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Apocryphal
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Comments
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I've finished reading Murderbot, so good to go, there. I like Vance and would like to read Emphyrio. I know Neil has had some issues with our past Vance reads, so he may be less keen to give Vance another go.
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Yeah, same. I'll see if I can find a used edition.
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I also hadn't thought of Aslan, but this rings true.
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LOL that does sound like it might be fun.
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No, I've never heard of a sequel. Maia is in the same setting, but an unrelated story set slightly before.
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That's largely how I felt about it.
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I'm not sure about that, but if I went that route I'd probably start with him as a captive and interlace that with memories of him encountering the bear to eventually becoming king, then skip most of the journey up to him getting captured altogether…
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I agree, no overt magic. But there's also no magic in much of Guy Gavriel Kay's work, like The Lions of Al-Rassan. But it is entirely set in a fictional place that is obviously not our world, which makes it a fantasy. I do find a certain magic in t…
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I actually thought I was paraphrasing LeGuin in saying that, but I suppose it was actually Clarke: “...science fiction is something that could happen - but usually you wouldn't want it to. Fantasy is something that couldn't happen - though often yo…
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(Quote) Well, thanks to everyone for trying. I definitely never imagined the book would be this difficult to complete or certainly wouldn't have picked it. But onto your comments, which I find interesting in a broad sense as generally applicable to …
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I read about half of Norrel & Strange some years ago before my attention wandered elsewhere. I'm not all that sure I'm interested in revisiting it, but I'll keep it under consideration for now. It seems like it ought to be a good candidate for a…
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It think it's possible the book did play a role in inspiring some of the animism mechanics in Mythras because the authors mentioned being influenced to some degree. When I said I was going to read it, two members of my gaming club said 'oh, great bo…
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Hi Joel, and welcome. It's good to have a new member. I'd suggest participating as a fellow reader for a few sessions before jumping into the rotation as a presenter, but only so you can get a taste of what it's like first. To present a book, one ne…
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I loved Watership Down every time I've read it. I thought The Plague Dogs was very good, though it's quite a dark novel. This was my first time reading Shardik and I knew very little about it. I had assumed it would be someone like the other two, on…
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I struggled to differentiate the religious characters from one another. Their individual roles were not clear to me, and to make matters more confusing this word 'saiyett' kept being used and I could not tell if this was yet another title for a diff…
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Yes, Shardik is perhaps better described as an instrument of fate than as a god. There certainly isn't much of a moralistic quality in the book, apart from some comment on slavery as an instrument of religion, and that not very nuanced. My edition o…
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Sorry - have been down for a few days with the flu - couldn't do much but sleep and drool. I thought the book started off well enough. Through the first two sections, I didn't mind the slow pace. It felt like someone who was deliberately wanting to …
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I agree about the setting - it doesn't feel very organic. As a made-up fantasy setting, it's not bad, and someone refreshing in avoiding the usual tolkienesque tropes that one finds so often now. There's no malignant twisted evil race, or fading old…
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The last 150 pages do (a) pick up the pace, (b) introduce some of the more interesting characters, and (c) tie the slavery angle back into the beginning, and in so doing might address some (likely not all) of your religious concerns, so I'd say to p…
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My edition has a colour map in the endpapers, if this helps anyone. (Image)
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Eversion has been on my list of books to find for a while, but so far I haven't found a used copy - maybe because it's still pretty new. New ones are available, and possibly library too.
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The first one is free on Audible. I hear mixed things about the books. I guess military sf and space opera fans like them. Others not so much.
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For me it wasn’t that this didn’t deliver to Napoleonic trope, it was more that I’m getting tired of the trope, and of it being reskinned in not very original ways. Of the three similar books I preferred the one set inside the Dyson sphere, which at…
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Meh. I’d rather go to the sources than use this mashup for inspiration. Do we think we can dispense with the whole faux-napoleonic thing for a while now? We’ve had three this year (two with wooden air ships and one with dragons substituting for s…
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Plot-wise I thought I was fine. It hit a lot of cliches off naval fiction, but I suppose that’s par for the course by now. Would it even be possible to write an original new Napoleonic novel? It’s surely all be done many times over by now, right? Bu…
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I thought the action scenes were some of the best parts, though again I wondered why they couldn’t take place on earth in a good old- fashioned (if rather derivative) adventure story along the lines of a Moonfleet for boy-girls. And by boy-girls, I …
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I thought this aspect of the book felt rather tacked on, basically introduced in order to check another box.
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They served the story well enough, but this wasn’t a character-driven novel. Not as rich as the characters in Treasure Island, or even Hornblower. But we had a lot of boxes to check (corsairs, check, mutiny check, bigots and noble savages and mean c…
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I agree with Neil on the matter of setting, though I certainly don’t begrudge an author a paycheque and have nothing against people writing things others may want to read. But I totally agree it’s a paper thin setting that’s basically taking steamp…
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I don’t think we know the ‘mores of this age’, being a completely made up nonsensical setting in which the discovery of alien beings hasn’t made a jot of difference to earthly society, so it seems a bit pointless to wonder how Arabella fits in or no…