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Are you saying Hobb likes to pile misery onto her characters? I ask because I have one of her books and was planning to read it someday, but I hate, hate, hate gratuitous misery. It seems like too many autbors confuse misery for drama or intrigue or character growth.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Are you saying Hobb likes to pile misery onto her characters? I ask because I have one of her books and was planning to read it someday, but I hate, hate, hate gratuitous misery. It seems like too many autbors confuse misery for drama or intrigue or character growth.

It's less that she makes the situation miserable; more that Fitz is an expert at having two choices and picking the one that results in more difficulties for him (note I say difficulties not necessarily misery). Plus many times the choices are partly the result of social constructs in the society he lives in (or his impression of them). Also I should note he's not an idiot; childish through his younger years for sure and apt to make mistakes, but he's not an idiot in the sense of just being dumb.

The only series she's done with misery is her Soldier's Son series, which is fully its own thing.

Reading through Red Rising: Dark Age.

I am a little confused. Darrow has spent the last four books being an unrepentant war criminal killing millions of innocent civilians (his own BTW). But suddenly on Mercury he becomes concerned about the civilians in a city being drowned and Orion trying to use the Storm Gods to kill everyone on Mercury. I am not sure if this is inconsistency or if the author really believes Darrows actions to this point weren’t crossing a threshold. From my view he crossed this red line a long time ago and his attitude towards civilians and collateral damage has been very clear cut. The End justifies the Means and morals only get in the way of beating the Society. If killing 10 million people didn’t bother him then why does 1 billion bother him? If seeing burnt by nukes doesn’t bother him then why does a flood bother him? Like, genuinely, even the notion of this character considering the practicalities of evacuating the flooded city (before deciding no) is out of character.

I am a little disappointed the author has decided to continue to make the Society the main antagonist. This essentially derails any nuance from the story as theyre too cartoonishly evil. Which essentially justifies almost every action taken. Darrow refusing the consider surrendering on Mercury or them prosecuting a self destructive war for example. It also rules out more interesting stuff like the Solar Republic splitting between moderates and radicals or different groups breaking off entirely on nationalist lines. For example Harmony’s Red Hand really feels like a non entity in the story.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Are you saying Hobb likes to pile misery onto her characters? I ask because I have one of her books and was planning to read it someday, but I hate, hate, hate gratuitous misery. It seems like too many autbors confuse misery for drama or intrigue or character growth.

That is the way it came across to me. YMMV, it's a matter of taste. But it does seen like the main character, when given a choice always makes the worst possible. Or he's just a passive plaything of whoever's exploiting him now.

Finished The End of Everything. Sad, but insightful read about civilizations thinking “We’re strong enough” “The oldways are the best ways” “Help is on the way” “The surrounding communities that we ruled over/preyed on don’t hate us enough to team up with the enemy” “It’s never happened before, so it can’t happen to us” right to the bitter genocidal end.

Man, did the Aztec’s thoroughly blow it. I think the conquest of the Aztec Empire has to put Hernan Cortes in the top 20 greatest strategic minds in history. Granted the Aztec way of war wasn’t conducive to fighting well equipped, seasoned Spanish professional soldiers, but they had ample time to adapt and just swamp the Spanish. What they chose to do even to the moments of the final battles borders on the delusional.

Spartan Leonidas and his allies are famous for fighting a defensive battle against vastly superior foes, but Cortes went on the offensive with around a thousand of his troops and a decent amount of regional allies after suffering a big loss and triumphed over an enemy that at times outnumbered 10 to 1. Pretty exciting stuff to visualize, though its sad for the innocent elements of Aztec citizenry who were born in the worst era for an Aztec.

Now I’m thoroughly engrossed in finding more books about Conquistadors.

 nels1031 wrote:
Finished The End of Everything. Sad, but insightful read about civilizations thinking “We’re strong enough” “The oldways are the best ways” “Help is on the way” “The surrounding communities that we ruled over/preyed on don’t hate us enough to team up with the enemy” “It’s never happened before, so it can’t happen to us” right to the bitter genocidal end.

Man, did the Aztec’s thoroughly blow it. I think the conquest of the Aztec Empire has to put Hernan Cortes in the top 20 greatest strategic minds in history. Granted the Aztec way of war wasn’t conducive to fighting well equipped, seasoned Spanish professional soldiers, but they had ample time to adapt and just swamp the Spanish. What they chose to do even to the moments of the final battles borders on the delusional.

Spartan Leonidas and his allies are famous for fighting a defensive battle against vastly superior foes, but Cortes went on the offensive with around a thousand of his troops and a decent amount of regional allies after suffering a big loss and triumphed over an enemy that at times outnumbered 10 to 1. Pretty exciting stuff to visualize, though its sad for the innocent elements of Aztec citizenry who were born in the worst era for an Aztec.

Now I’m thoroughly engrossed in finding more books about Conquistadors.

Conquistador by Bud Levy and The Broken Spears by Miguel Leon-Portilla.

You can also, if you want, just get the memoirs Bernal Diaz, an account of the conquest of New Spain by someone who was actually there (though written later in life, when he'd become bitter about how the conquest played out for him, particularly in the sense that he took shots at Cortez when it suited him).

As a great audio product; there's a fantastic Great Courses lecture from Edwin Barnhart (a Mayanist) that covers the history of Mesoamerica from its earliest origins through to the Caste Wars in the 18th anc 19th centuries. Much of the content is about the Classic Maya, but this series has the benefit of being produced in the 2010s, making it relatively recent as far as Great Courses go and Barnhart was on top of some important discoveries at the time he was recording (importantly the discovery of Maya Glyphs at San Bartollo that massively predate others we've found and rewrite the timeline for the development of Maya writing).

Currently i am reading: "Blackrock, eine heimliche Weltmacht" from Heike Buchter. Going into well, Blackrock.

revolting stuff really solely focused on their economic dealings. Though granted you need to be able to speak german.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Are you saying Hobb likes to pile misery onto her characters? I ask because I have one of her books and was planning to read it someday, but I hate, hate, hate gratuitous misery. It seems like too many autbors confuse misery for drama or intrigue or character growth.

I am also not a fan and I would say the misery is my least favourite aspect at points in the book. However I would say that Fitz has real character growth and so do all the characters in Liveship Traders. Sometimes that 'growth' is in a dark direction but I think it is all well done.

But it's a pretty common criticism of the series, even from fans. I obviously still love the books because the other aspects more than make up for the miserable sections.

The Silence

A paperback, plot-boiler end-of-world horror

The most interesting part was that the main character was deaf. Perfectly serviceable little read. Nothing life-changing.

Notably, the first work of fiction I have finished in probably a half-decade. Travel lets one finish things like this! Normally, I had been reading too much non-fiction for projects and work.

Edit: It looks like this book also has a movie?
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7315484/

 Da Boss wrote:
I also enjoy that if I think the characters are interesting or well written, unfortunately many of Erikson's characters fall fairly flat for me, especially the Bridgeburners. He can do good ones, but sometimes they are just flat.

I really liked alot of the world building and ideas but yeah I found the Bridgeburners pretty unlikeable and skimmed them a bit.

Working my way through the Jack Ryan novels (by Tom Clancy) again... and lamenting how terrible most of the movie adaptations were.

Although to be fair, Clancy's books get quite long and intricate, and really cannot be adapted well into movie format. Maybe a TV series, generally not good movies. (Hunt For Red October being a bit of an exception, and even that got rather severely trimmed back.)

To be fair you can say that of a lot of books. Most novels don't fit into a 1.5-2.5 time slot. Doing so often requires cutting, changing and shifting huge chunks around and that's before you add focus groups; theory; product placement; marketing; restrictive superstars; executives and a bunch of other elements that often twist an already adapted script into a monster.

I'd argue that the Jack Ryan film adaptations had more hits than misses?

Hunt for Red October is an amazing film, and I also love Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger.

The Sum of All Fears and Shadow Recruit failed to live up to the standards of the prior films.

 Overread wrote:
To be fair you can say that of a lot of books. Most novels don't fit into a 1.5-2.5 time slot. Doing so often requires cutting, changing and shifting huge chunks around and that's before you add focus groups; theory; product placement; marketing; restrictive superstars; executives and a bunch of other elements that often twist an already adapted script into a monster.

There are very, very few films I think are on par with the book for this very reason. Some are still good movies though, even if not as good.

There are also a lot of adaptations that are better than the books they are based on, either because they cut out the filler (Godfather) or keep what works and change what doesn’t (Die Hard, The Princess Bride). Unfortunately, in the age of the internet, adaptations have felt the need to be more “book accurate”, which usually means they lack the creative freedom to cut or change the elements that don’t work.

There are definitely good film adaptations, not going to say otherwise. I really like the Lord of the Rings movies, for example, although they are sadly cheapened a bit by the dreadful Hobbit trilogy. LotR definitely made changes from the source material, but generally in a very respectful and sensible way.

I've cooled on those as I've aged. Obviously they're about as good as you are gonna get, amazing they were made at all, but I can't get over how they treated many characters, fundamentally changing them to be worse people to bring in to my mind pointless drama and tension. Biggest crimes are the treatment of Frodo (and that is a huge issue), Theoden, Faramir and Denethor.

It's hard for me to watch some of the mistakes they've made. FOTR broadly holds up, but Two Towers and ROTK have some awful character choices.

For me the only missing part I feel strongly about is the lack of the Scouring of the Shire. I felt like it was an important step in both bringing home the danger of the world to the Hobbits. A thing that makes them feel a real part of the world and setting and not just a fairy tail land where all was good and most troubles were trivial in the grand scheme of things.

It's also a time that we really get to see Merry and Pippin as powerful warriors, but also see that Hobbits themselves, even without going on a grand quest, are not simple people with no backbone or fight in them.




Also on a personal level I've come to appreciate more and more the "small" stories. Whilst I'm a huge fan of grand narratives I feel that in modern times we've become fixated on them (esp in film) so having this massive film; this huge world ending quest to destroy a Ring and defeat a Dark lord - all ends not with the shattering of the ring and the falling of darkness; but with the defeat of who (by that point) is basically a thug leading a band of thugs. For some it might be anti-climatic, for me it just kind of makes the world feel alive when even a minor threat is still a threat.

I can forgive cutting, even important stuff like the Scouring of the Shire. They have to make cuts. It's deliberate choices to change things to make characters less intelligent or brave or noble, often to introduce false and petty contrived tension, that sticks in my throat. Frodo not resisting the Witch King. Sending Sam away. Aragorn beheading an emissary under a flag of parley. Denethor behaving like a madman rather than a great man under incredible strain. Pointless conflict between Theoden and Gandalf and Theoden and Aragorn.

Faramir arguably gets done dirtiest of all but it is the changes to Frodo that bother me the most.

I personally also hated the changes to Treebeard and the Ents. In the book, they wanted to do something about Saruman's destruction of their forest, but they just weren't entirely sure what they should do. In the movie, they seemed like they were totally aloof about it until Merry and Pippin show Treebeard the destroyed part of the forest, and then suddenly they all decided to go attack Isengard.

And don't get me started about how they butchered most of The Hobbit, turning an entertaining story into a cheap cash grab.

It always struck me as weird that the movie made it out like the shepards of the forest like... Just never strolled anywhere near Saruman's house.

And just never noticed he was all over their property...

Like the rampaging treepeople scene was pretty great. Like just really good.

But that they didn't notice was super weird as a change, especially since it didn't change the plot much but did make Treebeard and his bros look stupid.

With the ents, I thought they were going for the angle that the timespan of trees and ents is so great that they struggle to focus on something as short as a few months. I might be reading too much into it though.

 ZergSmasher wrote:
I personally also hated the changes to Treebeard and the Ents. In the book, they wanted to do something about Saruman's destruction of their forest, but they just weren't entirely sure what they should do. In the movie, they seemed like they were totally aloof about it until Merry and Pippin show Treebeard the destroyed part of the forest, and then suddenly they all decided to go attack Isengard.

And don't get me started about how they butchered most of The Hobbit, turning an entertaining story into a cheap cash grab.

The Hobbit felt a LOT like they didn't really know what they were doing with it. They changed a LOT of things and bits like putting an elf and dwarf romance into it felt very much like they were reaching into the Hollywood book of "how to make a film" rather than how to actually adapt the story. It's strange because the Hobbit should actually fit into 3 films way easier than Lord of the rings ever did because it is a much smaller adventure.

They also had the problem of the Hobbit being a more whimsical book aimed at children but trying to tie it in places tonally to the LOTR movies and at other times veering into slapstick.

Just a real mess, I was of the opinion that the fan edits salvaged it but watching one recently I could not make it all the way through.

It's a bit more whimiscal than dark, but the film leaned WAY more into the childish.

Other things like the very cheap go-pro in-barrel scene just further made me think they didn't know what they were doing but some suit said "I want it because it will be like a ride at one of our theme parks" bits or something. It's one of the worst bits I think because that sudden go-pro moment breaks the immersion.

The Hobbit is a mess for multiple reasons, but I think most of them can be laid at the feet of Warner Bros being a terrible company making terrible decisions. Even at the most basic level, the Hobbit was rushed with CGI used to paper the cracks- the LotR had years of prep, the Hobbit effectively had months.

Lindsay Ellis has a great Youtube series on the disaster of the Hobbit films, if you have time.

It also falls into some of the same scriptwriting traps of false tension and contrived conflict thar plague the LOTR movies, so while I am happy to blame WB especially for wasting Del Toro's time, I think some of the problems still lie with the script.

Don’t forget, wanting two films to be stretched to three. I mean, that was just never gonna work.

Finally? It starred James Nesbit, who I cannot stand.

I have just started L5R novel Three Oaths by Josh Reynolds.

I managed to get to the library and picked up two works of Historical fiction to read, almost at random. Lo and behold, they are both adaptions of Xenophon's March of the 10,000; or Anabasis. I have probably read that about a dozen times.

I finished the first, called oddly enough The Falcon of Sparta? Written by someone names Conn Iggulden. Not sure why that title? It does a good job setting up the situation and let's you get inside Cyrus' head. After Cunaxa it becomes less compelling, almost like an after thought.

This reminded me a lot of reading the Mil-SCifi/Mil-Fiction in the writing style. If that is your thing, you mat get something from it. I happen to have a a soft-spot for the original, so this interpretation left me a bit cold.