[Valgard]

I must admit I really enjoyed her work a great new author not the greatest work of literature but still a really good read. They were well written and enjoyable definately worth reading.

[Brys]

bluesman said:

Compared with Mieville for the language and settings.

There seems to be conflicting opinions about this fairly new British author. What makes me interested is of course the comparisons with Mieville and the cool concept with insects and drug addicts.

Anyone who read this care to comment?

bm

I think comparisons with Mieville give completely the wrong impression for the book. Yes, there is decent prose and imagination. Drugs do play an important role, and there are some interesting races.
But it's also a very different style to Mieville - it is basically one of the first truly imaginative epic fantasies (except perhaps Erikson). And it's told from first person. I've heard her described both as one of the best contemporary fantasy authors leading New Weird along with Mieville and a hack of the New Weird genre, creating a new cliche. But I think both inaccurate - Swainston is a very good author, but she writes in her own style, and has one feature often pushed to the background in the main New Weird authors - characterisation. The main character, Jant Shira, has been excellently crafted. The others, not quite as well, but still very good.
Ainulindale's said pretty much everything else.

Quote

but anyone who has only slight knowledge of how these systems worked will find it a ridiculous premisis.

Really? mid-19th century Germany (pre-1871) was very much like this. There was the rapidly industrialising Prussia, with an abundance of natural resources, with an autocratic, feudal, agrarian Austria. Swainston exaggerates this idea for effect, but the basic idea isn't that far from the truth. During the 19th century while industrialisation was occuring, a number of states remained very reactionary, though of course there was pressure for change, it took time for change to actually occur.

[polishgenius]

It's not really much like Mieville at all- but it is good. It seems lighter in tone - definitely there's more humour. Also, it's not as well concieved as Mievilles world. And it's much shorter.
But it has some interesting concepts, and it's worth reading.

It's more comparable, if you're going to use the New Weird label, to a NW equivalent of early Eddings/Gemmel - what you'd recommend to beginner readers, though it'll always be enjoyable- than Mieville.
IMO.

[Brys]

Duiker said:

There's a difference between autocratic/non-democratic and feudal. Prussia and the Habsburg Empire weren't exactly feudal anymore, bascally because they had been occupied by/were clients of the French at the beginning of the century.

Perhaps you can argue they weren't entirely feudal, but they were hardly progressive either, and serfdom still existed in Russia. But it's possible for industrialisation to happen in one country with feudalism in another. It's not quite as clear within a single nation, but it's still possible.

Quote

a NW equivalent of early Eddings/Gemmel

Interesting comparison - but it's of a far higher quality, greater imagination and better prose than those two, but perhaps that's because New Weird hasn't found poor authors yet, or we just haven't heard of them.

[fortyseven]

the Soviet Union was industrialized but still feudal in a way.

[Brys]

And the reason why the Russian revolution of 1917 wasn't a Marxist revolution was because Russia pre-1917 was still basically a feudal society - it hadn't industrialised nearly enough.