Spoilers What Book Are You Reading?

[ucfgrad93]

Not so much gore as it isn't very descriptive when people get killed, more just your average young adult book. There's an AI that's in place of all governments (Except the scythes apparently), so everybody is living a happy life - Except they're terrified of the scythes. But so far, it pretty much skips the deep questions.


Society approves of it, because they know that over population is a problem, so most of them just accept death when it comes. Each scythe has to kill 260 people a year, but it doesn't mention how many scythes there are. The scythes themselves choose the victims at random, although they are sort of choosing based on random parameters. One chooses random keywords, and searches out a specific victim based on those, one just looks for people that look like they have given up on life, and another appear to love mass killings so he usually just picks and entire bus or similar.


I guess they see human rights as being able to live on a non-overpopulated planet?


The scythes chooses apprentices to teach. One of the main rules is a scythe can never be selected if they enjoy killing, they must be horrified by it.


The scythes themselves. They have certain rules they follow, and congregate every 4 months, and any who doesn't follow the rules are disciplined. Of course, we already have a 'sort of' antagonist, and there are multiple books in the series, so I don't assume they all follow the rules completely.. There's some political undertones, but they haven't come into full effect yet (33% through), so so far it is your pretty standard YA book, set in a pretty weird future.

That sounds pretty interesting. I think I’ll download a sample to my Kindle.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Canterbury Tales I have enjoyed often enough.

It is the Pilgrim's Progress that I have never read…

Well, I loved - or thoroughly enjoyed - Canterbury Tales, Pilgrim's Progress a lot less so; this is a work that strikes me as having little by way of humour.

Re fantasy (or even YA fantasy), I will say - and it is one of the reasons for my questions and comments above - that the best works of fantasy that I have read - or, rather, the works I have enjoyed most - are those where the society (its structures, political and economic power systems, values) is a logical construct in the context of the story that is being told. Characters exist within worlds and these worlds (the best ones) have their own internal logic.

 

[AVBeatMan]

Is this just a gore thriller? Or does it address deeper questions?

Or, does the society approve of random slaughter? Who chooses the 'random' victims? How are they chosen? (I would find it hard to envisage a society even in the future - where the well-appointed, well-connected member so the elite found themselves among those randomly selected for slaughter).

Do basic human rights enter into this at all, or does the society enable them - or support their existence? Who selects the killers? Who has oversight over the killers?
[doublepost=1548761442][/doublepost]

Rebecca is very, very good.

One of my favourite books of all time.

 

[Falhófnir]

Just had this pop up on YT, got me thinking back to the book(s) on which it was based.

Spoiler: Video

As far as the first couple of books in the series of 4 goes I remember quite enjoying them, though (even at ~age 10!) there were a few eye-rolling parts that seemed more suited to a fantasy parody than a serious attempt at creating a fantasy world (I'm thinking the unpronounceable words; stock elves and dwarves; really generic setting etc).

Lasting impression of the third book gets a little less nostalgic - I remember being quite put off by the purple prose (I guess it's probably there in books 1 and 2 but this is where I really started to notice it in a negative sense) and having the general impression of a big meander in a river that takes us back to almost where we started without really changing an awful lot along the way. Sort of like the entirety of the third book was padding for a few scraps of plot he wanted to keep but couldn't quite fit in anywhere else.

Then of course the series finale. I can remember it seemed to just pop into existence one day a long time after the previous release, and after the last book had been a bit of a letdown I almost didn't bother, and I more or less wish I hadn't. I can't remember a lot of details at this point, but 'massive anticlimax' is pretty much what I've been left with as an aftertaste. Around this time I also came across a lot of criticism aimed at the heavy similarities to a number of other works. I'm not sure I'd go as far as some did (plagiarism accusations) but there's no doubt it's a bit of a lazy anthology of vanilla fantasy tropes.

Well that's a 15 minute blast from the past - anyone else read and want to share their opinions? (and if you haven't I honestly wouldn't recommend )

 

[ThisBougieLife]

@Falhófnir

I remember reading the first two books when I was in middle school, but I wasn't interested enough to continue. The thing that let me down most about the series (and what killed my desire to read on) wasn't the "meh" writing or the generic story (I did find some of the intricacies of the magical system interesting), but in the second book when

Spoiler

Eragon is transformed into a half-human half-elf hybrid and essentially becomes "perfect". Yawn. Eragon was never a very interesting character (one of the series' many flaws) but him literally losing his humanity made him even less interesting.

I doubt I'll return to it, there's much better fantasy out there, but I at least remember enjoying it for the most part up until that point.

 

[Falhófnir]

@Falhófnir

I remember reading the first two books when I was in middle school, but I wasn't interested enough to continue. The thing that let me down most about the series (and what killed my desire to read on) wasn't the "meh" writing or the generic story (I did find some of the intricacies of the magical system interesting), but in the second book when

Spoiler

Eragon is transformed into a half-human half-elf hybrid and essentially becomes "perfect". Yawn. Eragon was never a very interesting character (one of the series' many flaws) but him literally losing his humanity made him even less interesting.

I doubt I'll return to it, there's much better fantasy out there, but I at least remember enjoying it for the most part up until that point.

Yeah, I can’t remember a lot of the details about the character arcs without re-reading but if memory serves Eragon was also pretty much written as a heroic character from the get-go as opposed to someone who got dragged into events and rose to the challenge?

Spoiler

The part you mention definitely a lazy way of progressing the character, particularly as

Spoiler: Ending spoiler

in the finale he doesn’t even actually engage Galbatorix in a fight anyway!

The first couple of books definitely do a lot right, my overwhelming memory is enjoying them and that the series had quite a nice ambience, just think the ending and some of the weaker aspects drag it down from what could have been quite a solid fantasy series

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Just had this pop up on YT, got me thinking back to the book(s) on which it was based.

Spoiler: Video

As far as the first couple of books in the series of 4 goes I remember quite enjoying them, though (even at ~age 10!) there were a few eye-rolling parts that seemed more suited to a fantasy parody than a serious attempt at creating a fantasy world (I'm thinking the unpronounceable words; stock elves and dwarves; really generic setting etc).

Lasting impression of the third book gets a little less nostalgic - I remember being quite put off by the purple prose (I guess it's probably there in books 1 and 2 but this is where I really started to notice it in a negative sense) and having the general impression of a big meander in a river that takes us back to almost where we started without really changing an awful lot along the way. Sort of like the entirety of the third book was padding for a few scraps of plot he wanted to keep but couldn't quite fit in anywhere else.

Then of course the series finale. I can remember it seemed to just pop into existence one day a long time after the previous release, and after the last book had been a bit of a letdown I almost didn't bother, and I more or less wish I hadn't. I can't remember a lot of details at this point, but 'massive anticlimax' is pretty much what I've been left with as an aftertaste. Around this time I also came across a lot of criticism aimed at the heavy similarities to a number of other works. I'm not sure I'd go as far as some did (plagiarism accusations) but there's no doubt it's a bit of a lazy anthology of vanilla fantasy tropes.

Well that's a 15 minute blast from the past - anyone else read and want to share their opinions? (and if you haven't I honestly wouldn't recommend )

@Falhófnir

I remember reading the first two books when I was in middle school, but I wasn't interested enough to continue. The thing that let me down most about the series (and what killed my desire to read on) wasn't the "meh" writing or the generic story (I did find some of the intricacies of the magical system interesting), but in the second book when

Spoiler

Eragon is transformed into a half-human half-elf hybrid and essentially becomes "perfect". Yawn. Eragon was never a very interesting character (one of the series' many flaws) but him literally losing his humanity made him even less interesting.

I doubt I'll return to it, there's much better fantasy out there, but I at least remember enjoying it for the most part up until that point.

Yeah, I can’t remember a lot of the details about the character arcs without re-reading but if memory serves Eragon was also pretty much written as a heroic character from the get-go as opposed to someone who got dragged into events and rose to the challenge?

Spoiler

The part you mention definitely a lazy way of progressing the character, particularly as

Spoiler: Ending spoiler

in the finale he doesn’t even actually engage Galbatorix in a fight anyway!

The first couple of books definitely do a lot right, my overwhelming memory is enjoying them and that the series had quite a nice ambience, just think the ending and some of the weaker aspects drag it down from what could have been quite a solid fantasy series

Gentlemen: I will not watch a video.

Please tell me what this is about - author, title, and your comments and opinions on same.

I want words, not images, and I deeply distrust video as a (credible) source with which to examine, explore or simply read some source material.

 

[LizKat]

One book I read a while back that I really liked was Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner. It is non-fiction and all about water rights/policy in the development of the south western US.

I read it thanks to Frank Black (the guy from the indy band the Pixies) and his songs "Ole Mulholland" and "St Francis Dam Disaster".

Great book (great band too btw). I remember being shocked back around turn of century when Reisner died of cancer at only age 51. Cadillac Desert was a milestone in raising public awareness of issues around water rights and use of dams and irrigation channels that endangered the environment. Reisner made so many contributions towards bringing oppositional forces together to work on better ways to manage water resources.

I ran into that book in a rather odd way I guess, but just odd regarding the timing. There was a long stretch in which I devoted zero time to the cinema and practically none to contemporary reviews of it either. So I saw the 1976 movie Chinatown for the first time in 1990-something, having no clue what it was about beforehand. I ended up interested in how water resources figured into regional politics in the USA, then bumped into that 1986 book of Reisner's while trying to learn more about the subject.

====

At the moment I'm finishing up Emily Mitchell's The Last Summer of the World, a book that I had forgotten I'd bought. For awhile there I was immersed in WWI books, took some from the library, bought some and had to set some of the latter aside. This one certainly deserved picking up again. It's historical fiction about the photographer Edward Steichen when Paris was under threat by the Germans and he was doing aerial reconnaissance over France for the Americans (and suffering through the end of his first marriage thanks to an alleged affair he'd had with a best friend of his then wife). The book is painstakingly researched, imaginatively constructed with respect to analysis of some of the actual photographs Steichen took, and deeply moving in a way that I did not expect from a debut novel.

 

[ThisBougieLife]

Gentlemen: I will not watch a video.

Please tell me what this is about - author, title, and your comments and opinions on same.

I want words, not images, and I deeply distrust video as a (credible) source with which to examine, explore or simply read some source material.

The video is actually about the movie that was made of the first book, that is, Eragon by Christopher Paolini. It's a fantasy series about a boy and dragons and it's famous for being derivative.

 

[Falhófnir]

Gentlemen: I will not watch a video.

Please tell me what this is about - author, title, and your comments and opinions on same.

I want words, not images, and I deeply distrust video as a (credible) source with which to examine, explore or simply read some source material.

The video was incidental, just jogged my mind about these books which I haven’t read in years now... I would probably have to re read to give any more detailed insight (than the above) but I am a little short on time to do that currently. Ultimately I felt the need to post as the inheritance book series is an unusual one which I have mixed feelings about (I usually find I either really enjoy or outright don’t like a series). Overall I feel the really poor ending makes it a not-recommended read, which is a shame as there’s quite a lot to like about the earlier books

 

[Scepticalscribe]

The video is actually about the movie that was made of the first book, that is, Eragon by Christopher Paolini. It's a fantasy series about a boy and dragons and it's famous for being derivative.

The video was incidental, just jogged my mind about these books which I haven’t read in years now... I would probably have to re read to give any more detailed insight (than the above) but I am a little short on time to do that currently. Ultimately I felt the need to post as the inheritance book series is an unusual one which I have mixed feelings about (I usually find I either really enjoy or outright don’t like a series). Overall I feel the really poor ending makes it a not-recommended read, which is a shame as there’s quite a lot to like about the earlier books

Thank you; all I wished to know was the name of the book (or books).

I had seen them advertised (presumably when the movie was released) and wondered at the time whether they were worth reading.

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

Started re-listening to Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin. Such a wonderfull and likely the most cozy story I know, as the narrator is amazing. But it is definitely not for everyone, since it goes very heavily into biology!

Is there any appeal against being randomly selected for death?

Well, in principle no. If you don't accept the scythes selection of you, and you run or fight back, the scythe will also kill the persons immediate family. This works as a deterrent in most cases.

Now, another question: Was the author of this work male or female?

Male. He managed to write a fine heroine though.

I am curious how this works. Surely the ability to stop earthquakes or tsunamis etc is impossible?

This is something that is skimmed over. But they have these emergency drones which picks up corpses, and flies them to a resurrection center, where they are then revived. If they are completely destroyed, say, by fire, then it is not possible.

Now if (Big if!) I were to accept the basic premise of the book, I would expect the methods used to "scythe" people at random to at least be humane. Death by flamethrower doesn't sound too good to me!

Trust me, you just have to accept the premise and enjoy the plot. Otherwise there's nothing left in the book for you. It is a YA after all.

But some of the scythes consider it a prerogative to be able to use any weapon they want (Knife, gun, explosives, flamethrower, remote controlled detonations!). There's a fair amount of scythe politics in the book, where they discuss their internal rules and ethics (!).

And one wonders whether any of the (self-appointed, or appointed or selected by some other means) scythes (that is a lot of power to wield, the power of life and death) ever question their life, values and attitudes. Indeed, do they ever suffer from any sort of PTSD?

Well, most don't. They go through a year of training to ensure that they will be good scythes... Well, and by training, I mean fighting and weapons techniques. Nothing on the mental state of mind. There's also a fair discussion on what is a good scythe and what is a bad scythe, which is a large part of the plot. Some scythes are old school and have ethics, while more modern scythes just want to have fun.

But since you have so many questions, you should consider reading it! I ended up with a 4/5 rating, since, if you go into it knowing its a YA book, and you can accept the premise, then the story is actually quite fine. It even has a 4.36 rating on Goodreads (From 57.000 rating even) , which is pretty high.

I actually enjoyed Tarzan of the Apes very much (although I don't plan to read the entire series)

Yes, I enjoyed that one very much too. The sequel was also quite good.

Much like reading Dracula or Frankenstein, the books are significantly different from the movies where most of us get our impressions
That is why I am enjoying reading some of these older books where I *think* I know the story pretty well

I enjoyed Dracula more with the book, while Frankenstein more in the movies.

I have read The Count of Monte Cristo and enjoyed it tremendously (also very different from some movie presentations) and plan to re-read it again soon

Still on my to read list. Got the free eBook on iTunes, but have still to find time for it.

I have not read The Three Musketeers, but it is on my list as well

I enjoyed this one very much!

 

[arkitect]

It is a YA after all.

Alas, I am an OA. Not quite an OAP (yet!)

 

[mobilehaathi]

But they have these emergency drones which picks up corpses, and flies them to a resurrection center, where they are then revived

So...why bother? They already send assassins around the world to kill people (in what sound like somewhat brutal ways) in order to prevent over population. Why bother resurrecting people who die?

 

[LizKat]

Ah, the ambiguities of life in YA dystopia..

 

[S.B.G]

Ah, the ambiguities of life in YA dystopia..

What's YA in this context?

 

[arkitect]

What's YA in this context?

I think YA = Young Adult…
At least that's what I assumed.

 

[S.B.G]

I think YA = Young Adult…
At least that's what I assumed.

Ahhh, okay. Thank you!

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Started re-listening to Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin. Such a wonderfull and likely the most cozy story I know, as the narrator is amazing. But it is definitely not for everyone, since it goes very heavily into biology!


Well, in principle no. If you don't accept the scythes selection of you, and you run or fight back, the scythe will also kill the persons immediate family. This works as a deterrent in most cases.


Male. He managed to write a fine heroine though.


This is something that is skimmed over. But they have these emergency drones which picks up corpses, and flies them to a resurrection center, where they are then revived. If they are completely destroyed, say, by fire, then it is not possible.


Trust me, you just have to accept the premise and enjoy the plot. Otherwise there's nothing left in the book for you. It is a YA after all.

But some of the scythes consider it a prerogative to be able to use any weapon they want (Knife, gun, explosives, flamethrower, remote controlled detonations!). There's a fair amount of scythe politics in the book, where they discuss their internal rules and ethics (!).


Well, most don't. They go through a year of training to ensure that they will be good scythes... Well, and by training, I mean fighting and weapons techniques. Nothing on the mental state of mind. There's also a fair discussion on what is a good scythe and what is a bad scythe, which is a large part of the plot. Some scythes are old school and have ethics, while more modern scythes just want to have fun.

But since you have so many questions, you should consider reading it! I ended up with a 4/5 rating, since, if you go into it knowing its a YA book, and you can accept the premise, then the story is actually quite fine. It even has a 4.36 rating on Goodreads (From 57.000 rating even) , which is pretty high.


Yes, I enjoyed that one very much too. The sequel was also quite good.

I enjoyed Dracula more with the book, while Frankenstein more in the movies.


Still on my to read list. Got the free eBook on iTunes, but have still to find time for it.


I enjoyed this one very much!

I have questions because in my experience the best fantasy works (or rather, the works I have most enjoyed) have a well developed and thought through (and internally logical) society (and sometimes, system of magic); that means a world where economics, power, politics and religion are all somehow integrated into the plot, and serve to give it a context within which these actions and characters are credible.

Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle is brilliant.

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

So...why bother? They already send assassins around the world to kill people (in what sound like somewhat brutal ways) in order to prevent over population. Why bother resurrecting people who die?

Don't blame the messenger. I am just describing the book!

 

[mobilehaathi]

Don't blame the messenger. I am just describing the book!

Not blaming you, just wondering if there’s some internal logic that explains it!

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Not blaming you, just wondering if there’s some internal logic that explains it!

Exactly, this is what I had wondered, as well.

 

[ucfgrad93]

Scythe by Neal Shusterman. Young adult science fiction.

Two teenagers in a future world being trained as scythes, ie. people who condemn other people to death at random, and kill them. But wait, why would they do that you ask?? Well my friend, in the future, natural death and death by disasters has all been fixed, and diseases are gone, accidents doesn't happen, etc. so in order to maintain world population at a certain level, they randomly execute people!

My girlfriend liked the book, and said I would surely like it.. I am not so sure, being 25% through it now. Of course, scythes can choose their own methods of killing people, so I am looking forward to hearing more about the guy who always uses a flamethrower...

I downloaded a sample of this on my Kindle and read it. Seems pretty intriguing, so I will be buying it in the near future. Thanks for the recommendation.

 

[rhett7660]

Started book number 11 in the Bosch series.

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

Not blaming you, just wondering if there’s some internal logic that explains it!

None what so ever. This is usually the case for Young Adult books I find, so I just tend to go with it.

In general, I always just accept the premise from the get go, because I'll enjoy the books much more. After all, they are fiction.