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[pondicherry]

Germinal by Zola


Having fun with the horrible life of french miners... :/

[Silverthrone]

I am currently re-reading the Chronicles of the Fifth Conflux fantasy series by Erik Granström, starting with one of my favourite books, Svavelvinter (Sulfur Winter).

My word, they are fantastic. I adore those books, they are the sort of thing that I break out now and then to remind myself of why I write. I believe that every book is in search of its reader, someone that it will connect to, and create a strange understanding of sorts. In my case, it has been a direct hit. It is clever, it is educated, exciting and the prose is fantastic. He uses his language not merely as a vessel but as a vehicle, a method that is sadly deficient in contemporary Swedish writers. There is, of course, the inevitable deluge of fantasy names for people and places, and quite a few exorcises in Adjective-Noun, but he has been conservative with it, which I would urge every fiction writer to remain.

It rather reminds me of the Elder Scrolls; both the world of the story and the feeling and ambience that it gives me. It is not very surprising, however. They have a lot of common DNA. Further, Granström has been greatly involved in writing supplements and lore for the Drakar & Demoner RPG (That is, effectively, the Scandinavian Dungeons & Dragons), and these works are set in that particular universe. It rather shows; it is a very well-built world, and you constantly see hints and glimpses to a much greater world, with strange customs and traditions. That is one of those things that makes me sit up and listen.
Another thing that I like is that it is a rather dark and grim tale, but without dissolving into that tiresome sludge that 'Dark Fantasy^TM' tends to become. This is not Middle Earth. Fates are grim and men are cruel, but it is not devoid of light and goodness; there are many leagues to fall before it plunges into Grimderp, and becomes parodic and vapid. I am very pleased when a story can balance on that particular edge.

As far as I know, they are not available in English, I fear. I wish that they were, and I am keeping my fingers crossed that the publisher might see the potential. Rest assured that I shall sing its gospel for the world if they do.

[Spehss _]

Been reading the last 3 books of Wheel of Time. On the last book. I can hardly put these books down. After working my way through the series for years I want to finally finish it and see how the story ends.

[TheDarkStar]

Been reading the last 3 books of Wheel of Time. On the last book. I can hardly put these books down. After working my way through the series for years I want to finally finish it and see how the story ends.

Yeah, Sanderson was an excellent fit for finishing the series - while the middle of the series sagged a bit, the last few books more than make up for it.

[ChairmanPoo]

I'm trying to find a book about Hernan Cortes, but cannot find a decent online version. The best one so far is a cumbersome, heavily commented pdf.

Its annoying because I started reading it on paperback many years ago and it was interesting, I kind of felt I wanted to retake it.  I wanted a well formatted epub

[Frumple]

For what it's worth, it looks like there's converters for PDFs into things like EPUBs, which you might find easier to read. Could give one a try, see if what pops out is more bearable.

... any case, to actually contribute, last few days I've been reading through what translation's available for Long Live Summons!

.
.
.

It's shit. It's unmitigated power fantasy shit that manages to fail at even interesting worldbuilding, being tropes from various other punch wizard works jammed into a box with a side of clumsy smut. The main character is effectively an amalgamation of all the worst traits a reincarnated punch magic protagonist tends to have, everything else is about as single dimensional as it gets, the fight scenes are more vaguely incoherent than interesting, yadda yadda yadda. Garbage on every front, worse than mid tier fanfiction, sole redeeming feature being there's hundreds of chapters of the thing.

I'm going to finish what's available because I'm going to finish what's available, but if for whatever reason you're looking into light novel martial arts fantasy stuff, I can only recommend avoiding this massive pile of drek like the literary plague.

[ChairmanPoo]

I'll have to look into that.

The book is a chronicle by one of Cortes' soldiers. Its one of the ancient chronicles I mean to read, alomg with Caesar's .

I kind of got rekindled after starting reading Sumerki, by a Russian author, in which a Russian translator gets progressively obsessed with a chronicle of a lost Spanish expedition in Yucatan

[Paxiecrunchle]

 I'm rereading some parts in the hopes that I might be able to put together something for my English class on it, in the meantime for fun I've benn reading an anthology of Harry Turtldoves short stories called "We Install" or something like that.

[Yoink]

I'm finally gaining momentum in Those Barren Leaves, one of Aldous Huxley's early novels.
This dialogue is straight fire! It's funny how much I appreciate dialogue these days.
In my younger years, it seems as though if the author didn't provide me with the exact dimensions of a character's head and describe their voice and body language in great detail, I wouldn't have the slightest interest in hearing whatever that character had to say. Now, though, I find myself sometimes barely skimming physical descriptions in my rush to sink my teeth into the next juicy chunk of dialogue.
Before, the scenes I loved were those of battle, of drama, bloodshed and betrayal. Now I am far happier with something as mundane as a few grotesquely believable misfits standing around having an inconsequential chinwag, or the thoughts(inner monologue?) of some lone traveller as they trudge through some richly-described landscape alone with their thoughts(demons?).

...Anyway! This book seems to be an absolute masterpiece so far. Gets better and better. Comes tearing out of the gate with poignance and subtle-but-devastating comedy in almost equal measures.   
Forgive the sleep-deprived word salad above, it is almost five in the morning and I am feeling disturbingly enthusiastic about this book.

[A Thing]

Not quite something I'm still reading, but over the summer I finished Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Moss Roberts version.)

Romance of the Three Kingdoms (or Three Kingdoms) being a Chinese novel from somewhere in the 14-15th century. It certainly has problems, but after reading all of it I think it expresses the tragedy of hereditary rule really quite well (completely unintentionally, granted.) Still, I think there are enough rough edges in its roughly 1600 pages that they're worth listing:

• Dry Prose: RTK certainly has it moments of extravagant description, but there is still quite a lot of "Xu Yi Zhi slew Xi Yu Zhu in Xiayziao while Cao Cao's third cousin chilled out in the back." I think the dialogue and overall story being engaging lessens this problem, but early on it really hurts the novel. Hard to care about the Xiaoyizhiang Dynasty falling apart when it's the first page after all.
• Inconsistent Detail: The beginning of the novel has many, many anecdotal tales and sayings from the main characters. The problem being, that as the story progresses and the main characters change, these become less and less. From my knowledge, this is because the novel borrowed heavily from folk tales and plays; most of which don't concern the characters in the later portions of the novel. The thing is, the novel is already 1600 pages, so I didn't really notice this until after I was finished.
• Pretty Preachy: RTK is a romanticized historical novel (see the name) which espouses traditional Confucian virtues, a lot. I wasn't really bothered by this, but I can certainly see where it could bother others. Familial suicides are just not an acceptable thing anymore.

There's definitely a lot more then those three, but the novel's over a thousand pages long: you can write multiple essays on its problems and barely scratch the surface.

[Levi]

There are some cool scenes in the Three Kingdoms.  Its been a long time since I've read it so I'm probably misremembering bits, but one of the ones that stuck in my head was when Cao Cao was wandering off by himself one time and came up on a hunters hut.

The hunter of course invited Cao Cao into his home for dinner.  He had to go out and catch some meat first though.  Unfortunately the hunting didn't go well, so he came back and rather than say "Sorry, I don't have any meat" he chopped up his wife and fed it to Cao Cao.   

Cao Cao clued in that he was eating the guys wife, and didn't mention it.  In fact, he was so impressed by the mans generosity and politeness that once he arrived back in his kingdom he arranged to send the hunter a bunch of bags of rice as a reward.

[A Thing]

There are some cool scenes in the Three Kingdoms.  Its been a long time since I've read it so I'm probably misremembering bits, but one of the ones that stuck in my head was when Cao Cao was wandering off by himself one time and came up on a hunters hut.

The hunter of course invited Cao Cao into his home for dinner.  He had to go out and catch some meat first though.  Unfortunately the hunting didn't go well, so he came back and rather than say "Sorry, I don't have any meat" he chopped up his wife and fed it to Cao Cao.   

Cao Cao clued in that he was eating the guys wife, and didn't mention it.  In fact, he was so impressed by the mans generosity and politeness that once he arrived back in his kingdom he arranged to send the hunter a bunch of bags of rice as a reward.

It's actually Liu Bei that happens to. Cao Cao just murders a whole family on suspicion that they're planning on killing him. Apparently staying at a villagers house was a real bad idea in ancient China.

[Levi]

Ah!  Its been too long.    I had a feeling I was getting it wrong.

[Strife26]

Just started rereading Ender's Shadow by Card. Really good book, better than Game in my opinion, both as an independent book and being the always cool companion novel.

[Paxiecrunchle]

There are some cool scenes in the Three Kingdoms.  Its been a long time since I've read it so I'm probably misremembering bits, but one of the ones that stuck in my head was when Cao Cao was wandering off by himself one time and came up on a hunters hut.

The hunter of course invited Cao Cao into his home for dinner.  He had to go out and catch some meat first though.  Unfortunately the hunting didn't go well, so he came back and rather than say "Sorry, I don't have any meat" he chopped up his wife and fed it to Cao Cao.   

Cao Cao clued in that he was eating the guys wife, and didn't mention it.  In fact, he was so impressed by the mans generosity and politeness that once he arrived back in his kingdom he arranged to send the hunter a bunch of bags of rice as a reward.

It's actually Liu Bei that happens to. Cao Cao just murders a whole family on suspicion that they're planning on killing him. Apparently staying at a villagers house was a real bad idea in ancient China.

Having never read the book I find myself desperatley hoping that this cao cao is not the protagonist.