Robin Hobb has finished her new trilogy, so that gives me the all clear to start on the first one. Hurray.
Although, I'll first read The Left Hand of God, because it had one of those little recommendation tags on it and it tickled my fancy.
(Midwich Cuckoos was obviously very good. A slightly more abrupt ending than I remember though. )
You know, the Rain Wilds Chronicles are actually going to be a quadrilogy. The fourth one is going to be another year yet. Sorry to break it to you.
I'm a huge sucker for most of what Robin Hobb writes, though. I may have to purchase City of Dragons even before the e-book drops to a reasonable price.
Balls. I knew I should have bought her short story collection instead (half written under her other pen name for some reason)
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
Basically Tycho's problem with Mieville seems to be that the writing is "smug".
Now, though I generally like Mieville, god knows I have problems with his writing style. The New Crobuzon books in particular, I think the "baroqueness" is far over the top. But, man, is "smug" a reasonable complaint about writing style? What's the difference between saying "this is smug" and "this is trying something unique", "this thinks it is interesting", "this takes its ideas seriously"? Complaining about smugness sounds like anti-intellectualism to me, and not much more.
Well, I don't think I'd use the word "smug" myself, but there is definitely something about Mieville that I find offputting; the only thing he wrote that I could finish was Un Lun Dun.
On the other hand, I have rather liked everything Stephenson wrote. And this is even though I have degrees in both Mathematics and Philosophy (and thus, apparently, should "know better").
edit: on rereading Tycho's post, it doesn't seem like he's actually suggesting that he has the same problem with both authors, so nevermind.
Basically Tycho's problem with Mieville seems to be that the writing is "smug".
Now, though I generally like Mieville, god knows I have problems with his writing style. The New Crobuzon books in particular, I think the "baroqueness" is far over the top. But, man, is "smug" a reasonable complaint about writing style? What's the difference between saying "this is smug" and "this is trying something unique", "this thinks it is interesting", "this takes its ideas seriously"? Complaining about smugness sounds like anti-intellectualism to me, and not much more.
Yeah I kind of get the smug thing about Mieville. He's obvious an extremely well-read man who puts an incredible amount of thought into his characters, his stories, his language, his settings, and so on. But he never seems to restrain himself from showing off. If something is foreign and otherworldly, it's utterly bizarre; if something is mystical, it's arcane and beyond our comprehension. His books are littered with off-hand references to obscure mythology and pop culture. If he wants to strike a poetic chord it's all mixed up tenses, and omitted punctuation and capitalization, and gratuitous italics.
(that last one is a bit shallow as a critique, but it's an easy example)
I like Mieville, for the most part, but (much like Stephenson, actually) he seems to never in his life have heard the phrase "less is more". Reading their books is entertaining but also overwhelming, and you can have almost an allergic reaction to it. I've heard the term "maximalism" before and I'm not really sure that there's a strong definition of it anywhere but it fits both of them. I happen to like that style, but I understand why others don't.
The difference, for me, is that Stephenson's works are all about the nerdish topics he digresses into for pages at a time; Anathem wouldn't have been half as great a book if it weren't for the meticulous way in which everything gets pieced together, because it's basically A Fictionalized Short History of Modern Scientific Thought. Same goes for Reamde, I think I said earlier in the thread that a competent editor could get it down to half its length and an airport novelist could do it in 150 pages, but as a Neal Stephenson book it simply must be that long because it's so much more than just a story about a kidnapping.
Mieville, on the other hand, comes off as less authentically obsessed with his digressions and more calculated in the way he uses them. He also doesn't need them, because frankly he's a better writer.
I don't see how "he puts alot of thought and talent and work into his prose and such" becomes a critique.
And he's very much aware of "less is more". He's never bloated or over-long or dragging or overly descriptive or the like. He's usually overly dense infact, with alot being done in a small time or a single phrase or scene.
"Maximalism" might be closer to it but still I think misses the mark. Mieville is just a guy who's not interested in holding back on ideas and such, no matter how out there they are sometimes or how dense the ideas might be to pick apart.
But, man, is "smug" a reasonable complaint about writing style?
Especially when you write like Tycho...
(Note: I like Tycho's writing style.)
Oh God yes. I always felt like Mieville's wordiness came from a genuine love of the language. It took me years to accept that Tycho wasn't just showing off.
I never had trouble getting the gist of Mieville's writing, but there were and still are times when I think re: Tycho "that's a pretty sentence but what the hell do you mean?"
Don't have anything against the man. It's just that his particular criticism of Mieville means nothing to me except as a perfect example of pots calling kettles black.
"grindylow" has a nice etymological authenticity to it; there are many made-up words that, when fashioned with care, have that ring of historicity or genuineness to them (or are just weird old words that the author excavated from dusty dialects)
Crobuzon sounds like a throw-away name for a planet in a B-movie about purple aliens, on par with something like...I don't know. Gorblax the Third, Ruler of Gorblaxia.
It's still way better than eye-rolling cliched composites that mash together words like storm, blade, dark, grim, claw, fang, shadow, flame, stone, fist, etc.
I don't care for Mieville. He has a lot of nifty ideas and he's certainly capable of putting together some cool sentences, but every time I try to read him I feel like I'm slogging through oceans of irrelevant detail while following a narrow thread of plot. Which is a shame, because the plots are usually pretty cool; they just seem to take a back-seat in his writing. Much like Ian Banks, I want to like Mieville. I just can't seem to do it.
That said, I find it funny that the Science Fiction Chronicle blurb that Amazon has on the description of Railsea points out the (obvious) fact that this is a retelling of Moby Dick immediately before calling Mieville one of the most original voices in modern SF. I know what they mean, and I don't necessarily disagree, but rebooting Moby Dick as steampunk fantasy has to be one of the worst possible examples of originality in modern SF that you could pick, outside of the Pride & Prejudice & Zombies genre.
I like Mieville and his prose. too me sometimes his biggest flaw is his politics sometimes overtake the story. Iron Council was the most egregious example of this.
I like Mieville and his prose. too me sometimes his biggest flaw is his politics sometimes overtake the story. Iron Council was the most egregious example of this.
I like that it's political. Too little fantasy is.
Actually, that's another reason to love ASOIAF. As much as I love Tolkien, I get sick of monarchism.
I like Mieville and his prose. too me sometimes his biggest flaw is his politics sometimes overtake the story. Iron Council was the most egregious example of this.
I like that it's political. Too little fantasy is.
Actually, that's another reason to love ASOIAF. As much as I love Tolkien, I get sick of monarchism.
Norman Spinrad's The Iron Dream is awesome at showing the deeply creepy political subtexts of Tolkien/Howard-style fantasy. It's the way that Hitler's fantasy novel is so unexceptional that sells it.
I like Mieville and his prose. too me sometimes his biggest flaw is his politics sometimes overtake the story. Iron Council was the most egregious example of this.
Iron Council is the only one that's really flat out political and even that is more, sorta, about the socialist revolution always being just out of reach or the like.
Pretty much the rest of his books are written with an obvious knowledge of politics, but don't tend to have an actual political agenda. Even Iron Council is about more then just a political agenda.
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
I think a lot of the political criticism of Tolkien is rather cheap, to be honest. Does he exalt mythical monarchs? Sure. Do I think that translates to cryptofascism? I have a harder time with that one. Aragon is a better person, apparently by virtue of his bloodline, but he is a better person in a very humanistic, ethical sense - he's self-sacrificing, thoughtful, peace-loving, etc. The book doesn't show him doing terrible, vicious things and then tell us that that's okay because he's some sort of ubermensch who has transcended morality. And then there's the hobbits. People like Michael Moorcock rake Tolkien over the coals for exalting the English middle class in the person of the hobbits, but while Tolkien clearly has affection for them, the book is full of gentle satire of their cheerfully myopic, parochial attitudes - and our heroes are all in some way outcasts and misfits from hobbit society. I also note that for all the guff Tolkien takes about telling a story about fighting a war against absolute evil, he depicts war as unequivocally a bad thing. The heroes, the guys who are completely in the right, are still wounded and diminished. Frodo comes home maimed and suffering PTSD, and the beautiful culture of the Elves is lost forever.
I also note that for all the guff Tolkien takes about telling a story about fighting a war against absolute evil, he depicts war as unequivocally a bad thing. The heroes, the guys who are completely in the right, are still wounded and diminished. Frodo comes home maimed and suffering PTSD, and the beautiful culture of the Elves is lost forever.
I agree with your point on this whole thing.
C.S. Lewis, on the other hand....
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
I also note that for all the guff Tolkien takes about telling a story about fighting a war against absolute evil, he depicts war as unequivocally a bad thing. The heroes, the guys who are completely in the right, are still wounded and diminished. Frodo comes home maimed and suffering PTSD, and the beautiful culture of the Elves is lost forever.
I agree with your point on this whole thing.
C.S. Lewis, on the other hand....
That is precisely the difference between the two, for me.
Both were Christian and that influence was visible in both of their work, but Tolkien's feels, to me, by-and-large wise and humane and humble while Lewis's feels kind of shrill and doctrinaire and mean.
I also note that for all the guff Tolkien takes about telling a story about fighting a war against absolute evil, he depicts war as unequivocally a bad thing. The heroes, the guys who are completely in the right, are still wounded and diminished. Frodo comes home maimed and suffering PTSD, and the beautiful culture of the Elves is lost forever.
I agree with your point on this whole thing.
C.S. Lewis, on the other hand....
That is precisely the difference between the two, for me.
Both were Christian and that influence was visible in both of their work, but Tolkien's feels, to me, by-and-large wise and humane and humble while Lewis's feels kind of shrill and doctrinaire and mean.
I think the most on-point criticism of Tolkien is the racial subtext, intentional or not. Even then, it's less that he was a racist and more that he came from a time when making whole nations of men and orcs outright evil didn't raise the unintended implications flag.
That's the place where the Iron Dream nails it - the lazy shorthand of creating evil races and pure heroes comes across very differently in a fantasy novel written by Hitler.
I also note that for all the guff Tolkien takes about telling a story about fighting a war against absolute evil, he depicts war as unequivocally a bad thing. The heroes, the guys who are completely in the right, are still wounded and diminished. Frodo comes home maimed and suffering PTSD, and the beautiful culture of the Elves is lost forever.
I agree with your point on this whole thing.
C.S. Lewis, on the other hand....
That is precisely the difference between the two, for me.
Both were Christian and that influence was visible in both of their work, but Tolkien's feels, to me, by-and-large wise and humane and humble while Lewis's feels kind of shrill and doctrinaire and mean.
I think the most on-point criticism of Tolkien is the racial subtext, intentional or not. Even then, it's less that he was a racist and more that he came from a time when making whole nations of men and orcs outright evil didn't raise the unintended implications flag.
That's the place where the Iron Dream nails it - the lazy shorthand of creating evil races and pure heroes comes across very differently in a fantasy novel written by Hitler.
I would agree with someone criticising the general attitude of 'there is evil', but I don't think that is peculiar to Tolkien, fantasy, or even his era. I wouldn't even call it more common in his era.
In fact he seemed a kind and sensitive man who doesn't deserve any of the bile thrown at him.
Edit: Just read the wiki for Iron Dream and despite the F/SF setting it doesn't sound like any kind of criticism of Tolkien. It is more critical, simply, of 'just wars' and totalitarians and those who would call Stalin or Milošević 'heroes'.
I think a lot of the political criticism of Tolkien is rather cheap, to be honest. Does he exalt mythical monarchs? Sure. Do I think that translates to cryptofascism? I have a harder time with that one. Aragon is a better person, apparently by virtue of his bloodline, but he is a better person in a very humanistic, ethical sense - he's self-sacrificing, thoughtful, peace-loving, etc. The book doesn't show him doing terrible, vicious things and then tell us that that's okay because he's some sort of ubermensch who has transcended morality. And then there's the hobbits. People like Michael Moorcock rake Tolkien over the coals for exalting the English middle class in the person of the hobbits, but while Tolkien clearly has affection for them, the book is full of gentle satire of their cheerfully myopic, parochial attitudes - and our heroes are all in some way outcasts and misfits from hobbit society. I also note that for all the guff Tolkien takes about telling a story about fighting a war against absolute evil, he depicts war as unequivocally a bad thing. The heroes, the guys who are completely in the right, are still wounded and diminished. Frodo comes home maimed and suffering PTSD, and the beautiful culture of the Elves is lost forever.
I think you're on the nose with the hobbits, Jacob. Gentle and affectionate, but he's still lampooning them. Heroes who come from that kind of world must necessarily be exceptions or even aberrations (or it could be argued that a person of hobbitsome nature, to face evil and be rendered heroic, must radically change or be destroyed).
At best you could say that Tolkien positions the hobbits and their culture as fertile soil for heroic character, because of the humility and courage with which such small folk must face the world.
I think you're on the nose with the hobbits, Jacob. Gentle and affectionate, but he's still lampooning them. Heroes who come from that kind of world must necessarily be exceptions or even aberrations (or it could be argued that a person of hobbitsome nature, to face evil and be rendered heroic, must radically change or be destroyed).
At best you could say that Tolkien positions the hobbits and their culture as fertile soil for heroic character, because of the humility and courage with which such small folk must face the world.
He doesn't lampoon their gentleness or kindness, though. He lampoons their obsession with food, social rank and comfort.
I think all heroes are going to be exceptions by definition, but it is definitely clear throughout the books that the hobbit heroes are heroes because of their hobbit natures rather than in spite of them.
One of the most important things to remember about LOTR is that, unlike most of the work inspired by it, war is not the answer, and the final battle is actually a smokescreen for a non-military victory that the Enemy can barely conceive of.
I think you're on the nose with the hobbits, Jacob. Gentle and affectionate, but he's still lampooning them. Heroes who come from that kind of world must necessarily be exceptions or even aberrations (or it could be argued that a person of hobbitsome nature, to face evil and be rendered heroic, must radically change or be destroyed).
At best you could say that Tolkien positions the hobbits and their culture as fertile soil for heroic character, because of the humility and courage with which such small folk must face the world.
He doesn't lampoon their gentleness or kindness, though. He lampoons their obsession with food, social rank and comfort.
I think all heroes are going to be exceptions by definition, but it is definitely clear throughout the books that the hobbit heroes are heroes because of their hobbit natures rather than in spite of them.
I wasn't saying he was lampooning their gentleness or kindness, I was saying he was gentle and affectionate in the way he lampooned them (using Jacob's words).
The hobbits are meant to be laughed at, as a group, because they are sort of silly, but that smallness (physical and otherwise) is what makes them suited to a particular kind of heroism. Which is pretty explicit when it comes to the hobbits being ideal ring-bearers. Although you still get a sort of ambiguity between "the small and the powerless are better suited to deal with the temptation of power" and "the small and the powerless are the most likely to abuse power when they get it."
I think you're on the nose with the hobbits, Jacob. Gentle and affectionate, but he's still lampooning them. Heroes who come from that kind of world must necessarily be exceptions or even aberrations (or it could be argued that a person of hobbitsome nature, to face evil and be rendered heroic, must radically change or be destroyed).
At best you could say that Tolkien positions the hobbits and their culture as fertile soil for heroic character, because of the humility and courage with which such small folk must face the world.
He doesn't lampoon their gentleness or kindness, though. He lampoons their obsession with food, social rank and comfort.
I think all heroes are going to be exceptions by definition, but it is definitely clear throughout the books that the hobbit heroes are heroes because of their hobbit natures rather than in spite of them.
I wasn't saying he was lampooning their gentleness or kindness, I was saying he was gentle and affectionate in the way he lampooned them (using Jacob's words).
The hobbits are meant to be laughed at, as a group, because they are sort of silly, but that smallness (physical and otherwise) is what makes them suited to a particular kind of heroism. Which is pretty explicit when it comes to the hobbits being ideal ring-bearers. Although you still get a sort of ambiguity between "the small and the powerless are better suited to deal with the temptation of power" and "the small and the powerless are the most likely to abuse power when they get it."
Ah I see how your sentence was working now. Sorry.
I don't agree at all that smallness and powerlessness are the hobbits only virtues, or that they are only meant to be laughed at. Their physical and emotional resilience and their outstanding moral fibre is repeatedly mentioned, usually to Big People who are looking down on them for being small and without obvious virtue.
I think your idea of 'the small and the powerless' is a conventional one, but not one that's supported by the actual text of LOTR.
I think also there's a cultural element to take into account - I am from the Shires myself, near Oxford, and there are parts of the culture there that North Americans would probably find twee and worthy of ridicule - even more so in the past. So a lot of Hobbit culture is perfectly normal to me, and I can easily imagine you finding some of it silly when Tolkien wouldn't.
Mind you, somewhere behind me The Death of the Author is prowling, his scythe ready for the openings we are giving him.
I recently finished Daemon by Daniel Suarez and I think it is excellent. I ordered the sequel immediately after finishing it last week, but since it has to be shipped from the US and I am currently not at home I have started my second attempt at finishing the Chaos Chronicles by Jeffrey A. Carver.
I recently finished Daemon by Daniel Suarez and I think it is excellent. I ordered the sequel immediately after finishing it last week, but since it has to be shipped from the US and I am currently not at home I have started my second attempt at finishing the Chaos Chronicles by Jeffrey A. Carver.
The story in Daemon was interesting, if a bit credibility-stretching. I didn't immediately go after the sequel only because of the techno-thriller writing. All of the reliance on brand names as descriptions and overly-jargon-cluttered dialog gets on my nerves. The action scenes were good, though, and the haptic feedback suit is a neat idea.
I recently finished Daemon by Daniel Suarez and I think it is excellent. I ordered the sequel immediately after finishing it last week, but since it has to be shipped from the US and I am currently not at home I have started my second attempt at finishing the Chaos Chronicles by Jeffrey A. Carver.
The story in Daemon was interesting, if a bit credibility-stretching. I didn't immediately go after the sequel only because of the techno-thriller writing. All of the reliance on brand names as descriptions and overly-jargon-cluttered dialog gets on my nerves. The action scenes were good, though, and the haptic feedback suit is a neat idea.
The technobabble was a bit annoying sometimes, but I liked the story and the characters it set up.
I am deeply enjoying Christopher Farnsworth's The President's Vampire series. It's the perfect example of surface dumb - first book is vampire vs. Frankenstein, second is vampire versus Lizard People, third is vampire versus Jason Vorhees - written by a smart person. The action flows well, the characters are likeable and well defined and the overall setting hangs together.
There's a lot of neat military techno-thriller scenes too. If the idea of a military airdrop of said vampire into a naval battle between a Mexican druglord, Somali pirates and a boat full of lizard men appeals, definitely give it a try.
I can't say the same for Neal Asher's The Departure. The entire novel is like some hyperbolic Internet political rant expanded to 800 pages. There are gruesome millions of murders, a sociopathic hero who levels up and goes through bad guys like the character in an RPG and a total lack of wit, interesting characters or paragraph breaks. While I generally like Asher, this is one of those novels that makes you rethink everything an author has written.
One of the most important things to remember about LOTR is that, unlike most of the work inspired by it, war is not the answer, and the final battle is actually a smokescreen for a non-military victory that the Enemy can barely conceive of.
I don't like LOTR but it is hilarious how much the book defies the conventions of all it's followers before those followers were even written.
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jakobaggerLO THY DREAD EMPIRE CHAOS IS RESTOREDRegistered Userregular
edited May 2012
Yep.
Even Terry Brooks, despite the fact that he basically wrote an exact copy of at least Fellowship. Can't give a summary, it's been a while, but I remember saying 'come on' out loud several times when reading it. And then never reading anything of Terry Brooks' again. The only good fantasy Terry is Pratchett.
Also, I would also upvote/like other jacob's post on Tolkien, if we had those features (which I'm generally glad we don't. Wouldn't want to turn into Reddit).
Just got done reading Red Heat: Conspiracy, Murder, and the Cold War in the Caribbean by Alex Von Tunzelmann, dealing with the leaders of Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, along with your Khruschevs, Kennedys, Nixons et al, in the 50s and 60s. Might seem like a dry subject from the outside until you consider that the real-life mix of revolutionary war, mass murder, torture, military coups both successful and failed, the CIA and the KGB and the closest the world has ever come to nuclear war makes this approximately an order of magnitude more dramatic and visceral than your average imaginary thing.
After that I needed something lighter and more hilarious so I'm reading Chickenhawk, a critically lauded autobiography by Vietnam helicopter pilot Robert Mason. He's really good at making you simultaneously want to fly Hueys in Vietnam and not want to fly Hueys in Vietnam. Alternately thrilling and heartbreaking, and again, all too real.
I am deeply enjoying Christopher Farnsworth's The President's Vampire series. It's the perfect example of surface dumb - first book is vampire vs. Frankenstein, second is vampire versus Lizard People, third is vampire versus Jason Vorhees - written by a smart person. The action flows well, the characters are likeable and well defined and the overall setting hangs together.
There's a lot of neat military techno-thriller scenes too. If the idea of a military airdrop of said vampire into a naval battle between a Mexican druglord, Somali pirates and a boat full of lizard men appeals, definitely give it a try.
I've been mentioning this series every chance I get, it's dumb stuff written by a smart guy and loads of fun.
I didn't know the third one was out. EXCITEMENT.
I am currently about half way through a second read of all of the Harry Potter books inspired by my bad books thread (further research was required) and am about a third of the way through The Order of the Phoenix. All of the Harry Potter Fans I know like Order of the Phoenix the least, but I think it's probably the best thus far.
@lonelyahava - I found The Family to be an exhausting read. It's the same terrible politics combined with political reach and religious tomfoolery over and over again throughout modern history and each decade/era.
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lonelyahavaCall me Ahava ~~She/Her~~Move to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
@Apothe0sis, it's a bit of a read. i'm about halfway and i'm still struggling with it. I'm finding it fascinating but also just so damned... much.
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Balls. I knew I should have bought her short story collection instead (half written under her other pen name for some reason)
/nods
Mieville is always worth a read.
Embassytown was fantastic.
Now, though I generally like Mieville, god knows I have problems with his writing style. The New Crobuzon books in particular, I think the "baroqueness" is far over the top. But, man, is "smug" a reasonable complaint about writing style? What's the difference between saying "this is smug" and "this is trying something unique", "this thinks it is interesting", "this takes its ideas seriously"? Complaining about smugness sounds like anti-intellectualism to me, and not much more.
Great book entirely about piggybacking, or greatest book entirely about piggybacking?
(Note: I like Tycho's writing style.)
On the other hand, I have rather liked everything Stephenson wrote. And this is even though I have degrees in both Mathematics and Philosophy (and thus, apparently, should "know better").
edit: on rereading Tycho's post, it doesn't seem like he's actually suggesting that he has the same problem with both authors, so nevermind.
Yeah I kind of get the smug thing about Mieville. He's obvious an extremely well-read man who puts an incredible amount of thought into his characters, his stories, his language, his settings, and so on. But he never seems to restrain himself from showing off. If something is foreign and otherworldly, it's utterly bizarre; if something is mystical, it's arcane and beyond our comprehension. His books are littered with off-hand references to obscure mythology and pop culture. If he wants to strike a poetic chord it's all mixed up tenses, and omitted punctuation and capitalization, and gratuitous italics.
(that last one is a bit shallow as a critique, but it's an easy example)
I like Mieville, for the most part, but (much like Stephenson, actually) he seems to never in his life have heard the phrase "less is more". Reading their books is entertaining but also overwhelming, and you can have almost an allergic reaction to it. I've heard the term "maximalism" before and I'm not really sure that there's a strong definition of it anywhere but it fits both of them. I happen to like that style, but I understand why others don't.
The difference, for me, is that Stephenson's works are all about the nerdish topics he digresses into for pages at a time; Anathem wouldn't have been half as great a book if it weren't for the meticulous way in which everything gets pieced together, because it's basically A Fictionalized Short History of Modern Scientific Thought. Same goes for Reamde, I think I said earlier in the thread that a competent editor could get it down to half its length and an airport novelist could do it in 150 pages, but as a Neal Stephenson book it simply must be that long because it's so much more than just a story about a kidnapping.
Mieville, on the other hand, comes off as less authentically obsessed with his digressions and more calculated in the way he uses them. He also doesn't need them, because frankly he's a better writer.
And he's very much aware of "less is more". He's never bloated or over-long or dragging or overly descriptive or the like. He's usually overly dense infact, with alot being done in a small time or a single phrase or scene.
"Maximalism" might be closer to it but still I think misses the mark. Mieville is just a guy who's not interested in holding back on ideas and such, no matter how out there they are sometimes or how dense the ideas might be to pick apart.
Oh God yes. I always felt like Mieville's wordiness came from a genuine love of the language. It took me years to accept that Tycho wasn't just showing off.
I never had trouble getting the gist of Mieville's writing, but there were and still are times when I think re: Tycho "that's a pretty sentence but what the hell do you mean?"
Don't have anything against the man. It's just that his particular criticism of Mieville means nothing to me except as a perfect example of pots calling kettles black.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
Crobuzon sounds like a throw-away name for a planet in a B-movie about purple aliens, on par with something like...I don't know. Gorblax the Third, Ruler of Gorblaxia.
It's still way better than eye-rolling cliched composites that mash together words like storm, blade, dark, grim, claw, fang, shadow, flame, stone, fist, etc.
That said, I find it funny that the Science Fiction Chronicle blurb that Amazon has on the description of Railsea points out the (obvious) fact that this is a retelling of Moby Dick immediately before calling Mieville one of the most original voices in modern SF. I know what they mean, and I don't necessarily disagree, but rebooting Moby Dick as steampunk fantasy has to be one of the worst possible examples of originality in modern SF that you could pick, outside of the Pride & Prejudice & Zombies genre.
I like that it's political. Too little fantasy is.
Actually, that's another reason to love ASOIAF. As much as I love Tolkien, I get sick of monarchism.
Norman Spinrad's The Iron Dream is awesome at showing the deeply creepy political subtexts of Tolkien/Howard-style fantasy. It's the way that Hitler's fantasy novel is so unexceptional that sells it.
Iron Council is the only one that's really flat out political and even that is more, sorta, about the socialist revolution always being just out of reach or the like.
Pretty much the rest of his books are written with an obvious knowledge of politics, but don't tend to have an actual political agenda. Even Iron Council is about more then just a political agenda.
I agree with your point on this whole thing.
C.S. Lewis, on the other hand....
That is precisely the difference between the two, for me.
Both were Christian and that influence was visible in both of their work, but Tolkien's feels, to me, by-and-large wise and humane and humble while Lewis's feels kind of shrill and doctrinaire and mean.
I think the most on-point criticism of Tolkien is the racial subtext, intentional or not. Even then, it's less that he was a racist and more that he came from a time when making whole nations of men and orcs outright evil didn't raise the unintended implications flag.
That's the place where the Iron Dream nails it - the lazy shorthand of creating evil races and pure heroes comes across very differently in a fantasy novel written by Hitler.
I would agree with someone criticising the general attitude of 'there is evil', but I don't think that is peculiar to Tolkien, fantasy, or even his era. I wouldn't even call it more common in his era.
In fact he seemed a kind and sensitive man who doesn't deserve any of the bile thrown at him.
Edit: Just read the wiki for Iron Dream and despite the F/SF setting it doesn't sound like any kind of criticism of Tolkien. It is more critical, simply, of 'just wars' and totalitarians and those who would call Stalin or Milošević 'heroes'.
I would like to have a like button please.
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At best you could say that Tolkien positions the hobbits and their culture as fertile soil for heroic character, because of the humility and courage with which such small folk must face the world.
He doesn't lampoon their gentleness or kindness, though. He lampoons their obsession with food, social rank and comfort.
I think all heroes are going to be exceptions by definition, but it is definitely clear throughout the books that the hobbit heroes are heroes because of their hobbit natures rather than in spite of them.
I wasn't saying he was lampooning their gentleness or kindness, I was saying he was gentle and affectionate in the way he lampooned them (using Jacob's words).
The hobbits are meant to be laughed at, as a group, because they are sort of silly, but that smallness (physical and otherwise) is what makes them suited to a particular kind of heroism. Which is pretty explicit when it comes to the hobbits being ideal ring-bearers. Although you still get a sort of ambiguity between "the small and the powerless are better suited to deal with the temptation of power" and "the small and the powerless are the most likely to abuse power when they get it."
Ah I see how your sentence was working now. Sorry.
I don't agree at all that smallness and powerlessness are the hobbits only virtues, or that they are only meant to be laughed at. Their physical and emotional resilience and their outstanding moral fibre is repeatedly mentioned, usually to Big People who are looking down on them for being small and without obvious virtue.
I think your idea of 'the small and the powerless' is a conventional one, but not one that's supported by the actual text of LOTR.
I think also there's a cultural element to take into account - I am from the Shires myself, near Oxford, and there are parts of the culture there that North Americans would probably find twee and worthy of ridicule - even more so in the past. So a lot of Hobbit culture is perfectly normal to me, and I can easily imagine you finding some of it silly when Tolkien wouldn't.
Mind you, somewhere behind me The Death of the Author is prowling, his scythe ready for the openings we are giving him.
The story in Daemon was interesting, if a bit credibility-stretching. I didn't immediately go after the sequel only because of the techno-thriller writing. All of the reliance on brand names as descriptions and overly-jargon-cluttered dialog gets on my nerves. The action scenes were good, though, and the haptic feedback suit is a neat idea.
The technobabble was a bit annoying sometimes, but I liked the story and the characters it set up.
There's a lot of neat military techno-thriller scenes too. If the idea of a military airdrop of said vampire into a naval battle between a Mexican druglord, Somali pirates and a boat full of lizard men appeals, definitely give it a try.
I can't say the same for Neal Asher's The Departure. The entire novel is like some hyperbolic Internet political rant expanded to 800 pages. There are gruesome millions of murders, a sociopathic hero who levels up and goes through bad guys like the character in an RPG and a total lack of wit, interesting characters or paragraph breaks. While I generally like Asher, this is one of those novels that makes you rethink everything an author has written.
I don't like LOTR but it is hilarious how much the book defies the conventions of all it's followers before those followers were even written.
Even Terry Brooks, despite the fact that he basically wrote an exact copy of at least Fellowship. Can't give a summary, it's been a while, but I remember saying 'come on' out loud several times when reading it. And then never reading anything of Terry Brooks' again. The only good fantasy Terry is Pratchett.
Also, I would also upvote/like other jacob's post on Tolkien, if we had those features (which I'm generally glad we don't. Wouldn't want to turn into Reddit).
After that I needed something lighter and more hilarious so I'm reading Chickenhawk, a critically lauded autobiography by Vietnam helicopter pilot Robert Mason. He's really good at making you simultaneously want to fly Hueys in Vietnam and not want to fly Hueys in Vietnam. Alternately thrilling and heartbreaking, and again, all too real.
Yep.
I've been mentioning this series every chance I get, it's dumb stuff written by a smart guy and loads of fun.
I didn't know the third one was out. EXCITEMENT.
I am currently about half way through a second read of all of the Harry Potter books inspired by my bad books thread (further research was required) and am about a third of the way through The Order of the Phoenix. All of the Harry Potter Fans I know like Order of the Phoenix the least, but I think it's probably the best thus far.
@lonelyahava - I found The Family to be an exhausting read. It's the same terrible politics combined with political reach and religious tomfoolery over and over again throughout modern history and each decade/era.
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