[Tiste Simeon]

Serenity, on 19 September 2014 - 07:07 PM, said:

amphibian, on 19 September 2014 - 03:26 PM, said:

I just finished Feersum Endjinn.

I wanted more, as it ended. Even the jumbled up writings of Bascule was brilliant - an example of it is below:

Quote

Woak up. Got dresd. Had brekfast. Spoke wif Ergates thi ant who sed itz juss been wurk wurk wurk 4 u lately master Bascule, Y dont u ½ a holiday? & I agreed & that woz how we decided we otter go 2 c Mr Zoliparia in thi I-ball ov thi gargoyle Rosbrith.

At first, that'll take a bit to work through, but when you realize Bascule is a terrific person and can empathize with him, it gets very easy to read - and very funny.

Feersum Endjinn was the first Banks I read and it's still one of my favourites, mainly for the Bascule sections. So funny in places




I've got about 50 pages left to go of Meluch's Wolf Star. Then it's probably on to my third read through of Memories of Ice.

One of the ones I haven't got round to reading yet. Maybe after Assail I will read some Banks...

Edit forgot to say that Molly picture is brilliant!

This post has been edited by Tiste Simeon: 19 September 2014 - 08:25 PM

[amphibian]

Imperial Historian, on 19 September 2014 - 05:41 PM, said:

Yeah Amish books are everywhere on the backpacker circuit, and I've been seeing them a lot round the rest of asia. Reading the Ramayana it seems asher was trying to invoke that style but failed. I'd put the clunky English down to a bad translation but it seems its just a bad book.

I've been around Rajasthan (jaisalmer, jodhpur, Jaipur, udaipur) plus Agra Delhi and Amritsar. Currently in rishikesh then back to Delhi. The south will have to wait for another trip!

It surprises me India doesn't have a thriving fantasy market, the landscapes of India strike me as perfect inspiration.

Nice trip. I'd put Kashmir on the trip, even though it's volatile at times. I've heard it's absolutely beautiful there.

The fantasy market in Nepal is abysmal too. It's as if the desire for fantasy is already satisfied by TV/movies delivering straight pop Western media on top of the old Sanskrit epics everyone learns. Plus there's not a strong culture of reading for pleasure in most homes there.

I'd assume the same is similar for India: there's a continuous cultural choice being taken by people to watch tv or go gossip (men and women both) instead of to read by themselves.

[Andorion]

amphibian, on 19 September 2014 - 08:45 PM, said:

Imperial Historian, on 19 September 2014 - 05:41 PM, said:

Yeah Amish books are everywhere on the backpacker circuit, and I've been seeing them a lot round the rest of asia. Reading the Ramayana it seems asher was trying to invoke that style but failed. I'd put the clunky English down to a bad translation but it seems its just a bad book.

I've been around Rajasthan (jaisalmer, jodhpur, Jaipur, udaipur) plus Agra Delhi and Amritsar. Currently in rishikesh then back to Delhi. The south will have to wait for another trip!

It surprises me India doesn't have a thriving fantasy market, the landscapes of India strike me as perfect inspiration.

Nice trip. I'd put Kashmir on the trip, even though it's volatile at times. I've heard it's absolutely beautiful there.

The fantasy market in Nepal is abysmal too. It's as if the desire for fantasy is already satisfied by TV/movies delivering straight pop Western media on top of the old Sanskrit epics everyone learns. Plus there's not a strong culture of reading for pleasure in most homes there.

I'd assume the same is similar for India: there's a continuous cultural choice being taken by people to watch tv or go gossip (men and women both) instead of to read by themselves.

One thing to keep in mind is that India has dozens of cultural groups, seperated by language. Generating universal appeal is a bit tough. Then there are the epics, adaptations of which are still being circulated and are always popular. I am a Bengali from East India. In Bengali literature, there are some brilliant works on present day Bengali society and culture and a little bit of the past, meaning the 19th and 20th centuries. But that is basically it. I can count on one hand the writers who try fantasy or sci-fi. in fact this is one reason form my rapid loss of interest in Bengali literature, and several heated debates with my friends. While they accused me of neglecting it, I simply asked them to point out one author in the last 20 years who has written something other than Bengali society. So far they have been unable to. Its sad.

Regarding your trip, very nice itinerary, but you must have faced overwhelming heat. I hope you toured the forts in Rajasthan.

[Imperial Historian]

It's not been as hot as I would have thought actually, hottest it got was 35 and was mostly fairly comfortable at around 30 degrees. The forts in Rajasthan were hugely impressive! I need to come back and see kumbhalgarh and chittaugarh which are apparently even more so. I was going to go to Kashmir, but with the recent flooding was advised not to go.

I hadn't thought about the languages, though India is huge I guess the market for fantasy in each language isn't very large, and the majority of readers are probably reading English for a wider selection maybe in time some more Indian fantasy authors will appear. Bollywood from my limited sampling seems full of fantastical influences.

[Puck]

Managed to pick up a book for just.. well, reading for the sake of itself for the first time in months. So I'm now halfway through the first book of Elizabeth Bear's Jacob's Ladder trilogy, which I picked up at random for some reason. Right, have no opinion so far, except it keeps me entertained at work. But I'm just glad I can read something for pleasure again.

This post has been edited by Puck: 20 September 2014 - 07:55 AM

[Andorion]

Imperial Historian, on 20 September 2014 - 03:19 AM, said:

It's not been as hot as I would have thought actually, hottest it got was 35 and was mostly fairly comfortable at around 30 degrees. The forts in Rajasthan were hugely impressive! I need to come back and see kumbhalgarh and chittaugarh which are apparently even more so. I was going to go to Kashmir, but with the recent flooding was advised not to go.

I hadn't thought about the languages, though India is huge I guess the market for fantasy in each language isn't very large, and the majority of readers are probably reading English for a wider selection maybe in time some more Indian fantasy authors will appear. Bollywood from my limited sampling seems full of fantastical influences.

Chittoregarh is huge. You can't see the whole fort properly in one day. Its a real pity you coundn't visit Kasmir, but the present floods are absolutely devastating. If you want to visit the Himalayas, best time is the high summer: late April, May, June. After June the monsoon hits, you get heavy rain and that causes landslides and flashfloods in the mountains.

Regarding Indian fantasy one major problem is the mental block that prevents many people from seeing fantasy as a legit genre. So when I was trying to explain fantasy to my relatives they asked "So, these are basically English rupkatha? (Rupkatha basically are folk-tales with heavy fantasy elements which are primarily used to entertain very small children). While the English speaking audience does read a bit of fantasy and laps up stuff like Game of Thrones, its still basically LotR, Harry Potter, YA stuff like Eragon, Artemis Fowl etc. Most people by English fiction mean authors like Sidney Sheldon, Paulo Coelho, or Indian authors writing in English like Amitav Ghosh, Salman Rushdie, Jhumpa Lahiri etc.

As for Bollywood, weeellllll its basically bollywood. Wish fulfillment fantasy and cliches are its stock in trade. I do not expect one mature fantasy based film in the next ten years.

[Mentalist]

Finished "Cursor's Fury" last night. A page-turner for sure, though, imo not quite as good as Alera 2. Seemed more.. predictable, somehow. In this one, Butcher'd build up more suspense by putting in a cliffhanger sentence at the end of a chapter of a particular POV,and then ignore that POV for the next 5-10 chapters. Which was a tad irritating.

Hopefully, this isn't a plot device he means to be using often. I absolutely hated when Sanderson did that in Way of Kings.

Next up, i'm intending to read volume 2 of the Mongoliad. If it's good, i'll garb Volume 3 the same time I go to grab Alera 4.

[amphibian]

Andorion, on 20 September 2014 - 12:19 PM, said:

Chittoregarh is huge. You can't see the whole fort properly in one day. Its a real pity you coundn't visit Kasmir, but the present floods are absolutely devastating. If you want to visit the Himalayas, best time is the high summer: late April, May, June. After June the monsoon hits, you get heavy rain and that causes landslides and flashfloods in the mountains.

Regarding Indian fantasy one major problem is the mental block that prevents many people from seeing fantasy as a legit genre. So when I was trying to explain fantasy to my relatives they asked "So, these are basically English rupkatha? (Rupkatha basically are folk-tales with heavy fantasy elements which are primarily used to entertain very small children). While the English speaking audience does read a bit of fantasy and laps up stuff like Game of Thrones, its still basically LotR, Harry Potter, YA stuff like Eragon, Artemis Fowl etc. Most people by English fiction mean authors like Sidney Sheldon, Paulo Coelho, or Indian authors writing in English like Amitav Ghosh, Salman Rushdie, Jhumpa Lahiri etc.

As for Bollywood, weeellllll its basically bollywood. Wish fulfillment fantasy and cliches are its stock in trade. I do not expect one mature fantasy based film in the next ten years.

There have been occasional half hearted robot films, but more in the Indian Terminator vein than anything truly inventive.

I think the reading for pleasure thing is really a huge cultural obstacle all across south Asia. The bookcases you see in houses are often few, poorly stocked with anything outside school textbooks and religious texts and unused.

I'm speaking from a perspective of seeing a few hundred Nepali houses, a couple dozen Indian ones and a handful of Thai/Burmese. Even the highly educated families prefer to watch tv.

[Andorion]

amphibian, on 20 September 2014 - 05:07 PM, said:

Andorion, on 20 September 2014 - 12:19 PM, said:

Chittoregarh is huge. You can't see the whole fort properly in one day. Its a real pity you coundn't visit Kasmir, but the present floods are absolutely devastating. If you want to visit the Himalayas, best time is the high summer: late April, May, June. After June the monsoon hits, you get heavy rain and that causes landslides and flashfloods in the mountains.

Regarding Indian fantasy one major problem is the mental block that prevents many people from seeing fantasy as a legit genre. So when I was trying to explain fantasy to my relatives they asked "So, these are basically English rupkatha? (Rupkatha basically are folk-tales with heavy fantasy elements which are primarily used to entertain very small children). While the English speaking audience does read a bit of fantasy and laps up stuff like Game of Thrones, its still basically LotR, Harry Potter, YA stuff like Eragon, Artemis Fowl etc. Most people by English fiction mean authors like Sidney Sheldon, Paulo Coelho, or Indian authors writing in English like Amitav Ghosh, Salman Rushdie, Jhumpa Lahiri etc.

As for Bollywood, weeellllll its basically bollywood. Wish fulfillment fantasy and cliches are its stock in trade. I do not expect one mature fantasy based film in the next ten years.

There have been occasional half hearted robot films, but more in the Indian Terminator vein than anything truly inventive.

I think the reading for pleasure thing is really a huge cultural obstacle all across south Asia. The bookcases you see in houses are often few, poorly stocked with anything outside school textbooks and religious texts and unused.

I'm speaking from a perspective of seeing a few hundred Nepali houses, a couple dozen Indian ones and a handful of Thai/Burmese. Even the highly educated families prefer to watch tv.

Umm I don't know which part of India you visited, but reading in general is a huge thing in Bengali middle class homes. TV is edging books out a bit, but people still read like crazy. We have an annual book fair in Kolkata towards the end of what passes for winter here and its one of the most heavily attended occasions of the year, right after the Durga Pujas. Its so big a deal that we have new bus routes set up and special traffic arrangements made just to accomodate the people. Reading isn't a problem. Its the need for genre expansion thats desperate and all too rare.

[Baco Xtath]

Finished City of Stairs; really good. Bennett could have easily stretched this into a trilogy and I think it's a shame he didn't. Hopefully he revisits this world again. Also, halfway through Sleeping Late on Judgment Day. It's a welcome return to form, the second book being a bit of a drag. Anyway, love'n it.

[McLovin]

Taking another hit of the gauntcrack with NECROPOLIS.

[Whisperzzzzzzz]

Just took a breather from the heavy stuff after reading MoI as part of my re-read to once again enjoy BF, TLoLE, and THD. Now on to HoC. Witness!

This post has been edited by Whisperzzzzzzz: 22 September 2014 - 03:13 AM

[Ukjent]

Done with Weeks the Broken Eye, and enjoyable read if you liked The blinding Knife, but it is not that action packed.

[End of Disc One]

Ukjent, on 22 September 2014 - 10:03 AM, said:

Done with Weeks the Broken Eye, and enjoyable read if you liked The blinding Knife, but it is not that action packed.

I just started this. I noticed that the map is reversed, with South at the top. I checked the last two books, and in those books the compass didn't list directions. Interesting.

[Ukjent]

That explains why I wondered so much about the map.

[Mentalist]

Finished the second volume of The Mongoliad . It was nothing stellar, worse than the first. Frankly, it just seemed too choppy, getting nowhere by the end. I will get volume 3 to see how it ends, but not something I'd recommend.

next up I'll be reading Promise of Blood by Brian McClellan, volume 1 of the "Powder Mage" trilogy.

[amphibian]

I too finished the second volume, but I like the series still. I think that they picked a bad time to end the book. A few more chapters each would have been better.

[Serenity]

Over the weekend I finished Meluch's Wolf Star and am now about a third of the way through re-reading Memories of Ice.

[acesn8s]

I spent the past month marathoning through the Iron Druid series (books 1-6). Suddenly I had enough.

I’m reading Tad William’s Shadowmarch now. I wanted something that took its time developing and from what I remember of Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn – William’s should do nicely.

[Mentalist]

amphibian, on 23 September 2014 - 12:54 AM, said:

I too finished the second volume, but I like the series still. I think that they picked a bad time to end the book. A few more chapters each would have been better.

Oh, I'm still interested to see how it all ends, don't get me wrong. I generally like alt. history stuff. It's just that due to the nature of this as a collaborative work, I don't really see much connection between the main plot lines-and a few of them seem to not be going anywhere significant. So right now I'd be hesitant to recommend the series, but I'm still open for vol. 3 to impress me.