The Will of the Gods Discussion Thread

[RoBi]

This is your discussion there for the March 2013 pick. I hope you guys enjoy it. Unfortunately I am going to sit this only out as this month is going to be particularly busy for me. Maybe one of you fine folk that voted for the book can lead the discussion on this one.

[Embrodak]

Hmmm Where to begin
I am used to fantasy books that take the Tolkien approach with races. Dwarves.. Elves.. Haflings..
The humans still remain the same with the short lived aspect to them, but the others have a touch of what an elf would see in the shorter lived races, but they are a breath of fresh air. The whole symbiotic relationship is fascinating.
I was a little put off by the names of the hakadré. I know they should seem exotic, but the little hats on the names were getting to me at first. I got over it after the first 50 pages or so and it no longer mattered to me.
I really must emphasis how I liked seeing the world from an alien non, human perspective. The Dhraud came alive to me. Their non-caring of killing the humans in the beginning. Keri being taken back by their seeming brutality, but the Dhraud were just being efficent in their methods of protecting the Rirrik and maintaining their symbiotic relationship


I like the writing style. I feel as if.. I feel like I'm the kid in the Princess Bride and Grandpa (RG) is reading the book to me and he pauses and gives me a tidbit or two about what may be going on. I like how he blended the story telling in the book with how the hakadré would approach it.

[RoBi]

Damn it Embrodak you are making me really really really want to read the book now.

[Embrodak]

Don't You'll then want to jump right in and read book 2 and 3..

Thankfully they are all out.

I finished book 1 when book 2 was just coming out, and finished book 2 just in time for 3.

[Birched]

Just starting still (finding it hard to find the time to read currently, but I just finished another book so perhaps...). So far, seems interesting, but the fantasy naming scheme is a bit of a turn off and something I'm struggling to ignore for the sake of getting to the meat of the story. Rule of thumb: if the names are less original, weirder and/or harder to pronounce with my inside-my-head voice than the random names from my decrepit old generator at hailscape.com, then the author should have done a better job. Hopefully I'll get over it as the book progresses.

[Embrodak]

Birched,

I had the same problem with the hakadré. Right off the bat on the first page I struggled.
It became much easier as the book went on. For the most part it was dropped as they just referred to the main protagonist by a simple version of his name. By the time he met up with more hakadré, it did revert to a more formal use of names again, but I was acclimated by then.

On one hand I was annoyed, on the other hand it did show the foreignness of the culture.

[roninkelt]

A pronunciation guide would definitely have been helpful. I usually just ended up ignoring the diacritic marks as I was never sure what they were supposed to connote and there is no consistent meaning for either the circumflex or acute. IMO how the names are pronounced will depend on what language the reader grew up speaking. In english there are no diacritics in common use (thus my ignoring them). German has a few, but I don't believe includes either the circumflex or acute, while czech has both and a few others besides.

[Embrodak]

I just ignored them. In most literature I read I find I often mispronounce the names.

Most profound was when the Legend of the Seeker came out (I have already read all the Sword of Truth books). I was shocked when they pronounced the Mother Confessors name the first time as it was way different in my head.

[Birched]

Kind of like Mordor = "Mwouchhdwouchh" in the LOTR movie?

[RoBi]

I Think it is very clear that I mispronounce everything nearly all the time. LOL

[roninkelt]

Originally Posted by Birched

Kind of like Mordor = "Mwouchhdwouchh" in the LOTR movie?

Too many of the rolling british r's on the part of the cast...

Robi - It's shocking how often I mangle the english language. I think it comes from accent confusion - grew up in both upstate New York and central Texas, now I live in California. Probably the polar opposite of accents right there.

[Birched]

Overall: a good read, better than average for a piece of fantasy literature

I agree that the 'exotic' fantasy names thinned out later in the book, to my relief as a reader.

 

Likes: the development of the nationalities and political groupings; pacing of the plot; does a good job making the characters 'real' enough to care about; no annoying 'character A doesn't tell character B something that is plot crucial because of strange hangup C' (way too common in this kind of literature)

Quibbles: perfect characters (best archer *ever*, best swordsman *ever*, invincible warrior who can take on any foe (or collection up to 100 of foes?) and survive with at worse a scratch); annoying fantasy naming with lots of hard consonants, accents, and apostrophes that have no real meaning in english and, where they might have seemed interesting and exotic in fantasy literature a few decades ago, now just come across as an awkward device (it seems that the author released this himself, somewhat, as the story went on -- this stuff is densst near the beginning of the book)

Strangely: I often dislike 'fantasy' books with no interesting 'magic' -- oddly, there's none to speak of in the story, but I didn't miss it at all

[Aeternis]

I started this book last night, I got to 11% in Kindle. Here are my thoughts at this early stage.

 

• The foreshadowing is appreciated, but seems a bit out of place, overly direct. That's a style thing, I suppose. At this point, Keri's future has been foreshadowed about a half-dozen times and only one of them has yet even begun to come true. There is such a thing as overdoing that sort of thing.
• The races used are unique and believable, but it went a bit far between where we learned what they are called and what they are. The worst offender in this is the cultural symbiotes to the dhraud (name escpaing me) which I honestly thought were a herded domestic animal until they appeared on screen.
• The dhraud are an interesting people - quite psychologically human, but physically very different. My analysis makes them essentially "dire" humans, though I know that template in D&D is only for animals. Very well developed.
• I find it a little contrived that a raiding band of 150 invaders generates that much fuss. Maybe I'm missing something. Also, that geopolitical big picture was largely irrelevant and I see no reason why any of the characters involved in explaining it had motivation to care about it. I suspect it'll be relevant to the reader later, but still.
• The "exotic" names are fine, a bit thick early but I adapt quickly. He does a good job of keeping names to three syllables or less at least. Generally, I'd give any character with more than two syllables in their name a one or two syllable nickname to smooth things along. It's also not good when similarly named characters are all in the same conversation - for example, Keahin, Kari, and Kitrik all at once. My rapid-reading eye has to slow down to figure out who said what, especially if some of the named characters haven't set themselves apart from each other yet.
• More points as they occur to me.

[RoBi]

Originally Posted by roninkelt

Too many of the rolling british r's on the part of the cast...

Robi - It's shocking how often I mangle the english language. I think it comes from accent confusion - grew up in both upstate New York and central Texas, now I live in California. Probably the polar opposite of accents right there.

You know I think you may be onto something. I was born in Utah. I moved to Northern Texas when I was 5. Stayed there for 11 years. Moved to Ohio lived there for 13 years, and moved back Utah last year.

[roninkelt]

I quite enjoyed Will of the Gods. Enough so that I have already read the whole series. I did find a couple of things distracting but am not sure if it's due to me being an amateur author and nitpicking. First there are editorial comments throughout the books made in an omniscient author voice and foreshadowing later events. I found them a bit distracting. Second - there are switches in viewpoint from third person to 1st person during some sections that I found a bit odd. It seemed to happen mostly during action sequences.

We've already spoken about the names and languages and how a pronunciation guide would have been helpful so I'll leave that be. I did enjoy the characterization and distinct differences between the various races and cultures in the book. It was very clear when the characters were from one or the other and which one they were from and the feel of the various lands they travelled through was distinct as well. I hope there will be other tales set in this world, perhaps unrelated to the storyline told in this series.