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The Trouble With Peace by Joe Abercrombie [SPOILER THREAD]


Corvinus85

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Is the title a play on the 1841 classic work, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/the-19th-century-book-that-helps-us-understand-the-allure--and-perils--of-social-media/2019/04/03/1879def6-5576-11e9-9136-f8e636f1f6df_story.html

How classic this work is, well, here we go with an extreme right take:  

The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity (2019) by Douglas Murray

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/sep/19/the-madness-of-crowds-review-gender-race-identity-douglas-murray

The usual take has been that crowds provide unwisdom, so to speak . . . .

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17 hours ago, mormont said:

The owl on an axe basically confirms that the Owl is Broad. He has an axe and lightning tattoo, and uses an axe in several scenes.

I mean, if Broad didn't play into the final story in a significant way, it'd be a waste of character, wouldn't it?  I see why we have his perspective, but he, thus far, isn't really a character I've cared too much about. He's felt like a bespectacled shade of Logen Ninefingers at times...

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18 hours ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

I mean, if Broad didn't play into the final story in a significant way, it'd be a waste of character, wouldn't it?  I see why we have his perspective, but he, thus far, isn't really a character I've cared too much about. He's felt like a bespectacled shade of Logen Ninefingers at times...

Joe does seem to hit this character pretty hard in his books.

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16 hours ago, Ninefingers said:

Joe does seem to hit this character pretty hard in his books.

To be honest using these character more than once isn’t bad.

It just needs to provide some interesting dynamics or add enjoyable conflict to the story.

Also I find what made Logen, shivers, Monza, temple(he wasn’t a fighter but he was a mercenary) and Craw most interesting was that there was a question on how genuine their desire to actually leave their violent lifestyle was.

There was never a question for Broad.

He’s a fundamentally uninteresting character.

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Anyone else get the impression Bayaz may be depressed?

Compared to how he acted earlier in the series he just seems tired, fatigued, and going through the motions.

There was a passion to him when he was on page when he was engaging with someone.

Idk. To me it looks like he’s in a bit of a slump. 

He’s accomplished his goal of defeating the prophet but that does leave a vacuum on what exactly he’s supposed to be striving for. The union itself was merely a tool he crafted to use against an enemy who looks to be gone. 

 

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On 5/27/2021 at 7:57 PM, Varysblackfyre321 said:

Anyone else get the impression Bayaz may be depressed?

Compared to how he acted earlier in the series he just seems tired, fatigued, and going through the motions.

There was a passion to him when he was on page when he was engaging with someone.

Idk. To me it looks like he’s in a bit of a slump. 

He’s accomplished his goal of defeating the prophet but that does leave a vacuum on what exactly he’s supposed to be striving for. The union itself was merely a tool he crafted to use against an enemy who looks to be gone. 

 

Yeah without his fight with Khalul what is the piont? This is why I don't think he's behind the revolution I think evetns will pass him by.

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7 hours ago, Darzin said:

Yeah without his fight with Khalul what is the piont? This is why I don't think he's behind the revolution I think evetns will pass him by.

Yeah whether the union devolves within a year or a thousand it probably won’t matter to him at this point because well there’s no longer a purpose to it.

Keep it on for respect and legacy? His first appearance comes with him having living somewhere relatively isolated in the north with his very existence being co-signed as myth by most people.he’s not even offended when saline fails to appreciate his greatness.  He didn’t submerge himself in a particularly opulent lifestyle despite his vast wealth. 
He doesn’t even have Glockta’s motivation to preserve power to protect a loved one.

Hes the most powerful man in the world but there’s nothing he seems to want to  do with it.

Oh I just remembered this interaction between Bayaz and logen.

“What have I done?” Bayaz snorted with disbelieving laughter. “I combined three pure disciplines of magic, and I forged a new one! It seems you do not understand the achievement, Master Ninefingers, but I forgive you. I realise that book-learning has never been your strongest suit. Such a thing has not been contemplated since before the Old Time, when Euz split his gifts among his sons.” Bayaz sighed. “None will appreciate my greatest achievement, it seems. None except Khalul, perhaps, and it is unlikely he will ever proffer his congratulations.”

I think Kahul was the only person Bayaz could truly call a peer. 

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But we don't really know that the Prophet is indeed defeated.  All our information on that is secondhand and from unreliable sources.  We can be sure there's significant turmoil in the Gurkish empire, but it remains to be seen whether Khalul is regrouping somewhere or truly dead and gone. 

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3 hours ago, Maithanet said:

But we don't really know that the Prophet is indeed defeated.  All our information on that is secondhand and from unreliable sources.  We can be sure there's significant turmoil in the Gurkish empire, but it remains to be seen whether Khalul is regrouping somewhere or truly dead and gone. 

That possibility is fair to bring up. I don’t think it’s likely though or at the very least we’ll know by the need of the next book.

I think at least Bayaz does not think the prophet is still a threat and that he has accomplished his lifetime goal, with no one including Bayaz hyping up the conflict between the two in the present tense

 

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12 hours ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

 or at the very least we’ll know by the need of the next book.

 

 

This is a good point to bring up. How many plot threads do we think Joe will tie up by the end of the next book, and do we think we can expect any further novels based in the same world? 

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On 6/9/2021 at 6:24 PM, Relic said:

This is a good point to bring up. How many plot threads do we think Joe will tie up by the end of the next book, and do we think we can expect any further novels based in the same world? 

His next novel isn't set in the First Law universe, but I bet sooner or later he'll come back after taking a break. Similar to what he did with his young adult series.

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23 hours ago, Darzin said:

His nest novel isn't set in the First Law universe, but I bet sooner or later he'll come back after taking a break. Similar to what he did with his young adult series.

What do you mean? Is he going back to the Shattered Sea world? 

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21 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

What do you mean? Is he going back to the Shattered Sea world? 

I meant that he wrote three books in the Shattered Sea world, then returned to the world of the First Law. His new book is in an entirely new world with elves and demons and popes, but I bet eventually he'll write another First Law book. 

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