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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   2472 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 13, 2023

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So, what are you reading?

I'm still on Herzog's Citizen Knowledge. It's a good primer for knowledge debates in recent times, and the references are great.

Paper I'm reading: Hannon's Are knowledgeable voters better voters?

Started reading Wizard's First Rule. Maybe it gets better but the ~100 pages I read were pretty terrible so I put it down.

Got caught up on The Game at Carousel, a horror movie litRPG. It's truly fantastic, the sort of book that makes a part of me wish I could live in the setting (despite all the terrible stuff happening there).

Just started @self_made_human's Ex Nihilo, Nihil Supernum and The Dao of Simulation. They're pretty good! The latter didn't interest me too much--it may not quite be a typical videogame setting, but I have a very hard time caring about anything where the setting is fake/virtual--but the former is quite fun and interesting so far.

Also started reading The Windup Girl. It was well-written and interesting but the rape scene was much too much for me, so guess I'm never finishing that one.

Did you mean Wizard's First Rule, by Terry Goodkind?

If you think the first 100 pages are terrible then I doubt you'll like the rest. From my recollections reading it as a teenager, books 1 and 2 were good, and the rest were hit and miss. I still maintain that those two books are perfectly good fantasy novels in their own right.

Ultimately Goodkind has the reputation as a knock-off Robert Jordan, and I can't say I disagree with that assessment.

Yes, that's what I meant, I'll edit it.

I liked:

  • The wall, that was pretty interesting
  • Everything involving Richard's brother, who was a fairly interesting antagonist
  • The blood flies and their purpose
  • The secret book which was burnt after it was memorized

I disliked:

  • It was all super predictable
  • Richard was much too much of a blank slate to me. He seemed to basically just be "generic good guy."
  • The world overall felt tiny. It just wasn't interesting. Maybe it opens up more later.
  • Laying out explicitly the main character's whole quest right from the start, plus the main characters, all of whom are just very trope-y

I read the Wheel of Time series about 10 years ago and have been reading plenty of epic fantasy since, so maybe it's just that I read these stories in the wrong order. Certainly the prose etc. was fine, it just felt like a story I'd read many times before.

you haven't even gotten into all the weird sex stuff yet!

It was all super predictable

Well, Wizard's First Rule was 1994 and A Game of Thrones wasn't until 1996. Goodkind was definitely exploring well-trod ground. Martin gets shit these days for not finishing his series, but AGoT deserves to recognized for the sea-change that it was.

The world overall felt tiny. It just wasn't interesting. Maybe it opens up more later.

It does, starting where you quit and further in the second book. There's the wall you need to cross, and then another, and then another. Crossing these thresholds is something of a theme in these books. Willful separation in the libertarian ethos.

Laying out explicitly the main character's whole quest right from the start, plus the main characters, all of whom are just very trope-y

You will never get away from this, unfortunately. The arc of each book is pretty clearly explained early in each book. The main characters don't change much, though new allies and enemies sometimes emerge.

I read the Wheel of Time series about 10 years ago and have been reading plenty of epic fantasy since, so maybe it's just that I read these stories in the wrong order. Certainly the prose etc. was fine, it just felt like a story I'd read many times before.

Yes, Goodkind's work has not aged well. It's been done better and in more interesting ways in the 25 years since. Still, he sold a ton of books, so he was clearly delivering what some people wanted to read. I maintain that he's the poor man's Jordan, which is a backhanded compliment, but still means he writes a decent fantasy story.

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