View Single Post
Old 02-09-2013, 03:15 PM   #15601
ATDrake
Wizzard
ATDrake ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.ATDrake ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.ATDrake ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.ATDrake ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.ATDrake ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.ATDrake ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.ATDrake ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.ATDrake ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.ATDrake ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.ATDrake ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.ATDrake ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Posts: 11,517
Karma: 33048258
Join Date: Mar 2010
Location: Roundworld
Device: Kindle 2 International, Sony PRS-T1, BlackBerry PlayBook, Acer Iconia
Quote:
Originally Posted by maianhvk View Post
(I picked Shogun in the first place because it's the most read one in the saga )
You don't suggest the two later ones, Whirlwind and Gai-Jin?
Not the person you're asking, but I've read all of James Clavell's fiction besides Whirlwind because my dad had all the books (I haven't read Whirlwind because neither he nor I have been able to find wherever he last put the paperback). Gai-Jin is an okay tie-in which bridges the Tai-Pan and Shogun branches of Clavell's Asian saga. It's chronologically after those two, but is kind of a fill-in-the-gaps prequel to Noble House, so I'd recommend reading that first if you're still interested. Here's a mini-writeup I did on the various Clavell novels and their tv/film adaptations in a historical fiction recs thread last year if you're morbidly curious.

As for me, no sooner did I enthuse about looking forward to George R.R. Martin's upcoming Dunk & Egg novella and finish reading A Feast for Crows through, than he announces that the latest D&E will not be coming out after all, and he's swapping in some kind of historical prequel story about an old royal conflict in the A Song of Ice and Fire series. I'd have preferred to see D&E, but I like other backstory filler well enough, I suppose.

In the meantime, I have no shortage of convention-twisting fantasy to read, and accordingly I read John Moore's Heroics for Beginners: A Novel, which is a very funny fantasy spoof of fairy-tale tropes in general and the Big Heroic Evil-Thwarting Rescue Which Earns the Princess' Hand in particular, with a touch of the Evil Overlord List thrown in.

Like Moore's other such novels, a couple of which I read around this time last year it turns out to be two years ago, it takes a tongue-in-cheek almost deadpan send up approach to the comedy elements, which IMHO makes things even funnier than if they'd been treated as outright farce.

Recommended if you like trope-satirizing fantasy spoofs (and are willing to track down an out-of-print paperback). I'm impressed by the cover art, which is done by someone who actually read the novel, or at least paid attention to whatever the author suggested in the way of ideas, since it's got a clearly depicted sign of the official Fortress of Doom public opening and closing hours as described in the story (alas, no view of the gift shop).

Also read in paper from the library Mercedes Lackey's latest Valdemar series installment, Redoubt, which is 4th in the apparently open-ended Collegium Chronicles series-within-a-series. The previous volume of this I apparently did read around this time last year.

And it's more of the same, and the same accompanying flaws and frustration. Though it looks like she finally toned down Mags' annoying Funetikally Spelt Aksent a bit.

Once again, there's a long, drawn-out ramble about Mags' living situation and self-doubts (and he has so, so many) and his various mundane Heraldic trainee activities and his friends' personal dramas which are described in a weird level of irrelevant detail which takes the "show, don't tell" convention of storytelling and kind of turns it into a "show and tell", or maybe a "show that you're not exactly telling, but kind of telling that you're showing" thing.

If it all feels like filler, that's because it probably is, because unless you're desperately interested in weddings, polo-playing competitions, other people's family drama (which incidentally was handled in an Idiot Ball fashion which deliberately made the "bad" family members look like exaggeratedly evil total incompetents whom you're amazed managed to ride as far as Haven without falling off their horses while twirling their moustaches), and Mags' really deep thoughts about his new undercover apprenticeship as an aspiring underworld thug as relates to his former mine-slave situation, this story basically goes nowhere.

Okay, near the end, there starts the actual plot which finally provides the requisite story element where something happens which does eventually provide Mags with a tiny Clue as to his mysterious background hinted at over the past 3 books, before the status quo is restored and he can get back to his regular round of polo, personal drama, and musing about Being A Mine-Slave Turned Herald, but it's really too little, too late and probably won't be followed up upon much in the next book, any more than the previous tiny Clues have.

And while it's interesting to see some more stuff about how the neighbouring country's religion got so corrupt without getting checked in a world where the gods really do exist, the lovely explanation as to why their god didn't step in sooner and strike the corrupting usurping faux-priests down Because of Reasons that the common people needed to strive for freedom and justice and whatever themselves would be a lot more convincing if I didn't know that in the "present" continuity, several hundred years of priestly demon-running peasant-burning oppression were finally overturned by (not really a spoiler, since this first showed up in print some 15 years ago, but in case you haven't read that far in the series and don't want to know)
Spoiler:
a temple coup with very direct and obvious godly backing and interference with "miracles" and striking down of the blasphemers via divine means
. That's a long time to claim Prime Directive motivations before getting fed up and doing an intervention, and I'd drop any god who did that like a sack of easily-droppable things for clearly not providing value for money in the worship/faith department for seven $%^-ing centuries of deliberately-prolonged human misery. Not to mention the regular mini-genocides flushing the useful psychic abilities out of the national genepool.

Not recommended, unless you like me are morbidly curious as to where the storyline's going (nowhere, and in long, drawn-out circles to get there like a dying vulture picking out tiny bones of actual advancement from the scattered carcass). Lackey's writing was considerably better before she started doing long, drawn-out inner monologue character rants (okay, she kind of always did that, but then she started regularly substituting them for actual character insight and development), and her plotting was considerably tighter when she confined each storytelling arc to no longer than a trilogy, with each book-length installment telling a partially-whole story by having something major addressed and resolved in it towards solving the overall arc problem. This ongoing open-ended series-within-a-series thing is really making the quality and enjoyment suffer (besides the other writing issues).

Even though the Collegium Chronicles is kind of marketed as a continuity-free prequel newbie jumping on point for the main Valdemar series, IMHO, you're far, far better off starting at or near the beginning (I recommend picking up the very good Tarma & Kethry stories, which are highly enjoyable) even though the chronology, continuity, and number of books to tie-in/pre-read is more complicated.

Last edited by ATDrake; 02-09-2013 at 03:21 PM. Reason: Automatic spellcheck in the browser makes me look even more illiterate when posting.
ATDrake is offline   Reply With Quote