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NeilNjae
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- NeilNjae
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Neither did I! Even if it's not totally accurate (it is some random YouTube) it's good fodder for the imagination.
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I just stumbled across this video about word-games in Egyptian heiroglyphs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_oFUrgC9rA There are lots of examples of scribes being playful with words and writing, with signs being substituted all over the place depen…
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I'll echo other comments that you should choose a book that interest you. One reason I like this book club is that we read a selection of books. I wouldn't have chosen them myself, but I enjoyed most of them.
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(Quote) Yes, something of a novelty for Priest! (Quote) That's the reference I was searching for! Thanks for pointing it out.
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There are various other elements of "watching." Jenessa likes being watched when she's in Ordier's house. Jeness and Parren are anthropologists, who watch others to study them. The Qataari seem to organise their society around watching the…
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(Quote) I think that's something we don't have enough of in games. Mahit had Three Seagrass. Phileas Fogg had Passepartout, D'Argtanan, Athos, Porthos and Aramis had Planchet, Grimaud, Mousqueton, and Bazin. Knights in armour had squires. It's a dy…
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@clash_bowley , can you give some examples of what would go into a game? And I'm interested in what would make a good idea for something at the "Designer" level. What sort of things would inform your design decisions? Is there something a…
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(Quote) On the other hand, this is the only story I can remember from my first reading of this anthology many years ago. It may be constructed, but I found it successful. (Quote) I see what you mean about the parallels. Yes, they're there but I als…
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(Quote) Any good bits you want to tell us about?
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(Quote) It's not something I've got a good answer to in the novel. Martine took some effort to invent the parallel story of the Ebrekti. It's mentioned it throughout the novel, both as comments by the characters and snippets from Eleven Lathe's memo…
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(Quote) Care to say more about that? Was Lsel right to take the path it did, of selling the imago tech to keep Teixcalaan at bay? Would it be better to fight, or to expunge itself of all elements of Teixcalaanli cultural influence?
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We never really say One Lightning, but Thirty Larkspur was acting for entirely relatable reasons, of ambition. I thought Nine Adze was interesting, especially when it wasn't clear how much she was just using Mahit for her own objectives.
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This reads like a folk horror story, in the vein of The Wicker Man and similar stories. There's also a strong line of the "Brits discovering Greek islands" feel from the 1970s setting. Person goes to unknown island, lots of things happen w…
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Something else that occurred to me about politics in the books. There are factions, but the book doesn't concern itself with them. Instead, it's concerned with the people who head those factions. Most obviously there's the Western Arm faction, repre…
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(Quote) It's interesting how Priest has taken what's a fairly standard male fantasy, the sexually assertive woman who is direct about wanting sex, and turns it into something repellent.
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(Quote) Good insight. Is this something about technocrats vs demagogues? Relating the ideas to the novel, how would we categorise the various people we see? Eight Antidote, and to a lesser extent Six Direction, are technocrats (even if they used ta…
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(Quote) I agree that Martine didn't have many quotable phrases, I thought some of her paragraphs were good. I thought the description of Mahit's first real view of open sky (on the way to see Fifteen Engine) and the subsequent explosion were both vi…
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(Quote) Indeed. Byzantine politics may have been lots of poetry and double-meanings, but there was plenty of exile, blindings, and executions. (Blinding someone was a way of permanently eliminating them from holding power, without going quite so far…
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I liked Martine's choice to tell us about the poetry, not show it. Part is her talent in writing it, but I think it was motivated by the inability of us readers to interpret fully the poetry. I wonder if she was influenced by any difficulty in under…
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@RichardAbbott , we get to see a bit more of Lsel in the sequel, but a lot of the action is set in the Teixcalaan Fleet. I thought Nine Azelea's death was a bit peripheral to the story, and the escalation to firearms not handled well in the book. I…
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Interesting that you both thought of Teixcalaan as mainly Aztec. I read them as fundamentally Byzantine, but with bits of Aztec surface flavour (names, flower motifs). But that doesn't address the question of why we have Byzantines in space. I thin…
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(Quote) Fair enough! I wanted to get the questions up before I forgot the detail of the book. I look forward to your thoughts when you're able.
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Questions are now up, in the book's category. https://www.ttrpbc.com/categories/101-%28june-2021%29-a-memory-called-empire-by-arkady-martine
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I read The Dream Archipelago many years ago. I can remember enjoying it, but not much else. I think this is the one story that I remember from that read. I won't spoil the punchline. An other well-drawn, awkward situation. Thinking about A Memory C…
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I thought the sequel was good, but not as good as the first book.
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Oops: That link to the interview should be https://www.torforgeblog.com/2021/02/28/six-things-i-borrowed-wholesale-from-history-for-a-memory-called-empire/
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(Quote) Exactly. And rather different from the impression gained from The Islanders, of being a definite place. The two books make a nice contrast.
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(Quote) I agree with that. It was a very good story. I'll blame the quality for me not stopping when I should have! (Quote) I was curious about that too, but in the end the difference in ages indicated they were different people. Seri was about the…
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(Quote) (This is going to get caught up in too many layers of who means what to mean what...) My reading of the story wasn't that it was about people reading a text and making up their own minds about the meaning of texts. Instead, I think Priest w…
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(Quote) That would be fun! No pressure, though...