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RichardAbbott
About
- Username
- RichardAbbott
- Joined
- Visits
- 6,070
- 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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Though in the steampunk novel you chose a while ago (_The Guns Above_, I think) the heroine was a middle class socially anxious woman constantly worrying that the upper class leaders would belittle her, despite her abilities!
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> @NeilNjae said: > Things would need to be more precise for someone else writing (or creating RPG material) in the setting, but that's not this book. And I hope Clark has something more detailed in his "series bible" so that he doe…
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Also the Qur'an has a number of verses explicitly talking about djinn, some in complimentary and some in dismissive terms. So I guess Islam has always had a mixed relationship with the concept of djinn and their place in the cosmos
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I agree with @NeilNjae on this - I feel the book caught the extent and diversity of Cairo well, but not the bustle and apparent chaos of it
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OK, so general agreement that the magic wasn't well-structured!
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I'd seen a picture so wasn't surprised by gender, but the assistant professorship was new to me. A bit like Arkady Martine who wrote A Memory Called Empire and its sequel, who is actually AnnaLinden Weller and a historian. For quite a while it's bee…
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How about the different levels of interest that the djinn showed in human affairs, ranging from utter disinterest through to collaborative work on big projects and (so we learn part-way through) intimate relationships?
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A good spread of responses! As well as the other two in the Cairo series I got myself _The Black God's Drums_ which is set in an alternate historical New Orleans, complete with a lot of what I assume is authentic dialect. Not being well up on C19…
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Discussion starters for A Master of Djinn are now posted...
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> @clash_bowley said: > I'm ready! Finished yesterday! Let nobody say that @clash_bowley never finishes a book :)
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All: how are we getting on with A Master of Djinn? If all OK I will post the starter discussions in a couple of days
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Some interesting stats there @Apocryphal and as expected I see a lot of familiar titles in your list :) In terms of book format the vast majority are kindle for me - I think I listened to just five audiobooks last year, mostly in short bursts while…
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All: I have added the monthly category for February's Infinity: A Bridger's Origin and added in the cover blurb. I also did the blurb post for this month's A Master of Djinn as I discovered that unaccountably I had forgotten to do that...
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(Quote) The main spoiler was that we all felt the title was basically clickbait, and should have been "12th century BC: the century when something big happened in the ancient world of Late Bronze societies, but we're not exactly sure when or to…
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I'll set up the discussion area then
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Looks like it's available in kindle and paperback here in the UK
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Fine by me, I haven't heard of that series before
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And this is a good enough time to remind everyone about A Master of Djinn by P Djeli Clark...
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(Quote) I guess the problem is that you risk simply setting up a row of straw men rather than having different viewpoints presented credibly. True, Babel did occasionally put up an opposite side but this was generally put in the mouths of fairly loa…
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I gave Babel 4* (albeit a low 4 if I had such flexibility) - I thought the prose, grammar and basic concept were good, and I never felt at risk of abandoning reading it. We've all talked about the shortcomings, especially the failure to maintain goo…
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The same sort of questions arise in many different areas of writing. For example, we want dialogue to "sound natural" (especially external dialogue between people, probably less so internal reported thoughts), but in fact actual dialogue i…
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Etymologically, as no doubt RF Kuang would have made use of, telegraph comes from "writing at a distance". There's a Telegraph Hill not all that far from where my parents lived, part of the Admiralty chain from London to the dockyards at …
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(Quote) I agree - surely in an alternate England (or wherever) of that era there would have been wealthy individuals or groups arguing for emancipation of various kinds - our Europe in the C19th was a right furore of groups of all kinds wanting chan…
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Which is odd given the Christian theological position that Christ is the Word of God, and hence one can easily imagine a whole in-book theology building on words as divine vessels.
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(Quote) Yes, that bothered me a bit - the footnotes waver between giving information that's true in the real world to information that's only true in the sub-created world, and I found this inconsistency annoying. (Quote) What a great catch! Accord…
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@Apocryphal your words reminded me of another film, in this case Enemy at the Gates, where Danilov says to Zaitsev "We tried so hard to create a society that was equal, where there'd be nothing to envy your neighbour. But there's always somethi…
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> @Apocryphal said: > So, here's an interesting thing. While I was reading this book, I was also listening to another book called The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr. This book is about the aspects of a story that makes it pleasing to t…
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Over in the UK I might have said "signalled" instead of "telegraphed" but I got the drift. I'm not sure I agree with @clash_bowley about this as there are lots of chops and changes in the sections he never reached, and some of th…
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Yes that's a good way to put it
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(Quote) I tended to agree with you, after continuing to the end. I make some comments about this in @NeilNjae 's starter for part 2 on gaming that maybe will resonate with your thoughts on this.