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Bakker XLVIII - Selected to LEAD not to READ


lokisnow

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15 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

Hah! I recently said the false sun was a big nothing burger since only a few dozen people in his entire readership had read it / knew it existed.

Three of my high school friends and I all discovered Bakker independently around the same time and they belong to what I assume is the majority of the book buying Bakker reading population: they pay no attention to anything Bakker-related online. None of them have read TFS or FR nor heard of them on occasions I've referenced the shorts.

EDIT: Or KOMH either.

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27 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

Hah! I recently said the false sun was a big nothing burger since only a few dozen people in his entire readership had read it / knew it existed, so therefore it couldn't actually transmit any crucial information. Just an archaic red herring

That it is included in this book suggests otherwise.

Is it an appendix ala the story of liet kynes or is it a prologue ala pate?

They're part of the appendices. Appendix I is the encyclopedia, Appendix II is The False Sun, Appendix II is Four Revelations and Appendix III is the map collection.

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17 hours ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

Does anyone else find it strange that Cnaiur is still so, uh, spry after all these years? I mean, the dude is in his late 60s now, right? I thought that it was a skinspy or something until we got his POV near the very end of TGO. IIRC Achamian notes that it's unusual, but he didn't seem overly troubled by Cnaiur's virility so much as the fact that he was still alive and working with the Consult.

Maybe he ate salted Moe (or is still eating him slowly over time) and that's what eating salted sorcerer does for you?

I feel like I'm playing nethack with this series, sometimes!

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I really think long awaited revelations like if, how and when the No-God manifests are much more rewarding to find out about once you're reading the book. Just my two cents. We've been leading up to this ever since "Darkness" was released in 2004, at this point I need zero motivation to be ridiculously excited about the book. 

On a sidenote, I am already not expecting that much closure. I always figured a significant amount of stuff we speculated about would be answered and some not, and indeed both Wert and Bakkerfans are indicating/warning people to lower their expectations on that front.

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1 minute ago, Sarcellus said:

Preach.

Right - but others out there probably do

So you want (as an influencer, reviewer, etc) to be able to point these people who might not know about the series or dropped it to actually be interested. You want them to read whatever and go 'wow, that looks neat'. Yes, the people who have stuck through it need nothing - this isn't for you. This is for the folks who, say, dropped the series because the grim sadness was too much to deal with whatever payoff there was, and need to be shown a glimpse of the cool payoff that might make them deal with the grim. Or they dropped the series because there wasn't enough Inchoroi, so now they can see how cool the alien race is. Or they forgot about it or didn't know, and know something about how awesome Cnaiur was - and want to read about him again. 

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451 pages of actual story, as per Wert.

Which is about 45 pages shy of Great Ordeal but a bit bigger than TJE and TTT.

If the two had been published together as originally intended it would have been 950 pages, so you can now see why it was split.

That in itself would have been too much, and then the glossary would never have made it like Scott said, and he considered it's inclusion essential.

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7 minutes ago, End of Disc One said:

Roughly how long is the actual story?  Is it the shortest book in the series due to its fat ass?

Edit: Cali answered it already. But the book didn't need to be split -- these are published at 1.5 spacing; making it single-spacing (like a GRRM book) would have brought it to 700 or so pages hardback. 

I guess this way we have consistently spaced books and a fat appendix. Which could have been released online. Of course, some of the fat could have been trimmed from TJE, WLW and TGO and it could have easily been a trilogy in that way, too.

I'll be quite disappointed if some of the major underlying questions aren't addressed. We're now entering 7 books into the series and the bulk of TAE has been mostly teasing out concepts and riding on the WWKD (What would Kellhus do). 

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51 minutes ago, Callan S. said:

Werthead, if you've read it, the question is are you in therapy, as readers were promised they'd be? :)

Not really. If you've stuck with the story thus far, I doubt things are going to seem that much more traumatic.

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I'll be quite disappointed if some of the major underlying questions aren't addressed.

 

The "major underlying questions" seem to be very different for different readers (see the Lost thread for a good example of what some people deem to be vital questions and it was a betrayal they weren't answered, and other people didn't give two flying craps about them).

Not spoilers from the book (that's a big no-no) but spoilers regarding which questions are answered:

I will say several fundamental questions (such as "WTF is the Inverse Fire?", "What the shit is up with Kellhus, like in general?" and "Are the Inchoroi's origins explained?") are given pretty solid answers (as in, there is still some room for interpretation but Bakker gives us pretty much a straight answer). If you want a detailed D&D 

Manual of the Planes-style explanation for how Earwa's metaphysics work, however, I fear you will be disappointed.

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Yeah, honestly - I can think of very little that would excite people who read the series in the past but aren't now to give them, like, the origin of the Inchoroi. That probably wouldn't kill anyone's overall enjoyment, but I bet it would be super interesting for those who fell by the wayside.

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22 hours ago, Werthead said:

The 150 page glossary is pretty rad so far and comes at the end of the book, so...yes?

So, how does it expand on TUC's story and does it contain things that have not been covered so far in the released books, or in TUC's story segment?

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Is the Golgotterath map your eyes only, or will you or Scott publish it at some point...?

 

I think Scott is holding fire on everything that could remotely be considered a spoiler. I'm not sure the map counts. I'll ask.

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So, how does it expand on TUC's story and does it contain things that have not been covered so far in the released books, or in TUC's story segment?

There's a lot more detail to things. In particular, the Nonmen get a much more detailed original story/creation myth. Much more detail to the Nonmen entries in general. The unifying wars between PoN and AE are given a lot more detail. Other articles are repeated wholesale from the TTT encyclopedia, some mostly repeated but with a bit more info added. Some new entries altogether.

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2 minutes ago, Werthead said:

 

I think Scott is holding fire on everything that could remotely be considered a spoiler. I'm not sure the map counts. I'll ask.

There's a lot more detail to things. In particular, the Nonmen get a much more detailed original story/creation myth. Much more detail to the Nonmen entries in general. The unifying wars between PoN and AE are given a lot more detail. Other articles are repeated wholesale from the TTT encyclopedia, some mostly repeated but with a bit more info added. Some new entries altogether.

Thanks, I appreciate that.

The unifying wars seem an excellent point to elaborate on, I'm *so* looking forward to TUC...

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