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Apocryphal
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I could in turn ask which aspects of South Arabian culture you found most interesting/compelling. What are your takeaways about medieval South Arabia from this book?
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The complete lack of acknowledgement for religion, or for tradition in society (eg no mention I can recall of local jurisprudence schools or debate). And the dialogue itself reflected modern western concerns and tones. Judging by this book, if I’d g…
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(Poor Richard will be considering his words extra carefully by now, I expect… 😉)
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No, I didn’t think you were criticizing me. I was more worried you might think the same. I tend to approach these modern fantasies the same - hoping I’ll like this one, but prepared to be let down. This one let me down. Most do. But not all! I re…
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True, it reads more like an RPG campaign summary than like historical fiction. In gaming, it’s ok to expect this kind of thing because you can never get a group of diverse players at the table to play historical characters like you can in a novel. A…
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Ok, that’s roughly what I was thinking.
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I thought the book was adequately self-contained, so I wasn’t bothered. I read all contemporary fiction with the understanding that it will be part of a series. That’s just the way the wind blows these days. However I’m not motivated to read more - …
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I didn’t find the setting especially well drawn. I think it’s an interesting one or explore, but I’m not convinced she got to the specifics of Aden or Socotra culture. She does have a list of sources available on the publisher website - I’m really c…
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I guess my first though was that many of these characters are cliches. But maybe ‘archetypes’ is a better (and more charitable) word. Falco, for sure, did not seem like any real person to me. His only real reason for existence is to be an antagonist…
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I can see your point about entrapment and I think it’s an interesting one. When I had lunch with @BarnerCobblewood over Christmas, he said some very interesting things to me about religion and community, in the sense that both present a degree of co…
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I do think this was the most interesting part of the novel, but I can’t really get past the the fact that these are modern relations being explored in a historical setting. Exploring these relationships in a historical context would have been much m…
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Ten years ago Clash and I liked all the same books, but these days we disagree on all the books LOL. In this case, what I was hoping to get was, if not a historical fiction, then a fantasy that explored the historical milieu in its own terms, and…
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Also finished.
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Some of the stories seem to have originated in Cairo, Damascus, and Baghdad, which makes them culturally Arab. Note that in Arabic, they are not called ‘Arabian Nights’ - that’s just a western shorthand that we probably shouldnt read too much into. …
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In reading the Arabian Nights Companion by Robert Irwin it has become apparent that all kinds of stories have been appended to the corpus over the years. Irwin calls them the Nights Apocrypha (no relation) so quite a number are only loosely connecte…
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Interesting set of stories. They reaffirm my impression from earlier reading that the Nights tales featured a lot of fortune reversals and, in the end, people getting what they deserved, even if by the most unlikely means. Also, that folk tales a…
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(Quote) The individual books come hardback or trade paperback, and are between 300 and 400 pages each - so it might actually just be you breezing through things! I guess a testament to how much you like it.
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I though the Ali Khawaja tale was a bit boring - I mean, the kids are observed playing out the trial, then invited to the actual trial where their case is repeated almost verbatim? Meh. But I really loved the Night Adventures - it's one of my favor…
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(Quote) Did you give up on the Nights?
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The two volume omnibus is available here, bit expensive. Also, it's 600 pages! Are you sure these are novellas and not novels? Apart from that, the only Schroeder I've read was his contribution to the Metatropolis anthology, and his story was by fa…
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I'm curious to check out Quag Keep, if I ever find it.
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As a trope, it is a somewhat useful one, in that it allows the author opportunities to explain the setting in character (be explaining it to the transported character). But there are more than enough examples of authors who have achieved this withou…
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(Quote) Yes, this is true.
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Very cool. I noticed her website has lost of maps.
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Chakraborty remebered Marjana...
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Good story, I thought. I most remember this from an LP collection of stories I had as a kid that were narrated/acted out, and of that I remember most the magical Open Sesame words and the magical interior of the cave. I don't recall Ali Baba's broth…
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Yes, I think I agree on the matter of setting - I like my settings somewhat deep, at least for campaign play. But for a one-shot, one doesn’t want too deep a setting. I think the setting is just about as deep as any we find in the Who-verse. Take Pe…
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Yeah, that little switch up led to think this was a fixup novel for a time, but that went away. I didn’t mind the switch, but it would have been very confusing had I been doing this as an audio book.
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Vintage means more than just old, and not quite nostalgia. It’s signifies an age gone by that will never return (though will likely be copied in parts at some time in the future) and that means the only way to experience it is by appreciating the vi…
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Yes, true - Vance does do a lot more with setting in a similar length. So did Leigh Brackett in The Ginger Star. And L. Sprague de Camp in The Clocks of Iraz. The only reason I don't think of this setting as 'generic' is because what I think of as a…