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Comments
Molly has a lot more power, so she's going to have it worse. Much worse.
I feel like she's going to be pretty important in the next book, between that and the fact that apparently she can help Harry with his head-parasite (which is presumably what the next book is -- at least initially -- about).
I'd say I worry about her chances of survival, but I guess that's not a problem right now.
black patches
You know, I could probably just say "Please don't read the following post if you haven't read Cold Days yet."
So, uh, please don't read the following post if you haven't read Cold Days yet. And bam, now half my post won't be covered in black patches.
I think that the mantle of the Winter Knight is just a representation of the ongoing struggle between Harry's darker side and his regular self.
Well, it's not just that. It's got nifty perks too. But I think that's what it represents in the narrative.
We could make an actual Dresden Files thread if people want to talk about it indepth without spoilertags.
You know guys, I got bored by Fritz Leiber and went for a book on the development of ethnic/national identities after the fall of Western Roman Empire. It feels like I out-nerded myself.
Speaking of which, I got Under The Free Sun by the Slovenian writer Fran Saleški Finžgar as a gift; it's a novel about the settlement of South Slavs on the Balkans and their fight against the Byzantine; basically Sienkiewicz: Balkan Edition.
This reminds me, I have to read the Trilogy one day. It's fun BTW to look at Knights of the Cross after a troper's training, you know, Always Chaotic Evil and all the related tropes lumped onto the Knights by the truckload*.
*lorryload?
The painstakingly obvious nationalism in Romantic-era historical novels can often get really jarring, yep. According to some things I heard, over here the Byzantines are, almost without exceptions, decadent, corrupt and arrogant, while the Slavs are the stereotypical noble savages.
And Stara Baśń, I don't remember the English title, was even worse in this regard. It was quite comedic, really. On top of all the hating, you had, mhm, the naive level of research into the Slavic prehistory the XIXth Century had to offer. BTW give us a summary when you're done with it.
A Memory of Light is apparently going to be released in a bit over a week. Finished a reread of the series for it.
I'm not sure if I'm going to try to get back to that, or if I'm going to just reread Towers of Midnight so I can get to AMOL as quick as possible.
Towers of Midnight should brush you up well enough.
So I've had this idea floating around my head; a book where a company of mercenary knights hunt monsters by using techniques accurate to the medieval combat manuals.
Turns out I was too slow -- The Red Knight by Miles Cameron nails it hard.
From what I've heard of that book, its setting uses the same basic premise as Monster Blood Tattoo, which is interesting enough, but... what I've heard of the characters turns me off. A lot of reviewers have mentioned that they found it hard to care about the characters and that they're kind of... to quote on reviewer, "Noble by birth, but not by nature."
Which is the exact opposite of what I want.
Too bad, it sounded promising otherwise.
Man, Elantris sure does like throwing loads of made-up words at you. Something Mistborn was so good at avoiding, too.
Well, it was his first book.
And if he had called the Dor the Force, he probably would have been sued :P
I think the closest it gets is "Surgebinders" and the like, and even those names are descriptive.
^^Basically, it seems like with WoK, he resolved to only make up words for things that don't actually exist and thus don't have existing words.
The only outright made up words I can remember from Mistborn were "skaa", "kandra", and "atium"/"malatium". There may have been a couple I missed but for the most part it relied on repurposed real words (Smoker, Seeker, Inquisitor), compound words (Mistborn, Pewterarm, hazekiller), and occasionally fictional words made from familiar parts (obligator, Misting, all three magic systems).
Whereas Elantris has like three or four completely made up words already and I'm two chapters in.
Also koloss.
That's actually borrowed from German, and besides it's close enough to "colossus" to fall under the "made from familiar parts" category I think.
Remember when I wanted to talk about Tigana? 'Cause I was reminded by Comment 310694. I mean, it's not the same situation - it was written by a Canadian and inspired by Renaissance Italy - but the whole story felt kinda familiar, which is similar in a way I'll just explain. So, as I finished it, I took a look at its TVT entry, and it turned out other folks see it as "a bunch of thugs kill a decent leader". Must have been that famed applicability thing. So it means that, it seems, I had a different key to interpret the story, which made me enjoy it on a different level than others do. Except in my case, unlike Milos had it, chances are it kind of wasn't made with that key in mind.
Huh. Very interesting.
Well what I got out of Tigana was that everyone's a bisexual pedophile. (Okay, I only read like three chapters.)
On an unrelated note, I'm quite enjoying Elantris. Sarene's trolling of the king and Hrathen is hilarious.
Now that's the kind of key to Tigana that not even I was able to spot.
So The Red Knight turned out to be pretty good. Pretty damn good, in fact.
It invites comparison to George Martin's A Song Of Ice And Fire, but I think Miles Cameron does a better job of it. George's approach to medieval fantasy has always been a particular brand of arrogant -- the kind that claims knowledge, condescends and then errs heavily, while being cynical to boot. For all the entertainment A Song Of Ice And Fire provides, it's dragged down by an atmosphere of judgement and commentary. Not that Miles Cameron doesn't err, although his mistakes might be intentional. The Red Knight himself, who remains unnamed for most of the book, is very young for his position and the text is aware of this, right down to accusing the character of being occasionally petulant. Early dialogue suggests that the book is in favour of an atheistic aesop, although the remainder of the book's content is thankfully more balanced, sparing us all from any self-importance on part of the narration.
Where The Red Knight fails mostly heavily is in its moments of indulgence. While the book does well in generally keeping things under control, there's definite instances of overt fantasy writing as well. This might be fun for the author, but it's less fun for a readership. All the same, though, most of the writing is accomplished with both technical proficiency, especially the remarkable action sequences. Books don't tend to carry action sequences particularly well when compared to other mediums, but Miles Cameron has a way of describing them both laconically and in detail at once, using great efficiency of language to bundle lots of content into just a handful of words.
When it comes to a fantasy audience, I think there's something for everyone in this, if for no other reason than the diversity of characters. Lots of fantasy novels fall into the trap of having lots of different characters with different faces and clothes without the characters themselves being significantly noteworthy. The Red Knight certainly has a lot of characters, but most of them are disparate enough from one-another for it to actually make a difference. Knights, nuns, mercenaries, merchants -- various facets of medieval society are represented as perspective characters, and their differences in perspective actually provide the book with a kind of social realism and cohesion that many others lack.
I can't say I'm unbiased, though. Miles Cameron is a student of medieval swordsmanship and the book makes it clear, although contained within "easter eggs". Readers unfamiliar with historical forms of combat won't notice the references as specifically belonging to medieval swordsmanship, but there's just enough in the writing for action sequences to be delightful to those in the know without weighing down general readership. Likewise, Miles Cameron has an intimate knowledge of all kinds of medieval physicalities, from the labours of men in armour to the experience of horse riding to falconing and beyond. Under all the magic and fantasy is something intensely real and authentic -- this is a setting that would be perfectly interesting without its fantasy elements, but is elevated via the meeting of monsters accurate to folklore and combat techniques accurate to history. And then some.
The book doesn't really provide much in the way of the new, but I found it to be a fantastic fine-tuning of the fantasy genre. All the old tropes and whatnot are out in full force, but they're deployed with a highly developed understanding of medieval history, folklore, theology, magic, social structures and so on. And in that respect the book certainly is quite fresh, because in using traditional fantasy tropes in a more historically valid context, the effect produced is different and more diverse. And that's what all this accuracy ultimately produces -- diversity. The unfortunate job of a historian is not to simplify, but to make the understanding of history more complex, and Miles does a historian's job while spinning a good yarn.
I suggest picking this one up if you want to read about knights having throwdowns with wyverns using historically accurate weapons techniques, mighty siege defenses, medieval whodunnits, class disparity, spirituality and historical academia.
Yes. Yes that.
Okay, I have to note here; everything I've seen kind of agrees with this point.
Now, I'm not trying to condescend or be arrogant or anything. I am saying- I have noticed a trend with this book; almost everyone who reviews it is into historically accurate depictions of medieval life and combat. It's amazing how often reviewers talk about the author's habit of LARP'ing.
So, be warned if you want to buy it; the book is good, from a biased point of view. If you buy it, you might not like it quite as much.
Still, I haven't heard a lot of people talking about the flaws in the book, apart from flaws the book shares with books like A Song of Ice and Fire, in which the characters may wear on the readers after a while.
So, this aspect of the book seems more an... addition which adds on to the flavour of the book for many. Good points for the book have been discussed outside of that (the narrative flow in particular has been praised several times), and few flaws have been brought up even by reviewers who are normally good at it.
tl;dr if anyone besides alex picks this book up, I'd be interested in hearing opinions of it from people outside the 'we like historical accuracy' clique, just to get a fresh perspective on it.
I did describe some flaws, although they might have been lost in the wall of text.
The most pressing one is how the book sometimes indulges itself. It's difficult to describe, but sometimes the drama rises above what is really believable or appropriate, and sometimes characters lash out emotionally before proper tension has been established. It often struggles with sections that are emotively intense, although not always and it certainly has some good parts in that respect.
For me, there's also a few high fantasy elements that don't quite come together. A few too many glowing eyes, the monster perspective parts are a bit too human, and while many of the naming conventions are, well, conventional for medieval history, some of them are a bit more out of left field and require a double take so as to properly understand how to sound out the word. In your head.
The book is a far cry from perfect, but it seems aware of many of its weaknesses and plays to its strengths as often as possible.
What I really hope is for a screen adaptation at some point, because the style is already somewhat "cinematic". The overall flow of the writing runs like clear, cold water over smooth rocks, lending itself well to the faster pace of audio-visual media. And, again, bias, but it just gets so much right while being entertaining. A widely-seen adaptation of this could change the way people see the medieval world, because in this setting, chivalry is both a noble ideal that does much good and an excuse for evil works based on the interpretation of the character. Just as an example. Some people probably consider this book dark -- I don't. It's rough around the edges, roguish and prone to both ruthlessness and naive heroism. Like Han Solo in plate armour.