Invisible Man wrote:I hope it has something to do with 'seeing' or language or some low-level mysticism instead of straight-up class warfare.
As I've read on a bit, more and more is coming back to me (I guess it has been 8 year since I read it), but to answer that worry (and this isn't really a spoiler, but):
It starts to get into more detail about diplomacy, nationalism, and a pretty intriguing element of paranoia. Although there's definitely the aspect of Ul Quoma being more prosperous than Beszel, I think that's a less significant theme.
neonblack wrote:They say tone is in the hooks
D.o.S. wrote:I'm pretty sure moderation leads to Mustang Sally.
coldbrightsunlight wrote:Yes I am a soppy pop person at heart I think with noises round the edge
So I bought the book and picked up a different one and started reading. LOL! I can't help it! I'm halfway through the other book already, so I think I'll play catch up on this one. haha
"I do not have the ability to think rationally 90% of the time and I also change my mind at the drop of a hat".
jwar wrote:So I bought the book and picked up a different one and started reading. LOL! I can't help it! I'm halfway through the other book already, so I think I'll play catch up on this one. haha
Ha—what'd you buy instead?
neonblack wrote:They say tone is in the hooks
D.o.S. wrote:I'm pretty sure moderation leads to Mustang Sally.
coldbrightsunlight wrote:Yes I am a soppy pop person at heart I think with noises round the edge
jwar wrote:So I bought the book and picked up a different one and started reading. LOL! I can't help it! I'm halfway through the other book already, so I think I'll play catch up on this one. haha
Ha—what'd you buy instead?
I didn't buy it. I already had it. I bought the book for the club though, I just started reading this book instead LOL. It's called Death's Dominion by Simon Clark. It's about Frankenstein type race of people that were created by the human race to basically be slaves and then they decided to off the entire project and kill all of them. It's a really good book and a great twist on the idea of Frankenstein. I'm really digging it.
"I do not have the ability to think rationally 90% of the time and I also change my mind at the drop of a hat".
When: fracturedcity.org isn't a real website but is owned by random house/penguin. Missed opportunity although it probably requires one to create significant content. Or maybe not? Probably a good way out.
It's an interesting bit of mixed language and signifiers: Myspace instead of Facebook feels dated, but "googling" something doesn't (to stick to book examples).
I wish he was a bit more of a sprawling writer, though I can see why other people are glad he's not.
It's an interesting bit of mixed language and signifiers: Myspace instead of Facebook feels dated, but "googling" something doesn't (to stick to book examples).
I wish he was a bit more of a sprawling writer, though I can see why other people are glad he's not.
I can see that. Googling something seems to be after MySpace for sure. The time frame is loose/alternate. Maybe they live in a world where Corwi doesn't even know what Facebook is but MySpace is still popular for finding white belt grind.
Mr. Geary being deported was unexpected to me. Well, no, I thought he would breach, that foreshadowing was present but it happened more quickly than expected.
But I think, right around pages 90-100 do you start to see some more involvement from the Besz players and the more and more the Breach committee between both countries starts to come to fruition a bit more concretely. The TC encounter at their fortress with Muscles, haircut, etc., when the lawyer shows up and knows Borlu and he and corwi are putting together the pieces and you feel like the book is really hitting its stride.
D.o.S. wrote:I wish he was a bit more of a sprawling writer, though I can see why other people are glad he's not.
I imagine he deliberately pared it down a little to go for the detective novel feel. Did anyone else read the bit about him writing this novel because his dying mom was a fan of police procedurals? Ridiculously sweet.
But yep, Perdido and some of his other books aren't necessarily sprawling, but they're definitely a lot richer in the world-building sense.
neonblack wrote:They say tone is in the hooks
D.o.S. wrote:I'm pretty sure moderation leads to Mustang Sally.
coldbrightsunlight wrote:Yes I am a soppy pop person at heart I think with noises round the edge
D.o.S. wrote:I wish he was a bit more of a sprawling writer, though I can see why other people are glad he's not.
I imagine he deliberately pared it down a little to go for the detective novel feel. Did anyone else read the bit about him writing this novel because his dying mom was a fan of police procedurals? Ridiculously sweet.
But yep, Perdido and some of his other books aren't necessarily sprawling, but they're definitely a lot richer in the world-building sense.
it's funny because wife and i have been watching the wire. sometimes it gets really heavy because it hits closer to home (there's too much reality to see) and what i want is some un-reality (to unsee) -- basically wish there were some shit like this i could watch on netflix/hulu etc.
also, good to know about his other work being richer in world-building. i dig his panache.
Invisible Man wrote:Can you sprawl out with that comment? How so?
It's totally personal preference, but I skew closer to Mervyn Peake/Faulkner/Burroughs (to pick three out of the hat) as a fan of literature, where you get expository lines that aren't in direct service to the immediate plot of the story:
I was standing outside myself trying to stop those hangings with ghost fingers... I am a ghost wanting what every ghost wants-a body-after the Long Time moving through odorless alleys of space where no life is, only the colorless no smell of death...Nobody can breath and smell it through pink convolutions of gristle laced with crystal snot, time shit and black blood filters of flesh.”
“That was when I learned that words are no good; that words don't ever fit even what they are trying to say at. When he was born I knew that motherhood was invented by someone who had to have a word for it because the ones that had the children didn't care whether there was a word for it or not. I knew that fear was invented by someone that had never had the fear; pride, who never had the pride.”
“There is a love that equals in its power the love of man for woman and reaches inwards as deeply. It is the love of a man or a woman for their world. For the world of their center where their lives burn genuinely and with a free flame.
The love of the diver for his world of wavering light. His world of pearls and tendrils and his breath at his breast. Born as a plunger into the deeps he is at one with every swarm of lime-green fish, with every colored sponge. As he holds himself to the ocean's faery floor, one hand clasped to a bedded whale's rib, he is complete and infinite. Pulse, power and universe sway in his body. He is in love.
The love of the painter standing alone and staring, staring at the great colored surface he is making. Standing with him in the room the rearing canvas stares back with tentative shapes halted in their growth, moving in a new rhythm from floor to ceiling. The twisted tubes, the fresh paint squeezed and smeared across the dry on his palette. The dust beneath the easel. The paint has edged along the brushes' handles. The white light in a northern sky is silent. The window gapes as he inhales his world. His world: a rented room, and turpentine. He moves towards his half-born. He is in Love.
The rich soil crumbles through the yeoman's fingers. As the pearl diver murmurs, 'I am home' as he moves dimly in strange water-lights, and as the painter mutters, 'I am me' on his lone raft of floorboards, so the slow landsman on his acre'd marl - says with dark Fuchsia on her twisting staircase, 'I am home.”
