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NeilNjae
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- NeilNjae
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Whatsitsname is, for me, the clearest symbol in the book. It's not a person, its the combination of many aspects of the city and its people. All the way through, people are projecting their desires onto Whatsitsname. Almost never does it have any ag…
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I don't know how representative the characters are of Baghdad. It's a large city with a long, long history of trade and exchange, so I'd expect it to have plenty of variety in its citizens. But I've never been there and my perceptions of modern Bagh…
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I think it was more the "literary" end of fiction than the "genre" end, hence the focus on characters and setting over plot and events. It was very clearly an allegory for events in Iraq, and a wider consideration of power and ju…
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(Quote) I've not read any of their stuff, but it seems worthy of discussion. I'm happy to give it a go! And @RichardAbbott , it wasn't me that suggeseted Klara.
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I've finished as well.
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(Quote) Sorry, I misunderstood. Thanks for the clarification. FWIW, I think both modes are perfectly feasible in play, so long as all the players agree what they're doing.
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(Quote) The mission-based style is common in RPGs, even if the initiation may be different: "you have your orders" vs "the old man gives you a treasure map" vs "you are the prophesied Chosen One". (Quote) My definition…
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I heard once that the ideal for a play was for all the events to take place in a 24 hour period. That short period of intense activity is achievable for just about everyone. Even if things aren't that short, a lot of standalone stories are one-offs.…
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Yeah, I'm not that bothered by realism. I want things to fit the setting, but I'm more interested in using setting features to prompt interesting decisions. For example, you can catch the tide and sail now, but the ship won't be fully equipped. Or y…
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Thinking about it, Star Trek: Lower Decks may be a good model for a military RPG. The characters are much more concerned with their own agendas, with the overall missions being more prompts and backdrops than they are the focus of play. In that way,…
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I always have a problem with military games, because I think I get too caught up on the "chain of command" thing and now allow the PCs sufficient freedom. You can get away with that to some extent by having a mostly-independent unit, such …
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A decent military adventure romp. It's a cross between Sharpe and Hornblower, but with steampunk nerd-troping. Despite being steampunk, it doesn't glory in the racism, classism, colonialism of the era. A good book to read for unwinding before going…
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I thought there was too much technical exposition. It didn't help that it was all invented by the author for this book. Other Napoleonic military books (Sharpe, Hornblower) at least have the benefit of including some genuine historical detail on the…
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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.