mashiara Posted March 17, 2009 Share Posted March 17, 2009 I already had [i]The Fade[/i] on my wish list and I'm pleased I have another two books to add to it. Nice to see another author on this board. Welcome! :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ljkeane Posted March 17, 2009 Share Posted March 17, 2009 Fair enough, it's your book so I suppose you get to choose the ending! Why did you find it difficult to write? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Wooding Posted March 17, 2009 Share Posted March 17, 2009 Hi Mashiara. :cheers: Nice to be here! [quote name='ljkeane' post='1722691' date='Mar 17 2009, 20.20']Fair enough, it's your book so I suppose you get to choose the ending! Why did you find it difficult to write?[/quote] LOL. It is one of the privileges of the trade :lol: It was difficult to write for a lot of reasons. One was the change in the writing style from the long, loopy sentences in [i]The Braided Path[/i] to the short, rappy sentences that Orna thinks in: for some reason it's harder to write short than long [b]*glares at Hemingway*[/b]. That took me quite a while to get right. And the timing of the flashbacks so they revealed various aspects of Orna's past and character in time for them to impact on the main storyline was something of a headache. But the main reason was that the world was so unusual to the reader and it was hell to explain without infodumping all over the place. Not that I'm saying it's a completely unprecedented backdrop or anything ([i]Chthon[/i], anyone?), but when you write a book involving wizards and dragons and kings in castles then you don't need to explain every little detail of the world: the basic template is already there in people's heads. With [i]The Fade[/i] I got halfway through the book before I binned it and started again because the background was overwhelming the story. I really didn't want to be taking the reader aside and telling them about how the underground world worked; the story was being told through Orna's eyes, and it was all normal and unremarkable to her. So the only way I could make it work was by throwing Orna into a very enclosed space (prison), and gradually expanding the world through flashback until the reader was ready to be introduced to the big picture. Still, it's all in the game, and it's great when it all finally works. Figuring stuff like that out is what makes writing fun! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Werthead Posted March 25, 2009 Author Share Posted March 25, 2009 With the [i]Ketty Jay[/i] soon to take off from a bookstore near you (hey, I should be in PR), you can follow [url="http://www.kettyjay.blogspot.com/"]this logbook of the crew's adventures[/url]. From the look of it, the entries begin some time prior to the events in the book. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Max the Mostly Mediocre Posted March 26, 2009 Share Posted March 26, 2009 [quote]Retribution Falls is the first novel in The Tales of the Ketty Jay, which promises to be a series of semi-stand-alone novels set in the same world and focusing on the crew of the airship Ketty Jay and its crew of miscreants and scoundrels. If I had to provide a quick soundbite for this it would be Firefly meets Crimson Skies, with a dash of Locke Lamora sprinkled on top.[/quote] Firefly meets Crimson Skies? Sold. Sold a thousand times over. Well. Provided I like the Fade, which will be in my next book order. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MinDonner Posted March 26, 2009 Share Posted March 26, 2009 [url="http://sandstormreviews.blogspot.com/2009/03/retribution-falls-chris-wooding.html"]I was rather less keen than Wert was.[/url] Sorry Chris, you seem like a nice guy, but I didn't like your book very much. edit: dodgy tags Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sheep the Evicted Posted March 26, 2009 Share Posted March 26, 2009 [quote name='MinDonner' post='1734100' date='Mar 26 2009, 15.33'][url="http://sandstormreviews.blogspot.com/2009/03/retribution-falls-chris-wooding.html"]I was rather less keen than Wert was.[/url] Sorry Chris, you seem like a nice guy, but I didn't like your book very much.[/quote] Its very refreshing to see such a frank review. :wideeyed: For my part the whole "replaced with British Blokiness" pretty much sold me to the book. Anyhow i recently finished The Braided Path, and while i wasn't as keen on it as Werthead was i still enjoyed it quite a bit. Wert compared it to the recent superstars of the genre like Abercrombie/Lynch. etc. but when i started the book i would have compared it to WoT (though not as intricately built) and, much more aptly, the Coldfire trilogy by C.S Friedman. The prose was a little clunky and and the premise didn't exactly blow me away - to be honest if it wasn't for Wertheads review i might have dropped the book as just another average fantasy yarn. Then around the 550 page mark the story really started to step up a gear - a familiar concept to any Malazan fan i'm sure. The pace picked up, plots and betrayals where enacted (genuinely intelligent and worthwhile plots i might add) and the world was changed in a suitably epic fashion. I also liked the way how Wooding was able to intelligently blend in some hard Sci-fi to shake up a few fantasy stereotypes. So overall decent beginning, great middle, good end. 7.5/10 You know if i had read this book a few years ago i would have mindlessly read it and enjoyed it. But after the Bakker and Women thread i noticed i have become uncomfortably sensitive to sexual politics. Or maybe its the fact that complex sexual politics play such an uncommonly large part in this book/series. Also seeing as your here i just wanted to say i thought Stromthief was a great YA book with a great cover. :thumbsup: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Wooding Posted March 26, 2009 Share Posted March 26, 2009 [quote]Sorry Chris, you seem like a nice guy, but I didn't like your book very much.[/quote] Wow, you really didn't, did you? :P Well, cheers for reviewing it anyway. Rather be hated than ignored, etc etc [quote]For my part the whole "replaced with British Blokiness" pretty much sold me to the book.[/quote] As Wert pointed out up the thread, I'm blogging a [url="http://www.kettyjay.blogspot.com"]logbook of the Ketty Jay's captain[/url] which serves as an informal kind of prequel to [i]Retribution Falls[/i]. It'll give you a flavour of the book, and you can see what you think. Glad you liked Storm Thief :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luzifer's right hand Posted March 27, 2009 Share Posted March 27, 2009 I started reading The Fade yesterday and it's a fun read so far. I moved it to the top of my to read list because it's ....short. Lately I don't have the urge to read big books. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luzifer's right hand Posted March 28, 2009 Share Posted March 28, 2009 I finished The Fade yesterday. The setting was very intriguing and I liked the main character well enough. It was a good read with an ending after my liking. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Wooding Posted April 1, 2009 Share Posted April 1, 2009 Glad you liked it! :thumbsup: I also have a problem with big books /series nowadays. When I was a kid I could blaze through honking great fantasy/SF novels without a care in the world, but now I don't like to spend days reading stuff that's only okay when I could be spending it doing something else. They have to be uber awesome to pull me through. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luzifer's right hand Posted April 1, 2009 Share Posted April 1, 2009 [quote name='Chris Wooding' post='1740989' date='Apr 1 2009, 12.07']Glad you liked it! :thumbsup: I also have a problem with big books /series nowadays. When I was a kid I could blaze through honking great fantasy/SF novels without a care in the world, but now I don't like to spend days reading stuff that's only okay when I could be spending it doing something else. They have to be uber awesome to pull me through.[/quote] I ordered The Braided Path Omnibus. For your sake I hope it's not too long. :P ;)+ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Wooding Posted April 1, 2009 Share Posted April 1, 2009 Um... think of it as lots of little tiny books, each the length of a chapter! :leaving: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dunhallym Posted April 1, 2009 Share Posted April 1, 2009 [quote name='Chris Wooding' post='1715172' date='Mar 10 2009, 20.13']That's depressing to hear. I heard a similar thing about the German translation of [i]The Haunting Of Alaizabel Cray[/i], one of my YA books. The problem with writing in wordy, descriptive prose and long sentences is that it gets more and more mauled in transition unless you have an absolutely brilliant translator working on it. The other problem is that the author never knows about it until someone tells them... Well, I hope you do decide to give it a try in English. It strikes me that reading foreign translations that aren't classics or bestsellers (when the publishers shell out for top-end translators) is a bit of a crapshoot. God knows I've read some terrible translations into English. Difficult to appreciate the source material when that happens. It's kind of like trying to appreciate a band when they're being played on an old audio tape through a crappy 80s ghettoblaster while you're wearing a bucket on your head.[/quote] Sorry for depressing you. You're right in saying your style is probably hard to translate : I had a look at the beginning of the exerpt on your webpage and compared it with the French version, and one of the main problems is that the translation is too literal, which, given the different structures in French and English, results in something very heavy. And I don't speak of translation mistakes, though those can be found also in classics: my dad has already pointed to me some pretty obvious ones in Lovecraft short stories. Fantasy being often considered a "lower" genre probably suffers a lot from bad translations. Anyway, I got the omnibus English version for my birthday, so I can make an opinion based on the original work. Don't know how long it will take (my reading list is huge and I don't have much time to read at the moment) ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luzifer's right hand Posted April 1, 2009 Share Posted April 1, 2009 [quote name='Chris Wooding' post='1741126' date='Apr 1 2009, 15.48']Um... think of it as lots of little tiny books, each the length of a chapter! :leaving:[/quote] Nice. :lol: :spank: Edit: It arrived today and it's indeed lots of ...tiny books. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
john Posted April 1, 2009 Share Posted April 1, 2009 I'm reading the Braided Path just now (Werthead's to thank for that, I have to admit I never heard of Chris Wooding until he recced The Fade). My forearms are now bulging from hefting it up and down. Thoroughly enjoying it. This is how the Wheel of Time should have been written, there's even a character named Lan who appears then immediately dies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Wooding Posted April 3, 2009 Share Posted April 3, 2009 Aw, thank you! Increased muscle mass is indeed an under-reported benefit of fantasy books. :thumbsup: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
john Posted April 3, 2009 Share Posted April 3, 2009 And Asara is one of the best fucked up badass antiheros that I've had the pleasure of reading. I got to a certain point in Skein of Lament and had to throw the book across the room in a fit of GRRM-esque disbelief (it punched a hole in my plaster). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Wooding Posted April 5, 2009 Share Posted April 5, 2009 Lol. I'm pretty sure I know which bit. Sorry about your wall :| Asara was SO much fun to write. The living embodiment of unabashed selfishness. *hugs Asara* *Asara stabs Chris in the throat* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Myshkin Posted April 9, 2009 Share Posted April 9, 2009 Well, since Wert hasn't steered me wrong yet, I ordered all three volumes of [b]The Braided Path[/b]. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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