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BananaNutkins posted:Seconding all Thomas Covenant hate. I read a lot of fantasy and those books were so bad...But I do believe that the enjoyment of books is almost entirely subjective based on the quality of the books you've read before. If you loved Thomas Covenant or Malazan, odds are you just graduated from reading Starwars extended universe or Dragonlance or Drizzt crap.
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| # ? Apr 6, 2011 15:46 |
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| # ? May 22, 2013 21:30 |
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gvibes posted:I actually think Steven Erikson is fairly proficient writer, technically. He did graduate from the Iowa writer's workshop.
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| # ? Apr 6, 2011 15:53 |
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gvibes posted:I actually think Steven Erikson is fairly proficient writer, technically. He did graduate from the Iowa writer's workshop. I think he is a nice man, from his interviews, and that he is apparently proficient enough in his craft to make a lot of money. On the other hand, let me remind you that Natalie Portman graduated from Harvard and still proceeded to act in all the Star Wars prequels. Perhaps I would enjoy the books if I had ever played D&D considering they are based on Erikson's roleplaying campaigns, but I apparently fall into the wrong demographic. BananaNutkins fucked around with this message at Apr 6, 2011 around 15:58 |
| # ? Apr 6, 2011 15:53 |
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Corin Tucker's Stalker posted:I agree. The Malazan books are incredibly inventive, packed with subtext, and have some fantastic characters. It's also impressive to go back and find how many seemingly minor lines set the stage for very specific events that came along in later books. BananaNutkins posted:I think he is a nice man, from his interviews, and that he is apparently proficient enough in his craft to make a lot of money. On the other hand, let me remind you that Natalie Portman graduated from Harvard and still proceeded to act in all the Star Wars prequels. Perhaps I would enjoy the books if I had ever played D&D considering they are based on Erikson's roleplaying campaigns, but I apparently fall into the wrong demographic. gvibes fucked around with this message at Apr 6, 2011 around 16:13 |
| # ? Apr 6, 2011 16:07 |
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The ebook for Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks is on sale for 99 cents today. It's the first Culture novel, so if you ever considered getting into that series I would definitely pick it up. Banks is definitely one of the best scifi authors currently writing - I've never seen anyone write grand-scale scifi with such a clear focus on characters like he does.
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| # ? Apr 6, 2011 16:39 |
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dy. posted:The ebook for Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks is on sale for 99 cents today. It's the first Culture novel, so if you ever considered getting into that series I would definitely pick it up. Not available in Australia 
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| # ? Apr 6, 2011 21:40 |
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dy. posted:The ebook for Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks is on sale for 99 cents today. It's the first Culture novel, so if you ever considered getting into that series I would definitely pick it up. Damnit, I just bought it on Amazon last week.
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| # ? Apr 6, 2011 22:52 |
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nesbit37 posted:Damnit, I just bought it on Amazon last week. Email customer support. They will probably help you out. Amazon owns that way.
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| # ? Apr 6, 2011 23:11 |
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BananaNutkins posted:Seconding all Thomas Covenant hate. I read a lot of fantasy and those books were so bad...But I do believe that the enjoyment of books is almost entirely subjective based on the quality of the books you've read before. If you loved Thomas Covenant or Malazan, odds are you just graduated from reading Starwars extended universe or Dragonlance or Drizzt crap. That totally explains why so many Malazan readers are former GRRM followers. 
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| # ? Apr 7, 2011 00:04 |
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ConfusedUs posted:Email customer support. They will probably help you out. Amazon owns that way. Quoted for truth. I bought a Kindle 2 about a week before they dropped the price by like a hundred dollars or so. I emailed them, and they refunded the difference.
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| # ? Apr 7, 2011 03:19 |
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Habibi posted:That totally explains why so many Malazan readers are former GRRM followers. They've seen the light. And now I'm off to the bad thread.
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| # ? Apr 7, 2011 04:49 |
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Yo, as someone that does write from time to time, having taken a bunch of writing classes and studied some hacks like Soulcleaver has, I can say this: Erikson does some pretty neat worldbuilding, but his prose is loving garbage. Sorry if nerds get caught up in the campaign world-ness of it all, but he writes hundreds of unedited pages a year; that is a surefire way to make sure you never have anything polished or meaningful come out of your words. And to bring it on topic: I'm sure they're readily available, so how are the Revelation Space books? Are they pretty diverse in character and setting, or what?
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| # ? Apr 9, 2011 03:02 |
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dy. posted:The ebook for Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks is on sale for 99 cents today. It's the first Culture novel, so if you ever considered getting into that series I would definitely pick it up. Here's my review of that book: http://nulladiasanslinea.wordpress....n-m-banks-1987/
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| # ? Apr 9, 2011 12:54 |
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SaviourX posted:Erikson does some pretty neat worldbuilding, but his prose is loving garbage.
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| # ? Apr 9, 2011 13:09 |
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I'm almost done with M. John Harrison's Light. Very enjoyable book - I'll post a review once I'm finished.
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| # ? Apr 9, 2011 14:08 |
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Argali posted:Here's my review of that book: Oooooo, you almost had it. The appendices are crucial, the name is a misdirection, they continue the narrative rather than add disconnected marginalia. You were on the right track with the bit about scale, but then Banks goes really big. The appendices establish three things, First, that the events of the book had a profound effect on those involved, changing them in very deep ways. The Mind named itself after Horza for example. Secondly, the historical wrap up established that the events of the book had no significant effect whatsoever on the overall course of the war, brought the end no more than a second or two closer to its end, provided not one scintilla of strategic advantage, and made no real difference in any way to the grander scheme of a decades long war. Lastly, the whole conflict is established to be just a minor squabble between groups not terribly important on the galactic scale. First he hits you with that ending, bleak and powerful in an almost Homeric fashion. Then Banks zooms the scale out twice, each time rendering what went before small and insignificant. Then the dramatis personae code to remove any ambiguity at how much the protagonists were affected by their quest. Looking back at this remove we lose sight of the dangling threads you mentioned in your review because they aren't important anymore in the context of the narrative. It's quite a dramatic statement on our individual place in a very large world and how our actions, even if they amount to very little on the grander scale, still have deep meaning to ourselves and those we meet on the journey of life.
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| # ? Apr 9, 2011 17:48 |
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Velius posted:So I'm out of books to read again. I've burned through most of the 'new wave' sci-fi authors (Reynolds, Banks, Asher, Hamilton, Stross, Scalzi, Morgan and Vinge, although he's not new), and on the fantasy front most of the good authors I'm familiar with (most recently Sanderson, but I've read all of the Malazan series, the Wheel of Time, Ice and Fire, Lynch, Cook, Moon, Rothfuss's two books, Mieville, etc.) I'm burning through the Malazan books at the moment (finishing up book six) and, jesus, if stupid fantasy language bugs you, how can y'ou r'ead the'm ? I keep recommending Adrian Tchiakovsky's Shadows of the Apt series -- it's fun, original, and well-executed, especially after the first book, and nobody seems to've read it, perhaps because the premise sounds silly. Still, good series. Beyond that, my recommendations depend on how much niche fantasy you've read. Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart? A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny? If you don't mind going a bit retro, there are a lot of now-neglected authors from the 70's/80's that weren't half-bad considering. The Misenchanted Sword by Lawrence Watt-Evans is one of my all-time favorites, for example. Watt-Evans has written like 30 books, so he's worth exploring if you haven't -- he's a solid B-list fantasy author, and nothing he writes is *bad*. His best work is the Ethshar series, not so much a series as a collection of stories set in the same universe; his world's very very high-magic and most of his stories are about relatively ordinary people who get caught up in dramatic magical accidents. All his characters are likeable and intelligent and believable and he seldom has "villains" as such -- his stories are generally about relatively psychologically normal people in fantasy universes, not about Good Versus Evil. Similarly, the first three books of the Deryni series by Katherine Kurtz aren't half-bad if you're willing to hang your critical faculties at the door and roll with it -- sure, compared to something like Neil Gaiman they're dreck, but compared to David Weber's Mary Sue Fantasies they're solid goddam gold. She wrote a bunch more after that, I've never been able to get into them though. Dianna Wynne Jones also turned out a number of extremely clever books, and is a must-read if you haven't. Read her Tough Guide to Fantasyland for the best skewering of fantasy cliches ever, and then pick up Dark Lord of Derkholm to watch her turn all of that on its head into an excellent fantasy novel. If you want brainier recommendations, there's always Lord Dunsany's stuff -- he wrote a shitload of short stories, and he's still probably the best prose stylist to have written popular fantasy, to the point that he makes Gaiman and Tolkien look bad by comparison, but for some reason people today seem to not read him much. Best thing is most of his stuff is public domain now. Start with Idle Days on the Yann. If you've already read all that stuff then try out this site: http://greatsfandf.com/ the author's a bit pretentious (for example, he slams Katherine Kurts but good in like the second sentence on his site) but he has a TON of book recommendations, so I find something new to search out pretty much every time I look at his site. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at Apr 10, 2011 around 07:04 |
| # ? Apr 10, 2011 06:55 |
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I keep recommending Adrian Tchiakovsky's Shadows of the Apt series -- it's fun, original, and well-executed, especially after the first book, and nobody seems to've read it, perhaps because the premise sounds silly. Still, good series. Beyond that, my recommendations depend on how much niche fantasy you've read. Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart? A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny? I'll second this. The whole bug-people thing sounds silly, like something they'd make a saturday morning cartoon about, but the way the author does it, it's a lot more like having new and interesting fantasy races beyond the usual Elf/Dwarf/Troll tropes.
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| # ? Apr 10, 2011 07:07 |
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Can someone recommend some comedy style fantasy? I just finished reading Heroics for Beginners by John Moore, and really enjoyed it. It was a pretty good piss take on the generic fantasy books that abound in the wild. Just looking for something funny to read.
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| # ? Apr 10, 2011 08:44 |
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The textbook recommendation would be Terry Pratchett. He started out writing pretty explicit parodies of the kind of fantasy that was around in the 80s, but his books quickly evolved into something more worthwhile that retained the humour but actually stood apart as good stories too. He's written so many that it can be a bit daunting to know where to start - it all really depends on what kind of book you want. You could just start at the beginning, The Colour Of Magic, but I'd recommend starting with either Mort (which is about Death getting a new apprentice), Wyrd Sisters (witches in a very rural kingdom dealing with some Macbethian happenings) or Guards! Guards! (dragon invades city, the rump of the Watch has to deal with it).
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| # ? Apr 10, 2011 09:47 |
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Don't start with The Color of Magic. Read that (and The Light Fantastic) after you've become addicted to the series.
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| # ? Apr 10, 2011 09:54 |
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Can someone recommend some comedy style fantasy? Besides Pratchett, I'd suggest picking up Goblin Quest by Jim Hines. Its funny, well-written and if you've ever played D&D and forced an npc goblin to be your guide/tell you things, then you'll appreciate what it looks like from the goblins side of things. Tornhelm fucked around with this message at Apr 10, 2011 around 11:21 |
| # ? Apr 10, 2011 11:17 |
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Christopher Moore also writes really funny, sometimes excellent, modern fantasy. Technically it's fantasy in a city, but I hesitate to call it urban fantasy because it's really not of that genre. I'm really partial to Practical Demonkeeping (his first book,) The Island of the Sequinned Love Nun, Bloodsucking Fiends (the sequel not so much) and A Dirty Job. They're all laugh out loud in places, but Fiends and Job really had me laughing in public once or twice. He's a lot like an American Pratchett, but he doesn't seem to have a filter (or a stringent editor) in that some stuff gets into his books that makes you double take and think "who on earth thought putting that in was a good idea?". Still, he's much more Hit than Miss. Try John Dies At The End for comic horror/fantasy and Barry Hughart's Bridge of Birds is good for initially light-hearted ancient Chinese fantasy. And just an excellent book in general, really.
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| # ? Apr 10, 2011 11:31 |
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Can someone recommend some comedy style fantasy? A Lee Martinez is a pretty funny dude.
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| # ? Apr 10, 2011 12:34 |
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Evfedu posted:Christopher Moore also writes really funny, sometimes excellent, modern fantasy. Technically it's fantasy in a city, but I hesitate to call it urban fantasy because it's really not of that genre. I really enjoyed The Stupidest Angel had me laughing out loud more than once.
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| # ? Apr 10, 2011 14:24 |
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Good Omens is a joint Pratchett/Neil Gaiman romp that follows the advent of the Antichrist in modern London. It's hilarious. You've got Pratchett's humor combined with Gaiman's signature weirdness and it all combines into one of the best modern humorous fantasy novels out on shelves. Granted, the 'modern humorous fantasy' genre isn't all that large, but still.
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| # ? Apr 10, 2011 15:02 |
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Can someone recommend some comedy style fantasy? Robert Asprin wrote a series of fantasy book which are pretty funny, known as the Myth series. It's about an apprentice wizard who gets stuck with a summoned demon who is more sarcastic and judgmental than evil. The first book is Another Fine Myth, and I highly recommend it.
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| # ? Apr 10, 2011 16:43 |
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funkybottoms posted:A Lee Martinez is a pretty funny dude. 100% disagree. Aggressively unfunny. Hieronymous Alloy posted:If you don't mind going a bit retro, there are a lot of now-neglected authors from the 70's/80's that weren't half-bad considering. The Misenchanted Sword by Lawrence Watt-Evans is one of my all-time favorites, for example. Watt-Evans has written like 30 books, so he's worth exploring if you haven't -- he's a solid B-list fantasy author, and nothing he writes is *bad*. His best work is the Ethshar series, not so much a series as a collection of stories set in the same universe; his world's very very high-magic and most of his stories are about relatively ordinary people who get caught up in dramatic magical accidents. All his characters are likeable and intelligent and believable and he seldom has "villains" as such -- his stories are generally about relatively psychologically normal people in fantasy universes, not about Good Versus Evil. Early Ethshar books are great, the latter ones (after #6, when there was a publication delay) are iffy.
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| # ? Apr 10, 2011 17:16 |
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Theomanic posted:Robert Asprin I've seen a series of books that I think were by him, about a gambling dragon or something. Are they any good?
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| # ? Apr 10, 2011 17:28 |
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I haven't read much of Pratchett. I have read all of Moore's and Martinez's stuff though. Loved em. The zombie cows from Gil's All Fright Diner had me laughing pretty hard, and The Stupidest Angel was pretty awesome. I will give the recommendations a try  Thanks, the only other humorous fantasy I knew of was Tome of the Undergates, which is a pretty good book. It's not often that the "team" in a fantasy book actively hates each other, or someone gets drunk and rolls into the campfire at night 
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| # ? Apr 10, 2011 20:56 |
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I just finished The Lies of Locke Lamora and REALLY enjoyed it. Any books in that vein that you guys could recommend?
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| # ? Apr 10, 2011 23:40 |
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Captain Corduroy posted:I just finished The Lies of Locke Lamora and REALLY enjoyed it. Any books in that vein that you guys could recommend? The sequel--Red Seas Under Red Skies. Actually, I wouldn't recommend it, but here's hoping the third book out later this year is a return to form.
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| # ? Apr 10, 2011 23:53 |
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BananaNutkins posted:The sequel--Red Seas Under Red Skies. Actually, I wouldn't recommend it, but here's hoping the third book out later this year is a return to form.
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| # ? Apr 11, 2011 00:57 |
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Didn't we talk about "Locke Lamora" like two pages ago?
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| # ? Apr 11, 2011 01:55 |
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mllaneza posted:Oooooo, you almost had it. The appendices are crucial, the name is a misdirection, they continue the narrative rather than add disconnected marginalia. You were on the right track with the bit about scale, but then Banks goes really big. The appendices establish three things, First, that the events of the book had a profound effect on those involved, changing them in very deep ways. The Mind named itself after Horza for example. Secondly, the historical wrap up established that the events of the book had no significant effect whatsoever on the overall course of the war, brought the end no more than a second or two closer to its end, provided not one scintilla of strategic advantage, and made no real difference in any way to the grander scheme of a decades long war. Lastly, the whole conflict is established to be just a minor squabble between groups not terribly important on the galactic scale. I don't think the bolded portion is necessarily true. The Minds forecast claims that the recovery will bring the war to a conclusion a matter of months sooner. The length (decades) and scale (hundreds of billions dead) of the war doesn't necessarily make this false given the uncanny/inhuman nature of the Minds. It took the forecast as true and felt like it helped create the feel of a tiny human narrative lodged in a vast inhuman one. The Minds not only saw that far out, but their calculations led them to decide that waging a war that would kill countless (except to them) lives was the mathematically/morally correct choice. Kinda also makes the anti-culture criticisms in the novel seem quite a bit more pointed.
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| # ? Apr 11, 2011 06:53 |
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Ninja_Orca posted:I've seen a series of books that I think were by him, about a gambling dragon or something. Are they any good? A gambling dragon... I don't think I've read that. The only series I'm aware of him writing on his own are the Myth series and the Phule series (which is funny sci-fi). He also cowrote the Thieves World books, which I've not read, but I understand were pretty serious and probably not about gambling dragons. There IS a dragon in the Myth books eventually, and I seem to recall there is a book cover with him and a couple toughs sitting around a table or something. So maybe that cover is what you are thinking of? Also, I haven't read the last couple Myth books, so maybe... the dragon started gambling. I mean, stranger things have happened in those books.
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| # ? Apr 11, 2011 17:32 |
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I just started on Reynolds' Revelation Space and I'm wondering, does the pace start to kick up a notch at all? I'm like 75 pages in and starting to get bored.
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| # ? Apr 11, 2011 18:22 |
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Argali posted:I just started on Reynolds' Revelation Space and I'm wondering, does the pace start to kick up a notch at all? I'm like 75 pages in and starting to get bored. From what I remember, the pace really starts to kick in at the 2nd book, maybe by the end of the 1st.
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| # ? Apr 11, 2011 19:07 |
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John Charity Spring posted:This was pretty much how I felt when I read Gardens of the Moon. It didn't help that I loving hated most of the characters, particularly Kruppe who turned out to be some kind of fan favourite. GotM is by far the weakest book of the series, and was not only originally written as a movie script, but also written about a decade before the next book in the series. Needless to say, while the prose in GotM is *OK*, it improves significantly in the next book and only gets better. He's no Martin, but post-Gardens his prose is better than most fantasy writers', and combined with his world-building and characters makes for some amazing stuff. If I were to seek a comparison...his prose is certainly no worse than, say, Abercrombie's or Lynch's, but his latter books do suffer from some philosophic bloat. SaviourX...well, haters gonna hate.
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| # ? Apr 11, 2011 20:01 |
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| # ? May 22, 2013 21:30 |
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Read enough Malazan and you realize that ever single internal monologue is a paragraph or two, followed by a sentence, followed by a sentence fragment expressing how terrible/awesome something/someone is.
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| # ? Apr 11, 2011 20:13 |
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