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Oh yeah, also the gender politics are about as nuanced as a Lockhorns cartoon
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Aug 9, 2022 21:28
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Spime Wrangler posted:you sound like of those hussies with a plunging neckline who could use her bottom striped!! The cleavage dilated.
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Aug 9, 2022 21:28
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fwiw the new readers/spoiler tags thread is https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3983558 and the spoilers are totes okay thread is https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3897992 in case you want to discuss the books including or other than the well hashed grounds already being noted
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Aug 9, 2022 21:30
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I have a decent tolerance for generic fantasy but I've read the first two WoT books and I'm really undecided on continuing. I thought they were both pretty bland, though Great Hunt picked up and did some interesting stuff near the end. I just can't decide if it's worth reading any more, I've heard that reading through the third book does kind of give you a decent stopping point so maybe I'll do that. Or never touch them again. There are so many good books out there that I struggle to give the free time I have to Robert Jordan.
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Aug 9, 2022 21:33
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Wheel of Time was revolutionary and new in a big way . . In 1990. Gandalf is a woman! The hero is unpopular and has ptsd! We're referencing non-nordic mythology and cultures! That stuff was all groundbreaking in 1990 but it's standard fare now. I still think the series is worth reading but mostly for the mount-everest-effect of it; its so big and so much of a muchness that reading it start to finish is a kind of reader's marathon, a fairly unique experience few other things offer because few other things even attempt to offer that kind of scope or duration. But I'm never gonna tell anyone they have to read wheel of time. Not anymore anyway. I did say that to people in like 1991. We aren't in 1991 any more. The one caveat I'll add is that Eye was deliberately written to be the standard familiar farmboy fantasy to bring readers familiar with Tolkien and other conventional stuff. The series does get progressively more and more it's own thing with each book. But even then it isn't for everyone and that's fine. Wait and watch the TV show. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Aug 9, 2022 |
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Aug 9, 2022 21:42
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Time spent reading wot is time you could be spending reading Conan. Consider that
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Aug 9, 2022 21:45
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Taffy Torpedo posted:I want to read more of Janny Wurts' stuff but I'm not really ready to start a 14 book series or however long her Wars of Light and Shadow series is. Lol I just did this, and didn't realize what I had gotten myself into. If you do i'd love to hear what you think. I just finished book 1.
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Aug 9, 2022 21:46
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Gaius Marius posted:Time spent reading wot is time you could be spending reading Conan. Consider that This is a compelling argument for me.
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Aug 9, 2022 21:57
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Another issue with WoT is it's got that PoV character syndrome, where you're reading a really good part of the story that has action and consequences and you turn the page and it's a loving Perrin chapter, oh and he just doesn't understand women does he. No sir he does not.
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Aug 9, 2022 22:05
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It sure is frustrating, especially since Matt always knew how to handle women, or Rand.
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Aug 9, 2022 22:11
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I read the first two books then skipped to a later one because it's what the library had, and as far as I remember it was an entire doorstopper fantasy book where literally nothing happened
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Aug 9, 2022 22:14
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Qwertycoatl posted:I read the first two books then skipped to a later one because it's what the library had, and as far as I remember it was an entire doorstopper fantasy book where literally nothing happened Ah. Good ol' Crossroads.
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Aug 9, 2022 22:20
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Spime Wrangler posted:It sure is frustrating, especially since Matt always knew how to handle women, or Rand. lol
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Aug 9, 2022 22:26
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Yeah I also got as far as book 6 before I dropped it. I was tempted to reread it after I watched the TV series, which I thought was fine. Possibly because I would find Rosamund Pike watchable reading a telephone directory. But one look at the listing on Amazon and I was "Nope!". I will settle for whatever abridged TV version we get. The Sanderson books may be great, I ain't wading through X' thousands of pages to get to them.
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Aug 9, 2022 23:18
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The Dispossessed by Ursula K Le Guin - $0.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09XMDG3MH/ Countdown City (Last Policeman #2) by Ben H Winters - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B6OV90E/
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Aug 10, 2022 00:33
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I picked up The Eye of the World when it first came out. After a while, I noticed I was on page 150 and literally nothing had happened. That was as far as I ever got into the series.
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Aug 10, 2022 01:02
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Selachian posted:I picked up The Eye of the World when it first came out. After a while, I noticed I was on page 150 and literally nothing had happened. That was as far as I ever got into the series. I think I got maybe 6-7 books into the series but I can't for the life of me recall in detail any specific thing that happened in it.
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Aug 10, 2022 01:12
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StashAugustine posted:I havent gotten into Discworld before but i just read Guards Guards and loved it. Have had Small Gods recommended, where else to keep reading? IMO just start at the beginning and read in publication order. If you find the first book too dated to enjoy (it very much riffing on specific fantasy authors/characters/books which are not, I think, as widely read these days, and a lot of the characters and setting elements hadn't really gelled yet, like Death) skip ahead to Mort and read from there.
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Aug 10, 2022 01:14
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Pyramids, Going Postal, Guards, Guards, and the Tiffany Aching books are the must reads, in my opinion.
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Aug 10, 2022 01:55
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I'd agree with Going Postal and Guards, Guards for sure. I haven't read the Aching books so I can't speak to those, but Pyramids didn't really do anything for me, I found it kind of flat and forgettable personally.
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Aug 10, 2022 02:06
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MockingQuantum posted:I'd agree with Going Postal and Guards, Guards for sure. I haven't read the Aching books so I can't speak to those, but Pyramids didn't really do anything for me, I found it kind of flat and forgettable personally. I just really find the camel jokes top notch. Its got a great Death scene too.
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Aug 10, 2022 02:09
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MartingaleJack posted:I just really find the camel jokes top notch. To be fair, I can't argue with the camel jokes. A lot of the other humor didn't hit for me. I do think Pyramids is maybe the one Pratchett that suffers the most from having some specific British cultural touchstones, but maybe that was just me being a dumb American. Also I think that type of Pratchett novel is the type I like the least--largely one-off books that center all the humor around a single subject or area of knowledge. They just don't stand well on their own merits IMO. I was also lukewarm on Moving Pictures and Soul Music, despite the latter having some really clever references that I intellectually enjoyed. On the other hand, I work in live theater occasionally and absolutely loved Wyrd Sisters and Lords and Ladies so maybe it's just about hitting the right notes for any given reader.
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Aug 10, 2022 02:14
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Thief of Time is my favourite. I still think about Lu-Tze's advice every time I'm sweeping the floor.
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Aug 10, 2022 03:00
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The books may seem funny but Pratchett's secular humanism is spiritually corrosive.
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Aug 10, 2022 03:59
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MockingQuantum posted:I'd agree with Going Postal and Guards, Guards for sure. I haven't read the Aching books so I can't speak to those, but Pyramids didn't really do anything for me, I found it kind of flat and forgettable personally.  To me, Pyramids reads like a set of ideas that never really coalesced into a complete plot, or maybe like a beta version of Small Gods. I think I read somewhere that Pratchett wrote his first drafts before he figured out where the plot was going, and polished them up afterwards, which would explain a lot about this one especially.
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Aug 10, 2022 04:29
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FPyat posted:The books may seem funny but Pratchett's secular humanism is spiritually corrosive. If there's one thing I'm always thinking about when reading Pratchett it's the thin line he walks between being a secular humanist and a card carrying member of the church of Anoia.
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Aug 10, 2022 04:45
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FPyat posted:The books may seem funny but Pratchett's secular humanism is spiritually corrosive. Say whaa
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Aug 10, 2022 05:32
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The passage about the cheap vs expensive boots was life-changing when I was 17
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Aug 10, 2022 05:46
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Kesper North posted:Say whaa John C Wright sock puppet spotted? http://www.scifiwright.com/2011/10/the-watchtowers-of-atlantis-tremble/
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Aug 10, 2022 06:16
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ianmacdo posted:John C Wright sock puppet spotted? I made that joke because I went to an Evangelical school where teachers would warn students that Harry Potter would reduce their awareness of the dangers of real witchcraft. I never actually saw much in the way of Christian backlash against Pratchett before reading that post, so I was trying to imagine what my Lewis & Chesterton loving educators would say if they read Small Gods or Wyrd Sisters.
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Aug 10, 2022 06:36
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VostokProgram posted:The passage about the cheap vs expensive boots was life-changing when I was 17 Same.
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Aug 10, 2022 08:31
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ianmacdo posted:John C Wright sock puppet spotted? I love reading John C Wright. Even though he has brainworms. Maybe because he has brainworms? I don't know, the guy occupies this bizarre space where he's so preposterously ludicrous that I experience this weird doubt-edging when I read his words or read about him... like it has to be this amazing grandiose act of satire, right? Right? The fedora, the grandstanding, the just-on-the-cusp of institutionalizeable(sure that's a word) pants-on-head insanity, the white hot Catholicism boner he developed late in life, the plots of his more recent books, just... it can't really be real, right? It is, of course. Whatever mind monster from Dimension Z that ate his previous psyche after it finished with Dan Simmons left this weird homunculus behind that blogs like this and writes things like Somewither, a book that has been basically scraped from reality (except for Kindle Unlimited, lol) and a book that is like 1/3 transcendentally amazing Babylonpunk Sci-Fi, 1/3 The Shittiest YA Novel You Ever Read and 1/3 The Creepiest Schoolteacher Wants to Spank Teenage Girls Chronicles. It's not good! Don't read it! And yet, I cannot look away.
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Aug 10, 2022 09:55
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There is a new, and pretty decent as far as I can tell, bundle over at StoryBundle: The Dark SF Bundlequote:Science fiction has dabbled in utopia before, but never as often as people might think. The early writers' visions of the future were often dire. There was Asimov's crumbling galactic empire in Foundation, or his murder-driven The Caves of Steel with its claustrophobically enclosed city. Philip K. Dick's nightmares took form in print, paranoid horror-like tales of a shifting reality in classics like Ubik or The Man in the High Castle. Richard Matheson's I Am Legend imagined the last man on Earth haunted by vampires. $5 gives you
$20 gives you the above as well as
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Aug 10, 2022 11:06
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So I read Vita Nostra by the Dyachenkos and I've ordered The Scar by them too. Does anyone have some other recommendations for fantasy that wasn't originally written in english? Also unrelated question: How does Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn by Tad Williams hold up? I gather it was pretty influential but is it worth a read?
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Aug 10, 2022 15:27
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A friend of mine was trying to explain Riverdale to me and accidentally provided the perfect example of why I like the anti-Sandersonian approach to magicquote:Anyhow in episode 100, "The Jughead Paradox," it is revealed that the bomb that Veronica's crime boss dad set off under archie's bed in an attempt to kill him resulted in a sort of second big bang that created a parallel universe, almost exactly the name only the town was called, "Rivervale"
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Aug 10, 2022 16:06
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Taffy Torpedo posted:Also unrelated question: How does Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn by Tad Williams hold up? I gather it was pretty influential but is it worth a read? I've read at least 50 pages of it and how do you feel about reading a doorstopper fantasy epic by the world's most verbose man.
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Aug 10, 2022 16:14
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Taffy Torpedo posted:
From what I recall it occupies a fairly similar space to early Wheel of Time: decently executed farmboy fantasy that was novel and good in the 90s.
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Aug 10, 2022 16:17
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IIRC Tad Williams invented that thing where the doorstopper author realises it won't all fit in the last book of tbe trilogy.
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Aug 10, 2022 16:21
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I read Locklands and the Big U this week. Locklands was ok, liked that it tied everything up in 3 books and didn't extend itself out into a endless fantasy series. The timeskips in Locklands and the earlier first two books in the series didn't bother me, that's Robert Jackson Bennett's writing thing. Started off enjoying the Big U, then read it for morbid completions sake after the rape attempt scene happened. What the gently caress Neal Stephenson. Before that point it was oddly engaging and full of cleverish pokes at college environment life/college faculty and students living in a different reality than non-college people, after that the Big U became recognizably Neal Stephenson-esque with everyone morphed into complete psychopath villains or morphed into hyper-competent urban combat badasses or existed to make the hyper-competent characters go places. Other than that, the pocket tank was a cute concept for the 6 pages it existed and the sewer LARPing before the giant mutant rats appeared was amusing.
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Aug 10, 2022 16:24
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:From what I recall it occupies a fairly similar space to early Wheel of Time: decently executed farmboy fantasy that was novel and good in the 90s. I think I read the first two books in high school and it was just a dull slog. But that was in high school AKA 35+ years ago. I might need to give it a second go but right now I'm on an Ethshar kick which is pretty much the opposite of door-stopper fantasy.
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Aug 10, 2022 18:17
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