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redreader posted:If only spire were a word that appears in the dictionary You think you're better than us just because you know more words? gently caress you! Who are you to tell us what we need to enjoy literature?
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Oct 1, 2015 03:57
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Maybe I just have the taste of a Hungry Dog, but I liked it. It's loads better than Furies was, I'd say. Perhaps I'm the only one to have liked Gwendolyn as well. Now, we just have to wait a year or two (or more!) to learn anything at all about the overall plot! I'll have to do a re read. For some reason my imagination struggles to conjure decent images for stories, so I'll have to focus hard on the descriptions and update my idea of the world. I've got a good image of the Spires, but I'll have to focus more intently on the character and ship descriptions. Rygar201 fucked around with this message at 05:50 on Oct 1, 2015 |
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Oct 1, 2015 05:47
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Rygar201 posted:Maybe I just have the taste of a Hungry Dog, but I liked it. It's loads better than Furies was, I'd say. Perhaps I'm the only one to have liked Gwendolyn as well. I wanted to like her, but after some initial character beats that were never really explored, it seems she got abandoned for other, more interesting characters. She pretty much devolved into "quick-tempered, let's solve this with exasperated violence" woman. She did start to pick up towards the end interacting with Journeyman, so I have hopes she'll gain some depth in the next books. Rowl was the my favorite, followed by Grimm. And I agree, it was better than Furies. It was starting to shape up in Captain's Fury and the first half of Princep's Fury, but after, it just seemed like, "Oh poo poo, let's end this thing, now!"
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Oct 1, 2015 07:59
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I thought Grimm was pretty boring. He's a broody sky captain with a dark past... and that is the full extent of his characterization. At least Gwen shows some sign of character development where she starts the book as quite the spoiled brat and then grows out of that as she becomes exposed to more of the non-posh world. I'm also not tremendously impressed by the cats, because I've read plenty of urban fantasy (for example, October Daye) and I've seen all of that already. Sorry Rowl.
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Oct 1, 2015 09:10
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I also laughed aloud at Butcher making an anal sex joke, I didn't see that one coming.
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Oct 1, 2015 12:22
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flosofl posted:And some of Rowl's dialog gave me a real Chiun-vibe from the movie Remo Williams, one of my guilty pleasure movies. You should read some of the earlier Remo Williams books, the first 30 or 40 are full of stuff like that. However, I read them in the 80's so they may not be as good as I remember. If you are not aware they are called 'The Destroyer" by Warren Murphy and Richard Saphir. The series is well over a 100 volumes by now, though I stopped keeping up with them when the original authors stopped writing them.
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Oct 1, 2015 13:40
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Ornamented Death posted:Some folks have trouble understanding things that are explicitly spelled out; you're going to need to curb your expectations if you think they can pick up on inference. They would probably hate A Clockwork Orange. That one took me a few read throughs before I the slang clicked.
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Oct 1, 2015 17:06
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Habble was fine, but I balk at the L. Ron Hubbard-esque invention of made-up words to describe commonly existing objects. At one point someone calls a piece of flatbread a "bake-flat" or something stupid like that and I unplugged my ipod in self defense.
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Oct 2, 2015 02:46
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Old Kentucky Shark posted:Habble was fine, but I balk at the L. Ron Hubbard-esque invention of made-up words to describe commonly existing objects. At one point someone calls a piece of flatbread a "bake-flat" or something stupid like that and I unplugged my ipod in self defense. To be fair, people have varying names for the same thing from region to region, let alone country to country. And some areas have completely retarded names for things (or at least they're retarded in my opinion).
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Oct 2, 2015 02:51
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RosaParksOfDip posted:To be fair, people have varying names for the same thing from region to region, let alone country to country. And some areas have completely retarded names for things (or at least they're retarded in my opinion). Enter the 'Pop, Soda, or Coke' debate. E: yes, I've lived in places where all sodas are called coke regardless of brand or flavor.
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Oct 2, 2015 02:53
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Error 404 posted:Enter the 'Pop, Soda, or Coke' debate. "Want a coke?. Yeah. OK, what kind, 7up, Dr pepper or coke?". That's as it should be.
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Oct 2, 2015 02:57
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I have zero issue with the coke thing since it's basically brand recognition. People use tylenol, advil, aspirin, etc etc pretty interchangeably based on region /what their family happens to buy for OTC pain medication. It's the same thing with plenty of products and if you just happen to be in a region where the market gets cornered by a particular brand, you tend to just associate it with the product in a more general sense.
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Oct 2, 2015 03:03
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There was no discussion oh how the Spire's stay aloft, correct?
Rygar201 fucked around with this message at 03:22 on Oct 2, 2015 |
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Oct 2, 2015 03:11
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Rygar201 posted:There was no discussion oh how the Spire"s stay aloft, correct? They aren't floating, they are just fuckoff massive.
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Oct 2, 2015 03:15
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torgeaux posted:"Want a coke?. Yeah. OK, what kind, 7up, Dr pepper or coke?". That's as it should be. The word you're looking for is soda. 
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Oct 2, 2015 03:48
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Rygar201 posted:There was no discussion oh how the Spire's stay aloft, correct? What do you mean? It's attached to the ground. They even mention the danger of the ground creatures at the base of the Spire. It's unclear if it's an enormous cone/obelisk (miles in diameter) or if it's a gigantic pyramid. Personally, the word 'spire' conjures up a cone/obelisk to me.
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Oct 2, 2015 04:07
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flosofl posted:What do you mean? It's attached to the ground. They even mention the danger of the ground creatures at the base of the Spire. Yeah for some reason, I don't know why, but I had imagined them floating too. Dumb, now that I think about it.
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Oct 2, 2015 04:49
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navyjack posted:Yeah for some reason, I don't know why, but I had imagined them floating too. Dumb, now that I think about it. Well, there is a bit of a "Cloud City" vibe going on, so it's not that dumb. Except they specifically talk about the base of the spire in the context of dangerous creatures such as silkweavers. 
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Oct 2, 2015 04:58
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flosofl posted:What do you mean? It's attached to the ground. They even mention the danger of the ground creatures at the base of the Spire. Some dude in the book says they're perfectly round, and someone in this thread said Butcher said they are giant cylinders, so yeah giant cylinders that can't be reproduced any more.
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Oct 2, 2015 11:27
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redreader posted:Some dude in the book says they're perfectly round, and someone in this thread said Butcher said they are giant cylinders, so yeah giant cylinders that can't be reproduced any more. About a third of the way in, he gives a description of Albion as ten thousand feet high and two miles across. The two miles is consistent, it comes up earlier. So they're literally shorter than they are wide. Which doesn't match the name spire at all. More like one of those short cans of Bush's baked beans. The mismatched units (feet and miles) and general lack of agreement with the word spire makes me wonder if the ten thousand feet thing was a mistake. I dunno.
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Oct 2, 2015 12:47
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ConfusedUs posted:About a third of the way in, he gives a description of Albion as ten thousand feet high and two miles across. The two miles is consistent, it comes up earlier.
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Oct 2, 2015 14:32
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ConfusedUs posted:
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Oct 2, 2015 14:38
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How "urban" are the Spires books? Do we need to reformat things again thread-wise?
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Oct 2, 2015 15:21
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People discussed Codex Alera here before and that poo poo's rural. I don't see any need to reformat.
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Oct 2, 2015 15:26
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Does urban fantasy have to be set in a 20th/21st century city? The assumption, as far as I can tell, is that it does, but could something like (off the top of my head) The Lies of Locke Lamora be classified as urban fantasy even though its setting is modelled on 16th century Venice?
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Oct 2, 2015 16:07
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:How "urban" are the Spires books? Do we need to reformat things again thread-wise? I assume that it falls under the Dresden Files part of the thread.
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Oct 2, 2015 16:10
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:How "urban" are the Spires books? Do we need to reformat things again thread-wise? Not very. It's not really urban fantasy by any means; there is a city, but it's fantasy/steampunk from the ground up. We're talking about it here because this is the jim butcher thread in name (even if in practice it's the urban fantasy thread). I need to do a total rewrite of this thread. I want to make it centered on urban fantasy in general. I talked to you about it a couple months ago, but just haven't had time! It's been like three months of pure crisis management at work. 
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Oct 2, 2015 17:00
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Murgos posted:A Mile is 5280 ft. So 10,000 ft as a rough approximation of two miles is perfectly fine. It's within +/- 5%. Although for a spire you do typically think of something long and slender. Yeah if they were exactly those units, there would be a difference of 5.6%. I'm inclined to believe they're as as they are wide.
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Oct 2, 2015 17:04
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Wheat Loaf posted:Does urban fantasy have to be set in a 20th/21st century city? The assumption, as far as I can tell, is that it does, but could something like (off the top of my head) The Lies of Locke Lamora be classified as urban fantasy even though its setting is modelled on 16th century Venice? There's no One True Book on Genres, they are all pretty loosely defined. But for me personally, I consider it contemporary urban setting with (often underground but not always) fantasy elements within the realm of normal modern 20/21th century city life. I.e. Kraken, Dresden, or hell even some parts of Harry Potter (though that's pretty far removed for the most part). Some definitions (like on Wikipedia) just say "has to take place in a city--historical, modern, or futuristic" but I personally disagree with that.
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Oct 2, 2015 17:39
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I finished it last night. It was decent but I suppose partially setup for the next one? I would read the poo poo out of a book dedicated to surface expiditions. We know that's gonna happen later on. I'll definitely carry on reading this series, I know it'll get better.
redreader fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Oct 3, 2015 |
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Oct 3, 2015 19:03
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redreader posted:I finished it last night. It was decent but I suppose partially setup for the next one? I would read the poo poo out of a book dedicated to surface expiditions. We know that's gonna happen later on. I'll definitely carry on reading this series, I know it'll get better. I'm hoping they find people on the surface. And dogs. Talking dogs of course. And Rowl hates them on sight.
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Oct 3, 2015 19:20
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I'm curious as to whether or not this takes place on a fantasy Earth; a lot of the spires could potentially be linked to Earth locations; Albion - England, Olympian - Greece, etc. I liked it. I didn't really have a problem with any of the characters, though I didn't particularly like Gwen much until she started interacting with Journeyman and she started getting at least a little interesting. Grimm didn't bore me, he was just your standard very capable British officer type; he wasn't anything special as a character, but interesting things happened around him. Bridget was generally a decent POV character, and once I got used to the etherealists and saw that they weren't just randomly crazy and that there was method to their madness, I liked them. And I liked Rowl; if you have a cat, you can imagine them talking and thinking like that. I liked the naval combat; the next book could definitely use more of that, and I'd like to hear more about the surface. One thing I did like was that though it was a multiple POV book, all the POVs closely overlapped, so you were still largely following one plot or two closely related ones, rather than POVs that seem to have absolutely no overlap at all until the end. Overall, it was a fun read and I think Butcher did a good job. OneTwentySix fucked around with this message at 05:37 on Oct 4, 2015 |
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Oct 4, 2015 05:34
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flosofl posted:And some of Rowl's dialog gave me a real Chiun-vibe from the movie Remo Williams, one of my guilty pleasure movies. I don't want to spoil his lines, so this is more or less the tone of Rowl: All the Remo books feature Chium dialogue like that. Chiun being a hilarious grumpy rear end in a top hat is the whole point of the series, and the reason that I read all (at the time) 120 books in that series.
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Oct 4, 2015 22:51
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I liked Aeuronauts Windlass alright in the end. Great action scenes though the final battle did drag a bit. I got a very post apocalyptic vibe from Cinder Spires. Someone build the spires but it was obviously not the current inhabitants and the surface must have at some point been more hospitable for that to happen.
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Oct 5, 2015 17:13
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Finished Aeronauts Windlass today. Enjoyed it very much. My number one surprise take away is that I would be happy with a book solely about airship engineering. Power crystals and lift crystals and asymmetric webbing. The parts with journeyman just had me grinning.
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Oct 6, 2015 00:53
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M_Gargantua posted:Finished Aeronauts Windlass today. Enjoyed it very much. Curse you for a whore! 
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Oct 6, 2015 01:50
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So I started in on Aeronaut today...and I'm maybe its just because I finished up an Alera re-read, but I noticed a lot of name re-use. I can't tell if its supposed to be self-referential, or if he just likes the names...but Commodore Rook , Addison Orson Magnus Jeremiah Albion. I'm not as offput by the 'word salad' that Butcher has come up with..but I did double back to this thread to remind myself what 'habble' was supposed to be.
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Oct 6, 2015 02:23
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There are more than a few Leonine Roars, made more amusing by the lack of references to Lions.
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Oct 6, 2015 02:51
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People like to "bawl" orders, both in Alera and Aeronaut
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Oct 6, 2015 02:55
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People have extremely expressive eyes in Butcher Worlds. They're always flashing and glinting and so forth.
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Oct 6, 2015 03:02
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