Ship of Fools: February book group

Thread: February book group - Arcanum Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Tree Bee (# 4033) on :

This month's book is Arcanum by Simon Morden. The discussion will be led by Sir Kevin.
Please post if you are in!

Posted by Palimpsest (# 16772) on :

I've read it. I'm in.

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

I'm in, currently reading it

Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :

I'm in. Read it last year, will re-read if I have time but remember it well enough to take part in the debate.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

I've read it.

um... on kindle. But I bought it before the row blew up. Also, I took it to the States with me, and I couldn't have done that with the print edition.

Posted by Sir Kevin (# 3492) on :

Looking forward to our discussion: I am about three-quarters of the way through it and may well finish it tomorrow or the day after that as I have a lot of time to read today.

Shall formulate some questions of my own and will also look at what was provided in the book's introduction.

[Yipee]

Posted by Paul. (# 37) on :

Tentatively in. I have the book, so I may as well start reading it now rather than later. However it is very long and my track record for abandoning long books doesn't augur well.

(No offence to the author, I did enjoy one of his other books)

Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :

I didn't notice the length (except when I was trying to lift it). It's quite a gripping read.

I do read quite fast though, so YMMV.

Posted by Sarasa (# 12271) on :

I'm in, having just finished it a couple of weeks ago.

Posted by Sir Kevin (# 3492) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jane R:
I didn't notice the length (except when I was trying to lift it....)

That's why I got the Nook version on our computer!

Posted by Sir Kevin (# 3492) on :

Just finished reading this tome and shall have (H0PEFULLY) intelligent questions around this time next week. I shan't be re-reading this anytime soon as it is truly an epic drama.

I did not know our esteemed Shipmate and author had a Ph. D. until I finished it!

Posted by Sir Kevin (# 3492) on :

******************************************************************

Spoiler Alert!

Here commence the questions:

1. What century do you think the book is set in?

I'm thinking that this must be around the fourteenth or fifteenth century.

2. Does anybody else think that parallels might be drawn with the works of J.R.R. Tolkien or other books set in medieval times?

This is an epic drama and there is a quest. There are dwarves and they are fierce. There is also much superstition and violence in the book. It is, I believe, because of rough language and sexual innuendo inappropriate for readers under 16 years old. It could be studied in a course at a university.

3. What is your favourite part of the book? Did you see the end coming or was it a complete surprise?

I did not see the end coming as quickly as it did, but I did not find it surprising. The prince was a tragic character and it's inconceivable that he could have survived into adulthood.

(More questions to follow before the weekend...)

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

As the questions have gone up...

Suggested pull quote for the cover:

Simon Morden kills off viewpoint characters at a rate that makes me want to say 'steady on a minute' - George R R Martin.

More thoughts to follow.

Posted by Sarasa (# 12271) on :

Hmmm - Read 75% of this and then decided it looked like the battle with the dwarves was going to take the next 25% so skipped a lot of the rest. I may go back and re-read it properly sometime, but I found the book annoying as in parts it was great, it just felt about 300 pages too long.

My favourite bit was the battle for the library - as a librarian of course you need to save the knowledge you've got and use it, Good to have a librarian as a hero too.

[edited because I can't spell]

[ 18. February 2015, 18:24: Message edited by: Sarasa ]

Posted by Palimpsest (# 16772) on :

Spoiler Alert!

Here commence the questions:

1. What century do you think the book is set in?

One of the things I had a problem with was that the technical inventions didn't seem to follow any natural progression. You can blame some of that on the suppression of technology by magic, but it doesn't seem that logical. You have both the invention river boats and the use of printing. There's mention of the Carolingian empire which is at odds with the incunabula period of printing 1400's or so and the Renaissance rediscovery of Greek and Arabic books of technology.

2. Does anybody else think that parallels might be drawn with the works of J.R.R. Tolkien or other books set in medieval times?

It has some reference to medieval period, especially in the beginning, but much more a fantastical form like Avram Davidson's The Phoenix and the Mirror" rather than Tolkien's Northern Saga.

3. What is your favourite part of the book? Did you see the end coming or was it a complete surprise?

I liked the early part with the magic disappearing and the changes it caused and it was fun to see a medieval Jewish community being integral to the plot and the rediscovery of roman plumbing.
The ending seemed more like running out of steam after a giant and tedious war and not any logical ending. At that point most of the interesting characters were dead or exhausted.

I had read Simon Morden's trilogy about post modern apocalypse and was very pleased this was nothing like it. I enjoyed the sense of the end of magic being like the modern discoveries about the limits of science, e.g. ddt.

The characters were engaging although an awful lot got killed off. Also, the technology just didn't flow organically for me. You don't get printing before you have mining technology and metal casting. There was also a big hole left by the absence of Christianity in the history that wasn't really filled by the magic. Also a lot of the sensibility (democracy good, Jews good, capitalism good) seemed anachronistic. The most plausible part was how magic fit in to the political world.

Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :

quote:
1. What century do you think the book is set in?

I didn't think of this much, as it was obviously set in a parallel universe. I'd have said sixteenth or seventeenth century myself - they have printing. Unlike Palimpsest I didn't think the riverboats were out of place; the Romans and others used river transport (although the author of the Piercebridge Formula did not quite convince me that they invented locks) and if you have magic it makes perfect sense to use that to move them around.

quote:
2. Does anybody else think that parallels might be drawn with the works of J.R.R. Tolkien or other books set in medieval times?

This is an epic drama and there is a quest. There are dwarves and they are fierce. There is also much superstition and violence in the book. It is, I believe, because of rough language and sexual innuendo inappropriate for readers under 16 years old. It could be studied in a course at a university.

Well, there are dwarves in it. And one elf. And giants. I don't think it's very like Tolkien though. There is too much about technology, and the delivery of the message to the dwarf king wasn't really a quest as such. Unless you are thinking of Thaler's quest for knowledge?

It works for me as an allegory of how our civilization might adapt when the oil runs out. And I do think it's suitable for intelligent teenagers, because in many ways it's a very moral book. The whole thing about the Last Hexmaster offering the prince a Faustian bargain - I can keep the magic going if you let me sacrifice your subjects - and what happens after that is very well-written. The people who are actually in charge after the old prince is killed don't want to accept the offer, but you can see that if different people had been left in charge it might have been. These are questions that are entirely appropriate for everyone to consider - how much are you prepared to make other people sacrifice so that you can have a comfortable life?

Another thing that I thought worked very well was the dwarfs and giants - you did get a sense that they were Not Human, and thought and behaved in completely different ways. This came across particularly strongly in the battle against the dwarfs at the end - the Carinthians had planned their tactics on the assumption that the dwarfs would fight like human opponents, and they didn't.

And I liked the librarians. And Simon Morden obviously did his homework on the (real) Jews of Eastern Europe.

quote:
3. What is your favourite part of the book? Did you see the end coming or was it a complete surprise?

Hard to choose, but I think I'd have to go for the part where Thaler restores the water supply.

Several parts were a complete surprise; what happens to Nikoleta, for example. I can see why he did that, but it was a shock when she survived the big battle with the Last Hexmaster and then got killed on the way out by a chancer with an ordinary dagger.

A fair number of fantasy writers have done the 'heir-to-the-throne survives impossible odds' story. I thought it was fitting (though not, of course, a Good Thing) that Felix died in the battle against the dwarfs. This is what usually happens when a single person is cut off from the rest of the his in a pitched battle, however heroic he may be.

I did notice the irony in the battle at the beginning - when Felix survived (through being phenomenally good at sword-fighting; that treacherous Italian was good for something, at least) but his father died.

Favourite quote: "Why don't we go and make the world a better place?"

Posted by Sir Kevin (# 3492) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jane R:

....the delivery of the message to the dwarf king wasn't really a quest as such. Unless you are thinking of Thaler's quest for knowledge?

The summing up of the book as allegory appeals to me. I still say the visit to the dwarf king was very like a quest, so what are your reasons for disagreement? I do like the 'quest for knowledge' a bit; I think I liked the library story a lot better than the lengthy battle with the dwarves: the battle reminds me a little bit of my failed novel that I entered for NaNoWriMo in November of 2013. I made up a story about playing a long game of golf with my former dentist - I even contrived to make the chapter look like score cards. It was enough to put it over the top by the end of the following February with a wee bit over 50,00 words. My book was so horrible that my wife refused to read it! The only good parts, I think now, were the surreal tales of a horse riding a motorcycle and another part about having an ocelot as a housepet as a tribute to my favourite author Haruki Murakami who is well-known for his surrealism!

Favourite quote: "Why don't we go and make the world a better place?"

Posted by Sir Kevin (# 3492) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Sarasa:
....I found the book annoying as in parts it was great, it just felt about 300 pages too long.

My favourite bit was the battle for the library - as a librarian of course you need to save the knowledge you've got and use it, Good to have a librarian as a hero too.

I don't disagree!

Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :

Sir Kevin:

quote:
The summing up of the book as allegory appeals to me. I still say the visit to the dwarf king was very like a quest, so what are your reasons for disagreement?

Hmm. On further consideration you could be right, but my reasons for disagreeing (such as they are) were as follows:

1. Buber is going to deliver a message from his prince to the dwarf king - not really looking for treasure or knowledge for himself. I suppose that doesn't necessarily rule out the possibility of a quest (Frodo went to lose a treasure, for example) but that's the first reason why I didn't think of his mission as a quest.

2. He already knows (more or less) where to find the dwarfs. The only significant encounter he has before he meets the dwarfs is with the teenage thief in the abandoned city, and he doesn't find out anything from him that he couldn't have worked out by himself. Most fantasy quests have a lot more faffing around with minor characters before getting to the important bit.

3. I had this plot classified as 'diplomacy' in my own mind. Failed diplomacy, yes, but not the same as a quest... quests happen in stories and look tidier. This was almost messy enough to be real life.

Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :

oh, and this is what I meant to say yesterday:

quote:
...This is what usually happens when a single person is cut off from the rest of his army in a pitched battle, however heroic he may be...

Monday morning typing. [Hot and Hormonal]

Posted by Smudgie (# 2716) on :

Jane R, that was my thought too - this is almost messy enough to be real life.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Arcanum though I would agree that the length of it lost me a bit towards the end with all the battling. I actually found myself wondering whether the author had written it with a film in mind as it would probably work better in some ways as an action sequence.

I didn't get any feeling of quest. I too thought it was more a case of diplomacy over searching, and an interesting development of it, too. I loved the way that the author wove magic into the story in a way that actually made it believable - the use of it to run the economy, the implications of it "running out".... and really loved the idea of it making the dwarfs bigger and the giants smaller. I too think my favourite part was the battle for the library, that and the development of the characters and their relationships with one another.

I agree about it being inevitable that Felix would die, though I kept hoping against hope that it would be a fairytale ending that brought him back somehow, so found myself angry with the author, of all things, for having the audacity to cut his head off and mount it on a pole. Callous brute! But overall I was pleased that the fantasy setting did not mean fairytale endings.

I don't agree that too many viewpoint characters were killed off - The old prince had it coming, th e death of Nikoleta was harsh but a necessary part of the subterfuge which gave a proper insight into the motivation of her killer, the death of the necromancer was necessary.... but the mother in me wanted Felix to live against all odds. Still fuming, can you tell?

I think for me it was the style of the writing and the empathy for the characters that kept me reading. I've only recently started reading again and nothing like 700 pages, but this one did get me hooked and kept me going right to the end.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Smudgie:
I don't agree that too many viewpoint characters were killed off

I wouldn't say too many. But off the top of my head, there are seven viewpoint characters of which three make it to the end of the book. One of the ones who dies is fairly minor and he and another are only partly sympathetic, although the other only really loses it towards the end.

But George R R Martin has got a reputation for wantonly killing off major characters yet has only killed off one major viewpoint character that I can think of.

Incidentally, I'm not sure that putting in a conversation in order to pass the Bechdel test altogether succeeds if the reader thinks they can spot which conversation it is.

Peter is remarkably successful with women, on the basis of rather little onscreen interactions with them.

I'm being picky. I enjoyed it a lot. It's a subversion of other fantasy books: it has to end with a big pitched battle, because that's how epic fantasy battles end, although in this case it's not against orcs but against dwarves.

I would guess the author disavows all attempts to write an allegory for what happens when the oil runs out. It's just an exploration of what might happen in a analogous situation. Quite different.

Posted by Sarasa (# 12271) on :

I thought the survival of a world based on magic when it runs out was a great idea, and there were lots of other great ideas in the mix too. Long drawn out battles really aren't my thing which really detracted from the whole thing. I gave up before Felix got killed, though if he'd survived a marriage between him and Sophia would have been a bit odd.
One review I read on Goodreads was very pissed off by the introduction of Judaism as they thought it introduced an unwanted 'religious' element to the book. Myself I thought it was interesting idea.

Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :

Dafyd:

quote:
Peter is remarkably successful with women, on the basis of rather little onscreen interactions with them.

Well yes, but who knows what he gets up to offscreen? Perhaps he's the only man in Carinthia who bathes regularly - or Carinthian women find men with missing fingers and lots of scars irresistible - or he's got a really sexy voice. I think Peter Buber is more plausible as a babe magnet than (for example) any of Dan Brown's heroes.

I found Peter's character very likeable; partly because he had a proper respect for The Library but mainly because of the bit where the dwarf king asks him 'does your prince really mean this? Is he inviting all of us to live in Carinthia?' and Peter actually tries to work out *what Felix would want him to say*. And then says it, even though when Felix made the offer he thought there were only a few hundred dwarfs, because he knows that Felix would feel obliged to keep his word however inconvenient it might be.

[ 24. February 2015, 18:20: Message edited by: Jane R ]

Posted by Trudy Scrumptious (# 5647) on :

So I'm a little bit late to the party as I started the book later in February and underestimated how very long it was (easy to do when you're e-reading and can't actually hold the impressive weight of it in your hand). I just finished it today and for the most part really enjoyed it, though there definitely were places in the last half, especially during the seemingly-interminable war with the dwarves, that it dragged a bit. I skimmed some battle scenes.

In the first half, I thought the parallel of Carinthian society learning to live without magic to our own society learning to live without oil someday -- and the desperate lengths people might be willing to go to to keep their "magic" working -- was very sharp and effective. And I loved the practicalities of how they learned to figure things out, and the centrality of the library to building the new Carinthia.

I loved the complexity of Ullman's character, how you got to see him edging closer and closer to the dark side. His final fate was very satisfying. Felix's fate was sad, but seemed right. It would have been too much cheating to let him survive that battle.

OK, I hate to reduce a complex, nuanced portrayal of an entire society in chaos to the level of "shipping" but ... was anyone else really bothered by how Sophia's love life turned out? I mean, she was a great character in her own right, and I love that she emerged as leader, but ... really? Buber at the end?? I thought it defied belief at first that she could be seen as "consort" for Felix when he was just thirteen years old, but as the story went on I was able to accept that she would fulfill that role because of the political necessity and her need to be an Esther-like character to save her people. And I felt that a genuine love did develop between her and Felix even though I never saw it as a romantic or sexual love.

But then ... when Felix's brave and untimely death saves our brave and beautiful heroine from actually having to marry the boy, and she can finally be with a man who is her equal ... she ends up with BUBER??? When she could have had Thaler????? I'm sure I'm biased by the fact that Thaler was my favourite character, hands down, but OMG GURL ALWAYS PICK THE FAT LIBRARIAN WHO ACTUALLY CARES ABOUT BOOKS THOUGHTS AND IDEAS!!! Instead of the berserker-hunter with only two and a half fingers who can't even read or count??? I was so frustrated by that. I really was on team Sophia/Thaler all along and hoped against hope that them getting together would be the endgame. I could have accepted her staying with Felix, had he lived, or remaining single, or even settling down with a Jewish man for the sake of maintaining the bloodlines -- all of those I could have lived with though not as happily as if she'd hooked up with Thaler ... but Buber? No. Just no. I kind of want to demand a reckoning from the author.

Posted by QLib (# 43) on :

I'm very late to the party, as my copy only arrived about a week ago, and I was still in the middle of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. I thought nothing could follow that, and I was also a bit wary of reading something by someone I sort-of know, or who at least might read what I write about it.

However, I'm glad I got it - I'm really enjoying it. I haven't read all of all of the posts on this thread, but I already know more about the ending than I want to. I wouldn't compare it to LOTR; the book it reminds me of most is Pratchett's The Carpet People even though that was lighter, and written for children. But I feel that this is more real than either of those comparisons - by which I mean, more like our world, despite its differences. The depiction of the jewish community is fascinating, and the strong women very welcome.

Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :

Trudy:

quote:
OK, I hate to reduce a complex, nuanced portrayal of an entire society in chaos to the level of "shipping" but ... was anyone else really bothered by how Sophia's love life turned out? I mean, she was a great character in her own right, and I love that she emerged as leader, but ... really? Buber at the end?? I thought it defied belief at first that she could be seen as "consort" for Felix when he was just thirteen years old, but as the story went on I was able to accept that she would fulfill that role because of the political necessity and her need to be an Esther-like character to save her people. And I felt that a genuine love did develop between her and Felix even though I never saw it as a romantic or sexual love.

But then ... when Felix's brave and untimely death saves our brave and beautiful heroine from actually having to marry the boy, and she can finally be with a man who is her equal ... she ends up with BUBER??? When she could have had Thaler????? I'm sure I'm biased by the fact that Thaler was my favourite character, hands down, but OMG GURL ALWAYS PICK THE FAT LIBRARIAN WHO ACTUALLY CARES ABOUT BOOKS THOUGHTS AND IDEAS!!! Instead of the berserker-hunter with only two and a half fingers who can't even read or count??? I was so frustrated by that. I really was on team Sophia/Thaler all along and hoped against hope that them getting together would be the endgame. I could have accepted her staying with Felix, had he lived, or remaining single, or even settling down with a Jewish man for the sake of maintaining the bloodlines -- all of those I could have lived with though not as happily as if she'd hooked up with Thaler ... but Buber? No. Just no. I kind of want to demand a reckoning from the author.

I never got the sense that she was attracted to Thaler in that way; I thought she saw him more as a favourite uncle. Also Thaler himself is very resistant to the idea of getting married because of the tradition that Librarians must be celibate; and nothing is more important to him than his job. Felix's relationship with her is very odd; everyone behaves as if she is his consort, but in some ways she's more like a mother figure.

Something you might want to consider is that Peter (despite his lack of fingers and education) is a skilled huntsman and one of Felix's most trusted aides. He may not have as much book-learning as Sophia, but that doesn't mean he is unintelligent or that he is not an expert in his own field (or perhaps one ought to say his own forest). Carinthia is obviously a very different society to ours; school is not compulsory and many otherwise intelligent people don't bother to learn to read because they can function perfectly well in society without being literate.

Maybe I think the Sophia-Peter romance is more plausible because I know a couple where the wife is a university lecturer with a PhD and the husband is an aeronautical engineer who never went to university and worked his way up via an apprenticeship. They seem happy enough. Five hundred years or so ago he might not have bothered to learn how to read either.

I think the point about Sophia is that she was already unmarriageable in the Jewish community before the story started; if she'd been able to marry a nice Jewish man she'd have done it already. None of them would have her, because she was too intellectual for them. Or she wouldn't have any of them, because she found them too dull. Either way, it's clear that marrying another Jew has already been ruled out, and her father is getting worried that she will never marry. When she takes up with Felix she places herself completely beyond the pale for any God-fearing Jewish man, and when he dies she's left stuck between the two communities; that's why they make her leader, because both the Jews and the Germans trust her, but it also means that she can only have a romantic relationship with someone else who's an outsider to both groups. That's what she and Peter have in common.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

It's not so much that shipping Sophia and Peter is inherently implausible. It's that I can't remember whether they even had any significant scenes together before the final scene. If they did they had all the chemistry of a neon and argon atmosphere.

Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :

Well, they'd have had quite a lot of contact with each other in the main part of the story, since they were both important advisors to Felix. If they felt any 'chemistry' they'd have been stupid to show it, because at that point Sophia was the Princess Consort and very definitely Felix's "property". The only time I can think of when they had any contact before Sophia met Felix was when they went to look for the hexmasters together - or rather, when Sophia tagged along unofficially to look for the hexmasters and found rather more than she bargained for. And at that point Peter was with Nikoleta.

I see what you mean, though. I felt the same way when Jo Rowling paired Harry off with Ginny Weasley - I thought he should have married Luna Lovegood instead, because she was the only girl apart from Hermione who was allowed to develop a personality.

Posted by Trudy Scrumptious (# 5647) on :

Yes, I think it's mostly that I really enjoyed Sophia's scenes with Thaler and could see an attraction between them, and I didn't see that with Buber. And probably just that I found Thaler more attractive, myself, so I'm putting myself in Sophia's shoes a little here.

Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :

Well, yes, but she'd known him for years as a friend of her father's. To me, that flags him as 'favourite uncle' rather than 'potential lover'. And he is comfortable talking to her because he doesn't think of himself as 'available' - he's scandalised when someone suggests he should hook up with the Elf at the end of the book.

Not every loving relationship is about sex.

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