≡ PDF Free Tong Lashing Sir Apropos of Nothing Book 3 Peter David 9780743449137 Books

Tong Lashing Sir Apropos of Nothing Book 3 Peter David 9780743449137 Books

Download As PDF : Tong Lashing Sir Apropos of Nothing Book 3 Peter David 9780743449137 Books

Tong Lashing Sir Apropos of Nothing Book 3 Peter David 9780743449137 Books

"Tong Lashing" is the third book to feature the anti-hero Apropos of Nothing, along with roughly 115% more puns than is really necessary for anyone's sanity. (David is well-known for deploying both off-the-cuff standard low-brow eye-rolling puns and much more elaborate ones that take half a book to set up.) This current volume takes place in a Davidian emulation of ancient China/Japan (aptly named Chinpan), and Apropos runs afoul of the Forked Tong, the Skang Kei crime family, and the dreaded Anais Ninja clan (headed by the inscrutable Veruh Wang Ho).

David can truly break your heart, though, when he feels like it, which is once per book. And which happens here. The writing is effective, but the books have become very formulaic: pun, pun, snarky observations, Apropos runs away, everyone wants to kill Apropos, Apropos questions whether anti-heroism is an effective philosophy, he tries half-heartedly to do something good and is horrendously punished for it, a villain reveals an unexpected and poignant side, then the big heartbreak scene, and...END.

The page count could've been trimmed easily by dropping a good deal of the relentless internal monologuing over "Am I a good person or not, and is there such a thing as a good person, and why would anyone WANT to be a good person?" and so on.

The author definitely has skills and is not a little daring. I mean, in a single scene featuring three characters (immediately after a climax that some may find borders on troubling territory), he manages to allude to the Christian Holy Trinity, the atomic bombs Fat Man and Little Boy, AND the cult duo of Lone Wolf and Cub. But he needs to shake things up a bit. Every novel he writes, no matter the setting or cast, is largely the same novel. I want to see something different from him for once.

Future adventures of Apropos may not be forthcoming for awhile. David has noted that Pocket Books is not publishing new fantasy novels, but since they have the rights to the existing trilogy, he would have a hard time shopping a fourth book to another publisher. In the meantime, he intends to write some Apropos short stories, but whether those will ever see the light of day is unclear.


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Tong Lashing Sir Apropos of Nothing Book 3 Peter David 9780743449137 Books Reviews

Good
Good, but Peter David breaks less new humor ground in this one than in its predecessors. It still delivers what we have been looking for in this series, but somewhat less of it than in book 2.
I know a lot of people have complained that this particular title was a bit of a downer at the end, but in all honesty, I felt that was in keeping with the series. It's not about sweetness and light, yet it's still very enjoyable. I think it's a fun book. It may not be the Brothers Karamazov or Crime and Punishment, but I think it's still pretty good.
I wish this series would just keep going. Peter David is as creative a writer as I've read in a very long time! LOVE IT!
The craftsmanship of this story is unexcelled. There is no disappointment anywhere in the book. Recommend you read the previous book, "Woad to Wuin" first, but this is a total immersive experience. As soon as you think you've figured the plot out, it gives yet another twist, smoothly carrying the story along. This is no anticlimactic trilogy! Peter David is a sensei of writing.
Mr. David tries to be funny with a Lord of the Rings joke in the opening sequence of this novel. Instead, he turns the stomach of any reader with any taste with his crass vulgarity and a joke that simply isn't funny at all.

Sadly, I enjoyed the first two of this series and found them worth reading. This one seemed to just want to roll around in the vulgarity and avoid any real resemblance to the first two except for its lead character....

I would avoid this one like the plague. This was a total waste of time and paper.
Generally, in fantasy (among other genres), the principal characters fit into one of three broad categories. There are, of course, the heroes and the villains, and somewhere between the two is the anti-hero. Which is Peter David's character, Sir Apropos of Nothing? At times, he can be any of the three, which makes him all the more interesting. Certainly, in the third Apropros book, Tong Lashing, we get to see him at both his best and worst.

The novel begins with the protagonist drifting at sea, the only survivor of a shipwreck. This wreck was the result of a dangerous Dungeons & Dragons-like game that Apropos is forced into playing with some rather obvious parodies of Fafhrd, the Grey Mouser and Thomas Covenant. Now, Apropos seems doomed, but he is the ultimate survivor who eventually winds up washed up on the shore of Chinpan, a land that is a blend of China and Japan.

Apropos is taken in by a farming village and begins to find peace with their simple existence. Eventually, however, the real world intrudes and he is drawn into a conflict between the local emperor and a vast criminal/rebel organization. Even this has mixed blessings as Apropos shifts his allegiances from one side to the other and reaps the benefits, at least temporarily. He may even find true love, albeit with a woman who is distinctly evil.

This is dark fantasy, not in the standard sense of a supernatural horror story but because of the pervasive grimness that seems to follow Apropos. He is unable to be happy; any sense of contentment is marred by his worries about the next bad thing. Do the gods truly conspire against him or are his problems caused by his own dark nature? There is no simple answer.

Mixed in with all this darkness is a lot of humor (especially in the first half of the book). Much of this relies on puns that range from the clever to the ridiculous, but there is also plenty of good pokes at the conventions of the fantasy genre. Sometimes, the sillier aspects are an inconvenient distraction. Overall, however, this is a good book - a high four stars - that should please most fantasy fans. It is the third book in a series, however, and is better read as part of the set than as a standalone book. As a whole, this is one of the better fantasy series in recent memory.
"Tong Lashing" is the third book to feature the anti-hero Apropos of Nothing, along with roughly 115% more puns than is really necessary for anyone's sanity. (David is well-known for deploying both off-the-cuff standard low-brow eye-rolling puns and much more elaborate ones that take half a book to set up.) This current volume takes place in a Davidian emulation of ancient China/Japan (aptly named Chinpan), and Apropos runs afoul of the Forked Tong, the Skang Kei crime family, and the dreaded Anais Ninja clan (headed by the inscrutable Veruh Wang Ho).

David can truly break your heart, though, when he feels like it, which is once per book. And which happens here. The writing is effective, but the books have become very formulaic pun, pun, snarky observations, Apropos runs away, everyone wants to kill Apropos, Apropos questions whether anti-heroism is an effective philosophy, he tries half-heartedly to do something good and is horrendously punished for it, a villain reveals an unexpected and poignant side, then the big heartbreak scene, and...END.

The page count could've been trimmed easily by dropping a good deal of the relentless internal monologuing over "Am I a good person or not, and is there such a thing as a good person, and why would anyone WANT to be a good person?" and so on.

The author definitely has skills and is not a little daring. I mean, in a single scene featuring three characters (immediately after a climax that some may find borders on troubling territory), he manages to allude to the Christian Holy Trinity, the atomic bombs Fat Man and Little Boy, AND the cult duo of Lone Wolf and Cub. But he needs to shake things up a bit. Every novel he writes, no matter the setting or cast, is largely the same novel. I want to see something different from him for once.

Future adventures of Apropos may not be forthcoming for awhile. David has noted that Pocket Books is not publishing new fantasy novels, but since they have the rights to the existing trilogy, he would have a hard time shopping a fourth book to another publisher. In the meantime, he intends to write some Apropos short stories, but whether those will ever see the light of day is unclear.