I enjoyed this book, despite wandering into it with doubt. I’ve internalized many of the “perfect people” and related attacks on the series, but enjoyed this book all the same.
The scope is less sweeping, and the characters are well developed and grow in complex and realistic ways. I like Flick and Ulaume, and they really benefit from the extra attention. I’m curious again about the evolution of the world, and will probably pick up the next book in the series sometime soon.
Update: We’ll get together Saturday night at 7 pm (or so), have a BBQ, eat, and discuss our plans.
Since the discussion about “Are people too busy?” was canceled for people being too busy, it looks like a discussion we should have. Let’s have it on April 24th [the next day everyone currently expects to be available]. If you can’t make it, chime in and let us know!
Recently I’ve had strange thoughts cross pollinating and thought I’d share. The common theme is the end of the world– in a transformative way.
The idea was inserted into my brain by Joshua’s quick overview of Children of Men. That, in turn, brought back memories of Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, a different book about a humanity that just stops reproducing and slowly dwindles. It’s a cool look at cloning and social biases– not on the same point as Children of Men (as I understand it), but closely related.
Recently I’ve been reading The Wraiths of Will and Pleasure, a book about the Wraeththu. After reading some good critiques of the original series and overall setup, I know I’m reading the new book with a somewhat tainted mind, but it’s still interesting. In the backstory, a successor race (the Wraeththu) emerges from the midst of humanity and starts competing and killing it off. It’s kind of a “vampire/zombie plague” like spread, and is a fascinating look at the struggle between humanity’s remnants and its heirs.
In that, it reminded me of Darwin’s Radio by Greg Bear. In Darwin’s Radio, a few people giving birth to Homo Sapien’s (assumed) successor, strange children with talents as different from us as we are different from Neanderthals.
The other thread it sparked was the fantasy twist– the Patryns and Sartan from the Death Gate Cycle. They too are descended from humanity, grow up in its midst, and eventually blow up and recreate the world in a new pattern. (That’s all backstory!) The Deryni series is another story of insiders… thinking of the Wraeththu and Patryns and Sartan makes me wonder if their history, shadowed and paralleling the larger humanity’s, would also work.
So, five or six threads came to mind, none of which match together smoothly. The Deyrni are different from the rest– but always close to my heart I guess– I’ll set them aside. The rest are about a huge upheaval, the changing of the world.
On further thought, I can think of one RPG that kind of fits this mold– including the ambivalent role of a newly emerging superrace. White Wolf’s Aberrant is reputedly straight on target– super beings emerge in a relatively “realistic” world of today. It’s a bit like X-men (at least the movie versions I’m familiar with), with their interactions in larger society a little strained, with everyone trying to figure out how to pigeon hole them.
I wonder if an interactive history style game would work. For the first four ideas (humanity dies out, what replaces it), it’d be interesting to have a general timeline [maybe play out society wide stuff Reign or Aria style], then dip into specific characters at times of crisis in the history. So maybe start with a short series centered on the eruption of the alternate race, with the PCs playing both sides of the fence. Then hop forward a few decades or centuries and play characters in the new situation, as the balance between the new and old changes.
Anyway, I’m not actively planning anything along these lines at the moment– strangely, this came up just as I was studying the very heroic Spirit of the Century. I wonder if my interest is as a balance to the optimism of the pulps. Or just getting hit with similar plot ideas several times in succession.
A note to myself: Jennifer really liked this dish. (No pictures; I was behind schedule and didn’t pause to snap a picture.)
The recipe for Swiss Chard and Potato Enchiladas, from the farm.
Update: Both Kev and Ben canceled, so we’re canceling altogether. Next week wouldn’t have worked for Ben or Kev either, so we’ll discuss this (and hopefully game) on the 24th.
The previous meeting (for April 3rd) didn’t work out. We’ll game as normal this week, but we also need to look into game scheduling changes due to life changes.
Recent key life changes: Ben will be available to game on only the second and fourth weekends of the month. The other weekends he’ll have Emily.
Jennifer’s work now extends to 6pm and often runs over. Should we push the official start time back to 7 pm?
I know there are others; Mike has work and car issues, Kevin is juggling school and work schedules, etc.
So, let’s put our thinking caps on. Do we need to meet less often? Can everyone coordinate their schedule for most Fridays except Ben? If so, do we want to run different games on alternating weeks? Do we think that gaming more often (like adding a Sunday game) is the direction to go?
If you have ideas about a game or campaign for the alternate weeks, and think you’ll have time to run it, let’s talk about it. The previous games we’ve played would be cool to pick back up, though there would be some character additions and subtractions that we’d need to work in.
If you know people who’d love to play, a new game start is the best time to consider expanding or contracting the group.
If you have other thoughts– I’m sure I missed obvious ideas and consequences– chime in by phone, email, or comment. Thanks!
It’s been a while since I showed off my food, so here are a few dishes I’ve made recently. First, though, many hearty thanks to T&D Willey Farms for providing so many of the fresh fruits and vegetables shown.
An amusing Mouse with Swords book, Redwall is well written but clearly pitched at younger readers. I enjoyed it in general, but found that the straightforward plot and excessive praise for Mattias. Several points amused me as an older reader… where the simplistic charm of the series fell too far short of my expectations.
This would all be easily solved by reading the book earlier. It’d make a good book to give less proficient readers.
The nature of the animal societies is quirky and hard to nail down– very much a humans in furry skin, with some elements altered to fit the reduced size, while others remain proportioned as in our world. It’s also semi-medieval, but has a number of other elements that are out of time. In the end, it’s probably best not to concentrate on the details and investigate them for consistency, but just to enjoy the yarn for a good tale told around a campfire.
Brandon Sanderson, the author of the last Wheel of Time book, has a long blog post up about A Memory of Light. As he reread the series and took note of the plotlines remaining to be closed, the book kept ballooning. In the end, it looks like the final “book” will be three books. They’re currently looking at publication of the first chunk this year (November of 2009), with the remaining books probably coming out in 2010 and 2011.
He does a great job of explaining how this came about and gives us a glimpse at the way authors, editors, publishers, and booksellers interact and direct changes back and forth.
I enjoyed Mistborn very much, and look forward to these novels, despite falling off of the Wheel of Time wagon some time ago. It sounds like there’s a plan, which has me excited and waiting for November. Maybe now I’ll get around to reading Knife of Dreams….
The Iron Hunt is a good book with a fascinating main character and several good supporting characters. While it’s superficially similar to the “WoD knockoff” books that I’ve been burning out on, several interesting twists are made to the setting and characters that keep it from being a playground of wizards, werewolves, and vampires. I found this via Scalzi’s Big Idea piece by her.
The biggest element keeping everything together is that there aren’t dozens of splats. The foes are demons, though they aren’t ‘traditional’ demons with red skin and pitchforks. They are very alien like, though possession is the heart of their power and influence.
Maxine Kiss is a solid, conflicted character, with a huge responsibility thrown at her. She’s the last of her bloodline and is the “jailer” of the demons. In ancient days, pacts were made with some demons that have served her family for generations…
The book has an open ending, so I expect to see other books in the series later. This book is relatively complete despite that open ending, with several other interesting elements. I like the debate over salvation, whether the demons can be reformed at all. The nature of the prison is interesting, though its scale makes it very difficult to convey.
Despite a few glitches, I really liked the book. I look forward to the next.
I was clued into the Hostile Takeover trilogy by this Big Idea piece over on Whatever. It sounded like a fun book to investigate– a anarchical paradise in the middle of a huge confederacy. I was limited by the local library’s supplies however.
Partisan is the second book in the series. The local library doesn’t have books one and three, so that’s where I jumped in. The book is written well as a semi-stand alone; while it’s clear that the characters have had some recent and strong shifts in relations [in book one], their current situation is clear. The book suffers a bit as a mid-trilogy book, since the main plot is a traditional middle book “the recent victory only defeated a small arm of the overall plot”. There are a lot of strings that lead forward, implying that the last book integrate those loose threads and drive to an explosive conclusion. This book certainly primed me to look for the last book in the trilogy [Revolutionary]– or to buy the whole trilogy (which I now see is reprinted all under one cover).
The characterization was a little flat– the big swings don’t seem grounded in the character as developed in this book– but I can understand that the character grounding was developed in the first book. In general, I liked the book, and look forward to seeing what he’s doing now.