(no subject)

[skygiants]

Right, so, the thing is, if I had known that Samantha Shannon's Priory of the Orange Tree, which I have seen variously recced, was eight hundred pages long, I probably would have acquired the ebook. But in fact I did not know and therefore spent a week stubbornly hauling the the eight hundred page library hardback with me all around the city of Boston, and that ... may have impacted my feelings about the book ....

I mean, it's a perfectly reasonable Epic Fantasy, with worldbuilding that draws specifically on Spenser and the chivalric ideal in some unusual ways; also, I was reliably informed that there were lesbians and indeed there turn out to be so. I just found myself wishing quite often at times that it was a few hundred pages shorter.

The plot: on one side of the world, in Chivalric Fantasy Europe, undercover battle nun Ead Duryan is posing as a lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth I Sabine, part of a hereditary line of monarchy that according to the religion of Chivalric Fantasy Europe) holds off the rise of the evil dragons of absolute evil just by existing. The rest of the world largely thinks this is bullshit, but since they also, would nonetheless prefer the evil dragons not rise, Ead's nunnery has sent her to keep the queen alive in the spirit of "eh, can't hurt."

On the other side of the world, in Fantasy Japan Has Dragons (But Not The Evil Kind) (But Try Telling That To Chivalric Fantasy Europe), dragonrider hopeful Tané buries a secret in order not to miss her chance to take part in dragonrider trials, that unsurprisingly ends up biting her in the ass as well as the local exiled Fantasy Dutch alchemist who's gotten accidentally caught up in it.

Meanwhile, the evil dragons are indeed rising, so sooner or later everyone's going to have to work together to find the right combination of MacGuffins to get them to stop -- and sooner or later everybody does, but it takes about four hundred pages of maneuvering people into position before anyone starts to do much that is useful. So that's part of it; and part of it, also, is that, while I appreciate complicating national myth and memory, and I get the temptation to have Fantasy Europe be very emphatically wrong, I wish it had turned out to be a little more complicated than Their Religion Is Based On A Lie Whereas Ours Is Based On A Feminist Truth...

But mostly, I think, this is just a perfectly reasonable example of a kind of book that just doesn't do as much for me anymore as it would have ten or fifteen years ago. There's nothing inherently wrong with a plot about bringing the world together to defeat the evil dragons of absolute evil, but it takes a lot of really good character work to make that plot feel interesting to me, personally, and character work is just not the thing that Samantha Shannon seems interested in.

(... I say, sheepishly looking at my holds on the Mallorean books at the library; but a.) nostalgia, b.) intentionally or unintentionally the David Eddings books are definitely funny, whereas only two people in the entire cast of Priory of the Orange Tree ever give any evidence of possessing a sense of humor, in the whole enormous cast of the book, and one of them dies two hundred pages in, and neither of them is the author.)

Comments

[skygiants]

That's such impressive speed! I think they were still finishing up Counter/Weight when I started listening, lol, and I've been veeeeery slooooooooowly gaining ground ever since, pursuing over many years and many miles -- but it's sped up quite a bit over the past year, since I added a lot more walking through quiet areas where podcast listening is a reasonable thing to do to my weekly routine. I'm really looking forward to listening to Bluff City, the teaser episode they dropped in the main feed was extremely good! (And also I grew up going to Atlantic City every summer, so I expect nostalgia will be a key element too. I hope they reference Lucy the giant elephant hotel.)

That does sound pleasant! It would be nice to read episode reactions in real time rather than carefully avoiding them and then trying to dig them up on Tumblr months later ...

[shadaras]

I had a lot of free time when I started listening, and decided to use it binging everything. In chronological order. Because I was like that. Sometime around Nacre, as you do, I fell in love with the kind of storytelling they were doing. Sometime during Counter/Weight, I realised there were specific people whose characters I would just always love (Jack and Art). That helped with just going through the whole thing very fast, though the downside is that I remember the story overall but not always the specific beats. So, uh. I've ended up relistening to it (chronologically once more) slowly, so that I can actually remember what happened when? And after a year and a half-ish of that being my while-driving-listening, I have gotten to... the part of C/W where they switch into The Sprawl.

I've never been to Atlantic City, but even for me there's a lot of fun references going around about weird Americana in general. :) I am fairly certain they do reference the elephant hotel somehow, but I couldn't tell you when or how or if there is one in Bluff City. Nostalgia is definitely a big part of it, though, since Austin grew up near to Atlantic City anyway, and at one point spent like an hour of his Drawing Maps stream just giving everyone a virtual tour of it complete with references about his life. (The rest of that stream is extremely full of spoilers for Bluff City, but that bit alone was very cool.)

Yeah! The fandom's pretty good at making sure that it's hard to read spoilers without putting effort into it, at least, even if it also makes it hard to look up reactions if you're catching up. The discord's also nice 'cause the parts of it that are just about 'hey, go ahead and have spaces to talk about whatever else you like too' are just as active as the part about the show, which helps it feel like an actual community instead of just a place to be an obsessive fan.

[skygiants]

Nacre was definitely the point in season one where I fell hard for the show too -- not just how incredible Nacre was itself but the notion that this whole incredible thing happened because of an offhand joke about undead pirates just made me go "oh this way to make a story happen is FASCINATING." And then eventually I hit the point where I too would listen to Jack, Art and Ali do just about anything...and then I convinced my girlfriend to start listening so I also would have an excuse to relisten to episodes with her occasionally, and now we're at the Counter/Weight holiday special. >.>

YESSS ELEPHANT HOTEL! I'm so excited to pick out references as I listen. I was about to say, "I expect it will make me want to go back for a visit," but then I thought about FATT's general scene-setting and storytelling methodologies and, uh, I'm pretty sure I'd never want to visit anywhere in Hieron....

[shadaras]

Yes! I've always loved roleplaying, and have done a lot of it, and the improv turns like that are always the best, but I have rarely seen it taken that far. I'm so glad they play systems that let them change stuff up on the fly, so that they can pull stuff like that off.

:) Bluff City probably will make you want to go back for a visit! Exactly what emotion you feel about that will depend on when in their first season-arc you are, I think.

I'd love to visit specific places in Hieron during specific times, but only for brief periods. Like. I think there are times Marielda would be interesting and fairly safe. Or Nacre, before the war. But then, that's basically... off-screen times are safer because there isn't any active pain.

[skygiants]

It's honestly made me really want to play some of the powered-by-the-apocalypse systems, even though I know that I am nowhere near as good at improv as they are and would not be able to take it in directions anywhere near as creative, easy as they make it sound ... I just started playing a few years back when I moved to Boston, and my group is GREAT but we've mostly done D20 systems that are a bit more rule-bound. I love the character stuff they do with bonds and alignments, too.

I guess I also have to admit that I would love to visit Nacre at any time Nacre is in existence, with the caveat that I would also like to be able to go home again afterwards, which isn't usually in the cards for a Nacre vacation. However, I think it would be very unwise for me to visit Marielda because the constant reconfiguration would get me wildly lost and I would eventually starve to a confused death in an alley.

[shadaras]

They've had a lot of practice! But even without that much practice, it's a lot of fun. :) I grew up on d20 systems (D&D 3.5), and in college started moving towards other systems (White Wolf, etc), and my friend who got me into FatT got our gaming group to try some PbtA games. It's a really nice change of pace, and for groups like mine that like storytelling more than "How big a number can I get?", it's satisfying to play in a system that biases towards "make things interesting". Bonds and alignments are great and I just want to stick bonds and beliefs into literally any game I run now, because they help define characters so much.