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The Wandering Inn’s web serial version is (I think) the longest English language work of fiction, currently at about 11.5 million words. Pirateaba writes two chapters of roughly 30k words a week for 3 weeks every month. I love it, but it is a veeeeerrry slow burn.
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Mar 24, 2023 05:53
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The Wandering Inn's pacing is a glacier moving through a sea of molasses. At least in terms of the plot movement:word count ratio anyway.
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Mar 24, 2023 08:32
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FYI, pirateaba just rewrote volume 1 and it’s up on the website. I don’t remember all of what was done, but the main goal was to make Ryoka less of an unbelievably ornery and unlikeable character in those early chapters.
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Mar 24, 2023 10:15
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Silynt posted:The Wandering Inn’s web serial version is (I think) the longest English language work of fiction, currently at about 11.5 million words. Pirateaba writes two chapters of roughly 30k words a week for 3 weeks every month. I love it, but it is a veeeeerrry slow burn. Yeah I just checked the page count of book 5 and it clocked in at 1700. Hah
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Mar 24, 2023 12:14
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Cicero posted:The Wandering Inn's pacing is a glacier moving through a sea of molasses. At least in terms of the plot movement:word count ratio anyway. Yeah. Not wrong. It’s as long as it is and this far in they have not even seen the big boss of the dungeon they found under the town in volume 1. Not that the characters haven’t done and accomplished a lot of other big stuff but dang. I still read periodically and enjoy it but you can absolutely skip entire sets of chapters if they aren’t vibing with you. There are wikis where you can easily just check to see if you missed something important in those hundred pages
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Mar 24, 2023 17:47
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don't skip ryoka her stuff gets great
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Mar 24, 2023 18:04
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sure wish there was less sexual violence and trauma though
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Mar 24, 2023 18:08
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TWI is a huge time investment for a mild payoff. Up to you if you’re enjoying it. Beware the sunk cost fallacy and bail without remorse when you hit your limit. It’ll still be there in a decade.
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Mar 25, 2023 12:27
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Anias posted:TWI is a huge time investment for a mild payoff. Up to you if you’re enjoying it. Beware the sunk cost fallacy and bail without remorse when you hit your limit. It’ll still be there in a decade. It's either that or read the news, I'm tired of constantly blowing through good stories, I'm happy to reliably read a mediocre one as long as reading is low effort.
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Mar 25, 2023 16:51
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.Z. posted:FYI, pirateaba just rewrote volume 1 and it’s up on the website. I don’t remember all of what was done, but the main goal was to make Ryoka less of an unbelievably ornery and unlikeable character in those early chapters. Do you know if the kindle edition is the updated version? I would much rather read on my kindle than iPad.
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Mar 25, 2023 21:12
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loudog999 posted:Do you know if the kindle edition is the updated version? I would much rather read on my kindle than iPad. It is not. I think pirate still has to do an editing pass, then figure out how to deal with releasing the rewrite to people who bought the ebook. As even if it's possible to just release an update for the ebooks to become the rewrite version, it opens a whole can of worms. Audiobook version becomes incorrect, customers may not like having something they bought suddenly get changed, etc.
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Mar 26, 2023 03:55
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Some more Will Wight bits: * Unsouled and Soulsmith extra scenes (non spoiler, so it's safe to read as long as you've read the respective books) - https://www.willwight.com/a-blog-of-dubious-intent/captain-release-first-kickstarter-bonus-scenes * The Captain, first preview chapter - https://www.reddit.com/r/Iteration110Cradle/comments/11l11n8/the_captain_audible_preorder_and_chapter_1 * The Captain, second preview chapter - https://www.reddit.com/r/Iteration110Cradle/comments/11xm83x/the_captain_another_sneak_preview The chapters from the captain are in both written and audio form.
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Mar 30, 2023 07:13
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Anias posted:TWI is a huge time investment for a mild payoff. Up to you if you’re enjoying it. Beware the sunk cost fallacy and bail without remorse when you hit your limit. It’ll still be there in a decade. yeah I bailed in the last 10% of the first audiobook yeesh, the author sure knows how to be cruel to their characters
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Mar 31, 2023 21:29
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Will Wright’s latest, The Captain, is out now. Just over 10% in and it’s not making a great impression. A protagonist without much character, solving a bunch of problems so quickly that there are no stakes. Hoping it improves but this ain’t no Cradle.
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Apr 4, 2023 02:00
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Coq au Nandos posted:Will Wright’s latest, The Captain, is out now. Just over 10% in and it’s not making a great impression. A protagonist without much character, solving a bunch of problems so quickly that there are no stakes. Hoping it improves but this ain’t no Cradle. In fairness, I recall that the highlight of the first Cradle book was the main character beating up eight year olds.
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Apr 4, 2023 05:06
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That was the funniest part of the book but otherwise dunno if it was really the highlight. That would be throwing the Elder who just looks like a little kid off a cliff.
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Apr 4, 2023 07:19
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Cicero posted:That was the funniest part of the book but otherwise dunno if it was really the highlight. That would be throwing the Elder who just looks like a little kid off a cliff. That sounds pretty funny, maybe I should give that another shot.
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Apr 4, 2023 17:00
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The Captain is adequate, better than 95% of KU fantasy but not quite as good as Cradle or the like (And my opinion of Cradle is it’s basically popcorn, light fluffy and fun but no real depth or craftsmanship which still ranks it above 99% of stuff out there). Protagonist is fairly bland while the side characters are more distinct but cartoonishly so ; e.g. guy who just likes murder, guy who is being an ott golden-age sentai-superhero who talks about friendship, battle hardened emotionless rear end kicker woman. Prose explains what is happening without being painful or especially moving.
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Apr 4, 2023 21:43
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The thing that makes Cradle good is how strong each character's voice is. Everything else is fine but the distinct texture of how everybody speaks is truly wonderful, and that preview of the final book is a brilliant example of that. So I read the Portal to Nova Roma books. Wow, that is a shockingly good example of an author not knowing what's interesting in their story. You get a couple paragraphs about the literal driving motivation of the protagonist coupled with just a few lines for the most definitive relationship they had as an AI. Then you get a few decent bits where they're interacting with people and understanding the world in between the dogshit. It starts to build up and the story reveals itself to be that of the protagonist forming a new society and military to right some social wrongs and save the world and all that, only for the next book to just be him on his own for most of it. It also has this really annoying tendency to be like, "Wow, I sure am reckless and emotionally affected. Shouldn't have done that." It's like they listened to some advice on how to make an interesting flawed protagonist and then took that in the most literal way possible while missing the lesson on show, don't tell. It's especially annoying because it's not pure trash. The parts that are good are really good (for KU).
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Apr 4, 2023 22:26
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HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:It's especially annoying because it's not pure trash. The parts that are good are really good (for KU). My favorite thing was the 20 page fight scenes that end only when our intrepid hero manifests a new ability, not that that particular deus ex machina is novel to KU.
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Apr 4, 2023 23:34
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HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:The thing that makes Cradle good is how strong each character's voice is. Everything else is fine but the distinct texture of how everybody speaks is truly wonderful, and that preview of the final book is a brilliant example of that. I think that’s what’s annoying me so much about The Captain (also the name is poo poo): None of the characters so far have a voice or much of an actual character. This is especially egregious in the protagonist. Writing in first person gives you heaps of opportunity to build character, and every opportunity gets wasted. It’s such a frustrating read.
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Apr 4, 2023 23:48
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Coq au Nandos posted:I think that’s what’s annoying me so much about The Captain (also the name is poo poo): None of the characters so far have a voice or much of an actual character. This is especially egregious in the protagonist. Writing in first person gives you heaps of opportunity to build character, and every opportunity gets wasted. It’s such a frustrating read. I bought The Captain sight unseen, because I liked the previous books by this author. Currently at around the 27% mark, and so far it is immensely disappointing. For about the first 25% of the book, we only had one character who was more than a throwaway caricature. Unfortunately, if I was going to describe our protagonist in two words, they would be "dull" and "obnoxious". I really do not enjoy reading his constant sneering and bragging about how cool he and all his stuff are. From the very start, he's supposed to be royalty in some science fiction megacorporation. I am rooting against this greedy 1%er pretty hard. He does not do a single thing that made him more sympathetic, and with how sketchy and vague the universe is when it doesn't involve hyping up the main character, I am rooting for one of these apocalypses to destroy everything just in the hope that I won't have to listen to him any more. Right now we are getting a montage of secondary characters who might be involved in a tournament to see who is qualified to be the main character's sidekicks, and they all seem to have exactly the same tedious greedy braggart personality. It is staggering, I know this author is capable of creating characters that are actually fun to read, but I am well into this book and I can't think of a single page I legit enjoyed. Also, the book starts with a scene that cribs from a particular part of Andor really hard, and when I realized what they were using this set piece for, it was legit a little depressing.
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Apr 5, 2023 00:39
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Follow-up: I am 46% of the way into The Captain. We are now at 4 characters with something vaguely resembling a personality, 2 of which are vaguely tolerable to read about. Unfortunately, they aren't very fun either, and the author has put so much time into writing about all of their oh-so-cool powers and gear that there is very little left for giving them much interesting to say.
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Apr 5, 2023 02:39
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HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:The thing that makes Cradle good is how strong each character's voice is. Everything else is fine but the distinct texture of how everybody speaks is truly wonderful, and that preview of the final book is a brilliant example of that. Yeah I gave up somewhere in book 2 after I think the 5th time there was some contrived reason he had to be alone and fight hordes of random monsters.
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Apr 5, 2023 10:24
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Coq au Nandos posted:I think that’s what’s annoying me so much about The Captain (also the name is poo poo): None of the characters so far have a voice or much of an actual character. This is especially egregious in the protagonist. Writing in first person gives you heaps of opportunity to build character, and every opportunity gets wasted. It’s such a frustrating read. I finished the book last night (so it was at least entertaining, since I plowed through it), and the biggest take away about the main character's voice I can remember is that he likes to remember and point out corporate slogans for his equipment. The other characters introduced are mostly OK, and I am looking forward to actually getting the last two characters into the gang, since they seem interesting, or at least more interesting than Omega. By the end, I was more interested in how the powers and setting fit into the broader setting of the author. One element of the magic system in particular seems like a direct point of connection with a major element of Cradle. The minor plot that introduced this (and most of the exposition about how magic worked) felt really shoehorned in, though. The main character teaches at a school, and the chapter that introduces the school and the fact that he is a teacher is such a massive jump in tone and setting from the immediately preceding chapter that I thought the view point had shifted for several pages. Bloopers are still an entertaining idea for a novel, Lindon obliterating the main character was fun.
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Apr 5, 2023 13:43
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I have finished The Captain. It was an F for the first third, but they managed to dig up to a C- by the end. None of the characters were particularly enjoyable to read about, but there were a handful that felt mildly interesting. The book's lack of interest in giving the world any depth not immediately required to slap their superhero action figures together is a common thread throughout, regrettably.
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Apr 5, 2023 16:12
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MadHat posted:Yeah I gave up somewhere in book 2 after I think the 5th time there was some contrived reason he had to be alone and fight hordes of random monsters. It greatly improves after that! Book 3 is mostly the good stuff. Book 2 really suffers. Coq au Nandos posted:I think that’s what’s annoying me so much about The Captain (also the name is poo poo): None of the characters so far have a voice or much of an actual character. This is especially egregious in the protagonist. Writing in first person gives you heaps of opportunity to build character, and every opportunity gets wasted. It’s such a frustrating read. You can really tell Will Wight is still very immersed in Cradle, but he's very much not willing to just transpose those characters to this one. Feels like he wants to get away, but can't. Bit of a shame that. I feel like it'll improve dramatically after Cradle is over for a while.
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Apr 5, 2023 17:00
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Yeah, The Captain wasn't great. I agree it got better as it went along, but the main character really had like zero backstory or characterization other than being a space wizard. After chapter 3 or so, the pacing was pretty relentless. There was one whole scene where the main character got a temporary reprieve that wasn't interrupted with combat. Kinda the opposite of Cultivation, I guess, where the main char starts at the top and never has to spend time recovering/cultivating.
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Apr 6, 2023 20:42
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Its also bizarre that the whole inciting incident/conceit is that the main character gets life experiences from 5 other alternate versions of himself who managed to make different choices and master different kinds of magic... and then proceeds to literally never use any of these other kinds of magic outside what we're told is his specialty before the whole ritual. Definitely feels like it wasn't really hanging together.
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Apr 6, 2023 21:09
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Zore posted:Its also bizarre that the whole inciting incident/conceit is that the main character gets life experiences from 5 other alternate versions of himself who managed to make different choices and master different kinds of magic... and then proceeds to literally never use any of these other kinds of magic outside what we're told is his specialty before the whole ritual. Sealing is his normal magic and he uses navigation and water quite a lot on top of this. Curses is mentioned as sealed and I’m guessing whatever he does with the rabbits vs Omega and the king is another magic school. Think that leaves one of the six unaccounted for.
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Apr 6, 2023 23:04
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That's really odd. It sounds like Wight wanted to skip doing a standard zero-to-hero story, but also rushed past all the character and world building that a more standard setup establishes by default.
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Apr 7, 2023 01:21
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I think he was intending the protagonist to be something of a long-term investment. He's literally the clone-heir of an rear end in a top hat narcissist plutocrat who gets knocked out of being a living corporate asset by the implantation of five prosthetic consciences, it's a plot point that he doesn't actually have a big heroic wish of his own, and it's only in the finale that he realises he's finally an actual human being with his own life. Definitely needs some serious page time in the sequels to have him start to figure out the repercussions of that whole existential crisis, though, and interact with other human beings in ways that aren't just 'the universe is doomed and I need your help to make it less doomed'.
Darth Walrus fucked around with this message at 03:22 on Apr 7, 2023 |
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Apr 7, 2023 01:35
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Come to think of it, given that everyone on the ship is a failed hero, those heavy hints that the protagonist's plot arc will be about becoming a person rather than a living weapon seem reasonably likely to apply to everyone else as well, as they go beyond being just incredibly competent universe-saving devices. All of them are incomplete in some way as humans (or human-adjacent sapients, at least), either partially or severely.
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Apr 7, 2023 01:55
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It is kind of funny that the first cradle book was hurt by the main character being a kind of nice guy who's completely useless in most situations and it sounds like this is the precise opposite but lindon did find ways of being peripherally useful by cheating in interesting ways so in practice it's not really the same at all
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Apr 7, 2023 02:34
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How does The Captain rate compared to Of Sea and Shadow?
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Apr 7, 2023 03:19
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Will's success with his first three series so far has been directly proportional to how progression-y they are. Maybe he's just bad at writing non-progression fantasy. Edit: that said, I can appreciate wanting to do something very different from your megahit to prove it to yourself or because you don't want to get stuck in a rut or whatever Cicero fucked around with this message at 06:02 on Apr 7, 2023 |
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Apr 7, 2023 06:00
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I think scifi fantasy combos are just generally hard to pull off and I can think of maybe one series that I actually enjoyed that did it, and they did so by shying pretty hard away from the scifi aspect
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Apr 9, 2023 22:47
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That's why Star Wars doesn't work, after all.
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Apr 10, 2023 01:13
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9% of the way into the Captain and I can't help but think that'd it be 100x as satisfying to watch the protagonist show off their cool powers and dunk on enemies if we had seen him earn them. There's a reason Weak to Strong is so common, even outside of progression fantasy. Also, there's way too much worldbuilding thrown at your face. It's like a goddamn firehose of random stuff to learn, and the plot is jumping around too.
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Apr 24, 2023 07:10
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It’s a highly readable bad book. Idk.
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Apr 24, 2023 19:49
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