Errant Bard

Anecdotical, but one of my sisters chose to settle in Ireland (well, more exactly, Dublin) over UK or France because she felt women were more respected there. If that can help.

About the loading problems from a few weeks ago, I also have no more issues, not sure when it went away, suspecting ISP cache refresh (usual time is 48h after all) Anyway, I wanted to report a weird behaviour on the mobile version: it's not the first time I have it, but I seldom use my phone to access the site anyway, but sometimes, on a page or another, the site refuses to display as the mobile version: the full one tries to load, and it just takes forever. I can try to click "use mobile version" all I want, it does not work... What works, sometimes, is clicking "back" (goes back to previous page and nice mobile theme), waiting some time and reclicking the link. I got it recently when not logged in, multiple times on the main page, opening gen chat and opening lit. I wonder if one ad could not force the site into full version.

Yes, the pages load... some times only.

I am having the same issues as JonCon's Red beard, I have cleared my cache, several times, to no avail. The pages half load, or don't load at all, staying in "loading" mode, and I need to either reload or go back one step and reclick the link, and do that three or four times before the page displays in full (when it does, it displays fast) Considering what manages to load (half the posts, the left panel) before it locks, half the time, I'm not convinced the DNS is at fault. I would hate it if it was some hidden caching proxy on my ISP side.

Welcome. But I have to point that actually, there are some bards you can trust.

Not to mention, you only spoilered who did not die in a relatively minor scene. No real damage done.

There is romance and romance, in my mind. I found Lions romance minor, flavouring, not the plot point around which everything revolves like in a Kushner. The main theme for me was the passage of time, the ephemeral nature of existence, and the way history is written. The only thing that bothered me was the strong nationalist elements that somehow detracted from the impermanence theme. That chapter when we don't know who is who was really superb, though. Maybe too obvious an attempt at tugging the reader's string, but I liked it nonetheless, only the aftermath bothered me. SPOILER: lionsBoth should have died, the ending was too sappy. I guess I never bought the eternal love thing, and would have been happy with a more awesome conclusion to it. As it was, it felt lame.

It's an issue about style, in the end. I don't necessarily prefer impartial documentaries over biased well told tales. Even if I am manipulated to think the wolf is the bad guy, I still like(d) listening to the story. As for other comparisons with the aforementioned Fantasy serie, we had such things as non-plot related information shortage, like "She screamed a word" or "The axe took her in the head".

Because they disagree with you, that's why. I really liked The Lions of Al-Rassan. Could you give more details as to why you find him average? And what does proto-GRRM mean, exactly?

"Little did she know she would lose a piece of her heart this evening" Seriously now, I only read Lions of Al-Rassan, and apart from noticeable writing quirks, he writes consistent and very enjoyable stories, with memorable characters and a good sense of breath of the world. Lions feels a bit similar to asioaf in that it actually has multiple unreliable PoV, and it works pretty well, despite an important amount of third person narration.