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RichardAbbott
About
- Username
- RichardAbbott
- Joined
- Visits
- 6,061
- Last Active
- Roles
- Member, Administrator, Moderator
- Games I like
- Sundry, mostly board
- Books I like
- Science fiction, fantasy, some historical fiction
Comments
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I have to confess I don't remember Voice of the Whirlwind! But if it was a choice of mine I'm glad it went down well
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I kind of paused with this one while I thought about it. One of the (many) great things about the club is that we often differ amongst ourselves as to whether a particular book has this factor or not. Some books we all agree either do or don't, but …
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Yes, I just gave up on language. I know most SFF authors aren't as bothered about language roots as I like to be, but this was so much of a hotch potch that I abandoned any hope of finding consistency early on.
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As mentioned, I thought the use of scent was a great innovation. Full marks for that. If the overall setting was derivative I;m not sure what it derived from! But overall it just struck me as chaotic and haphazard, and I wasn't persuade that a socie…
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In all fairness I don't think I got far enough into it to tell! I kept thinking that I must be on the verge of some great revelation about the world, but it never seemed to come. Maybe by the end?
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Exhausting to read! Every time I sat down to read it there was this sense of "this isn't going to be a peaceful ride". Now I totally get that books need a mix of action and rest... but where was the rest? Did I believe that the characters …
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I found this very chaotic. The history of the city kept being on the verge of interesting, but then would disintegrate into confusion again - I am sure that this was a deliberate authorial ploy, a kind of mimesis if you like, but for me it was just …
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After about 1/3 of the way through I still didn't feel that I had much idea what the characters were doing. Yes, the one we started with was a kind of low-class exterminator, but then we met various aristocrats (I think this is the right word) and I…
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(Quote) This reminded me of Asimov and the inhabitants of Solaria, who had taken isolation to huge extremes to the point where actually meeting another human being in person was horrific and unthinkable as a voluntary act.
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It's available on regular Kindle (here in the UK at least) though not on bookshop.org until May 21st. That'll probably be enough time to read it. Either way I'm in
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Discussion area now set up for The Works of Vermin Still plenty of time to comment on The Doloriad by Missouri Williams @NeilNjae any thoughts for May?
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That was in the Ancient Days before my time... but you could probably make a case for Shardik also being post apocalyptic?
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(Quote) I agree that the cause of the lack of limbs is secondary, but the fact of it meant that most members of the group couldn't go very far to explore, forage, make contact with others etc. Those limitations surely were central, and the nerdy par…
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(Quote) This kind of highlights some of my perplexity about the story. We first meet Dolores being wheeled off to some other group, presumably as a bride as part of some kind of peace treaty. But then she gets dumped in the middle of nowhere, manage…
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Generally speaking sheep in theology are people in general - as in the Messiah line (itself from the prophet Isaiah) "all we like sheep have gone astray" and that then allows Agnus Dei as the identification of the son of God with the pligh…
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Interested to hear what others say about this
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Yes, the prose style was a real turn-off for me. I really didn't like the long rambling sentences strung into long rambling paragraphs. And as you say, the viewpoint shifted often in unpredictable and largely unsignalled ways. It baffled me first th…
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That's an interesting thought which hadn't occurred to me before reading your question. Not sure yet what to make of it.
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I kept wondering if having more knowledge about the historical Aquinas's position on things might help, but it's not a subject I know anything about so that line of thought didn't get far! So far as I know he was a theologian (and a very astute one)…
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Yes this is a great question! She seems to have much less agency even than many of the others. I could never decide why the author had chosen this title.
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Here I wish we'd been told a bit more about the world. Were there other groups or not? Why the prevalent deformities? What had happened? How had the Matriarch first come into her power? I felt constantly cut off from anything that might tell me more…
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I hadn't heard of it before so had no expectations. I have to confess I didn't really enjoy it and struggled, not least with the prose style (which I see you pull out as a separate topic later)/ The second half was very much skim-read just to get th…
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Sorted now! So as to get back ahead of myself, @Apocryphal are you still intending The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennis as your choice for April?
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(Quote) That's my fault, I'm afraid - I hadn't actually set up the monthly discussion area :o
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After that the rota reads as April @Apocryphal May @NeilNjae
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Quick reminder that the selection for March is The Doloriad by Missouri Williams, chosen by @kcaryths . Still plenty of time for comments on Nada the Lily :)
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Interested to hear what others say but my feeling is that it would take a whole lot of research if not to end up with a rather simplistic arena for the game.
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My impression is that Haggard broadly speaking admire the Zulus and wrote highly of them (barring the overt cruelty of the leadership), then had the Swazis and a couple of other groups as a kind of second tier, then a whole bunch of other tribes who…
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As mentioned in another thread, I have been reading several of his books over the last few months and am enjoying them. I suspect that I'll want a rest from them after a while, and will then revisit at some stage - I don't think he's the kind of aut…
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I kept being reminded of Tolkien - we know that JRRT admired Haggard's writing and (so to speak) recycled elements of She into Galadriel. Here at the start of chapter 30 we have "All that is hidden is not lost" which it's surely impossible…