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BravestOfTheLamps posted:I hear good things about the book version of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. I haven't read that one but I enjoyed The Rebellion of the Hanged well enough, it's about indigenous labourers being forced into slavery on Mexican mahogany plantations.
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Aug 17, 2018 00:20
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How come spy fiction isn't one of the genres here?
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Aug 17, 2018 01:37
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:How come spy fiction isn't one of the genres here? In any case, nothing's stopping you from posting about spy fiction yourself. If you have insights to share, people would be more than willing to read them.
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Aug 17, 2018 02:35
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:No, I only look at the covers. That's enough to judge books. Hah. Fair enough. You know what I mean, though. I can imagine you reading the first one, and then skimming through the others to find excerpts of writing that offend you. It's just... based on the quality of those excerpts, I'd find it very hard to persevere through that series.
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Aug 17, 2018 04:40
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Man, the dialogue in that first excerpt is just awful. It's only a few steps up from some Eye of Argon crap, and Abercrombie (presumably) doesn't even have the excuse of being a teenager in the Ozarks when he was writing it. Also, writing a Muslim-bogeyman evil empire in your gritty fantasy novel is bad enough, but naming it the "Gurkish Empire" is a loving crime. Seriously? Antivehicular fucked around with this message at 05:18 on Aug 17, 2018 |
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Aug 17, 2018 05:13
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CountFosco posted:Hah. Fair enough. You know what I mean, though. I can imagine you reading the first one, and then skimming through the others to find excerpts of writing that offend you. It's just... based on the quality of those excerpts, I'd find it very hard to persevere through that series. He not only read all 6, he quite enjoyed them! BravestOfTheLamps posted:All the characters and their stories were great, basically. BravestOfTheLamps posted:The Heroes is obviously superior as a book, but BSC has such satisfying payoffs to everything that it's more fun to read.
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Aug 17, 2018 05:42
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Bullet Proof posted:He not only read all 6, he quite enjoyed them! That was deep cover infiltration.
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Aug 17, 2018 05:50
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It's important to note that, while not mustachio twirling villains, the Ottomans were no saints either. They saw conquest as a legitimate means of empire expanding just as much as any Western power, and as inheritors of the Roman Empire, they saw themselves as having casus belli on pretty much all of their neighbors. Sure, the millet system gave local minorities in the empire more autonomy than was typical in other empires, but at the end of the day ultimate power and authority really did rest in the Sultan and his bureaucracy. The devsirme system, for example, isn't some historical fiction invented in order to blacken the name of the Turks. That said, I haven't read Abercrombie's books, so whether he crosses the line from legitimate critique into Orientalist racism is not for me to say.
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Aug 17, 2018 14:55
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CountFosco posted:It's important to note that, while not mustachio twirling villains, the Ottomans were no saints either. They saw conquest as a legitimate means of empire expanding just as much as any Western power, and as inheritors of the Roman Empire, they saw themselves as having casus belli on pretty much all of their neighbors. Sure, the millet system gave local minorities in the empire more autonomy than was typical in other empires, but at the end of the day ultimate power and authority really did rest in the Sultan and his bureaucracy. The devsirme system, for example, isn't some historical fiction invented in order to blacken the name of the Turks. That said, I haven't read Abercrombie's books, so whether he crosses the line from legitimate critique into Orientalist racism is not for me to say. He doesn't delve deeply enough into Gurkish culture for anything like a proper critique - they're largely the faceless invading horde. I feel with both Bayaz and the Gurkish Abercrombie is motivated by nihilism rather than racism. The idea of a banking conspiracy secretly pulling an empires strings is undoubtedly antisemitic, but the central gag of the ending is that there isn't some sinister cabal running the show - it's just one rear end in a top hat wizard. It's a very TVTropes approach. He's seemingly identified that banking-conspiracies and swarthy-foreigners are a somewhat problematic feature of modern fantasy, and his oh-so-clever twist is to have it all be the result of a secret wizard feud. It "subverts" the trope instead of realising that you shouldn't have the drat trope to begin with. Edit: Abercrombie's prose is a lot like Rothfuss in it's performative cleverness. It's not enough to come up with a powerful metaphor or to find a nice rhythm, it has to dance back and forth in front of you telling you how very clever it is. The earthy dialect BotL quotes is obnoxiously over the top, like it's written to draw attention to how very earthy its dialect is. There's the occasional good snippet when he stops trying so drat hard. I really like the scene where Forley happily marches off to warn Bethod and probably get himself executed. Abercrombie strips out some (not nearly enough) of the forced dialogue and we actually get some of the underlying emotion coming through. Strom Cuzewon fucked around with this message at 16:35 on Aug 17, 2018 |
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Aug 17, 2018 16:16
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Gurkish
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Aug 17, 2018 18:21
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chernobyl kinsman posted:Gurkish You know, in Guy Gavriel Kay's books there's a people that represent the Sassanid Empire. You know what they're called? Bassanids.
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Aug 17, 2018 22:15
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hey man, if it ain't broke
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Aug 17, 2018 22:16
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Or how Bakker just smashed together completely different words to come up with Padirajah. Or gave his Jesus figure two names that are both kind of like Jesus.
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Aug 17, 2018 23:36
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As much fun as it is to make fun of the Jisraelites praying to Iesus it all just ties back to BotL's core themes that nothing is fantastic in any way. I just remembered the John Carter of Mars books, and those never pretended to be anything but silly pulp fiction. There's a lot in there that I suspect would be problematic to a modern reader, but there's a lot of just straight up wacky surprising poo poo you don't see that often in fantasy, like how Mars girls lay eggs or wacky mutant psychic heads that grow headless bodies to ride around on. Meanwhile Joe Abercrombie and co are going to have poo poo you can find in your local D&D game. As to Abercrombie/Rothfuss' prose, the idea is to appear smart so people who are identifying with the proper books can feel like they read a work of literature and disguising the fact that this is all ripped off dungeons and dragons.
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Aug 18, 2018 01:28
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CountFosco posted:It's important to note that, while not mustachio twirling villains, the Ottomans were no saints either. They saw conquest as a legitimate means of empire expanding just as much as any Western power, and as inheritors of the Roman Empire, they saw themselves as having casus belli on pretty much all of their neighbors. Sure, the millet system gave local minorities in the empire more autonomy than was typical in other empires, but at the end of the day ultimate power and authority really did rest in the Sultan and his bureaucracy. The devsirme system, for example, isn't some historical fiction invented in order to blacken the name of the Turks. That said, I haven't read Abercrombie's books, so whether he crosses the line from legitimate critique into Orientalist racism is not for me to say. The Ottoman empire was badass and I won't have anyone sullying their cool decadence and style
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Aug 18, 2018 01:31
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Yeah a lot of fantasy books these days don’t include a lot of fantastic stuff. The ones that do are still filed in the fantasy/sci-if section but under the subcategory “weird fiction” like China Mievilles work.
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Aug 18, 2018 12:56
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Meanwhile Joe Abercrombie and co are going to have poo poo you can find in your local D&D game. Almost nothing pisses me off more than r/Fantasy neckbeards slobbering all over themselves thinking of new adjectives to place in front of "prose" when talking about Rothfuss
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Aug 18, 2018 22:11
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honestly i probably wouldnt give a poo poo about rothfuss and think he was just another lame fantasy writer if it weren't for his unbelievably smug blog posts isn't he also the one that was like "my editors are allowed to the story but not my prose because i have mastered the craft"?
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Aug 18, 2018 23:28
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Abercrombie’s series owes as much to George R.R. Martin as to Tarantino, as he writes of geopolitical struggles that become complicated by supernatural forces and secrets emerging from the margins of the Circle of the World. The opening trilogy centres on the Anglo-Germanic kingdom of the Union, beset by barbarians in the imaginatively named North and by the despotic Gurkish Empire (one letter away from Turkish Empire) in the Global South. The former are genericized Norse-Saxon-Celts with a Hyborian veneer, while the latter are Ottomans presented with confusing and confused Orientalist nastiness. The corrupt Union stands in for Western civilization and imperialism, but initially bears the reader’s sympathy as the closest thing to a stable, amiable polity. Three anti-heroes from each nation are drawn together by a Merlin-like sponsor to improve themselves on a quest to save the Union, while a crippled torturer navigates the grime of hyper-gritty detective fiction, and a band of gruff men of violence try to survive without their leader. But the true narrative of this trilogy is the overlong revelation that our heroes will never improve themselves, for they are either monsters, fools, or both. Like the Union, they turn out to be no better than their enemies. I always thought Abercrombie looked pretty bad, but this sounds pretty entertaining. Thanks for the recommendation.
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Aug 21, 2018 18:10
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Seldom Posts posted:I always thought Abercrombie looked pretty bad, but this sounds pretty entertaining. Thanks for the recommendation. “Northerner, eh?” asked a massive shape in the doorway. “Aye, who’s asking?” “The Stone-Splitter.” He was big this one, very big, and tough, and savage. You could see it on him as he shoved the cupboard away with his huge boot and crunched forward through the broken plates. It meant less than nothing to the Bloody-Nine though—he was made to break such men. Tul Duru Thunderhead had been bigger. Rudd Threetrees had been tougher. Black Dow had been twice as savage. The Bloody-Nine had broken them, and plenty more besides. The bigger, the tougher, the more savage he was, so much the worse would be his breaking. “Stone-Shitter?” laughed the Bloody-Nine. “So fuckin’ what? Next to die is what y’are, and nothing more!” He held his left hand up, spattered with red blood, three fingers spread out wide, grinning through the gap where the middle one used to be, a long time ago. “They call me the Bloody-Nine.” “Dah!” The Stone-Splitter ripped off his mask and threw it on the floor. “Liar! There’s plenty o’ men in the north have lost a finger. They ain’t all Ninefingers!” “No. Only me.” That great face twisted up with rage. “You loving liar! You think to scare the Stone-Splitter with a name that’s not your own? I’ll carve a new arse in you, maggot! I’ll put the bloody cross on you! I’ll put you back in the mud you coward loving liar!” “Kill me?” The Bloody-Nine laughed louder than ever. “I do the killing, fool!” The talk was done.
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Aug 21, 2018 18:29
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:“Northerner, eh?” asked a massive shape in the doorway. Hmm, this seems bad. Maybe I'll read the rest of your post.
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Aug 21, 2018 18:40
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It bothers me that he couldn't even loop the 'carve you a new arse' back into 'stone shitter'. C'mon.
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Aug 21, 2018 19:29
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:“Northerner, eh?” asked a massive shape in the doorway. I don't really like the use of the word "savage" here as kind of a...general physical description? Like big I get, I'll give you tough, but you just see some guy in a doorway and you're like, "Holy poo poo this dude is savage"? Does he have like baby bones falling out of his teeth or something?
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Aug 22, 2018 01:27
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I discovered the afterword in shadow of the torturer that claims this is a translation and I have v. strong feelings about it
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Aug 22, 2018 01:38
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I discovered the afterword in shadow of the torturer that claims this is a translation and I have v. strong feelings about it 
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Aug 22, 2018 02:25
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Ok, so, here's my issue with it. A. Its kind of a tedious thing that exists mostly to silence those whoa are obnoxiously hyper-serious about world building by being like "when I say horses I don;t mean horses but the closest approximation to the animal that doesn't exist yet is horses so I said horses please just shut up" B. Its a way more interesting story than the actual story. The postscript posits that the book that has been translated is one of many artifacts of a "post-history" that have been collected by contemporary scholars and shared in secret. Essentially, there is an entire circle of academia dedicated to the collection and study of evidence of future events so as to create a coherent narrative of what is to come. That's a goddamn Calvino/Borges premise. gently caress this pretentious sci-fi fantasy shoe-gazing bullshit, all the interesting questions are in the postscript. What do you do as a scholar of future events? Do you feel you have an obligation to try and change the course of what is patently a rather grim view of things to come? Can those events even be changed? How do the academic principles of studying history translate into a study of events yet to come? I want THAT book
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Aug 22, 2018 15:02
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I bet someone will pipe up to recommend some genre trash.
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Aug 22, 2018 16:01
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:I bet someone will pipe up to recommend some genre trash. Closest I can think of is Robert Charles Wilson's The Chronoliths. Which isn't all that close to the previous post, but he does have the kind of regard among sf readers that would make for an interesting subject here.
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Aug 22, 2018 17:25
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Anyway, reading Shadow and Claw, all I can think of is another overrated work which I already mentioned in the latest review: Oldboy (2003). They're eerily similar in style and spirit.
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Aug 22, 2018 18:39
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Not seeing that comparison at all.
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Aug 22, 2018 18:51
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"Gurkish" is really bad because it's close enough to "Gherkin" the brain automatically associates it with pickles.
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Aug 22, 2018 20:29
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C.M. Kruger posted:"Gurkish" is really bad because it's close enough to "Gherkin" the brain automatically associates it with pickles. I associate it with pubic wigs
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Aug 22, 2018 22:12
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Eugene V. Dubstep posted:I associate it with pubic wigs 
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Aug 22, 2018 23:07
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Sham bam bamina! posted:The only way to do that would be through "gherkin" in the first place. Yes, which shows that I think at least twice as fast as the idiots who only got to "gherkin" in a single free-association interval.
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Aug 22, 2018 23:09
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Ok, so, here's my issue with it. Trust this thread to conclude that a book about a bunch of academics arguing and pondering and publishing about poo poo that never happened would be a better read than a book about a shirtless hunk with a bitchin sword who lives in a rocket ship and wears black and executes people and has lots of sex
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Aug 22, 2018 23:19
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BotL, please read The Worm Ouroboros. I would love to hear your take on its prose, since it does really commit to everyone not sounding and acting like moderns, and also on its politics.
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Aug 22, 2018 23:20
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I want to see him do Anathem by Neal Stephenson, or Feersum Endjinn by Banks.
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Aug 23, 2018 02:00
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Viriconium or bust.
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Aug 23, 2018 20:12
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Or any M John Harrison for that matter. (but mostly Viriconium. Just don't forget the Kefahuchi Tract trilogy)
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Aug 24, 2018 02:10
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Wanna watch Asimov get torn a new Asimov.
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Aug 24, 2018 02:14
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