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Welcome earthlings to the Awful Book of the Month! In this thread, we choose one work of Resources: Project Gutenberg - http://www.gutenberg.org - A database of over 17000 books available online. If you can suggest books from here, that'd be the best. SparkNotes - http://www.sparknotes.com/ - A very helpful Cliffnotes-esque site, but much better, in my opinion. If you happen to come in late and need to catch-up, you can get great character/chapter/plot summaries here.  For recommendations on future material, suggestions on how to improve the club, or just a general rant, feel free to PM me. Past Books of the Month 2011: January: John Keats, Endymion Febuary/March: Miguel Cervantes, Don Quixote April: Laurell K. Hamilton, Obsidian Butterfly May: Richard A. Knaak - Diablo #1: Legacy of Blood June: Pamela Britton - On The Move July: Raymond Chandler - The Big Sleep August: Louis L'Amour - Bendigo Shafter September: Ian Fleming - Moonraker October: Ray Bradbury - Something Wicked This Way Comes November: John Ringo - Ghost December: James Branch Cabell - Jurgen 2012: January: G.K. Chesterton - The Man Who Was Thursday Febuary: M. Somerset Maugham - Of Human Bondage March: Joseph Heller - Catch-22 April: Zack Parsons - Liminal States May: Haruki Murakami - Norwegian Wood June: James Joyce - Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man July: William S. Burroughs - Naked Lunch August: William Faulkner - The Sound & The Fury September/October: Leo Tolstoy - War & Peace November: David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas December: Kurt Vonnegut - Mother Night 2013 January: Walter M. Miller - A Canticle for Liebowitz Febuary: Alfred Bester - The Stars My Destination March: Kazuo Ishiguro - Remains Of The Day April: Don Delillo - White Noise May: Anton LeVey - The Satanic Bible June/July: Susanna Clarke - Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell August: Michael Swanwick - Stations of the Tide September: John Wyndham - Day of the Triffids October: Shirley Jackson - The Haunting of Hill House November: Iain Banks - The Wasp Factory December: Roderick Thorp - Nothing Lasts Forever 2014: January: Ursula K. LeGuin - The Left Hand of Darkness February: Mikhail Bulgalov - Master & Margarita March: Richard P. Feynman -- Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! April: James Joyce -- Dubliners May: Gabriel Garcia Marquez -- 100 Years of Solitude June: Howard Zinn -- A People's History of the United States July: Mary Renault -- The Last of the Wine August: Barbara Tuchtman -- The Guns of August September: Jane Austen -- Pride and Prejudice October: Roger Zelazny -- A Night in the Lonesome October November: John Gardner -- Grendel December: Christopher Moore -- The Stupidest Angel 2015: January: Italo Calvino -- Invisible Cities February: Karl Ove Knausgaard -- My Struggle: Book 1. March: Knut Hamsun -- Hunger April: Liu Cixin -- 三体 ( The Three-Body Problem) May: John Steinbeck -- Cannery Row June: Truman Capote -- In Cold Blood (Hiatus) August: Ta-Nehisi Coates -- Between the World and Me September: Wilkie Collins -- The Moonstone Current: Book Barn's General Battuta -- The Traitor Baru Cormorant http://www.amazon.com/Traitor-Baru-Cormorant-Seth-Dickinson/dp/0765380722 quote:Case in point: Max Gladstone was the first author with whom I shared Seth Dickinson’s debut novel, The Traitor Baru Cormorant. Not because I’m Max’s editor and he’s a cool guy and we’ve become good friends—all of that is true, but I don’t ask every author I work with to send me a quote for every book I edit. Like I said, when it comes to obtaining blurbs, I try to match the writer to the book. In this instance, knowing Max the way I do, I had a strong hunch he’d be as enthusiastic for Seth’s novel as I was. http://www.tor.com/2015/09/15/the-art-of-the-blurb-or-step-away-from-the-traitor-baru-cormorant-max-gladstone/ About the Author General Battuta posted:No, in my opinion. I think Ark is a lot better than Gap. General Battuta posted:Aaaa I LOVED that game. I must've been eight or ten when we played it, so my brother and I would just stare over my dad's shoulders and tell him what to do. General Battuta posted:I really want to make the corvette swarm happen, but I am so, so bad at flying Rebel ships. General Battuta posted:What is best in life? To swarm your enemies, see them ruptured in vacuum, and order the devastation of their worlds. General Battuta posted:
General Battuta posted:You don't have to use Tinder, you can just talk to people you meet in the course of your day to day life and social occasions, accepting that all human relationships are on some level a product of coincidence and that it's more important to build friendships out of what's there than to seek out some illusionary, instantaneous spark of connection General Battuta posted:Me too! I want to be a boat. Discussion, Questions & Themes: Pacing Discussion is fine, but please use spoiler tags. References and Further Reading Final Note: If you have any suggestions to change, improve or assess the book club generally, please PM or email me -- i.e., keep it out of this thread -- at least until into the last five days of the month, just so we don't derail discussion of the current book with meta-discussion. I do want to hear new ideas though, seriously, so please do actually PM or email me or whatever, or if you can't do either of those things, just hold that thought till the last five days of the month before posting it in this thread. Thanks, and I hope everyone enjoys the book! Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 12:51 on Oct 12, 2015 |
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Oct 5, 2015 02:36
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watermelons for months. And then the game put you on a timer and rushed you through the awesome octospider lair 
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Between this and City of Stairs* it was a good year for Goon written Fantasy with bureaucratic female protagonists. Such a good book. I assume we hold back on spoilers until mid-month? *ok, published 2014. I just read it his year.
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Oct 5, 2015 10:40
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Is Robert Jackson Bennett on the forums, too? I'm about to begin translating 'City of Stairs', so I guess the end product will be as much of a horrible disaster as all goon projects. Or maybe the publishers will outweigh the bad influence... unless they're goons, too, in which case, sorry, I'm already getting back to work! And this might be the Book Barn that I actually participate in, although I'm easily distracted with all the other things I want to read
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Oct 5, 2015 15:18
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Burning Rain posted:Is Robert Jackson Bennett on the forums, too? Spiny Norman, but he hasn't posted in a long time.
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Oct 6, 2015 06:37
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Yeah, he was run off by FYAD after the release of Mr. Shivers, as they mocked that book mercilessly. He's obviously grown as an author, but it's hard to blame him for not wanting to stick around and be a punching bag.
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Oct 6, 2015 14:51
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I have to side with other reviews I've seen. This is probably the most depressing and nihilistic work of genre fiction I've read since Blindsight. Take Guns, Germs and Steel, and then add in the feeling of any hope or plan being crushed by the implacable gears of a great machine, where the only way to survive is to trample the weak and hurdle the dead as you are beaten into becoming what you are trying to overthrow. This is Traitor Baru Cormorant Enjoy
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Oct 6, 2015 15:20
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It definitely gives KJ Parker a run for his money, and I mean that in the best way.
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Oct 8, 2015 05:15
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taser rates posted:It definitely gives KJ Parker a run for his money, and I mean that in the best way. I thought the same thing. Similar feel to me, specifically to the Engineer trilogy.
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Oct 8, 2015 15:13
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I'm happy to answer questions and talk about poo poo, if that's not weird. I've been doing an author's commentary that digs into some of the subtler stuff happening in the book. It's full of spoilers, so save it until you're done!
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Oct 9, 2015 15:36
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General Battuta posted:I've been doing an author's commentary that digs into some of the subtler stuff happening in the book. It's full of spoilers, so save it until you're done! Neat. Will have to check that out afterwards. I was in the process of picking something to read next when I saw this thread. TTBC was in the books to read pile and now the decision has been simplified. I loved City of Stairs (sounds like a vote for Goon Authors, I had no idea), and Max's Craft Sequence is far too much fun, so I'll take his enthusiasm as a good sign too. Ancillary Mercy ended pretty upbeat, so I'm ready for some dark and grim.
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Oct 10, 2015 04:49
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I stayed up until 2am to finish this last night. Great book. Soul-crushing, but great. Battuta, I have some questions! (We can use this thread like a bastardised AMA right?) 1) What's the deal with the Mother of Storms? (very minor spoilers about something that doesn't affect the plot at all)The few descriptions we get are tantalising, and I need to know what that expedition (mentioned in the letter at the end) found. I'm not sure if it's supposed to be an overtly fantasy element in a book which otherwise has no such elements, but I seriously got some Cacotopic Stain vibes from it. Is it going to be prominent in the sequel? 2) Also, what exactly are the Stakhi mansions? I think at one point it's mentioned that they're underneath the mountains in the north, so now I'm picturing huge Moria-like underground kingdoms. 3) Have you made any map, even a sketch on a napkin, of the wider world beyond Aurdwynn? I'd love to see what the shape of the land looks like. 4) Could you tell us more about your other projects that you mentioned in the Clarkesworld interview*? Both Exordia and Durandal sound really cool, I need them now. I'm hoping for cool alien races in both. 5) Tangential question, what are your favourite alien races in SF, and your favourite fantasy races in fantasy? Doesn't have to be limited to just books. * Important note: that interview also has some plot information about the sequel to The Traitor Baru, which will spoil the outcome of the first book, so be careful if you haven't finished the book yet. Hedrigall fucked around with this message at 00:32 on Oct 12, 2015 |
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Oct 12, 2015 00:26
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I really enjoyed this and look forward to further books in this world. Even though it was, indeed, quite dark. The author's commentary blog post series is a fun read (but definitely spoiler-tastic and should be left until after reading the book). It's rare (in my experience) to see an author pick through their own work like this and talk about some of the design and intent behind it. I found this review/response (warning: full book spoilers) to raise a number of interesting points: https://arkadymartine.wordpress.com/2015/09/27/the-traitor-baru-cormorant-a-reviewresponse/ I don't entirely agree with the reviewer's complaint that the Masquerade is "too evil"... quote:It commits every atrocity that a modern Western reader recognizes as abhorrent. This is a problem. It is a problem because we are asked, as readers, to believe that there are reasons besides blackmail that a person would willingly become an agent of the Masquerade. We are asked to imagine that the Masquerade is a beautiful machine.
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Oct 12, 2015 03:46
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Quinton posted:I don't entirely agree with the reviewer's complaint that the Masquerade is "too evil"... This was my single biggest problem with the book. Since I knew the author was a goon and I might get to post at him about the book, I jotted down notes as I read the book so that I'd remember certain things. I've got 4 pages of handwritten thoughts and impressions of the book and probably 3 pages worth of them are a variation of "The Masquerade is a gigantic sack of used assholes and I have no idea why people put up with them". The Masquerade punch every 'evil' button on the Modern Western Society panel. Imperialist homophobic eugenicsts. Concepts like "reperatory childbirth" where they breed women like livestock as a punishment. Neighbors informing on each other's 'social sins'. They are so overtly mustache-twirling evil that I found it distracting, honestly. I kept getting kicked out of the story to ask myself 'Why do people put up with this poo poo?' I'm gonna spoiler-tag it from here on out just in case. I look at it this way. Your evil empire needs one of two things to stay in power, really. It either needs the kind of iron fist that lets it tell potential rebels to go gently caress themselves, or it needs to provide enough benefit for people to tolerate it in spite of the fact that it's the evil empire. The Masquerade spent the first half of the book not showing either of those things. Dentists and doctors got mentioned a couple of times, but that was it as far as that went, and the Masquerade's iron fist didn't get any airtime until the Navy used their Greek fire to chase those first pirates away from the tax convoy. I really think the book would have benefitted from showing me Falcrest or somewhere else where the Masquerade had a softer touch, something that gave me reason to think "Okay, this isn't that bad, I would take this over feudal warfare or road bandits or dying of cholera". Or I think it would have benefited from showing their iron fist earlier in the book, so that I could see how they managed to maintain an empire while being mustache-twirling evil. Either would have done a lot to help my immersion in the second quadrant of the book.
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Oct 12, 2015 06:37
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Yeah, all of it is almost as unbelievable as what happened in our world history. In reality.
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Oct 12, 2015 07:26
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It's truly amazing none of those peasants read what was happening on Facebook and organized a flash mob to protest the actions of this organized empire with superior technology. That could have shut this poo poo down cold.
The Slithery D fucked around with this message at 10:05 on Oct 12, 2015 |
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Oct 12, 2015 09:49
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Hedrigall posted:Yeah, all of it is almost as unbelievable as what happened in our world history. In reality. I just finished the book last night so I'm still processing it (in general it was excellent). I find myself agreeing to a certain extent with that critique. I do recognize that many of the tools of conquest used by the Masquerade are drawn from real life examples. However, the Masquerade is a composite of the evil features of many different empires -- it combines native schooling/talent skimming with eugenics with the purposeful use of disease as a tool of conquest with violent and repressive homophobia with a secret police with Clockwork Orange style brainwashing, etc etc. It's not so much that any one feature is realistic as it is the fact that they're all found present here, together, and that all of the Falcresti we meet appear to be gung ho for the Empire. Certainly empires like the Spanish in North America were not free of dissent within or without -- a large reason the Spanish get such a bad rap today is a longstanding and extensive propaganda campaign in Northern Europe against the atrocities committed by Spain. I would expect a world like this would have a very strong anti-Falcresti publicity campaign waged by rival empires. I'd also expect there to be a fairly significant current of resistance within Falcrest itself. That said, a book with a tight focus like this one might not benefit from this kind of scope widening. I can believe that Baru would not be aware of elements within Falcrest. I thought the solo POV and focus on our main character was a refreshing change from the usual fantasy bloat and I hope any subsequent books in this series keep this focus. There's always short stories and follow up series to expand the world... Edit: added spoiler tags just in case uberkeyzer fucked around with this message at 16:05 on Oct 12, 2015 |
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Oct 12, 2015 13:52
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Hedrigall posted:I stayed up until 2am to finish this last night. Great book. Soul-crushing, but great. I can't tell you exactly, that'd ruin it! One of my goals with the book is to find stuff in real life that feels uncanny, impossible, and otherworldly — the eerie mundane. (This is why the southern Oriati territories have a bunch of natural fission reactors, ecosystems adapted to radioactive water, and a religion around cancer: it could happen, with a little geological and timescale jiggering, but it's not something that actually occurred very widely Earth.) But there may also be supernatural elements out there! Who can say? quote:2) Also, what exactly are the Stakhi mansions? I think at one point it's mentioned that they're underneath the mountains in the north, so now I'm picturing huge Moria-like underground kingdoms. Imagine a low-budget Moria meets Andean terrace farms — I try not to do easy analogies for real-world civilizations, but it's a beautiful and harsh place with a lot of ingenuity on display, both above and below ground. quote:3) Have you made any map, even a sketch on a napkin, of the wider world beyond Aurdwynn? I'd love to see what the shape of the land looks like. I have a general outline, but I haven't written it down. When I need art I turn to my partner, who's really good at this stuff. She did the map for this book! quote:4) Could you tell us more about your other projects that you mentioned in the Clarkesworld interview*? Both Exordia and Durandal sound really cool, I need them now. I'm hoping for cool alien races in both. Exordia is a crazy space opera set in a universe that's just discovered a physical basis for morality, left over by whoever built the place (and apparently died in the process without quite wrapping up the loose ends). A race breaks out to get the keys to the system, so that the winner can define themselves as universally good. You can read a short story based on the opening [url=http://www.shimmerzine.com/anna-saves-them-all-by-seth-dickinson/]here. The other one (which I'm calling Titanomach right now) is about a really depressed young Indian woman who manages to open a wormhole and jump through as a way to get out of her lovely life — but her half-sister follows her through. They end up on a huge starship trapped in orbit around an alien megaconstruct, and because the crew is infected with a mental virus and the ship's AI has gone megalomaniacally insane, they have to take command of the ship and try to get it home. Kinda Portal meets Marathon meets Narnia. quote:5) Tangential question, what are your favourite alien races in SF, and your favourite fantasy races in fantasy? Doesn't have to be limited to just books. Oh man! I think the Scramblers from Blindsight have to be first, but I also had a weakness for the aliens of David Brin's Startide Rising growing up. Nancy Kress' Fallers were pretty terrifying, as were the MorningLightMountain guys in one of the Peter Hamilton novels. When it comes to alien machines, Reynolds is great at freaking me out. My interest in fictional aliens is mostly in the parallax they can provide on humanity — challenging our assumptions about whether our brains are really optimized, adaptive, or inevitable.
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Oct 12, 2015 17:21
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Only about halfway through the book, but I found it interesting that people said that the Masquerade was "too evil" when for the first few chapters its evilness struck me as restrained by fantasy standards i.e., it forcibly remakes other cultures instead of outright massacring or enslaving them. It later turns out that the long-term goal probably is enslaving everybody in the world, but that's not obvious to the average person in universe. The description of the Cold Cellars did seem a bit over the top, though; that kind of direct social control seems a bit out of place in a region where the Masquerade otherwise seemed to have left previous social systems in place.
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Oct 13, 2015 05:06
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Silver2195 posted:The description of the Cold Cellars did seem a bit over the top, though; that kind of direct social control seems a bit out of place in a region where the Masquerade otherwise seemed to have left previous social systems in place. It seemed to me that in the wake of the Fools' Rebellion and ongoing unrest, things ended up being handled in a very unsubtle way. Not quite the model absorption into the empire, which presumably looks more like what happened in Taranoke. Quinton fucked around with this message at 07:38 on Oct 13, 2015 |
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Oct 13, 2015 07:16
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Silver2195 posted:Only about halfway through the book, but I found it interesting that people said that the Masquerade was "too evil" when for the first few chapters its evilness struck me as restrained by fantasy standards i.e., it forcibly remakes other cultures instead of outright massacring or enslaving them. It later turns out that the long-term goal probably is enslaving everybody in the world, but that's not obvious to the average person in universe. The description of the Cold Cellars did seem a bit over the top, though; that kind of direct social control seems a bit out of place in a region where the Masquerade otherwise seemed to have left previous social systems in place. It's more than the Masquerade seems to have a checklist of "Evil poo poo To Do" that it cribbed from modern western society and it's ripping right down the whole list. Eugenics, check. Homophobia? Check. Genital mutilation? Check. Big Brother-style spying and thoughtcrime type stuff? Check. Rigid gender roles? Check. Women are breeding livestock? Check. Diseases as weapons? Check. 'Reperatory Childbirth' as a punishment for infidelity? Got that too. No evil too petty, no deed too over the top. If you told me that they gave each schoolchild a puppy so that they could end each semester by strangling the puppies of the bottom 10%, I'd believe it. I think the book would be stronger if the Masquerade was a bit less overt with the mustache twirling evil and a bit more overt with the benefits of its society. Medicine. Dentists. Sewage and Saniation. Trade routes. Piracy suppression. That kind of thing. Some kind of benefit that would make people more likely to bear their chains peacefully. As it is, that stuff gets like two lines of dialogue in amongst the "tribadism and the knife" talk. Khizan fucked around with this message at 07:39 on Oct 13, 2015 |
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Oct 13, 2015 07:36
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Yeah, but don't forget who is the source of everything we hear about the Masquarade. Of course Baru paints it in the darkest colours, while also at the same time having swallowed a lot of their thinking wholesale or having to make a conscious effort to not fall too deep into the Masquarade thinking structures (which I found a really, really well done characterization). And they do a lot of evil poo poo over the course of the book, but we've only seen a island right after "peaceful" conquest and one on the verge of rebellion. I'm sure in more settled provinces people live a nice life with a lot of upsides once they are used to the fascist ways. Probably something for book 2 that's set at least partly in Falcrest. Also, even if there weren't any upsides to the rule of the Masquerade, it doesn't seem like people have really that much say or choice in it. We've just seen what happens to rebellion, and they control lives as thoroughly or more so as the SED did in Eastern Germany during their height. Either you go with the program or you disappear. We expect them to have enough positive sides to make up for all the poo poo, so people won't rebel - but in reality many, many empires were real shitholes for all but a privileged few. Why did people bear the chains of the USSR relatively peacefully? North Korea? Spain under Franco? The various Juntas in South America? People put up with a lot of poo poo in the name of stability. Decius fucked around with this message at 13:27 on Oct 13, 2015 |
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Oct 13, 2015 13:13
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Decius posted:Why did people bear the chains of the USSR relatively peacefully? Basically everyone was too afraid of Stalin, then after he died, revolutions in Poland and Hungary were crushed and for decades later, any regime that deviated too much from the communist guidelines found a bunch of Russian tanks knocking on its borders. The anatomy of revolution is an interesting topic, but it's very hard to find literature that deals with it without being overtly politically biased, either with Glorious Ideals Of The Oppressed or Warmongering Discontented Peasants Threatening Our Way Of Life. Either way, it's a minority thing - most of the people just want to go on with their (already complicated enough) lives. The trick is to make sure they always have something to lose. Suppression and creating a negative image of the intellectuals to discourage questions, and so on. A lot of the seemingly mustache-twirling stuff are valid (and/or real) political tools. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 13:41 on Oct 13, 2015 |
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Oct 13, 2015 13:29
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Exactly my point. You have a few big examples to show how you deal with rebellion, be it the 17th of June (1953), 1956 or 1968 - or the Fool's rebellion and the new rebellion - and you get of decades of people ducking down their head and keeping quiet, even if life is comparably bad - and aside of not having any freedom and the creepy 1984-like Homo Sovieticus engineering, the live of most people in the Maquarade is probably quite good - enough food and work if you keep your citizen score high enough.
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Oct 13, 2015 13:47
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If North Korea is any example, life doesn't even have to be particularly good. Revolutions almost never succeed without significant external support and military aid.
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Oct 13, 2015 13:58
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Read this book without realising a goon wrote it. It's a great read and I'm glad I can tell the person who wrote it how much I enjoyed it in person (sort of). Thanks General Battuta! Can't wait for the next ones, hope it is selling well for you.
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Oct 13, 2015 21:30
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The Masquerade gives me some serious post-Revolutionary France deja vu for some reason.
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Oct 16, 2015 11:33
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This was really freaking good. Nice work general buttbutter. Looking forward to seeing Baru "paint you across history in the color of their blood in the sequel. Very metal.
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Oct 16, 2015 16:58
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Loved it. Sent Seth my first-ever embarrassing author fanmail before I read this and found out he is a goon. Awesome work!
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Oct 19, 2015 02:46
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Interesting trivia: The condition Baru suffers from in the final chapter appears to be based on a real case, described in the "Eyes Right!" chapter of Oliver Sack's classic book "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat". A woman suffered brain damage, which caused her to lose all understanding of the concept of "left". She would only eat what was on the right side of her plate, and didn't understand people when they told her that there was more food on the other side. I just finished the book, and will probably have some more to say when I have had time to think about it. SimonChris fucked around with this message at 16:40 on Oct 19, 2015 |
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Oct 19, 2015 16:37
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Re: the Masquerade, I think we're not exposed quite so much to the evil of the feudal system it's competing with. There's plenty of evidence that the population of pre-Masquerade Aurdwynn is basically on the edge of starvation at all times, and there's a sharp noble/serf distinction. Imagine if you're a straight serf without much interest in the old religion in that context, and compare your life under the Masquerade to what the dukes offer. I think there's a pretty good argument to be made that for a lot of people life is better off under the rule of Falcrest. I actually didn't see them as too overtly evil - I thought they were a pretty good interpretation of what would happen if the Conquistadors had been run by people with a better understanding of social science than actually happened.
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Oct 19, 2015 22:27
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About two-thirds through and I'm not really following Baru's motivation. Why is she leading this rebellion again? I don't see how it helps liberate her homeland. e: ...oh. Crashbee fucked around with this message at 14:16 on Oct 23, 2015 |
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Oct 20, 2015 01:29
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it... helps
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Oct 20, 2015 02:01
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SimonChris posted:Interesting trivia: The condition Baru suffers from in the final chapter appears to be based on a real case, described in the "Eyes Right!" chapter of Oliver Sack's classic book "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat". A woman suffered brain damage, which caused her to lose all understanding of the concept of "left". She would only eat what was on the right side of her plate, and didn't understand people when they told her that there was more food on the other side. Yes, I also picked up on that straight away, having recently read the Sacks book and thus having it fresh in my memory. Good job, General Battuta, write more stuff and I will read it.
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Oct 20, 2015 09:16
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http://www.sethdickinson.com/2015/10/01/the-traitor-baru-cormorant-read-along-chapter-1/ I just checked out the author's web page, and he has started a commented read-along of the entire novel. Looks really interesting.
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Oct 23, 2015 10:35
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Need suggestions for next month.
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Oct 23, 2015 12:51
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Need suggestions for next month. Its only available to order on Amazon but I think "Voices from Chernobyl" by Svetlana Alexievich would be good. It's interesting, relevant, short, and she did just win the Nobel Prize.
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Oct 23, 2015 14:00
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Its only available to order on Amazon but I think "Voices from Chernobyl" by Svetlana Alexievich would be good. It's interesting, relevant, short, and she did just win the Nobel Prize. Agreed.
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Oct 23, 2015 16:47
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Ah, the month is almost over! I'll never be this famous again! I think it's important to leave a wall between writer and reader so that the reader has room to interpret the text without the author drooling all over. But whatever gently caress that, I'll talk about some poo poo. I'm curious how many people picked up on/cared at all about the more subtle threads in the book. I tried to bury the plots of other novels in the story, then make Baru resolutely ignore them (because she's so focused on her goal). Part of the idea was to reward rereads, part of the idea was to seed future stories that would be interesting, but mostly I wanted the novel to illustrate that the world was bigger than Baru. Just off the top of my head: Heingyl Ri's plan to take over Aurdwynn. The true identity of the actress in the bar (this one's super easy). Exactly which vengeance-crazed individual killed Duke Sahaule, and why Baru presumes it was done! Xate Yawa's motives throughout the novel (pretty explicitly revealed), and the identity of her backer. The fate of Xate Olake's daughter with Tain Ko. The identity of the man with the iron circle that Tain Hu mentions, although it'd be a mad stretch to guess this one just from the textual evidence. Exactly what brought down the Tu Maia heartland. The scientific error that drives Masquerade eugenics. I'll try to remember if I dropped any other threads!
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Oct 23, 2015 19:56
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General Battuta posted:
I have no idea, but I really liked that part just the way it is; as a mystery. It felt very Malazan: you could tell there was probably a book's worth of story behind whatever happened to that guy, and we're going to briefly hint at it for a paragraph before going right back into the main story.
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Oct 23, 2015 22:09
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I regret that I'm getting this one too late to participate, but I did order it just because of the good word I've seen here. Best of luck on your career, Seth.
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Oct 24, 2015 04:25
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