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NeilNjae
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- NeilNjae
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I'll post some discussion points over the weekend. It'll be interesting to hear what people think!
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(Quote) A quick search failed to turn up any sites of "SF book reviews by Black/PoC reviewers." It would be interesting to see what they thought of the book. (Quote) Yes. The conversion mostly suppresses memory, so Hoa's narration to to b…
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(Quote) Mathematician's autocorrect.
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The Broken Earth trilogy has a lot to say about racism and living under the oppression that it causes. Do we think it has anything important to say? Should we look at the books differently given the prominence of the BLM movement? I'm a white UK-re…
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(Quote) Yes, it is a good article. Perhaps it's one I should have kept in mind more as we were doing the slow read: bringing out some of those themes might have given us more to discuss. One thing that's strong in the books is the notion of changes…
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(Quote) The destruction of the world (of Syl Anagist) was caused by ordinary, boring, mundane racism and genocide. Utterly banal. I don't know if it's important in the novel that the problems were caused by exactly real-world problems, or if the sto…
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I think Essun matured a bit in this book, or perhaps she just started her transition into something other than human. She seemed less vindictive in this book than previously, but also more detached from the people around her. I was a bit disappoint…
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(Quote) I think we're in whole-hearted agreement on all of these points.
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@RichardAbbott , we have different interpretations of the stories. In Earthsea, the high kings have been gone for a long time. Certainly outside living memory, perhaps several centuries (Wikipedia suggests "several millennia"). The rule o…
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The comments remind me of two things. The "world is magic" is similar to how things work in Glorantha. Communities and their bonds are just as much entities as heroes and dragons, and both affect and can be affected by magical and mundane …
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Good thoughts about names. Yes, I liked how the mages were referred to by their homes, as a way of de-humanising them in that scene. They weren't really participants in the events of Ogion's death.
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That interpretation of Handy seems entirely consistent with what's in the book. It could well be the interpretation we're meant to have.
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(Quote) I think it's a transition from a stable but unhappy state to a better one. After all, Gont was in large part controlled by selfish lords and powerful gangsters. The assertion of "rule of law" should improve things, even if the tran…
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It was more his role in the book. Handy was involved in the initial attempted murder of Therru, but he's the one who tried to get help for her. And why was he trying to kill an infant dragon in the first place? He spends the rest of the book pursuin…
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(Quote) This is very true. The world, and the power structures in it, are shaped by men. The malign power of Aspen, Handy and Spark. The benign power of Ogion and Lebannen. There's nothing in the book to suggest that this will change, only that wome…
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(Quote) And in the UK. They need to be sheltered against south-facing walls, but they grow and fruit here.
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I'm not sure. It's a very personal story. We spend a lot of time inside characters' heads, especially Tenar's. It's about how people come to terms with change. Because it's so intropective, it fits the form of the novel. I'm not sure how to translat…
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You're right, it's a very personal book. It's about how people are changed by the great deeds they've done in the past. It's something that's rarely done in adventure fiction: what comes after the "happily ever after". One thing I liked a…
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There were some mentions of Tehanu in the le Guin documentary I mentioned the other day. Le Guin said that Wizard of Earthsea was "a wash" when it came to feminism and issues, and that it took her twenty years to find Tenar's story. It's q…
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I'm not too sure that names were an important part of this story. Ged went by the name of Hawk (rather than Sparrowhawk) because he wanted to distance himself from his life as a mage. Tenar did something similar, being known as Goha while married. T…
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There's a lot about women coming into power, and men losing theirs. Tenar comes into some ability with magic. Therru changes from crippled girl to maturing dragon. Ged comes to accept his new position of partnership with women. Aspen, the mage, refu…
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How about Ceres? There are recent stories that it may contain reservoirs of liquid water (or maybe not). It also has bright spots in some crater floors, which are ice deposits. Perhaps one of those could be an ice shell placed over an ocean, as you …
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Energy will be a concern. You're under an opaque atmosphere far from the sun, so solar power is out. Burning hydrocarbon isn't a great source, as you need to expend energy to liberate the oxygen from water, only to burn it and turn it back into wate…
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We're scheduled to discuss Tehanu starting this weekend. How about we aim to talk about The Stone Sky after that discussion has finished?
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I'm happy to read a book that's been adapted. What book are you thinking of? Does it have a film that everyone would know?
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Thanks for that!
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There'd be no surface. Brown dwarfs are between very large gas giants and stars. Just like there's no surface on Jupiter or the Sun, there'd be no surface on a brown dwarf. But there'd be plenty of scope for life in the warm clouds. The Algebraist …
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(Quote) I certainly am! I've just about finished a re-read of Dune, so I'll start on Stone Sky after that.
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Finished it as well. I can certainly tell that le Guin was older when she wrote this one, and that her concerns had changed. Should make for some interesting discussion!
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(Quote) I think that's a Descended from the Queen game, based on the storytelling game For the Queen. I've only played the basic For the Queen, but it seems like a good basis for games of this kind: exploring situations that are about feelings and a…