[Morgoth]

QuickTidal, on 24 February 2016 - 02:13 PM, said:

Maark, on 24 February 2016 - 01:15 PM, said:

That whole 'magic stuff out of thin air' bothers me as well.

It's not from thin air, it just seems like that at this point. Trust me, a better explanation will come.

Morgoth, on 24 February 2016 - 01:35 PM, said:

Cause, on 24 February 2016 - 01:08 PM, said:

Morgoth, on 24 February 2016 - 10:27 AM, said:

Macros, on 23 February 2016 - 05:10 PM, said:

I have a hearty dislike for the stormlight archives too, so you're by no means alone on that front.
Irritating characters and that god awful david eddings/ robert jkrdan trope of 'people from this town ALL act like this' but people from the next valley over have an entirely different set of characteristics.
Shallans an annoying tool

Not to mention how the king and his aristocracy can leave a feudal kingdom for ten years with all of their armies without any serious consequences. Ignoring the logistics of it, the power structure back in the kingdom would have crumbled long ago.

The logistics are explained by magic. The parshendi live on Gem city and Gems can be used to literally magic water, food and shelter out of thin air.

As for the power structure, the queen was left behind with a court and certainly many soldiers. Not so different than the kings of our own world going on crusade.

No, very different from that. Most rulers did not go on crusades for that very reason. The most famous crusader kings, Richard Lionheart and Phillip II of France left most of their army behind under the control of appointed seneschals. Richard was gone for four years and returned to a revolt lead by his brother. Phillip was gone for two years and when he returned to France he immediately started plotting to attack Richard's holdings on the continent. Richard, after all, was away.

Whenever the holy roman emperors spent too long fighting in Italy they were forced to return because of unruly subjects trying to grasp for power. An empy throne leaves too much of a power vacum.

Ten years is just nonsense.

Well...in later Crusades, yes. But in the early Crusades, especially the 1st and 2nd what Cause says is pretty close to true. Of the nine lords who lead the 1st Crusade, only 2 ever returned home, and both did so out of cowardice of being killed rather than trying to stop any usurpers to their titles at home. They were all far too interested in what they might grasp in the Holy Land to be worried about home. The only monarch who didn't participate was Henry IV in France, and he didn't go because he was late-middle aged, ill, and had an already unstable kingdom.

The 2nd Crusade was even worse for this, as counts and lords left their homes and families to not only fight in a grand Crusade (the first of which was...largely successful...minus the drawbacks no one was talking about), but there were established Crusader kingdoms to fall in line for, like Edessa, or Jerusalem.

The 1st and 2nd Crusade, you'll notice were small numbers of nobles, with large armies that they brought...but by the time of the 3rd and Richard and Phillip entered the fray, the amount of nobles involved were staggering. So they were able to come to Outremer and lead and show power, without bringing vast armies with them, because those armies largely existed in Outremer already. The 1st and 2nd Crusade didn't really have that luxury. So you're both right, but I see Cause's POV here.

None of the great kings participated in the first crusade. King Phillip sent his brother (he himself was busy dealing with several local rebellions), William stayed in England and Henry IV, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, was busy dealing with unruly vassals in Italy. The kings of Iberia were dealing with local wars and the kingdoms of Scandinavia and Rus were too far away.

[polishgenius]

I haven't read Well of Ascension, but

Spoiler

Odium is a dreadful name for a villain. It has all the daftness of the bad guy being called Naughty McEvil but without the usual intended benefit of sounding cool (see for example: Darth Maul, Voldemort, Doctor Doom, Ruin).

This post has been edited by polishgenius: 26 February 2016 - 10:19 PM

[Primateus]

Lord of the Rings.

Now, I get the struggle in the book, I get that it laid down some sort of foundation for epic fantasy and that Tolkien hisself was some sort of english professor. I get it all. I understand that, from a literature pov, this story is some sort of seminal piece of work.

If only it wasn't so godawful boring...

[Andorion]

polishgenius, on 26 February 2016 - 10:17 PM, said:

I haven't read Well of Ascension, but

Spoiler

Odium is a dreadful name for a villain. It has all the daftness of the bad guy being called Naughty McEvil but without the usual intended benefit of sounding cool (see for example: Darth Maul, Voldemort, Doctor Doom, Ruin).

Yeah but you see that's how the Cosmere works

Spoiler

. Each world has two Shards, one good,the other bad, and they have opposite names.

I don't remember all the names, maybe BK can give them

[End of Disc One]

Actually the number of Shards on a world varies. There's Ruin, Preservation, Honor, Odium, Preservation, and 11 others.

[Maark Abbott]

Andorion, on 27 February 2016 - 01:02 AM, said:

polishgenius, on 26 February 2016 - 10:17 PM, said:

I haven't read Well of Ascension, but

Spoiler

Odium is a dreadful name for a villain. It has all the daftness of the bad guy being called Naughty McEvil but without the usual intended benefit of sounding cool (see for example: Darth Maul, Voldemort, Doctor Doom, Ruin).

Yeah but you see that's how the Cosmere works

Spoiler

. Each world has two Shards, one good,the other bad, and they have opposite names.

I don't remember all the names, maybe BK can give them

So by this logic the 'good god' must be called

Spoiler

Garfieldio

.

Anyway it took 970 pages for Kaladin to stop being a whiny bitch-tits. It's nice that it's finally picking up but it seems massively pretentious that it's taken this long for the characters to stop being bawbags. And to litter the book with interludes that serve no purpose other than to up the page count?

It feels in many ways like a Marvel fanfic (Living Tribunal plays a flute?) that wants to have the scope and complexity of Malazan but fails to do so. There's so much potential here and it's just not capitalised on.

[Cause]

Just wanted to come back and say that the crusades are not a great anno lost since it implies a far greater distance than what is actually happening. It's more like the king of England waging war in France. He is not that far from home at all

[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

Primateus, on 26 February 2016 - 11:29 PM, said:

Lord of the Rings.

Now, I get the struggle in the book, I get that it laid down some sort of foundation for epic fantasy and that Tolkien hisself was some sort of english professor. I get it all. I understand that, from a literature pov, this story is some sort of seminal piece of work.

If only it wasn't so godawful boring...

Just because something has a certain amount of status and popularity doesn't mean everyone will like it - I view LOTR in much the same way I do a lot of the "classic" books. Yes, lots of people like them, but that doesn't mean they're universally brilliant (I love LOTR, but there are plenty of classics I can't stand no matter how much people explain to me why they're brilliant).

Horses for courses

[Gabriele]

TheRetiredBridgeburner, on 27 February 2016 - 09:06 AM, said:

Primateus, on 26 February 2016 - 11:29 PM, said:

Lord of the Rings.

Now, I get the struggle in the book, I get that it laid down some sort of foundation for epic fantasy and that Tolkien hisself was some sort of english professor. I get it all. I understand that, from a literature pov, this story is some sort of seminal piece of work.

If only it wasn't so godawful boring...

Just because something has a certain amount of status and popularity doesn't mean everyone will like it - I view LOTR in much the same way I do a lot of the "classic" books. Yes, lots of people like them, but that doesn't mean they're universally brilliant (I love LOTR, but there are plenty of classics I can't stand no matter how much people explain to me why they're brilliant).

Horses for courses

I can't get into Dickens. I love Eliot's Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda and a lot of stuff by Henry James, for example, but Dickens bores me.

I've met a professor of German literature who specialised in the late 19th to 20th century literature and never read Thomas Mann's Joseph-Trilogy because he couldn't get into it and amdired me for having read the thing twice. Tastes do vary indeed.

I love LOTR, too, btw.

This post has been edited by Gabriele: 27 February 2016 - 02:30 PM

[QuickTidal]

Morgoth, on 25 February 2016 - 09:59 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 24 February 2016 - 02:13 PM, said:

Maark, on 24 February 2016 - 01:15 PM, said:

That whole 'magic stuff out of thin air' bothers me as well.

It's not from thin air, it just seems like that at this point. Trust me, a better explanation will come.

Morgoth, on 24 February 2016 - 01:35 PM, said:

Cause, on 24 February 2016 - 01:08 PM, said:

Morgoth, on 24 February 2016 - 10:27 AM, said:

Macros, on 23 February 2016 - 05:10 PM, said:

I have a hearty dislike for the stormlight archives too, so you're by no means alone on that front.
Irritating characters and that god awful david eddings/ robert jkrdan trope of 'people from this town ALL act like this' but people from the next valley over have an entirely different set of characteristics.
Shallans an annoying tool

Not to mention how the king and his aristocracy can leave a feudal kingdom for ten years with all of their armies without any serious consequences. Ignoring the logistics of it, the power structure back in the kingdom would have crumbled long ago.

The logistics are explained by magic. The parshendi live on Gem city and Gems can be used to literally magic water, food and shelter out of thin air.

As for the power structure, the queen was left behind with a court and certainly many soldiers. Not so different than the kings of our own world going on crusade.

No, very different from that. Most rulers did not go on crusades for that very reason. The most famous crusader kings, Richard Lionheart and Phillip II of France left most of their army behind under the control of appointed seneschals. Richard was gone for four years and returned to a revolt lead by his brother. Phillip was gone for two years and when he returned to France he immediately started plotting to attack Richard's holdings on the continent. Richard, after all, was away.

Whenever the holy roman emperors spent too long fighting in Italy they were forced to return because of unruly subjects trying to grasp for power. An empy throne leaves too much of a power vacum.

Ten years is just nonsense.

Well...in later Crusades, yes. But in the early Crusades, especially the 1st and 2nd what Cause says is pretty close to true. Of the nine lords who lead the 1st Crusade, only 2 ever returned home, and both did so out of cowardice of being killed rather than trying to stop any usurpers to their titles at home. They were all far too interested in what they might grasp in the Holy Land to be worried about home. The only monarch who didn't participate was Henry IV in France, and he didn't go because he was late-middle aged, ill, and had an already unstable kingdom.

The 2nd Crusade was even worse for this, as counts and lords left their homes and families to not only fight in a grand Crusade (the first of which was...largely successful...minus the drawbacks no one was talking about), but there were established Crusader kingdoms to fall in line for, like Edessa, or Jerusalem.

The 1st and 2nd Crusade, you'll notice were small numbers of nobles, with large armies that they brought...but by the time of the 3rd and Richard and Phillip entered the fray, the amount of nobles involved were staggering. So they were able to come to Outremer and lead and show power, without bringing vast armies with them, because those armies largely existed in Outremer already. The 1st and 2nd Crusade didn't really have that luxury. So you're both right, but I see Cause's POV here.

None of the great kings participated in the first crusade. King Phillip sent his brother (he himself was busy dealing with several local rebellions), William stayed in England and Henry IV, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, was busy dealing with unruly vassals in Italy. The kings of Iberia were dealing with local wars and the kingdoms of Scandinavia and Rus were too far away.

Not sure why you even bring up Britain. Only knights and nobles from France were largely involved in the 1st crusade. But the nobles (which count with regards to what we are comparing too) work just as well as "the great kings"

[Mentalist]

The thing with SLA is that is it starts out by practically jumping up and down and screaming how awesomely EPIC it's gonna be, with 4k years of history, and all these BIG CHANGES, etc.

Then WOK spends almost 950 pages being a typical Sanderson character archetype book, with very OCCASIONAL glimmers of "big picture". Then there's the phenomenal ending, which is phenomenal, has some cliff-hangers, but also relies on too many tropes from Dragon Ball Z 's TV Trope page.

WoR is better in this regard, in that it kind of tires to keep the big picture more in focus, but then it goes off those rails, and for a while it becomes all about people fighting using magitech suits of armour with crazy stuff happening (kinda like Escaflowne ). Then it comes back with an EVEN MORE epic finale, and a 50-page epilogue that sets up MORE possibilities.

My general impression of SLA so far is Sanderson writing epic fantasy but borrowing heavily from the Saturday morning cartoons in "tone". Lots of stuff and lots of tropes seem lifted straight out, which makes them instantly "cool' and recognizable, but the big picture of the EPIC tends to get displaced with this approach. For this reason, so far, whilst I'm curious to see where Sanderson takes SLA (and the Cosmere concept as a whole), i'm nowhere near close to having him as an insta-buy author.

[Maark Abbott]

Eh, he may as well have just gone to the Evangelion Characters page for Dally, Kally and Sally. 950 pages of an 1125 page book is also far, far too long in terms of anything much happening.

The really frustrating thing is that when it gets going, it gets fucking GOING. But then stops almost immediately. Sort of like driving a Bugatti Veyron directly into a wall.

[stone monkey]

I detest the vast majority of English Literature from the 19th century, and Dickens in particular - I read Oliver Twist and Great Expectations in high school, and I've tried a few others since (I can just about barely tolerate A Tale of Two Cities) and they did nothing but confirm that I loathe the style of writing of that period; too wordy, too self-satisfied, too convinced of its own importance. A friend of mine who actually taught Dickens to high school students agrees with me on this one (her degree is in English Literature, but she specialised in Medieval Literature; which is far more interesting and fun to read).

[amphibian]

Dickens was writing most of his novels in a format that doesn't lend itself well to a strong editorial process - newspaper installments.

It's supposed to be hammy, soap opera-ish, changing on the fly as reader feedback came in, and above all, lurid/self important.

He did this so well that most novels were written like this for a long while. So when we read them in book format, we are losing some of the context that surrounds the production. Dickens is more like a TV dramedy that evolves somewhat within each season.

[Andorion]

stone monkey, on 28 February 2016 - 06:36 PM, said:

I detest the vast majority of English Literature from the 19th century, and Dickens in particular - I read Oliver Twist and Great Expectations in high school, and I've tried a few others since (I can just about barely tolerate A Tale of Two Cities) and they did nothing but confirm that I loathe the style of writing of that period; too wordy, too self-satisfied, too convinced of its own importance. A friend of mine who actually taught Dickens to high school students agrees with me on this one (her degree is in English Literature, but she specialised in Medieval Literature; which is far more interesting and fun to read).

I agree entirely, and its not just Dickens but quite a lot of authors.

[Aptorian]

amphibian, on 28 February 2016 - 07:28 PM, said:

Dickens was writing most of his novels in a format that doesn't lend itself well to a strong editorial process - newspaper installments.

It's supposed to be hammy, soap opera-ish, changing on the fly as reader feedback came in, and above all, lurid/self important.

He did this so well that most novels were written like this for a long while. So when we read them in book format, we are losing some of the context that surrounds the production. Dickens is more like a TV dramedy that evolves somewhat within each season.

I've never heard of this before. I am aware of authors writing stories for magazines but was this a widespread thing at the time?

Would it be like a small column like the opinion pieces and comics of today? Or would it be whole pages dedicated to pieces of story posted daily or weekly?

[Puck]

Iirc it was something like a chapter per issue, with weekly or monthly newspapers. Most of Dickens's novels were first published this way. The Count of Monte Christo, Moby-Dick and The Brothers Karamazov appeared like this as well. Basically, it was everywhere. And again, iirc, most publishers payed per line or episode, which caused many authors to blow their stories up more than necessary, or add extra line breaks, repeat stuff from the previous chapter and such shenanigans, for the extra monies. Also, it was cheaper to buy the newspaper to read the installments than buy a whole book for most people. This caused even those novels which weren't published in newspapers to be blown up unnecessarily to mimic them.

Also, I imagine eager victorian readers would write to the newspapers/authors expressing their opinions, which might have influenced the story progress, e.g. when too many letters complaining about something would come in.

This post has been edited by Puck: 28 February 2016 - 08:23 PM

[Grief]

It would depend on the author, and where they were publishing. Dickens for example had a lot of control over his publishing process. They'd be published in installments, with however many pages of writing in between however many pages of advertising (plus some illustrations etc). Better copies of the novels will often include installment numbers so that you know where the breaks would be (looking at my copy of Bleak House, there were 20 installments, 3-4 chapters each, with installment 19 and 20 being published as a double issue). It leads to some funny phenomena. For example, big cliffhangers being spoiled by illustrations (or captions on illustrations) for the initial readers.

Some of the advertising is well worth a read too. Dickens got so big that some advertisers started trying to tailor their advertising to his book. I particularly like this example:

Spoiler

I imagine it would make for a very different reading experience in its original format.

This post has been edited by Abyss: 26 March 2016 - 06:19 AM
Reason for edit: Pic in blocks bcs fucking huge

[stone monkey]

tbh my appreciation (or lack thereof) of Dickens is not tempered by the fact he wrote in instalments (which I already knew). His style might be a result of the process, but that really doesn't make it any less grating to me.

As with many things, I've read enough of him to be certain I don't like his work - Stephen King is another author whom I gave a good try and came out loathing.

[Maark Abbott]

Don't think I mentioned this before, but whilst it's not a dislike, The Name of The Wind.

I mean, yeah, it's ok. It's written pretty well, the prose flows, it was easy enough to lose myself in it. But it didn't really sideswipe me like I'd been led to believe. Kvothe isn't particularly likeable, neither is Denna, and the whole university vibe didn't do very much for me (until Auri, anyway). It's one of those books I'd probably have gotten on better with if not for Malazan, though I do plan to read The Wise Man's Fear and when it's released The Winds of... Wait, wait, wrong series.