lukeb0nd.bsky.social
London based Computer Programmer (@ InfluxData). Kubernetes, Golang, Rust. Metal. Fantasy fiction.
489 posts
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👀
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I did a training course once and the teacher introduced himself as being the highest scoring or most prolific or something StackOverflower in the language in question. Not even ironically 🙄
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I love this. Thanks for the rec
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Switching to discord is gonna age out us boomers, Lewis
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I like kekht arakh! It's a bit of fun. This album is not as good. KA manages to achieve something I think: doing something so absurd & ridiculous but with such sincerity that it kinda works. There's something very BM about that. Or maybe I'm just not trve kvlt 😂
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Someone alerted me to the toxic hyprland community business. Why are humans like this
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I remember when I first came to the UK I saw fa**ots in gravy at the supermarket and it blew my tiny foreign mind. I can't even type it
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I misread you thinking you finished Assassin's Apprentice. I'm half a book behind you! So great to have all that good reading to look forward to.
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I'm only half a book ahead of you. Loving it
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I have a nagging thought that I don't know how to express: when I think of what Robin Hobb is good at I think of how Janny Wurts is also good at it. A skill at sensitivity, nuance of humanity & emotional impact. Are there too few women writing great fantasy or do I read too few? If the latter, why?
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TIL she previously went by a different name!
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That's good to know! Looking forward to the rest of them even more now!
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I knew it 🐶
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💯 fantasy doesn't need that another gandalf. He reads more like a ruthless head of intelligence for a sketchy regime
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I see you found it
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Yes that's done so well! Third book review is up, lemme paste the link...
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Inexplicably spelled the author's name wrong through the thread 🤷♀️
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Lots of unanswered questions about the world, not least the Elderlings, The Skill and Wit. And I'm excited to learn about it through the vehicle of this autobiographical series, & seeing what she does with the framing narrative. I'm expecting high things from this series.
(End)
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I don't much go in for court intrigue type stuff, and reading the blurb this is what I expected of this book and perhaps why I took so long to get around to it. "Booooring" is my reaction. Positive reviews of the full series is what drew me in. I'm glad I dived in eventually. It's of highest quality
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"Forging" may well become clearer in later books but at this stage it serves at least a strong thematic function. What the victims are reduced to could be part social commentary. Curious to see where this goes.
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I bet she's a dog and horse lover. Like Wurts and horses, Hobbe really knows and loves these animals, and they serve as vehicles for some very powerful emotional storytelling and character development. "Men cannot grieve as dogs do. But they grieve for many years." 😭😭😭
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I don't know the right term for it but something she does beautifully is pick out aspects of a scene to mention in order to highlight, hint or remind of the character's state or context. Eg dog sniffing around reminds you that the character's looking for something, without her telling you directly
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Hobbe's writing can be somewhat florid but not nearly so much as Wurts. Her writing is elegant, moving and poignant.
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A surface read suggests it's about a boy coming of age & getting tangled up in court intrigue due to his lineage. But it's also a vehicle to introduce you to the world & the lens through which you see it: the protagonist. This is one of several ways in which it reminds me of Curse of the Mistwraith.
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You don't immediately get the weight of millennia of history like in Malazan. She's holding back maybe, or it's not going to be there. I respect that it doesn't seem important to her to prove that to you up front. You're asked to trust her and enjoy the story in its own right.
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RotE is almost 20 books by now, you know there's going to be a lot of world built in that time. Hobbe seems content to let it unfold at the pace of the narrative and as it serves the character development, and to try to keep this first tale relatively self-contained.
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The framing suggests it's somewhat autobiographical, with the narrator's intention being to make an historical record of the land, but it keeps becoming a personal history. He keeps rewriting it. Here your doubts begin.
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The text is bookended by a framing narrative. I love a good framing narrative. This one has it all: doesn't make much sense on first read, rewards on re-read, and hints at a potentially unreliable narrator and a lack of impartiality. Perfect!
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I want to talk about structure, pace, themes, characters, prose and world building.
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Thanks Joe for all the laughs. Cracking read, and it surprised me. 10/10 (see what I did there?)
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If you're looking for an uplifting story of the human spirit triumphing in the face of adversity against the odds, you won't find it here. It left me feeling a little depressed and angry. I'm sure Joe knows that's because of what the genre has trained me to expect. And I respect him for that. 9/10