[polishgenius]

I haven't read the book yet so won't comment on character, but one thing I've found odd is review reaction to the luridly described sex scenes - to whit I've read a few which have praised the book for not shying away from describing it in intimate detail.
The thing is that Morgan's sex scenes have always been ridiculous and my biggest problem with his books, and at least one of these review sources (SFX, this was) has pulled him up on it before when it wasn't man-love that was going on. So basically I find it difficult to believe that this has changed just because one of the main characters is gay. Basically I'm accusing them of backing off the issue to avoid accusations of homophobia and that all this may be overshadowing the actual character.

Anyway, I could be talking out of my arse, as I say I haven't got round to reading it yet. Anyone who has read it got any thoughts on that?

As for Stone Monkey mentioning other gay characters in fantasy, have you read Hal Duncan's Vellum? I was very impressed in that by the way that some of the main characters were gay, and very definite about it, but a huge deal wasn't made out if it.
The second book made it a bit more of a focal point, which disappointed me because it slightly undermined the casual way the first book went about it, but I can see why he went with it. And it's nowhere near what Morgan appears to be doing.

[Abyss]

To be fair, Morgan's sex scenes in the Kovacs books usually involved multiple cloned bodies, digital personalities, radiation poisoning and/or genitalia customized to extrude LSD (aside: and if that doesn't prompt a few of you to check the series out you are cold and dead inside ). he's over the top and quite deliberately so. Black Man and Market Forces have some sex but it's hardly central to the story. In TSR goes a whole other direction with the sheboingy.

- Abyss, ..yes, 'sheboingy'...what?

[Use Of Weapons]

stone monkey, on Oct 7 2008, 08:41 PM, said:

The fact that Ringil is unrepentant about his sexuality probably makes him the most accurate gay male character in fantasy, he certainly reminds me of at least a couple of gay men I know (they're not sword wielding badasses btw, just not camp and not willing to take any shit from anyone about who they are)

In a lot, most where they appear even, of previous genre fantasy novels (it's something of an 80s trope imo) gay male characters seem to appear as bad guys of the "if you thought he was evil before, wait til you find out that he likes fucking other guys!" stripe; which is a truly mendacious use if you ask me.

I too would be interested in finding if our gay members concur.

I agree. Katharine Kerr does this in the first of her Deverry sequence. And Mercedes Lackey has a male rape sequence with Vanyel in the final book of the Herald Mage trilogy, though that may have been more due to Vanyel's reputation and an opportunistic thing. It certainly drove the plot, and didn't seem gratuitous.

[Werthead]

Having watched The Wire, Ringil being a hard-assed mofoer who is the most dangerous person in the room and doesn't give a toss what people think about his sexuality seems highly reminiscent of Omar, except the shotgun gets traded for a longsword.

[polishgenius]

Having just finished watching the first season of The Wire yesterday, Omar is fucking awesome.

[globish rip]

omar :: brandon ringil :: that dude that got executed and tortured

reaction to the luridly described sex scenes - to whit I've read a few which have praised the book for not shying away from describing it in intimate detail.

i dont think the sex scenes were particularly lurid. i mean they were there, but they werent ott like what abyss described from the sf books.

Has anyone found anything anywhere on a gay reader's perspective on the characters in this book?

i thought arceth was less believable than ringil but i liked both of them. obv it was nice that the characters homosexuality didnt dictate their personality in a cliched way but it still impacted their personality on some level. it wasnt all there was to them but it was a part and of a piece with who they were. ringil's rage and that sense of barely leashed violence that he has meshed really w/his resentement and discomfort w/society.

basically <3 this book a+++

[Abyss]

¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶, on Oct 21 2008, 05:24 PM, said:

...i dont think the sex scenes were particularly lurid...

SPOILERS HERE SPOILERS SPOILERS

WILD CRAZY SPOILERS

SPOILERS

At one point Ringil internal monologues on the slight smell of shit after a bout of sex

Spoiler

with the lightning elf.

It's not so much lurid as the sort of detail one doesn't usually find even in fantasy books that have homosexual characters.

Mieville treaded on the edges with IRON COUNCIL but never quite went that far.

I agree with you the way Ringil's personality was depicted was very well done.

Archeth wasn't as well developped

Spoiler

in terms of her sexuality but her real plot point was the feeling of desertion

by her father's race more than her preference for women

.


- Abyss, looks fwd to the next book...

[Dr Trouble]

I just finished it and loved it. I'll spoiler everything just in case.

Spoiler

From the get go I was very underwhelmed. I was thinking, "Here we go, Morgans making a point about gay men in a bland setting, 300 pages to go? Damn."
I couldn't have been more wrong.
That is to a point of course, I still think he was heavy handed with his portrayal of the take no names, fuck you in the ass then slit your throat, Ringil. But it's hard to be annoyed with Morgan when the character is so fucking cool. He's the kind of character I like. In the early scene where Seethlaw is following him down a path but he doesn't know its him yet and he's all, "I'm not in the fucking mood for this."
I love it.

But when it got to the intimate sex scenes between Seethlaw and Ringil? the talk of Seethlaws finger in Ringels arse and the smell of shit in the air? I'm not ashamed to say I was uncomfortable. It just seemed gratuitous. But maybe that's just because I don't like men having sex with other men? I remember thinking the same thing about the graphic sex scene in Altered Carbon.

And his character transformation by the end was ... confusing to say the least.

Egar was brilliant from the start. I regret that Morgan didn't choose him as the main Character simply because he is so much fun to read. Much like Karsa Orlong, only more civilized. The bit in the bar after he meets Ringil for the first time when he pulls a knife, I couldn't help but laugh out loud at this part: "Right you are, Gil," He Roared. "Who wants this right up their fucking arse? Fucking magicking old cunts."

Thats the can do attitude I look for. It's a shame we saw so little of him in the book though. I would have gladly replaced Archeths dull narrative for more of his exploits.

And yeah, Archeth didn't really do much for me. I thought she was the weak link in the book.

All in all, Morgan enjoys to employ the words, "Fuck" and, "Cunt" whenever he can.

[Abyss]

Trouble, on Oct 26 2008, 06:25 AM, said:

I just finished it and loved it. I'll spoiler everything just in case.
...

I totally agree with you on Egar - great, GREAT character.

I suspect the point of the shit/sex narrative was to make some readers uncomfortable.

I liked Archeth.

Spoiler

I agree she wasn't the most fascinating of the three, but she was the window to

a lot of the past, and her internal struggle between obeying her ruler and following her conscience were well done. Plus the four-named-blades fighting style thing was AWESOME.

I rationalized Ringil's transformation as him having spent more time in the Dwenda time-and-space-in-flux-thing dimension than any human ever had and having the sheer strength of will to hold onto his mind thru it.

- Abyss, agrees with the luv for the book.

[Dr Trouble]

On Archeth:

Spoiler

There were glimpses of important things in her POV, I can't deny it. Like her people leaving and her being left behind. Her slow assimilation throughout the novel.

And of course, her knives. Which was wonderfully done. As you said above, it just works. But when you think about it, her whole POV could have been done in half the chapters and been a much tighter story.

On Ringil:

Spoiler

Were hints dropped hat there was another human male that lived within the Grey space? But even if his mind was damaged in the grey space, it doesn't show up till the epilogue really, thats the only thing that really got me.

I hope Morgan writes a prequel detailing how Egar took down that Dragon. Could you imagine him screaming while doing it?

[Werthead]

Richard Morgan's been commenting on the thread on the book on Westeros.org. Apparently he had started work on a new SF novel set in the same world as Black Man when his editor called him and suggested he tackle the next Ringil book straight away and make it more of a trilogy rather than three episodic stand-alones, which apparently was the original intent. So the plan is for the two sequels to The Steel Remains to be written, then two SF novels, and then he'll see what he wants to do. I think he hasn't ruled out more fantasy, but he won't be milking any one of his characters or universes too much (for example, he's already said it's very unlikely he'll do another Kovacs book).

[globish rip]

Abyss re: Archeth

Spoiler

i thought she suffered in part because she spent so much time with the Emperor who thought i was actually supercool and v. worthwhile as a comic foil.

also the parallel structure maybe exposed her char's weaknesses. i take yr point about her being abandoned by her ppl but you (I) didn't get the same stong sense of isolation and loneliness in her chapters as the other two. it almost felt like her reaction to events (being offered the slave, witch's kidnapping) was forced to mirror the other's stories rather than as naturally flowing from her character. the knives WERE cool though.

[Dr Trouble]

Werthead, on Oct 29 2008, 07:22 AM, said:

Richard Morgan's been commenting on the thread on the book on Westeros.org. Apparently he had started work on a new SF novel set in the same world as Black Man when his editor called him and suggested he tackle the next Ringil book straight away and make it more of a trilogy rather than three episodic stand-alones, which apparently was the original intent. So the plan is for the two sequels to The Steel Remains to be written, then two SF novels, and then he'll see what he wants to do. I think he hasn't ruled out more fantasy, but he won't be milking any one of his characters or universes too much (for example, he's already said it's very unlikely he'll do another Kovacs book).

That's a relief. I have to start reading threads at Westeros again.

That's the best thing about Morgan in my mind. His characters and novels never out stay their welcome. Even though Kovacs was a great character.

[Abyss]

I respect him leaving a project as 'done' and moving on to something new. So far i've really enjoyed each new effort he's made. I don't mind Ringil and co moving ahead of Black Man, but chances are i'd read whatever he wrote. I wonder how long til they start releasing his work in hardback.

- Abyss, will still pay.

[pat5150]

Just posted the two Vincent Chong endsheets for the Subpress limited edition on the blog, and they are the shit!

Check them out!

Patrick

[Myshkin]

Let me preface this by saying I liked the book. I liked the story, I liked the concepts, and I liked the characters. I just had a problem with the writing.

I'll cross-post this from westeros:

Just finished Richard Morgan's The Steel Remains. It was a good book, but I had some major problems with the writing. Firstly, the style (especially early on) seemed to be some kind of half-assed stream-of-consciousness, like Morgan was either trying and failing to get that stream-of-consciousness feel, or he just accidentally ended up with over-long sentences and sometimes simply forgot what tense he was writing in. Secondly, the swearing, especially the word "fuck". I am not a fucking prude by any fucking stretch of the fucking imagination, but at times it fucking seemed that Morgan was fucking just randomly fucking inserting the word "fuck" into his fucking manuscript. Really, it just seemed like he would write a paragraph, and then add the required ratio of "fucks" to total word count, and it really served to break up the flow of the narrative. Also, there were at least five times where one of our heroes would insult some nobody and said nobody's response would be "hey, fuck you", which just seemed childish and lazy to me. I don't mind profanity at all, but it should at least sound good. I suppose you could say I liked the book despite the writing.

Two more gripes:

1) I forgot to mention in my "fuck" rant that the word fuck was actually italicized about 50% of the time. It was like Morgan really wanted us to know he was saying fuck. This just seems to me like shock value, which is kind of a pet peeve of mine. Profanity (as well as graphic depictions of violence and sex) is used in literature as a means of injecting realism into the narrative. After all, profanity is an everyday aspect of most people's lives in the real world. But there comes a point, a saturation point if you will, where the use of profanity in a manuscript goes beyond realism and enters the realm of shock value. A point where fuck or shit or cunt or prick or whatever is being used so often that it becomes unrealistic, and starts to interrupt the flow of the narrative. IMO this happened in The Steel Remains.

2) We had two front and center non-human races in this novel; the Kiriath and the Aldrain, both of which were far older and far more advanced than the human race. I liked the idea of these two races, but I felt that Morgan failed to pull them off as well as he could have. Mainly this is due to the fact that both races talked, thought, and acted in exactly the same way as their human counterparts.

Like I said earlier, I liked the book, but I had some major problems with the writing. I'll be picking up the next one in the series, and I'm hoping (based on what I saw in the last 50 pages or so) Morgan smooths out some of the wrinkles.

This post has been edited by Myshkin: 07 November 2008 - 05:31 AM

[Pig Iron]

Amazon blurb for "The Cold Commands":

Spoiler

Ringil, Egar and Archeth are back. In a world still cursed by slavery, a corrupt aristocracy and a vicious church justice is still in short supply. Ringil, Egar and Archeth will fight for it but they need to fight for survival first. Archeth's position in court is still tenuous and the secrets of the departed Kiriath are casting a worrying light on the present. Egar is still caught between his tribe and his memories of life in the Empire and facing the challange of a jealous shaman. And Egar, struggling with his own identity still faces prejudice and the horror of a prophecy that could put him at the centre of evil. And all the while the demon Takavech plays his game with mortals. And have the Dwenda really gone?

[Abyss]

yay! Typo using Egar twice, but Yay!

- Abyss, the fan purchases...

[polishgenius]

Just finished this today. Good stuff. It's entirely not what I expected though. The writing style is brisk, as you'd expect from Morgan, but for a not-very-long book, the plot moves very slowly at the start. That's not a complaint, and it's a very well-paced book, but from Morgan it threw me. To start with it reminded me of something between Abercrombie and Martin, but when it got odd towards the end it reminded me in tone of Kearney's The Sea Beggars.

Spoilers just in case:

Spoiler

I agree about Ringil being an ace character. Sympathetic, badass, and all-round awesome. I was less taken by Egar - he was cool, but he didn't seem developed enough for me. I cared more when Darby died then I would have done if he'd gone. Archeth too, but the Emperor in particular was cool so that was alright. And I agree about the fighting.
What I most liked about it was the atmosphere, the sort of sense of eerieness about the edges of the world. Helped a great deal by Morgan's lack of infodumping - these characters live in this, it's not remarkable to them, so we're left to figure out things like the Band and what the nature of the Kiriath was by ourselves from casual observations.
I also liked how the Dwenda were at the time alien yet had all the same doubts and flaws as humanity. Although there are hints here and there that both are somehow descended from humans.

Odd that in that synopsis for the second book,

Spoiler

Egar is apparently back with his tribe. Wasn't he going with Archeth?

An aside, about the swearing: it's curious, I've heard the same complaint about China Mieville and it's always from Americans - and in neither case did I notice it myself. Perhaps we just swear more than you lot on this side of the pond. The same goes for Deadwood, I barely noticed all the swearing in that till someone pointed it out to me - again, no-one here seems to notice. Well, apart from 'cocksuckers', that was pretty obvious.
Just something I'd noticed.

This post has been edited by polishgenius: 07 November 2008 - 11:34 PM

[Cause]

I feel like I was reading a different book to some of you. It was dreadful. Im going to start my complaints by stealing Myshkins post and adding to it. The following is excactly how I felt about the book.

Myshkin, on Nov 7 2008, 07:28 AM, said:

Let me preface this by saying I liked the book. I liked the story, I liked the concepts, and I liked the characters. I just had a problem with the writing.

I'll cross-post this from westeros:

Just finished Richard Morgan's The Steel Remains. It was a good book, but I had some major problems with the writing. Firstly, the style (especially early on) seemed to be some kind of half-assed stream-of-consciousness, like Morgan was either trying and failing to get that stream-of-consciousness feel, or he just accidentally ended up with over-long sentences and sometimes simply forgot what tense he was writing in. Secondly, the swearing, especially the word "fuck". I am not a fucking prude by any fucking stretch of the fucking imagination, but at times it fucking seemed that Morgan was fucking just randomly fucking inserting the word "fuck" into his fucking manuscript. Really, it just seemed like he would write a paragraph, and then add the required ratio of "fucks" to total word count, and it really served to break up the flow of the narrative. Also, there were at least five times where one of our heroes would insult some nobody and said nobody's response would be "hey, fuck you", which just seemed childish and lazy to me. I don't mind profanity at all, but it should at least sound good. I suppose you could say I liked the book despite the writing.

Two more gripes:

1) I forgot to mention in my "fuck" rant that the word fuck was actually italicized about 50% of the time. It was like Morgan really wanted us to know he was saying fuck. This just seems to me like shock value, which is kind of a pet peeve of mine. Profanity (as well as graphic depictions of violence and sex) is used in literature as a means of injecting realism into the narrative. After all, profanity is an everyday aspect of most people's lives in the real world. But there comes a point, a saturation point if you will, where the use of profanity in a manuscript goes beyond realism and enters the realm of shock value. A point where fuck or shit or cunt or prick or whatever is being used so often that it becomes unrealistic, and starts to interrupt the flow of the narrative. IMO this happened in The Steel Remains.

2) We had two front and center non-human races in this novel; the Kiriath and the Aldrain, both of which were far older and far more advanced than the human race. I liked the idea of these two races, but I felt that Morgan failed to pull them off as well as he could have. Mainly this is due to the fact that both races talked, thought, and acted in exactly the same way as their human counterparts.

Like I said earlier, I liked the book, but I had some major problems with the writing. I'll be picking up the next one in the series, and I'm hoping (based on what I saw in the last 50 pages or so) Morgan smooths out some of the wrinkles.

Next however I have a list of complaints all my own it seems. The characters were flat, lifeless and never once rang true with me or held my interest. First I should say the book has probally excactly five characters. Ringil, Egar, Archeth, The emperor and Seethclaw. Everyone else, absolutly evryone else is less than window dressing. They exists solely to mirror the others light back at them. Even so it seems five characters were too much to flesh out. Ringil is gay, a good fighter whose gay, a gay hero whose gay. Theirs not much to him beside the fact he is gay. Well unless you count he has sex with men. Than their is Egar, this character at least was okay so Ill leave it that. Than Archeth she is a halfbreed, she has been left behind and struggles with this truth fine but nope she has to be lesbian to. It appeared to me nothing but a cheap stunt thrown in to shock us some more. Fuck Im awesome My book has fucking gay and lesbian characters. Theirs seethclaw who has a relationship with the main character, a relationship never well explained. The motives of ither party clouded and one of them dies before we even get to know him. Than theirs the emperor a hedonist sadist okay.

So the characters were flat but what about the world? Nope no redeption here. The world is insubstantial shadow of a stage in which the characters perform. The whole book I dont think more than two cities are mentioned. A war with alien lizard folk invaders is only recently over the cause of the pain in all our characters lives and we known as much as I have just written now. In the last battle of the book over tweny throne eternal elite fight beside our heroes and have as much influence and page time as it takes to describe them dying. They are nothing but chaff.

I found the book wearing!