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Chernabog posted:Which fantasy series/books would you guys recommend I move on to next? If you're doing audiobooks the First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie has a fantastic narrator. Start with The Blade Itself.
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May 23, 2018 15:51
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The last new fantasy series I read and enjoyed was Wall of Night by Helen Lowe. It's a little GRRM in the worldbuilding with older style prose. The first one (Heir of Night) has noticeably cringeworthy things (e.g. infodump with the subtlety of brick in face, literally one character says to another "I don't understand this thing you're all talking about please tell me the story" and then follows said infodump in italics), the second one (Gathering of the Lost) is significantly better and the third one (Daughter of Blood) I really, really loved. She's apparently working on Book 4 at the moment, no publication date yet.
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May 23, 2018 15:53
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The Ninth Layer posted:If you're doing audiobooks the First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie has a fantastic narrator. Start with The Blade Itself. I also recommend this if you're NOT doing audiobooks. Abercombie is great. It's more on the brutal GRRM side of the genre than the anime side like Sanderson.
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May 23, 2018 16:05
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I do pretty much all of my "reading" through audio books. Thanks, I'll check it out.
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May 23, 2018 16:26
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The Ninth Layer posted:If you're doing audiobooks the First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie has a fantastic narrator. Start with The Blade Itself. Yes, this trilogy loving owns. The 3 books after are good too.
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May 23, 2018 17:05
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Henrik Zetterberg posted:Yes, this trilogy loving owns. The 3 books after are good too. Yes. Best Served Cold has the best representation of that old adage about how 'the best laid plans never survive contact with the enemy' that I've ever seen. That set piece in the brothel is hilarious, brutal, and just keeps building on itself until it's almost farcical.
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May 23, 2018 18:04
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I finished Oathbringer! So...yeah. So there. Edited for content. Stormlight books are amazing but so draining to finish. I always take a bit to come back to fantasy. There's just so much there! Feels like the start of book 3 was an age ago. shirts and skins fucked around with this message at 02:24 on May 26, 2018 |
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May 26, 2018 02:14
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Folks, I've got a theory about Dalinar's memories and my husband is a whole book behind so here we go: Dalinar asked the Nightwatcher to erase his memories of his wife, but my thought is that he didn't specify by name. So now that he's married Navani, the memories of his dead wife are coming back. (Timeline not confirmed, can anyone remember when he first started remembering?) My theory is that he will start forgetting Navani. Thoughts? PS: This Wheel of Time talk is making me want to reread
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May 29, 2018 03:15
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Tinydryad posted:Folks, I've got a theory about Dalinar's memories and my husband is a whole book behind so here we go: No, because the Nightwatcher did not erase his memories, Cultivation did. Cultivation specifically said that the boon is to help him become a better person, but will return his memories later to make sure Odium could not return his memories at the worst time.
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May 29, 2018 03:28
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L-O-N posted:No, because the Nightwatcher did not erase his memories, Cultivation did. Cultivation specifically said that the boon is to help him become a better person, but will return his memories later to make sure Odium could not return his memories at the worst time. Yeah I remembered a lot of plot justification for why his memories were coming back and it wasn't because he married someone else
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May 29, 2018 03:29
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Oh yeah... I figured someone would have a good reason that didn't work. Oh well, fun while it lasted.
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May 29, 2018 03:38
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The other fakeout explanation people were thinking was He's wearing a painrial and since it's taking away his pain, the bargain is wearing off and his memories are coming back
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May 29, 2018 03:57
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Dalinar originally asked the nightwatcher for “forgiveness” and when cultivation showed up she offered to “prune him” so that he may grow into the man he would need to be. And when she asked if Dalinar was willing to bear the cost of losing memories he accepted
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May 29, 2018 04:24
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Cultivation gambled that she could "cultivate" him into a better man and out of Odium's grasp. The plan was for him to grow without his memories pulling him down so that he could face them after he had gained strength.
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May 29, 2018 05:04
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Just two random thoughts I had recently: (Oathbringer) Now that Szeth is in Urithiru, it's only a matter of time until Nightblood and Vasher meet again, right? I don't know if I can wait 3 years to find out! (Secret History) The ability to use allomancy is stored in your spiritualDNA. So putting ghost Kelsier into a spiked body should still make him a mistborn, right? Or would he need his new body to have been a mistborn for that to work?
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May 30, 2018 14:34
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Tinydryad posted:Folks, I've got a theory about Dalinar's memories and my husband is a whole book behind so here we go: During the chapter release previews that was my favorite pet theory too. Sanderson didn't go that grimdark/Faustian with Dalinar, though things did get pretty bleak. It's more-or-less explicitly laid out in the book why the memories returned; the memory loss was never intended to be permanent. Cultivation has a decent ability to see the future (this isn't an ability shared by all Shards; though Odium has it to a lesser extent) so she could have them start returning slowly as the confrontation with Odium neared. This enabled him to process and grow past his history, and not be consumed by it like Odium had planned--if he was lost to his pain/passion he would become just another pawn of Odium like the ancestor Singer souls. It was a gamble since if he couldn't grow strong enough he'd just be more capable a pawn for Odium to coopt.
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May 30, 2018 19:36
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Tinydryad posted:PS: This Wheel of Time talk is making me want to reread I rage quit the series after the 4th book. For some reason I just picked up book 5 and after lowering my expectations I find I'm really enjoying it.
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May 30, 2018 21:22
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First half of book 5 was boring as hell, but the second half pretty much owned. Book 7 is..... ok, halfway through.
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May 30, 2018 23:54
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Sab669 posted:I rage quit the series after the 4th book. For some reason I just picked up book 5 and after lowering my expectations I find I'm really enjoying it. I'm slightly surprised that you would rage quit after book 4. Why? I don't want to put you on the defensive or anything like that, I'm genuinely curious. Even though I'm a huge WoT fan, I can see several points later in the series where people might rage quit. But I'm not seeing this in The Shadow Rising. Again, it's totally fine not to like WoT, I just would like to know what you found so offensive. And in what ways did you lower your expectations?
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May 31, 2018 06:59
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Wondering about that too. For most people it's book 7 where it starts to go bad.
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May 31, 2018 10:26
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Spoilers for the 4 books I guess: 1) I started with Sanderson, and knowing Sanderson finished the series (and also always just hearing how good it is) I was really let down with the magic. It's not very well explained. A mile wide and a foot deep. Again, coming from a Sanderson book I was expecting it to be much more concrete. 2) I really don't like any of the characters. Nynaeve is a stubborn jerk, Perrin doesn't want to be able to talk to wolves, Matt doesn't want to be a lucky son of a bitch, and Rand doesn't want to kill all his friends. I get Rand and Matt's perspectives but the other two I don't. Egwene isn't bad and I really liked Loial. I don't much care for Elayne or Min though, they both met Rand like once and can't stop thinking about banging him. Or now in book 5, Aviendha is like "I hate you I hate you I hate you.. Oh I just woke up with hypothermia after teleporting to the arctic waste and falling into a river. Let's bang". And every male being like, "Ugh women are so confusing" and every female being like, "Ugh men are as dumb as oxen" is really not interesting. 3) I find the Aiel wholly uninteresting, and The Faith Militant is a tired trope by now. Maybe it was more interesting back when this was written, but... And also gently caress that one Whitecloak who is so insistent Perrin is a Darkfriend but then he himself doesn't do anything about the Trollocs in Emon's Field. 4) Every single encounter with the Forsaken was very unrewarding. Rand just effortlessly kills 4 of them in the first 4 books, culminating with Asmodean just running away while Rand chases him down. Every other character makes them out to be these big terrifying badasses and he just squashes them like bugs. Also Moghedien showing up in whatever town Nynaeve was in at the end of #4 and it's like, oh hey by the way mind control powers that make it so you can't lie or really remember any of this is a thing. So ultimately it just boils down to I went in expecting something very similar to Sanderson and instead I just got a really slow series full of miserable characters in a world that happens to have magic. I do really like the general notion of wheel of time and the cyclical nature of everything, I like all the ouroboros imagery, but I everything I do really like just isn't fleshed out. So really it's just lowering my expectations of how anything works and instead just trying to focus on Rand turning into a badass. Also I think it was because I read 4 books straight expecting to learn more about the magic and it just doesn't happen. So now I'm probably just going to rotate 1 WoT book then something else. I do actually really like Siuan's arc and look forward to how it works out. Sab669 fucked around with this message at 12:57 on May 31, 2018 |
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May 31, 2018 12:41
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Sab669 posted:Spoilers for the 4 books I guess: Something that's worth considering is the age of these books. They were published in the 90s (for the most part) and reflect the state of the genre at the time. It's just like a lot of GRRM's stuff is considered cliched and trite now ("Oh, you killed someone you were setting up to be a major character, :eyeroll:"), but his books were absolutely groundbreaking and took the genre in new directions. Sanderson finished the WoT series, but it doesn't mean it's the same style of fantasy that he writes. If I recall (I'm currently re-reading the WoT series, coincidentally, and I'm up to book 5 now!), the magic does get a bit better explained as it's used more and more to push the plot along. That doesn't mean it's ever as concrete as the way Sanderson does it. You'll get more descriptions of doing things with magic and how it's accomplished, but you'll never get anything near as thorough as what you'd get with a Sanderson system. Your criticisms of the characters are valid. Jordan was not great at writing women. Some get better. Others get much, much worse.
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May 31, 2018 14:38
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New Yorp New Yorp posted:Your criticisms of the characters are valid. Jordan was not great at writing women. Some get better. Others get much, much worse. Ya, Jordan was not great at writing women (I would say he was pretty bad at it...). It was, however, a step in the right direction by actually having their be women main characters that were very important for a variety of reasons. I think the only female character I genuinely liked without reservation in the series was Verin.
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May 31, 2018 14:57
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New Yorp New Yorp posted:Something that's worth considering is the age of these books. They were published in the 90s (for the most part) and reflect the state of the genre at the time. It's just like a lot of GRRM's stuff is considered cliched and trite now ("Oh, you killed someone you were setting up to be a major character, :eyeroll:"), but his books were absolutely groundbreaking and took the genre in new directions. Yea as I said in #3 about the Whitecloaks -- I think it just doesn't hold up as well for me looking through the lens of the late 2010's. 20+ years later the novel concepts don't seem so novel to me so it's tough to appreciate it fully. I only just got into reading the past few years, ASOIAF and Sanderson primarily, along with a few other shorter fictional series. So going into it, I really had no idea to expect and a lot of it just wasn't what I wanted, and there wasn't enough of what I did want.
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May 31, 2018 15:29
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Sab669 posted:Yea as I said in #3 about the Whitecloaks -- I think it just doesn't hold up as well for me looking through the lens of the late 2010's. 20+ years later the novel concepts don't seem so novel to me so it's tough to appreciate it fully. I was always annoyed by the Aiel. The only way he could have been more blatant about ripping off the Fremen from Dune would have been if they had ridden giant worms. And there were giant worm monsters mentioned that lived in the Blight.
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May 31, 2018 17:26
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Sab669 posted:Spoilers for the 4 books I guess: This is a brutally good post. I started writing more content in this post, but you've got it covered so far as I'm concerned. Potato Salad fucked around with this message at 18:45 on May 31, 2018 |
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May 31, 2018 18:42
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Sab669 posted:Spoilers for the 4 books I guess: All of this, yes. Also, the Seanchan are hot garbage. They're not interesting villains, they're just sadist-titillating story bloat.
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May 31, 2018 18:45
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Having read all of WoT, I can see going to it after Sanderson being very rough. It's not that Jordan is bad or the books are full of tropes (since a lot of them are tropes now because of him). The issue is Sanderson is so great that other fantasy authors seem weak. We are so spoiled by these well devised clearly explained logically consistent magic systems. Jordan does do an okay job of letting you know when someone is doing heavy lifting magic-wise, but there's way way too much gun-in-the-first-act of "here's this forgotten thing from the first age that one of the characters happens to figure out". Like if someone says it can't be done, someone will be doing it before the last book, guaranteed. I don't think he leaves anything behind in the First Age stuff. I mean look at Vin's ability to pierce copperclouds in Mistborn. Not only is it explained and expanded upon, it's also not unique to her. Makes it feel less hokey.
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May 31, 2018 19:00
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SynthesisAlpha posted:Having read all of WoT, I can see going to it after Sanderson being very rough. It's not that Jordan is bad or the books are full of tropes (since a lot of them are tropes now because of him). The issue is Sanderson is so great that other fantasy authors seem weak. Vins mist powerup at the end of book 1 is still a bit of a deus ex machina.
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May 31, 2018 19:42
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Sab669 posted:Spoilers for the 4 books I guess:  This post is like super spot on. I'm currently halfway through Lord of Chaos (I won't spoil anything) and although I pretty much agree with everything you posted, I think the overall story is pretty rad. All the women are written pretty awfully, although I am interested in Siuan's arc. I think Elayne is becoming more interesting, and I like how we're finally starting to see some behind the scenes stuff with the Forsaken and the Dark Lord. I get all giddy when I finally get to a 3-paragraph section on Padan Fain every other book.
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May 31, 2018 19:50
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Tunicate posted:Vins mist powerup at the end of book 1 is still a bit of a deus ex machina. It is somewhat explained later; Sanderson is internally consistent with his systems, but some aspects are more out there than others. Preservation's shell/remnant has pegged her as the successor for the Shard, so she's able to tap into the physical realm aspect of it, so long as she's not spiked by Ruin's Hemalurgy. Still a bit hand-wavey, but considering it's a relatively early Cosmere work he still stays within the sketch lines he's since inked over, which is a nice feat of consistency.
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May 31, 2018 20:11
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OAquinas posted:It is somewhat explained later; Sanderson is internally consistent with his systems, but some aspects are more out there than others. Preservation's shell/remnant has pegged her as the successor for the Shard, so she's able to tap into the physical realm aspect of it, so long as she's not spiked by Ruin's Hemalurgy. Still a bit hand-wavey, but considering it's a relatively early Cosmere work he still stays within the sketch lines he's since inked over, which is a nice feat of consistency. yeah but in book 1 it just comes out of nowhere
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May 31, 2018 20:13
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One thing you might find fun is figuring out who is a member of the Black Ajah. It's a surprising amount of people, including some quite prominent characters. There's more Aes Sedai politicking in the later books, with the supergirls getting involved pretty deeply. There's also more feudal politicking going on. The girls accomplish much there, without needing help from the boys. Jorenko posted:All of this, yes. Also, the Seanchan are hot garbage. They're not interesting villains, they're just sadist-titillating story bloat. I think the Seanchan are pretty rad. They do awful stuff, but there's much more to them than abusing damane.
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May 31, 2018 20:19
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Tunicate posted:Vins mist powerup at the end of book 1 is still a bit of a deus ex machina. It does sorta come out of nowhere until you find out why it happens and why it didn't happen earlier. I mean, everyone at some point reading that book probably thought the earring is significant.
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May 31, 2018 20:24
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As for the Forsaken, It's kind of part of the point that most of them encountered throughout the books aren't really the cream of the bad guy crop. Most are just assholes who went to the evil side cause they're assholes. A guy who just wants to end the world, the jealous musician, a doctor with a pain fetish and so on. Sure they might be extraordinarily good at some aspects of magic, with all that prior experience, but they're also missing all the tools of the lost age. Additionally, they've been built up for centuries as boogeymen, as the shadows in the woods who snatch up wayward misbehaving children, so their reputations may be a bit overblown by the time the books take place. They tend (with the exception of the few actual soldiers/generals in their ranks) to be much better at plotting and politicking and backstabbing then straight up and up combat. The whole constant infighting for favor thing doesn't help them a whole lot, either. Arrath fucked around with this message at 20:30 on May 31, 2018 |
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May 31, 2018 20:27
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Kalas posted:It does sorta come out of nowhere until you find out why it happens and why it didn't happen earlier. It has a chehkov's gun feel to it.
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Jun 1, 2018 01:31
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Arrath posted:As for the Forsaken, The only competent Forsaken are Demandred and Ishmael, and the latter only gets there after he's reincarnated. Hell, Demandred stops being competent the minute his hate-boner for Lews Therin overwhelms his tactical planning and common sense, ie. the minute he assumed al'Thor was at the field of Merrilor. Hey, dude, you're commanding the side-show, the Dragon has bigger fish to fry, you're not as important as you think you are.
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Jun 1, 2018 08:57
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rndmnmbr posted:The only competent Forsaken are Demandred and Ishmael, and the latter only gets there after he's reincarnated. What about Semirhage? Where's she incompetent?
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Jun 1, 2018 10:40
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I disagree that the forsaken are/were incompetent. If I am remembering correctly, almost all of Rand's victories over the forsaken were with assistance from another person or entity.
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Jun 1, 2018 11:53
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Pash posted:Ya, Jordan was not great at writing women (I would say he was pretty bad at it...). It was, however, a step in the right direction by actually having their be women main characters that were very important for a variety of reasons. I think the only female character I genuinely liked without reservation in the series was Verin. Oh yeah I have to agree with the Verin stuff, she ruled.
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Jun 1, 2018 14:02
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