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NeilNjae
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- NeilNjae
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It was an action romp that mostly rattled along. There were some large wodges of exposition that I found myself skipping over. It didn't help that most of the detail of airship operation was just invented for the book (there not being much to draw f…
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Josette was the main protagonist, and she grew a bit, becoming a more confident commander with support of her crew. But there wasn't a lot of that. Bernat did the most growing, I thought, but that was a fairly predictable journey. Overall, not a l…
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I liked that Josette wasn't perfect, and had flaws like a temper and a dose of fanaticism. Bernat was a bit erratic, I thought, veering from upper-class fool to cynical operator a bit too much. The rest of the characters were mostly flat, as Richard…
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Steampunk always seems closely associated with classism and colonialsim, and saying things like the British Empire was good, actually, and aristocrats are the best people and should be in charge. So I was pleasantly surprised when this book didn't g…
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A Guide to Condor Heroes from Tor. It looks like the books are more of a trilogy than I thought, but still spanning generations.
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(Quote) I think it is stand-alone, but was sufficiently popular at the time he wrote a sequel. Or two. Or eleven. Same setting, different characters, but ramifications of one book flow into another.
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I'm still considering choices for June. As my wife is getting me into watching wuxia at the moment, how about a wuxia book? A Hero Born ( review ) could be a good one?
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(Quote) Exactly. A new take on Lovecraft would have been good. Emphasis on the horror of a mind parasite: that's a little-explored and potentially horrifying idea to build a story around. In this one? They couldn't even be bothered to deal with the …
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(Quote) Big spaceships, galaxy-spanning empires, FLT travel and teleportation, the fates of entire planets depending on the actions of a few people... there's a lot of space opera in it. There's more than the superficial pulp of Lensman, but I think…
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What doesn't work? I think it's a combination of an insular point of view, the disconnect between the two halves of the book, and the paper thin pulp style. (Pulp can be good: this isn't.)
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I was meaning intellectual laziness and lack of curiosity, not a comment on Wilson's work ethic in his narrow interest. It never occurred to him to attempt to move outside his bubble. And I agree that we should call out this insularity and the effec…
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I like the idea of a mental enemy. I once wrote a Glorantha Lunar scenario where the MacGuffin was a mind shattering meme/Riddle that passed from person to person. It could also tie into Cold War fears of brainwashing and traitors, like The Manchuri…
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I've not read any Lovecraft either, but I recognised some of the names.
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It still came across as being a conflict outside the identity of Austin. It was a non physical space, but I don't see how Austin changed as a person through his struggle with the parasites. He didn't change his core identity and the parasites were a…
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I put it down to laziness and unchallenged unconscious bias. Wilson didn't need to move outside his comfortable little echo chamber, so didn't. And his readers were similarly cloistered, so didn't complain. And to bring out a point: the parasite…
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Insulting, considering the makeup of the few adults he intended. It's pretty much a eugenic argument.
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As @Apocryphal says, they were idealised pulp versions of people. Genre-specific stereotypes rather than people. The most memorable locations were hotel rooms, and I think that says a lot about the other locations.
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I don't think so. Industrialisation happened, and that changed things. But it was more an excuse for the plot than anything else.
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I think the physical and engineering parts were plausible extrapolations from the author's time. No problems there. Now, the social setting was a very different matter. He described a world where white male technocrats had all the power, and were co…
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I felt much the same. The first half was mostly good, even if it suffered from long irrelevant diversions. I lost interest in the second half and especially the last quarter. I didn't get any sense of menace or fear from it. It was all about her…
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I'm away this weekend, I'll join in soon.
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I've finished it, so post questions whenever!
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A quick look online shows various anti-war Japanese before and during WW2. I think I knew that the war wasn't universally popular before it started (but many fell into supporting the war once it did). But, the general point is one about the limited…
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Does that mean we should propose worse books in future?
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Veering away from the book, I've come to understand that most bureaucratic impediments aren't there to support the best of us, but rather to impede the incompetent and malicious. Bureaucratic checks often stop mistakes, and do more to constrain the …
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There's two ways of running investigations in RPGs. One is the traditional way, where GM prepares a mystery and a set of clues for it, then reveals the clues as the players do things until the players are also able to understand (recreate?) the exp…
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I agree that the descriptions of the deaths don't overly dwell on the gory details. There's enough there that you can imagine the scene, but not so much as to revolt the reader (or at least, me). But yes, when is killing morally justified? What kil…
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(Quote) So, John Smith's not a villain for torturing people to death? Takahashi Kansei isn't a hero for saving McGrady's life? How should McGrady be different in order to be a "hero", or is the hardboiled genre one that does not allow her…
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I was struck by the tension between the "rugged individual" self-image of Americans with the ideals of patriotism. How can a sovereign individual be loyal to a country? How can a patriot put themselves above their fellow citizens?
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(Quote) Really? I read it that he only decided to go back to Sachi once he'd run out of other things to do and was at a bit of loose end. OK, there's a bit more to it than that. I think that episode is saying something about alienation and people b…