21 replies to this topic

[total1402]

Just curious because A Song actually came with a recomendation from Janny Wurts who wrote L&S. As well as Raymond E Feist whos another of my fav authors.

They're very good, much more dense in terms of word count and slower than I&F but it has some truly great elements to it. I love Lysaer and all the scenes with him in are gold. I'd say I have a love hate relationship with the series and I definetly prefer A Song to it.

If anyone responds I'll talk bout it some more.

[nickg]

I have almost bought the first book several times now. I've heard mixed reviews from a couple of people i know that have read it ( although one liked the series quite a bit ). Really dont have anything to add, but im interested in reading what everyone has to say.

Might just go ahead and grab it from the library.

[Buried Treasure]

I've read them all, it's not my favourite fantasy series but I do enjoy them. It's one of those series where even when I am holding a fat book in my hand I'm only reading a medium sized book because the writing style is very wordy and I end up skimming a lot of chapters. Within that though, I think Janny Wurts is telling a good story.

[total1402]

Oh its well written. But tediously slow and has a dubious moral message that I found very grating and hypocritical. One side is relentlessly demonized and made to look idiotic whilst the other are forgiven all moral misdeeds as being forced even though they're from a pacifist universe which values all life and are all supermen. Really, a consistent theme is that armies of mail clad townsmen are butchered with ease by a handful of clansmen. Theres also zero suspension or surprise at how events will unfold. You know that Lysaer (the prince of light) is going to lose to Arithon (Prince of Shadow). Plus she rehashes exactly the same themes and repeats them verbatum. Its also much more indepth, focuisng on fewer characters than I&F but I can actually only count on my hand those I was interested in. Which is a travesty across so many books. Those I did like however were brilliant and I loved lysaer and the efforts of those around him to deal with the curse placed on him which compells him to destroy his hafl-brother.

But the first three are very concise stories and these flaws are less apparent. It has most of the interesting characters and there are some okay bits.

I much prefer Martins portrayel of both sides armies as roughly equal and it really uncertain who is going to prevail. He also makes it clear that even the Northmen are as guilty of crimes by the common soldiers. Plus, the North had the Boltons, the Lannisters had the mountain. I won't say that he was compltely cynical, since some villians haven't gotten away with things and some only won because of luck and circumstance ie Renly being murdered by Stannis rather than the two joining up, Baelish deciding to side with Cersei coz he hated Ned. These are all things that are mutable and were entirely mutable. This added a lot of nuance and believability to the story rather than bad guys win or we so epic compared to u.

Edited by total1402, 08 June 2012 - 07:14 PM.

[Galactus]

It's a huge missed opportunity. After the first book I honestly thought it would be a story of two morally ambigious protagonists clashing, but no. The author picked a side.

[jagilki]

I read the first book and enjoyed it, tried later ones and it just seemed to me any "magic" I felt in the first one was gone.

[total1402]

Galactus, on 08 June 2012 - 07:23 PM, said:

It's a huge missed opportunity. After the first book I honestly thought it would be a story of two morally ambigious protagonists clashing, but no. The author picked a side.

Oh lord did she nail those colours to the mast. She even sucks out moral ambiguities where might be seen or goes to great length to excuse them. It wouldn't have bugged me if she hadn't played the moral martyr in her prologue and said that she wanted to caputre the moral ambivalence of brutal history like Cullodon moor. But the moor had two sides to it, you can't just reverse the demonization and victimization. So she promised a morally grey story but it really isn't.


The magic for me was Lysaer. He pretty much held up this series and after I got the first seven books for free. Well I was obliged to by the last two and they did quite a lot with him in those books. I'am glad he got another love interest (Dalianna?) though I'am a bit wooried it'll end in tragedy. He did nearly kill her n all and that scene was just OMG in how quickly the tone changed. I mean I laughed when Lysaer was explaining he couldn't have because the curse might make him force her so she just casually strips and says you can have me willingly. WTF! It caught me off guard because normally shes incredibly up-tight about being vivid. Not like Mr Martin that is. Cough. Cough.

[PaulineMRoss]

Galactus, on 08 June 2012 - 07:23 PM, said:

It's a huge missed opportunity. After the first book I honestly thought it would be a story of two morally ambigious protagonists clashing, but no. The author picked a side.

That's exactly how I felt after reading Daughter of the Empire (the Wurts/Feist collaboration). Both sides as bad as each other but we're supposed to root for the protagonist just because she's the protagonist? Being the sole POV character doesn't make her actions acceptable or even defensible.

I've been wondering ever since whether I should try a different Wurts effort in case DotE was anomalous. Seems like it wasn't.

[Shryke]

Galactus, on 08 June 2012 - 07:23 PM, said:

It's a huge missed opportunity. After the first book I honestly thought it would be a story of two morally ambigious protagonists clashing, but no. The author picked a side.

Agreed.

It took a couple of books till I realised this was a love letter to that sensitive guy who played guitar she knew in college.

Edited by Shryke, 09 June 2012 - 04:59 AM.

[Little Valkyrie]

I still enjoy them, but it's often for the more background characters and topics, and with a heavy dose of reading the text against what I'm pretty sure the author is going for.

[total1402]

Little Valkyrie, on 09 June 2012 - 01:57 PM, said:

I still enjoy them, but it's often for the more background characters and topics, and with a heavy dose of reading the text against what I'm pretty sure the author is going for.

Yeah I know what you mean and its pretty obvious that Arithon is her love-child and that she is Elaira. I just can't take the notion that a rock or tree has free will seriously and the idea that humans are abominations within the natural order is non-sensical and too much greenpeace for me. I actually end up rooting for the Alliance and the townsmen at several points; even though you know they're going to lose.

[Galactus]

I thought the point wasn't so much that humans were abominations per se, but rather that they were trespassers on this particula world. (and, essentially, were alloed to settle conditionally)

[Zocc Arris]

The series certainly has its virtues, but Wurts indulges in some outright bizarre retconning to justify how glacial her pace is. That said, I think that the world-building is some of the best in recent years in fantasy in a middleweight series of this stature.

[Little Valkyrie]

total1402, on 10 June 2012 - 05:04 PM, said:

Yeah I know what you mean and its pretty obvious that Arithon is her love-child and that she is Elaira. I just can't take the notion that a rock or tree has free will seriously and the idea that humans are abominations within the natural order is non-sensical and too much greenpeace for me. I actually end up rooting for the Alliance and the townsmen at several points; even though you know they're going to lose.

Actually, that's one of the parts that I find most interesting--she's writing a world with a metaphysics that is in fact really alien to my own rationalist "rocks don't have feelings or rights, what the hell" thinking.  Humans are objectively wreaking a lot of havoc in how they're living in this world, and yet they often don't know better, or are not willing to walk the hard road that asking permission involves.

Arithon really is a dick, even if she doesn't mean for him to be all the time (but I think he's meant to be a dick until pretty recently).  The best character introduced so far was Sulfin Evend, because he's where some of the abstractions actually got put into character development form.

[Gormenghast]

There's a thread I opened a while back about this. I've read only the first book and it has a rather rich style of writing, but I enjoyed the book and interested about reading the rest (in due time).

It's another of those "full-semantic" kind of worlds. So even the description of a landscape becomes emotional and anthropomorphic. I see this in the vein of Donaldson and Erikson, not in the sense that these are similar works, but they share a certain sensibility. All three tend to be psychological and kind of inward directed.

P.S.
If Arithon is the side the writer "picked" then I'd say it's quite evident already in the first book, but I'm not so sure she wanted to write this as a perfectly balanced struggle. I don't see it being told in a neutral, equidistant style. In fact in book 1 both of them get along rather well, and the conflict only happens because Lysaer is pushed to his extremes, but this happens through an external agent.

Edited by Gormenghast, 11 June 2012 - 12:22 AM.

[total1402]

Little Valkyrie, on 10 June 2012 - 11:21 PM, said:

Actually, that's one of the parts that I find most interesting--she's writing a world with a metaphysics that is in fact really alien to my own rationalist "rocks don't have feelings or rights, what the hell" thinking.  Humans are objectively wreaking a lot of havoc in how they're living in this world, and yet they often don't know better, or are not willing to walk the hard road that asking permission involves.

Arithon really is a dick, even if she doesn't mean for him to be all the time (but I think he's meant to be a dick until pretty recently).  The best character introduced so far was Sulfin Evend, because he's where some of the abstractions actually got put into character development form.

I disagreed with that because, if the argument was to make the clansmen the better men n the way of compromise good, it really does flounder if she gives them essentially divine justification for everything the clansmen and fellowship do. Any kind of moral point goes out of the window once you start arguing that one side is in support of the very under-pinnings of the universe. Indeed, the fellowship never judge the clansmen for murdering trespassers by the hundreds because they're trespassing sacred grounds to the paravians which will disrupt the lane flux. Which is only justifed because of her meta-physical set-up, without it, they're no different from Gregor Cleganes men. But rather than make this an innocent mistake which can be related to the author goes out of her way to demonise every townborn character and the underpinnings of their society. Plus, the fact that the townsmen are so ignorant of how this verse works is at times simply beyond belief. Plus, I would say the verse is far too preachy and moralistic; which becomes grating since its the same point reiterated. She also makes simply jarring arguments, where it is wrong to use bolts of light to incinerate people but perfectly correct to use illusion to blind or confuse them n lead them into slaughter.

I hated Arithon after he started defending his use of child soldiers and the battle in the first book. He has the power of shadow, he could have easily hidden the army and escaped without any bloodshed. Why would the clansmen risk extermination? There was nothing to be achieved in fighting and the clansmen willingly going to fight an army which outnumbers them 10:1 is stupid. Only because they have dues ex machina they r awesome n alliance stupid enough to fall for the dam trick do they win. This is jarring because although the author tries to act seriously when it comes to moral subjects the battles and conflict are simply non-sensical. We're supposed to believe that a handful of longbowmen without armour are able to slaughter, not just irritate, but slaughter whole armies of troops that are disciplined and incredibly well equipped with heavy mail armour and has cavalry. Really, their bows and traps should do neglible damage to the army and if it came to close quarters the armoured men would win easily; end-of. Plus, every battle is exactly the same. Lysaer is stupid because of the curse. So the author makes an asinine point about how anger and over-confidence are bad and how might does not guarenteee victory. After so many books that gets annoying.

Yeah, I liked Sulfin Evend. But I don't get why she spent so many books building the alliance portion of the series up to Stormed Fortress only to restart the series with the most recent one. Still, I like how his ancestor is hooking up with Lysaer.

[Shryke]

Well yeah, pretty much everyone has agreed the whole "Both sides are right" thing falls apart.

But that wasn't your initial complaint:

Quote

I just can't take the notion that a rock or tree has free will seriously and the idea that humans are abominations within the natural order is non-sensical and too much greenpeace for me.

Which is you complaining about the very idea of humans being a distruption to the natural order.

Except that's the very premise of the series. As Galactus points out, the whole set up is that humans are foreign colonizers of this world and they really don't belong. They can only exist there under certain conditions.

[Galactus]

Quote

If Arithon is the side the writer "picked" then I'd say it's quite evident already in the first book, but I'm not so sure she wanted to write this as a perfectly balanced struggle. I don't see it being told in a neutral, equidistant style. In fact in book 1 both of them get along rather well, and the conflict only happens because Lysaer is pushed to his extremes, but this happens through an external agent.

The point is that at the end of book one BOTH of them are cursed, yes, Arithon is more aware of it, but still. Except that the Curse only makes Arithon a bit moodier, but it makes Lysaer into Hitler.

The story had a ton of cool concepts, including the curse (which would seem to be a perfect setup for moral ambiguity: Two people fighting despite neither being a bad guy) the "virtues" they had inherited, etc. etc. But she blew it in the execution, which frankly sucked.

Quote

I hated Arithon after he started defending his use of child soldiers and the battle in the first book.

Wasn't that becuase well, while Arithon is more aware of the curse than Lysaer, he's still (at this point, at least, hazy on if anything happened) just as cursed as Lysaer: He's driven to fight, and (as we see with Lysaer) the way the curse works is that it twists you into justifying your actions.

[total1402]

Shryke, on 11 June 2012 - 10:12 AM, said:

Which is you complaining about the very idea of humans being a distruption to the natural order.

Except that's the very premise of the series. As Galactus points out, the whole set up is that humans are foreign colonizers of this world and they really don't belong. They can only exist there under certain conditions.

Its a general post so bringing up other things seemed okay.

Its not just that humans are disruptive. Its that humans are held to behave in a certain way that is inheritly destructive to the lane flux. Only exceptional individuals like Arithon who come close to this purity can exist or understand this. Central to this is the assumption that emotions like anger, violence, greed, the desire to expand at the expense of other animals, lust, selfishness etc are inherently human traits and outside the natural order. Essentially the best characters, like when Arithon comes with the Paravians is to be self-denying and to come closer to nature; which is inherently pure. Thats a view which is I disliked because

a-its ridiculous, nature birthed humans and they share exactly the same violent passions she lamblasts. Trees spreading across a continent is no different to humans doing it. The author making dues ex machina excuses for this wasn't good for me.

b-its a really nieve moral argument to make and once deconstructed is essentially-always act good and deny your own desires. It doesn't accept the very complex consequences and negatives associated with such a mentality. Plus, its unreasonable to demonise people for just being human; which is what this plot device essentially means.


Don't get me wrong, I did like the books because of Lysaer and found his efforts to deal with the curse very well done.

[total1402]

Galactus, on 11 June 2012 - 12:19 PM, said:

Wasn't that becuase well, while Arithon is more aware of the curse than Lysaer, he's still (at this point, at least, hazy on if anything happened) just as cursed as Lysaer: He's driven to fight, and (as we see with Lysaer) the way the curse works is that it twists you into justifying your actions.

Its not an impression which is gotten across very well. My belief whilst reading was that Arithon resists the curse almost entirely and that it only affects him like in scenes in Miderl Bay where his clansman captain has to pin him down to stop him as he screams for Lysaers blood. The curse is there but he resists it affecting his thinking and in Lysaer he essentially had a nervous breakdown and its constantly with him.


So basically I blamed Arithon for everything he did and thought he was needlessly putting himself and others at risk; plus doing things like having a temper tantrum because some rich townsmen demand he play some songs and opens the lane flux. Killing several hundred old people in the process and bringing the wrath of Lysaer down on him.

Edited by total1402, 11 June 2012 - 01:49 PM.