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Ornamented Death posted:Or you never get them back .
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# ? Oct 24, 2016 20:56 |
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# ? Jun 1, 2024 05:36 |
Drifter posted:^^^ - like 2-6 bucks a pop usually. I guess it adds up if you do it. I've never resold books, I've just given books I no longer want over to goodwill or a school library. Resale, in general, has been a small factor when I consider ebook pricing, however. You kinda want it low enough to encourage people who would only buy used items to bite on an ebook, too. That's about what I get in credit when trading books in at the local used book store. But I've also sold books (on eBay and through various forums) for many times their cover price. But, again, that's rare, and generally I don't buy books with the intention of reselling them.
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# ? Oct 24, 2016 21:02 |
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Always lend books expecting not to get them back. How else could i ever get rid of the things? a kitten fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Oct 24, 2016 |
# ? Oct 24, 2016 21:43 |
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Ornamented Death posted:Or you never get them back . never loan a book always give it also laugh at loving with spines and poo poo
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# ? Oct 25, 2016 02:07 |
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Strom Cuzewon posted:Powder Mages as a concept, are absolutely fantastic. The mechanics of the magic (in short - detonate gunpowder with your mind and redirect the explosion) are fantastically elegant, are integrated incredibly well into the fight scenes, and give all sorts of variety to different character's fighting styles. The different methods of the Powder Mages and traditional wizards sets up such a great conflict - magic's all about class and privilege and all sorts of juicy ideas. It's not quite Malazan levels of metaphor, but it's close. There also seems to be a lot of build up in the first two book without any major payoffs. You can definitely see that Brian McClellan is a disciple of Sanderson. He has the same kinds of stories. Well developed magic systems, prophesied heroes and some politics/religion. The world isn't as interesting as any of Sandersons. I remember nearly everything about Mistborn but nothing about Powder Mage world even though I read the Powder Mage series this year and Mistborn like 3 years ago. Characters are also very cookie cutter and receive most of their development in the first few paragraphs and little so afterwards. Also Taniel falling in love with the child girl mage he brought along him was very weird because he clearly saw her as a kid until he relized her age and said I should bang her. Its a fun fantasy series with some decent action setpiece moments. If you like Sanderson you should like it but it is not as good. Its the authors first series could potentially improve.
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# ? Oct 25, 2016 04:17 |
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I just finished the Seveneves Audiobook while I was working for the last I guess four days? Anyway it was the first audiobook I have ever listened too (don't particularly care for them I realize now) and the narrators had pretty loving terrible voices for the different characters especially the men (Her German character voice is hilariously bad). Overall the first two parts of the book were interesting and with a twenty minutes into the future perspective of how humanity would react to the moon exploding was pretty cool. the jump cut 5000 years into the future was really jarring especially with a new narrator coming in (though I did like more than the lady in Part 1 & 2 ) and really felt like it should have been a separate book and this part was alot worse in my opinion than part one which had such huge stakes even the political crap between the different races seemed less engaging compared to the fate of the human race. Overall the original storyline was solid and really loving dark, I was shocked just how loving badly things went and how futile all the effort that went into an ark that should survive 5000 years nearly died after three. Also the character of JBF was loving cold, she betrayed her country(ish) by fleeing into space, left her husband and down syndrome daughter to die, then once in space plotted a mutiny that lead to everything falling apart by spoofing an asteroid strike when everything was on its way which sent humanity nearly into extinction and in the end she walks away as one of the "mothers" of new humanity alongside crazy cannibal lady who even as Neal notes in the book shows up and manages to be even more hosed up than JBF. Overall this book reminded me alot of what KSR writes, but more in the vein of Aurora and its plot than the more optimistic Mars trilogy. Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 05:24 on Oct 25, 2016 |
# ? Oct 25, 2016 05:22 |
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It's just been announced that Sheri S Tepper has passed away aged 87.
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# ? Oct 25, 2016 10:10 |
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Jedit posted:It's just been announced that Sheri S Tepper has passed away aged 87. May flights of rape-horses sing her to her rest.
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# ? Oct 25, 2016 11:04 |
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Last time my parents moved my dad decided to get rid of his books because they had gone all digital. He literally could not give them away as not even Goodwill wanted them.
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# ? Oct 25, 2016 13:27 |
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Darth Walrus posted:May flights of rape-horses sing her to her rest. Do I even want to know?
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# ? Oct 25, 2016 13:45 |
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WarLocke posted:Do I even want to know? From The Waters Rising: quote:“Oh, mares,” said Blue, shaking his head. “They always have to be whinnied into it. Or . . . subdued.” This interview is pretty terrimazing, too. I'd provide selected quotes, but there's just so much crazy and it keeps on escalating. Lady is - or was, I guess - a literal eco-fascist.
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# ? Oct 25, 2016 13:57 |
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Jesus, I had to ask, didn't I?
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# ? Oct 25, 2016 16:54 |
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Tepper isn't a favorite of mine but I think she gets an unfair amount of poo poo since her work was about women and women's issues and the villains are often out-of-control patriarchy or something. I mean there are some commenters (not so much in this thread) who more or less say 'welp! we found one crazy feminist! therefore all feminist discourse is biased and invalid!' and go back to reading Sword of Truth or something. When put up against the weird-sex shenanigans of Peter F. Hamilton or Donaldson or a lot of other SFF authors she doesn't really stick out...except again for being very outspokenly feminist.
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# ? Oct 25, 2016 17:02 |
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I haven't had time to read that while thing yet but the bit that stuck out most at the beginning was that she said she loves myths and fairy tales because everything works out well in the end, bad guys get what they deserve and they rarely end in tragedy. What myths were you reading lady
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# ? Oct 25, 2016 17:17 |
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occamsnailfile posted:Tepper isn't a favorite of mine but I think she gets an unfair amount of poo poo since her work was about women and women's issues and the villains are often out-of-control patriarchy or something. I mean there are some commenters (not so much in this thread) who more or less say 'welp! we found one crazy feminist! therefore all feminist discourse is biased and invalid!' and go back to reading Sword of Truth or something. When put up against the weird-sex shenanigans of Peter F. Hamilton or Donaldson or a lot of other SFF authors she doesn't really stick out...except again for being very outspokenly feminist. She literally wanted mentally-ill people to be declared subhuman and put in camps. From the interview I linked: quote:NS: When Sheri becomes Head Queen, what three things will get changed first?
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# ? Oct 25, 2016 17:21 |
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Confirmed - sci fi/fantasy writers have that pathetic, edgelordy, furious desire to se the world to 'rights' that the rest of us got over as teenagers.
Strategic Tea fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Oct 25, 2016 |
# ? Oct 25, 2016 17:28 |
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Jack2142 posted:I just finished the Seveneves Audiobook while I was working for the last I guess four days? Anyway it was the first audiobook I have ever listened too (don't particularly care for them I realize now) and the narrators had pretty loving terrible voices for the different characters especially the men (Her German character voice is hilariously bad). Overall the first two parts of the book were interesting and with a twenty minutes into the future perspective of how humanity would react to the moon exploding was pretty cool. That third and last part of the book killed it for me, even more than the continuous info-dumps in the first two parts. Globally, I didn't like it at all, although some of the engineering concepts are really cool and
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# ? Oct 25, 2016 18:45 |
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Strategic Tea posted:Confirmed - sci fi/fantasy writers have that pathetic, edgelordy, furious desire to se the world to 'rights' that the rest of us got over as teenagers. Also, who's going to bell the cat in this scenario? I mean 'Humans' can't injure other humans. Who's going to arrest these people and send them into exile. If they resist, who's going to stop them without becoming no longer human etc. You know I'm starting to thing Ms Tipper hadn't fully thought through all her ideas.
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# ? Oct 26, 2016 16:40 |
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If they're being arrested they're obviously not humans and therefore you can hurt them as much as you want.
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# ? Oct 26, 2016 17:13 |
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Deptfordx posted:Also, who's going to bell the cat in this scenario? I mean 'Humans' can't injure other humans. Who's going to arrest these people and send them into exile. If they resist, who's going to stop them without becoming no longer human etc. Our future Judge-Kings are more than human. They're humanity's gods. To do as they say makes us more human.
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# ? Oct 26, 2016 17:38 |
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Reading the new Brent Weeks book. I wasn't really liking the beginning*, but I've just got the part where it's revealed that the dead man is a magical construct. Weeks, please, no. Just leave it alone. Please, for the love of God, leave it alone. Resist the urge to literalise every last loving thing, I'm begging you. *It reads like Weeks wasn't too happy with the ending of the last book and felt he needed to insert an extra epilogue into the beginning of this one. It's awkwardly written and largely unnecessary. e: Jesus Christ that execution e2: I take it back, I love everything about Dazen Guile's voyage through the realms of madness. And devil-may-care diplomat lady. And Teia ruminating on the nature of slaves and slaveholders. Actually, I love basically everything in this book. Except Kip's sections. I'm in the final third now and he's yet to do anything interesting. KOGAHAZAN!! fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Oct 27, 2016 |
# ? Oct 27, 2016 16:09 |
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orange sky posted:So uh, I've been reading Blindsight and it may be once again my bad for not being an English speaker but.. I can't understand poo poo? I didn't see anyone respond to this so I will. I listened to it on audiobook so I'm not sure what page it started to click but I was confused like you were. I also hate that sort of thing as well, but I kept listening to it because I was at work and had nothing better to do. It'll gradually make more sense, to a degree you can understand what's going on and enjoy it. However, it still leaves you with a lot to chew on, and I found myself stopping the file several times to think on things, and even rewinding a few places. It's a great book with terrifying implications, I'd say stick with it.
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# ? Oct 28, 2016 11:33 |
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I was tossing up buying Tepper's Grass in a bookstore the other day but reading that passage above made me immediately abandon her forever. And come to think of it the only reason I was thinking of reading Grass was because it's on the SF Masterworks list, and come to think of that, I've read a bunch of those and found them absolutely rubbish.
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# ? Oct 29, 2016 09:41 |
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I don't know if any of you have read this, but it's one of my favorite books ever, just an unrelentingly grim and visceral futurewar story: Germline, by T. C. McCarthy. Cannot recommend this enough. E: I need people to read this.
Biplane fucked around with this message at 18:07 on Oct 29, 2016 |
# ? Oct 29, 2016 17:59 |
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i got about halfway through. it didn't feel like it had much of a narrative and the protagonist loving a bunch of virgin perfectly attractive supersoldiers was a bit eyerolling.
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# ? Oct 29, 2016 18:11 |
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Biplane posted:I don't know if any of you have read this, but it's one of my favorite books ever, just an unrelentingly grim and visceral futurewar story: Germline, by T. C. McCarthy. Cannot recommend this enough. E: I need people to read this. I loved it, too. Despite never having been in the military, the author manages to capture a lot of the experience quite well.
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# ? Oct 29, 2016 18:20 |
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Neurosis posted:i got about halfway through. it didn't feel like it had much of a narrative and the protagonist loving a bunch of virgin perfectly attractive supersoldiers was a bit eyerolling. i pretty much had the same reaction. I kept reading it because I was waiting for it to cross into the awesomeness the thread describes. I'm not saying it was bad book, it just wasn't for me.
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# ? Oct 29, 2016 18:21 |
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Neurosis posted:i got about halfway through. it didn't feel like it had much of a narrative and the protagonist loving a bunch of virgin perfectly attractive supersoldiers was a bit eyerolling. Two, but yeah I can kinda see what you mean although I never found it to be that much of a thing in the book. Its made clear that they all think he's a freak (except the two who... you know) Anyway I've probably read it 15 times the last three years, the author even facebooked me cos I was gushing about it so hard.
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# ? Oct 29, 2016 18:35 |
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Children of Time was pretty cool. I thought the ending was going to be super bleak with both the super spiders and humans wiping each other out with some kind of chemical weapon, but the twist of the spiders brainwashing the humans into being their buddies was not how I thought it would end. Is any of Adrian Tchaikovsky's other stuff particularly interesting?
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# ? Oct 29, 2016 19:10 |
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I just bought C.J. Cherryh's Heavy Time at a clearance sale. Is it a sequel to something else? Is it a good introduction to her work?
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# ? Oct 29, 2016 19:25 |
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Solitair posted:I just bought C.J. Cherryh's Heavy Time at a clearance sale. Is it a sequel to something else? Is it a good introduction to her work? It's the first book of a pair (the second is Hellburner, and they're commonly sold as the omnibus Devil to the Belt). They're set in her Alliance-Union universe (which also includes Cyteen and Downbelow Station) and are, I think, chronologically the earliest books in it. They're also the only books in that setting focusing on the Earth-based faction. They're ok, but they're both not my favourites and some of her most stressful and claustrophobic work; I generally recommend The Pride of Chanur as a starting point, or, for people interested in A-U specifically, one of the Merchanter books for something short and fast-paced or Cyteen for a longer, slower book.
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# ? Oct 29, 2016 20:59 |
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Doorknob Slobber posted:Children of Time was pretty cool. I really liked his insect series thing, Shadows of the Apt. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3437309-empire-in-black-and-gold It was sorta similar in tone to LE Modesitt's series...the one with Cyador and the chaos and order mages. Anyway, both good series, nothing amazing, but deffo solid. For reference, Erikson's Malazan and Vinge's Zones of Thought were amazing. Sorry, these were the first two off the top of my head. Drifter fucked around with this message at 00:30 on Oct 30, 2016 |
# ? Oct 30, 2016 00:23 |
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Saw Heroes Die and Blade of Tyshalle mentioned somewhere earlier, decided to give them a try. Holy gently caress. How are these books 18 years old and I'd never loving heard of them before?
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# ? Oct 30, 2016 01:49 |
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Khizan posted:Saw Heroes Die and Blade of Tyshalle mentioned somewhere earlier, decided to give them a try. Holy gently caress. How are these books 18 years old and I'd never loving heard of them before? Stover himself suffered from some sort of really serious debilitating sickness or injury as well (I can't recall what it was but I read about it in a martial arts or sci fi magazine or something, ages ago) which took him ages to recover from, I believe. Between that and his muay thai or whatever background, makes for some pretty visceral writing. Spoiler: what happened in Retreat during the Boedecken was essentially a David Gemmell novel, but way gorier. coyo7e fucked around with this message at 03:21 on Oct 30, 2016 |
# ? Oct 30, 2016 03:17 |
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Autonomous Monster posted:e2: I take it back, I love everything about Dazen Guile's voyage through the realms of madness. And devil-may-care diplomat lady. And Teia ruminating on the nature of slaves and slaveholders. Actually, I love basically everything in this book. Except Kip's sections. I'm in the final third now and he's yet to do anything interesting. Diplomat lady was refreshing, yeah. Some minor person you get to know in about a chapter and she stands out stronger than Zymun, who got barely any face time (but had good asides that continues to establish him as a really lovely dude). Kip's sections show how hes growing out of that awkward teenager stage and becoming competent but it does plod a lot if you're not looking for that perspective. However, early on it does show he got a hell of a lot more fluid and quick in drafting on top of not speaking whatever crosses his mind all the time. I didn't care so much for Tisis mainly because Weeks isn't great at writing romance and adding a physical condition on top doesn't lend itself to even flow but I'll give him credit for trying without getting too weird about it. Still some nice reveals to come as you hit the end. Very JRPG-esque plot!
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# ? Oct 30, 2016 03:32 |
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I just finished it myself. The thing that struck me was how sympathetic I was towards Andross at the end. I mean he's a giant douchenozzle, but I feel like I get him and the absolute heartbreak he's gone through. I even understand his motivations a lot better and maybe that he is, in fact, trying to do his best to save as many as he can. I still hate his loving guts and I'm still not sure I trust his endgame, but drat if he didn't become more real to me in this book.
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# ? Oct 30, 2016 03:53 |
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Biplane posted:Two, but yeah I can kinda see what you mean although I never found it to be that much of a thing in the book. Its made clear that they all think he's a freak (except the two who... you know) I mean the writing was decent and the characters solid... I just didn't have enough of a draw to keep going. Not for me but I can understand people liking it. Khizan posted:Saw Heroes Die and Blade of Tyshalle mentioned somewhere earlier, decided to give them a try. Holy gently caress. How are these books 18 years old and I'd never loving heard of them before? They are good. The next two are a bit weird in structure and things get a bit out there and confusing but still enjoyable. I wish Stover was more prolific in non licensed fiction, if nothing else (and there is a lot else he does well) he writes loving good action.
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# ? Oct 30, 2016 05:57 |
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I finally found it. I found the worst LitRPG has to offer. Its not exactly badly written or full of self-published grammatical errors. What it is, though, is a text description of playing Everquest 1 with VERY few changes. Even though the characters are in virtual reality pods they still have to interact with everything in the game world by "clicking" it with their eyes or voice commands. I'm gonna finish it because I finish almost every book I start but jeez, if anyone here reads my recommendations for LitRPG I post here on occasion, leave this one alone. For new LitRPG series I picked up since my last post: The Land by Aleron Kong: These Mary-Sue driven novels are about a guy who is transferred from the MMORPG he is playing to a parallel dimension that the MMORPG was modeled after exactly, except he's back to level 1 and has limitless potential. In the five offerings so far, none of the titles match what is going on in the book, and the main character Richter builds a town based on freedom from oppression. They really aren't bad at all and are fun little reads as long as you don't mind Mary Sue stylings that much. The Dive: Birth of a Wordsmith by Justin Miller: Stay far away. Its basically a Harem fantasy about a Mary Sue character who creates a magic spell in the game he's playing that lets him change the properties of objects and people. Mostly consists of the main character being called "Cheat-character" by the NPC females he has following his adventures from near and afar. If you can get past the dumb poo poo though, it was kind of a fun book. Awaken Online: Catharsis by Travis Bagwell This might be my favorite new LitRPG that I have read lately. Its unfortunately short and only one book so far though the author plans on more apparently. In this one, a bullied teenager is expelled from school because his bully's father is basically an evil Bill Gates and the bully punched him in the face for no reason. At the same time, a new virtual reality game has released. Once in game, the main character works out his frustrations on the game by using game systems to become the head of a villain faction, whereupon his bully who has gotten a head start in the game leads an army to his gates to teach him a lesson.
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# ? Oct 30, 2016 14:35 |
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Sage Grimm posted:Kip's sections show how hes growing out of that awkward teenager stage and becoming competent but it does plod a lot if you're not looking for that perspective. However, early on it does show he got a hell of a lot more fluid and quick in drafting on top of not speaking whatever crosses his mind all the time. Honestly, I haven't felt like Kip's been an awkward teenager for a long while now. He was very clearly maturing even at the beginning of Blinding Knife; by the end of Broken Eye that arc is basically finished. For me, his sections in this book are more about him trying and failing to be the Lightbringer. I know it's supposed to be more of a WoT-esque sequence, where the hero insists he's just this ordinary dude and it's the people around him who can see him for what he really is, but honestly I'm more inclined to favour Kip's evaluation of his performance than Tisis's. As a military commander he's passable, but lacklustre. Morally, he's compromised in ways he never was before (a slave-trader, even if he was between a rock and a hard place there). He does seem to have some talent as an orator, but he refuses to use it. By the end of the book he's starting to lose lieutenants to desertion. He is a fairly spectacular wizard, but that doesn't count for a whole lot here. If Weeks' messiah figure ends up being just a really good wizard I'm going to be terribly disappointed. We could be working our way to a "Gavin is actually the Lightbringer" reveal, of course. I've been speculating along those lines for a while now; Gavin's been at times almost more the protagonist than Kip, he's got a very traditional fall from grace -> suffering and revelation -> redemption arc going on, and he's a inspiring, revolutionary leader in all the ways Kip isn't. And of course, the Lightbringer's prophesied revolution could well be killing God. Though I'm not entirely certain where we're supposed to fit that mission into Weeks' moral universe. Grinwoody's position that magic is the root of all evil in the Lightbringerverse isn't wholly unreasonable. It almost seems to been (actually was) designed to cause massive suffering and strife if not closely regulated, and the system that's come into being to regulate it is hardly one to inspire admiration. But on the other hand, Grinwoody thinks that magic is also the cause of social stratification, and slavery, and that its destruction would bring those to an end too. This is actually the reciprocal to the joke on Teia earlier in the book, where she asks, in all seriousness, "Who can imagine a world without slaves?" Both characters are making a proposition that makes sense from their perspective, but ends up making them look ridiculous to the reader. And then, Grinwoody doesn't understand nearly as much about the nature of God as he thinks he does. From the revelations in Broken Eye, Orholam is clearly more than just a magical nexus, and I think Weeks writes about his characters' faith with too much respect to reveal that the Wizard of Oz is just a guy from Omaha. And of course, Gavin kept an actual literal sex slave and used her in that capacity. And straight up murdered a girl in a fit of rage (the series squirming around trying to find a way to let him off the hook for that is probably the grossest thing in it, even more than the sex slave thing). And is just generally compromised in all sorts of ways. Rejecting the black luxin in the arena and the prison isn't really enough of a redemption, I don't think. And, ultimately, I think Lightbringer is too much of a straight up teenage boy power fantasy to go for it. (The real clever twist would be Teia turning out to be the Lightbringer, but that's not happening.) Anyway, I think the problem with Kip's arc here boils down to the fact that this book never existed in Weeks' original outline. It's pretty clear, reading it, that this whole thing has been awkwardly crowbarred into the structure of the series because he looked at his characters, looked where they needed to be for the climax, and realised that he couldn't possibly manage to wrap it up satisfactorily in one book. A couple of characters here (Quentin, Marissa), are given hilariously abrupt closures to their stories- Marissa is literally just, "Here's my entire backstory in a big lump. Alright amma get out the way so you can go mad and claw at the walls now." Others (Zymun, Kip, Ironfist and Liv to a lesser extent), are almost entirely sidelined. Kip is the protagonist of the whole thing and he's barely in the book! I think he gets less pagecount than any other POV character. Our protagonist is running a military campaign in the jungle for an entire year and it's dealt with in summary. We spend more time talking about Tisis' vaginismus. Similarly, Karris' whole hosed up relationship with family and Zymun in particular is the centrepiece of her arc in Broken Eye. Now the two of them are finally in the same place, where's the conclusion to that? Absent, presumably because any resolution with Zymun is earmarked for book 5. I mean I liked the book, a lot in fact, but it's pretty clear that a whole bunch of plotlines had to be left to tread water while Weeks got Teia and Gavin caught up. (I'd be interested to know how much of Gavin's sections here were a late addition to the narrative; the effect of them here is to reconfigure Gavin's entire character, and basically everything in them seems to come out of nowhere). I think the book wouldhave been better if Weeks had just gone the whole hog and cut Kip out of the book entirely. Just shoved him off-screen after the prologue, picked him up again for the final book. Speaking of Tisis, I actually liked her a lot. It's weird, considering how flat/peripheral she was in earlier books, but she gets fleshed out in record time here and ends up being this very sweet, earnest, passionate person. And all her interactions with Kip come across as very genuine. And touching. Compare with the rest of the Mighty ("Are we really going to call ourselves that" indeed ). They've been around forever at this point, but none of them are real characters and I ended up sort of despising every scene with them talking in it. They need Teia back, honestly, without her the whole dynamic is hosed. flosofl posted:I just finished it myself. I'm not sure how to feel about Andross now. Hell, I'm not sure how we're supposed to feel about him. I'm half convinced still that that entire sequence of revelations in the prison was an elaborate mindfuck of his on Gavin, even if it would make no sense at this point. The idea that he genuinely cared about Dazen, and wanted him to be prism because he thought he was the good version of himself is just that brainbending for me. It doesn't seem to match up with Kip's reading of him at the end of Broken Eye, either (that he just cares about winning). Though it would hardly be the first time a character has come to the wrong conclusion based on incomplete information. Is Andross the better half of the Grinwoody/Andross pair??? Victorkm posted:LitRPG I desperately, desperately want to read one of these "trapped in an MMO" stories that focuses on the social and psychological implications of a large group of people suddenly finding themselves trapped in an alien deathworld. Long story short, every possible alternative telling of SAO is better than what was actually delivered.
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# ? Oct 30, 2016 15:23 |
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# ? Jun 1, 2024 05:36 |
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Resurgence book 2: the return of resurgence
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# ? Oct 30, 2016 15:28 |