Here is a reply by SRD to a question I posed in the GI: It appears to me that this whole discussion proceeds from a false premise: that the function of storytelling is to portray societies. While this premise clearly holds true in some cases, it is far from being universally relevant. For many many ...

My mental image of Linden is pretty much like this picture, but with a somewhat leaner face and longer, finer features, and the blonde hair not as frosty. My mental image also has Linden's hair somewhat longer but thinking about it the length shown here is probably more like what a focussed professi...

Kevin had much more lore and power, but Mhoram turns out to have more wisdom and inner strength. I also have a post bubbling up in my about why the New Lords developed the mindmeld, which the Old Lords did not have, and whether this was partly in response to the consequences of Kevin not sharing his...

A resurrected, undead Kevin with mastery of all seven wards would clean Mhoram's clock IMO. That was also Mhoram's opinion. In Ch.26 of TIW, he explains to Hile Troy the reasons why he and Calindrill were unable to help her against Kevin in the fight that was still raging at that moment: Yes if we ...

I'm currently reading Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time.

This is Wiki's summary of the book.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great ... ion_(book)'

I read War and Peace last year. I agree with you that the Second Epilogue dragged on a bit, although whether I would have felt that way had I read it as a stand-alone essay is another matter.

On another thread I have commented that the New Lords do not seem to do or be what we normally associate with the word "Lord" in our reality. For us, a Lord is someone who exercises power, who rules others, and who possesses certain privileges that go with Lordship. Re-reading The First Ch...

I recently posted on Facebook that I thought one of my friends was uxorious. I could have added that he was lost in the irrefragable fuligin of his exigent devoir.

One thought that this thread has prompted is that in our reality we associate the word "Lord" with some kind of rulership, exercise of political power, possession of privilege, etc. The vocation of the Lords of the Land is somewhat different from what the word implies for us. This thought ...

We could speculate on whether Covenant's Unbelief was strengthened or mitigated by encountering all these people in the Land who spoke archaic English sprinkled with obscure words.

There is another way of looking at this. As far as the Lords were concerned, Covenant's illness and injury were real, but their healing of him would also be real. Covenant, on the other hand, does not - cannot allow himself to - believe that the healing would be real.

Dark lords are very narcissistic with a tendency to use and discard. They're not big on keeping bargains. Knowing that, they would see the other dark lord as a rival or a nuisance. They would never believe the other dark lord would keep his word, because the other dark lord never would. This is pre...

The invention of the printing press for the reason given above. [Holy Roman Empire 1440]

The first printing presses were invented in China and Korea some time before then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_o ... .281040.29

If Lord Foul did conquer the Land in the scenario that I have outlined, no doubt he would have ordered his servants to search for and pursue Covenant in the hope of obtaining the white gold. No doubt he would also have set in motion other plans with the aim of breaking the Arch of Time, or manipulat...

Imagine if he had fallen in the woods, from exhaustion, and had never found the girl. He might have become so weak that he would have died from starvation and exposure. If so, how would the events of The Power That Preserves been altered? This is the key question. The answer to it depends on when C...

This thread was a great idea... ..and it's so well-suited to my nature, because I accidentally anti-recommend things that I really like! Here's one about "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch," by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: It's from a story where a bunch of people are in a gulag prison/l...

I cannot think of anything to suggest that the old Lords even had tombs - so I am wondering if anyone else knows of any references to anything suggesting it. Yes, that's also my recollection. As far as the New Lords are concerned we are told that Prothall returned to his original home in the Northr...

Also (and this kind of relates to my comparison further up the thread with modern societies in our world), warriors need to be fed, clothed, sheltered and doctored while on the march, armed with swords, spears, bows and arrows, armoured and provided with shields, and so forth. In modern societies la...

I'm close to finishing China Mieville's October: The Story of the Russian Revolution. Has anyone else in this forum read the book, or is anyone currently reading it? Here's a short interview in which Mieville discusses the book. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/07/books/tell-us-5-things-about-your-bo...

A couple of thoughts. Any guesses we make about the numbers of people in the Land and the numbers available for combat need to be underpinned by some assumptions about population density in the Land plus what we know about the area available for human habitation. We know that the peoples of the Land...