The Pattern

Terje wrote:Det jeg kan si, er at fortellinga hopper fra kontinent til kontinent, og tilbake igjen, og at gudene i serien er meget involvert i hendelsene.

Og hvis dere tror Martin er hensynsløs med tanke på karakterdødsfall, så vent til der får se Erikson...

Terje wrote:Sikta ikke spesielt mot deg, Mr. Narsissist...

Men bra at du prioriterer den så høyt.

Okay. I just started Gardens of the Moon and am having a hard time getting into it. I feel like I have been plopped down in the middle of completely foreign culture (imagine that ) with no tour guide or book to help. I am getting frustrated with the amount of RAFO elements. I would like to understand something of what is going on while it is going on. This having to go back and re-reading parts once I get a clue what it might have been about is getting old. ~Sigh~. Patience is not neccessarily one of my strong points.

How long will it be before I start figuring out what is going on and who is good and who is bad? For that matter are there any good guys in this book? Or is this a George RR Martin type thing where you don't really know who is good and who is bad? Ot are they all evil? My nature is to latch on to someone who is just plain good. The gate guard Gamet seems to be the only person I have actually liked so far. Also maybe the officer at the very start of the book that Ganoes was talking with. He seemed like he might be a down to earth decent sort. So far Ganoes is too arrogant to like.

My question is how long do I have to keep slogging through it until it gets good? How long until I am going to understand who the players are and what their agenda's really are? Will it be worth sticking with? I need a little encouragement to keep going on.

Trust me when I say while there are indeed some shades of gray among the characters, it is written in such a way that as the story progresses, you begin to feel empathy for even some of the most evil-committing characters. It is done in a way that while you'll feel empathy for them, you will also realize that those actions are what they are....evil. It just isn't a senseless Evil, but the choices of people faced with prejudices inherited from their cradles, their fears, their hungers and desires - all of what makes each of us so interesting and so potentially damning.

This is a really lame way to put it but...reading Erikson is kinda like living life. You don't get all the knowledge you have in the first ten pages. You have to keep going, experience new things, and then maybe when you look back you can understand it.