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NeilNjae
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Back in the dim, distant past of the 1980s, a friend lent me a series of novels about WWIII. IIRC, the books as a whole covered the progression of the war between NATO and Warsaw Pact, with different books covering different theatres. In that way, t…
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Given my mistake over timing, I can't remember much about the enlisted characters. That probably says all you need about how memorable they were. The enlisted characters weren't protagonists in the story. I think they were to provide a different vi…
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I liked how the author played with the tropes. The trope is that Hinman was the friendly commander who inspired his men, while Mealey was the rigid disciplinarian who would be ineffective in combat. Mealey remained the disciplinarian, but he was an …
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It's an element of the war I knew nothing about, before this book. Then again, I know next to nothing about most of the US/Japan war in WWII; my scant knowledge is more about India, Burma, and Malay. The conflation of several boats? That's fine as …
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It was an unusual choice in a war story. As a piece of fiction, I think it mostly worked, even if the romance part was treated superficially. What I found interesting was the different civilian attitudes towards war between what was portrayed in th…
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Without having seen the other questions, I think "tropes" is something we'll come back to several times in the discussion. The trope in most of these war stories is that the viewpoint characters will struggle through many dangerous and da…
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I just stumbled across this video about the history of the torpedo that features so prominently in this book. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ5Ru7Zu_1I
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"I got confused and finished reading it next month."
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I agree with you that Helliconia Winter is the weakest of the trilogy. I need some more Sabatini in my life. Thanks for the reminder. I'm currently reading bits of The Elephant and Macaw Banner, the short story collection that accompanied the recen…
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I got confused and read it a month ago!
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The book is clearly not a gazetteer, so why did Priest decide on this form for the work? Did he have a chunk of spare worldbuilding he wanted to show off? The book now clearly is revolving around these same few individuals and Commis's death. I sti…
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(Quote) I can explain it as one of those effects that only shows up over large distances. At the scale of an island or so, navigation is accurate and mapping is possible. The weird effects show up at distances of hundreds or thousands of km, making …
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(Quote) It reminded me of Hong Kong, but you're right: it's reminiscent of plenty of large cities in warm climates. Two questions, though. Those cities tend to be supported by large rural hinterlands: where are they in the Archipelago? And the &qu…
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What I get from these chapters is that the Northerners' war is everywhere, but the Islanders deliberately don't see it. There are northern military police roaming Mesterline; Muriseay has two military camps, maintained by force; someone's building a…
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There's also the theory that various ancient megastructures (Stonehenge, some pyramids in Chichen Itza) are designed to give an acoustic element to events there. But in the Dream Archipelago, it seems to be something that art students do, and I thin…
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(Quote) The in-world description of The Islanders is one of a gazetteer of the islands, with individual descriptions penned by many people. So why did the compiler of the gazetteer include this piece of narrative? Did they think it would make a good…
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(Quote) I think it makes about as much sense as any other deep reading of the book's symbolism!
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(Quote) That's a great contemporary reading of the situation. But how about the Classical one? The book is a journey across an unknown Mediterranean, hopping from island to island. An Odyssey, if you will. Is there anything to be gained from that re…
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Thanks for the reviews, @Apocryphal . I hadn't made the connection between the Archipelago and Greece, but it's obvious now it's pointed out. It might fit hole similar to the Caribbean for those on the other side of the pond. Accessible, but still …
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(Quote) Lorna expressed admiration for the tunnels as an art form. (Quote) I could read the final, circling drone as Lorna. She's finally given up dreams of leaving the island, and her personal horizon has shrunk to the one island, constantly circl…
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We learn that tunneling is a landscape-modifying art which produces soundscapes. It ties in to the constant mentions of winds and currents, as they're what produce the sounds. Do the tunnels capture the wind? Channel it? Emphasise it? I don't think …
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(Quote) The secret to stage magic is misdirection. The secret to stories abut stage magic is also redirection?
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(Quote) I'm sorry to hear about that. As for the book, the gaining and losing of the internal narrative is an interesting idea that could have been explored.
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(Quote) "Deft" is the word that springs to mind. As others have mentioned, I think Pratchett is closer stylistically to Wodehouse than Douglas Adams. Adams can be rather pointedly clever; Pratchett and Wodehouse rarely rub our noses in it.
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(Quote) That's a good crystallisation of the point. Yes, the place is full of smug artists that leave a wake of damage. I don't know if it's autobiographical, or it's a point that Priest is trying to make in this book.
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(Quote) Is this based on the "systems" view of history, as opposed to the "great man" view. Pratchett's saying that individual actions can make a difference at the level of individuals, but individuals are generally powerless at …
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(Quote) Perhaps I'm projecting from his later books. You can imagine the thought process behind this book: "Death's a popular character, but I need a viewpoint character as a way in to the story, let's give Death an apprentice." Death goe…
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I think it was Robin Laws who coined the terms "iconic hero" vs "dramatic hero." In that framing, iconic heroes are ones like Kirk or Holmes, people who don't change over the story; they're suited for episodic stories. Dramatic h…
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(Quote) Ooh. (Or should I say "Ook"?) There's an interesting idea. It's also interesting that the veracity of the written stories, in Death's library, is never questioned or shown to be inaccurate. I wonder if an older Pratchett would hav…
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I've not played Dying Earth and it's ages since I've read it. Something like Fate Accelerated could also work; that's a game where characters are described by their personality and relationships more than physical abilities. I would say Smallville …