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chrisoya posted:I've been sick and busy and so only just finished The Traitor Baru Cormorant. It is the best book I have read all year, and I've read some pretty good books in 2015. The General should be proud, and also write more so I can buy his next book. I just finished it too and it is a good book, a fine read. I have one request: General Battuta, is it possible to put the map from the beginning up on your author site? I bought the ebook and my old kindle doesn't make it easy to flip back; it isn't super-necessary as the geographic descriptions are strong but I like the visual. It also manages to be a very political, painful, harrowing story that doesn't need rape to make its points. This shouldn't be a compliment or something unexpected but so many authors seem to feel that is how they claim 'realism' or 'maturity' in their works and it never for a second felt like the stakes weren't high for everyone. I also read Walton's Among Others a while back and while it I enjoyed it, I felt like it shared a bit much with Ready Player One in trading on nostalgia to build its base around. The actual story itself has some fantastic elements but they felt almost like an afterthought. occamsnailfile fucked around with this message at 07:54 on Sep 20, 2015 |
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Sep 20, 2015 07:51
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i'm listening to the audiobook, so someone please post the map itt
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Sep 20, 2015 17:18
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Also finished Baru Coromorant. I liked it a lot. Any plans for anything else in the world or is it intended to stand alone?
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Sep 20, 2015 19:41
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The good General is in the midst of a three book contract, I do believe, with The Traitor Baru Cormorant being the first.
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Sep 20, 2015 20:05
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I was reading the Books You Couldn't Finish thread and someone linked to a blogger whose posts I read years ago. Does anyone else remember her? Do you think her advice still holds up?
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Sep 20, 2015 23:02
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Never heard of her posts before but they seem to be entertaining variants on Do Your Research Stupid, which never goes out of style in my opinion.
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Sep 21, 2015 00:02
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Solitair posted:I was reading the Books You Couldn't Finish thread and someone linked to a blogger whose posts I read years ago. Does anyone else remember her? Do you think her advice still holds up? Ooh, I remember her. Kind of ambivalent towards her, though. I think she sometimes sort of conflated the research issues Thunderclap mentions with matters of personal taste; in particular, she tended to be critical of anything optimistic.
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Sep 21, 2015 00:29
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Holy gently caress @ The Library at Mount Char.
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Sep 21, 2015 01:18
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Silver2195 posted:Ooh, I remember her. Kind of ambivalent towards her, though. I think she sometimes sort of conflated the research issues Thunderclap mentions with matters of personal taste; in particular, she tended to be critical of anything optimistic. I'm ambivalent as well, but I'm not sure why. It's certainly not because she doesn't like optimistic stuff; I read a few articles and one common theme between them is that she hates pointless angst, and wants more optimistic stories as a change from grimdark stuff. Solitair fucked around with this message at 01:38 on Sep 21, 2015 |
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Sep 21, 2015 01:33
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Mars4523 posted:Holy gently caress @ The Library at Mount Char. This is the correct response.
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Sep 21, 2015 01:47
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Mars4523 posted:Holy gently caress @ The Library at Mount Char. It's pretty good. I rarely like books with graphic violence, too!
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Sep 21, 2015 02:08
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Solitair posted:I'm ambivalent as well, but I'm not sure why. It's certainly not because she doesn't like optimistic stuff; I read a few articles and one common theme between them is that she hates pointless angst, and wants more optimistic stories as a change from grimdark stuff. Depends on what you mean by optimism. See here, for instance: http://limyaael.livejournal.com/269641.html quote:Ever get to the point where you’ve been reading so much idealistic fantasy that the idealism is leaking out your ears and getting in the way of your vision and… Come to think of it, though, I actually kind of agree with her general points here...
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Sep 21, 2015 02:27
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Solitair posted:I was reading the Books You Couldn't Finish thread and someone linked to a blogger whose posts I read years ago. Does anyone else remember her? Do you think her advice still holds up? It definitely holds up. Bad fantasy is still bad fantasy (and bad writing in general) for many of the reasons she mentions. I don't agree with everything she says necessarily, but I do most of it. It is mostly "do your research" with suggestions on the kind of things to keep in mind for that research, which is always useful.
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Sep 21, 2015 06:12
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Here's a fuller archive, btw: https://curiosityquills.com/limyaael/
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Sep 21, 2015 06:25
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Silver2195 posted:Depends on what you mean by optimism. See here, for instance: http://limyaael.livejournal.com/269641.html I was thinking more along the lines of this and this. She's fine with optimism as long as the writer earns it; in the post you linked, she's only against idealism when it happens because the writer didn't think through alternatives and took the easy way out.
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Sep 21, 2015 07:03
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Silver2195 posted:Depends on what you mean by optimism. See here, for instance: http://limyaael.livejournal.com/269641.html Whatever happened to her anyways?
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Sep 21, 2015 08:23
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xcheopis posted:It's pretty good. I rarely like books with graphic violence, too! Graphic violence in a library?
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Sep 21, 2015 16:01
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Jedit posted:Graphic violence in a library? Quite a bit of it. The "roasts" are a bit more than cutting remarks over dinner. Which is when you might learn that one of your colleagues is getting the axe.
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Sep 21, 2015 16:37
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Mars4523 posted:Whatever happened to her anyways? I don't know exactly - but in one of the links she mentions Winterfox as a friend, possibly the same Winterfox AKA Requires only that you hate, notorious internet troll.
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Sep 21, 2015 16:55
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MrFlibble posted:I don't know exactly - but in one of the links she mentions Winterfox as a friend, possibly the same Winterfox AKA Requires only that you hate, notorious internet troll. Limyaael stopped posting in 2010, back when some people still liked Requires Hate. I'm a bit surprised they'd be friends, though; Requires Hate hated a lot of the stuff Limyaael held up as good, and Limyaael seemed rather unenthusiastic about feminism (at least in the forms it tends to take in fantasy).
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Sep 21, 2015 17:24
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occamsnailfile posted:I just finished it too and it is a good book, a fine read. I have one request: General Battuta, is it possible to put the map from the beginning up on your author site? I bought the ebook and my old kindle doesn't make it easy to flip back; it isn't super-necessary as the geographic descriptions are strong but I like the visual. I'll post it! gently caress, I should make a whole blog post out of it, since I like the map a lot. But give me a few hours and I'll try to get it up here.
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Sep 21, 2015 17:39
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Silver2195 posted:Limyaael stopped posting in 2010, back when some people still liked Requires Hate. I'm a bit surprised they'd be friends, though; Requires Hate hated a lot of the stuff Limyaael held up as good, and Limyaael seemed rather unenthusiastic about feminism (at least in the forms it tends to take in fantasy). Requires Hate did a lot of deep poo poo to people and is said to have had some control over her 'friends' - http://laurajmixon.com/2014/11/a-report-on-damage-done-by-one-individual-under-several-names/ I mean it was just a mention, and as you said she stopped posting in 2010. It just jumped out at me when I saw it, because I only ever knew about Requires hate from the blog and the essay above.
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Sep 21, 2015 17:51
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MrFlibble posted:Requires Hate did a lot of deep poo poo to people and is said to have had some control over her 'friends' - http://laurajmixon.com/2014/11/a-report-on-damage-done-by-one-individual-under-several-names/ RH is something else. A real work of art.
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Sep 21, 2015 18:41
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This poster loves police brutality, but only when its against minorities!
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DeusExMachinima posted:RH is something else. A real work of art. I followed Benjanun's cutesy Twitter profile for a while before any of the news that she was RH/all the other stuff broke, and I have to say, I've never seen anything like it. Watching the cutesy profile slip was the creepiest poo poo. The only thing I can think of that came close is the whole Ms. Scribe saga, and even that wasn't anywhere near as willfully malicious, and was thankfully isolated to a tiny portion of the Internet. EDIT: Although rereading the RH Exposed essay, both have really similar MOs where they use their supposed love of liberal causes to assemble an army of worshippers that they use as a weapon against entire online communities that they dislike. On the subject of Limyaael: I've read a bunch more of her essays, and while they continue to be super fun, I found a nice passage that exemplifies my current thoughts about her stuff. From the essay on comic relief: quote:Please, no puns that are dependent on English. I’ve had whole books ruined for me because the key to the plot was a pun or riddle that depended on the coincidence of two English words, or even an English letter. Most times, the people in your other world will not be speaking English. There are exceptions, certainly, but it destroys suspension of disbelief when you’ve gone to some trouble to set up the other language and then kill everything for the sake of making a funny. Banning all puns in the English language is clearly a taste issue that comes from being really nitpicky about worldbuilding. That's silly. On the other hand... quote:Besides which, think of a fantasy author who is famous for using puns in his series: Piers Anthony, with the Xanth books, which have tended to decline steadily as the series went on. Do you really want a series that will remind people of the Xanth books in any way? She's not at all wrong about some really good points. Combed Thunderclap fucked around with this message at 19:35 on Sep 21, 2015 |
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Sep 21, 2015 19:21
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occamsnailfile posted:I just finished it too and it is a good book, a fine read. I have one request: General Battuta, is it possible to put the map from the beginning up on your author site? I bought the ebook and my old kindle doesn't make it easy to flip back; it isn't super-necessary as the geographic descriptions are strong but I like the visual. Here you go! I added the map to the author page. I really adore that map. I didn't want to have one at all, because I think most fantasy maps are deployed incorrectly — why would you fill the beginning of your book with impossible names, before the reader has any reason to care about them? But the idea of putting Baru's commentary and notes on the map lets it kind of tell its own story. I like it 
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Sep 21, 2015 19:39
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It's a map that's actually useful before, during and after reading. It's amazing.
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Sep 21, 2015 19:42
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General Battuta posted:I didn't want to have one at all, because I think most fantasy maps are deployed incorrectly — why would you fill the beginning of your book with impossible names, before the reader has any reason to care about them? Because that's the best place to put them. Putting a map in the middle of the book makes it a pain in the rear end to find if you ever want to refer to something. Putting the map at the end of the book means that most people are only going to find out about the map after the book is finished and it's no longer as useful as a reference. Putting the map at the start of the book makes it much more likely that people will see the map while also putting it in a position that it's easy to flip back to. And if you don't include a map in a book like this it can be awfully hard to keep track of what your geographical area looks like. As an example, my Kindle started me at the text and so I missed the map at the start of Baru. I'll do a quick MS Paint sketch of what I pictured the land to look like until I went to reread the beginning and saw the map.  It is just a little different. That aside, I like your map because it's just relative locations and important geographical references without a lot of extraneous details, which makes it easy to read and easy to understand.
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Sep 21, 2015 20:30
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You got everybody in the right place, more or less! I understand the logistical reasons to put the map at the front — I just think it's the least bad of bad alternatives, unless the map has some kind of narrative attached like 'here is the Fellowship's journey' or 'we only labeled things you should care about.'
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Sep 21, 2015 20:32
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General Battuta posted:Here you go! I added the map to the author page. Thanks! I actually couldn't read the commentary text well on my tiny Kindle screen so the big version is helpful there too.
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Sep 21, 2015 21:03
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tonytheshoes posted:It would really save a lot of time for yourself if you just changed your title over there to "I Hate Joe Abercrombie." You never miss a chance to mention it... coyo7e fucked around with this message at 21:32 on Sep 21, 2015 |
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Sep 21, 2015 21:29
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coyo7e posted:Wasn't this a recent movie with Ethan Hawke, iirc? Predestination. Excellent adaptation of Heinlein's —All You Zombies—.
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Sep 21, 2015 21:32
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General Battuta posted:Here you go! I added the map to the author page. Thanks for this. I've just gotten The Traitor Baru Comorant and am 10% of the way through. So far, I think it's a little too fast-paced; you don't really take the time to flesh the characters and events out much. Perhaps that will change now that the main plot is underway. Tying this back to Limyaael, how do people feel about her dislike of words in fantasy that refer to real-world people, places, or legends, like herculean (https://curiosityquills.com/limyaael/modern-language-in-fantasy/)? I noticed the use of "sodomite" in The Traitor Baru Comorant, in a world without any Sodom. I'm not sure it's possible to totally avoid eponyms and so forth. A month or so ago I was reading The Eyes of the Overworld and noticed the word "quixotic," but it's technically set in the future of our world. I'm not sure how I feel about the eponym issue myself.
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Sep 22, 2015 05:45
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Silver2195 posted:Tying this back to Limyaael, how do people feel about her dislike of words in fantasy that refer to real-world people, places, or legends, like herculean (https://curiosityquills.com/limyaael/modern-language-in-fantasy/)? I noticed the use of "sodomite" in The Traitor Baru Comorant, in a world without any Sodom. I'm not sure it's possible to totally avoid eponyms and so forth. A month or so ago I was reading The Eyes of the Overworld and noticed the word "quixotic," but it's technically set in the future of our world. I'm not sure how I feel about the eponym issue myself. This really doesn't bother me. I don't think a book will be notably improved by making up a completely new word for something like sodomy, or cologne, or champagne, because most people are going to associate those words with "buttsex", "masculine perfume", and "bubbly wine". They're not going to read those words and jump to "biblical reference", "town in Germany", and "bubbly wine made from grapes from the champagne region blah blah blah".
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Sep 22, 2015 06:28
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Silver2195 posted:Tying this back to Limyaael, how do people feel about her dislike of words in fantasy that refer to real-world people, places, or legends, like herculean (https://curiosityquills.com/limyaael/modern-language-in-fantasy/)? I noticed the use of "sodomite" in The Traitor Baru Comorant, in a world without any Sodom. I'm not sure it's possible to totally avoid eponyms and so forth. A month or so ago I was reading The Eyes of the Overworld and noticed the word "quixotic," but it's technically set in the future of our world. I'm not sure how I feel about the eponym issue myself. For me the whole idea of a fantasy story is that you're hearing about events that happened in another world completely separate from our own. Anything that then reminds me that actually Earth exists too can ruin the immersion and take me out of a story (unless Earth is a part of that story). I think it's something to be avoided if possible, it's the difference between a fantasy world that is its own world vs "it's basically Earth's middle ages but with magic and dragons, whatever."
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Sep 22, 2015 06:32
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Well, you can always pretend the author is pulling a Wolfe and replacing unfamiliar words with English-based equivalents.
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Sep 22, 2015 06:45
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The Ninth Layer posted:For me the whole idea of a fantasy story is that you're hearing about events that happened in another world completely separate from our own. Anything that then reminds me that actually Earth exists too can ruin the immersion and take me out of a story (unless Earth is a part of that story). I think it's something to be avoided if possible, it's the difference between a fantasy world that is its own world vs "it's basically Earth's middle ages but with magic and dragons, whatever." As my next fantasy novel puts it, "huan wa no delig node xin scri onwarudo de ling de dex", or in English, "Enjoy your books not written in any language invented on Earth, then". If you're going to think about this, don't think of a novel as a window onto a real world. Khizan posted:This really doesn't bother me. I don't think a book will be notably improved by making up a completely new word for something like sodomy, or cologne, or champagne, because most people are going to associate those words with "buttsex", "masculine perfume", and "bubbly wine". They're not going to read those words and jump to "biblical reference", "town in Germany", and "bubbly wine made from grapes from the champagne region blah blah blah". Without having read either the General's novel or his mind, I'd guess he chose Sodomite, at least in part, especially because it's a Biblical reference and he wanted the reader to think of the word's background, and if he'd wanted different overtones he'd have chosen shirt-lifter, queen, fairy, Apostle of Greek love, or whatever.
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Sep 22, 2015 07:04
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I really liked Rendezvous with Rama and I'm looking for more books that are similar. I enjoy stories that are about exploring what remains of lost alien civilizations. I prefer stories with a lot of mystery, where not everything is carefully explained, and is instead left to your imagination. As long as the mystery isn't clearly a point where the author couldn't think of something good and cool, and just wanted to get out of having to explain it.
Queering Wheel fucked around with this message at 07:10 on Sep 22, 2015 |
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Sep 22, 2015 07:07
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Re: all the English-in-secondary-worlds talk above: Ann Leckie did a good lampshading of the whole "this isn't really English the characters are speaking, I'm just translating it for you" in Ancillary Justice. Every so often in the narration there would be a little weird aside about the use of language that doesn't make sense if they were really speaking English. I can't remember specific examples, so I'll have to make one up now, but they were along these lines: "Would you pass me the salt?" she said, and I smiled at her use of alliteration. or "There is a cat on the windowsill," she said, and then blushed because she had accidentally made a rhyme.
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Sep 22, 2015 07:19
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It's funny because the examples used are not alike to me at all. "Sodomite" I would read in a fantasy novel and not blink an eye, but if someone is sipping champagne while putting on cologne I'd be thrown out of the story. Maybe it's because "sodomite" has an excellent punch for a word and can be very necessary for your tone, but why can't your character sip wine and put on perfume? If it's an everyday thing it's a greater danger to immersion. Likewise you have words whose connection to our present world is much too strong, like "Wal-Mart" or "social media." In other words, it's situational and if you're a good writer you can get away with a lot more.
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Sep 22, 2015 07:24
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House Louse posted:As my next fantasy novel puts it, "huan wa no delig node xin scri onwarudo de ling de dex", or in English, "Enjoy your books not written in any language invented on Earth, then". My narrator doesn't have to be from Earth (or the US/England, for that matter) to speak English to me. e: No matter how you want to think about the narration, it's still part of the story immersion, and if I'm reminded that the narrator is actually some pudgy guy in his 40s living in Chicago, it bumps me out of the story and makes it feel less authentic. It's like watching a movie where the character swings a Coke can in front of the camera for really unsubtle product placement, it reminds you that you're watching something artificial. The Ninth Layer fucked around with this message at 07:45 on Sep 22, 2015 |
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Sep 22, 2015 07:33
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