Pieces on Speculative Fiction

3 stars out of 5. I really liked the Blade Itself, but this middle book of the trilogy, while entertaining, feels somewhat lacking. Partly this is because I liked only one of the three main plot lines and just would’ve liked to have more Glokta. Before They Are Hanged still is very good character-driven fantasy and enjoyable for anyone who liked the first part.

There are three main story arcs: the mysterious quest lead by the magi Bayaz, Glokta‘s mission in Dagoska and Union‘s war with Northmen. Glokta‘s arc is easily the monst intersting, in my opinion, and Bayaz arc the weakest, as there are some easily guessed elements(which despite of this are very enjoyable). Union‘s war with the Northmen is quite meh as it is predictable and the characters aren’t the most interesting ones. Luckily there are couple of nice twists in each of the plot lines.

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There has been couple of interesting posts on swearing in speculative fiction at Joe Abercrombie’s blog and at Dribble of Ink. Some people apparently feel that normal English curses like fuck, cunt, shit, motherfucker or cocksucker shouldn’t be used in speculative fiction as they are either offensive, or considered to be unfitting in the context, a fantasy or a future world that is.

Swearing doesn’t really bother me, though I don’t sweat that much. Modern curse words don’t really affect the immersion in any way, the made up ones quite often do, as they are fairly long or obviously substitutes for real words. What I’ve noticed is that most of the bothered ones are from United States, foul language seems to be a big no-no there. Haven’t really run into similar attitudes here in Finland since school.

To me it’s a bit of mystery cursing as cultural phenomena has so much negative connotations. I understand that originally cursing was basically expressing your secularity by for example using God’s name in vain et cetera. Why these negative connotations have moved to words describing genitalia and secretions like shit and piss is beyond me. Maybe it is part of the(Victorian?) move of making a lot of bodily functions and body parts shameful.

Not too many posts this week, I’m having fever for the second week in a row and it does take a lot of my enthusiasm away. Did manage to do quite a bit of reading though. I guess my experiment is officially over. Now I’ll just continue posting for the fun of it, probably aiming at four posts a week, depending on everything else. I think I’m moving more and more away from traditional book reviews, as I really don’t aspire to be that serious critic and besides, I really don’t like to spoil a lot of books. So I guess I’ll be concentrating to my opinion even more, if possible.

I would like to be one of those bloggers who get review copies, solely because while I like to read a lot, I don’t like collecting books that much. I’m enough of a penny pincher that I don’t like paying $20 for a book and then selling it on for $4 as is bound to happen with lots and lots of books. Sadly I don’t think that I’ll ever receive any review copies living in Finland and all.

What I’ve found while writing this blog is that good writing habits are hard to form. I’ve often started writing while watching some series or chatting in IRC or doing some other little activity that takes away my concentration.

3 stars out of 5, first impressions, not as good as Lies of Locke Lamora, but if you liked it you’ll like this one too. Doesn’t have much fantastic feel, but all the wit and banter make up for it quite well. I really appreciate that Lynch is writing these modern thriller and adventure books within the fantasy genre.

This is story of Jean and Locke trying to rob the biggest casino of Tal Verrar, where they fled from Camorr. Not surprisingly there are kinks on the way and they have to embrace the sweet life of sailors. Oddly enough, quite a few of those now verses from various books. Reavers are civilized people.

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4 stars out of 5, first impressions, Patrick Rotfuss’s opening of the Kingkiller Chronicles shows his talent as storyteller. The story is moving and moves at quick enough pace along with solid and likeable enough characters.

The story starts with an injured local stumbling bleeding into the village inn with a spider-like dead monster that killed his horse and nearly him. From there on everything starts to wind out with the innkeeper Kote taking the lead role. It turns out that he previously was Kvothe, notorious mage-warrior whose story we partly hear. So the format is story in a story as Kvothe stars to tell his tale.

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I’m really sorry that I haven’t been able to post that often this week, I’ve been a bit feverish, so haven’t got the energy to write. Also was away for the weekend, so no writing done there either.

Sad news this week for some, Robert Jordan passed away. Apparently the last part of Wheel of Time is still going to be published posthumously. I’m really curious whether some hack picks up the WoT franchise. Haven’t been fan of all that tugging and smoothing in a while.

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I feel that Lynch dropped the ball with this one. There is still the good natured banter between Locke and Jean, but the book is overlong. Cutting parts of the plot would probably have made the book a better read. Reading Red Seas Under Red Skies is a lot like watching one of newer action films: there is really substance for a 1h 30min film, but it drags on over the 2h mark. The ending still managed to seem a bit hurried, when everything came together in one big flurry.

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Joe Abercrombie mentioned my review of The Blade Itself in his blog. Times a changing when authors are amongst us mortals. Anyways there’s also a interesting post in his blog on how fantasy series compare to TV series, where he goes to point out the that the TV trend of long plot lines and open-endedness might be making it’s way to fantasy series.

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You know, writing this blog has really been an interesting experience. It has shown me that self discipline is something I lack. That’s okay, generally reaching every goal means that the goals weren’t that hard to achieve anyways. However this blog has definitely gotten me into reading more. For a few years I’ve read only maybe 20-30 books a year, which is really miniscule amount. I used to read hundreds of books in my teens, 365 exact in my best year. Perhaps that time instilled the speed style of reading into me. That and my low tolerance for shared shame.

All in all I’m pretty happy with what I’ve accomplished so far. My ambitious side would like to see me writing more pillar content, the stuff of legends! I’m realist enough to know that that is going to need the spark of creativity from somewhere. I’ve never been too good at forcing myself.

As an aside. It never ceases to amaze me how little people read. Or rather how little the people who moan about lack of good speculative fiction have read. There are huge amounts of good SF books just waiting to be read. Not finding out about them isn’t really hard these days, with the net and all. Just browsing quickly through Jay Tomio’s Top100 books of the last 10 years has quite a few unread books for the most of us.

Name of the Wind is the best new novel I’ve read this year. Seriously I can’t understand how Acacia(review) can be mentioned in the same breath as candidate for best fantasy debut this year. Name of the Wind has everything Acacia doesn’t have: clear writing, engaging story(or story in a story) and characters who you come to care about. I have to admit that I’m a sucker for coming of age stories, but this one was really, really good. As far as entertaining fantasy goes, this is top notch. Only gripe I have is that the story presented is a premise of a huge story arc. The author has set it so that he could write probably quite a few parts to his Kingkiller Chronicles.

After reading the first 60 pages I wasn’t really sold. There was some apparently evil monsters, this innkeeper who isn’t what he seems etc. I even put it down to read Tim Powers’ Last Call and Joe Abercrombie’s Before They Are Hanged. Today I continued where I left of and had to change the plans for the day as I just couldn’t stop reading.