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Joseph Brassey

Auteur van The Mongoliad: Book One

8+ Werken 1,822 Leden 65 Besprekingen

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Fotografie: via Angry Robot Books

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Werken van Joseph Brassey

The Mongoliad: Book One (2012) 865 exemplaren
The Mongoliad: Book Two (2012) 403 exemplaren
The Mongoliad: Book Three (2013) 344 exemplaren
Katabasis (2013) 113 exemplaren
Skyfarer (2017) 62 exemplaren
Dragon Road (The Drifting Lands) (2018) 23 exemplaren

Gerelateerde werken

2014 Campbellian Anthology (2014) — Medewerker — 23 exemplaren

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Compelling story at the time of the height of the Mongolian invasion of Europe, with loads of action and wonderful period detail. Told from multiple points of view; within the Mongol court, Christian warrior monks and cardinals trapped in Rome trying to elect the next Pope. Brilliantly read by Luke Daniels.
 
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Matt_B | 12 andere besprekingen | Jun 10, 2022 |
Really hard to find, have been vaguely looking for years as it was one of the last Neal Stephenson books I haven't read (thanks internet archive!)

I agree with most of the other comments, it's a pretty fine book but not amazing. I'll probably read at least the next one bc it's a relatively fun, relaxing (if you can that with battle scenes) book. Bc it was designed as a book of collaboration, I think it did an ok job with the different threads but 8 books is too many, unless it gets a lot better… (meer)
 
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Lorem | 33 andere besprekingen | Jan 31, 2021 |
2.5 stars

While I flew through this book and, therefore, obviously enjoyed it, its flaws prevent me from giving it a high rating. Perhaps surprisingly, given the pedigree of some of the authors involved, chief amongst these flaws are some passages of startlingly bad writing. I mean, sentences or paragraphs that I would re-read thinking I must have misread them the first time around they were so badly constructed. I really should have kept notes as there were several. I remember one being something like “They outnumbered our numbers.” Wow, really?

Many of these read like editing problems - or, rather, a lack of editing. Any half-decent editor should surely have picked up these clumsy sentences. I’m not sure how the seven named authors worked together but I suspect that is the major issue, more care being taken in constructing the storyline and making sure the styles matched as closely as possible than actually ensuring the writing works. Perhaps all the glaring faults can be attributed to one of the authors and the others felt unable to cut him out. There was also some glaringly anachronistic language. I know that, unless it were written in Latin, Old French and Mongolian it can hardly be accurate, but some sentences and words just jumped out at me as inappropriate. For instance, there is the constant use of the word “ass” in its modern American meaning, sometimes in quite rapid succession. Again, this is just bad writing; grab a thesaurus and use alternatives: backside, posterior, rump. Actually, I am beginning to suspect that this and the terrible writing may be able to be laid at the door of the same member of the authoriat.

The book actually reads as though it is the write-up of a Roleplaying campaign - albeit rather a dull one - and the descriptions at the back of the dramatis personae, complete with ink line sketches, further reinforces this. (Spotting whether authors are roleplayers is actually something of a hobby of mine; you can often spot the tell-tale signs).

The characters are engaging enough, although not especially well drawn - and some of the shield-brethren have the air of cardboard cut-outs with a single defining characteristic to distinguish them. Again, something that made me think of extras in an RPG.

Not unexpectedly from a book from Neal Stephenson (although I have no way of knowing whether he wrote these particular sections) there is the occasional, sometimes heavy-handed, infodump, but I still felt that the world was under-explained, the setting unclear perhaps because the authors could picture it but failed to get that across to the reader. I couldn’t tell whether this was straight historical fiction, or history with a slant. At times I found myself wishing it was written by Mary Gentle and then, not only would we get her superb writing, but the wonderfully fleshed out reality of the historical setting would be shot through with fantastical anomalies that both enhanced it and made the reader examine it more closely.

All this said, the first volume of this series was an enjoyable read and I will probably continue with the series. The setting seemed to solidify somewhat toward the close, perhaps due to the style becoming more uniform or maybe simply because of to the gradual build up of detail, and I am intrigued to see how the arc of the two stories will intersect. As well as, perhaps, to find out whether the events are broadly historical or introduce elements that would never be found in the most detailed history of that time.
… (meer)
 
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Pezski | 33 andere besprekingen | Jun 21, 2020 |
What this book, and this series, really, really, really needed was an editor. What it felt like, and I'm pretty sure was, is a group of authors who storyboarded some general plot points, then each of them could do whatever they wanted with their own story line and just coordinated with someone else where their storylines met. Each storyline had about half a dozen main characters and multiple other characters, which means the reader is supposed to keep track of 50-ish "main" characters.

Because it was written as a web series and then collected and published as books, it's written as a continuous stream. But I read them as books, which meant years between book 1 and book 2 and several more years between book 2 and book 3. At no point is there any sort of recap or anything to help the readers reconnect with characters from one volume to the next, which is another useful thing an editor would have done.… (meer)
½
 
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Tarawyn | 10 andere besprekingen | Jun 13, 2020 |

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Statistieken

Werken
8
Ook door
1
Leden
1,822
Populariteit
#14,116
Waardering
½ 3.5
Besprekingen
65
ISBNs
46
Talen
4

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