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My brother in law got me the first Starship's Mage book, and I blasted through it and the next two. I don't know why but it really hit for me. I plan on finishing out the series. There are some aspects where you can 100% call what is going to happen, but it seems fun enough to keep going.
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Jun 12, 2021 13:20
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Just read Light by M. John Harrison. A bit like The Fifth Head of Cerberus in being three novellas with connections to each other, although there's more of a through-line. Like Fifth Head, it suffered from me liking one story (the spaceship adventure) more than the other two. Found it hard to read for some reason, though I can't identify anything wrong with the writing, but the whole book ended on a triumphant note. Don't know if I'll pick up the sequels. (A user review describes it as "a Gigeresque indigestible fusion of Robert Rankin with JG Ballard") FPyat fucked around with this message at 14:36 on Jun 12, 2021 |
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Jun 12, 2021 14:33
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darkgray posted:Hi guys, my Kindle recommended this exciting book to me, and I was wondering if anyone happened to have read it and could tell me if it's as good as the blurb says. Jack’s eyes grew wide at this, he was TOTALLY going to be throwing fireballs around in no time! All of his stats were going into this for sure! i skimmed the free sample but even if you read this kind of thing there are better examples for free, even if you insist on protagonists named jack
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Jun 12, 2021 15:29
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mllaneza posted:Those two really do go together as almost sort of a set. Both are to a greater or lesser degree the story of the progress of a Saint. That's rare in literature. As a third I'd suggest Lord of Light which shares themes with the other two. Fourth... okay, I like the Paksennarion saga, but I wouldn't put them in with the first three. Kind of tangential but still related is The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. Sci-fi instead of fantasy, but very heavy on themes of guilt/martyrdom/faith. Also just a loving awesome book in general.
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Jun 12, 2021 16:37
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Are there any light and punny fantasy series that aren't written by a sex pest?
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Jun 12, 2021 16:45
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Gnoman posted:Are there any light and punny fantasy series that aren't written by a sex pest? I don't recall hearing anything about Robert Asprin being horrible, but I'm prepared to find out I'm wrong.
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Jun 12, 2021 16:49
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Discworld. The caverns and creatures series by Robert Bevan has the plot depth of an instruction manual but it is hilarious in a frat bro kinda way. It's litrpg fantasy if that matters. Eli Monpress was a good series. Not really a pun tastic one but definitely on the light side.
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Jun 12, 2021 16:55
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Seconding Asprin. His stuff is light and fun, and he doesn't appear to be any kind of awful.
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Jun 12, 2021 17:37
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Never heard anything bad about Tom Holt either. (Except for being better as KJ Parker.)
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Jun 12, 2021 17:54
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Silly Newbie posted:Seconding Asprin. His stuff is light and fun, and he doesn't appear to be any kind of awful. There’s a fair amount of casual sexism in the Myth books (nothing unusual for the era, but worth a warning if someone’s looking for light and fun.)
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Jun 12, 2021 18:34
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Silly Newbie posted:Seconding Asprin. His stuff is light and fun, and he doesn't appear to be any kind of awful. Went to wiki to double-check and found only: quote:Due to a series of personal and financial problems, Asprin published little during the 1990s, although he had two books on The New York Times Best Seller list, which piqued the interest of fans and the Internal Revenue Service.
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Jun 12, 2021 20:55
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Gnoman posted:Are there any light and punny fantasy series that aren't written by a sex pest? the previously mentioned the palace job and its two sequels are heist novels (think oceans 11) written by a dragon age author that are easily enough consumed the last one maybe crosses the line to be a bit too "epic" to be as fun as the other two
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Jun 12, 2021 21:23
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Just finished reading One Word Kill by Mark Lawrence last night. I'm familiar with Lawrence because of his epic fantasy (broken empire trilogy, red queen's war trilogy) - this seems to be the book where he tries to out-Cline Ernest Cline. It's 1986 and a gang of D&D playing misfits has a *gasp* GIRL join their group (is this the plot of stranger things?) I was convinced to read it because Robin Hobb said she'd give it 6/5 stars if she could and GRRM said "I enjoyed the hell out of One Word Kill". I didn't like it that much. I'm starting to think I have an unusually adverse reaction to when quantum mechanics is brought in to hand-wave things about a story, because I absolutely hated Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. This book does something similar with alternate worlds / time travel / quantum physics. When it feels like the book is spending more time trying to explain how the time travel plot device works than actually moving the plot forward, I start to get upset. Also the girl character in this felt very Manic Pixie Dream Girl. She falls for a guy with leukemia who recently started chemo because he's got big brain and knows quantum mechanics good. Male fantasy. I'm going to read the rest of the trilogy because it was short enough and not total garbage, but I prefer Lawrence's fantasy novels. 2.5/5
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Jun 12, 2021 21:56
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Gnoman posted:Are there any light and punny fantasy series that aren't written by a sex pest? I liked the greatcoats series which sort of emulates the tone of the three musketeers (ie. a romp)
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Jun 12, 2021 21:57
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Craig Shaw Gardner's Ebneezum/Wuntvor books are pretty good, and aged decently. The only problematic character in them is the creepy obsessive unicorn. Asprin: vaguely recall something from the SFL Archives about Robert Asprin being the founder or the commander of a freelance volunteer security-guard group for SFF convention's that got gropey & "Dennis Reynolds from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia implications.txt" toward female SFF fans. That Asprin founded volunteer security-guard group went by the names of the Dorsai Irregulars and the Klingon Diplomatic Corps. https://youtu.be/DJ3hc8pJelk quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 03:10 on Jun 13, 2021 |
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Jun 13, 2021 03:06
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Lemniscate Blue posted:I don't recall hearing anything about Robert Asprin being horrible, but I'm prepared to find out I'm wrong. He absolutely cheated the IRS and got busted, and he certainly looked like a sexpest in 1995ish at DragonCon*, but I never heard anything more. *Not that he would have been top 10 sexpest at DragonCon even if you restricted it to the founders only.
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Jun 13, 2021 03:56
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I remember when I found that out, and it really recontextualized the scene in one of the Myth Adventures books where an important character goes on a nearly-unprompted rant about how it's every citizen's right, nay, duty to cheat the IRS as much as possible. Anyways, I quite like the series for the way it progresses from a kind of nearly-episodic cheap fantasy to actual character development and such, although it takes a deep dive around the time (or just before) Jody Lynn Nye started helping. (Which, as I understand it, was also because of the tax dodging)
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Jun 13, 2021 04:14
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I think I read about 9 Myth books in grade 6 before the main character became too much of a dick for me to want to keep following those characters I don’t remember much else tbh, just that lingering bad taste of disappointment
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Jun 13, 2021 04:24
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I’ve spent months frantically reading to catch up with this thread, and the (surprise-new-author - not- murderbot) winners are Brothers Grossbart, Gunmetal Gods, and Theory of Bastards. It’s really astonishing how much great writing is out there, both Gunmetal Gods and Theory of Bastards are on KU:
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Jun 13, 2021 04:54
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quantumfoam posted:Asprin: vaguely recall something from the SFL Archives about Robert Asprin being the founder or the commander of a freelance volunteer security-guard group for SFF convention's that got gropey & "Dennis Reynolds from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia implications.txt" toward female SFF fans. See? I was entirely prepared for this.
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Jun 13, 2021 06:00
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John Lee posted:I remember when I found that out, and it really recontextualized the scene in one of the Myth Adventures books where an important character goes on a nearly-unprompted rant about how it's every citizen's right, nay, duty to cheat the IRS as much as possible. lol, it's not mycrimes.txt but "My Crimes - A Novel"
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Jun 13, 2021 11:59
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fancyclopedia3 content is either highly sanitized stubs or landmines of "how was this ok in any context?" WTF. cough https://fancyclopedia.org/Secret_Handgrip_of_Fandom cough
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Jun 13, 2021 14:27
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quantumfoam posted:fancyclopedia3 content is either highly sanitized stubs or landmines of "how was this ok in any context?" WTF. that link posted:We can tell you that it originated with Patia von Sternberg, her entry posted:https://fancyclopedia.org/Patia_von_Sternberg
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Jun 13, 2021 17:35
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The Princess Bride by William Goldman - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003IEJZRY/ Equal Rites (Discworld #3) by Terry Pratchett - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000W9393Y/ The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick - $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005MZN2B2/ The Burning God (Poppy War #3) by RF Kuang - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084VP8KNB/
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Jun 13, 2021 17:48
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Stuporstar posted:I think I read about 9 Myth books in grade 6 before the main character became too much of a dick for me to want to keep following those characters In fairness that's part of the character development, and it gets addressed and rectified shortly after when he calls an official meeting with all his coworkers, where he says he's been meaninglessly profit-seeking for a while now and treating people he started off friends with as employees and independent contractors instead of, you know, friends, and that he's reincorporating the company as an equal-shares venture
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Jun 13, 2021 18:11
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Jedit posted:Book 1 is setup, and you do eventually get to find out why the shift, but it's a fairly straightforward story overall. Still I don't think you'd be wasting your time with it. The series is entertaining enough to be worth a read. It was good enough to make his mark in alt-history.
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Jun 13, 2021 18:54
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SFL Archives 1996 continues to deliver. ==== Subject: Re: The B5 Gay Bath House (Grey 17 is Missing *something*) someone someone <someone*somewhere> wrote: >Jeremiah is the wizened leader of a beefcake cult, wearing gloves with cut >out fingers, an international gay symbol for things done with the fist. Did you notice he initially was not wearing gloves ("consider...the palm..."), but must have put them on sometime mid-sermon? Obviously this is significant. >There are no females living here, just hunks seeking perfection. No, no. There *were* females, but they all found perfection already. At least that's what they told Jeremiah, as they made there way toward the pressure doors with blowtorches stuffed in their knapsacks. ... ... ... ==== Normally I'd include the entire SFL Archives discussion thread on this for context, however now that means redacting & keeping track of who the redacted id's were for clarity of who is responding to who, and that's just too much effort for internet posts that have been available online unexpurgated for 20+yrs.
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Jun 14, 2021 00:45
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John Lee posted:In fairness that's part of the character development, and it gets addressed and rectified shortly after when he calls an official meeting with all his coworkers, where he says he's been meaninglessly profit-seeking for a while now and treating people he started off friends with as employees and independent contractors instead of, you know, friends, and that he's reincorporating the company as an equal-shares venture I can’t remember if I got that far, but adult me would probably have a lot more patience for that payoff than 11 yo me did
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Jun 14, 2021 04:21
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Bear Sleuth posted:I'm not a fan of modern fantasy or grimdark but hum-doggy Blacktongue Thief is a hoot. Love Kinch's voice and Buehlman himself narrates for the audiobook in a wonderful accent, silky smooth and crisp at the edges. It's a riot, so much fun. Thanks for the rec, thread. I picked this up on Audible and it's really good. However you certainly weren't kidding with the accent, my stupid American ears has trouble understanding him sometimes, thought not enough to bother me.
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Jun 14, 2021 14:06
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Melissa Scott did a short interview: Author Melissa Scott on the 2021 #PrideStoryBundle of Queer SF/Fquote:Can you tell us about the book you have in this StoryBundle? And wait, what, I missed this - a new book from her! Water Horse sounds fun!
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Jun 14, 2021 14:26
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She is OG
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Jun 14, 2021 14:39
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I was also poking around the Candlemark & Gleam website and whoa, this sounds cool: https://www.candlemarkandgleam.com/shop/drakon/?doing_wp_cron=1623678022.1371679306030273437500 quote:Drakon
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Jun 14, 2021 14:44
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StrixNebulosa posted:I was also poking around the Candlemark & Gleam website and whoa, this sounds cool: I'm not normally into dragon fantasy but this sounds interesting enough for my wishlist.
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Jun 14, 2021 19:04
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So yeah, if anyone was looking at the Zero G series cowritten by William Shatner and Jeff Rovin, don't.
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Jun 14, 2021 19:10
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Blacktongue Thief rocked. Binged it over a roadtrip this weekend. Can recommend, with a minor CW at the beginning of the novel for cat violence.
tokenbrownguy fucked around with this message at 21:14 on Jun 14, 2021 |
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Jun 14, 2021 19:48
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Decided to press on with Parker's Fencer trilogy despite the first book not totally wow-ing me. These books don't need to be as long as they are, I feel, but it does give Parker plenty of space to talk about how exactly to cut down a tree and the ways in which certain types of architecture subtly communicate power to observers, etc. etc. He really calmed way down with scene description in his later books. The magic system is both a cool addition and rare to see in Parker, but also maddening because it so vague and characters keep falling asleep and getting visions of the future or possible pasts and its hard to tell what it all means. I hear this book ends with a big twist so I'm looking forward to seeing how things trundle towards that.
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Jun 14, 2021 19:52
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If anyone else is a Hugo voter, the voter packet is out.
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Jun 14, 2021 22:46
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Ben Nevis posted:So yeah, if anyone was looking at the Zero G series cowritten by William Shatner and Jeff Rovin, don't. Jeff Rovin is still alive and writing? Geez.
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Jun 14, 2021 23:51
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I'm reading the doors of eden by tchaikovsy, 44% through. Very disappointing so far. I was expecting something interesting exploring different civilizations, like Stapledon's first and last men. The reality is a Dan brown like thriller about secret conspiracies. Not to mention the endless pop culture references, maybe they shouldn't bother me, but I can't help it. they are so unnecessary. Overall a massive step down from children of time. Hopefully the second half improves.
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Jun 15, 2021 00:00
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A Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea #1) by Ursula K Le Guin - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008T9L6AM
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Jun 15, 2021 00:01
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