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But sometimes he writes with accents!
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Aug 28, 2017 04:03
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och aye laddie begorrah
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Aug 28, 2017 04:07
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So what do you guyos think of the Chronicles of Amber? When placed into a chronology of the evolution of modern fantasy, I think the first one is pretty good, but flawed in a lot of ways. There are stretches of great prose and some interesting mechanics that ultimately don't hold up or aren't capitalized on, but I'll definitely read the next one.
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Aug 28, 2017 07:26
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Ccs posted:You seem to have really latched on to the idea that if a story is not written with the mindset of its time then it's worthless. How much writing from the medieval or renaissance period from a first person perspective is there to draw on? 1) This is oddly specific, and 2) enough; for example, Benvenuto Cellini's autobiography is a superior version of Kingkiller. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 08:18 on Aug 28, 2017 |
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Aug 28, 2017 07:38
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:1) This is oddly specific, and 2) enough; for example, Benvenuto Cellini's autobiography is a superior version of Kingkiller. I have never wanted to read a book more then that autobiography after reading what it's about. Is there any particular translation that holds up the best or can I just read whatever comes up first on Amazon?
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Aug 28, 2017 10:13
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I read the Penguin Classics one and it's very clear prose. It doesn't have the archaic flair that public domain translations have. I haven't really compared translations. Be warned, it's rather repetitive and psychologically shallow because Cellini is an actual narcissist without emotional depth and no capacity for self-reflection. MUCH LIKE KVOTHE
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Aug 28, 2017 10:19
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Maybe Kote found the power of introspection, but it is obfuscated with the story within a story structure, as he is dictating his biography as he wishes it to be published verbatim.
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Aug 28, 2017 10:34
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Jemisin is a bad writer, and I actually wrote a short review for another of her novels. I can't find this that compelling as an argument because even people who like The Fifth Season frequently didn't like The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. Personally, I really liked The Fifth Season and I thought its second person worked well, in that it never got in the way and the fact that the "you" is a real character and not intended to be a reader stand in. I'm always incredibly skeptical of second person but it worked in Broken Earth. I also thought the series biggest strength was its complicated morality--I think it resists easy identification with any protagonist because they all do terrible things, but for human reasons. It's far from perfect--I think her pacing needs serious work, especially in the second and third books of the trilogy, for example, and she has a bad habit of assuming the reader cares more than they do about relatively minor characters we haven't spent much time with. That said, I'd very much like to read a critique of those books that isn't "she's a bad writer forever because HTK was bad." Harrow fucked around with this message at 15:29 on Aug 28, 2017 |
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Aug 28, 2017 15:25
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Harrow posted:That said, I'd very much like to read a critique of those books that isn't "she's a bad writer forever because HTK was bad." Her prose is bad and her general aesthetic is banal misery. Not to mention that she's just a genre writer. For example, in The Fifth Season there are these children born with special powers, you see, and they're persecuted unless they're trained by the government. Stirring stuff.
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Aug 28, 2017 15:46
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Her prose is bad and her general aesthetic is banal misery. Yeah, can't argue with the misery thing. I also agree that "people with special powers are persecuted" is a tired trope, but I thought Broken Earth did a good job explaining why, how, and how the world got there. The genesis of the persecution in these stories is usually a perfectly understandable fear, that's not new, but the way it works in the setting and society ends up believable enough. I'd like to know what you mean by "just a genre writer," more specifically. I don't want to respond to that without making sure I understand you.
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Aug 28, 2017 16:03
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Lacking in literary qualities and connection to literary tradition. Also, this is one of the more hilarious lines I've seen in a review: io9.gizmodocom posted:The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, out Feb. 25, is an impressive debut, which revitalizes the trope of empires whose rulers have gods at their fingertips. That classic beloved trope of empires who control real, existing deities. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 16:20 on Aug 28, 2017 |
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Aug 28, 2017 16:17
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:That classic beloved trope of empires who control real, existing deities.  I feel like the state of genre fiction criticism is similar to the state of games criticism: far too little critical writing that goes beyond consumer advice. And then someone tries to sound smart and writes a sentence that is pretty much just nonsense.
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Aug 28, 2017 16:41
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Harrow posted:
pop culture criticism is unfortunately driven by clicks which is why you get aggressively superlative or negative reviews instead of substance. It's especially bad on youtube - movie criticism is particularly dire. There isn't really a great solution because a lot of amateur criticism lacks the vocabulary to really do much. The existence of "booktube" is especially hilarious to me. Pro criticism seems to be fairly limited in what they're looking at especially for genre. Books that publishers are pushing tend to get a lot more attention.
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Aug 28, 2017 16:58
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The thing that made me lol the hardest about the Fifth Season was the shoe-horned social justice stuff and the forced sex trope reversal, where the female lead is forced to have sex with the "hero" over and over again while she complains about how awful it is, and then the hero turns out to be gay, so it was awful for him too, and it turns out all the women he was forced to sleep with by the government had babies, and those babies are lobotomized and turned into earthquake detectors. Sex can't be good. It has to be the worst thing possible. Also, I met N.K. at a school function after a speech where she told us how Trump was trying to kill her.
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Aug 28, 2017 17:25
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BananaNutkins posted:The thing that made me lol the hardest about the Fifth Season was the shoe-horned social justice stuff and the forced sex trope reversal, where the female lead is forced to have sex with the "hero" over and over again while she complains about how awful it is, and then the hero turns out to be gay, so it was awful for him too, and it turns out all the women he was forced to sleep with by the government had babies, and those babies are lobotomized and turned into earthquake detectors. This is the most insane summary of a plot point that I think I've ever read. I had to read it twice just to make sure I didn't have a stroke or something in the middle of it. What in the whole hell?
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Aug 28, 2017 17:28
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Genre fiction is cancer
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Aug 28, 2017 17:31
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BananaNutkins posted:Sex can't be good. It has to be the worst thing possible. I mean, later in the book she and the gay guy she's forced to mate with end up having lots of good sex with someone they find very attractive, so I don't think this is necessarily the point Jemisin was trying to get across. SpacePig posted:This is the most insane summary of a plot point that I think I've ever read. I had to read it twice just to make sure I didn't have a stroke or something in the middle of it. What in the whole hell? Easier description: the most skilled people with special earth magic powers are forced to breed, and their offspring are often lobotomized so that they don't pose any threat to anyone and instead just instinctively quell earthquakes, because there are a fuckload of earthquakes that would kill everyone if nobody magically stopped them. It might not sound much less insane but maybe it's easier to parse.
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Aug 28, 2017 17:32
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I'm tired of every fantasy novel being the beginning of some dumb epic series. It's a loving struggle to get a singular story contained in one volume. Anyway I like Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kaye a lot and it's mercifully a standalone novel.
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Aug 28, 2017 17:34
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Agreed about series. I'd love more good standalone fantasy or science fiction books. You get a lot more of that in science fiction, at least. Even in trilogies I like, the second and third books are rarely as good as the first.
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Aug 28, 2017 17:36
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Malpais Legate posted:I'm tired of every fantasy novel being the beginning of some dumb epic series. It's a loving struggle to get a singular story contained in one volume. I like the part in Tigana where the hot chick has sex with the protagonist in a closet just to keep him quiet while she's spying on the evil wizard's henchmen and then he's all confused and flustered for the next 400 pages. But true talk, Tigana has some suck prose in parts, and some very boring PoV segments that occur in the harem where no sex occurs. I think I don't like when Kay breaks from 3rd-person limited to diddle around with omniscient-3rd, but then is all like, you were just a bitch to me omniscient-third, back to 3rd-person limited. Also, the main conceit of the novel never sold me. To be clear, the omniscient third parts weren't like montages or even mood pieces like the opening of NoTW, they were just random instances of head-hopping within scenes. Maybe it's a French thing, like having casual sex in a closet with a skinny, unnattractive frenchman just to keep him quiet. MartingaleJack fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Aug 28, 2017 |
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Aug 28, 2017 17:41
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Malpais Legate posted:Anyway I like Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kaye a lot and it's mercifully a standalone novel. Tigana is my favorite tragedy where the bad guys win.
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Aug 28, 2017 17:43
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Tigana has a scene where the evil Stalinist wizard thinks about how he's going to enjoy torturing a homosexual, unaware how hideous his grin makes him look.BananaNutkins posted:The thing that made me lol the hardest about the Fifth Season was the shoe-horned social justice stuff and the forced sex trope reversal, where the female lead is forced to have sex with the "hero" over and over again while she complains about how awful it is, and then the hero turns out to be gay, so it was awful for him too, and it turns out all the women he was forced to sleep with by the government had babies, and those babies are lobotomized and turned into earthquake detectors. Sex can't be good. It has to be the worst thing possible. Also, I met N.K. at a school function after a speech where she told us how Trump was trying to kill her. I don't want to sound like a 4channer, but her writing really is "social justice-y". A good example is from HTK,: oppression and inequality are big themes, but one of the primary method by which this is conveyed is the dread and anxiety the protagonist when faced by her monstrous, tyrannical relatives. It's a case where the personalization of a political issue ends up obscuring the truth. Like I pointed out in my review, the protagonist is an warrior aristocrat of royal blood, but also needs to be a subaltern everywoman with modern liberal sensibilities, which just rings false (especially when all sense of society and community is so vague throughout the novel). One of the fundamental problems of what we think of as "social justice" discourse is the obscuring of class relations, and it's full force in HTK. You can also see it in how the imperialistic society that's the novel's antagonist force is a confused melange of various historical forms of oppression, ultimately defined by the fact that they're White People. This isn't even subtext, they're basically a stand-in for various White People Evils of history (feudalism, aristocracy, Catholic theocracy, Western imperialism). At the end it's revealed that their god is actually black and the protagonist thinks how this must upset them. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 18:14 on Aug 28, 2017 |
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Aug 28, 2017 17:49
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Yeah Tigana has plenty of issues and I'm not lauding it as god's gift to fantasy, but I enjoyed it all the same. Though it's been like 3 or 4 years since I read it so maybe it isn't as fun or good as I remember. I mentioned it primarily as an example of single book fantasy. And an example of worldbuilding that didn't feel like a D&D campaign setting.
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Aug 28, 2017 17:56
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:I don't want to sound like a 4channer, but her writing really is "social justice-y". A good example is from HTK,: oppression and inequality are big themes, but one of the primary method by which this is conveyed is the dread and anxiety the protagonist when faced by her monstrous, tyrannical relatives. It's a case where the personalization of a political issue ends up obscuring the truth. Like I pointed out in my review, the protagonist is an warrior aristocrat of royal blood, but also needs to be a subaltern everywoman with modern liberal sensibilities, which just rings false (especially when all sense of society and community is so vague throughout the novel). One of the fundamental problems of what we think of as "social justice" discourse is the obscuring of class relations, and it's full force in HTK. 
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Aug 28, 2017 18:34
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State of the Genre Address 2017, updated Aug 28, 2017 Here's my recommendations for fun fantasy trash. Heroes Die by Matthew Stover. Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere Roger Zelazny's Nine Princes in Amber book I (they have a linear decline in quality and entertainment value after that). Joe Abercrombie's first trilogy. Blood Song by Anthony Ryan Here's my recommendations for well-written fantasy trash. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell The Library at Mount Char Best Served Cold and The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie. Frank Herbert's Dune and maybe Dune Messiah. The rest are trash. The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. Technically SF, but it reads like fantasy, so whatev. American Gods by Neil Gaiman or Neverwhere, but if you read one Neil Gaiman book, you've read them all. The Drawing of the Three or Wizard and Glass by Stephen King, but the rest of the Dark Tower series is trash. Maybe The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch, but it has gotten worse with each re-read for me, and the sequels are just kind of there. The Magicians by Lev Grossman Going Postal by Terry Pratchett. The Tiffany Aching books by Terry Pratchett written up to the point his brain started turning into sponge. The Golden Compass book 1, but the sequels are trash because they turn into a didactic anti-catholic/religion screed instead of being a story. Here's my recommendations for fantasy trash that was important to the genre but that you shouldn't read unless you want to be a writer because it was good at the time, but its all trash now Wheel of Time A Song of Ice and Fire (wasn't trash for a book and a half, became trash) Dresden Files Lord of the Rings (wasn't trash until we ran it into the ground) Narnia Oz before Baum died or farmed the series out Harry Potter The Black Company Ursula K. Leguin T.H. White Here's the utter trash of the fantasy genre you shouldn't read The Name of the Wind Shannara Terry Goodkind Terry Brooks Anyone named Terry not last named Pratchett Robin Hobb Brent Weeks' Night Angel trilogy. After book three, he's on my genre-terrorist watch list for crimes against the genre. A Wrinkle in Time Peter V. Brett The sequels to Blood Song by Anthony Ryan. The Malazan Books of the Fallen R.A. Salvatore Christopher Paolini The Powder Mage series by Sanderson's gimp. N.K. Jemisin Fantasy Trash for which I am conflicted The Darkness That Comes Before (lots of weird sex stuff, whatev, and too much philosophy and navel gazing, but mein gott! some really good sentences scattered throughout.) Fantasy so derivative it doesn't deserve a mention Iron Druid Chronicles Sandman Slim Daughter of Smoke and Bone MartingaleJack fucked around with this message at 19:55 on Aug 28, 2017 |
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Aug 28, 2017 18:49
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BananaNutkins posted:
The gently caress?
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Aug 28, 2017 18:53
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Pash posted:The gently caress? Sorry, they suck now. Go read them again. I screwed up and should have put them in the influential category.
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Aug 28, 2017 18:55
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The Library at Mount Char is utter garbage. Shockingly terrible. Genuinely confused by the praise it got. What a sad, cynical, confused thing. Rothfuss's work at least pretends to be about something; it isn't, but by dint of making it appear that it is he has a better grasp of what literature is than Hawkins ever will.
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Aug 28, 2017 19:10
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I read Night Angel trilogy around the same time I did Name of the Wind, and I actually liked it enough to try Weeks' Lightbringer books. It was another book where I thought the magic system was interesting enough, but so little was going on around it that I barely finished it. Looking back, night Angel probably wasn't as good as I thought it was. It, too, has a lot of creepy themes about sex that I was uncomfortable with even at the time. Where do the Codex Alera books fall for you, Lamps?
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Aug 28, 2017 19:11
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BananaNutkins posted:Sorry, they suck now. Go read them again. I screwed up and should have put them in the influential category. LeGuin belongs nowhere near the trash pile motherfucker Like I'll give you Tolkien because I really can't stand the way he puts a narrative together but LeGuin's stuff, even Earthsea, stands up as extremely well written even now, and her books also function effectively as stand-alones even when they're part of a series.
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Aug 28, 2017 19:14
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BananaNutkins posted:State of the Genre Address 2017, updated Aug 28, 2017] What is wrong with you, Goon Sir! This is the most incorrect statement about a book series I have ever read. You are challenging my honor as a reader of only non-trash fantasy literature. Because of this I challenge you to a Goon Duel at dawn! To the moderately tired from walking! Seriously the Malazan books are intense and amazing, and I am someone who typically stays away from the type of fantasy fiction (or any really) that would portray gods as central characters in the story.
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Aug 28, 2017 19:15
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Like, say what you will about their lack of artistic merit or beautiful prose or whatever, but Malazan does not deserve to be dumped in with Terry Goodkind. Also The Dark Tower is uniformly poo poo, but even if I had to pick the better parts... Wizard and Glass? Hell no. This ends today's installment of "My opinion > your opinion".
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Aug 28, 2017 19:29
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ZombieLenin posted:What is wrong with you, Goon Sir! This is the most incorrect statement about a book series I have ever read. You are challenging my honor as a reader of only non-trash fantasy literature. Bro, I will give you Deadhouse Gates being alright, and the high-point of the series. But not Gardens of the Moon, and certainly not Memories of Ice.
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Aug 28, 2017 19:47
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BananaNutkins posted:Bro, I will give you Deadhouse Gates being alright, and the high-point of the series. But not Gardens of the Moon, and certainly not Memories of Ice. Gardens of the Moon is probably the weakest novel, but it is really necessary for stage setting--it was written like a decade before Deadhouse gates. That said, the second time I read the book (yeah I'm one of those) I really appreciated it. I don't know why anyone wouldn't like Memories of Ice. Again, a lot of background info is provided that you need for the rest of the series; however, all kinds of stuff happens in the book, including the introduction to Burn and the Crippled God.
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Aug 28, 2017 19:51
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Reene posted:LeGuin belongs nowhere near the trash pile motherfucker Ok, Earthsea is probably the best thing she ever wrote, minus short stories. But they still suck. They are heavy-handed with metaphor, and the detail is too sparse to elicit an autonoetic response in my brain. That's a problem of her putting prose over story. The Dispossessed sucks balls. The Left Hand of Darkness sucks balls. Neither of them are entertaining, and both spend the majority of their words to deliver a political message. I didn't include them because they are SF. Another who did similar things in his books but in an entertaining manner is Ian M. Banks.
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Aug 28, 2017 19:51
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I really think The Magicians is pedantic trash and not especially well-written but it's been a while.
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Aug 28, 2017 19:56
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ZombieLenin posted:Gardens of the Moon is probably the weakest novel, but it is really necessary for stage setting--it was written like a decade before Deadhouse gates. That said, the second time I read the book (yeah I'm one of those) I really appreciated it. MoI is all over the place tonally. Rape and murder of almost Bakkerian proportions, mixed with slapstick necromancers, a harem comedy, and whatever the hell Kruppe is. It has some really good moments, but it doesn't work as a unified novel. Midnight Tides has the same issue with all the dick jokes. And he doesn't quite flesh out the problems in the alliances enough for me, so when everything falls apart it doesn't feel like it was an inevitability, but like everyone suddenly became really stubborn and short sighted. House of Chains through to Reapers Gale are seriously great though.
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Aug 28, 2017 20:01
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porfiria posted:I really think The Magicians is pedantic trash and not especially well-written but it's been a while. I enjoyed The Magicians for the trashy pulp it is, but I would never categorize it as "well-written," especially not next to something like Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell or Dune. In fact, I'd say it belongs in the "fun fantasy trash" category much more.
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Aug 28, 2017 20:18
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ZombieLenin posted:Gardens of the Moon is probably the weakest novel, but it is really necessary for stage setting--it was written like a decade before Deadhouse gates. That said, the second time I read the book (yeah I'm one of those) I really appreciated it. I think it was the change in tone to very comedic during the siege of wherever the hell. The guy who is basically Liono from the Thundercats defending the city. And space raptors. Oh, and that time where for 30,000 words its just meeting scene after meeting scene with people discussing DBZ power levels. The stupid canoe that creates a new deity and magic system. Endless introspection from PoV characters and philosophizing.
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Aug 28, 2017 20:23
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:I don't want to sound like a 4channer, but her writing really is "social justice-y". A good example is from HTK,: oppression and inequality are big themes, but one of the primary method by which this is conveyed is the dread and anxiety the protagonist when faced by her monstrous, tyrannical relatives. It's a case where the personalization of a political issue ends up obscuring the truth. Like I pointed out in my review, the protagonist is an warrior aristocrat of royal blood, but also needs to be a subaltern everywoman with modern liberal sensibilities, which just rings false (especially when all sense of society and community is so vague throughout the novel). One of the fundamental problems of what we think of as "social justice" discourse is the obscuring of class relations, and it's full force in HTK. This was what stood out to me when I read it. The book is about a young woman sent to the heart of a monstrous empire trying to subvert it from within. But broadly the only politics going on is (ruling) family rivalry - the empire itself (or class relations, like you say) barely feature in the book. The empire exists because its pet gods kill anyone who says otherwise as per the world building. The rulers we meet are the protagonist's spiteful relatives who don't display any presence or capability that might suggest they literally rule the world. E: IIRC I compared it to The Traitor Baru Cormorant at some point, which uses a similar setup to explore how empire works and the endless effort that goes into keeping the imperial machine going another day. In Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, the virus of empire is just bad white strawpeople whose power comes from ~~magic~~ and is defeated by ~~magic~~ when the natural order is reasserted. Strategic Tea fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Aug 28, 2017 |
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Aug 28, 2017 20:27
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