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I felt the same about the latest trilogy. Nothing outright bad, but it didn't work for me. His books have always contained nods to our world, history, and fiction. In the past those touchstones were surrounded by something different, a setting with way more going on even though we only saw tiny glimpses of the big picture. It seemed like all the subversions, humor, and wild characters were moments away from smashing through something to reveal a new unpredictable element of the setting. Age of Madness seemed to tip the scales in the other direction, to the point that all the stuff I love about Abercrombie was minimized, and everything felt in service of the real world analogs. It worked thematically and had some character moments that I enjoyed but the broader world came across as smaller with fewer possibilities.
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Apr 24, 2022 19:46
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Social Animal posted:Cool thanks guys I'll grab BSC. The trilogy books were just so perfect for reading before bed. A little dangerous though when that "just one more chapter" hits when you really need to turn the light off and sleep. read it after the novels for sure. its my favorite book of his, every story is great
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Apr 24, 2022 19:47
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I liked the new trilogy. It definitely wasn’t on the same level of the OG trilogy or Heroes/Red Country, but I felt it was just as good as all the other stuff he wrote.
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Apr 24, 2022 19:48
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He’s gotten better at writing female characters and probably better at pacing but lost a bit of the magic of the setting. Possibly because he was growing bored with the world.
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Apr 25, 2022 03:27
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Ccs posted:He’s gotten better at writing female characters and probably better at pacing but lost a bit of the magic of the setting. Possibly because he was growing bored with the world. Which is a shame I think because there seemed to be so many cool stories to tell if he leaned towards magic instead of realism. I'd love to learn more about The Master Maker instead of a revolution. My favorite part of his last book is the epilogue where it hints at some magical poo poo that is about to go down.
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Apr 25, 2022 04:38
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Progress Report June ’22
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Aug 8, 2022 19:40
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Just finished Wisdom of Crowds and I liked it quite a bit. I was thinking Shenkt would show back up at the end, when Glokta was trapping Yoru Sulfur. The person Rikki sees in her last vision is probably Euz, but I wonder if it might be Tolomei escaping the Tower of the Maker. I don't think anyone but Bayaz knows she's in there with Yulwei. Ferro might know, it's been awhile since I read Argument of Kings. If Glotka ever finds out I'm sure it'd be high on his list of priorities to bust the tower wide open. Shame Orso went out the way he did, but him being at the whim of powers he has no control over is very on brand for his character. It did seem odd to me that Bayaz was such a non entity through the last trilogy, but Rikki's vision shows that he doesn't have to respond to every little thing. He's like 400 years old, he can afford to sit in his tower and play the long game. One of the things I like about the series as a whole is how technology keeps advancing. In Game of Thrones, the whole world seems to have been in a medevial period for the last thousand years. I like that at the beginning of the Blade itself it's your standard fantasy setting, and by the end of Wisdom of Crowds there's about to be an industrial revolution.
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Aug 14, 2022 20:27
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Your Gay Uncle posted:
Way older than that
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Aug 14, 2022 22:12
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Your Gay Uncle posted:
I know that 'tactical realism' isn't the point, as long as the setting tells interesting stories, but the modernity/technology actually sort of irked me in the setting. They were probably in the early modern period at the start of the first trilogy, and/or in Best Served Cold, and then as you say they're almost full into the industrial revolution within a generation. I know it's not that egregious and I should be able to suspend my disbelief, but it's simplifying so many incremental advances - not just engineering but metallurgy, commercialism etc. I roll my eyes slightly when some bloke wanders up to our protagonist at a party and starts burbling about his incredible new machine, and we are all supposed to, as laymen with no technical backgrounds, to recognise 'aha, he's come up with the steam engine' and applaud that they've got a train later in the book. Where in fact that technology went through so many stages before it was anything more than a curiosity, it wasn't just cut from whole cloth by one genius in a year or two. This is especially noticeable in the military bits like the Heroes. One side is an early medieval society with its warrior class and peasants, which we sort of envision as Danes/Anglo-Saxons. Chaps with shields and swords/axes and maybe mail shirts. The other is a modern (Napoleonic-ish?) army with a general staff, representing the military effort of a developed state. (and they've got a bizarre mish-mash of late medieval technology, like pikemen, crossbowmen and full plate harness, with Napoleonic tropes like colourful uniforms, no/irrelevant armour and officers with useless ornamental swords). The Union should absolutely stomp all over the Northmen. Sidenote, someone will probably point out some examples like the British Empire vs Afghanistan (in the 19th century, not more recently) and that the Afghans often came off best. Yes, but that was largely because Afghanistan was one of many colonial theatres and the British never sent more than a fraction of their force there. The Union/North war is one of the biggest, if not the main, effort for the Union. The Northmen don't use much in the way of guerilla tactics, they're slogging it out in pitched battle. They should be massively outnumbered, out-trained, out-supplied. If anything, the Northmen's successes seemed to rest on this barbarism vs civilization trope that they (at least their Named Men) were enthusiastic about close combat and the Union were from a more modern tradition where everyone knows fighting hand-to-hand sucks balls. But that trope has no reason to exist in a world without gunpowder.
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Aug 15, 2022 20:12
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I don't think you're wrong, I think it was probably better for a story standpoint to have the children of the other characters interacting and experiencing technological change in an unrealistic timeline than the grandchildren or great grandchildren of the characters in a more realistic timeline.
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Aug 16, 2022 21:20
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Also it allows for the possibility of hardboiled noir detectives two or three generations from now and that'd be great. Abercrombie doing whatever he needs to do to the setting to keep the pressure on Bayaz is excellent imo.
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Aug 17, 2022 05:04
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I know it's been a month, but I felt I could maybe discuss this a bit:Genghis Cohen posted:They should be massively outnumbered, out-trained, out-supplied. They explicitly are, to a degree, when it comes to numbers and equipment, and while they do have a hard-core of veterans, their new recruits compare very unfavourably to professional Union soldiers(the fight in the town). At the beginning of Heroes the Northmen have been avoiding battle (to get the Union to overstretch) for so long that Black Dow has no choice but to give battle lest he lose the support of his people, and he picks the best possible location available to him, and they are scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to reinforcements, as Beck's POV demonstrates. The Northmen at no point fight a pitched field battle during Heroes. They start with surprise attacks on over-extended forward elements, and then dig in in high ground / a town they seized, and manage to resist Union's subsequent attack for long enough for Dow to be able to negotiate from a position of strength (the thing with returning POWs). Dow knew that he was going to lose eventually if the fighting went on. The Union almost had them, but their general felt they couldn't win within the deadline they had been given. The Northmen managed to run down the clock, just barely.
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Sep 18, 2022 20:32
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Warden posted:I know it's been a month, but I felt I could maybe discuss this a bit: You may well be right, and I am just hung up on the lack of detailed explanation of the anachronisms and how they played out. That said, I do think there is an over-reliance on the Union not being 'warriors' compared to the Northmen (who I accept are mostly the veterans of their army).
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Sep 19, 2022 11:35
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Always remember that they have magic people guiding them too. Bayaz wants to further tech? Magic man knows how to build poo poo with steam and gunpowder. Northmen doing really good at war? Dancing lady is giving them the hot tips that the union doesn't want you to know. Commanders hate her!
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Sep 19, 2022 12:44
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I liked the new trilogy myself except for the first book which really dragged for me. Though in my opinion, Abercrombie's standalone books are much better then either trilogy.
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Sep 26, 2022 20:41
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I am very dangerously posting in this thread just to say I'm about 3/4ths through The Blade Itself and quite liking it! I know absolutely nothing about anything Joe Abercrombie has written. Do I need to know anything going forward? Otherwise, see you guys in like three books at least
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Oct 27, 2022 17:36
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You do not. See you later!
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Oct 27, 2022 18:53
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Tosk posted:I am very dangerously posting in this thread just to say I'm about 3/4ths through The Blade Itself and quite liking it! I know absolutely nothing about anything Joe Abercrombie has written. Do I need to know anything going forward? A man lost in the desert must take accept water no matter its source
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Oct 27, 2022 19:10
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Tosk posted:I am very dangerously posting in this thread just to say I'm about 3/4ths through The Blade Itself and quite liking it! I know absolutely nothing about anything Joe Abercrombie has written. Do I need to know anything going forward? Just read them, it's better to do it than live with the fear of it
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Oct 27, 2022 19:12
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Jose Valasquez posted:Just read them, it's better to do it than live with the fear of it Say one thing for Joe Abercrombie, he could coin a good aphorism
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Oct 27, 2022 19:14
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You can never have too many books
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Oct 27, 2022 19:18
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Tosk posted:Do I need to know anything going forward? What are you worried about? The 99th page of book 2 will explode if read on a monday, so don't do that obviously, but otherwise I'm not sure what kind of problems you're envisioning?
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Oct 28, 2022 21:04
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Tosk posted:I am very dangerously posting in this thread just to say I'm about 3/4ths through The Blade Itself and quite liking it! I know absolutely nothing about anything Joe Abercrombie has written. Do I need to know anything going forward? You only need to know that you have to be realistic about these things.
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Oct 31, 2022 07:40
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Crespolini posted:What are you worried about? The 99th page of book 2 will explode if read on a monday, so don't do that obviously, but otherwise I'm not sure what kind of problems you're envisioning? When I posted that I was thinking more along the lines of: maybe the standalone books aren't great and I should skip to second trilogy after the first? Maybe all of them are worth reading and chronological order is the way to go, or the latest trilogy is very bad, or one or two of the standalones give important context and the others are forgettable, etc etc. Stuff like that. In any case I appreciate all the aphorisms quoted at me. as the thread title indicates, say one thing for Joe Abercrombie... I finished the first trilogy a few days ago. Overall, they were pretty solid fantasy stories. I felt reminded of a more David Gemmell or even pulpier type of fantasy as opposed to more structured fantasy worlds like WOT, ASOIAF, Middle-earth etc. The prose was very readable throughout, although I felt like the last third of book 3 was kind of a whimper for the trilogy to go out on. Also all of the sex was terribly cringe. I'll probably read further in the hopes of seeing Bayaz receive some kind of comeuppance, but I don't feel in a hurry to start on the standalones.
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Nov 9, 2022 16:57
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His writing improves markedly across the stand alone books.
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Nov 9, 2022 17:03
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Southpaugh posted:His writing improves markedly across the stand alone books. Yeah, and you can tell that someone gave him the "your female characters need improvement" note and he took it to heart, he gets a lot better about that too. The sex scenes do not improve however, but fortunately there's only ever like 1 or 2 per book tops i think. frankly i hope he never gets better, their badness lends a certain kind of charm if you squint at it just right
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Nov 9, 2022 17:14
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Tosk posted:When I posted that I was thinking more along the lines of: maybe the standalone books aren't great and I should skip to second trilogy after the first? Maybe all of them are worth reading and chronological order is the way to go, or the latest trilogy is very bad, or one or two of the standalones give important context and the others are forgettable, etc etc. Stuff like that. I think the first trilogy and stand-alones are much stronger than the second trilogy. Make sure to read the short story compilation after the stand alone books too.
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Nov 9, 2022 17:16
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If I'm remembering correctly his publisher forced him to put a sex scene in the first book so he purposely did it super cringy. And he's just kind of kept that vibe going for all his other books.
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Nov 9, 2022 17:55
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Artonos posted:If I'm remembering correctly his publisher forced him to put a sex scene in the first book so he purposely did it super cringy. And he's just kind of kept that vibe going for all his other books. Is that the one where Logen and Ferro just bang right next to Jezal?
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Nov 29, 2022 01:32
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I thought they did it in a cave or something but yeah it's them. iirc the dialogue is mostly transliterated grunting
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Nov 29, 2022 01:43
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Joe has posted a brief Progress Report November ’22
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Dec 1, 2022 20:58
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Dec 5th, 2022 Ask Me Anything on Reddit
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Dec 5, 2022 21:27
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Progress Report February ’23
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Mar 1, 2023 08:38
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Progress Report April ’23quote:A busy bank holiday weekend followed by a rush to get a contract signed has meant that I’m just a couple o’ days late for my April progress report, so here it is at the very start of May…
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May 3, 2023 19:46
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Sounds like he had some tv stuff in progress…
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May 4, 2023 02:53
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Ccs posted:Sounds like he had some tv stuff in progress… Isn't he a TV editor as well? Could still be doing that on the side, authors don't make too much right? Even if they're mildly successful.
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May 4, 2023 03:55
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Ccs posted:Sounds like he had some tv stuff in progress… What I would give to have HBO take on the First Law Trilogy.
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May 4, 2023 05:16
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Shave Liam Cunningham's head and you've got yourself a Bayez.
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May 5, 2023 06:11
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RIP Ray Stevenson. First thought was that's most the Joe Abercrombie adaptation fancasting down the drain.
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May 23, 2023 13:02
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gently caress, I loved that guy in Rome. He would have been excellent as any number of characters in an Abercrombie adaptation.
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May 24, 2023 03:13
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