aceofkittens | The ire affair

In a weird coincidence, I discovered Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair at

bugjism's house the same day that

vaznetti had been writing about it in her LJ. I'm slowly working through a rather neglected reading list, and finished Eyre Affair this morning on the train.

Well.

vaznetti had said that people either really take to the Fforde books and love them, or else loathe them. I can't say that I had that strong an opinion in either direction, but I definitely disliked it more than I liked it. It made me kind of annoyed. I would read the sequel, sure, but there's a kind of — smugness — which permeates the writing, and which I tend to really dislike. It's one of the reasons I don't like Laurell Hamilton's books (especially the Anita Blake ones) — a sense that the author is entirely too pleased with themselves and how very very very clever they are.

Maybe I react badly to so-called "clever wordplay" because of overdosing on Piers Anthony...