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Moderator: I'm Murrin
It is completed, it took me a bit longer than expected because of the density and obscurity of the writing. I enjoyed TGO a lot, much more than TJE and I guess more than WLW as well. More detailed remarks hidden:Madness wrote:SerScot, Hiro, Avatar, are any of you any closer to completing this leg of the slog?
Lol. What are you playing and what books are you reading currently? As I've mentioned, I think, I'd definitely recommend rereading at least TJE and WLW before diving into TGO.Avatar wrote:Haha, sadly not yet. Been playing too much computer games to get through the 2 books I have to read before I can start my re-read, and even then I'll have to wait for the paperback. (Unless I crack...but I'm trying not to.)
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I get the feeling people are pining for conclusion more so after this volume than any previous, especially after the time it has taken to expedite TGO.Hiro wrote:It is completed, it took me a bit longer than expected because of the density and obscurity of the writing. I enjoyed TGO a lot, much more than TJE and I guess more than WLW as well.Madness wrote:SerScot, Hiro, Avatar, are any of you any closer to completing this leg of the slog?
Hiro wrote: More detailed remarks hidden:
Spoiler
I do wonder about the timing of the events, as announced at the beginning of a chapter. Are they correct? I suspect there are some glaring mistakes there.
Hiro wrote:Spoiler
The image of the Urokkas lit by sorcerous fire is spectacular. The detonating nuke (...?) is very well written. The severe image of the radiation-ill crossing the river via the dead Sranc. Except for one chapter, in which not much was actually happening, I enjoyed the Momemn line as well. Although its climax, with the spectacular string of Deus ex Machinas, does indeed raise the question of the ultimate point of this storyline. Perhaps as a way to draw out the Hundred and other enemies of the Empire, but at the expense of the agency and lives of many promising characters.
Hiro wrote:Spoiler
The overall darkness of the vision of this series: no salvation in this life, no salvation after. It creates a claustrophic effect: a universe as a prison.
Hiro wrote:Spoiler
The Sranc Horde, an enormous monotonous army is just not that interesting as a foe. No matter how much I enjoyed the use of geography around Dagliash. And the nuke that killed the entire Horde, huh? That didn't make a lot of sense, because of the cover of those mountains. It would seem that the Ordeal, on the southern side of the mountain range would have to be more exposed than the Horde on the northern side, no?
Love it. I've always envied that strength to use only in-world analogies and metaphor.Hiro wrote: Bakker's use of metaphor is still strong, I like how he devices them within the understanding of the characters of this world, comparing the chaos in Momemn with a bowl of water on a racing chariot, for instance. Some thoughtful points about faith, and well-framed as No compass is so puny as the now, and yet it is the estate of man, his ephemeral empire.
I hadn't seen Larry's OF Blog review. Thanks, Hiro.Hiro wrote: Two more points for Madness, have you noticed Larry's review at Ofblog?
And, since you are on the SRD forum, have you read the Gap series? If not, then you should, its narrative drive and characters still exceed what has come afterwards, including this intriguing yet flawed series.
Playing The Witcher 3.Madness wrote:Lol. What are you playing and what books are you reading currently? As I've mentioned, I think, I'd definitely recommend rereading at least TJE and WLW before diving into TGO.
I feel like someone who now writes books famously worked on that...Avatar wrote: Playing The Witcher 3.Just finished the main storyline last night, and starting on the expansions now.
I need to give a go as an adult. I read partway up to and into Midnight Tides (which, I believe, is book five) when I was 16 or 17? I feel like I might have just not been ready for it.Avatar wrote: And re-reading Erikson's Forge of Darkness, (book 1 of his Kharkanas trilogy), so that I can read the recently released book 2, Fall of Light.
(There's an Erikson sub-forum here, if you're into the Malazan books. (And if you're not, you should be.) )
Lol - yeah, I think you and I had this back and forth on the last pageAvatar wrote: Will definitely be reading all the PoN books and the first two AE books before the new one once I get it.
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Seomus wrote: It can help to think of the Malazan world in D&D terms (because this shared universe of Erickson and ICE came out of their shared D&D campaigns they ran together, building their world and also why the two authors disagree on somethings, like what sex K'rul is. It is also why they write in different parts of the world.
Can't argue with thatAvatar wrote:To me the differences are minor, and IIRC, manage to meld together. For example, the K'rul issue...once the "new" sex is defined, I seem to remember that it then becomes standard for both authors. K'rul is an elder god afterall, if he/she decides to change gender, it can...
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Another:Our knowledge commands us, though our conceit claims otherwise. It drives our decisions and so harnesses our deeds--as surely as any cane or lash. She knew well the grievous fate of princes in times of revolt ...
Hope is ever the greatest luxury of the helpless, the capacity to suppose knowledge that circumstances denied. So long as she remained a captive in Naree's apartment, Esmenet could always suppose that her little boy had found some way.
This is as good of a critical explanation of Bakker's prose as I have seen. I've often felt that his prose "connects" with me on a deeper level than just about any other author I've read and this has given me some insight, insight that resonates, into why. Thanks for this Z.Zarathustra wrote:I've started TGO today, made it through the first chapter. I love how he can convey desperation, hope, dread, and relief as Esmi tries to find her son. His characters seem to bleed right through the pages, feeling their own struggles deeply enough to bridge that gap between reality and fiction. They feel real.
I also love how he get his prose to resonate with deeper meaning by making everything a philosophy lesson on what it means to be human. He does it right there on the page, right out in the open, so that it's obviously a narrative "trick," or tool, but it's one that I like very much, despite how obvious it makes the author's hand. It's a fair trick. He's being honest with us. (In other words, he's not doing something dishonest like dangling a concocted, implausible ignorance before us like a carrot to keep us reading.)
Example:
Another:Our knowledge commands us, though our conceit claims otherwise. It drives our decisions and so harnesses our deeds--as surely as any cane or lash. She knew well the grievous fate of princes in times of revolt ...
Hope is ever the greatest luxury of the helpless, the capacity to suppose knowledge that circumstances denied. So long as she remained a captive in Naree's apartment, Esmenet could always suppose that her little boy had found some way.
In both cases, we move from the general to the specific--from a universal human truth to its instantiation in this scene, in this character, so that it works simultaneously as character development and thematic exploration. It also works on the level of the prose by setting up that elusive rhythm that every writer seeks, the one that keeps a reader moving forward as he glimpses the underlying pattern, the connections between sentences, as each leads logically to the next. "Our knowledge commands us" flows right into "she knew well," so that we see immediately why Bakker chose this moment to instruct us on this particular aspect of being human. He could have left off the first, general, statement and still described the same scene, but her knowing wouldn't have carried the same weight, drive, and urgency ... the same meaning.
Thus, it even helps set the scene, for each scene in our private dramas are enacted within the context of the larger human drama going on around us and before us, that which we all share. We don't always notice it, but Bakker points it out to great effect, so that these characters and this story ride on a wave of humanity and history like no other.