I’m back from our family hols (Sodwana Bay, for those who like that kinda thing. Very pretty indeed; butterflies and monkeys on the beach in the middle of winter. Hell yeah) and trying to catch up on emails and lj posts and stuff. (And failing, I might add)
This post by Scalzi made me feel a bit better about my incredibly slow path to …well…anything really. 
Why New Novelists Are Kinda Old, or, Hey, Publishing is Slow
this part especially:
1969 – 1997: Time spent learning to write well enough to write a novel (28).
1997: Wrote first complete novel (28)
1997 – 2001: Life intervenes and keeps me away from fiction (32).
2001: Wrote second novel (32)
2002: Offer made on second novel, now my debut novel (33)
2003: Contract signed for debut novel (33)
2004: Editing and early publicity for debut novel (35)
2005: Debut novel published (35)
2006: Won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (37)
So basically I have five more years before I give up. *grins*
While on hols, I finally got some reading time in and finished Cindy Pon‘s Silver Phoenix. It’s easy to tell that Cindy likes food and painting. Seriously. She made me hungry a whole lot, and her writing is very visual, very painterly. Most of the time I felt I was watching the story scroll past in a series of water colours, with fresh colours and clean ink lines.
Personally, I would like to see her incorporate the other senses more to help ground me in her world. Taste and smell especially. The few times that these two senses came into play I really felt myself immersed in Ai Ling’s world. As it is, I loved the mythology, and her descriptions are wonderful , and I’m glad to see that Cindy Pon doesn’t shy away from killing off characters. (Yay!).
Ai Ling makes for a sympathetic protag and she was both believable and relatable. I loved Chen Yong, and his obvious out-of-placeness and I’m keen to read the next book and see where the story takes the two of them (if indeed that’s where the focus is going to be).
Recommended.
