[amphibian]

Now is the time to get down to brass tacks and be specific about what I mean.

What is the difference in the conversation between Osserc and Gothos about the Visitor, building/destroying and the nature of the Azath and the introduction of Kallor and the mercenaries early on?

The first scene is tidbits of interesting information presented as Osserc working things out with a very reluctant to talk Gothos. ICE through Osserc is in essence walking us through many different topics, providing Osserc's own take on things and allowing Osserc to be exactly the character he is. In return for this approach, we get a really cool look at Gothos and his view of things as well as finding out about Osserc's disagreements with the current Liosan society. This is excellent writing.

The second scene I mention is an omniscient narrator clumsily giving us the line "All the crew and the assembled warriors awaited his command, for though cruel and harsh he had led them on many successful raids and they trusted his leadership in war." Why not mention something along the lines of Kallor accumulating mercenaries about him as he journeyed away from Darujhistan post-Toll the Hounds? Why not throw out some names of places, battles or potential storylines to revisit or expand into? The option trees for a writer and a reader can be expanded considerably - to use an example most here are immediately familiar with, Erikson told us briefly of Nathilog, Mott Wood and Blackdog long ago in the first three books. We still know very little about the battles at these spots, but there is room to go there and the emotional/physical toll the Bridgeburners suffered in getting through these places was hinted at, intriguing the reader and providing potential future places to expand and revisit for the author.

Other authors do this as well. Jim Butcher did it very well in the Codex Alera with the memorial to Septimus, the Canim ambassador and certain furies. He does it brilliantly with the Dresden Files

Another example of clumsiness is the first paragraph dealing with Shimmer. It is as clumsy an infodump as possible and entirely unnecessary to boot. Shimmer's position within the Crimson Guard can be shown in the subsequent conversation with Ardata's minions, her physical abilities and the vow can be shown with her running down to the docks or spotting the boat long before the others. Whatever. There are any number of ways to do this and ICE chose a clunker.

Saeng's opening is also clunky. There is no involvement with the reader - we are being told Saeng did this, that and the other thing when young - there is very little to think about until the shades start talking to her and she starts talking to Hanu. Saeng's four page interactions with the shades and with Hanu tell you more about her than the three or four pages prior that were spent telling us what Saeng did. This is the "show vs. tell" thing that really works.

Same goes for Murk and Sour. The reader does not need to be told Murken Wallow is nicknamed Murk when Sour could do it two lines below. The jump is a tiny one for the reader, but trusting the reader to make that jump is integral. It allows the bigger jumps later in the book and eventually the book to book jumps that truly skilled writers can have us do. GRRM, Butcher, Gene Wolfe, Abercrombie, Rothfuss - they all do this (along with Erikson and ICE) and they trust their readers to do it without being coddled. Everything the readers have shown to each other, to the authors and to the world at large shows that people pick up on this stuff, they dig super-deep and they revel in the multiple layers of subtlety.

Although Butcher had a huge problem with making everything in the beginning of the Dresden Files an intro. How many times did we need to be told what the Blue Beetle was, Jim?

Why am I criticizing these things? Because ICE gives us terrific scenes like Spite vs. Anaconda, Kallor talking to Jatal about the shaduwam, Gothos and Osserc sitting in the Azath. These are amazing scenes and give me all kinds of fun stuff to think about - the conveyance of a visceral experience, the kinetic action, unearthing multiple layers of history, comparing complicated and confused motivations vs. clear and simple ones. This is what I chase after as a reader. The brilliance of these scenes is marred by clunky infodumps, the slippage into clunkier ways to get ideas or plot points across and the other problems a good advance reader or editor challenges a writer to improve upon.

Now y'all get what I'm talking about? I'm not alone on these forums in expressing these opinions and I do so because ICE shows that he is very much capable of writing excellently. If this was Tom Clancy or J.K. Rowling, I wouldn't give a crap. They sell bajillions, but they've not shown any flashes of true writerly brilliance in their entire careers.

Also, ICE's epigraphs (mostly composed of historical excerpts or the myth tidbits) are at times heavy-handed, but overall, very good. I've read enough of old firsthand accounts from the 1800s or 1700s to realize how weirdly mixed the racism, bigotry and dismissal can be with genuine cultural insights and observations. The condescension is flavored with enough description and information as to actually be useful for people who come later and think differently - and ICE shows that often in his epigraphs.

This post has been edited by amphibian: 28 November 2012 - 07:01 PM

[amphibian]

The original post elsewhere:

Cougar, on 28 November 2012 - 10:51 AM, said:

amphibian, on 27 November 2012 - 02:24 PM, said:

Furthermore, my criticisms of ICE have become untethered from SE. They are their own persons and write differently. They have their pros and cons and I've enough sense to know that.

It's fine if you feel that you've expressed this position,, but the things you have actually typed here make it appear otherwise.

amphibian, on 27 November 2012 - 02:24 PM, said:

If you don't want to listen to me, you don't have to. However, I do provide more substantive criticism than "I don't like this."

Thank you, very decent of you. I feel your criticism runs to exactly 'I don't like this', is strongly multi-vocal and rarely actually addresses the problems you hint at. A criticism, I might add, that I sought to level at the general tone of the discussion on ICE, rather than merely you.

amphibian, on 27 November 2012 - 02:24 PM, said:

I also do not nitpick endlessly or trash authors just to preserve my own notions.

Well then, the problem clearly lies in the discrepancy between what is in your head and what comes out on the page, because I'm reading a lot of (frequently contradictory) nitpicking.

amphibian, on 27 November 2012 - 02:24 PM, said:

Quite a bit of my personal and professional life revolves around constantly testing things in the crucibles of pressure and need and I try very hard to not be a jerk just to be a jerk.

I'm not certain what relevance your personal and professional crucibles of pressure have in this discussion - I'll probably hold off on telling you what my job invovles too. Indeed, teh above seems dangerously close to a fallacious appeal to authority (though not quite) since you're telling me (I think, I can't make head nor tail of the last part of the sentence -apologies) that you have all the experience and mental tools to make complex criticisms, yet you then (at least to my eye) haven't actually made use of said faculties. Once again, I can only go on what you've written in the past.

amphibian, on 27 November 2012 - 02:24 PM, said:

However, there are problems with ICE's writing that have been apparent from Night of Knives onwards and some are not getting fixed, despite greater resources, more lead time and the attachment of the Erikson Malazan series as a companion and example.

OK, so what are they? As I said, my previous post, whilst self-evdiently adressing you as one of a group, was not exclusively dedicated to your posts so I certainly didn't mean to imply that you alone were at fault.

As for the point about the Return of the King, fair one, but I could pick out loads of books that don't have climactic endings or 'pay-offs' and are still regarded as good. As Steve said, DoD and tCG were really one book written as two, so TBF it doesn't matter that the LotR was MEANT to be one book it still has 3.

Overall, to reiterate my point, the bottom line is that I feel that there is a special level of criticism being reserved for ICE on here that comes from little more than him not being Steve. He's no great writer, but then at least he doesn't think he's James Joyce like Erikson does, and I think viewing him with a greater degree of detachment from our fanboy love of SE reveals he's a decent author writing workmanlike, entertaining pieces of fantasy in a world we're all fond of. He seems to know his limitations, and as Abyss commented some time ago, his writing does show significant development in OST especially when depicting characters that are well know via Steve (say Kruppe or Coll, who's characters seemed very consistent both linguistically and in their stated motivations with SE).

[polishgenius]

It says a lot about this book that the title of this thread could easily have referred to something that occurs within it.

[blackzoid]

polishgenius, on 29 November 2012 - 02:46 AM, said:

It says a lot about this book that the title of this thread could easily have referred to something that occurs within it.

Thats what I was thinking!
"Which monster fight was that again?"

[Pig Iron]

I liked it, which is kind of irrefutable. Some of your criticism can be written off as choice of style. That said you are probably correct as far as analysis goes.

[amphibian]

Pig Iron, on 29 November 2012 - 05:57 PM, said:

I liked it, which is kind of irrefutable. Some of your criticism can be written off as choice of style. That said you are probably correct as far as analysis goes.

The deeper I consider the book, the more I realize that ICE just sucks at introductions and lapses into telling instead of showing relatively often. He's good at action scenes, his characters (once introduced) can be interesting to follow along with, he can write a fairly good "deep talk moment" and the stuff that happens (other than the endings of Greymane in SW, the Seguleh and Tyrant arcs in OST and Toc the Elder in RotCG) is often pretty dang fun.

[Sinisdar Toste]

amphibian, on 29 November 2012 - 06:21 PM, said:

Pig Iron, on 29 November 2012 - 05:57 PM, said:

I liked it, which is kind of irrefutable. Some of your criticism can be written off as choice of style. That said you are probably correct as far as analysis goes.

The deeper I consider the book, the more I realize that ICE just sucks at introductions and lapses into telling instead of showing relatively often. He's good at action scenes, his characters (once introduced) can be interesting to follow along with, he can write a fairly good "deep talk moment" and the stuff that happens (other than the endings of Greymane in SW, the Seguleh and Tyrant arcs in OST and Toc the Elder in RotCG) is often pretty dang fun.

I think the intro criticism has some validity, especially as regards Saeng. the initial rundown of her life up until hanu going off with the thaumaturgs reads like a travelogue, as you note. she went here, did this, these things happened, she learned this. after that though, everything seemed like gravy to me, though the setting helped greatly. the whole idea of himatan is brilliant and was executed brilliantly.

edit: just remembered, the one thing that nagged at me every time it came up is this:

"Very good."

holy shit is it just me or is everything 'very good' in jacuruku? seems a little like wishful thinking, since NOTHING going on in himatan is 'very good'.

This post has been edited by Sinisdar Toste: 01 December 2012 - 06:47 AM

[amphibian]

I rather liked the "K'azz has no answers he's willing to share" thing. It parallels somewhat with the Tavore thing, but really what it points at is Silverfox and the T'lan have way more to do with the Crimson Guard than K'azz really wanted.

The ending to Jatal's arc (to me) was an ambitious failure. I do like how Kallor never learns - but I don't think the transition from Jatal, Future Leader of the Adwami to Jatal, Wants to Die was handled in a way that made me feel much for him. I do not for one second believe that Kallor planned the impromptu suicide attempt, but I do like that only Osserc's act of bravery saved the continent and by extension, Kallor.

The invasion of Himatan was done by Kallor to take revenge on the Thaumaturges. That sort of ended well for him because all the Thaumaturges are dead or gone over to the other side (Pon-Lor) or feral (the boss Golan). All the Adwami who hated Kallor are now dead and the only memories of Kallor left are basically good/greed satisfying ones.

Which is why I'd have liked to see Jatal survive and keep the Kallor-hate alive for the next bout. But that's me. It's an authorial decision and I respect that.

I still think ICE needs better editors or advance readers. Or at least to be pissed off enough to write good to show people like me. That'll do it.

[Sinisdar Toste]

i definitely wish jatal had lived. he could have been the first member of a nehemoth-style band that chases kallor across the globe.

[Cougar]

I'll start by generally coming back on what Amph has done here. Apologies for the delay, I had real world things to do and , as such, it's taken me a little while to be bothered doing this. It's good to see some of the criticisms explained and I think we'd all benefit from being a little more specific. That said, I find little to agree with.

First, many of the criticisms are predicated on an assumption that show, rather than tell, is a superior way of writing. This is a matter of opinion and taste and reflects a persuasive, though very current way of thinking about writing. A writer could 'show' you in a very oblique manner and achieve little. Steve does this rather too much for my liking: an example would be the scenes in TtH that begin with the release of the undead dragons in the death realm and include Kallor's conversation and Tulas Shorn's thoughts. In this we have a tantalising, but highly oblique reference to the war on death (about which we may yet find out more, of course) and a confusing contradicition between the two statements by the undead dragons. One claims to remember its death, the other does not, which leaves us with a field of options (we literally have no idea whether the dragon is TS both times and is being untruthful with Kallor or whether there are two dragons etc). This I would contend is 'show' done poorly, leaving too many unknowns for the reader and too many questions to get accross a point which was never and (we'd have to assume)will never be resolved.

Tell, on the other hand can be useful to drive the story along as it essentially takes less time to do and doesn't rely on you knowing anything about the character. In this respect, perhaps Amph's thoughts do have a little merit. ICE might rely rather too heavily on tell in the intros, which he struggles with.

To further suggest an answer to one of Amphs' queries, I'd suggest there is a good reason for ICE not making too much of the mercenaries backgrounds. Steve writes with little care for timelines and things he's said before - please don't try to disagree with me on this, it's a fact that I've learned from days spent discussing this topic with his advance readers. Erikson just doesn't think in a way that prevents him making collosal mistakes with continuity (see Forge for this, but also Harlo etc). ICE seems to be a little more circumspect about this and I'd suggest that he's trying to avoid putting in too many things that can be faulted later on since he and Steve have a hard time marrying their story lines up. This is merely a suggestion, I, like us all, can only speculate about these things.

I'll now quote Amph, to bring my round to my concluding point:

Quote

"All the crew and the assembled warriors awaited his command, for though cruel and harsh he had led them on many successful raids and they trusted his leadership in war." Why not mention something along the lines of Kallor accumulating mercenaries about him as he journeyed away from Darujhistan post-Toll the Hounds?

This objection is taste, there is nothing inherently clunky about this isolated sentence. What this is an example of is where Amphibian blurs the lines between clearly made criticism of structure or prose and gets into, merely taste. This comes back to my original point, which I feel is the inherent difficulty of Amph's critiicsm. Amph appears to make, or rather implies that there is a greater value to 'show', which I feel, based on the variety of literature regarded as good or even great, is an unsustainable value judgement.

I'm not keen on the epigraphs either, but then again, I've no time for SE's. Once again though, I think there is no need for you to bring up jobs and hobbies here. The quality of your thought should be self evident without resorting to attempts to bolster the legitimacy of your opinion by claims to knowledge. Whilst I've no doubt you've read lots of 18th and 19th century ( I assumed this was what you meant rather than 1700-1709 and 1800-1809) manuscripts, we've no evidence for this claim and it has little to no bearing on what you are saying. You seem capable of making some fairly solid observations about historical material (although would you not think that 'racism, bigotry and dismissal' are 'cultural insights and observations' as valuable as any other?) so I feel that pointing out how much you've read is needless self promotion.

The problem is that I find the tone and sentiment expressed in Amph's above post almost entirely at odds with those in the thread and I think there is a lesson here. If we all forced ourselves to be as considered as this response, we'd probably say far fewer stupid things. We are all responsible for how what we say is interpreted and you can sit and cry on your keyboard for as long as you like about being misinterpreted, but the bottom line is if someone thinks something about you (unless they are willfully misrepresenting you) its probably your own fault.

So far as personal taste goes, I quite like ICE's books. They are solid, with a good story (RotCG was too disjointed and patchy for my tastes though). I have no particular preference these days for show over tell or vice versa, so I guess it just doesn't bother me that much.

[amphibian]

Cougar, on 06 December 2012 - 04:29 PM, said:

Steve does this rather too much for my liking: an example would be the scenes in TtH that begin with the release of the undead dragons in the death realm and include Kallor's conversation and Tulas Shorn's thoughts. In this we have a tantalising, but highly oblique reference to the war on death (about which we may yet find out more, of course) and a confusing contradicition between the two statements by the undead dragons. One claims to remember its death, the other does not, which leaves us with a field of options (we literally have no idea whether the dragon is TS both times and is being untruthful with Kallor or whether there are two dragons etc). This I would contend is 'show' done poorly, leaving too many unknowns for the reader and too many questions to get accross a point which was never and (we'd have to assume)will never be resolved.

I'll address the last line first - given how Tulas Shorn was shown to be Kagamandra Tulas in Forge of Darkness and also as the initial caretaker of the Jheck pack that later became the Hounds, I think we do get quite a few resolutions to these potential Chekov's guns that Erikson left in that scene and there may be more yet to come.

I prefer now to use another author than SE to provide my "show" vs. "tell" examples. Jim Butcher does this constantly in Cold Days with Harry trying to figure out the rules of the Faerie Court. The only things he/we the reader gets told in the early going of the book is that he can't shed blood and that he can't talk to Mab without permission. Everything else in terms of politics, murder plots, magical happenings and so on have to be sussed out by his blunders, occasional smart move and the kindness of others. The story is then shown to us, even though Butcher writes the books as if Dresden is writing a journal.

This is show vs. tell. I'd say that one of my favorite authors Cormac McCarthy is enormously in love with telling - but his telling blends description and multiple layers so well within it that it essentially becomes showing, despite being mechanically telling.

To me, showing is indeed superior to telling. The reader is involved more, the characters are allowed to act and the story can take on more layers and twists than what the author ever intended. The complexity and the deliciousness of the story increase when showing is used more than telling.

Quote

Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.

The above is a short paragraph from The Road I found online. Technically, this is telling. However, this is so well told and descriptive of what's going on that it is a showing.

Compare that to my Kallor/mercs focus above.

Quote

To further suggest an answer to one of Amphs' queries, I'd suggest there is a good reason for ICE not making too much of the mercenaries backgrounds. Steve writes with little care for timelines and things he's said before - please don't try to disagree with me on this, it's a fact that I've learned from days spent discussing this topic with his advance readers. Erikson just doesn't think in a way that prevents him making collosal mistakes with continuity (see Forge for this, but also Harlo etc). ICE seems to be a little more circumspect about this and I'd suggest that he's trying to avoid putting in too many things that can be faulted later on since he and Steve have a hard time marrying their story lines up. This is merely a suggestion, I, like us all, can only speculate about these things.

The "solution" to timeline problems is not to avoid putting in things, but to refuse more often to tie the things to a specific time. Saying a character spent some time fighting in the Whirlwind rebellion is fixing that character to that time and place. However, there have been so many rebellions and campaigns of subjugation that saying the character spent time fighting in Seven Cities is freeing up the character to slide around in terms of age and experience. There's Coltaine's Capitulation to Kellanved, the Seven Cities fighting among themselves, First Empire stuff and so on. So much room if the temptation to avoid fixing the character to a specific time and place before is avoided.

Erikson, annoyingly at times, fell into that trap and then decided to handwave most of the problems away. It is something I've noted and wish it hadn't happened. However, the main series is done. They likely won't change. What matters now is to get things better for the the future books by both authors.

[QUOTE]I'm not keen on the epigraphs either, but then again, I've no time for SE's. Once again though, I think there is no need for you to bring up jobs and hobbies here. The quality of your thought should be self evident without resorting to attempts to bolster the legitimacy of your opinion by claims to knowledge. Whilst I've no doubt you've read lots of 18th and 19th century ( I assumed this was what you meant rather than 1700-1709 and 1800-1809) manuscripts, we've no evidence for this claim and it has little to no bearing on what you are saying. You seem capable of making some fairly solid observations about historical material (although would you not think that 'racism, bigotry and dismissal' are 'cultural insights and observations' as valuable as any other?) so I feel that pointing out how much you've read is needless self promotion.[QUOTE]
I think you dropped a few of my lines here. I like the epigraphs ICE uses. The historical "records" or quotes from books and famous sayings are more interesting, in general, than the poetry other authors love using. The epigraphs, even if racist, bigoted, dismissive or plain stupid, not only tell us about the thing the epigraph talks about, but about the person saying them.

Frank Herbert loved using Princess Irulan epigraphs for Dune because it painted such a complex portrait of Paul and showed us the tragic love Irulan carried for Paul that was never returned. The words Herbert gave to Irulan showed us both what the observed and the observer thought, what they did and how they felt. The same goes for some accounts from, yes, the 18th and 19th centuries - they can be savagely cruel and stupid in their contempt and dismissal, but wonderful in their description.

There is a considerable difference between "The savages killed and ate their enemies" and "With obsidian hand tools, the Red Feathers, who we bought for six buttons and my left shoe hahaha they suck so bad at business deals, took the prisoners captured in the petty battles with the Green Snakes and the Blue Pots and brought them to the great holy place, which is really just a mound of dirt that's nowhere as magnificent as Stonehenge, where they performed satanic rituals with smoke, fire and lots of flowers and priests chanting Ole ole ole while bleeding out the prisoners and asking people if they wanted a bite of the heart or a blood spot daubed on their forehead".

The epigraphs ICE uses, as well as Murk describing what Sour did in the jungle, are great ways to show the reader what one person says about this thing and what their words or thoughts show about that person in return. It's like watching someone commentate on the actions of a third person being observed through a two way mirror. We get to see both and to figure out how to value the words and actions of both individuals. Knowing how to put the actions and words of the two people in the proper context is indeed a matter of personal experience and the ability to make empathetic or intellectual leaps (bolstered by experience and prior knowledge).

And I like this better than poetry because poets can make up whatever they want with lesser penalties for goofing or failing. They're after feelings and universal truths, rather than specifics about the here and now. Plus they get too long winded sometimes.

This post has been edited by amphibian: 06 December 2012 - 08:47 PM

[Macros]

One aside.
i think Kazz has realised his vow has basically made his men in t'lan crimson gaurd, and this depresses him.

[amphibian]

Macros, on 10 December 2012 - 07:01 PM, said:

One aside.
i think Kazz has realised his vow has basically made his men in t'lan crimson gaurd, and this depresses him.

It was interesting to see how K'azz retreated into the mountains to one specific place, immortalized everyone and then they all dispersed. It's as if Mao's retreat was run through the Black Company's Taken.

We do know the way to undo the ritual - kill a god and have the blood splash over the T'lan. Or to have Silverfox do some mumbo jumbo on Assail.

[Macros]

I figure it'll be silverfox, hence the Assail connection

[Black Winged Lord]

Only just finished this and just got to chime in.

I was almost thrown out of the story completely with the scene where Ina meets Mael. "he has empathy for us - for what it means to be human". I mean, it was almost as though ICE just brushed through two whole books of characterisation with Bugg in those couple of words. No SE readers needed reminding of this, and new readers didn't need to know as it in no way affected anything.

Hell, if he'd just left it at Mael showing up in Bugg mode it would have been enough of a nod for me. The was the best thing about that scene just seeing these two entities in humble forms. Not really sure what Mael even being there added to the story though, especially with the meetings with Oponn and Shadowthrone as well.