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genericnick posted:What??? To Gulag Archipelago, not Prince of Nothing
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Jan 6, 2019 15:40
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Give him a few years tbf
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Jan 6, 2019 17:03
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I read the first 5 books so far, and then I read most of the threads here on Book Barn while waiting for the next book to arrive, though I'm gona read the rest of the books before I finish that. Really enjoying it overall. Long time since I had reason to binge some SA threads too. If there's a flaw, it's that sometimes you already get what the person is trying to say, and you wish they would shut the gently caress up about that thing even if you agree, and it's literally years of writing later and they're saying the same stuff. Hopefully you stop doing that later, General Battuta/Scott Bakker. Death came swirling down. Brendan Rodgers fucked around with this message at 01:49 on Nov 22, 2019 |
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Nov 22, 2019 01:34
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Brendan Rodgers posted:Hopefully you stop doing that later, General Battuta/Scott Bakker. Say what now. 
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Nov 22, 2019 01:54
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I'm sure both the books and forum threads will go through some twists before I'm done, but they do have a lot of similarities if you read them all at once.
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Nov 22, 2019 02:26
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Buy my book
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Nov 22, 2019 02:33
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I refuse to fully read the last book until I've got confirmation that he's going to actually write the last two. Whole lotta why bother.
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Nov 22, 2019 02:33
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Memnaelar posted:I refuse to fully read the last book until I've got confirmation that he's going to actually write the last two. Whole lotta why bother. The publisher isn't interested. This series is dead. The series just got steadily worse. I got off after the first three books but having read the spoilers for the last book I can't imagine how ripped off people feel after reading the whole series. Like, after THAT many pages, this is the ending? Really?
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Nov 22, 2019 02:54
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Memnaelar posted:I refuse to fully read the last book until I've got confirmation that he's going to actually write the last two. Whole lotta why bother. Seeing this thread resurrect in my bookmarks made me want to check, apparently he went from “My story’s done” to “Yep guess I’m milking this” at some point since he’s working on “a final duology that might turn into a trilogy” See all you fuckers right back here in 2025 I guess
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Nov 22, 2019 03:13
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Brendan Rodgers posted:
Such is the curse of being dunyain amongst mortals.
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Nov 22, 2019 04:26
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The Logos is without beggining or end.
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Nov 22, 2019 05:50
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Ursine Catastrophe posted:Seeing this thread resurrect in my bookmarks made me want to check, apparently he went from “My story’s done” to “Yep guess I’m milking this” at some point since he’s working on “a final duology that might turn into a trilogy” My understanding was that the duology tonclose it out was always the plan. That's what I took from his forums anyhow.
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Nov 22, 2019 09:01
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Memnaelar posted:My understanding was that the duology tonclose it out was always the plan. That's what I took from his forums anyhow. I could have sworn there was an interview right after the last book was published that boiled down to "This is where I planned the series to end up from the get-go, I have literally no idea where I would even go plot-wise after this", but I may be misremembering some portion of that
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Nov 22, 2019 10:18
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It’s a fitting ending to the series, I don’t understand why people think there’s potential for two more books worth of plot. I do disagree that the series got progressively worse, the prose actually improved towards the end. As far as the question of whether the books were “good”, BoTL already said everything better about the misgivings and flaws of the series than I can ever hope to do. However, I still enjoyed the sense of dread Bakker manages to build and ramp up through the series. Few genre writers can keep up like that. Goon reactions to gross poo poo in the books were also a solid source of entertainment during the years, so I can’t really complain.
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Nov 22, 2019 11:24
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:It’s a fitting ending to the series, I don’t understand why people think there’s potential for two more books worth of plot. I do disagree that the series got progressively worse, the prose actually improved towards the end. BotL was hardly an authority on what constitutes a good book. Well except in his own head.
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Nov 22, 2019 22:18
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Also his review was massively uncharitable, he started from the premise that the book was bad and went from there. Look at the bits he quotes about Akkas thoughts and judgements on spies and whores, saying it shows Bakker is full of poo poo. But those scenes are there to show that Akka is full of poo poo, because he gets immediately dunked on for how wrong they are
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Nov 22, 2019 22:24
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Amethyst posted:The publisher isn't interested. This series is dead. I'm actually fine with the ending. Those who have seen my previous posts would know why. I quit far sooner and checked the spoilers. I STILL have no finished TUC and most likely won't. As for the other two books, well...maybe. According to his blog, he has been saying that he's been putting it all together and writing vignettes. Something like that.
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Nov 22, 2019 22:58
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I hated the last two books but drat if I didn’t love the slog of slogs. I’m a sucker for all of that Moria derivative poo poo.
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Nov 22, 2019 23:12
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-Cleric -Akka's battle with the ancient give-no-fucks dragon -Serwa's fight with another dragon at the end. Those are the three things that even remotely got me engaged in the second trilogy. And that last one had the dragon going on about 'cunny' and made me cringe so hard I split a molar, so I'm deducting half a point.
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Nov 23, 2019 03:22
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may'haps it be elitist of me but i feel entitled to, as an adult, refuse to read any book where there's a dragon that talks about cunny.
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Nov 23, 2019 03:34
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Cunny liking dragon is the true hero of this series
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Nov 23, 2019 03:45
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I was shocked to see the thread resurrected when I randomly checked SA tonight. There are like 3 places on the Internet where this series is discussed, and at this point none of them very actively, haha. I think they're some of the most cerebral fantasy around, for all their flaws. They attempt to be something more than a lot of other stuff that's out there, even when they fail and fall flat. There were some great theories before TUC or TGO dropped about ways the story could play out, and a lot of them made far more sense than what we got. I think I got almost as much enjoyment out of that as out of reading the books themselves.
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Nov 23, 2019 03:45
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Tosk posted:I was shocked to see the thread resurrected when I randomly checked SA tonight. There are like 3 places on the Internet where this series is discussed, and at this point none of them very actively, haha. I think the end of Game ofThrones still has us in the whole 'botched cocluions and wasted potential' mindset. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised is a LOST thread here saw a few posts after that.
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Nov 23, 2019 03:54
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Tosk posted:I was shocked to see the thread resurrected when I randomly checked SA tonight. There are like 3 places on the Internet where this series is discussed, and at this point none of them very actively, haha. It's true, very few fantasy series's have nuked a chunk of the cast and then portrayed them skullfucking followed by cannibalizing each other. Cerebral.  Why you gotta do this, goons, another like two weeks and this poo poo would have fallen into archives. Now it has to languish for another year, stinking up the place.
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Nov 23, 2019 04:07
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I’d have definitely liked to have seen the last two books properly edited down into one volume. But I was on board with a lot of what happened. The progression of Akka’s dreams and the revelation about what the no god and consult were/are. Kellhus getting turned into a pillar of salt was right up there. I was waiting for him to get his by about halfway through the first book. I also liked his brother snorting nonman ashes and suiciding. Really just any dunyain misfortune was good by me. If he’s able to put together another series with Akka just having a terrible time during the apocalypse I’m there.
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Nov 23, 2019 04:32
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looking back on the books I did like, I was in my late teens, and am at the stage where I'm willing to reinterpret them as Gnostic texts where the author eventually fails to understand what he's writing and concludes that the Demiurge was right. If Bakker was a persona instead of someone who writes 10000 words about every negative review he gets, I'd be willing to run with this
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Nov 23, 2019 04:43
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The way the writing hinted at helicopters and hosed up tech and the fact that it didn't go that route is still the most disappointing thing
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Nov 23, 2019 04:55
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StrixNebulosa posted:The way the writing hinted at helicopters and hosed up tech and the fact that it didn't go that route is still the most disappointing thing You got dirty nukes, laser guns, crashlanded interstellar spaceships, genetically modified supersoldiers controlled by an AI which feeds them holographic BDSM porn, undead elves with ultra-dementia, transferal of consciousness between bodies, children being slapped into coffins to try and reboot aforementioned AI's OS, and womb tanks straight out of HR Gigers worst nightmares. I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting something but the hosed up tech is very rife in the later books. Shame that they focus on the whole skullfucking radiated corpses aspect instead of a narrative anyone might care about.
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Nov 23, 2019 05:23
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Rime posted:It's true, very few fantasy series's have nuked a chunk of the cast and then portrayed them skullfucking followed by cannibalizing each other. Cerebral. I guess we just disagree, but the first trilogy is as good as fantasy has ever been, in my opinion. That doesn't make it perfect, it doesn't even mean it isn't diminished in hindsight by the knowledge that the series went on to loving implode on itself under the weight of its author's pretentious self-indulgence which sucks because of all the questions that retroactively will never be answered, but in my opinion, the Prince of Nothing in general is a solid 8 or 8.5/10. Bakker's portrayal of women is probably my biggest criticism. His use of them as plot devices felt weird and cringe and was executed poorly from start to finish. People predicted the axolotl tanks pretty far back. Then we hit the second trilogy and, between all the new ideas and the Moria sequence and Bakker's fantasy love letter to Blood Meridian, I thought The Judging Eye was pretty good. Far more ponderous and navel-gazing than the previous trilogy, but I kinda liked Bakker for that quirk, so it didn't bother me. But TWLW already started to lose steam for me, but I assumed it might just be the weaker, transitional book. I started wondering how everything was going to come together in one book, but I was open to the idea that it could be pulled off. I started reading the series during the publishing crisis between TWLW and TGO - when it was announced TGO would be split into two volumes, something started to smell, and here we are. I finish this post by forgetting why I made it to begin with. I dunno.
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Nov 23, 2019 13:40
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I agree, that's why the OP has a big ol' warning to just read the first three and forget anything else exists, the Dune strategy.
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Nov 23, 2019 15:01
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Rime posted:You got dirty nukes, laser guns, crashlanded interstellar spaceships, genetically modified supersoldiers controlled by an AI which feeds them holographic BDSM porn, undead elves with ultra-dementia, transferal of consciousness between bodies, children being slapped into coffins to try and reboot aforementioned AI's OS, and womb tanks straight out of HR Gigers worst nightmares. I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting something but the hosed up tech is very rife in the later books. No, you're missing the point! All of that very cool stuff means nothing compared to the BIG things, like: -Sorweel's epic and very meaningful journey of achievement. -Cnaiur's grand quest of non-vengeance -Mimara's fateful Judging Eye and Child of Destiny, key factors in...um...I'll get back to ya. -The thrilling intrigue between Esmenet and Maithanet that meant nothing because the place just exploded, alright -Akka and Mimara finding Kellhus' ruined home and freaky relatives (that promptly gently caress off to not matter), discovering the amazing revelation that there's something kinda weird about this guy and he may not, in fact, be on the up and up gently caress, what a waste.
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Nov 23, 2019 21:57
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You can rate all the books by the relative abundance of Proyas and Saubon. Thus it goes: Warrior-Prophet Thousandfold Thought Great Ordeal Darkness that Comes Before and then gently caress the rest.
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Nov 23, 2019 22:34
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Strom Cuzewon posted:You can rate all the books by the relative abundance of Proyas and Saubon. That...actually mostly works. Carry on.
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Nov 24, 2019 18:29
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The scenes connecting Saubon from TWP to TOG were loving sick, gotta give Bakker that. I also thought the scenes in Ishterebinth were pretty good, even though it all petered out. Like the guy two posts up said, it all just went loving nowhere. The potential was there and it just died and "LOL im subverting ur expectations of fulfillment retard" is basically the author's official explanation for it. Reading the AMA with Bakker after the end of the series was painful. Someone asked whatever happened with that one scene from TDTCB where Achamian's friend hears Onkis whisper to him right before he dies and Bakker said something to the effect of "lol yeah I lost my notes on that one my bad haha!!"
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Nov 25, 2019 04:42
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Tosk posted:I was shocked to see the thread resurrected when I randomly checked SA tonight. There are like 3 places on the Internet where this series is discussed, and at this point none of them very actively, haha. I don't really think they're that cerebral, to be honest. What philosophical insights did I miss? I kind of get that the dunyain are representative of the illusory nature of free will and that any attempt to escape the paradox will result in something monstrous and inhuman but I've seen that idea treated better elsewhere and also in less than three thousand pages.
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Nov 26, 2019 00:28
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I have not read any of the second trilogy so I can't really say much about the idea of damnation and hell being real but reading the spoilers it just seems like a thin facade for garden variety sadomasochistic fantasy. The different schools of magic may have some kind of symbolic meaning but I wouldn't know because the novels are buried in extremely typical modern writing written in endless inner monologue format where characters agonize over their feelings for chapters on end. E: I think my main problem with this book, in the end, isn't that it wasn't smart enough. That's fine. The first book was actually ok, 3/5, because all the palace intrigue and stuff was fun. The problem was Kellhus. Man he was a drag to read. Mainly because he was supposed to be transcendentally charismatic and insightful. Even for an excellent writer, it would be hard to write this character convincingly. For an (let's be honest) amateur like Bakker, it's impossible. Kellhus constantly spouts banalities and everyone around him acts like they're witnessing miracles. Amethyst fucked around with this message at 00:43 on Nov 26, 2019 |
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Nov 26, 2019 00:32
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Amethyst posted:I don't really think they're that cerebral, to be honest. What philosophical insights did I miss? I really dig Prince of Nothing not so much for its philosophy, but for its demonstration of that philosophy, and the emotional turmoil of people grappling with it. If I had to sum up Bakker's philosophy it'd be something like "we privilege internal/mental processes over external stimuli only because we are unaware of their origins". Philosophically there's not much there that you wouldn't find on the wikipedia page for the Introspection Illusion (I checked). But what Bakker does is break down all those internal processes - cultural indoctrination (Proyas), emotional drives (Cnaiur), self-aggrandisement (Conphas), psychological manipulation (everyone Kellhus talks to, and Xinemus' torture), and shows how this lack of introspection limits these characters and leaves them open to manipulation. So far, so rationalist. But then Bakker goes one step further - it's not merely that we're unaware of the origins of our thoughts, but we are completely unequipped to consider them. We have to believe in free-will, we must be blind to influences beyond our control, because its the only way we can have any semblance of identity. If you secretly shoot my brain with magnets to turn me into a bank robber, I'll merrily confabulate and convince myself I choose to do it, because you just can't function if you acknowledge that the inside of your head might not be your own (poor Xinemus  )I think Bakker does a pretty good job of exploring this through his characters that all grapple with different aspects of free-will, but the real appeal to me is the brooding, apocalyptic tone. I don't know the origin of my thoughts. I can't know the origin of my thoughts. That poo poo is terrifying, and Bakker treats it with the horror it deserves. I also want to give him credit for writing an intensely atheist book that actually seems to understand religion. Religion is messy and contradictory, as any Dawkins follower will tell you. But rather than treating this as a cheap Gotcha! Bakker understands that this messiness is part of the whole point. That reason and logic will only take you so far, and that people find genuine comfort in making a leap of faith. It's telling that the only atheist character in the series is Akka's dumbfuck roommate, who dies ignobly off-screen before the books even start. Neuropath and Crash Space are good examples of the kind of dry philoso-wanking that I think PoN avoids. Crash Space features a future in which technology lets us directly modulate our brain functions, and a young couple remove the safety locks on their software, and merrily dance off into atrocity and madness. It should be an emotional gutpunch, but Bakker writes it in such a cold and emotionless style that it fails to leave any impact. And for all it's faults, you can't accuse Prince of Nothing of that.
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Nov 27, 2019 13:40
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There's also the novel Blindsight and its sequel, where you have aliens capable of interfacing with our brains directly, causing stuff like editing themselves out of your brain's processes so they can stand right next to you without you ever noticing. Which I found both fascinating and creepy as poo poo. At one point, the very environment the Scramblers favor (extremely high electromagnetic background radiation) interferes with the Human brains trying to explore it so badly, it ends as quite the trip for everyone involved as their brains experience severe malfunctions.
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Jan 1, 2020 11:18
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Libluini posted:There's also the novel Blindsight and its sequel, where you have aliens capable of interfacing with our brains directly, causing stuff like editing themselves out of your brain's processes so they can stand right next to you without you ever noticing. Which I found both fascinating and creepy as poo poo. Had to do a weird double take on this because I'm surprised I wrote that many words in the book barn without plugging Blindsight.
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Jan 2, 2020 00:09
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Libluini posted:There's also the novel Blindsight and its sequel, where you have aliens capable of interfacing with our brains directly, causing stuff like editing themselves out of your brain's processes so they can stand right next to you without you ever noticing. Which I found both fascinating and creepy as poo poo. drat good book. "Starfish", by the same author, is also good, but avoid the sequels.
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Jan 5, 2020 09:21
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