Reading an African fantasy and a forgotten science fiction epic

oh would you looky there it's another reading Vlog yeah I'm back with another one the these are really fun and I have a better idea of what I'm doing this time so hopefully this one will go a little bit smoother uh this is going to feature two books as long as I don't change my mind which I do you know have the right to do at any point but I'm hoping to get this first part shot right before I go live with chatting with nuts I'm going to be with Carlos and Yolanda from story tube uh in this episode I'm really excited about that it's Friday uh and then I'll be reading more over the weekend and then I will most likely take my recording stuff and my mic with me to Denver on a work trip and record some in the hotel room cuz I get super duper bored and then hopefully one when I get back when I'm on those long plane rides I get a lot of reading done so I should be able to wrap up this maybe in hopefully three parts we'll see the whole theme of this Vlog is a forgotten epic and possibly a new one but the newer one I think is going to be a little bit of a harder cell for many people um I'm just excited uh after I've read the first part of these two books I'm just thrilled to be in both of the worlds are very distinct they have great world building and are very just by themselves in what they're doing even though they have a lot of other Inspirations which is really great first I'm going to start out with the one that I think has a very good chance of being kind of revitalize maybe a little bit you don't see this one talked about any anymore it doesn't seem and I know there's at least one of you in the comments when I show this book that you're going to go actually I you're going to push your glasses all the way up to your eyebrows and be like I never forgot about this series and I named my daughter pleo scene or or whatever um the ER is actually called I'm talking about the many colored land okay this book is by Julian may this is part of the plene I'm probably going to say eight different ways but the plene uh era or saga is a four book series it's quartet and if you go back in time and you go read old articles with top 10 sci-fi fantasy list from any major publication uh maybe even 15 years ago you would see this all over the place I mean people love this series it has so much notoriety for the people who have read it but it seems like whether it was out of print or you know maybe the genra change which I think might be part of it and Julian May seems to also have comments on that in in an essay I read from her I don't know what it is but when you actually look into people who have read this series everyone says this should be mentioned alongside of the book of the new Suns the culture series by enm Banks all these other the things and there's even my clip just fell off my mic uh there's even a companion novel that Julian May wrote some stuff for herself though she does recommend really only using the glossery until you finish all four books she doesn't want to spoil anything for you but I mean that should tell you the level of World building is and this I've seen other books that have uh companion novels like The Wheel of Time obviously book of the new Sun as well there's a lot of material for that so there's that material for this and reading the first part which is about 100 Pages it sets up the fact that we I I don't know if I want to call it a utopian Society like a galactic Society uh but there's certainly a union and a standard way of doing things different countries have their own Colonial planets and it's far in the future the believe we've met other aliens uh and everything seems hunky dory it should be great right well not so not so much there are some people who are looking to to leave this place right and there there's a name for the the society or like the Galactic Civilization I'm forgetting what it's called the Union uh but they want to go somewhere else and that is into Exile which is possible through a time machine that was invented it's a one-way ticket and you go to the pleine era of Earth like five or six million years ago and you can go there and they call it Exile there are a lot of people who want to go to Exile and at first the guy who would invents it he dies and his wife is kind of apprehensive letting people pass through the portal because you know bad things can happen paradoxes all these things but she's hard up for money so she starts actually setting people through for money and then more and more people go so we get a ton of perspectives of people who want to go into Exile or being forced into Exile through this this portal back in time there's different characters there's a xenophobic uh jerk for sure in there name I think it was Vorhees was that one there's a uh like futuristic driller who is just bucking back against the system there's a troublemaker there's a former athlete there's someone who has like psychic abilities or psychoactive abilities mag I don't really understand it uh and she has lost her abilities and she's not seeing the point of it anymore so she wants to go somewhere else she's going to Exile so there's a lot of people going back to this Pline era for different reasons and I am so excited to see what awaits them the whole first part is introducing the characters introducing the the current time which is way in our future and then how the portal came to be so it's a lot of setup in that first 100 pages and I was getting pingpong back and forth between all these perspectives and at first was having trouble getting my footing but as you go on and you meet the povs and they kind of reoccur they show up every you know the same POV will show up in a couple chapters I started to differentiate them in my head and honestly some of the humor was really funny uh in this as well and there's some Darkness for sure I mean you can tell like that future Society is not all perfect so I'm curious to see what happens whenever they all go through it seems like they're all looking for something different out of this uh Exile or experience uh one is actually chasing a love I have a feeling that's not going to go well so between romance being set up definitely some xenophobia and then crime I mean there's a lot right so all this part one was a setup and I am so excited to see what is on the other side of this juliia may seems like an incredibly intelligent person uh and an author that took a lot of time to craft this there are listen if you're a big fan of capitalized words that we don't know AKA World building terms you're going to love this book because I bought the companion not so I could read the spoiler sections or anything or the essays I actually bought it so I could have a glossery of every single term because there's a lot of stuff I mean you were thrown into the deep end just like a massin just like a book of the new Sun it is you're in this and you're going to learn or you're going to drown one of the two right I don't usually get frustrated by that I get curious and I'm very curious about what is going to happen uh the only thing I'll say right now just in part one in the setup uh I do know that there's a ton of Celtic inspiration in this from mythology to history and culture and figures and history so you may enjoy this if you're at all into you know Celtic stuff I guess you may you may want to check this out but so far so good love getting into this world this forgotten science fiction epic and some people say it's SCI fantasy I'm not going to Julie May refers to it as sci-fi so that's what I'm going to refer to it as I don't really care I think it's all in the same realm anyways now the other book I started that I finished part one in little over 100 pages is black leopard red wolf and I had to look and read in reverse because I constantly forget the name of this and I know some of my friends call blue- eyes white dragon just because you know it's easier to remember uh Marlon James only thing I've ever read from him was a brief history of Southern killings I didn't finish it I read the first quarter of it and then realized I had no time to actually finish it I will one day but I was so impressed with that book and the way that he wrote uh with such a strong narrative voice and different voices for each character and I I just loved it I love someone who has a very style even whenever that style doesn't always work with me I just appreciate someone sticking out in the crowd and Marlon James is certainly that author and black leopard Red Wolf is no exception but I've heard it is African inspired fantasy I've also heard Jamaican inspired I'm not sure what you know I'm not sure where all the inspiration comes from and what it's pulling forward is like I knew the Celtic stuff in Many Colored land because you know it's pretty much right there on its face cover uh so I need to do a little bit more research in this but I'm trying to stay away from anything uh about the book cuz I don't want to be spoiled because I have almost no idea what's happening in this book except we're following someone named tracker in a world that is Bleak and grim and brutal uh there's there's men turning into leopards going back into leopards there's humans doing the deed there's humans and leopards doing the deed this is already in this part one uh you get a very sympathetic backstory for tracker that I think anyone could you know extend their empathy towards but also he is not the most likable protagonist of all time and he is Young I think he's somewhere between like 17 to 21 from what I can understand and he he's a bit Brickly and very frustrating at times little bullheaded stubborn like we all can be uh but the world is so alive I mean there's like these little like fairy people walking around the everything's a dangerous every single everywhere you go apparently is super dangerous I'm sorry I keep touching my nose I don't know why my nose just started running anyways uh there's a lot about the culture here uh like circumcision is a really big deal which I kind of find interesting I mean it it's kind of weird but it's also interesting because that did play a really big role in in our history at some points and in how we divided people and whatever else that that's here for sure so I think there's a ton a ton of culture that you could dig into that he's setting up here in the book and it's it's pretty wild uh beliefs of like bottom teeth coming in first on sh means that are cursed and then you have to get rid of them uh there's a lot of graphic content I I am actually kind of flabbergasted that somebody said that it was equivalent of the Marvel Comics Universe uh Macho kakutani from The New York Times dude no don't agree at all when you say Marvel and Marvel Comics I'm thinking like superheroes kind of familyfriendly I know Comics can be mature but like Marvel dude no not at all this is uh you know a very very dark story so far and all of the sexual content you could ever imagine is in this book of all types and Natures I mean it is extremely sexually graphic which I was shocked by again because I read and people are like oh yeah it's like Marvel comic Universe who's writing these taglines like do they just have a bucket of taglines that they pull from it's the dumbest dumbest comparison I've ever seen and and maybe you know what hey in In fairness maybe as I continued the book past part one I'll figure out more about what the story is about because it's all set up right now like it's all Vibes you're just traveling with tracker as he has left his home because of circumstances and he's meeting people he's learning things people are viewing him different because of where he comes from it's wild so maybe down the road when I actually figure out what this plot's actually going to be about maybe then I will see this Marvel Comics universe but just in tone alone in content it's a ridiculous thing uh and and I will keep my eye out I'll try to argue with myself as I go through but my God Marlon James's voice is going to put off some people I'm sure but for me after I got in through about chapter 3 it I just like Swift or switched into neutral and just kind of gliding along this bizarre weird dark tale following someone named tracker by the way the whole story is framed as if he's talking to somebody like a priest or or somebody who's actually going to you know be incriminating him I think he's a prisoner and he's kind of recanting his tale of how he got here we get a little bit of setup in that first like paragraph or page or so which is probably what I'll I'll try to read maybe in the next excert of this maybe maybe not I don't know um but something about like a queen's kid dying I think that he's might be responsible there's a lot of like there's a lot of stuff about children in this book and and how they're viewed and thrown out but also like how they're de formed or or passing on I really don't know it's hard to get a good grasp on exactly what's happening I'm just now understanding the character Dynamics and how the world Works a little bit so I mean this one is critically acclaimed but so many people seem to dnf this like I feel like one out of 10 people I watch pick this book up end up dnfing it either because they don't like how dense it is because it is dense or simply because of the graphic nature of the book I mean it is it's extremely graphic and is told in a way of which someone is telling a story right I am assuming this narrator is going to be unreliable at some point but I don't know that for a fact yet um I haven't put my finger on anything but you're certainly seeing it through tracker's view which can be sometimes a little bit I don't know I want to argue with him a little bit which is good it's fun so those are the two books we got one that seems to be like a modernday pariah when it comes to popular reads but also critically praised maybe this will be one that will grow in time there is a book two and a third on the way this year I think I'll probably be reading them as long as I like the rest of this and then you have a Sci-Fi epic that a lot of people have forgotten about and we can't let this slip into the past because so far through part one I can tell that this is really special so that's how this reading Vlog starting off I got to go do chatting with nuts I'm pushing up pretty close here uh nothing like a time crunch but uh I look forward to talking to you soon I'll probably be done with part two and three I don't know I'll probably be a good way through these books by the next time I give you an update which will most likely be in my hotel room but maybe not I don't know see you [Music] soon woo [Music] welcome to part two of this reading Vlog where I am in beautiful Denver Colorado well kind of near Denver I guess uh very beautiful outside nice view uh almost didn't do this because I only got two hours of sleep last night because for some reason every time I come here for work I can't sleep the first night I'm here so I literally slept for 2 hours but the good news is I got a lot of reading done on the plane I unfortunately did not get to read much more of black uh leopard Red Wolf though I wolf wolf wolf I'll get it right one day anyways I I only read a little bit more of that into part two part two opens up with a map that had a new area and like basically telling a different story with tracker still uh and leopard but the map had something I love and that is walls in fact it's a place that has three walls uh each one going outward more I have a good feeling about it I'm really excited I only read the first chapter of part two and yeah I'm excited to see where this story is going to go and interesting it's not picking up right where the other one left off there's some time to go and I'm wondering if the other parts of the book are going to be chronological or if they're going to jump around even more I'm not sure I have about 60 pages left of the many colored Land by Julian May and I have to tell you this this I'm just excited about this story in General but I think this is just really wrapping me around its finger there there are definitely there definitely possibilities that there are maybe some logical leaps Paradox is abound because it has time travel in it and we're kind of just like letting it go uh and I'm sure there might even be plot holes like I'm not sure I'm not someone that pays attention to that like if I see a glaring mistake like that means it's really bad cuz I'm paying attention to other things like the writing and the characters and whatnot um but yeah we came through this portal and let me tell you what my expectations were about as wrong as the characters in the book and that's all I'm going to say uh there is so much in this book that does not go to expectations uh some good twist and turns and plays on uh time travel even but also the pene era I can't say much else except I really like where it's gone and what she has turned turn the story into is what has me just pumped up to read the last 60 pages and definitely the the other books I'm certainly continuing this series uh definitely going to be a high priority for me uh we see new characters that we didn't see before they jump through the portal which I like because we get some you know not just Fresh Faces but also other motivations of why they came through the portal uh one person was trying to chase down the hollow Earth entrance which I thought was just amazing to read about you know I don't think there Hollow but it's fun to think about and the fact that it's in this story is like okay we'll go there why not it'll be fun in this plos era the wildlife and the nature and you know just the overgrowth Everything feels alien even though it is Earth for millions of years ago and I have just been really enjoying listen to the description she has of the wildlife uh that are around and it's very very dangerous it's extraordinarily dangerous that kind of plays into the situation that the these people find themselves in is all I will say the hardest part for me though so far has been trying to grasp these psychic abilities uh basically people can influence other people they can control other people they can speak telepathically uh I think they call it like psychophysics or Psy it's like yeah psychophysics I think is what they call in this book but it is a little bit hard to read because she just kind of like goes into it and you're like oh okay they're they're they're communicating in their mind and sometimes it's like flashes of scenes so like you're not you're not actually sure of what you're seeing but the two characters are sure uh and that that it's a little hard to take in but I like it and also just the fact that there are a ton of characters in povs uh there are two distinct groups of people that have come to the portal and you follow them around evenly in the first like I would almost say three fours of the book but then when I got in I think part three or part four which is like the final part one of the groups is just like not getting any chapters anymore like I think I've been like over 100 pages and I haven't seen the other group and I actually like the group that we're getting more than the group that we're not getting but it does feel a little weird it feels little almost lopsided now uh for what it set up earlier in the story so I'm wondering if this is one of those situations where like maybe this book was split and book two is actually part of book one but the publisher made her split I don't know I don't know it doesn't really matter um but yeah uh a whole lot more capital letters being thrown around the the the World building continues and there is a sense of wonder with this and I just like what she's doing with this uh this could have been very vanilla and very you know tropy and it's not there's stuff like that in there there's even some references to other works like Narnia which I thought was really funny uh and then there's certainly a ton like I mentioned earlier Celtic mythology uh references here uh and I bet you if someone is well versed in that and just in history in general they're probably going to get even more out of the series than I am but yeah it is uh it's something else I mean this is one that people should be picking up because this is going to be uh a doozy for me it's a banger so I will be finishing uh those 60 Pages either in my room uh tonight or I'll finish them on the plane and then as soon as that's done I'm back into black leopard red wolf and going to finish that up in hopefully the next part of the Vlog unless if something absolutely wild happens at the end of Min color land I want to just update you about that but it's going to be hard without spoilers a lot of this is hard without spoilers I feel like I'm doing the book Justice uh I also wanted to mention that there might be a little bit for for you jack Vance fans out there I do feel like there's a bit of Jack Vance uh Vibes to this uh not as fleeting and you know disjointed vignettes or anything like dying Earth but I don't know there's something about it I might be way off but I'd be shocked if Julian May wasn't a fan of Jack Vance uh so yeah uh what a great reading month not the best trip uh to Denver because I always struggle to sleep but the reading is carrying me on and now I'm going to go get some dinner hopefully read and finally get some sleep see you soon [Music] [Music] okay so it's been a few days since I got back from my trip to Denver for work uh which is the last time I updated this Vlog mainly because my my sleep has just been horrible uh it always gets messed up when I go to Denver usually I come home I get a nice rest when I come back but I've just been uh struggle busing and then I also pulled a muscle in my left trap my mid trap and folks don't get old it's not very fun I uh did was not feeling well for a few days um and I didn't do as much reading as I had hoped but I did do a ton of reading on the way back from Denver which I'm really really excited about because that's mostly black leopard Red Wolf I have a ton of stuff to say about that book now I've so found out some things that I was kind of questioning earlier like motivations behind the story and everything with Marlon James that I actually have answers to so that's great but I wanted to talk about many colored land first in this update because as you know in the last update I was really close to finishing this book and I have to say the ending did not disappoint but it did feel just a tad bit rushed one of the things that I talked about last time when I was talking to y'all is like the book started to feel a little bit weird because we' had been falling these two groups and all of a sudden in the last part like there just one group and it's like well where did this other group go like literally not a single update and I was able to confirm that book two does in fact pick up with the other group and you kind of figure out what they've been doing this whole time and I do believe this was a publishing decision they decided to split the book I think that's accurate that's at least what I read on the internet so it has to be true uh the ending just felt like a lot of stuff I mean if if you wanted a lot of stuff to happen in the final acts of this book I mean you you're happy with it because a lot of really crazy stuff happens and it is very epic like it feels like epic sci-fi I see people talk about Sun eater a lot as being epic sci-fi I think that many colored land also has to be thrown in that conversation cuz good lordy there is some cool sci-fi stuff uh towards the end of this I liked the events I think it all made it interesting I may me want to read book to especially see what the other group's up to so on the it's not a bad ending it just a little quick little quick I thought some of the stuff that was happening I was hoping to get a little bit more time with uh and then there was a case of a relationship a ro a romance in the book that I was fine with I I thought you know this could be an interesting place to go but I thought that it developed just a little too quickly for me not insta love per se but damn near close not the most egregious instance of of insta love I've seen and it didn't ruin the story at all so I did like the ending I'm hoping when I pick up book two which I think it's going to be relatively soon because I did really like this and I like Julian May's writing quite a bit as well uh and I like the characters I want to see what the other group was up to but I'm hoping that with the other group figuring out what they're going to do like maybe everything will feel a little bit more consistent uh and maybe it'll go back to that methodical Pace that book one had and up until like the last 50 pages that I really really liked uh so this is a hit for me this is a great great sci-fi epic uh at least an intro to it in book one and and this is going to be one that I'm mentioning a lot more and when people ask me like hey what should I read maybe I'll start throwing this in that list because you know in a in a community where a lot of us read the same damn things it's always nice to find something that has been a little bit forgotten uh many colored land I mean for me this is like a good four star four and a half star read I I I really loved it and uh I don't know we'll see we'll see what other people think about it if people start picking it up after this I would like to hear what people think out in the comments uh so if you've read it let me know getting back now to black leopard Red Wolf the second book that I got to finish in this Vlog uh I did say that I started out part two and it seems like there's a little bit more of a plot in part two than there is in part one part one is very much a long introduction to tracker in the world around him in his backstory part two we're doing what trackers probably should be doing and that's tracking people and with in in this case with his super sense of smell and I was a also able to look up without spoilers and figure out that yes this is African inspired that's not just a tagline but it's actually inspired largely by like the Mythos of Africa and religions of Africa before any sort of uh involvement of Christianity or even um like Muslim religion just like really really ancient Africa and I think that that's really neat and if we think about you know the things that we see inspired in fantasy lot it's just like medieval maybe a d you know a splash of spice is like the Victorian area like oh God this is taking you know the same kind of uh application of medieval history but instead of using African history in Mythos and it makes for some of the most bizarre I have ever read I don't know exactly what pieces are inspired by African uh history or religion or whatever but now I am more interested than ever about it the way the story develops is actually also inspired by how these stories were told uh with kind of winding narrative structures that aren't always chronological in almost like a fleeting sense of narration where it's unreliable for sure and also you'll just have random Side Stories you know going on so I think that that those Inspirations has kind of led to some of the things that make this book unique because we don't see all that many stories inspired World building Wise by this uh but also in the way that it is told which is really really big and Marlon James Nails it and as far as it being the African Game of Thrones I I read that Marlon James actually said this as a joke and of course the publisher was like that's brilliant that's the smartest thing anyone has ever said and then immediately put it on like any magazine or book ever they could and Marlon James says you know he's he's not upset that he made the joke and it's caught on because you know in in a world that is very gray and people's lives are at stake he says he can kind of see the relation but it's so much its own thing uh I see so many people comparing this to you know I think Neil gon said as well imagined as anything tolken did and I afraid people will think that we're talking about Lord of the Rings here and that's not the case but there is something so awesome about this book where I have forgotten just how much I love when a group of interesting people go on a journey or go on a mission and just let it go from there and and and there there's hitches in the road there's there's curve ball BS thrown there's success and there's failures and this is not uncommon in fantasy at all in in the mon B fantasy genre or the classic fantasy genre lots and lots of Journeys DND D stuff right but the thing that has become harder for me as someone who's read a decent amount of fantasy at this point I still have a lot to go but you know I've I've been reading hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of fantasy books is I feel like the interesting people portion of interesting people journeying sometimes is the weak part of the equation not in this book and I'm not saying that everyone watching this is going to like love it but folks these people are so weird like leopard turn went from a character that I was kind of like it's a little jarring man shape-shifting into a leopard he has like a romantic relationship with tracker to him being someone that I cannot wait to see on page and that that natural letting the beat build uh feel of of getting me invested in the side characters like leopard and the boy who's following him around which tracker could not be any meaner to by the way um I just find these people to be fascinating and then you see people pop up and they have history with tracker and we we are not aware as the reader we have no idea why he has this history what to come of it um and the more I read on the more I'm realizing that the opening of this book where we're kind of being set up with the frame Narrative of tracker talking to this magistrate or whatever it is um it's like oh those first few paragraphs are starting to make a lot of sense which shows that Marlin and James really took time to think about the way that he gave information out in the story and anytime the further entries in the book Rec contextualize the beginning of the book that's something I I look for and it is doing this and I'm so conflicted about recommending it because the violence uh towards people and specifically children not doesn't really go away uh the language which is very coarse uh and there's a lot of repetition with some of the swears um like one of the big ones is uh swearing Against The Gods basically saying F the gods um and you know just what people say in this world but it's like over and over and over and I can see a grading on people possibly it's like I'm positive only two or three people out of 10 are going to like this book um but I I'm just in and there's a there there's a people in this world that a really interesting origin but I won't spoil that for you but they're called the Ogo and there's a specific Ogo that's traveling with tracker and I think he is so tragically funny like his his backstory is very sad and he's kind of a he's kind of a Melancholy character but he's also really funny and that's I I know I'm talking about horrific violence and grimness and sexual nature and all these things in this book but the other thing about this book is that it's actually really funny in a dark way and Marlon James just has an act for knowing when to when to put in those jokes I think now humor is subjective just like anything else so you might not find this book funny at all and I could understand that because the tone of it is very dark it is vivid it has crumbling World building where you get the Mysteries and the answers all in these little tidbits randomly throughout the story maybe not even from tracker himself but someone else in the story and I'm connecting dots this is not a fast read I've only read maybe 120 pages in like four days which for me is you know a little bit slower but it's not about the speed it's about engaging and this book demands engagement also there's trolls I mean how how the hell am I not going to just love a book that has trolls in it that are Mighty Wicked uh and in tracker if you're watching this tracker you fictional character you like dude you don't have to call every single person that's a female a witch they're not all witches dude you're you sound like someone from the the twin rivers or the two rivers or whatever the wheel time toown is where everyone every I said eyes a witch I feel like tracker might have picked that up uh from a different world or something I don't know there's debauchery uh sexism uh I think think this is like one of the darkest things I've read but I I I don't know guys I'm just having a blast with it uh I finished out uh part two or part three I can't remember what part I'm on now I have 150 pages left in this book I think roughly and I will say that I felt like you know in in this when we're going to New Towns which all the towns are set up very excellently um the one thing I will say is when we got to I think the third Town there's like a new character and I liked to the character but I did start to feel like to slow down a little bit I'm looking at the book being like 620 pages and I'm like I think maybe this might be one of those books that I really wish was like 520 Pages or 500 pages but I can't say that until I get to the end so we'll see I'm just I'm not saying I'm not enjoying it at currently but I feel the Slowdown and I'm starting to take a look over at my next read wondering what it is uh so the immersion is is there but I am in a little bit of a slow spot right now uh where we're kind of building up more of the character so we'll see how I go uh I'm having a blast I can't wait uh to to finish it up and then that'll be the end of this Vlog I think I'm only going to do one more update and it'll be when I finish black leopard red wolf and that'll be the end of this Vlog so I got to go to Jiu-Jitsu I just finished work so I'm going to go to Jiu-Jitsu my traps feel a little bit better felt okay this morning in the gym uh and we'll see yeah I'm trying to cut some weight right now and it's uh it's not fun because I can't stop eating chicken Tika Masala but hey nonetheless I'll be back whenever I finish black leopard red wolf [Music] [Music] so this is the last update for the reading Vlog which does mean that I have finished black leopard Red Wolf which is sitting right over here on the side I'm in my little bookish corner uh that I never sit in but I thought it looked nice so I thought why not record here uh I have finished black leopard red wolf and I love love this book when I think of modern fantasy and people ask about modern fantasy This Modern fantasy that I this is a book that I'll think of it's kind of hard to recommend it's so stylized and I think there are people who are going to struggle with it if all you've read is just like some of the general Epic Fantasy stuff out there you haven't kind of you know expanded your horizons out to try more stylized works I think it could be tough uh you know I see a lot of people talk about Anna spark Smith is that her name Anna Smith spark I can't remember she's like the queen of grim dark or whatever everyone calls her uh but I've always heard that her writing is extremely stylized and a lot of people actually end up saying it's a negative when in you know literary works most of the time or contemporary fiction let's not let's not get snobby over here a lot of times that style is revered or applauded and with fantasy or genre fiction in general it's not as common so people don't like it as much uh that's going to be a pretty big stopping point for a lot of people uh but I I really did love this and also when I see a lot of people talking about how Epic Fantasy is dead I mean I'm just sitting over here looking I'm looking at this book and I'm thinking this is pretty epic I mean it it might be a little bit more of a a closer story because of the frame narrative but make no mistake about it it has some Epic World building in it and it also does it with only about 600 something Pages or 500 something Pages it didn't need a thousand to to flesh out a world that is honestly un unmatched in in its influence and its originality uh and how just how unique and visceral that it is is I'm impressed I'm impressed by it the World building Marlon James is clearly a creative and uh an artist and it it shows and whenever I hear him talking interviews you can tell this guy he knows what he's doing and a lot of people who know what they're talking about also seem to really enjoy his work so he might be an artist artist right like your favorite author's favorite author type of guy I don't know if it'll ever have Mass Appeal uh I want to talk about the ending though because with this ending uh I don't think it's a perfect ending and it felt somewhat abrupt for me like when I was looking at the page count what was left I was like okay how is this going to end and I do know it's a book one but I still was kind of expecting a little bit more uh outside of the frame narrative because we do see present day tracker and he's telling the story to a magistrate or or somebody and I'm thinking okay we're going to get some events outside of the frame narrative um for instance name of the wind right we always get some stuff in the present day no not really uh this kind of just wraps up and then we uh end the tale banger last paragraph I mean some really great lines in there my arm is so tired holding up this freaking cam I lost my tripod I'll find it eventually but I had to get this done before I record bend the knee uh anyways I I I I was expecting a little bit more from the present day I know it's a book one so I will definitely be reading book two and seeing if maybe some more of the present day stuff comes out or maybe this really is just a re encanting of a tail which is totally acceptable I was shocked by how much I ended up feeling at the End of This Book I actually got pretty emotional and I had more ties to the characters than I realized that's a good thing uh especially whenever the characters are so weird and you know they're shape shifters they're doing all this crazy stuff but I still ended up feeling a human connection and I think what this book is at the end of the day about is purpose and like why you do what you do and maybe Justice maybe just a little a little bit a Sprinkle of justice but I think purpose and cause is at the root of the story and it did resonate with me even though I feel like the end was kind of like fireworks Bam Bam Bam Bam Bam and then we closed out the story was over uh I am going to read book two which I I read the first page of book do and it has a single sentence from a McCarthy book it has to be a direct inspiration I'm all for it like I couldn't be more excited as someone who as you can see right there loves cormack McCarthy uh I love the fact that Marlon James seems to be picking up something from that on the first page of the second book it's cool uh there's a little bit of a uh farce that people say that the second book is just a retelling of the exact same events from a different POV I've heard that this is not totally true and a bit of an undersell for the book I've heard that yes we do go over events and we find out tracker is a bit of an unreliable narrator however we also see a whole bunch of new stuff original content original scenes that were not in the first book at all so I think that there's more to book to than just a retelling I'm not the biggest fan of just the same events from different povs I I I can like it but it's not something I gravitate towards so to hear that actually has me way more fired up for a book too uh which I have sitting over there and I just ordered uh or I bought off somebody two first edition hard covers to add to my collection I'm very excited about that and I'm very positive on this book even if the ending like three4 in the book I was starting to feel like okay what's my next read and the ending had great stuff but just a little bit maybe I don't even know if I want to say abrupt it just didn't end how I thought it would so maybe it's just my expectations and I know I said the same thing about many colored land uh it just so happens that both these books have uh you know endings that I feel were just a little quick but it's still a good ending and it's still a great book in my opinion uh the other books that I'm reading uh and that does kind of wrap up this reading Vlog by the way uh but the other books I've been reading this month that I'll talk about in the wrap-up that's going to come out after this reading Vlog is the change by Victor Laval I think is how you say a horror book that I had no idea what I was getting myself into and then I'm also reading Bourne by Jeff vmir and what else am I reading oh my dark Vanessa by somebody with three names that I can't recall off top of my head unfortunately but I'll talk about those in my monthly wrap-up where I do the patreon pick and stuff so if you want to hear what I think about those books check out my wrap-up this is a great reading Vlog a forgotten sci-fi Masterpiece epic and then a modern epic African fantasy that is extremely Grim dark I I had a great time one of my favorite reading months and one of the most unique reading months I've had in a very very long time and I appreciate you checking out these updates and the shaky camera where is my tripod I need to find my tripod stat I'm sorry that this is shaky but I will uh do more reading Vlogs as long as people still enjoy these and maybe give you a little bit more of a taste of my daily life possibly who knows um but yeah thanks for being here like subscribe YouTube stuff love you bye I want to give a big shout out to my patrons including my high tier patrons my King Scar which include Bridger xan Adam K Amel Jonathan J pry Eric B Chia Steve talks books Taylor D Matias D Carlos Yolanda John C John Garrick Eevee Henrik Benjamin C Sebastian M Frank C C do Scott Jacob W Darren jobot Terrence F Michael B Lauren M Nicholas e Kai C Kev Ryan shod Amanda V Kaa RJ shod Stewart C Oscar a Derry Tanner strolley bones Damon H Kyper Adam Caitlyn s boss and Cur G thank you all so much you're the best

Channel: The Fantasy Nuttwork

Views: 3,289

Keywords: Reading an African fantasy and a forgotten science fiction epic, science fiction, sci fi, reading vlog, cozy reading vlog, black leopard red wolf, marlon james, julian may, the many colored leand, pliocene saga, the fantasy nuttwork, african fantasy

Id: r1kNp6mEvkc

Length: 41min 47sec (2507 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 24 2024