(I rarely say this, but) Squee!

I finished Crown Duel a little while ago. (I’d forgotten about the short story in the back, hehe.) I thought it was so good that I went on Amazon wondering if Sherwood Smith had written anything else. Now, I did read the little bio in the back that gives her website address, but I wouldn’t have visited it (or given anything else she’d written much thought) if she hadn’t posted on Amazon.

A lot of reviews on Amazon are general and don’t really tell you much of anything about the book. I couldn’t figure out … well, anything about the book (Inda, for anyone keeping track). (I have to admit, what the author wrote confused me a bit; it seemed sort of random and not really fitting in with talking about the book at first.)

After I realized it was the author herself writing, I thought she might give more details about the book, so I went around looking on her site. What I wanted to know probably isn’t crucial to selling the book, but the things I found out sold it for me: adult fantasy, set in Meliara’s world. Woohoo!

Although it’s not about Mel or Shevraeth, I’m still interested. I keep thinking it’s somewhat similar to M. M. Kaye’s The Far Pavilions (which, upon further consideration, might almost be up to par with how fun Crown Duel, Ella Enchanted, etc. are), and I don’t want that to ruin it. Since it’s still in hardcover, I’ll just wait for the price to go down, and misleading associations to go down as well.

The squee! part comes in when I found out Sherwood Smith has written other stories with Mel and Shevraeth in them, and some are available online. :O One fansite, Colorwoods, also has a Q&A page up, which is almost like another story. More like backstory, but since I hadn’t known it before, it’s a new story to me. I’ve bookmarked three pages and joined a new community on Livejournal, to remind me to read all this later.

And all this has led me to staying up till midnight, when I’d planned to get to bed earlier than last night. D’oh!