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Scott Lynch's THORN OF EMBERLAIN


Werthead

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14 minutes ago, banjax451 said:

I just had an amusing thought about the opening chapter of Weis/Hickman's "Rose of the Prophet" trilogy. Yeah yeah...it was late 80s, not 90s, but the entire prologue/opening chapter was an extensive info dump explaining world/pantheon/magic system.

 

Weiss/Hickman was exactly who I was thinking of.

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6 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Weiss/Hickman was exactly who I was thinking of.

I kinda figured. Loved them so much as an adolescent. Tried re-reading the Dragonlance books awhile back....couldn't do it. I wonder if you hooked up some so-called "Grimdark" authors to a polygraph and asked them "Your inspiration....it was the desire to murder Tasselhoff Burrfoot...admit it!"

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19 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I loved and still love Anathem.  I'm still working through non-fiction reading spawned by that book.

I don't really have a problem with Anathem. Didn't mean it that way. But it isn't for everybody. I'd say that if you don't like infodumps at all, it's best avoided.

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25 minutes ago, banjax451 said:

I don't really have a problem with Anathem. Didn't mean it that way. But it isn't for everybody. I'd say that if you don't like infodumps at all, it's best avoided.

I suppose that I'm odd in that I love infodumps: timelines, indexes, glossaries, and maps just make me happy.  

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Neal Stephenson is a weird one because while I don't mind the odd well-written infodump, he does them what should really be the wrong way, just taking pages and pages out to throw information at the reader in a really clunky manner. But somehow it works for him.

Anathem though works best because the premise and characters are more or less designed for infodumping, infodumping is what progresses the narrative, so he's not breaking anything off by doing it. I absolutely love that book.

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1 hour ago, polishgenius said:

Neal Stephenson is a weird one because while I don't mind the odd well-written infodump, he does them what should really be the wrong way, just taking pages and pages out to throw information at the reader in a really clunky manner. But somehow it works for him.

Anathem though works best because the premise and characters are more or less designed for infodumping, infodumping is what progresses the narrative, so he's not breaking anything off by doing it. I absolutely love that book.

Have you read The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.?  The premise of that book has some overlap with Anathem.  I'm curious to see if that becomes a series if it is a back door to a sequel to Anathem.

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20 hours ago, polishgenius said:

Neal Stephenson is a weird one because while I don't mind the odd well-written infodump, he does them what should really be the wrong way, just taking pages and pages out to throw information at the reader in a really clunky manner. But somehow it works for him.

Anathem though works best because the premise and characters are more or less designed for infodumping, infodumping is what progresses the narrative, so he's not breaking anything off by doing it. I absolutely love that book.

I just finished rereading 'Diamond Age'. The difference between Diamond Age and everything post Cryptonomicom is that in Diamond Age, he just states that there are matter compilers and nano tech and he assumes (correctly) that the reader can grasp the basic concept and go along for the narrative ride. In his books including and since the Baroque Cycle, he assumes the reader needs every. last. thing. explained in detail. His 2nd, 3rd and 4th books are all time favorites of mine. I've read Anathem, the Baroque books and his crap attempt at a Ludlum book once each with little interest in going back. 


To bring this back around to the main topic, I've read the Lynch's books a few times each as they are enjoyable to read. I would say the hints about mystery of what happened to the Eldren has been a little clunky but I think that's going to be a key detail in future books which will be fleshed out. 

 

Side note- I just realized both the Expanse Books and the GB series have the same undercurrent of 'what happened to the unknown entities that make this amazing thing' (protomolocule/stargate/glass towers). 

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  • 1 month later...
1 hour ago, Jussi said:

It looks like the publication has been pushed back to September 2019. From the new catalogue:

http://www.orionbooks.co.uk/assets/OrionPublishingGroup/downloads/Catalogues/Orion-Rights-Guide-Frankfurt-2017.pdf

 

 

Let’s just call it like it is:  Postponed Indefinitely

Giving it a date just to have a date is frustrating and pointless.

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6 hours ago, Rhom said:

Let’s just call it like it is:  Postponed Indefinitely

Giving it a date just to have a date is frustrating and pointless.

Yeah, in almost two years he could rewrite the entire book or he could do absolutely nothing, depending on how he feels. Anyway, setting such a far date is bizzare at best.

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8 hours ago, Rhom said:

Let’s just call it like it is:  Postponed Indefinitely

Giving it a date just to have a date is frustrating and pointless.

This "postponed indefinitely" thing seems to be catching on... :( 

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Maybe some of these fantasy authors should just follow William Gibson's lead. More than once, he's written a second and third story set in the same world as an initial book. But the key thing is that when you finish the first book, there is never any reader expectations that there would be future books with those characters.  If Gibson's not interested or inspired to keep mining that creative vein, he can just move on and the reader has no unmet expectations. But these fantasy guys seem fixating on writing a book and then immediately avowing that they will need 2-6 more books to fully tell their stories. I'd have to think that would increase the pressure on their creative process immensely.

 

Or is this a business thing where the publishers like to hear that they can get 3-7 books in a series from the author (in theory) and that makes it easier to market to the work? 

 

No way to know but I wonder if Lynch (and Rothfuss) would already have published some new books if they didn't have to fit it into their self-constrained limits of their respective sagas. 

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