The Steel Remains

[Myshkin]

[quote name='Werthead' post='1580725' date='Nov 6 2008, 19.21']Negative. I believe they are, in fact, 'the fuck' :smoking:[/quote]
Good call.

[Happy Ent]

Would it have fucking killed Morgan to make one of the two superior elder races arboreal? Works for Ruckley, should work here too.

Otherwise, pretty good. I’m on board.

Initially, I was a little taken aback by the intellectual anachronisms, such as Ringil [i]getting[/i] economics. Evolution in slave trade expressed in terms of “profit margins,” etc. It’s difficult for me to immediately accept fictional universes that are intellectually on a different trajectory than our civilisation. Same is true for the contemporary vernacular used in much of the dialogue. But I overcame my reservations pretty quickly and was able to suspend my disbelief after just a few chapter. Very nice and probably refreshing.

The plot works, the whodunnit is fine, the world’s backstory is engaging, the characters are good standard Morgan macho fare – actually two of them; maybe Egar and Ringil might benefit from a clearer separation. Now one of them glows in the dark, so it’s ok.

I don’t quite get why we needed the first scene, with the zombies. It’s not Ringil’s “normal” post-war day, it’s not in itself sufficiently gross or exciting to grab me, it [i]maybe[/i] gives us a good opening paragraph, but one whose detached prose is at variance with the rest of the book.

I suspect that part of the motivation for this book may be the conscious subversion of fantasy stereotypes, and I’m a bit annoyed by it. Some of the parts seem to serve mainly as a demonstration of “Hey, look what [i]I[/i] did!” [i]Black[/i] elves, and they’re smart! Not done since Tuvok! My Aragorn gets to have sex with Gandalf! I also have a lesbian who’s überbrilliant [i]and[/i] throws knives! Oh, and recreational drugs!

But in the end the good guys all display modern Western sentiments. Nothing dangerous.

[Volsungr]

I was pretty disappointed by this. Especially after being introduced to Morgan through Black man which I was really struck by. I had two main difficulties with it I will deal with the less important aspect first.

Ringils homosexuality I was raised by a gay man for much of my childhood and spent allot time with the homosexuality community because of that, I ended bouncing at a gay bar for most of my early twenties. Ringil to me was an unconvincing homosexual his personality characteristics simple didn't fit those I have seen in the majority of gay men, by contrast when reading Archeth I definitely felt reminded of the lesbian women I have known. My understanding is that their are fairly clear biological underpinnings to sexual orientation at this point and their related to cognitive and behavioral traits just as we see in general between males and females. Its certainly my experience that gay men have distinct common personality traits and Ringil just didn't seem like a gay man to me outside of the whole graphic gay sex.

The bigger issue I had was the way the moral ambiguity of this particular world was approached. I am all for subtle shading in the morality of characters for seeing things from multiple perspective and for right and wrong being legitimate questions. Explorations in writing of this kind fascinate me. I did not feel like there was any subtlety any real dept to the moral grayness of this world. Ringil does seemingly good things like try his cousin, his sister etc. He does terrible things like kill a child who just happens to be standing in the right place, but there doesn't seem to be any depth to his actions any real exploration of his motivations Ringil seems to be confused as to why he does things and as reader I felt the same way, it left me feeling total unconnected to his character there was no shared humanity. Likewise I felt that way about the whole world clear it is world were bad things happen were their are real consequences to actions but I never felt their impact the suffering caused by the wars seemed completely glossed over the overall motivation that caused all this suffering boiled down to one simple fact greed no exploration of any greater dimensions.

I kept comparing it in my mind to Martin is great at this who all his characters do things that are reprehensible and most also act in noble and kind ways as well. There is variation between the characters in between people just as in real life nobody is total moral paragon but at the same time the motivations of characters are motivations we recognize in our own lives. Charecters struggle with questions of honour, love, devotion to family, desire for success etc. Its easy to see Tyrion or even Jaime over time as basically being driven from positive motivations but doing heinous things. The goodness or evilness of their actions is matter of perspective. Jon, Eddard and Davos are in my opinion probably the characters most put forward as moral paragons but each does negative things each makes compromises its easy to see another perspective to each of their actions, How much suffering could have been forestalled if Eddard had had Cersei assassinated taken her children into custody and taken over the government? evil actions from his perspective.

Its a trend I have noticed in fantasy in general recently there is this a desire to move away form stories about good guys and bad guys and to more brutal seemingly realistic style of story telling but to often I feel like the authors forget that we all have postive and negative motivations and its exploration of them and the way they can effect the world that makes fiction interesting. A story were only negative motivations or ambivalent motivations are left lacks humanity to me, it gives me nothing to connect to.

[Happy Ent]

[quote name='Faelcind Il Dana' post='1612237' date='Dec 8 2008, 08.28']Its certainly my experience that gay men have distinct common personality traits and Ringil just didn't seem like a gay man to me outside of the whole graphic gay sex.[/quote]
This strikes me as a good point, the problem is possibly exacerbated by the fact that Morgan is the author of [i]Black Man[/i], so he should be wary of Blank Slateism.

To couch this within the criticism I tried to formulate upthread, Ringil’s sexuality strikes me as a [i]postulate about stereotypes[/i] rather than good characterisation. Not only can we have a gay hero in a fantasy novel, we can have a gay hero who defies stereotypes about homosexuality to the extent of becoming [i]not recognisably gay[/i].

As if Ringil’s sexual orientation was a parameter that is orthogonal to other all other character traits. This seems to me an extreme position in the gender debate, and one that is at variance with the epistemological framework that I thought Morgan ascribes to in [i]Black Man[/i].

[diabloblanco18]

[quote name='Faelcind Il Dana' post='1612237' date='Dec 7 2008, 23.28']Ringils homosexuality I was raised by a gay man for much of my childhood and spent allot time with the homosexuality community because of that, I ended bouncing at a gay bar for most of my early twenties. Ringil to me was an unconvincing homosexual his personality characteristics simple didn't fit those I have seen in the majority of gay men, by contrast when reading Archeth I definitely felt reminded of the lesbian women I have known. My understanding is that their are fairly clear biological underpinnings to sexual orientation at this point and their related to cognitive and behavioral traits just as we see in general between males and females. Its certainly my experience that gay men have distinct common personality traits and Ringil just didn't seem like a gay man to me outside of the whole graphic gay sex.[/quote]

I didn't think about this while reading, but in retrospect I agree. One thing I'd question, though, is how much those homosexual traits you've observed are a function of the gay community.

[shortstark]

[quote name='Faelcind Il Dana' post='1612237' date='Dec 8 2008, 07.28']Its certainly my experience that gay men have distinct common personality traits and Ringil just didn't seem like a gay man to me outside of the whole graphic gay sex.[/quote]

Yeah, but even so, are those traits readily apparent to the larger community, if so the question then arises as to how so many gay men can remain in the closet successfully, interesting nevertheless, ringil certainly is a uber macho male type.....

[delete this account pls]

[quote name='diabloblanco18' post='1612791' date='Dec 9 2008, 06.57']I didn't think about this while reading, but in retrospect I agree. [b]One thing I'd question, though, is how much those homosexual traits you've observed are a function of the gay community.[/b][/quote]

That's what I was thinking myself. Not that I'm an expert on the gay community, but I'd imagine the common personality traits a gay man might exhibit today might be very different from those traits exhibited by a gay man in a pre-modern setting.

[Volsungr]

Indeed Happy ent that was part of what was so suprising to me was that the while Marsalis was pretty compelling as as the ultimate expression of Male dominance while the whole thirteen Idea was kind of hokey the idea of breeding to express characteristics like dominance, hypersexuality is fascinating and plausible and seemed pretty clearly rooted in the current findings of evolutionary psychology, sociobiology, and other behavioral sciences.

On the other hand while its certainly not impossible for gay man to have ringills personality characteristics. He doesn't exhibit any specific gay personality traits aside from a having sex with men. I find the idea of gay hero fascinating but I don't see the point of having a gay hero if the only exploration of his identity as different from the standard hetero hero is his sexuality it reminds me of bad sword and sorcery novels with chain mail bikini clad sex queen heroines who behave exactly like men expect for their explicit sexuality.

Diabloblanco, it hard to say of course part of it is based on the community I have know several gay and bisexaul men who have really rejected the norms of the gay community. However its my impression that the gay communities norms arise in part because of the inate personality characteristics of the people forming the community and the studies that show how homosexaul behavior is correlated with specifically androgenous traits in brain development, 2d 4d ratios and specific cognitive traits indicates to me that there is pretty strong genetic basis for the behavioral differences between homosexual and heterosexual men in general.

Shortstark a lot of gay men pass its true of the few I have know who have passed some found it easy because they are more towards the masculine end personality wise to start with for some its really a public mask, I am not sure their ability to pass negates my argument to any degree people see what the expect to see and for gay men in prejudiced cultures conforming to peoples external expectations can be matter of life and death.

[The Iceman of the North]

Out of curiosity, what kind of traits are you missing?

[Larry.]

I finally got around to writing [url="http://ofblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/richard-morgan-steel-remains.html"]my review of The Steel Remains[/url]. Perhaps there are certain things that I'd not understand, being a straight male, but I did find Gil's character to be fascinating in the sense of how he is portrayed neither as being chaste nor a victim.

[Ran]

Finished this one today. I am ... underwhelmed is the best word for it, I guess. It did not engage me as much as I had hoped. Parts of it felt rather jejune, and I admit there were significant sections where I just skimmed (the big fight at the end being a major one). I think perhaps Abercrombie ended up striking into territory ahead of Morgan, and first time is a surprise, second time is ... well, late to the party? Mind you, Morgan clearly has some of his own take and approach on things, so it's not like he's cribbing from anyone's notebook, so I don't want to seem I'm suggesting that. It's just that, with Abercrombie looming a bit large in my memory as one of the most recent fantasy series I read, there's definite ways you can compare them and there's ground being covered that's similar.

I found the ending to be a bit too perfunctionary -- I see Richard remarked on the defeat of the dwenda at the end, but even so, I think if the smaller dwenda force had done far more damage, it would have worked better; as is, even non-major heroes like the Throne Eternal commander managed to take down a pair of dwenda .... Of course, being he's commander of an elite company, maybe he wasn't that far off from Egar and Ringil. Anyways.

Oh, Archeth and all her named knives -- kind of not a fan. It felt very cliché, like she was a thief walking out of Greyhawk. The character was interesting, and I kind of wonder why the Kiriath left her behind. Is it purely because, due to her half-human heritage, she wouldn't survive the journey? I wasn't clear on that.

I know the homosexuality and the graphic sex is a turn off for some, but not at all a problem for me. I do think that Ringil's sexuality was made intimate and important for his character -- so kudos there, I think. I bought it.

Of the characters, well, the "simplicity" of Egar (who isn't very simple at all) was appealing to me. I liked that he was sort of semi-civilized, not just some barbarian who could see the great cities and the high culture and then go back home to herding buffalo.

Hmm. Clearly, I've more to ponder. Will I read the next book? I think so, because there's enough there to make it entertaining. I'm scaling back my expectations in terms of the ambition of the series, though -- I'm not sure it's really trying to turn epic fantasy on its ear, which is what I thought was the idea from the major initial buzz. It's "just" hardboiled noir applied to epic fantasy, with a dash of a particularly modern understanding of economics and sociology coloring the way characters interact with the setting.

[TheEvilKing]

[quote]I think perhaps Abercrombie ended up striking into territory ahead of Morgan, and first time is a surprise, second time is ... well, late to the party? Mind you, Morgan clearly has some of his own take and approach on things, so it's not like he's cribbing from anyone's notebook, so I don't want to seem I'm suggesting that. It's just that, with Abercrombie looming a bit large in my memory as one of the most recent fantasy series I read, there's definite ways you can compare them and there's ground being covered that's similar.[/quote]

I see what you mean and agree with this. However, I'd say The Steel Remains is better than The Blade Itself, and if Morgan's next two books improve at the same rate that Abercombie's did, he may just come out a winner.

I hope it turns out that the Emperor is just another puppet ruler on Bayaz's payroll. :smoking:

[red snow]

I thought it was a promising introduction to the World. I'm pleased Richard posted and told us his reasoning for why the dwenda seemed to be easily defeated in the end as i hadn't considered that.

It's been 5 months since I finished it so I've forgotten a few names but I'll try and join in. Ringil seems to be the aforementioned Dark lord as the dwenda kept talking to Ringil in the future tense of what he will be and that he was the one who could exist on both planes. I think the catch is that simply being known as the Dark lord doesn't necessarily mean he is evil.

I thought the other two POV characters were a bit superfluos in this novel but I can see how Archeth will play a more prominent role. I think my favourite character was the sex mad emperor as his character was really fun and when I had him pegged as an idiot, we discover he's actually a very clever man. I really hope to see more of him in the future.

I also assumed that the band was our moon having being destroyed, it seemed pretty clear this was earth in the future.

My only criticism was that it did feel like part one of a trilogy and I had hoped that Richard would have given us a more self contained story like he has done with the Kovacs series. The sequels will determine whether this is really a cut above, and I'll be hoping I can get a signed copy of "cold commands" if Richard is kind enough to do a signing in London again.

[Max the Mostly Mediocre]

RE: Dark Lord, flickers of blue light. Recall that at one point while discussing the aspect storms and suchlike that...blanking on his name...the dwenda Gil screws comments that even you could, like, make your sword appear out of nowhere and suchlike but you'd never be superbadass like me, because you're human. And then Gil [i]does[/i] make his sword appear out of nowhere during the tavern battle ('give me the dwenda's sword' 'what's wrong with the one on your back?' '...').

[quote name='Ran' post='1672666' date='Feb 3 2009, 13.35']I found the ending to be a bit too perfunctionary -- I see Richard remarked on the defeat of the dwenda at the end, but even so, I think if the smaller dwenda force had done far more damage, it would have worked better; as is, even non-major heroes like the Throne Eternal commander managed to take down a pair of dwenda .... Of course, being he's commander of an elite company, maybe he wasn't that far off from Egar and Ringil. Anyways.[/quote]
Funny, I was thinking as I read the fight that only the PCs were managing any kills while all the NPCs were getting pwned. Okay, I didn't think of it in those terms, but that was the gist. If anyone who wasn't one of the Big Three or the Throne Eternal commander brought down a dwenda, I missed it.

[Relic]

I had a hard time with the language choices in the book. It completely took me out Morgan's world. I guess i can understand all the "fuck you's" being thrown around but having the otherworldy Dwenda say it was just jarring. Wasn't just the modern day cursing either, there is something in Morgan's clenched jaw/furious style of clenched jaw writing that made his world very unbelievable to me.

i'll get the second book tho to see where the story goes.

[Juba]

Sorry to resurrect an ancient thread, but my library finally got a copy of this and I'd been looking forward to reading it, but I must say the anachronistic and etymological failings were just too jarring to allow me to believe in the setting.

The word sodomite would not exist on a world where the city of biblical Sodom doesn't exist, nor would gunmetal be used as a color descriptor in a pre-gunpowder culture, and the term rubberneckers would not be used as a descriptor in a world devoid of vulcanized rubber.

I could go on and on with other examples-

Faggot-first used to describe a homosexual in 1914, Gay-1933

These are thoroughly modern conventions-Why not use ass pirate while you're at it?

To add to the confusion, why then bother to rename cocaine-krinzanze, if etymological roots and inventive language are a moot point?

Then there is the issue others have stated that irrespective of culture all the characters talk like extras in a Guy Richie film.

The foul language, drugs and sex didn't bother me at all, it was the modern sensibilities and cultural inconsistencies of the characters and setting that left me scratching my head. Why write a pre modern fantasy novel with modern speech and thought patterns in the first place? Just because something is novel doesn't make it a good idea.

All this said, perhaps Morgan had thematic/stylistic reasons for using the word gunmetal instead of say-gray, pewter, iron, leaden, granite, etc...But I'm of the opinion he didn't give it any thought at all.

[red snow]

Sorry to resurrect an ancient thread, but my library finally got a copy of this and I'd been looking forward to reading it, but I must say the anachronistic and etymological failings were just too jarring to allow me to believe in the setting.

The word sodomite would not exist on a world where the city of biblical Sodom doesn't exist, nor would gunmetal be used as a color descriptor in a pre-gunpowder culture, and the term rubberneckers would not be used as a descriptor in a world devoid of vulcanized rubber.

I could go on and on with other examples-

Faggot-first used to describe a homosexual in 1914, Gay-1933

These are thoroughly modern conventions-Why not use ass pirate while you're at it?

It's been a while since I read it but are they examples you are stating from the lips of characters? If they aren't then you could argue that Richard is describing the world in his terms.

I can see some of your argument but I always feel it's a slippery slope in that a fantasy world probably shouldn't even be speaking in English as all of our language has roots in our history - the words didn't just appear. It's a bit like being annoyed at a spaceship with a faster than light drive but having no problem with faster than light communications. At some point we have to just buy in to the fantasy.

I was also convinced that the book is set in our far future which would render the argument moot - although I've heard the new edition of the book has a map in it that doesn't look like Earth (at a stretch it could be a long way in the future).

You might like Adrian Tchaikovsky's "Shadows of the apt" series as he takes the language quite seriously, eg it's a world where the only mammals are humans and horses (big insects killed everything else) and he realised that a lot of english phrases could no longer be used as they revolve around animals.

[Juba]

Actually all the examples cited are either from character quotes or italicized POV thoughts.

And if this was a case of a "future earth" scenario, why only one biblical reference? Is it really believable that a future earth would revert to a medieval level of technology and culture and yet be cleansed of all other artifacts of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, not to mention modern technology, etc?

My thoughts are that Morgan didn't give any of this thought, which in my opinion is just sloppy and unimaginative prose and world-building.

Anyway, thanks for the recommendation, it sounds interesting, I'll have to give it a look.

[Richard]

Actually, FYI, I did give rather a lot of careful thought to the use of "sodomite", "faggot" and "rubberneckers" in the text, and remember the process of doing so quite clearly. ("Gunmetal" I confess I don't recall, and since I'm out of the country right now and don't have a copy of TSR to hand, I can't speak to its use).

Red Snow has nailed this pretty effectively as far as I'm concerned -

(1) this is fantasy; I'm not trying to imitate a given period of history, this is a world that exists entirely in my imagination. The gods, ghosts and intelligent reptiles should have given that one away fairly early on. Etymology really is the least of it.

(2) the base conceit of pretty much all fiction not set in its own contemporary period and language area is that the words you read are a filtered version, a kind of assumed sub-titling to the real conversations and thoughts of the characters. Thus "faggot" perfectly captures (for me, anyway) the sentiments of the people who use it in The Steel Remains. The fact it has only been in use in this context since 1933 is of absolutely no concern to me at all. Ditto "sodomite", whose quasi-religious and authoritarian overtones exactly echoed the character stance I was implying. And so forth.

The truth is that without "filters" of this kind, it would be frankly impossible to set a novel more than a couple of centuries in the past or future or anywhere outside the language area the writer (and reader) belongs to, let alone in an entirely fantastical alternate reality. And of course translated fiction of any kind would be a complete non-starter. For all these areas of fiction to work, the willing suspension of disbelief is required, and the operative word here is willing.

[Ran]

Yes, far future earth or something. See the old Steel Remains thread, with input by Morgan, about some possible crossover with his Takeshi Kovacs novels.