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Brandon Sanderson is a great writer and I'm tired pretending he isn't.

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I was looking at this picture and something funny occurred to me. These are books Tad Williams has written since A Dance of Dragons came out:
>The Dirty Streets of Heaven (2012)
>Happy Hour in Hell (2013)
>Sleeping Late on Judgement Day (2014)
>The Heart of What Was Lost (2017)
>The Witchwood Crown (2017)
>Empire of Grass (2019)
>Brothers of the Wind (2021)
>Into the Narrowdark (2022)
>The Navigator's Children (2024)

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>>25106770
To be fatso HAS written since then
>Fire & Blood
>The World of Ice & Fire
>A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

Not to mention editing and contributing to Wild Cards despite no one seemingly caring about the series.

>>25106770
Problem is both of his best known series are old at this point. Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn as well as well as Otherland are what, 30+ years old? He's the kind of author who has to keep writing news stories seeing as he has no huge series to milk.

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>Race and gender absolutely determine the direction that cosmic horror takes
> white male cosmic = “fear of feeling insignificant”
>feminist cosmic = “your body is terrifyingly significant… it needs your body to reproduce”
> black cosmic = “forget the universe, I was already born into a system that… makes me feel insignificant”
> cosmic horror is really about privileged white guys realizing they’re not the “lead character of the universe”
> old sci-fi aliens are just white dudes imagining “a futuristic evolved version of themselves”
> only a “black lens” could think of making the ship itself the monster
> genre improves the more you “pivot away from the white centred male lens”
> diversity makes the void stop being unknowable and start being a mirror.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZThg5yn6n/

>>25106777
>A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
Ahem.
>The Hedge Knight (1998)
>The Sworn Sword (2003)
>The Mystery Knight (2010)
Just because your old stories are collected together doesn't mean you've written something new, otherwise I'd have mentioned Tad's short story collection from 2014
>>25106793
Well I hope he finds recognition eventually, he's consistent in both his workload and his quality, which is surprisingly rare

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>>25106793
>He's the kind of author who has to keep writing news stories seeing as he has no huge series to milk.
that's every professional writer who doesn't have a big relevant series. tchaikovsky is probably the posterchild.

>>25106768
>mormon

Is Pierce Brown a faggot or will he release red god within the next year

fantasy book about crusade against evil?

>it's another GRRM thread disguised as /sffg/

>>25106929
You mistake me, this is a Tad Williams thread.

This captcha is getting ever worse and even after filling it out most of the time it says my IP is blocked and wants my email.

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>>25106974

Recommend some space opera please, I'm working on my own project and want inspiration.

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Republic of Forge and Grace: A Parallel-Universe America Novel - Daniel Rirdan (2026)

Rirdan, the author, says this is an unabashed utopian novel that he's self-published. I assure you that's completely accurate. Rirdan has previously self-published The Blueprint: Averting Global Collapse, a far longer work of non-fiction that lays out his vision for the world in far greater detail, which I haven't read. This novel seems to have been his attempt to provide a minimal narrative for his ideas to reach a wider audience.

This is literally a novel length worldbuilding infodump. The protagonist is shown a portal to another world and explores it. That's a fine premise, but almost every single scene exclusively serves the purpose of further elaborating on Rirdan's ideas on how the world ought to be. There's barely anything else to it. Ideally I'd want all of this presented by a local protagonist without it dominating everything, but it was tolerable.

To be entirely clear, this is essentially a series of lectures disguised as narration on how society ought to be arranged. Almost every character is willing and able to talk at length about whatever the protagonist has to ask about regardless of the context. At the end, it's mostly the protagonist condemning everything about his United States, which is to say it becomes a prolonged authorial rant. Rirdan wasn't born or raised in the United States, though I presume he's spent of the majority of his life here.

As with all utopian fiction it presumes a romanticized and idealized culture where essentially everyone acts in their rational self-interest and is fully self-motivated at all times. Everyone trusts everyone else to do their fair share, have common sense, and get along without any bias towards each other. The only incentive is a desire to promote the common good.

A rough estimation of the book's politics would be to call it ecologically-oriented minarchist mutualism. Culturally it's a mash-up of contemporary technology and early to mid 20th century pop culture. What the author believes to be modern social ills are excluded. Exceptions are made for AI, blockchain, and a few other technologies. The world here decided that ecology was more important than anything else and all else follows from that. Nuclear power dominates, there aren't any publicly traded corporations, air travel has been discontinued, and the Great Plains have been rewilded. There's no welfare. Your social safety net is your community and private charity. Radio dramas seem to be a primary form of mass entertainment. Education is very different.

There's also a romance for the protagonist with incestous female twins to be his sister-wives and another guy who is to be his brother-husband. One of the twins also has dissociative identity disorder. This is tonally very out of place. The author says his developmental editor said it was, but that he couldn't help himself. The characters demanded he do so.

Rating: 2.5/5

>>25106568
>and he's obviously speedreading yet stuck on the same book for weeks.
lol retard.

read the rest of your nonsense and actually thought you were going to make a point, dumb fucking retard instead just surface levely affirms it emptily.

"well its been escalating, well, you see, when Kellhus randomly found water in the desert, you see, well its been escalating, so you see, its totally not random for him to pull his heart out of his body because, well, you see its been an escalating series of miracles that i have categorized as miracles preconceived, because im a stupid person, who is stupid and a premier example of stupid people who just hold onto preconceptions, that dont need any basis, because I have no critical eye and jist accept what is given, because well, you see, its an escaliting series of random events, so that means its actually totally not random, because well, you see, its escalating."

ill give bakker the benefit of the doubt and conclude its just his fans that are stupid, not him.

"you see, you actually dont get it, because you dont think the body and blood of christ given at church is actually the body of blood and christ, see the fact that you dont accept something wholesale like a braindead retard, and question it, means you dont get it, you just dont get that the government is sending threatening messages directly to me through news reporters."

>>25106980
What space opera have you read in the past?

>>25106985
your """reviews""" are SHIT
FUCK OFF

Reminder to report and ignore newfags like >>25107009 who actively contribute to off-topic discussion and have been spamming off-topic for literal years.
https://warosu.org/lit/thread/21311319#p21323327

>>25106985
>Nuclear power dominates, there aren't any publicly traded corporations, air travel has been discontinued
What's his issue with air travel? I guess it would reduce immigration pretty severely. Nuclear power and no public corporations is a pretty good society, though.

>>25107025
The /sffg/ goodreads group get really mad when one of their own members gets called out in this thread

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>>25106768

>three off-topic posts because people discuss books in a book thread
lol

>>25107024
Air travel causes too much pollution and allows people to travel too easily. Nuclear powered ocean liners are his solution. People in general rarely travel anywhere because localism is preferred in all ways. The national highway system was never developed in the US. There's almost no private ownership of vehicles.

Being a farmer is one of the most prestigious occupations. Immigration is only allowed for family relations and those who can greatly contribute to the country.

>>25107061
>reviewfag spamming his """review""" that gets zero replies counts as """discussion"""
Fuck off back to your goodreads group

>>25107019
don't forget spamming and flooding.

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>>25106974
Just pay the pass, anon. You know you want to.

>>25107064
Losing flight is a hard price to pay. But I guess in a utopia it's doable. Not in a world wracked by competition between nations and with large scale wars, though. The advantage of air travel is too great to give up in war.

>>25106993
I'm not sure what you're trying to say other than proving my point.

>>25107354
You joke, but I've done so once before.

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Is this why Bakker mostly disappeared around 2017-18 (tapering off to a handful of posts in 2019 and then down to 3 in 2020, one of which was just about covid)? His retarded prediction of "we've totally figured out the human mind guise! (because, uh, transistors=neurons?)" turned out to be nothing, and he just retreated to his Canadian hole in the ground to stew?

also great to learn that meme-master Kellhus was inspired by online trolling and rage-baiting, and that Bakker thinks his readers are alien rape-xenomorphs with... massive cocks? this man's cuck fetish knows no bounds

>>25107411
>11/27/14 4chan Passes are currently on sale for Black Friday/Cyber Monday!
Specifically that's when. They're $30 now, so I don't know who would.

>the meat crazed and the scalded
>the meat craze lifting from the Ordeal
>their realization
Maybe some of the absolute bleakest shit I've ever read but somehow has avoided crossing over into edgy 14 y/o grimderp territory

>>25107419
As far as I know, the story up to The Unholy Consult was what he originally thought of, that's the original concept.
The potential No God series would be new territory.
Since the Unholy Consult was a financial failure maybe he just decided to not bother since he managed to complete and release what he originally set out to do in the beginning?

>>25107373
Yeah, you've already made it clear theres a lot youre not sure about what another is trying to say.

>>25107000
Hyperion, Dune and Revelation Space

>>25107064
Man I wish we still had kino ocean liners instead of being crammed into a tube like sardines in a can.

>>25106768
I've read 500 pages of The Way of Kings and I just don't know.

There's some page turner chapters in there, but some parts are pretty bland. The pacing is just really slow. I feel like there's a good book in there but I should be done with it already. He says very little with a lot of words.

>>25106796
To be fair, if you're low IQ enough, it would seem like the police just randomly show up and kill people for no reason.
>Daekwondarius, hear this shit right now, your crack deals and hustlin' are drawing the cosmic gaze of Poh'Lize

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Is the sequel good?
Are his other books like Starfish good?

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The more i read the more I think the writing is bad.

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Because the more I read any dialogue or narration about Esmenet, the more I realize that this shit writing commits grave basic sins of writing, that could only possibly be excused if you have no standard or care, for anything being real or meaningful, you read to be told something. To feel by being informed. Not to read to understand, to experience. To connect with and reflect with.

Picrel.

>>25107686
It is a sidequel, not a sequel. Read the supplementary short stories.

>>25107686
i liked starfish WAY more than blindsight. I thought blindsight was pretty retarded actually, but starfish was novel since it is all about diving and being in the deep ocean.

>>25107064
What if you need to travel over land? Nuclear aircraft would greatly reduce the number of roads and tracks that need to be built through the wilderness.

>>25107458
>but somehow has avoided crossing over into edgy 14 y/o grimderp territory
It really didn't.

>>25107846
Yeah, but they'd also make travel too easy. The population in this US is 100 million. They're all about self-sufficiency and localism. There shouldn't be any need to go anywhere. That being said, the one time they travel a great distance to a nature preserve they use an underground maglev train that goes ~1,800 mph. All tourism is seen as a bad thing, as are commutes of any real distance. I didn't mention that everything uses a veinprint of the palm biometric to do almost anything.

>>25107947
>Just kill off 3/4 of the population and then develop mach 3 maglev tech in a shed in your isolated village
Why are zoomers like this?

Does anyone know if there's an annotated version of the Book of the New Sun? I would fucking swear I had one when I read the books for the first time around 2014, or a website annotating the series maybe, but for the life of me I can't find anything like it now. And no, the chapter by chapter book by Andre-Driussi that's mostly summaries and one or two allusions per chapter is not what I'm thinking of.

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>>25107963
The US population was 106m in 1920. It's just that this alternate world never had a population boom and that was intentionally so. Not a zoomer either. Pic is the author.

>>25107009
Stupid bitch.

>>25107602
>The Palace of Eternity, Bob Shaw
>The Centauri Device, M. John Harrison
>Schismatrix, Bruce Sterling
>A Fire Upon the Deep, Vernor Vinge

>>25106859
who is the elite mormonoid author? card? is simmons mormon? I forget

>>25108058
Good list. That Shaw is one of his very best.

>>25108058
>>25108096
>Shaw
Overrated and only discussed because of e-celebs

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>>25107686
echopraxia is weirder

>>25106777
>>Fire & Blood
An expanded edition of The World of Ice & Fire

>>The World of Ice & Fire
Slop written by Elio & Linda

>>A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
All three existing stories written before 2011.

>>25107857
It did though

Why does John Ring inspire so much seethe?

> robin hobb okay tier
Lol. Probably best well-written, humane and relatable characters.

>>25108339
Burrich grunting as he penetrates Molly. Every dog within a half-mile radius sniffing the air and thinking "Heart of the Pack is mounting his bitch". Sweat pours down his back into the crack of his hairy ass while Molly's legs lock around his hips to make sure his seed fills her. Fitz in his shed, writing stupid shit nobody will ever read and then burning it all in the fireplace.
Unh.
Unh.
Unh.
This is Burrich grunting as he fucks Molly.

What a truly terrible thread.

>>25107617
85% set up with ALL the reveals and twists in the last 15% is his modus operandi. And those last few chapters are always great. Say what you will about his writing, he's a great storyteller, he fills the books with hints and non-obvious foreshadowing and then does pay it all off in the end.

I'm really looking forward to the Apple TV adaptations of his works precisely because he has really cool things to say, but his prose is just so meh at best.

>>25107686
Starfish is actually better than Blindsight, Watts has called it his most perfect book. But I can't even force myself to read its quickly churned out sequels. Echopraxia was just okay.

>>25108486
If only you had the power to contribute to it... but alas, a gypsy cursed you all those many years ago to be unable to post on /sffg/ except to complain about the state of the thread itself.
Truly a heinous curse, but you deserved it for running over her son with your car.

With what historical events (except crusades)/ time periods should I familiarize before reading Bakker?

Does /sffg/ have a top 100 (or whatever number) chart?

>>25107602
Gap Cycle

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>>25107354
go for it

>>25108140
>Overrated
Nah, he didn't care for the New Wave like his contemporaries but he was always entertaining.

Friends. What do we think of “comfy” sff? Any recommendations? Legends and Lattes?

>>25108693
>“comfy” sff? Any recommendations?
Asimov. His characters never get angry no matter the circumstances and the problems are always solved.

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>>25108693
Jack Vance writes mostly about dudes going to weird places and meeting weird people with weird customs. It's pretty comfy.

>>25108693
Exactly what kind of "comfy" do you want? There's so many ways to interpret that.

>>25108712
Low stakes. Kind of slice of life. Maybe a slow burn romance <3
>>25108700
>>25108709
Thanks brothers

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>>25108724
Robert Asprin's Myth series. Comedic. Gets a little glurgy as time goes on, but that's mostly a problem of binge reading.

>>25107686
Echopraxia isn't quite as good as Blindsight overall, but I liked the characters better. They bounce off each other in fun ways, and the team vampire is an even bigger troll than Sarasti was.

>>25107419
His projection knows no bounds.

>>25108756
This is the kind of cover that would make me pick up a book if I saw it in the library, nice find.

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>mfw it's Perrin's chapter again
Absolutely cursed ass character. Motherfucker should've been iced six books ago and his big-nosed wife should've taken his spot, she at least gets shit done and has actual growth. It's second to last book and this bumbling idiot is STILL going "I'm a simple blacksmith, simple as", "I duhn wahn it (the responsibilities, the lordship, the wolf stuff)", "Take the banners down" etc ad nauseam. Most if not all other main and side characters are peaking in their characters arcs (you could probably say many have went through several character arcs even) while young bvll walks in circles since at least book 4. What the actual fuck.

>>25108550
You dont need to be familiar with anything like that to read Bakker

>>25108892
Robert Jordan really had no idea what to do with him after he went back to the Two Rivers. That's why he was left out of an entire book, and his chapters for like 4 books consisted of sitting around in a camp being moody.

>>25107617
If it was just the Kaladin chapters, with the flashback pared down significantly, it'd be a pretty compelling story.

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>>25106762
there's criminal lack of fantasy crusades out there

>>25108969
I love when Ce'Nedra leads the armies of the West in the Belgariad, though it doesn't quite hit as hard rereading as an adult. Just lots of descriptions of the mounted knights tearing through the pathetic swarthy foreigners over and over, utterly helpless to do anything about it. I mean that's great and what I want but after all the buildup the stakes don't seem very high when it comes to the actual war, even if its whole purpose is something else.

>>25108756
Cover art can be a really special thing. I try not to get unbalanced but it really enrages me when a publisher swaps in completely awful new cover art for something that used to look appealing and intriguing.

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>>25106768
I came here just to say how much I like Mistborn

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So why exactly is Gene Wolfe supposed to be good?

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>>25108982
>it really enrages me when a publisher swaps in completely awful new cover art for something that used to look appealing and intriguing.
RAGE, MY BROTHER

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>>25108999
Problem is Josh Kirby did such terrific covers nothing can really touch them.

>>25108343
Very argumentative

>>25108999
Damn that's one of the biggest lies I've ever seen on a cover. Imagine how many people will DNF this
>>25109005
kino and it makes me know not to take this too seriously, but with humor and whimsy

>>25107419
Post that Bakker meme, you know the one.

>>25108756
Early books of Myth series that I have read were great, good comedy.

>>25108996
I wish I had a Dorcas gf who would do this to me

>>25108996
Bro that's your grandma. Don't fuck your gramgrams.

>>25108996
It's good because of the subtlety, flaws, and hypocrisies of Severian's character and how the true author (Wolfe) manages to communicate them even through Severian himself being the in-universe author of the words being written.

You unironically need to have a western European brain to possess the cognition necessary to process the multiple layers of storytelling occurring simultaneously in BOTNS.

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>>25108756

>>25109083
It shocks me how recent the idea of separating the author of a text from its narrator is

>>25109101
is it?

not trying to argue I just didn't know that

>>25109083
The multiple layers are an excuse for the author to write about the most inane shit no one cares about.

>>25109116
Yeah, a few centuries only despite people having been writing stories for millennia.

>>25109123
I cared about it. Lots of /lit/ seems to. And lots of people off /lit/, based on conversations I've had and blogs I've read. It's neat.

The phrase "no one cares" is one of the saddest things a person can utter. It'd be fine if they just said "I didn't like it", but they have to try and drag that out to create an artificial alternate reality for themselves where "nobody liked it" as the only way to justify their own insecurely held position to themselves. It's basically announcing, verbatim, that they feel physically hurt by the mere fact people enjoy something they couldn't. It's really pathetic and beneath you.

>>25109127
bodied that freak

>>25107419
No idea where Bakker got the idea that the Black Box of the brain is "cracked open" even if I assumed you only valued Science and domt care about the hundreds of years of Philosophy telling you that you can't bridge the mind body gap the way science thinks it can. Even Science doesnt make such a claim about the brain, unless theres been some developments I'm unaware of. And if there is, How I wish society would act in accord of some true "understanding" of the brain.

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>>25108969
well hey, this is the one thing I actually would recommend Bakker for (even if you'll have to put up with a lot of cuckoldry and gay snuff porn, but when he actually gets around to writing the campaigning and battling it's pretty great, wish he'd, y'know, do more of that instead of all the other stuff...)

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>>25109180
It's baffling, even eliminative materialists seem to usually just postpone it to some indeterminate point in the future when "they're totally going to figure the brain and consciousness out, you'll see!", I have no idea where Bakker even got this from, other than the possibility of it genuinely being some AI-bro-tier thing of "if we just have simulate enough neurons on a computer that translates to understanding the human brain!"

Also very ironic to have a story about people lacking self awareness and being easily manipulated, coming from a guy with no self awareness about how his rampant cuckoldry and rape fetishes and inferiority complexes seep into his work. Maybe crack open your own black-box first, fag

>>25107419
I heard Bakker got into blogpost comments debate with Edward Feser and hasn't been the same

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>>25108550
Bakker's worldbuilding really isn't actually that deep in a political or societal sense, beyond the depth you get "for free" from borrowing a real historical conflict and mapping it onto a fantasy world, and it is really just that one conflict (not even the Crusades as a whole, the actual effort to maintain a position in the Outremer afterwards isn't part of this at all, it's just the 1st Crusade and nothing afterwards). It gives *the impression* that it is, but when you actually dive into it there isn't necessarily that much going on, like sure, the glossary has a bunch of shit about how "this tribe lived under the yoke of that tribe and formed this kingdom which split up into those other kingdoms", but this is just trivia, factoids strewn across a page that don't actually add up to anything.

The only thing I'd say you should do is adjust your expectations away from some of the Medieval Europe stereotypes, the vibe here is meant to be more Mediterranean, more urbanized and less stereotypically feudal to some extent (there are a handful of groups which are more your typical feudal societies with knights and shit, but they don't make up the majority of people involved in the war)

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Xinemus becoming a semi interesting character out of the contrivance that was his attempt to save Achamian in the last book is something I didnt expect.

Not that its without criticism as he might aswell be a completely different character, but even ignoring that, he exposes the fundamental problem Kellhus holds over the entire narrative: That Xinemus is simply only an interesting character in this context because he questions Kellhus' legitimacy, something, every single other character is too shallow, simple, and captured by Kellhus' magical mindreading powers, and a simplistic reduction of the human mind, that must be accepted, without basis, to continue reading the series.

>>25109326
>I wanted a literate, socially intricate and cosmopolitan world".

I really do wish this was contained in his writing. Youre right that there isnt actually depth, in the sense, that the poltics is so nebulous that it could apply to any tribe. The Ainoni do drugs and...stuff. The Galeoth do war...and stuff...and this one can basically apply to virtually every other tribe. I honestly dont remember, because its simply never relevant, they all end up blending together, you dont actually learn or understand anything deeper about the culture. Ajencis seems like the only philosopher, and even his philosophy ends up coming across as the type of stuff you find on YouTube philosophy videos, a collection of quotes, where you dont actually get to see the arguments formulated and constructed, as is key to philosophy, since 90% of philosophy is trying to problem solve other philosophy, past or present. So Philosophy is like a constant dialogue with itself.

To be fair, I dont like this criticism, as valid as it is, because the kind of immense effort, and immense knowledge and understanding of Philosophy, Politics, and Culture you would have to have, to adapt the depth to writing, would be a different kind of significance than just making up names and words and langauges. All those are like the ultimatw style over substance, where the age old phenomenon of people confusing "more" or "alot", or "volume" or in other words "how much information can I fill something with" with depth and substance. Allows for people to get away with this stuff.

I dont remember where it was, but I skimmed past a post in this thread that essentially said, he loves when writers, spend time meandering about the mechanisms of made up stuff in their fiction, because it contributes to the atmosphere of whatever. I ask myself "what is the purpose or meaningful use of that information in the continued writing" Whereas they just care about the sense that information gives in the moment, that information could end up never coming up again or being relevant, and essentially just being words on a paper, not a part of the actual fictional world.

I have some more theories about this, but I don't want to get into it right now.

Jnan in Second Apocalypse doesn't help with the way cultures meld together, because it might aswell just mean "custom". And everybody seems to follow it in the same way. Like I said, it would be very hard to pull off making different customs feel purposeful, and unique without feeling like the entire culture is a caricature defined by their custom. So the criticism is kind of hard to put on any author that fails, or doesnt even try.

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Didn't Bakker say, what made Kellhus so well written, is that the way he manipulates and affects isn't magical? That it can be understood intuitively or whatever through keen perception and logic or something? Ignoring the blatant mind reading, somebody inform me on what is logical or purely perceptive based about this interaction?

For context, Kellhus seemingly seeks to speak to Seswatha (originator of the Gnosis magic or whatever) through Achamian since Seswatha sort of has some magic ghost possession power over all Mandate Sorcerers, due to blessing them with Nightmares of the First Apocalypse through Seswathas memories.

Kellhus pulls out a blade, spins it, and tells Achamian to follow the light of the blade.

Is this a tactic Neurosurgeons or Psychiatrists practice on repressed patients or something, obviously without a blade. Seeing as Bakker believes science can reveal all the secrets of the mind, and of course, science is "logical" so that would make sense.

>>25108916
in contrast, Gene Wolfe strongly recommended everyone read the New Testament at a bare minimum to understand Book of the New Sun

>>25109517
Bakker is an autist trying to write someone so socially savvy an adept at psychological analysis, despite being neither of those things. So it doesn't work. Every interaction where Kellhus "manipulates" people has common sense bending over backward to accommodate him. I'm not a hater but I didn't like this series because I can suspend my disbelief but I cannot suspend my cringe.

Vance > Wolfe

>>25109615
This
https://youtube.com/watch?v=oiOt6eW0pZI&list=LL

>>25109517
Yeah he used hypnotism? What is confusing about that? It's wether he really did speak to Seswatha or not thats the mystery in this scene.

>>25109517
>>25109593
Getting filtered by Kellhus is a common complaint about the Second Apocalypse. I've read enough about cults and false prophets to know that what Kellhus is doing isn't that far fetched, especially considering his superhuman abilities as a Dunyain. Are you sure you haven't fallen into the old "well I would certainly never join a cult, only an absolute idiot would!" way of thinking, and are projecting that on the characters in the book?

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>>25109517
>Didn't Bakker say, what made Kellhus so well written, is that the way he manipulates and affects isn't magical?
Hmm, apparently he just "got lucky" and "wrote something improbably intelligent" (no he fucking didn't, this guy *genuinely* has no shred of self-awareness, like come on now. No wonder he thinks he'd be easily manipulated by this fucker he made up)

> Kellhus pulls out a blade, spins it, and tells Achamian to follow the light of the blade.
No you see, these guys who are supposed to be among the most powerful sorcerers around, and who are specifically infused with a mechanism to prevent them from ever giving up their secrets, would totally be vulnerable to basic hypnosis techniques!
And obviously Kellhus somehow figured out the mechanism of how the Seswatha business works (even though like months ago he didn't even know sorcery was a thing), and figured out that you can use hypnosis to access the Seswatha spirit/subroutine/whatever - something which I guess the Mandati themselves have never thought to do, even though it'd be of immense interest to them to ask their founder what's up?

>>25109654
> It's wether he really did speak to Seswatha or not thats the mystery in this scene
And a mystery it will remain. Was this ever brought up later? You'd think some of the other Mandati might be interested in whatever scheme Kellhus pulled (and by the sequel quadrilogy, we know Achamian has written a history of the war, and some prominent characters have read it, I assume he'd have mentioned this bit in it, which again should have inspired questions as to what the hell he pulled off here)

>>25109674
>Are you sure you haven't fallen into the old "well I would certainly never join a cult, only an absolute idiot would!" way of thinking, and are projecting that on the characters in the book?
Kek, thats not the point. I already addressed this predictable ass cope counter argument people make, like 5 threads ago, with my analogy about writing a book about a vegetable (slang for braindead person, actual braindead not the slang use of the word braindead) I'm not going to reiterate it again, use your intuiton to figure what I could possibly mean.
Yes, we live in a world of easily manipulatable people, a word of abundantly unselfaware people, a world of simple, shallow people. Saying "wow simplistic shallow people exist so I am immune to criticism for writing simplistic shallow people" is like saying "you know, there really are a lot of jews like that..." in rationalization of somebody writing a book that completely validated and appeals to every singke antisemitic trope and narrative believed by Nazis.

If you avoid complexity so brazenly, simply to validate belief, notion, ideology, and especially of the preconceived kind. Then your writing is simply not good...in my opinion (objectively) because its not doing or saying anything interesting.

I'm of the opinion that the medium of literature has the unique capacity to specifically open us up to perspective and interactions that we often arent privy to, because all manner of information can be included, regardless of perspective, it has the capacity to depict something that dispels the normal assumptions about somebody were disposed towards, to show us how somebody we cannot imagine being the way they are...can end up being the way they are. To show us how things we are rarely aware of or privy to, whether due to a lack of experience, or a lack of qualification, can influence and affect the way we understand and interact with things. Yes I know Second Apocalypse tries to do this with "The Darkness that comes Before" it tries to show us that Esmenet is a classic Narcissistic whore (The actual understanding of Narcissism, where in short they have big egos and senses of self, because they've been made to feel small or inconsequential) because she was a whore who wasn't treated well by her society. But theres a difference between showing us something and engaging with that thing. That point I brought up about Narcissism is barely touched upon, and I can barely wager that it was intended, because Bakker treats every mind like a rubix cube to be solved, engages with none of its complexities. If you twist and turn things in this specific way, then then youll see the cube (mind) clearly. Even if you agree that that is how the mind really is. It reduces characters to things to be used. Nothing more nothing less, and at that point, youre stripping human beings of everything that could make them interesting, truly interesting, not subjectively interesting, the way a wine mom might find a grey cat.

>>25109699
>No you see, these guys who are supposed to be among the most powerful sorcerers around, and who are specifically infused with a mechanism to prevent them from ever giving up their secrets, would totally be vulnerable to basic hypnosis techniques!
>And obviously Kellhus somehow figured out the mechanism of how the Seswatha business works (even though like months ago he didn't even know sorcery was a thing), and figured out that you can use hypnosis to access the Seswatha spirit/subroutine/whatever - something which I guess the Mandati themselves have never thought to do, even though it'd be of immense interest to them to ask their founder what's up?
Yeah thats the part that matters which that guy completely ignored from me to pivot to the "mystery". I'm starting to understand that a lot of people dont really care about the process, just whatever can be reflected upon about the outcome, hence the "mystery" matters more than the validity of the mystery. I was going to elaborate on that, but honestly I dont feel like it.

>>25109674
We're told Kellhus is superhuman empath mind haxxor constantly. We're never shown. There's literally nothing of his thought process. It's all : Kellhus does X, it's very effective!

>>25109619
soul

I really did not like Elantris.

any fantasy about Aryans dealing with swarthoid silliness

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>>25109674
> filtered
There's a difference between "I don't get it" and "I get it, but I just fundamentally disagree with the premise". Assuming that all critics must simply "not get it", that there couldn't possibly be people who got it perfectly well, and simply felt that it sucks and doesn't work, is one of the marks of a pretentious author too far up his own ass

> I've read enough about cults
The thing about cults is that they tend to be relatively small scale, usually involving a tight-knit, highly localized community, where you're in near-constant contact with the cult leadership or enforcers, and are deliberately encouraged to cut yourself off from friends, family, and the outside world in general. This very close micromanagement of the victims is necessary in order to actually successfully control them - the larger the cult gets, the more opportunity for people to slip through the cracks, not get the necessary attention and start developing disillusionment and eventually seeking escape.
It takes time to get people fully bought into the cult, and *constant maintenance* to keep them there, and as such it doesn't scale very well to large populations.

Kellhus' successes can *maybe* be justified within the limits of the holy war specifically, since by the end they've been whittled down quite thoroughly, they're all kind of going insane from the combat and misery of the desert, and he does actually have the opportunity for personal contact with many of the remaining members. But it really starts straining credulity past that - maybe if the Unification Wars were actually elaborated on and weren't just a list of dates in the glossary...
Scientology for example, while they themselves claim to number in the millions, are estimated to actually be in the tens of thousands, if even that, given how their numbers are shrinking. That might actually line up somewhat with the numbers of the surviving Holy War members (I'm not sure if the books give a clear number of how many are left after Shimeh).

>>25109777
Trips so I’ll elaborate. And this is coming from a guy who loves Stormlight, even Wind and Truth. [spoilers]
I couldn’t care less about telling the nobles Sarene interacted with apart. The reveal that her uncle was some super dangerous pirate felt… unearned. In fact, most reveals feel unearned. The biggest offender is by far the chasm after the earthquake. The chasm exists very far away from the city, and it’s hardly ever mentioned before it is revealed that the chasm was a drastic enough change to the landscape to alter how aons should be drawn. If there was a big fuck ass chasm in between Elantris and the other city I could see it being a better reveal.
Hrathen dying and revealing he was in love with Sarene is just so ridiculously cliche, given how little they actually interacted. Didn’t they talk like, one time? Two times?
All in all I felt I had to read this as homework for future Cosmere projects, but in reality it doesn’t seem important. Seons, splinters of Devotion, are about as useful as a fax machine? Come on now.
Apparently Hoid comes to Sel to see if he can become Elantrian, but I can’t imagine why he’d want to if AonDor decreases drastically by range, yet the side effects stay the same. So if he’s on a different planet and Elantris gets hit by another earthquake, Hoid is now a zombie fucker.
Well I was going to read the Emperor’s Soul next, but now I don’t know. Sel is super bland and gay

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>>25109779
believe it or not, actually Bakker again, kind of (the setting is one where all the white aryan nations got mostly wiped out in the past, so what's left of civilization is this world's equivalent to the Mediterranean, with its not-Byzantines and not-Arabs plus a handful of surviving aryan tribes and not-Africa off in the distance)

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>and this is coming from a guy who loved Stormlight
atta boy

>>25109488
> Jnan in Second Apocalypse doesn't help with the way cultures meld together, because it might aswell just mean "custom".
I think jnan was mostly Bakker wanting to get some Hindu caste society flavor in his setting that's otherwise basing itself off a European (well, Europe & MENA) conflict. But it seems to be mostly for the exotic flair, actual interactions between different castes and the rules that have to be observed doesn't really seem to come up that much, from what I remember?

You'd think the specifics of jnan would come up more in a story about a guy manipulating people, but alas...

>>25109702
>Are you sure you haven't fallen into the old "well I would certainly never join a cult, only an absolute idiot would!" way of thinking, and are projecting that on the characters in the book?
>Yes, we live in a world of easily manipulatable people, a word of abundantly unselfaware people, a world of simple, shallow people.
Lmao.

>That point I brought up about Narcissism is barely touched upon, and I can barely wager that it was intended, because Bakker treats every mind like a rubix cube to be solved, engages with none of its complexities. If you twist and turn things in this specific way, then then youll see the cube (mind) clearly. Even if you agree that that is how the mind really is. It reduces characters to things to be used. Nothing more nothing less, and at that point, you're stripping human beings of everything that could make them interesting, truly interesting, not subjectively interesting, the way a wine mom might find a grey cat.
The most interesting characters in the series are the ones who were used and tossed aside. It's almost like this was by design. But no, I'm sure Bakker is just ignoring the complexities of the human mind. There's no way people could actually be manipulating into loving someone to the point of sacrificing everything for that persons goals. No, surely if you wanted to do something like that you'd have to go on a deep, psychological, mission to uncover all the hidden peaks and valleys of their mind to do that. And doing that to every person in a crusade? Impossible. You'd just be reducing people these inhuman, uninteresting, soulless husks to even think of writing something like that. What was Bakker thinking?

>>25109794
By the time of the Unification it's no longer a cult and is just a straight up religion. A lot of people forget also forget that Kellhus is actually a prophet when he gets off the Circumfix, complete with miracles and halos glowing around his head and hands.

so who is the best fantasy author who writes about human condition?

>>25109794
During the Great Ordeal you see him maintaining his power with the Believer-King's. He has them all gather together in a big tent and confess their sins to him in front of everybody while he reveals their inner thoughts and emotions, ending with him forgiving them. It's all very cult like behaviour.

>>25109855
Me

>>25109855
my diary desu

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>>25109847
>By the time of the Unification it's no longer a cult and is just a straight up religion
Okay, but *how does it make that transition*? That's exactly my problem - organized religions need to establish complex institutions in order to actually function at scale.
I guess the idea here is that Kellhus subsumed the existing structure of the Thousand Temples - okay, how? The whole point of this religion is that it's *not* just not-Catholicism, it's a weird hybrid of monotheism and polytheism ("there's a bunch of gods, but they're all aspects of THE God, but you still worship them individually as their own entities"), and all the individual sects have their own stuff going on, so it's functionally pretty decentralized.
The glossary specifically says
> the sheer size and complexity of the Thousand Temples often renders [the authority of the not-Pope] ceremonial. ... there are the ecclesiastical courts, the political missions, the various Colleges, and the labyrinthine interconnections with the Cults to administer. As a result, the Thousand Temples often suffers from weak leadership, and is regarded with cynicism by many in the Three Seas
So subsuming this doesn't actually but you a big and capable centralized bureaucracy, the way subsuming the Catholic Church in Medieval Europe would.

This also does nothing for Kian and Nilnamesh, who aren't part of those institutions anyway. The Kianese are specifically stated to be "the most powerful nation of the Three Seas", but, uh, I guess they all kind of just gave up on the new religion they were fanatically devoted to, and got subsumed by the guy who ethnically cleansed their priestly caste? (aside from the one remaining rebel guy and his crew)
And the Nilnameshi never adopted Inrithism to begin with, they're still in the pre-Sejenus phase of OG Kiünnat, which would be even more decentralized on account of there not being the belief in a central God to at least tangentially unite the separate sects into a singular institution. Nilnamesh was also the last to be conquered, so there would have been the least amount of time to actually establish new imperial institutions there.

All of this could be trivially solved if Bakker simply got over his Homeric LARP obsession of listing "and so the <type of warrior> from <nation A> under <king X> lined up with the <type of warrior> of <nation B> etc. etc. etc." and just simplified the political environment and cut down the number of nations by setting this back in the time of the Ceneian empire or whatever, so that Kellhus would actually have a ready-made centralized empire to inherit. But, despite his Rothfuss-esque insistence that he totally had the whole story and its conclusion planned out from the very start, I get the feeling he maybe didn't have anything beyond a very broad outline - he wanted a 1st Crusade expy with all the political fractionalism that entails, and a story about an evil prophet uniting the land, and had to mesh them together somehow.

>>25109916
it ends up being sort of like Star Wars in a way, where the OT gives the impression of the transition to the empire being a longer and more arduous period, the very mention of "Clone Wars (plural)" makes one imagine many separate wars taking places over decades, with the Republic gradually becoming more autocratic as a consequence
And then the prequels come out and it's just the one war (even though the plural is still used), it goes on for like 3 years and honestly doesn't really seem that devastating, considering the scale of the whole galaxy - and Lucas' "subversion" of having the clones actually be on the Republic's side when everyone back in the early EU years assumed it was the Republic fighting against various clone armies means that the Republic didn't actually even need to do anything like institute large scale conscription and lose a lot of its actual citizenry in brutal war - you've got two sides mostly fighting with manufactured soldiers, whether in factories or vats, so what's even the big deal?

>>25109855
actively writing? gosh probably DCC guy

>>25109916
Anyway, more on Nilnamesh, since I ran out of space - presumably, Kellhus *really* needed them if he bothered expending all this effort on conquering it, he probably made some calculation that the manpower they brought would be necessary for the war - although I'm not sure how well that actually holds up, I don't think the books give precise numbers but from checking on The White-Luck Warrior now, one of the Four Armies that the Ordeal is broken up into is Nilnamesh + Kian + Girgashi + Cironji - I assume the later two are going to be small contingents since those are small nations, and it's mostly the first two, so lets generously say the Nilnameshi are half, that's half of a quarter or an eight total - decent contribution for a single nation, but would it really be that instrumental for the war effort, considering the losses incurred conquering them?

The Vokalati they bring actually *are* really important, but do you really need to conquer the nation to get those guys? Sorcerers presumably aren't exactly very nationalistic on account of the general population considering them damned, outside of the Scarlet Spires who actually just run a nation of their own.

See, these would be interesting question to actually explore - but Bakker's interest clearly isn't in that, which is why we kind of handwave the whole monumental effort of uniting the Three Seas and speedrun starting the Ordeal, where his actual interest (gay snuff porn) lies. But why bother coming up with all these nations with their own (admittedly rather limited once you actually think about it) lore and histories, if you were just going to flatten them into "yeah they all get conquered and do the Ordeal" in the end?

Herbert didn't bother coming up with super-detailed backstories of all the planets in the Corrino Empire, because he knew it wouldn't matter to the Dune series - he just focused on the Fremen and the handful of aristocratic families and organizations who were the main players. Because he was actually a good writer who knew where he was going (well, mostly, at least until the later books)
Tolkien did come up with a bunch of lore and histories, but he actually set stories back during those histories, and had the events of that past still informing what was going on in LOTR in various ways.

>>25109842
Why do retards respond to a post without responding to a post but instead craft a sarcastic story about the post their responding to, that only exists to validate themselves because it doesnt change any actual fact of the matter of what is said, just reframes it in a way that can be reconfigured for their comfort.

Its so weird, its like theyre only talking to themselves but they frame it as talking to somebody else. I dont understand why posts like this are even allowed to stay up, unless the type of person who has the power to get rid of them, simply doesn't actually care whether human beings engage in discussion with other people or create their own internal outspoken echo chambers.

I'm not responding to anything else you have to say. You don't possess the self awareness to understand why you're stupid, and if I broke it down specifically and precisely for you, like I already did with the character limit post you didnt remotely address, you'd just pull this same trick where you can give them impression of addressing something, without ever doing so.

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>>25109929
> but Bakker's interest clearly isn't in that ... where his actual interest (gay snuff porn) lies
Some more funny stuff on this point - Bakker has a handful of short stories released separately from the books. One of them, https://secondapocalypse.fandom.com/wiki/The_Knife_of_Many_Hands, is set in Carythusal, the capital of High Ainon, shortly before the Scholastic Wars start. Great setting, you might think, lots of potential to elucidate what these damn Scholastic Wars actually were, how the Scarlet Spires maneuvered themselves into getting their own puppet nation, more stuff on Ainoni culture, right?

Uh, no
> Screaming. Thrashing. Bestial glimpses of spider eyes and puckered cunnies.
> ‘Ravish him!’ the Grandmaster screeched, keened.
> ‘Sack his flesh! Blast him with shame! Rape! Rape!’
> Thurror Eryelk awoke on the riverbank, curled about Vampire beneath a rotting dock, clothed only in filth and blood.
> ...
> And though he remembered nothing save
making love to the Queen in the grotto, he could see the print of what had happened in the gore that robed him...
> The shrieking memories would not be long in coming.

>>25109817
Swarthy

>>25109862
The Ordeal is more than 300k strong. There's, like, 10 named kings, plus let's assume a decent amount of high-ranking caste-nobles who also get to sit in on the meetings.
Sure, the kings are obviously going to influence the men under them, but that only goes so far. Some of these guys have tens of thousands of men under their command - you need some semblance of an officer hierarchy at that scale, and with each layer of removal from an in-person Kellhus buckbreaking session, surely the faith-reaffirming effect would weaken?

Did Kellhus do some kind of vetting program to make sure hundreds of thousands of men were fully loyal? Given that the whole point of this campaign is to mobilize as much meat as possible to throw at the Consult's forces, I can't imagine he was that selective with the lowly infantrymen in his army. So why would those guys be all that faithful? How loyal are the Nilnameshi? The Kianene?
The sorcerous schools (other than the Mandati, who are in it for the love of the game, and the Swayali, who are presumably personally loyal to Kellhus on account of being formed at his behest) apparently *weren't* that loyal, and had to be roped in with the double whammy of "you're totally not damned anymore, trust me!" and "you're totally going to get the Gnosis when we're done, trust me!" - so, what's roping in all the lowly guys who aren't being subjected to regularly scheduled cult sessions? After the Second Battle of the Horde, the Believer-Kings had to go before their men and deliver the news that they'd be eating sranc now, and everyone was like "looks like meat's back on the menu, boys!"?

Again, I'm willing to sort-of accept this in the context of the first trilogy, since what's left of the Holy War by the end is small and battered enough that *maybe* Kellhus' cult techniques could conceivably work at that scale, *maybe* he could manage to interact with a sufficiently large proportion of the men to keep them dedicated and fanatical. But that's not applicable to the Ordeal - there's the big speech Kellhus gives to everyone at the start in front of Sakarpus, but I think it's all meetings with the select few from that point on, until maybe right before the final battle? (and obviously after the Breaking of the Ordeal, even if he wanted to he couldn't speak to everyone anyway). There's a handful of mentions of priests leading mass prayers, but those guys are no Dunyain. The Judges ostensibly run around punishing dissenters, but again, this is an army of hundreds of thousands, and one that gets deliberately split up and dispersed at one point, it's going to be difficult to fully enforce moral policing.
Maybe an Ordeal led by the Dunyain as a whole organization would be believable - there'd be enough guys to talk to mostly everyone. But Kellhus has just himself and a couple of his half-trained half-Dunyain kids, who don't really seem much help here.

>>25109803
Even though the technical level is lacking, the metaphorical one was really evocative.

>>25109930
I understood your point, it was just so completely wrong and misplaced that I could cut through the rhetoric and dismantle it with a mere fraction of the word count. You have been spamming these threads for days with your read through of the Second Apocalypse, and it is painfully obvious to everyone that you have zero understanding of the material. Worse, it's like you're not even trying to understand it. It's as if you've developed some kind of personal vendetta against the series and now it MUST be bad, like your ego could not withstand it being good. Please, return to the series when you're less emotional and more capable of giving it an honest critique.

>>25110024
ah, "YOU JUST DON'T GET IT", the classic retort of the bakkerfag (and apparently Bakker himself, >>25109794 pic related - is that you, Scott? Is this thread of like maybe a dozen posters where you find yourself now?)

No-God when

>>25110091
No-God No-When, No-Hetero lmao rekt

I just finished Three Body Problem and I feel like I'm going insane. Why does everyone love this? How did it win a fucking Hugo? This was one of the worst reading experiences I've ever had, and seeing people compare it to the likes of Clark and Asimov makes me so confused.

>>25110024
By far the worst thing to happen to bakkerfags is someone reading the book and posting screen caps of it. I wish this had happened years ago, there's no way it would have caught on do much as a meme if niggas could have seen how it actually was, instead of what bakkerfags pretended.

>>25110104
Have you read other post-turn of the century Hugo winners? Do so and you won't be surprised

>>25110104
All of the praise for 3BP rightfully belongs to the later books in the series. Which still aren't great, but are not nearly the dumpsterfire of the first book. I wouldn't recommend the series to anyone because it's not worth slogging through book 1 to get to 2 and 3, but if you've made it all the way through 3BP you might as well keep going.

>>25109794

Unironicaly you are filtered. Kellhus is a superintelligence and everything he does works out as he wants it too for exactly that reason. It is that simple take it or leave it. I think it is sufficent for us the readers to understand the tools and methods he uses for his manipulations. We don't need / shouldnt get his thought process behind it.

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>>25108981
>Ce'Nedra, or X'Nedra, was an Imperial Princess of Tolnedra and eventually the Rivan Queen. She was the wife of Belgarion and the daughter of Ran Borune XXIII, Emperor of Tolnedra, and the Dryad Ce'Vanne. She bore the titles of Queen of Riva, Imperial Princess of the Tolnedran Empire, and Jewel of the House of Borune. She is also known in the Mrin Codex as the "Queen of the World".
YES QUEEN

>>25110104
There's a cultural fascination with Chinese authors. In most cases dry English translation doesn't help their works.

>>25110091
I really don't care anymore, it's taken longer to write it than it did for me to grow out of grimdark.

>>25110360
Bakker writes EPIC fantasy, not grimdark.........

>>25110304
> take it or leave it
> choose to leave it
> NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO FILTERED

>>25110369
No because his criqitue is way more autistic than just saying it dosen't interest him.

He autistically criticizing how real life cults work and why because of that Kellhus dosen't work. Blatently ignoring the one obvious fact which is that those real life cults are not lead by a guy with superintelligence and godlike magic powers. If real life cult leaders had those things going for them their cults might function a little differenty don't you think?

I wan't you to apply this same level of absurd hyper autistc analysis to every single piece of fiction you consume. Just apply this same exact logic to Moby-Dick and you will see just how retarded and bad faith this kind of analysis is. "Oh you really think these sailors would really just go along with chasing the white whale over just whaling like normal? Just because Ahab is a good speaker!? People aren't that dumb!!! Melville is a fucking hack!"

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Any fantasy books with ultra lean prose?

>>25110104
>the likes of Clarke and Asimov
lol

>>25110438
Like when they said GRRM was the new Tolkien.

>>25110478
I think Asimov and Clarke are just as overrated. Death to megapopular-only tradpub filth.

>>25110490
Clarke is still good. His writing still transmits that good old sense of wonder 20th century SF had.

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>>25108969
>criminal lack of fantasy crusades
I'm surprised they haven't started shitting out Trench Crusade fiction yet. Probably because it's imploding too fast.

>>25110408
>I wan't you to apply this same level of absurd hyper autistc analysis to every single piece of fiction you consume
> don't question things, just consume product and get excited for next product
Also, is Bakker supposed to be a serious author of literature or not? Serious works are supposed to invite questioning! If he was just openly a fun pulp guy writing about barbarians adventuring in rape-goblin-land, I wouldn't give a shit, but he's >>25109253
Manipulation and the secret things that drive people without them knowing are a core fucking theme here, it's literally the title of the first book! Is the reader supposed to *not* contemplate how this stuff works, given the time dedicated to explaining it?

> Oh you really think these sailors would really just go along with chasing the white whale over just whaling like normal?
I very specifically said like 10 times that my problem is *with the scale* of things. I'm fine with Kellhus being able to manipulate individuals he comes across and spends time with. I'm even willing to, begrudgingly, maybe accept what happens in the first 3 books, specifically within the confines of the Holy War, due to the unique circumstances there. But beyond that?

> guy with superintelligence and godlike magic powers
Okay, and? I just fundamentally do not buy into the premise that those things translate to Kellhus being able to do the things he pulls off. How does superintelligence solve the problems I pointed out? My argument was that the cult techniques require direct interaction with people to work - and, indeed, I'm perfectly willing to accept that Kellhus can keep the people who he regularly interacts with dominated. But how does he maintain their obedience on a scale past that? His godlike powers do not include omnipresence -
how does his manipulation function over time? What happens to all the Kianene and Nilnameshi after they've been conquered and he's gone back to the capital, and they're not there seeing his halos and miracles in person? Are they just buckbroken forever because they saw him the one time?
Like, let's imagine that he uses some metagnosis mumbo-jumbo to basically implement a fantasy version of the 1984 Big Brother broadcasts - he figures out how to do Giga-Cants-of-Calling and hit the entire population of the Three Seas, even the non-sorcerers, with his sermons each night. Maybe he studies the Mandati's Seswatha heart thingy and figures out the method behind it with his super-genius (maybe he actually just speaks to Seswatha again and asks him his secret, assuming it was actually Seswatha who came up with it and not Emilidis or some other nonman buddy), redoes the Serwe heart-pull trick but with his own, and gives everyone in the Ordeal a little Kellhus soul-homunculus to follow them along. These are premises I *would* buy into - but for what's actually presented in the book, I don't.

>>25110538
Anyways, the overall point is - you do buy into that premise. I do not. Simple as that.

> just saying it dosen't interest him.
That's the thing - the world *does* interest me! I just wish I got to read more about it without this plot device coming in and ruining my fun. I guess I have partly myself to blame since I got roped in by the "fantasy 1st Crusade" advertising angle, and thought this would be a story about the intricate politics of a fantasy Mediterrenean, and that's simply not what Bakker's doing. That's why my enjoyment steadily drops as the series goes on - I actually genuinely really like The Darkness That Comes Before, precisely because it has a lot of the politicking, but by the end of The Thousandfold Thought and Moënghus' clunky exposition dumping I'm kind of starting to tap out.

The short story I brought up in >>25109941 is me falling for it again, thinking that there's going to be actual interesting political lore when it's just a a sloppy barely comprehensible mess about a guy being raped, or raping, or being raped so he rapes another guy later

Also, speaking of filtering
> Kellhus is a superintelligence and everything he does works out as he wants it too for exactly that reason
Isn't literally the core point of the sequel quadrilogy that *it doesn't work out* (although of course there's the "he totally pursed his soul in the second decapitant, it's all part of his master plan" theorizing, but the No-God's never getting written so we'll never know). Doesn't he specifically acknowledge to Proyas that he's going insane? Doesn't he specifically acknowledge that for all his Dunyain breeding, he has a darkness of his own moving him in Esmenet? Isn't the whole point of the Ishuäl sequence that the Dunyain method is a dead-end, and the Logos isn't actually attainable by superintelligent autistic contemplation, and making things even worse - the things that the Dunyain did in their attempts to get there have pretty much made them some of the most giga-damned motherfuckers in the universe?

>>25109517
>Didn't Bakker say, what made Kellhus so well written
>author pats himself on the back, therefore he's right on everything

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>>25110326
This but unironically

>>25110538
>how does his manipulation function over time? What happens to all the Kianene and Nilnameshi after they've been conquered and he's gone back to the capital
pretty sure he installs some kind of system of overseers and informants to enforce his rule by force, nothing supernatural going on there
he does delegate tasks to other people (I assume he's VERY good at picking the right people)

>>25110538
>is Bakker supposed to be a serious author of literature
It makes anons post enormous walls of text so maybe?

>>25110574
>>25110538
Besides, it takes very little imagination for the scenario to be something like the Nilnameshi who are left in positions of power being either greedy or pragmatic
they know the winds have changed, and their personal future are with Kellhus' empire - be that either for greed, economical/ploitical opportunities enabled by submitting
or simple fear of Kellhus coming down like a ton of bricks
probably both
(a pupped government propped up by Kellhus?)

Obviously the books skipped over all this. But it's not like it's impossible beyond imagination. I think all of this sounds very mundane.
They could still be playing wack-a-mole with tiny rebellions, just we don't hear about it in the book. It's been so long since I read, but I don't think it's made explicit that *everything* is being 100% dominated with no resistance.

>>25110554
huh? what are you responding to, im getting really tired and impatient with the realization that a lot of retards just consume books uncritically, and 90% of the resistance to criticism is "erm well, couldnt you criticize everything then, like classics that I have predetermined as immune to criticism such as moby dick?"
be more clear regarding your response.

>>25109803
>Well I was going to read the Emperor’s Soul next, but now I don’t know. Sel is super bland and gay
I never read Elantris. My first Sanderson book is Emperor's Soul. I liked it enough to read through Mistborn era 1. For context, I'm >>25107617

So far, I think his novellas are better than his books because they feel like they're pretentiously long so he can do what >>25108505 said. So I think you should give The Emperor's Soul a try.

>>25108969
>>25108969
Is this any good? Its marketed as crusade among many other things.

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>>25110617
>>25110617
Forgot picture

>>25109803
Elantris was one of the first chronological Cosmere stories, and we never got the promised sequels which makes it all feel unfulfilled, half-assed and discarded.

>>25110326
>>25110558
I loved that she had to use her pre-teen sexiness to convince her dad and some of the other kings.
Belgariad had both a hebe waifu (ce'nedra) AND and milf waifu (Polgara, My beloved...)

>>25110574
> pretty sure he installs some kind of system of overseers and informants to enforce his rule by force
Yeah, the Ministrate and the Judges. But not much detail is given on them - I guess here again we just have a difference in opinion on what's a satisfactory explanation or not. If you're focused more so on the main plot, just a mention of "yeah, the Kellian NKVD are running around busting caps" is perhaps sufficient, but I question the idea of secret police in a pre-modern society without a surveillance state really being able to be effective. The Spanish Inquisition had a relatively easy time since they were mostly targeting Jews and Muslims - the Judges here would have a much larger demographic that they'd need to be keeping an eye on.
And heavy-handed methods can backfire, as literally happens:
> the Judges publicly lashed a slave they had apprehended for blasphemy
> ...
> they were entirely unprepared for the mob's rush. Within a matter of moments they had been beaten, stripped, and hung from the hanging stone gutters of the Imperial Custom House. Within a watch, a greater part of the city rioted ...
So I guess Kellhus *didn't* pick the right people, and without his subtler means of control it's riot-o-clock. Except this instability seems to only start happening in time for the books plot, and the Empire was otherwise relative stable after the conclusion of the Unification Wars, even thought there presumably would have been Judges doing public torture and executions the whole time. I guess this could be somewhat justified at least, by saying that tensions were escalating for a while, and things just happened to reach a breaking point in this particular moment.

There's also the fact that the Empire is mobilizing for the Ordeal - so how many men can it really spare for law enforcement? Normally, I wouldn't mind this so much, I'd even agree with the >>25110408 take that it's an overly autistic critique, but Bakker here has specifically written a set of books *heavily* involving the logistical troubles of running a massive military campaign. If he didn't want me to think about the importance of resource distribution, he shouldn't have written in all the cannibalism and gay rape.

If Bakker had maybe made the Dunyain somewhat less super-special, perhaps this could be made to flow better - if some limited Dunyain skills could be taught to regular folk, not enough for full-on psychological domination, but just enough to basically become able to spot people who give off a "hiding dark secrets" vibe, maybe a secret police could seem more feasible.

>>25110538
>>25110540

>Is the reader supposed to *not* contemplate how this stuff works, given the time dedicated to explaining it?

But we do know how it works. You are just being pedantic because you refuse to accept that it would function on the masses. Why you think manipulating the masses for Kellhus would be any difficulty at all I don't comprehend.

>His godlike powers do not include omnipresence
Except that the thousandfold thought is literally exactly like the prescience in Dune. He knows already if what he has done is enough or not. He knows already how far their loyalty to him will extend. So if he has done enough for them to stay loyal until his goal is accomplished he will do no more. If it's not then he knows also what would get them there.

>Isn't literally the core point of the sequel quadrilogy that *it doesn't work out*

Yes because while his Dunyain powers grant him complete dominance over humanity. It does not make him strong enough to overcome reality / God / fate itself.

>>25110604
>like classics that I have predetermined as immune to criticism such as moby dick?

You know that was not the point of the Moby-Dick example. That was to point how retarded your type of criticism is when applied to "great literature." Like yeah I wan't to hear you say that you think its bad writing because the crews response to Ahab is not realistic. Because it is a genuinly retarded take that would get you laughed out the room. Why? Because is that what Moby-Dick is at all about and what we should spend our time thinking about? I hate the way that you read. Thats really all.

>>25110600
>They could still be playing wack-a-mole with tiny rebellions, just we don't hear about it in the book
Maybe, but given that Bakker went out of his way to include a massive glossary at the end, to the point of destroying his relationship with his publisher over it, he probably would have mentioned that, or it would have come up in the Esmenet chapters. The timeline of the Unification Wars mentions
> Only Fanayal ab Kascamandri remains of the Empire’s notorious enemies
I guess there could also be some lesser non-notorious enemies left? But anyway, that seems to be the only notable rebellion, and it's not really a particularly active one - Fanayal's just chilling in the desert, and only moves some time after the Ordeal heads off, with the Empire being so stripped to the bone by that point that the Fanim basically just march on the capital nearly unopposed.

> the Nilnameshi who are left in positions of power being either greedy or pragmatic
> be that either for greed, economical/ploitical opportunities enabled by submitting
Except it's specifically established that the planning for the Ordeal involved requisitioning a massive amount of resources from everyone. There was no economic opportunity in becoming part of the Empire - you just got to have most of your military-aged men and food surplus redirected to the war effort, which surely would have had a destabilizing effect.
You really need to be made into an actual believer in the Apocalypse in order to be willing to sacrifice so much for the Ordeal - this isn't an Alexander the Great style conquest, where most of the local institutions and governmental structures remain intact and there's just some new Greek asshole at the top, Kellhus is completely upending life in all these territories in order to supply the Ordeal. One would expect this to cause way more unrest.
I guess I can accept the elite being successfully propagandized, but the general populace? How do you even explain the Consult business to a bunch of peasants, "no look we have to take all your sheep because there's a bunch of big-dicked rapist aliens chilling on the other end of the continent who we really need to kill".
In fact, what we get from the glossary is
> Ere the departure of the Great Ordeal, more than half the population of every province in the Empire had been Whelmed, more than three quarters in a few (such as Nansur and Conriya).
So, there's still decent portions of the population who haven't even gone through their not-Baptism, how much would they even know about the principles of this new religion stealing all their shit?

>>25110880
>Why you think manipulating the masses for Kellhus would be any difficulty at all I don't comprehend
Because how does he fucking *communicate* with the masses? This is a pre-modern society - he's not rolling out the Volksempfänger and holding regular radio shows about the evils of the Consult. He needs to actually talk to people, in person. Pre-written screeds delivered by non-Dunyain priests are presumably not going to be anywhere near as effective.

And the thing we know about the mechanism of Dunyain manipulation is that it's based on reading faces and observing reactions. Again, this is fine for individual manipulation - how does it translate to giving speeches to thousands and manipulating them all at once? How does it translate to running a state, and anticipating the reactions of people in another country?

me and excerpts-anon are different guys btw, I know it's difficult for you to consider that there could possibly be more than one fool who dislikes the genius of Mr. Pendulous Phallus himself, but there are


> I hate the way that you read
>>25110024
> Please, return to the series when you're less emotional and more capable of giving it an honest critique
hmm

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I haven't read something so profoundly unremarkable in a while, does this series actually get better in the second novel?

>>25110905
the aggressively generic title and book cover art should given that away before you wasting your time.

>>25110903
>How does it translate to giving speeches to thousands and manipulating them all at once?

He sees their faces and reactions etc and he says exactly whatever is going to result in the number of conversions from non-believers to believers. This is not hard to understand and not critique worthy of taking seriously. It is "What is Aragorns tax policy!?" levels of pedantic.

>me and excerpts-anon are different guys btw, I know it's difficult for you to consider that there could possibly be more than one fool who dislikes the genius of Mr. Pendulous Phallus himself, but there are

Hilariously enough I am also not the guy you seem to think I am >>25110024 is not me

>>25110943
>He sees their faces and reactions
With fucking what, his elf-eyes?

> This is not hard to understand and not critique worthy of taking seriously
"face-muscle-based mind-reading" also isn't really a concept worth taking seriously, but alas

>>25110917
People always recommend that series when dragon rider centric epic fantasy comes up so I decided to give it a try but I really don't understand what they see in it currently

Fantasy series with a female mc that does not get fucked? I feel like I’m getting cucked if another guy gets with the female mc

Best Lovecraft stories?

I've already read The Whisperer in Darkness and At the Mountains of Madness and thought they were decent.

>>25110963
>>He sees their faces and reactions
>With fucking what, his elf-eyes?
You should have stopped responding to him when he tried justifying Kellhus' mind reading powers...by saying that he sees faces and reactions. There really is little point in engaging with fans like this seriously. The unseriousness and hollowness with which they engage with writing is honestly a worse look for Bakker than anything. Makes me want to give him his basic respect of finishing thousandfold thought and seeing if he manages to pull it together, and if not, abandon the series forever and move on to read whatever fantasy book bakker fans seem to hate the most or consider the most overrated.

>>25110880
> Except that the thousandfold thought is literally exactly like the prescience in Dune
I feel like Paul probably wouldn't have needed to get those 60 billion people killed in that case
Prescience in Dune never seemed to reach quite this level of individual control, it seemed more about broader societal developmental predictions, somewhat psycho-history-like.
Dune's prescience also clearly has a mystical component to it, it's not about being a superintelligence and the idea that somehow being able to pick up enough information quickly enough translates to manipulation. Refer to this comment from another anon from two threads ago: >>25094305
> Particularly with hard sci-fi, Watts and Reynolds, or Bakker as well, the authors seem very wired into a particular philosophical tradition.
> Analytic philosophy of mind is still very hot on computational theories of mind
> Wisdom is subtractive and intuitive. It’s the ability to see what matters amidst the noise of the world. Analysis is additive. You describe the inputs and then the conclusion. The latter is way easier to write. It's particularly easier to write if you're pushing an ideology where all insight and wisdom is a mirage because nothing *really* matters.
If you happen to, for philosophical reasons (or perhaps theological ones), disagree with this additive view, the idea that just stacking more and more information actually leads to anything by itself, then the whole "superintelligence" premise just becomes childish.

> So if he has done enough for them to stay loyal until his goal is accomplished he will do no more. If it's not then he knows also what would get them there
Well, "the thousandfold thought did it" is just something I don't find to be a particularly compelling narrative concept. Dune places limitations on prescience and has competing factions to spice things up.

Kellhus eventually runs into one hard limitation, right at the end, but otherwise can apparently base his plans on the specific rape of a specific guy and the specific consequences of that. This is anime-tier nonsense.

>>25110903
>>25110883
I genuinely don't get the problem, we got stuff like this happening throughout history all the time. Wars. (religiously motivated wars)
the masses being sent into the meat grinder for dumb reason they themselves wouldn't care about or understand

Kellhus had set himself up a religious figure and hijacked both that, and usurped the local power structures

>There was no economic opportunity in becoming part of the Empire
There is if you're a war profiteer, and a local leader
Or maybe you rely on trade with the empire, and you're just totally cut off if you're not a part of it

>>25111000
>abandon the series forever
Tbf, I'd say at least the Great Ordeal chapters of the sequel quadrilogy are worth reading, just for the war-kino.
Unfortunately, most of the other stuff is... eh. People love the Achamian chapters, but honestly I didn't care for my favorite cuckolded hobo-sorcerer's adventures that much. And most of the other stuff was shit, it's truly shocking how badly-paced and edited the books become.

>Bakkerfag talking to himself again
Sigh...

>>25111011
>it's truly shocking how badly-paced and edited the books become.
I'm not surprised. Warrior Prophet was a horrible slog. Genuinely horrible. Felt like I could have read a summary of Warrior Prophet then read the last hundred or so pages and been fine. It was the book that induced "skimming" and speed reading pages to me, once I realized that all the details I paid attention to, didnt matter, and retards on here who I'd bring up these details to address didnt care that a significant portion of the book is fluff.

I honestly shouldnt even be reading Thousandfold Thought, Its very rare for me to see THIS many blatant problems with a series and deliberately ignore them to continue reading unless theres a huge upside, and the upside im hanging onto, is everything established in Darkness that comes Before, having a purpose and coming to fruition.

I'm sticking around out of respect for the intrigue I've held onto from the first book.

>>25106807
does he groom his eyebrows or do they grow like that naturally?

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Brilliant writing here. I almost can't possibly tell what the Author himself thinks of intelligence, and why hes so bad at writing, it, and why Esmenet, not Kellhus is actually the perfect example of how he easily succumbs to one of the most basic and egregious writing follies.

>>25111005
> I genuinely don't get the problem, we got stuff like this happening throughout history all the time
Except we don't. Total war is a concept of modernity, facilitated by certain technological and societal developments.
For most of agrarian history, wars have been a small-scale affair fought by a relatively small proportion of society. Pre-modern states simply did not have the capacity to mobilize all that many resources - the masses did not get sent into the meat-grinder, since like 90% of the population had to be dedicated to farming just to ensure the basic survivability of your state, and you were still a couple of bad harvests away from disaster.

The Crusades were not fought by the masses - infamously, a bunch of peasants did actually go in first, which was specifically *not* something anyone wanted, and they got slaughtered. Everything afterwards was professional warrior classes, with armies reaching at most 100k, and usually far below that.
Only a handful of empires like Rome and China could support massive armies, thanks to having a sufficient food surplus - Rome, for example, heavily relied on importing from Egypt and North Africa, and being eventually cut off from those imports had severe consequences for the empire (or what was left of it by that point). Most states weren't in such a situation, and it doesn't seem to be the case for anyone in our fictional setting either - there's no super-fertile Nile equivalent here.

It's stated that "Never, not even in the days of Far Antiquity, had the world seen the assembly of such a host". This is a clearly unprecedented level of mobilization for such a society, and would be highly disruptive - I guess Kellhus didn't feel like utilizing his super-calculating genius to invent better agriculture or anything (he had to spend all his time thousand-folding his way into getting his men to gay-rape each other, of course), so he'd still be working with a society where over 90% need to farm, and trying to squeeze as much military capacity as possible out of the last few remaining percent - and he squeezes so much that he leaves the empire with such a depleted military that they have to start mobilizing retirees
> Middle-aged veterans were called up. Militias were levied. A dozen small battles were fought across lands famous and obscure. Curfews were extended. The Yatwerian temples were closed, and those priestesses who did not flee were imprisoned and interrogated.
So the Ordeal is very much a level of militarization that's very atypical for a society such as this, whether in our history or in Bakker's fictional one.


> and usurped the local power structures
I covered this in >>25109916, but the local power structures are specifically established as *not* being very highly centralized - so him usurping them does not actually translate to him getting a nice ready-made empire to run. New institutional systems would have to be established - and that's always an opportunity for discord

>>25107782
But I must remember, no literary criticism is anything but autism, if anything can be questioned, even our dear old preconceived immune from criticism classic Moby Dick can be criticized and oh how I cant fathom the horror of such a thing, therefore I can just call all criticism autistic when I feel like it to make sure to protect Moby Dick, because I've preconceived that it must be so.

I love stupid people and how their ignorance guides them to such overwhelming confidence in continuing to be stupid with zero question or thought. They walk on a smaller earth.

Anyway I replied to this for picrel.

>>25110963
How do you think you made any kind of argument here? Yes he reads people by looking at them? With his "elf-eyes" those are the stated mechanics of Dunyain mind reading.

>"face-muscle-based mind-reading" also isn't really a concept worth taking seriously, but alas

Okay so you admit to being filtered. Could just have admitted that at the start.

>>25111002

It is clear that both of your critiques of Kellhus literally just boils down too "I can't see how he can be THAT smart!" but he just simply IS. There is nothing more to say. You don't like it? Fine. But do we need 50 posts about how its bad writing? Just because you're getting filtered by the Übermensch concept?

Can you start talking about Cnaiur instead already? If you didn't get Cnaiur I don't respect your opinions on the series or literature in general.

>>25111094
See I think It's funny how your avoidance to actually DIRECTLY criticize Moby-Dick actually reveals that you know such criticism is stupid in first place.

Here's a decent reading list I found if anyone's interested.
https://friendorfoe.com/d/Old%20School%20Reading%20List.pdf

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I wonder about passages like this. I could write more about an approach to "complexity" in writing I don't like, and lay out all the indepth reasons, and theories, to be engaged with, but theres no point on here when nobody engages with anything.

What I'll say, is that, this doesnt really change anything regarding how I see Esmenet. What it does do, is for the first time, in this entire series, Bakker has managed to conjure up writing that makes me feel something, that makes me feel bad for Achamian, by reminding us who he was, before the torture, and what made his patheticness tolerable, all that feels behind us now, as I dont even remember the last time Achamian woke up from the Seswatha Nightmare. But to be fair, it would be pointless and meaningless to write about that at this point. Theres nothing interesting, atleast at this stage, to be reaped from that experience without Esmenet.

These were characters, in Darkness that comes Before which I always thought simple, but complete something in how they reveal more about one another through their dialogue and interactions. When your characters arent actually deep, you cant constantly mine deeper understandings of each character, after each dialogue interaction.

Even this passage, is just revistiing what we already knew and understood about Achamian, and yet somehow it did genuinely make me feel bad for him again, more than when we first understood him. Because of the relentlessly heartless context of Bakker describing Kellhus pinching Esmenets nipple, setting in the very fact, that Achamian can no longer have his reprieve from the dreams.

Its very cheap, but effective, just reusing understanding, in a renewed context, to elicit feelings always there, but never highlighted. And feelings that likely will never be delved into, because there really isnt much depth to harvest. Just feeling, from recontexualization.

>>25111114
No I just don't care about, and haven't read Moby Dick. I will criticize anything. I dont care. I'm not as shallow as you, my values are not given to me by norms, conditions, and precedent, grounded by a social contract. They are found, and formed by me.

>>25111137
I think you felt so badass writing this. KWAB

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The prose is very good, it's extremely readable, even when the editor obviously gave up in the second half, which was unfortunate as that's when the book actually began to feel like it was going somewhere. It took me so long to get into and the front half is so vague and directionless I would have dropped it if I didn't have an autistic obsession with finishing everything I start. I suppose my feeling is that things you dislike teach you more than things you like. What I'll do with what I've learned is a mystery.
For instance, I thought I didn't like exposition, but from this I learned that you have to do at least a little bit of work in the beginning to get me understanding what's happening. There's fantasy elements mixed in with the scifi, and my assumption is that that's the dream world crossing into reality, or maybe the other way around. It would have been nice to have a few brief words on the situation, just to clarify.
Like I said, I didn't like the front half. It seems to have been going for the junkie hijinks angle, but for some reason it's one of those super tight timeline, when the day changes there's a big page to announce it type of books. I think that's cringe. If you're going for so little exposition that I'm left wondering if magic is in the setting, then you can't be strictly demarcating days. I feel that about ALL fiction books that mark out the days though, Let The Right One In didn't need it either. Anyway, it leaves the junkie hijinks feeling empty. I needed more time to get to know the characters before I could care about their story, and especially when the conclusion isn't the protagonist having to accept that he lost his sister to drugs and that he needs to clean up his act, but that he's going to become the new god of the drug world. Not every cyberpunk story has to end on the Wintermute/Neuromancer communion.
All that said, when I put it down I wasn't sure if I had liked it. One day I'll read it again to make sure.

>>25111296
>sister
I meant to say sister/lover

>>25111296
It was good enough for me. Try also Pollen and Nymphomation.

>Inb4 Your "reviews" are shit. Fuck off.

>>25110966
Same with Sun Eater for SF, modern standards are basically non-existent.

>>25108550
Bakker = First Crusade + The Silmarillion + Dune

Almost finished with my first read of Dune, and while I think the ideas and themes presented are interesting and worthy of further discussion, I just cannot bring myself to care about the actual story or the characters.
Perhaps I just haven't read enough classic sci-fi, but this is a problem I've also had with other books around this same time period. Great ideas, questionable execution.
Perhaps I'll revisit it in 10 years or so and have a greater appreciation for it, but for now those are my thoughts.

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SF/F discussion sucks here. Plenty of fantasy discussion, especially Sanderson, Rowling, and plenty of awful YA, etc. Tolkien and Lovecraft are fine but way over discussed. The little SF that gets discussed is either Dune.., maybe one of the big 3 SF writers, or else 1984 or Brave New World. I made a new thread for literary Genre SF discussion
>>25111550

Howling Dark: I was hoping Hadrian cheating death would have something to do with his consciousness transferring to a body clone made by Calvert when he had his blood drawn but I guess I'll have to wait and see if this was some advanced AI fuckery or actual true mysticism. Book was frustratingly slow up until they got to Vorgossos but what a ride since then.

>>25111557
All you had to do was talk about that stuff instead of complaining why nobody else is talking about it
Even your new thread has nothing from you, just you begging other people to talk for you. Maybe instead of 4chan you should on YouTube, watching video essay slop? That way you don't have to do anything yourself

>>25111560
I'm not begging anyone to discuss anything. I'm critiquing this general by saying most of the writers discussed here are shit. YA is not SFF and shouldn't be discussed here. If you disagree with what I'm saying feel free to tell me why.

>>25111560
nta but some of you niggas are genuinely mentally ill, literally engage with others like youre not human.

>>25111557
Why don't you read rwal literature instead?

>>25111558
Vorgossos features one of the worst instances of Ruocchio's plagiarism though (the waiting room)

>>25111557
Good, bakkerfag can take his page by page analysis there.

>>25111575
>I'm not begging anyone to discuss anything, I just drop things into the thread I want other people to talk about instead of saying anything about it myself
You have nothing to say about any New Wave authors. Otherwise you'd have, you know, made a substantial post about them. But you didn't. You just said "pls talk about this here", asking other people to provide the substance and content.
You are a hollow, hollow man.

>>25111581
Do you mean their capture and imprisonment? Yes not a bright spot in the second half of the book but regardless it's still better than the first.
And I'm the midwit from last thread who hasn't read any SF, this plagiarism is flying right over my head. Thus I am unbothered.

>>25111594
The whole sequence is taken from Gene Wolfe and if you one day read Claw of the Conciliator, you'll understand and be deeply bothered.

>>25111598
desu I wouldn't mind if all books were plagiarized from Wolfe.

>>25111558
Been a year or so since I've read Howling Dark but I remember the last 1/3rd or so being when I really started to enjoy the series. That hostage negotiation part was one of my favorite parts of that book.

Sun Eater is better than Second Apocalypse. There, I said it.

>>25111578
SF is real literature.. Science Fiction is a Speculative Fiction genre, along with Fantasy. the difference is that Science Fiction is scientifically explicable, or is said to be so. General Fiction is different from Speculative Fiction in that takes place in the ordinary world. There is supposedly 'genre fiction' and 'literary fiction' but this is false because all fiction has a genre. Both Speculative Fiction and General Fiction can be literary. 1984, Brave New World, Frankenstein, Slaughterhouse Five are all Science Fiction. From the 1950s -1980s SF arguably had more literary merit than general fiction.

I am reading Carl's new book.
>>25111575
If you discussed something not megapopular, you would not get replies, despite the amount of posts or the effort involved. Don't fall for his newfag trap. He wants to wiggle his finger in your face and tell you that he's not touching you.

>>25111752
>/sffg/ - comics & tentacle hentai

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>>25111754
I was just looking up "Weird Tales magazine" on Google Images and this is one of the top results.

>>25111766
Women and tentacles, a tale as old as time.

>>25111752
>>25111754
>>25111766
>>25111769
kek
rec me some fun pulp with plenty of female objectification

25111608
epic bro

>>25111491
>sequels
I'm not interested enough in the world Noon created, or what he might have to say with any other work because Word Spelled Differently ("inpho") or Compound Word ("Shadowgirl," "Robodog") does not good scifi make.

>>25111502
>modern standards are basically non-existent
That's more because your average modern reader, already an ever increasing rarity, basically hasn't read anything of note older than maybe a decade if that.

>>25111954
whats epic about that? brodem? i can tell youre not a true broski

RIP DAN SIMMONS

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>>25112243
Oh damn I thought you were lying, RIP to a genre legend.

>>25112261
RIP Terror Man

>>25112243
NANOMACHINES, SON

>>25109517
I was entirely sure that Kellhus would eventually be revealed to have psychic powers of some sort, even if he wasn't aware of that himself.

>>25112243
>>25112261
Man, that sucks. Hyperion really is a must read.

>>25112326
Why?

I'm reading The Scar and I want to cuddle Bellis so much she's so cute why is every man around her such a turboautist

>>25112336
Because it's a great read and Simmons really flexes his writing muscle by shifting through so many different styles of character choice and genre of story. Each of the individual cantos also stands on their own as really compelling stories and not just as part of a greater whole. The meta-narrative is the weakest part of the book in my opinion but is serviceable enough that it doesn't totally detract from the experience.

So I just started malazan, not only is it poorly written there's also niggers everywhere and one of the main character is a obese woman mage getting wet for BBC literally 5 minutes after seeing her boyfriend getting burned alive
wtf is this piece of crap?

>>25112372
You're trying too hard, anon.

>>25112320
Its hard to take Kellhus seriously, unless youre one of those stupid type of individuals that believes in stuff like mood rings. Every single defense of Kellhus' as fine or good writing comes from the type of mind that believes in mood rings and zodiac signs, the type of people that dont care about the basis of something, the type of people that dont care about understanding things, they just care about associations and connections founded on preconceived notions.

So if you associate a certain colour with a certain mood, and your confirmation bias is convenient enough to simplify your mood to something as simple and "clear" as a colour. Then the mood ring is useful. Same with Zodiac signs. An association of a set of preconceived behaviours, is made with a sign, and your confirmation bias seeks to affirm every time that you can "see" that arbitrary association, and ignores every time you cant.

I was going to tell a story, but I don't want the mentally stunted individuals in here to know what its actually like to be human. I treat most of you like ChatGPT. Something that can never understand things truly, ans can only repeat back familar words, because it lacks the actual human experience to engage with another human being, it can only take as reference, what their preconceived script decides should be their use.

>>25110985
The Color Out of Space, Call of Cthulu, Herbert West: Reanimator, Dreams in the Witch House

>>25109517
>what made Kellhus so well written
kek

>>25110985
Shadow Over Innsmouth
Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath
The Shadow Out of Time

All these arguments about whether or not Kellhus can actually influence anyone are moot, because at the end of the day Kellhus did influence them, and as such it is their fate to be influenced. The cause is it's own effect because free will is an illusion and only the No-God is free from the path of time.
Kellhus is not the No-God and as such is fated to follow a path without choice, and all he interacts with will react the same way again, without choice. People literally have no choice but to follow Kellhus, just as he has no choice but to lead them. The darkness that comes before has already decreed it.

>>25112243
Shame. Nothing else he wrote was as good as Hyperion but honestly that is almost irrelevant since it's a masterpiece.

>>25112243
damn rip

>>25112360
Okay.

>>25112243
>>25112261
Rest in Power, White King.

>>25112049
I'll read Nymphonation for you.

>>25112261
9-11 broke his mind, he died long ago.

>>25110985
The Dunwich Horror
The Randolph Carter stories

>>25112541
>>25112579
>>25112622
>everyone picked different stories
So this is the power of Lovecraft...

>>>/v/733944883 is he right?

>>25112655
/v/ is always wrong.

>>25112655
>/v/
/b/ misspelled.

>>25112342
Because a man named China wrote them

>>25112655
/v/ is never right about anything.

>>25110985
The Outsider
The Picture in the House
Shadow Over Innsmouth
Need to finish Unknown Kadath but I generally prefer his shorter works. Dunwich Horror had a cool ending but the leadup took forever. Kadath is at least is a constant string of strange images and wondrous prose.
The real horror is the new CAPTCHA thoughbeit

never read a hp Lovecraft book before. I want to try 'the mountains of madness' because I read the summary not so long ago and I liked it

omg hyperion died

>>25112655
yes

>>25112261
>>25112243
damn

>>25112465
The funny thing is that you are actually so dense that there is no argument that can break trough your barriers of mental retardation. When you watch Spider-Man and he has spider powers becuase he was bit by a spider. Do you question it? You are not making any kind of intellectual critique of the series because you refuse to buy into Kellhus having mind reading powers. All you are doing is showing everyone how retarded you are.

>>25112465
Kellhus is a type that can work well in a fantasy book as a dangerous villain with mind-affecting powers. What doesn't work is the explanation that Kellhus does it all with just observation and high IQ. I think him making use of subconscious telepathy while being completely unaware of it because he is too much of a rationalist to believe in telepathy would have fit well his character and the setting. I think maybe Bakker would have dropped that revelation in a future book if he was still writing books...

>>25112243
RIP. Hyperion was a huge part of my late teens. Need to re-read it and maybe the sequels as an adult.

>>25112756
So why is this not sufficent for you? Don't you think AI with another 100 years of development would likely be able to read a crazy amount of data from you from just your mannerisms, speech patters and words? Then we take it a few steps further too and give it access to your heartrate and body temperature while you speak to it. Is it really that far fetched an idea that it could make some scarily accurate conclusions about you given that.

>>25112243
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRlcR-J_P4c&list=RDmRlcR-J_P4c&start_radio=1

>It is perhaps a good guess that very few sf writers any longer think we own the future. Which is not (one might add) before time. The future may have been fun while it lasted, and the kind of sf that did the owning was almost certainly more fun than sf will ever be again; but now that sf writers have to jostle for lebensraum with all the interpenetrating virtual-reality potions and poisons of a themed and disinherited world, the stakes have suddenly become much higher. Because it is no longer possible to bully the future into shape, it is no longer really possible to think of any tale written in the catarrhal geek pidgin of the old First SF regime as being worth much more than paper. The world, which once lay before us like a wilderness ripe for plumbing, or like Trantor, has turned to us its true face at last: the Medusa face which stares back at us through the mirror: the huge teeth and the bulging eyes of the homuncule gape of glory of the god who faces us with our own gorgon face. What the world has become is us. And we have become too implicated (and maybe too doomed) to be bullied into any of the Future Histories dreamt of by dinosaurs. The sf which tries to do so is a sharecropper of corpses.

>>25112770
No it's a fucking retarded idea. Humans do not "tell" like you think they do, and if they did, everyone would be so different that it wouldn't be effective.

Kelhaus is easily the worst part of Second Apocalypse, which is saying something because fucking Esmi is in the books

>>25106768
At least he writes, unlike me :(

>>25112901
What about your diary desu?

>>25112838
Your point is so stupid that is barely more than pure ragebait. Literal lolcow tier argumentation. You think when someones heart is racing that isn't a "tell." I can see why the character filters you so when you have an autists understanding of human "tells."

>>25112756
>I think him making use of subconscious telepathy while being completely unaware of it because he is too much of a rationalist to believe in telepathy would have fit well his character and the setting.
Im not responding to that other fucking retard, unironically defending spiderman writing to not engage with my point and solely make a retarded argument that only validates his retarded feelings, and preconceptions.

But you seem to be responding in earnest, so ill say, that whatever response you think youre making, isn't understanding my point. And I mean no genuine offense by this, im just noticing this because of the retard that keeps responding "OMGLMAO!!!! HE THINKS EVERYTHING NEEDS TO HAVE A REASON OR JUSTIFICATION". But if you don't understand my point, you're either bringing in too many baseless preconceived notions you've just accepted as norms, and therefore genuinely cannot consider certain implications outside of what your frame of reference allows. Or you misread. So I implore you to reread what I've said. You already acknowledged one part of my criticism that I dont care much about. Which is that Kellhus' acts and behaviours are meant to have REAL implications on human behaviour, and if that is the case, then "OMG SPIDERMAN SHOOTS WEBS BECAUSE ITS JUST MAGIC!!!!!" isnt an excuse for ANY PIECE OF WRITING ACTUALLY TRYING TO SAY SOMETHING MEANINGFUL ABOUT THE WORLD" holy fuck this world is MADE to keep people stupid. The observations I'm making arent even intelligent its just basic critical thinking.

But theres another part of my criticism that has nothing to do with how "real" it is. Even if Kellhus had a stupid sophisticated psychological method based on decades of psychology. It would have problems, but at the very least, would make Kellhus as a PERSON more interesting, but at that point, the story would have to be written completely differently, since Kellhus would have an actual comprehensible aspect of character that could be, and would be engaged with (by any good writer, aka a writer that values depth and complexity) to say something deep about human psychology and influences.

But the spiderman and moby dick dude is genuinely too retarded to be capable of understanding this. Besides I hate criticizing in a way that essentially just suggests a book should be completely different, so the reality is likely, that unless the themes by the end of thousandfold thought eventually escape "its magic". Then Second Apocalypse was simply fundamentally written from the get go to be stupid.

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So after TUC is it safe to say that Kellhus now resides in the outside as a Ciphrang God?
Is he merged completely with the spiritual being that is Ajokli or is he a being separate from Ajokli in the Outside?
Or did the Inverse Fire merely show him as Ajokli, deceiving him and he is actually suffering eternally as a damned soul?
Since Kellhus is aware that the closer he gets to Golgotterath the less he can 'see', the probability trance stops working, probably because he is approaching his demise.
But since he knows this do you not think he has made a plan for this?
I do not believe that he knew about Kelmomas, I think he was genuinely shocked to see him in the Golden Room, but it feels like he must've made some failsafes in case something that he cannot account for would happen in Golgotterath.

>>25112320
Something similar to this may actually have happened since it is likely that Kellhus becomes entangled with Ajokli before he learns the Gnosis and many many years before he ventures to the Outside
It's quite possible that the voice Kellhus hears in PoN and the Halos could be a product of Ajokli. After reading Aspect Emperor, going back and re-reading PoN you start seeing signs, of course nothing is ever outright confirmed to the reader, but it's certainly up to interpretation.

>>25113053
the appendices say it's an urban legend that someone saw Kellhus going out into the night and replacing his own head with the Decapitants at his waist
I think the real Kellhus at Golgotterath was hanging at his hip the whole time

>>25108299
Ladies can’t into John Ringo

>>25113037
>You already acknowledged one part of my criticism that I dont care much about. Which is that Kellhus' acts and behaviours are meant to have REAL implications on human behaviour

Yeah you are meant to be far more interested in what the implications of X thing being real more than you should be concerned with if its "realistic" for it to exist. Something either you or the other guy are hung up on. Can't exactly keep track of which one im speaking to. This is why im repeatedly calling this specifc critique thats been repeated several times autistic.

>It would have problems, but at the very least, would make Kellhus as a PERSON more interesting, but at that point, the story would have to be written completely differently, since Kellhus would have an actual comprehensible aspect of character that could be, and would be engaged with (by any good writer, aka a writer that values depth and complexity) to say something deep about human psychology and influences.

But you understand that the whole point of Kellhus is that he isn't a person. So that is what will be explored instead because hes not human and should not be thought of as such or written as if he is a person at all. Right? You wouldn't if you were trying to actually emulate the mind of animal. Write it like its a human mind. If you think Bakker should give us as deep of a dive into who Kellhus the person is as we get with Cnaiur you are MISSING THE POINT. Like atleast tell me you understand that is what Bakker is doing before you decry it as bad writing.

What makes Kellhus compelling is not personal struggles and the like. Rather what the limitations of his powers end up being. What the things are that he can and can't see/understand and what that says about the parts of the human experience that AI / Superintelligence cannot replace or solve for us. When Kellhus fails at something that is the point of interest. Why can he no longer read Cnaiur in the river? If you didn't stop to think about this I can tell why you think the character sucks.

>>25113185
I'll think about responding to this. I have a counter for all of this, its just about whether its worth wasting my time on something that likely won't be understood. Based on your last sentence, im starting to think more and more, that people put what they want into a story, rather than actually appreciate the writing. Books and media then, just become a medium for centering their feelings on a world that is simpler, and easier to understand than the real one. Its why "Death of the Author" has become so popular. It also explains so many of the problems with every other newer medium, particularly TV and Videogames.

Because if you think the Prince of Nothing in any remote way, tackles or does anything with this scene
>Why can he no longer read Cnaiur in the river?
and think that my problem is that I didnt do this
>If you didn't stop to think about this I can tell why you think the character sucks.
rather than the fact that I did exactly this, and nothing was reaped from this (especially due to the incredibly and absurdly blatant counter factual that Kellhus was still able to PERFECTLY manipulate Cnauir to do everything necessary to expose the skin spies and solidify his takeover of the Holy War)

Means, that YOU. Yes YOU. Are inbueing, per your desires, more meaning and value into the writing than is there.

This is the most ill give you of a response, till I think this is worth any deeper response.

I agree with almost every critisicm of Bakker and his second apocalypse serie.

Yet its still the best epic fantasy serie ive read

>>25113185
>You wouldn't if you were trying to actually emulate the mind of animal.
Arguably this is the very problem.
>as we get with Cnaiur you are MISSING THE POINT.
Cnauir is a retarded mess of a character. I perfectly get the point of a semi self aware dude, who is grasping with the meaning of himself and his values, but its a mess with little to reap from, because of how contradictory he inherently is, this isnt to say you cant create an interesting character with a contradictory sense of self. What Im saying is, ALL he is right now is contradiction, its not like some conclusion or deeper understanding can be got from the contradiction like Hegels philosophy would claim, I am claiming that literally all he is is that contradiction. I can't write anything deeper than that. Cnauir is interesting moreso for his judgments of other characters, and his perspective being the only direct one we have access to that is aware of how much of a fraud Kellhus is as a "person". If you can tell me something deeper about him than that, which doesnt go beyond Thousandfold Thought, then I'll admit I'm wrong about something atleast.

>>25113205
I can understand this sentiment. As much as I've grown tired of it. The prose is very pretty and expressive. Which is an impressive consistency to maintain (and also means everything drags just that little bit more). And also, its just a cool world with cool implications. I'm not enjoying it right now, yet, im still reading it in hopes of gaining any further understanding, about the Dunyain, Consult, Maithanet, the Mandate, etc. Its part of why Serwe chapters were some of the worse. Having to experience chapters from an inherently simple shallow character so completely captured by Kellhus is obnoxious, because there is nothing interesting that can come out of the perspective of somebody so dumb. Esmenet is the same but is just barely saved by her past relationship to Achamian, and the equally obnoxious, but atleast somewhat human and interesting reflections that come of that.

>>25113217
>>25113201

>Cnauir is a retarded mess of a character.
I can tell you with 100% certanity this character is among the best in fiction. You do not understand Cnaiur at all. Don't even tread these waters for it will you expose you for the illiterate that you are. As you are already well on your way to doing.

I will breakdown the river scene for you. In this very same chapter we get the moment where Cnaiur a savage and cruel rapist barbarian suddenly trys to save a woman and her infant child. Going against all that we knew of him previous to this. We would with out current understanding never expect him to act this way. You could say this should confuse the reader. It did for me. You have to reconstruct your understand of him after you witness this do you not? I think so. So what happens in the river at the end of that chapter? Well Kellhus (like the reader) is lost and confused. It's a clever hint from Bakker for us ask ourselves what exactly that "darkness" that Kellhus cannot perceive is here. And no, Im not telling you my conclusion.

>means, that YOU. Yes YOU. Are inbueing, per your desires, more meaning and value into the writing than is there.

But see. If a writer writes in a way that allows this. I think that IS good writing actually and Bakker does this in spades.

>>25113225
>Its part of why Serwe chapters were some of the worse. Having to experience chapters from an inherently simple shallow character so completely captured by Kellhus is obnoxious, because there is nothing interesting that can come out of the perspective of somebody so dumb.

Im not gonna get too into this because this im sure would trigger you. But for what Bakker actually is doing with Serwe. It is perfect. She is that retarded Chani character from Dune. But with an actual point to be made. Which is: Is meaning built on a lie meaningful still?

I read a short story today, and I am a little over 20% through Carl's new book.

>>25113053
>entire sections dedicated to explaining in detail how the Duyain were wrong and still blind
>muh Kehllus can do nothing wrong
The readership is borderline retarded.