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This is the remade thread to discuss The Commonweal is a self-published fantasy series by Graydon Saunders. He describes it as "Egalitarian heroic fantasy." This OP contains some mild spoilers, but I've tried to keep them light. This thread is for discussing ONLY events or information directly from the text. Information drawn from the Google Group (discussed below) is strictly off-limits. If you want to discuss things from the Google Group, take it to PMs. It takes place in a world where magic (called the Power) emerged some thousands of years ago and every bit of human history thereafter is filled with large & small conflicts between sorcerers of various power. The Power as a force in the world appears have malign tendencies and prefers chaos over order and that individuals exalt themselves to whatever degree possible. The Commonweal is a civilization that arose within the last few hundred years thanks to the invention of a set of magical artifacts called Standards which allow regular people with any amount of talent for the Power to cooperate to project military might that was previously unseen. The founders of the Commoneweal took a dim view towards most of human organization since the Power came onto the scene, and decided they would be governed by one principle: "No Slaves." What has arisen is a sort of socialist state composed of different flavors of human beings (and possibly one form of sentient tree) doing their best to live up to that idea. The conflicts in these books come in two primary flavors. The first flavor is conflict with external powers looking to expand and conquer. The second flavor is political and social, relating to the way that the society has chosen to deal with the problem of very powerful sorcerers (called Independents) living alongside regular people while also not having slaves. Well, they're really all political, but the politics tend to be a little more obviously present in the books that are primarily social in nature. There are five books in the series so far, with three or so more projected:  #1 - The March North - Graydon describes this one as: "Presumptive female agency, battle-sheep, and bad, bad odds." This is one of the external powers conflict books, in the general vein of the The Black Company books. Four platoons at the outskirts of the Commonweal in an area called the Creeks after the people who live there and the numerous Creeks head North to stop...something? at the border, aided by a few of the most powerful Independents in the Commonweal, sent by Parliament to help with "whatever comes up."  #2 - A Succession of Bad Days - "Experimental magical pedagogy, non-Euclidean ancestry, and some sort of horror from beyond the world." This is one of the socially-oriented books. A class of unusual individuals so powerful they have no choice but to become Independents or die go to civil engineering wizard school, and learn a lot about themselves as people in the process.  #3 - Safely You Deliver - "Family, social awkwardness, and a unicorn." Basically the second half of the wizard school story with a different set of narrators. Also a Unicorn, but a very different sort of Unicorn than you're likely used to.  #4 - Under One Banner - "Career options after your Talent-mediating brain tissue catches actual fire, what became of the Shot Shop, and certain events involving Scarlet Battery, Fifth Battalion (Artillery), First Brigade, Wapentake of the Creeks. May contain feels." This book is about the experiences of a student studying to be Independent who is nearly-fatally injured in a magical accident and is only saved by an unprecedented magical procedure. No longer able to go for Independent, she decides to make herself useful however she can, mostly by extensively documenting the various new military activities taking place in and around the Creeks. This book is sort of straddling the social/military conflict divide.  #5 - A Mist of Grit and Splinters - "The first Creek standard-captain known to history, certain curious facts concerning the graul people, and an operational test of the Line's altered doctrine." This book is really a companion to Book 4, about the new military activities taking place in and around the Creeks. Definitely more on the military conflict side with a smattering of the social. Where can I get these books? Either on google play or Books2Read. Graydon has a post on his blog about it: http://dubiousprospects.blogspot.com/2018/09/where-to-get-my-books.html. If you're on a Kindle links to the steps to download the EPUB and either upload it via Calibre or by emailing it to your Kindle. If you've got suggestions for what should be added to the OP, just give me a holler. Danhenge fucked around with this message at 01:32 on Jul 2, 2022 |
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Jun 30, 2022 22:08
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Updated the OP to reflect the fact that the google group is closed at the moment. I imagine it might re-open at some point after all the books are done since he appears to have locked it rather than deleting it entirely. Hard to say.
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Jul 2, 2022 01:33
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Unknown, he was still working on it last I heard and the going was slow.
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Jul 2, 2022 03:33
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I hadn't considered the impact of visible but hard to explain events on the First Commonweal, if it survives.
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Jul 6, 2022 18:21
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That spoiler above is a mild spoiler but it should become clear by the end of the book.
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Jul 22, 2022 19:54
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They're pretty straightforward about why they don't like the cap, because as they say, reward should ideally match effort. They're going to a lot of work to preserve that element of the economy without overpaying the kids or future wizard teams, but still being fair to them. It's about treating the kids right from a clerk's perspective. The kids just point out that the benefit they accrue is not purely economic, and the cap is still a lot of money. They also physically cannot put the kids on vacation, the second Commonweal would collapse without them. Here's what I'd guess Saunders would say something like: The point of the ur-law is that neither can trump the other, both requirements have to be met. Danhenge fucked around with this message at 04:27 on Jul 25, 2022 |
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Jul 25, 2022 04:24
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Seems simple enough to edit your posts on request if you accidentally post something that's not in the books. Edit: Also if you can name another author with a clearly parallel situation I'd be interested to hear about it.
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Aug 3, 2022 20:15
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Slyphic posted:I find the prospect of having to retroactively redact spoilers sufficiently annoying to dissuade me from posting. Ok.
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Aug 4, 2022 03:58
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Yeah, if you enjoyed both the military bits and the aftermath, you'll likely enjoy the rest. Although, as has been discussed book 2 is a very different story of book.
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Oct 14, 2022 15:56
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Sailor Viy posted:
Flying isn't without risks - if you run into something that needs all your focus to confront but you're 50 feet off the ground and need to keep flying, what then? Like the others said though, this gets addressed
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Dec 31, 2022 01:17
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I think he's just never gotten around to working out the print on demand logistics.
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Jan 16, 2023 01:36
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Slyphic posted:Third. I've used the 'Frodo Lives' comparison even. I'll add that to the OP if you don't mind.
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Jan 17, 2023 02:49
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D-Pad posted:I am just about finished with the first book and loved it. I *think* I have figured out a lot of how things work from the context, but it's still all very confusing. I have avoided reading this thread because of spoilers for the following books which I will dive into soon, but does a lot of this stuff get answered going forward? Like I understand a lot about the standard but I also feel like I am missing a whole lot and/or I may be wrong. Is there any guide to the mechanics of this world and magic system that wouldn't spoil later books or should I just continue reading because there will be more concrete explanations? Keep reading, then ask questions if you feel too lost IMO.
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Jan 23, 2023 21:25
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His post on the matter seems to imply that Amazon wants a lot more of his personal banking info than Google, rather than it being an ethics issue.
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Mar 11, 2023 06:52
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Cardiac is also conservative and presumably doesn't particularly like the underlying politics.
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Mar 31, 2023 22:25
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habeasdorkus posted:Stuff about Chert saying too much is going to the line... I think his primary objection is that whatever goes to the line is not considered "productive", it's essentially lost to the Peace because the line is outside the Peace and is sometimes required to depart the Peace in pursuit of its duty. Chert is just remarking mournfully on how costly it is to maintain the line in the strength that is required to defend the second Commonweal.
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Apr 1, 2023 21:55
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Slyphic posted:Well, he hasn't a single peep about them on any of his social media accounts nor blog since he nuked the mailing list. I think he's still mad about it. We emailed about it afterwards, and I don't think he was mad, exactly. I think he's just very busy and since he writes in his spare time, he hasn't had much time to work on it.
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Aug 24, 2023 23:09
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Lead out in cuffs posted:So ... Laurel. I think someone in the sci fi thread described them as having performed an experiment to knock down the local wizard lords. But it seems like they had a much bigger design in mind. Did they create the Shape? They must have, to have bound the defeated sorcerers as Independents. So they quite intentionally set up the Commonweal, and likely just as intentionally recognized that they would represent an existential threat to that system if they hung around. If they could make the Shape, they might be able to break or subvert it. As I recall Laurel didn't bind the original Independents to the Shape of the Peace, I'm not even sure she made the Peace, I think that might have been Ongen. Here's a quote from The March North: quote:Halt sounds nearly smug. “Look what Laurel did, as a natural enchanter of notable but not exceptional talent. The first standard-bindings, and your own species, Captain, before the Hard Road; five hundred years, and more to come. Blossom is seven times the enchanter Laurel was and Blossom is young, and much better educated.” Halt doesn't name the Peace as one of Laurel's creations. Here's a quote from A Succession of Bad Days where Blossom (along with Halt) is talking to the kids about Laurel as a lesson about what persistence and experimentation gets you over brilliance and raw power: quote:“All the early Commonweal history says the Foremost marched for Laurel, only then Laurel didn’t assume control of the conquered territories, Laurel went away, no one knows where, with the people who’d been the Foremost. Only they’d never have called themselves that, that’s what they were called after the Shape of Peace got made and the Line came into existence and wanted an example. Only there’s almost forty years in there, and the Twelve were overcome by the Foremost. So what was going on, while everybody was arguing about setting up Parliament?” It sort of implies that a lot of stuff came after Laurel bailed elsewhere in that text. The people left behind Laurel's conquest made the decisions that there would be no slaves and Ongen helped them shape something that would make it possible. Then the Parliament unzipped all of the thirty or so sorcerers that had been defeated by Laurel and asked them if they were willing to be part of what they built. Those that disagreed, perished. Those that agreed and passed the Shape became the Twelve. I suppose Laurel might be out there, but that sort of dramatic reveal doesn't seem consistent with Saunders' style to me. I think she's pretty much gone from the stories, even if she's not gone from the world of the Commonweal. Lead out in cuffs posted:Also, what was the wizard Laurel? "There wasn't much [they] didn't know about necromancy", but they also used Ed's entelech-style weeding trick of time-slicing to defeat The Twelve, but they were also a master enchanter. In the world's magical system, individual wizards only get one, maybe two flavours of Talent. Was Laurel a hive-mind like the polycule? Some sort of god? Laurel was definitely an enchanter, maybe a minor necromancy flavor? Again, like I quoted above, Laurel's an example of what careful study and extensive preparation can get you over native talent and brilliance. She spent almost a thousand years figuring out the battle standards, the Hard Road, and the graul (including the time to breed enough of them), which implies tremendously inhuman patience in figuring things out, when necessary. Broadly speaking, I think Laurel is a metaphor about what Saunders' believes about the difference between "brilliance" and "studying hard and expending extended effort."
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Aug 25, 2023 13:55
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