@BESW when I get colourful with no colours I just decide it's rainbows everywhere. Garish always tends to be like...abright greenish yellow if I don't get anything else. (this is sometimes hilarious, when my brain imagines this way and I know it doesn't make sense but that is what happens when you don't give me enough words!)
@Ash n this case, it's Servant of the Underworld, an urban fantasy murder mystery set in 15th century Tenochtitlan, so I'd really like a bit more specific details (like colors) about the setting:
> I walked back to the Imperial Palace on my own, under the light of late afternoon. Outside the Jaguar House, some sort of ceremony was going on. Three warriors and three sacred courtesans were going through the steps of a dance, to the piercing, slow tune of flutes: the jaguar pelts the warriors wore mingled with the courtesans' garish cotton skirts, weaving a pattern like a spell cast over the world.
user15026
Hm, yes, because my usual mental colour does not fit there
The whole book is like that--good descriptions ("piercing, slow tune of flutes") mixed with irritatingly vague descriptions ("garish cotton skirts").
And the gaps are particularly around colors, which is maddening because it's a very colorful world but I don't know what those colors are. I know more about how it smells!
But it's by no means something limited to this author, the lack of clear color descriptions is very common.
I'm a little disappointed by the end-of-second-act twist in Servant of the Underworld, because it feels a bit tired and generic and like the author thought she needed to raise the stakes to "world-ending" when I was quite fine with the stakes being much more personal.
Source: The Well-Educated Mind (2 edn 2016), p. 86 Middle.
Related to this is one final question: What is fiction meant to do? Why are you
reading a novel at all? Are you expecting to find out some truth about human nature?
Should a novel reveal some difficult, hard-to-face truth abo...
Source: The Well-Educated Mind (2 edn 2016), p. 49 Middle.
If you don't have a reading partner who can meet with you face to face, you can
conduct discussions by letter (or email, as long as you treat these dialogues as formal,
requiring proper vocabulary, grammar, spelling, and punc...
Source: The Well-Educated Mind (2 edn 2016), p. 165 Middle.
I modified the book's format, as the author quoted scantly and the omitted sentences were short enough to be restored.
Solzhenitsyn's autobiography is the story not just of himself, but of all
these prisoners, told in clear det...
I asked a question on SF about a piece of postmodern metafiction with a fantastic theme. Some commenters questioned if it was a fit there, but ultimately it was accepted, but did not get much attention.
Could I re-ask it here? My understanding is that cross-posting on SE is discouraged or forb...
Source: The Well-Educated Mind (2 edn 2016), p. 86 Middle.
Related to this is one final question: What is fiction meant to do? Why are you
reading a novel at all? Are you expecting to find out some truth about human nature?
Should a novel reveal some difficult, hard-to-face truth abo...
What are some curious facts/interpretations about Alice in Wonderland? What are some of it’s main historical facts? What is it’s linguistic influence?
I asked a question on SF about a piece of postmodern metafiction with a fantastic theme. Some commenters questioned if it was a fit there, but ultimately it was accepted, but did not get much attention.
Could I re-ask it here? My understanding is that cross-posting on SE is discouraged or forb...
