Traveller’s Comments (group member since Jan 14, 2015)

Traveller’s comments from the On Paths Unknown group.

That's very interesting, thanks, Ruth!

Oh boy, we need to go do that Mieville short story read...I keep forgetting!

I suppose he is seen as being rather esoteric - I see what you mean...

Thanks, Amy!

Borges was also pretty meta in his own way, wouldn't you say?

Nobody is allowed to see her for the first three days after, when she will be confined to 'solitary' ICU - which kinda makes sense, I guess, so it will have to be after.

So playing things by ear for now. Thanks, Linda! :)

Thanks, Amy.

This isn't the place for it, really, but since I mentioned it at the start of the thread, I might just as well mention that my mother is receiving her bypass surgery tomorrow.

Understandably, we're all pretty nervous, and she herself is on the brink of getting cold feet. She doesn't have much of a choice, though, as I see it.... :(

Linda wrote: "I can see how modern readers, who perhaps grew up with/have a lot of experience with post-modern work, might get tired of this play...to those who have come to terms with open endings or the idea t..."

Thanks for reminding that this book had been published in 1979 already! So yeah, rather on the forefront of po-mo, metafictional writing, eh?

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "Things that jumped out at me:

- the BDD moment: Broke. My. Heart. (JV loves those themes around fathers and mothers and the brokenness of the parent/child relationship.

- loved the Dradin referen..."

Yes, I also noticed the 'parent' thing.

Re the mushrooms - certainly one of the more unusual scenes I have read in my life, and I have read pretty unusual things .... XD. I loved (and was frightened by) that they were so alive - lightly strobing, with a tangy smell- usually mushrooms have a rather musty-ish smell to me, but worst of all was the spores they released - ack!

..and yes, Truff and Truffidian definitely also made me think of truffles in COSAM already...

Oh, and I wanted to mention that it was around this part in the text that I noticed Mary being addressed directly in the text for the first time - certainly she had been mentioned before, but now she is being directly addressed - it's almost like a conversation that's going on there, and you're right, it's very 'real' - it's almost like reading people's Twitter messages to one another. :P (Just much longer. ;) :D )

Hello people, I would like to request that we restrict untagged comments to up to chapter 8 for the first few posts of the thread, please, so that members can post as they go along w/out fear of coming up against spoilers.

Sorry for the bother, but let's tag spoilers that fall more or less after Chapter 8.

I've started yet another thread for Part 2 here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Thread for discussion of first half of Part 2.

How about we make this one to the end of chapter 4, being the convening thread - I don't like making those too long - then I'll start one from chapter 5 and ask that we don't post spoilers too far in advance for the later chapters at the beginning of the thread already? I like to post impressions as I go along... :P

Anyway, since you guys are a bit ahead of me, please feel free to make a suggestion as to where to break for the next thread on this one. Chapter 1 and 2 certainly become weirder as I progress...

I've noticed (I think?) that you enjoy world-building, and I'm sort of working from that assumption....

A suggestion re Mieville - experienced Mieville readers are saying that the new short stories are not -that- good.
I would recommend starting either with Perdido (you can still post in that thread anytime) or with Embassytown, and maybe with The City and the City.

Please feel free to post on our 'old' discussions anytime - they are designed to never die. :)

Whoa, have you read the whole book yet, Amy? From where to where do you think we should make a next thread?

And yes, your caution re COSAM is not unfounded at all, since Robyn has not read COSAM yet. :)

I agree totally with your opinion re VDMeers' subversion of real-world elements. Just make your own, completely separate world, dude - even if you meant to criticize our own world, trust your readers that they'll pick it up anyway!

China Mieville also takes aspects of our world and subverts them in rather annoying ways in his "Bas-lag" world.

Btw, I totally recommend Perdido Street Station to you if you like VanderMeer.

Lots of very topical social commentary here, eh? Much as we may disapprove of Muslim flogging and beheading for 'blasphemy' and 'criticism', it would do us good to remember that the Catholic Church, even where politics, more than actual religious defiance was the problem, did the exact same thing, as for example with the barbaric torture and burning of Jean D'Arc.



(I'm referring to (view spoiler)[ Neither did the Truffidian Church exhort its members to “stone, pummel, or otherwise physically assault” Duncan, as occurred some years later to our soon-to-be editor Sirin, who had decided to champion a book on the “cleansing merits of interreligious romantic love.” {Sirin, alerted by a sympathetic typesetter, managed to change both the decree and the flyers created by it, causing the designated Truffidian Voice, the Antechamber standing by his side, to read a decree in front of the famous porcelain representation of the God Truff and all others in the Truffidian Cathedral that called for the Antechamber’s stoning, pummeling, and much worse. (hide spoiler)] )

You know, there is just so much to say on this, that I don't know where to start!

Also in the COSAM discussion, I mentioned that the razing of the city of Cinsorium by Manzikert I had reminded me of the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire/The Conquest of Tenochtitlan

, and in this book, he mentions it again, and so far, I still have that feeling.
So far, I am loving the world-building that Vandermeer is engaged in.

In the COSAM discussion, I had mentioned that Hoegbotton & Sons reminded me a bit of Google and Amazon, but the more rich and ancient feel in this volume is making me think also of the Medicis.

Another book that the weirdly mixed brother and sister voice is reminding me of, is the cacophony of voices you get in If on a Winter's Night a Traveler.

If I'd known the book was going to have this almost Ghormenghasty/Mervyn Peake-ish feel about it, I would have read it long ago!

Oh, and something else I wanted to mention, was the Middle-Eastern feel that mention of the Kalif brings to it, a vibe I hadn't really picked up in City of Saints. Vandermeer cleverly subverts the Kalif -> Islamic ruler by making him ruler of a "(North-)Western" Empire, just so that we are quite sure the rules are different in this world of his.