[worry]

Finished Fairy Tale by Stephen King. Would it surprise you to learn that he whiffs the finale after a pretty good beginning and middle?

[Chance]

Paused my read of Three Axes to Fall during last week and for very intense work and wasn't in the mood to start it up again the last few days.

Well...it took about two minutes for me, to wonder why did I put it down, this book is distilled awesome

[Gwynn ap Nudd]

Just finished the second book in the Poppy War. I enjoyed this more than the first - the new author complaints I had about the first have gone away. Though there are a few bits where I think a better editor was needed.

Some previous reads as I was away from the forum for a bit.

Max Gladstone's Ruin of Angels. The setting and plot were fantastic, but I wasn't thrilled with the new main character and the most frequent returning one was among my least favourite in the series. I really only got into it in the later stages once Izza and Tara were more focal. Would read again, just for the bonkers setting.

Naomi Nopvik's Golden Enclaves. I enjoyed this, but it not as much as the first two Scholomance books. I dunno, something was just missing in comparison.

My reading really slowed down the last few months. Hope to pick that up over the holidays and into the New Year.

[Aptorian]

Finished the first two Takeshi Kovachs books, Altered Carbon and Broken Angels

Altered Carbon was really good, though a bit annoying in retrospect given that it's one of those books where the eventual third act has little to do with the start of case. I was sure I'd read Altered Carbon before but I didn't remember anything of that ending.

As someone mentioned earlier Broken Angels wasn't as great but still good. It's a weird story that takes strange leaps. The book seemed to want me to care about a bunch of cereal box mercenaries that Kovachs gets to know in a week, and then expects us to believe Kovachs is really sad when they die. Meanwhile also showing Kovachs happily murdering, real death, people he's known for a year in droves.

Kovachs morality code is in general really fucked up. He describes himself as a sociopath but I think raging psycho is probably a better description.

The concept of life and death is really strange in these books as well. It seems like no one ever really dies any longer, so long as people don't destroy your hard drive. It's a topic that's avoided but I wonder why people don't just stay in virtual worlds instead of trying to get resleeved over and over. Maybe a lot of people prefer virtual life and the stories just don't address it.

Humanities population must be exploding if everyone keeps getting resleeved.

This post has been edited by Aptorian: 23 December 2022 - 01:06 PM

[Chance]

Gwynn ap Nudd, on 23 December 2022 - 03:42 AM, said:

Naomi Nopvik's Golden Enclaves. I enjoyed this, but it not as much as the first two Scholomance books. I dunno, something was just missing in comparison.

Can only agree it didn't grip me in the same way, still decent but not great.

Aptorian, on 23 December 2022 - 01:04 PM, said:

It's a topic that's avoided but I wonder why people don't just stay in virtual worlds instead of trying to get resleeved over and over. Maybe a lot of people prefer virtual life and the stories just don't address it.

It does come up in the third book, you meet some renouncers. I'd guess it largely comes down to no one wanting to pay for the energy/maintenance to keep dead people in virtual heavens forever.

This post has been edited by Chance: 23 December 2022 - 03:26 PM

[Abyss]

Chance, on 22 December 2022 - 03:53 PM, said:

Paused my read of Three Axes to Fall during last week and for very intense work and wasn't in the mood to start it up again the last few days.

Well...it took about two minutes for me, to wonder why did I put it down, this book is distilled awesome

*headthump*
*headthump*
*headthump*

[Abyss]

Aptorian, on 23 December 2022 - 01:04 PM, said:

Finished the first two Takeshi Kovachs books, Altered Carbon and Broken Angels
...

Humanities population must be exploding if everyone keeps getting resleeved.

Everyone doesnt get resleeved. The point is made elsewhere in the books, and the tv show, that there are entire dump sites on various worlds filled with stacks from people who cannot afford to be resleeved, or no one wants to bother with, or fell thru the cracks, etc.

[Tiste Simeon]

Finished Moon Over Soho, and utterly loved it. Have immediately downloaded Whispers Under Ground. Just an amazing series!

8 awkward sex scenes with jazz vampires out of 10.

This post has been edited by Tiste Simeon: 23 December 2022 - 09:18 PM

[JPK]

Tiste Simeon, on 23 December 2022 - 09:17 PM, said:

Finished Moon Over Soho, and utterly loved it. Have immediately downloaded Whispers Under Ground. Just an amazing series!

8 awkward sex scenes with jazz vampires out of 10.

Damnit. There goes a credit for Rivers of London. I hope you're happy with yourself.

[Aptorian]

Chance, on 23 December 2022 - 03:17 PM, said:

Gwynn ap Nudd, on 23 December 2022 - 03:42 AM, said:

Naomi Nopvik's Golden Enclaves. I enjoyed this, but it not as much as the first two Scholomance books. I dunno, something was just missing in comparison.

Can only agree it didn't grip me in the same way, still decent but not great.

Aptorian, on 23 December 2022 - 01:04 PM, said:

It's a topic that's avoided but I wonder why people don't just stay in virtual worlds instead of trying to get resleeved over and over. Maybe a lot of people prefer virtual life and the stories just don't address it.

It does come up in the third book, you meet some renouncers. I'd guess it largely comes down to no one wanting to pay for the energy/maintenance to keep dead people in virtual heavens forever.

I can't imagine it's that expensive or hard 500 years into the future. Energy seems to be a solved problem in this age.

I suspect it's probably one of those things where digital life doesn't fulfill some core human need of human consciousness.

Abyss, on 23 December 2022 - 08:53 PM, said:

Aptorian, on 23 December 2022 - 01:04 PM, said:

Finished the first two Takeshi Kovachs books, Altered Carbon and Broken Angels
...

Humanities population must be exploding if everyone keeps getting resleeved.

Everyone doesnt get resleeved. The point is made elsewhere in the books, and the tv show, that there are entire dump sites on various worlds filled with stacks from people who cannot afford to be resleeved, or no one wants to bother with, or fell thru the cracks, etc.

I took the part about the Souls Market in book two, to be more an example of a war economy where so many people are killed, civilian or military, that their stacks can be stolen or held for ransom. There's certainly no interest in resleeving millions of people during wartime.

I do like the fact that these books are low key Cyberpunk books with little focus on the online part.

[Aptorian]

The Rivers of London books are awesome.

Just did my obligatory check of when there's another book coming out. There's a new novella called Winter's Gift coming out in June 2023.

https://www.benaaronovitch.com/

[Aptorian]

Just read a surprisingly ham-fisted passage in the third Takeshi Kovachs book by Richard Morgan.

Kovachs is approached by the wife of a Islamic priest on a boat and the passage below is what follows.

Your own personal beliefs about religion or Islam aside, this whole passage seems incredibly out of character and just seems like an opportunity for the author to use his character as a loudspeaker.

(Sorry for the wall of text, formatting doesn't follow the copy paste)

Quote

Westward, waves broke white and just audible on the great curving reefs that heralded the eventual rise of the Kossuth gulf coastline further south. ‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ said a quiet voice beside me at the rail. I glanced sideways and saw the priest’s wife, still scarfed and robed despite the weather. She was alone. Her face, what I could see of it, tilted up at me out of the tightly drawn circle of the scarf that covered her below the mouth and above the brow. It was beaded with sweat from the unaccustomed heat but didn’t seem unconfident. She had scraped her hair back so that not a trace made it past the cloth. She was very young, probably not long out of her teens. She was also, I realised, several months pregnant. I turned away, mouth suddenly tight. Focused on the view beyond the deck rail. ‘I’ve never travelled this far south before,’ she went on, when she saw I wasn’t going to take her up on her first gambit. ‘Have you?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Is it always this hot?’ I looked at her again, bleakly. ‘It isn’t hot, you’re just inappropriately dressed.’ ‘Ah.’ She placed her gloved hands on the rail and appeared to examine them. ‘You do not approve?’ I shrugged. ‘It’s got nothing to do with me. We live in a free world, didn’t you know? Leo Mecsek says so.’ ‘Mecsek.’ She made a small spitting sound. ‘He is as corrupt as the rest of them. As all the materialists.’ ‘Yeah, but give him his due. If his daughter ever gets raped, he’s unlikely to beat her to death for dishonouring him.’ She flinched. ‘You are talking about an isolated incident, this is not—’ ‘Four.’ I held out my fingers, rigid in front of her face. ‘I’m talking about four isolated incidents. And that’s just this year.’ I saw colour rise in her cheeks. She seemed to be looking down at her own slightly protruding belly. ‘The New Revelation is not always most honestly served by those most active in its advocacy,’ she murmured. ‘Many of us—’ ‘Many of you cringe along in compliance, hoping to peel something of worth from the less psychotic directives of your gynocidal belief system because you don’t have the wit or nerve to build something entirely new. I know.’ Now she was flushing to the roots of her painstakingly hidden hair. ‘You misjudge me.’ She touched the scarf she wore. ‘I have chosen this. Chosen it freely. I believe in the Revelation, I have my faith.’ ‘Then you’re more stupid than you look.’ An outraged silence. I used it to crank the flurry of rage in my own chest back under control. ‘So I’m stupid? Because I choose modesty in womanhood, I’m stupid. Because I don’t display and cheapen myself at every opportunity like that whore Mitzi Harlan and her kind, because—’ ‘Look,’ I said coldly. ‘Why don’t you exercise some of that modesty and just shut your womanly little mouth? I really don’t care what you think.’ ‘See,’ she said, voice turned slightly shrill. ‘You lust after her like all the others. You give in to her cheap sensual tricks and—’ ‘Oh, please. For my money, Mitzi Harlan’s a stupid, superficial little trollop, but you know what? At least she lives her life as if it belongs to her. Instead of abasing herself at the feet of any fucking baboon who can grow a beard and some external genitalia.’ ‘Are you calling my husband a—’ ‘No.’ I swung on her. It seemed I didn’t have it cranked down after all. My hands shot out and grasped her by the shoulders. ‘No, I’m calling you a gutless betrayer of your sex. I can see your husband’s angle, he’s a man, he’s got everything to gain from this crabshit. But you? You’ve thrown away centuries of political struggle and scientific advance so you can sit in the dark and mutter your superstitions of unworth to yourself. You’ll let your life, the most precious thing you have, be stolen from you hour by hour and day by day as long as you can eke out the existence your males will let you have. And then, when you finally die, and I hope it’s soon, sister, I really do, then at the last you’ll spite your own potential and shirk the final power we’ve won for ourselves to come back and try again. You’ll do all of this because of your fucking faith, and if that child in your belly is female, then you’ll condemn her to the same fucking thing.’ Then there was a hand on my arm.

[Tsundoku]

Does he do it constantly or is it something the character only does once? Since you say out of character I'm guessing just this once so far, that you can detect.

And besides, ho many authors don't take the opportunity - at least occasionally - to display their beliefs? The author this forum is formed for sure does. Some are just more subtle than others.

Is it the hamfistedness (it's a word now if it wasn't before) that annoys you more or the fact he's doing it at all?

[Aptorian]

It's the only time the character has done or said something this overt in regards to religion or politics. Kovachs through out the series certainly has opinions but it's usually filtered through a world weary cynicism and detachment. The perspective of a man who's seen and done a lot of terrible shit.

Not what ever the above bullshit is. Mind you this whole book seems a bit off. Don't know if it's because the character has returned to his home planet but his planning and behavior is off.

[Aptorian]

Okay, okay, I just read a segment around p. 315 that explains Kovachs behavior. I still find the characters actions to be out of character but oh boy, it's a heck of a revelation.

Spoiler

Old love interest dies in a terrible way because of her marriage to a space muslim.
Kovachs in turn has gone completely Anakin Skywalker on the village she died in and is hunting down the entire muslim clergy of the planet.
And putting their digitized souls through hell.
I'm impressed at how fucking insane he's gone with cold hatred.
Like bravo, you absolute psycho.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Been listening to Wall of Storms (book two of the Dandelion Dynasty)---it's more novelistic than the Grace of Kings, and goes into the different schools of philosophy in much more detail. They're closely based on ancient Chinese philosophy before the arrival of Buddhism.

I like that the name for Confucius is closer to his Chinese name (Confucius is actually Kong (IDK if he's the inspiration for the King of that name)---with 'fuzi' being an honorific: Kǒngfūzǐ).

OTOH this book would be more interesting if the in-world philosophies were a bit closer to the ancient Chinese. For example, one major criticism of the book's version of Confucianism is that performing the outward forms of the rituals without inwardly feeling their significance might not cultivate true ethical behavior. But one of the main tenets of Confucianism is that it's not enough to perform the external rituals, you have to inwardly feel their significance in order to be ethical. (Interesting quote from the Analects suggesting how to help do that: '[He] sacrificed to the dead as if they were present. He sacrificed to the spirits as if the spirits were present. [...] "I consider my not being present at the sacrifice as though there were no sacrifice."')

One character who's highly critical of the book's version of Confucianism says that she only cares about people who are close to her. But the book completely ignores the one of the primary ethical disagreements between Confucianism and Mohism: the Mohists (represented in the book as proto-scientists and engineers) promoted 'impartial caring' (often translated as 'universal love'), whereas Confucianism holds that being partial to your relatives and friends is 'natural' and right. Though I'd suppose the irony is amusing....

The ethical dimension of Mohism ('Patternism') is completely ignored. (They also held that offensive war is wrong, and devoted their engineering skills to creating defensive fortifications. That's one of the main reasons why they were eventually wiped out... though I'd suppose this is a (fantasy) variation on Chinese history in which Mohism lived on.)

Overall, I'm enjoying it, and finding the plot riveting at times, though it's perhaps a little uneven in places. Could imagine it being better---I'd definitely listen to a revised version---but it's still pretty good.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 25 December 2022 - 08:49 PM

[Aptorian]

Finished Woken Furies by Richard Morgan.

I didn't like this book. The plot is okay, if very meandering, but I came to despise Kovachs during this book. He's angry, abusive, exploiting and makes a mess of everything.

I think it would be interesting to see somebody map Kovachs interactions with other characters, over the course of the three books and what his impact is on their lives.

He seems to be an utterly destructive personality. Only loyal to himself, easily making excuses for why he hurts or uses the people around him, swapping allegiances on a dime, turning on friends on a whim.

If there'd been more books in the series, I'd have dropped the series here

[Chance]

Currently going through the second half of Richard Swan's The Justice of Kings because it got recommended in half a dozen places from what I already read and like.

So far it's not doing much for me however, for one I'm hard bouncing off the use of german language for some reason. Maybe because I saw some ww2 documentaries recently and find the idea of a conquering german empire mixed with some roman ideas to have some particularly unfortunate allusions. Unless you make them the really irredeemably bad guys...so far they seem to be the good guys this is giving me cognitive dissonance or something But it isn't bad enough for me to not finish, solid writing and it might end up better than I predict so far.

Aptorian, on 26 December 2022 - 06:58 PM, said:

Finished Woken Furies by Richard Morgan.

I didn't like this book. The plot is okay, if very meandering, but I came to despise Kovachs during this book. He's angry, abusive, exploiting and makes a mess of everything.

Kovach is certainly a mess, a very angry mess, but after three books I think, the readers understand why pretty well.

[Abyss]

Aptorian, on 24 December 2022 - 08:05 AM, said:

The Rivers of London books are awesome.

Just did my obligatory check of when there's another book coming out. There's a new novella called Winter's Gift coming out in June 2023.

https://www.benaaronovitch.com/

Check out the comics.

[Chance]

Finished up The Justice of Kings and it got some better but it wasn't, the kind of book where I really want to know what happens next. In my opinion a book in a series need to have that or deep engagement with one or more character or that the story stands on its own or that it is just that bloody entertaining. This one didn't really fit any of those qualities.

Started up Priest of Bone by Peter McLean and that in difference to The Justice of Kings, has engaging characters, nice action and is even rather fun most of the time. Brings to mind Raven's Mark and Low Town series which to my mind is all good stuff.

This post has been edited by Chance: 29 December 2022 - 03:05 PM