I confess to hoping that nobody gets me TMWTIH; I am just completely pig-sick of all things World-War-2-y by this guy. I’m probably too hard to please: am ambivalent about his Greek Traders – which I thought well done, and out of his common run, but not a big turn-on for me. Have still read only the first book in that series; though don’t rule out going on to the others, some time.
Feel that I should maybe get a bit back into Turtledove – what with having written Stirling off… there are several newish things by Turtledove (not to do with That War) which I’ve not read – that being partly because material by HT is not always particularly easy to get in the UK, where I am.
The cannibal tribes in the Emberverse are fascinating to me: the notion that ordinary Americans could fall so deeply into savagery so quickly. I kept waiting for an in-depth look at one of their societies, chronicling their fall and what made them tick, but as the books progressed it was increasingly clear that Stirling had no interest in giving us this.
We kept getting nothing more than page after page of pseudo-Celtic goddess-worship and miscellaneous happy crappy. The Eaters were treated like wandering monsters in D&D, relegated to the periphery of the narrative.
When the viewpoint characters, traveling through the Midwest, just happened to run across the one tribe in that part of the country that had never engaged in cannibalism I said, “That’s it, I’m done.”
I think that’s the point I gave up. Maybe I read The High King of Montival, but I’m not sure. The first…3, I think, books worked for me, but finally I decided that I’d done this with one author and there was no way that I was going to let Stirling pull an Auel on me so I hated the whole series once I was done.
Nearest, maybe, to “Eaters as fellow-humans”: in Book 2, in one of the parts set in Britain – Sir Nigel and his merry men encounter, some way north of London, a bunch of low-life-ish ordinary folk who have come through the Change, independently of the relict British state – it’s implied that they’ve been cannibals in the worst times, but have given that up now that the very worst is over. Initially, a bit of regarding and describing these bods as fellow-humans; but Nigel & Co. manage to piss them off, and things go sour; there follows, lengthy flight-and-pursuit stuff in canoes: Nigel & Co. fleeing, the “Brushwood Men”, quickly reverted to type, following, eager to make Nigel and the rest into dinner if they can catch them.
The chase goes seaward along the River Great Ouse – which has become populated with hippopotami and other exotic game, escaped from safari parks, cue slapstick / exciting doings with the big game – to me, a descent into silly “1950s-kids’comic-paper-adventure” stuff. Stirling managed similar scenarios in “Conquistador”, without descending to this sort of bathos. I just have to feel that in recent years he has – compared to his output in previous times – got crude and facile and silly. And when our heroes get to where the Ouse meets the sea, there is of course a convenient deus ex machina to rescue them – I was starting to feel queasy about the Emberverse, well before the gods-and-demons weighed in big-time.
There was some discourse on the Yahoo “Stirling” board, as to whether it might have been possible for an ethical and peaceable “Eater” society to come about – with members of the group volunteering and accepting to be killed and eaten, so that the collective might survive. General consensus was: probably not – if any nation could pull this feat off, it would likeliest be the Japanese.
As lately mentioned – was feeling not too happy about the series, even before the “magical / mystic / mythologic” stuff kicked in big-time. Not very long after it did – especially when there had become involved a magical sword, of all the bloody hoary, hackneyed cliches – I was done.
I finished it last night. Like others have said, I found there to be too much filler. It’s a seven book series that probably would have been great if it had been edited down to a trilogy. And I feel the same way about his recent Shadowspawn trilogy - it would have been a great novel.
The ironic thing is I can be reading one of Stirling’s shorter works and I’ll wish he had written more of it. I guess this shows me to be careful of what I wish for.
But I can sympathize, I suppose. Editing the seven books down to three would have been a lot more work and the result would have been half as much sales. Can’t blame somebody for wanting to make more money.
I learn from a Stirling fan site, that SMS has contracted to write three new novels with an “Emberverse” setting, and is busily at work on the first of those. So far as I could make out, there was no indication of where these will fall, chronologically, in the Emberverse time-line.
To be honest, my reaction to the news was, “God, please make it stop”.
Why oh why (I know - money) do so many artistic types keep returning to the well long after it has run dry? If Striling had ended the books after A Meeting at Corvallis, it would have been a nice little trilogy that people woulr recommend for decades. Now, it is a bloated corpse that stinks up everything even remotely associated with it.
I find that the quote mechanism on this site, won’t “quote quotes” – anyway, the leader’s disparaging reference to “Brummie [not-nice persons]” – info for Americans maybe not au fait with this bit of British slang, a Brummie is an inhabitant of Birmingham, ususally reckoned England’s second city. I being a resident of that Birmingham, I’ve always felt a bit offended by that part of the guy’s tirade…
It might be forgiveable if they churned out lucrative crap for the sake of the money – to enable them to give their “spare time” to writing (and somehow getting published) worthwhile but non-remunerative stuff.
I’m a Stirling fan and have followed the Emberverse books all the way through, swallowing doubts about the injection of major “magical / mystic / mythologic” elements 'cos they’re generally fun stories, but I have to agree with the OP about The Given Sacrifice. The pacing is weird. The whole second series of Emberverse books (7 - count them - 7 books!) was absurdly dragged out. I sort of forgave some of the middle books thinking the they were weak because they were setting up the big finale but then what do we get: a third of a book carrying on as before, less than a third whizzing through the destruction of the CUT, and the rest of the book vignettes from the next 20 years apparently there just so the “sacrifice” can be made (and set up the next series :dubious: ).
The first third was good quality Stirling - the risks of being a glider pilot, MacKenzies on campaign, the battle in the Silver Tower, the develoment of Tiphane as a mentor to Lioncel, etc. but it left all sorts of threads not picked up in the rest of the book e.g. how did traitors get into the Protector’s Guard and were any more found, what happened to Huon, what happened in Boise post-“liberation” and so on. Incidentally, it was this first third that appeared as teasers on Stirling’s web site pre-publication so by the time the book came out I was anticipating a strong finish - not what we got.
Along with many successful and long running authors he desperately needs a tough editor - please no more gloating descriptions of meals! One of the more annoying aspects of the last few books was the repeated exposition to explain the back story - who the Bearkillers are, how bad Norman Arminger was and how he was killed, the family relationships between Rudi and Mary and Ritva, etc, etc. This is essentially the 10th book of a series, anyone picking this up without having read the others will just have to manage… If some back story is essential stick in a few pages of introduction running from book to book, don’t waste my time as a long time reader.
I gave up on the series a book or two ago. It just did not seem to be going anywhere.
As for an anticlimactic ending to the big bad guy Stirling did that in the “Island” trilogy as well. Had them killed off via poisoning which pretty much came out of left field as I remember it. It just felt like he did not know where to take it next and came up with a quick way to finish things off.
I liked the “twist” ending there. In retrospect you could see Stirling had set it up - he had made Ian’s capture and subversion of Odikweos part of the narrative alongside the other threads about military events. It was legitimate misdirection if we, as readers, assumed it would be the military elements of the story and not Ian’s part that led to the climax.
I don’t feel the climax was handled as well in the Emberverse series. Here, it was the expected ending: Rudi did kill Sethaz, so it was not a surprise. It was just described anti-climatically. You’d think after seven volumes, Stirling wouldn’t end up underwriting the climax of the series.
Agreed re bumping off Walker - it was properly set-up in the narrative. As was said up-thread, I think Stirling was at his peak for the *ISoT series, The Peshawar Lancers *and Conquistador plus the first three Emberverse books.
Little Nemo, I concur with you about the way in which Walker was disposed of in the “Island” trilogy. Refreshingly and surprisingly different – not the “big pitched battle” scenario which readers would on the whole have been expecting.
I am perhaps disposed to feel this way, because I’m not a fan of great amounts of “military minutiae” – easily get bored with it. My only big “beef” with the “Island” trilogy, is the great quantity of expansively-recounted military doings in the Middle East in books 2 and 3. And I feel the Egypt-related military involvement late in book 3 to be rather pointless self-indulgence on the author’s part – suspect him of including it, just to set up a clever reference to the Har-Megiddo / Armageddon location of hostilities.
I personally am very thankful for the variation / relief given in books 2 and 3, by the chapters about Girenas’s “Lewis-and-Clark-type” transcontinental expedition, including confronting the Tartessians in California. Some fans, on the other hand, find the Girenas expedition tedious and lacking in point, and would wish that the space it occupies had been taken up with yet more Middle Eastern stuff. De gustibus, and all that…
I suspect that Stirling just felt that after all the set-up he had put into the military parts of the story, he needed to have a big battle at the end.
I found it strange that the Islanders were willing to accept the idea that Tartessos and Achaea would have uptime advisers as long as they were not direct rulers (and did this themselves in Babylon) but for some reason felt it was unacceptable in Egypt. It’s not like McAndrews invaded Egypt - he was there at the Pharoah’s invitation.
I enjoyed the expedition storyline. Yes, it was a sidetrack form the main story but it was an enjoyable sidetrack. I’m not one of those people who feel the purpose of a story should be to get from the beginning to the ending as quickly as possible.
Stirling’s premises are excellent, and his plotting was quite engaging. I love following the detailed geopolitical and tactical fallout of his various magical plot devices. But his characters are wooden and his prose is rarely impressive and occasionally cringeworthy.
Once the pace of action drops off (as it did starting in The Sunrise Lands), there’s not much to hold you.