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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Sometimes a book series is so important that you want people to put everything aside and just read it. I'm not the only one who feels this way about N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy. The first and second novels in Jemisin's trilogy, The Fifth Season and The Obelisk Gate won the prestigious Hugo Award for the past two years in a row—the first time this has happened since Ender's Game and its sequel Speaker for the Dead won sequential Hugos in 1986 and 87. Now the final Broken Earth book, The Stone Sky, is out. You can gobble up the whole series without interruption.
There are a lot of reasons why this series has been hailed as a masterpiece. There are unexpected twists which, in retrospect, you realize have been carefully plotted, skillfully hinted at, and well-earned. There are characters who feel like human beings, with problems that range from the mundane (raising kids in a risky world) to the extraordinary (learning to control earthquakes with your mind). The main characters are called orogenes, and they have the ability to control geophysics with their minds, quelling and starting earthquakes. Somehow the orogenes are connected with the lost technologies of a dead civilization, whose machines still orbit the planet in the form of mysterious giant crystals called obelisks. To most people on the planet, the orogenes are known by the derogatory term "rogga," and they're the victims of vicious prejudice.
But Jemisin is hardly retelling The X-men, only with orogenes instead of mutants. She's created a sociologically complex world, and the more we read, the more we understand how the orogenes fit into it. As we travel with our protagonists across the planet's single megacontinent, we discover the place is full of many cultures, often at odds with one another. The brown urbanites from the tropics think the pale, rural people of the poles are ugly idiots; the coastal people aren't too sure about the inland people; and of course everybody hates the orogenes. These tensions are part of a long and complex history that we learn more about as the series develops. There are a number of mysteries to unravel in this series, but one of them is understanding the devastating origin of prejudice against orogenes.
[...] The Broken Earth is exciting, full of incredible technology, and powered by a dark historical mystery. It's something you can read to escape, or to ponder philosophical questions in our own world. In short, it's that rare series that appeals to a love of adventure, and to the urge to reflect on the unseen forces that drive our civilizations.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by vux984 on Monday September 18 2017, @07:42PM (4 children)
You said it was a rip off of GRRM's... but then everything you said was in Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit.
Men, Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, Goblins, Dragons, Eagles, Ents ... Sauron
Lost Tales, Similiarilian, ...
the First Men ==> the First Men
the building of the Wall ==> Minas Tirith (city of Gondor, holding back Sauron's forces)
dragons ==> dragons + balrogs
Valeryans ==> Valar although any number of Tolkien civilizations could take the place; i just picked that one for the phonetic similiarity.
Westoros ==> Middle earth (aka the 'the west')
Essos ==> 'the east' (where from the Easterners in Sauron's army hail)
the White Walkers ==> Ring Wraiths aka "Black Riders" (LOL when you start lining them up it starts looking ridiculous.)
the Army of the Dead ==> well... I guess that lines up with "the Army of the Dead" (Dead Men of Dunharrow)
Dragonglass ==> Sting maybe, or mithril.
valeryan steel ==> elvish swords (Glamdring, Orcrist, Sting, the Barrow blades, Narsil, ...)
wildfire ==> Saruman's bomb at Helm's deep
And LotR was half a century before that.
Not sure I'm going so far as to call GRRM's GoT a 'ripoff' here, but I don't think we can hold him up as the pinnacle of originality either, and saying another novelist ripped off GRRM sort of rings a bit ridiculous.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday September 18 2017, @07:59PM (3 children)
fictional world, with a bunch of different cultures at odds with each other
Men, Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, Goblins, Dragons, Eagles, Ents ... Sauron
One big difference I see here between LotR and ASoIaF is that in LotR, the different cultures aren't actively warring against each other, they're divided into 2 camps, along with some that are more-or-less neutral. The Men, Elves, Dwarves, and Hobbits are all allied, with some help from the Ents and Eagles, and Sauron and the Orcs and Uruk-Hai are allied, with a little help from a cave troll and a balrog (though it didn't seem the balrog or cave troll were working for Sauron, they were just attacking some intruders into their domain for the sake of evil AFAICT). In GoT, the different groups are actively fighting each other, with alliances changing over time, and there frequently isn't a clear "good" or "evil" side as there is in LotR.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by vux984 on Monday September 18 2017, @09:05PM (2 children)
"One big difference I see here between LotR and ASoIaF is that in LotR the different cultures aren't actively warring against each other"
Yes and no.
The lord of the rings events leads up to a final showdown with Sauron, but until he rose and threatened *everybody*, they were NOT allies.
There is some pretty clear animosity between the elves and dwarves, and some strong bad blood between them. Elsewhere, the battle of five armies in the hobbit started out as a battle between: Humans vs Dwarves vs Elves. Treebeard the Ent answered what side he was on, was that he wasn't on anybodies side, because nobody was on his side. Further by the time of the events in LotR, the elves had more or less retreated into isolationism and had a pretty low opinion of man, and i expect did not tolerate most of them in their territories perhaps except the Rangers. The LotR history though is pretty bloody - they formed up as allies to fight morgoth and later Sauron, but the elves waged some pretty brutal wars against even their own kind in the Silmarillion.
I agree with you though that LotR was definitely more arch-typical with usually clear 'good' and clear 'evil' and a few more tragic figures caught in-between changing sides (Saruman, Gollum, and Boromir for example). However, GoT is pretty black and white too; he's just trying to be a lot more coy with who is who; and he has a lot more 'Boromir' where people change, and he isn't afraid to kill off a few 'lawful good' types. And it worked really well at the start... but now its starting to wear thin, with lots of StarTrek 'redshirts' in one camp, and "Jesus Snow" & co in the other.
So that's what... LotR with what, medieval england politics with a bunch of flawed nobles of varied wealth, power, status, and inbreeding vying for influence and the throne. :p
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday September 18 2017, @09:34PM
So that's what... LotR with what, medieval england politics with a bunch of flawed nobles of varied wealth, power, status, and inbreeding vying for influence and the throne. :p
I am really curious how it's going to wrap up. Obviously, they're pitching this new romance (with some inbreeding) between dragon-girl and Jon Snow as the ultimate union to stand against Cersei and the Army of the Dead, but Cersei has plans to stab her in the back, and now with the dead having their own dragon, things are looking pretty murky. I'm kinda hoping that Cersei's treachery will end up causing the living to lose. It'll be a nice lesson in how we stupid humans can't recognize the existential threat we face until it's much too late and too many of our leaders are greedy assholes leading us to ruin.
(Score: 2) by bart9h on Tuesday September 19 2017, @03:00AM
As I interpreted it, Boromir never changed sides.
He was just not strong enough to resist the power of the ring. When he "attacked" Frodo, it was the the ring itself (or Sauron) that was really acting.
See, when he went after Frodo he was not thinking about getting the ring. That occurred only when he got near to it. Just as, after Frodo ran away with the ring, he immediately came to his senses again.