July 2016 Reads

[mushroomshirt]

On 7/12/2016 at 5:21 AM, Lily Valley said:

Digging into Outlaw,

PROS:

She has taken the matriarchy from the previous book and greatly expanded upon it.  I actually had a "Mother-fucking Hallelujah" moment when she exposed an idea in two lines of dialogue that I had as an undergrad when dealing with evo-psych in the classroom for the first time.  It took me fifteen pages to explain the reverse of the "modern gold-digger / philandering- banker syndrome".  It took her TWO LINES OF DIALOGUE.  TWO LINES!  It was beautiful and extremely vindicating.

Cons-

Ok.  Her prose style is long run-on sentences and she still falls into stream of consciousness stuff occasionally.  I find it an effective way to choose a close third person POV.  Mileage may vary. 

Some of her points of view  have a voice that is jarring.  There are language barriers between several characters.   I do think she is using the voice for a specific effect.  If someone smarter than I am could look at this idea, I'd appreciate it.  There is a big fat role reversal happening in this story and it might be an affectation for emphasis.

There's a lot of Zwoots in her world (omg, so many zwoots).  I'd count them, but ......

Zomg pros again:

I am too busy actually using the highlight function on my kindle to pick up zwoots,

Awesome things like:

 Here's a goddamn pissing contest that is ACTUALLY done the way that women do it.

I wonder if Pride  actually feels like that from a whole crowd trying to keep face.

Oh shit, THAT is actually what trust in someone else's competence looks like.

I'm putting that very last bit in here, just because I liked it.   The character speaking is extremely agoraphobic and xenophobic.  He let the other go, leaving himself alone and among strangers.

 

  Hide contents

 

Veiko watched the pattern she took, climbing breezes and drafts that he couldn't feel on his skin, couldn't smell.  He trusted that she would not bump against the stone walls he could not see.  Trusted that she could navigate that absolute dark.

 

Ok, you can see the affectation used from that.  No contractions, other stuff that I'm sure is annoying.

I DON'T CARE.  I AM TOTALLY LOVING THIS BOOK!

 

I finished the book a few days ago.  I had to read the ending twice.  It really felt rushed to me.  That said I really enjoyed the book, just wished that the ending could have been paced like the first 2/3rds.

Istel has to be my favorite character.

Spoiler

Looks like Snow will save him, thankfully.

Maybe closely followed by Dek.  

Spoiler

Really enjoyed both her rescue of K'Hess Soren and her scene with K'Hess Rurik.  She also got the requisite kill your traitorous family member for honor thing which was cool.

Veiko didn't have a huge role

Spoiler

other than "damsel in distress"

which is actually OK with me.  Not a huge fan of the Veiko/Snow partnership.  I like Istel/Dek a lot better.  This time around there was some (minor) conflict between Veiko/Snow which I liked.

Spoiler

I really hope that their relationship does not turn romantic.  Looks like there might have been hints at that near the end.

Snow seems to have become even more of a superwoman in this book, which is OK I guess.  I liked it a little better in Enemy when her conjoring was limited.  Didn't really like the whole thing about how she is better than some adepts but doesn't know it and how Bel would never be able to find her.

I liked seeing more about the matriarchal society of Illharek.  I thought the politics were well done with the "reformers" wanting to give the men more rights.  I liked the whole thing about how the highborn keep harems of men so that they never know which other house fathered their daughters.  That seemed like a pretty cool idea for cementing multiple alliances.  It was cool when Snow was explaining this to Veiko and reading about their reactions to this.  It felt very true to their characters and was a nice high point for me (and a rare source of tension between them!).

Bottom line was I enjoyed it very much.  I'm looking forward to the next one!

[Lily Valley]

The bit about the harems was an incredibly artful rebuttal to the whole evo-psych argument about "men being naturally promiscuous and women being naturally monogamous" bullshit that I had to eat in Sociology courses.  I LOVED it.  

Also, Veiko's role

Glad you liked it as much as I did.  I've been pestering everyone I know to read these.

[First of My Name]

On ‎20‎-‎7‎-‎2016 at 6:16 AM, Darth Richard II said:

Well, I can say his people hate my book because I put gay characters in them is complete BS. There were gay characters in the old EU for years plus Lords of the Sith introduced one before he did.

The only I can recall is Goran Beviin and his partner, but they were very minor. Were there others?

[Darth Richard II]

19 minutes ago, First of My Name said:

The only I can recall is Goran Beviin and his partner, but they were very minor. Were there others?

Don't recall off hand, but Beviin was added just a TAD before Aftermath came out.

[First of My Name]

6 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Don't recall off hand, but Beviin was added just a TAD before Aftermath came out.

Nine years earlier or so IIRC. But that's not a whole lot of LGBT characters. Apparently Juhani from KOTOR was a lesbian but that's three characters across thirty years of fiction, and in none of those cases do their sexualities stand out in any way. I'm not surprised people didn't really respond to it until after Disney.

[Darth Richard II]

True, but my main beef is when the author dismisses all criticism of his terrible book by saying "Oh they just hate me cause I was the first to put in Gay characters". No, you were not, and your book is shit regardless. He also admits he wrote the book in 3 weeks, so... Yeah I hate that book a lot. You could say I'm on fire with hatred, even.

[First of My Name]

5 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

True, but my main beef is when the author dismisses all criticism of his terrible book by saying "Oh they just hate me cause I was the first to put in Gay characters". No, you were not, and your book is shit regardless. He also admits he wrote the book in 3 weeks, so... Yeah I hate that book a lot. You could say I'm on fire with hatred, even.

Oh, I'm definitely with you there. The people claiming it was shit made valid points and he waved some of them away as homophobes. I'm glad he put the gay characters in but that does make me wonder about him as a person.
Yeah, I think anyone who's been on here longer than a week took notice of that  

[Spockydog]

8 minutes ago, First of My Name said:

I'm glad he put the gay characters in but that does make me wonder about him as a person.

Care to expand on that? I've been following Chuck for years, and he definitely strikes me as one of the good guys.

 

[First of My Name]

30 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Care to expand on that? I've been following Chuck for years, and he definitely strikes me as one of the good guys.

 

I should have phrased that differently; it makes me wonder about his ability to handle criticism. I applaud him for including the gay characters, but from what I've seen he disregards most criticism of Aftermath under the banner of LGBT acceptance, even when the criticism has nothing to do with the gay characters. Which strikes me as a cheap way of avoiding responsibility for Aftermath's flaws.

[Ghjhero]

I've spent the majority of the summer reading Atlas Shurgged by Ayn Rand. I read about 70% of it before I had to put it down. Not that it wasn't good, but once I found out who JG was I didn't feel like reading another 300 pages about a philosophy I already mostly agreed with. 

Next up, The Great Ordeal! The slog of slogs continues!!!

[Darth Richard II]

6 minutes ago, Ghjhero said:

I've spent the majority of the summer reading Atlas Shurgged by Ayn Rand. I read about 70% of it before I had to put it down. Not that it wasn't good, but once I found out who JG was I didn't feel like reading another 300 pages about a philosophy I already mostly agreed with. 

Next up, The Great Ordeal! The slog of slogs continues!!!

Wut.

[Ghjhero]

Just now, Darth Richard II said:

Wut.

Eh?

[Darth Richard II]

OK, its Late so I'll just do this Darth Richard style.

Atlas Shrugged is a shitshow and Ayn Rand's philosophy is offensive and evil.

Also see: Sword of Truth

[Ghjhero]

1 hour ago, Darth Richard II said:

OK, its Late so I'll just do this Darth Richard style.

Atlas Shrugged is a shitshow and Ayn Rand's philosophy is offensive and evil.

Also see: Sword of Truth

Offensive to whom and why?

[The Marquis de Leech]

5 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

OK, its Late so I'll just do this Darth Richard style.

Atlas Shrugged is a shitshow and Ayn Rand's philosophy is offensive and evil.

Also see: Sword of Truth

IMHO, it's a book with all the humanity of Mein Kampf, but with none of the historical curiosity value.

[Jo498]

There was this joke that three famous persons came as immigrants to the US, Leo Strauss, Isaac B. Singer and Ayn Rand: One a philosopher, one a writer and one who claimed to be both but was neither.

I have a 100 pages to go in my first book by Robin Hobb: Assassin's Apprentice. It is pretty good, well written, but damn slow, isn't it? Very little happens in the first third or so and despite the broadness there is a lot left mysterious (on purpose I guess but I wonder if it will be explained in later books). In addition to the narrative pacing I find some of the in-story pacing improbable - about half a year is sufficient to train a bunch of "Skilled" ones (basically some kind of telepaths and magical mind-benders) - why not a weekend crash course?

 

[Ghjhero]

5 hours ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

IMHO, it's a book with all the humanity of Mein Kampf, but with none of the historical curiosity value.

For a book that's about the virtues of limited government and industry that seems pretty extreme to me. Sure it's not something everyone agrees with, but I wouldn't say it's "evil".

[C Rutherford]

14 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

OK, its Late so I'll just do this Darth Richard style.

Atlas Shrugged is a shitshow and Ayn Rand's philosophy is offensive and evil.

Also see: Sword of Truth

 

Well unless you are Donald Drumpf   Then selfishness as a virtue is your religion.  If either Sarah Palin or Amateur Porn Star and Paid Lounger/Whiner for Reality cameras Kim Kardashian could read they would think so too I bet.

 

Oh and make sure in the future you add hypocrite to offensive and evil.  She latched on to government benefits like she was a hungry baby and the US social system a bit fat juicy teat.

[Jo498]

Finished Assassin's Apprentice and was sufficiently entranced to get the next one immediately for kindle. But I still think there are some flaws. It's very long-winded in the beginning, one should better not hate dogs or horses and the pacing between the long reflective (sometimes "whining") passages and the often rather short ones where important things happen very fast is sometimes not convincing. Some of the "action sequences" are also strangely inconsequential (e.g. the expedition to that southern town/lord and from there to Forge). Several of the "revelations" (e.g. Lady Thyme) are very easy to guess. The amount of background info given in the italicized beginnings of the chapters (and sometimes elsewhere) is also somewhat frustrating (too much apparently inconsequential stuff and not enough info on important plot-related things, like the Skill) and I am not sure if this is deliberate to leave things mysterious to the reader, or just not very well done.

It's also interesting that this book appeared almost at the same time (a year earlier?) as GoT and there are quite a few parallels: bastard, court intrigue/struggle for a throne with a strange zombifying external enemy, sympathy/telepathic connection with animals.

Again I am not sure if this is a misunderstanding of mine, miscalculation of the author or done on purpose but the climate of the duchies' world seems also somewhat strange. There is ice fairly close to the north and apparently on most of the East coast and the adjacent sea seafaring is hard to impossible in winter but still the "outislands" off the map to the east? north? are inhabited. But only a few days travel seems to get one to some kind of steppe or even desert, so the climate zones seem to be condensed within a few hundred kilometres whereas it would usually be far longer distances on earth.

[Ghjhero]

On July 24, 2016 at 10:01 PM, Ghjhero said:

 Next up, The Great Ordeal! The slog of slogs continues!!!

Just kidding, I'm still waiting for TGO to arrive so I'm reading The Martian in the meantime!