Cav's Place

A couple of months ago, somebody who admitted to having “always taken a rather condescending attitude toward fantasy literature, with the exception of Tolkien” asked for recommendations on the MobyGames forums, wondering whether anything else “that would have at least some literary aspirations, even if it ultimately lapses into mere pretensions” may be worth trying and specifying that what he’s “definitely not looking for is someone’s poorly written account of their D&D session, gay dwarven sex or endless descriptions of swords clashing”. So I replied at some length and, though my list is obviously limited by what I already read, now that I’m planning to put the book reviews written over the years here on the blog, thought I might as well add this here as well, with the edits required to turn a forum reply into a blog post.

Since the popularity of the TV series would make many start with this, yes, A Song of Ice and Fire is stunning, and the books are definitely far better than what you can see on TV, as that may be outstanding compared to other series in this genre but not so much when compared to the source material. Still, I have to say that my recommendation of it is based on the first four books. The fifth is still sitting there on a shelf, as I heard enough bad things about it to not want to spoil my opinion of the series by reading it on its own. When he’ll release the sixth, it’ll be out in paperback as well and I’ll get it too, I’ll go for reading both I guess. Up to that point, however, and in books two and three in particular, it goes to mind-boggling in scope and passes that point without even noticing, though one has to note that it’s very low fantasy. With the exception of Daenerys’ dragons, once she has them, such elements appear very rarely.

Then I also particularly liked The Black Jewels Trilogy, which is conveniently available in one huge volume. Yes, very much a Mary Sue case and there’s a note of soap opera in there, but highly original world that oddly enough works really well. Plus those character names… Must note that the series continued a fair amount after that, but what I heard was that most of the other books were pretty much just a fantasy soap, some focusing only on one event or another and so on, so I didn’t bother, though if you put them all together they do continue the story. Then again, it wouldn’t necessarily need to be continued past the end of the main trilogy.

For those who may be interested in some epic science fantasy as well, I really liked The Book of the Short Sun, which is also conveniently available in one large volume. Extremely confusing, with this unreliable witness thing that Wolfe does and a main character who can’t control his powers and doesn’t usually know whether what he’s experiencing is real or merely a dream, but nevertheless absolutely awesome. I’ll say it’s the best part of his Solar Cycle, if probably because it’s the one with the most notable actual fantasy elements and that’s what I prefer.

Back to regular high fantasy, Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone. Seriously, the first two books of that are stunning. I did see people quite pissed off by parts of the second, but that was because of connections they made with real life, and yes, I’m talking about the depiction of organized religion. The third book seemed somewhat weaker, though still nice on its own, while the last one is just a compressed whirlwind of action. Does seem like the author got rather bored of the series and wanted to finish it even though what was supposed to happen would have probably required at least one more book, so it’s extremely packed and at times you need to stop and “unzip” what you’re reading to make it more bearable, but that sure was an awesome piece of work.

Still at Keyes, Age of Unreason. Written before Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone and it shows, as the style is rather rough and you shouldn’t expect reasons to like it based on that, but the story is awesome. It’s alternate history with significant, and increasing as you go along, fantasy elements, with real historical characters but everything else taking a very different turn. While the writing issues are usually noted by most, I do see that plenty tend to say that it’s better than Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone in terms of the actual story. Not exactly sure I’d agree, since I strongly prefer proper fantasy, but it is quite awesome, and the way it all comes together in the end for one amazing and heroic 100-page battle scene, which works better than those who are uncertain about reading detailed descriptions of battles would probably think, is quite something.

And since this was originally posted on a gaming site, I obviously couldn’t forget The Witcher. The Last Wish, Blood of Elves, Time of Contempt and Baptism of Fire are out in English at this point. Admittedly, The Last Wish is made up of short stories, which are a bit of hit and miss, and I didn’t read Baptism of Fire yet, but sure liked Blood of Elves and Time of Contempt. Quite different from what typical high fantasy means, but then again many probably already know that.

And since somebody had mentioned Weaveworld on that thread as well, I did read that too at some point. Urban fantasy isn’t my thing, horror elements even less so, but it was indeed well done, and I’m saying that even if I generally stay away from fantasy novels, meaning single books that are not part of series, because it’s pretty much impossible to fit proper worldbuilding into a single book, even a big one. Does work for urban fantasy, since you only need to explain what’s different, but proper high fantasy can’t work without the space offered by a series.

It’s the third Sunday update of 2014, but you can say there’s a reason for it, obviously on top of the fact that I can’t get myself to write anything else. As you can see from the title and despite what I was saying two days ago, the reason is that it snowed yesterday, which was quite a surprise despite the rather shockingly cold day for this time of year. Now it’s melting, but a fair amount had settled on the ground after some large snowflakes started falling in the afternoon, briefly stopped after probably less than half an hour, then started again and continued at least until some point during the evening, when I think it turned to rain for a while. Quite sure it was snowing again during the night, however, though the earlier rain made it hard for the layer to get any thicker.

Otherwise, since I’m writing such an update, I’m going to also say that I seem to be giving up on The Witcher yet again, seeing as I didn’t play at all this week. I still mean to keep trying, especially since I don’t think there’s a particular reason why I stopped now, but there was no particular reason why I gave up on Morrowind either, and it happened once in 2008 and the second time in 2012, so I’m not sure how that will go.

I definitely won’t be playing anything now, however, seeing as I did volunteer to help with that translation and, after sending what I could quickly do right away, last evening I was finally told what I actually should have done. Thankfully, what I did is likely the part that was most needed, but the rest is more time-consuming and frustrating, so I’d better get to it. I did say I’ll do it on Monday, but it’ll probably take a few hours, so it’d be a good idea to start today, and if I’ll also manage to finish then all the better.

Slightly late, but we can now say that autumn arrived here as of yesterday. It’s cloudy, rainy, somewhat windy and chilly, and tomorrow it’ll be downright cold, with the high being reported as 5°C and an estimated wind chill factor of five to seven degrees. Temperatures should get back to what would be normal for this time of year during the second half of next week, but that’s still quite chilly and ten to 15°C less than we had until recently, so it’s still a shock despite actually being what should normally happen at the end of October.
Can’t stand this sort of weather. Raining or threatening to rain quite steadily at length, not the relatively brief storms that I quite like to watch as long as I’m safe inside and don’t need to be on-line right then, to be able to unplug the cable for safety reasons, and obviously also no snow, as that I’d definitely like to watch and even go outside in. Also cold enough to make me miserable, but not enough to switch to, shall we say, “winter mode”, putting on a sweater on top of the other clothes and so on. Thankfully, the city seems to have started providing heat, though these days they say they’re only testing, so let’s see how it goes and whether or not the other people living in this building will decide to turn it off until the end of the month, as they’re allowed to do if the majority approves, due to the bills.

Otherwise, the writing’s going terribly, having given up on pretty much anything other than struggling to keep adding at least 100 words per day, even if they make next to no sense and quite clearly add nothing to the story. Gave up the goal of at least 300 words per day over a year ago, then also gave up editing the finished sections several months ago, then also allowed the average words per day, calculated since I started writing daily, to drop below 250, also dropped tentative daily targets of 250, 200 and 150, then gave up even trying to come up with any sort of chapter or even section plan, and now I’m not even reading what I wrote a day or two before anymore, so what little I keep adding may well not even make sense when put alongside things that are on the same page. So the only thing left is to give up completely, but I guess I’m still too stubborn for that, for at least a little while longer, even if there’s absolutely no point or value left in it.

That said, writing pointless personal posts on here that have about as many words as I can add in my story in several days and also make more sense than it currently does feels like even more of a waste. There would have been other things to say, but none of them good, so I’ll leave it at this and see if I can be useful for others at least, as I volunteered to help with a translation and I’m waiting to see if I’m not overlapping with someone else. What this week’s second post will be, I don’t know at the moment, though I do have some forum posts saved and mean to make one out of them, the question being whether I’ll get around to it and, if so, when.

Took the Political Compass test again a few days ago, and once again found that I slid even further left since the last time, so I’m just putting the result here now for future reference.

I first learned of this test in 2006 or 2007 and probably took it about six or seven times since then, which made this drift towards the left particularly obvious, as I remember my score on that scale being only around -3 at first and sliding noticeably further every single time after that. On the other hand, my social score doesn’t change much, the difference between the highest and the lowest being of no more than one point and, if I recall correctly, most scores being within two or three tenths of each other, indicating that there are probably just a few questions where I tend to alternate between two answers.

Economic Left/Right: -8.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.54

Considering how far left I ended up now, I’m inclined to say it’s quite unlikely I’ll slide even further, but as long as it’s still possible I can’t be certain of that. After all, my views in terms of economics can quite clearly be described as being far to the left, demanding an entirely new system that will guarantee a decent standard of living for all except those proven guilty of serious crimes without anyone still having any need to “earn a living”, and not making any difference between those who wouldn’t do anything at all and those who’d still choose to work but not have a particularly good performance. Granted, I’d like to see a few additional benefits for those whose performance would be particularly good, but any actual special treatment should be reserved only for those who’d have truly important achievements that’d bring significant benefits to many or to the world as a whole.

If you don’t count a few e-mails from various sites and a text message from a shop offering me a 1% discount, which used to be higher in previous years, only two people mentioned it today, so that’s some improvement. Doesn’t make the day any better and my standard reply to the standard birthday wish here, which would literally translate to “many years to come”, is still “if they’re like the ones that passed, I don’t want them”, but it could have been worse.
Still, the day didn’t start well at all, since some neighbor decided to start drilling at around 10:20 AM and, even though the noise didn’t last that long, it was probably around noon by the time I could get back to sleep. Then, after some fainter noise briefly woke me up again at some point, I finally crawled out of bed at 3 PM and couldn’t do much of anything by the time dad got home, about an hour later. Because of that, I’m still wondering when I’ll manage to clean my room, since I’ve been meaning to do it since the start of the week but I’m yet to get around to it.
Also meant to go for a walk one of these days, or perhaps on more than one of them, since the weather seems to be so nice, but that health card was apparently delivered on Monday and I had to go to the post office and pick it up yesterday, obviously without managing to tell anyone, not even an innocent postal worker, exactly what I think about these cards and where to shove them. And since I did that without shaving and it counts as having gone out this week, I didn’t feel like going anywhere else now.
In addition, something else broke in the bathroom, so couldn’t use that sink for the past several days, and have to be careful with the one in the kitchen as well, as that has been having problems for years and now it feels like it may not survive someone not being careful enough when turning on the water. Replacements have been bought yesterday, though the one for the bathroom is a cheap piece of shit that’s also too small and will make it rather nasty to use that sink from now on anyway, but so far dad doesn’t seem to have too much success in installing anything. He tried with the bathroom today, the result being that at the moment everything’s in pieces around there and I can’t shower either.

I guess that’s about it for now. If anyone expected any balance sheet or plans for the future now that I reached such a milestone age, there won’t be any. The parts of the past that made it seem that life may actually be worth living in some ways keep getting more distant and the future is ever bleaker. Was actually telling someone a few days ago that when it comes to causes or world issues, I can at least still hold on to some illusion of hope that I may be able to do something to play a small part in creating some good change, but when it comes to my personal life, I don’t even have that anymore.