- Pronouns
- he/him
Yes it should be the Videssian Sea in the second case.Quick nitpick, you refer to the Black Sea's counterpart as being the Sailors' Sea as well as the Med's - not 100% sure if this should be the Videssian Sea or one of the others, but that seems most likely.
Watching the Witcher lately I've noticed some interesting notes on language correspondences I don't want to go into without having read the books I suspect will have more detail in them.
Also unfortunately seen some flamewars ultimately about the different political implications of viewing the human/elf conflicts as an Eastern European allegory or an allegory for settler colonialism in what's now the US.
There are also more imaginative geographic changes compared to Videssos. A secondary continent is home to the nations of Kuusamo and Lagoas, for example. Kuusamo uses the Finnish language for place names, but its people ethnically resemble East Asians and its geopolitical place in the war is that of the United States. Lagoas, occupying only a small part of the secondary continent, equates to Britain. Rather than being colonially derived from Lagoas as America is from Britain, Kuusamo sees the Lagoans ultimately as invaders who’ll one day be expelled as they once did to the Kaunians, although this has largely become just a ceremonial oath (that’s even spoken by Lagoan students in Kuusaman universities!)
Yeah, there are a number of cases where Turtledove picked place names that are obscure to the average American reader, but not necessarily everyone. A number of the Romanian ones on Sibiu stuck out to me, as well as Algarve itself (which is a popular tourist destination in Portugal for Britons - not sure why he used a Portuguese name for an otherwise Italian-speaking country).My mom is from Kuusamo Finland, so this paragraph was kind of a roller coaster.
They corrected some mistakes for the version above, but introduced other ones instead, such as misspelling Kuusamo as Kuusano.Note: According to Dr. Turtledove, the map in the Earthlight first edition of Into the Darkness is not entirely correct.
I seem to say you liked Scott Lynch's Locke Lamora books (at least at first) which are a lot less subtle in references than most of the examples I gave here - being set in Not Venice, and I recall you mentioning yourself the fact that the villain of book 2 is called Requin.I dunno.
Reading that article left me with a powerful urge never to touch anything written by either Sanderson or Turtledove.
Thanks. I did a long rambling review of the first three Stormlight Archive books last year, and ironically(?) my conclusion was I most enjoyed the parts when it felt like a more aimless exploration of the world in the first two books, and found the bits where the story ramps up in the third book to be almost nauseatingly acceleratory by comparison. Though it depends what you mean by 'story', the first two books have plenty in the sense of individual character plots rather than the big overriding plot.Sanderson's one of those guys who gives a lot of love to the world and not so much to the story to the point where I end up not really caring about either. Which is a common thing in the genre so can't fault him too much for it, and his shorter stuff is a lot better (also true w/Turtledove). Nice article.
I seem to say you liked Scott Lynch's Locke Lamora books (at least at first) which are a lot less subtle in references than most of the examples I gave here - being set in Not Venice, and I recall you mentioning yourself the fact that the villain of book 2 is called Requin.
Liked Locke Lamora better when I thought it was going in the direction of Locke and Jean travel from place to place having standalone adventures rather than whatever it is now, if it's still going. I don't think the sequels were particularly bad, I just don't remember them all that well. The setting didn't make any sort of impression on me either. I remember the interlude chapters in the first one quite clearly though, those were good.
Now, if you want a Fantasy Parallel culture version of Venice done well, then Braavos from ASOIAF is closer to the mark.
Unlike Camorr's canals and Italian names, that actually plays with La Serenissima- ambiguous relation with a mythologised ancient empire, republican governing structure, a naval arsenal, actual mercantile houses, the works. Unlike real life Venice's fairly staid aesthetics- there's a line from a traveller once complaining that he seemed to have wandered into a city full of protestants- GRRM absolutely plays up the Carnivale masks and so forth, but that's par for the course for the series.
I suppose when you compare Venice and Braavos you need to talk about the existence of a mad death-worshipping Church that extorts its followers for every penny, but as I said, Camorr doesn't have Catholicism either...*
*I'm allowed to make this joke, but I will demand to see the confirmation names of anyone who tries to run with it.