|
Ccs posted:I’m not seeing those Pratchett sales, they’ve gone back up to $8. I recall people here being really enthusiastic about it; I picked it up on an earlier sale and, of course, haven't actually read it yet.
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2021 00:23
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 2, 2024 05:29 |
|
|
It was my intro to Parker last year and I absolutely loved it. If I didn't read everything at a glacial pace I'd have read more of his than that and Folding Knife for sure. I picked up the Scavenger Trilogy when that was on sale and I hope to get into those at some point in the not too distant future.
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2021 00:27
|
|
|
Pennsylvanian posted:Yeah, he said last month that his New Year's Resolution is to get it out in public in some form or another (he's been working on it for a while- he showed me an early draft from like ten years ago that he completely abandoned in favor of a re-write and it shows massive improvement). Last I talked to him, he was tweaking the B-plot to read a bit better, and that he wants to get more people critiquing it soon. He's nervous about throwing it all out at once, so he's been been toying with the idea of turning it into some kind of Early Access-style webnovel where people can give him feedback as he works on it and some of his short stories, one of which was an interesting take on They Are Made of Meat. I'm trying to be as gently encouraging as I can be. Well, tell him some random dude on the internet said he can't wait to read it cause it sounds neat.
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2021 01:58
|
|
|
The Magicians by Lev Grossman - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002AU7MJU/ Armor by John Steakley - $4.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NUMILJ2/ Bloodchild by Octavia E Butler - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008HALO0U/ Boy's Life by Robert R McCammon - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005T54I2W/ May be more horror.
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2021 18:33
|
|
|
pradmer posted:Armor by John Steakley - $4.99 I vaguely remember thinking (part of) this was great, many many years ago.
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2021 18:39
|
|
|
darkgray posted:I vaguely remember thinking (part of) this was great, many many years ago. It's kind of the anti-Starship Troopers, with the premise being "yeah, war is still horrible, even if you have power armor and are fighting space bugs". As opposed to Heinlein's "well sure, I spent the war as a civilian aeronautical engineer in Philadelphia, but I'm sure that combat is the crucible that makes a man a real man" take from Starship. 
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2021 18:45
|
|
|
I mainly remember how similar it was to Vampires
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2021 18:50
|
|
|
Ccs posted:I’m not seeing those Pratchett sales, they’ve gone back up to $8. It’s Parker-prose without the detestable main characters and grinding psychological misery. Now, me, I kinda LIKE the horrible MCs and misery, but I still enjoyed 16 ways, its sequel, the Prospers Demon book, and the short stories (they all seem to be related somehow, if only thematically). Fun reads, all.
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2021 21:22
|
|
|
pradmer posted:
Tremendous. I hadn't realized there was an ebook of this, and my paperback copy is getting all beat after my kids got their hands on it and read through it. Looks like there's no Kindle version of Vampire$, though, which is a bummer. I'm not even sure where my paperback copy of that is, but I recall that being fun, and better than I had expected it would be going into it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2021 21:44
|
|
|
navyjack posted:It’s Parker-prose without the detestable main characters and grinding psychological misery. Now, me, I kinda LIKE the horrible MCs and misery, but I still enjoyed 16 ways, its sequel, the Prospers Demon book, and the short stories (they all seem to be related somehow, if only thematically). Fun reads, all. I read a bunch of it last night, it is really fun! As brutal as The Folding Knife but more sympathetic protagonist, and hopefully will end without him dead or ruined. I'm probably gonna put my reread of some Discworld books to the side to finish it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2021 22:17
|
|
|
McCoy Pauley posted:Looks like there's no Kindle version of Vampire$, though, which is a bummer. I'm not even sure where my paperback copy of that is, but I recall that being fun, and better than I had expected it would be going into it. Yeah, that sucks; I'd like to reread it. Also to read the page that was printed hosed up in my copy (one page is printed twice in a row and the page that should have been there is missing).
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 00:15
|
|
|
I cannot stop listening to the audiobook version of A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik, and this is the third time through. I’ve really enjoyed Uprooted and Spinning Silver, but for some reason this is sticking with me. I might have to go to the recommendation thread for suggestions.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 02:40
|
|
|
McCoy Pauley posted:Looks like there's no Kindle version of Vampire$, though, which is a bummer. I'm not even sure where my paperback copy of that is, but I recall that being fun, and better than I had expected it would be going into it. I remember being really disappointed in the movie which removed all the interesting stuff about the book and replaced it with just a fairly rote vampire movie.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 03:01
|
|
|
muscles like this! posted:I remember being really disappointed in the movie which removed all the interesting stuff about the book and replaced it with just a fairly rote vampire movie. quote:I know loving well there's a God because I kill vampires for a living. Are you listening? I kill vampires for money. A lot of it. So don't tell me there ain't no God. I know loving well there's a God. I just don't understand Him. And the vampires...do not gently caress around.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 03:23
|
|
|
pradmer posted:The Magicians by Lev Grossman - $1.99 This is one of the best fantasy novels of the past twenty years and the marketing tagline of "harry Potter for grownups" sells it enormously short. The start of a very good trilogy about ennui, depression and post-education aimlessness, which also happens to be a very good fantasy adventure.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 03:33
|
|
|
freebooter posted:This is one of the best fantasy novels of the past twenty years and the marketing tagline of "harry Potter for grownups" sells it enormously short. The start of a very good trilogy about ennui, depression and post-education aimlessness, which also happens to be a very good fantasy adventure. more narnia for grownups if anything. with a bit of donna tart thrown in. thought the first book was the best of the three but agree, if you haven't read it, it's worth a go.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 03:36
|
|
|
for those of you who use audible Vampire$ can be listened to free if you have a membership.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 03:41
|
|
|
Yeah I like The Magicians a lot. Second book made a major misstep but it managed to conclude well in the third. First could be standalone though.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 04:13
|
|
|
freebooter posted:This is one of the best fantasy novels of the past twenty years and the marketing tagline of "harry Potter for grownups" sells it enormously short. The start of a very good trilogy about ennui, depression and post-education aimlessness, which also happens to be a very good fantasy adventure. Counterpoint: these books are bad, you should watch the TV series instead & suffer through the first season while they're still following the source material until you get far enough in that they start treating it with the outright contempt that it deserves and the show becomes much better as a result (also, funnier, hornier and gayer). Aging all the characters up from 16 year old grade schoolers to college grad students also massively improved the show over the books, especially when it dipped into the nastier aspects of the source material. (The books are very much Harry Potter & Narnia, but Edgy! and Dark! and Bringing Real Literature to Squalid Genre Fiction as if no SF author had ever thought to do that before, but better. The end result isn't a homage to or parody of the source material it cribs from, its just plagiarism but with more rape and pedophilia and suicidal ideation, and a fundamental seriousness applied to nonsensical unserious things which just doesn't work.)
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 04:14
|
|
|
I didn't hate The Magicians but I remember wishing that it had focused on literally anyone else who was not the main character since they all had more interesting stories to tell. The third book was better about that but it wasn't enough in my opinion.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 04:49
|
|
|
I thought it was okay but I thought many of the characters were unlikeable. It's a bit of a weird place to be in while reading a fantasy novel, thinking 'You little poo poo, you don't deserve to be having this adventure!'
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 06:18
|
|
|
I think I read it, but bounced off the series because the main character came off as a simultaneously arrogant entitled yet also incredibly boring and depressed shithead. The only things I remember about it are the weird furry sex and the one part near the middle? where the apple guy shows up. Was an interesting premise, I guess, just not for me. The whole magic idea I mean, not the "What if harry potter, but loving and drugs and ADULT things?"
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 09:26
|
|
|
TOOT BOOT posted:I thought it was okay but I thought many of the characters were unlikeable. It's a bit of a weird place to be in while reading a fantasy novel, thinking 'You little poo poo, you don't deserve to be having this adventure!' That's sort of the point though? They all read to me like authentically petty, selfish millennial teens who get handed the extended adolescent power fantasy of wizard school before being chucked unceremoniously into adulthood. I'm pretty sure the gap between the mundane little shits and the high fantasy they eventually stumble into is intentionally uncomfortable. But I get that people might not like reading those sorts of characters. It's definitely a flawed series - like pseudorandom name said, there's a lot of edginess for its own sake (including sexual violence), dumb plot developments and I'm not sure the second and third books ever completely work out what they're trying to say. But for me it really captured that sense of freebooter posted:ennui, depression and post-education aimlessness and it stuck with me in a way few other modern fantasy books have. Maybe it's because I was a similar age to the main characters when I read it, wishing I could have been a wizard instead of being stuck in hell world.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 09:31
|
|
|
DreamingofRoses posted:I cannot stop listening to the audiobook version of A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik, and this is the third time through. I’ve really enjoyed Uprooted and Spinning Silver, but for some reason this is sticking with me. I might have to go to the recommendation thread for suggestions. I also really enjoyed that audiobook. I can also recommend Piranesi, read by Chiwetel Ejiofor. It was amazing.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 11:07
|
|
|
Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:The whole magic idea I mean, not the "What if harry potter, but loving and drugs and ADULT things?" This is a bafflingly common reaction, and granted, I don't read much fantasy (I post in this thread because I read a lot of SF) but it makes me think that a lot of fantasy must be really, like, Christian? I never got the sense Grossman thought he was being particularly titillating by describing everyday aspects of life like sex and drugs. Gato posted:Maybe it's because I was a similar age to the main characters when I read it, wishing I could have been a wizard instead of being stuck in hell world. I think I definitely read the first book at precisely the right time in my life, around about 22, after I'd graduated university and then gone backpacking around the world and then come back to Australia and moved from my tiny home city to a much bigger city and was living in a sharehouse with my best friends, everything I'd always wanted (certainly not hell world - in retrospect some of the happiest times of my life!) but I was like... oh...? Is this it? Nothing left on the horizon? Why don't I feel happy? It was a book series which (among other fiction, other stories) made me realise that fiction and stories themselves are actually very compromised ways of interpreting life. Choire Sicha summed it up better than me - warning, that's a very spoilery review if you want to read this series: quote:It’s crucial to Quentin’s growing up that he be released from this stupid compulsion to make sensible stories that resolve, and most importantly, to let go of his need to form self-soothing narrative concepts of self. Momentousness, epicness, heroism, so common in young adult and fantasy fiction, are poison. They will make you wistful, falsely pre-nostalgic, soul-sick. Life isn’t that. The desire for the clarity of your own tale is infantile selfishness. It’s a nervous tic evolved from being crippled by fear. If you think your story will make sense in retrospect, perhaps you’ll get lucky at the end, but you’d better be dying quite slowly.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 11:38
|
|
|
Wouldn't say "Christian", I guess the best comparison is Synder talking about the new justice league cut, and how is rated r and batman says gently caress! It's gonna be so rad and hardcore! It just... It just seems like a sad take on a genre. It's like he read harry potter and went "how can I make this more depressing and boring, but also make sure it's cool enough for adults?" and decided to Snyder it up and just throw in sex, drugs, and the crushing ennui of adulthood. I get some people digging it, but it's incredibly not cup of tea. If I'm reading fantasy, I prefer to have an actual plot line for the series. Gimme a god to kill or a king to overthrow or just something other than "boy growing up sure does suck balls" for an entire book.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 12:48
|
|
|
Harry Potter is in part a fantasy take on the classic British boarding school novel. The Magicians is in part a fantasy take on the American campus novel, which I think is the real source of what people are calling "edginess". Basically read The Secret History or The Rules of Attraction or The Art of Fielding and you'll have a better idea of where Grossman is coming from. rollick fucked around with this message at 14:48 on Feb 5, 2021 |
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 14:38
|
|
|
rollick posted:The Magicians is in part a fantasy take on the American campus novel, which I think is the real source of what people are calling "edginess". I mean for about the first half of the first book, anyway. Oh yeah At least three gods get killed eventually, if that helps you any
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 15:06
|
|
|
Haha I will admit to only reading the first one.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 16:09
|
|
|
freebooter posted:Choire Sicha summed it up better than me - warning, that's a very spoilery review if you want to read this series: This was deliberate! Lev Grossman described himself as a "classical novelist" and had massive contempt for the fantasy genre in general at the time of writing the book. It was a glove slap to his audience's face. The book set out to criticize fantasy novels and dared people to read a story about lovely characters in a world deliberately made boring. Except... teenagers are angsty in proportion to the amount of agency they lack in the systems in which they grow up. It's the system that makes them that way, it's not some intrinsic property. But he made all these statements from elitism - the fucker went to both Harvard and Yale - about how rich, powerful and wealthy people can still be really sad you guys.Then, he also picked a genre he himself hated to showcase it. It's not satire, it's projection. He wrote about a group awful, unlikable characters given the world and who refused to change anything about themselves. It's the anti-heroes journey, written by someone who was actually given the world. This book lands with the wettest of farts for me. I choose to spend my time believing and reading better. Bhodi fucked around with this message at 16:38 on Feb 5, 2021 |
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 16:30
|
|
|
I like the bit where there were a bunch of depressed traveller nerds, until the rape god
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 16:49
|
|
|
I finished DARK MATTER and my problem with it is that it's not about DARK MATTER what gives crouch  I did read THE FISHERMAN which is about not just one but several FISHERMEN. Maybe it should've been called THE FISHERMEN horror guy!!
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 16:58
|
|
|
I also finished DARK MATTER and have no idea why he called it that. Or why he set up a Sliders situation and only showed us like 2 interesting worlds, briefly
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 17:01
|
|
|
Bhodi posted:I would be down with this but I really hated The Magicians. They are given massive power and they did literally nothing to help anyone around themselves while whining about how nothing makes them happy. It's the unmitigated selfishness of it all, painted in a light that was supposed to make them sympathetic. They are absolutely contemptible characters. Sometimes it can be fun to read about contemptible characters, but this is absolutely not one of those cases. I read a lot of books with unlikeable characters, but specifically self-centered, low-level depressive and whiny ones are just not that fun. Over privileged and boring. Very NYT in a way.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 17:04
|
|
|
General Battuta posted:I finished DARK MATTER and my problem with it is that it's not about DARK MATTER what gives crouch I'm reading THE FISHERMAN right now and I have to ask, does it ever pick up speed? I'm less than a quarter of the way through the book but it feels like an absolute slog in the early chapters.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 17:32
|
|
|
Yes, I think when you get to the first big flashback into the mythology—they go to a diner on their way to fish and a guy tells them a story—that's pretty much when it takes off.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 17:50
|
|
|
The only other fantasy campus novels I can think of are Tam Lin by Pamela Dean and The Fool on the Hill by Matt Ruff. I guess Rothfuss too? Can't think of any SF ones.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 17:58
|
|
|
General Battuta posted:Yes, I think when you get to the first big flashback into the mythology—they go to a diner on their way to fish and a guy tells them a story—that's pretty much when it takes off. Oh I think I might be right at the start of that, so I'll keep reading. Thanks!
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 18:14
|
|
|
rollick posted:The only other fantasy campus novels I can think of are Tam Lin by Pamela Dean and The Fool on the Hill by Matt Ruff. I guess Rothfuss too? Can't think of any SF ones. Vita Nostra by the Dyachenko's. SF you have The Big U by Stephenson at least. There's enough Wizard School books that one of them almost has to qualify.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 18:39
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 2, 2024 05:29 |
|
|
rollick posted:The only other fantasy campus novels I can think of are Tam Lin by Pamela Dean and The Fool on the Hill by Matt Ruff. I guess Rothfuss too? Can't think of any SF ones. I'm in the middle of Leigh Bardugo's Ninth House (premise: the various Yale secret societies, like the Skull and Bones, Scroll and Key, etc., are actually magical orders). It's okay.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 18:40
|
|
