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NeilNjae
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- NeilNjae
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Comments
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One thing I think is that Riddley is someone who sees the symbolic meaning in everything. Everything that happened to him was, in his mind, connected to and an echo of something from a story or tradition. His whole world is suffused in symbolism. A…
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I found most of them pretty clear. It may help that the book seems well-situated in the South East England of the 1970s, which were my formative years. The anticipation of nuclear holocaust, and the ongoing effects of it, were just part of the every…
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It was believably Kent, and it was pretty clear to me that the 1 Big 1 was a nuclear war. Split the Addom, particles in the hart of the stone, and all that. I thought the setting was pretty Kent-like. The country is tame and mild, with a few rollin…
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I found the writing hard going. I normally don't sound out words when I'm reading (and therefore get bemused by people talking about "the rhythm of the writing", as I don't hear the words at all). But for this book, I had to slow down and …
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Here's a clip of a Kentish accent. It starts a bit "Standard English" but the accent gets more pronounced as he goes on. https://youtu.be/5S8JR4eJAXA?t=592
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I think you mean "Kent and Sussex are south of the Thames." Riddley Walker is set n Kent the far south-east of England ("Do It Over" on the map is Dover, as in White Cliffs of). Sussex is the next county west of Kent, also on th…
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It seems the choice has been taken from me. I've been ambushed by the arrival of my pre-ordered The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi;I'll have finished it long before we get to April. So, April will be The Red Scholar's Wake!
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For April, it's a toss-up between The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi (review) and The Red Scholar's Wake (review), both of which are on my "to be read without a moment's hesitation" list. Any preferences?
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Things would get more interesting if there was a world with equivalent people and technology, and repeated visits there. There could be trade of ideas between the two (you have 36 hours to memorise these blueprints, so we can build McGuffins on Eart…
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"Workmanlike" is how I'd describe it. Simple, direct, pacy, clear. Does the job. I've read worse (and I've written much worse!) and I've read better.
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Bridging clearly worked as it did in order make the conceit of the books work. It doesn't make any sort of coherent sense beyond that, and it doesn't need to. It makes no more sense than "light of a yellow sun / kyptonite", or "bitten…
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As Richard says, it was cartoon-like. I didn't much care about the characters, so I didn't much care about what happened to them. The descriptions of in-the-moment fighting, mainly at the beginning, seemed almost plausible, but didn't really gel wi…
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PlotDevice Inc .. sorry, SafeTrek, existed purely to set up the violent portal fantasy setting of the book. It makes no sense whatsoever. It doesn't matter. It's some hand-waving to get the plot started, and it does that adequately.
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I've had crepes with more depth than any of the characters here. Passerina came across as the result of making a few rolls on a "protagonist generator" table. On the other hand, Asimov and Clark are lauded as great writers of the SF Gold…
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It was awful. Just rubbish. It wasn't offensive, and it rattled along at a decent pace, but there was nothing there. (My wife likes reading trash just before going to sleep. She started one of the main-series books and abandoned it part-way through …
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I'm glad you liked it!
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I'm glad you're enjoying it! When the mystery is revealed, it's satisfying. I won't say more.
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(Quote) I know. I lament the adulteration of the term.
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(Quote) That is a very good point. The only counter is that the setting is wider than just this book, and perhaps the boilerplate eunuchs came from elsewhere. As for the wider point about mixing magic with clockwork, what's the point? There are exa…
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(Quote) I'm not sure the "clothing is the first thing you see" is a cultural thing so much as specific to Fatma and her outlook. That said, my impression is that Middle East people are more formal than Europeans: people dress well and form…
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I liked the setting and could see it becoming a great setting for RPGs. It would be a refreshing change from the Western-Europe inspired standard urban fantasy settings. Urban Shadows, Liminal, any of the World of Darkness games. I terms of stories…
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I was happy with the magic as presented. The plot didn't revolve around the different types of magic that could exist and how they inter-relate, so I was content to be told by the characters what was important for this story. I don't think there we…
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I think it was handled well. It was interesting that Clark decided that the Egyptian Old Gods were against Islam, but the presence of (pre-Islamic) djinni wasn't a problem. Was it explicit that most djinni were Moslem?
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I think the large cast worked well. I think Clark did a good job of making even the minor characters distinct, so I didn't find myself getting confused by who was who. That was in terms of appearance, name, mannerisms, and character and goal. Even t…
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I like the conceit of Egypt as a Great Power, and Cairo as a major world city on a par with London, Paris, and Berlin. I liked the contrast between the old and new Cairo, with different buildings and peoples existing side-by-side. I've been to Cair…
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I enjoyed it! It was fun and pacy. The writing was generally good. Yes, it hit a lot of standard tropes with a modicum of novelty, but I think it did them well. It's the not the most original book, but there's merit in sometimes reading a tale that'…
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It looks like the origin story of the main character in the main series, with this book written after the main series. I don't know if that's a good thing or not! But reviews suggest it's a fun romp, so I'm happy to give it a go.
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(Quote) I was thinking of the more systemic views of oppression and power capture. There are now billioinaires, and more of them, and that class is gaining more power. The rise of hate groups is something that's useful to the elites, and probably cu…
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(Quote) Those aren't the only two options. The USA and UK are both very unequal societies, and are becoming increasingly so. Norway and Sweden are far more equal. The excesses of the 1890s Victorian era gave way to something far more egalitarian by …
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I liked how the book started with a strong voice and sense of place, and how it presented a bunch of new (to me) perspectives on racism and colonialism. Well, they're issues that I knew existed, but I hadn't seen the presented from such a personal v…