Book of the Ancestor trilogy by Mark Lawrence {spoiler thread}

[Darth Richard II]

Finished it. Loved it, though I can see where some of the criticism cones from. The people crying about SJWs and such...I dunno maybe they should stick to John Ringo. For a book about battle nuns there was zero "now remember girls were better than those icky men", plus no crazy lezzing out stuff other authors might have thrown in.

Edit: I realized after I posted this last night that might sound offensive to LGBT people, and I did not intend it to. I just meant certain authors who I won't name would have used an all girls training school to throw in unnecessry porny bits.

[Liver and Onions]

On 4/15/2017 at 2:41 AM, Darth Richard II said:

Finished it. Loved it, though I can see where some of the criticism cones from. The people crying about SJWs and such...I dunno maybe they should stick to John Ringo. For a book about battle nuns there was zero "now remember girls were better than those icky men", plus no crazy lezzing out stuff other authors might have thrown in.

Edit: I realized after I posted this last night that might sound offensive to LGBT people, and I did not intend it to. I just meant certain authors who I won't name would have used an all girls training school to throw in unnecessry porny bits.

I just finished it myself. Really enjoyable, I like the twist on a character like Nona- she's not just some superpowered little girl assassin trope. 

I agree with you about the risk of other authors possibly adding it "porny bits." It's all about the girls as characters. And it's certainly not misandrist; it's just that the majority of the cast are women and girls (and what a fun variety they are, too!). There are some male characters I hope to see more of, too.

So I maaaay have to check out more of Mark Lawrence's work now.

[Blank]

This reader is disgruntled by all the women. Ultra grimdark and needs more men in the convent!

"A joyless book lacking the interesting characters of The Broken Empire and the joyful wit and comedy of The Red Queens War. Lawrence took every grimdark cliché, amped up the blood to 11"

"Second, what's the point of the nuns? Why are they all female, is there a vow of chastity. It's never clear in the book why they are nuns? Why just girls? If they are paramilitary wouldn't it make sense to train make hunskas along with female ones? The sex restrictions aren't backed up by the religion."

[Darth Richard II]

Is this a joke?

[Blank]

9 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Is this a joke?

In cases of doubt all you ever have to do is take six or so words of any line and paste it into google in quotes. You will immediately find the source.

[Darth Richard II]

Oh, I thought that was YOUR actual review. Today is DRII fails at internetting day.

[Darth Richard II]

It is. :/

[Contrarius+]

I'm a little over halfway through this right now.... and I'm not all that impressed. It's not awful, but it's awfully tropey. And I'm occasionally having to roll my eyes. I still like Lawrence's writing, and he's thrown in a bit of cute misdirection here and there, but so far I'm thinking it's a step down from the first two trilogies.

[redeagl]

20 hours ago, Contrarius+ said:

I'm a little over halfway through this right now.... and I'm not all that impressed. It's not awful, but it's awfully tropey. And I'm occasionally having to roll my eyes. I still like Lawrence's writing, and he's thrown in a bit of cute misdirection here and there, but so far I'm thinking it's a step down from the first two trilogies.

Yeah, The worn out cliches is my main beef with the book.

[Contrarius+]

I finished it -- and although I'll definitely be reading the sequel, I think I'm just over the whole magical-school thing. Just too tropey. And I did miss the humor of both the preceding trilogies, though I can understand why Mark would have wanted to change things up a bit -- but speaking of changing things up, I'd love to see him build a fantasy world that ISN'T a devolved high-tech society. On the good side, I thought some of the worldbuilding and magic ideas were great, and he threw some good misdirection/twists in there several times.

[Darth Richard II]

I love devolved high tech societies and I'm not sick of magic school training yet so that probably helped.

[Darth Richard II]

Progress in art? Wut?

[unJon]

I don't begrudge Mark trying to make a buck. I hope more authors I enjoy make enough so they can write more books. 

[Darth Richard II]

I really, really don't get the YA accusation, but then I still have no idea what the hell makes something YA and what doesn't.

[Darth Richard II]

See I don't see most of those things as YA, but again, YA really, really confuses me these days. I can think of lots of books with most of that stuff sans maybe the cursing that are considered super adult and lots of YA books with overt sexuality and, I'm not trying to start a fight here, I just really don't get it.

[C.T. Phipps]

I view YA fiction as primarily starring teenagers 13-18 for a similar ranged age group.

Just like grimdark I see less as a genre and more like shorthand for "Dark, Gritty adults-only fantasy and sci fi."

Other people have strange ideas about it as "The Rules of Supervillainy" and its sequels by me have been actually bestsellers in the Teen Category despite the fact they're written about a 30 year old jobless loser getting superpowers and the strains that puts on his marriage.

[Darth Richard II]

Yeah, there's some weird stuff considered YA.

Also I think Abercombie specifically wrote Shattered Sea as YA, so, I get that. But other stuff that gets the YA label baffles me. Like, in the YA thread someone mentioned The Invisible Library books as YA, which makes no sense to me at all. I think there is a tendency with how popular GrimDark(tm) is now that anything not grimdark is automatically seen as some how not as adult.

[Darth Richard II]

Haha, yeah well, I was reading Stephen King by that age, so...

[Darth Richard II]

Hah well my aunt gave me Lord Foul's Bane when I was, lemme think...

12?

I uh, did not like it at the time.

[C.T. Phipps]

Here's an interesting article on gender, genre, and grimdark authorship which I think a few fans on this board may like. Especially one Arya Stark poster.

http://gingernutsofhorror.com/wihm/on-gender-genre-and-authorship