SQUEEE! Publisher's Weekly Review of Threshold -- and it's good!

[seawasp]

Either this is a late-emerging review, or I somehow missed it before.

EDIT: It seems to have vanished from that link, too. Are reviews over a week old no longer accessible without subscription?

It's not a long review, as you can see by the whole thing here, but it's nicely positive in tone and despite one "understatement to the point of almost wrong" (saying the Bemmie technology is  "millennia" old rather than 65 million years old), it's a good overview that isn't very spoilery at all. It includes  this excellent line:"This genial, fast-paced sci-fi espionage thriller is light in tone and hard on science and a fine choice for any collection."

I couldn't really hope for a better review from a real source, eh?

Wish I could've seen one for GCA, but I suspect they generally only do hardcovers.

Comments

[shana.livejournal.com]

They review about 6-8 mass market paperbacks each issue.

[muirecan.livejournal.com]

Very nice. Millennia isn't absolutely wrong though people aren't used to very very large swaths of time. Eon might have been a better choice of words though in astronomical terms it implies billions. I can't think of a good word to use other than millennium. Epoch while it can cover enough time is more specifically a geologic time marker and eon would be a bit to long. So while millennia is way to short it implies the long scale at the very least.

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

Hey, excellent!

[melchar.livejournal.com]

Funny story happened earlier this week. Was in a B&N, checking out the new sf books and stressing that a lot [okay ... 4] of the authors I follow had hardbacks out. And I saw -1- copy of 'Threshold' on the shelf and pointed it out to my hubby, since he likes Flint's work and I've been trying to get him to read 'Boundary' & 'Threshold'.

[He was puzzled. I explained that Ryk E Spoor was Seawasp and then he noticed Flint's name there**. So I went on a 'gee, remember Usenet' thing and some -other- guy in the aisle grabs the book and says 'you know this guy?' and goes off to buy it. Completely bewildered me. It was like he was taking it so that I couldn't have it O_o]

** IMO your name is positioned in a much more eye-catching way on the cover.

[seawasp]

You may be right. Eric's name is at the top with both Boundary and Threshold, but in both cases my name's against a much darker background and stands out -- something more pronounced in Threshold.

Hopefully the guy who grabbed Threshold already has Boundary or he's going to be confused!

I presume YOU already have Boundary and thus you could convince Hubby to try that one first. :) If other people keep grabbing your copy of Threshold I'll send you one. ;)

[melchar.livejournal.com]

[snerk] I have 'Threshold', 'Boundary', 'Grand Central Arena' - and I -had- a copy of 'Digital Knight' but think I loaned it out.

[I am an admitted book addict, have 7 bookcases stuffed full - and loan them out. Sadly, some of them don't come home.]

[seawasp]

Well, of those four, I have spare copies of the first three. Digital Knight, alas, being OOP, I have no more copies of.

You don't have Mountain Magic?

[isleburroughs.livejournal.com]

Awesome!

[rdmasters.livejournal.com]

Cool! Congratulations!

[seawasp]

Glad your cow-orker liked Boundary (so now they can try Threshold!); but I must admit to some puzzlement as to your being satisfied by Threshold's ending which most people say is an AAAAAAAAAIIII! Cliffhanger! when you seem UNsatisfied by GCA's ending, which is about as much closure as I could figure out being POSSIBLE with that setting.

The sequel to Threshold is in process now. You waited four years for Threshold because it took Eric that long to do his part. I finished the first draft of Threshold about the time the paperback of Boundary came out.

The sequel to GCA is "if GCA earns out and some more". So it depends on how well it sells. Minimum is about 14,500 copies total, I think.

[seawasp]

Veeeeeery Eeeeeenteresting.

I can sort of see how that perception could happen; GCA is a grand-scale space opera and the threats are grand-scale and may seem imminent, while Threshold is a more personal-scale and the threats are being addressed one at a time, in order, etc.

Yet in actuality, at the end of Threshold you have a clock ticking in several areas, one of them on an hour-scale importance (get power from Munin over to Nebula Storm in time to keep the dusty plasma drive running as a radiation shield) and the others still heavily constrained (can we keep the life support systems running? What are our supplies like? Who's hurt on Munin, since several of the people onboard were being evacuated from Odin? How long will it take to repair Nebula Storm's reactor? How will they deal with the fact that they're living in something like 1/10th gravity?) And that's not even touching the political bomb that's about to detonate, and the wild card of the fact that Hohenheim is still alive.

On GCA side (at least as far as Our Heroes know) the only REAL timebomb is the Molothos, and they've established that as a threat that's at least a year out.

[wyldc.livejournal.com]

Well, GCA definitely shows the grand scale viewpoint(just look at the arena), but the end of GCA almost feels like the set up for a more "local" (just the Sol system) interlude.

The more immediate questions at the end of GCA were (for me), what hoops will they have to jump through to get a cohesive mission together to return? Will Ariane manage to hold onto leadership, or will political factions on Earth try to replace her (or stop the return entirely)? Are the strange forces sealed away in Ariane truly contained? When will they start to eat through the containment?

Yes the Molothos are a year out, but its a year where every second counts and humans can be very stubborn. Further, it is a year that will shake the fairly complacent society of Sol. I admit I'm looking forward to what happens next, and not just on what happens with their return to the arena (for which I have many more questions).

[seawasp]

Well, I can tell you that if there is a sequel (pleasepleasepleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease), I will be trying to minimize the political aspects in terms of how much it directly ensnares the main characters. There WILL be tremendous political and social impact -- no doubt about it -- but I don't want to end up in the trap David Weber did with Honor Harrington, where he's been forced to change the basic nature of the series to be more political simply because of the position Honor has risen to. I may, like him, HAVE to do it at some point, but at least I want to keep the series focused on mostly-individual action and choice and adventure for several more books.

I did actually write about 40,000 words of a sequel, and it was that which convinced me that I wanted to avoid the politics. Even with that one, though, I had them back to the Arena before 30,000 words had passed. The Arena is where things happen and where things have to be dealt with.

[suburbanbanshee.livejournal.com]

The nice thing about keeping politics in the background is that you can paint an interesting sf picture with just a few references.

Those racing and extreme sport people are going to be a bit boggled. It'd be like dressage suddenly becoming an important military training element again.

[seawasp]

Yep. The USR community (Unlimited Space Racing) is going to be the center of Arena pilot recruitment.

And painting the picture is what I want to do. I want to give you enough of an idea of the political upheaval so that it's clear how much of a mess things are, but not spend most of my time WRITING about it.

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

Congratulations! That's awesome!

I hope you write a GCA sequel anyways.

[nerem.livejournal.com]

I really enjoyed it. Though I'm sure people have mentioned this, but one certain DBZ reference was more obvious, but the other, colder one was a lot more subtle. Am I right?

Re: I hope you write a GCA sequel anyways.

[seawasp]

Well, there are at least five DBZ refs I can think of in GCA, of which some are blatant, some are combo (i.e., they could be refs to something other than DBZ, too) and a couple are fairly subtle. I would say the... cooler one is fairly subtle, or at least obscure; you'd have to be good at constructing visuals in your head, AND your construction would have to track close to my own visualization when I wrote the description, for you to get it.

Re: I hope you write a GCA sequel anyways.

[nerem.livejournal.com]

I am very good at visualization and I was on the look out ever sense the blatant one showed up, so once the tailwhip came up, I was like "Hold on a second." and went back and read the description, and then compared it to my photographic memory for things like this.

And then I was like "EUREKA."

Re: I hope you write a GCA sequel anyways.

[nerem.livejournal.com]

Hold up. Is your avatar implying something.

Re: I hope you write a GCA sequel anyways.

[seawasp]

It could be implying many things. Sore wa... HIMITSU desu!

Re: I hope you write a GCA sequel anyways.

[seawasp]

Yes, if you've seen the right scene, or played the DBZ games, that tail-whip is utterly distinctive and will trigger your recall.

[nerem.livejournal.com]

That was exactly it. I was just telling my friend how the tailwhip was Freeza's signature move in the games, and that plus the glanced past 'small, white, and purple' made me realize it in a flash.

I have to admit though, Orphan and related did remind me of Cell's first form to an extent, though I dunno if that was intended!

And I was left wondering if that thing that happened at that certain time was suppose to remind us of a certain green-eyed ability.

Yes, I'm so vague, but I know you'll understand.

[seawasp]

A lot of your questions and guesses will be answered by going to my official website, which includes video, character/species descriptions, and even my "soundtrack" for GCA (which itself contains hints and spoilers).