Daniel > Recent Status Updates

Paths: I wish, maybe you and me, Pullman, but if this were true for everyone Brandon Sanderson wouldn't have a career, now would he.

Spires: Meh. "Isn't oxford neat?"

Intention: Musings on "authorial intent" and if such a thing is knowable even to the author themselves.

Paradise Lost section, not bad at all, but least interesting section so far for me, it's more like a mini cliff notes with just the slightest pinch of commentary. Does make me wonder when was the last time I read Brust's To Reign in Hell.

This is quite good. It's going to bear rereading, no doubt. Lots of connections I never made, not just in his own work. Makes me want to reread His Dark Materials, on top of all the other stuff I've been feeling I should reread. (Dune, for example.)

the plot thicks

i'm baffled by how the "ships" work here. mindship needs to earn money for maintenance, ok, seems reasonable. but this talk of family and "childhood" memories of eating, etc. wtf. i don't remember if this was explained in Tea Master. i have the vague idea the obvious "used to be human" explanation isn't it, but idk y

it's good, things are just so distracting atm

Is it just me or does the updated "updates" email suck. It seems like it's sending a random selection of not particularly new updates, and the formatting makes it harder to pick out the actual review snippets.

Time for another Cool and Lam. I wish all of these were on kindle already. Not a fan of ancient used paperbacks, though this one seems to be higher quality paper than most of the ones I have. It's not shedding itchy, burny acidic dust all over my face when I try to read in bed.

time. where does it go?

sometimes I like something enough to immediately go buy a bunch of other stuff by the author, but then I put off reading any of them for so long I forget what prompted the buying spree. this was one of those. really good.

funny 😁

rtc

have gotten more invested as it goes on

doesn't feel like im almost half way

Not bad. The mc is the only likable character so far. Prose is as unpretentious as the mc, maybe a bit unpolished, but not enough to throw me.

i don't remember why i put this off. it's good

hmmm

Very stylized, but so far good.

Good, but little things still irritate occasionally, and also things like characters who basically ignore or downplay the giant blinking neon important story clue (TM) that the author is repeatedly bashing the reader in the face with for months of story time. The fact that people IRL would be incredibly unlikely to take any kind of proactive steps to investigate is completely irrelevant, because it's a story.

Mostly good, but some details are throwing me out of the story. A japanese man (speaking in japanese) referring to Thaniel as a "cracker". He'd have used some derogatory slang but "cracker" as a translation is super jarring. Wrong culture, wrong everything. And ootb reference to Thaniel's size, very failed to establish. And sudden obsession with someone repeating a word, a writerly concern, not a speech thing.

The parallels with the Grace situation in Watchmaker seem... problematic. >.>

Since the first book, I'd apparently forgotten everything about Thaniel but his name, and that Six even existed.

grrrr

Yes Acatl, that's the attitude, when you realize you've made a horrible bad decision, just lean into it. OMG this is infuriating and reads like a barely coherent bad first draft.

"I've heard it say you're sick people, but this is the first proof I had." ummm, wtf? did the editor die halfway through the book? this is Acatl's SISTER, head of her own high profile order, after asking why Acatl's preisthood has no consort/female priests, which is due to some dramatic event 12 years prior which we're told a few paragraphs earlier is "public knowledge".

middle bit has suffered from that sort of shapeless problem mystery plots may fall prey too, seemingly pointless wandering in circles, mc stubbornly refusing to connect dots despite BRIGHT FLASHING LINES. and seriously acatl, high priest for the dead, everybody knows you bring someone back from the dead you just going to end up having to put them down again later, do you even watch tv?