I love when parallel ideas stem up from different places. Recently the chef movie on an island and the boat movie with rich people both critiqued the upper class and came out around the same time. (I forgot the names of both in this moment.) I see an increase of this type of phenomenon occurring more frequently .

As people consume more of the same media, as people become influenced more and more by the same thing, and creative people are influenced by a greater quantity of the same material, perhaps this also makes the creative's original expansion upon their influence less unique.

What are some other media which this happened? Maybe Dark City and the Matrix having similar themes as well? And do you think creative people should journey out to more obtuse media to combat this problem?

Michael Crichton, in his book: Tineline

Is the first, that i know of, to show the audience how a wormhole would work by folding a piece of paper in half. This concept can be seen through many current age sci-fi movies that it's become a trope. I'm assuming during his research for his novel some scientist explained it to him that way, but he was the first to show the world this concept through a form of media.

Does anyone know any other media that influenced the zeitgeist in some way yet went unnoticed by many?

Recently, I searched for another enjoyable read and scrolling through book suggestions, this book came up many times. 

I knew nothing about this book and had no assumptions before reading it, besides the fact that many people enjoyed it. 

Between Two Fires begins during the Black Death, as Thomas de Girvas: a Knight, rescues a young girl named Delphine. Along their journey they befriend a sorrowful priest named Mattieu.  Eventually prophecy compels them along their journey to Paris and then to Avignon. 

I enjoyed parts of the book and the Author: Christopher Buhlman, sticks, mostly, to his strengths, which is action writing and bestowing life into the horrifying creatures he creates. If you are a fantasy fanatic, I would recommend this book to you, but if you are not, perhaps some of these critiques may also resonate with you, just as myself, in how some of the author’s choices may hinder or elevate the readers’ enjoyment of the story. 

Spoilers:

My enjoyment of the story started fading around half way in. At the time I wasn't sure why, but I started talking notes to understand the 'why' and to become a better writer myself. After finishing the book I ruminated and thought a bit about the book. A few things stuck out to me.

1. The characters lack change or change is never experienced or felt by the reader.

Thomas might be gravely wounded but the next chapter will start when they set off again, and his great injuries healed and that time as partners sharing shreds one another is minimaly there. This, through an episodic story engine, where someone is hurt or nearly hurt, then healed through the passage of time--the white space between chapters, diminishes the impact of the injuries the characters face and lessens the injuries to no more than the initial shock value of the injury obtained. 

2. The story structure does not contribute to the story.

The story is also told cyclically which, I feel, only harms the story. This works wonderfully in a memoir, but in a fictional story that glosses over the spiraling nature of trying to heal from trauma, it hinders the characters’ development as well as the reader’s understanding of the characters. 

The reader may consciously, or unconsciously feel the repetition of the story structure, which is:

New place --> Monster/Villain --> Injury --> Onwards towards their quest. 

The characters, also, never dwell on their misfortunes, or ruminate on their past lives. Nearing the third quarter of the novel, the author, perhaps, tries to break his story structure and gives us the backstory of Thomas. But this decision perplexed me in the placement of Thomas’s backstory in the overarching story.  

The reader has already spent a lot of time with the characters. We know the priest drinks and is having a crisis of faith, that Delphine sees or imagines otherworldly creatures, and that Thomas feigns an air of indifference and smugness to hide his pain.

When Thomas’s backstory is told, the assumptions the reader gathered along their time with Thomas: how they percieve him, is wounded, thus wounding the reader’s perspective or notion of the character; they must reframe him from one picture to another.

The backstory is told by the omniscient narrator and not by Thomas. There is no emotional weight through his backstory, only a series of sorrowful events. 

The emotion is already lacking and whatever problem the author was trying to solve with placing the backstory three-forth through, is shadowed by what the author shows—action, and what the author does not show--the inner etchings of the three main characters. 

3. The Author could have, perhaps, done one more pass at editing.

 

As I was reading, I found some prose/passages jarring through their vagueness and repetition of the language used. 

Some examples are: 

“His hands scooped the air as he spoke, like an Italian’s hands, but gently, as though they were playing in the water.” (309) 

“When she saw the impish humor in his eye, she was cooked.” (298) 

“He slipped into a pleasant dream of children laughing. 

What children? 

Oh. 

Those.” (360) 

I also noticed a prose tick that weaves through the narrative. The author will repeat a verb of an adjective, I’m assuming, to try and draw emphasize. 

“So strong he’s so strong. But the nature of her scream changed as the thing in the orange robes changed. She screamed...” (370) 

  

In only one instance did I feel the tick strengthened the story, which is as Thomas and Delphine encounter unknowable, otherworldly creatures during the climax. 

“Six wings, six wings, and two wings. 

Twelve headed thing, fly-headed thing, lion thing.” (371) 

I feel this repetition of words works in this instance because it mirrors the action, and the sounds of the repetition of the words gives the language depth as the word’s sounds conjures more and more things appearing, gives language to the unknowable creatures that are appearing, and plays into the poetic language of the St James bible. 

 4. Why Did the Author Write this? 

As I read, shortly after Matthieu succumbs, I pondered why the author wrote this story. The characters did not change after his death. I remember only once instance of them remembering their dear friend, so the purpose was not to illuminate some truth the author was trying to examine or understand, such as how we move on from the darkness of our past and still see hope in the future. 

In another brief book review one of their critiques was that it was damning to Christianity as it showed God in an unfavorable light, who simply was not there, but I have the opposite opinion. In a way it is a DnD campaign taking place under a Christian guise. No other religions are examined and Christiany hardly is and only subtextually. Delphine, literally sees and talks to both Christian Demons and Christian Angels, giving legitimacy to Christianity and diminishing the faith of other religions like the Judaism. Only the Christian god or lore is shown to be the true god in this story. 

When Thomas is tortured in hell, with methods that are similar to the ones that were used by the Inquisition, the author makes no subtle or direct reference to the history of anguish that religion has inflicted on opposing ideologies and their own people, such as the crusades, enslavement, oppression and the sheer number of people hurt by religion or on the opposite end, those who benefited from the religion. I saw no use for adding the weighty Christian element except the fact that it was historically accurate to the place and time. I know the author went on a trip to 'study the time' but its a story filled with monsters. I learned nothing about this period except that the handle of a sword may have had animal skin on it.

This brings me to the overarching problem I had with this novel. Which is that it seemed destitute in meaning or had nothing to examine.  

Even in genre fiction, I feel, there should be some under arching idea or ideas the author is examining, such as in another recent genre novel I recently finished: Sphere, by Michael Criton. In Sphere, the author examines the unconscious and how our past selves influence our present selves. Most of it is hidden in the subtext, but the subtext makes the reader engage with the ideas within the novel and because of it, the story becomes more memorable as the reader carries it within them, even after they have finished the story. But in Between Two Fires things happen, and the subtext is almost nonexistent, which makes the writing seem very surface level.

When the novel ended, because I never felt the weight of the trauma the characters carried, and the subliminal, subtextual ideas presented in the novel seemed to be non-existent, the story truly ended for me after the last page. Everything was told and held no room for myself to stay in the dream world.  

Two Fires did entertain me, but I was often brought out of the story by the writing and mutability of the author examining any facet of humanity.  

I would rate Between Two Fires 2.5/5. 

 

What are your thoughts on the novel?

 

I just played a game with rumble and conduit and did the bauss strat of spinning in a circle. I'm pretty sure each instance or reapplying burn gave the eneny another stack of the augment. I bet there is a tech where u face and face away as quick as possible.

What do books do better than any other medium? It puts you in the the mind of a character/characters. You literally embrace unconsciously walking in someone elses shoes for a time. It creates empathy and shows nuance in the underlining of what drives different types of souls. Because reading is on a decline we no longer take as much time, with out defenses down, to inhabite the spaces that dwell in the unspoken.

We glance more at headlines and make snap judgements as we scroll through social media which is manly compossed of a capatalistic mindset, which is what evokes the most emotion to gain our attention., thus driving the most views or sales.

Art is outside the capatalistic system and creates with the sake of expression, which is drowned out through the mediums we ingest in place of what used to be storytelling. This is shown through the insane number of cliques that people gravite towards creating group identity, but sacrificing the individual identity in the process. This can be seen in the same style of clothing, used as a status symbol instead of showing individuality, and people repeating what was said or told to them, also from the leaders of these groups. Thoughts?

Such as fashion reusing trends from the 2000s and 1990s, movies using the same formula and tone, which is exemplified in superhero movies, games which are filled with the save the world trope, interior design which has turned muted monochromatic tones vogue, slang that is devoid in meaning such as the 6 7 trend and Ai slop videos and popular music making no real inivation in its production, it in fact is produced to sound less unique, less human and more artificial, such as the oversaturation of autotune.

Hi, I just started reading Mccarthy. I think his prose is beautiful and am fascinated by his work because his work seems to be juxtaposed (in style) to one of my favorite authors Kazuo Ishiguro who loves to use the unreliable narrator. I feel like interiority is one of the strengths of novels, as it can do it better then any other medium, so I was curious if anyone knows or can speculate on why he tends to shy away from interiority.

Thanks

Such as people using king and queen to compliment each other.