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Rich Horton's avatar

I liked Sorceress more than you guys, though I think your comments are reasonable. I think in a way I read it as a YA novel. I mean, it's kind of two novels -- a YA fantasy with a sadly less than fully interesting main character in Cordelia; and an adult fantasy with a decent main character in Harriett. But the villainness was very bad in a fairly interesting way, though as you note she was perhaps TOO bad. But I think you could speculate that her particular power was of a nature to completely corrupt her morally.

And I largely agree with you on The Tainted Cup, which ended up second on my (still provisional) ballot. It's simply immensely fun. The fantastical elements are pretty interesting but I don't think they are quite NEW enough, so my "speculative" rating would be lower -- probably 7. And the same with the literary rating -- 6 or 7. Solid prose, and Ana's voice in particular is great, but overall the prose and the other "literary" aspects are just fine, not special.

I also pretty much agree about Alien Clay and Service Model. So I had them ordered 2,3,4,5 -- the Bennett, the two Tchaikovskys, and the Kingfisher. That means the next two you do will be by #1 pick and my last place pick!

I also quite like your Literary/Speculative rating concept!

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