I've just abandoned my attempt to read a recently published fantasy, a pseudo-Victorian piece*. I'm not complaining about the characters or the plot; to be honest I didn't get far enough into the novel to be able to offer much in the way of an opinion on those scores.
What did for me was the names of the places (and some of the characters). With remarkable consistency these names kicked me out of the story and made me stop and wonder Why that choice? Why not something that fit better?
Lorna talks about something she calls The Gift of Naming. It's that magical talent for the mot juste—okay, the nom juste—that some writers just seem to be born with, and others develop through (I suspect) hard work. I think Sarah Monette has it; Lorna says Ursula Le Guin is the wellspring and Glen Cook an excellent possessor of the talent (she thinks it's more important in fantasy than SF, but I recall being very impressed with what I used to refer to as William Gibson's "brand-name future" as I read his Sprawl novels). And of course names are one of the things most frequently noted about Charles Dickens, though I can say without much fear of contradiction that this is a talent he was still developing when he wrote Pickwick Papers.
*No names. I'm now of the opinion that life's too short to spend time calling out, by name, authors or books I can't recommend. If I mention a book or author by name, it's because I want to recommend it.
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