Jesse > Recent Status Updates

The bit with Rincewind getting worked by the Octavo and vaporizing one of the cultists, and the aftermath, is pretty good. I’m also a sucker for the Luggage terrorizing villains and this section is pretty good for it.

Idk if Pratchett PLANNED on elaborating on Death’s adopted daughter when he first wrote Ysabell here but it’s the exact sort of thing worth writing its own book about. I love the exchange with the trolls, here, where they largely “die” by catching “philosophy”.

In The Colour of Magic you got the feeling that most of the ridiculousness of Discworld was Twoflower’s insistence on touring a very real and dangerous world and only surviving due to the influence of the Lady. The sword and sorcery analogues could have come from their own, serious stories. Cohen the octogenarian barbarian is a firm (and welcome) break from the tone of the first Discworld book.

This is just plain more fun. The Colour of Magic sort of rubbed elbows with the sword and sorcery stories it was parodying; this hits just about the right tone of being a functional fantasy world that has stakes and is also just a parody of fantasy in general. I love the deeper look into the Unseen University and the Galder / Trymon adversaries.

The next stop on my Discworld retread. Maybe the first proper Discworld novel, insofar as The Colour of Magic was a picaresque tour through the fantasy pulp that Pratchett grew up on.

Decent fight scene at the finale. Lots of YA extra and some of it’s pretty goofy. I get big Geognosis feels for dumb death arenas. Aveyard is quick to outline character beats for the spared Samos twins. The epilogue also has the important YA facet - if you never actually SEE someone die, then they probably aren’t dead. Also WOOP WOOP for Mare’s “I choose no one.”

Looooool yeah of course it went down this way. I’m kind of glad that Cal is so much of a do-right that he said no. Now it’s just down to seeing how crazy the escape is.

It’s YA and we are in the first book still and there are about 100 pages left of potential betrayals. I feel exhausted, lol.

PHEW OKAY CRISIS AVERTED

Omg no are they gonna massacre the stilts population while Mare is watching?!?

LOOOOL this is big time brinkmanship, putting nearly every major player in the same room following the bombing. i have no idea what is going to happen.

Oh god please spare me from Kilorn’s part in this blooming love quadrangle. We barely got a hint of them as potential lovers, only really when Mare tried to imagine who she might have married instead of Maven, and he flips to super-jealous and possessive. It’s like it’s trying to be doomed bittersweet pairing but it comes across as painfully forced and awkward.

Fffff updating goodreads with shoddy internet connection ftl

I’ve been struggling to place Red Queen somewhere in the ruins of old North America and with the talk of the “lakelands” and Piedmont I think that it’s set in the northeastern part of the country, with the Choke being the part of Canada that’s connected to Michigan and New York? With Norta being provincial Canada, I guess.

Maven is the saddest boi 🙂‍↔️

lol Evangeline is so catty. Either she is gonna stay being one of the biggest malcontents or she is staged for some sort of reversal of character. Maybe a little of both, idk. She is just begging to be knocked down a peg or five

Umm well that escalated quickly! If I ever knew what Mare’s power was before then I had forgotten it but when she kickstarted her house’s electricity again it was pretty obvious. The breakneck pacing of YA here is exhausting; you hardly get a chance to catch your book-breath in this cavalcade of certifiable moments.

lol the royal family name is Calore and girl just got a job recc from a handsome young man called Cal HMMMMMMMM

If you had any doubts about how the silvers were supposed to be positioned (prior to Aveyard muddying the water, I’m sure) then look no further than the post-bombing lynch mob. A whole crowd of meta humans deciding on the spur of their anger to massacre their servant class - it’s almost too much to believe that Gisa and Mare got out with just a broken hand between them.

Okay the land of Digitopolis manages to be just as philosophically humorous as any of the other sections, making delightful absurdity out of numbers. The dialogues on infinity and the .58 of a child who gets to drive .3 of a car, and the trick of getting the Mathemagician to agree to Milo’s quest - awesome

LOL at Alec Bings, who floats in the air with his head fixed at a height in the air so that his point of view never changes as he gets older. The color orchestra is another wildly beautiful moment from Juster. Also, the exchange with the giant / midget / fat / thin man is pretty good fun.

The humbug reminds me of Oz’s woggle-bug. The story consciously evokes Baum’s work where with Faintly Macabre, the not-so-wicked-Which. Her story of how she became imprisoned and the royal banquet where people eat their words and have half-baked ideas for just desserts is, well, very madcap clever. I kind of wish that the jumbled-up marketplace segment would have lasted longer!

Comparisons to Alice in Wonderland are apt. Milo is off on an adventure in a fantasy world all his own with its own sort of literal-logic. The cadence smacks of Lewis; whether this is super-intentional or an outgrowth of the intellectual playfulness of both writers is beyond my discernment. Dictionopolis has been a treat, as was the jaunt in the Doldrums.

This book entered my mind when, in an episode of Parks and Rec, Leslie read out loud from it in order filibuster her own town hall meeting because it was going badly. Also, Tom Haverford espoused the book as “awesome”. I’ve been slowly filling in book references, even if many of them were mentioned in Stephen King’s novels, and this seems like a good a time as any to read The Phantom Tollbooth.

“The Story of the Princess Zulkais and the Prince Kalilah”

In this story, twins are the unwitting pawns of their pagan intellectuals who encourage their incestuous affections. It’s really gross but the story is unfinished and the twins never get a chance to consummate their burgeoning relationship within the prose. I can see why C.A. Smith picked it up, since the end promises his kind of alien travelogue.

Imma just say that this chapter would be Cassandra Clare’s favorite

“The Story of Prince Barkiarokh”

Barkiarokh is a horrid miscreant, a man seemingly composed of nothing but appetites, who chafes at the counsel of a virtuous (but naive) spirit, even if she would put him on a throne. The dude’s list of crimes includes prompting fratricide and patricide, rape, adultery, murder, and contemplating (but not consummating) incest with his daughter.

Alasi let a lot of horrible stuff go that Firouz was doing but Barkiarokh is so much worse, maybe even worse than Firouz. It’s a tough race but from what I know I have some 20 pages left and I know that it only gets nastier from here.

The second tale isn’t instantly marked by something taboo that marked Vathek’s and Alasi / Firouz’s stories, and it feels more like an Arabian Nights narrative in how many other substories have been told. I have completely forgotten the name of the Prince since we are long into his wife’s story, her being some kind of exiled Djinn.🧞‍♀️