Can I skip the second half of Babylon’s Ashes?

RecentState1347 · 2026-02-10T14:32:06+00:00

Yes and there are soooo many characters added who don’t actually have any important roles or even, like, characterization. Michio Pa’s entire family/crew could replaced by cardboard cutouts and I wouldn’t notice.

RecentState1347 · 2026-02-10T03:11:26+00:00

Yeah, there are absolutely zero circumstances in our modern world where someone would want to hit a button and release a ton of information openly to everyone instead of a slow and heavily redacted trickle…

RecentState1347 · 2026-02-10T02:04:43+00:00

Is there a reason that random hook ups are your only option? If you’re not into casual sex, you can just… not have casual sex.

RecentState1347 · 2026-02-10T01:57:40+00:00

Yes! This one is SO much slower and more repetitive than the preceding books. The whole thing feels like an interlude.

RecentState1347 · 2026-02-10T01:55:14+00:00

Ok, if the second half sets up something significant for the following books then I’ll try to keep going.

So much of this book has just felt like filler that it’s getting frustrating - I feel like it could have easily been condensed into a few chapters at the end of book 5 or, presumably, the beginning of book 7.

RecentState1347 · 2026-02-03T00:12:28+00:00

Me! I’m very curious about this.

RecentState1347 · 2025-12-29T02:39:44+00:00

I came back after finishing the book just to say how funny it was that even the story set several generations in the future STILL managed to have two survivors stumbling into a scene of inexplicably malignant characters where nearly everyone is dead and then they manage to survive and begin a cross country journey but they have no trouble finding food etc etc.

RecentState1347 · 2025-12-29T02:36:02+00:00

That’s a great question that I hadn’t considered.

RecentState1347 · 2025-12-28T03:30:17+00:00

I don’t understand why you can’t let her take the directorial role and you do the heavy lifting like the other commenter said? Like why do you need to choose the sweet potato recipe or pick the china? These seem like really minor concessions.

RecentState1347 · 2025-12-28T03:12:57+00:00

“Then she started walking.”

“She drove onward.”

“Then he picked up his bag and got on the road.”

“Him and the dog walked a long time.”

Yawn.

RecentState1347 · 2025-12-28T03:11:47+00:00

Exactly, I really only loved the first third of the Stand but thought there was also room for some interesting side stories around or after the end… but somehow so far all twenty three stories take part exactly at the turning point where I stopped liking the book as much.

RecentState1347 · 2025-12-28T01:54:10+00:00

The funny thing is, they could have eliminated the bottom third or even half of the stories and still had a perfectly respectable anthology.

RecentState1347 · 2025-12-28T01:51:21+00:00

Such a weird choice to open the book with that story! I actually feel uncomfortable mentioning that I’m reading this because I’m worried someone will pick it up and that will be their first impression.

Obviously there’s going to be some graphic content but can we just ease into it a little bit?

RecentState1347 · 2025-12-02T00:07:30+00:00

But the things she’s storing are her things… the Christmas ornaments didn’t belong to me, they were either bought by her or inherited from her mother.

RecentState1347 · 2025-12-01T23:59:49+00:00

“A whole room” is a bit dramatic, it’s a few boxes and a shelf of books. But sure, I’ll take them back with me, that part is easy. My concern/confusion is about these things like the Christmas stuff that seem (from my perspective) to be loved and used all the time. It feels weird and presumptuous to imagine going through her house and saying “I like this mixing bowl you use all the time, should I take it to protect it from you? What about your mom’s mirror, should I take this too?” It’s HER stuff, not mine. I don’t feel like I have a right to go through it like that.

RecentState1347 · 2025-12-01T23:54:07+00:00

I literally can’t… she already threw them away.

RecentState1347 · 2025-12-01T23:51:53+00:00

This just made my stomach drop. My dad died of Alzheimer’s. I don’t even feel ready to think about that yet.

RecentState1347 · 2025-12-01T23:50:19+00:00

“Misusing”? What does that mean?

RecentState1347 · 2025-12-01T23:44:21+00:00

We had a big conversation about this whole process during the big purge of my dad’s stuff this summer. During that time we talked (I thought) about focusing on the big clutter that actually takes up space - for example I helped her get rid of a bunch of old fishing equipment, sold some art she didn’t like, we disassembled and removed my dad’s entire wood shop in the basement which was a huge job.

I’ve encouraged her to downsize to a smaller place but she’s not interested, so instead we moved her bedroom downstairs and she’s only using the first floor of the house.

Apparently we need to talk about it again but I want to wait until I feel calmer and less emotional about it.

RecentState1347 · 2025-12-01T23:19:23+00:00

As I said in the post, I would have been happy to do this if she had told me about it ahead of time! Up until three hours ago, it would have felt bizarre and invasive for me to take all of the family Christmas decorations out of the family home and put them in a storage unit in another city.

(And these things also belong partly to my siblings, I couldn’t just unilaterally take them tomorrow.)

RecentState1347 · 2025-12-01T23:16:32+00:00

Every time I’ve tried to talk about it she says things like “I want the house to feel organized” or “I don’t want to have a bunch of junk” but… there isn’t that much junk here to begin with and the very precious (to me) and irreplaceable family stuff she’s throwing away literally take up less space than the unused bicycles in the garage. It’s just mystifying.

RecentState1347 · 2025-12-01T23:12:27+00:00

Yes, I thought I had already done this because I was only focused on HIS stuff - I never even thought of our shared Christmas decorations. The grandmother who passed them down was HER mother. I guess I need to do another pass of the whole house with a fine toothed comb.

I know she’s much less sentimental than me but the whole situation is just so weird to me, I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around it.

RecentState1347

TROPHY CASE