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Saw some people say they were reading/recommending Ninefox and just a reminder that the recently published book of short stories, Hexarchate Stories, is a must read as it contains a sequel novella and also short stories about younger Cheris and Jedao.
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Oct 1, 2019 14:56
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quantumfoam posted:I know they weren't the greatest but totally ignoring the existence of Roger Zelazny's two Amber series is dirty pool, HA. I wouldn't categorize the Amber novels as being urban fantasy at all. To me, urban fantasy is fantasy set usually in the real world, urban settings but where magic or supernatural creatures exist. Corwin leaves what is presumably our Earth behind in the first book, and briefly returns to get some guns. Merlin spends more time on Earth, but again it's not really like urban fantasy, and the setting of Earth is really more like a set for a play within a play or something like that.
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Oct 1, 2019 14:58
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professor metis posted:Oh one of the most visible reviews for it on goodreads is really negative. I'm terrible at writing reviews but I'll write one for this since I know that's pretty important. I had forgotten about that review. It feels like she either went into it wanting to dislike it, or she read a completely different book.
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Oct 1, 2019 15:21
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pseudanonymous posted:I wouldn't categorize the Amber novels as being urban fantasy at all. To me, urban fantasy is fantasy set usually in the real world, urban settings but where magic or supernatural creatures exist. Corwin leaves what is presumably our Earth behind in the first book, and briefly returns to get some guns. Merlin spends more time on Earth, but again it's not really like urban fantasy, and the setting of Earth is really more like a set for a play within a play or something like that. Yeah, Amber is more portal fantasy. Even if you don't count that, though, Strange & Norrell came out in...2004? And I'm honestly not even sure I'd call it "urban fantasy", it tastes different, but even if we do, So You Want To Be A Wizard came out in 1983. And if for some reason you want to exclude YA, War for the Oaks came out a few years later and from the late 80s onwards you couldn't swing an elf without hitting some sort of ongoing urban fantasy series.
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Oct 1, 2019 15:46
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Even from just Powers, Earthquake Weather was nineties. I think the sub-sub-genre of "King Arthur wakes up in modern days" was around at least in the eighties...
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Oct 1, 2019 15:52
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pseudanonymous posted:I wouldn't categorize the Amber novels as being urban fantasy at all. To me, urban fantasy is fantasy set usually in the real world, urban settings but where magic or supernatural creatures exist. Corwin leaves what is presumably our Earth behind in the first book, and briefly returns to get some guns. Merlin spends more time on Earth, but again it's not really like urban fantasy, and the setting of Earth is really more like a set for a play within a play or something like that. True. Trying to think of a fantasy series that incorporated Earth as more than a simple framing device/launching point is how I ended up using Merlin-Amber as an example. Merlin meets his two antagonists on Earth, plans out his literal deus ex machina on Earth, bounces back to Earth repeatedly to recover + scooby do mystery solve, etc. Fantasy series that use Earth as a simple framing device/launching point, on the other hand, are legion(ie, Thomas Covenant series, John Carter, Terry Brooks, etc) Wouldn't really call Declare a modern "urban fantasy" because timeline wise, Declare took place mostly in the 1940s-1960s with a brief finisher in the late 1980s. Declare also shares a unique awkward bond with the 1987 The Living Daylights film, by featuring amazing regional freedom fighters that would in real life evolve into terrorist groups quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 16:05 on Oct 1, 2019 |
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Oct 1, 2019 15:58
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Right, I haven't read Kim Newman but I'd classify Amber as portal fantasy . JS&S isn't modern setting, it's regency fiction with a fantasy spin. Night in the Lonesome October is probably Zelazny's closest approach to modern urban fantasy but it's clearly something else, its own wonderful pastiche thing. Some of his shorts might classify, I'd have to reread. Power's Last Call also fits the genre but for some reason I thought he wrote Declare earlier in his career, my bad there.
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Oct 1, 2019 16:06
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ShutteredIn posted:You can wait. I'm in the same boat. I can see how a loose, more colloquial tone might appeal to some people but it took me right out of the story every time.
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Oct 1, 2019 16:12
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Finally read Gideon the Ninth, and found it quite enjoyable. Not best thing I've read this year enjoyable, but I'll happily read more and all the skeletons and bones made it feel appropriate in the lead up to Halloween too. I'm not as high as the buzz is on it, but I can understand it.
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Oct 1, 2019 16:41
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Right, I haven't read Kim Newman but I'd classify Amber as portal fantasy . JS&S isn't modern setting, it's regency fiction with a fantasy spin.  For some reason I thought you were saying that JS&MN was the "first modern urban fantasy", not Declare.Declare only predates it by a few years, though, so the rest of my post stands.
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Oct 1, 2019 16:45
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ToxicFrog posted:
Yeah either way I'm wrong and the pointer should be at Power's Last Call. Or maybe The Haunted Mesa. Though that's also more portal fantasy. Gaiman's Neverwhere too.
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Oct 1, 2019 17:30
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The Shadowrun novels were urban fantasy, don’t @ me.
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Oct 1, 2019 17:55
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muscles like this! posted:Saw some people say they were reading/recommending Ninefox and just a reminder that the recently published book of short stories, Hexarchate Stories, is a must read as it contains a sequel novella and also short stories about younger Cheris and Jedao. Will do, thanks.
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Oct 1, 2019 18:35
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yeah either way I'm wrong and the pointer should be at Power's Last Call. Didn't Last Call come out in the 90s? Speaking of which, if I liked Declare and The Anubis Gates, is Last Call worth checking out?
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Oct 1, 2019 19:48
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ToxicFrog posted:Didn't Last Call come out in the 90s?
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Oct 1, 2019 19:50
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Last Call was Powers' best book until Declare. It "has" "sequels," in that there's an unrelated book and he wrote a third book that's kind of a sequel to them both but it's not something you'd care about if you didn't know it existed. Just read Last Call as a standalone for now.
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Oct 1, 2019 19:57
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quantumfoam posted:True. If you're into that sort of thing you might want to check out The Doomfarers of Coramonde which was first published in 1977 and its sequel The Starfollowers of Coramode which came out in 1979.
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Oct 1, 2019 20:02
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ToxicFrog posted:Didn't Last Call come out in the 90s? Yes. I'd call those three Powers's best books, and then maybe The Stress of Her Regard and On Stranger Tides. quantumfoam posted:True. PJF's World of Tiers books go back and forth between Earth and various parallel worlds.
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Oct 1, 2019 20:26
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Necrotizer F posted:If you're into that sort of thing you might want to check out The Doomfarers of Coramonde which was first published in 1977 and its sequel The Starfollowers of Coramode which came out in 1979. Hello teenage me. As I recall, there is a certain amount of American weapon masturbation in that one. quantumfoam posted:Wouldn't really call Declare a modern "urban fantasy" because timeline wise, Declare took place mostly in the 1940s-1960s with a brief finisher in the late 1980s. If Declare, (a better version of the Laundry series imo ) is urban fantasy, lovecraft should fit in right there. As always, genre definition are ambiguous and more of a publishing decision than anything else.
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Oct 1, 2019 20:28
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Lovecraft is pre-ww2 though which is important.
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Oct 1, 2019 20:42
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Finished the Final Frontier sci-fi anthology curated by Neil Clarke. Overall it was a mixed bag for me.The most common element in the stories inside the collection besides FTL + STL travel (and hibernation/coldsleep) was the Gliese 581 star system being a destination. Some of the stories in the anthology hit really well for me, while all but two of the remaining stories were "just" really good. Figuratively and subjectively, Greg Egan's "Glory" and Carter Scholz's "Gypsy" were the worst stories of the Final Frontier anthology for me. I bounced so hard off the Greg Egan story I figuratively became a flight-hazard for low flying drones and ultralights. In Carter Scholz's "Gypsy" the out of nowhere one paragraph "no we fixed everything" email from earth was so tonally off from the rest of the story it pulled me out the book completely/made me laugh for 3 straight minutes, which was probably not the reaction Scholz was aiming for. A Jar of Goodwill/Tobias S. Buckell: A mix of Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix, Ray Bradbury's Martain Chronicles and a 1st contact story. Mono no aware/Ken Liu: A generation ship and Doomsday of the the planet earth story that works really well. Rescue Mission/Jack Skillingstead: Super-strong homage of Ray Bradbury's Martain Chronicles series. Shiva in Shadow/Nancy Kress: Kress's story went darker, way darker than I expected it would. Slow Life/Michael Swanwick: Elements of Heinlein's really good YA stories plus faint elements of Ray Bradbury's martain chronicles stories. Three Bodies at Mitanni/Seth Dickinson: Loved the human-hive mind concept and the <Exterminate YES/NO?> framing plot. The Deeps of the Sky/Elizabeth Bear: Very good 1st contact story between gas-giant lifeforms and carbon/water (human) based lifeforms told from the gas-giant lifeform viewpoint. Diving into the Wreck/Kristine Kathryn Rusch: Enjoyable. Felt like a more personalized and spooky mission in the RPGlite Starcrawlers game. The Voyage Out/Gwyneth Jones: An inter-personal teambuilding story that reminded of Philip Jose Farmers Riverworld + Julian May's Golden Torc series in their most positive aspects. The Symphony of Ice and Dust/Julie Novakova: Was a nice spin on "the 1st explorers to XXX" + "story told through journal entries" tropes. Twenty Lights to The Land of Snow/Michael Bishop: A really solid generation ship story, and it's open-to-all-genders Lama status. The Firewall and the Door/Sean McMullen: pretty much a thinly disguised "Fund Elon Musk!/Fund NASA! DAMMNIT!!" rant. Permanent Fatal Errors/Jay Lake: A solid homage to Heinlein's Lazarus Long meta-character without the creepiness of later Heinlein stories. Gypsy/Carter Scholz: Think "The Martian" set on a spaceship written by Peter Watts. Story had a future Earth so crapsack, 2000 AD's Judge Dredd series was a Disney Kids super-optimistic cartoon in comparison. Sailing the Antarsa/Vandana Singh: peaceful yet explorative, with a tinge of Homeworld 1 (without the genociding of Kharak though). The Mind is Its Own Place/Carrie Vaughn: one flew over the cuckoo's nest meets FTL was a odd but potently enjoyable mix. The Wreck of the Godspeed/James Patrick Kelly: liked the mystery-mystery reveal in it along with plethora of religious beliefs. Seeing/Genevieve Valentine: story was sort of a Oliver Twist approach to astronaut training, pretty weird but good combo. Travelling into Nothing /An Owomoyela: Weird, confusing enjoyable. Reminded me of Robert Reed's the Great Ship short stories somehow. Glory /Greg Egan: Unable to get into the story. Not surprising, I've NEVER been able to get into a Greg Egan story. The Island /Peter Watts: The Island has maybe Watt's most happy ending in all of his scifi stories, which says volumes towards Watt's writing style. quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 22:46 on Oct 1, 2019 |
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Oct 1, 2019 20:57
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I feel like The Island has been republished in a lot of places. I'm not complaining, but am I crazy or has it done the rounds a few times?
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Oct 1, 2019 21:40
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Kesper North posted:I feel like The Island has been republished in a lot of places. I'm not complaining, but am I crazy or has it done the rounds a few times? It was his first big splash I think? I can't recall if it's been published lots of places but I feel like it's been mentioned a lot as something that influenced others.
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Oct 1, 2019 22:06
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Today I learned about the sword-n-sorcery Imaro novels by Charles R Saunders, and if I have to be sad that buying them in paperback costs a billion dollars, so do you. (Will I ever crack and buy a kindle? who knows. not today.)
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Oct 2, 2019 01:40
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quantumfoam posted:I know they weren't the greatest but totally ignoring the existence of Roger Zelazny's two Amber series is dirty pool, HA. This reminds me... Newman's new Dracula book is out. Anno Dracula was fun and pretty well written. I haven't read the rest.
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Oct 2, 2019 01:45
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Neurosis posted:This reminds me... Newman's new Dracula book is out. Anno Dracula was fun and pretty well written. I haven't read the rest. 2nd Anno Dracula is covers Kim Newman's version of World War 1 and is merely ok. Was expecting something like the World War 1 section of eternal darkness going in, not giant mutated vampiric flying machines enhanced by germanic mad science which was almost as cool. Third Anno Dracula book is frankly pretty bizzare and want more people to read it just to see if they also catch the low-key vampiric charlies angels homage in the book.
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Oct 2, 2019 02:27
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Cardiac posted:Hello teenage me. I didn't really think so. Towards the beginning of the first book a summoning spell ends up bringing an Armored Personnel Carrier complete with crew from the jungles of the Vietnam War to help a besieged kingdom deal with a dragon. Beyond those portions and aside from some exceptions, the novels pretty well shape up to be slightly twisty sword 'n' sorcery. It was at least different from the reheated Tolkien of a lot of fantasy back then.
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Oct 2, 2019 02:35
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Necrotizer F posted:I didn't really think so. Towards the beginning of the first book a summoning spell ends up bringing an Armored Personnel Carrier complete with crew from the jungles of the Vietnam War to help a besieged kingdom deal with a dragon. Beyond those portions and aside from some exceptions, the novels pretty well shape up to be slightly twisty sword 'n' sorcery. It was at least different from the reheated Tolkien of a lot of fantasy back then. You forgot the passages where they complain that the 303 machine gun can’t pierce dragon hide while the 50 could. And how one of the protagonists gets an entire expose on selecting his guns when he goes back to fantasy land including one passage where his father gives him his ww2 m1 garand. This is stuff I found cool as a teenager 25 years ago and for some inexplicable reason still remember. Mind you, this is the same teenager that found nothing strange with RPGs doing entire chapters detailing different guns.
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Oct 2, 2019 08:09
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Thranguy posted:Even from just Powers, Earthquake Weather was nineties. I heard anecdotally that back in the day major Fantasy publishers had to maintain a whole seperate slush pile for 'King Arthur + twist X', and 'King Arthur but modern day' was by far the most popular twist for unsolicited submission. StrixNebulosa posted:Today I learned about the sword-n-sorcery Imaro novels by Charles R Saunders, and if I have to be sad that buying them in paperback costs a billion dollars, so do you. (Will I ever crack and buy a kindle? who knows. not today.) Could you not just download the kindle app for your phone? Deptfordx fucked around with this message at 09:24 on Oct 2, 2019 |
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Oct 2, 2019 09:17
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Neurosis posted:This reminds me... Newman's new Dracula book is out. Anno Dracula was fun and pretty well written. I haven't read the rest. quantumfoam posted:2nd Anno Dracula is covers Kim Newman's version of World War 1 and is merely ok. Was expecting something like the World War 1 section of eternal darkness going in, not giant mutated vampiric flying machines enhanced by germanic mad science which was almost as cool. Third Anno Dracula book is frankly pretty bizzare and want more people to read it just to see if they also catch the low-key vampiric charlies angels homage in the book. All of them are worth reading, IMO, but I like most of Newman's stuff on the whole.
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Oct 2, 2019 10:55
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Cardiac posted:You forgot the passages where they complain that the 303 machine gun can’t pierce dragon hide while the 50 could. And how one of the protagonists gets an entire expose on selecting his guns when he goes back to fantasy land including one passage where his father gives him his ww2 m1 garand. Well, when you're fighting a dragon, piercing its hide is a legitimate concern. As for the rest... it's just not enough of a negative for me to care about in terms of the rest of the book and its sequel.
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Oct 2, 2019 15:13
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Necrotizer F posted:Well, when you're fighting a dragon, piercing its hide is a legitimate concern. As for the rest... it's just not enough of a negative for me to care about in terms of the rest of the book and its sequel. It is a fun read, no doubt about it. Especially as it doesn't take itself too seriously. I liked the giant royal guards and the fight in the end.
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Oct 2, 2019 16:55
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StrixNebulosa posted:Today I learned about the sword-n-sorcery Imaro novels by Charles R Saunders, and if I have to be sad that buying them in paperback costs a billion dollars, so do you. (Will I ever crack and buy a kindle? who knows. not today.) Could always do a interlibrary loan.
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Oct 2, 2019 18:32
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For people who don't have kindle or other ebook devices, the amazon kindle 3 goes for around $10 on ebay, and everything they do is still supported, with the addition of a text2speech mode that got removed for a few generations of kindle devices. New battery for a kindle 3 costs about $10, and replacing the k3 battery is dirt-simple. Interlibrary loans are magical. And just like magic, interlibrary loans are unpredictable. Sometimes a book-loan will take 3 days to arrive, other times it could take 4 weeks.
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Oct 2, 2019 19:29
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Thranguy posted:I think the sub-sub-genre of "King Arthur wakes up in modern days" was around at least in the eighties... I'm not sure what was so terrible about the 80s though, especially since the oval office slept through the Battle of Britain like a loving baby. Bananarama aren't that bad.
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Oct 2, 2019 19:43
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tooterfish posted:That's because part of the myth is he comes back to save Britain at the time of its greatest need. Thatcher.
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Oct 2, 2019 19:45
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He was a toff, he'd be cheering her on mate.
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Oct 2, 2019 20:13
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tooterfish posted:He was a toff, he'd be cheering her on mate. He was a royalist. Some wretched peasant woman usurping the powers of the crown wouldn't be his cup of tea.
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Oct 2, 2019 21:19
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Quick mini-review post Hunter's Oath by Michelle West/Sagara: first book of a duology about a pair of hunters in a fantasy kingdom ruled by a deity that demands that in exchange for fertile fields and Hunter Lords granted magic powers, all Hunter Lords must go on a Sacred Hunt every year where the God may hunt them in turn. Richly detailed world-building, fantastic focus on the glory and horror of this paganistic deity, and it's all interwoven with a bigger plot about Satan Himself trying to return. I've started the second/final book and it's continuing to be just as excellent. Cast in Shadow by Michelle West/Sagara: yeah I'm a fangirl of her now, I've bought almost everything she's written because I adore her writing style. Anyways, this one is her urban fantasy series, which feels like a weird way of describing it because while it has the lighter tone/writing style of UF, it has no romance, it has really rich and weird fantasy-focused worldbuilding, and instead of treating the fantasy races like Star Trek treats its aliens - elves are just tree people with ears, etc - it instead makes them deeply alien and I spent a good chunk of the second book struggling to understand some profoundly alien psychologies. In the third book you even get a hive mind species that meshes very poorly with the vanilla humans. ... But this is also urban fantasy in the sense that each book is a different case, and the first one is solving a string of child murders. I've read the first two and am nearly done with the third and it's delicious weird fantasy. *I'm working through Broken Crown by West/Sagara as well, but more slowly as Hunter's Oath/Death come first. But oh my goodness I am a sucker for her writing, it's so dense and delicious and everything I've been looking for in high fantasy lately. Ninth Rain by Jen Williams: first in a trilogy, finished this one a few minutes ago so I'm still reeling from that finale. And drat, what a finale. Ahem, no spoilers. This is a weird one where it feels like a fantasy, acts like a fantasy, but has sci-fi and steampunk elements in equal turn. It's a fantasy universe that faces an alien invasion every few centuries, and the aliens are fought off by magic tree elves and their warbeasts (dragons, gryphons, etc) - but the last invasion ended when the Tree God powering the elves died mysteriously, and now centuries later the elves are dying out / turning to vampirism, and our heroine is a rich biologist nerd in her forties who goes around studying the ruins of the alien ships and seeing how they twist the landscape. Our other heroine is an imprisoned fell-witch, a lady who can summon fire at will - she's imprisoned by an insane cult/mega-corporation that steals these fell-witches, tells them they're abominations in the eyes of god, and then uses them to make drugs to sell to people. Oh yes. It's full of weird stuff that somehow seamlessly works together, the characters are fun, etc. The prose isn't amazing, but it works and has a modern tone ala Gideon - oh yes, these elves say gently caress. I'm hyped for reading the second one - after I've slept off the high of that finale. drat, what an ending! anyways! Due to playing a ton of final fantasy xiv I've been hankering for fantasy and lo: two new authors (to me) I enjoy a lot. Also I've been on a shopping spree and I've got a bunch of used paperbacks coming in, so hopefully I can keep up this reading pace. ("weren't you also reading floating worlds and steel frame and ro3k" yes hush I read like twenty books at once, I'm going as fast as I can)
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Oct 2, 2019 23:59
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quantumfoam posted:For people who don't have kindle or other ebook devices, the amazon kindle 3 goes for around $10 on ebay, and everything they do is still supported, with the addition of a text2speech mode that got removed for a few generations of kindle devices. I'm using a Kindle Keyboard I inherited from my grandfather and only recently had to replace the battery. I keep going "the Paperwhite sure looks nice" but really can't justify spending $80 or whatever the new ones run for a marginally better screen/UI when there are other gadgets to buy. Maybe I'll eventually pick up a used Oasis once they go down in price or something.
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Oct 3, 2019 09:30
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