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Wish I could hit the reset button and read Between Two Fires for the first time again.
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Jan 19, 2025 23:19
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anilEhilated posted:To be fair the movie is fairly different from the book. Given your username I will take your word for it
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Jan 20, 2025 20:37
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value-brand cereal fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Mar 26, 2025 |
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Jan 20, 2025 22:03
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anilEhilated posted:To be fair the movie is fairly different from the book. He has excellent prose. Authority and Absolution are far ahead of the other 2 though.
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Jan 22, 2025 17:59
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I'm reading one of Christopher Buehlman's newer books, The Blacktongue Thief. It's not horror, and I'm only mentioning it because of Between Two Fires. It's good, but not on the same level. It's also comedic how transparent his real world analogues for fantasy nations are. The protagonist is the fantasy equivalent of Irish, and Buehlman narrates the audiobook in an over-the-top "oirish" accent. I half expected him to say "They're magically delicious." at some point.
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Jan 22, 2025 21:03
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Curious that he didn't hone that accent on the Ren Faire circuit.
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Jan 22, 2025 21:19
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He lives in Florida, so any accent refinements probably were based on what sounds right to Americans.
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Jan 22, 2025 23:26
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Authority rocks and is this super specific vibe of overextended, crumbling, but also powerful and esoteric bureaucracy trying to make sense of an alien other that is even more opaque than itself I wish there were more books or things like it, but Control is really the only other piece of media I've stumbled across hits that spot imo (please prove me wrong)
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Jan 23, 2025 15:57
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MNIMWA posted:Authority rocks and is this super specific vibe of overextended, crumbling, but also powerful and esoteric bureaucracy trying to make sense of an alien other that is even more opaque than itself Control is HEAVILY inspired amongst many other things by the SCP foundation, which definitely has a lot of that sort of thing, although obviously the quality swings wildly between entries. I did really enjoy the SCP story turned book "There Is No Antimemetics Division" by Sam Hughes (aka Qntm)
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Jan 23, 2025 21:03
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MNIMWA posted:Authority rocks and is this super specific vibe of overextended, crumbling, but also powerful and esoteric bureaucracy trying to make sense of an alien other that is even more opaque than itself For me it was Absolution that really nailed that theme of Central as alien and inimical to humanity, mainly because of how unbelievably and thoroughly cruel it was to Old Jim There’s obviously a lot of material that covers dystopian bureaucracies but afaik Control is the media I’d consider closest in vibe
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Jan 24, 2025 04:05
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Danger posted:Anyone have any thoughts on “We Used to Live Here”? It was fine. I had a higher opinion of it immediately after I read it but I've soured on it. I think the core idea of an innocuous favor trapping someone into a situation that constantly gets worse and the feeling of unreality caused by alternate realities bleeding together is pretty spooky, but everything scary dwindled once I started to realize that this book was conceived of as the beginning of a series and not a particularly solid one at that. Its like JJ Abrams's "mystery box" style of writing, where you propose questions without having any actual answers, make some vague clues here and there, and sacrifice the cohesion of the first book/season/movie/whatever in the hopes that the desire to resolve their confusion hooks people in for the sequel. Anyway, I also read Tender is the Flesh. While I think it stumbles on occasion (there's something a little formulaic in how each encounter with a new character goes and the focus strays into tangents that don't really add much to the book) and it is also the absolute worst I have felt while reading something fictional, its a pretty good satire of industrial farming and capitalism/consumerism.
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Jan 24, 2025 10:53
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hopterque posted:"There Is No Antimemetics Division" by Sam Hughes (aka Qntm) oh for sure, should have mentioned this. I've got that in paperback waiting for me to finish a backlog of other stuff
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Jan 24, 2025 15:11
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Whirling posted:
I found it was a pretty accurate depiction of what society would look like had the situation become normalized and industrialized. Really good read but I see it in a lot of "extreme horror" lists which I don't really get. Dark, true, but extreme? I dunno. It's just as much a social commentary as anything else. I'm working through Grady Hendrix's Witchcraft for Wayward Girls audiobook and really liking it. I'm a sucker for Hendrix's stuff though, but this is the first audiobook for me.
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Jan 27, 2025 05:28
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Read House of Bone and Rain which describes itself as barrio noir. I'd add horror to that description, more cosmic than supernatural. All stories are ghost stories is a driving theme of the book, it was great.
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Jan 27, 2025 07:08
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R.L. Stine posted:Really good read but I see it in a lot of "extreme horror" lists which I don't really get. Dark, true, but extreme? I dunno. It's just as much a social commentary as anything else. Examining 'plausible' realities is terrifying sometimes.
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Jan 28, 2025 17:33
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True, although when I think of extreme horror the first things that come to mind are Cows or Matt Shaw's absolute garbage. I blame reddit. Speaking of Matt Shaw I've probably just summoned him Derek Smart style, sorry all.
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Jan 28, 2025 23:19
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Found a cheap physical copy of Only the Good Indians and grabbed it without knowing anything about it. Book good?
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Jan 28, 2025 23:23
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R.L. Stine posted:True, although when I think of extreme horror the first things that come to mind are Cows or Matt Shaw's absolute garbage. I blame reddit. Extreme horror is a weird thing because it’s a sliding scale for where it begins and ends just like saying ‘splatterpunk’. There are things some would consider to be in the sub genre that I enjoyed reading but almost universally anything that has “: an EXTREME horror novel” at the end of the title is trash and should be approached as such
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Jan 28, 2025 23:33
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Rolo posted:Found a cheap physical copy of Only the Good Indians and grabbed it without knowing anything about it. I liked it a lot but apparently it’s pretty divisive.
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Jan 29, 2025 00:01
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Rolo posted:Found a cheap physical copy of Only the Good Indians and grabbed it without knowing anything about it. One of my favorite modern horror novels. Nothing he wrote ever measured up to this, in my opinion. Enjoy it
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Jan 29, 2025 00:57
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Sweet, I’m not used to seeing modern horror in a second hand store so I usually snatch first ask later.
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Jan 29, 2025 02:04
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I recently decided to pass my couple of Tremblay books into the secondhand ecosystem (I don't really click with that guy's writing), so I hope they can inspire a similar "ooh, a TPB of a recent book in good shape" gratitude in someone.
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Jan 29, 2025 04:38
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Rolo posted:Found a cheap physical copy of Only the Good Indians and grabbed it without knowing anything about it. I have not liked anything else by this author but thought it was decent with some great moments
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Jan 29, 2025 08:29
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Enfys posted:I have not liked anything else by this author but thought it was decent with some great moments I read 3 of his other works and all of them were tough to get through, even the short novellas...
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Jan 30, 2025 02:10
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Rolo posted:Found a cheap physical copy of Only the Good Indians and grabbed it without knowing anything about it. I thought it was great in the first third but kinda lost focus and ended on a meh. So, you know, a horror novel.
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Jan 30, 2025 05:21
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value-brand cereal fucked around with this message at 17:35 on Mar 26, 2025 |
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Jan 30, 2025 19:08
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The only other novel of Jones' I've read is My Heart is a Chainsaw and it didn't do anything for me, but I've read a short story or two of his in random collections and thought they were decent
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Jan 30, 2025 19:11
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R.L. Stine posted:
Hiring a Midwestern voice actor for a protagonist from Alabama took some getting used to lol
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Jan 31, 2025 06:40
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Metaline posted:Hiring a Midwestern voice actor for a protagonist from Alabama took some getting used to lol When I listened to Nestlings it sounded to me like the narrator was a British person reading with an American accent, and I just thought it was obvious and distracting. So I looked it up and she's from Michigan. Not a trace of northern midwest in her voice. It's also frustrating when actors try to do a southern accent but just end up sounding like hillbillies. caspergers fucked around with this message at 00:37 on Feb 1, 2025 |
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Feb 1, 2025 00:35
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I think audiobook actors should just quit with accents completely. The book says the dude is French-Canadian, now I know. I'm looking at you "performing" Into the Drowning Deep, Christine Lakin!
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Feb 1, 2025 02:16
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I think Nat Cassidy just isn't my cup of spooky tea despite his popularity. I didn't enjoy my slog through Nestlings a few months ago. I ended up checking out Mary without realising it was the same author until today. While there were parts I was almost enjoying, it was feeling like such a slog that I decided to abandon it for now rather than continue brow-beating myself into picking it up when I really didn't want to. I feel less bad about this decision after realising it's the same author of Nestlings, which I did make myself finish. Enfys fucked around with this message at 09:46 on Feb 1, 2025 |
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Feb 1, 2025 09:42
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I think someone in here recommended The Descent by Jeff Long. That was a fun time, thanks! I was expecting something more Journey to the Center of the Earth but Long abstracts away a lot of the minutiae of the voyage, which is a big part of Jules Verne’s formula. And it’s a horror thriller and not a sci fi adventure.
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Feb 1, 2025 11:57
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Enfys posted:I think Nat Cassidy just isn't my cup of spooky tea despite his popularity. Yeah Nestlings was interesting and boring at the same time, very frustrating. I think my main issue was it was a slog for a bit and then everything started happening at once. No real buildup, it didn't even establish a good atmosphere at the beginning of the book. It did have enjoyable aspects like the very Stephen King-inspired ex-landlord and the two protagonists turning on each other. And the ending was very strange, confusing, and depressing. I'm not big on bleak endings unless it's a somewhat satisfying conclusion to the emotional structure of the story. Anyone read Adam Neville? Two of his books, Cunning Folk and Last Days, have very bleak endings but the protagonists' needs are technically met, so it offers a really bittersweet and poignant ending. Nestlings didn't seem to have that, just "something bad happened, let's move on from this." Nothing learned whatsoever, absolutely pointless.
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Feb 1, 2025 13:21
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value-brand cereal fucked around with this message at 17:36 on Mar 26, 2025 |
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Feb 1, 2025 17:21
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value-brand cereal posted:iirc Nat Cassidy is Jewish or was raised in Judaism byt is non practicing. If that explains why theres a general 'bad things happen, we survived, no morals, the end' explanation. It reads a more literary horror than horror, to me. It's not like scifi or fantasy where theres generally a winning Good Ending. Same tone or flavors of realism as Tremblay or King really. I can admire an author who would go for the Bad Ending, whether or not theres a Final Girl / Boy. This makes sense, similar to the ending of A Serious Man, regarded by most to be the Coens' most quintessentially jewish film Also just to clarify further with the "needs met with a bleak ending" thing I prefer in storytelling another good example of this is Being John Malkovich, where the protagonist gets what he wants but we see just how pathetic he is and the lengths he went to achieve it. In Cunning Folk the protagonist's wife takes his daughter away but by some folk magic deal with the devil he was able to become some shadow entity demon thing so he could haunt his daughter's bedroom, so he got what he wanted but it leaves you with a unique sense of disgust.. So when I talk about "needs met" I don't necessarily mean good/happy ending, just structural integtrity; Seinfeld and Peep Show are masters of this (apples and oranges comparing books to film/tv, i'm sure, but at the end of the day writing is writing) caspergers fucked around with this message at 14:16 on Feb 2, 2025 |
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Feb 2, 2025 13:44
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tuyop posted:I think someone in here recommended The Descent by Jeff Long. That was a fun time, thanks! Just had a look at this: great concept, enthusiastically written, but holy poo poo, is it incoherent. It's like the author grabbed a great armful of protagonists, ideas and clashing plot structures and wildly mashed them all together. Long claims in the acknowledgements that this book had an editor, which I sincerely doubt.
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Feb 3, 2025 07:59
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Pistol_Pete posted:Just had a look at this: great concept, enthusiastically written, but holy poo poo, is it incoherent. It's like the author grabbed a great armful of protagonists, ideas and clashing plot structures and wildly mashed them all together. Long claims in the acknowledgements that this book had an editor, which I sincerely doubt. Yeah I’d say in the third act, everyone has very confused motivations. And you’re right, if it had just been a daring tale of searching the underworld for artifacts and linguistic traces, it would be way better. OR this Blood Meridian mercenary crew searching for the president’s daughter. OR the other subplots.
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Feb 3, 2025 11:37
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Pistol_Pete posted:great concept, enthusiastically written, but holy poo poo, is it incoherent. Speaking of Blood Meridian
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Feb 3, 2025 14:00
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caspergers posted:Speaking of Blood Meridian except I feel like with Blood Meridian, the incoherence is kind of the point. I haven't read Descent so I can't speak to whether it's intentional there, but it doesn't sound like it is really
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Feb 3, 2025 19:29
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“The 2005 film of the same name has a lot of similarities to, but is not based on, the book.” Hmm. It’s the exact same concept, on a larger scale. Then I read the rest of the book plot summary on wiki, and hooboy, all this other poo poo? Still want to read it though, in hopes that there are a lot of spooky/violent scenes involving the “troglofauna hominids”
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Feb 3, 2025 22:41
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