Ever since I read Dies the Fire I had been hooked on the series. I don’t want to be one of those fanboys who say the first was the best, but I have to. If my excited for the series started out at level 100 with the first book, by the end of the 3rd it was at about a 75, a 70 after the 4th, and it has been steadily going downhill since.
I bought Lady a couple of days after it had been released and I gave up on it a little over half way through last night.
Other than the fact that Rudy annoys the crap out of me, it has become way too fantasy oriented. I was ok with having “Alien Space Bats” cause The Change, but now it is
Spoilers
the work of “the old gods” and he is the chosen one who will be High King of Montival (maybe it’s just me, but when they all made him High King the first thing I thought was, “why does he get to be High King? No one voted for him. Some watery tart handing you a sword is no way to run a government.”).
I wanted to read what it would be like if society lost all modern technology, not if the gods were getting involved with everything and bringing feudalism back into the world (seriously, nearly every country is a feudal country. Even the good guys taught someone how to make them self a king).
And why would Signe be ok with the bad guy of the first three books getting exactly what he wanted all along? And when did she become pagan? I may have missed all of that, but like I said above, I gave up. I really don’t want to read about some high priest having magical powers or anything.
Would you mnd spoilering it for me then? If it’s less retarded than I thought I may pick it up again. That’s the beauty about books, they don’t expire.
Okay.
The “gods” are a (probably technological) collective consciousness, the sort of worldmind that Tipler envisioned in the far future, where everyone who ever lived exists as a sort of simulation in an insanely advanced society where the time travel and travel to and creation of alternatre timlelines is possible. A faction of this Omega Point entity wants to go back and remake the past by turning everyone into obedient slaves—this faction is behind the CUT. The rest of the entity (it’s more of an internal debate with oneself than a war) wants to preserve free will. The compromise they came up with was the Event. And the Event is only temporary—the laws of physics WILL go back to what they were on Earth and apparently sooner than later. (Although what “soon” means to a being that exists thousands of years in the future…) Now, it’s up to the humans led by Rudi to defeat those led by the CUT, or the reprogramming of human minds will take place.
What kind of a critic reads half a book and then writes a review on it? If you don’t have the class to finish a book before you blast it, how do you expect anyone reading your review to have the slightest respect for your review?
Well, I’ve finished the book and I believe my original point still stands. They may not be “the old gods” or whatever, but their actions and the consequences of such are the same as if they were gods.
For anyone who didn’t realise - **joatsimeon **is S M Stirling
As to Sword of the Lady, I’m a big fan of Stirling’s work. **Sri Theo **says the writing is pretty poor and I doubt he will win any literary prizes but it meets my test, do I want to keep turning the pages and buying the books? I had doubts about the second Emberverse series, I was quite happy to just take the Change as a given - Alien Space Bats or whatever - and worried about the apparently supernatural turn but TSotL is where it starts to come together and my “rationalist” world view can re-emerge! TSotL also has more of a conclusion than The Sunrise Lands and Scourge of God, its two predecessors.
It’s just a shame we’ve got to wait for the finale!
What bothers me about the series is how anyone who engages in cannibalism to survive, even once, turns into a subhuman monster who never goes back to eating normal foods after everyone else is dead, but continues to hunt humans, who no longer speaks normal English or even has a name.
I don’t recall hearing about this happening after the siege of Leningrad or the Chinese famine of the early '60s, both times when cannibalism was widespread.
Is the dehumanization supposed to be a curse from the old gods?
The difference is that in the Russian and Chinese examples once the crisis was passed the survivors were integrated back into functioning societies which re-established “normal” behaviour. Following the Change the cannibal bands in or on the edge of the ‘Death Zones’ around the major connurbations had no functioning society to re-integrate into. The relatively successful survivors were only just getting by and had minimal resources to spare for others. We have examples of both caring societies like the MacKenzies and properous ones like Iowa driving off non-cannibal refugees - those they do take in are not going to be the people who have clearly been surviving on human flesh.
Oops - pressed Submit by mistake!
Pretty soon this becomes self perpetuating, it is build into the new societies’ belief systems that cannibal bands are beyond the pale and they (the prosperous survivors) are morally justified in denying them all assistance and where possible hunting them down and killing them. On the other side, the cannibal bands have no choice but to build up a mythos that justifies their own actions to themselves. Which of course encourages them to go on doing it even when not essential to survive.
Also on the continuing to eat human flesh, the underlying assumption is that the cannibal bands were mostly made up of people with no wilderness survival skills - that part of why they turned cannibal. Even once the mass of humanity has died off they still cannot live off the land - either because they do not know how or because the decent land is already taken.
On the “no long speaks English”, that is not down to the cannabilism, that is down to the isolation of very small groups, in many cases made up of children and young people following the even higher death rate amongst the older people. Actually the language drift is shown as very swift in all the survivor groups as they take on the style of the founder. It is absolutely clear it is not linked to cannabilism in *TSotL *as we meet a group of neo-savage survivors (won’t say more so as not to have to use a spoiler box) who are not and have never been cannibal but who are just as “subhuman” - in terms of language and behaviour - as the cannibals.
Actually, we have no evidence that everybody who resorted to cannibalism ended up a savages. I see no reason why an individual or family who survived during the worst of times by eating the occasional passing stranger (or even that neighbour no-one liked ) could not bury this deep and never mention it when they re-establish contact with one of the growing communities.
I’m actually reading a Stirling novel for the first time. It’s Marching Through Georgia, which I picked up as part of the ongoing read-nothing-but-dystopian-fiction jaunt I’ve been on. I’m only a few pages in, but so far I’m enjoying the style.
Ooh, how exciting, actual author of book actually posting in thread about book. Now if only he will tell us if we’ll ever get a book about those people in the zeppelin from the Nantucket series…
So I definitely am continuing to enjoy the series. One question: does anyone else read the preview chapters as they’re released on smstirling.com? He usually releases 10 of them over the months leading up to the book’s release. It’s a bit weird, in that by the time you actually by the book, you’re already a third done with it. On the other hand, it’s not like you didn’t already get that value. But what it means (at least to me) is that it’s a little harder to remember what happened last chapter and who all is where, since you’re reading a chapter a month or so, BUT on the plus side you’re kind of keeping your feet in the water. Overall, I like it, but it definitely makes the reading experience a bit different.
I used to read the sample chapters but then I’ve stopped because all I was doing was torturing myself. I’d read all of them about 6 months prior to the book being released, then I’d forget where I left off when I bought the book.
Personally I’ve stopped reading the preview chapters - I found it spoiled the joy of the new book. I missed the excitement of opening the brand new book
The only trouble is it makes it hard to read the Stirling Yahoo group - too many of the threads bring up spoilers for the up coming book!
) could not bury this deep and never mention it when they re-establish contact with one of the growing communities.