Update to “Safehold” Critique

Esther Friesner’s got it right:

Goot eeeevening. Velcome to my eeeentroduction. Enter freely and—

SLAP!!!

Whew. Thanks. I needed that…

…Campy faux Transylvanian is jangly enough to the innocent ear, but when the reader’s eye must wrestle with that dreadfully twisted orthography, it becomes the realm of Cruel and Unusual Punishment.

And we don’t want that. We love our readers. We cherish our readers. We want our readers to be happy.

It’s be nice if David Weber took her advice to rectify his irritating naming convention in his Safehold series.

Granted, Esther Friesner’s humorous series of “Chicks in Chainmail” and “witches, werewolves and vampires in… Suburbia” stories are in a lighter vein, but readability shouldn’t be dependent on genre. (I wish James Joyce could hear that from the grave… even though he’swriting as much now as I wish he ever had *heh*)

BTW, if you think I think (yeh, as little as possible and only when I have to*heh*) readers of this space might enjoy Friesner’s wacky–yet respectful of her readers’ time and sensibilities *cough*, such as they might be–approach to her topics, then you’re right. From the intro to Fangs for the Mammaries*–

As I might have mentioned in the Introductions to previous anthologies, Suburbia has become a very easy target for the Hip, the Hot, the Artsy, and the Artsy-with-a-capital-F. Thus I promise not to yield to the urge to make vampire-slanted puns about how Suburbia bites, sucks, is dead, drains your blood, drives you batty, etc.

It is one thing to shoot fish in a barrel. It is another thing to bring flamethrowers into play against beached guppies.

Except I pretty much just did that, didn’t I? Oops.

*heh*

*Yes, it’s an anthology of (mostly) others’ stories set in Friesner’s unique world, still her vision.