[QuickTidal]

PARADISE is here bitches, on 15 August 2018 - 04:45 PM, said:

Retry Masters of Rome? I’m still floored you didn’t devour this epic set of books.

It's still in my ToRead pile...perhaps. I just found it so overly meaty with names and places to start off that I was constantly put off. I read the opening like 30 pages 5 times now and nothing hooked me.

[Chance]

Macros, on 15 August 2018 - 03:10 PM, said:

Next one, is that State of the Art (listed some places a s short story collection) or Excession?

State of the Art is a short story collection with the title story being a longer short story. Its not really necessary Excession should be the next one State of the Art (and after Excession also Inversions) is more for completion then actual necessities.

[polishgenius]

QuickTidal, on 15 August 2018 - 04:13 PM, said:

Stalled out into a book slump...nothing is piquing my interest right now...ugh, I hate this feeling.

As ever, I'm gonna bug you with a recommendation for The Gone-Away World, in my opinion the ultimate anti-reading-slump-book.

[Abyss]

QuickTidal, on 15 August 2018 - 04:13 PM, said:

Stalled out into a book slump...nothing is piquing my interest right now...ugh, I hate this feeling.

Patrick Weekes, Rogues of the Republic trilo. You’ll thank me.

[Macros]

Just opening Vellum. I've had it ony shelf for a while, one of my Amazon used buying binges.

Let's see how it goes.

Any predictions on Mac's take of it?

[QuickTidal]

Macros, on 15 August 2018 - 06:42 PM, said:

Just opening Vellum. I've had it ony shelf for a while, one of my Amazon used buying binges.

Let's see how it goes.

Any predictions on Mac's take of it?

I don't think you'll like it.

I loathed it though...so I'm a tad skewed on views of it.

[Macros]

read about 50 pages then took a break for a half hour nap.

it definitely falling in the weird so far. I get a bit of what Duncan is trying to do, not sure if I'm going to like it though.

[amphibian]

I've read the first six Gemmell Drenai books. They're not great, especially with his books coming out in the mid eighties to mid nineties. The women are near fetishes of rescue and rarely ever pass a Bechtel test. Gemmell isn't that good at depicting scenes or fighting. The most interesting book was Quest for Lost Heroes and that annoyed me with its refusal to actually say Finn and Magrigg were gay lovers. Howard (Conan) and the others that write the barbarian hero type generally wrote better than Gemmell.

Shifted over to reading the Incorruptibles series by John Hornor Jacobs. Wow. It's like Lonesome Dove on peyote with Roman army stuff, vampires, and demons. Very well written, the action is phenomenal, and the scenery and characters are very vivid if a bit "HBO Rome" style. Loved the first two and am reading the third now.

[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

amphibian, on 15 August 2018 - 08:45 PM, said:

The most interesting book was Quest for Lost Heroes and that annoyed me with its refusal to actually say Finn and Magrigg were gay lovers.

I love Gemmell, so we fundamentally disagree, but I found this interesting. To me, Quest for Lost Heroes is the worst book of the whole lot and the only one I didn't particularly enjoy. Just shows you - horses for courses!

[amphibian]

How do you think Gemmell treats his women characters?

What do you like about his writing?

[Andorion]

QuickTidal, on 15 August 2018 - 04:13 PM, said:

Stalled out into a book slump...nothing is piquing my interest right now...ugh, I hate this feeling.

Have you read - Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins? Divine Cities by Robert Jackson Bennett?

[Mentalist]

Macros, on 15 August 2018 - 08:20 PM, said:

read about 50 pages then took a break for a half hour nap.

it definitely falling in the weird so far. I get a bit of what Duncan is trying to do, not sure if I'm going to like it though.

Knowing something about the history of socialism in Scotland may help.... or it may not.

It's a weird jumble. Duncan is kinda emulating Moorcock's method with the Jerry Cornelius books (especially in Ink ), but he's also throwing in a big dose of "Snow Crash"-esque infodumps and mythical allegories.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 16 August 2018 - 01:08 AM

[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

amphibian, on 15 August 2018 - 11:03 PM, said:

How do you think Gemmell treats his women characters?

What do you like about his writing?

I don't completely disagree that the books are indicative of the time they were written, and that he falls into tropes and writes typical heroic fantasy. However, it's never spoiled my enjoyment. You could argue there's some teenage nostalgia involved for me, but whereas other books I read at the same time have fallen by the wayside (A Song of Ice and Fire being a prominent example) I still re-read Gemmell semi-regularly. They're something fun and comfortable I go back to when I don't want something new.

For me, there's a spare elegance to the writing. There's no more description or fluff or complexity than is strictly needed, and I have always liked his characters. They're all flawed and to me they read as human. The books have always been stories of people. they just happen to have funny names and live in a made up place.

I don't agree with the women thing entirely. Probably holds true for some but Virae, Jianna, Caessa, Danyal off the top of my head all certainly have more about them - Caessa in particular is the exact opposite of the rescue fetish, she's a freaking psychotic serial killer when you get right down to it, traumatic tragic backstory or not.

I adore Virae though, so I'm possibly a bit biased.

This post has been edited by TheRetiredBridgeburner: 16 August 2018 - 06:05 AM

[Macros]

I side with TRB on this.

They were written in the 80s, and, like it or not, the semi medieval type setting they were placed in is a place where men did the fighting. And since basically every book is about fighting....
A product of its time sure, but it's never dented my enjoyment. I think it's made fairly obvious the Finn and Magrig are a gay couple.

I actually love his action scenes and as trb says, there's no fluff wasted on describing the teapots, no tugging of braids and not one well turned calve in sight.

I think the women that stand out in his books stand out all the more because they're strong women in what is clearly a male dominated world/society. I like books that show women being treated as cometely equal, but also appreciate books that show in most societies, especially pre tech, they weren't, and so manage to transfer a bit of real world across to their fantasy set up.

This post has been edited by Macros: 16 August 2018 - 10:27 AM

[worry]

Never read Gemmell. Might give him a shot down the line, to draw my own conclusions. I have no problem with books being of their time, but I sure am glad fantasy authors these days have listened to the critiques about how wide a world this is, how varied its peoples and cultures, how deep its mythologies...and so have finally moved on from Medieval Europe onto [checks notes] Napoleonic Europe and Victorian England.

[Maark Abbott]

Started on "I've Been Killing Slimes for Three Hundred Years and Maxed Out My Level." Man, these light novel titles are literal as fuck because within chapter 1 that's exactly what the MC has done so far.

Again, it feels sort of trashy and flimsy, but again, it's dumb fun, and that's something I think I've been sorely lacking in books lately (compounded by the fact that the books I've read that have tried to be fun have failed miserably at it).

[Tsundoku]

Abyss, on 15 August 2018 - 06:11 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 15 August 2018 - 04:13 PM, said:

Stalled out into a book slump...nothing is piquing my interest right now...ugh, I hate this feeling.

Patrick Weekes, Rogues of the Republic trilo. You’ll thank me.

D'accord!

[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

Macros, on 16 August 2018 - 06:46 AM, said:

I think the women that stand out in his books stand out all the more because they're strong women in what is clearly a male dominated world/society. I like books that show women being treated as cometely equal, but also appreciate books that show in most societies, especially pre tech, they weren't, and so manage to transfer a bit of real world across to their fantasy set up.

I'll spoiler for the sake of those who haven't read White Wolf, but on this point:

Spoiler

I always felt like the monster Jianna becomes is in part, though definitely not totally, in response to her having to fight that much harder to assert her dominance because she was female in a male dominated society - the whole prophecy her father hears so sets out to have her trained by Malanek "like a man". It's clearly demonstrated in the flashbacks the people en masse were that much more willing to follow Boranius despite his depravities because he was much more the norm - i.e. male.

As you say, the women work within the constraints of the depicted society they are placed in. There's no point expecting an Adjunct Tavore in a world which doesn't allow for it.

This post has been edited by TheRetiredBridgeburner: 16 August 2018 - 11:38 AM

[Mentalist]

Finished "Lord of the Silent Kingdom" last night. Around midnight I had about 50 pages to go, so I figured "who really needs sleep, anyway?"

Gonna be looking for next book to buy soon. Meantime, continuing on the religious wars theme, I tossed Hurley's "God's War" into my backpack as a commute book.

Unless I end up getting totally sucked into it, I'll probably be starting a Tolkien re-read at home as the next big reading project this year.

[QuickTidal]

TheRetiredBridgeburner, on 16 August 2018 - 06:04 AM, said:

amphibian, on 15 August 2018 - 11:03 PM, said:

How do you think Gemmell treats his women characters?

What do you like about his writing?

I don't completely disagree that the books are indicative of the time they were written, and that he falls into tropes and writes typical heroic fantasy. However, it's never spoiled my enjoyment. You could argue there's some teenage nostalgia involved for me, but whereas other books I read at the same time have fallen by the wayside (A Song of Ice and Fire being a prominent example) I still re-read Gemmell semi-regularly. They're something fun and comfortable I go back to when I don't want something new.

For me, there's a spare elegance to the writing. There's no more description or fluff or complexity than is strictly needed, and I have always liked his characters. They're all flawed and to me they read as human. The books have always been stories of people. they just happen to have funny names and live in a made up place.

I don't agree with the women thing entirely. Probably holds true for some but Virae, Jianna, Caessa, Danyal off the top of my head all certainly have more about them - Caessa in particular is the exact opposite of the rescue fetish, she's a freaking psychotic serial killer when you get right down to it, traumatic tragic backstory or not.

I adore Virae though, so I'm possibly a bit biased.

I wholeheartedly agree with TRB and Mac here.

And let's not forget Sigarni, who has her own duology as a badass protagonist.

Amph.

Do you REALLY think that holding an old 80's/90's heyday fantasy author up to the Bechdel test (something that, though written in an indie comic in the mid-80's, didn't gain widespread notice util at LEAST the early 2000's) is doing anything good for anyone? If you start holding authors prior to the 2000's up to the Bechdel Test, they will OFTEN if not ALWAYS fail it. That's the whole goddamned point of it. That's WHY the test became such a phenomenon in the 2000's, BECAUSE of those holes in the social structure of fiction in previous eras. It's fine to hold up authors after the 2000's to it and "tsk tsk" at them...that I get, they have no excuse...it's widespread enough that it should make creators think before writing in this day and age. Anyone before the 2000's lived in a different era, and attempting to hold them to modern gender standards is a waste of time because it's not going to work. Leave people in the time they wrote the things they wrote. Yes, we can hold up Tolkien as having had some bad tendencies with regards to social structures based on his era of the early 20th century...but what on earth is the point? What purpose does that serve? I can look at it, see that it was a bad thing resulting from the era he wrote in, take that lesson, and STILL enjoy the hell out of his work.

Real Life Example: China Miéville, when I met him, signed my copy of EMBASSYTOWN with a quote by Rudyard Kipling...should I have gotten into it with him about Kipling's clearly racist and imperialist leanings? Or can we all just accept that 19th century Imperialist Brits were all racist and move on to see what good there is in the fiction of the era? I like Kipling (one of the first books I ever read was KIM)...but I'm WELL aware of his more racist underpinnings and can take that lesson while still enjoying his work. I'm not willing to throw the classical baby out with the bathwater.