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NeilNjae
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I've also finished. Now to try to come up with some worthwhile questions about it. That won't be easy!
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This book didn't do it for me. Perhaps if I was more interested in the poetry of the writing I would give the book more time. But I found the whole thing rather overblown.
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As i said elsewhere, this is a complex world that Ennis has put a lot of thought and effort into creating. It's clearly highly baroque, with lots of layers and hidden depths. I didn't overly mind the mixed languages, as I thought it added to that se…
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There are a few separate plot threads that will inevitably come together at the end. As far as I can see, nothing exciting going on here.
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The writing comes across as someone showing off how erudite they are. That gets in the way of the rest of the book. Yes, it's a complex world (both socially and physically), but the complex descriptions of everything mostly hide the details we need,…
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I think this was an example of worldbuilding over plotting. Ennis has put a lot of effort into setting up this world, and all the history that led to the current situation. Unfortunately, they're spending the first chunk of the book basically showin…
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I've delayed responding to these questions for a bit, in the vain hope I'd get a bit further. But no. I'm about a third of the way through and have lost enthusiasm for reading more. The exterminators were a bit dull, I thought. Only Guy has some re…
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Yes, it could be the outcome of a game of Microscope, where players create a history of a bunch of time. As for more traditional RPG fodder? I'm not sure there's much there. Most of the stories are very static and introspective.
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Barner, I'm not sure the stories are about not being able to face the transcendent, but rather the inability of characters to embrace it, and therefore narrating what they think is happening as others do. Also, this story came from a different con…
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It was another method of colonisation. The dogs were safe: they had the cobbly worlds to move to. Why not leave the earth to the ants, as they became denser and denser?
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As Richard says, the lure of "Jupiter" is a stand in for a class of transformations. As I just answered in Q5, the book posits that humans move on from this "base existence" by transforming themselves. The move to Jupiter is perh…
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I liked the three (or four?) different answers to "how do we expand?" Humans transformed themselves to move to a different environment, dogs found parallel worlds, robots used rockets to explore other star systems. The ants tried to increa…
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I thought the use of Dogs was pure sentimentality, and nothing more. It didn't make a great deal of sense. That said, I was amused by the dogs having the ability to sense the cobbly creatures, then move into the cobbly worlds. It was a justificatio…
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I could see the agoraphobia happening, at least increasing in scope. I've seen youngsters move their socialising online. That has benefits, such as access to larger communities of like-minded people, or even finding like-minded people that are rare …
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I've been reading a fair bit of "urbanist" literature, about how cities can work to be pleasant places. One argument is that the best cities can be great places to live and work, so long as they adopt a dense and human-scale. That means ke…
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Revisiting some old posts, because my copy of City finally arrived via inter-library loan! Overall, yes, this is a book very much of its time, for good and ill. I agree with Clash that there are some jarring tropes in the book, and I'm glad they wo…
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How about How to Find a Nameless Fae by AJ Lancaster? My wife's read it and recommended it. The wrinkle is that it's available on Kindle Unlimited, so I'm not sure how widely available it is for non-Kindle-Unlimited folks. Please let me know if you…
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Also, the copy of City I reserved at the library has finally shown up. I might make some comments on the book in the appropriate discussion.
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(Quote) I was thinking of something Romantasy, as that's fashionable at the moment. My wife reads a lot of it, so I'll ask for recommendations.
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Sorry, I skipped this one. Partly because I've been away. Mostly because I read some reviews of the book and decided I wouldn't like it at all (too disturbing). I'll try to catch up next with next month.
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The political setup is easily transferred to most settings. The despotic ruler, the relatives trying to take over, it's all standard stuff. The setting and background is a lost cause, I think. I wouldn't trust anything in the book to be an accurate…
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Having all Black characters means you can't rely on racial stereotypes. You have to see the characters as different people. The prejudice of the characters to non-Zulu is believable as something those characters would feel. I thought it interestin…
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I didn't like the writing. It seemed both dull and laboured. There were big chunks of exposition that didn't seem to serve much purpose in either moving the story or setting the scene. If the book had been edited down to something like half the leng…
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It was a very simple plot, and there wasn't a lot of complication added to it. Yes, the ending was foreshadowed, but there weren't any surprises in how we got from start to end. I though it was quite dull. I think that what was supposed to carry to…
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I came across this article from The Conversation from 2023 (link below). It's written by an English academic who's published papers on Shaka Zulu. The main point is that most of what we "know" about Shaka has been made up by various people…
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None of the characters was particularly nuanced. The main male characters were brave and violent, with Chaka being ruthless and cruel. They did their things because of family and context rather than their own individual personalities. The women didn…
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I think the frame structure worked fine here. It gave an explanation for why British Victorians were paying attention to a story told by a Black man about other Black men. It also emphasised that this was a biased narrator's account of the facts, no…
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At its best, democracy doesn't mean tyranny of the majority. There can be diversity and tolerance for it. I recently saw a short video by a university economist about why there are so many sequels in films, just a few music superstars, etc. His con…
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Roleplaying amnesia seems to fit in the same category as roleplaying other forms of dramatic irony. If I, as a player, know that your character has some hidden agenda, or secret backstory element, or whatever, I can engineer scenes to have that appe…
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In a fit of good timing, this video version of the first short story just appeared on Youtube.