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Everyone posted:What sexual assault scene? I ask because I haven't read book 2 since it came out nine years ago in 2012. Meredith using mind magic to get Alex to sleep with her.
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Jun 5, 2021 15:03
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Here’s some thread necromancy, with no group sex. I caught up on the thread for the first time since 2015, which meant reading this gem—among countless predictions of “Peace Talks next year for sure”:biracial bear for uncut posted:(Nicodemus should be played by) Tom Ellis, once that Lucifer TV show gets cancelled. Well, looks like we still have another year or two to convince Netflix to rehire Ellis for the new position.  (I enjoyed the parallels between the Lucifer TV series and the Harry Dresden character pre/post Changes. Killed off unexpectedly, then miraculously resurrected, with a marked change in scope/tone/quality before vs after the break.)
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Jun 5, 2021 16:12
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I just finished the first four Sandman Slim books- they were a lot of fun, in a lot of ways they reminded me of Alex Verus in the sense that this felt like the kind of book Jim Butcher thought he was writing with The Dresden Files. My only big, recurring complaint is that Stark didn't consistently click for me- it felt like his personality wildly deviated between genuine bastard and haunted good person who used scars to cover his hurt. It felt almost like the author was worried about making him too much of a jackass, and overcompensated too much in the other direction- most of my favorite scenes are the ones where Stark and his friends are just genuinely kind of garbage people, like when he's the devil and scaring the hell out of some animatronics wizard, and his girlfriend casually goes 'We're gonna nail wheels to your legs and ride you like a horsie,' not because Stark needs help intimidating the poor man but just because it's kinda funny. Also wasn't a fan of Alice casually going 'Oh yeah, in addition to being murdered I was also raped, that felt gross and unnecessary, but thankfully it was just a throwaway line. Fun books, though!
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Jun 6, 2021 22:18
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So now that I'm completely through the Verus series to date: I got a little grumpy for a while about the general change in tone in the last two books though I can't really say it wasn't earned, or that it wasn't coming. I definitely like Alex Verus, Hanging On By The Skin Of His Teeth better than Alex Verus, Murderhobo though. (It's not really that huge a change in his character, I guess; Alex was always the dude who would prioritize keeping himself and his friends alive over every other consideration, and the best you could say for him is that he would at least try not to go on killing sprees if there was another way. Now he's just much more capable of killing sprees, but that's not really as interesting to read.) Jacka does a great job of presenting Alex as an unreliable narrator. Not that he's lying to us (though certainly to himself), but he's blinded by his own perspective and we the readers get to see a bit beyond that from time to time. I'll be interested to see how things pan out in the last book. Also I have definitely watched way too much Arrowverse stuff in the last year but Cinder is 100% Dominic Purcell's portrayal of Mick Rory, right? Right?
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Jun 8, 2021 21:40
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docbeard posted:Also I have definitely watched way too much Arrowverse stuff in the last year but Cinder is 100% Dominic Purcell's portrayal of Mick Rory, right? Right? Only if Cinder writes a series of trashy but extremely popular action romance novels.
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Jun 9, 2021 01:11
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docbeard posted:So now that I'm completely through the Verus series to date: I avoid the CW like the plague, but if you give the Verus audio books a shot you'll get a better idea of the intended tone for Cinder's character. The narrator does a very good job of having unique and consistent voices for each character, and their "voice" for Cinder is perfect.
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Jun 9, 2021 01:58
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biracial bear for uncut posted:I avoid the CW like the plague I haven't been avoiding the CW exactly, but I have kind of lost track/interest in it over the past couple of years. I will say that Legends of Tomorrow got kind of bat-poo poo crazy in the best of ways. Season Two was a huge improvement over the first season and the show more fun in Season with the addition of Tala Ashe. Plus Matt Ryan was perfect as John Constantine.
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Jun 9, 2021 03:21
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What did you think of how the stuff with Rachel and Drakh concluded? Besides the Anne stuff I think that was my biggest disappointment in the series- Drakh was really well-established as a scary eldritch threat guy, so boiling him down to "Lol, he's Verus except with another djinn, because everyone has a djinn" felt like a real letdown, especially since after multiple books of talking up the Rachel stuff, it turns out that the prophesied thing was basically "Distract a guy for a second so you can shoot him."
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Jun 9, 2021 05:03
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Omi no Kami posted:What did you think of how the stuff with Rachel and Drakh concluded? Besides the Anne stuff I think that was my biggest disappointment in the series- Drakh was really well-established as a scary eldritch threat guy, so boiling him down to "Lol, he's Verus except with another djinn, because everyone has a djinn" felt like a real letdown, especially since after multiple books of talking up the Rachel stuff, it turns out that the prophesied thing was basically "Distract a guy for a second so you can shoot him." As long as there's a possibility for a diviner to win, the diviner wins. This is insane bullshit hampered only by the opposition being able to melt the whole building and teleport. Verus uses repeatedly uses a minor power boost, an artifact, circumstances to beat people he shouldn't be able to. Its completely logical for an amoral diviner rear end in a top hat to shore up his weakness and therefore become basically untouchable. This explains said dickwad taking a diviner as an apprentice, with an explicit plan to either give his power to another mage or for him to take another mage's power. I'm not surprised about the power up being a djinn because they've been in the books since the start along side that mages are assholes to magical creatures. w.r.t to Rachel, I thought it was hilarious was appropriately cynical.
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Jun 9, 2021 05:37
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docbeard posted:Also I have definitely watched way too much Arrowverse stuff in the last year but Cinder is 100% Dominic Purcell's portrayal of Mick Rory, right? Right? I agree with the opinion I've seen a lot in this thread that the direction the Verus series has taken in the last couple books isn't particularly satisfactory for me. I'm almost certainly going to read the last book and will look forward to checking out whatever's next for the author, though.
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Jun 9, 2021 05:53
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Omi no Kami posted:What did you think of how the stuff with Rachel and Drakh concluded? Besides the Anne stuff I think that was my biggest disappointment in the series- Drakh was really well-established as a scary eldritch threat guy, so boiling him down to "Lol, he's Verus except with another djinn, because everyone has a djinn" felt like a real letdown, especially since after multiple books of talking up the Rachel stuff, it turns out that the prophesied thing was basically "Distract a guy for a second so you can shoot him." Richard being another diviner was more or less inevitable for thematic reasons if nothing else. I haven't found anything about him to be that disappointing, mostly because he's always been Alex's personal nightmare, and it became increasingly clear that that's because of the circumstances of their relationship rather than because Richard was objectively some sort of unbeatable superwizard (except to the extent that diviners are really loving powerful in their way). Rachel...yeah, I'm a bit disappointed, less with the idea that redemption arcs only work if the person has any desire to be redeemed, which is fair enough, than with the general idea that trying to help friends who make bad choices is stupid and naive and what you should really do is kill them as hard as possible. For the record, I've really enjoyed the series in spite of some disappointing turns here at the end and I'm fully onboard to see how it turns out. Although...drat, I kind of expected it going in but the Babylon 5 references are REALLY blatant, aren't they?
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Jun 9, 2021 12:32
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Speaking of Richard, after finding that he's also a Diviner I'm a bit confused that it wasn't obvious after the time Alex had a meeting with him and considered just stabbing him there and then. He did think to himself that he was surprised the fight would be so close, but he apparently could not see that he'd be getting counter-divined. Unless I am misremember and that was after Alex knew?
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Jun 9, 2021 14:10
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Darkrenown posted:Speaking of Richard, after finding that he's also a Diviner I'm a bit confused that it wasn't obvious after the time Alex had a meeting with him and considered just stabbing him there and then. He did think to himself that he was surprised the fight would be so close, but he apparently could not see that he'd be getting counter-divined. Unless I am misremember and that was after Alex knew? It may be difficult for dividers to predict other dividers, mutually. There's a recursivity issue.
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Jun 9, 2021 14:12
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Darkrenown posted:Speaking of Richard, after finding that he's also a Diviner I'm a bit confused that it wasn't obvious after the time Alex had a meeting with him and considered just stabbing him there and then. He did think to himself that he was surprised the fight would be so close, but he apparently could not see that he'd be getting counter-divined. Unless I am misremember and that was after Alex knew? Maybe I'm misremembering but isn't that part of what clued Alex in that Richard was probably a diviner? Hieronymous Alloy posted:It may be difficult for dividers to predict other dividers, mutually. There's a recursivity issue. One of the things I noticed as I read is that divination seems to be more or less unblockable and undetectable by other mages or magical protections, even those who are generally capable of blocking things like mental magic or time magic or whatever. The only things I ever remember even slowing Alex's divination down (aside from the built-in limitations like free will or there just being too many potential futures to sort through) were the wards in Crystal/Vitus's mansion in whichever book the apprentice tournament was in.
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Jun 9, 2021 14:20
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docbeard posted:Maybe I'm misremembering but isn't that part of what clued Alex in that Richard was probably a diviner? Could be, but I don't think he was convinced by it at the time. And yeah, I expect Diviner vs Diviner fights could cause some problems, I just though Alex would recognise it either by "hey, how is he countering my every move?" or "why are we both just standing there motionless in every future?". It could aslo be that Alex just has no idea what a Diviner fight looks like and doesn't consider it much because they are so rare. I should just re-read the books and get a better idea of what actually happened and what was foreshadowed.
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Jun 9, 2021 14:38
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Darkrenown posted:Could be, but I don't think he was convinced by it at the time. Yeah, he suspected it but didn't settle on it until after he hauled off and punched Richard without thinking about it first and the punch landed.
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Jun 9, 2021 15:26
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biracial bear for uncut posted:Yeah, he suspected it but didn't settle on it until after he hauled off and punched Richard without thinking about it first and the punch landed. There is a similar thing in the mistborn series. In a fight with someone who can see the future the solution was basically stop thinking and act off random instinct.
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Jun 9, 2021 16:35
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Keystoned posted:There is a similar thing in the mistborn series. In a fight with someone who can see the future the solution was basically stop thinking and act off random instinct. It's also pretty much how Deadpool beats people that can read/react to intent in a fight (Taskmaster, telepaths, etc.).
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Jun 9, 2021 16:52
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docbeard posted:
A couple of points. First, Alex and Rachel were never friends IIRC. He's become friends with people who cared about Rachel (Cinder and ghost or whatever of the apprentice whose name I can't be arsed to look up), but any attempts Alex made to "save" Rachel where always for them, not for Rachel herself. Second, there is a big difference between friends/people who make bad choices and somebody who willfully pursues a path to the destruction of themselves and/or others. In the first case you should be willing to reach out or extend some measure of help and consideration. In the second case you should be willing to do that as well. However, there also needs to come a point where you recognize a willfully destructive path for what it is and you need to be wiling to cut that person loose before you end up going down their path with them. I mean, Dr. Harleen Quinzel tried to help the Joker and.... it did not go well for her.
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Jun 9, 2021 18:10
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Everyone posted:A couple of points. First, Alex and Rachel were never friends IIRC. He's become friends with people who cared about Rachel (Cinder and ghost or whatever of the apprentice whose name I can't be arsed to look up), but any attempts Alex made to "save" Rachel where always for them, not for Rachel herself. The name you can't remember that was repeated a lot throughout the series is Shireen.
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Jun 9, 2021 18:14
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I like the direction Verus has taken but I understand why others wouldn't. I like the unfolding logic of his choices; he's being effectively forced to become a villain and it's a neat exploration of that character "development". The overall treatment of Anne is what I see as the series weak point, in a few different ways.
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Jun 9, 2021 19:12
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docbeard posted:
I don't think that's the takeaway at all, Rachel has been actively trying to kill him throughout the series and even though he's powered up enough to _probably_ win without killing her, I don't think it's reasonable to continue to expect him to take the high road. He's not killing her just because he's done trying to help, it's self-defense.
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Jun 9, 2021 19:19
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The overall treatment of Anne is what I see as the series weak point, in a few different ways. Gonna be hilarious when Anne kicks the Djinn out on her own and everyone else is just left standing around like a bunch of useless plot devices.
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Jun 9, 2021 19:26
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Everyone posted:A couple of points. First, Alex and Rachel were never friends IIRC. He's become friends with people who cared about Rachel (Cinder and ghost or whatever of the apprentice whose name I can't be arsed to look up), but any attempts Alex made to "save" Rachel where always for them, not for Rachel herself. Yeah, I don't think you're wrong about any of this, it just didn't really come across well for me. Hieronymous Alloy posted:The overall treatment of Anne is what I see as the series weak point, in a few different ways. Yeah, no question. I'm still trying to sort out how I feel about Anne's story in about twenty different ways but I think making the Also hahahaha I'd almost forgotten, Sheridan's Shadow-possessed wife in B5 is called Anna.
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Jun 9, 2021 19:57
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biracial bear for uncut posted:The name you can't remember that was repeated a lot throughout the series is Shireen. The last book, Forged came out in November of last year. I got it the day it came out and read it over the next day or two, then I put it on a shelf and haven't really looked at any of the series since then. docbeard posted:Yeah, I don't think you're wrong about any of this, it just didn't really come across well for me. When the last book comes out I'll be torn between doing a full series re-read or a Babylon5 rewatch to make sure I catch all the references.
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Jun 10, 2021 00:31
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Cugel the Clever posted:For some reason I've always pictured Cinder as Fat Chance from The Venture Bros. I always figured he looked like the bulky black heared dude from metalocalypse (not that I've actually seen the show, so I have no idea if the character fits, just how I imagined him to look)
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Jun 10, 2021 07:54
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I just finished a very long web serial (Now You Feel Like Number None, for the curious). The focus was definitely primarily on the protagonist's relationships with her fellow ghosts and attempts to build an actual society of undead in the Hollow World, and secondarily on the cataclysmic battle to attack and dethrone god; and while I do enjoy the occasional epic battle and will happily take as much cozy undead lesbian domesticity as I can carry, the bits that I enjoyed the most were actually the mundane (for lack of a better word), slice-of-life interactions between Nemo and her fellow ghosts, and the humans -- both the superpowered humans who are participating in the whole fate-of-the-universe stuff and the ones who can see ghosts but are pretty much sitting this one out otherwise. Like, the bits where a goth medium finds Nemo haunting a clothing store and gives her fashion advice, or Esme gets adopted by a bunch of bunch of ghost hunters, or the government of the afterlife shows up in a maelstrom of darkess and thunder to congratulate some of their human friends on their first day at university and give them a houseplant and some snacks? I would read an entire series of that. So -- any recommendations? You get some of this in Seanan McGuire's urban fantasy series (I am especially thinking of InCryptid here, but Ghost Roads and October Daye have a bit of it as well), and Jim Hines's Magic Ex Libris books, but it's not a significant element of either.
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Jun 24, 2021 13:57
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You have probably already tried Katalepsis right? If not then it sounds like it might have been written for you.
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Jun 25, 2021 11:00
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Lot 49 posted:You have probably already tried Katalepsis right? I've never even heard of it, and it does look like it's Extremely My poo poo, but it's also unfinished, so that goes on the backburner until it's done.
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Jun 25, 2021 22:12
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New Craig Schaefer out called The Hungry Dreaming. This is set in the Ghosts of Gotham universe, but isn't a direct sequel (new characters). It is quite low on the supernatural for the first 2/3rds, and reads as more of a horror novel, then the magic explodes in the climax of the novel. I enjoyed it, and in particular, I loved that the final confrontation with the big bad was resolved in a very clever way, and wasn't just "so I punched EVEN HARDER."
gerg_861 fucked around with this message at 15:53 on Jul 8, 2021 |
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Jul 8, 2021 13:59
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gerg_861 posted:New Craig Schaefer out called The Hungry Dreaming. This is set in the Ghosts of Gotham universe, but isn't a direct sequel (new characters). It is quite low on the supernatural for the first 2/3rds, and reads as more of a horror novel, then the magic explodes in the climax of the novel. I enjoyed it, and in particular, I loved that the final bad confrontation with the big bad was resolved in a very clever way, and was in no way "so I punched EVEN HARDER." Oh the other hand, I gave up on it about 20% of the way through because it was dragging so much. It felt like a very slow, generic, American cop/hard-bitten journalist investigation plot with a bit of supernatural thrown on top. I think it was made worse for me coming directly from Schaefer's other newish book, Black tie required (Harmony Black) which I didn't much enjoy either. I just found the way Harmony and co were gleefully talking about how anyone who dared commit the terrible crime of cheating Vegas casinos are scum who deserve 25-life while they themselves are operating outside the law very distasteful (Harmony even executes a guy in cold blood towards the end. It is to stop him suffering terrible torture + avoiding the cost of failing to catch him, but it's still very much an illegal murder). Of course, they are all FBI agents so it makes perfect sense they love harsh punishments for the "bad people" who do crimes against the rich while ignoring their own much worse crimes against regular people, but I didn't enjoy them as protagonists.
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Jul 8, 2021 15:22
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Darkrenown posted:Oh the other hand, I gave up on it about 20% of the way through because it was dragging so much. It felt like a very slow, generic, American cop/hard-bitten journalist investigation plot with a bit of supernatural thrown on top. Not going to disagree that this started slow, it was one of those novels where it took me 3 days to read the first half and 3 hours to read the second half. Fair warning, The Hungry Dreaming is also Schaefer's longest book. Harmony Black is fine, but I wouldn't read it if it didn't cross over with Faust.
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Jul 8, 2021 15:58
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gerg_861 posted:Not going to disagree that this started slow, it was one of those novels where it took me 3 days to read the first half and 3 hours to read the second half. Fair warning, The Hungry Dreaming is also Schaefer's longest book. Harmony Black is fine, but I wouldn't read it if it didn't cross over with Faust. Hungry dreaming was also originally a serial with a weekly release on his Patreon, which probably explains some of the weird pacing issues.
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Jul 8, 2021 16:15
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Darkrenown posted:I think it was made worse for me coming directly from Schaefer's other newish book, Black tie required (Harmony Black) which I didn't much enjoy either. I just found the way Harmony and co were gleefully talking about how anyone who dared commit the terrible crime of cheating Vegas casinos are scum who deserve 25-life while they themselves are operating outside the law very distasteful (Harmony even executes a guy in cold blood towards the end. It is to stop him suffering terrible torture + avoiding the cost of failing to catch him, but it's still very much an illegal murder). Of course, they are all FBI agents so it makes perfect sense they love harsh punishments for the "bad people" who do crimes against the rich while ignoring their own much worse crimes against regular people, but I didn't enjoy them as protagonists. Except that's not what happened? Harmony was posing as a gaming-board agent to rattle the bad guy into making a dumb move, then she and Jessie played bad cop-bad cop to scare the dealer into cooperating. It was an act, not their actual feelings. IIRC, it's even made clear they had no intention of arresting the dealer; they needed her cooperation to try and keep her from getting herself killed or blowing their operation, and scaring her was the best way to do it.
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Jul 8, 2021 16:43
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I'm not talking about their act, her talking to her fellow agents and internal monologue go on about what a terrible felony cheating the casino is.
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Jul 8, 2021 19:04
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xsf421 posted:Hungry dreaming was also originally a serial with a weekly release on his Patreon, which probably explains some of the weird pacing issues. I backed it on Patreon and it still had pacing issues with the weekly releases and stalled out a few times on the first couple of chapters. It does pick up towards the halfway point and I really liked it overall. However it does feel like the most structured of his books and it does a deep dive into the history of NYC. Schaefer did a write up once he finished the book that goes into how his writing process is different depending on the series. There's a four part breakdown of his outlining process on his Patreon, I am not sure if it is available for free but here's the link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/outlining-part-48534656 Edit: I just checked in another browser, unfortunately, it's paywalled. However if you're interested in his process for $2 you get the whole of the Hungry Dreaming and his next project, Any Minor World, which has around 32 chapters released so far. I haven't started it yet, and for the life of me cannot find his original post/synopsis of it.
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Jul 9, 2021 02:59
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I'm not sure what thread to post this in but the the new Joe Ledger book is goooooooood.
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Jul 15, 2021 20:10
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Everyone posted:I'm not sure what thread to post this in but the the new Joe Ledger book is goooooooood. I'm sure it sort of barely counts. There's definitely some Lovecraftian elements in a bunch of the books. Thanks for the news, though. I've been waiting for this book, especially after that gut punch of an ending in Rage
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Jul 16, 2021 04:18
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Proteus Jones posted:I'm sure it sort of barely counts. There's definitely some Lovecraftian elements in a bunch of the books. If those count then the Threshold series by Peter Clines probably counts, too.
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Jul 16, 2021 12:39
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13 and The Fold are good fun. I wouldn't bother reading the 2 semi-sequels of Dead Moon and Terminus however.
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Jul 16, 2021 12:56
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