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RichardAbbott
About
- Username
- RichardAbbott
- Joined
- Visits
- 6,069
- 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 was about to put out a mild nag about February's book chooser making a choice, but I've just realised that actually it's down to me... I'll give it some thought. Meanwhile the January book is The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi+ by SA Chakraborty, s…
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I had a vague idea that the character names might be significant in terms of the story, but I'm no longer convinced: Ali Baba = Great Leader Qasim = Generous / charitable Majana (from Murjana) = Little Pearl Ah well. If I'd been choosing the names t…
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I like the link with The Hobbit :)
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I have to admit that I knew nothing about Marjana before reading this! As was indicated in one of the comments, in most Western versions of the tales women are relegated to distraction or decoration rather than being agents of the action. I mean, ho…
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I came across some notes that Andre Norton made in 1979 about the origins of the whole Witch World saga (including maps :) ) which bear copying here from https://andre-norton.com/works-of-a-master/series-of-a-master/the-witch-world-saga (Quote) (I…
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BTW here's the cover for the Kindle version that I have been reading, attributed to Matt Forsyth (Image)
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It seemed to me, albeit with far less experience than any of you folk, that the background / setting is one that gives enough detail to allow a potential player to choose one of several character types. So instead of choosing wizard / warrior / elf …
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(Quote) I think this is another symptom of the time of writing of the book - Andre Norton tends here (and in some of her other books) to switch viewpoint character quite abruptly. This practice is nowadays more frowned upon, going by the name "…
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Like that cover! My version has yet another cover, by Matt Forsyth, which I'll try to find a way to upload. The only virgins rule (again spoiler alert not strictly true as the series goes on, but widely believed) is an interesting twist on the &…
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"Tregarth" reads as a Cornish name to me, with close links to Welsh, all suggesting that the root of the symbolism and magic is either Celtic or maybe Brythonic. On its use in literature, I guess it depends on whether it's used in a system…
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My take is that whatever the original historical setup of the witch world had been, the fact that it was a kind of readily accessible nexus between worlds - the very fact that made it possible for Simon Tregarth to get there in the first place - mea…
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Spoiler alert - the whole "giving up her future for the hero" business is turned on its head at the start of the sequel _Web of the Witch World". I must admit that I hadn't really noticed the shortness of the book! It seemed of a p…
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Andre Norton was one of the very first SFF authors I ever came across, back in Godalming library when I were but a lad (Image) Alongside other authors of course, but it was her that I really attached to (and indeed, it was her that made me first wa…
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I'm very happy to continue
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(Quote) That's a slightly tricky question given that we're reading the tales in translation. There are kind of two questions folded into this a) does each story in isolation follow a ring structure, and b) does the cycle of seven stories as a whole …
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Love "spice" as a plural for "spouse" - who does one lobby to get a new word into the dictionary? At the risk of being boring about Severin, there were some great bits that I read last night. At this point in the story he has be…
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I think the main thing that struck me here was (again, as last week) the sheer length of time the whole series is supposed to take. Most of the episodes aren't actually given numbers of years, but seeing as how Sinbad lives a long time, gets wealthy…
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All: still some chatter going on about Tripoint (which has generated a lot of chatter, so obviously a good choice @clash_bowley ) but probably this is a good time to remind all that December's book is Witchworld chosen and with discussion led by @Ap…
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I've Got a busy family weekend coming up so will appreciate the pause as well
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...but how else are we going to have a cool space battle?
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(Quote) Well yeah I got kind of carried away with it :)
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(Quote) I think I would have enjoyed this style more if the viewpoint character voices were more different, so that you could tell who was speaking without having to go through a kind of forensic process of deduction! One character speaking / thinki…
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(Quote) Yes I'd forgotten that, thanks for the reminder
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(Quote) Asimov well before the 1990s used "unprintable" as a substitute phrase for naughty words in the Foundation series so I suppose it was an entrenched writing strategy.
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Interesting how both Cherryh and Asimov used the idea that "the jump", however they conceived it, was incomprehensible to the human mind and therefore likely to lead to madness. This was a big thing in a few of Asimov's stories set soon af…
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Seems that almost everyone is pissed about something almost all of the time :) I got the relativistic aging business and thought that was done well (though maybe Forever War handled the total disorientation brought about by a century or more of tim…
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I guess I never worked out whether fuel was like say hydrogen that you could gather up for yourself if you had the time and energy, or like (say) petrol where you purchased a stock from somewhere but couldn't make it yourself on the fly. If the form…
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(More question marks than confidences there)
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I got the impression (rightly or wrongly) that Capella is one of (a very few?) individuals who can learn to remain conscious and comparatively sane during the jump. A corollary is that she can "visit" others though I was never sure if this…
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(Quote) Yup, fair points. Like you, I found the vocabulary to be very stuck. Swearing is, I think, a difficult one to get right - do you use contemporary naughty words and assume that your readership will simply work out that that isn't exactly what…