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#61
Forum Games - The Beer Cellar! / Re: Word Association
Last post by Glaurung - June 24, 2026, 09:22:52 AMfish
#62
Forum Games - The Beer Cellar! / Re: Last Post
Last post by Glaurung - June 24, 2026, 09:22:21 AMMelting win
#63
Forum Games - The Beer Cellar! / Re: Word Association
Last post by Jubal - June 23, 2026, 10:54:08 PMPie
#64
Forum Games - The Beer Cellar! / Re: Word Association
Last post by Tusky - June 23, 2026, 10:36:28 PMApple
#65
Forum Games - The Beer Cellar! / Re: Last Post
Last post by Tusky - June 23, 2026, 10:36:14 PMW1n
#66
Forum Games - The Beer Cellar! / Re: Word Association
Last post by Jubal - June 23, 2026, 04:52:55 PMscrumptious
#67
Forum Games - The Beer Cellar! / Re: Last Post
Last post by The Seamstress - June 23, 2026, 01:56:03 PMWin x2
#68
Forum Games - The Beer Cellar! / Re: Word Association
Last post by The Seamstress - June 23, 2026, 01:55:28 PMtruly
#69
Writing, Poems, AARs, and Stories - The Storyteller's Hall / Re: What are you reading?
Last post by Jubal - June 23, 2026, 10:49:56 AMI keep meaning to read Katabasis, not done so yet.
As it is, I have read, uh, A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas, which sure was a decision on my part. I genuinely wanted to give it a fair hearing, having had so many discussions about Romantasy and even made my Romantasy blurb generator. And... uh. Spoilers ahead?
I groaned a little before I got to page one, when I looked at the map, the product of someone who has evidently spent just long enough looking at maps to pull some veeeery slightly serial-numbers-filed-off names from them but not long enough to work out what borders are or how they work. The world-building generally follows this pattern: it's enough to deliver the front-end trope as long as you don't think about it, but as I was cursed with the apple of knowledge like the rest of humankind, this didn't work out so well for me. We open with Feyre, our protagonist, out hunting, which she does to feed her noble family who have fallen upon hard times and apparently live on equal terms with commoners now. Whilst we get quite a bit through the book on fey politics, humanity conversely just seems to live as some sort of vague anarcho-capitalist collective. The family are shunned by other nobility for being poor, or something, which leads to lots of questions that remain unanswered. Feyre is fanatically devoted to her sisters, Benevolently Useless and Mirror Of The Protagonist But Useless, and her father Mister Useless, who in turn take her for granted completely.
Anyway, she kills a faerie in the form of a wolf, gets stolen away to Faerieland rather than killed in response for complicated reasons that a working-class faerie is later going to have to spend a whole chapter giving us exposition on which in turn will also undermine a bunch of characterisation work - not something there was much of to go around anyway - and the plot starts. It's Tam Lin, we're doing Tam Lin! In all fairness, that much is good, I like folk tale retellings and reimaginings. Fairport Convention managed to do this in about seven minutes with slightly more panache, though.
Most of the rest of the book is a slow burn (to put it gently, as a Tolkien fan I very rarely complain about slow pacing but here we are) as it turns out that Tam Lin is Ferocious And Bestial But Protective And Sexy, in really shocking characterisation news. Also everything we know about faeries was a lie (gasp), which actually makes them on balance less interesting and makes the whole world setup make less sense. We also meet characters like Working Class Exposition Deliverer Faerie and Snarky Lancer Who Is More Of A Talker. Feyre does exciting things like spending several chapters trying to write a letter and wrestling with feelings about her family, who we are reminded she is Devoted To on a regular basis. I think this was the bit that most dragged. The juxtapositions of grief and romance are not super well handled, and Feyre's internal monologue, which is the lens through which we get the whole story, is not exactly a piano sonata of nuance, she has about four character traits which Maas hits repeatedly with all the joy of a small child who has been given a gong and let loose with it.
The book then pivots as things get more dangerous, we get a brief human world interlude in which the author somehow manages to make her protagonist's family feel a lot more interesting than the protagonist and then we go back to The Plot, which now becomes an actual plot. It turns out that the main love interest has an enormous ulterior reason for this relationship, which changes a ton of the earlier parts of the book in ways that are half acknowledged but never really commented upon in emotional terms.
The book accelerates in its last hundred pages to a set of fey trials, which somehow include zero references to the actual story of Tam Lin except insofar as the ultimate opponent is a faerie queen. They even included that Tam Lin can shapeshift but didn't include the classic story of him being turned rapidly between forms as his love holds onto him, which felt like a missed goal. Instead, there's a riddle that can solve everything, and the trials are otherwise more reminiscent of the Hunger Games than anything especially fey, interspersed with a lot of sexual harassment (something which felt like it was played too cheaply throughout this book) and a few murders and dark bargains. Fortunately our antagonist is an idiot, unfortunately for the several people who die between the contest being set up and the resolution, our protagonist and her allies are not the sharpest tools in the drawer either. It's not a very difficult riddle insofar as I knew the answer immediately, and poetry is not Maas' strongest suit, which kinda took the wind out of the sails of the setup a bit. Another big bad villain who's presumably being set up for future books is mentioned at one point to be upset that the Faerie Queen has staked her whole court and her life on doing some silly trials with a human, which, honestly, is an entirely reasonable position on his part given he turns out to be completely correct that this is a Bad Idea.
I know some fans of the series say it improves a lot after book one, and they are quickish reads so I may sit down with the second book at some point. There are some bits and some characters I like, but the lack of groundedness and the awkward underexplored twining together of prophecy and will, and of grief and romance, the faeries who are Just Shiny And Cool Because Magic rather than anything that feels deeper or more connected to the things they nominally represent... eh. I'm definitely asking the wrong questions of a book that isn't trying to answer them here, but I don't think I wholly understand what it was trying to do either. Other than show me hot dangerous faeries, which it did accomplish.
As it is, I have read, uh, A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas, which sure was a decision on my part. I genuinely wanted to give it a fair hearing, having had so many discussions about Romantasy and even made my Romantasy blurb generator. And... uh. Spoilers ahead?
I groaned a little before I got to page one, when I looked at the map, the product of someone who has evidently spent just long enough looking at maps to pull some veeeery slightly serial-numbers-filed-off names from them but not long enough to work out what borders are or how they work. The world-building generally follows this pattern: it's enough to deliver the front-end trope as long as you don't think about it, but as I was cursed with the apple of knowledge like the rest of humankind, this didn't work out so well for me. We open with Feyre, our protagonist, out hunting, which she does to feed her noble family who have fallen upon hard times and apparently live on equal terms with commoners now. Whilst we get quite a bit through the book on fey politics, humanity conversely just seems to live as some sort of vague anarcho-capitalist collective. The family are shunned by other nobility for being poor, or something, which leads to lots of questions that remain unanswered. Feyre is fanatically devoted to her sisters, Benevolently Useless and Mirror Of The Protagonist But Useless, and her father Mister Useless, who in turn take her for granted completely.
Anyway, she kills a faerie in the form of a wolf, gets stolen away to Faerieland rather than killed in response for complicated reasons that a working-class faerie is later going to have to spend a whole chapter giving us exposition on which in turn will also undermine a bunch of characterisation work - not something there was much of to go around anyway - and the plot starts. It's Tam Lin, we're doing Tam Lin! In all fairness, that much is good, I like folk tale retellings and reimaginings. Fairport Convention managed to do this in about seven minutes with slightly more panache, though.
Most of the rest of the book is a slow burn (to put it gently, as a Tolkien fan I very rarely complain about slow pacing but here we are) as it turns out that Tam Lin is Ferocious And Bestial But Protective And Sexy, in really shocking characterisation news. Also everything we know about faeries was a lie (gasp), which actually makes them on balance less interesting and makes the whole world setup make less sense. We also meet characters like Working Class Exposition Deliverer Faerie and Snarky Lancer Who Is More Of A Talker. Feyre does exciting things like spending several chapters trying to write a letter and wrestling with feelings about her family, who we are reminded she is Devoted To on a regular basis. I think this was the bit that most dragged. The juxtapositions of grief and romance are not super well handled, and Feyre's internal monologue, which is the lens through which we get the whole story, is not exactly a piano sonata of nuance, she has about four character traits which Maas hits repeatedly with all the joy of a small child who has been given a gong and let loose with it.
The book then pivots as things get more dangerous, we get a brief human world interlude in which the author somehow manages to make her protagonist's family feel a lot more interesting than the protagonist and then we go back to The Plot, which now becomes an actual plot. It turns out that the main love interest has an enormous ulterior reason for this relationship, which changes a ton of the earlier parts of the book in ways that are half acknowledged but never really commented upon in emotional terms.
The book accelerates in its last hundred pages to a set of fey trials, which somehow include zero references to the actual story of Tam Lin except insofar as the ultimate opponent is a faerie queen. They even included that Tam Lin can shapeshift but didn't include the classic story of him being turned rapidly between forms as his love holds onto him, which felt like a missed goal. Instead, there's a riddle that can solve everything, and the trials are otherwise more reminiscent of the Hunger Games than anything especially fey, interspersed with a lot of sexual harassment (something which felt like it was played too cheaply throughout this book) and a few murders and dark bargains. Fortunately our antagonist is an idiot, unfortunately for the several people who die between the contest being set up and the resolution, our protagonist and her allies are not the sharpest tools in the drawer either. It's not a very difficult riddle insofar as I knew the answer immediately, and poetry is not Maas' strongest suit, which kinda took the wind out of the sails of the setup a bit. Another big bad villain who's presumably being set up for future books is mentioned at one point to be upset that the Faerie Queen has staked her whole court and her life on doing some silly trials with a human, which, honestly, is an entirely reasonable position on his part given he turns out to be completely correct that this is a Bad Idea.
I know some fans of the series say it improves a lot after book one, and they are quickish reads so I may sit down with the second book at some point. There are some bits and some characters I like, but the lack of groundedness and the awkward underexplored twining together of prophecy and will, and of grief and romance, the faeries who are Just Shiny And Cool Because Magic rather than anything that feels deeper or more connected to the things they nominally represent... eh. I'm definitely asking the wrong questions of a book that isn't trying to answer them here, but I don't think I wholly understand what it was trying to do either. Other than show me hot dangerous faeries, which it did accomplish.
#70
Forum Games - The Beer Cellar! / Re: Word Association
Last post by Jubal - June 23, 2026, 10:09:57 AMYours