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NeilNjae
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- NeilNjae
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Comments
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"Workmanlike" is how I'd describe it. Simple, direct, pacy, clear. Does the job. I've read worse (and I've written much worse!) and I've read better.
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Bridging clearly worked as it did in order make the conceit of the books work. It doesn't make any sort of coherent sense beyond that, and it doesn't need to. It makes no more sense than "light of a yellow sun / kyptonite", or "bitten…
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As Richard says, it was cartoon-like. I didn't much care about the characters, so I didn't much care about what happened to them. The descriptions of in-the-moment fighting, mainly at the beginning, seemed almost plausible, but didn't really gel wi…
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PlotDevice Inc .. sorry, SafeTrek, existed purely to set up the violent portal fantasy setting of the book. It makes no sense whatsoever. It doesn't matter. It's some hand-waving to get the plot started, and it does that adequately.
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I've had crepes with more depth than any of the characters here. Passerina came across as the result of making a few rolls on a "protagonist generator" table. On the other hand, Asimov and Clark are lauded as great writers of the SF Gold…
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It was awful. Just rubbish. It wasn't offensive, and it rattled along at a decent pace, but there was nothing there. (My wife likes reading trash just before going to sleep. She started one of the main-series books and abandoned it part-way through …
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I'm glad you liked it!
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I'm glad you're enjoying it! When the mystery is revealed, it's satisfying. I won't say more.
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(Quote) I know. I lament the adulteration of the term.
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(Quote) That is a very good point. The only counter is that the setting is wider than just this book, and perhaps the boilerplate eunuchs came from elsewhere. As for the wider point about mixing magic with clockwork, what's the point? There are exa…
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(Quote) I'm not sure the "clothing is the first thing you see" is a cultural thing so much as specific to Fatma and her outlook. That said, my impression is that Middle East people are more formal than Europeans: people dress well and form…
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I liked the setting and could see it becoming a great setting for RPGs. It would be a refreshing change from the Western-Europe inspired standard urban fantasy settings. Urban Shadows, Liminal, any of the World of Darkness games. I terms of stories…
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I was happy with the magic as presented. The plot didn't revolve around the different types of magic that could exist and how they inter-relate, so I was content to be told by the characters what was important for this story. I don't think there we…
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I think it was handled well. It was interesting that Clark decided that the Egyptian Old Gods were against Islam, but the presence of (pre-Islamic) djinni wasn't a problem. Was it explicit that most djinni were Moslem?
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I think the large cast worked well. I think Clark did a good job of making even the minor characters distinct, so I didn't find myself getting confused by who was who. That was in terms of appearance, name, mannerisms, and character and goal. Even t…
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I like the conceit of Egypt as a Great Power, and Cairo as a major world city on a par with London, Paris, and Berlin. I liked the contrast between the old and new Cairo, with different buildings and peoples existing side-by-side. I've been to Cair…
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I enjoyed it! It was fun and pacy. The writing was generally good. Yes, it hit a lot of standard tropes with a modicum of novelty, but I think it did them well. It's the not the most original book, but there's merit in sometimes reading a tale that'…
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It looks like the origin story of the main character in the main series, with this book written after the main series. I don't know if that's a good thing or not! But reviews suggest it's a fun romp, so I'm happy to give it a go.
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(Quote) I was thinking of the more systemic views of oppression and power capture. There are now billioinaires, and more of them, and that class is gaining more power. The rise of hate groups is something that's useful to the elites, and probably cu…
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(Quote) Those aren't the only two options. The USA and UK are both very unequal societies, and are becoming increasingly so. Norway and Sweden are far more equal. The excesses of the 1890s Victorian era gave way to something far more egalitarian by …
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I liked how the book started with a strong voice and sense of place, and how it presented a bunch of new (to me) perspectives on racism and colonialism. Well, they're issues that I knew existed, but I hadn't seen the presented from such a personal v…
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(Quote) ... and we're back to translation, and what counts as "accurate".
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(Quote) Thank you for saying that. One thing I like about this club is the breadth of books we look at. Most work, some don't. But for me, the few failures are worth it for finding all the good ones.
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(Quote) I think the second half was more of the same, albeit faster. I think you wouldn't have enjoyed the rest of the book, given what you thought of the first half.
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There are plenty of "ideal story structure" frameworks around, such as the Campbell Monomyth used as the basis of Star Wars, and so on. The question is, how much artifice in a book is too much? Assume @Apocryphal 's characterisation of th…
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Happy new year! I've posted the final round of questions for Babel.
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(Quote) I read the prequel short story A Dead Djinn in Cairo and really enjoyed it. Hopefully the novel is as good!
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But, would 200-year-old language forms have come across as archaic and stilted, distancing us from the characters? Is what we're reading a translation from that form of language to modern vernacular? Of course, the far more likely explanation is th…
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What is Robin's core identity, and where does he "belong"? I think the Robin of Book 2 belongs nowhere, and he knows it. He is, and will always be, a tolerated intruder in the British ruling class, accepted only so long as he's useful. He'…
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Yes, I think it's long, and large parts of it don't advance any story. But it does all give a sense of the time and place, so none of it feels like filler and I don't find any of the writing dragging.