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Thanks for the reviews! I'll buy Hull Zero Three. Every single book I read by Greg Bear has been god drat mind-blowing. Blood Music starts off with a scientist who has managed to make sentient white blood cells and then injects them into himself because, you know, why not.
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# ? Apr 15, 2014 08:18 |
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# ? Jun 3, 2024 22:26 |
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Hedrigall posted:After a slow and terrifying build up of horrific visions and people disappearing, the main threat turns out to be a Japanese spirit thing who literally stands on a pile of corpses wielding her katana, uguu~. The book turned into anime. It became anime, in my hands. loving Adam Christopher weeaboo piece of poo poo. That was kind of obvious from literally the first few chapters. I mean, poo poo, the prologue was named 'Yomi', and then a vaguely sinister-looking character named Izanami showed up. Sure, not everyone has even the slightest of passing familiarities with Japanese mythology, but that's entry-level, like if the book started with a prologue entitled 'HELL' that had some dude moping about how God's a douchebag and he wants out, and then introducing a friendly, slightly off character called Satan Lucifer. I get that goons have a violently antipathic reaction to anime (with good reason), but you were warned well in advance, and this poo poo only qualifies as 'anime' by dint of coming from the same country and showing up in an inherently nerdy subgenre. It's almost literally Event Horizon with a different national mythology. I mean, I'd get what you were complaining about if you were talking about, say, the Grand Central Arena series, because jesus christ Ryk Spoor tone it down, but this is basically 'OH MY GOD IT WAS JAPANESE I GOT JAPANESE ON ME GET IT OFF GET IT OFF GET IT OFF'. Sorry about the big blocks o' black, by the way. Not sure how to reduce them unless everyone's cool with me spoiling some plot poo poo. e: ah, hell, it's not like the author is trying to hide it. Summary - The Burning Dark is basically Event Horizon with Christianity swapped out for Japanese mythology. It's a fun, light read that's solidly written enough, with the downsides being the usual horror slow-wittedness, one irritatingly underexplained plot point, and a merely so-so ending. If you liked that movie, and if the merest mention of Japan doesn't cause you to back away whilst reaching for the garlic and crucifix, then you'll probably like this. Darth Walrus fucked around with this message at 16:35 on Apr 15, 2014 |
# ? Apr 15, 2014 10:18 |
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regularizer posted:On the Felix Gilman note, has anyone read The Revolutions yet? It was only published two days ago, and I'm about to start it today or tomorrow. I just finished The Revolutions yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed it. I had no idea what to expect going in -- I had ordered it on my kindle months ago and totally forgot about it until it popped up. So I was surprised by the fact (not a spoiler) that it's set in fin de siècle London. It felt like it pulled in some elements of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrel, but mixed in with a heavy dose of CS Lewis's That Hideous Strength. The strengths, as you might expect, are the characters, who are memorable and interesting, the writing (uniformly high quality) and the sheer imagination involved. The main weakness is probably the central "romance," which is just sort of presented to us without much explanation of what the two people find so compelling about one another. It also has some similar pacing issues as Half-Made World (although HMW is among my favorite handful of books from the last five years, so it's not fatal). Overall I'd strongly recommend it -- especially to this thread, as it hits a number of genres/themes that this thread often talks about.
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# ? Apr 15, 2014 13:46 |
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uberkeyzer posted:It felt like it pulled in some elements of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrel, but mixed in with a heavy dose of CS Lewis's That Hideous Strength. loving yes, That Hideous Strength is one of my favourite fantasy books, and Gilman is one of favourite new authors. Still waiting for my stupid local store to stock it. It appears to be there now.
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# ? Apr 15, 2014 14:00 |
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Hedrigall posted:I actually just wrote a blog post about the space horror subgenre, and I mini-review 5 works (Unto Leviathan, Blindsight, Hull Zero Three, The Burning Dark, and the Revelation Space series) while giving comments on the horror elements, SF elements, and mystery/resolution elements of each work. Not actually interested in the books themselves (I'm not big into either space or horror these days) but the graphics are cool, man.
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# ? Apr 15, 2014 15:41 |
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uberkeyzer posted:I just finished The Revolutions yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed it. I had no idea what to expect going in -- I had ordered it on my kindle months ago and totally forgot about it until it popped up. So I was surprised by the fact (not a spoiler) that it's set in fin de siècle London. It felt like it pulled in some elements of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrel, but mixed in with a heavy dose of CS Lewis's That Hideous Strength. I'm also kind of amazed that anyone liked That Hideous Strength at all.
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# ? Apr 15, 2014 16:11 |
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Darth Walrus posted:That was kind of obvious from literally the first few chapters. I mean, poo poo, the prologue was named 'Yomi', and then a vaguely sinister-looking character named Izanami showed up. Sure, not everyone has even the slightest of passing familiarities with Japanese mythology, but that's entry-level, like if the book started with a prologue entitled 'HELL' that had some dude moping about how God's a douchebag and he wants out, and then introducing a friendly, slightly off character called Satan Lucifer. I get that goons have a violently antipathic reaction to anime (with good reason), but you were warned well in advance, and this poo poo only qualifies as 'anime' by dint of coming from the same country and showing up in an inherently nerdy subgenre. It's almost literally Event Horizon with a different national mythology. I mean, I'd get what you were complaining about if you were talking about, say, the Grand Central Arena series, because jesus christ Ryk Spoor tone it down, but this is basically 'OH MY GOD IT WAS JAPANESE I GOT JAPANESE ON ME GET IT OFF GET IT OFF GET IT OFF'. It would be just as dumb if it was a Navajo ghost with a tomahawk.
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# ? Apr 15, 2014 16:18 |
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Piell posted:It would be just as dumb if it was a Navajo ghost with a tomahawk. I give it a bit more of a pass because she's the goddess of death, so the actual mythology frequently depicts her with either a katana or the more ladylike naginata (long-bladed halberd) for harvesting her thousand souls a day. It's kind of like the Grim Reaper's scythe, it's not there just because JAPAN - or if it is, then the author stumbled on a very lucky coincidence.
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# ? Apr 15, 2014 16:43 |
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Cardiovorax posted:Man, I'm not sure that's much of a recommendation. I know Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrel is really popular here, but I always felt that it succeeded a bit too well at its central conceit; which is to say, being written like a biography. I gave up three quarters through because I kept waiting for plot to happen and it just never did. I don't really want to get too into why I made the comparisons I did, because spoilers, but upon reflection it's closer to Out of the Silent Planet. It does not read like a biography -- it's third person limited and jumps between the two main characters, Arthur and Josephine, for the most part, like he did with the two main characters in Half-made world
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# ? Apr 15, 2014 18:28 |
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I've looked through my Goodreads recommendations, and my eyebrows kind of slowly rose, and I thought, "You are kind of reaching, guys". Maybe it's this particular selection, but it felt like they were desperate writers but had nothing to write about. For example [quote="Grailblazers by Tom Holt"] Fifteen hundred years have passed and the Holy Grail is still missing, presumed ineffable. The knights have dumped the quest and now deliver pizzas, while the sinister financial services of the lost kingdom of Atlantis threatens the universe with fiscal Armageddon. [/quote] [quote="The Witches of Chiswick by Robert Rankin"] We have all been lied to—a great and sinister conspiracy exists to keep us from uncovering the truth about our past. Have you ever wondered how Victorians like Jules Verne and H.G. Wells dreamed up all that fantastic futuristic fiction? Did it ever occur to you that it might have been based upon fact? That War of The Worlds was a true account of real events? That Captain Nemos Nautilus even now lies rusting at the bottom of the North Sea? And what about the other stuff? Did you know, for instance, that Jack the Ripper was a terminator robot sent from the future? In this book, learn how a cabal of Victorian Witches from the Chiswick Townswomen’s Guild, working with advanced Babbage super computers, rewrote 19th-century history, and how a 21st-century boy called Billy Starling uncovered the truth about everything. [/quote] Instead of smiling these blurbs make me worried for the sanity of the writers, especially in the area of schizophrenic disorders. There are several threads kind of appropriate for this, but Goodreads classifies these books as fantasy, apparently. Anyway, my complaint applies.
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# ? Apr 15, 2014 22:53 |
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supermikhail posted:I've looked through my Goodreads recommendations, and my eyebrows kind of slowly rose, and I thought, "You are kind of reaching, guys". Maybe it's this particular selection, but it felt like they were desperate writers but had nothing to write about. I can't speak for Tom Holt as I haven't read any of his work in the past few years (I remember most of them being silly twists on classic folk tales and their elements), but The Witches of Chiswick is great! Both authors write light-hearted comic fantasy novels in the vein of Pratchett or A. Lee Martinez. Any description of a Rankin book tends will seem absolutely insane, but I find him the funniest of the bunch. His novels are breakneck-paced, goofy, insane thrillrides that poke lighthearted fun at genre conventions and every other thing in the world ever. He's super British, and he's super witty. Edit: It might be the whole comic fantasy genre you're reacting to. Those blurbs don't seem too out of place when compared with the rest of the genre. Siminu fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Apr 15, 2014 |
# ? Apr 15, 2014 23:20 |
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The more picky I've become about my reading, the more difficult it is to tell whether a book will be enjoyable or not based on the premise alone. The most gonzo ideas can make excellent stories if executed well, and the coolest ideas can fail horribly in the wrong hands. I feel like I'm in the minority here by not being all that impressed with Blindsight though. Maybe it's because horror doesn't faze me at all anymore, and without the chills you'd normally get conteplating such a devastatingly void intelligence, I spent too much time picking the rest of the novel apart. I couldn't give two shits about his characters because the only ones who had any personality at all were the assholes, and the rest, including 3/4 of the multiple personality "Gang," all blended into a samey mass with different names I forgot almost as soon as I read them. I mean, gently caress, his unreliable narrator even admitted at some point he wasn't transcribing the other character's original phrasing and instead translating their meaning--but that's just an excuse for lazy characterization because dialogue does half the work. All he had left to impress me with was his near encyclopedic knowledge of abnormal psychology, but I already know all that poo poo, so all it did was come across as a bunch of psych 101 thought experiments. I suppose being familiar with the most extreme materialist views of neuroscience, and calling bullshit on them doesn't help either. The background's general current of transhumanism was still cool I guess, and I have to admit that it's a well put-together story. Maybe I'm just an old grump. Pay me no mind if you loved it. I dunno. I was far more impressed with Solaris when it came to conteplating a vast unknowable intelligence. Solaris was filled with so much more confusion, wonder, longing, and loneliness that it remains my gold standard for this kind of story.
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# ? Apr 16, 2014 02:30 |
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Has anyone tried to read the Kindle edition of Destination: Void? It's not proof-read. I have a feeling it's one of those situations where they used the scanning technology to get it into a digital format and never proof-read the lovely file it spit out. It was bad enough that I had to stop reading and got Amazon to refund the purchase. That being said, how vital is Destination: Void to the Pandora Sequence? I see a lot of reviews where people who loved the Pandora Sequence hated this book. I don't mind reading it if it informs the latter books in a meaningful way, but I just want to see what people on here think. Also, has anyone read the following (The Jesus Incident, etc.) books on the Kindle? Do they have the same editing issues?
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# ? Apr 16, 2014 04:00 |
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I read Jesus Incident without reading Void and while I was certainly curious about what had happened before it hardly seemed vital. Jesus Incident is a loving weird book. It's full of very striking imagery and situations, but it's quite grotesque in a way that's very hard for me to pin down.
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# ? Apr 16, 2014 04:34 |
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Siminu posted:I can't speak for Tom Holt as I haven't read any of his work in the past few years (I remember most of them being silly twists on classic folk tales and their elements), but The Witches of Chiswick is great! I read the third one of the Brentford series and at least after some consideration thought it was pretty amazing, then tried the fourth book, and realized that it felt like such a letdown to even continue after the third book, not to mention that absurd quaintness was getting kind of stale and repetitive. Then I read Hollow chocolate bunnies and became convinced that I'm never going to get a satisfying conclusion out of Rankin. I guess I'll at least try a sample of Witches of Chiswick on Amazon based on your opinion.
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# ? Apr 16, 2014 09:33 |
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Less Fat Luke posted:Good luck. I loved the Golden age trilogy, kind of liked the Everness books... but goddamn I found the Chaos series horrible. I think that was his first post-batshit insane couple books (as opposed to just Ayn Rand bullshit). I'm almost done with the first book and by and large it's decent. The parts where it's not, though... The spanking scene, the creepy sexuality poo poo going on, ugh. I'll press on - I'm beginning to see how it maps onto Zelazny's Amber books (Wright said each faction has a corresponding Amber/Chaos faction; Saturn clearly taking up the position of Dworkin.).
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# ? Apr 16, 2014 18:20 |
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supermikhail posted:I read the third one of the Brentford series and at least after some consideration thought it was pretty amazing, then tried the fourth book, and realized that it felt like such a letdown to even continue after the third book, not to mention that absurd quaintness was getting kind of stale and repetitive. Then I read Hollow chocolate bunnies and became convinced that I'm never going to get a satisfying conclusion out of Rankin. I guess I'll at least try a sample of Witches of Chiswick on Amazon based on your opinion. I find Rankin really difficult to recommend to people as I'm sure there are people out there who will find his writing completely insufferable. The Witches of Chiswick is my favorite book of his, but that might be because it was the first book of Rankin's that I read. The Hollow Chocolate Bunny sequel and the 3rd book in the Witches of Chiswick trilogy gave me that same stale and repetitive feeling, which is odd to say about a writer whose books are chock full of absurdity. I find Rankin's book blurbs helpful in vaguely describing the strange events to come, and they all seem stupid and ridiculous until you read the book and see how the wacky disparate elements come together. Regardless, Witches is ridiculous time-travel adventure novel. It also has Hugo Rune in it, a Kruppe-like, arrogant, mooching, munchausen tale spinning, blowhard who acts like those guys on the internet who lie and brag about all their ridiculous accomplishments and martial arts abilities. Like Rankin's books, he's a whole lot of fun. (Until you get tired of him and need to take a break)
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# ? Apr 16, 2014 23:12 |
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Hedrigall posted:I actually just wrote a blog post about the space horror subgenre, and I mini-review 5 works (Unto Leviathan, Blindsight, Hull Zero Three, The Burning Dark, and the Revelation Space series) while giving comments on the horror elements, SF elements, and mystery/resolution elements of each work. Your page here got tweeted out by Alistair Reynolds the other day. Awesome job man!
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# ? Apr 16, 2014 23:46 |
Could I get recommendations for novels or series of novels that are similar in content and tone to either the Hellboy or The Goon series of comics/graphic novels? I love the way that Hellboy stitches together all kinds of mythologies into an unsettling world that always makes you think that something amazing and wonderful is just around the corner. I also like the dark tone, and how Mignola intersperses little bits of humor or other lightness in along with it, to keep it from being too depressing. I love the way The Goon takes the horror elements and drama and weaves it in with moments of levity. It goes a little more towards the absurd than I'm actually looking for, but it's the only thing other than Hellboy that I've read that seems to really capture that "bizarre occult world" feeling that I'm looking for. Also I'm a sucker for noir, so there's that. The only thing I've seen recommended that fits the bill is Charles Stross' Laundry Files, but aside from "Lovecraftian", I don't know if it fits at all.
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# ? Apr 17, 2014 00:40 |
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Hedrigall posted:I actually just wrote a blog post about the space horror subgenre, and I mini-review 5 works (Unto Leviathan, Blindsight, Hull Zero Three, The Burning Dark, and the Revelation Space series) while giving comments on the horror elements, SF elements, and mystery/resolution elements of each work. This entire blog is pretty awesome. Would you consider enabling full-text RSS feeds? I do most of my blog reading on the train where I often don't have signal, so truncated RSS feeds aren't much good for that.
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# ? Apr 17, 2014 00:46 |
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Fried Chicken posted:Your page here got tweeted out by Alistair Reynolds the other day. Awesome job man! Yeah that was a cool surprise Soviet Canuckistan posted:This entire blog is pretty awesome. Would you consider enabling full-text RSS feeds? I do most of my blog reading on the train where I often don't have signal, so truncated RSS feeds aren't much good for that. Hey thanks! I thought it was enabled... Wordpress's settings tell me that full text goes out on the RSS. edit: Looking at the raw feed ( http://outtherebooks.wordpress.com/feed/ ) it seems like the full text of each article is there.
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# ? Apr 17, 2014 00:51 |
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Hedrigall posted:Hey thanks! I thought it was enabled... Wordpress's settings tell me that full text goes out on the RSS. It looks like Firefox was truncating it in the feed preview, and I thought it meant the feed itself was truncated. I tried actually adding it to feedly, it is indeed full-text. Thanks!
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# ? Apr 17, 2014 01:23 |
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Hedrigall posted:I actually just wrote a blog post about the space horror subgenre, and I mini-review 5 works (Unto Leviathan, Blindsight, Hull Zero Three, The Burning Dark, and the Revelation Space series) while giving comments on the horror elements, SF elements, and mystery/resolution elements of each work. Revelation Space gets a 9/10, top banner 50% Alastair Reynolds books? PR mole spotted. (just kidding, bookmarked your blog)
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# ? Apr 17, 2014 01:28 |
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Hedrigall posted:Yeah that was a cool surprise
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# ? Apr 17, 2014 03:15 |
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Hedrigall posted:Yeah that was a cool surprise Page looked good. I also added a book to the list on Goodreads, it's an older novel, Farewell, Earth's Bliss. I got it as a gift on Secret Santa a few years ago, so I was pretty much going in blind, and it turned out to be really grim psychological space horror. The husband really liked it, which is saying something because he loves horror and reads and watches everything he can get his hands on and he isn't easily impressed.
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# ? Apr 17, 2014 04:23 |
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Ornamented Death posted:UK goons, you need to read Traitor's Blade by Sebastien de Castell. Holy poo poo it's good. I'm about halfway through it and you're not wrong. Really enjoying it so far. The narrator has a great voice for the story, it's really quite funny in places.
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# ? Apr 17, 2014 13:01 |
Azathoth posted:Could I get recommendations for novels or series of novels that are similar in content and tone to either the Hellboy or The Goon series of comics/graphic novels? Start with Lovecraft if you haven't. Nothing else is quite like The Goon, perhaps because the illustrations let Powell get a little sillier than you can really get away with in pure prose fiction. My general advice would be to look at the various "Urban Fantasy" authors like Jim Butcher and Ben Aaronovitch that write detective/cop novels with heavy fantasy elements. I'd suggest starting with the Dresden Files series (he's a P.I. -- and a wizard!) and maybe the Peter Grant novels by Ben Aaronovitch (He's a london beat cop -- and a wizard!). Laundry Files is good but it's more a spoof of spy novels and sometimes it gets really, really geek-silly. There are a few others that get regularly mentioned in the Dresden Files thread, too. None of that stuff is quite in the same key as as The Goon but they might be close to what you're looking for. Another route to go might be something like Zelazny's A Night in the Lonesome October or other comic horror. Maybe Gil's All Fright Diner by A. Lee Martinez. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 16:01 on Apr 17, 2014 |
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# ? Apr 17, 2014 14:43 |
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Azathoth posted:Could I get recommendations for novels or series of novels that are similar in content and tone to either the Hellboy or The Goon series of comics/graphic novels? Did you try the Hellboy novels? The one by Tom Piccirilli I thought was really good.
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# ? Apr 17, 2014 15:58 |
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Some of Neil Gaiman's stuff might fit as well. He certainly writes like a graphic novel a lot of the time.
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# ? Apr 17, 2014 21:37 |
Hieronymous Alloy posted:Start with Lovecraft if you haven't. As for the urban fantasy recommendation, I've dipped my toe in, and have enjoyed the Dresden Files. I think I'm on the 5th or 6th book. I have to be in the right mood for Dresden, but I enjoy it when I am. I'll definitely check out the Peter Grant novels, it sounds right up my alley. As for A Night in the Lonesome October, I read it and loved it. I went in absolutely blind, since a friend recommended it to me, and was alternatingly rolling my eyes and glued to the page. That book was more fun than it had any right to be, same for Gil's All Fright Diner. I also really liked The Automatic Detective. However, all those feel just a little too...tongue-in-cheek...self-aware...funny? I don't know how to describe the feeling, but it seems like they don't go serious enough. I'm not looking for the grimmest, darkest novel to ever grimdark, but too much that should be solid drama gets treated with a wink and a nod. Also, thanks for the clarification on The Laundry Files, that's basically what I was afraid of. After making it through Redshirts, I seem to have developed a powerful aversion to things that seem to pander to geek culture like that. ravenkult posted:Did you try the Hellboy novels? The one by Tom Piccirilli I thought was really good. I tend to avoid any adaptation novel out of instinct, after a misspent childhood reading Star Trek novels, but I'll check it out. Was Mike Mignola involved in any way with Tom Piccirilli's or any of the other novels? The Hellboy-universe stuff that he's not involved in doesn't have quite the same magic. coyo7e posted:Some of Neil Gaiman's stuff might fit as well. He certainly writes like a graphic novel a lot of the time. I can't quite put my finger on what it is about them that I don't like, but aside from being just at little too similar to each other, I think it's the feeling that the endings are very predictable. They're well-written, contain some unique stuff, but I never really got a sense of dramatic tension out of them. It isn't that they ended badly, just a little too predictably for my taste.
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# ? Apr 18, 2014 00:13 |
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Is Revelation Space the one with the lady who had to be kept in an enclosure without sleeping because of the tiny bio-mechanical bomb on her neck/spine?
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# ? Apr 18, 2014 00:52 |
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Any thoughts on the Dire Earth Cycle? I've been really enjoying the first book and I keep wondering if the quality keeps up through the rest of the series and how I could have missed it if so. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BABT9VY/ref=pe_245070_24466410_M1T1DP
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# ? Apr 18, 2014 00:54 |
Azathoth posted:I should have mentioned that I love Lovecraft and have read most of his stuff at one time or another, and I guess I'm looking for something that captures some of that feeling of existential dread and horrific wonder. His Dreamlands stories are some of my favorite short fiction works ever. Hrrrrm. Ok, this is tougher. The other thing that Gaiman has written that's good is Stardust but yeah it's also somewhat predictable. Have you read William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land? It was a big influence on Lovecraft. There's also Clarke Ashton Smith and of course Robert E. Howard. Another direction you could go would be to read some of the stuff like H. Rider Haggard's She or King Solomon's Mines or the other pulp-horror stuff that Goon and Hellboy are drawing on. There's also Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu novels but they're horribly, horribly racist and really only worth reading now for historical reasons (the big secret of the Indiana Jones franchise is that they're basically Sax Rohmer novels with the Nazis as the villains instead of the heroes).
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# ? Apr 18, 2014 01:24 |
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Kraps posted:Is Revelation Space the one with the lady who had to be kept in an enclosure without sleeping because of the tiny bio-mechanical bomb on her neck/spine? That was The Prefect by the same author.
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# ? Apr 18, 2014 02:52 |
Hieronymous Alloy posted:Hrrrrm. Ok, this is tougher. The other thing that Gaiman has written that's good is Stardust but yeah it's also somewhat predictable. I also really should read Stardust. I absolutely love Lord Dunsany, and since Stardust seems to be Neil Gaiman writing in that style, I should give it a shot. Also, you might be right about just going to the source and reading the old pulp stuff. Are there any guides out there for what is good (for certain definitions of "good")?
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# ? Apr 18, 2014 04:23 |
I've never seen a comprehensive guide to 30's pulp fiction but there must be one out there somewhere. If you do read Stardust make sure to find an edition with Charles Vess' illustrations; Gaiman has said that the print-only version only exists "for adults who can't handle reading a comic book." The illustrations add a great deal and are part of the intended experience.
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# ? Apr 18, 2014 04:28 |
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I've always felt like I'm missing something when people bring up Gaiman. His books seem pretty dull.
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# ? Apr 18, 2014 04:36 |
shrike82 posted:I've always felt like I'm missing something when people bring up Gaiman. His books seem pretty dull. Which have you read? His best work is Sandman, i.e., a ten-volume graphic novel. It really is genuinely amazing but you have to read the whole thing and at $20 per volume that gets expensive. After that the two things of his I like best are Neverwhere and Stardust, one of which was originally a BBC miniseries script and the other a comic book that made more sense as an illustrated novel. Some people really like American Gods but I found it really derivative. I think his best work is probably behind him at this point except perhaps as a YA author; his plots are getting really repetitive and he seems to be stuck writing the same basic stories over and over again. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 04:45 on Apr 18, 2014 |
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# ? Apr 18, 2014 04:41 |
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Azathoth posted:I appreciate the recommendation on The Night Land, it looks interesting. If you're going to read The Night Land, read the new modern-English edition. The original was written in a broken fake-victorian English that is absolutely agonizing to read. http://www.amazon.com/Night-Land-Story-Retold/dp/0615508812/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397793380&sr=1-4&keywords=the+night+lands
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# ? Apr 18, 2014 04:58 |
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# ? Jun 3, 2024 22:26 |
Mr.48 posted:If you're going to read The Night Land, read the new modern-English edition. The original was written in a broken fake-victorian English that is absolutely agonizing to read. I don't know if it's necessary to go that far but I'll agree that the first few chapters of Night Land are skippable. There's a frame narrative in really painful faux-archaic language but once things get sci-fi I found it a lot more tolerable. The real strength is in the imaginative and evocative imagery and monkeying with the language could ruin that.
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# ? Apr 18, 2014 05:09 |