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A Nice Boy posted:I was never terribly bothered by the "he's amazingly good at a lot of things" situation that so bothers some people. If you read the back of the novel before you buy it, you basically know exactly what kind of story you're in for...It's the story of a legendary wizard, one of the most amazing historical figures in that world's history, so of course that's the kind of character he's going to be. I put myself in that sort of mindset before the book started and it never bothered me. I think the "he's incredibly talented at almost everything" aspect of the story is less problematic than the "all the antagonists are incompetent assholes" aspect. Kvothe seems pretty insufferable at times; surely he could have had some higher quality opposition than Ambrose and Hemme.
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Nov 15, 2010 04:25
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Melche posted:I kinda wanna reiterate what I said earlier, because I think a lot of people are complaining about the wrong things and the defences are pretty valid. I dislike this book because it follows one character through his early life, as he apparently matures into the legendary hero he's gonna become. It's entirely character based. And yet, there's no character development whatsoever. This got me thinking. Is there any character development at all in the book, for anyone? The only example I can think of is Lanre, which we are told about third-hand and affects a character we know almost nothing about. Everyone else seems static, character-wise. I enjoyed the first book despite its flaws, but this does not bode well for the sequels. Watching Kvothe become an embittered shell of a man would be interesting, but I'm not confident that we'll get to see it.
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Nov 17, 2010 03:39
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Lyon posted:My thought is that Bredon is part of the human Amyr and Denna's patron. That's also how I read it. I think their games of Tak foreshadow the actual state of the world, which is that Kvothe initially thinks he's hot poo poo, only to find that he's being toyed with by someone who really knows and understands the rules of the game, and who can crush him handily if so inclined.
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Mar 31, 2011 23:14
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isochronous posted:I know this thread isn't about The Lies of Locke Lamora, but I just wanted to speak to this. I found it pretty ingenious how Lynch dealt with the all-powerful-ness of the bondsmagi - he just made the price of admission incredibly high, and made sure there was only a single point of entry. I mean, he explicitly mentions that no one can really afford to employ a bondsmagi for any significant period of time without going entirely broke. It took one guy 30 years to build up a fortune large enough to pay a bondsmagi for a month, and it's only because that guy would rather have had revenge than his 1.2 Million crowns/royals/whatever that his tactic was viable. Only a man absolutely driven by vengeance would go down that road. The problem with this approach is that the Bondsmagi don't really make sense if you think about it too much. Why do they want money at all--couldn't they just take whatever they want directly? And how does this organization enforce such air-tight discipline when any of its members could personally take over any organization they want and live whatever lifestyle appeals to them? A wizard did it, I guess.
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Sep 26, 2011 22:47
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isochronous posted:As to the first question, what would a bunch of wizards want with taking over the world? That's just really a lot of work for not a lot of payoff, if you think about it. Since you can make 40,000 bucks for one day's work (which seems more like half a mil or more in their universe) why not just build up an invincible reputation, make the value of your services well known, set up some sweet headquarters, and just kick back & study magic 99 days out of 100? Why would they want to do whatever some shlub with a ship full of cash wants for an entire month? Obviously they could take the ship or anything else they wanted at any time, and no one could stop them. Why would they even want money? I don't see what the motivates every wizard in the world to enforce guild discipline with lethal force, but I guess it's fine to assume that there's some reason we're not told about. Maybe everyone is super afraid of the guild master. But, we're getting pretty far afield.
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Sep 27, 2011 03:09
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Habibi posted:Yeah why not take it by force, piss off a lot of people, possibly start wars, get governments coming after you, have to go through a lot of work to defend/protect yourself, find the next ship better-defended, etc...? And that's before the internal power struggles begin in earnest... I don't know why THIS is the big issue. Alternatively, and as isochronous tried to explain, they can charge a boatload of money and relax in relative ease while devoting themselves to learning more about magic instead of, eg, trying to defend themselves from King Soandso whose ship(s)/villages they plundered. The bondsmagi as described in the book have no reason to be worried about the retribution of governments or individuals. They could very plausibly demand tribute from any government they like in exchange for the service of not utterly destroying the nation and all its citizens. Habibi posted:Or maybe it's to the wizards' benefit to keep their colleagues in line? What motivates any association (medical, legal, business) enforce their code of conduct? Is this Thinking 101? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartel#Long-term_unsustainability_of_cartels
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Sep 28, 2011 05:12
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