Di & D Reading Group discussion
Book 2: The Golem and the Jinni
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Leslie
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May 17, 2018 04:00PM
This is why you keep an eye on that Fiddleback. He may have a delightful voice, but one must take into account that he chose to take the name of a spider...
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"Nitsua can lead us through it. :)"Okay: start on p.1. Let us know when you get to the end. Or don't. I'll survive.
Up to chapter 3 and already getting into this work. Great stroke to give both protagonists insatiable curiosity. Although nominally fantasy, it takes on the typical POV of great science fiction, i.e. looking at humanity from an alien point of view.
Book should be arriving any day now, so I'll likely plow through it this weekend!
OK, so this book is kind of a slow burn. I'm hoping that the multipage tangents about the rabbi and the ice cream maker are going to pay off at some point.Really enjoying the Djinni's backstory, though. The back-and-forth-ing between that and the late 19th century is the kind of flipping that might have made the last book somewhat more interesting.
Engineer27 wrote: "OK, so this book is kind of a slow burn. I'm hoping that the multipage tangents about the rabbi and the ice cream maker are going to pay off at some point.Really enjoying the Djinni's backstory, ..."
It's definitely a slow burn. I'm still enjoying it, especially because it started to feel like things are happening, but that only happened about a third of the way into the book.
Well, it's appropriate for "Digressions..."
I have to say that I originally didn't want to give it a look but than the 5 minute listen on audible got me. I'm only two hours in and what I already love is the natural reaction of the tin smith to the jinn.Not: "Magic? I never heard of magic, explain to me like I'm as old as I act right now..."
, but: "Oh, so magic is real. to what degree and in what form, mind you?".
Somewhat enjoying the book, currently just got through chapter 2. One thing stuck with me so far though--the Jinni was afraid to touch iron but not steel...
Nico wrote: "Somewhat enjoying the book, currently just got through chapter 2. One thing stuck with me so far though--the Jinni was afraid to touch iron but not steel..."I noticed that as well. I guess, go read the PHB on "Cold Iron".
I found it a fun read, a bit outside my normal reading sphere. Nothing too heavy.Book one though?
The book made me think that maybe the sliding scale we measure RPGs with: railroad vs sandbox and Game vs Storytelling. I never thought of RPG stories as being focused on character or on plot and that you take away from one, to fuel the other. I am really enjoying this one so far (halfway through).It is exploring human feelings, I needed that right now.
favorite line so far
(view spoiler)
Just finished. I was having an amazing time getting to know the characters and seeing the golem and jinni's personalities bounce off of each other.But sweet steaming Gruumsh... the last third of the book got REALLY intense, REALLY fast. Wonderful stuff.
Brian wrote: "I like what I'm hearing. And what I am reading.[kicks back and basks in the blame]
Brian wrote: "How many of you have finished this one?"I read it back when it came out; picked it up again Tuesday and am about 1/3 through.
Yup, took a few days, but all done and dusted.What's next?
In the final stretch so far enjoying it still
Just finished the book. I enjoyed it a lot, the last stretch especially. It's a much slower-paced book than a lot of the recent ones I've been reading, but I find that it's very satisfying.
How often do I get a week's extension on anything?I'll take it!
Uh, uh, I'm done too :P Though I cheated with audible.
Done. It's just as compelling and enjoyable on second read. Without getting too much into the climax and denoument, I'll say that+ I really like magical realism. As much as I like "pure" fantasy, it's also nice sometimes to have a story that has one or two fantastic elements in it and doesn't linger too long on them. Someone mentioned earlier that they liked Arbeely's fairly measured reaction to "oh, there's a person popped out of that flask," and I feel like that's kind of how the whole world Wecker created reacts to these two magical creatures. (If you, too, like magical realism I'd suggest Italo Calvino's work, even though it tends to be more fabulist than realistic.)
+ I feel alone a lot of the time, so I really appreciate a main/major character who is truly *alone*, reaching out and making tenuous connections. I (personally) don't need a full-blown novel of manners with endless social complexity: limiting the character palette to a half-dozen major and another half-dozen minor works well for me.
+ And I'm always a sucker for stories told in multiple timelines. Iain Pears' *Dream of Scipio* is a good one for this: three stories in the same location spread across provincial Gaul, medieval France, and WWII Resistance France.
+ I'm thankful Wecker put us in the time and the culture with plenty of unobtrusive details---clothing, the elevated dead-ending at 59th St., streetcars and errand-boys---rather than through verbal signifiers. Too many authors would have thrown ten Yiddish or Arabic words onto each page and called it "immersing the reader."
Nitsua60 wrote: "...plenty of unobtrusive details..."I loved that the people at the wedding drink araq. And how high-quality araq really does turn cloudy white when you put regular water in it.
There were a few minor misses, though.
OK. Finally finished.Thought: The central theme of this book is whether you can act against your true nature? And, if you can't, should you take responsibility (or credit) for any of the outcomes?
Various characters find their own answers to this question, but the author does not seem to judge between them.
Other thought: The book was so sprawling and detailed, it didn't so much end as run out of story.
Engineer27 wrote: "Other thought: The book was so sprawling and detailed, it didn't so much end as run out of story."Thing is, with that thought, she's got a sequel coming out. Which I will not be reading. The book didn't offend me - I liked it, but it was kind of...vanilla-feeling. I just tend to have an unnecessarily antagonistic relationship with sequels that I think are wholly unnecessary. But I am likely wrong.
And totally rambling.
Bit late to the party, but I struggled to get through to the end.I liked the ideas behind the book, however, it the plot moved so slowly and subsequently, the ending felt rushed and incomplete.
Not one for the re-read pile.
