[Sea-to-sky]

10 hours ago, Jarric said:

You know, it's never occurred to me before how impenetrable the books must be if you're not British (and probably, even if you are British, if you're not fairly familiar with London

At least i know im slightly more likely to relate to it.😆

[Jarric]

4 hours ago, sarakingdom said:

.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

There's a lot going on; basically every character is from a very different cultural background. Even Nightingale, who should be the most stereotypically English of the English, is from what is essentially a foreign culture, and doesn't even fit that well anymore. Peter's dad isn't just Cockney, he's a specific post-war version, in a specific subculture. Abigail speaks a different London dialect than Peter does, even though she's only ten years younger. (She's deliberately written using a specific modern multicultural London dialect that's not Peter's; there's a lot of intentionality in how differently they all speak.) Lesley doesn't speak the same as Peter; she's giving off major small-town future UKIP voter vibes, but it's totally implicit. Several types of linguistic code switching in Sierra Leonian speech. The differences between immigrant parents and their first generation children. The hyperregional personalities of all the Thames girls. The implications of Seawoll being down from Manchester, but specifically someone who experienced Manchester in the Thatcher era, and also someone who loudly uses specific media police cliches to his advantage, even though they don't fit how he actually runs his unit at all. Like, there's a lot about how all these people ended up in London and how that changes who they are and how they can and can't communicate with each other, and the images they project that aren't them, and a ton of characterization going on implicitly in tiny dialect tells or backstory.

 

Basically it's a book that's code switching left and right, because nobody speaks precisely the same language, and they're also jumping through a lot of roles. And I can catch a lot of that stuff when I see it; I'm good at following performance. But if I'm reading on the page and internally generating a lot of the tone and stuff, I'm just not going to as reliably be on the same page. Like, would I accurately read in the differences in how Peter, his dad, and his cousin all speak? Or catch the Gene Hunt impersonation that tellingly slips at certain times? Probably not every time time they show up, and not as accurately. But if I hear the voices, it's really obvious to me how big a cultural divide there is between Peter and his dad, and Peter and Abigail. Why Seawoll and Nightingale rub each other the wrong way almost instinctively. And so on.

 

 

Spoiler

I think what you've described almost perfectly encapsulates what I think London is as a place - almost no-one is actually from London, and even if you are from London, where and when in London is also really important. Everyone you speak to feels like they've come together from somewhere different. It had never occurred to me that that would be difficult to pick up, because I know immediately when Peter is doing a multicultural London impression, or when Seawoll is taking the piss out of a posh accent. I'm quite sure I couldn't tell the difference between American accents/dialects in writing though, unless they were particularly extreme, and even then I probably wouldn't tie the correct connotations to them.

 

4 hours ago, sarakingdom said:

 

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Because it's not actually an arc, I think. He seems very anti-fantasy-arc when he talks about his writing, and didn't want that to be a central plot arc.

 

Which I'm sympathetic to; I think I'm not a big fan of the usual fantasy epic quest arc structure, or at least not in large quantities. I just don't like my fantasy very epic, I guess. I don't totally know what to make of Rivers of London structurally. On the one hand, as a series it meanders and is really oddly paced in a way I don't totally understand. On the other hand, the slightly more slice of life style and the fact that it does go places I don't quite get at a pace that puzzles me are both sort of refreshing. So I think it structurally confuses me and I respect it for that.  It's a type of imperfect I find valid and valuable; if it's flawed in that way, it's largely by intention, and for an artistic reason that's worth the attempt and gives me something surprising to think about.

 

And I think that's part of why the first book feels different to me; the Punch plot feels closer to a classical epic fantasy story structure with an arc of building tension and mythological import to the expected confrontation to defeat the big bad. It's one of the reasons it feels more formulaic to me and not a tonal fit to what the other books are doing, but I can also understand it being the one many fantasy fans would prefer, because it's the genre promise or customs they want kept.

 

For me, turning the Punch story on its head in book 7 was what made book 1 more memorable, and part of what changed my feelings on the whole series and what it was doing. It's another writing choice I don't totally understand, but it's interesting. And in some ways full of a humanity and a meaning I just didn't find in the resolution of the first book.

 

It's an odd series, because sometimes it's keeping the fantasy genre promises, sometimes the police procedural genre promises (and I think it may be heavier on these by design), and sometimes it's Ben Aaronovitch doing his own thing by feel.

 

 

Spoiler

Yeah, I felt like the book 7 retcon (if it's not too extreme to call it that) was a bit weird, and I didn't totally understand it. I don't hate it though.

 

I like the idea that the odd pacing is intentional though; it makes the books feel a bit more realistic if they don't fit to standard narrative structure. For me though it also makes them a bit less impactful, or at least a bit less memorable. I think it also felt a bit directionless when the book clearly had one plot, but a lot of time was spent talking about the Faceless Man without anything really happening to advance that thread. Again, that's probably a more realistic narrative, but the lack of clarity wasn't great for me.

 

To be clear again, I really enjoyed all of the books, just the middle ones less than the first and the latter. I also really enjoyed The October Man - I'd like to see more of the world of the German contingent.

 

Looking up things for this has also made me aware that I haven't actually read Winter's Gifts, so that's now going on the top of my to read pile.

[sarakingdom]

8 hours ago, Sea-to-sky said:

At least i know im slightly more likely to relate to it.😆

 

LOL. Nothing becomes a bestseller if it's hard for a randomly chosen person to relate to. You'll be fine.

 

But you are likely to get more of the details from it. It's such a love letter to London, and they chose to keep it very strongly London and not to make it more internationally accessible. (I listened to a set of writing interviews with the guy last week, so I'm currently full of facts on their writing and marketing choices.)

[sarakingdom]

5 hours ago, Jarric said:

Looking up things for this has also made me aware that I haven't actually read Winter's Gifts, so that's now going on the top of my to read pile.

 

I just listened to that this week! That's one I'm definitely going to have to find the text version of; I spent the whole time thinking about how much the reader bothered me. (They have different readers for all the different novella POVs. The German guy from October Man was pretty decent. This one bugged the crap out of me.)

 

But I enjoyed the story. It kind of indirectly (or maybe directly) addressed one of the casually mentioned bits of backstory in the books that left me with strong feelings of a possibly spoilery nature, and I had a slightly spoilery reaction I will not detail here.

[Harriet]

22 hours ago, sarakingdom said:

 

Yes, that's roughly it.

 

This sort of challenge seems too detailed and long, but somehow it works for me in this format. It hits some sweet spot of "I can do a little bit of every major thing without being overwhelmed by each item", plus "I've started the category, so I can manage one more". Which is good, because I need to keep myself accountable for all the things I supposedly do okay, and that makes lists long.

 

Whatever works for you is the logical choice. Or the magical choice? I don't know what the core virtue is in rivers. 

[sarakingdom]

5 hours ago, Jarric said:

 

  Hide contents

I think what you've described almost perfectly encapsulates what I think London is as a place - almost no-one is actually from London, and even if you are from London, where and when in London is also really important. Everyone you speak to feels like they've come together from somewhere different. It had never occurred to me that that would be difficult to pick up, because I know immediately when Peter is doing a multicultural London impression, or when Seawoll is taking the piss out of a posh accent. I'm quite sure I couldn't tell the difference between American accents/dialects in writing though, unless they were particularly extreme, and even then I probably wouldn't tie the correct connotations to them.

 

Spoiler

Yes, that's exactly it - it's information I can mostly recognize when I see it, but getting it from written text is just that extra step or two harder for me, while for a local (like the reader), it comes more naturally, and it's super helpful to me to have that local making sure that context is something I'm picking up on. (I probably have more exposure to UK regional accents and cultures than many, which helps, but I suspect a good character performance would get people a lot closer to getting that information from context, even if they couldn't put their finger on it.)

 

I have read some of the books in text, there's at least one my library doesn't have in audio. It was a perfectly fine experience. There may be alternative characterization benefits to my own reading pace and inflections. (Although I also tend to skim sometimes when the ADHD kicks in,  so that could be a draw.) I'm sure it's a case of alternative media, alternative benefits. But having that information reliably does make the books feel richer to me, and maybe slightly closer to what he's trying to say about London or at least closer in a more visceral, less intellectualized way.

 

6 hours ago, Jarric said:

 

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Yeah, I felt like the book 7 retcon (if it's not too extreme to call it that) was a bit weird, and I didn't totally understand it. I don't hate it though.

 

I like the idea that the odd pacing is intentional though; it makes the books feel a bit more realistic if they don't fit to standard narrative structure. For me though it also makes them a bit less impactful, or at least a bit less memorable. I think it also felt a bit directionless when the book clearly had one plot, but a lot of time was spent talking about the Faceless Man without anything really happening to advance that thread. Again, that's probably a more realistic narrative, but the lack of clarity wasn't great for me.

 

To be clear again, I really enjoyed all of the books, just the middle ones less than the first and the latter. I also really enjoyed The October Man - I'd like to see more of the world of the German contingent.

 

Spoiler

I really enjoyed October Man as well. I think those characters are coming back. (Randomly throwing in an unrelated novella from some totally random Germans is one of those very Aaronovitch "what the heck are you doing" choices, and I'm here for it.)

 

I do know, after the aforementioned interview listens last week, that he did intentionally reject fantasy structure and pacing. He seems to dislike the building stakes ending in an epic battle for the fate of the world type of story structure for some ideological or artistic reasons. He says he chose to alternatively go with crime series structure and pacing,  but I think he also says it was because crime series structure isn't broken by a certain amount of personal discretion. So I think he's made a conscious genre choice in terms of structure, but done it knowing he wants the freedom to ignore it occasionally.

 

I agree with you that the flip side is that it can feel directionless, or at least weirdly meandering at this unexpectedly casual pace. I expected the Faceless Man to be a much more central priority. It was weirdly agitating at times that he wasn't - there was this clear active, and very disturbed, danger, and if nothing else it'd personally targeted at least one of then quite early, so why were they not more focused on the risks to themselves and the people around them? I actually found books 3-5 sort of claustrophobic, because of this sense of background dread about how slow they were being compared to how apparently sadistic and active this threat was. Book 6, my sense of where that plot was going started to change.

 

Ultimately, I don't know if that pacing is a flaw or not. It's a choice that makes me think hard about why that's happening, why I'm reacting like I am, and what it's trying to say as a story. I genuinely don't know if it's a good or bad choice, but it's an interesting one, and I like that it's not the usual choice and I have to work for it a bit, even if it's maybe not the cleanest choice.

 

 (And I had that experience of finding the books sort of blending together in the middle there,  so I get your reaction there. They were very hard to remember on my first pass. It was like what he was doing didn't really come into focus for me until book 7, and the way I read his genre and tone and characters really shifted. I can go back now and see pieces of that differently than I did on my first pass.)

 

I do think a lot of his more offbeat choices are for the sake of realism, or perhaps a particular humane slant on realism, as opposed to the gritty realism genre. For one thing, the whole way Peter and Bev's relationship has gone, that's so much more about a realistic depiction of "life happens" than any sensible narrative structure. One of the things books 7, 8, and 9 make much clearer than the earlier books is that a huge running theme of the series is building families, and it's done with so much more kindness than I expected in the earlier books. Not that they weren't full of very decent people or anything, but it's really coming into focus as you're transitioning through books 5-6-7 that it's much more expansively kind than you'd been led to believe. The series was not the narrative arc I thought it was; the hints were there, but I didn't see it till it built up momentum. Somewhere I connected up parts of What Abigail Did That Summer and Lies Sleeping, and went, "oh," because I suddenly saw the bigger ongoing story, and it was not what I'd thought. It was so much smaller and more human, in the best sense.

 

So I think he is running narrative arcs, but they're not plot arcs. They're thematic arcs, and they're a lot more about very everyday things and the world we live in and some very small, human things. And looking at things like the pacing through that lens, it's kind of different. I'm still not sure I get it or that it might not be a flaw, but there's a different story running under the surface that I didn't spot the first time around, and I suspect it's paced for the story that's not on the surface.

 

(Plus or minus the margin of error for Ben Aaronovitch just being a slightly unpredictable, creatively messy writer at times. He has a long history of making a ton of "what the heck are you doing,  Ben Aaronovitch" choices, and he lands a higher percentage of them than he should be able to, but not all of them, and not all cleanly. Which of those his pacing is, I genuinely don't know.)

[sarakingdom]

1 hour ago, Harriet said:

Whatever works for you is the logical choice. Or the magical choice? I don't know what the core virtue is in rivers. 

 

Sensibly practical. One makes the sensibly practical choice. (Or, at least, if one is a wizard. The core virtues change somewhat if you're a river, or in a river. It gets a bit mythic.)

[sarakingdom]

11 hours ago, Jarric said:

 

  Hide contents

Yeah, I felt like the book 7 retcon (if it's not too extreme to call it that) was a bit weird, and I didn't totally understand it. I don't hate it though.

 

Spoiler

In the midst of all my tldr, I forgot book 7! Because book 7 is kind of a lot. Every damn thing in it is a plot twist you didn't see coming. I don't know if it's a retcon, but it's definitely a little out of left field.

 

It changes Isis, the understanding of what type of villain the Faceless Man is, Punch, Lesley, the pale ladies, and any assumptions of how safe the main characters are from bad things happening to them, plus exposing a lot of tonal changes going on in the books. Everything is not doing what you expected.

 

And not in a bad way, but in a way that's not totally easy to get. I can't tell how much of that book was planned plot twists and how much was a sort of impulsive serendipity on the existing threads. There are hints back to book 1 and 2 about Molly's sisters, the historical presence and ongoing importance of Punch, Isis being something other than what she says. But not much. Lesley is foreshadowed fairly well. The Faceless Man starts shifting in this direction when we learn who he is. It's not totally out of nowhere even if it's not a long foreshadowing. But it's not clear how planned all this was, specifically. The whole book is sort of "WTF is this, Ben Aaronovitch". Not in a bad way. Just... different.

 

In some ways, it's a much more openly emotional book than a lot of the others. Like, it's more open about who these characters are without masks on. (Which, uh, I'm sure was not an intentional tie-in to defeating the Faceless Man, but...) The theme of "Peter growing into Peter's strengths, rather than trying to be someone else" is pretty strong. Nightingale spends the first part of the book reconnecting with himself, and the next part just openly taking care of his adopted family with no policeman facade in evidence, with no sensible reservations about taking in Foxglove or being professional about Peter. The Faceless Man's core delusion is exposed, and he's mad in a way we'd only seen small hints of. Lesley's motives and flaws are exposed, and they're not a huge surprise because we know her fairly well, but they're not what we'd assumed. Isis/Walbrook and the Thames family secret (or at least the bit that isn't Lea) is exposed. Punch is exposed as something new but still very Punch and very RoL at the same time.

 

And all through it, they're weaving some very interesting themes. Every one of those subplots is about people caring for others. It's a book that's pretty openly about love, and changing things through love. (And not accidentally named "____ Lies Sleeping", I think.) Peter both gets captured and frees himself and Foxglove and wins by acting out of love. Lesley ends the threat of the Faceless Man by acting out of love that's been twisted, but still exists in some form. Foxglove acts out of love. Nightingale acts out of love. Walbrook and Punch act out of love. The Thameses very nearly fail, because they all but Beverly fail to take care of someone. Love is the thing the Faceless Man fails to get. All the revenge plots go wrong because people choose love. In both Foxglove and Punch's case, the policemen are freeing the criminals from their imprisonment.

 

They're consistent story choices. The book makes a sense of its own. But it's a really unexpected story, and just back to back upturning what you understood of the series so far.  It's a strange book. I have no idea if it's actually a good book, because I don't totally understand it or where it came from. But I don't dislike it; in fact the reverse, because it totally changed how I understood the series and read the previous books. Seeds of all those themes and character understandings were there, but I wasn't connecting them. (Who had Seawoll down as "genuinely caring and concerned mentor of undervalued young cops, and actually very nice"? It's there in book 1, and pretty clearly by book 2, but it takes this long to really see it.) My perception of the long game of the books was totally different, I'd been half-missing the type of universe the stories were taking place in.

 

But I still don't know what was deliberate and foreshadowed, and what was impulsive and opportunistic use of dropped clues. Or understand a damn thing about the pacing. In book two, there's a mention of all these trafficked chimeras, in a setting that Nightingale finds so potentially traumatic that he shields Peter from it in all of the subsequent books. He then does nothing about it (or nothing Peter learns about, anyway) and the thread isn't picked up till book 9, when Peter discovers some of the trafficked people. It's really odd pacing, and it's an odd personal and professional failure for Nightingale, surely. But Nightingale does have those awkward blind spots, it's a thing, so it may not be by accident. That's an extreme example, but there are so many plot threads running on that sort of time scale. I don't know if that's pure authorial inattention or has a purpose, or a mix of both. The plot threads weave so slowly and randomly, and it confuses me. WTF, Ben Aaronovitch.

 

[Scaly Freak]

Here for the rivers. And to maybe, hopefully, find some inspiration to do some spring cleaning of my own.

[sarakingdom]

 

Today deserves a little full moon magic.

 

 

Training Performance Report
Officer: Sara Kingdom Date: 25/03/24 Department: Special Assessment Unit
Physical Formae
Daily Crura impello Arma scindere Scindere practice set	Bonuses Boxing practice Dance Visit genii locorum	Support Electrolytes Hydration Meds Vitamins
Arma scindere. Vitamins.
Good start.		Score: 1.5
Mental Formae
Tool Reversal of desire	Cue Avoiding a task, restless, distracted
Once.
		Score: 1
Recovery
2 hours practice, start before noon.	6-8 hours sleep. In bed by midnight
Okay, of all these, I got six hours of sleep. But my deficit is really, really safe.
I'm pleased to hear that, but I see no improvement on the actual targets. I'm already using a very generous definition of midnight. Nil points.   I'm glad you had a good night out. Get in earlier tonight.		Score: 0
Silentium Mentis
Mindfulness	Metta	Cast a magical circle or ground energy
		Score:
Home Front Reintegration
Yoga nidra	Podcast	Yoga (regular)
Yoga nidra.
		Score: 1
Record Keeping
Make a daily plan	Journal practice	Make a weekly and monthly plan
		Score:
Spring Cleaning
Make a daily plan	Project work	Make a weekly project plan
Gardener. Planted watercress.
Oh, that makes delightful sandwiches. I must ask Molly about that.		Score: 1
Space reserved for office use   Date rec'd: Initialed by:   Form ID: Zulu Foxtrot 18.C.68-v2-Jun-1977 (ZF.18.C.68/1977.06) (Supercedes form 64B from Nov 1932) For internal use only. Sensitive records. Not to leave the Folly.

 

I mean, fair. I did intentionally socialize too late, knowing wizards would dock me points for it, and it was worth it.

 

(But he's right, the time management side effects of that are way more annoying today than they seemed last night.  I hate that he's always right.)

[sarakingdom]

 

Related to our discussion on accents and dialects. (No spoilers, beyond a minor character name.)

 

It's an excerpt of this:

Spoiler

 

[Jarric]

I don't have anything nearly clever enough to say in response to your thoughts on the books, but I just wanted to thank you for sharing - they were really interesting.

 

I only read a handful of books a year at best, and I've never found a good time for audiobooks, so I very rarely re-read anything. I'm seriously tempted to re-read Rivers after your comments though, to see what I pick up retrospectively.

[sarakingdom]

1 hour ago, Jarric said:

I only read a handful of books a year at best, and I've never found a good time for audiobooks, so I very rarely re-read anything. I'm seriously tempted to re-read Rivers after your comments though, to see what I pick up retrospectively.

 

If you ever were to find time for audiobooks, these are the ones.

[sarakingdom]

 

Training Performance Report
Officer: Sara Kingdom Date: 26/03/24 Department: Special Assessment Unit
Physical Formae
Daily Crura impello Arma scindere Scindere practice set	Bonuses Boxing practice Dance Visit genii locorum	Support Electrolytes Hydration Meds Vitamins
Electrolytes. Meds. Vitamins.
		Score: 1
Mental Formae
Tool Reversal of desire	Cue Avoiding a task, restless, distracted
		Score:
Recovery
2 hours practice, start before noon.	6-8 hours sleep. In bed by midnight
All three, by a hair!
Very good. Since you're using a generous definition of "done", I will use a similarly marginal definition of "one point".		Score: 2.5
Silentium Mentis
Mindfulness	Metta	Cast a magical circle or ground energy
		Score:
Home Front Reintegration
Yoga nidra	Podcast	Yoga (regular)
Yoga nidra. Needed that.
Excellent.		Score: 1
Record Keeping
Make a daily plan	Journal practice	Make a weekly and monthly plan
Journal practice.
		Score: 1
Spring Cleaning
Make a daily plan	Project work	Make a weekly project plan
		Score:
Space reserved for office use   Date rec'd: Initialed by:   Form ID: Zulu Foxtrot 18.C.68-v2-Jun-1977 (ZF.18.C.68/1977.06) (Supercedes form 64B from Nov 1932) For internal use only. Sensitive records. Not to leave the Folly.

 

My sleep deficit is 12.5 hours. This is so much improved. (But now I am conscious of how exhausted I am. I want sleeeeeeep.)

[Mistr]

May you get the lovely sleep that you want. 🪄

[sarakingdom]

 

I turned to find a stocky black woman in a strapless red dress, cut low enough to show off broad, muscled shoulders, and cut high enough to reveal legs that could do an Olympic time hundred meters without taking off the high heels. Her hair was shaved down to a fuzz, and she had a wide mouth, flat nose, and her mother's eyes. I was caught in a wash of clattering machines, hot oil, and wet dog. The cold didn't seem to be bothering her at all.

 

Madame Tang bowed, properly. As well she might, given that she was in the presence of a goddess -- that of the river Fleet.

 

Training Performance Report
Officer: Sara Kingdom Date: 27/03/24 Department: Special Assessment Unit
Physical Formae
Daily Crura impello Arma scindere Scindere practice set	Bonuses Boxing practice Dance Visit genii locorum	Support Electrolytes Hydration Meds Vitamins
Electrolytes. Meds. Vitamins.
		Score: 1
Mental Formae
Tool Reversal of desire	Cue Avoiding a task, restless, distracted
		Score:
Recovery
2 hours practice, start before noon.	6-8 hours sleep. In bed by midnight
Sleep points. (And my deficit is 12 hours.)
Well done.		Score: 1
Silentium Mentis
Mindfulness	Metta	Cast a magical circle or ground energy
		Score:
Home Front Reintegration
Yoga nidra	Podcast	Yoga (regular)
Yoga nidra.
		Score: 1
Record Keeping
Make a daily plan	Journal practice	Make a weekly and monthly plan
		Score:
Spring Cleaning
Make a daily plan	Project work	Make a weekly project plan
Did a cleaning task. Made a daily plan.
		Score: 2
Space reserved for office use   Date rec'd: Initialed by:   Form ID: Zulu Foxtrot 18.C.68-v2-Jun-1977 (ZF.18.C.68/1977.06) (Supercedes form 64B from Nov 1932) For internal use only. Sensitive records. Not to leave the Folly.

 

[sarakingdom]

It's week one. Time for a new project.

11:03

NO MY BRAIN ISN'T WORKING

11:05

Five minutes. Five minutes a day on the two big projects.

11:09

Okay. I guess.

11:13

Wait. I'm not done with last week's.

11:14

Yeah. Keep doing those. 

11:15

Oh nooooooo

11:18

11:19

[sarakingdom]

I'm doing stuff. Mostly. But not tracking. Fuck tracking.

 

[sarakingdom]

Scientia potestas est Society of the Wise • Est. 1775

The Folly Russell Square London, WC1B 7ZF     28th March, 2024   Dear Sara,   It seems you've picked an unexpectedly good day to rebel against tracking, as your tracker is giving you an unexpected and wholly unearned gift that would make the accounting difficult.   Might I suggest a cup of tea and a mental regroup? I suspect it will be needed today.   Yours,   Thomas Nightingale   Detective Chief Inspector, Metropolitan Police Acting President, Society of the Wise

 

[Everstorm]

21 hours ago, sarakingdom said:

But not tracking. Fuck tracking.

 

Hear, hear!

[Mad Hatter]

 

On 3/23/2024 at 6:35 PM, sarakingdom said:

I think that's fair, and do not judge it. It was a very slowly acquired taste for me. For the first few books, I found them like potato chips; I could enjoy them well enough as a salty mindlessly consumed snack, but they didn't stick in my head even 30 seconds after finishing them. (And it's very possible that the audiobooks were a big part of the reason I found them so munchable, because the writing is so deadpan that I don't know if I'd keep the character tones or the cultural contexts straight without the assist.) I listened to the few books that existed, went "meh, okay, maybe a bit dry and I still don't quite get the genre it's trying to be, but very well done audiobooks", then didn't even think about it for years.

Oh I see. I probably won't be trying then. I wish I could do audiobooks, but I loose focus and it's more difficult to figure out where I stopped paying attention to an audiobook than a physical book. 

 

On 3/23/2024 at 6:35 PM, sarakingdom said:

I've heard the Dresden comparison, though I can't speak to it. But I suspect it's sort of a superficial one, and the books are not trying to do the same things at all. I mean, I'm guessing about the Dresden side. But I think they're actually doing very different things.

I think so too. It was the promise of urban wizard and weird characters that did it, but while Dresden is all action this very much isn't. 

 

On 3/24/2024 at 8:05 PM, sarakingdom said:

Ultimately, I don't know if that pacing is a flaw or not. It's a choice that makes me think hard about why that's happening, why I'm reacting like I am, and what it's trying to say as a story. I genuinely don't know if it's a good or bad choice, but it's an interesting one, and I like that it's not the usual choice and I have to work for it a bit, even if it's maybe not the cleanest choice.

Personally I think that if I'm consciously aware of weird pacing while reading, and it loses me, it's flawed. Why should I care about this plot when the characters don't? I can see why he'd want to get away from the epic fantasy battle at the end though. It's a real problem in fantasy writing, especially for series where each book ends up with a bigger, badder battle until you can't get any further. 

 

On 3/24/2024 at 6:41 AM, sarakingdom said:

It sells too well for it to actually be impenetrable, but I do think it's super deadpan and understated about a lot of its humor and characterization, and it probably is easy to miss a lot if you're not very familiar, especially for the non-POV characters, whose inner monologues you never see.

As someone who's lived in the UK but not British I could easily pick up on the differences, but a lot of the subtleties is probably lost on me. I think that's fine. I feel like if the fundamental premise and storytelling are solid then the subtleties shouldn't matter. It's an extra layer that makes it funner or more interesting for people in the know. But even if I didn't get all the references (like I don't even know who Gene Hunt is) I can still appreciate the love letter aspect and the diversity of the cast at a more abstract level.

[Sea-to-sky]

4 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

like I don't even know who Gene Hunt is) I

Gene hunt probubly refers to a character from a british tv series called life on mars. (Excellent show, highly recommended if you can get it in your country).  Its set mostly in the 80’s and is a police drama. Gene hunt is the chief inspector and in command of the Manchester and Salford police division. He is the main characters superior officer. 

[sarakingdom]

7 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

Personally I think that if I'm consciously aware of weird pacing while reading, and it loses me, it's flawed.

 

I differentiate "not gonna work for me" from "not well crafted". Stories can be either one without necessarily being the other, and being able to describe the difference is a big help in recommending things to others and knowing my own tastes better. And also I generally think life would be happier if more people differentiated subjective dislike from objective badness. (Like Pratchett and his "the root of all evil is treating people like things", my addendum is that the root of a surprising amount of unpleasantness is the failure to differentiate subjective preference from an objective truth.  I was discussing this with a friend recently, because I stumbled across a place where that conflation was being used to radicalize in the culture war to neo-Nazi pipeline.)

 

But there's also a ton of gray area; no expressive exercise is perfect, so even "well crafted" doesn't mean"not flawed", and pinning that down is particularly tricky when you can't tell what it was aiming for or how it was crafted or whatever. Usually you can get some of that, and sometimes it's really not clear at all. Unlikely to be the cleanest of intents and executions if so, but it's not clear what's the craft and what's what I'm bringing to it.

 

In these books, what I was bringing to it turned out to make a difference to how much I understood what sort of fictional universe I was in, what its values were and so on. I didn't entirely get that until fairly late, but I don't put a lot of that on the books. They are slow burn, but it was more to do with the genre experience I was coming in with and the storytelling expectations I had. (Oddly, the only place those values come close to being broken are in the first book, which is one of the reasons I feel it has first season syndrome. It's not wildly out of skew with the later books, but just enough that it's the one book I think might be a little misleading about the genre expectations a reader should have.)

 

9 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

I can see why he'd want to get away from the epic fantasy battle at the end though. It's a real problem in fantasy writing, especially for series where each book ends up with a bigger, badder battle until you can't get any further

 

Yeah, exactly. I think it's a plot structure that has usefulness and meaning, but it's not been done a service by becoming The Norm. It's not a natural fit for every story, and the escalation is very difficult to do, and can get kind of silly. It's also not the only meaningful stakes to talk about. Sometimes the most personal, least epic stakes hit the hardest. Also I'm just a bit tired of it being everywhere. Even places it really doesn't work, like Doctor Who.

 

It's part of why it took me so long to understand I was slightly misreading these books, because I was subconsciously expecting that structure. It wasn't until the Major Epic Plot Arcs introduced in books one and two fully played out (and some incidental things that happened in the course of that) that I realized I'd been a little off about the basic nature of the universe and the story being told in it. Not hugely. I got it enough to get the characters and so on. I was just off on the emphasis and where to trust the story and so on.

 

7 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

As someone who's lived in the UK but not British I could easily pick up on the differences, but a lot of the subtleties is probably lost on me. I think that's fine. I feel like if the fundamental premise and storytelling are solid then the subtleties shouldn't matter. It's an extra layer that makes it funner or more interesting for people in the know. But even if I didn't get all the references (like I don't even know who Gene Hunt is) I can still appreciate the love letter aspect and the diversity of the cast at a more abstract level.

 

Yes, I think I agree. It may not work the very same way, but that doesn't mean it doesn't work. (I think I disagree that the subtleties don't matter in the sense that not having any would be apparent to the reader - but readers don't have to, and likely won't, agree on where or what they are. The exact nature of them doesn't matter a ton.) There may be more meaning (or jokes) there for people who understand them, but they contribute a lot of worldbuilding and the feeling of authenticity and richness to people who don't, too. (And for all I know, I'm in the latter position with regards to all the Sierra Leonian, Nigerian, and Somali cultural references. A ton of those specific cultural references are totally new to me, and people who have lived in Africa may be seeing massive things I don't have any idea is there.)

 

He said something in some of these interviews I watched about not letting the publishers change things to be more accessible to international audiences, because, essentially, the main thing of value a book had to offer was its authentic voice, and that was more important - even if it wasn't as accessible to the readers, it would be far more evident if it weren't authentic. And I'm inclined to believe that's true. Writers can't ever really control what readers take from a book. (And no matter how good the writer, some readers will end up reading a book that's the opposite of the one the writer meant to write.) But they can control that it's their voice, their style, their worldview, and it's likely that readers are very sensitive to that and know when it isn't real.

[Mad Hatter]

11 minutes ago, sarakingdom said:

I differentiate "not gonna work for me" from "not well crafted".

My bad, to me it sounded like the first book fell into the latter camp since you described the plot as slow and a bit weird and being conscious of the structure, despite liking it. That it lost me was, well, on me. And I mean no book is perfect so I overgeneralized that to be a weak point. I completely agree with the sentiment though.

 

Then again, with works of fiction I'm not even sure the distinction is even that worth debating considering how different people's tastes are. Sometimes well crafted means horrible experience while terrible fan fiction makes people happy. Is there even such a thing as "objective badness" when it comes to fiction? And if there is, who's decided this and is it really universally true?

 

39 minutes ago, sarakingdom said:

(I think I disagree that the subtleties don't matter in the sense that not having any would be apparent to the reader

Yeah I think a complete lack would make a book pretty flat or generic. 

 

41 minutes ago, sarakingdom said:

He said something in some of these interviews I watched about not letting the publishers change things to be more accessible to international audiences, because, essentially, the main thing of value a book had to offer was its authentic voice, and that was more important - even if it wasn't as accessible to the readers, it would be far more evident if it weren't authentic.

That's pretty cool. And even if a person doesn't get the subtleties of exactly how the various people differ, it still teaches them that there exist many different cultures and voices and that's neat and important. Pet peeve of mine is when people talk about liking the English accent, like what does that even mean when it changes every few miles? And some are terrible. Mostly objectively terrible. 😉

 

5 hours ago, Sea-to-sky said:

Gene hunt probubly refers to a character from a british tv series called life on mars. (Excellent show, highly recommended if you can get it in your country).  Its set mostly in the 80’s and is a police drama. Gene hunt is the chief inspector and in command of the Manchester and Salford police division. He is the main characters superior officer. 

I did look it up, but police drama is not really my thing. 🙂 Which I think also added to a bit of disappointment in the book, I expected a bit more wizard and bit less police.

[sarakingdom]

6 hours ago, Sea-to-sky said:

Gene hunt probubly refers to a character from a british tv series called life on mars. (Excellent show, highly recommended if you can get it in your country).  Its set mostly in the 80’s and is a police drama. Gene hunt is the chief inspector and in command of the Manchester and Salford police division. He is the main characters superior officer. 

 

Yeah, Gene Hunt is a big, blustering Northern DCI from 1970s Manchester - loud and blunt and swearing and offensive, and aggressively 1970s blue collar man's man in his leadership style. He's sort of an assembled archetype of gritty 1970s cop dramas, like The Sweeney and various gritty Northern things. The kind of archetype a big Northern DCI (and someone writing one) might find useful, and also subvert in increasingly telling ways.

 

(It is a fun show.)