8.0 KiB
[DC] Nostalgebraist's "The Northern Caves" is now finished, and it's a pretty good read!
-
Author: u/want_to_want *
-
URL: http://archiveofourown.org/works/3659997?view_full_work=true
-
Score: 23
-
Created: 2015-10-23T23:08:21
Post:
Comments:
u/None [+3] (9 hours later)
I really, really enjoyed the story up until chapter 23 or so, where it seemed to suddenly lose its way. I liked the very last bit too, though.
I'm not sure if it could possibly be described as rational fiction.
u/traverseda [+3] With dread but cautious optimism (16 hours later)
Is this... rebranded homestuck fanfiction?
Complexity is, on balance, a literary virtue. "On balance" is, of course, the operative phrase, and no bit of serialized cultural detritus -- sci-fi television, detective novels, comic books -- is too thoroughly valueless to lack some corps of adoring anoraks who confuse its growing convolutions for authentic depth.
Devotees of "Chesscourt," Leonard Salby's increasingly incoherent series of monstrously overgrown children's books, are a striking example of the type, and display all the hallmarks of the cultural trainspotter's delusion in full flower. Spend any significant amount of time around a Salby enthusiast and the c-word is bound to come up, usually in conjunction with some platitude about the author's "unparalleled imagination" or the elaborate notes and diagrams he reportedly uses to keep track of the series' proliferating characters and plot lines. Other Mirrors, the latest and longest installment, is undeniably imaginative; it probably has the most dizzyingly elaborate plot ever featured in a work of children's literature. Does that make it complex? No, it makes it complicated. And between those two little words is a world of difference.
Salby's plotting builds hierarchically, inexorably, unforgivingly. Every new development serves as scaffolding for the next, and any idea or event, however minor, however many pages or books ago it was introduced, can serve as fodder for new narrative contortions. The result is a reading experience that recreates with eerie accuracy the atmosphere of the schoolroom. Salby demands academic devotion; everything will be on the test. As Other Mirrors demands from its reader a certain drab, bureaucratic cast of mind, no child who is fully a child will enjoy it; as its sensibility never progresses beyond that of a precocious adolescent, no adult who is fully an adult will tolerate it. Salby has written what is perhaps a definitive test of abnormal development, but he has written a dreadful novel.
u/want_to_want [+3] (a day later)
From the mention of "anoraks", I'm pretty sure it's mocking this review of Tolkien. Though Nostalgebraist is certainly aware of Homestuck. I guess TNC is a book about fandom in general.
u/NotAHeroYet [+3] City of Angles Municipal Government (5 hours later)
blru and confusion. perfect-yet-wrong and infailible. the third sign rises, peaks, falls, irrelevant. delicious, flawless, horrifying.
not-true yet not-falsse, devouring and dark.
uncomprehending eyes speed along blurred pages, broken and unsettling alike.
Shattered soulless ramblings, broken and mended but never flawlwss. fell into the chasm of drems, flee mun- flee.
u/MaxDougwell [+2] (12 hours later)
Enjoyable read, good atmosphere for the most part, though I found the ending abrupt.
Possibly the only work I've read where the comments section could serve as a final chapter, with a sting to boot.
u/andor3333 [+2] (a day later)
Man...talk about inductive leap endurance training. I can't believe I read that entire thing in one go. It was cool to see a story written that way though.
u/scruiser [+2] CYOA (3 days later)
Kind of late replying because I took my time thinking of my response... I guess the fact that the story takes place in a fictional world makes deciphering the real meaning and cause of the events more difficult. What I mean is, in the real world, the prior probability of someone developing mimetic manipulation/psychic powers/power capable of causing people to commit suicide just by talking to them is incredibly low, but in a fictional world it is much more likely. Three people making a suicide pact for no apparent reason is a pretty unusual event. Thus the events are ambiguous because we can't be quite sure if it is a magic-realism type of story or a more mundane type of story. This would be okay, if the story played up the ambiguity better, but instead all the more rational/sane characters in story treat it as a coincidence and then the story abruptly ends without any resolution or even acknowledgment of the ambiguity.
Also, I have to agree with /u/alexanderwales that the prose gets awkward to read when the main character gets really crazy. I feel like a moderate amount of this would have been okay, or a large amount so long as it has a pay off, but as it is now, it feels excessive for no pay off in terms of plot or characterization of hidden details.
Still despite all of this, I liked the story, it just ended too abruptly.
u/alexanderwales [+3] Time flies like an arrow (8 hours later)
This does a similar thing to what Floornight did, which is starting with an interesting enough premise and then just descending into ... I don't know, prose for the sake of prose? Words arranged in some way that might have been meaningful to the author? The semblance of style but no real substance?
It's cheap gimmickry in a story about people analyzing a story that's full of cheap gimmickry, standard experimental fiction that's analyzing experimental fiction ... I'm almost on the verge of saying that I hated it, but I think if I strip away all the things I don't like (most of which are down to style) there's an enjoyable story.
Perhaps reading it all in one sitting wasn't the way to go.
Edit: Here's a review on Slate Star Scratchpad that I think is pretty much spot on, though it's got lots of spoilers.
u/Anderkent [+1] (12 hours later)
Yeah I was disappointed in the ending. (Floornight I couldn't finish at all, so can't really compare)
u/NotAHeroYet [+2] City of Angles Municipal Government (14 hours later)
I assumed, after a good- well, mediocre- night's sleep, that in their daze they just... assumed chains of cause and effect that were plausible in the normal story, and more-so in the north caves, but not in the real world.
I assumed the deaths were coincidence, or close to that level, (if i do something that accelerates a death, by accident but with intent to change something, is that manslaughter? it's probably not murder) but the unending chains of causality, combined with a decent dose of superstition, made them overthink it. That the story is only a memetic in that it conveys a bizarre worldveiw- everything else that happens is normal. If you spend long enough thinking in patterns, they stick unless you're very careful. It's not magic, just things going weird manually.
u/Anderkent [+1] (17 hours later)
Yesh, maybe. But that's kinda boring.
I was out of the story by the time they just immediately accepted that the short chat Errant had with a stewardess was the cause for the suicides. I felt, from the 10th or so chapter on. like the story was teasing me continuously, just on the edge of something worthy telling actually happening, and then nothing happens and it just ends.
Bleh.
u/alexanderwales [+1] Time flies like an arrow (18 hours later)
It builds up way, way too much to a payoff that it doesn't (and can't) actually deliver on.
u/adad64 [+1] Chaos Legion (2 days later)
Huh. That was a thing.
I think I liked it a lot, but I'm honestly not sure.