Topic: Super Waffle's book chat / Gundam discussion

[Super Waffle]

I got a box today.  I wonder if it's my Carmilla book.





Hey, did you guys just hear something?  I thought I heard the first few chords of Rie Fu's "I Wanna Go to a Place" playing faintly in the background or something.

Weird.  Whatever.





oh.

Well at least I'll be occupied for a couple of hours, I guess.





But I did get this other box. 





oh hey wouldn't you know it.

[Super Waffle]

Unfortunately Carmilla is a rather classy lesbian vampire book.

Bullshit.  Carmilla bites like three different girls' boobs in the first half of the story alone.

[Gunlord]

Earthsea? I haven't read it, but I've heard of it. LeGuin is more highbrow than I thought you'd be interested in, waffle-kun.

[Super Waffle]

I really like the first three books.  But after reading Tehanu… ugh.  If this is any indication of how the other post-20-year-writing-lapse Earthsea books are written, I don’t think I’m going to be reading the rest of the series any time soon.

One, hardly anything of consequence happens in that mess.  There’s no reason for it to be the longest of the first four books given the threadbare plot it tries to focus on.  Hell, there's no reason for it to be longer than a brief epilogue to Farthest Shore.

Two, the entire thing comes off like Le Guin said to herself, “Well it’s been two decades since I’ve written about the Earthsea universe and my original teen audience is all grown up now, so now I’m going to re-invent Earthsea for mature adults.”  Except her concept of something aimed at mature adults amounts to in-your-face I’M TALKING ABOUT FEMINISM GET IT GET IT GET IT? social commentary and long passages of basically breaking the fourth wall.  It turns the series into a full-blown political manifesto.

There’s whole chapters where Tenar and Witch Whateverthefuckhernamewas do nothing but sit down and talk about men’s roles and women’s roles and men’s power vs. women’s power and oh my fucking god just get on with it.  And the really sad thing she was able to get the same point across when she was writing Tombs of Atuan in the 1970's in a way where it integrated into an actual plot with characters who act like rational human beings instead of walking political soapboxes.  That’s some George Lucas shit right there.

Third, that goddamn climax.  And I’m not even talking about the arguable Deus Ex Machina part.  That’s a completely different discussion and it’s actually one of my smaller complaints.  In the afterword, Le Guin was saying something about how she wanted to separate Aspen from Cob and tried to design him as a specifically anti-feminist womanizing motherfucker so he could clash with the book’s themes.  Yeah, you sure did differentiate them.  Cob was actually a memorable villain.  He was genuinely chilling.  He had his own kind of charisma going.  Farthest Shore’s entire apocalyptic tone, the dragons going nuts and eating each other, villagers succumbing the mass paranoia to the point of sacrificing babies on altars and stoning their local Wizards to death?  All of that shit was on Cob.  The entire book dealt with developing Cob.  And when they revealed he was obsessed with trying to break death itself, it was a throwback to Ged’s foolish youthful mistakes dicking around with portals in the first book.  It was a clever “If Ged had gone the other way…” type of idea.  The way he was written instantly gave him some interesting dynamics with Ged. 

And he’s Zombie Saruman for his final form.  I mean, come on.  Zombie.  Saruman.

Aspen is some completely undeveloped stock jackoff who functions as the book’s weak de facto villain after being in two random scenes, and he exists for no other purpose than to force the story’s shallow GURL POWR message across.


tl;dr:  I'm not angry Tehanu talks about feminism.  I'm angry that it deals with the topic in a completely hamfisted way while trying to be a sequel to other smarter books.

[Shiroi Koumori]

You still need Tales from Earthsea and The Other Wind. Then you are done with the Earthsea saga.
I didn't like the novels since I found them too slow, and the plot too obvious. Well, I can't really complain much for a children's book. I liked the short stories from Tales of Earthsea best, maybe because the pace of the short stories is way faster than the novels, but I have to admit, without the background of the other books, I would be lost in the Tales.
If you hated Tehanu, I don't think you'll like The Other Wind, but that is just my opinion.

Nice! 1/100 Legend Gundam! I have the Strike Freedom, Destiny and a first edition Infinite Justice still waiting for me to build them. Ahaha... 

[Super Waffle]

I have the Strike Freedom

get out.

[Shiroi Koumori]

get out.

ooohhhh.... someone's jelly~~ ♫♪‼

[Gunlord]

I think that happens to a lot of authors, Waffle. You say it was written after a 20 year gap? A lot of times one's writing skins can really decline (even in regards to just one particular series) if they've stepped away from it for so long. T_T

[Super Waffle]

A Wizard of Earthsea - 1968
Tombs of Atuan - 1970
The Farthest Shore - 1972
Tehanu - 1990

problem detected.

Also, Farthest Shore feels a LOT more like a proper final book than Tehanu did when it first came out.  Le Guin constantly talks about how she made everything up as she went along, and it shows, but Farthest Shore was definitely written in an END OF EPIC; IT WAS ALL LEADING TO THIS style and you can tell she wanted to get the fuck out of Earthsea at that point.

[Ratty]

And the really sad thing she was able to get the same point across when she was writing Tombs of Atuan in the 1970's in a way where it integrated into an actual plot with characters who act like rational human beings instead of walking political soapboxes.

Funny since I mentioned him in my last post here but, the only author I've ever seen do the character-as-political tract very well is Frank Herbert in the original Dune. Less so in the sequels, which descended into heavy navel-gazing. That's also the reason Dune is pretty much un-filmable, the characters are written in such a way that they aren't as interesting, or sometimes don't even make sense, without their dozens of pages of inner monologues and philosophizing. I've heard complaints similar to the ones you're making about Tehanu made about the Dune novels written by Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson, don't think I'll ever touch those things.

[Super Waffle]

Yeah but David Lynch made Dune hilarious.

[Ratty]

Yeah but David Lynch made Dune hilarious.

And incomprehensible. But hey, that's David Lynch. I like the visual design of a lot of the film though. Except for the fact that the Fremen (who are all about preserving every drop of moisture in the human body) walk around with their heads uncovered, and the dumb & ugly designs they gave the Bene Gesserit and Space Guild pilot (aka "that big stupid floating fish thing") the latter of which shouldn't even be IN the first Dune. But you're right if you watch it with someone who's never read the book it's a great "this is awful wtf am I watching" romp.

[Super Waffle]

I think I'm experiencing a lack of motivation toward reading Jurassic Park / 1984

I blame Tehanu.

[Ratty]

I think I'm experiencing a lack of motivation toward reading Jurassic Park / 1984

I blame Tehanu.

Jurassic Park is a great pulpy adventure story, and the characters and events are different enough that it's worth reading if you've seen the movie. You should check it out it's a fast read.

I gave up on Homeland for the time being, just couldn't get that interested in Drizzt. Picked back up Jungle Tales of Tarzan, #6 in the series and the first short story collection, an interquel to the original book. It's ok so far, though definitely shocking in some of it's racism for a modern audience. Burroughs was often relatively progressive for his time but you really need to keep a historical perspective to enjoy some of these turn-of-the-century novels.

Personally it's hard for me to get upset or take it too seriously when the first story of the book is about Tarzan entering his teenage years and trying to woo a female ape, and the self doubt that wracks him when he does it. (He's not hairy! His teeth are too small and white!) Overall I'm liking the book more than Son of Tarzan, which focused on Tarzan's less interesting son, and it's definitely better than Beasts of Tarzan, which was dumb but not very fun.