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Yeah, they are. There is sort of precedent for a deva's children being incarnations of other devas (Ganga), but they weren't all the same guy.
I guess Arjuna being an incarnation of his father sort of fits with the idea that one is "reborn" through his son brought up earlier (section XC and section CLXI), although I'm pretty sure that wasn't this literal.
Recent reading: Jacek Dukaj's short story collection King of Pain. Guys, if by any chance any of you knows a publisher that owes you any favours, or perhaps is late with the money he had borrowed from your Fammiglia, tell him to translate and publish Jacek Dukaj.
You think that story about technological singularity your favourite author wrote is deep? The punch in the face that this collection has for a hello involves technological singularity together with its effects on family life, with a side order of generational conflict, Papal encycliques, and the philosophy of Wittgenstein, sprinkled with MMORPGs the protagonist plays. Hell, this last thing contains another trademark of Dukaj, each of the ideas he casually dismisses as mere MMORPGs could be turned into whole book series by wordcrafters like David Weber, earn dozens of thousands of words for their TVT entries. Bit hard to chew through because of the narration reflecting the protagonist's way of viewing the world, I do admit.
Then there is the rest of them. Retro-SF that could hide forever between Lem's Pirx stories, personally I've found it the second most enjoyable. A story of a street-child from South American slums who ends up drafted into a secret project of the US government. Dark, thick, grim. Awesome. I am told Dukaj wrote it at twenty, if you need a way to un-motivate you from any writing project that you are trying on your own, chances are that'd be it. A retelling of The Heart of Darkness, with victorious Nazis, on another planet. The first half has a mood that whacks you like the Neue Deutsche Härte that the author advises you to listen to while reading, the second is a bit underwhelming after that build-up. Still fun though, with that first half. And a couple more I can't be bothered to give descriptions of at the moment.
I finished book 1 of the Mahabharata. The whole "reincarnation of Indra" thing seems to have been swept aside and in favor of presenting Arjuna and Krishna as reincarnations of the Nara-Narayan duo (not that a guy can't have more than one past life, but still).
Also, the last part got Arjuna to fight his father somehow. When vacationing with Krishna (the Krishna, not anyone else with Krishna as an alternate name), Arjuna comes across a hungry fellow, who is actually Agni, the deity of fire. Apparently he really wants to eat this forest, which involves burning it down, since he got a headache from some king continuously sacrificing (thus, feeding him) butter for twelve years. Problem is, Indra won't let this particular forest burn down (he keeps pouring rain over it whenever Agni tries), so Agni enlists the help of Arjuna and Krishna, and giving them cool weapons and chariots. This leads to our heroes going against the celestials themselves, including Indra. And winning. Somehow they managed to deflect the devas' attacks and all. Also, Arjuna has a wind weapon that's just perfect against stormclouds.
Started reading a book called Affluenza because consumerism is the one thing I completely embrace about modern society and clearly I need to learn that's wrong.
It's not doing too well so far (like... twenty pages in maybe but it's a big book with small text) the first page was a test about how you were infected with affluenza and how thinking "My life can be improved if I buy X item" is apparently a sign of it. Allfuenza being the consumerist obsession modern society has.
Then we come to an illustrative example that involves a womanizing rich boy who apparently has no friends and works all day vs. a Nigerian-born New York taxi driver who is nice and happy, I would list off all the circumstances about this example (not even counting that the rich boy was an actual social connection of the author's friend and therefore felt more comfortable being honest with him versus the fact that the Nigerian cab driver would probably just be fun and chipper in the cab because that's his job).
I'll read some more but I'm not exactly convinced that the compulsive purchasing of non-essential items (like, iunno, the book) doesn't make things better yet.
As the joke goes: money won't bring you happiness, but it's better to cry in Ferrari than otherwise, eh?
My reading have recently been two books: outline of Western European medieval warfare and history and culture of Central Asia. I actually read the former before finishing the latter, and it looks like I won't finish it. I bought it for two reasons, the content, and the sweet sensation of owning a huge-ass book of this content. In retrospect, I didn't expect it will be so... red. See, authored by a Tajik. I have a feeling he had to out-commie all the Russians in the trade to get at the top, 'cause other books I've read written in that kind of circumstances were a lot less enthusiastically Marxist. Heh heh.
Stopped reading Allfuenza because the author basically said that anyone who was a shopaholic definitely had a terrible childhood and women shouldn't work because they need to take care of children at home and we should sell all army land to pay women to stay home and have/take care of children.
Also I just generally didn't ever believe any of what he said (his constant portrayal of well-developed and self-aware people as being INFECTED WITH THE NEED TO SPEND SPEND SPEEEEEEEEND because they had nice things, because it's a crime to have nice things now).
Recent reading: The Riddle-Master of Hed trilogy by Patricia A. McKillip. Solving riddles is already a serious business, but the hero finds out that what he knew of it is just the tip of the iceberg.
Which brings me to a thought I've had once. McKillip wrote a story with riddles and their solving as an important part of the plot. Guy Gavriel Kay, whose writing you already know I've been into, wrote a novel with a mosaicist as a protagonist and a couple of themes revolving around his craft.
So, my point. Does any of you know of a novel, fantasy or historical, where the plot revolves around mathematics? It sure was a serious business in quite a number of times in our history.
So, I've been reading a blog (in Polish, so no point in linking), and in there an article on Tolkien ends up with:
And it got me thinking. It's stated often, and keeps causing discussions to start on Internet forums, that there is no SF "canon" in the same way. But perhaps, subgenres within broader SF have. Take military SF. If that doesn't have a generic default setting - well, what with the same types of characters behaving in the same way (the cowardly/sleazy civilian politician, the noble warhawk career military type, the sleazy superior officer, the soldier woman), similar plot devices (Always Chaotic Evil bug aliens, Proud Warrior Race cat/bear aliens, etc., oppressive statist central government), similar plot outlines (rugged frontier-men rebel against the central government, evil aliens attack and push humans back until proven to lack creativity).
TL;DR while SF is hard to sum up in its entirety, it has subgenres as derivative as pseudo-Tolkienian fantasy.
They're totally the same thing <_< >_>
I'm always surprised at how much a single fantasy novel series can contain, but I'm more impressed at the level of dedication it takes to write like 12, 500 page novels.
Since we have a book thread, I guess I'll mention how I recently remembered that Sara Shepard had a new book series out called The Perfectionists and I'm interested in reading it. I would get the e-book versions, but I'm concerned with how much time I spend looking at screens already nowadays.
I'll also try and remember that Lisi Harrison's The Pretenders series exists, and finally get around to reading those. Maybe that book that got all the press this year too; One of Us is Lying, it seems interesting.
I'll start with the setting. No medieval Europe here - it's a wonderful Oriental mix of Hindu, Persian and occasional Mongolian elements. You know, palaces, tigers, elephants, wandering mystics and so on. The place the action is set in is an exotic empire founded several generations before by one of the warrior princes from the northern steppes, bordered by another similar empire on one side and un-invade-able pirate haven on the other.
The plot is essentially built around a conflict between sons of the emperor - one is a philosopher and mystic, the other a hardline conservative and military man. Parental favouritism towards the first pushes the second into rebellion. The intrigue involves competing religions, different peoples and their representatives within the empire, and finally other siblings within the court, who are forced to side with one of the two warring brothers.
The narration jumps between focus on the court, and the bystander perspective of foreign merchants who arrive from beyond the sea. This means that at one point we have an insight into the relation between the primary characters, and then watch everything from distance, with sympathy towards one or another or without it. Linguistically, everything is told in a wistful tone that quite evokes the mood of the story.
The best part: it's not fantasy fiction. It's not even fiction. It's actually a book about Mughal India. The difference between it and the average historical book is that instead of just telling the facts, it is written to bring out the whole drama to the front. You could sprinkle dialogues on it, and it'd be a novel. And since the topic is not well known in the West, you could probably sell it as fantasy and find quite a number of people cheering you for creative world-building, if not necessarily for the plot and character design.
I was like "this is such a reversal of what usually happens in fiction" and then it wasn't even fiction which makes it sound really interesting.
All I've read lately is Agreement to be Gay for 30 Days (it is as offensive as it sounds).
The fight scenes sure were miserable, even when characters are all braggy about it. Which is good since there's never a bad time to be reminded how terrible war is. Though maybe I'm too heavily affected by already knowing about how Achilles shows up in the sequel and blatantly states that the "heroic" life he had wasn't exactly worth it. Also it's hard to hate any of the people when it doesn't let me forget how much worse the gods are and how much of the story happens because of their manipulations.
I'll get to the Odyssey at some point, though it's a little annoying that I'll most likely never get to experience the complete story of the Trojan War.
It also makes me like how Achilles turns out in the later part of Fate/Apocrypha, despite how clumsily it handled like, everything.
I mean, if other villainous parents suggest their children commit horrific acts of self-mutilation just so a prince can marry them that's something to look forward to.
But also at the same time is about being in love with something that still doesn't actually exist.
I also read The Twelve Dancing Princesses, which was about twelve hilariously terrible princesses who let lots of men die for no real reason and never get punished.
It's set in a world with a semi-draconic government that revolves around everybody maintaining their utmost health and working as one to maintain the survival of the species, but it quickly pulls out of that a beautiful discussion of governments as a whole.
Especially those with systems that wish to be presented as infallible just because they're doing the least harm to people. The two main characters like, literally were something else entirely; the heroine, Mia Holl, doesn't really care what's going on in the world till her brother Moritz dies. Moritz was opposed to the Method, and ends up in stuff that lead to him being targeted by Those With Influence, which include "journalist"-slash-leader-of-the-movement Heinrich Kramer.
He's convicted of a crime he didn't commit, and kills himself (because the alternative is being sentenced to freezing until whenever they find the cure for murderous tendencies). He leaves Mia his imaginary girlfriend, who acts as the better part of Mia's conscious through the first half as she avoids her feelings towards what the Method has done.
Mia is confronted with Heinrich Kramer, a staunch supporter of the method, who refuses to be called a fanatic. It's really hard to explain the whole thing without just like, really getting into it, but their dynamic is something else, I really loved it.
Aside from like, the genuine literary merit this book has, it addresses a lot of fun things. At one point, the main character is annoyed by her lawyer because his sad backstory reason for opposing the Method is way less relevant than her's.
As soon as I find a PDF reader. any recommendations?
I think the spiral of darkness in this story is so very beautiful. That sounds weird, but it's such a pure comedy of many errors combined with an ending that's somehow stacked in the protagonist's favour only after their own demise which also ruins the ballerina's life forever.
So the story is basically told from the point of view of a one-legged tin soldier who wrongly assumes the paper ballerina in a beautiful house is just like him. The truth is her other leg is just hidden behind her massive tutu. Then we have the soldier torn away from her and everything that gives him hope, but as soon as he manages to get back the purest form of evil in the world (a small child) kills him by tossing him into a fire.
But it's not enough for him to suffer in his massively unrequited love, now the ballerina is thrown into the fire too by a gust of wind and is forced to become bound to him together as part of a tiny tin heart.
All through this, the tin soldier remains brave and steadfast for no real reason, but it's vaguely inspiring as well (poor ballerina though).
I felt the same way about Anastasia
Apparently people complained about music trends even in the time of Homer.
The story is set in an alternate version of the UK, called Highland, where the state somehow came to the decision that future leaders all need to be pure and lacking in flaws. In this case, they brand anybody found flawed so they can never become anything resembling one. This escalates very quickly, and the Flawed class become such a repressed and hated minority that it quickly descends into a classist system.
Our protagonist is Celestine North, who self-defines as a Perfect citizen, her views greatly shaped by her mother's attitude as a model and her father's close relationship with the main judge of the Flawed Courts of the Guild; Judge Crevan.
The Guild is the system that runs parallel to the real government. The Flawed are never imprisoned, just painfully branded and then shunned forever. Celestine witnesses a neighbor, the wife another one of the judge's (many) close business relationships be branded, and is scarred by the experience. She then attempts to help a Flawed man, leading to her own turn in the courts where tensions rise and she basically breaks Judge Crevan.
What follows is equal parts learning to live her new life as Flawed and anger at the system she once trusted in without even a single doubt. I think this is probably the best use of the dystopian setting I've ever seen in a YA novel aside from Seven Second Delay, because this isn't a story of an action hero who immediately wants to change things.
When Celestine does decide what she wants halfway through the book, she decides she doesn't really care about much aside from her family's safety and revenge against Craven. She realizes very quickly that everybody with even the slightest motive wishes to use her for their own ends. It's quite the slow burn at first, but once the political intrigue angle starts to build up, it really doesn't let up
It's just full-on politics and mindgames, because our protagonist has nothing aside from her wit to keep her going. Her case is so public that 'disappearing' her becomes a problem, so she can have a degree of influence even with the slightest of actions.
Then there's the discrimination she faces. It was genuinely hard to read in bits, particularly Logan's sermon at her... once he's gotten his friends to strip her and tie her up, but it was all things that really hit close to home. This girl who would once not even look at a Flawed person realizes that everybody shares her former sentiments, especially now that somebody who was well-and-truly considered 'one of them' is Flawed.
It's really funny to read this book at times, because 1/8th of the way in the protagonist is revealed to be of mixed race. At first, I loved it, but I was also very aware that YA is the genre of perfect pretty white blonde people (her mother is, and it takes a lot to finally knock the perfect out of her). Making her mixed-race really makes those moments where she admits her prejudices against the Flawed particularly interesting and ironic, because she is Perfect at the start of the story. It was nice to have that.
That's not the only minority representation either; aside from Logan's friend Gavin, who "can't stop sleeping with boys", Celestine's representative in the Guild Court, Barry, has a husband. It was pretty cool, especially since YA novels that deal with discriminatory systems just seem to ignore people who are minorities IRL in general (or, in the case of The Selection series, make sure to have them face the most suffering possible but MC is too busy with Royal Bachelorette to care ie Never Forget How The Worst Eadlyn was).
The only thing I'm worried about going into book 2 and the conclusion is Carrick. Carrick is a boy who is in the Guild holding cells at the same time as Celestine, and the narrative slowly builds at a romance between them. Problem is, Carrick has said about two sentences throughout the whole book, and Celestine has built this guy up like nobody's business.
What's even weirder is that despite being an 18 year old Flawed At Birth orphan raised in a brainwashing facility to un-Flaw him, Carrick is built like a super soldier with his muscles "permanently flexed" (not even kidding, this was probably the one time I was like "yup, YA" in the whole book). Whenever he shows up, Carrick is mentioned to be danged freaking hot with giaaaaaaaaaaant muscles. I mean, everybody likes a good insane description of some guy's rippling muscles under an ill-fitting shirt, but it makes no sense why he's so built (I bet Flawed people aren't even allowed to use gyms). It is doubly weird, because his only other real character traits are being a powder keg of unending anger and his general not dislike of Celestine.
I really hope "Political Intrigue" and "Oh my gosh does Carrick like me his muscles have muscles which also have muscles" don't become competing voices in the next book. This one worked, a lot. I really want to have a new favorite YA series.
Also FOR GOODNESS SAKES CELESTINE WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR IS IN THE GLOBE I figured this out like, a page after it was mentioned, but she still hasn't.
It's called Dear My Teacher. It's a yuri manga about a teacher-student relationship. None of those three traits (manga, yuri, teacher-student relationship) are things that normally attract my attention. But the character designs were rather pleasant to look at so I checked it out, and then the first two books of the story have surprisingly effective drama, which suddenly put it on my radar in a big way.
I did not think so at the start, and for about 150 pages in I thought my worst nightmares had come true and it had really suffered from second book slump (despite not being a trilogy). To be honest, it probably had. A bunch of characters were introduced in an insular setting, all revolving around Carrick. Celestine jumps into bed with him after speaking to him for about a day (things happened very, very fast) even though she says she hadn't slept with Art for the six months they'd been dating.
Carrick is in this book a bunch, but the fact that I practically burst with happiness once he disappeared for a bit shows how much not much he is. He's involved in a lot, and at first it seems like Celestine will take a step back to let him shine, but he actually is just involved in a lot of other characters plans. He's a bad love interest, and to skip to the end, when Celestine picks him over Art in a love triangle that happens literally within the last twenty pages, it makes no sense.
The annoying thing is that she didn't even need to pick either, she was basically already with Carrick, and that last segment of the book was just ridiculous. Mary May, as a character, had been practically resolved, all we needed from her was a bit sentence and not a random entire chapter where she threatened Celestine's life after everything is over. It was the worst sort of padding.
Carrick is worse written than Maxon from The Selection series (but Maxon was surprisingly well done for the series he was in to be honest), which is just sad. In fact, this book presents Art as a very complex character with a full-on redemption arc, and trying to juxtapose that with Carrick in a 'love triangle' reveals how badly he was portrayed. I guess like, he slept with Celestine? That's really all he has on Art.
Back to the start; it was random, dull, and had little to do with the rest of the story. The villain of this little sideplot is a man called Bahee, who learned from the Bahemba tribe of 'Africa' (yes, just the entire continent of Africa, maybe that was how we were supposed to tell he was a villain? This from a book that later quotes Nelson Mandela, for goodness sakes) that he needed to keep his makeshift Family of Flawed together by kicking out every 18-24 year old girl by being an idiot.
Anyways, there are a few other asides in the book, but none are the worse than the first 150 pages and then the almost last 10 pages. Otherwise, man this was a ride.
The political intrigue continued, and Celestine takes things into her own hands in a big way. She comes up with strategies, never trusts blindly and is always ready to give a rousing speech. In that final sequence where they announce the Flawed Internment Camps and she launches a peaceful protest, I actually cried and felt the tension. It was perfect.
Judge Sanchez really stepped up as a counter to Judge Crevan, and she was pretty brilliant for it. Everything about her uncontrollable need for power turned her into a compelling character, and she made a pretty good Last Boss, technically.
I really love how the whole story is solved by characters with their words and devious schemes, which is a giant rarity in dystopia. The politics were YA level in the end, but they were compelling either way. There was a lot of character shuffling everywhere, and sometimes it felt like it was irrelevant to the overall plot, but the majority of it worked.
I do have to complain about how the author started resorting to "Goosebumps chapter endings". The first book had a few where Celestine will just outright tell you she's made a mistake just so there's a thrill at the end of a chapter even though she shouldn't know it. At one point, a character unlocks a room for the protagonists only for the villain to lock it again at the start of the next chapter. It was almost funny, but like... not in a serious book.
I'm quite annoyed that a lot of the good characters from the last book; like Pia Wang and Nathan Berry, were literally turned into medicine-fueled zombies and then never actually appear in a speaking role again. It makes it feel weird that Celestine is able to get away from Crevan but a seasoned reporter and a shady attorney can't at least manage that. There weren't as many good characters just in this half; that's mostly just Rafael, every other new character fell hyperflat.
There are also bits where things just stop so Celestine can tell us things, and they're never really super important bits. Just random things, which makes all of the strange padding bits (like when Carrick spends two pages explaining a non-existent carbon reclamation system) feel weird.
Overall; I think the themes of bravery and accepting yourself really came through. ...Probably better without the part where Celestine brands herself right during a part where she is being accused of doing that before, which would have undermined her testimony had her plan not worked, made even worse because she immediately recovers from this branding when the others left her bedridden for a week. The ending with the Judges was good, but it was ruined by Random Mary May at the end.
I liked it, but I don't think I'll remember (or want to remember, in certain cases) all of the plot in a years time. Worth it in the moment, but also for the overall concept and the awesomeness of the protagonist.
Oh by the way; I did read One of Us Is Lying a while ago. At first I thought it was a really great book, but I saw a lot of flaws after I'd had some time to think about it. Bronwyn as a protagonist was very basic, and Simon's plot was surprisingly cliche for a plot so novel. The other two main characters did have very good plots though... they're also the only two who really changed their lives. Bronwyn faces no real consequences for what she did, unlike they did. She also never changes because she's too focused on her romance, which was a bit annoying.
Netflixseries made out of it ("The Expanse"). You probably read and watched both already, but still I'll give you a short description.The novel opens with two basic plotlines. One is a detective story set on (or in) the asteroid Ceres, and therefore also doubles as an introduction into Solar System politics and a description of living in the Asteroid Belt. The second involves a crew of a ship delivering ice from Saturn's rings to the Belt, and the series of mishaps they get into after responding to an SOS signal. Inevitably, the two threads come together at some point. The whole intrigue that puts them in motion is rather, I'd say, simplistic, so don't expect multi-leveled conspiracies or huge revelations about the human condition or whatever. On the other hand, the setting is a very enjoyable retro universe bringing to mind the classics of SF - no crazy transhuman shit, just rotating stations and spaceships and multiple g's of acceleration.
The language was, in my opinion, rather plain - either a bit simple, or a bit flowery. It's possible that's just the matter of the translation I've had, so at this point I won't place the blame, but there also was a lot of infodumps, which I cannot pin on translators. But that doesn't detract much from the enjoyment of the read.
So, I'm giving it something around 4/5. Worth the money I spent on it.
(edit reason: corrected a mistake.)