leahhh
Little Sibling
Posts: 36
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Post by leahhh on Dec 15, 2022 2:50:52 GMT
I love the City of the Saved. Reading this section made me want to re-read Of the City...
I mean, who wouldn't want to to see that!
Cousin Pinocchio is, as many have observed before, so cool.
I appreciated the way Krymptorpor acts as sort of a reverse image of Verrifant, where the same procedure that worked for House Mirraflex backfired spectacularly for the Celestis.
For some reason I was very tickled by Arr Ri's plans to rewrite human history.
I've always enjoyed the story of Het Linc's embassy to the Homeworld. I love the idea of the Houses having grudging relations with neutral powers that are playing on the same level - it's one of the reasons I still need to listen to True History.
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Post by darkspine10 on Jan 9, 2023 23:03:49 GMT
After reading these chapters on the City I was very intrigued. The first time I ever heard of the concept was as a single stray mention in the TARDIS Eruditorum entry for A Romance in Twelve Parts (referring specifically to the short story 'A Hundred Words from a Civil War', which is a follow-up to Of the City of the Saved). When I finally got round to reading the Book of the War and discovered it was the origin of the concept I was delighted. It's like a whole little subculture, almost separate from the War yet somehow feeling like it feeds off it in a way that doesn't make it completely extraneous.
And what a wonderful premise it is. All of human culture, past and future, getting to interact in one melting pot. The fact that Of the City... is such a coherent text with a sprawling baseline premise like that is a testament to the strength of the creativity powering such ideas. I especially like what the novel did with Tobin/Compassion, but that's a digression from the Book of the War's entries.
It also highlights one of the strengths of beginning the independent Faction Paradox range with something like the Book. As an encyclopaedia style tome, it serves to both remind or establish concepts from their appearances in the EDAs, but also as a wonderful form of setup for new stories. When coming to Of the City... the fact that the concept had been thoroughly detailed in the Book allowed me to appreciate the novel as a story in its own right. I was able to digest and grasp the complex backstory and setting before even arriving at the city for the first time.
Many other FP stories also link back to earlier stuff first written about in the Book, which I find a wonderfully efficient method of storytelling. Rather than making things denser and harder to understand, it gives any new FP work a shortcut, touching upon memories of the Book of the War and then expanding off in new directions. Without a central guiding lodestone a lot of the frisson of contradiction and development of ideas would be lacking.
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