Wise Phuul

[polishgenius]

On 06/01/2017 at 8:56 PM, Let's Get Kraken said:

But something like whether or not the title is a pun

It's pretty obviously a pun.

[Darth Richard II]

3 hours ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

Yeah, I mean, you cut my sentence in half with your quote there. It's obviously a pun, I said that reading the book probably tells you whether or not it's just a pun or has some deeper meaning to the plot.

I'm kind of surprised that I've had to justify my comment this much. Is it really that strange of a suggestion that the title of a book makes more sense once you sit down and read the story?

I've sen much weirder arguments on here.

[Jerry Drake]

I once tried, and found it refreshing, to treat any book or any piece of writing or work of art as if it was intended to be of comedic value. You'd be surprised how much fun otherwise dull and uninspiring things turn out to be.

[Iskaral Pust]

I just finished this book yesterday.  It's pretty well written Fantasy, with a slightly sardonic humor that I enjoy, some inventive world-building and a main POV that is plausibly flawed but experiences some personal growth.  The setting is similar to WW1-era England with a Soviet-style govt and KGB, and a slave economy based on zombies. The tone and style are much closer to steampunk than high fantasy or grimdark.  Told in a first person POV, the plot is a mix of political intrigue and personal odyssey.  For a first novel, the author's voice and style are established pretty well and thankfully no signs of the usual growing pains: over elaboration in the prose or plot, excessive wish fulfillment characters, cloying sentimentality nor sophomoric "wouldn't it be cool if..." plots.  A good reading experience; thumbs up.

Minor nitpicks:
- the world building was inventive and not overly complicated but as a fan of history I would point out that slave economies don't make much sense after industrialization (outside of isolated pockets).  I could also imagine Trump supporters raging against the author's implicit prejudice.
- although using a Finnish base for names has some nerd cool, using so many polysyllabic names, double vowels and umlauts skates pretty close to the cliche about names in Fantasy and almost jumps the sha'arkk.  The first couple of chapters includes Venomavat, Kuolinko, Quovalinko, Tuoanako, etc.  Please excuse any miss-spelling from memory.  Although most of the main characters have names of only two syllables, the early rush of polysyllabic names was a bit jarring and disrupts the flow of reading.
- the sexuality of the main POV goes through some changes.  At first, he's a bitter, lovelorn, insecure beta male smarting from being dumped, then slightly prudish around his libertine friend, then he's suddenly James Bond on a train confidently seducing a secret agent, then pointedly gay and promiscuous, drops back to James Bond mode and we get a little last hint of the bitter dumped.  At each point there was no real continuity between prior or future states.  It's not about hetero/bi/gay, it's that his sexual confidence and attitude to sex seem to change throughout the novel too abruptly to be linked to his personal growth story.
- Do not call a major country with distinct ethnic group and culture "the North", and especially do not have it's own inhabitants refer to it as such.  GRRM got away with it but it sounded worse when Abercrombie used it too.  It's done.  Most places have richer names than that.

Major nitpick:
- it's well written but the central plot doesn't have a strong enough hook for the reader.  After 20-25% I was enjoying the writing but wondering whether the story was worth bothering with.  By the end, I felt pretty much the same.  If this is primarily literary fiction about the development of the central character, then there needs to be a lot more development  -- a crisis and a catharsis -- and a lot more reason for the reader to care about that development.  If it is primarily plot driven, then you need stronger participation in the plot.  Random stuff happens to the character and he muddles along, so many loose ends (e.g. Sufael), many conspiracies are hinted and revealed but remain remote, unresolved, disparate and largely unimportant to the reader.  If this is all deliberate set-up for subsequent books, the first book is too thin to bring back the readers.

Nice work RBPL, I hope the sequel is going well.

[The Marquis de Leech]

On 19/01/2017 at 7:34 AM, Iskaral Pust said:

I could also imagine Trump supporters raging against the author's implicit prejudice.

I know it's bad form to respond to a review, but I should mention that the book was (mostly) written in 2011-2012, long before the rise of Trump. It's an issue of (accidental) applicability, rather than allegory.

[Chaircat Meow]

What are people thinking about when they say the book has implicit/accidental prejudices Trump supporters would rage against? 

[Iskaral Pust]

9 hours ago, Chaircat Meow said:

What are people thinking about when they say the book has implicit/accidental prejudices Trump supporters would rage against? 

A Trump supporter (Brexiters too) would take offense at the depiction of menial and low level workers as mindless, soulless zombie automatons directed by the meritocratic elite who are good at passing exams.  It feeds very directly into the chief cultural complaint today that the educated elite overlook, dismiss and actively scorn the blue collar masses.

I think the author uses the world-building to play with the typical notions of societal types, e.g. the conservative culture with rigid hierarchy is actually meritocratic and gender-balanced, while the society with heavy religious fundamental presence and misogyny is a younger culture and more technologically progressive.

We briefly hear from "an Ordinary" (I bet that phrasing would also draw some ire) and their resentment of the elite, but it's a very minor point and not sympathetically placed in the narrative.  I suspect the longer arc of the series will revisit this tension and the viability of the society. 

[The Marquis de Leech]

14 hours ago, Chaircat Meow said:

What are people thinking about when they say the book has implicit/accidental prejudices Trump supporters would rage against? 

I was thinking:

 

Sufael's father is an unemployed older guy who wants revenge against the elites who screwed him, and doesn't care if the world burns as a result. He is practically the stereotypical Trump voter.

[The Marquis de Leech]

4 hours ago, Iskaral Pust said:

A Trump supporter (Brexiters too) would take offense at the depiction of menial and low level workers as mindless, soulless zombie automatons directed by the meritocratic elite who are good at passing exams.  It feeds very directly into the chief cultural complaint today that the educated elite overlook, dismiss and actively scorn the blue collar masses.

That bit actually was intentional, though it was meant as a criticism of the elite, not the masses. For all that Teltö whinges, he is actually very well off, socially if not economically. There is also the scene at the end where Tuvena confronts him about his privileged hypocrisy - essentially, meaningful political change cannot come about while an economic system built on Necromancy exists. Teltö's failure is that he cannot countenance such a world, falling back on the idea that Necromancy is the natural order of things.

[Iskaral Pust]

12 hours ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

That bit actually was intentional, though it was meant as a criticism of the elite, not the masses. For all that Teltö whinges, he is actually very well off, socially if not economically. There is also the scene at the end where Tuvena confronts him about his privileged hypocrisy - essentially, meaningful political change cannot come about while an economic system built on Necromancy exists. Teltö's failure is that he cannot countenance such a world, falling back on the idea that Necromancy is the natural order of things.

 

 

I agree.  Although we experience the narrative through Telto's POV, I thought the reader was meant to see beyond the limitations of his self-interest and worldview.  I assume this is the direction of the series.  I could imagine some readers taking offense within the first few chapters and not waiting for that realization.

Regarding you response to Chaircat, I assumed that would have met deep approval and several yee-haws from those readers. 

[Iskaral Pust]

On 1/22/2017 at 3:28 AM, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

I know it's bad form to respond to a review,

I meant to respond to this point.  In this thread, in this forum, my list of nitpicks were for discussion with you and other readers.  I'd welcome your response and would not see it as bad form at all*.  None of them are flaws, just choices.  My review in the reading thread and on Amazon excluded those.

*Not like the author who posted on Goodreads to instruct readers how they should post reviews, including that only ratings of 4-5 were acceptable.  She was a piece of work.

[The Marquis de Leech]

Taking your nitpicks in order then:

1. I'd argue that in this case the things that made slave economies uneconomic (the cost of food, shelter, and security for slaves vs having your low wage workers buy the things themselves) don't apply. You don't need to feed a zombie: it's basically a flesh robot (I've subsequently noticed, incidentally, that the book is incredibly Marxist in points). Where the Empire actually falls over is the next step after industrialisation - any technological change that doesn't involve large numbers of menial labourers would undermine the power of the Necromantic class (the North doesn't have this problem; in fact, the land-owning aristocrats *are* the factory owners, so the Northern ruling class feels strangely genre-savvy).

2. This is a matter of personal preference, I think. While I can understand people disliking fantasy names that look like they've involved an accident with a typewriter, I'm not a big fan of Martin-style Ned/Jon/Robert names either. So I tried for something outside the mainstream that at least feels like it comes from a consistent culture (so the suffix -nako denotes one of the traditionally-defined Imperial cities - Kuolinako, Tuonako, Mustanako, and Qivunako. Plus the old name for Skeevereet, Ilmanako). Given the mention of the rivers Nhagivat and Venivat, I'd guess that -vat is a river suffix, so the Venomavat family got their name from a river. And as I've said before, the umlauts are subject to a vowel harmony system, so they are at least consistent and not random flourishes. 

3. This was my attempt at representing a bisexual character. Since Show Don't Tell applies, this means showing attraction to both sexes, without making it look like one-off experimentation or feeding the stereotype that bisexuals will sleep with anyone. Teltö seems to prefer men for sex and women for relationships - he has far more hang-ups about the latter than the former. He's also much less promiscuous than Dyrstin (who, curiously, is subjected to sex-related mockery in a way that no other character is). Nor is he really James Bondish - it's mutual interest on the train, not seduction.

4. The (imperfect) analogy I had in mind wasn't Martin, but rather Northern Ireland, which does get referred to as the North. I acknowledge that the name is pretty unoriginal, but in my defence, it does also get referred to as the (Skeevereet) Principality - defined by its government system, just as the term North defines itself in terms of its neighbour.

5. I'll concede the point about plotting (which I personally find much tougher than character, worldbuilding, or the technical aspects of prose). Ultimately, I think the issue is structural - the book is entirely narrated from a single POV on the move, who can really only provide an outsider's perspective on the movers and shakers, and who is much more concerned with his own personal needs and wants. While the protagonist has some influence on proceedings (he isn't a true Arthur Dent), he is also very much at the mercy of social forces beyond his control (though I think he acquires more agency in the second half of the book, as the social constraints start to fall apart).  

The sequel, incidentally, will be from the point of view of Rhea (the elder sister).

[Rorshach]

6 hours ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

The sequel, incidentally, will be from the point of view of Rhea (the elder sister).

That could be interesting. 

It was really hard - in this book - to see what she offered, or why she was even in it (in person, as apart from being mentioned). Drawing from memory, Teltö showed up at her engagement party (?), she was cross with him - and that was it. Felt like a loose thread.

[The Marquis de Leech]

Rhea is the shadow in which Teltö has lived his entire life (I think it's why he's never shown great ambition or invested himself in academic work - he knows he'll pale beside her, so is content to do the minimum necessary). We know from the engagement party that she's not only more intelligent than Teltö, but also much more naive.

Insofar as this applies to the Viiminian Empire, Rhea (thus far) is a good deal more disturbing than her brother - he's protected from excesses by his shell of cynicism, whereas she is actually a true believer, with the intelligence to do some fairly disturbing things.

[Iskaral Pust]

Great response RBPL, thanks for sharing your thought process. 

Rhea as the next POV is an interesting direction.  I was wondering initially if her character existed to unintentionally block Telto's development and he would later be revealed to be some uber-necromancer who had surpressed his ability.  I was a bit relieved when Telto didn't suddenly become the Dragon Reborn.  

[The Marquis de Leech]

A short Q&A on the world of Wise Phuul:

https://ourepicworlds.com/2017/07/07/daniel-strides-viiminian-empire/