Guess Which Australian Survived Th Changed...

Meatshield

EnglishCanuck said:
Well if I'm being honest I read these books because the worlds are interesting, none of the characters were ever particularly interesting. Rudi least of all since everything around him seemed to be just so badly contrived, such as all politics instantly becoming good for him or everyone liking him and no one really seriously objecting to his rule.

Yeah the bold there is the biggest thing that bugs me. There is zero tension in these novels and no character drama/growth.
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It's the "secondary" characters that have (along with the world building, which is Stirling's real selling point as an author) really made the series.

To the point where "Oh, another Rudi-chapter!" begins to grate, badly. The second Rudi steps back into the narrative, all the other characters suddenly lose their agency and drop what they are doing to remark on how beautiful/smart/strong/capable Rudi is.

If Rudi was written in the same way, say, Sauron was written....primarily as an offscreen entity, with the other characters simply hearing about his doings, at one remove....things would be a lot better. As it is, he's basically a literary "Poochy" (the Simpson's fans will understand).

As a primary character, he just doesn't work, and drags the narrative down by steamrolling every situation with sheer (informed) awesomeness.


  • He's not as good an Archer as Edain, but he's a close second.....and he's better at everything else than Edain will ever be.
  • Somehow, he's a better Knight than all the PPA knights who are knights 24/7/365.
  • Somehow, he's qualified to command the entire Montivalan army...despite having almost no military operational experience...and in spite of the fact that there are a dozen people on hand who do have lots of experience wrangling armies.
  • Somehow, he's the best swordsman ever. Despite not having "swordsman" as his primary occupation (which was "trainee Clan Leader").
  • IOW, Rudi can get 36 hours of learning/training out of a 24 hour day.

King Arthur works as a character. Lancelot works as a character. Galahad works as a character. A single character with all the abilities/qualities of Arthur, Lancelot, and Galahad combined.....is painful to read.
 
EnglishCanuck

EnglishCanuck

Meatshield said:
It's the "secondary" characters that have (along with the world building, which is Stirling's real selling point as an author) really made the series.
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Yeah what made the first three books so amazing was the fact that the main characters all had a great supporting cast who didn't gush about them non-stop and were well rounded, flawed, and had interesting story arcs of becoming leaders in the new world.

Meatshield said:
To the point where "Oh, another Rudi-chapter!" begins to grate, badly. The second Rudi steps back into the narrative, all the other characters suddenly lose their agency and drop what they are doing to remark on how beautiful/smart/strong/capable Rudi is.
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This is really what killed it for me. If it hadn't been for everyone, literally everyone, going on about how amazing Rudi is at everything I probably could have tolerated him even as a bad sue, but that we had to get the narrative painfully stopped every time someone just had to mention Rudi is amazing at everything was so aggravating that it smacked of bad fan fiction not an actual thought out and interesting character.

A fellow fan likened it to me as "Being repeatedly punched in the face while trying to watch a good show"

Meatshield said:
If Rudi was written in the same way, say, Sauron was written....primarily as an offscreen entity, with the other characters simply hearing about his doings, at one remove....things would be a lot better. As it is, he's basically a literary "Poochy" (the Simpson's fans will understand).

As a primary character, he just doesn't work, and drags the narrative down by steamrolling every situation with sheer (informed) awesomeness.


  • He's not as good an Archer as Edain, but he's a close second.....and he's better at everything else than Edain will ever be.
  • Somehow, he's a better Knight than all the PPA knights who are knights 24/7/365.
  • Somehow, he's qualified to command the entire Montivalan army...despite having almost no military operational experience...and in spite of the fact that there are a dozen people on hand who do have lots of experience wrangling armies.
  • Somehow, he's the best swordsman ever. Despite not having "swordsman" as his primary occupation (which was "trainee Clan Leader").
  • IOW, Rudi can get 36 hours of learning/training out of a 24 hour day.

King Arthur works as a character. Lancelot works as a character. Galahad works as a character. A single character with all the abilities/qualities of Arthur, Lancelot, and Galahad combined.....is painful to read.
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Yeah, he might have worked had he actually been flawed in any way shape or form, had some serious adversity and conflict, and not had his entire arc ripped from the pages of King Arthur/The Standard Fantasy Hero trope.

Otherwise it basically just became annoying to the reader and I couldn't wait for Rudi to be out of the picture so I could read something interesting for a change.

I practically gagged when the characters immediately started going on about how great Rudi was in the preview chapters of the Golden Princess, even his death will not spare us the sheer annoyance of the characters presence.
 

TheScottishMongol

Banned
EnglishCanuck said:
Yeah what made the first three books so amazing was the fact that the main characters all had a great supporting cast who didn't gush about them non-stop and were well rounded, flawed, and had interesting story arcs of becoming leaders in the new world.



This is really what killed it for me. If it hadn't been for everyone, literally everyone, going on about how amazing Rudi is at everything I probably could have tolerated him even as a bad sue, but that we had to get the narrative painfully stopped every time someone just had to mention Rudi is amazing at everything was so aggravating that it smacked of bad fan fiction not an actual thought out and interesting character.

A fellow fan likened it to me as "Being repeatedly punched in the face while trying to watch a good show"



Yeah, he might have worked had he actually been flawed in any way shape or form, had some serious adversity and conflict, and not had his entire arc ripped from the pages of King Arthur/The Standard Fantasy Hero trope.

Otherwise it basically just became annoying to the reader and I couldn't wait for Rudi to be out of the picture so I could read something interesting for a change.

I practically gagged when the characters immediately started going on about how great Rudi was in the preview chapters of the Golden Princess, even his death will not spare us the sheer annoyance of the characters presence.
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Honestly, people gushing about him after his death is the most realistic part. I mean, wouldn't it make sense that people only make him into this perfect character after his death? That would have made a really interesting addition to the story, people really playing up all his traits after his death, but it wold have only worked if he wasn't so flawlessly perfect in real life.
 

Meatshield

Ideally, I'd like to see Stirling approach the "post-Rudi" books by filling in all the blank spaces on the map.

It's not like he lacks for options. If <region> was previously said or implied to be a death zone devoid of civilized cultures...he can retcon that by simply stating that the characters were mistaken. It's not like folks in CY 23 had the best picture of what was going on in the regions outside Montival...

...remember, they basically knew almost nothing about the CUT (other than some rumors), and only just knew of Iowa's existence (Ingolf basically provides 20x the amount of data they previously had). Even Iowa and Richland knew nothing of Norrheim's (Maine Vikings) existence.

So having a <feudal kingdom><Christian Republic><People's Empire><Fascist Matriarchy> suddenly pop up in, say, Florida or Texas or Virginia or Mexico or Patagonia....doesn't strain credibility. They just hadn't come into contact with anyone who Montival were dealing with, prior to that point.
 

Malta

Hmmmm.

An interesting tidbit. Apparently the Transylvanian Germans are the biggest (and I think only) population of Germans to survive in Europe! That will make for interesting times once the Hungarians and other European Balkans populations gets heir numbers back. Not to mention rubbing up against the Hellenic League in Constantinople and Crimea.

By the looking of it the only major population of French speakers are the Bekwa in Quebec and the Dakar Emirate (though their primarily Wolof speaking and use French for sciences) along with the Fulani and Toureg of former French Africa (though it more likely seems as the same in Dakar).
 

TheScottishMongol

Banned
Malta said:
Hmmmm.

An interesting tidbit. Apparently the Transylvanian Germans are the biggest (and I think only) population of Germans to survive in Europe! That will make for interesting times once the Hungarians and other European Balkans populations gets heir numbers back. Not to mention rubbing up against the Hellenic League in Constantinople and Crimea.

By the looking of it the only major population of French speakers are the Bekwa in Quebec and the Dakar Emirate (though their primarily Wolof speaking and use French for sciences) along with the Fulani and Toureg of former French Africa (though it more likely seems as the same in Dakar).
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Where was this brought up? On the Yahoo Group?
 

TheScottishMongol

Banned
Malta said:
Ayep on there on the conversation regarding "Ship of the Desert" clarifying that the Hellenic League wasn't re populating the Balakans but establishing old outpost from the Ancient Greek era along the coast.
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Alright, so we've got Poles, Hungarians, Transylvanian Germans, the Hellenic League, Cossacks, Tartars, the city-state of Belograd, and whatever's going on the the Balkans themselves. Eastern Europe seems pretty fleshed out to me.
 

Malta

TheScottishMongol said:
Alright, so we've got Poles, Hungarians, Transylvanian Germans, the Hellenic League, Cossacks, Tartars, the city-state of Belograd, and whatever's going on the the Balkans themselves. Eastern Europe seems pretty fleshed out to me.
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Don't forget the Norrlanders who are going to populate Germany it seems.

I imagine the intial, continuous Death Zone stretches from France to Germany Proper across the Baltic Coast and links up with a larger Death Zone focused on Moscow which likely extends up into Finland.

From that short story in the "Warriors 2" Anthology , Ancient Ways was it? The Caucasus is much more advanced and tied into the global economy then Eastern Europe is, focused on Astrakhan it is once more a major highway for trade rather then a veritable backwater thanks to the revived importance of the Spice Route.
 

TheScottishMongol

Banned
Malta said:
Don't forget the Norrlanders who are going to populate Germany it seems.

I imagine the intial, continuous Death Zone stretches from France to Germany Proper across the Baltic Coast and links up with a larger Death Zone focused on Moscow which likely extends up into Finland.

From that short story in the "Warriors 2" Anthology , Ancient Ways was it? The Caucasus is much more advanced and tied into the global economy then Eastern Europe is, focused on Astrakhan.
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I haven't read that short story. Really waiting for the Change Anthology to come out.
 

Malta

TheScottishMongol said:
I haven't read that short story. Really waiting for the Change Anthology to come out.
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It's pretty good. It's about a Don Cossack teaming up with a Kalmyk (Oriat Mongol) to rescue a Kalmyk Princess (who has a strong knack for Chemistry) from slave traders in Astrakhan. I recommend finding the book in Barnes and Noble and reading the story. It gives a great picture on the whole region nigh a century in the future.

There is a Duke in Nikolayvesk and a Khan in Chrisopal.

Apparently the Yuan make a comeback in China.
 

Malta

TheScottishMongol said:
I haven't read that short story. Really waiting for the Change Anthology to come out.
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OH! OH! SPOILER

John Birmingham's doing a story for my anthology, THE CHANGE. It's set in Sydney, but the heroes are working for King Birmo. The snake's biting its own tail with a vengeance!

He's using three excellent characters from his "After America"/"Disappearance" series. Since both are ASB apocalypses set in roughly the same period (1998 and 2003) there's a natural crossover. In this case, they get the Change instead of the Disappearance.
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TheScottishMongol

Banned
New sample chapter.

You know, some people don't like the Dunedain, but I think they are crazy awesome. Post-apocalyptic scenario and what do they do? Form a society based around my favorite book series with a heavy focus on special ops.

Well, except for the fact that most of them become pagans. You can't worship the Valar as manifestations of pagan gods! They make it extremely obvious the Valar aren't supposed to worshiped! Treated with reverence, yes, but you don't pray to them or ask them for blessings. If anything, the Dunedain should be all Deists who treat Eru as the one true god, since in the books no one ever really prays to Eru. In fact, the only organized worship we see in Arda is worship to Morgoth and later Sauron. Yeah, there's the Meneltarma, but they pray to Eru only there and only once or twice a year (I forget).

[/Rant]
 
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