22 Eargesplitten posted:

I haven't read any Eddings in a while, and his last series was pretty bad even for teenage me, but those books will always have a special place in my heart. It's not good, but at least it's charming.

I absolutely agree the Elenium is better, though.

Speaking of David Eddings,


Eragon straight up plagiarized the Belgariad. The scene where Eragon's mentor teaches him magic uses the same set-up and the same joke as when Belgarath is teaching Garion magic. Mentor guy even reacts with the same line, word for word.

I like how with all of the Star Wars talk, nobody has brought up the X-Wing series. They were my first Star Wars books, and the best ones I read. I never read the Thrawn ones. It's funny, they are both Star Wars and 100% military fiction, but are better than 98% of either.

InediblePenguin posted:

World War Z was utter loving poo poo. The Survival Guide was stupid and poorly researched to start with, and don't loving try to write in a format where "multiple people are narrating" if you're loving poo poo and can't write in a different voice. Like a bad impressionist who can't change his voice and is like "now I'll be Batman: I am the night! now I'll be a soldier: semper fi herobravery!" in his normal voice but because his dad is a famous comedian everybody keeps going drat HAVE YOU HEARD HIS IMPRESSIONS

Nutsngum posted:

Oh believe me I agree with you, it still holds a place in my heart as the first fantasy series I really read through properly and enjoyed. Just that whole "adult perspective" brings out some of its less well written and/or intended themes.

The Elenium largely corrected the basic issues that the Belgariad had in having a competent and not boring main character and more realistic side characters. Less awful female characters (by just not having any but one female character who fortunatley wasnt an awful monster like Polgara) and having a more fun and concise goal based adventure.

The Saddest Rhino posted:

22 Eargesplitten posted:

I don't know, I thought the main woman witch in both series were similar. Apparently Eddings' wife co-wrote most of his books, and they were semi-self-inserts. It's been most of a decade since I read any of them, though. And that makes me feel old.

But I agree that the characters in the Elenium were basically like if the side characters in the Belgariad weren't saddled with a couple of coming of age stories.

CommissarMega posted:

I know you're trying to unsell the books here, but as a lover of lovely puns, I think I need these books now.

The Saddest Rhino posted:

Nanomashoes posted:

The Warlock posted:

When a voodoo priest bewitches Sand’s beloved, the samurai goes on the warpath

Black magic orgies. Human sacrifices. Necrophilia. These are just a few of Augustus Janicot’s special skills. This charismatic sadist has built a formidable following, convincing politicians across Europe that his voodoo ritual can win them office. When they consent to his bloody rites, he films them, and uses the footage for blackmail. On the verge of obtaining unlimited power, the Warlock is about to make a fatal mistake.

Janicot’s next target is in Vietnam, and for Robert Sand, this is too close to home. An American trained in the ways of the samurai, Sand fears for the safety of Toki Jakata, the granddaughter of his late samurai master and the only woman he has ever loved. Sand has never been able to win Toki’s heart, but he will do anything to keep Janicot from pulling it out of her chest.

Glaucus atlanticus posted:

I bought this for my husband for Christmas one year. He read the whole thing and likely hates me now.

divabot posted:

I'm not sure things like rear end Goblins of Auschwitz count - when someone's trying to make something that's clearly marketing itself as "BUY ME SO YOU CAN LAUGH AT HOW TERRIBLE I AM ON YOUR MESSAGE BOARDS", it's not on the same level of artistic achievement as someone who really thinks they're making a real book. Modelland, as someone noted, is basically outsider art by a millionaire whose handlers couldn't hold back her determination to poo poo the floor in public. That is a noteworthy thing.

22 Eargesplitten posted:

These threads always make me want to start writing again, because even though I have maybe a thousand hours of writing to go before I would even submit something to CC for critique, I know I will never be as bad as some of these authors.

22 Eargesplitten posted:

These threads always make me want to start writing again, because even though I have maybe a thousand hours of writing to go before I would even submit something to CC for critique, I know I will never be as bad as some of these authors.

ToxicSlurpee posted:

To be honest I'm almost tempted to start writing again just to see if I can somehow do even worse than these authors. Forget striving to be the best I want to write the worst book ever written.

22 Eargesplitten posted:

These threads always make me want to start writing again, because even though I have maybe a thousand hours of writing to go before I would even submit something to CC for critique, I know I will never be as bad as some of these authors.

A benign lunatic dictating from under his bedcovers posted:

She screwed up the securing diagram and was overwhelmed by a sudden desire to clean her teeth. It became the be all and end all of existence for a few seconds. The desire to clean her teeth grew absolutely compulsive, she could have no more resisted it than she could have flown unaided between two planets.

Moving quickly from the radio to her living quarters, she squeezed a little water into a plastic container and put a few dabs of toothpaste on her brush. She slipped the brush into her mouth and pressed the small button in the end which activated its electric motor. The bristles-soft, gentle bristles, guaranteed not to damage the enamel or the gum-moved swiftly against the teeth. She began with the top left molars, worked round to the bicuspids, and came round again from them to the incisors, the canines, the laterals and the centrals. Once she had reached the front of her mouth, she-changed her grip on the brush so that it moved round to the top right, travelling over the bicuspids and molars as it moved. Coming down the sides of her teeth, she paused and took a deep breath, placed a little more paste upon the brush and moved it round again this time beginning with the actual chewing surface of the upper right molars, coming round and cleaning again between the crevices until she had worked round to the left-hand molars.

Once more she put paste on the brush in this same elaborate ritual and concentrated her attention now upon the inside of the upper left molars, the inside of the upper left bicuspids, round across the incisors and so back to the right-hand masticators. She rinsed the brush, reapplied the paste and repeated the whole ritualistic process with the lower teeth. She cleaned the brush very carefully and then, in a set way, put it back and moved back towards the radio set.

She had taken barely a dozen paces when she was assailed by a horrible thought that she had not cleaned the top left inside molars. She stood in an agony of uncertainty for five minutes, then went back to the bathroom area of her living quarters, recharged the brush and carefully cleaned again the top left molars on their inside surfaces. She looked at her reflection in the mirror; it foamed back at her like a rabid dog.
"This time I have done them all," she said. "What about the bottom inside molars?" asked her reflection. "I have done them all," said Marian firmly. "If you have forgotten them the bacteria responsible for dental caries will get in," said the voice in her mind. "It is no good being clean on the outside if you have forgotten the inside. Are you sure you have done the left inside?" "Yes, I have, I have." Marian picked up her toothbrush and flung it savagely across the dome; it bounced from the thick plastic glass and broke on the floor.

22 Eargesplitten posted:

These threads always make me want to start writing again, because even though I have maybe a thousand hours of writing to go before I would even submit something to CC for critique, I know I will never be as bad as some of these authors.

InediblePenguin posted:

World War Z was utter loving poo poo. The Survival Guide was stupid and poorly researched to start with, and don't loving try to write in a format where "multiple people are narrating" if you're loving poo poo and can't write in a different voice. Like a bad impressionist who can't change his voice and is like "now I'll be Batman: I am the night! now I'll be a soldier: semper fi herobravery!" in his normal voice but because his dad is a famous comedian everybody keeps going drat HAVE YOU HEARD HIS IMPRESSIONS

The Vosgian Beast posted:

Thank you for writing a criticism of World War Z that wasn't AMERICA'S BEST AND BRAVEST WOULDN'T GO DOWN LIKE THAT!!!! OOORAHOOORAHOORAH

Sleeveless posted:

I'm pretty sre that most of the "fans" of WWZ have never actually read the book and are just going off of the title and general "woo zombies " sentiment before it got run into the loving ground.

I am basing this assumption entirely on fans criticizing the movie version for being "unrealistic" unlike the book. Said book which never really explains the origin or spread of the zombie plague aside from a vague reference to organ black markets and illegal immigrants, skips over the part where zombies go from a thing that exists to a global pandemic because the author admitted he couldn't think of a way to do it with slow zombies, and has zombies that are effectively magic since they can be frozen solid in winter and them thaw in spring no worse for wear, walk across the bottom of the ocean in defiance of pressure that would destroy a human body, and have limbs that remain animated after being cut off as of they have minds of their own.

Also all the goofy comic-book poo poo like Japan being kept safe by blind samurai and their otaku protégé. But it's presented as an oral history so it's totally grounded!


Him making the soldiers be so comically ineffective at Yonkers was just as masturbatory as any right-wing military fiction since it was only there to continue his faux-populist narrative with the nerdy armchair generals know more than the real thing and are stuck shaking their heads and clicking their tongues when they're proven right.

The whole book has this whole juvenile "NO YOU SHUT THE gently caress UP DAD" attitude where everybody in power is incompetent and stupid and nerds are all rad under-appreciated geniuses and since the zombie wasteland is a perfect meritocracy the cool nerds get to run things while the old guard ia relegated to (literal) poo poo-shovelers and the suburban dads die in the woods because they don't even know what kind of sleeping bag is the right one.

The Vosgian Beast posted:

I hate having to break this to you, but books and movies aren't real life.

Sleeveless posted:

I'm pretty sre that most of the "fans" of WWZ have never actually read the book and are just going off of the title and general "woo zombies " sentiment before it got run into the loving ground.

22 Eargesplitten posted:

These threads always make me want to start writing again, because even though I have maybe a thousand hours of writing to go before I would even submit something to CC for critique, I know I will never be as bad as some of these authors.

22 Eargesplitten posted:

Oh, I know. It's just too low on my priority list to do tight now. Once I finish school in 5 months, probably.

King Doom posted:

This post made me angry, because yeah, it's all true. The first book in the series, River God, is loving amazing. Read it when I was a kid, it's one of my favourite books of all time. Set in Ancient Egypt it is from the viewpoint of the Eunuch Taita, that Ancient Egyptian Wizard mentioned (he's more of a wise man than a wizard at this point) and the book is really entertaining and at the same time feels like it could all have happened and that Wilbur Smith did a metric ton of research. Everything that happens (barring possible the main character using something called Red Sheppen to go on a vision quest type thing) could realistically have happened. There's action, adventure, a tragic romance (Taita the eunuch is in love with his owner, Queen Lostris) and she dies in the end of the book, lamenting they could never be together. It's all very sad.

Years later he decides to write a sequel. I'm overjoyed.

I read the Sequel, called Warlock.

This is the point where Taita, who has up to now just been a very intelligent man, is suddenly a wizard. Personally, I suspect the author became some sort of mentally ill, because if I remember correctly, it takes less than fifty pages before people are shooting magical penis orgasm beams at each other, because that's how wizards work. Gone is any attention to detail or historical accuracy, now it's psychic sexual warfare and pages long descriptions of big throbbing cocks. Towards the end of the book, in the last few pages, that fairly important female character Her Dryer mentions? the one who gets spearfucked? her own sister does that.

The next book in the series is I think called 'the quest' and that I never read. I have heard that Taita magically grows his cock and balls back in this one. Remember a paragraph or so ago when I mentioned the tragic love between Taita and his owner, Queen Lostris? they end River God saying one day in another life they can be together. That time is now, in book three. Taita is around 120 right now, and Lostris has been reincarnated and is now I wanna say sixteen or so. The sex witch parts are new to me, but now I've heard about them and having Warlock, anyone who said they were made up and not in the book I'd call a liar.

Sleeveless posted:

Tell that to all the people who hold WWZ up as some paragon of tactical realism.

Nanomashoes posted:

Isn't this the climax of a novel about a painting fucker that also fucks like van goghs and matisses?

A Classy Ghost posted:

Participate in Thunderdome! http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3691539

The Saddest Rhino posted:

lol @ this failson for thinking there's time to write when u start work. chortling at my desk kneedeep in wet spreadsheets and contracts to vet through. they are wet from my tears

The Saddest Rhino posted:

you are a terrible poster with a strange aggressive attitude that sparks of anger problems, and projections of your own life failings onto other people by virtue of their subjective taste in media items which are of little interest to you. perhaps, consider therapy.

InediblePenguin posted:

You're really defensive, is it your favorite book or do you just have a beef with that poster?

InediblePenguin posted:

You're really defensive, is it your favorite book or do you just have a beef with that poster?

Sleeveless posted:

The Saddest Rhino sighed as he drew his blind Japanese master's anti-zombie katana...

Sleeveless posted:

The Saddest Rhino sighed as he drew his blind Japanese master's anti-zombie katana...

mycot posted:

Well you could just look at Sleeveless's post history and decide for yourself.

Sleeveless posted:

Tell that to all the people who hold WWZ up as some paragon of tactical realism.

Carnival of Shrews posted:

http://www.peltorro.com/intro.htm

Robert Lionel Fanthorp posted:

The darkness all around him was thick, black, stygian. It was a stifling, overwhelming, suffocating darkness. A horrifying terrifying darkness. A darkness of the nethermost pit of hell. Indescribable. It seemed an oppressive darkness, like the darkness of some foul underground dungeon, to which the blessed light of the sun never gained access. It was velvety, almost tactile. He was inhaling it; it was penetrating the pores of his skin; it seemed that the world had always been darkness, that the world alway would be darkness. It was a timeless darkness, a weird, horrifying, overwhelming eternal blackness. He felt as though this was the darkness of a tomb, and that he had been buried alive. . .

Robert Lionel Fanthorp posted:

The co-pilot was right. Even with the eyes shut a blueness was still everywhere. The world had suddenly turned into a vast blue phantasmagoria, a panoply of blue that was everywhere. A vista of blue desert, of blue twilight. A blue glitter, a blue sparkle, a coralescing, scintillating blue that seemed to have no end and no beginning. There was no escape from it. It was an inevitable blue, an unescapable blue. They could smell it now, it seemed to be penetrating their nostrils, their lungs, the pores of their skin. It was seeping into their bodies as thought they were immersed in a bath of it. They felt that it was invading them, that somehow it was penetrating to the innermost depths of their souls, their minds and their bodies. There was no stopping that blueness.