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kcaryths
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- kcaryths
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@BarnerCobblewood Fantastic stuff! Not too long at all - love it. I feel like I almost read a book in another language - that's how disconnected I am from the culture, religion and historical context that was swirling along inside the pages. The int…
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(Quote) No need to apologise at all. This book did not do well for me either. I found myself completing it because of the quality of the writing, but I didn't enjoy much of the reading experience. I DNF'ed my first Chandrasekera book so this one was…
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Questions for The Saint of Bright Doors are up. That was harder than I thought to come up with, so be nice ...hahah.
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I enjoyed this book as well, and @RichardAbbott you did a good job hitting on many of the main points that were of interest to me. While I felt like his discussion on other SF works were a little "surface level", it's really hard to be to…
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Good with either one. They both sound good.
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Picked this up from the library this weekend and will give it a read.
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The last line reads like some sort of sovereign citizen speech.
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For sure. I have no idea if Vance was Libertarian or not.
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Yeah, you encouraged me to go look it up, and Emphyrio was also nominated for a Prometheus award for it's Libertarian messaging. I'd have to give more thought on whether the comparison between Russia and Hauma.
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(Quote) I could see how his use of obscure words might be seen as charming or something to people. I mostly just found it annoying. Why use big word when small word do good.
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Yeah, you encouraged me to go look it up, and Emphyrio was also nominated for a Prometheus award for it's Libertarian messaging.
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My only quibble (and I mentioned this elsewhere) with his writing is that he always drops these weird words that I never hear used elsewhere. Now, that could very well be because I am not well read enough but with both of his books I found myself fa…
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I didn't think the characters were useful as much more than tools to push the plot along and to flesh out the setting a bit more.
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(Quote) Agreed. I wondered why there was not more pushback against the type of society they had but perhaps if things were never really "that bad" then there was never enough of a reason to stick your neck out to fight against it. I just f…
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I've only ever read 1 other Vance book (City of the Chasch) which had some of the same weird (not bad) world building elements and his preference to use words that I have to look up since I don't know what they mean but definitely had more of light-…
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100% agree and not much more to add. The Emphyrio tale just felt like book ends that we were supposed to read more into but the rest of the story mostly felt like it barely touched on it,
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I also finished it this month.
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(Quote) Good tips! Seems like The Saint of Bright Doors is a better fit then.
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Most of the characters felt like background noise for the most part for Silas, but I was ok with that. This is surprising for me as generally I prefer books that give me rich characters and this one didn't have a lot of that. However, I found myself…
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Like @BarnerCobblewood I struggled to really work out the connection between the maths and the story he was telling. I even watched a few videos on it and by the end I could kind of understand the "idea" of it, but couldn't really grasp th…
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Maybe a touch slow at the start but I thought the pacing was great by the end. Certainly he wanted to get er done faster but kept getting dragged back out of it until it was a do or die situation and I enjoyed it.
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Sounds like Saint of Bright Doors would be a good choice - I'll track down a copy.
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I thought it did an ok job of winding its way between giving away too much of the twist so that it became too easy to guess, and still dripfeeding me enough to keep me interested. The first one can be boring and the second one can be extremely frust…
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It worked well for me. Never read one of his books and I embraced the fast-paced plot. I read the entire thing is two sittings and really enjoyed it. I also loved the Tom Cruise film Live, Die, Repeat, so it's very possible that this style of storyt…
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A couple ideas for April. Will be my first kick at this so not sure what are considered good choices for the group in general. If we want something a bit lighter I can do that too! Let me know. I don't think either of these have been read by the gro…
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Grabbed a copy of this from the used bookstore today in case we decide to go ahead with it.
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I'll come up with some ideas this weekend for a book for April.
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I'm good to go.
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Depends why you don't like it. I felt like it had a solid payoff by the end.
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I am unsure if I was able to fully grasp the intricacies of the argument they were making. Does the Bible as an ancient text fall into the good vs evil structure? It seems to for me, but then I have a feeling they would find a way to make an excepti…