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RichardAbbott
About
- Username
- RichardAbbott
- Joined
- Visits
- 6,360
- Last Active
- Roles
- Member, Administrator, Moderator
- Games I like
- Sundry, mostly board
- Books I like
- Science fiction, fantasy, some historical fiction
Comments
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It's also been interesting for me having just read The Sinbad Journey which I have rattled on about in our Nights discussions. That had quite a lot of discussion of the maritime cultures around the Indian Ocean and their sundry religious and social …
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I guess my feelings were sort of in the middle. I was never at serious risk of giving up, though I did wonder from time to time if the book was too long. But I wasn't gripped by it in the way @clash_bowley describes. I did enjoy reading it in parall…
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I've finished it!
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Just 35 of the tales huh! That would be an interesting piece of work to understand, though I strongly suspect you'd need to be very familiar with the historical development of Arabic and other languages to follow it closely.It reminds me a bit of th…
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I liked this story! And am looking forward to reading the next part - yes, I managed to restrain myself from reading straight on... One of the striking features is how aspects of the story - for example our sudden introduction to the Pari - connect …
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(Quote) Yup you're right, they are individually quite long so we'll just tackle Sun of Suns for Feb :)
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Discussion area set up for Sun of Suns
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I enjoyed these again, but I wasn't convinced that the incomprehension was gender based. To me it came over more like the bafflement of a non-magician trying to come to terms with the magical abilities and preferences of someone they had assumed was…
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> @Apocryphal said: > (Quote) > The individual books come hardback or trade paperback, and are between 300 and 400 pages each - so it might actually just be you breezing through things! I guess a testament to how much you like it. Fair…
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> @clash_bowley said: > (Quote) > I got way behind because of one thing or another and it looked like I was just too far behind. They're pretty much all separate stories so it doesn't matter if you skip some sections! I can't see there…
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(Quote) I'll set up the new discussion area early next week but have currently reverted to reading The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi
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(Quote) Hm that's weird. They must be pretty small pages in the print edition :) I whipped through 1/6 of the compilation of the first two books pretty rapidly while deciding on it. But if it gets burdensome we can stop after just the first one. Let…
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I enjoyed these tales again, though in places they seemed to cover similar ground to what we've had before. I guess that's inevitable really! I wasn't sure about Ali Khawaja being the prototypical detective story - it seemed to me more along the li…
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All: for February's read I'm thinking the first two of Karl Schroeder's _Virga_ series of novellas (presupposing we haven't read them before my time?). Schroeder is a Canadian writer currently living in Toronto. The _Virga_ books are all set on (or …
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I was about to put out a mild nag about February's book chooser making a choice, but I've just realised that actually it's down to me... I'll give it some thought. Meanwhile the January book is The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi+ by SA Chakraborty, s…
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I had a vague idea that the character names might be significant in terms of the story, but I'm no longer convinced: Ali Baba = Great Leader Qasim = Generous / charitable Majana (from Murjana) = Little Pearl Ah well. If I'd been choosing the names t…
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I like the link with The Hobbit :)
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I have to admit that I knew nothing about Marjana before reading this! As was indicated in one of the comments, in most Western versions of the tales women are relegated to distraction or decoration rather than being agents of the action. I mean, ho…
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I came across some notes that Andre Norton made in 1979 about the origins of the whole Witch World saga (including maps :) ) which bear copying here from https://andre-norton.com/works-of-a-master/series-of-a-master/the-witch-world-saga (Quote) (I…
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BTW here's the cover for the Kindle version that I have been reading, attributed to Matt Forsyth (Image)
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It seemed to me, albeit with far less experience than any of you folk, that the background / setting is one that gives enough detail to allow a potential player to choose one of several character types. So instead of choosing wizard / warrior / elf …
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(Quote) I think this is another symptom of the time of writing of the book - Andre Norton tends here (and in some of her other books) to switch viewpoint character quite abruptly. This practice is nowadays more frowned upon, going by the name "…
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Like that cover! My version has yet another cover, by Matt Forsyth, which I'll try to find a way to upload. The only virgins rule (again spoiler alert not strictly true as the series goes on, but widely believed) is an interesting twist on the &…
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"Tregarth" reads as a Cornish name to me, with close links to Welsh, all suggesting that the root of the symbolism and magic is either Celtic or maybe Brythonic. On its use in literature, I guess it depends on whether it's used in a system…
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My take is that whatever the original historical setup of the witch world had been, the fact that it was a kind of readily accessible nexus between worlds - the very fact that made it possible for Simon Tregarth to get there in the first place - mea…
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Spoiler alert - the whole "giving up her future for the hero" business is turned on its head at the start of the sequel _Web of the Witch World". I must admit that I hadn't really noticed the shortness of the book! It seemed of a p…
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Andre Norton was one of the very first SFF authors I ever came across, back in Godalming library when I were but a lad (Image) Alongside other authors of course, but it was her that I really attached to (and indeed, it was her that made me first wa…
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I'm very happy to continue
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(Quote) That's a slightly tricky question given that we're reading the tales in translation. There are kind of two questions folded into this a) does each story in isolation follow a ring structure, and b) does the cycle of seven stories as a whole …
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Love "spice" as a plural for "spouse" - who does one lobby to get a new word into the dictionary? At the risk of being boring about Severin, there were some great bits that I read last night. At this point in the story he has be…