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Queen of Liars

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In a few days time, I went through:

 

Star Wars: Tarkin

Rogue One: Catalyst - A Star Wars Story

and

Star Trek: Enterprise Logs

 

Quite interesting, if I say so myself.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The Empire of Manuel Komnenos, 1143-1180, by Paul Magdalino.

 

Book is thick with info, which is great, but I am glad I already know some stuff on the period and stuff before and after it because the author seriously just jumps into the topic with no build up or proper introduction. Also his wording of calling the Holy Roman Empire the 'Western Empire' throws me off but I guess is okay by the contemporary medieval policies founded on the Donation of Constantine and the Coronation of Charlemagne as Emperor. Again, if I didn't know that beforehand I would be fruitlessly lost.

 

Not done with book.

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I haven't been checking on here, or on the site in general, from quite some time, so here we go.

 

I'm not sure in what order, in the past...weeks? months? I've read:

The soul slayer by Paul Doherty. This one was pretty lame, a good concept (satanic deals, superpowers in medieval England) dealt with poor descriptive power and a boring style.

Cuba Libre by Elmore Leonard. A surprisingly good one. Surprisingly because it's not exactly my kind of novel, for the setting (Cuba), the tone (fast, direct, almost a movie script), the time period (1898).

The mayan civilization by Eric J. Thompson. A great insight on one of the longest-lived continuous civilizations, and certainly the most sophisticated of the Americas (you gotta admit, combining love for life and nature with human sacrifice is pretty tough, and the Maya did it pretty well, at least in the classical and early post-classical periods, unlike the aztecs who were just bloodthirsty).

Land of turkey and the deer, another book on the mayans, by Victor von Hagen. I think I've re-read it. It introduced me to the epic story of Gonzalo Guerrero, the man who resigned his faith and identity to become one with the mayans and go against his own native Spain.

The search for the maya; the story of Stephens and Catherwood, yet another book on the mayans, always by von Hagen. I'm writing a novel set in the first half of the 16th century in mayan Mexico, that's why all this. This one deals with the rediscovery in the early 19th century of the forgotten ruins and civilizations of southern Mexico by two artists/travellers.

The song of Solomon, from the Old Testament. A tender and tragic love story. I leave more complex interpretations to others, I liked it for what it seems to be.

 

Right now I'm reading, at a very slow pace, I've got a job and got not much time, The journey to the west, a classical chinese novel dealing with the obnoxious, OP mythical monkey king Sun Wukong and his partecipation in the from-real-events-inspired travels of a monk from China to India to retrieve authentic buddhist texts. It's funny, and shows how mind-boggingly complex and absurd classical chinese religion and otherworldly affairs are (I hope no one gets offended by this statement).

Edited by Millennium
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  • 2 weeks later...

New 52 Swamp Thing #1: Raise Them Bones

 

I wanted this for a while so i could get to know him and the natural force called The Green better, and also wanted a DC horror comic. Well, I got what i wanted: what with demonic flies going into people's ears, those people getting possessed by an evil force of nature, and snapping their necks so their heads are on backwards, and examples of The Rot including the manipulation of dead matter and expanding rotten flesh and bones and organ piles and corpses and flies and carrion birds and I  think fungus? Yeah, nasty stuff. But it was very interesting. The way it ended I need to get the second book and soon.

 

Now going to start New 52 Animal Man #1: The Hunt. Because this dude controls The Red, I get to look look at more trippy stuff concerning flesh and stuff. Yay...

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  • 1 month later...

Jo Nesbo's The redbreast. The guy was a suggestion of a friend of mine, and at last I managed to get a look on his books. I'm not much into crime novels, but the WW2 tie-ins and the different perspective taken on nazism/racism/nationalism, then and today, intrigued me, and it paid off. I'm not sure if I'll read more of him though.

Edited by Millennium
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Entirety of New 52 Animal Man. I will miss the Baker family, but I am actually glad that this ended (lasted 5 volumes) instead of continuing on for eternity like Batman or Superman. The focus of the series being on the family and Buddy Baker's  relationship with his children while the horror fueled plot is transpiring gave the series a heart that most comics lack. Animal Man went from being a character I never heard of to one of my all time favorite heroes. I would like to see a mature animated series of this with Swamp Thing.

 

Decided to pick up Coming of Conan the Cimmerian again. The description of the Spawn of Set was great and captured the horror everyone felt. It was inspiring, so i went back to writing Skrall stuff.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Tower of the Elephant, and The Scarlet Citadel, both by Robert E. Howard. both were amazing, and though I don't agree with the pessimistic worldview of Howard, the historical scope of Tower of the Elephant is commendable, and evokes awe to the imagination. The Scarlet Citatdel and it's Hall of Horrors are likewise deep in atmosphere and has an epic ending. I want animated movies of these.

 

Also read New 52 Swamp Thing Vol 4 and Vol 5. Loving these. Only two more volumes to go, then I will go and read Alan Moore's redo of Swampy and the arcs that happened afterwards.

Edited by Iaredios the Hip Historian

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I think the last book I finished was Haruki Murakami's "1Q84". I don't recommend it. It's draggy and nowhere near as good as his other books. My first recommendation of his will always be "Norwegian Wood", but I'm also fond of "South of the Border, West of the Sun", "Colourless Tzuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage", and "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle". At his best, his works are hauntingly beautiful and reflective. At worst, shallow and sexually depraved.

Wait, actually the last book I finished was Douglas Adam's Starship Titanic, authored by Terry Jones - and supposedly written whilst fully naked. A hilarious, slapstick light read I recommend to anyone without a stiff upper lip. Also, I've just about finished Volume 1 of Attack on Titan, but I'm not sure Manga counts xP

 

Currently working through "Tess of the d'Urbervilles", which I am enjoying greatly, and is very readable for a late 19th century piece; a biography on Stephen Hawking, "Stephen Hawking, A Life in Science"; a popular maths book called "How Not To Be Wrong", which is interesting enough, focusing largely on statistical fallacies as these books often do; and lastly "The Greek Myths" by R and K Waterfield, which is very enjoyable, and simply written out in the format of fairy tales, as if they were true stories, how they were originally meant to be told - I've been a long time looking for a good Greek mythology book for the layman, and this book succeeded in delivering that.

 

I've currently put on hold the Ray Coleman John Lennon 2-volume biography, and "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" - of which I'm kinda ashamed, since I respect the author and thought I'd enjoy it. 

Edited by dragonzrmetal
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Phew, it's been a while. Been pretty stressed and busy with college stuff so I haven't gotten a whole lot of time (or motivation, given the time) to read. But I just went on a (admittedly non-vacation) trip to Hungary and Romania and got a good bit of reading done during that time, at least by my standards.

 

Finished Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Found it rather trialsome to read just because I hated Harry so much in that book. He's so obnoxious, I was almost rooting for Umbridge at a certain point.

 

Finished Durarara!! Volume 1. Fantastic book. Fantastic anime. I saw the anime first so I know the story, but reading the books does add to the show. Starting the next book in the series now.

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Currently, I'm reading Different Seasons by Stephen King who while also writing full lengths novels tends to write lots of short story/novella collections this one contains Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, Apt Pupil, The Body, and The Breathing Method.  I just finished Apt Pupil and it was quite thought provoking and well paced, however, Shawshank was definitely the better of the two. I'd highly recommend it if you're in the mood for a bunch of short but good reads. 

:voyanui:

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The last book I finished was Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin. All the information of how Russia's internal politics work is pretty interesting, but the best part is the author's conversation with random people he meets in the most desolate parts of Russia. It's sad, absurd and slightly heartwarming at the same time. 

 

Finished Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Found it rather trialsome to read just because I hated Harry so much in that book. He's so obnoxious, I was almost rooting for Umbridge at a certain point.

IIRC Order of the Phoenix is where Harry's obnoxiousness peaks, it's more tolerable in the last two books. 

It's all ogre now

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The Colour of Magic - Terry Pratchett

 

I'm kinda new to the whole Discworld thing but enjoying it already, and it's heartening to hear that the first two books are considered below par, as I put the book down halfway through last time and this is the second read.

 

In all fairness it's been more enjoyable this time - last time I tried to read it was on the train out to/from Warwick, during which I got a phone-call saying my Cambridge rejection came through the post, so I suppose there were bad memories there, and I've only just started reading it again. Any Discworld fans here?

 

I've ordered the Death series up to Hogfather; Small Gods, and Pyramids; so I'll continue on with Mort next. Death is just great.

 

I've got a bad habit of reading books concurrently, so I'm still enjoying Tess of the D'Urbervilles at the moment.

Edited by _Kocytean_
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Currently reading Cyrus the Great, by Jacob Abbot.

 

Enjoyable and interesting book. It fulfills its mission of being very informative yet not dry.

 

I got this book because the Wikipedia page regarding the records of the early life of Cyrus was not very helpful, and you can imagine how I was both surprised and enthusiastic about reading this when I learned that President Abraham Lincoln enjoyed the book for being rich in information yet not too long to distract him any more than neccesary from the crisis the USA was undergoing at that time.

 

And along with Cyrus, you also get to learn of other characters, such as his tyrannical grandfather King Astyages of Media (from attempted infanticide to covertly making a father cannibalize his son), King Alyattes of Lydia and his imperialistic and grieving son Croesus of Lydia (whose ambition ironically led to his own fall and the rise of Cyrus), and historians, adventurous Herodotus (who unknowingly my agori-self iaredios is a lot like him) and the historian-commander Zenophon who led the great Retreat of the Ten Thousand before retiring (oft regarded as one of the greatest achievements ever).

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We are all but grey specks in a dark complex before a single white light

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Small Gods - Terry Pratchett

 

Immensely enjoying Discworld now.

 

From Mort:

 

“It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever," he said. "Have you thought of going into teaching?” 

 

“Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one.

But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.” 
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1984

 

Wow that's some deep stuff.

You have my sympathy. Last new book I read-though technically it was listened to-was The Chronicles of Prydain Book 1: The Book of Three.

Voicing your opinions with tact is the best way to keep a discussion from becoming an argument.
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1984

 

Wow that's some deep stuff.

Always wanted to read it myself rather than having to use the hearsay of others. ...I am like that with a lot of things.

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A RUDE AWAKENING - A Spherus Magna redo | Tzais-Kuluu  |  Pushing Back The Tide  |  Last Words  |  Black Coronation  | Blue Man Bound | Visions of Thasos   ن

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1984

 

Wow that's some deep stuff.

Always wanted to read it myself rather than having to use the hearsay of others. ...I am like that with a lot of things.

 

Don't know how you're finding it - I think it's one of the most overrated books of all time along with Lord of the Flies. I found it both boring as-well as simplistic and poorly written.

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1984

 

Wow that's some deep stuff.

Always wanted to read it myself rather than having to use the hearsay of others. ...I am like that with a lot of things.

Don't know how you're finding it - I think it's one of the most overrated books of all time along with Lord of the Flies. I found it both boring as-well as simplistic and poorly written.
Funny you should mention that I just started reading Lord of the flies.

1984 I think was written very well and was interesting to see a author think so far ahead of his time but the story is so depressing making me not care for it that much.

Hey I got a Flickr because I like making LEGO stuff.

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1984

Wow that's some deep stuff.

 

Always wanted to read it myself rather than having to use the hearsay of others. ...I am like that with a lot of things.

Don't know how you're finding it - I think it's one of the most overrated books of all time along with Lord of the Flies. I found it both boring as-well as simplistic and poorly written.
While I have not read either, perhaps they were acclaimed at the time of their inscription due to the writing standards of their time, so while they hold their place in literary history and their simplicity can be absorbed by more people than other books with more guile of pen, they being outdated cannot be a fault as we have advanced or changed our standards. Just a cranial poot, don't know if any of that is entirely true or not, but I know we have changed styles since the highlight years of H.G. Wells.

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1984

 

Wow that's some deep stuff.

Always wanted to read it myself rather than having to use the hearsay of others. ...I am like that with a lot of things.
Don't know how you're finding it - I think it's one of the most overrated books of all time along with Lord of the Flies. I found it both boring as-well as simplistic and poorly written.
Funny you should mention that I just started reading Lord of the flies.

1984 I think was written very well and was interesting to see a author think so far ahead of his time but the story is so depressing making me not care for it that much.

 

 

Fair enough, each to their own. Be interested to hear what you think of LotF. Hm, I didn't think it was depressing at-all, but mainly maybe because the writing didn't make me care about the characters a smudge. Now for depressing, you really gotta read The Book Thief, Norwegian Wood, Never Let Me Go, and Tess of the D'Urbervilles; even The Godfather is pretty downbeat in its own way.

 

 

 

 

1984

Wow that's some deep stuff.

Always wanted to read it myself rather than having to use the hearsay of others. ...I am like that with a lot of things.
Don't know how you're finding it - I think it's one of the most overrated books of all time along with Lord of the Flies. I found it both boring as-well as simplistic and poorly written.
While I have not read either, perhaps they were acclaimed at the time of their inscription due to the writing standards of their time, so while they hold their place in literary history and their simplicity can be absorbed by more people than other books with more guile of pen, they being outdated cannot be a fault as we have advanced or changed our standards. Just a cranial poot, don't know if any of that is entirely true or not, but I know we have changed styles since the highlight years of H.G. Wells.

 

I don't believe your hypothesis can be true if you mean that standards have increased. Writing standards were probably higher in the past. There's a reasons there are so many formidable classics. For some reason, these days poop like Dan Brown and James Patterson is popular, along with the plague that is YA novels. Their books should all be thrown in a pile and burnt, preferably with the authors tied to them. Although if I've misunderstood you, you'd certainly be right to say that the context of the era was crucial to Orwell's works.

Edited by _Kocytean_
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My senior year English class involved reading 1984, Lord of the Flies, The Portrait of Dorian Gray, and Macbeth-the last was easily the cheeriest thing on the list.

 

Have been listening to the first book of The Guardian Herd series-definitely an interesting concept.

Voicing your opinions with tact is the best way to keep a discussion from becoming an argument.
So far as I'm aware, it's pronounced like this: We're ee ah moo.
 

Check out my Creations:

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G1 Fallen Guardian - G2 Shadows of Past and Future (The Legend Continues Entry) Head of Stone, Heart of Jungle


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1984

 

Wow that's some deep stuff.

Always wanted to read it myself rather than having to use the hearsay of others. ...I am like that with a lot of things.

 

Don't know how you're finding it - I think it's one of the most overrated books of all time along with Lord of the Flies. I found it both boring as-well as simplistic and poorly written.

Really? I'm surprised to find someone who dislikes both 1984 and Lord of the Flies.

I'm not one to immediately accept a "classic" as an amazing book (I absolutely abhor The Scarlet Letter, for example), but I thought both of those were absolutely fantastic and poignant. Sure, characters are a bit lacking (seriously can't think of a character from either book except for the fat kid in Lord of the Flies), but the characters aren't really the point of those stories. With the former, they're just a means to demonstrate the world they're living in, and in the latter they're just a means to show the innate and unavoidable animalistic nature of humans.

 

Have you read Animal Farm (also by Orwell)? I'd be curious to hear whether you like that one or not, especially because there really aren't any "characters" in that story to speak of, it's much more focused on its purpose.

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Cyrus the Great, by Jacob Abbot.

 

Just finished this book. Funny how as his power over mankind rose he himself fell. From a noble youth to a selfish conqueror whose hunger for power could never be sated.

 

His last actions caused the death of the son of a Scythian queen named Tomyris, and after he died in battle against this barbarian queen, she kept her promise of quenching his thirst for blood, for after mutilating the kings corpse, she got a large tub, decapitated all the Persian prisoners over this tub and filled it up with blood and floating heads of the fallen, then lowered the ruined corpse of Cyrus into this bloodbath of his people and let it all rot in disgusting putrefaction.

 

O how the mighty have fallen.

 

Aside from that nasty ending, I wish the book at least mentioned something regarding Cyrus in the east, at Indus River. I know there is not much on that, but something more than "not going beyond lands of eternal rain and rampant overgrowth" would have been nice. But the strategy that Cyrus and Coressus utilized before his death gives me inspiration for more stratagems to utilize in BZP games.

Edited by Hyethut (Iaredios)

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In all fairness it's been more enjoyable this time - last time I tried to read it was on the train out to/from Warwick, during which I got a phone-call saying my Cambridge rejection came through the post, so I suppose there were bad memories there, and I've only just started reading it again. Any Discworld fans here?

 

 Yes, there are quite a few, and I number among them.

 

Anyway, just polished off Eddie Bunker's Dog Eat Dog​ - typically hard-hitting crime novel, one of his more underrated works. Giving Proust's ​The Way by Swann's​ another crack, and reading Gene Wolfe's The Claw of the Conciliator (​part 2 of ​The Book of the New Sun ) ​- if you like intelligent but tricksy fantasy novels you might very well love this. I certainly am enjoying them.

Edited by Erasmus Graves
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"Mutiny, Booty and Entropy"  - The Three Vices of the Frostelus

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1984

 

Wow that's some deep stuff.

Always wanted to read it myself rather than having to use the hearsay of others. ...I am like that with a lot of things.

 

Don't know how you're finding it - I think it's one of the most overrated books of all time along with Lord of the Flies. I found it both boring as-well as simplistic and poorly written.

Really? I'm surprised to find someone who dislikes both 1984 and Lord of the Flies.

I'm not one to immediately accept a "classic" as an amazing book (I absolutely abhor The Scarlet Letter, for example), but I thought both of those were absolutely fantastic and poignant. Sure, characters are a bit lacking (seriously can't think of a character from either book except for the fat kid in Lord of the Flies), but the characters aren't really the point of those stories. With the former, they're just a means to demonstrate the world they're living in, and in the latter they're just a means to show the innate and unavoidable animalistic nature of humans.

 

Have you read Animal Farm (also by Orwell)? I'd be curious to hear whether you like that one or not, especially because there really aren't any "characters" in that story to speak of, it's much more focused on its purpose.

 

To be fair to Orwell and Golding, I never got more than about 50 pages into Lord of the Flies before deciding it wasn't going to get better and giving up, and it's been about four years since I read 1984, so I was younger and maybe missed the points - I should give both of them re-reads in the fullness of time, but I have about 50 books ahead of them in the queue for now so it won't be anytime soon. My opinions should be taken with a pinch of salt until I've returned to them again.

 

I understand your point, and perhaps I'm judging them on the wrong merits if I expected multidimensional characters etc, but I didn't find the world itself that Orwell created in that book intriguing, immersive, or insightful at-all - honestly I thought it was really simplistic, like the sort of thing a child would come up with if you gave them the task of imagining a big-brother state. (Of course, the book's influence on literary themes and concepts has been massive: Orwellian dystopia, big-brother, doublespeak, thought-crime, etc...)

 

It's been six or seven years since I read Animal Farm, back when I was in school, so I can't really comment on it, although I think both the concept and execution were clever.

 

 

 

Still about halfway through Tess of the D'Urbervilles, which I'm now reading exclusively until I've finished it - I've been reading it very-on-off and completed a few other books during that time, because it's very dense and I'm not used to reading classics. When I've finished it I'm going to go on to Voltaire's Candide, and next in line as far as Discworld is concerned will be The Light Fantastic and Guards! Guards!. In the near future I want to get through Polya's How To Solve It, since it's quite well regarded as a maths book and I've had it sitting there waiting for a few months. Within the next year I want to get hold of copies of Pascal's Pensees and Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy.

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Shadow of Ararat, by Thomas Harlan.

 

Still reading this. Intruiging alternate history of the Roman Empire in 600 AD, with the spin that the occidental empire did not fall and is still present during the time of the emperor Heraclius and the final Roman-Persian war before the explosion of Islam, and the spin of magic being a real thing (from healers to battlefield wizards). HOWEVER, there are pressing things that are bothering me that the book will need to answer as I read it or else these will be "black holes" in the plot (as a friend of mine worded it).

 

1. How is the world still historically accurate only until the 400's if non-divine powers have always been a thing?

 

2. The pagan religions of the pre-Christian Mediterranean world are still present at the time of 600's AD, and so far I see no mention of Christianity in this world despite it being fundamental to the Roman Empire with the reforms by Theodosius I (whose reforms replaced the latin pagan rites ingrained in the state in order to directly control this foreign widespread religion and twist it into a theocratic mirror of the old ways).

 

3. Why are the Praetorian Guard still a thing? Constantine the Great disbanded them three centuries prior, replaced with the Scholae.

 

4. Related to number 3, Why is the Varangian Guard a thing at this time? To my knowledge, they were organized by Basil II Makedon the Bulgar-Slayer four centuries later. Varangian Guard is also a branch of the aforementioned Scholae set up by Constantine I.

 

5. Why is the phlogiston 'Greek-fire' around at this time, in 600, when while this super-weapon was indeed being developed at this time, it wouldn't be completed and utilized until the Arab Siege of Constantinople in the late 600's to fend off the jihadist horde, certainly not in the form of the advanced portable 'guns' that would not arise until centuries later but restricted to only huge wall turrets and boat turrets ('fire ships').

 

6. Historically, the final war began because of an alliance with Justinian I's dynasty and the Persian Sassanian dynasty, which the former was slaughtered by Emperor Phocas, who was deposed and executed by the revolutionary Heraclius, the Sassanian Shah claiming to have someone of Justinian's dynasty and invaded to put this "friend" back in power while taking advantage of Christian provinces revolting from Rome due to theocratic tyranny by the Emperors. This will be answered by the book as this great war will be central to the story, but everything has to be right, and previously mentioned things make me very interested in how this huge war will erupt in thus bizarre world.

 

Again, hope these are answered by the end of the book.

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Shadow of Ararat, by Thomas Harlan.

 

Still reading this. Intruiging alternate history of the Roman Empire in 600 AD, with the spin that the occidental empire did not fall and is still present during the time of the emperor Heraclius and the final Roman-Persian war before the explosion of Islam, and the spin of magic being a real thing (from healers to battlefield wizards). HOWEVER, there are pressing things that are bothering me that the book will need to answer as I read it or else these will be "black holes" in the plot (as a friend of mine worded it).

 

1. How is the world still historically accurate only until the 400's if non-divine powers have always been a thing?

 

2. The pagan religions of the pre-Christian Mediterranean world are still present at the time of 600's AD, and so far I see no mention of Christianity in this world despite it being fundamental to the Roman Empire with the reforms by Theodosius I (whose reforms replaced the latin pagan rites ingrained in the state in order to directly control this foreign widespread religion and twist it into a theocratic mirror of the old ways).

 

3. Why are the Praetorian Guard still a thing? Constantine the Great disbanded them three centuries prior, replaced with the Scholae.

 

4. Related to number 3, Why is the Varangian Guard a thing at this time? To my knowledge, they were organized by Basil II Makedon the Bulgar-Slayer four centuries later. Varangian Guard is also a branch of the aforementioned Scholae set up by Constantine I.

 

5. Why is the phlogiston 'Greek-fire' around at this time, in 600, when while this super-weapon was indeed being developed at this time, it wouldn't be completed and utilized until the Arab Siege of Constantinople in the late 600's to fend off the jihadist horde, certainly not in the form of the advanced portable 'guns' that would not arise until centuries later but restricted to only huge wall turrets and boat turrets ('fire ships').

 

6. Historically, the final war began because of an alliance with Justinian I's dynasty and the Persian Sassanian dynasty, which the former was slaughtered by Emperor Phocas, who was deposed and executed by the revolutionary Heraclius, the Sassanian Shah claiming to have someone of Justinian's dynasty and invaded to put this "friend" back in power while taking advantage of Christian provinces revolting from Rome due to theocratic tyranny by the Emperors. This will be answered by the book as this great war will be central to the story, but everything has to be right, and previously mentioned things make me very interested in how this huge war will erupt in thus bizarre world.

 

Again, hope these are answered by the end of the book.

I would chalk most of that up to the alternate history bit; I also can't speak for how well-researched the work is.

 

Been listening to The Chronicles of Prydain-quite enjoyable, loving the humor and mythos.

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Shadow of Ararat, by Thomas Harlan.

 

---SNIP---

I would chalk most of that up to the alternate history bit; I also can't speak for how well-researched the work is.

 

Been listening to The Chronicles of Prydain-quite enjoyable, loving the humor and mythos.

Some of the passive wording made me think that it is a world where Constantine lost the Battle of Milviam Bridge to Maxentius, but the existence of Constantinople goes against that.

 

Constantine wins that decisive battle, sets the path open for the wars done against either him or the practitioners of this new god he has adopted that ends with him unifying the roman tetarchy. Later, he founds New Rome atop the ruins of Byzantium, and after his death the city is renamed by his son Constantius II as Constantinople in his father's honor.

 

EDIT:

...After some thinking, also can't be Emperor Julian to set the path in this book. In face of the increasing amount of Christians, the generous charity by the followers making the homeless and lower classes rely more on them and give less want or need to rely on the Roman state that controlled the state cult, Julian reformed the Roman religious system to be more like Christians by setting up temples that would focus in healing and charity and making that the focus rather than retaining traditions. However, after his death these reforms would actually rapidly increase conversion rates to Christianity because Julian had removed much of the thick time-old traditions these beliefs focused around, these traditions being the main wall preventing them from becoming Christian. It is no wonder that later Theodosius did what he did in order to retain theocratic control.

Edited by Hyethut (Iaredios)

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Been listening to The Chronicles of Prydain-quite enjoyable, loving the humor and mythos.

 

 

Those are great, I think it's an underappreciated kid's fantasy series that deserves a lot more credit. (By the way, if you didn't know, that series is based somewhat on Welsh mythology.)

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Shadows of Ararat, Thomas Harlan.

 

I am convinced that Christianity is not a thing in this world, and now I look forward to seeing how a pagan medieval roman empire deals with Muslim Conquests. This should be very interesting considering other highly interesting developments, which I shall not say anything on. If I like the ending to this book and one of its sequels, I shall seek to find the author (who lives south of me) and maybe we can have a friendly discussion on Romans. Even if I don't, I would appreciate such a talk with a fellow enthusiast.

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Read Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, along with a bunch of other short stories in the Norton Anthology of Short Fiction (8th ed.). I'm glad I read it, but it wasn't anything super spectacular in my opinion. Victory Lap, Young Goodman Brown, and A Wall of Fire Rising were some of the highlights of the other stories I've read so far.

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Not the last book I read, but I did recently go through the entirety of The Mistmantle Chronicles by M.I. McAlister. Truly amazing books-somewhat in the flavor of Redwall but with their own cool unique elements. The books focus mainly on the adventures of the inhabitants of the island of Mistmantle, particularly a honey-colored red squirrel named Urchin of the Riding Stars. Sadly the series is no longer in print, and copies of the final book are hard to find and thus expensive-I read library copies.

Voicing your opinions with tact is the best way to keep a discussion from becoming an argument.
So far as I'm aware, it's pronounced like this: We're ee ah moo.
 

Check out my Creations:

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Mask Hoarder, Desert Scourge

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