Help offset server costs by donating. This is totally optional. Any overages will go to library fines or new books.
NeilNjae
About
- Username
- NeilNjae
- Joined
- Visits
- 1,825
- Last Active
- Roles
- Member
Comments
-
Art and artists is something I rarely include in my games, and I should include it sometimes for variety. It's an interesting motivation for a villain: they're not evil, just want to express themselves. For setting, this may make an interesting com…
-
I preferred the unabashed short stories to the collections of guidebook entries. In the stories, there was some connection to the characters which made me more interested. It was difficult to care about people like Bathurst and Yo because we only he…
-
Harking back to Q1 and the difference between guidebook and travelogue. Priest I think is more interested in presenting a travelogue of the Archipelago, full of impressions and feelings; but has presented it as a guidebook, full of emotionless facts…
-
The Islanders is neither a guidebook nor a travelogue: it's a long-ish work of fiction that adopts some of those conceits. Is it a novel? I don't know enough about the definitions to give an answer. I think there's plenty of filler in the book. I s…
-
I read Dream Archipelago ages ago and really liked it. I can't remember much about it, apart from the appearance of thrymes in one story. I'll be happy to read it again, and a novel that follows. I think The Islanders was a bit of an experiment in …
-
Let's go for A Memory Called Empire. We've got a good track record of everyone here liking recent, popular, Hugo-winning novels!
-
(Quote) In that case, is this chapter an attempt at unity? Yo finally relaxes and shares a moment, the people listening to her song do so as a whole. Is this where Priest shows us what units the Archipelago?
-
About metaphors, I agree with Richard that this relationship, like I think all the others in the book, is devoid of any real connection. There's no generosity or nurturing in it. No-one becomes more as a result of a partner. And even if we take the …
-
So, the tunnelling is just a metaphor for sex. How dull. Yo goes around fucking islands until she gets "properly" fucked herself. I was expecting a bit more. Yo and Oy were caricatures, cipher characters in a fairy story about opposites o…
-
The timing makes no difference to me.
-
(Quote) Wells is great. I've read a few of his books, but not yet Moreau. I'm looking forward to it! (I think I read Aldiss's reworking of it when I was much younger, but can't really remember much about it.) As for the June selection, I'm torn bet…
-
I've not read this either. But celebrating with a book about people in a small community that study monstrous creations? Are you trying to tell us something?
-
A couple of other things. Kammeston makes a big thing about never leaving Rathersway, yet there he is in Winho. The dates in the Siff entry suggest that Kammeston, Bathurst et al. were active about 300 years before the entry was written. An entry in…
-
A question. Does this book get going at any point? I've just finished as Part 2 Chapter 5 and so far the book is "woman sits in room." The most exciting even was the recent occurrence of "something exciting might happen in a different…
-
(Quote) I read that as a fairly mercenary move on her part. Torm was about to leave her stranded, so she traded sex for him staying. That's not to say she wasn't attracted to him anyway, but I thought there was some calculation in it too. (Quote) T…
-
Yes, I was expecting the story to connect to the Commis murder. It's at about the same time, though: Torm's journey to Seevl was delayed by a ferry accident, presumably the same one that got Sington fired. There are other similarities, such as the c…
-
If The Islanders is a deconstruction, what is it deconstructing? The novel? The idea of consistent worldbuiding?
-
(Quote) Threads don't show as having unread items until you've posted in them. You have to keep an eye on the subjects and dates to see if any brand-new threads have appeared.
-
I typically go into the general main discussion list, and pick up the new threads from there. I also have an RSS reader that finds the threads after a day or so.
-
The "oriental" part of "orientalism" is the least-defining element of the trope. Orientalism is about defining non-Europeans as being everything opposed to how Europeans want to see themselves. The original "Orient" was…
-
(Quote) The two authors / two tones point is a good one. I was thinking of it more as a split between characters and world: simple, square-jawed, heroic characters, but placed in a messy and dangerous world.
-
The links above are broken (they start http://https://...). Should be fixed below. (Quote)
-
I liked the juxtaposition of the two Rawthesay chapters. We've seen Caurer built up as a mythical figure, and it was a good contrast to see the human feet-of-clay side of her. I find it somewhat hard to believe that both Caurer and Kammeston had suc…
-
(Quote) There was also the intrusiveness of the military into officers' marriages. I forget the names, but there was the officer with the unhappy marriage; the military types thought it reasonable that they interfere with it, the merchant navy perso…
-
(Quote) I think I got part-way through the book, started rolling my eyes at that author going on about the torpedoes again, and decided to check what the history of the weapons actually was. I was surprised when I discovered that the events in the b…
-
(Quote) The UK had it's fair share of fascists and supporters (Mosely and the blackshirts). Some are still with us (the Daily Mail newspaper, the royal family).
-
(Quote) Look in the general "Discussion" view of the forum.
-
One other thing about characters and tropes. When I were a lad, I read war comics like "Commando" and "Warlord", full of butch soldiers who spoke in a way that fitted into speech bubbles: Short phrases! With exclamation marks, Gi…
-
I think it's a bonus. The detail comes through. Something like the incident with the toilet would only have come from first-hand experience, or talking to someone with that experience. He is clearly still angry about the torpedoes, and that almost d…
-
I think the different settings helped enliven the story. I could have been quite monotonous if the action had been just events on the submarine on patrol, or just events ashore. Bringing it back to gaming, it's something I've struggled with to make…