Chatterbox: Literature Edition

Today I finished Harry Harrison's Eden series. I actually read the first book many years ago, then read books 2 and 3 just this year.

Honestly, it was a far better example of worldbuilding than of storytelling. In particular, the ending of RTE was kinda weak, considering it had the span of three whole books to live up to.

Just read London Falling by Paul Cornell. It's pretty good - a bit like Wildbow's Pact meets Aaronovich's Peter Grant books. Similarly dark and miserable and theologically-inclined to Pact, but it's Magic Cops In London like Rivers of London.

Interesting to note that it's urban fantasy without a mentor, i.e. the protagonists have to figure out all the magic pretty much on their own.

I have started on The Wise Man's Fear and it is the longest audiobook I will have tackled at 43 hours (previous was Ash at 26 hours of which one hour was the author ranting out his little-Englander politics). I see on our wiki that it is meant to be told in a single day. Ah well.

I don't feel it fully deserves its length. The descriptions can be long-winded and the prologue is just so slow, half an hour of things that set the atmosphere well but I had no reason to care about. But beond that I like the combination of real historical grounding and magic that is essentially alternate physics, the good character touches and how our hero's cleverness and determination are also his biggest flaws.

Smaller flaws are names that can seem like strings of random syllables, and occasional use of modern phrases like "behavioural filters", but that's fairly common in fantasy. Will be seeing how it continues.

Name of the Wind promised to be an epic fantasy adventure; it is not. It is just our hero bumming around magic university. I didn't mind because I like magic universities. But it still doesn't really deliver what the blurb promises.

The second one had more happening in it, and I liked some of the ideas, but it also introduced the whole 'Kvothe is a Sex God' thing which I predict will be very annoying.

edited 19th Feb '16 3:37:02 AM by LoniJay

That's funny I've almost finished The Name of the Wind, and I was planning on posting what I thought of it in this thread too.

I liked TNOTW, but AWMF did what few books accomplish in making me consciously analyze its myriad flaws as I read it. So far, the series seems grossly overrated — fun, but it gets an undeserved level of praise.

Anybody else super bothered by how the narrative treats Felurians literal mindrapey nature as on the whole a positive thing? It makes sense for Kvothe to see it like that since he's been glamoured into loving her but I get the impression I'm not supposed to find it concerning. I mean, given that the whole series is supposed to be narrated by Kvothe himself I suppose I'm not sure how you could have the book disapprove of something when Kvothe doesn't...

I did rather like the way the Kvothe/Denna relationship ended up going in TWMF. And the whole handspeak thing the martial arts culture whose name escapes me had, that was cool.

I just finished The Name of the Wind. I didn't enjoy the start of the book overmuch, until I got to the end which made me retroactively like it better. But while I was reading it I didn't start to really enjoy it until we started hearing about Kvothe's past.

I just took a look at my library's online catalog. The good news in the one around the corner from my house has The Wise Man's Fear. Unfortunately I won't be able to get it until monday. Here's hoping no one borrows it before then.

edited 20th Feb '16 3:21:56 AM by 32ndfreeze

One of my problems with the series is that it's hard to draw the line at which stuff Kvothe thinks is good and Rothfuss doesn't. I've seen a lot of discrepancies handwaved as "it's meant to be that way because Kvother is biased" but I'm not sure how much of the benefit of the doubt I'm willing to give it.

Getting near the ending of Wise Man's Fear (I've been going strangely slow for some reason; it makes me want to continue, but not right now) I can say it's good but has some rather annoying flaws. Including and the long-winded details.

It's undeniable that Patrick Rothfuss loves his hero rather too much. The novel often feels like a single-player RPG except with little combat. Not only is Kvothe going about the world learning new skills, acquiring epic gear and building trust levels with NPCs (seriously, it feels like that on some levels), little seems to happen in his absence and everywhere he goes problems pop up to be solved. I can forgive this in a game but in a novel it feels off. I should add that genuinely bad things do happen to him (and often they're his fault) but they get resolved too quickly.

I also feel that the Felurien portion is the weakest, despite the Fae themselves being good. Partly because it drags out to where the sense of mystery and alienness evaporates, but mostly because it's "good things happen to Kvothe because he's the protagonist". Elsewhere he has to earn his rewards. ( I don't think it's treated as good but rather as the natural drive of an amoral being. But the angle of her being dangerous is basically dropped quickly and she comes across as too human.)

The author's praises extend beyond Kvothe to most people who matter (it is a heroic tale in the classical sense), which makes the Adem and the Edema Ruh seem rather too virtuous; not so much that their moral codes match those of today, but that seemingly everyone adheres to them despite their strictness. It also makes me wonder why the Ruh have such a bad reputation. And the Adem could be given more of a dark side, they seem like a repressive culture.

Also, Denna the love interest. I can't care much for her and her sub-plot because their time together is mostly the narration gushing praise on her and she seems unconnected to anything else. Could have been cut without loss.

But the biggest problem is of tone: it's supposed to end in large-scale tragedy, but it's too triumphalist, and the disjointed plot is not building up to much. I don't see how he ends up causing this war without some hurried contrivances in a later book. The whole narrative is only linked by threads like the Chandrian that pop up every half-dozen chapters or so. The novel is a string of sub-plots rather than anything cohesive.

For all that, the sub-plots are mostly good. It's like Harry Potter without the two biggest flaws, in that the magic makes sense and the protagonist is pro-active. I like how the magic combines the rules-based sympathy and alchemy and the mystical naming. Kvothe is a good character, even if he would benefit from some distance from the author, succeeding against the odds by cunning and daring whilst also getting into real trouble for his careless arrogance that is the flip side of his virtues. The practical side of things is given a fair look, like the STDs. The human towns and cultures are distinct, the Adem are particularly interesting and are not historical knock-offs. The non-humans are genuinely alien, not humans with a cultural gimmick. And whilst every paragraph could do with trimming, at an overall level it's well paced. I think Rothfuss would benefit from co-writing with someone who could keep him in check.

More AWMF complaints: it felt, as you said, like a series of disconnected episodes with little linking them into a cohesive narrative. IIRC it's even attempted to be justified by Kvothe himself saying something to the effect of "okay, but that's not important, let's get to the more interesting part" (on the "learning a language in one night and going away from the University" bit, I think), but at that point I was well and truly tired of the using-Kvothe-as-mouthpiece-for-Rothfuss thing.

And goddamn, I hated the Adem.

It's been a while since I read it, but I recall that I thoroughly enjoyed The Wise Man's Fear.

In general, I hold that most of what we see is seen through Kvothe's eyes, and is thus potentially unreliable. This is reinforced for me by the external sequences, which have a rather different tone, and which at times point out issues with Kvothe's narrative—for example, I recall Bast noting that Denna isn't as perfect as described, and indeed that Kvothe has a tendency to describe all the women as being rather lovely.

(I'm thus inclined to put the depiction of the Adem down to Kvothe's admiration of them.)

As to Felurian, I seem to recall feeling that her behaviour was being presented as horrific: it's stated, for one, that everyone other than Kvothe who has found themselves in her clutches ends up either dead or insane as a result. The sequence in which Kvothe describes her power overwhelming him with lust to the point of nearly blanking out his sense of identity stands out in my memory as particularly horrifying. Kvothe himself makes it through primarily because of his naming-power flaring up, and perhaps because at that point he's somewhat sex-mad himself.

Regarding the narrative, I don't think that I was bothered by its structure. This may be a result of my not being sensitive to such things (I'm not sure that I often notice pacing issues either), or simply that I'm not all that bothered by a narrative structure of relatively-discrete chunks, and was content with the points at which the background narrative regarding the Chandrian did push forward.

Overall, I'm actually rather eager for the next book—I want to see how it all comes together, and I've been very much enjoying the ride thus far.

(this whole paragraph is gonna be spoilery).

Yeah, it's that bit where Kvothe describes the glamour is the bit that kind of horrifies me because Kvothe is so unwilling. He's terrified. She is forcing him and he fights it but loses.

And then immediately after that he's a lovesick puppy (because she forced him into that mindset). And he remains a lovesick puppy pretty much for good. And I'm supposed to think the resulting months (...really) of faery sex is hot and fun and a good thing for Kvothe? And then we part viewing Felurian positively because she did help Kvothe and seemed genuinely fond of him and, hey, after all it's just what she does and you can't hate her for it because she's beautiful and natural!

I feel like Rothfuss put the first part, of Kvothe resisting Felurian, on purpose - but then tries to have his cake and eat it too.

Possibly—I may well be forgetting some of the latter parts of the depiction—as I said, it has been some time since last I read the book. ^^;

I think that my reading was that after Kvothe used Felurian's name to overpower her, they fell into something slightly more equitable; a degree of enchantment that he was okay with, and a degree of respect (or fear) from her.

edited 30th Mar '16 6:30:25 AM by ArsThaumaturgis

Again, the problem with Felurien is that it continues for too long with nothing bad happening and the reader forgets she's dangerous. Kvothe fighting for his sanity and the unstated subtle tug-of-war should have lasted longer.

Having finished it... the ending actually brings down everything before. He's back at the university after less than a year away and the only noticeable difference is that he has money. There is no climax, just the sort of tying-up that should follow one (maybe the confrontation with the mayor was supposed to be it, but it's too isolated). The lack of obvious changes in his situation retroactively makes his adventure feel less important. And I didn't care for the non-resolution of the romance either.

I have compared it to Harry Potter, but I have to add that all those (well, except Order of the Phoenix) come to a climax bringing together elements of the entire story, and the advancing school years help make up for the plot is so constrained by the school in time and space. In comparison, Rothfuss just throws together good elements with only the loosest thread tying them.

However, the ending of the framing story worked a bit better; not because there's any sense of climax, but because it hints at tragedy to come. I'm interested in how this will conclude, but it's hard to imagine how it will feel like a natural continuation of this generally upbeat novel.

Just got through the first book of Terry Brook's Chronicles of Shannara. Where Wise Man's Fear was memorable for both the good and the bad, this is just... bland.

The dialogue is like a Bethesda game. There is no sense of scale or wonder because the pace is too fast, putting focus on the plot, which I had little interest in despite a good twist. There is a sense of mystery at the start but it soon evaporates. The cast have some arcs of their own but they never come to life. The book is not a full story, it stops on a cliffhanger, which normally would annoy me a bit but here I didn't care.

Not so much bad as conforming to the stereotype that modern fantasy is just derivative wannabe-Tolkien fluff.

I'm told all the books after the first are much better. That's why the tv series skipped the first book and just turned it into the backstory. Though the series had its own problems.

I have no idea where to put this. Maybe it would go better in the animation section, but this is a piece of news about an author - one of the great fantasy writers of our time...

I was trawling Reddit when I came upon this post...

I feel incredibly disgusted. Stuff like this shouldn't happen, yet here it is...

EDIT: More info.

edited 12th Jun '16 4:37:14 PM by Aldo930

Finished The Republic of Thieves, third in the Gentleman Bastard series. It was... alright. What it did well was great, in that it gave Locke and company more room to move around and be awesome, which is the best part of the books and typically gets only a small portion to make room for all the horrible things to happen to him. The general plot of the book was interesting, but it lacked stakes. The big reveal was not only a total Shocking Swerve out of left field, but it was so thoroughly disconnected from the central plot that I'm halfway wondering if it was shoved in there to give the book some story relevance for the larger series. The flashback story was interesting on its own, but honestly, I couldn't care less about Sabetha. The entire emotional arc of the book was about her and Locke's relationship, and that kinda falls flat because Locke's somewhat hard to like at times, but he pulls through on account of being charming and a smartass towards unlikeable characters. Sabetha, though, is just... bland. Like a sack of tropes held together with little character to actually make her interesting. Locke being a bit of a whiny manchild is often brought up, but honestly I ended the book wishing the both of them would grow the hell up.

Decent read and I'll read the next one, but the fact that it sat unread for weeks in the middle of the climax should be an indicator that it's not the best book in the series. The first one is still the most cohesive and well put together of the lot.

What's your favourite Newbery book?

For me, it's easily Holes.

I got through The Thorn Birds, which is marketed as an Australian ''Gone With The Wind", only perhaps without the South apologia. I liked it, but I can't call it a stunning epic. I know that "three generations of women living in the same house" is a phrase often prefixed with "yet another", but this felt real for both historical context and character themes.

It follows a family who move to a farm in the Outback around 1910, and ends in the fifties. One real problem is that years are skipped by line breaks (which don't come across in an audiobook), resulting in some confusion on my part. The trouble of farming in the desert, inheritance disputes, the weight of the Catholic Church, forbidden love, pregnancies with the wrong man, career in the city against keeping the family farm all figure, in a remarkably concise novel. It only covers 6 hours yet still affords a few sub-plots that don't seem to go anywhere, like the brother who is imprisoned for thirty years. The gradually changing society, and farming practices, are brought to life very well.

The unifying theme seems to be the harm that we knowingly do to ourselves (though I'm not sure what else these women could have done; it's more the vagaries of love and the society around them that's at fault).

But I should say that one thing annoyed me even though it's not objectively a flaw. All three women fall in love with much older, higher earning men. It was particularly grating with Justine, the most self-reliant and career-minded of them, but also the only one who got to marry him.

It's a good novel, but it didn't resonate that much with me.

I finished All the Wrong Questions, but sadly it looks like the entire internet is over that series.

Oh NASA Christ Dan Brown is writing another novel....

I've written a book. It's on Kindle.

https://www.amazon.com/Daavas-Swinney-Illustrator-Jessica-Ballard-ebook/dp/B01LX3H60T/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1476214037&sr=1-1&keywords=tales+of+daavas

Do we have a page on Neal Schusterman's Accelerati Trilogy?