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I'm about 1/4 of the way through book 2. At first I really didn't like it compared to the first book. It's not that I'm categorically opposed to the shift from Wizard Warfare to Wizard Animal Crossing, but the bigger change is that Saunders' style has gone from terse-to-the-point-of-obscurity to telling the reader every goddamn thing in as much detail as possible. And he's picked up this weird tic where he has to report every single character's reaction to everything in long lists: "Zora smirked. Kynefrid looked awkward. Dove smiled a little bit. Chloris frowned." Like they're a bunch of anime characters. Now I've got to the point where they've finished building their wizard school and I'm sort of getting used to it. I enjoy having to get my phone and google engineering terms every few pages. Still waiting for an actual plot to start but I will probably trundle on through even if the rest of the book is just more building stuff.
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Dec 8, 2022 04:34
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Edgar gives you a lot more than before, but he's also not quite as observant as the Captain so he misses the subtext and it's easy for you to do so as well.
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Dec 8, 2022 05:03
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I like that Edgar's perspective involves a lot of detail but it often lacks subtext or background information so while it's less ultra-terse than The Standard-Captain's perspective, it feels like it's actually telling you even less.
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Dec 8, 2022 07:11
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If you’re waiting for an actual plot to start I’d recommend tweaking your expectations. This is much more a character driven book than a big action sequence story. There are definitely a number of smaller dramatic bits but overall it’s about development. I suggest just sitting back and getting to know these people. Also, I hope you like canals.
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Dec 8, 2022 13:35
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Plot-as-action tends to be back-loaded into most of the books after the first one.
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Dec 8, 2022 15:27
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Sailor Viy posted:I'm about 1/4 of the way through book 2. At first I really didn't like it compared to the first book. It's not that I'm categorically opposed to the shift from Wizard Warfare to Wizard Animal Crossing, but the bigger change is that Saunders' style has gone from terse-to-the-point-of-obscurity to telling the reader every goddamn thing in as much detail as possible. And he's picked up this weird tic where he has to report every single character's reaction to everything in long lists: "Zora smirked. Kynefrid looked awkward. Dove smiled a little bit. Chloris frowned." Like they're a bunch of anime characters. Yeah. The shift between the first two books is pretty jarring. Every book changes viewpoint character, so there's a significant shift between each book. The shift between the first and second is the roughest.
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Dec 9, 2022 01:36
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I just want to read very detailed summaries of these books because i love the idea of them but I can't get through them.
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Dec 11, 2022 03:23
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Ccs posted:I just want to read very detailed summaries of these books because i love the idea of them but I can't get through them. Well poo poo, we can do that. It's too bad we had to nuke the old thread, because we had some of those.
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Dec 11, 2022 04:34
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Ccs posted:I just want to read very detailed summaries of these books because i love the idea of them but I can't get through them. There are fairly detailed let’s reads over at Lum’s forum: https://brokenforum.com/index.php?threads/egalitarianism-battle-sheep-and-bad-bad-odds-lets-read-the-commonweal-series.10575/
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Dec 11, 2022 12:13
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Decided to reread March North to kill time at work, which'll be my first time since completing the rest of the series. A) The Captain really is up to some poo poo the whole time, huh? B) I was struck by the use of "guys" and "grandma," and I'm struggling to think of a generic but gendered noun coming up in the rest of the series.
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Dec 15, 2022 08:31
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I like to think that the Standard-Captain is just kind of a weirdo for that, or it's not actually a Commonweal cultural thing to avoid gendering people and it's just a Creeks thing, and the refugees have picked up on it. Although the real answer is that hadn't been quite worked out, I bet.
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Dec 15, 2022 09:09
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grassy gnoll posted:Decided to reread March North to kill time at work, which'll be my first time since completing the rest of the series. What? I genuinely have no idea what you mean by this. Maybe it's just too early here for my brain to be working.
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Dec 15, 2022 14:47
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Larry Parrish posted:I like to think that the Standard-Captain is just kind of a weirdo for that, or it's not actually a Commonweal cultural thing to avoid gendering people and it's just a Creeks thing, and the refugees have picked up on it. I don't think gender is actually a total mystery box, it's just considered linguistically impolite to use gendered language with someone you aren't personally close to. Something like tú vs usted in Spanish, but stronger. It's also I think a little more unusual for the Creeks because sex and gender are almost totally decoupled but I don't think that's true for all the ilks. Edit: I think i misread this post. Re: "guys" I think you can sort of imagine it the way that some people say "you guys" in a non-gendered way. Anyone out in the battlefield is probably going to be some kind of dude, even if they're gendered female. Re: Grandma you can probably just think of it as a translation for "Your mother's mother." The Creeks don't formally recognize fathers so you've only formally got relations on your mother's side. Nobody has a paternal grandma. Danhenge fucked around with this message at 17:14 on Dec 15, 2022 |
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Dec 15, 2022 17:06
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Danhenge posted:Re: Grandma you can probably just think of it as a translation for "Your mother's mother." The Creeks don't formally recognize fathers so you've only formally got relations on your mother's side. Nobody has a paternal grandma. I never picked up on this but it seems correct. Is that mentioned explicitly anywhere?
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Dec 15, 2022 17:16
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Happiness Commando posted:I never picked up on this but it seems correct. Is that mentioned explicitly anywhere? No, but you can pick it up via osmosis. Everybody has aunts, nobody has uncles, you never hear about anybody's Dad, etc. It's a natural extension of their egalitarian system to prevent people from exerting reproductive control over other people, beyond the general fact that the right to reproduce is controlled by the government.
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Dec 15, 2022 17:25
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LLSix posted:What? I genuinely have no idea what you mean by this. Maybe it's just too early here for my brain to be working. I think they mean that the Captain knows pretty much immediately that there's a huge problem if Parliament is sending him Halt and Rust... and everything the Captain does from there on is predicated on "we must absolutely annihilate whatever Reems is sending our way." I could be misreading the OP. The other option I can think of is that they mean the Captain is extremely deadly. Which, also true. Danhenge posted:I don't think gender is actually a total mystery box, it's just considered linguistically impolite to use gendered language with someone you aren't personally close to. Something like tú vs usted in Spanish, but stronger. I don't think it's entirely decoupled, but they have genders that don't cleave along what we'd immediately recognize as "gender" - IIRC Chloris is the first place we see the Creek gender/orientation along "monogamy/multipartner" lines. Chloris is upset when realizing, because of the suggestive effects of power and the risks associated with losing control in an intimate moment, there will never be another night at the Tavern with a bunch of beefy stevedores. Chloris starts off in the "heterosexual/multiple partners" quadrant of creek gender, while Dove starts off in the "heterosexual/single partner" quadrant. Things then get weird because of the power, Dove wouldn't usually be attracted to a non-Creek like Edgar. Our dude doesn't even have a prehensile dong! This does bring up a question I'd love to have asked the google group, which is what does population growth look like in the bad old days or before the Commonweal showed up and instituted the mandatory annual "peace-abiding" vaccine/booster shot/contraception dose. Probably some rough population cliffs in bad years, or you just never got organized enough to not have an exceedingly high mortality rate from critters and weeds to match the high birth rate of no contraception. And if you were organized enough you were probably under the thumb of some power user who was exercising dominion and thus there was a different set of constraints on population growth. Danhenge posted:Re: Grandma you can probably just think of it as a translation for "Your mother's mother." The Creeks don't formally recognize fathers so you've only formally got relations on your mother's side. Nobody has a paternal grandma. I read it as also being that Halt's glamour is intended to present an image that just about anyone would recognize as an archetypal grandma. Even the Captain, who as a graul wouldn't have that type of relationship to kin and is operating off of (admittedly long and well observed) familiarity with other ilks' customs. habeasdorkus fucked around with this message at 17:36 on Dec 15, 2022 |
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Dec 15, 2022 17:28
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that would make sense for Halt. her image is just whatever your platonic ideal of a grandma is, no matter how little sense it makes.
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Dec 15, 2022 18:09
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Now that I'm not late-night posting, on reread the Captain is clued into a lot more than you might initially suspect, even in comparison to the Independents, and Graydon's feeding us a hell of a lot more info than initial appearances would suggest as a direct result of their perspective. It's cute and neat.Larry Parrish posted:I like to think that the Standard-Captain is just kind of a weirdo for that, or it's not actually a Commonweal cultural thing to avoid gendering people and it's just a Creeks thing, and the refugees have picked up on it. You are most likely right, but there's just a hint of possibility that maybe there is something going on here, and I can't totally discount that option due to the nature of the series.
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Dec 15, 2022 20:14
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habeasdorkus posted:Things then get weird because of the power, Dove wouldn't usually be attracted to a non-Creek like Edgar. Our dude doesn't even have a prehensile dong! When I first read this in Book 2 I assumed it was a joke. And then a few books later you get An Explanation.
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Dec 15, 2022 21:04
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iirc creek gender is complicated in a much more fundamental way than just preferences for which genitalia you like and how many partners. i think there's references to like being attracted to what we would think of as particular personality types (e.g.: dove's absolutely insane heroism) in ways they would consider gender
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Dec 15, 2022 21:18
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grassy gnoll posted:Now that I'm not late-night posting, on reread the Captain is clued into a lot more than you might initially suspect, even in comparison to the Independents, and Graydon's feeding us a hell of a lot more info than initial appearances would suggest as a direct result of their perspective. It's cute and neat. Yeah, it is pretty cool. We learn later that Captains of the Line receive a very intentional and explicit education on the history and politics of the Commonweal, including stuff like critical historiography where they're intended to read between the lines of what was written and what actually happened. In one of the more recent books two people (maybe Fire and and somebody else? Honestly can't remember) have a chat about how the common stories about Hammer don't really match the facts they are aware of. Most existing historical accounts were written after the fact, etc. Captains have an enormous amount of personal power and making sure they are both responsible individuals AND that they have the right information to make responsible decisions seems like the explicit goal of their form of office training.
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Dec 15, 2022 21:19
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Danhenge posted:Yeah, it is pretty cool. We learn later that Captains of the Line receive a very intentional and explicit education on the history and politics of the Commonweal, including stuff like critical historiography where they're intended to read between the lines of what was written and what actually happened. In one of the more recent books two people (maybe Fire and and somebody else? Honestly can't remember) have a chat about how the common stories about Hammer don't really match the facts they are aware of. Most existing historical accounts were written after the fact, etc. Captains have an enormous amount of personal power and making sure they are both responsible individuals AND that they have the right information to make responsible decisions seems like the explicit goal of their form of office training. That conversation was in AMoGaS between Duckling and Crinoline. (Though that conversation also notes that most people don't do that reading between the lines.)
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Dec 15, 2022 21:22
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eke out posted:iirc creek gender is complicated in a much more fundamental way than just preferences for which genitalia you like and how many partners. i think there's references to like being attracted to what we would think of as particular personality types (e.g.: dove's absolutely insane heroism) in ways they would consider gender Yeah they talk about a two-axis: Picky/Hopeful and Reliable/Exciting Model of how you choose sex partners in ASoBD. Chloris was way far towards picky/exciting.
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Dec 15, 2022 21:30
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ulmont posted:Yeah they talk about a two-axis: thank you! i could not remember what was Forbidden Google Groups Knowledge and what was in the books
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Dec 15, 2022 21:31
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eke out posted:thank you! i could not remember what was Forbidden Google Groups Knowledge and what was in the books I always have to fire up Google Books and do searches myself.
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Dec 15, 2022 21:36
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Kalman posted:That conversation was in AMoGaS between Duckling and Crinoline. (Though that conversation also notes that most people don't do that reading between the lines.) For sure, but I think the implication of that conversation is that if you don't read between the lines, or aren't willing to think and talk about it, they are unlikely to give you a commission.
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Dec 15, 2022 22:37
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eke out posted:iirc creek gender is complicated in a much more fundamental way than just preferences for which genitalia you like and how many partners. i think there's references to like being attracted to what we would think of as particular personality types (e.g.: dove's absolutely insane heroism) in ways they would consider gender ulmont posted:Yeah they talk about a two-axis: This scene, or rather, set of scenes, didn't come across to me as an alternative to gender. A frequent refrain in the books is that "nothing ever happens in the Creeks" always followed up by some variation on "the Creeks work hard to make sure nothing ever happens." In this context, this makes me think more that the Creeks have a robust sex-ed/relationship course included in their basic schooling. If you're the kind of person who goes for "bad boys" or as the Creeks say a preference for "hopeful and exciting" relationships, that seems like a useful thing to know about yourself. Especially if, as seems to be the case, you've been taught how to safely find those kinds of partners. Gender is an orthogonal issue I think; so someone could be hopeful exciting hetero or hopeful exciting bi or hopeful exciting homo or rather, somewhere along all three axis. (Sorry if I didn't get the gender terms completely polite - I did my best  )
LLSix fucked around with this message at 23:02 on Dec 15, 2022 |
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Dec 15, 2022 22:59
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you're right, looked up that part and it's not gender it's described as more like a rubric to think about how people pick sexual partners (that's presumably more relevant in a deeply post-gender society like the commonweal) what counts as gender for the creeks - or any other ilk we know about - seems less defined eke out fucked around with this message at 23:50 on Dec 15, 2022 |
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Dec 15, 2022 23:35
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i just like that as far as im aware it's fundamentally alien for the most part to any real cultures norms on this stuff. i like that kind of ordinary foreignness to my fantasy and scifi.
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Dec 15, 2022 23:37
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Danhenge posted:nobody has uncles, Slow mentioned uncles in book 5 when talking to Radish.
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Dec 15, 2022 23:49
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Larry Parrish posted:i just like that as far as im aware it's fundamentally alien for the most part to any real cultures norms on this stuff. i like that kind of ordinary foreignness to my fantasy and scifi. Yeah, it rules and it's one of the best things about this series.
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Dec 16, 2022 00:20
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fritz posted:Slow mentioned uncles in book 5 when talking to Radish. Oh yeah. Mom's brothers.
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Dec 16, 2022 02:55
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eke out posted:you're right, looked up that part and it's not gender it's described as more like a rubric to think about how people pick sexual partners (that's presumably more relevant in a deeply post-gender society like the commonweal) We know that Typicals construct a gender binary as creative/supportive; Creeks seem to have at least one axis of gender that maps roughly to masculine/feminine (“Slow’s obligate androsexuality”), and Grue talks about male/female in the context of her relationship with Blossom, but there seem to be additional aspects of gender for Creeks not yet discussed. Blossom and Grue constructing gender as male/female might just be a Regular thing? Though there’s some discussion of Pelorios wanting to ask the male hierarchy in the Creeks, so it might be more broadly understood, or they might have been referring to physical sexual characteristics while Pelorios was still working from the strongly gendered unicorn construction. Or this could all just be the side effects of a writer from our own society trying to drop the gendered implications and making the occasional error, who knows.
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Dec 16, 2022 04:43
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I'm re-reading The March North for what must be the fourth time, because there's really nothing else quite like these books, and noticed something that I'm not sure I had grasped on prior re-reads. After the first encounter with the Road of Concentrated Despair there's a discussion between the Captain, Blossom, and Halt about how long ago Reems started using the physical embodiment of despair from millions of people (or hundreds of thousands, made to feel utter despair multiple times). They're sure it's taken well longer than the six years since Rust comprehensively crushed the Archon at Meadows Pass. They guess that Reems is under threat from something even further north, and thus being pushed towards the Commonweal at Meadow's Peak and across the sentient terrain. They consider the possibility of a major summoning having gotten out of Reems control/turning against Reems and that being a cause for Reems moving south (and creating a ready source of despair). Spoiler warnings for all the later books from this point on. So... who was smashing up Reems from the north? Was it the Sea People? I thought they were coming from across the southern oceans, not that it precludes them landing on the northern shores of the Commonweal's landmass. And was the Worse-than-a-Marid already rampaging about Reems at the time of The March North? It's about a decade from The March North to Under One Banner, so that'd mean it was running around eating Reems for roughly two decades before it gets to the Eastern Wastes. And you don't jump straight to using something like that unless you've got no other choice, so they must have been invaded some time before that. But Reems was still an organized polity a couple years before Under One Banner during the events of Safely You Deliver, and able to launch a major magical infiltration and assault (the plague, the demons sent after Halt and Wake, the construct sent after Dove and Edgar - after they'd already lost a Full Mighty many-centuries old sorcerer and his large retinue). Am I missing something or did the final collapse of Reems happen real quick between 543-545 Year of the Peace Established after twenty-ish years of war and destruction? Also, every time I read these books I find all my writing for a few hours after becomes etiolated - full of asides, fragments, and inconsistent punctuation. Curses, I've become a poor model Graydon again!
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Dec 30, 2022 16:41
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That section of the book is confusing because it contains experts speculating about a new-to-them-phenomena on insufficient data. If I remember right, they revise their estimates of how long it would have taken down later in the book (on the theory that people are more afraid than they assumed during this discussion). OTOH, from the Commonwealth's perspective, it still looks like Reems has been slowly losing a war (and in the process running through an awful lot of pre-eminent sorcerers) for a long time. Especially when you consider that all the wizard fights we see last somewhere between a few seconds and a few days at most.
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Dec 30, 2022 16:54
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I believe that particular threat is never classified, and I don't remember if it gets mentioned in later books but I imagine it's on the Standard-Captain and friends' mind even as they deal with the apocalyptic schism and the southern threat.
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Dec 30, 2022 17:10
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LLSix posted:That section of the book is confusing because it contains experts speculating about a new-to-them-phenomena on insufficient data. One point of consideration is that many of the wizard fights we get to see are short by necessity. They must drive back and crush their enemies with overwhelming force quickly or the whole Peace fails, etc etc. It may be different in other places that do more of the constant war and enslaving of others.
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Dec 30, 2022 17:22
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yeah i always imagined Reems to be in the kind of slow cascading collapse of a major empire that takes decades and involves lots of political reconfigurations as new people seize power and try increasingly desperate things. like Rome losing Britain but still being most of a century away from the West "falling" we have so little information about the state of the world -- apart from that it's an absolute hellscape -- that the easiest answer is that lots of things were probably attacking Reems from all angles once they started losing territory (especially given how much Dominion Over Territory is a big deal for everyone not in the Commonweal) eke out fucked around with this message at 18:16 on Dec 30, 2022 |
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Dec 30, 2022 18:09
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I'm ~75% through book 2 now and yeah, it was definitely worth persevering. So much to like here--the whole sequence with the wound-wedges, the "bone of which nothing is known", Grue hooking up with flesh-eating kelpies... I still think it could have done with a bit of cutting, but I guess with a book like this it's the uncompromising, take-it-or-leave-it authorial vision that's the main selling point. If Saunders had started making concessions to the reader then it wouldn't have the same appeal. I'm definitely going to keep reading the series but it's going into the category of "books that demand work and reward it" rather than "smooth reading", which is how I would have classified the first book. A couple of random questions that have popped up--I don't know if the answers to these will be spoilers or not: 1. Does the Commonweal have money? At first I thought no, what with all the collectives and local councils. But a few times in this book they've mentioned "making things cost less" or "fines for barges that don't follow regulations". 2. Why don't wizards just fly everywhere instead of walking, rowing canoes, etc? The apprentices can levitate kegs of beer carefully enough that they don't get fizzy, so flying oneself should be easy. I guess it would be impolite to do it in civilised areas, but it would have saved them a lot of time when they were travelling through that swamp.
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Dec 30, 2022 21:56
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Sailor Viy posted:1. Does the Commonweal have money? At first I thought no, what with all the collectives and local councils. But a few times in this book they've mentioned "making things cost less" or "fines for barges that don't follow regulations". these are reasonable things to be asking but the answers to both are broadly "keep reading"
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Dec 30, 2022 22:16
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