Unofficial What are you Reading Thread?

[Cainad (dec.)]

The White-Luck Warrior by R Scott Bakker

An excerpt that I think we can all appreciate:

"The masses will always be mired in falsehood. Always. Each man will think he believes true, of course. Many will even weep for the strength of their conviction. So if you speak truth to their deception, they will call you a liar and cast you from power. The ruler's only recourse is to speak oil, to communicate in ways that facilitate the machine. Sometimes this oil will be truth, perhaps, but more often it will be lies."

[Cain]

I have decided, on your pimping of him, that I will actually get around to reading Bakker at some point.

[Cainad (dec.)]

   Victory! My years-long viral campaign/fanboyism has come to fruition!

Seriously though, I think you'll appreciate it. The overall plot of the first trilogy is transparently based on the Crusades, but the philosophical and psychological asides are very pithy.

Looking back now, after reading it as a teenager, I think it's actually pretty remarkable that a philosopher wrote a work of fiction that doesn't have an author insert protagonist who's sole purpose is to expound the author's worldview and how correct it is.

[Doktor Howl]

Looking back now, after reading it as a teenager, I think it's actually pretty remarkable that a philosopher wrote a work of fiction that doesn't have an author insert protagonist who's sole purpose is to expound the author's worldview and how correct it is.

That's gotta be damn near unique.

[Cainad (dec.)]

(had to abort earlier attempt at a reply due to typing on a phone and imminent class)

Looking back now, after reading it as a teenager, I think it's actually pretty remarkable that a philosopher wrote a work of fiction that doesn't have an author insert protagonist who's sole purpose is to expound the author's worldview and how correct it is.

That's gotta be damn near unique.

I think it might very well be.   There is one character who comes out on top of everyone around him basically all the time. But it's because he really is that much more clever than the superstitious and keenly religious (i.e. medieval european/modern american) people around him, for reasons that would be kind of boring to explain here. The philosophical asides themselves are not the means by which he achieves victory.

Basically, the author didn't let his asides get in the way of things like characterization, plot, and vivid writing. Instead, they serve as a distinct sort of flavoring to the writing and provide a lot of "ah-ha! that's clever" moments when he turns out a particularly wry turn of phrase.

[Cain]

So in other words, it's the exact opposite of The Sword of Truth?

I'm intending to start on The Prince of Nothing once I finish up with The Malazan Book of the Fallen series.  I'm harvesting it for quotes, which I will post on the forum.  The series might appeal to people who like the idea of reading George RR Martin on crack.  Imagine a Martinesque story, set in a rapidly expanding empire, against the backdrop of a war going back at least 300,000 years, and involving everyone from Elder Gods to lowly soldiers plotting and scheming against each other for advantage.

And then the author doesn't even bother to go with a conventional set-up, he instead throws you directly into the action, and makes you figure out the back-story on your own.  Oh, and characters you may know of under one name could well be operating under another, and faking your death seems to be an everyday activity.  The first book introduces a plot within a plot within a plot, and things only get more complex from there.  That one of the main characters of the series is a man who essentially schemed his way into becoming the God of Magnificent Bastardry explains a lot of this, but not all of it.

It gets a little preachy towards the end, concerning environmentalism, but it's otherwise pretty good, and is especially good when it comes to deconstructing fantasy archetypes.  The author's anthropological, archeological and historical digressions are also quite good - he himself has a background in this area, and so he includes a few historians as characters, and often has quite detailed observations on the tribal structure and religious beliefs of various societies he invents.  Almost none of which are the typical fantasy races, either.  The Titse are somewhat similar to elves...but the Jaghut, T'lan Imass, Forkrul Assail and the rest are quite different.

[Cainad (dec.)]

From what I've heard about Sword of Truth, yes. Very different indeed.


Looks like I need to pick up the Malazan series next. Steven Erikson has an endorsement right on the cover of The White-Luck Warrior, and I've heard more than one person also compare Prince of Nothing to GRR Martin.

It's difficult for me to tell if Bakker is pushing any kind of personal agenda, which is probably a good sign. If anything, one might argue that he's got an anti-war slant, but even that is arguable because he's simply describing, in gruesome detail, the horrors of war and violence and how much it fucks people up.

Bakker definitely also does the layered plots and schemes thing, enough so that when I read it the first time around it took my 15-year-old brain about 2/3ds of the first book to really process what was going on.

Each chapter opens with an excerpt or two from a historian or famous scholar, many of whom are referenced by the characters at some point. I'd say the various cultures (all-human setting, not counting monsters and the mostly-extinct Nonmen) are pretty transparent palette-swaps of actual historical cultures, with some key differences. The true weirdness of the setting is actually very subtle and only unfolds from the limited perspective of the main characters. It turns out to be disturbing on several levels.

[Placid Dingo]

Just polished off the Old Testament.

Have started to enjoy Don Quixote, though it gets a bit repetitive at times.

[Cain]

From what I've heard about Sword of Truth, yes. Very different indeed.


Looks like I need to pick up the Malazan series next. Steven Erikson has an endorsement right on the cover of The White-Luck Warrior, and I've heard more than one person also compare Prince of Nothing to GRR Martin.

It's difficult for me to tell if Bakker is pushing any kind of personal agenda, which is probably a good sign. If anything, one might argue that he's got an anti-war slant, but even that is arguable because he's simply describing, in gruesome detail, the horrors of war and violence and how much it fucks people up.

Bakker definitely also does the layered plots and schemes thing, enough so that when I read it the first time around it took my 15-year-old brain about 2/3ds of the first book to really process what was going on.

Each chapter opens with an excerpt or two from a historian or famous scholar, many of whom are referenced by the characters at some point. I'd say the various cultures (all-human setting, not counting monsters and the mostly-extinct Nonmen) are pretty transparent palette-swaps of actual historical cultures, with some key differences. The true weirdness of the setting is actually very subtle and only unfolds from the limited perspective of the main characters. It turns out to be disturbing on several levels.

Yeah, you'd likely enjoy the series, in that case.  A lot of the action in the books centres on an elite unit of soldiers, the Bridgeburners, who are....not entirely sane.  They're a mashing together of the likes of the SAS and the Engineering Corps (even with the slogan of the latter "first in, last out"), and in a world where most people prefer to use magic to explosives, that makes them relatively deadly in unexpected ways.  However, having been fighting in a decade long-campaign, where they've been shoved into every worst fight that is going, for what essentially amount to political reasons...they're on edge.  Officers sent to serve with them have the highest fatality rate in the entire Empire.

One of the books in particular is a very obvious protest against the Iraq War (you can easily figure out which by looking at the publishing dates, then reading it), but apart from that, it is harder to pin down a single theme.  One of the more gradually emerging one is that the god's are bastards who do not understand the burderns of their worshippers, but then, in a classic reversal, Erikson goes on to show the gods, lamenting the horror and bloodshed mortals inflict on each other in their name.

The main problem is the sheer ambition of the series.  10 books, with a storyline that contains probably a thousand or so named characters, that reaches back at the very least 300,000 years, spread over several different dimensions and at least four continents in the main reality...it leads to a lot of loose ends, some of which are never tied up.  It also means paying really close attention to everything, because things which get a passing mention early on can then appear amazingly relevant several books later.

Anyway, I'll type up the quotes sometime today, and throw them in a thread.

[hirley0]

9tooth 0 UAYEB (POISONED) Maybe i should & maybe i should not
My guess? is to get a calculator such as the ti-83 that i got for $10 & the instruction book$10

The ARRL Handbook, 71st ed.,

oh i see it was not aarl its ARRL Radio Relay | get A Ti
11:19 TI 83 EMULATOR? -> 

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Just finished John Carter's Sex and Rockets, which is remarkably scholarly for a book named Sex and Rockets.

[Oysters Rockefeller]

Just finished John Carter's Sex and Rockets, which is remarkably scholarly for a book named Sex and Rockets.

I'm pretty sure I'm gonna need to read that.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Just finished John Carter's Sex and Rockets, which is remarkably scholarly for a book named Sex and Rockets.

Was good?

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

A little too much history of schisms in occult movements for my taste. But, it is difficult to write a boring book about a rocket scientist sex magician who killed himself with explosives after failing to impregnate two different women with god semen. It seems like Carter tried very hard to write a boring book and failed miserably. Even the pages upon pages of GALCIT org charts couldn't keep it from being interesting.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

A little too much history of schisms in occult movements for my taste. But, it is difficult to write a boring book about a rocket scientist sex magician who killed himself with explosives after failing to impregnate two different women with god semen. It seems like Carter tried very hard to write a boring book and failed miserably. Even the pages upon pages of GALCIT org charts couldn't keep it from being interesting.

Wow.