The Book Thread

[Ionathus]

Have you ever read Patricia A. McKillip? Especially her more ... dense books like Winter Rose?

I've only ever read the Riddle-Master trilogy but it has a special place in my heart. Funny enough, I mentioned McKillip upthread as an example of authors that really threw me for a loop on the first read-through when I was expecting clear-cut rules of magic and concrete worldbuilding (think Eragon) and Riddle-Master just basically jerked me around with fairytale logic for three books

[Wookieetank]

Still working on The Girl who Played with Fire, and its not grabbing my attention quite the way TGwtDT did. About 200pages in, and it just feels very meandering, with no clear direction yet. Probably not helping that some rather outlandish coincidences are having to fall into place for characters to keep running into each other. Overall still enjoying it, just not as much as the first one.

[Dragonus45]

Still working on The Girl who Played with Fire, and its not grabbing my attention quite the way TGwtDT did. About 200pages in, and it just feels very meandering, with no clear direction yet. Probably not helping that some rather outlandish coincidences are having to fall into place for characters to keep running into each other. Overall still enjoying it, just not as much as the first one.

Yea that's an increasingly painful issue the series has past the first book. The more recent ones written after Larsson died were a bit better but Larsson got really caught up in just wanting to do cool scenes of the cool girl and his self insert and how great they were then he was in telling a mystery as good as the first one was.

[Metastachydium]

Second person narration only makes sense when it's supposed to be a literal self-insert. Which primarily means it's only good for shortform fiction.

It's definitely an...interesting choice, given I have literally only ever encountered second person narration in Choose Your Own Adventure-style novels and games, and in "adult" fiction.

I've seen it used to good effect in a few other places:
- Charlie Stross has used it (at least) twice, in Halting State and Rule 34. In Halting State, it's sort of a shout-old to old school interactive fiction, IIRC, and I didn't think added much. It's more interesting in Rule 34, though, where it's related to an AI whose consciousness is sort of oriented on other people instead of being properly self-aware.
- N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth series used it for a good chunk of the series, I liked it there due to combining the intimacy of first-person with the separate perspective of an (opinionated) narrator.
- Blindsight by Peter Watts uses it for brief passages; it works well because it's integrated textually, with the first-person narrator trying to convey other perspectives to the reader.

It's just incredibly distracting. Every other sentence where the book says "You hear him say this" or "You do that", my brain responds "No! No I'm not! I'm just reading this!". Makes it neat impossible to focus on what is happening.

(Works that are more experimental in the first place can also sometimes make it work. I'm not going to say I liked it in the framing device of Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, but given how

Spoiler: Spoiler, I guess?

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signifier and referent never really matching up beyond a measure of recursive self-referentiality is basically the whole thing of Traveler, it makes a surprising amount of sense. And, of course, after a while it's one of the less absurd things about the framing device as well.

)

[Sermil]

I've only ever read the Riddle-Master trilogy but it has a special place in my heart. Funny enough, I mentioned McKillip upthread as an example of authors that really threw me for a loop on the first read-through when I was expecting clear-cut rules of magic and concrete worldbuilding (think Eragon) and Riddle-Master just basically jerked me around with fairytale logic for three books

Oh, ya, I loved the Riddle-Master trilogy. The Forgotten Beasts of Eld is another classic of hers, with a somewhat-rational protagonist but also a certain fairytale logic to the whole thing.

Winter Rose, though, is a good mile further down the dream-logic road. I felt like blinking my eyes and rubbing them like a man waking from a nap, after finishing that one.

[Tarmor]

Oh, ya, I loved the Riddle-Master trilogy. The Forgotten Beasts of Eld is another classic of hers, with a somewhat-rational protagonist but also a certain fairytale logic to the whole thing.

Winter Rose, though, is a good mile further down the dream-logic road. I felt like blinking my eyes and rubbing them like a man waking from a nap, after finishing that one.

There's also "The Sorceress and the Cygnet" and it's sequel, "The Cygnet and the Firebird" which I love as much as the Riddle-Master trilogy. I haven't read 'Winter Rose' - I'll have to find a copy!

[prunemelda]

…what? I have literally never heard that claim in any conversation about 2nd person.



Not liking 2nd person because it feels weird, jarring, or breaks your immersion? Not liking it because you think the writer was bad at it? I can understand that.

Not liking it because you felt obligated to actually take on the POV character and accept the narrative’s judgments as your own makes absolutely no sense to me though. I get that you hated the characters and writing of this series, but that’s very clearly not what most 2nd person writing is meant to do, here or anywhere else.

Junot Díaz‘s “How to Date a Brown Girl…” is a good example of 2nd person and I don’t think that’s meant at all to treat the reader like the spoken-to character — quite the opposite. The blatant specificity of the POV character’s unique upbringing, worldview, and decision-making process makes it obvious that they see the world differently than I do. Even though the word “you” is being used, I feel even more disconnected from the character. Same here with Harrow, IMO. I still get very acquainted with the character, maybe too much, but in a detached way. It’s more like looking at them through a microscope than a VR headset.

TL;DR - 2nd person usually has an alienating effect for me, more than any kind of 1st or 3rd, because the target character is so specifically the audience of the narration that you’re forced to notice that they’re not actually talking to you. So I truly don’t get where you’re taking the “I was supposed to actually feel like Harrow and accept the narrative’s insults as my own” impression from.

Hi everyone! I'm new aboard. I just finished reading "The Nightingale" by Kristin Hannah and I'm telling you, it's freaking amazing! (For the interested ones, it's all about these two sisters in France during WWII and their insane struggles to survive under Nazi occupation) I bet it's gonna hit you right in the feels :) Seriously, read it!

[Morgaln]

I've started on Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson today, the first book released through the Secret Project kickstarter.

I've only read the first ~50 pages so far, but the main thing that jumped out at me is how different it is in style from Sanderson's usual books. It reads similar to something by Neil Gaiman in tone. I'm thoroughly enjoying the book so far.

[Dragonus45]

I've started on Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson today, the first book released through the Secret Project kickstarter.

I've only read the first ~50 pages so far, but the main thing that jumped out at me is how different it is in style from Sanderson's usual books. It reads similar to something by Neil Gaiman in tone. I'm thoroughly enjoying the book so far.

Yea he said he was aiming for something more Princess Bride like in tone and he really nailed the jokes and the characters. It was refreshingly different from other stuff, other then the Alcatraz books. Which I still need to read the last one of those now that I think about it.

[Ionathus]

Yea he said he was aiming for something more Princess Bride like in tone and he really nailed the jokes and the characters. It was refreshingly different from other stuff, other then the Alcatraz books. Which I still need to read the last one of those now that I think about it.

Nice to hear that the tone works -- I stalled out at the start of the second Mistborn book because I was sick of the narration & descriptions being blandly "cute", for lack of a better word. Not sure if his later books improve, but "something like Neil Gaiman or Princess Bride" sounds like a real selling point to me.

[theangelJean]

I've just read (or re-read, not 100% sure) The Neverending Story by Michael Ende, in the 1983 English translation by Ralph Manheim. Started reading it to my 9yo a week ago and decided I should check the rest for age appropriateness and old biases. The ending seemed kind of familiar (and quite different from the movie) but there was a large section, just before that, which I didn't recognise. It's possible I flicked to the end while in the shop buying it, a few years back.

The fantasy elements are awesome. Definitely glad I picked this one up. The nerdy, unathletic, imaginative point-of-view character is a cliche by now, not sure whether that would have been the case in Germany in 1979 though. It's all richly described and framed in a fashion that draws you right in.

While reading the second chapter to my daughter I decided it was a total sausage-fest, and when we got to Atreyu, the kid and I agreed it was time for a gender swap for at least that character (I usually read ahead fast enough to swap pronouns as needed, plus Atreyu is from a tribe where girls and boys receive the same training). After having read the rest, I'm feeling like that was a good decision - there is actually a handful of female characters in the rest of the book, but they all have quite stereotypical roles. Even the Childlike Empress is a princess in all but name - her job is simply To Be, and (explicitly) to hold power, but never wield it. She gets a tiny bit of agency in the very middle of the book, but only because she has been driven to extremes.

In fact, I can only count six named female characters in the whole book, plus a couple more unnamed ones with a speaking part. In contrast we get seven named male characters in the prologue+first two chapters alone, plus one who is described as from a genderless race, but then gets male pronouns. That's the 80s bias I was checking for, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that there's actually nothing more egregious than that. Nothing that a main character gender swap can't fix.

I can kind of see why the movie ended where it does, because the book kind of meanders after that point - the author constrained himself to writing a chapter for every letter of the alphabet, and the book reaches a kind of goal in the end, but the progression in the last quarter isn't obvious. It ends with a couple of morals, of course, but they seem reasonable for my 9yo so I won't poke at them too hard. And if you want the joy and heartache of imaginary worlds, it's all there.

Thinking of doing a Let's Read on this after PontificatusRex finishes with Oz.

[Eldan]

I guess it meanders a bit in the second half, but I also think the most interesting part also only starts in teh second half, where the main character (the overweight nerdy kid who was bullied all his life) goes totally mad with power as soon as he has it, instead of being a good steward for the land.

[Ionathus]

I guess it meanders a bit in the second half, but I also think the most interesting part also only starts in teh second half, where the main character (the overweight nerdy kid who was bullied all his life) goes totally mad with power as soon as he has it, instead of being a good steward for the land.

Honestly, a far more believable outcome. I know if I suddenly got power after suffering through life powerless, I wouldn't be in a very good headspace and I likely wouldn't start with a lot of selfless decisions.

[theangelJean]

I guess it meanders a bit in the second half, but I also think the most interesting part also only starts in teh second half, where the main character (the overweight nerdy kid who was bullied all his life) goes totally mad with power as soon as he has it, instead of being a good steward for the land.

Honestly, a far more believable outcome. I know if I suddenly got power after suffering through life powerless, I wouldn't be in a very good headspace and I likely wouldn't start with a lot of selfless decisions.

Oh yes. Don't get me wrong, the second half of the book is still captivating and a great adventure. It just isn't as much of an obvious "arc", more of a wander. The decisions the main character takes aren't presented as definitively good or bad, either. You could see them as natural consequences of world building and wish fulfillment, in a way.

[Ionathus]

Interesting! Sounds like a fairly unconventional book, which I have both liked and disliked in the past (Neverwhere and Stardust both come to mind as "sure, that might as well happen" books, whereas something like Good Omens preserves that unconventional feeling but still delivers on a more satisfying story arc).

(Yes I'm aware what the very specific difference between those two examples is )

[Eldan]

It is. Or at least, that's how I remember it, it was my favorite book as a kid and the first book I remember my father reading to me, so I'm biased. The first part is a pretty standard hero's quest, it's the part they filmed. In the second part, Bastian is tasked with rebuilding fantasia, which he does by travelling around, telling stories which become true and watching as the land comes back into existence. He starts giving himself more and more powers like knowledge, strength and so on. And because he's greatly admired and honoured for his role, he eventually amasses an army of followers who constantly praise him. This part is kind of alluded to in the second movie. One of his followers is a witch queen, who gives him the idea that he should be Emperor and overthrow the Childlike Empress. She knows the secret, though, the more wishes he makes, the more memories of the real world he loses. Eventually, he loses most of his memories and fails at his usurpation, and in the last part, wanders the world he created, trying to remember who he is so he can return home.

[Saph]

It is. Or at least, that's how I remember it, it was my favorite book as a kid and the first book I remember my father reading to me, so I'm biased. The first part is a pretty standard hero's quest, it's the part they filmed. In the second part, Bastian is tasked with rebuilding fantasia, which he does by travelling around, telling stories which become true and watching as the land comes back into existence. He starts giving himself more and more powers like knowledge, strength and so on. And because he's greatly admired and honoured for his role, he eventually amasses an army of followers who constantly praise him. This part is kind of alluded to in the second movie. One of his followers is a witch queen, who gives him the idea that he should be Emperor and overthrow the Childlike Empress. She knows the secret, though, the more wishes he makes, the more memories of the real world he loses. Eventually, he loses most of his memories and fails at his usurpation, and in the last part, wanders the world he created, trying to remember who he is so he can return home.

That's pretty much it, yeah. Like you say, the first part is a standard hero's quest, and it's good, but it's the second part that really does something unique. Wish-fulfilment stories where the nerdy main character gets godlike power are common as dirt nowadays, so it's interesting to go back to one of the originals and see how it took it much further. Watching the main character be given everything he's ever wanted and be corrupted by it is quite disturbing for a children's story, particularly since you spend Part 1 getting to know and like and identify with the guy, which makes it hit much harder in Part 2 when you slowly realise that he's getting further and further from being the hero and closer and closer to becoming the villain.

[Morgaln]

It is. Or at least, that's how I remember it, it was my favorite book as a kid and the first book I remember my father reading to me, so I'm biased. The first part is a pretty standard hero's quest, it's the part they filmed. In the second part, Bastian is tasked with rebuilding fantasia, which he does by travelling around, telling stories which become true and watching as the land comes back into existence. He starts giving himself more and more powers like knowledge, strength and so on. And because he's greatly admired and honoured for his role, he eventually amasses an army of followers who constantly praise him. This part is kind of alluded to in the second movie. One of his followers is a witch queen, who gives him the idea that he should be Emperor and overthrow the Childlike Empress. She knows the secret, though, the more wishes he makes, the more memories of the real world he loses. Eventually, he loses most of his memories and fails at his usurpation, and in the last part, wanders the world he created, trying to remember who he is so he can return home.

Very accurate summary. In addition, there's also a heavy dose of "be careful what you wish for", as many of the stories Bastian tells and turn true have unintended side effects later down the road. There's also a lesson of "true friends will tell you when you screw up." Admittedly, Bastian is 12 years old, so not exactly world-wise...
The book is surprisingly deep for a children's book but all the better for it. It is however rivaled by "Momo" from the same author in that regard, which I also highly recommend.

[Ionathus]

That's pretty much it, yeah. Like you say, the first part is a standard hero's quest, and it's good, but it's the second part that really does something unique. Wish-fulfilment stories where the nerdy main character gets godlike power are common as dirt nowadays, so it's interesting to go back to one of the originals and see how it took it much further.

This is an interesting dynamic in its own right. I feel like whenever an iconic storytelling setup emerges (e.g. portal fantasy, young adult dystopia, etc) and then gets popular enough that people start satirizing or deconstructing it, there's this vaguely held opinion that the original works that popularized the story format were themselves as cliché or very basic as their copycats.

But I've now run into this dynamic a couple of times where the first stories that popularized the format were also written by very competent authors who thought critically about the implications and included them...but that extra deconstruction element got left out of all the shallower parodies, copycats, imitators, and generic popcultural osmosis of the format, so people eventually forget that the original was more fully fleshed out.

I think Overly Sarcastic Productions has talked about this a few times but I can't name any good examples off the top of my head

[IthilanorStPete]

This is an interesting dynamic in its own right. I feel like whenever an iconic storytelling setup emerges (e.g. portal fantasy, young adult dystopia, etc) and then gets popular enough that people start satirizing or deconstructing it, there's this vaguely held opinion that the original works that popularized the story format were themselves as cliché or very basic as their copycats.

But I've now run into this dynamic a couple of times where the first stories that popularized the format were also written by very competent authors who thought critically about the implications and included them...but that extra deconstruction element got left out of all the shallower parodies, copycats, imitators, and generic popcultural osmosis of the format, so people eventually forget that the original was more fully fleshed out.

I think Overly Sarcastic Productions has talked about this a few times but I can't name any good examples off the top of my head

LOTR for epic fantasy and Hunger Games for YA dystopia come to mind.

[Batcathat]

LOTR for epic fantasy and Hunger Games for YA dystopia come to mind.

Yeah, I was about to suggest Tolkien, too. I'm prone to ranting about how so many fantasy authors seem to lack... well, fantasy, ("Alright, so my world has elves, dwarves and a vaguely medieval European society, time to start writing!") but while I do think Tolkien is overrated in some ways, he can't exactly be faulted for unoriginal worldbuilding (and even when he did borrow ideas from mythology and whatnot, he certainly made them his own).

[Saph]

I think Overly Sarcastic Productions has talked about this a few times but I can't name any good examples off the top of my head

The Hobbit is one of the best examples. It's kind of hilarious to compare the film and book versions of the Battle of Five Armies at the end. The film version of the battle takes something like 1 1/2 hours, has countless thousands of CGI soldiers fighting on screen, and all kinds of over-the-top special effects. It goes on forever.

In the book, Bilbo gets knocked out at the beginning of the battle, misses the entire thing, wakes up, has the events briefly summarised to him, then gets told "anyway, that's all over with now, let's get to Thorin." You could probably read the whole thing in two or three minutes. We won't even get into what happens with the dragon.

[warty goblin]

Yeah, I was about to suggest Tolkien, too. I'm prone to ranting about how so many fantasy authors seem to lack... well, fantasy, ("Alright, so my world has elves, dwarves and a vaguely medieval European society, time to start writing!") but while I do think Tolkien is overrated in some ways, he can't exactly be faulted for unoriginal worldbuilding (and even when he did borrow ideas from mythology and whatnot, he certainly made them his own).

This hasn't been true of fantasy for at least a decade now, probably pushing two, and I think I can make a reasonable case it wasn't even particularly true in the 1990s. Seriously, go to any new bookstore with a fantasy section and try to find something with elves and dwarves and so on that isn't either a game tie-in or an extreme legacy series like Shannara. Odds are they will be extremely few and far between.

Which isn't to say fantasy has gotten more creative, because it absolutely has not. Ots just that the endlessly cloned subgenres have changed. Nowadays you've got your hot werewolf/vampire slaying strong female protagonist urban fantasy series (though after the Great Paranormal Romance Cratering of the 2010s these are less prevalent, with some series probably eligible for legacy status at this point), various "what if magic but time period or classic novel X?" novels, and the current rage; colonially oppressed wizards. Just acres and acres of wizards who have to hide their traditional indigenous magic with a 50% of being a metaphor for queerness because its outlawed by the evil empire, even though it's blatently obvious it's the key to saving the world.

This last category seems to be cross-pollinating with what I can only describe as "books for the internet" which are explicitly targeted at certain fandoms/tropes and usually look extremely YA even though somehow not being in the YA section. You can tell because they usually say which tropes they have right on the back cover, so you don't accidentally read something that isn't enemies-to-lovers. So now it's enemies to lovers but also the heroine is (theoretically) oppressed because she's a wizard. Wanna bet the love interest is a darkly handsome but troubled colonial agent bad boy with a tragic backstory?

The lockstep march of fantasy from overdone genre to overdone genre is in my mind an excellent reason to freely and randomly read stuff from the last fifty plus years. Yeah sure any two 1970s barbarian books are pretty similar, but they are both radically different from any of the 1990s twelve book mega series about the super special awesome magical protagonists and how they saved the world all the time, which is nothing like an oppressed wizard book. You get much better variety reading across decades than within decades.

[Mx.Silver]

Dracula for vampire horror is possibly another example, up to and including the 'standard powers/feature lists' of vampires as an archetype. It's also a much more 'literary' work than most of its descendants tend to be, which iirc someone on these forums found-out the hard way when they tried to do a 'let's read' of it

[Batcathat]

This hasn't been true of fantasy for at least a decade now, probably pushing two, and I think I can make a reasonable case it wasn't even particularly true in the 1990s. Seriously, go to any new bookstore with a fantasy section and try to find something with elves and dwarves and so on that isn't either a game tie-in or an extreme legacy series like Shannara. Odds are they will be extremely few and far between.

Sure, it's definitely gotten better and it was never close to all of fantasy, but for a genre that's named fantasy it's weird how much of it has defaulted to anything but that. Some works being influential is one thing, people basically using a shallow version of the same world for seemingly no reason is another.

[Ionathus]

Dracula for vampire horror is possibly another example, up to and including the 'standard powers/feature lists' of vampires as an archetype. It's also a much more 'literary' work than most of its descendants tend to be, which iirc someone on these forums found-out the hard way when they tried to do a 'let's read' of it

I think this is one of the ones OSP referenced! It’s a much more complex book than the cartoonish adaptations have established in the public opinion.

[Ionathus]

This is one of my favorite topics! I'm an avid reader and I love talking about books. What books have you been reading lately? Do you have any recommendations for a good story? I'm always looking for something new and interesting to read.

Project Hail Mary was very fun, pretty lighthearted sci-if, and a really interesting take on First Contact with aliens.

The City of Brass and its sequels (the Daevabad Trilogy) are nonwestern-inspired fantasy with a very gripping political intrigue angle and lots of compelling characters.

The Locked Tomb series (starts with Gideon the Ninth) is my current favorite: queer-normative sci-fi with a unique setting that gets pretty weird in the later books. That one seems to be much more love-it-or-hate-it: lots of discussion on this forum about it.

That’s just a few of the things I’ve read recently, would recommend any of them!

[Eldan]

Speaking of, stuck inside by bad weather, didn't have time to donate it yet and my other book is one I have to read slowly, so I read Harrow the Ninth yesterday.

Tl;dr: 6/10, more enjoyable than not, might easily be a few points better. Chuckled once.

Specifically, still hate the second person. Having it explained doesn't help, so I read those chapters kind of permanently angrily sneering at the book and daring it to go on. Break chapters are better to read, even if they are ultimately pointless as they were building up a mystery that pointed itself out in neon letters in the first chapter, then lead to some mysteries I had already figured out in the last book and didn't think were mysteries. Still engagingly written, characters work. They are all ****ing children, even if they are ten thousand years old, but in ways that don't seem entirely unbelieveable for broken people. Mostly enjoyable, reading pleasure takes a nosedive when we get more Gideon chapters. Still grating. Still forcefully trying to be unfunny-funny and failing. Emperor's funny, though, at least once.

Specifics:

Spoiler

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Figured out that A.L. was the emperor's cavalier when reading the cast list before starting to read. Thought he probably once had one last book, assumed corpse in the tomb was said cavalier. Mainly surprised that his lyctors didn't know, felt so obvious.

Harrow's mind being broken, sure. Didn't figure out it was to preserve Gideon's soul, I assumed it was to spare Harrow grief, mainly, and keep her somewhat functional, and that Gideon's soul would show up in some other way. Still. It didn't feel like her mind being altered actually lead to much. Her personality isn't meaningfully different and the flashbacks aren't super interesting. I feel like those chapters could mostly have been left out without losing anything.

Gideon being the emperor's child... didn't feel that was sufficiently foreshadowed (if at all?) so it's mostly "huh, neat", not earth shattering. In hindsight, she had a mysterious heritage, so it had to be someone important, but it could have been a lyctor or someone from outside the Nine Houses , to lead into those politics.

Don't think there's anything else to say?

[LibraryOgre]

Been reading Steven Brust's Tsalmoth, in his Vlad Taltos series. Always do love Vlad getting into mischief; this is set just after Yendi, so way back in the timeline.

[Tarmor]

Been reading Steven Brust's Tsalmoth, in his Vlad Taltos series. Always do love Vlad getting into mischief; this is set just after Yendi, so way back in the timeline.

I've greatly enjoyed that series, and the add-ons (The Paths of the Dead, etc). I didn't realize there was a new Vlad book out! I really need to track down copies of the few I'm missing and then go back and re-read from the beginning before Lyorn comes out next year.