I've just finished reading The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch, a novel I was given by a friend to read to try and convince me that fantasy novels are where it's at. Not that I have anything against genre fiction you understand but fantasy novels always seem to be so long and involved, caught up in their own created worlds in a way which (generalization alert; based on my own limited involvement with the genre) seems wholly insular, rather than using alternate worlds to look at our own.
On the one hand I did quite enjoy the book: it's well written, good plot (once it knows where it's going), larger than life characters; on the other hand it didn't really change my opinion of fantasy writing: for the first 100 or so pages I found myself wondering (as I always do when reading fantasy novels) who on earth can be bothered to come up with so many names for things? I know its not as bad as coming up with a different language for your fantasy world but still ... surely there's more productive things to be done.
So that's a bit of a crap point, i accept it, and I did get over it to enjoy the book, but I think it demonstrates the point adequately on insularity.
And, to the main point of my post, though it still has to do with naming; at a point late on in the book Locke Lamora uses the name Galdo Avrillaigne, which, if it's not immediately apparent, is Avril Lavigne with the space and the 'v' missing.
You see how hard naming so many things is?
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