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This month's deep-dive book for the seminar-style book club series at Parallel Worlds in #Portland

This was a good read. A bit slow at first, but the short vignettes at the beginning, which were individual stories with very loose connections to other stories set the stage for the main story, which is basically a murder investigation novella. Lots of introspection by whichever character is narrating, and I have to say there seems to be something really strange about Irish men in the 60s because they have a lot of internal problems!

An apocalyptic ending to this twenty-five year long series. Wow!

I really like the world the author has developed throughout this book and Witch King. Instead of the usual elves, dwarves, etc., we have wholly new and well-imagined races and a world that is mysterious in that there's not a lot known about the Heirarchs.

Still, there is something missing in these novels. I guess it's character-building. I wouldn't call them two-dimensional, but I want to know more about the internal motivations and conflicts of the characters we follow.

The other challenge for me is the back-and-forth storylines of past vs. present. We switch in each chapter and since both storylines involve a journey and the same four primary characters, I often have to stop and concentrate to remember what's been happening in this specific storyline, which kind of takes me out of the book a bit.

@theresmiling added to my "want to read" list, it looks fun!

This little book nicely conveys the struggles, roadbumps, distractions, and challenges of writing a novel. Each two pages consists of an illustration on one page and text on the other. I love how deeply the author conveys the scene in just a few words and Gorey's recognizeable art style.

The SF/Fantasy-focused bookstore in #Portland is doing this book as part of one of its book clubs. I've only read Surface Detail from the Culture series, and thought I'd ready this early novel to better understand the universe. It's a really interesting perspective, the beginning of the book laying out the game-playing and Gurgeh's mastery of nearly any game he encounters as a way to tell the story.

The setting is described really well; you definitely want to read this in the cold of the winter, and it's best of you can read it with snow all around. The inspiration for this novel is a book about the dark side of living in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and draw upon it, it does. The descriptions of squalor and adversity go deep, though I'd like to have had more about the local townspeople in Minnesota, whereas the book only goes into detail for people in the cities of St. Louis and Chicago.

I don't fully understand the motivations of the main characters, though I apprecciated the story-telling.

@arnodegroote This is the third and final book in McCarthy's Border Trilogy. I highly recommend the other two novels, as well. I read them shortly after they came out as a recommendation from a close friend and also didn't know what to expect. All three are super engaging, gripping, and sometimes unbelievable. (well, it's fiction, but you know what I mean)

@cornellbox Thanks! Looks like it's something I need to put on my list, then, as I like those things.

@pluralistic@mamot.fr @gnoll110@ruby.social naming your company after some aspect of Middle Earth has sadly become a strong indicator that it's something we would all be better off to avoid.

Tucking into this one because @pluralistic@mamot.fr told me I had to. I don't know how nuts it's going to be, but the first couple chapters start out with some truly wild stories.

Promoting because the author is not allowed to.

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