Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
- 109
- 1
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I finished the recently released DCC book and it was by far the weakest yet.
The narration was top notch as always but the actual book was boring. I found myself zoning out frequently but there were like two moments in the book that were interesting (the start of one races and what happened at the very end).
It felt like the book lacked stakes and the plot and the solutions to the issues presented in the plot were not legible to the reader and things came off as mostly random shit happening and Deus ex machina rather than the characters making clever decisions with the resources they have available. The author relies a lot on not telling the audience what the characters are planning which is both profoundly unsatisfying and no longer justified by the narrative.
This book should probably have been condensed down to a few chapters of breakneck introduction to the next part of the story rather than be dragged out to an entire book. There wasn't really anything happening, no plot, no character development and no character power progression.
At this point I'm barely even interested in the next book but given the stakes set up at the end it could be interesting, but that depends on things actually progressing and the plot not feeling like Deus ex machina.
Agreed, for me, it still had a few great moments, but as an individual novel it's not much. The tone was a little too crapsack/gritty, there was negligible character and relationship development, and the majority of the book was preoccupied with side quests and meta level exposition that took too much away from the main plot of the novel itself, stretching it too thin and making it feel forced. I think Dinniman is definitely aware that this is a Thing that is happening with his series, as he said something to the effect that he understood how authors got bogged down in their own works in the afterword, which of course immediately made me think of ASOIAF, (though it would have easily been just as applicable for other sprawling series like, say WoT,) but it's clear that the world that he's building took precedence in this particular book and the characters were just along for the ride.
I've written one novel, about 100k words, with only two major characters and even within that I got about 85% of the way done and then took twice as long to finish it, because connecting everything seamlessly is very hard work and intractable dilemmas pop up everywhere. Can't imagine doing a whole series.
Congratulations on getting that far! I think the best I've done is halfway so far, and that's been over a decade now. I have a new idea brewing, but IDK if it'll ever amount to more than a few chapters because despite telling myself to write first, edit later, I can't even write more than a few sentences at a time without going back and tweaking something. Sadly, that's a significant improvement from my worst!
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link