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NeilNjae
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Pratchett obviously loves the genre, tropes and all, so his satire of them is full of sympathy and warmth. I don't think this would work with an author who was hostile (or even neutral) to the genre. As for how to run humorous RPG sessions? I have …
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One thing I forgot to mention. Mort's name and what it means. He spends most of the book being called "boy" and resenting it. Just about as soon as he becomes recognised as an adult and people call him "Mort", he becomes Duke of …
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There's not a great deal to the plot. It's amusing seeing how both Mort and Death grow through the story: it's not just Mort's changes that matter. Mort learnt responsibility and Death learnt about justice. As for doing a coming of age story, I thi…
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The satire is something that permeates Pratchett's work, like the word "Blackpool" runs through a stick of rock. There's a warmth to it as well: most people are generally decent and trying to do the right thing, even if the structures and …
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Junno read like a British commentary on the worst of USAian libertarianism and gun culture. I'm not sure there was much more to it. Bathurst seems more like a superhuman Lothario than an actual human being. These islands show some of the impact of …
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Sounds intriguing. Kindle is good for me, so availability isn't an issue.
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Oh. Oh. I've got myself confused. I've read Final Harbour, the submarine book that's the March pick. I'll see if I can catch up with Mort soon!
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Why glass? Is the prevalence of glass a metaphor for something? Glass is transparent but tangible; it separates but allows observation. Is there a connection with painting and pictures? Hike could have slammed a door on Commis, but instead mimed th…
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As a short story, would this stand on its own? I don't think so. It's interesting because of how it shines new light on the Commis affair. As a short story itself, I don't think it's compelling; it doesn't make a point by itself. I did entertain th…
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(Quote) If these are stories told by Islanders for Islanders, why should such origin stories be there? How often do the Norman Conquest and the Danelaw come up in everyday conversations in Britain? Yes, there are references to "Blitz spirit&quo…
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(The Islanders was published in 2011. #MeToo started in 2017. I think we can excuse Priest for not taking an account of a social movement six years before it happened.)
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(Quote) > (Quote) Very true. It's easy to be negative. Perhaps we should take care to explicitly note the positive things in what we read. As for the "not woke" comment, Priest is far from hostile to issues of race, gender, and sexual…
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(Quote) I agree with this. The slow read is certainly bringing out more of the book than I'd get on my own. A lot of that, I think, is because of the great notes and pointers from @Apocryphal . I'm confused by the book, but not offended. I'd like to…
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(Quote) Perhaps people should step away from the keyboard for a bit? And everyone should strive to read and write charitably?
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(Quote) Should we infer concrete meanings for these dream-like words? I think they're meant to suggest concepts, and Priest seems to have made a choice not to nail down meanings for us. I thought "erotomane" could be homosexuality or pre-m…
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(Quote) I think Me Too hasn't (or hadn't) reached Christopher Priest.
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(Quote) This is a good question. What's the point of this book? It's not to tell a gripping story. It's not a puzzle for us to solve. It's not an insight into the human condition (none of the characters has any depth). Is it meant to be an allegory …
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We're finally beginning to see a story emerge! We now have a small group of characters with lots of connections between them. For a gazetteer, this book has a lot of information about these people. This setup reminds me of an old (1990s?) British TV…
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... And Erotomane laws. And why the fixation with tunneling?
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(Quote) Thanks for doing them. I'm finding them useful. I think I'd miss many of the cross-references otherwise. As for the club format, I'm happy to be doing this as a slow read. It's prompting good discussion, which is the point of the exercise.
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We have two islands with the same names. Both islands have foreign military bases. Both islands venerate the same person. But the islands are in mirrored locations, the bases are from mutually-hostile nations, and the veneration is about very differ…
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(Quote) I've not seen any of it yet. OK, the individual vingettes are interesting, but I'm at the stage where I'd like to have some connection between them. If this is pitched as a "novel", it could do with some kind of overaching narrativ…
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(Quote) Very true. It's either a guidebook for middle-class tourists, or a coffee-table book for the curious. (Quote) I'm not sure "scientifically organised" is the right term, but I agree that the information presented is inconsistent. I…
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(Quote) I wonder where the inspiration came from? (Quote)
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(Quote) In my limited reading, I thought it cleaved too closely to questions about blood donation, and was little more than a somewhat fictionalised essay about some recent concerns about it. If it was a wider commentary, I missed that entirely.
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When reading, I was reminded of (my perceptions of) the difference in blood doning between the UK and US. My perception of blood doning in the US is that it's a commercial transaction: you pay me for some of my blood. That reflects the language of c…
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(Quote) I think the label's pretty obvious: it's the Dream Archipelago, so it would be a surprise if things were entirely logical. I'm expecting inconsistency in geography and naming, as those have both been highlighted in the introduction. I'm hopi…
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(Quote) I got that feeling too. I think Priest is trying to make a point (or several points) but won't spell it out explicitly. We'll have to work on finding out what he's trying to say.
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A key theme I see emerging is that this is a world of stories, and stories where even the world itself is an unreliable narrator. In the introduction, Kammeston doesn't tell us anything true, only what he's read in his books. And he says that those …
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(Quote) I don't want to pre-empt other people, and I may well change my mind before June!