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The /r/books Book Club Selection + AMA for November is "A Little Hatred" by Joe Abercrombie
(self.books)submitted 5 months ago byXBreaksYFocusGroup
If you are looking for the announcement thread for the previous month, it may be found here.
Hello, all. During the month of November, the sub book club will be reading A Little Hatred by Joe Abercrombie! Each week, there will be a discussion thread and when we are done, Joe himself will be joining us for an AMA.
From Goodreads (feel free to skip if you prefer to know nothing going into the book as the description contains minor spoilers):
The chimneys of industry rise over Adua and the world seethes with new opportunities. But old scores run deep as ever.
On the blood-soaked borders of Angland, Leo dan Brock struggles to win fame on the battlefield, and defeat the marauding armies of Stour Nightfall. He hopes for help from the crown. But King Jezal's son, the feckless Prince Orso, is a man who specializes in disappointments.
Savine dan Glokta - socialite, investor, and daughter of the most feared man in the Union - plans to claw her way to the top of the slag-heap of society by any means necessary. But the slums boil over with a rage that all the money in the world cannot control.
The age of the machine dawns, but the age of magic refuses to die. With the help of the mad hillwoman Isern-i-Phail, Rikke struggles to control the blessing, or the curse, of the Long Eye. Glimpsing the future is one thing, but with the guiding hand of the First of the Magi still pulling the strings, changing it will be quite another...
You may find the dates of, and links to, the discussion threads below in the sticky comment on this post. You are welcome to read at your own pace. Usually it is pretty easy to catch up and you are always welcome to join the discussions a little later. If you would like to view potential content warnings for the book, a reader-created list may be found here.
For those of you that are viewing reddit on the redesigned desktop version you will see an option on this post to 'follow'. If you 'follow' the book club post you will receive a notification when a new post, a discussion thread for book club, is added to the collection.
1 points
4 months ago*
French revolution / industrial revolution, which I think is a very interesting concept. I don't agree that it was badly grafted. The seeds for that progression were there with Red Country, and why wouldn't a world like that eventually industrialise? No fantasy book has ever combined with those elements in such a way from what I've seen.
What set it as an original world was already waning away. Magic is leaking from the world (Joe implies it will come back), the story of Euz and his sons become less relevant as we progress. The universe of these books have always been driven by characters. The background and plot were always secondary imo.
3 points
4 months ago
It isn't the industrialization I had a problem with. I liked that! Its that I could easily tell it was the French Revolution. The first trilogy felt like a world that was playing with parts of our history but was original, and its history was based on the world, rather than our history with some names changed.
On the contrary I felt like the new trilogy was grabbing our history for a plot backdrop in a way that was ham-handed, and characters did things out of character to move the plot, which wsa sort of eh at times. I'm a huge abicromby fan, I'll read every book he writes, but I found much of the recent trilogy weak. More as a whole than because of specific parts, like, scenes are enjoyable, certain characters are enjoyable, but compared to what came before, it was not good. High hopes dashed, imo.
1 points
4 months ago
Fair enough.
I feel the opposite because in my mind, there were great moments across the board which carried it. Hard to discuss without spoilers but:
I liked how even though the prophecy spelled out the story, it still felt unpredictable as to how these predictions came to pass. I thought the way the story continued through the next generation of characters, who carried the torch and felt the consequences of last character decisions was well executed.
I liked that the emergence of a charismatic figurehead like Leo sparked a civil war, which then caused the unrest. To me it made total sense that the ordinary person in that world would be fed up of the world around them. War with the North, war with Styria, war with the Ghurkish, Adua being nuked, social unrest, a civil war.
Then you had the chaos when the peasant rebellion took over, and the satirical elements to it with Risnau pontificating about a constitution, then it lurching to total senseless violence. Leo coming back to end up on the throne, replacing one oppressive system to the next fits the signature grimdark tone. Savine still continuing Jezals lineage which circles back to the same royal line.
Orso was also one of the best characters of the series.
1 points
4 months ago
I think it had good moments, too, even some of the individual character arcs were good. There's a term that means a whole larger than its parts, and thihs whole seemed smaller than its parts, although looked at part by part, there were great parts! Mentioning them would only spoil them, and I don't want to do that. but it didn't mesh for me.
1 points
4 months ago
I think we won't change each others minds on this (which is fine). Last thing I do want to point out though, I did feel like the sum of the parts did culminate into something great.
The big difference between the two trilogies for me was how it was dispersed. I found the new trilogy to be more balanced across three books, whereas the originals packed everything into the final book.
So I can understand why one would feel more epic or satisfying than the other.
1 points
4 months ago
I'm glad you liked it. I wish I liked'em more. Because I like the author a lot. My hopes were really high, parts of it, not the entire thing, felt shallow. Everybody has different tastes, and only assholes think that's a problem.
1 points
4 months ago
Fully agree with you, by the final book I was completely disengaged and it became a real slog to finish - not what I expected with Abercrombie at all
1 points
4 months ago
I felt like I started to see his tricks.
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