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Post by andys on Sept 20, 2016 8:28:59 GMT -5
I've thought about reading a Witcher book for a long time, but I keep hearing about "bad translations". You make things sound a bit more inviting and interesting. Yeah, what I've heard is that in the original versions, Sapkowski uses a lot of archaic diction for clever or comedic effect, which the English versions completely lack, at least in the two early books that I read. But they still read okay if you just want a decent story. You can tell who the characters are and what they're doing and why. I think the only time I felt a bit lost was at the end of the second story (A Grain of Truth), which has a climax that felt fuzzy somehow and I had re-read it a couple of times. |
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Post by deuce on Sept 20, 2016 13:14:39 GMT -5
I've thought about reading a Witcher book for a long time, but I keep hearing about "bad translations". You make things sound a bit more inviting and interesting. Yeah, what I've heard is that in the original versions, Sapkowski uses a lot of archaic diction for clever or comedic effect, which the English versions completely lack, at least in the two early books that I read. But they still read okay if you just want a decent story. You can tell who the characters are and what they're doing and why. I think the only time I felt a bit lost was at the end of the second story (A Grain of Truth), which has a climax that felt fuzzy somehow and I had re-read it a couple of times.Sounds like a fairly incompetent/mediocre translator, then. Too bad. The "Alatriste" novels from Perez-Reverte read great and obviously have a great translator. A shame that Sapkowsi doesn't have the equivalent. |
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Post by deuce on Sept 23, 2016 1:08:42 GMT -5
I reread Scott Oden's novel, Memnon, last week. Very well done. Bloody, brutal, but it also has a kind of poetry in its prose, much like REH. Oden is a Howard fan and the influence can be seen in this tale. A great book set at the dawn of the Hellenistic Age. www.amazon.com/Memnon-Scott-Oden/dp/1932815392 |
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Post by deuce on Oct 4, 2016 14:39:54 GMT -5
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Post by jmbroberts on Oct 4, 2016 15:37:36 GMT -5
I reread Scott Oden's novel, Memnon, last week. Very well done. Bloody, brutal, but it also has a kind of poetry in its prose, much like REH. Oden is a Howard fan and the influence can be seen in this tale. A great book set at the dawn of the Hellenistic Age. www.amazon.com/Memnon-Scott-Oden/dp/1932815392The artist made very clever use of the Corinthian helmet, making its eye opening into an Eye of Horus, combining Greece with Egypt. |
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Post by deuce on Oct 4, 2016 18:24:49 GMT -5
I reread Scott Oden's novel, Memnon, last week. Very well done. Bloody, brutal, but it also has a kind of poetry in its prose, much like REH. Oden is a Howard fan and the influence can be seen in this tale. A great book set at the dawn of the Hellenistic Age. www.amazon.com/Memnon-Scott-Oden/dp/1932815392The artist made very clever use of the Corinthian helmet, making its eye opening into an Eye of Horus, combining Greece with Egypt. It's a carryover from the Men of Bronze covers. Memnon actually has very little onstage action going on in Egypt.   |
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Post by KiramidHead on Oct 4, 2016 23:33:48 GMT -5
Finished up The Lost City of Z not long ago. It was pretty great, on the whole. Curious to see how the movie goes about things. I have the script, but haven't read it yet. Now I'm working on rereading The Eyes of the Dragon.
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Post by andys on Oct 7, 2016 14:45:05 GMT -5
I'm reading this book called Blood Red Turns Dollar Green, the first in a hard-boiled trilogy written by an Irish guy named Paul O'Brien. The angle with this book is that it's about pro wrestling, specifically it's set in the territorial era of the early 70s.
It's enjoyable so far. On the rare occasions that wrestling comes up in general fiction, it's usually treated as a gag ("Ha, look at how stupid these wrestling fans are!"), or maybe with a sort of lazy, detached appreciation ("I don't really watch it but this whole Mexican mask wearing thing seems like it might work as a nifty literary device..."), but O'Brien actually knows his stuff. If you don't know anything about how wrestling works, this book does a pretty good job of explaining it, laying out the inside jargon, the perspectives of the people involved, how matches are promoted and booked, etc. If you do know all that stuff, there's fun to be had in seeing how O'Brien uses real life people and incidents as inspiration. It's very entertaining so far.
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Post by KiramidHead on Oct 11, 2016 23:57:36 GMT -5
I finished my first reread of The Eyes of the Dragon after 8 or 9 years or so. It's a very good fairy tale fantasy, and it's always fun watching Flagg be an evil bastard, no matter the setting.
Now I'm working on The Secret History of the World, by Mark Booth. I don't really buy into a lot of what this guy is writing about, and I'll admit that it seems like the ramblings of a lunatic to me at times, but at least it's entertaining.
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Post by deuce on Oct 12, 2016 18:36:00 GMT -5
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Post by deuce on Nov 3, 2016 17:19:00 GMT -5
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Post by almuric on Nov 9, 2016 11:21:42 GMT -5
The White People and Other Weird Tales, by Arthur Machen. I've heard the name a lot, but never read his work before. Machen was a huge influence on Robert E Howard and H P Lovecraft, and it's easy to see how "Worms of the Earth" was inspired by Machen's sinister take on the Little People. You should definitely check this out. |
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Post by almuric on Nov 13, 2016 17:30:46 GMT -5
The Dragon Lord, by David Drake. This was David Drake's first novel. It was also very nearly a Cormac Mac Art pastiche, back in those waning days of the Sword and Sorcery boom when even a character REH barely wrote about could get his own series. But a change of plans and Cormac and Wulfhere became Mael and Starkad. This is a very unglamorous take on the Arthurian legend. This Arthur is a charismatic warmonger who wants to conquer the world with a dragon Merlin will create for him.
While the plotting is very uneven and the story doesn't quite come together (Drake's plotting has never been his strongest point) there are some wonderfully evocative bits including an encounter with a revenant in a barrow so it's not a waste of time. It's minor Drake, but still worthwhile.
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Post by thedarkman on Nov 13, 2016 18:50:10 GMT -5
The Dragon Lord, by David Drake. This was David Drake's first novel. It was also very nearly a Cormac Mac Art pastiche, back in those waning days of the Sword and Sorcery boom when even a character REH barely wrote about could get his own series. But a change of plans and Cormac and Wulfhere became Mael and Starkad. This is a very unglamorous take on the Arthurian legend. This Arthur is a charismatic warmonger who wants to conquer the world with a dragon Merlin will create for him. While the plotting is very uneven and the story doesn't quite come together (Drake's plotting has never been his strongest point) there are some wonderfully evocative bits including an encounter with a revenant in a barrow so it's not a waste of time. It's minor Drake, but still worthwhile. I too enjoyed this tale. I actually found it better than several of the Andy Offut Cormac novels (except for the two that Keith Taylor worked on). |
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Post by thedarkman on Nov 15, 2016 22:20:01 GMT -5
Just cracked open my new copy of Imaro 2: The Quest for Cush. Some old-school S&S by one of the masters from the 70's renaissance.
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