John's recent posts

Recent public posts (showing 1-20 of 185).

I moved to Indiana this summer, so I had to go. This was my first time, and I only went for one day, but I had a blast.

Rindis, a friend of mine, a big veteran of Gencon, started going to Origins a couple years ago and I think he likes it as well or better than Gencon. He's first and foremost into RPGs, then tabletop games like Warhammer or Mordheim, and then board games when the rest of us drag him into one (but I think as much as anything he likes that Origins is a lot closer to Pittsburgh, where he lives, and he likes Columbus better than Indy).

I spent a good deal of my time in the exhibit hall, with stops in the auction room and the Rio Grande games room. Next year, I need more days!

One aspect of Toll that I liked was the exploration of the Tiste Andii, of what it is to be an immortal--or nearly so--being, struggling with purpose. So much of fantasy has creatures immortal or so long-lived as to be nearly so, but in most cases that just means that they're like us only wiser because they live so long. I liked Erikson's take (and, for that matter, rather like Bakker's take too, different as they are).

Whew! Glad you liked it!

Hey! That song is the only thing *I* remember from that LotR movie too (was that the, uh, second movie, The Return of the King?)!

They are on the long side, but just four: A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, and A Feast for Crows. A Dance with Dragons was originally supposed to come out in late 2006, but... we're still waiting. Also, supposedly it will end up being 7 books in total.

Thanks for the review. One quick point that you might want to edit: A Song of Ice and Fire is at 4 books (though the end does still seem very far away considering how long it's taking GRRM to write the next one!); maybe you're thinking of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time?

I was ready to nominate or second Grendel, so I guess I'll third it here. Great book, told from the perspective of the monster in the Beowulf legend.

Jeffrey, I don't know the Joe Abercrombie book, but I don't think any of the other three are really "from the villain's point of view." Wizard's First Rule is from the good guys' POV, Thomas Covenant is a reluctant hero and does a bad thing or too, but he's not the villain--Lord Foul is, and although it's been years since I read it, I don't think we ever get his POV. And the same is true of The Golden Compass--all these have interesting villains, perhaps, and we might even see why they don't see themselves as villains, but that's not the same thing as being from their POV.

Just my $.02.

I'd be tempted to nominate To Reign in Hell by Steven Brust, which is *kind of* a re-telling of Paradise Lost from Satan's perspective. At the same time, I'm not entirely sure it fits, in that Satan is really the hero of the story--that is to say, it's tough to see him as a villain in this version of the story. If things went down *this* way, then Satan *is* the hero of the story! I compare that to Grendel, where--although we may sympathize with--we still see him as doing villainous things.

But what the heck, I'll nominate To Reign in Hell and others can weed it out if so inclined.

I wasn't counting Tattersail since she comes back (more or less) and the review was written without the benefit of foresight, so I didn't realize quite how many characters would head down to Hood's Gate before all was said and done.

Of course, it *is* called the Malazan Book of the FALLEN, so we'll be lucky if *anyone* gets out of this alive! :)

I stopped reading your review when I got to the plot stuff. It's probably the lack of a character list that has kept me from reading this. I've owned it since it came out in hardcover, but after reading the first two, I decided I'd wait for the series to be complete and read it start to finish.

Do you know whether Treason's Shore completes the story? Can I start reading in this world again?

You're almost certainly right about the book's length--my initial thoughts otherwise are probably just symptomatic of liking the novel and rather wishing there was [i:]more[/i:].

Ditto the Thon/Dom scene.

Sounds absolutely fascinating. To the list it goes!

I haven't really looked to see if anyone else is talking about it (I'm currently without home internet, which would be much more conducive to such things!). I was pretty far into it before I noticed it--I was just suddenly struck while reading a Mimara passage that I could have sworn the book was in past tense. I thought it might be a mistake, but the whole passage was there in present tense, and that's when I looked back to see that this had been the case throughout.

I'm hoping that the conclusion of this series turns some things on their heads, because The Judging Eye just seemed a bit too straightforward in a lot of ways. Part of the delicious tension in the original series arose from its ambiguities. Was Kellhus sent to join his father or kill him? In what direction would Kellhus ultimately take the Holy War, and what would his role in the Second Apocalypse be? And those are mostly just plot points--many of the characters were intensely interesting on their own! So far, I just don't get that vibe. I love Achamian, but so far it feels like he's running around after things that we the readers already know pretty well.

As I think about it, my first question is part of the reason why I found the novel unsatisfying: it raises too many questions that don't reach any closure in this volume, so we just have to trust that they'll be resolved in the next--I don't mind being left hanging on some things, but not on most everything!

Ah well. I'll just have to wait and grumble and wait some more--because I *am* hooked. :)

I ended up giving it 3.5 as well, though I think I rounded *down* in light of the strength of the first series! The review is up if you're interested.

There were a couple things I wanted to get your thoughts on that didn't go into the review. First, did you notice that Bakker wrote all of--and only--Mimara's section in the present tense? I assume this is intentional, but I'm not sure what to make of it. Any thoughts?

Also, the second half of the prologue(I think--I don't have it in front of me now)--did you come to any conclusion about who the mysterious man was meeting with the Scalpoi?

I'd like to respectfully disagree with you, Marc. I think The Dresden Files is a bit more uneven, in that the first couple books are not as strong as the rest of the series, while Codex Alera is a more even work, but I think Dresden rises to greater heights. Maybe it's because I'm a bigger fan of epic fantasy, but I don't think Alera is all that noteworthy in the genre, while Dresden is a very good urban fantasy (that's said with the caveat that I'm not as immersed in urban fantasy).

I guess I just feel like Butcher is stylistically better equipped for urban fantasy than for epic.

They tell me the same thing, but they can take their time... I just finished reading TTT and still need to read The Judging Eye. And then if I decide to re-read any (or all?!) of the Malazan books.... no, they can send it on the slow boat, even though I *am* pretty excited to get it!

Looking forward to it!

It's true, as you say, that a style like Erikson's demands an even more sink-or-swim mentality from a reader. I know that Gardens of the Moon was hard to get into at first... but ultimately I appreciated it (R. Scott Bakker's The Darkness That Comes Before would be another example). I prefer it, but then, as an old lit major and reader of philosophy, I'm pretty comfortable with difficulty.

For a fantasy writer especially, exposition has to be the one of the greatest challenges. Literary fiction, romance, detective novels... they all have it easy in the sense that they're working with what is basically a known world. Sure, they may need to reveal things to us about the way that particular things in particular places outside the general reader's experience work, and they have the usual work of laying out what's going on, but they don't have nearly so much work to do as a fantasy writer does.

As for your later question, I've had some trepidation about starting a big, unfinished series, realizing that the writer may never finish or because of the frustration of having to wait so long between volumes, but for the most part I haven't let that stop me. I was actually tricked into The Prince of Nothing series because I thought it was finished when I started--and technically, of course, it is, but that's really the first arc in a longer saga. Once I realized my mistake there, I just stopped worrying about it. If it's good enough that I have to see it through, then I won't mind re-reading novels to refresh my memory, if it comes to that.

Given the discussion here, it's striking to me that while Dakar in some ways resembles Arithon--particularly in the fact of destinies/responsibilities they don't want to embrace--it's Lysaer that Dakar gravitates toward while developing a strong antipathy toward Arithon. Opposites attract?

I actually didn't get the appellation "Mad." He didn't seem off. "Unwitting Prophet" I could see, or "Surly Prophet," but mad? Really?

Janny asked for thoughts about Morriel Prime's assessment, so I think I'll start there and--setting myself up to be collosally wrong--say that Lirenda seems to be on the right track when she suggests that Lysaer is, at least, the more predictable. At the same time, Morriel seems to have it all wrong. I'm with Elaira that, if anything, Arithon's gifts are the ones that can lead to a reconciliation of the whole. There may be poets of too tender sensibilities, but Arithon will not prove to be one.

Ultimately, Arithon just seems all-around the more "right" of the two brothers. He's always seemed the more fair-minded of the two. When Lysaer was embrace by his people, even before he'd met the townsmen, he seemed ready to take their side against the "barbarians", unwilling to see the justice in their cause. When it comes to Lysaer actually taking the townsfolks' side and Arithon defending the clans, it just seems so lop-sided. If I'm not mistaken, the impression we're given of the so-called barbarians is that they raid caravans and traveling townsfolk, but they don't murder them. They take their stuff, they ransom them, but they seem rarely to take lives. Contrast that with the townsfolk, with their bounties to headhunters--where the scalps of men, women, and children all pay out as well--and their radical inequalities between haves and have-nots. How is it that Lysaer's thirst for justice can seemingly overlook that so easily? I suppose the clue is in the scene where the headhunters begin the rape of the captive women and Lysaer gives them a quick death instead--he doesn't accept the darkest side of his allies, but in the end he's perfectly willing to accept the proposition that the ends justify the means--killing women and children is fine if it's for the greater good of stamping out evil or if the enemy refused to fight fairly. Does it come down to "justice" ultimately being favorable toward the status quo? That justice--at least for Lysaer--is bound up in civilization and the way things are? Because the townsmen represent the established order, their justice is, to a large extent, his justice? And the barbarians--despite their historical position--no longer fit that? Especially since--faced with annihiliation--they just won't fight "fair"?

I did think the book's ending was a satisfying end point. Well, pause point, anyway. :) We had our first, devastating, battle in the war between Light and Shadow, and we've seen a good bit of where these central characters are coming from. Perfect place to conclude this volume.

As for the characters Lysaer seemed, ultimately, static without actually being static. He ended in a very similar place to where he started, with a hatred for Arithon that is at once justified in his mind and unjustified by reality. But of course it's more complicated than that because we have the middle where he did come to understand and respect Arithon (more or less). I'm torn between feeling like the Mistwraith's curse is an obtrusive device and feeling like it's almost symbolic short-hand. It's a rather fine line being walked here, I think, because it's ultimately a force outside Lysaer himself who mucks with his mind and forces him in opposition to his brother. At the same time, it's not as though it's totally outside Lysaer either. As Asandir or one of the other Fellowship point out, the Mistwraith couldn't have gotten in if Lysaer's distrust wasn't already there. It just puts memories and feelings that Lysaer already had in a different light while bringing them to prominence over the better days they had together. Although it's hard for me to personally understand how it happens in the everyday course of things, the fact is that this kind of thing *does* happen. People do dredge up the past seemingly out of nowhere, their feelings do twist radically. The Lysaer we see, it seems to me, wouldn't have been this kind of person without the Mistwraith's influence, and that's the part that feels like a cheap trick, but at the same time it does get to real experience.

Arithon, on the other hand, is the character who seems to grow more. We saw in his backstory his embrace of the realm of politics and, for that matter, the taking up of the family feud. And from page 1 we see how that worked out for him, we understand his reluctance to take that up again. But he does, in his own way. And again, it all falls apart, but in the meantime we see the evolution of this conflict within him between self-actualization and duty, and clearly it isn't over yet. While he's taken up as Halliron's apprentice, we know from the Prologue that he has several hundred more years of conflict with his brother, we know that he'll have to take up the mantle of leadership again. But in any case, there seems to me to be a stronger sense of development in Arithon's character, and more obvious room for his growth.

The milieu into which they're thrust seems perfectly real. Janny mentioned the Welsh, but the Arab-Israeli conflict comes strongly to mind, the lingering effects of slavery in America don't seem irrelevent, and on and on....