It's baaaack...

[bovil]

Remember all that furor last fall about "venom cock?"

It's erupted again, this time because of a somewhat favorable review by Liz Henry in Strange Horizons.

No, I haven't read the book, I've only read the extracts.

Still, I think it was a bit presumptuous on Ms. Henry's part to tell the folks who think the book blows dragonsgoats that they're not sophisticated enough to read such a great piece of feminist dystopian literature. Oh, wait, it's not great literature, it might even be kind of bad (scroll down and look for her long response where she mentions The Book of the New Sun). Talk about mixed messages.

For the whole hullabaloo, check out emcitblog; Cheryl has a pretty good bead on the review and the resulting fallout.

I'm waiting to see the fallout when people start noticing that The Library Journal included Touched by Venom in their list of 2005's Best Genre Fiction. So far, I've only seen one reference to that, and I had to verify it myself. I dug through the University's periodicals databases to find their original review from November, they closed with With particular appeal to fans of the works of Jacqueline Carey and Terry Goodkind, this opening volume of a planned trilogy is highly recommended for most libraries. I also found a similar glowing review in Publishers' Weekly. Gotta love Lexis-Nexis Academic.

(Oh, and for a laugh, check out crevette's thoroughly snarky and rotten review of Touched by Venom. I dare you to make it through the whole thing. It's a glorious rant, bucking frilliant.)

Comments

[jeff-morris.livejournal.com]

Hell, come out to Fandom Wank. We've been having a fine old time with "Venom Cock" the last few days.

JSM

[bovil.livejournal.com]

That's where I noticed it. I don't do JF regularly, but some days I go and check F_W. Somehow I missed it when it first appeared on emcitblog last week.

It's my fault that it showed up on F_W the first time (http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank/845160.html); I posted the original "WTF Wednesday" synopsis (http://community.livejournal.com/fanthropology/163275.html) on fanthropology.

[esprix.livejournal.com]

Good lord, you do know where to find this stuff. :D