Disappearing Nightly

Moving from the wilderness back to the city, next up on the list of relaxing books to read during my stressful and overly-busy fall was Disappearing Nightly (Luna, 2005; no editor listed), by Laura Resnick.  Ms. Resnick is the daughter of Mike Resnick, whom I was busy dissing back in the summer for his cloying short fiction that unaccountably keeps making the Hugo ballot.  I'm pleased to report that while this isn't a wildly exciting novel, at least it isn't cloying.  It is, however, basically fluff, and uneven fluff at that.

I'm very cautious about books from Luna, which at least in its original incarnation was meant to be female-appealing by adding romance into the F&SF mix.  I don't object to romance in F&SF, but I don't really like it as the focus of a story, and my first experiment with a Luna novel was quite negative in that regard.  In Disappearing Nightly, Resnick tries hard to combine romance, mystery, comedy, and fantasy, which is a lot to load into one story.  The mystery is adequately handled and sort of interesting as a concept: various stage magicians' disappearing acts are causing their assistants to disappear for real; how and why?  The fantasy elements (good magicians protecting New York City from Evil) are not terribly original.  The romance is a little heavy-handed and feels like a distraction from the plot.  Having the mystery originate in the theater world is a plus for me personally, but -- alas -- it's not a backstage comedy.  Most of the book takes place around New York City rather than in the theater itself.  And all of the characters except the protagonist, actress Esther Diamond, are shallowly drawn, less actual characters than collections of characteristics (often very funny characteristics, but still.)  It's meant to be screwball comedy, but the tone and pacing just aren't quite right.  Some bits are quite funny, but the successful jokes come in fits and starts.

The book isn't awful, and I read it straight through with no urge to toss it across the room.  But I think Resnick bit off more than she could chew here.  It feels clunky and uneven in tone, and the pieces just don't quite merge into a successful whole.  And it is too much like chick-lit, complete with a heroine who is "feisty," which is one of those terms that mainly gets applied to women and usually strikes me as semi-contemptuous.  That SF Chronicle called this "one of the best titles Luna has issued" confirms that I really am not in Luna's intended demographic.

Disappearing Nightly apparently is the first book in a series, with a second one coming out from DAW next year and this one set to be reissued by DAW at some point; details are here.  I don't know that I'll be running out to buy the next one, despite the promising title of Doppelgangster, but moving to DAW strikes me as a good sign, in that it presumably removes the Luna mandate to include romance.  I think dropping that might help; slapstick urban fantasy mystery seems like it has potential, if it went lighter on the chick-lit elements.

Shopping link, if you want to see for yourself:

Comments

[Serge]

The book isn't awful, and I read it straight through with no urge to toss it across the room.

Coming from you, that's no faint praise.

As for the Luna Books... The idea of tapping into the market of people who enjoy F/SF and romance was a good one. Unfortunately, it was so badly promoted that, because the publisher was Harlequin, bookstores put the novels in the romance section, where most F/SF reders don't go, and it turned out that most romance readers didn't seek fantasy stories not set in the here and now. That's why, when Luna went thru a blood bath, the survivors were mostly what's now called Urban Fantasy.

[Susan de Guardiola]

I've read an enjoyed quite a few romance novels, but I seem to be very fussy about having romance mixed in to my F&SF. Two great tastes that don't taste great together? It's hard to strike a happy medium between just writing a romance novel in a fantastical setting and writing a F/SF novel but leaving the romance so unintegrated that it feels artificial and imposed on an otherwise workable story (which is sort of how I felt with this book; the plot would have worked just as well without the romantic elements). Somewhere in there is a sweet spot where the romance is integral but not overwhelming, but very few authors seem to be able to find it to my satisfaction, and it mostly turns me off the new variety of urban fantasy/paranormal romance.

(I also read quite a few books in this subgenre for Publisher's Weekly, which I can't discuss here, so I have some idea of what the field's like in general.)

[Serge]

It's hard to mix genres. It can happen. Last year, at the worldcon, I was having lunch with my wife and her agent, who deals with the romance field a lot. I mentionned - and they agreed - that the James Bond movie Casino Royale was extremely romantic, but that it wasn't a romance, not as the publishing world now defines the term.

[Mary Aileen]

I enjoyed Disappearing Nightly more than you did, although I agree that it's somewhat uneven. I've been looking forward to the sequel, which was delayed by several years. I have generally liked the Luna books I've read, but I'm very choosy about which ones I pick up. On the other hand, I am a romance reader as well as a SF/fantasy reader. The blends generally don't appeal to me because romance novels rarely handle the fantastic elements well; I'm a lot more forgiving of a good SF/fantasy novel that drops the ball on the romance part. Luna, as you say, seems to emphasize the SF/fantasy elements, so it fits my tastes well. When we buy Luna books for my library, we put them in SF, not romance.

[I wasn't able to post this in Firefox just now, because the Post button stayed grayed out even after I entered my information. Posting this in Explorer, which seems to be fine.]

[Marilee J. Layman]

Susan, how do you feel about Catherine Asaro's books?

[Susan de Guardiola]

Marilee:
Catherine Asaro lost me forever when I read the story that featured the romantic leads eloping on pastel unicorns, which was the climactic annoyance in a whole series of them. I read one other story of hers and found it irritating in all sorts of ways, so I stopped annoying myself by reading her stuff.

[Paul A.]

Susan, have you read any of Lee & Miller's stuff? Most of it is romantic without being Romance, like what Serge said, but a couple of the novels might qualify properly as Romance.

[Marilee J. Layman]

I've never read any of hers because they sounded too romantic, and it sounds like I was right.

[Serge]

Asaro.... I shall refrain from publicly say what I think of her.

[AJ]

Eloping on pastel unicorns? Oh goodness. If I read that in a book, I would either die laughing, or roll my eyes so hard that I'd sprain my retinas.

[Serge]

"AJ! Stop rolling your eyes like that, young lady! Or do you want to wind up looking like Marty Feldman?"

[Mary Aileen]

I just read Doppelgangster, the sequel to Disappearing Nightly. It was pretty good, although the mob stuff here didn't interest me as much as the theatrical bits in the first one. Anyone reading this for the romance is going to be disappointed.

Despite the flaws, it's good enough that I'll read more as they are published.

[Serge]

"Doppelgangster"?
Any fairy godfather?

[Serge]

I mean, wasn't there a Mythadventure about that very subject, years ago?

[Mary Aileen]

Serge: No, no fairy godfather. Maybe that's the next book.

[Susan de Guardiola]

I've also read Doppelgangster, and though I don't like gangland drama as much as backstage/theatrical drama, I thought it was a much better book overall than Disappearing Nightly.

[Paula Lieberman]

Most of the original Luna series were outside of my taste loci and some seems immensely self-indulgent. The ones I did read and go out of my way to buy, including Michelle Sagara's series, which is reminiscent actually of Steve Brust's Dragaera novels, except that most of the characters LIKE one another; and Laura Anne Gilman's Retriever series (which is UF and there is a running romance subplot involving the female and male leads; the Sagara series, has little in the way of romantic subplot threads, someone who comes to it looking for romance is majorly going to be out of luck....)

[Serge]

Paula... Every once in a while, my wife receives emails from readers of her Luna novels who asks if there's a chance the story might ever be continued/completed, even in electronic form. She always has to say no to them.

[Susan de Guardiola]

Serge,
Why can't it be continued/completed?

[Serge]

Susan... The story didn't do well with readers of romance or fantasy. It probably was too much fantasy and not enough romance for the former. As for the latter, if she had been known in the field of F/SF, and if the potential readers had known to look for the novels in the romance section of bookstores, her story might have done better, but how much better? Also, after two novels, the story was only at the half-way point.

The bottom line? We doubt there is that much of a demand for the rest of the story.

Who knows? Maybe one day she'll decide to return to the whole thing and maybe rewrite it. Right now though, she's busy with many book projects.

[Susan de Guardiola]

Paula,
I read one of the early Luna novels, but I've blanked all the details out of my mind because I found it so cloying.