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Grand Prize Winner posted:I don't know if you're far enough in yet, but pretty soon you'll start to figure out that he's also loving pathetic in his own way. I still can't decide if I hate or pity the guy. I have a hard time hating him just because of how much he hates himself.
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Jul 31, 2011 02:55
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anathenema posted:I saw Bayaz as the perfect summation of Abercrombie's theme: the self always wins out over the collective. Hence why Logen goes back to being the Bloody Nine, Shivers can't be a good man, Monza gets her revenge, Jezal becomes a lazy poo poo and Bayaz ruins everyone's lives because he really hates a guy. I always thought the defining character arc of his work was that people change, but more often than not they change back.
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Aug 1, 2011 01:42
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Daveski posted:Best Served Cold is next, both in terms of publication order and chronology. And from here out his books are amazing. I didn't realy care for the trilogy but the stand alone books are so good.
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Aug 10, 2011 04:55
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Bummey posted:The books were better. v Say what you want, but The Prestige the movie was 10 times more entertaining than the Prestige the book According to my subjective enjoyment, and not because it had that plush blonde chick in it..
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Aug 14, 2011 21:35
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v Movies just can't give you the same experience as a good book.
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Clinton1011 posted:A co-worker just let me know that Joe mentioned in his blog that he sent a draft in to his editors. I checked his blog and he provides a bit of information on the upcoming book. Eh, it's only the rough draft of a single section of what will probably be 4 sections long. Red Country is so much better than A Red Country, so I hope he goes with that.
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Aug 16, 2011 23:05
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Bummey posted:You mean you're pretty much 100% certain that he's not going to be back. His story ended perfectly! Bringing him back would not be good character development. He'd be in his late 70's anyway, given how much time has passes. More likely we find out he's had a daughter or a son and follow their story.
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Aug 21, 2011 01:53
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tofes posted:West is a good guy, even if he does have anger issues I don't really want any more from Logen's POV. I think we had enough of that, and Joe is a much better writer now than he was then. I'd prefer some Shenkt next, or Stranger Come Knocking. Eventually, we'll probably see Monza and Shiver's kid as a POV which could be really cool.
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Sep 5, 2011 22:22
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For some reason I got the feeling that Stranger-Come-Knocking was the son of Crummok-ee-moon guy whatever, but I have nothing to base this on. The name Pip sounds really familiar, but its not ringing any bells for me.
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Sep 6, 2011 04:35
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HeroOfTheRevolution posted:Why did they intentionally misspell argument Brits...
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Sep 13, 2011 08:21
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Bummey posted:Please, no more Cosca. He had a fantastic story in The First Law trilogy and was, by far, my favorite character of that series despite his relatively short role. I felt his character was ultimately harmed in Best Served Cold. I loved the poo poo out of Cosca, but I really don't want to see him again. Joe does a great job with character progression and he (usually) ends them in the best possible places. Im the opposite. I thought he had little depth in the First Law and loved him in Best Served Cold. Different strokes I guess. I also really liked the Day/Moreveer relationship in that book, especially the way it ended.
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Sep 20, 2011 01:12
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I would really like to see a magician or wizard type character. I was hoping he was going to turn Malicous Quai (or however you spell that) into someone really cool, but well, he turned out to be the dog's dinner.
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Sep 21, 2011 05:36
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dmccaff posted:I'm about 30% into The Blade Itself and I just can't get into it. I can't say it's boring, there's just nothing really making me care about the story or the characters so far. Is it worth sticking with? I'm not keen on the prose either but that's probably just nitpicking... I disliked the entire First Law trilogy. Parts of it were enjoyable, and they are really necessary in my opinion to enjoy Best Served Cold and The Heroes, which are both amazing. So you're doing yourself a favor by reading it all.
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Sep 27, 2011 04:02
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John Charity Spring posted:Yeah, not because you don't enjoy the trilogy - that's subjective taste and all - but that you'd read so much stuff you don't enjoy to get to the later books (which you'd probably assume you still wouldn't enjoy). I decided a few years ago to read every major fantasy book (that is not based on a video game, tabletop game, movie, or tv show) released within the last twenty years. I did this because I write fantasy novels as a hobby and wanted to get a clear picture of where the genre stands so that I can see what ways it can be improved. Joe Abercrombie was a relief after struggling through the last Robert Jordan written Wheel of Time books. Some writers who are successful have books out that I will never be able to stomach--Terry Goodkind was crossed off my list at book one. Steven Erikson is really hard for me to like, but I might come back to him. I felt that Joe Abercrombie started pushing the genre forward in new ways starting with Best Served Cold. The continuation of a traditional trilogy format with individual releases has never been accomplished with this kind of success. I will have to sit down when I have time and really come up with a bullet point list of the ways he is improving the genre. Maybe not "improving" but definitely finding and filling in a niche. MartingaleJack fucked around with this message at 02:28 on Sep 30, 2011 |
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Sep 30, 2011 00:25
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anathenema posted:I think the best possible thing he did was decide to not give a poo poo about "the genre" and just wrote what he wanted to write. That's understating it a bit. He only knew what he wanted to write because of the things he'd read before. He read those things and then used them to reach down inside himself write something he wanted to write, and in most cases with good fiction, it was not a regurgitation, but a re-ordering of all the things he enjoyed about fantasy (or any other kind of fiction). Writing for the market is a terrible idea 100% of the time. You have to be well-read to write well. I don't think any successful author would tell you different. It helps to read all kinds of writing, not just fantasy. I think if I read just Fantasy I would get the writer's equivalent of scurvy.
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Sep 30, 2011 11:33
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Above Our Own posted:Well, halfway through Heroes and I feel like each book I've read is worse than the previous, but still not bad on the whole. Abercrombie does a great job turning traditional tropes around to create a darkly interesting world but at this point I feel like he's just rehashing all of his own themes and subverted traditions. I feel basically the opposite. With each subsequent release, Joe has refined his technique and his character development. Yes, there's a substantial amount of similarities, especially between Shivers and Logan, but what he accomplishes with Shivers works far better logically than what he did with Logan. His story-telling methods have expanded significantly and show a willingness to take risks that weren't there before. See the Monza and Shivers sex scene The one that does not take place with Monza and Shivers and the long section where the viewpoint shifts every time a new character dies, ratcheting up the tension when you finally reach the characters you care about. I got a real sense of dread, which for me, is a rare feeling to get from a fantasy novel.
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Dec 15, 2011 17:52
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Umph posted:
You are missing the point. Almost every character goes through an arc where they almost become a better person, even Jezal in the second book, but they always return to being who they were at the beginning or worse (Shivers, Monza, and Logan). Glokta is the only character who ends up a better person, because he halfway accepts himself and learns to love someone else. Its a really pessimistic outlook at humanity, but it works for me, and it counters the typical fantasy arc where everyone ends up being these perfect and fulfilled human beings by the end of their arcs. MartingaleJack fucked around with this message at 10:47 on Jan 19, 2012 |
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Jan 19, 2012 10:45
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isochronous posted:I've heard good things about Matthew Stover's Heroes Die. The first book is really good, like a fantasy version of the Running Man. The protagonist is an Ayn Rand worshipping Mary Sue, but that didn't stop me from loving it. The second book sucks so hard. If you could remove all the philosophizing, it might be pretty good, but you'd be left with like 5 pages of Cain kneeing people in the teeth.
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Feb 25, 2012 09:11
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Gimmedaroot posted:Would it be terrible of me to be introduced to this world by reading "Heroes" first? I got it as a recommendation from GRRM's site, and the premise sounds interesting. Would I miss out on more than just a few inside jokes? Read the Heroes first if you want. I am one of those people who think Best Served Cold and the Heroes are really good, but can't easily recommend the original trilogy. You won't miss out on too much other than the background of Shivers, who is a minor character in the trilogy, and if you really like the Heroes you can work backwards. You'll miss some little nudges and nods, but its not integral.
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Jul 2, 2012 17:08
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Red Mundus posted:I've been hearing a lot of great things about this author/series and so far everything I've seen looks great. The two are nothing alike in tone or structure, save that they are in the same genre and have occasional descriptions of the old ultra violence. Abercrombie's work is more comic-booky. There is rape in Abercrombie's books The melty-faced blacksmith's daughter, gets raped or nearly does, doesn't she? And what happens to Terez is arguably worse than your run of the mill back alley rape
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Jul 12, 2012 18:49
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Here's my Red Country review. Spoiler free, I believe, but I'll spoiler it anyway just in case. In Red Country, Joe makes use of all the lessons he learned when writing the Heroes. But what made the Heroes such a great book has the opposite effect here. In the Heroes, Joe used far more numerous point of view characters than is typical of his previous books to paint a picture of a battle from every angle. The clarity of movement is crystal clear. No side truly good or evil, and there are triumphs and tragedies on both sides. The saying goes that you never know what its like to be someone until you've walked a mile in their shoes. But people lie to themselves all the time, and some people even have multiple pairs of shoes. Joe uses viewpoint brilliantly in the Heroes to create real people. This realism comes from showing the difference between how these people perceive themselves and how their friends and enemies perceive them. Neither views are completely true; the truth is somewhere in between. That same technique is employed far more extensively in Red Country, but to far less effect. Joe lets us try on a whole lot of shoes this time around; Red Country is practically a foot locker of POVs. But while the Heroes used viewpoint to deepen our understanding of the main cast or to show a clearer picture of a chaotic battle, Red Country's POVs are lead boots that result in a shallower main cast, a padded word count, and plodding pace. There are simply too many characters this time around with to little to do. I couldn't remember all of them, much less care about them. It's too hard to effectively establish the personality of a character in one or two pages, and its especially too much to ask the reader to care once it becomes obvious that this person will probably never figure into the story again. The Heroes restricted its use of these scattered minor viewpoints; when they appeared, there was always goal in sight. The famous sequence in the Heroes where characters are introduced in the midst of a battle only to be killed a page later had obvious purpose--it establishes a trend, and soon enough the reader knows the that a character they know and care about will be the POV. The purpose was obvious. It was like a race towards a finish line, and the longer it went on the pace and the anticipation actually increased. In Red Country, the POV sequences aren't a purposeful race; they're a ponderous stampede with no end in sight. The people who are introduced might as well be cattle for all I could care for them. This problem rears its head as soon as Shy and Lamb join up with a caravan headed to the Far Country; the pacing slows unbearably as each and every member of the caravan are introduced in their own POV segment. The use of POV snippets here is a misstep, but an understandable one. Unfortunately, it gets worse from there. The technique is utilized again and again, until it feels like authorial laziness for not constructing a plot where the necessary details could have been perceived by the main cast. Shy becomes a one note character very soon, capable only of spitting at things through the gap in her teeth. Temple shows promise of depth, but is never given real opportunity to come alive. The plot veers between wanting to be Blood Meridian, wanting to be Going Postal, and wanting to be Red Dead Revolver, but is never as interesting as any of its influences. The stolen children, who served as the call to action of the book, end up feeling more like what they are: an excuse to get Shy and Lamb moving. That plot line, the children's plight and the reveal of their captors, is perhaps the most unfulfilling portion of the book. There is far more navel gazing and philosophizing in this novel than Joe has ever included before. Thankfully, Lamb and Cosca provide some of the best lines in any of Abercrombie's books. They never have a viewpoint, but when the crosshairs of the story settle on them, even momentarily, its a relief. Cowardice is the dominant theme of the book, but it is an unsuccessful theme. Only Lamb's plot seems to have anything interesting to say on the subject. With experimentation there are inevitably some failures. What surprised me about Red Country is that what I had expected to be its biggest problem is actually it's least; the switch to spaghetti western style dialogue mostly works. Sometimes it feels the same as when an american guy trying to pull off a british accent, but I was intrigued by the culture change, and I am extremely curious as to where Joe will be headed with his next book. Red Country is my least favorite of Joe Abercrombie's books, which may sound like an insult. But when your literary career has been as shining as Joe's, having one subpar book is hardly something to be worried about. I hope Joe keeps experimenting with his next book and keeps trying to push the boundaries of genre. But it wouldn't be too bad a thing for a return to some of the younger, simpler Joe on structural side of things.
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Nov 24, 2012 03:42
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I think Joe has been pulling away from going too fantasy because it would detract from his commentary on human nature. If he made Logen's struggle be entirely caused by demon blood, it wouldn't be as "literary".
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Dec 4, 2012 08:03
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FMguru posted:Read "Blood Meridian" by Cormac McCarthy. You've just finished a bloody-minded western novel, now step up to the universally-acknowledged masterpiece of the form. While I agree that Blood Meridian is an amazing novel, I wouldn't recommend that anyone actually read it without warning them about Mccarthy's difficult to swallow style and the extremely unconventional structure. Its a literary novel primarily, and while I did find it extremely entertaining, the average reader is going to toss it into the trash as soon as they get to sentences like: Mccarthy posted:A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained weddingveil and some in headgear of cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or saber done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses’ ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse’s whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen’s faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of Christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools. That's one sentence, my friends.
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Feb 28, 2013 05:53
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People who defend Malazan remind me of this girl I dated who put ketchup on her eggs-- She was a nice person and reasonably intelligent, but never in a million years would I let her pick where we were going to eat.
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Mar 14, 2013 02:10
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Cardiac posted:Simple books for simple people, read Abercrombie. Well... Read Paolini.
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Mar 15, 2013 13:11
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I understand why some people are crazy about Malazan. I work on a train and I'm constantly stuck with another person in the cab for hours and hours at a time, and the subject of books always comes up eventually. Train workers are usually pretty well read because of the inherent boredom of the occupation. This guy I worked with told me he loved fantasy. So I asked him what he read and he listed off the series in the order he'd read them. 1. Dragonlance 2. R.A Salvatore 3. Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth 4. Eragon 5. Malazan And by far Malazan was his favorite. And I understood why. He reminded me of this girl I used to date who liked to get punched in the stomach occasionally whenever we were making out. Later I found out that all the previous men in her life had been convicted sex offenders. MartingaleJack fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Mar 17, 2013 |
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Mar 17, 2013 19:11
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One big difference is that Joe writes characters that have clear cut personailties and goals, that actually change in terms of goals and personalities as the stories go on. And I know I've been ragging on Malazan, but I actually like the second book and wrote a positive review of it: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3459058&pagenumber=3&perpage=40#post399522925 I had hoped Erikson would progress as a writer, but every book beyond Deadhouse Gates is actually worse than the one that came before it. If you try to describe the character arcs in Joe's books, its easy. If you try to talk about the characterrs in Malazan, you can't without discussing their progression in terms of how powerful they've become. I thought the best character in the first three books was Felisin, but even she eventually falls to this trope. Abercrombie: Logen is a noble brute who fights against the part of himself that revels in bloodlust. He tries to be a better man and sometimes he succeeds but mostly he fails. Erikson: Ganoes Paran is a guy who...he uh...well, he dies and then gets brought back to life for reasons known only to the gods. Then he becomes megapowerful because he attacks or frees a giant demon dog that's imprisoned inside a mystical sword and then he becomes a Deckmaster, which has to do with magic poker cards or something, but it makes him even more crazy powerful even though he doesn't really do anything with it. Abercrombie: Monza is a woman who was betrayed by her brother and her employer. She wants revenge over anything else and sets down the dark path of achieving it. Only she realizes that things are a lot more complicated than black and white, and that she's becoming just as horrible or worse than the people she's set out to kill. Erikson: Quick Ben is this crazy powerful mage who has absorbed the powers and personalities of other crazy powerful mages, which makes him even more crazy powerful, but no one even knows HOW crazy powerful he really is. Maybe even the crazy powerfullest. Abercrombie: Temple is a man who always does the safe thing, and this makes him believe that he is a coward. He struggles with this aspect of his personality, learns to stick his neck out for something he cares about, and learns that a good man isn't necessarily a brave one. Erikson: Felisin is betrayed by her sister. She's sent to a horrible prison, where she initially vows revenge, but ends up getting addicted to heroin. And it turns out her sister didn't totally screw her over, because men are sent to protect Felisin. Except Felisin still wants revenge. Which is interesting until Felisin becomes a goddess of rage or something and all that boring human stuff is out the window. You'll notice that with Abercrombie, a person's "power" never plays an important part of their character arc. I'm not saying Malazan is terrible because it degenerates into power fantasy, but to honestly say that Erikson writes good characters you must be very poorly read, and I think most people are just irrationally defensive of the weakest aspect of the series they love. Its like back in college when I dated Sarah Jessica Parker. One of my frat bros thought she had a hideous face and we got into this big fist fight because I wouldn't admit it, even though we both knew I was only into her for her body. There are other reasons people enjoy Malazan. They are reasons I do not share or endorse, but I understand how the allure might be there depending on your reading background or your penchant for playing all night sessions of D&D.
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Mar 18, 2013 04:03
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The Ninth Layer posted:tThey're different styles but that doesn't mean all of Erikson's characters are poo poo. Hey, it's cool, I'm not insulting you because your a Malazan reader. Your past experiences have made you into the person you are and given you the tastes you have today. I mean, I noticed that most of your posts on these forums go in the Game Room, which is the table top pen and paper D&D sub-forum, right? Malazan is probably pretty fantastic as the D&D campaign it started out as. But as a book series on its own merits its pretty lacking. But hey, like I said before I get the appeal. I had this dog once that ate his own crap. He hadn't been taught better and it was in his nature. It didn't make me think any less of the dog. Abercrombie isn't literary gold or anything, but at least he can write people well enough that a boy raised on a healthy diet of Patrick O'Brian and Dostoevsky and Joyce and Mccarthy can stomach it. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 18, 2013 07:58
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Braking Gnus posted:Clearly what we need is the spawn of Ninefingers and Ferro. This would be cool. I'm wary, though, because I've never read a story about the children of the original cast that was as good as the original.
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Mar 20, 2013 18:35
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You're just getting to the good bits, friend.
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Mar 25, 2013 11:38
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Neurosis posted:Uh, wouldn't that be a little difficult, or am I massively misremembering BSC? He's dead. I made this spoiler long so that people wouldn't go, ah, that spoiler is only four characters long so that means he's dead. Although, now that I think about it alive is only five characters and people might assume that instead. But he's dead. Very very dead. Maybe the next book is all about Morveer's mother.
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Sep 10, 2013 11:15
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Tequila Sunrise posted:Did you even read the same books we did? Abercrombie's characters are interesting, realistic, and compelling. I think it's safe to say that the good Captain doesn't get it. Especially as one of his complaints was that Abercrombie's work is bad because it disregards the classic hero's journey structure.
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Jan 28, 2014 20:02
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Read Bloodsong by Anthony Ryan. The sequel, Tower Lord, is even better than the first.
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Dec 16, 2014 15:30
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Suxpool posted:Prince of Fools is def. better than Thorns. My short forensic analysis of his career shows that Ryan took his time with the first book (8-10 years), and when it was a surprise success, he quit his job to write. Smart move! Then, while already making money hand over fist in the self-pub arena, he sold the book rights to a traditional publisher. Bad move! Immense pressure was immediately leveed against him to produce a second novel as quickly as possible to capitalize on the success of the first and to make some sweet sweet revenue for said publishing company. As Gabe Newell is known to say, "These things take time." Ryan's blog posts at the time of the second novel's writing relate his exhaustion, his doubts about some of the choices he made to broaden the story (switching from a single PoV to three new PoVs). It seems he was worried about finishing the story too quickly, given the place the first book ended, over-compensated, and lost a lot of the things that people loved about Blood Song. There are many signs throughout the second book of a quick, haphazard write. Perhaps the worst of these is the switch to progressive tense for every action scene, which eliminates any possible sentence structure variation, and makes the prose wooden and difficult to read. The third book was released, and is widely considered a continuation of the second with all its flaws, but even more rushed--unsurprisingly, given the word count of these books and their release schedule.
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Jun 4, 2016 01:07
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Never has a forums community lost interest in a series faster than the wheel of time.
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Feb 11, 2018 02:01
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I'm liking the book up until the 25% mark, but not loving it. Too many PoV characters introduced too quickly for me to really get into any of them, and no real memorable dramatic scenes or well described places. I don't go in for nostalgia at all, so when old characters show up, it's not serving as entertainment like it may for someone else. Maybe I'm just the wrong reader.
MartingaleJack fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Oct 25, 2019 |
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Oct 24, 2019 22:57
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I finished the new one today. It's good, but it isnt quite as engrossing as some of the earlier books. Having six viewpoint characters with mostly equal screen time means getting to know each of them less well. I liked reading about Rikke and Orso the most. The climax felt weak--just a change of status for most characters.
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Nov 8, 2019 02:09
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The world building in this one felt lacking, I think. The Union is basically just industrial revolution London, without any interesting secondary world modifications. The scene where the chimney sweeper boy gets cooked was the only really evocative image. I didnt feel like Abercrombie ever got to the core of how screwed the peasants were, despite multiple scenes where bad things happened. Everyone in the story is far too disconnected or emotionally muted to take part in the class struggle--even Broad who witnesses the worst parts--his violence and moments of rage arent, for some reason, tied into the class struggle. He isnt a violent man because of his happenstance, he's just a violent man. Vick is too cold. I felt a little of Judge's hate, but I dont think we got the backstory to whatever horrible tragedy turned her into this Joker-esque character. I was scratching my head as to why the book was called A Little Hatred. MartingaleJack fucked around with this message at 22:33 on Nov 10, 2019 |
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Nov 10, 2019 20:55
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I don't care to see any commentary on the industrial revolution unless there's some interesting speculative/magic twist. So far there isn't.
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Nov 24, 2019 05:17
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If you only want to read about good people doing nice things, Joe Abercrombie is not for you.
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Sep 12, 2020 00:19
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Question about The Trouble With Peace ebook. It's really bothering me that there are no scene breaks when PoVs change. In my copy, there's not even an extra line return. Some of the chapters are hard to follow, especially the wedding scene, with the PoV hopping into different heads every couple hundred words. Its exasperated by Joe's habit of taking a leisurely time to establish the new viewpoint when a scene changes, and by the multiplicity of characters in this new series. I don't recall this being an issue with the OT or the other stand alones, but I read those in hardback. Are there scene breaks in the paper edition?
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Oct 6, 2020 18:06
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