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Ninefox Gambit Q3: Implicit worldbuilding and sense of place
There's a lot about the wider setting that's implied rather than spelt out. The factions and what they do, the lives of ordinary people, what the Fortress of Scattered Needles is like, and much else isn't really described. All we really get to see is life in the Kel military, aboard a moth. Richard made the comment that he didn't know if the locations were different patches of one landmass or wholly different star systems.
Did this work? Did you need more worldbuilding? More exposition? If so, what? Or were you happy that what we got was sufficient for the story? And, of what we saw, was it compelling, consistent, and enticing?
Comments
The whole thing required a lot of work on my part, putting together a worldview from inferences, it was an interesting technique, but not entirely successful - witness Richard's fundamental confusion. Communication requires understanding on the part of the recipient to be successful.
Yeah, I never really got it at all, even after @BarnerCobblewood sent me those links. If I had found the story in itself interesting I might have put in the effort to learn what was going on, but I didn't, so I didn't (if you see what I mean). A lot of it just felt like alphabet soup. I could really have used exposition, and what I got was way short of sufficient for the story. As I (sort of) said in another discussion, it felt like I was suddenly ported into book 10 of a fan-fiction series where everyone else knows the buzzwords. So for me, it was neither compelling nor enticing, and I didn't really care what happened to any of the characters. Was it consistent? I don't really know! Every now and again some new and even more potent weapon got hauled in to smash people into little tiny bits of goo, and these might have been calendrically consistent, but I was unable to grasp the overall pattern.
It was very impressionistic. I clued into this about 4 chapters in and decided not to let it bother me too much. I made notes of all kinds of things I thought could have done with proper descriptions, but it was obvious the author was trying to give the setting a 'feel' rather than an 'image'. In principle, I'm OK with this as a technique, but it runs the risk (as evident in this book, I think) of being so obscure the people can't really follow the events property. And like Richard (and maybe you others as well) I wasn't always able to follow them.
I agree with the comments. There wasn't enough to make anything real.
It was almost like this was the dialogue and set direction for a film, but without any of the art direction or set dressing that would have made things come to life.