beccaelizabeth (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beccaelizabeth) wrote2016-04-30 02:09 pm
beccaelizabeth) wrote2016-04-30 02:09 pm
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Raymond E Feist: Serpentwar
I just finished reading Rage of a Demon King, volume three in the Serpentwar Saga according to the cover. There's probably more, the ending has an ominous TBC all over it, but this was the last REF book I bought. Back when they were new I think I gave up because the book club realised I was too poor to support my book habit, but now I've re-read them I'm pretty sure I'm not going to read any more.
Shadow of a Dark Queen pissed me off, what with women existing in 2D with rape to motivate men. It went on my To Sell pile and quite happily. Buuuuut I just brought it back through into the keep pile. Provisionally. While I think about it. Because while the series does not get any better about women - there's more of them, but they only exist as dependents or rewards or adjuncts to a male, none of them are PCs - it does get a lot more interesting about what exactly the PCs are doing. Because someone read a bunch about logistics, and probably the Sharpe series (given the number of names in Demon King that are out of Sharpe, which is distracting, because as fanfic it's rubbish). Rise of a Merchant Prince is actually interesting, because they see the war coming and they don't just put out a call for heroes, they have to finance the army.
And that brings it closer to my interests than fantasy books tend to get. I mean, most of the computer games I've played are trading games or building games, or civ games where there's is war but you've got to build up the forces by digging and chopping wood and having farms first. From a computer game point of view this stuff is necessary and obvious, but making it a good read takes some changes to the standard hero model.
The other thing is it's pretty obvious the book doesn't think much of its protagonist. He's a dick. He hasn't noticed he's a dick. He's rubbish to women, he thinks 'love' starts in his pants, he married the 'ugly' daughter of a business partner to seek his fortune but then doesn't invest time in the marriage, he ignores his children, and this adds up to trouble. This isn't some fantasy of what the rich can get away with re mistresses etc, this is him storing up problems by being a dick. So when the protagonist also makes his fortune by monopolising grain in a neighbouring state's famine year, it seems reasonable to assume the book knows he's being terrible. That isn't so clear, though, that might be a pure capitalist fantasy moment. He does get most of his rivals to panic and give him all their stuff, that's a win on a fantasy epic scale. And then his only successful business rival turns out to be Evil, which is certainly translating the tropes. So it's doing interesting things.
But, and this may be the gripping hand, it makes him bloody annoying to follow around for a couple of books. And capitalist fantasies aren't my idea of fun. Sure he's rich, but there's a lot of people probably can't afford grain for years, probably some starvation, a whole lot of livelihoods bought up and squeezed dry. Some of that is for the war effort and reflects the thing where it's all going to get destroyed by the invaders anyway, but doing it by tricks of the few instead of tax on the many seems like a different statement. He tears down workers' houses to extend his offices, and given how things work out that might be a whole futility of wealth / you can't take it with you riff, but still, we spend a couple of books hanging around with this exploitative dick. Not exactly fun.
So I think on balance they keep their three inches of shelf space, and I don't get any more.
But the strands that are about Clerics are kind of interesting. I'm not keen on the now-standard 'man creates gods through belief' bit, because really, I think it can gives people the wrong idea. I mean it's not like saying Kings are Kings because belief, because the forces of the universe that gods embody are going to continue to be there. But it is the idea that humans create the discourse around the gods, that whether or not they exist our understanding of them is very human. And it's the logical and chaos mage result that humans can set out to create gods. Or, in this setting, reinvigorate dead gods. And that's actively interesting.
But what I am interested in, about clerics or otherwise, is something like the greatest good for the greatest number. Not rising to the top of a very unequal system, but making the system better for everyone. Fantasy novels that work by levelling up their characters over a maximum of three books to be boss of pretty much everyone else, they aren't really playing that game, even if they switch from nobility to trained military as the means of rising.
I don't know what I want to read, but this isn't it.
I'll go read something else.
Shadow of a Dark Queen pissed me off, what with women existing in 2D with rape to motivate men. It went on my To Sell pile and quite happily. Buuuuut I just brought it back through into the keep pile. Provisionally. While I think about it. Because while the series does not get any better about women - there's more of them, but they only exist as dependents or rewards or adjuncts to a male, none of them are PCs - it does get a lot more interesting about what exactly the PCs are doing. Because someone read a bunch about logistics, and probably the Sharpe series (given the number of names in Demon King that are out of Sharpe, which is distracting, because as fanfic it's rubbish). Rise of a Merchant Prince is actually interesting, because they see the war coming and they don't just put out a call for heroes, they have to finance the army.
And that brings it closer to my interests than fantasy books tend to get. I mean, most of the computer games I've played are trading games or building games, or civ games where there's is war but you've got to build up the forces by digging and chopping wood and having farms first. From a computer game point of view this stuff is necessary and obvious, but making it a good read takes some changes to the standard hero model.
The other thing is it's pretty obvious the book doesn't think much of its protagonist. He's a dick. He hasn't noticed he's a dick. He's rubbish to women, he thinks 'love' starts in his pants, he married the 'ugly' daughter of a business partner to seek his fortune but then doesn't invest time in the marriage, he ignores his children, and this adds up to trouble. This isn't some fantasy of what the rich can get away with re mistresses etc, this is him storing up problems by being a dick. So when the protagonist also makes his fortune by monopolising grain in a neighbouring state's famine year, it seems reasonable to assume the book knows he's being terrible. That isn't so clear, though, that might be a pure capitalist fantasy moment. He does get most of his rivals to panic and give him all their stuff, that's a win on a fantasy epic scale. And then his only successful business rival turns out to be Evil, which is certainly translating the tropes. So it's doing interesting things.
But, and this may be the gripping hand, it makes him bloody annoying to follow around for a couple of books. And capitalist fantasies aren't my idea of fun. Sure he's rich, but there's a lot of people probably can't afford grain for years, probably some starvation, a whole lot of livelihoods bought up and squeezed dry. Some of that is for the war effort and reflects the thing where it's all going to get destroyed by the invaders anyway, but doing it by tricks of the few instead of tax on the many seems like a different statement. He tears down workers' houses to extend his offices, and given how things work out that might be a whole futility of wealth / you can't take it with you riff, but still, we spend a couple of books hanging around with this exploitative dick. Not exactly fun.
So I think on balance they keep their three inches of shelf space, and I don't get any more.
But the strands that are about Clerics are kind of interesting. I'm not keen on the now-standard 'man creates gods through belief' bit, because really, I think it can gives people the wrong idea. I mean it's not like saying Kings are Kings because belief, because the forces of the universe that gods embody are going to continue to be there. But it is the idea that humans create the discourse around the gods, that whether or not they exist our understanding of them is very human. And it's the logical and chaos mage result that humans can set out to create gods. Or, in this setting, reinvigorate dead gods. And that's actively interesting.
But what I am interested in, about clerics or otherwise, is something like the greatest good for the greatest number. Not rising to the top of a very unequal system, but making the system better for everyone. Fantasy novels that work by levelling up their characters over a maximum of three books to be boss of pretty much everyone else, they aren't really playing that game, even if they switch from nobility to trained military as the means of rising.
I don't know what I want to read, but this isn't it.
I'll go read something else.
no subject
And there's a two year old heir that would have been two when Roo got back from Novindus, and Roo didn't get married immediately, and yet has a three or four year old, probably four. So the kid must be at least six.
dude needs to timeline his stories