The Sword and Laser discussion

There's a lot of them especially during flashbacks. Do you think they add to the story / world or are you confused/overwhelmed?

The last time I got this amount of characters was with the A Song of Ice and Fire novels (there are like, 2,100+ of them mentioned).

Disclaimer: I'm in the 30% mark.

I wasn’t overwhelmed, because they mostly seemed to be the same few characters repeated.

They add to the story. Even though I had a list of characters, I never needed to look at it, as it wasn't hard to keep track of the main ones.

Many only appear once or twice.

Ah OK, thanks, I could just continue reading with the same dose of concentration then.

I feel like for the most part the characters are centered in the same general area of the book, except for some of the big ones. Meaning there was only a couple times I had to be like wait who was that again and where did we first meet them?

There are a lot, but I never had trouble keeping track of them, especially once the "fellowship" is established. A lot of the more minor characters fade in and out and belong to certain sections of the book, so there were never too many at one time for me.

Thank you, Poonam and Valerie. I had at least one time when I thought I have met the character but apparently I haven't. The list of names in the front is quite helpful.

What confused me a few times were the large blocks of dialogue where who was saying what lost the indicators and it would all get mixed up in my head and on the page. I tried to follow the threads, but I swear a few times the author did put the wrong words into someone's mouth. I don't think in the end it was that important though: information conveyed.

That definitely happened to me too! Lots of rereading the long dialogues. Granted, I don’t usually enjoy too many speech tags, but a little help in a scene with 6 people would be appreciated.

Valerie wrote: "... especially once the "fellowship" is established..."

Perfect way to express when the plot really coalesces. The many characters, how the author doesn't always explicitly connect dialogue to a character, how the description at the beginning seems intentionally obfuscatory - all that stuff is really is just dressing up the old 'gather a party and venture forth' story that makes up the middle 80% of the book. Once I got there it was easier to tell who and what was important, and who wouldn't be showing up again. Until then, however, I struggled.

Seth wrote: "the description at the beginning seems intentionally obfuscatory"

To me that sounds like you’re being kind. I just found it to be badly written.

Trike wrote: "Seth wrote: "the description at the beginning seems intentionally obfuscatory"

To me that sounds like you’re being kind. I just found it to be badly written."

I don't know. The middle of the book was coherent enough that I guess I give him credit for being able to write a straight-forward narrative. After getting through the book, I sort of see the first bit as some extra stuff deliberately tacked on. When I'm being kind, I'd say he's setting a tone - when I'm being unkind I'd say it's like a rock song where the singer couldn't think of an extra verse and instead just encouraged the lead guitar to play a 4 minute improvised solo on one string. It's the sort of thing that people who love it will defend as a daring artistic decision, but I'd say whatever merits it has are outweighed by it's being confusing and unnecessary.

Seth wrote: "when I'm being unkind I'd say it's like a rock song where the singer couldn't think of an extra verse and instead just encouraged the lead guitar to play a 4 minute improvised solo"

There’s actually a perfect rock song analogue to that: there’s a line in the John Mellencamp song “Play Guitar” that bedeviled people for *years* trying to decipher it. A good 20+ years after its release he admitted that he couldn’t think of a good rhyme so he “just mumbled some crap”. 😂 There are literally no lyrics there, just random sounds. You can hear it at the 2:30 mark: https://youtu.be/ipxevTh6hI8

For me, BLRW is that line, repeated.

I heard for Sweet Child of Mine, when Axl sings "where do you we go now" (4:30), he was actually saying that in the studio, lol. I think I heard that on VH1 Behind the Music.

Keith wrote: "What confused me a few times were the large blocks of dialogue where who was saying what lost the indicators and it would all get mixed up in my head and on the page. I tried to follow the threads,..."

Oh wow, I had this issue with the eARC and was hoping it was easier on the eyes in final copy.

The only time I was really confused listening to the audiobook was when someone (I didn't go back to figure out who) sang some of Tracker's story. I hope the narrator did what the author wanted, but I found it hard to listen to.

Funny, I found the song hard to read too, but I never like songs written in novels.

I was enjoying Dion Graham narration and then he started singing.