Chidiebere Ama

The Dao of Writing. The Dao of Stories. Simply Human 🍀

[Chidiebere Ama @thewritingdao]

WARS OF LIGHT AND SHADOW FULL SCALE REVIEW — IS THIS A SERIES WORTH GIVING A SHOT

SPOILER FREE REVIEW 🧵

[Chidiebere Ama @thewritingdao]

When did I start talking about 11th grade and 12th grade in my tweet 🫩

Anyone with common sense can detect a more sophisticated narrative

[Ivan^3 +18 @DarthK4iser]

I know this is bull because the bare, basic, and easy to follow beige pose of Farewell to Arms is considered 12th grade while the constantly changing prose, thematic and symbolic wording, and just wordy Moby Dick is considered 11th grade

[Chidiebere Ama @thewritingdao]

@LORElitaPixie yes, this particularly seems to be the case with how people describe silmarilion and Ursula's sci-fi works

[Chidiebere Ama @thewritingdao]

I think people need to realize that there's a difference between a story being complex/difficult, a story being ambiguous, and a story being confusing. These things are different but they keep getting overlapped. Also note that a story being inherently confusing is bad writing.

[Chidiebere Ama @thewritingdao]

Pray tell, by these “more than one type of complexity” you mean lore dumps and multi pov? (The very staple of fantasy btw)

[allowableman @allowableman2]

There is more than one type of complexity

[Chidiebere Ama @thewritingdao]

and live through the experience of cause and effect. It is a distant view with very present emotions that rub on you despite the archaic far flung pov. And in addition to that, ideas are recalibrated with newer perspectives down the road. Multi pov and different styling

[Chidiebere Ama @thewritingdao]

Shifting POVs is not narrative styling. It can account for a given narrative structure. But styling is a deliberate creative effort to facilitate unique forms of a narrative structure in which a story is told, thus giving it a unique experience than if it was told otherwise. 🧵

[shiddd @dominus_dobbs]

@thewritingdao That’s what narrative styling is. If a book jumps from multiple POVs and settings, that’s part of its narrative styling. One sentence in your post contradicts the one right before it.

[Chidiebere Ama @thewritingdao]

Wars of Light and Shadow by Janny Wurts and Asoiaf by GRRM both use multi pov but Janny's styling is much more sophisticated than his and the experience is different. With asoiaf you get to feel and experience the characters. In wolas, the styling compels you to observe, 🧵

[worm @616mvrdock]

just rewatched civil war and man theres no way in hell that anybody was ACTUALLY team iron man im ready to reopen the debate about this idgaf

[Chidiebere Ama @thewritingdao]

@Poison_Magus lmao

[Chidiebere Ama @thewritingdao]

Imo there isn't a single book in both tweets that is remotely advanced or expert level. Silmarilion and Gardens of the Moon are the only one that comes close but not quite there. Everything else falls into beginner and intermediary

[Sayuti 📖 @MalazofWesteros]

Damn it gets even worse. Look who he snuck in the expert level lmaoooo 😭😭

[Chidiebere Ama @thewritingdao]

@salem_zarir yeah, the way I see it, narrative styling and prose styling bolster theme work and character work. I've lately been unable to separate unique character works from the author's preferred styling in narrative and prose

[Chidiebere Ama @thewritingdao]

Fundamentally, yes it is. Because it is a novel. And the reading level of any novel is determined primarily by its prose and narrative structure. Multiple povs and lore dumps add little in complexity to direct engagement especially if one is used to reading fantasy already

[Simspron @simspron86522]

@thewritingdao @mudchar22 Apparently you think reading level of fantasy is determined by how hard it is to read and understand a sentence.

[Chidiebere Ama @thewritingdao]

@NathanielWesnak It only makes the story feel more vast. Not more difficult to engage with

[Chidiebere Ama @thewritingdao]

Not true, because despite possessing a larger cast and a deeper lore, a song of ice and fire for instance isn't more difficult than a series like book of the new sun that has just one pov character. Also you can't understand the underlying theme without prose engagement

[godson_wesnak @NathanielWesnak]

@thewritingdao I guess if you’re just trying to understand the sentences, but if you want to understand the context and underlying themes of the story a larger cast and deep lore absolutely make things more difficult.

[Chidiebere Ama @thewritingdao]

books that demand much more both in narrative style and sentence on sentence reading. These advanced books still feature your “jumping from city to city”

[Chidiebere Ama @thewritingdao]

That is not a problem for anyone that reads fantasy. The prime criteria for judging the difficulty of a novel is its language syntax and narrative styling. Not jumping from povs or multiple places. That's why those books are intermediary reads. They fall short of advanced 🧵

[shiddd @dominus_dobbs]

@thewritingdao @mudchar22 I see the problem. You don’t understand the criteria. Yes, you can look at two pages of a book and say, “See? Pretty easy to read.” Duh.

The point is that the book itself, in its habit of jumping from time to time, place to place, can be difficult to follow.

[Chidiebere Ama @thewritingdao]

@nocful well for me it hardly did. I was definitely slower reading malazan compared to a lot of fantasy reads. But I was much slower reading wolas compared to malazan. my original post was on gotm tho, which is actually easy to parse through imo.

[Chidiebere Ama @thewritingdao]

@nocful The dense and very layered prose often enforces a slower engagement with the narrative to really process what is going on. Add on the thematic ambiguity that repurposes itself at different points (like Lysaer in The Brotherhood's Hostel) and you obtain a more complex narrative

[Chidiebere Ama @thewritingdao]

@nocful I disagree. Malazan possesses structural ambiguity and an alternating lead cast which might feed the mind with a sense of overload, but it still possesses a nigh accessible direct engagement to the narrative. Wolas on the other hand doesn't

[Chidiebere Ama @thewritingdao]

@ProfeSteve1701 yeah it definitely is. It's rare to come across something as sophisticated as it

[Chidiebere Ama @thewritingdao]

@MalazofWesteros @Catface_OJK I posted it here around April as part of the new finds I've got though. Also y'all don't fw prose and language like I do so it didn't ring in my mind to tell y'all. Sorry