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RichardAbbott
About
- Username
- RichardAbbott
- Joined
- Visits
- 6,175
- 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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Continuing these thoughts, this is one reason why I don't see this as a war novel.... the events of the war and the conditions of life for most of the population are largely absent. We only find out about the Kentepai (spelling?) at the point where …
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I have to confess that I was unaware of this convoy issue, and have just now read up about it.
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A lot of it is a genre conceit, I think! By some strange piece of synchronicity I saw one of those internet joke posts just yesterday about "how to succeed as a screenplay writer" which included the sage advice "a detective is incapa…
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(Quote) Yes, it's a classic problem in lots of media - I have read all kinds of agonised blog articles by both women and men authors as to how far to include "modern" attitudes to race, gender, sexuality etc in a historical book, tackling …
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(Quote) Is he naïve and hesitant? Or is he simply inexperienced except (presumably) with prostitutes? I agree that he doesn't seem to want to make advances to a woman he respects and potentially) loves, but routinely waits for them to make an explic…
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(Quote) In fact those three years were kind of glossed over in almost every way, which I found probably the most surprising and disappointing aspect of the book
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(Quote) I agree to the extent that he had become unable to successfully reintegrate into either standard American or Hawaiian society, and so went back to the only place he knew that he might find respite. Perhaps not unlike Frodo, his success at ri…
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(Quote) Yes, fair point. I guess what I meant to write was that "I'm not sure that any individuals here are either simplistic heroes or villains". All of the main ones have both likeable and unlikable qualities, so that their heroic or vil…
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(Quote) Quite a different level of detail from The Orenda, for example
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It's a challenging question for our age, I think. Over many millennia we have expanded the group of individuals to which we feel allegiance family -> village or clan -> tribe -> region -> nation. Lots of speculative fiction assumes that …
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I guess there are at least two levels to this very difficult question: first the existential one as to whether killing is ever morally justified in real life, and secondly the literary one of whether a killing as described in the book is gratuitous.…
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I think I'm sort of repeating @Apocryphal 's point, but I'm not sure that any individuals here are either heroes or villains. The protagonists have flaws (in some cases, serious ones) alongside their more noble qualities, and the villains are given …
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So far as I recall, all the major characters (good guys and bad) were duty-driven - probably the main exception is Fred Ball who apparently gets far too much pleasure in working over suspects. Conversely, Takahashi (father, not daughter) acts much m…
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I tend to agree with @Apocryphal though (as I have said elsewhere) I have little experience with some of these genres so can't comment with much confidence. Almost all authors I know (who are mostly indie, and mostly self-published, just to clarify…
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It's a long time since I did any gaming, but I remember one long-running game (two regular players, sometimes three, plus the GM) where we had to try to solve a problem not of crime but of insurrection - a vague and rather intangible group who would…
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It worked for me - but then I've read so little hardboiled books that the choice didn't strike me as unusual. Lots o books follow this particular narrative style, often switching viewpoint character between chapters or sections to give some varying …
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A question loosely connected to that. You say "It's that decision and action that I'm interested in" which I totally get. Now in a book narrative it is very common for a character to think they understand the situation and pursue a particu…
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I thought I'd start with an easy discussion starter :) Yes, I was surprised, not so much with the legwork part, which seemed to me to go along nicely with the type of story, but more with the gaps. It was really a story of Two Decembers, with an in…
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(Quote) Well worth catching up on sometime, but you're right it is not a quick couple-of-days read
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I've been thinking a lot about @BarnerCobblewood 's points, and how they actually apply to contemporary fiction as much as historical (by means of incorrectly representing professional conduct, or whatever). But rather than that, I wonder if I migh…
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I've finished it so good to go whenever suits
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Building on the fiction side in parallel with gaming, I think historical fiction in particular faces this problem. If you're writing contemporary fiction then your readership will judge you on how well you present contemporary life in whatever count…
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(Quote) But it was also (again trying to not give stuff away) about exploring different ways of going beyond individuality and isolation, and it seemed to me that a same-sex relationship provided a better and more focused parallel to some of the oth…
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(Quote) My impression was that a major target of Boyden's was to relate in fictional form how the downfall of the several Indian tribes (ie not just the Wendat-affiliated ones but the Iroquois-affiliated as well) was an inevitable consequence of the…
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> @BarnerCobblewood said: > (Quote) > I have some trouble with this - not the characterisation of the genre, but with the idea that emotional motivations (for which we have few words and poor definitions) remain the same across great expa…
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> @Apocryphal said: >According to Wikipedia, Boyden claims Ojibwe and Nipmuc heritage (and previously Mi'kmak and Metis.) > As I recall, the Metis were the remote ancestors of the protagonist in Hiero's Journey, the name having worn …
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I think historical fiction does have some different conventions to some other genres. For example, I think there is a greater emphasis on "what would it be like to live in that place/time". There tends to be less world-building, on the ass…
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PS he also covers as a tangential point another matter we have talked about, viz the need for popular and influential historical fantasy (and by extension historical fiction) to be accurate so as not to establish incorrect stereotypes in the minds o…
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(Quote) That is an excellent article, with a lot of other points of some connection with other discussions we have been having around The Orenda (the article discusses Plains Indian groups rather than the Great Lakes area ones of our book, but never…
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PS I meant to add that another good example is the occurrence of severe illness mong the Indian tribes. From our modern medical perspective we readily accept explanations like "the north American tribes had no resistance to European diseases&qu…