oh Tamora Pierce no...

[ricardienne]

"Ozorne's uncle now has a name, and I can get on with the arena games. (The last time Arram went, he threw up.)" (of course he did.)

HAHAHAHAHAHA yesssssssssss, TP does evil fake!Romans! You guys, I cannot wait for this. It is going to be epically bad and I will laugh so hard (and also get a little angry, because her stupid 'my fantasy novels are so historically accurate' pose means that she will be indoctrinating young people with the stupid under the guise of the realistic.)

Comments

[awomanthatsblue.livejournal.com]

I'm torn between GOD NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

And "This is going to be hilarious, I can't wait."

Maybe I'll just read Emperor Mage every time she publishes a new book, and pretend it's current.

[camlina.livejournal.com]

Wait but, Carthak in the previous incarnation really did not resemble the Romans at all!?

[ricardienne.livejournal.com]

Well...*puts on pedantic seeing-Romans-everywhere glasses* they were more Byzantine/Alexandria/vaguely Carthaginian, I guess, but iirc the description of the army was pretty Roman, and, also, I feel like decadent and vaguely-mediterranean evil empires are sort of always looking back to Rome...

...so maybe it will be just a few more Roman elements, like gladiators/throwing people to the lions (and obviously we will feel sorry for the lions, because that's just cruelty to animals, you guys!).

[awomanthatsblue.livejournal.com]

All I know is that no Roman wore fantastic makeup in any Biblical epic I've ever seen. :)

I love Ozorne's makeup SO MUCH. She'd better not try to take it away from me.

[ricardienne.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but just add some fantastic makeup, and change the togas to something brighter in this kind of thing (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Siemiradski_Fackeln.jpg) and it would more or less work.

[zoethor.livejournal.com]

I had Carthak in my head as Egyptian/northern African - definitely not Roman!

[camlina.livejournal.com]

Me too. Partly because of the name I always assumed Carthak was based on Carthage - in the earlier Tortall books, especially, Tamora Pierce's re-naming wasn't very creative (e.g. the K'mir for the Khmer, Scanra for Scandinavia). And Carthak has a hot, dry climate IIRC, and hot-weather animals (though many I think are analogous to real-world South America and Australia, e.g. crocodiles, but it's clearly not based on either of those places). And I think in one of the out-take scenes I've read, there were camels.

Didn't the Romans eventually conquer Carthage though? So maybe Pierce's 'Carthak' is based on a fantastical hybridization of the two.

[ricardienne.livejournal.com]

Yeah -- I mean, Egypt and North Africa are both part of the bigger "Roman world" in the imperial period, (most of our evidence for on the ground Roman bureaucracy/tax collecting/economy comes from Egypt, because that's where the papyri comes up, for ex.); and in principle, I would be 100% on board with a cool fantasy version of the hybridized Roman mediterranean (or non-fantasy versions!)

[silverfyshxin.livejournal.com]

Haaaaaaaa, I'll look forward to that.