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Apocryphal
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> @clash_bowley said: > (Quote) > It's been a minute since I read that last. Does that mean you read it only a short time ago? Or that you haven’t read it in a long time?
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Yeah, the alternate Arthur is interesting. One common speculation is that ‘Arthur’ was a title, not a name, so possibly Ruan would become Arthur, and Harkfast becomes Merlin - or Merlin replaces Harkfast. But then the rest of the myth doesn’t really…
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Yeah, I thought Harkfast sounded more Saxon than Gaelic, but I couldn’t find any equivalence in either language.
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I'm not sure there's anything here I would us. I really like the setting of an early Post-Roman Scotland, but this book is so a-historical that it couldn't possibly be used for that. I certainly wouldn't use the brutality/rape. I might use some plot…
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Yes, it felt like there would be a sequel, and Id' likely read it if there was. I'm curious how Ruan goes from gormless boy to King - seems like he has a long road ahead of him. And what kind of king will he be? Presumably one that rises above the b…
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I enjoyed the book. To the best of my knowledge he mostly wrote romances, which don't interest me at all, so I don't think I'll be double-dipping into the author. But if he had written a sequel to this, I'd read it.
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Somewhat with both Ruan, who is a gormless youth, and with Harkfast, who is arranging the board like a real gamer, and to the Roman character whose name excapes me, but who seemed out of his element yet still tried to do his best by what he thought …
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Presumably it's the age old conceit that life in the past was hard, brutish, and short. We don't much take that view anymore. I wouldn't say the book was 'full' of it, but there was certainly more than necessary.
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Historically, that's how picts were often betrayed. I've read quite a few pieces of folk literature that depicted them this way. (and the early Irish, too, who were thought to be descended from the same stock as the Portuguese (Portugal = port of th…
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Yeah, good question. I suppose because Harkfast was really driving the bus here at the beginning. Possibly this was intended as a trilogy, and the last book would be named after Ruan the King, or some such, and the middle book after a character that…
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I really didn't mind either - actually, I liked the words. The brutality I could take or leave - it doesn't entertain me, but I can live with it. As to the prose styling, I got on with it rather well - it was the right level of descriptive vs actio…
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Ancillary Justice, too.
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(Quote) Even the dragon?
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Although this book wasn’t really my kind of thing, I don’t really have much negative to say about it either. I thought the story-telling was good, the writing entertaining, the characters ok if kind of formulaic. I don’t really have any complaints d…
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Yeah, at the 2/3 mark I was speculating that the napoleonic dragon battle had better show up quickly. When it did I was a bit surprised how soon it was over, and the lack of detail. I concluded the author wasn’t really all that interested in the bat…
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Definitely better as an RPG than board game.I haven’t read In Harm’s Way: Dragons, but my gut feeling is that this book captures the feel Of that game quite closely.
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Q1. Not really. Q2. A quick end, generally. I’m not big on series these days.
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Since dragons don’t exist and a I don’t think a twist of history would have brought them into existence, I’ll stick with ‘fantasy’ for this one, though it is historical fantasy. The only comparison I came across was a single sentence from a reade…
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I suspect the goal was ‘fun read’, maybe with some exploring in terms of inter-character relations. The book didn’t really approach military life (and especially not tactics) the way most napoleonic fiction does, and it didn’t come anywhere near exp…
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I didn’t think the dragons were especially well-developed, to be honest. They felt like they were made up to satisfy the needs of this book (or series, as I imagine it was conceived). I didn’t get any sense of the grand sweep of human-dragon history…
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I’ll stick to Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boule for my next pick.
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I’m almost finished Temeraire.
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I’ve never seen Blake’s 7, so I’m as curious as anyone. I don’t remember it airing over here, though we were exposed to quite a few British shows, including Dr Who, hitchhiker’s, red dwarf, Benny Hill, the Two Ronnies, and more.
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Another similarity to Sword and Sorcery fiction - personal goals, rather than saving the world.
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Those seem like odd questions to ask. But I do feel drug use fits the setting, which is afterall about how tech can amplify a person at the risk of being addictive. It basically fills the role that sorcery takes in a Sword and Sorcery setting - t…
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BTW I was admiring how you got so much in the way of discussion starters from the intro!
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Oh, yeah - there was a degree of that back in the day here too.
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I’m not sure we’ve seen deregulation. If anything I think I see more regulation now that ever. But the widening gap, for sure. I do think the globalization of Cyberpunk (that is, the global span of the stories and the prevalence of mainly East Asian…
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I don’t think making dumb videos about copying some dance move in your pool or dumping cold water over your head is very cyber pink at all. Also, Although ’Cyberpunk’ as it’s perceived more gut be about the blend of tech and rock, I think that just …
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I don’t think the transformative power of computers became really apparent to me until sometime in the nineties, but even from my childhood, computers were a part of my life. My brother and I took ‘computer classes’ from a teen and we learned a bit …