My friend Sarah Monette has the first chapter of her second book The Virtu up on her website. (Less pretty but more accessible version here.) It’s a sequel, so those of you who haven’t read Mélusine won’t entirely get what’s going on… but that just means you need to go out and get your hands on Mélusine.
There’s a wee bit of anti-academia snark that I quite enjoyed. (Monette is Dr. Monette, so she comes by anti-academia snark honestly. Unlike, you know, scrubs like me.) If you ask me, sci-fi and fantasy authors do anti-academic snark better than anyone.
I picked up one of those David Lodge books everyone raves about. Thought it painfully obvious, annoyingly sexist, and (worst of all) so dull I didn’t even finish it.
But I love The Dispossessed, in which an academic pissing contest threatens anarchist utopia. Or The Gods Themselves, in which the gods themselves contend in vain (?) against the rank stupidity of an academic’s ego.
Sure, I’m mean and small-minded and all that. Granted. Don’t let that stop you from reading The Virtu, ’k?
