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The March North is the first book in a series of 5 books set in and around the Commonweal. Each book is self-contained, so readers may enjoy as many or as few of the books as they like. In the words of the author, Graydon Saunders, the series is "Egalitarian Heroic Fiction." The first book, the March North (https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=MoIOAwAAQBAJ), has the incredibly short official description of "Presumptive female agency, battle-sheep, and bad, bad odds." I can't think of a better description that wouldn't give far too much away, or give completely the wrong impression, so let's go with that for now. I haven't written a Let's Read before, but I wanted to share these books with you because even though I'm the kind of person who happily spends hours in libraries and bookstores, I've never read anything else like this. You'll see what I mean once we get into it. Spoiler Policy Please spoiler any information from chapters or books we have not yet reached in this thread. Similarly, as per the author's request, don't post any information from his Google Group. Graydon Saunders has a writing style that can be described as idiosyncratic. In addition, he has a tendency to include references, names, and nouns that readers are not yet familiar with. Since he's done this consistently in all of the books I can only assume he's doing it deliberately to remind us that this is not our world and help us share in the confusion of the characters. Saunders' characters often find themselves needing to act without complete information or suffering from visions indistinguishable from insanity, so let's soak in the confusion together. Please do speculate about what's going on based only on the information provided in what we've read so far. I can't wait to see what wild theories everyone comes up with. Where to get the book The author, Graydon Saunders is currently only selling their books through kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/series/commonweal They've been available through other vendors in the past, but in this time and place, only kobo offers them. There are no print editions, nor is there an audiobook, due to financial considerations. No publisher for the former, and Graydon would want to pay the voice actor union rates and can't get the math to pencil out. Posting Frequency I'm going to try to post a new chapter every day. Including today. Edit: Starting with book 2, I no longer have any pre-prepared chapters. I will try to make time to read and do writeups every day, but may miss days occasionally. Please be patient with me. If there's a thread for announcing new Let's Reads threads, please let me know so I can go share this there. Quick links to the start of the Let's Read for each book Book 2: A Succession of Bad Days Book 3: Safely You Deliver (Presented by Danhenge) Book 4: Under One Banner Book 5: A Mist of Grit and Splinters -intro -first chapter LLSix fucked around with this message at 01:21 on Oct 6, 2025 |
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Jul 20, 2024 15:39
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Chapter 1The March North posted:“They’re sending us a Rust, somebody who goes by Blossom, and Halt.” The first chapter opens with that cryptic and worrisome exchange. No, we're not supposed to know who any of these people are yet. Or even who is speaking with Twitch. I'm impressed by how swiftly and tersely Saunders informs the audience that Halt is bad, bad news while at the some time creating confusion and uncertainty about everything else. The chapter then goes on to, briefly, inform, or rather, imply, that this conversation is happening somewhere called "West Wetcreek." If you're wondering why they need to specify a creek is wet, the chapter quickly provides an explanation. The March North posted:These days there’s a Westcreek (dust dry), a West Wetcreek, a Lost Creek (swamp), and Split Creek (on some fixed astrological schedule: fire, blood, venom, beer) in the province of Westcreek. I’m leaving out the rest of the Creeks, plural, the stuff further east. Let's try to unpack this. 1) The locals are sufficiently stubborn to keep referring to a dry creek-bed by its former name. We learn in the next few paragraphs they've been doing so for at least 300 years. This is more than a normal amount of obstinacy. 2) The behavior of Split Creek is not natural. It's not even what passes for natural in your typical fantasy setting. Somebody made it run alternately with fire, blood, venom, and beer. None of those are water. Somebody with enough power that nobody has been both able and willing to set it right in at least 300 years. 3) The, still unidentified, speaker is familiar enough with magic to be confident distinguishing small magical workings from large ones, not that it's hard to tell in this case. But this is a nicely subtle way of establishing that this is not a low magic setting. This scene also establishes that the West Wetcreek is on the far Western edge of someplace called "the Creeks." The people who live in the Creeks are also called Creeks. The next couple of paragraphs establish that the Commonweal has been internally peaceful for the past 300 years. The Creeks are peaceful even by those standards. I get the impression that sheltered Hobbits from the Shire would be impressed by the amount of peace, plenty, and general tranquility in the area. The author even manages to sneak in an implication that the Creeks aren't naturally peaceful or prosperous, but rather that the current idyllic condition is the result of consistent hard work, attention to detail, even "Spring feels planned", and the beneficence of the Commonweal which allowed the population to triple up to the current relatively stable levels. Next we get our first character description. The March North posted:Twitch: twitchiest guy ever — tongue clicking, toe-tapping, will drum on any small object you don’t take away provided an absence of immediate lethal threats — looks at me a bit funny and hands The List down, tapping on the cover. This is one of the tamer character descriptions, but it immediately provides a distinguishing personality quirk that will help us remember and recognize him. No physical description, though. No obsession with hair or eye color or graceful curves or bulging muscles as you see in so much fantasy writing. Both of these will be consistent elements in character descriptions. One of the main complaints I've heard about these novels is that it is hard to mentally visualize how characters look. I think that's a fair complaint. On the other hand, I remember being told over and over in school that what matters is who someone is on the inside, not how they look. So maybe we're getting the part of the description that really matters. The lack of physical descriptions is also used to underline the importance of the few descriptions we do get. It can make for some dramatic reveals. The March North posted:There’s a lot of Independents these days, sorcerers good enough that the basic deal — the Line don’t extinguish them, and in return they show up for five years in fifty and do subtle clever things to make the Commonweal work better, besides staying out of trouble and politics — applies. That’s the List, the sorcerers good enough to make themselves ageless by a means the rest of us will tolerate. But the List contains the Short List, too. Parliament gives it a polite name, but what it means is, “if this one causes trouble, send a battalion”. There’s fifty-odd names on the Short List, out of the couple thousand on the List as a whole. So Halt is not just a bad sorcerer. They're the baddest, oldest, scariest, smartest sorcerer our narrator is aware of. The obvious question, and the question bothering both Twitch and the viewpoint character, is why Halt is coming to a quiet backwater like the Creeks? What's a brigade? We haven't been told yet. Apparently it's larger than a battalion. What's a battalion? We haven't been told that yet either. We haven't even been told what the Line is, other than they're in the habit of executing sorcerers who cause trouble or "make themselves by a means the" Commonweal won't tolerate. Which, given some of the ways fairy tales describe gaining immortality like bathing in the blood on an innocent once a month, seem fair enough. I'm trying to strike a balance between discussing the chapters and just quoting the whole book so I'll skip over some more character descriptions and background here. In the next few paragraphs we learn: The March North posted:Rust’s name is the fourth name of that dozen, and Rust and Halt do not get on. The Short List, as we know it so far, goes: 1) Halt 2) ??? 3) ??? 4) Rust … ?) Blossom So 2 of the 4 most powerful sorcerers are coming to the same place at the same time. They're both coming to West Wetcreek, along with Blossom. That's something like a sixth of the Commonweal's mightiest headed for one of the most peaceful parts of it. This would be a bit like learning that a sixth of all the nuclear equipped bombing squadrons in the entire country and a marine strike team had suddenly been redeployed to your neighborhood. There aren't a lot of believable reasons for something like that to be happening. None of the possible explanations are encouraging. Also notable that Blossom is smart and talented and powerful enough to make it into the top 50 immortals in under 100 years. We're told the Commonweal has existed for at least 500 years, which means Blossom is stronger than people five times older than Blossom. Or more. Impressive, and at least a little scary. The narrator figures much the same. The March North posted:Either someone’s decided that Split Creek desperately needed plugging about a hundred years ago, or someone else is afraid that Halt and Rust’s long feud is soon to have a failure of decorum and believes the devastated landscape ought to be far away from the City of Peace.
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Jul 20, 2024 15:39
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I am hype as gently caress for this, my fellow Graydon sockpuppets.* The Commonweal is one of if not the most interesting, delightful series I've read in my life.LLSix posted:Where to get the book You can also get the Commonweal books via Kobo (The March North is at https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-march-north-1) and Apple Books (https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-march-north/id1003510474?at=1010l9S2&uo=4&mt=11) as well as some other indie stores (links to those storefronts via Direct2Drive https://books2read.com/u/4Xx214). Some of his books have also been added to a number of library systems across the US and Canada as an ebook, so it's worth checking those if you can't afford/don't want to pay the $5 for TMN. There are no print editions, nor is there an audiobook, due to financial considerations. No publisher for the former, and Graydon would want to pay the voice actor union rates and can't get the math to pencil out. * There's a long running joke in the Science Fiction/Fantasy book barn thread thread that everyone who posts about the Commonweal must be sockpuppets of Graydon Saunders. Because it's an obscure self-published title and every 6-12 months someone jumps into the thread to gush "holy moly have I got a book series you need to read! It's like nothing I've ever experienced before!" so one goon made the assumption that we must be the author trying to pump sales. habeasdorkus fucked around with this message at 16:47 on Jul 20, 2024 |
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Jul 20, 2024 16:20
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A couple notes on parts of the chapter that OP didn't excerpt:The March North posted:“Five years in fifty means they’ve got to send Halt somewhere .” Which is just true, not an explanation. Not when Independents don’t serve with the Line — there’s five centuries of custom back of that. This is right after the opening lines, and tells us straight off that the Commonweal does not have battlemages as a part of the Line. That the Independents, even (or especially) the super powerful ones like Halt and Rust and Blossom, do not serve as members of the Line. So it's very off-putting that they're being sent into the Creeks, where we're specifically told nothing happens, and detailed to the Line. --- As for real life numbers, a battalion in the US and most US allied nations is about 1000 soldiers, split into companies and then platoons. They're typically considered the smallest force capable of independent operations. A brigade is significantly bigger, and comprises several (usually 3-5) battalions. So if someone on the short list goes Evil Overlord, you send 1000 or so of these Line people to go to handle it. Which should makes you wonder how a group of 1000 people can handle an extremely powerful immortal wizard.
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Jul 20, 2024 16:41
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habeasdorkus posted:I am hype as gently caress for this, my fellow Graydon sockpuppets. The Commonweal is one of if not the most interesting, delightful series I've read in my life. Thanks! Added.
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Jul 20, 2024 16:42
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Will be interested to see if anyone besides Graydon posts here.
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Jul 20, 2024 17:00
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I solemnly swear that I am not graydon saunders or any of his relatives living or dead.
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Jul 20, 2024 20:03
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I loved this book, and enjoy the LR with the reminders as to why. I bounced incredibly hard off the second book, so plan a sequel thread where I can learn how dumb I am.
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Jul 20, 2024 21:44
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LLSix posted:The next couple of paragraphs establish that the Commonweal has been internally peaceful for the past 300 years. The Creeks are peaceful even by those standards. I get the impression that sheltered Hobbits from the Shire would be impressed by the amount of peace, plenty, and general tranquility in the area. Put a pin in this impression and we'll come back to it at some point.
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Jul 20, 2024 21:46
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withak posted:Will be interested to see if anyone besides Graydon posts here. I am not Graydon. But I have not read any weals, common or rare
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Jul 21, 2024 00:11
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Y'know this might be the best way for me to "read" the book, given my vast TBR pile. Cools!
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Jul 21, 2024 01:18
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LLSix posted:Posting Frequency Bookmarked! Thanks so much for running this! Don’t know when I can jump in and start reading but this has been on my TBR for ages and this is going to give me the push to start at last.
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Jul 21, 2024 10:47
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I acquired all of these books at some point and doubt I'll ever actually read any of them until I retire, due to the fact that I like the premise but my eyes slide off the prose. Graydon seems like a much smarter person that me.
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Jul 21, 2024 16:56
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Chapter 2The March North posted:The drill night wasn’t a disaster. The March North posted:The West Wetcreek Wapentake — don’t think I’ll say that five times fast — isn’t bad, precisely. Aside from me, and Twitch, four (it should be five, but we’ve got four platoons instead of five short ones) sergeants and a quartermaster, none of them think this is their job. The March North posted:… pretty much all of them have been pulled into cleaning wool or helping with the canning, so there’s a reliable delicacy of touch you don’t expect to find in the Regular Line. Long story short, they're fine when doing small scale, delicate work like boiling water for canning. Or even when doing civil engineering tasks which generally aren't time-sensitive and don't require the whole company working together. Unfortunately, they're pretty bad at anything else. In particular, they're bad at large scale activities, like fighting. To fight effectively, they need to fight together as a group, and they're not really managing that right now. The March North posted:As a company they don't coalesce. To make things worse, they don't trust their leader. The March North posted:For some guy whose ancestors weren’t born here, or for a standard half of them think runs on necromancy, there just isn’t any reflex of trust. Even harder to notice, is that the soldiers don't understand how their primary weapon, the standard (or focus), works. Half of them think it's spooky evil necromantic magic. The March North posted:So they want to argue, and do great canals and they’d be hopeless at fighting, when you must react without thought. Back at the end of the Bad Old Days, you’d get some sorcerer willing to pound at the focus to see if there was a way through; these days, they know there isn’t, not with anything they can do, and go for flash floods or a million hornets or worse, anything to get your attention off them long enough to get away. If they do get away, they come back by surprise; you can’t keep a company together all the time. Not a problem for a regular battalion, which can keep a guard company up in rotation. Pretty hopeless when one company is all you’ve got. Interestingly, whatever "the focus" is, it's got enough oomph behind it to reliably crush sorcerer's powerful enough to summon a lake's worth of water. As long as the sorcerer is dumb enough to face it head on. It takes more people contributing to "the focus" to be able to deal with a smart or tricky sorcerer. The Commonweal does have enough soldiers for that, organized into "regular battalions" made up of companies. Unfortunately, the Wapentake doesn't have enough people to deal with smart, tricky sorcerers. All they've got is a single, slightly understrength (4 platoons instead of 5) company. Which is probably enough to deal with stupid bad guys. At least the narrator thinks they could if the Wapentake would follow orders reliably. Which, since they don't follow orders, is a pretty big if at the moment. The next couple sections are more discussions of the differences between a part-time force like the Wapentake and professional soldiers. All pretty typical stuff that's pretty much the same as in our world. The narrator has the Wapentake practicing their drill, which is the most productive thing the narrator can think of until they figure out how to explain what a real fight would be like. While drill is wrapping up, something unusual happens. The March North posted:… today unusual is being led by a five-tonne sheep under a howdah. Giving no outward sign of being the least bit surprised, the narrator turns to deal with the five-tonne so-called sheep while Twitch wraps up and sends the Wapentake home. Since there are no walls a bunch of the Wapentake stick around anyways to see what's going on with the monster sheep. The detail about no walls is very important. People build walls when they think they're likely to be attacked. Even if the attack is only once in a generation or two, historically speaking, most human civilizations still invested in walls, because they'll save your life that one time you need them. Therefor, any place that doesn't have walls must be really, really peaceful or have a central government that is very afraid of revolts and isn't willing to allow walls outside the capital. We heard last chapter about just how peaceful the Creeks are, but the lack of walls is a nice confirming detail. One of the many little details Graydon Saunders does such a good job of remembering and keeping consistent. Instead of telling us about the sheep first, the book first describes one of the people traveling near the five-tonne sheep. Personally, I'd be more interested in the house-sized sheep, but that's not who the narrator focuses on initially. The March North posted:We’ve got Rust, all right. Rust’s horse looks good and plain and honest, too, and it might have been. It might still be; Rust has been riding the ghost of that horse since there are records, and if anyone knows how that works, they’re not saying. The March North posted:The sheep with the howdah has to be Halt. If you’re willing to call something six-horned and about five tonnes a sheep, anyway. We do, finally, get the Captain's impression of the sheep The March North posted:… it looks like someone set out to cross malice with a sheep and got black iron and brass into the malice. The Captain, completely undisturbed, greets Halt politely. Everybody else is thoroughly rattled. More by Halt than the sheep. Because Halt is, well, the book talks a lot about how scary Halt is so I'll point you back to all those descriptions and just repeat that Halt is the strongest and scariest sorcerer in the whole of the Commonweal. The March North posted:Everybody knows a lot of things about Halt, some of which are true. Hardly anyone seems to know Halt’s not a metre-fifty tall and looks like someone’s grandma. Maybe not your grandma, no-one in the Creeks is that delicate, even adjusting for scale, but someone’s. I'll take a moment to note here that there's a very subtle hint that Creeks are on the large side hidden in the above quote. We'll get more details about that as the book continues. Halt has a very convincing grandma appearance. "Halt’s best benign look is an excellent effort." Rust isn't quite as good at pretending to be human: The March North posted:Rust, who can manage to look good materially. Plain and honest, yeah, right the way through, but even as an adjective, “good” sort of shudders away from the standard’s view of Rust. Both Halt and Rust have been commissioned as "Staff Thaumaturgists." This is surprising because: The March North posted:Staff Thaumaturgists get kept around to do things like straighten nails; anything too delicate to get the duty platoon to do. Anyone with enough active talent to consider seriously that someday, if they work hard, they could become a qualified assistant village sorcerer is drastically overqualified to be a Staff Thaumaturgist. The narrator takes it all in stride and asks if there's a third; mostly because they're wondering if Blossom is playing the same ridiculous game. Blossom is not. Blossom is something much stranger. So much so that the narrator, for the first time, can't manage to keep a straight face. The March North posted:Blossom hands me a sheet of paper, folded in three lengthways, personal orders, unit orders is a stack of paper, and something that can only be called a scroll. Unlike the other two sorcerers, Blossom is also wearing armor. The standard, regulation issued, armor for a person with Blossom's rank of part-captain. This is even weirder than the other two being made staff thaumaturgists. The Captain gamely rallies and gives Blossom instructions/orders for how to get the gunners in her "battery" beds and food. It's not super important right now, but Blossom is riding a vaguely horse-shaped thing that the Captain is sure isn't a horse but doesn't otherwise recognize. It must be pretty weird since he was willing to call the thing breathing fire a sheep but declines to extend the same courtesy to the "horse-thing" Blossom is riding. This has been a chapter of startling revelations. Enough so that the Captain needs a moment to calm down before concluding the formalities. The March North posted:Staffers are of the Line, not in the Line, and are not welcomed to units, which means there is another customary phrase.
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Jul 21, 2024 18:35
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“Hello commander of a backwater militia where nothing ever happens and nothing ever will happen! High command is sending you Sauron and Belgarath to use their talents to keep rabbits out of the Company garden. Oh and we have a young officer, Rand Al’Thor, we hope you’ll find him useful.” Also, “appalled” count: 1! First page! (This is Graydon’s favorite word, assuming it’s not “snorfled”) navyjack fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Jul 21, 2024 |
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Jul 21, 2024 19:05
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LLSix posted:Wapentake This word is from Old English with the literal meaning (and presumably pronunciation) 'weapon take', and later was a kind of political subdivision.
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Jul 21, 2024 19:14
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fritz posted:This word is from Old English with the literal meaning (and presumably pronunciation) 'weapon take', and later was a kind of political subdivision. Lots of Old English in the books.
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Jul 21, 2024 19:28
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LLSix posted:Giving no outward sign of being the least bit surprised, the narrator turns to deal with the five-tonne so-called sheep while Twitch wraps up and sends the Wapentake home. Since there are no walls a bunch of the Wapentake stick around anyways to see what's going on with the monster sheep. The detail about no walls is very important. People build walls when they think they're likely to be attacked. Even if the attack is only once in a generation or two, historically speaking, most human civilizations still invested in walls, because they'll save your life that one time you need them. Therefor, any place that doesn't have walls must be really, really peaceful or have a central government that is very afraid of revolts and isn't willing to allow walls outside the capital. We heard last chapter about just how peaceful the Creeks are, but the lack of walls is a nice confirming detail. One of the many little details Graydon Saunders does such a good job of remembering and keeping consistent. Avoiding trying to giving anything away, I'll say that I think this might have more to do with the character of the Creeks and the Line's policy for dealing with external threats.
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Jul 21, 2024 19:54
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Danhenge posted:Avoiding trying to giving anything away, I'll say that I think this might have more to do with the character of the Creeks and the Line's policy for dealing with external threats. It’s going to be so hard to not spoil stuff by accident, because there are so many seeds that get planted that don’t sprout for a long time. Several books in some cases.
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Jul 21, 2024 19:57
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navyjack posted:It’s going to be so hard to not spoil stuff by accident, because there are so many seeds that get planted that don’t sprout for a long time. Several books in some cases. Fair enough. I'll just say that I imagine the general planning of the Commonweal assumes that if an enemy got to where the Wapentake is drilling, things have already gone very badly wrong. To the point where walls aren't likely to matter.
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Jul 21, 2024 20:02
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An interesting start
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Jul 21, 2024 20:37
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The March North posted:even as an adjective, “good” sort of shudders away from the standard’s view of Rust. LLSix posted:I really like this line. A very subtle way of saying that Rust isn't just terrifying. He's also a terrible, terrible person. This'll be relevant several times later on. This line also understatedly suggests that the standard sees more and/or differently than eyeballs.
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Jul 21, 2024 21:16
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I cannot believe that OP left out the most important part of this chapter, that we learn the gigasheep is named Eustace! I was mispronouncing Wapentake for years like it was an Algonquin word until someone finally pointed out that it was just Weapon Take (as in, "take up your weapons and prepare to fight"). It's noted in the start of this chapter that the Company can make walls pretty quick: The March North posted:The camp-ditching is fine, too; you’ll have a better-than-regulation ditch and a stone-faced wall in two hours if they have to make the stones. I’ve seen them go so far as to make great thick refractory tiles, glazed in regulation colours, when camped on a mass of old clay lakebed." Also noted at the start of the chapter is that some folks joined up because they'd "lost their nerve for a weeding team." A bit odd, right? That people would take up soldiering because they couldn't handle weeding a garden? Put a pin in that. Lastly, Blossom rules. ulmont posted:This line also understatedly suggests that the standard sees more and/or differently than eyeballs. We know now that the Standard can let regular people do some sorcerous stuff - we're told straight up that Twitch can see what Halt and Rust actually look like rather than how they glamour themselves for polite company for people who're looking with just their eyes using regular photons. habeasdorkus fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Jul 22, 2024 |
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Jul 22, 2024 00:12
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habeasdorkus posted:We know now that the Standard can let regular people do some sorcerous stuff - we're told straight up that Twitch can see what Halt and Rust actually look like rather than how they glamour themselves for polite company for people who're looking with just their eyes using regular photons. Without getting into how Independents become Independents, I would argue that what's actually happening is they're picking up on the sorcerous aura via the standards, rather than viewing their purely material selves. The only reason I'm being picky is that glamour implies an illusion, and their physical, observed bodies are actual material things.
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Jul 22, 2024 22:43
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Danhenge posted:The only reason I'm being picky is that glamour implies an illusion, and their physical, observed bodies are actual material things. Well. Some of them are.
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Jul 22, 2024 23:20
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Ok, so I am a HUGE Halt and Eustace fanboy! We don’t know much about them, other than that Halt is a legendary terror. Descriptions are decent, but I’m American so I can’t easily do the metric stuff in my head. “Gramma” Halt at “not a meter-fifty” comes in at under 4’11”. Eustace is about 5 tons. Assuming these are metric tonnes, that is about 22,000 lbs. Average weight of an African elephant is 12,000 lbs, and the largest ever recorded is 24k lbs. Halt at least presents as a sweet little old lady, but when she provides correction to the bigger-than-elephant sized alleged sheep, that sheep listens! Sheep, by and large, are not aggressive animals. The 5 tonne sheep with possible actual steel wool that breathes fire?? Well, we’ll see.
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Jul 23, 2024 01:09
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Chapter 3The March North posted:It’s been a long time since there was even a territorial battalion stationed in West Wetcreek; the opinion that nothing happens in the Creeks is not restricted to the folk who live there. The third chapter opens with a reminder that the Creeks are unusually peaceful. In most contexts this is good. Unfortunately, right now it is important mostly because it means the Wapentake, the local militia, a.k.a. the only soldiers in the entire region, are unprepared for any sort of conflict. The next couple of paragraphs fill in some more detail of the buildings used by the Wapentake. They were built hundreds of years ago for several times as many people as currently make up the Wapentake, so there's plenty of capacity for Blossom's artillerists. The buildings are also in good shape. Much better than you'd expect in our world for buildings used by a group that nobody expects will need to do much of anything. But the descriptions also serve to further reinforce how few of the soldiers there are. A company where there should be a battalion. Several buildings have been replaced by grassy fields. Others have been converted for civilian use. It all gives an impression of a long, long time of peace and stability. The building the Captain lives in is "one of less than a dozen standard-shrines that date from the time of the Foremost." No, the Foremost have not been introduced in this book before. Graydon Saunders frequently includes references to things long before explaining them. New readers are not expected to know what is being described but I wanted to point out this snippet because it's a nice bit of detail that dates the building very clearly once you've read the later books. We also learn that the scary sorcerers are going to be living with the Captain, because that's where the rooms for Staff Thaumaturgists are. In addition to having creepy magic folk in it, the building also has The March North posted:… no kitchen — no point — but Creeks don’t do social well without this vile stuff they make from wood lettuce roots. The same stove-and-kettle setup will do for actual coffee, and since Creeks in general have the same view of coffee as I do of the lettuce roots, what would be scant supply for a company can stand to have a couple of Independents added to the Captain and Quartermaster. It is not clear at this time why there's no kitchen in the building, but there is a reason the Captain thinks there is no point in having one. I don't think it gets explained until book 2, but I promise there's a rational explanation. The main reason I wanted to talk about this paragraph is that wood lettuce root tea is a fixture of the series. It will be in almost every social scene, which is probably why the Captain thinks "Creeks don't do social well without" it. We are reminded that the Captain is not a Creek in this paragraph as well, unlike Creeks, he thinks the "wood lettuce root tea" is vile. Which is saying a lot. In context with some of the things he puts in his mouth, I have to assume it's about as pleasant smelling as rotten eggs or something even worse. The March North posted:"Halt takes coffee black. Halt is also apparently incapable of sitting down for any length of time without knitting. Halt does an excellent job of pretending to look like someone's grandmother. She even knits. Meanwhile, Rust can't even drink coffee without doing creepy magic stuff that sets him apart like pulling cream out of thin air. Even though he's trying not to be creepy, and even goes so far as to offer to share the cream. The creepiness of the cream is further reinforced by the Captain noting that it's not available anywhere in the entire town. As creepy as this, it is also one of the earliest setting elements that helps set this book and series apart. The author invests a lot of time into thinking and showing how magic not only shapes sorcerers' lives, but how it can be used to make things better for everyone. Like providing cream. The next several paragraphs are a discussion of magical details that I found interesting but I think are clear enough on their own. The main detail to remember is that Blossom, "and another youngster" were taught a new style of magic that allows them to do impossible things like join a focus. Something that old sorcerers like Rust and Halt can't do. We also get an exact age for the Commonweal, "five hundred and seventy-one years," that being how long Halt and Rust have served the Commonweal. The next couple of paragraphs have some wonderfully colorful reminders that all three of the newly arrived wizards are powerful, scary, and in two cases, ancient. No matter how spry they appear. This being the case, the Captain tries to ask why they're here. The March North posted:“Does Eustace have an official reason for a sojourn in the Creeks?” There’s a voice for inquiring after much-loved lapdogs. Not quite the right thing for five tonnes of opinionated mutton, but perhaps close enough. Regrettably, Eustace did not make it into this chapter, since it was all indoors, and sheep larger than elephants don't fit through doors. The Captain makes one last try to dig answers out of them and is again rebuffed. That being the case he gives them orders like he would any other member of the Wapentake he commands. The March North posted:“Two days to settle in” — we’ll call it settle in, and not fuss unless they ask for live creatures or dead people — “and then on day seven, the company will require your presence to referee a game of catch.” LLSix fucked around with this message at 02:54 on Jul 24, 2024 |
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Jul 23, 2024 02:23
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quote:they're fine when doing small scale, delicate work like boiling water for canning. There's some small scale, delicate work involved in safely canning, and I'm throwing thoughts under a spoiler tag. Anyone who can strike a match can set water boiling. This is a weeding problem. Boiling the jars is not enough, you need to get them hotter than 100C and you need to remove anything that won't be killed or rendered harmless by the heat you can apply without melting the jar. The last bit is a measure of control as well as intensity. And then you have to filter whatever goes in the jars, so you don't add some sentient megabotulism to your nicely sterilized jars of applesauce. That gives the Commonweal a serious advantage in being able to store a food surplus. Everyone else relies on the willingness of sorcerers to do tedious work or rely on boiling and hope. I'ma play with some math here: Take the focus minimum of eight people, each of whom can sorcerously light a candle. Some googling shows a lit match will put out about 1,000 joules. If I remember correctly, an 8-person focus gives a 3-fold multiplier so 8x3 or a 24-factor boost total. Something over 24 kilojoules of heat when they push. That's generalized raw power, and quite a bit of it. The tricky part is the filtering which requires concentration and extreme attention to detail. A lot is up to whoever makes the focus, but the canning team has some very meticulous work to do. That's also about what a file in the Line operating with no support can put out on offense. e. Incidentally, that kind of mathposting supports my opinion that these books are not fantasy, but science fiction. Not only do the imaginary elements follow rules that you can extrapolate from, but the books also explore different forms of society and of being a person. mllaneza fucked around with this message at 02:48 on Jul 23, 2024 |
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Jul 23, 2024 02:36
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mllaneza posted:e. Incidentally, that kind of mathposting supports my opinion that these books are not fantasy, but science fiction. Not only do the imaginary elements follow rules that you can extrapolate from, but the books also explore different forms of society and of being a person. spoilered for general discussion about the series re: scifi stuff it really is fun how the "bad old days" fantasy context of the series is akin to a dark forest scifi-y setting -- right down to purposefully doing everything you can to obscure your existence, avoiding doing things like trying to map out where other people are because your own knowledge might itself be magically detectable, etc. it also renders nearly all encounters with outsiders fundamentally alien and saunders certainly delivers there eke out fucked around with this message at 03:18 on Jul 23, 2024 |
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Jul 23, 2024 03:08
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The March North posted:
This, I think, is instructive. You will see that phrase, “in their kingdoms of wrath” time and again when talking about sorcerers from “The Bad Old Days” (another phrase you will see a bunch of). This tells us that Halt and Wake, in particular, are not your normal run of Fantasy sorcerers. They are Sauron and Belgarath and Elminster and The Ten Who Were Taken. Absolute world-beaters who, after undergoing defeat at the hands of the “Foremost,” are now politely sipping coffee and under the nominal authority of a militia commander in the rear end-end of nowhere. What is this society like and what terrible power does our narrator represent that this is so?
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Jul 23, 2024 03:11
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navyjack posted:What is this society like and what terrible power does our narrator represent that this is so? e. LOL, this needs to be spoilered. Laurel's greatest power wasn't her work as an enchanter, it was as a politician lining people up to help make the No Slaves, No Rule By Sorcerers concept work in a world where "do what the sorcerer says" has been genetically coded into tens, hundreds, or thousands of generations. Laurel could compel Halt, probably more with a vision of a better future than sheer force of Power, to agree to the experiment of the Commonweal. Laurel cannot compel someone to feel bad that they didn't do their share of dishes at the refectory after lunch. mllaneza fucked around with this message at 06:07 on Jul 23, 2024 |
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Jul 23, 2024 06:03
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It was last chapter but I’m wondering what image Blossom’s “smile that could bend metal” (another frequent phrase) conjures for folks. Malicious? Sweet? Exuberant?
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Jul 23, 2024 12:23
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head58 posted:It was last chapter but I’m wondering what image Blossom’s “smile that could bend metal” (another frequent phrase) conjures for folks. Malicious? Sweet? Exuberant? I read it as something like “Joy of getting a hard job you really like doing.” Hard but happy.
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Jul 23, 2024 15:14
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We get some major exposition on how the standard/focuses work, the Captain thought it was impossible for a sorcerer to latch to one until he met Blossom. Essentially, whatever goes into becoming an Independent makes you incapable of latching to the Standard, and thus unable to serve in the Line. Also, they have artillery, as in cannon, but we'll see some of how those work in the next chapter.head58 posted:It was last chapter but I’m wondering what image Blossom’s “smile that could bend metal” (another frequent phrase) conjures for folks. Malicious? Sweet? Exuberant? I see it as an almost physically sharp grin. Not malicious, but potentially dangerous. Not sweet, but not angry. Exuberant feels like too much, but I might go with "eager" and/or "wry."
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Jul 23, 2024 15:20
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mllaneza posted:e. LOL, this needs to be spoilered. I don't remember which of the later books this spoils, probably multiple of them Laurel didn't do much in the way of politics, they kicked rear end, made Ongen build the first shape of peace, and moved on. it was the people picking up the pieces afterwards that did all that stuff. Halt and all the rest were let out of Laurel's imprisonment because it was that or the Commonweal wasn't going to make it.
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Jul 23, 2024 20:33
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mllaneza posted:There's some small scale, delicate work involved in safely canning, and I'm throwing thoughts under a spoiler tag. I think once a sorcerer establishes dominion, the weeds settle down and start answering to them, and part of the reason the Commonweal has so much trouble is they refuse to let anybody establish dominion
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Jul 23, 2024 20:43
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head58 posted:It was last chapter but I’m wondering what image Blossom’s “smile that could bend metal” (another frequent phrase) conjures for folks. Malicious? Sweet? Exuberant? I feel like it's an emotive phrase rather than a descriptive one. So whatever emotion it makes the reader feel is good. For me, it sounds 
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Jul 23, 2024 21:08
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I'm enjoying this Lets Read. Really wish I enjoyed reading the actual books haha. So many good ideas! So much indecipherable prose!
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Jul 23, 2024 21:54
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i think part of the obtuseness is that we're very much in the Captain's head and the Captain is extremely observant and keenly aware of what's happening around them at all times, but also doesn't really care much about certain things and doesn't bother to think about them much
eke out fucked around with this message at 22:24 on Jul 23, 2024 |
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Jul 23, 2024 22:20
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Chapter 4The March North posted:Split Creek is running blood. Not the burning kind; this just spreads a thick smell of fresh blood down five kilometres of river-flats. If you're wondering why a town was built on a river of blood; that's a great question. Hold on to it. It gets explained later. Sort of. As does how they're not all dead from a lack of clean water. Also, in this world there are at least two types of blood, the burning kind, and the normal kind. This is a river of the latter, "normal," non-burning kind. I love how full of tiny sidenotes like this the series is. It gives the writing a real sense of place. A strange, magical place. As promised in the last chapter, the Captain has lined up the Wapentake on one side, and the newly arrived gunners with their artillery tubes on the other side of a large flat area beside the river. There's about half a kilometer between the two sides. I don't know about you, but I have a hard time making out details of anything that far out. I certainly can't throw anything like that far. For that matter, it's further away than most rifles are accurate out to. There's some back and forth talk between the officers, including the Captain asking Part-Captain/Independent Blossom: The March North posted:“Do your gunners know what they’re doing?” Quiet, pleasant, isn’t-this-lovely-weather officer voice; the Line makes you practice discussing hangings in these tones to its satisfaction before it’ll provide the warrant of commission. Not the only requirement, but not optional. Eliding over some more character building and world-building Blossom gives us the operational specifications of the artillery tubes. The March North posted:“Ten rounds per tube, black-black-black, all in a fifty-metre target at twenty kilometres range.” No forced cheer at all. “The target wasn’t eighty guys in a block.” The Captain then explains why he has everyone out here to play "catch." The March North posted:“You’re here, Halt’s here, Rust is here. I’ve got a company of dutiful, honest Creeks with no belief in fighting. That needs fixing before why you’re here shows up.” Because it won’t necessarily bother to kill people before it eats them can go unspoken; I want the colour party to spread an idea of readiness, not assert that I’m crazy as well as undead. The house-sized murder sheep, Eustace, provides a bit of comic relief to lighten up the tension. The March North posted:Eustace has wandered down into the creek and is slurping away at the blood. Belly wool’s going to stain something dire. Meanwhile, everything else over the next couple of paragraphs serves to ratchet up the tension. Blossom is pretty good with the standard and demonstrates the first bit of magic we see from the standard, unless you count eating paperwork as magic. Blossom splits the standard's viewpoint and positions one viewpoint roughly in the center of the field and the other behind the first platoon. The captain creates a third viewpoint and moves it The March North posted:.., way up and back, so I’m looking down on the whole thing, but keep listening, so I hear, with the odd over-there effect one gets from the standard stuffing things in your ears Toby’s long “Ready!” In addition to hearing Toby, platoon sergeant for first platoon, the standard also lets them clearly hear the gunners of tube one. Remember, these two groups are half a kilometer apart, yet the standard lets the officers hear both groups clearly. That sort of clear communication is incredibly valuable. Especially when paired with viewpoint controls that are suspiciously similar to camera controls in games like Total War. The book provides both in-universe military jargon and a translation for it. The important bit is the description of what the artillery tubes are about to shoot. The March North posted:usually iron — bar half a metre long and ten centimetres across. The other two “blacks” in the shot code mean it has nothing directing its flight nor any magical effects when it hits. Which makes it the lightest, least dangerous thing the tubes can throw. Less awesome is Toby's reaction. The March North posted:Toby misses it, waiting to see it before reacting, which was just plain dumb. Also, this seems like a good time to discuss that "catch" in this case, involves magic artillery shooting at the Wapentake, one tube per platoon of the 4 (should be 5) platoon company. Previously I thought half a kilometre was a long way to stand apart. But it's basically nothing compared to the 20 kilometre range of the artillery. There's almost no time to react, even with the artillery shooting at the slowest, "safest" speeds they can. Fortunately, Toby manages to recover from being virtually "killed" and sprayed with sparks from Rust stopping the artillery shot. He "grabs the platoon focus," and puts the fire out. So the standard/focus (the terms are used largely interchangeably) can provide remote viewing, remote hearing, presumably catch artillery shot, and also put out fires. That's a versatile magic item. The Captain calmly comments that the point for that round of catch goes to the artillery. The Captain, demonstrating a level of ruthlessness horrifying during peacetime and generally considered desirable in war, narrates their thoughts. The March North posted:Before we marched out this morning, I pointed out that the right thing to do at this range is to pick the tubes up and beat their crews to death with them. Blossom radiated horrified just long enough for my next sentence, utterly forbidding any such thing, to sink in. This is a game of catch … Next up, platoon two, and their sargeant, Radish, gets to try catching a shot from tube two. I'll probably be saying some variation of this every chapter, but you really have to read between the lines with this book. Saunders never comes straight out and tells us that Radish the platoon sergeant for second platoon, but he is. The March North posted:Radish is a small guy, for a Creek, a small guy named Radish, which is not your usual Creek name. So a good bit meaner than Toby. Radish does the simple thing and rams the platoon focus into the ground on the angle of a door wedge over twice the width of the platoon front. Tube two’s gunner gives the whole thing a nice long pause and then calls the shot with hand signals while saying “black-black-black” out loud, hoping that the focus, with no resistance, will have wavered. This time the point goes to the company, as Radish demonstrates another magical effect the focus can make. Shields! Or at least inclined planes of invisible force. Suddenly, catch seems a lot fairer and less a form of elaborate suicide. Blossom catches the rebounding shot and redirects it into the river. The Captain approves entirely, and, like a good supervisor, lets Blossom know they do approve. The March North posted:This is going well; no lasting damage but lots of bad smells and a real sense of risk. Blossom notes two points to the company. Or maybe one more point added to the previous point for a total of two? It's not clear to me. Meanwhile, the gunners for tube 3 are only just realizing they're not all going to be killed with their own shot and shakily pulling themselves back together. The next few paragraphs are short. A little bit of world and character building that I'll skip over summarizing. The March North posted:Hector gets clever with four; it feels like going for Dove’s trick, only the neat, quiet version with the shot caught hanging in the air. Which misses, three or four times, with increasing force; five or six pieces of shot spray out in a witch’s broom of flaming iron off the original shot track. Dove gets both chunks that would have sliced into Three, straight up, and Blossom does the slapping trick again, close sullen thunder. Hector’s cuirass gets “Braver than you” hammered into it, something Hector may not notice in the midst of a larger grass fire than Toby got. Also, 4 platoons try 4 different magical ways to avoid getting shot and killed. I said it before; that's a very versatile tool. Possibly too versatile. Whatever the standard is, it's doing an impressive imitation of a battle wizard. The trouble with that is, it takes a lot more training and practice to get used to using something with that many options. In my 8-5 life I design user interfaces, and one of the things we always look for is ways to make them simpler. Simpler tools are safer because they have fewer ways to mess up. The incredible versatility of the standard is yet another reason for the Captain to want to make sure they get plenty of practice with it in circumstances as close to real as possible. A coin flip rearranges which tubes are shooting at which companies, and the game of catch continues. There's a bit more comedic relief from Eustace the house-sized murder sheep. Interestingly it comes in the form of the terrifying sheep eating even more horrifying weeds. This is the reason Halt gave for bringing Eustace instead of explaining what she's really doing here in the last chapter. It's a fantastic callback to a detail that's very easy to overlook. There's some more fairly standard military commentary. Including a note on the importance of drinking water and how hard it is to remember to drink enough. This is entirely sensible but the sort of small but critical detail a lot of military fiction authors forget to include. The March North posted:Four hours later, the score is one hundred twenty-three, artillery, seventy-eight, company, Dove’s cuirass is the only sergeant’s undented… It's also worth remembering that Dove is the only platoon sergeant who didn't screw up once. Dove did the right thing in the right way, faster than you can blink, for 4 hours in a row without a single mistake. Which is probably most of the reason the score isn't more lopsided. Dove's performance here is extraordinary. The March North posted:“Three’s sergeant is unusually talented.” Blossom’s more quiet saying this. LLSix fucked around with this message at 13:29 on Jul 24, 2024 |
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Jul 23, 2024 22:31
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