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NeilNjae
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- NeilNjae
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Lee currently lives in Texas, but (according to his wikipedia page) spent a lot of his childhood in Korea. That said, given his varied cultural experience, I'm surprised that he produced a book that was so difficult to parse by this group of Angloph…
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I was wondering if Ninefox Gambit would have been more interesting if Cheris had a stray civilian to look after as well as organise the assault on the station. But then it occurred to me that Ninefox Gambit would have been more interesting if Cheris…
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I thought "formation instinct" was conditioning to obey orders, quickly and unquestioningly. How much of the good formation's benefit comes from purely physical ordering, and how much from mystical agreement with the calendar, is open to d…
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I think Lee wanted to show the horrors of war, but again the descriptions didn't land. No-one really seemed that upset by anything that happened. As for the issues of command, I don't think we ever saw Charis really struggling with some command deci…
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I think the writing was workmanlike at best. No great turns of phrase, no elegant setting of scene, and the pacing was somewhat off. A lot of the characters made fairly nonsensical decisions too.
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I agree with the comments. There wasn't enough to make anything real. It was almost like this was the dialogue and set direction for a film, but without any of the art direction or set dressing that would have made things come to life.
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My take on this is that it's a neo-Confucian thing, where the workings of the universe follow a predictable pattern, and many rituals and events must happen, both because the universe compels them and because the universe will fail if they're not do…
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Let's file this under "cultural references that didn't translate." I thought it helped reinforce Jedao's role as a trickster, attempting to bring a change to the status quo. As for the plan... it was irrelevant to the book, and I can't rea…
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Arabian Nights schedule thoughts. I think we should aim at about 20-25 pages per week. Is that OK? Also, I think the Introduction has some good stuff in it about the context of the Arabian Night, and how it's interpreted. How about we split the fir…
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Questions posted in the Ninefox gambit category. As for the Arabian Nights, sorry for being a bit slow on this. I'll put together a reading schedule in the next few days.
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How are people getting on with Ninefox Gambit? Shall I post questions at the weekend, or would people like some extra time?
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Let's go for Horta and Seale, just so I don't get bored reading the same book again!
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(Quote) Either the Lyons & Lyons version The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1,001 Nights (2010, 3 volumes, lets start with the first) or the Horta & Seale version The Annotated Arabian Nights: Tales from 1001 Nights (2021). I've read most of volu…
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(Quote) If you like that, you may like Aberystwyth Mon Amour and sequels, a comedy version of hardboiled detective fiction on the mean streets of Aberystwyth.
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Women (existing openly as women) is easier in the army, where there is a long tradition of "camp followers" and similar support personnel, much like the vivandieres in the link Richard posted. But women on naval warships of the time? That'…
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(Quote) I didn't know that. Please tell me more!
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(Quote) Yes, it could have been on a ship anywhere. It was a bit warm, and there was the occasional storm. Apart from that, devoid of place. There was a brief stop at Bermuda, but that was only so that people could go from ship to ship and talk the…
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I don't much mind that the naval combats weren't described: after all, Emily was kept out of them. But I agree that much more could have been made of Emily, her status, and why she was a prize worth fighting over. It might have made the villain a bi…
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It was good to do a "Lower Decks" approach to the setting. There have been similar examples around. The Star Trek ones (the "Lower Decks" series, and the first season of "Discovery" that featured a maverick non-commande…
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I know very little about the War of 1812, but everything in the book seemed to agree with what I knew about the Napoleonic Wars in Europe. I imagine that American and Canadian audience would find the setting more compelling than me. There wasn't an…
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This is where the novel fell down for me. I could see what Cooper was trying to do, and I think she almost succeeded. I think the characters were well-drawn and the major ones were distinct. But I didn't really care much about them. It could be bec…
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I've read pretty much all the Hornblower books, inspired by the UK TV series. I've read a couple of other naval adventure books outside the club, but not much. The main difference is that most of those other books focus on the commanders of the shi…
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One I need to read. For some reason, I conflated this and The Stars my Destination (which is also a good book).
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Amusing review, thank you! Sounds like another instance of someone hitting a winning formula and keeping at it. That's something that came up in the discussion of the "Thousand True Fans" idea: the artist needs to produce work that is simi…
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It sounds like something formulaic he churned out to pay the bills. But there's nothing wrong with that!
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Let's be boring, and stick with Ninefox Gambit. We could so a slow read of Arabian Nights in parallel, if anyone's interested.
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Nothing to say, except that the bonobos were written as distinct characters that we got to know by the end of the book. Another instance of Schulman lowering the boundaries between human and ape?
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I thought the lack of speech marks was a way to blur the distinction between spoken and signed language, another way of lowering the barrier between human and bonobo. Overall, I think it was a decent pop-science book, with the emphasis on the "…
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Wilderness travel can be difficult to game, because it's mostly reactive ("situation X appears, can you handle it?") and there's often little player decision-making that goes into it (you either successfully find a good campsite or you don…
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Yes, I don't think the story ended so much as stopped. There was next to no closure there. And if the pop science angle was about women actively choosing their mates from a selection, there was no real competition of mate choice. Enjoyable enough, b…