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Cardiac posted:Eh, no.
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# ? Dec 21, 2016 14:31 |
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# ? Apr 27, 2024 06:49 |
Strom Cuzewon posted:Who is Fisher kel Tath and can somebody please break his quill?
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# ? Dec 21, 2016 19:58 |
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anilEhilated posted:Have you got to Toll the Hounds yet? By then you'll be wishing for someone to punch out his teeth. I know I was. It was the glut of Fisher epigraphs at the start of Toll that made me post that. I'm now halfway through and starting to revise my opinion of him. I was almost welling up reading the scenes with Fisher and Duiker. Absolutely crushing to read, and I almost started hating Duiker, for not being able to tell the story of the Chain of Dogs Although I'm putting money on Fisher being some sort of secret Tano spiritwalker - it's how he seemingly knows everything about everyone.
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# ? Dec 21, 2016 22:21 |
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Toll the Hounds trip report - It seems like the lazy pacing of Toll is kind of unpopular among fans, who prefer the more chaotic flow of the rest of the novels. I actually appreciated the way it slows everything down and gives us a chance to take stock of everything before we dive into the finale - especially as I massively enjoyed all the street-level shenanigans back in Gardens, and Toll has that same feel to it, but without the exhausting milling around from tavern to house to secret lair to tavern to rooftop to tavern again. Imagine how amazing Gardens would be if Erikson wrote it now. It's also the most Malazan of the Malazan books, which is why I don't understand the negative response to it. The bulk of these books is people plotting and scheming with only dodgy information and inferences about what everybody else is doing, until we get some sort of catastrophe when everything slams together. And Toll takes that to it's logical conclusion - we have a book in which nobody has any idea what anybody else is doing. Not a bloody Scooby doo. And it's fantastic. Harllo never knows who Murillio is, Murillio barely understands where Harllo has come from, Vidikas ends up as the antagonist in a kidnapping plot that he isn't even aware of. The Bridgeburners don't know who hired the assassins, the assassin's know but don't know why. The entire Darujhistan plot is a huge snarl of different tiny stories tugging in a hundred different directions, which makes the violence and death even more powerful when it comes - it's both shocking and unexpected to the characters, but inevitable and ill-fated to the reader. I really liked the assault on K'Ruls Bar - by most standards it's a pretty typical Bridgeburner fight - chaos, misdirection, spectacular improvisation and reckless use of explosives in confined spaces. But take it from a warzone and plant it in a temple, and suddenly it becomes absolutely horrifying. I didn't quite buy all of his philosophising about what it means to be a solider until that moment. I also want to make a list of all the characters that die grinning - I can remember Moroch Nevath and Mallet, but I swear there's loads more. Bringing back Pearl after his one scene (7 books, 2 million words ago) was a nice touch, and makes me worry about all the side characters I've not been keeping track of - I know that even with my note taking I've lost track of the T'Lan Imass who were chasing Karsa and the Unbound. Are they even still around? The ending was as hardcore and apocalyptic as we've come to expect from Erikson, but I have to confess that I have no idea what anybody was doing. Not a bloody Scooby doo. The whole thing was a secret alliance between Hood and Rake to free the Gate from Dragnipur (probably with some input from Ganoes, given Hood's secret whispering) but none of the mechanics make any sense - he releases the gate using the web of sorcery that Draconus intended to be a God to escape the sword, but was actually Kadaspala's attempt at getting revenge on Rake for killing his sister, which is implied Rake did as part of some devious plot with Andarist and Ruin back when Kharkanas fell and....something. It's too fragmented for me to fully get. And then Rake sends his mate to slow down Kallor, because he somehow knows that Kallor will be there, even though Kallor doesn't really have a plan beyond "get to the convergence", and the Hound start massacring Darujhistan for some unknown reason, then the Hounds of Light appear just for the giggles. Why did Hood have to appear in the flesh? Why did he need to murder huge chunks of Darujhistan? Couldn't Rake have killed him somewhere out in the wild? Why did Rake need Dassem Ultor to kill him, couldn't he have just opened his wrists? Why did Shadrowthrone want Dassem to be involved, and why was Mael trying to slow him down? The only reason he would have to do that is to stop Rake entering the sword, but Mael gains nothing from that, and it seems very out of character for him to try and stop people defeating chaos. Especially as Draconus' inner monologue implies that Dragnipur was created to bind the Crippled God in some way (or at least adapted, as he'd been working on it since before the Crippled God fell). If the whole problem with Dragnipur is that it tore the Gate of Darkness from it's natural migratory path, then why did Rake unveil it and permanently settle it around Black Coral? Isn't that just going to cause the same problems? And Itkovian somehow continues to still own. I sure hope his replacement Shield Anvil is up to the job!
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# ? Dec 31, 2016 16:07 |
Strom Cuzewon posted:And Itkovian somehow continues to still own. I sure hope his replacement Shield Anvil is up to the job! As for the rest - regarding the convoluted story behind Rake, Kadaspala, Draconus and the whole Mother Dark/Hold of Darkness mess, you'd have to dive into the prequel trilogy (well, duology so far). Turns out most of the theories we made based on TtH were completely wrong. Having read it also makes TtH a lot more enjoyable because it turns out the Andii's recollection of the events isn't exactly accurate and bias-free either... And you'll find a whole new level of appreciation for Spite and Envy. As for the dislike - I can only talk for myself but TtH is my least favorite book of the bunch and it's because of the Darujhistan segments. Kruppe's narration gets really grating (although there is a reason for drawing attention to it so it might get a pass on that account), but most of the storylines go nowhere or serve to set up really stupid anticlimaxes in OST. Plus I honestly found I didn't give a drat about Crokus or anyone traveling with him, but that might be just me. As for the rest: Dragnipur was (MoI)changed after TCG fell, Draconus mentions it in the prologue, but what was its original purpose is up to anyone's guess until Walk in Shadow comes out and maybe not even then. So basically we know gently caress all about how the sword actually works. Mael probably doesn't care about chaos and darkness one way or another but he is playing his own game so my guess is that he doesn't want further complications in it and chaos breaking out is one hell of a complication as seen later on. Another possible reason: basically no one wants Draconus out in the world, guy is considered extremely dangerous and unpredictable. As for Hood being killed, it's RAFO, but Dassem is probably the only one stupid/vengeful enough to actually try to kill the god of death and maybe Hood thought he deserved the shot. Guy's Jaghut, who knows how his mind works. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 16:53 on Dec 31, 2016 |
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# ? Dec 31, 2016 16:48 |
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anilEhilated posted:Quoting this for posterity, as the next Shield Anvil you'll encounter is quite the character. Ha! Excellent. Although I was making a joke about how Norul and Velbara were unceremoniously killed off somewhere before RG quote:As for the dislike - I can only talk for myself but TtH is my least favorite book of the bunch and it's because of the Darujhistan segments. Kruppe's narration gets really grating (although there is a reason for drawing attention to it so it might get a pass on that account), but most of the storylines go nowhere or serve to set up really stupid anticlimaxes in OST. Plus I honestly found I didn't give a drat about Crokus or anyone traveling with him, but that might be just me. Yeah, the ending with the Tyrant felt like a big sign flashinf "read my mates book". The Kruppe narration wasn't too bad - much better than having him or Pust actually speaking - and the little dips in and out of different characters lives (the mule on the corpse wagon, the guard with a heart condition) was a nice touch. And the climax does seem to support the "cotillion and shadow throne are mules" theory. Which might be a joke, but I'm pretty much convinced.
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# ? Dec 31, 2016 20:00 |
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I'm re-reading HoC, and there are some amusing and subtle little details in the opening Karsa chapters. I especially liked Karsa going out of his way to smash a little Fener statue during his rampage through Silver Lake.
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# ? Jan 3, 2017 23:50 |
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Who likes predictions? I love predictions, and so, before I dive into DoD/TCG, here are my predictions for just where this madness is going: Spoiler's from books 1-8 throughout. I feel there's going to be some major reveals about the pantheon and cosmology of the Malazan universe, and we can piece together some sort of creation myth from Feather Witches casting of the tiles, and the Tiste legends. There's two distinct mythologies here - the Andii have Mother Dark and the coming of Father Light yadda yadda which seems to be some highly metaphorical big bang. I think of these in terms of Dark Soul's First Flame - before the fire the world was grey, and the creation of the flame allowed it to be split into light and dark. The Andii seem to think that they're Mother Dark's first children, but Osserc tells us that the Andii were her second offspring. This makes me think that the Andii have their timelines wrong - they didn't predate the Light, they were created at the same time as it. The first born are from some sort of primordial dark, before "dark" was really a proper thing. Feather Witch gives a more literal creation story, that seems to be a description of how the primal forces came to the Malazan planet (Malazan-land? Mezland?) which at this point is just Dolmen, as Burn has not yet begun to dream, and probably doesn't even exist yet. The driving force behind this is the Errant, who sets Fire against Dolmen, creates the Azath to shelter/trap the Jaghut. Bugg identifies the Errant as Forkrul Assail. And from what we've seen, the Assail as a species have some very peculiar ideas about conflict: Calm and Serenity are both Bringer's of Peace, but they seem to interpret this as "kill everyone", which they see as resolving some sort of discord. This would give some motivation to the Assail and all their shenanigans in creating the Holds. They clearly can't abide discord, and so are attempting to divide and separate out the universe into it's component parts. Ice goes in the Ice Hold, Beasts go into the Beast hold etc. When they can't divide out things they instead set them onto a collision, Fire against Dolmen, Beast against Ice, they don't understand that you can co-exist and cooperate. And then the Dragons come: Midnight Tides posted:"Then, to achieve balance once more, is born the Eleint, and chaos is given flesh, and that flesh is draconic. I'm going to stop banging on about chaos dragons, because it's clearly a tautology. Dragons are some sort of natural response to the creation of the Holds - the Assail have created order, and so chaos must exist to be its opposite. Heboric's epigraph way back in GotM describes "the matron" giving birth to dragons/chaos, and bringing "light into dark and dark into light", so it seems plausible that the Elient were the first children of Mother Dark. Clearly the dragons haven't done a very good job at plunging the world into chaos, and I think we have K'rul and the Assail to thank for that. By bringing the Eleint into the Dragon Hold the Assail trap them in rules of their creation, just like Ganoes permits the creation of the House of Chains. K'rul pulls off something of a coup, persuading the dragons to help him create the Warrens, and then killing them or sealing them away. Sealing them away seems to be the preferred choice - as dragon blood seems to link directly to Starvald Demelain, and drinking it gives you some essence of the dragons themselves. I think the nature of these early battles is something that might get revealed in the Kharkanas trilogy - Midnight Tides gives a bunch of different parentages for Mendandore, Sukul Ankhadu and Sheltatha Lore, but they themselves think they're children of Tiam, not of Mother Dark. So there's clearly more going on there than we're lead to believe. It also means that those three are Eleint, not Soletaken, and so poo poo is going to hit the fan once their blood leaks out into the Refugium. Nice going Ben. So we've got three cycles of this conflict - Light vs Dark, Order vs Chaos, and now Whole vs Crippled. As the nature of magic gets more specific and divisible in the progress from Wandering to Hold to House, so has this battle. I don't think the Crippled God is specifically an agent of chaos, but I definitely think they'll rally to his side. I also think we'll actually learn the Crippled God's real name and identity. He's Grallin, the Lord of Deep Waters, living on the moon. The Jade Meteors came from the moon (I think the reveal will be that they launched from there, instead of being the result of an impact like is suggested in TtH) and they clearly have some similar sort of essence to the Crippled God - his body spawned the Great Ravens, and the impact of the Jade Statue created the Otataral Desert, both absorb magic but are ineffective against Elder Warrens. It could be that this is a result of Elder Warrens being non-native to Mazland - the Tiste, Assail and K'Chain came from elsewhere, so maybe the Jaghut and Imass did too, or maybe their warrens are a different "type" to the Tiste. I don't have a week spare to cross-reference which warrens otataral and ravens do/do not work against. Maybe the jade is an attempt to protect the passengers from the effects of travelling between realms? We've seen how dangerous that can be - Stormy and co are basically ascending, Emuhrlahn has been shattered thanks to Scabandari opening some sort of "gate", and Kulp manages to freak out half the universe by pretending to tear a hole in the nascent. So there's going to be some sort of massive clusterfuck on Letheras. I think the Crippled God is going to unleash the Otataral Dragon (the Consort of the Dragon Hold, who "writhes upon a tree") against the Azath to free the other dragons, who can now access them after Gothos accidentally allowed Nimander to help a giant create an Azath inside Starvald (at least I think that's what happened) Minor predictions: Oponn are clearly the House version of the Errant, who is himself the Hold version of the original Errant. I think they'll betray him (probably through Corabb tripping over his own feet and stabbing him in the eye) as they've shown themselves to be a more even-handed and less nasty than him. Except when they killed Felisin. The K'Chain Che'Malle I think are going to invade Letheras - their plot with Redmask was just to wipe out the Awl in a disastrous battle (kind of like the Awl did to the Grey Swords), as the Awl are the only humans to ever be able to fight the K'cha ffs I am not typing that loving thing out again. The sword ones. Veloci-rapiers. I'm hoping we'll find out how the First Empire created D'Ivers. The temple where the original Trail of Hands is clearly an old Cedance, and as far as I can tell it's still there, being guarded by Olar Ethil. Crokus will take Cotillions place as the Patron of Assassins, or become the Assassin of High House Death or something equally ironic after all his attempts to save Apsalar. Toc will share a quiet drink with Clem, and tell him how he died a terrible death.
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# ? Jan 4, 2017 00:11 |
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Holy poo poo. I won't say which predictions are (or may be) accurate, but you've made me start rethinking things. I may reread this series sooner rather than later.
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# ? Jan 4, 2017 05:00 |
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I finally finished Fall of Light(it's definitely the longest it has taken me to finish a Malazan novel) and caught up on this thread after avoiding because not wanting to get spoiled and still wanting to be able to see revelations I missed and what other posters opinions were. I gotta say I was disappointed in this one for a lot of the same reasons others were. I won't go over all the reasons, as they've already been written a lot about in here. The biggest drawback for this volume for me is that it felt a lot less refined compared to Forge of Darkness and fell far from the standard he set with it. It felt like he made a huge effort with the first Kharkanas novel to make it seem distinct and different than the main Malazan series, with a tighter focus and denser prose, while this latest installment felt like a regression right back to his writing in the later volumes of the main Malazan series. I really do wish Erikson had restrained himself more with the overabundance of philosophical musings and bloviated dialogue, as there would probably be a lot more characters that I'd now love instead of being driven to hate just because "too many words"
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# ? Jan 4, 2017 05:29 |
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Strom Cuzewon posted:Toll the Hounds trip report - It seems like the lazy pacing of Toll is kind of unpopular among fans Actually that's the "divisive" book that either people think it's the worst in the series OR the best one. Probably it's the one that stands out the most, in style, so it's more easily to consider it as a thing on its own.
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# ? Jan 4, 2017 06:45 |
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Strom Cuzewon posted:Words I think you are going to enjoy DoD/TCG as they will upend a lot of your predictions. Also, read FoD and FoL next. Surprises are always good. Also, TCG is probably one of the weakest books in the series, mostly since it ties most of the story lines together. IMO, some of them didn't need to and there were far too many happy endings in the last books.
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# ? Jan 4, 2017 08:25 |
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Not to poop on Strom's enthusiasm for the last two books, but since finishing them a couple of months ago they've staled quite a bit in my mind. They get laboriously ponderous and spend too much time on peripheral characters at the expense of some major ones. They both have nice convergences and scattered bits of greatness though. EDIT: Talking about DoD/TCG, not the prequels. snoremac fucked around with this message at 09:07 on Jan 4, 2017 |
# ? Jan 4, 2017 09:04 |
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I agree. Not enough time was spent on Bonehunters Heavies and too much time was spent on useless deities. I wish I had more time to read but God Damon OST is the tits.
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# ? Jan 4, 2017 17:57 |
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So I'm on Memories of Ice, and I feel I don't understand a couple things. What are gods? Ascendants are mortals that became gods, but are all Ascendants gods? How does the afterlife work? Everyone talks about Hood's embrace, but other groups talk about reincarnation. Is it unknown? Are all correct?
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# ? Jan 11, 2017 12:59 |
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Hiro Protagonist posted:So I'm on Memories of Ice, and I feel I don't understand a couple things. The afterlife is a kind of flexible thing, what happens after death is very, uh, circumstantial. What happens to ordinary people is somewhat explored later in the series but not to the point where it's at all clear.
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# ? Jan 11, 2017 13:11 |
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Hiro Protagonist posted:So I'm on Memories of Ice, and I feel I don't understand a couple things. you're not supposed to know anything about anything, don't worry about it. anything you think you know is probably wrong anyhow.
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# ? Jan 11, 2017 14:11 |
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Hiro Protagonist posted:So I'm on Memories of Ice, and I feel I don't understand a couple things. Whenever you don't understand something just replace it with "magicalistic" Ascendents are more magicalistic than wizards, but less magicalistic than gods.
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# ? Jan 11, 2017 17:14 |
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Normally those are questions for the reader to ponder, but in MBotF, they are questions that the characters ponder, instead, and discover during the course of the books. It's not that the questions are unknown or all correct, it's that the specifics vary. Some things were born gods, others Ascended and became gods, and others Ascended and didn't become gods. There are probably a few who became gods and didn't Ascend at all. And the afterlife works in kind of the same way. Some people get to reincarnate, some get an afterlife, some turn into ghosts and haunt mortals. Characters in the books actively interfere with the specifics of death, with a variety of results. Just in the first book, you have Hairlock, Ganoes Paran, and Dragnipur offering pretty wildly different outcomes on what can happen when someone dies.
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# ? Jan 11, 2017 17:18 |
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I saw you guys talking about Dune a while back. Is it any good/worth reading?
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# ? Jan 12, 2017 02:21 |
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RC Cola posted:I saw you guys talking about Dune a while back. Is it any good/worth reading? Everyone should read Dune, it's one of the all-time classic of scifi. The sequels are worth reading too, but Herbert died before he could finish the series. His son Brian and Kevin J. Anderson have written a whole bunch of sequels and prequels, but they're complete dogshit, and should be avoided at all costs unless you REALLY want more Dune.
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# ? Jan 12, 2017 03:13 |
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Juaguocio posted:Everyone should read Dune, it's one of the all-time classic of scifi. The sequels are worth reading too, but Herbert died before he could finish the series. His son Brian and Kevin J. Anderson have written a whole bunch of sequels and prequels, but they're complete dogshit, and should be avoided at all costs unless you REALLY want more Dune. How close to being finished was the series? Also is there a dune thread?
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# ? Jan 12, 2017 04:43 |
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RC Cola posted:How close to being finished was the series? Also is there a dune thread? Frank Herbert had planned at least one more sequel (working title: Dune 7) to finish the series, which was probably enough room considering the pace of the rest of the series. Also (as I already mentioned), every thread in the Book Barn is a Dune thread.
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# ? Jan 12, 2017 04:48 |
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ulmont posted:Frank Herbert had planned at least one more sequel (working title: Dune 7) to finish the series, which was probably enough room considering the pace of the rest of the series. It's eerie. Is the family with duke Leto and Paul the main family?
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# ? Jan 12, 2017 04:53 |
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RC Cola posted:It's eerie. Is the family with duke Leto and Paul the main family? For the first four books.
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# ? Jan 12, 2017 05:00 |
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RC Cola posted:I saw you guys talking about Dune a while back. Is it any good/worth reading? Dune is really good and worth reading. The Frank Herbert written sequels are pretty good and one is even great.
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# ? Jan 12, 2017 05:05 |
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The general rule for Dune is to read the series until you no longer enjoy it. Everyone has their own breaking point. The weird thing is it doesn't feel unresolved or disappointing.
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# ? Jan 12, 2017 05:31 |
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"Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife - chopping off what's incomplete and saying: 'Now, it's complete because it's ended here.'"
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# ? Jan 12, 2017 06:16 |
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Hand Row posted:The general rule for Dune is to read the series until you no longer enjoy it. Everyone has their own breaking point. The weird thing is it doesn't feel unresolved or disappointing. God Emperor of Dune was bad, I had to force myself to slog through it and stopped there.
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# ? Jan 12, 2017 14:51 |
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Gravity Cant Apple posted:God Emperor of Dune was bad, I had to force myself to slog through it and stopped there. God Emperor of Dune is my second favorite of the series, and I like it better than Dune Messiah and Children of Dune, but otherwise, yes, as soon as you find a book you don't like in the series, stop.
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# ? Jan 12, 2017 18:15 |
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wheels within wheels within wheels plans within plans within plans tricks within tricks within tricks treachery within treachery within treachery feints within feints within feints blue within blue within blue Abalieno fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Jan 12, 2017 |
# ? Jan 12, 2017 20:12 |
ulmont posted:God Emperor of Dune is my second favorite of the series, and I like it better than Dune Messiah and Children of Dune, but otherwise, yes, as soon as you find a book you don't like in the series, stop. God Emperor was the second book I read after Dune, our Alabama libraries being somewhat lacking. I was profoundly confused until I found copies of Children and Messiah. I have to say, I still like it better. It has a weight of believable history and legend and speculation that is missing in those two. The prequels were all terrible and almost ruined my appreciation of the original novels. It can't be just a normal bull that kills a duke, it has to be a super-dangerous hybrid insect bull that's poisoned to be extra aggressive and dangerous by a shadowy cabal, coincidentally using a pre-established character that has proved to be popular in focus groups. No nuance. A good story doesn't need bullshit one-upmanship, but this a lesson that Frank's son and his co-author never learned.
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# ? Jan 13, 2017 08:50 |
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^^^^ Also tleilaxu farts, never forget RC Cola posted:I saw you guys talking about Dune a while back. Is it any good/worth reading? I'm pretty much incapable of understanding scifi without looking at it through the lense of Dune. That's how big an impact it's had on me. I'm confident I'm not alone. The comparisons with Malazan always struck me as odd. In the foreword to GotM Erikson cites Dune as an example of how it's possible to throw readers in and trust them to pick up important points - he conveniently ignores how the first few chapters consist of five or six characters explaining their relationship to the hero, setting out their objectives, and describing their philosophical and symbolic roles in the story to come.
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# ? Jan 14, 2017 02:57 |
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Strom Cuzewon posted:^^^^ Also tleilaxu farts, never forget I think it's God-Emperor and next two books that share those elements more than the first book.
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# ? Jan 14, 2017 04:42 |
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It's great fun talking to people about Erikson's books who haven't read them all, since people always seem to have predictions about things which are wildly off-base. I read FoL in December so now need to wait another year or two for the next one, welp.Knobb Manwich posted:you're not supposed to know anything about anything, don't worry about it. anything you think you know is probably wrong anyhow. ^ This about sums it up. I sort of half-want Erikson to write some books set before the Kharkanas books just to provide yet more context, though the setting would probably be a lot less enjoyable if we knew definitively about how everything worked. edit: FoD/FoL spoilers, be careful even if you've read the whole main MBotF series - Everyone ITT seems to think FoL is much worse than FoD. I personally found FoD to be overlong (not to say that FoL isn't overlong too, but to a lesser extent), but at least the non-tiste (thel akai, gothos, k'rul, etc) segments in FoL were much more frequent than the Kharkanas segments. I also thought Prazek and Dathenar's bizarre poetic exchanges were at least interesting at times. The main question that I find myself returning to after both FoD and FoL is what happens to the world in the few hundred millenia up until the mainline series. Like, geographically. It certainly seems that the continent Kurald Galain is in is part of the same physical world/plane as Malaz etc, but I'm not sure how that makes sense. About as much sense as Jacuruku, I guess. Though there is that one bit in FoL where the pre-chapter italic narrator talks about the concept of different places being arbitrary or whatever. cadenza fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Jan 19, 2017 |
# ? Jan 19, 2017 21:03 |
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Is FoL not releasing in paperback? I recently asked at Barnes and Noble and there's no release date for it, only the audio book in May.
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# ? Jan 19, 2017 22:09 |
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I'm on emperor of dune. So far not liking it too much
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# ? Jan 19, 2017 22:19 |
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RC Cola posted:I'm on emperor of dune. So far not liking it too much drat that was fast. Have you got to the dick jokes yet?
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# ? Jan 19, 2017 22:40 |
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Strom Cuzewon posted:drat that was fast. Have you got to the dick jokes yet? I'm at Idaho talking to Paul
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# ? Jan 19, 2017 23:19 |
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# ? Apr 27, 2024 06:49 |
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RC Cola posted:I'm at Idaho talking to Paul It doesn't get better.
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# ? Jan 20, 2017 00:50 |