quote:
The logic train ran off the tracks when Mr. Parcelan said:
Or we could go read a book where stuff actually happens.
No we can't. The Mountain Who Doesn't Write is living up to his name.
quote:
At least I'm not Greenlit
No we can't. The Mountain Who Doesn't Write is living up to his name.
-Lies of Locke Lamora, Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch: fantasy Ocean's Eleven meets Godfather.
-First Law trilogy, Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie: Brutal mothafuckas rapin' it up over four volumes.
-The Steel Remains by Richard Morgan: Pedophilia, gays, anus-whorl stabbing, blood, blood, blood.
A lot of fun stuff to read out there, actually!
I almost liked the first one, but I had trouble getting past the authoral schizophrenia. One moment, it was a light-hearted romp with roguish but lovable characters, the next people are being drowned in vats of horse piss and the tone is a cross between Michael Moorcock and Wes Craven. Sort of ruined the experience for me.
--Satan, quoted by John Milton
quote:
Bloodsage had this to say about John Romero:
How was Red Seas Under Red Skies?I almost liked the first one, but I had trouble getting past the authoral schizophrenia. One moment, it was a light-hearted romp with roguish but lovable characters, the next people are being drowned in vats of horse piss and the tone is a cross between Michael Moorcock and Wes Craven. Sort of ruined the experience for me.
There's some pretty gruesome moments in Red Seas, but I really liked it. I don't recall anything quite as vivid as the piss drowning so if that's what really got you then you'll probably be alright with it.
quote:
Bloodsage had this to say about John Romero:
How was Red Seas Under Red Skies?I almost liked the first one, but I had trouble getting past the authoral schizophrenia. One moment, it was a light-hearted romp with roguish but lovable characters, the next people are being drowned in vats of horse piss and the tone is a cross between Michael Moorcock and Wes Craven. Sort of ruined the experience for me.
Lies of Locke Lamora was great. Red Seas Under Red Skies was good.
The schizophrenia you described does sort of occur, in that the setting changes dramatically (and possibly needlessly) half way through, but the tone is pretty much kept the same.
At any rate, it's still better than most of the fantasy out there today, so I'd recommend it.
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Bent over the coffee table, Dr. Gee squealed:
There's some pretty gruesome moments in Red Seas, but I really liked it. I don't recall anything quite as vivid as the piss drowning so if that's what really got you then you'll probably be alright with it.
It's not that the scene got to me, so much as it completely changed the tone of the novel. It'd be like watching Sesame Street, and it suddenly having a skit of hardcore porn in the middle of it. Not that there's anything wrong with the porn...it just wouldn't go with the overall atmosphere of Sesame Street.
--Satan, quoted by John Milton
quote:
Bloodsage thought this was the Ricky Martin Fan Club Forum and wrote:
It's not that the scene got to me, so much as it completely changed the tone of the novel. It'd be like watching Sesame Street, and it suddenly having a skit of hardcore porn in the middle of it. Not that there's anything wrong with the porn...it just wouldn't go with the overall atmosphere of Sesame Street.
Yeah, the tone remains the same throughout, but it's difficult to tell sometimes since the setting changes fairly abruptly. It never really returns to the light-hearted roguishness, but it does remain fairly witty as the first.
quote:
Greenlit had this to say about Duck Tales:
No we can't. The Mountain Who Doesn't Write is living up to his name.
lol.
By the way, if the HBO pilot gets picked up and gets decent ratings, it could catch up with the books, which would be pretty funny.
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And I was all like 'Oh yeah?' and Zair was all like:
lol.By the way, if the HBO pilot gets picked up and gets decent ratings, it could catch up with the books, which would be pretty funny.
That would be funny. I just found a blog with day to day updates on the filming of the HBO Song of Fire and Ice.
Seems filming started just under a month ago.
Winter is Coming: Game of Thrones HBO series filming blog Katrinity fucked around with this message on 11-15-2009 at 07:29 PM.
Breaking this up to summaries for each major character.
Perrin: He seems kind of lost now that he's rescued his wife. A combination of his lack of an objective to strive for (saving his wife) and his fear of his own brutality during the battle. He takes it upon himself to see the captives of the Shaido to safety and they start their slow procession to somewhere more civilized. Faile, meanwhile, murders Maesma (The Prophet) so he can't be any more trouble to Perrin. She also has a little bonfire possessions burning with the other captive women in honor of the Brotherless or Maidens who showed them kindness amongst the Shaido.
Mat: He is missing his new wife, Tuon, who went back to Ebou Dar to take over the Return, even if he fiercely denies it to his men. They continue to head north to Caemlyn though get stopped a few times on the way. One of these stops is when they were resuppling at a village called Hinderstrap. A normal seeming town, the mayor gives them till sundown to get what they can and get out of town, a curfew that he won't be brooking any disagreement with. Mat gambles the Band up some supplies but drags his feet right to sundown in doing so when he finds out it was a bad idea to do so as all the villagers suddenly turn into raving homocidal maniacs. They kill each other and any other person close by though Mat and the few of his men he brought plus a few Aes Sedai with him, barely make it out of town alive though they leave many corpses in their wake. When the sun comes up, they return to see if everyone is dead and find out what happened. They instead discover that everyone who died is fine and back alive with no memory of what happened that night or any night for the last several months. The whole place was cursed with the same cycle every night and morning. His next stop is to find a woman who is supposedly supplying people with accurate pictures of his and Perrin's faces. Thinking it might be a darkfriend trap, Mat instead discovers it Verin Sedai, tugged by the Pattern to this place to wait for him. She gets him to Caemlyn with a gateway after making him promise to either wait 10 days in Caemlyn to read a sealed letter she gave him or 30 days if he refuses to read it.
Tuon: The Daughter of the Nine Moons returns to Ebou Dar to take back up the reins of the Return after the botched attempt by Semirhage, who was pretty much controlling the Seanchan on that side of the ocean, to capture or kill Rand. With news of her mother's assassination back in Seanchan, Tuon drags her feet in taking up the name of the next Empress. She and her generals plan a possible raid on the White Tower to capture marath'damane. Tuon finally gives in to Rand's requests for a sitdown between his forces and hers at Falme. Rand demands peace between their peoples at least until after the Last Battle when he will be dead and it won't matter anymore to him. After some tense negotiations, Tuon refuses and the meeting is ended with the knowledge that the Seanchan will soon be back on the offensive. The moment the meeting ends, Tuon proclaims herself the Empress and pushes forward the raid on the White Tower. She sends around 80-100 to'raken carrying 300 Seanchan troops and over 50 Sul'dam and damane to capture as many women who can channel as possible.
Egwene: Egwene continues her battle of wills against Elaida even though she is punished with numerous beatings everyday for not acting like a novice. She starts turning Sedai to her side by condemning the divisions that Elaida has caused in the White Tower with Ajah set against Ajah. She continues to refuse rescue when talking to the rebel Sedai in the World of Dreams, saying her work inside the Tower is much more important. She eventually drops in on the Black Ajah hunting sisters and turns them to her side as well. Egewene's patience with Elaida comes to an end while she is serving her one meal and gets in a verbal debate while Elaida unable to meet her arguments instead starts beating her with the One Power. Egwene doesn't even flinch from the beating and continues to condemn Elaida while several Sitters, who attended the meal, watch on. Egwene is locked up in a small dungeon cell to await trial after this scene. She is released some time later to go back to Novice duties after the Mistress of Novices, a Red sister to boot, stands up for Egwene before Elaida and the Hall of Sitters, and Elaida puts the blame on Egwene's behavior on her shoulders instead. As Egwene arrives back to her novice quarters, she is paid a surprise visit by Verin Sedai who is waiting for her there. Verin has been drinking poison tea while waiting and has only a short time left to live. She confesses to Egwene that she was a member of the Black Ajah but only joined when threatened with death if she didn't and made it her life's work to study them. She is only able to tell Egwene all this since her oath to the Dark One only sipulated to the last hour of her life. Verin leaves her journals with information and names of the Black Ajah plus its cipher with Egwene before dying. Egwene tells both the Black Ajah-hunting sisters and Suane to watch out for a few of the names mentioned in the journal (which has almost all the Black Ajah listed in it beyond a half dozen or so names Verin missed). Its shortly after this that the White Tower is attacked by the Seanchan forces riding to'rakens. Fire and death rains down on the Tower grounds and holes are blasted into the sides of the Tower as Sul'dam and damane pour into the halls hunting Sedai, Accepted, and Novices. Egwene, who has been feed forkroot like most of her time as a prisoner, rallies dozens and dozens of novices to form circles and push back the Seanchan. She does a better job of it than some of the Aes Sedai who form a HQ on the ground floor. She and her forces take out over 30 to'raken and many sul'dam/damane before the Seanchan retreat with what captives they were able to get. It is later discovered that Elaida is one of these captives. Egwene, exhausted from the battle, is carried back to the rebel camp in the confusion by Gawyn. She lets Gawyn and Siuan know her displeasure with what they did but quickly takes back over the rebel Aes Sedai on her return. A swift purge of all the Black Ajah sisters amongst the rebels begins with only a handful escaping. Egwene decides its time to invade Tar Valon now that the Seanchan have caused so much confusion and as her forces arrive at the gates of the city, a procession of Aes Sedai sitters comes out to meet her. She is proclaimed at the one and true Amirlyn Seat, finally reforming the White Tower into a whole organization.
Gawyn: After leading successful raids against the rebel Aes Sedai scout/resupply forces, Gawyn discovers that Egwene is a captive of the White Tower. He sneaks away from the Younglings and goes to the rebel Aes Sedai's camp, begging to Gareth Byrne to mount a rescue raid to save Egwene. He is denied for a while until Egwene mysterious vanishes from a chat in the World of Dreams with Siuan at the same time that explosions start up at the White Tower. A small force of men lead by Gareth and Gawyn plus Suane sneak into the city and the White Tower while the Seanchan are assaulting it. Gawyn finds an semi-conscious Egwene and carries her out of the tower back to the rebel camp.
Aviendha: She is pretty much punished the whole book by Wise Ones who proclaim that Aviendha isn't learning fast enough. Useless task after useless task is set to her for punishment and she does them all before finally having enough and yelling at the Wise Ones where they could stick their punishments. The Wise Ones all rejoice as finally Aviendha is acting like a Wise One and not an apprentice. They welcome her amongst their number and send her to Rhuidean to walk the crystal columns/arches.
Nynaeve: She is fustrated at both Rand and Cadsuane Sedai, caught between both of them. She tries several times to advise Rand and make him realize that he doesn't need to be so hard to no avail. At the same time, she tries to be part of Cadsuane's group of Sedai which she is treated as nothing more than an Accepted. While in the capital of Arad Doman, she hunts down leads to where Graendal the Forsaken is for Rand when the messagener of the King of Arad Doman is killed before Rand could question where the King, and at the same time where is Graendal, was. Nynaeve is horrified when Rand takes her with him to the estate that Graendal is probably hiding. When he balefires the whole structure out of existance from a distance, she turns to Cadsuane Sedai to try and help fix him before he ends up killing the whole world. Cadsuane makes her get the location of Perrin from Rand which takes a while but she finally gets it from him when they head back to Tear, abandoning Arad Doman to chaos.
Rand: Rand takes his forces to Arad Doman to quell the chaos of the nation and try to get a new king named for it. He bargins with the great Domani general, Rodel Ituralde, who has been waging a fairly successful guerilla war against the Seanchan invaders, into moving his troubles into Saldaea to guard the Blight. In return, Rand promises to find the king, or replace him via election by the Merchant Council, and bring stability to Arad Doman. Rand does attempt this with his Saldaean troops and Aiel though it is hard going. Meanwhile, Rand's Aes Sedai and Cadsuane are attempting to interrogate Semirhage, captured at the end of the last book, though Rand has commanded she cannot be tortured. Semirhage treats them all like children and answers their questions by talking about all the ways she has tortured/killed people in the past and saying that is what she would do to them and their loved ones. Cadsuane finally stumbles on the solution when Semirhage knocks her daily meal from a Aes Sedai's hands, demanding something better than the bean soup they were feeding her. Cadsuane forces Semirhage's face into the mush on the ground, saying if she is going to act like a child she would be treated like a child. Semirhage is then placed across her lap and has the tar spanked out of her by Cadsuane. Semirhage starts to break under the humiliation as the Sedai start treating her as nothing more than a human woman. Luckily, she is saved one evening by a Black Ajah sister amongst the bunch at Shaidar Haran's command. She takes the male Domination Band (Seanchan channeler necklace) that Cadsuane was keeping safe and ambushes Rand and Min in his bedroom. A quick struggle ensues before Semirhage is able to get the collar on Rand's neck. She and the Black sister command Rand to kill Min who he starts to choke to death (the Domination Band actually can let the users control the male channeler completely, not just compel them to obey via pain/nasuea like the Seanchan female version of it). As his fingers choked the life from Min, something in Rand broke as he came to realize nothing the Forsaken or the Dark One could do would affect him anymore, this was the last straw so to speak, since he was killing someone he loved just like Lews Therin did. He looked for a way out but was unable to grasp Saidin through the collar until he found a power leagues beyond saidin in strength. Grasping the True Power, Rand broke out of the Domination Band and balefired both Semirhage and the Black sister. Min survived but Rand would not be the same after. All emotion faded from him as he became harder than steel, he became cuendillar. He also seemed to merge more with the voice of Lews Therin in his head, starting to talk as if he actually was Lew Therin in some instances. He exiles Cadsuane from his sight on pain of death after this. Rand has his meeting with Tuon of the Seanchan at Falme but demands she have a truce with him for the time. His demanding nature goes against everything Tuon believes he should be (a male channeler should die, the Dragon Reborn has to kneel before the Crystal Throne of the Empress of Seanchan, etc) so she denies his terms. They leave the meeting both knowing it will be war after. It was after this that Rand really started to hunt for Graendal though with the help of Nynaeve, he was able to track down the hiding place of the Forsaken. Travelling to it with twenty Maidens and a few other followers plus Min and Nynaeve, Rand sent in a brown-nosing Domani Lord to the estate to request a meeting with Graendal's noble persona. The man came back under heavy Compulsion which right afterward Rand, once more having the ter'angreal connecting him to the giant statue sa'angreal, weaves a massive spear of Balefire that completely wipes out the whole land of Graendal's estate. He has Nynaeve check the lord for the Compulsion and takes its disappearance as signs of Graendal's death. Rand finally gives up on Arad Doman and moves his troops back to Tear, to meet with the Borderlander armies and get all his troops ready for the Last Battle. Rand goes to meet with the Borderlanders but only finds Hurin, the Sniffer from Great Hunt, waiting for him with a message to meet the Borderlander Kings/Queens in Far Madding. Rand is furious at them for trying to trick him into another 'box' and wars with himself and others over just destroying the whole lot of Borderlanders with rains of fire and lightning. Cadsuane, after discovering the whereabout of Perrin through Nynaeve, brings back Tam al'Thor to Tear. He meets Rand for the first time since he left the Two Rivers and they have a good father/son chat as Rand's hardness starts to crack slightly. When Tam mentions who brought him there, Rand grows super-furious. He rants and raves about being manipulated by Aes Sedai and others and almost kills Tam with Balefire before stopping himself. In shock at what he almost did, Rand opens a Gateway and flees. He heads to Ebou Dar, contemplating destroying the Seanchan for good but instead travels again, arriving at Far Madding and contemplating killing the Borderlanders again. He finally ends up on the very peak of Dragonmount where he contemplating killing himself or the whole world. He is destined to die afterall and is tired of being reborn to suffer and cause suffering time after time. Nothing will change, he thinks. As he pulls all the power the massive sa'angreal can muster, Rand is ready to die and take the world with him but he remembers something Tam told him before, "Sometimes its not what you do that matters, but why you do it." It wasn't important that he had to die or might have no choice in the matter, it was that he did it for a chance to love again, to protect those he loved again, and to live again. Rand's shell cracks as he turns the overflowing amount of saidin he holds back onto the massive sa'angreal, crushing the device into rubble. As the book ends, he is laughing and crying atop Dragonmount from emotion he hasn't felt in months.
sadf Bloodsage fucked around with this message on 11-17-2009 at 04:51 PM.
--Satan, quoted by John Milton
*Smooths skirts over lap.* *stands and walks off as the skirt makes a swishing noise!*
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Bloodsage had this to say about Reading Rainbow:
I was good for about 3 books, then hung on out of sheer doggedness through Path of Daggers...but it look as if this one is still as pointlessly convoluted as ever.sadf
I always burn out somewhere through book 6 or 7. I actually enjoyed book 9, but I heard 10 was worse and just couldn't give a shit any more.
I have no idea why people aren't offended by the idea of a series that makes you read through ten books just to get one or two good ones.
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Dr. Gee impressed everyone with:
The first four were pretty good and they degraded slowly enough after that to keep you reading. Once you get through book seven you start telling yourself that since you've come all this way you might as well keep going. Then around halfway through book eight suicide becomes a viable option.
People tell me this, but I don't see it. Perhaps I'm far too picky or perhaps we just weren't reading the same book, but I found the first book to be dreadfully boring.
"Howdy! Farmboy here!"
"Hey! There's a prophecy! Wanna get in on it?"
"Fuck yeah! Let's do some heroics!"
"Okay, let's take this group of talented youngsters and one crybaby girl and have ourselves an adventure filled to the brim withOH MY GOD LOOK OUT A NAZGUL!"
"Halfman."
"HALFMAN! AND A BUNCH OF ORCS!"
"Trollocs."
"YES, RUN."
"Okay, I think we got awOH MY GOD A DEADLY MIST RUN!"
"That was a clOH MY GOD MORE TROLLOCS RUN!"
"Thank goodness we escaped thaOH MY GOD A LIGHT RAIN RUN!"
"Hey, I can talk to wolves!"
Also a gleeman dies.
