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Apocryphal
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Comments
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Also finished.
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Some of the stories seem to have originated in Cairo, Damascus, and Baghdad, which makes them culturally Arab. Note that in Arabic, they are not called ‘Arabian Nights’ - that’s just a western shorthand that we probably shouldnt read too much into. …
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In reading the Arabian Nights Companion by Robert Irwin it has become apparent that all kinds of stories have been appended to the corpus over the years. Irwin calls them the Nights Apocrypha (no relation) so quite a number are only loosely connecte…
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Interesting set of stories. They reaffirm my impression from earlier reading that the Nights tales featured a lot of fortune reversals and, in the end, people getting what they deserved, even if by the most unlikely means. Also, that folk tales a…
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(Quote) The individual books come hardback or trade paperback, and are between 300 and 400 pages each - so it might actually just be you breezing through things! I guess a testament to how much you like it.
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I though the Ali Khawaja tale was a bit boring - I mean, the kids are observed playing out the trial, then invited to the actual trial where their case is repeated almost verbatim? Meh. But I really loved the Night Adventures - it's one of my favor…
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(Quote) Did you give up on the Nights?
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The two volume omnibus is available here, bit expensive. Also, it's 600 pages! Are you sure these are novellas and not novels? Apart from that, the only Schroeder I've read was his contribution to the Metatropolis anthology, and his story was by fa…
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I'm curious to check out Quag Keep, if I ever find it.
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As a trope, it is a somewhat useful one, in that it allows the author opportunities to explain the setting in character (be explaining it to the transported character). But there are more than enough examples of authors who have achieved this withou…
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(Quote) Yes, this is true.
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Very cool. I noticed her website has lost of maps.
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Chakraborty remebered Marjana...
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Good story, I thought. I most remember this from an LP collection of stories I had as a kid that were narrated/acted out, and of that I remember most the magical Open Sesame words and the magical interior of the cave. I don't recall Ali Baba's broth…
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Yes, I think I agree on the matter of setting - I like my settings somewhat deep, at least for campaign play. But for a one-shot, one doesn’t want too deep a setting. I think the setting is just about as deep as any we find in the Who-verse. Take Pe…
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Yeah, that little switch up led to think this was a fixup novel for a time, but that went away. I didn’t mind the switch, but it would have been very confusing had I been doing this as an audio book.
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Vintage means more than just old, and not quite nostalgia. It’s signifies an age gone by that will never return (though will likely be copied in parts at some time in the future) and that means the only way to experience it is by appreciating the vi…
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Yes, true - Vance does do a lot more with setting in a similar length. So did Leigh Brackett in The Ginger Star. And L. Sprague de Camp in The Clocks of Iraz. The only reason I don't think of this setting as 'generic' is because what I think of as a…
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I'm good to go.
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Hmm, some good insights there, Richard. I was somewhat struck by the casualness with which the murders of the 4th story are described. There isn’t a lot of hand-wringing about them. Also, when he hears about the custom of dooming spouses (spice?) …
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Sounds good to me.
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True.
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Speaking of cool space battles (but otherwise totally off topic) I’m just about finishing up Protector by Larry Niven, which has this odd space battle that take place at sub lightspeed speeds, but because of the distances involved, when the protagon…
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Wow, very in-depth review! Thanks for that.
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Does Cherryh write hard SF (apart from the FTL)?
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Overall, I'd say I liked the book. I might have liked it more, but there were a few things that held me back. One was that I really felt like Cherryh was writing to her club members, and not being a club member there were too many things that I didn…
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Setting - to me it seemed kind of generic, at least as presented here. That might be because Cherryh has been copied a lot! I can absolutely see the influence of Cherryh on Star Cluster, and I can also see it on the kind of sessions Clash runs for h…
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I got lost somewhere during the climax and don't have a good idea of what happened. The back of the book suggest Tom is going to save everyone by trusting his father. Is that what happened? Here's what the plot seemed like to me: (Spoiler)
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(Quote) No. (Quote) No. (Quote) Everything in the real world belongs in fiction, and a lot of things that aren't in the real world, too. (Quote) I mean, I guess in the absence of a meaningful system of law and order, then I think yes.
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I was able to keep all these characters apart and they were distinct enough to stand out in my mind. I'm not sure any were all that deep, which is a bit surprising in a novel of this length. I mean, in terms of actual events, there really wasn't all…