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HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:I've been enjoying CivCEO, a LitRPG 4X. It's competent, and the main character fucks up a bunch because of their values as a boomer businessman, but it doesn't get too stuck in the weeds of dumbass stats, other than using a few higher concept videogame abstractions and modifiers. Definitely nothing special, but a good easy read. That sounded interesting, so I googled it, ended up on the US amazon page, hit the "UK kindle store" link, and the closest match it could offer was "Femdom & Extreme BDSM : A Night to Remember, A Life Dismantled ([A 15,700 word explicit extreme-bdsm erotica])". The second closest was "Philips Hue White Single Smart Bulb LED [B22 Bayonet Cap] 100 W with Bluetooth, Works with Alexa, Google Assistant and Apple HomeKit". So, uh, thanks amazon.
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Dec 8, 2020 19:20
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Aardvark! posted:i'm on to book 2 of Thousand Li and so far it's less a copy of Cradle than Mage Errant was, honestly It could be worse, I read Dungeon Robotics recently, and while it was OK everyone was constantly mumbling. Every comment anyone made that wasn't a direct and loud address to another character was described as a mumble. Every. Single. One. They also smirked a lot. I also started and gave up on The forever king today, because I could not stand reading "the mage" over and over again:  there was a bunch of other questionable writing as well, the constant "the mages" was just the worst part. But the real reason I came in here was to say I read the entire Cradle series over the last week and it was very enjoyable, I'm glad several people posted about it. Lindon developed very well from annoyingly humble and self-pitying to a polite yet ruthless badass. I'll have to check out Thousand Li and Hollow core too. Larry Parrish posted:Personally I think Duchess of Terra had a great book 1, but just kind of slowly slunk into boring after that. I like Glynn Stewart but he writes fleet battles the same way David Weber does, which is boring and awful. Probably makes the dude money, though. I like Weber's battles, so I'll have to try these too. I'll also look at Rebel fleet though! roffles posted:Craig Schaefer's new book The Hungry Dreaming was released yesterday. Wish it was a Daniel Faust novel but the premise sounds fun, reminds me of the Sleepy Hollow show they did on Fox until the writer's strike killed it. Huh, I follow Schaefer on Amazon and wasn't alerted about this, so thanks! Not only that, there's a 6th Harmony Black book too! Damnit, Amazon!
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Jun 28, 2021 00:58
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Aardvark! posted:I've enjoyed the 3 cultivation series I've read (Cradle, Mage Errant, Thousand Li) I'm reading Hollow core at the moment, it's not as good as Cradle but you might enjoy it. You could also try the Arcane Ascension/Weapons and Wielders books.
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Jul 3, 2021 11:09
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I'm also enjoying Dungeon Crawler Carl, half way through book 3 now. Assuming 4 isn't the end of the series, do we know how often new ones come out?
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Jul 7, 2021 23:16
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Yikes, but also 
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Jul 7, 2021 23:37
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This does make me curious, does anyone know (or perhaps there's a thread about it?) what the revenue stream from kindle unlimited is like? Is DCC more likely to be making the author rent money or beer money?
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Jul 8, 2021 00:18
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Butt Discussin posted:This is by the Thousand Li guy and explains it, though it's kind of outdated. TLDR; KU reads pay them much less than what a sale does, but can still sometimes be worth it in volume or in not cannibalizing sales too much. Thanks!
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Jul 8, 2021 15:45
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Captain Monkey posted:So I just read Kaiju Battlefield Surgeon. I'm reading this now, and up to about 30% in I was thinking ok it's a bit dark but I dunno what that poster meant. Then I got to the bit about amplification. Jesus. Also, the main character gets his first xp by stamping on small creatures, and there's a lot of being inside giant creatures. I thought the DCC ai having these kinks was an amusing way for Carl to get some special treatment, but it's now seeming more like Matt is just into this.
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Jul 11, 2021 19:52
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Darkrenown posted:I'm reading this now, and up to about 30% in I was thinking ok it's a bit dark but I dunno what that poster meant. Then I got to the bit about amplification. Jesus. Huh, and then all the body horror stuff stops after that and the rest of the book is no worse than DCC. A strange book!
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Jul 13, 2021 01:27
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Larry Parrish posted:It really takes me out of the action when theres that style of pop culture reference lol. i don't know how to explain it but nerd poo poo written down in a book makes it sound way more stilted and awkward than it typically already does. It's like a brick wall. I got to the end of Harrow the Ninth and was unexpectedly assaulted with the Emperor of Man, 10,000 years in the future, suddenly dropping a none pizza with left beef reference 
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Jul 28, 2021 15:51
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90s Cringe Rock posted:Yeah but the Necrolord Prime, the King of Nine Renewals, the Emperor Undying, Resurrector and Creator, the Kindly Prince is probably posting in the pyf meme thread right now. I know, I know, but I don't like it! I'm reading Dutchy of Terra now. I quite like it, but I disagree with whoever said it has Weber-like detailed battles. It really doesn't. If on a 1-10 scale Weber goes to 11 on how missiles work, Stewart is about 3-4. I'm on book 5, Shield of Terra, now, and there's some annoying continuality/editing error going on the key thing to resolve book 4 was they had a helpful advanced-race alien on their ship who helped them make a hyperspace current to get to a place in time to save the day. About half way through book 5 a fleet of the same aliens shows up on a self-made hyperspace current to save the crew of the ship which hosted said alien in book 4 and the human officer who was dealing with him is all "wow, they can make hyperspace currents?! Amazing!". They are also fighting some other advanced aliens in book 4 and their key advantage in battle is that the aliens have no active anti-missile defences. When they meet them again in book 5 they have now invented these defences and no one really reacts to it, it's just "we fire our missiles and their defences shoot them down, ho hum" - this is a massive balance changer and it's just casually noted in passing. Later in the story other people do reflect on what a massive deal it is, but it feels like the initial reaction scene is missing. All in all it feels like books 4 and 5 were chopped out of one book and not quite perfectly re-arranged into two. E: Now in book 6 he's forgot/retconned the missile speeds he's kept constant for the whole series so far.
Darkrenown fucked around with this message at 14:38 on Aug 1, 2021 |
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Jul 31, 2021 22:40
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I finished Dutchy of Terra, I didn't enjoy the last 3 books as much as they spent almost 2 full books going back to a lone ship pottering around instead of the big fleet actions of books 2-5. Continuality errors continue to pop up as ship classes are changed, missiles which were a constant size in books 2-8 suddenly half in warhead size in book 9 (to no real effect either, he could just have never mentioned their size but since he did it's annoying he can't keep it constant) and a couple of minor characters who definitely survived book 6 are suddenly said to have died there instead. I'd still recommend if you want some space opera though. Trying He who fights with monsters next. I'm only about 15% into the first book, but it's good so far. Another "guy falls into an MMO/RPG" type book, but it seems well written. I'd seen this in the store a few times but I'd skipped it until this thread also recommended it because the blurb made it seem worse than it was, something about focusing on his lack of pants, I suppose.
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Aug 11, 2021 16:35
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90s Cringe Rock posted:HWFWM started out incredibly strong but once you find yourself tiring of it, consider stopping. Noted. But so far so good, as just after that line he starts talking about frying halved hardboiled eggs, something which I have never heard of before but sounded delicious. I stopped reading to make some, and they were! https://www.thaitable.com/thai/recipe/son-in-law-eggs
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Aug 11, 2021 23:51
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I never got tired of HWFWM, currently waiting for the next one to release, on the 7th. I've also been enjoying Defiance of the fall, it's another LitRPG/Cultivation series, but it's also well-written (although having characters just say "cough" when they cough is awful, it only happens a few times): https://www.amazon.co.uk/Defiance-Fall-LitRPG-Adventure-TheFirstDefier-ebook/dp/B09168R29M/ Partly I enjoy the protag having a very simple yet interesting class, he's basically a combat lumberjack who may one day be able to Chop reality in twain.
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Sep 2, 2021 15:16
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Thanks, I should take a look, but so far there's been enough on Kindle Unlimited that I've been too lazy to continue series' on different platforms. That said, while the next HWFWM is out in a few days the next DotF is in November, so I might have to change that. E: Taking a look, it seems the chapters from books on kindle, or soon on kindle, have been removed. With HWFWM, aside from some early chapters I can only start at Chapter 267, which seems to be set after the upcoming third book. E2: DotF lets me start right after the Kindle content though! Darkrenown fucked around with this message at 18:44 on Sep 2, 2021 |
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Sep 2, 2021 18:34
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Silynt posted:The Defiance of the Fall Webnovel currently has free chapters up to 689 as of today on RoyalRoad. The currently published books cover ~ the first 200 chapters, so another almost 5 books worth has already been written and published. I haven’t read the KU versions yet so I dunno what sort of editing has been done, but if you like the story and want to find some more there is plenty to be found. I'm now reading it, and yeah, there must have been an editing pass for the Kindle version as the web stuff is a step down in technical quality. The story remains very enjoyable though! But having to scroll instead of tapping to turn pages is killing my thumb 
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Sep 4, 2021 22:04
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I read all the DotF web stuff, now I need to wait for more I also read the 3rd HWFWM, and it was weird. Most of the book was fine, but the epilogue stuff was borderline incoherent. I'll try the web chapters next, but I hope whatever is going on in the epilogue stops and never returns.
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Sep 22, 2021 15:21
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M. Night Skymall posted:I read it on royal road and it's not easy to tell at a casual glance what book 3 covered, but once it started going downhill I pushed on for a while and it kept getting worse so I stopped. Book 3 is mostly preparing for and then dealing with the builder cult within the reaper realm, I didn't think it was as good as the first 2 since it was mostly just grinding XP, but it was fine. The terrible epilogue was after Jason dies and there's a lot of weird time skipping in the events afterwards, some terrible stuff set back on Earth, and some very very bad and boring metaplot where the great astral beings have a meeting and some priests of the world phoenix do... something. I'm taking a break to read The Wisdom of Crowds and then I'll try reading the web content, but it'll have to pick up soon or I'll drop it. Silynt posted:If you want to really join us on the dark side, you can support his Patreon for $10 a month for another 50 chapters ahead, but then you’re hooked because of you want to drop the subscription it’s like 2 months until you catch up. I'm tempted as I enjoyed the entire thing, but I was worried about exactly that hook. I'll probably just read other stuff while it builds up again and check in every month or so. I'll donate some $$ though, it was very much worth it. Next up, System Apocalypse!
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Sep 22, 2021 19:19
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Siegkrow posted:Is book 3 (HWhWaWiM) in audio form yet? I've liked listening to the first 2 books when I go out on walks. Maybe you found it already, but yeah, it's out. What's with Audible's prices though, is it normal for books to cost £55? I know there's a subscription model as well, but jeez. https://www.audible.co.uk/series/He...cB&gclsrc=aw.ds I ending up reading all the web content (unless there's paywalled stuff) and I can say none of it was was bad as the book 3 epilogue. The earth story dragged a lot, which was weirdly fitting because Jason was also frustrated and bored with it. It felt like maybe the writer felt the same because of the repeat of the dimensional landgrab where Jason kills all of his enemies so he can leave at last and abandonment of the leveling via vampire juice plan. I was kind of surprised North turned out to have been actually trying to help the whole time, and despite him killing millions I expected Jason to let him go. I'm also surprised Jason didn't load up on Gun essence or other Earth-specific stuff to either sell, or give to people he meets, in magicworld where they would have been in high demand. Still, it was decent, I don't regret reading it, and the post-Earth story picked up a bit more.
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Sep 30, 2021 19:38
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Reaper stuffDr Subterfuge posted:Yeah even if Eithan had the power to save someone as Ozriel it seems like the Eldari Pact would have prevented him from doing so unless it was an incursion. The biggest question I have is whether or not he would have broken the marble if someone on Cradle was about to kill him. I don't think he'd have let himself die, since that would also have spoiled his plans. But I'm also not sure anything could have killed him, because while his full power was locked away he still had the basic toughness of however his body was reforged through his various ascensions. I think Lindon understands the pact issues from Suriel and so will know and understand that Eithan couldn't just use his real powers to solve all their problems. I agree with most of the comments above, I enjoyed the book and especially the Lindon and Eithan stuff, but various other parts didn't really go anywhere or happened mostly offscreen. I could have happily lost most of the non-Ozriel Aibidan stuff, most of the Jai Long stuff, and some of the Labyrinth stuff (and/or just make the book longer) to hear a bit more about Yerin, Mercy, Ziel, how Lindon's family are coming to accept the reality of progression and how powerful Lindon is, some loving comeuppance/repentance from Lindon's mega-rear end in a top hat dad. There's a lot to cover in the final 2 books and that's before Lindon finds some way to kick out the Monarchs. I was surprised Dross wasn't fixed, but I'm glad some hope was offered at the end. I was a bit confused by why the Dreadgods got a powerup near the end - Was it simply because Subject 1 died and so his power was shared between them, or did Shen do something with the binding to empower them? It seems like the former should be the case, but it didn't happen until Shen was outside and showing off the binding.
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Nov 7, 2021 18:26
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Yeah, I guess it could be that too. I'd have liked it to be a little clearer.
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Nov 7, 2021 20:20
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I also enjoyed Bastion overall, but something like from the 50% point to 80% had me quite frustrated with Scorio. It was good that his Tomb spark revelation was to quit being such a whiner and accept responsibility for his past actions at least. I was kinda surprised/frustrated that he never used having access to another gauntlet to get around his two oaths regarding his next gauntlet run. I was sure he was going to do the typical clever very specifically worded oath "Yeah, I promised not to heal before my next gauntlet run/I promise not to go more than 6 rooms deep in my next gauntlet run" and then go fulfil that in the ruined gauntlet before coming back and giving it his all in the known gauntlet. I also feel like it would have made sense to at least pick up some treasures from winning the run before announcing he was bailing, since his damaged heart is such a problem for him. Real dick move by Sol just restoring him to his pre-Imogen state of damage rather than fixing it up too.
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Nov 24, 2021 16:17
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I started reading Thousand Li #1 last night, but I got bored pretty quickly. Does it get better? I recently read the oddly named Something (Full Murderhobo). I can't say it was exactly good, but it passed the time and the reason for the title was kinda interesting to me: All new mages get shoved in a portal which scans their magic type and sends them off to get trained. The protagonist has a rare magic type and ends up in a tutorial area where the previous learner mage somehow died and the scaling difficulty to encourage quick completion has been running unchecked for 100s of years. This means instead of killing 5 Rams to progress he is facing thousands of murder-rams which he has to grind for decades - and that's just the first area. By the end he is both insane and insanely "overleveled".
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Dec 5, 2021 13:28
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https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/54835467-the-wastes-of-keldora I enjoyed this and am halfway through the 2nd book now. It's basically as if someone was playing Factorio inside a WoW server, with heroes and raid bosses causing problems while the main character tries to optimize conveyer belt placement and bring about fully automated communism.
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Dec 8, 2021 11:54
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There's actually 5 books now! 
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Dec 9, 2021 12:00
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Yeah, the sudden Cold Week Is A Thing was weird. The book does it again, when "God"/the system admin releases a patch to nerf various aspects of the factory and the Keldorian gods, which is pretty ham-handed.
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Dec 20, 2021 17:14
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I'm currently on the 4th book of the Underverse series: https://www.amazon.com/UnderVerse/dp/B08723YWTB And I have such mixed feelings about it. I like the setting, the story, the progression system (both personal and there's an empire-building and crafting system), the combat, etc. etc. but I hate the main character. He's a kind of "violent goon (the criminal kind) with a good heart" type, but he veers wildly between constantly loving everything up and doing the exact perfect thing to mitigate his fuckup and often benefits from it in the end. I.e. despite knowing what fireball does he casts fireball in an enclosed space and blows up himself and his party - except luckily it was the only move which both burned off the poison gas which was approaching them AND the resulting collapse dumped them into the right area to get their loot. He also often does these awful preachy speeches which I suppose are meant to show his good heart that he's meant to win the hearts and minds of his followers, but I just skip over them at this point. Also he has a fairy and they are constantly horny for each other, although luckily the sex scenes are just fade to blacks. The word "willicoptor"* has been used twice too, which is really 2 more times than I wanted it to be. He's a Geordie too. *to spin one's penis, or "willy", like a helicopter.
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Jan 1, 2022 19:12
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I always assumed at least half the reason is just to pad the page count for those KU $$$s.
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Jan 27, 2022 15:52
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I've been reading some DotF on patreon and it's kind of a pain to do so. There doesn't appear to be any chapter links so each time I finish a chapter I scroll back to the top and search for the next chapter number - which sometimes decides that while I may have typed "567" what I really want is chapter 657. Am I missing a better way to read or is this really how the site works?
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Feb 21, 2022 12:49
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I started reading DCC book 5 and... I seem to have already read it? At least the start - were there preview chapters released a while back or something? I have no memory of how I read it but I certainly seem to have.
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Mar 18, 2022 23:46
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I did read dotf and hwfwm there, but I don't recall reading DCC there. Well I'll read on and see how much is familiar. E: Turns out I've only read the first 10 chapters in the mysterious past, so I still have most of the book as new material 
Darkrenown fucked around with this message at 17:05 on Mar 19, 2022 |
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Mar 19, 2022 00:35
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Zore posted:Its released as a web serial before the author compiles it as books and releases there so you might have read it on Royal Road? Is this still the case? I went looking after finishing book 5 (which was great) but I can only find a few sample chapters from book 1 on RR.
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Mar 23, 2022 21:02
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I read book 2 of Full Murderhobo and I'm still enjoying it. Objectively it's not great, but I just like the concept of "bad tutorial coding becomes decades of violent death." I also read the first 2 The Menocht Loop books, and while they are well-written and I enjoyed them they don't really seem like progression fantasy despite being called "The Menocht Loop: A Progression Fantasy Epic". It's weird because it starts after the loop is almost solved so all the the PC's progression happened already and he is now the most powerful dude in the world. He then spends two books not really doing anything besides complaining about things and hanging out and sorta asexually flirting with his friend. Book 2 is worse because even less happens and a lot of time is spent wondering "is the protag an Ascendant???" But the book is called "The False Ascendant" so we already know the answer is "yes, but weird." We also never learn anything about why he's a false one, just that he is. Protagonist also easily wins a competition which will allow him access to "Rifts", but the book ends before we see any results. It seems like we should have seen some rift stuff or learned a bit about Ascendancy, or this could all have been tacked onto book 1. I know this was also a web serial, so I think the problem is this was just not a great way to group the chapters into books. Hopefully Book 3 is better and some actual progression starts happening. Darkrenown fucked around with this message at 13:05 on Apr 1, 2022 |
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Apr 1, 2022 13:01
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I'm re-reading Cradle before Dreadgod arrives I see why I was confused about the guy Suriel comes to deal with right at the start - I was always unsure if he was meant to be an Abadon level dude returning to Cradle, or just a [low]gold+ summoned from elsewhere on Cradle and his crime was returning to Sacred valley. At one point during a Suriel PoV she refers to him as "the gold practitioner", and I figured she'd know, but now I think that's just a little author error. The people in Sacred valley thought of him that way, because they thought gold was the mythical peak and his clan gave him a gold badge, but there's no reason for Suriel to think that, and the guy has to be Monarch+ since he ascended beyond Cradle.
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Jun 23, 2022 23:34
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Oh sht oh poo poo, I have to read all of Reaper today
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Jul 4, 2022 04:38
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I really enjoyed Dreadgod, although as others have mentioned the fights are getting a bit too abstract now. I don't really enjoy any of the Abidan plot and the battles being "the bad guy fires 20 suns at the judge but the judge has the power of 1000 suns so it's no use, but oh no there's 50 bad guys each firing 200 suns now!" is a large part of that. A few little complaints: At the end of Reaper, after Awakening, the Blood Phoenix melts itself into eggs to secretly attack the Akura lands, but when we see it again here it is flying around attacking the 8 man empire's islands and the Reaper plot seems to have been forgotten. Just before Dread-Lindon turns up, Ziel is lying around exhausted and mentions that his cores are empty. Little typo? But then a bit later Lindon is draining the 9cloud Herald and says he has to drain his cores. Herald is confused by this and Lindon pauses before saying he misspoke. Is the author making fun of his own typo in the same book instead of fixing it? Kinda strange. For all the time spent on Jai Long his death seemed pretty lame and pointless. How much time was spent on him advancing to Underlord only to have him turn up to rescue his squad which had already been rescued in Reaper only to have him die like this in Dreadgod? I don't see the point. I wish the word count had been spend on a little more of Lindon's parents realizing how powerful he's become and being proud of him or something, because they, and especially his dad, were awful to Lindon and I really want to see them admit their mistakes. It seemed odd how willing Malice and Northstrider were to turn on Lindon and forgive their mortal enemy Shen - who had literally just awakened all 4 Dreadgods to use against them. 9 cloud girl is equally odd in being grateful to Shen for helping her against the Weeping Dragon, but it was Shen who woke it up to attack her! Aside from Shen actually showing off Subject one's binding at one point I almost felt like Shen's entire causing of this whole situation had been retconned out of the story. Yes, Lindon killing the King powers up the other 3, but Shen had already awoken all 4 of them and increased their power too which seems like the worse act. I thought awakening them was the main problem really, because then they can start plotting and hunting Monarchs instead of just drifting around like a natural disaster. Zore posted:
And, of course, Mercy is once again in a coma after taking too much power from her book... exactly what happened to her after the gang's first fight against the Titan.
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Jul 6, 2022 21:00
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In contrast to Dreadgod, I didn't really enjoy the new Bad guys, Darktown funk. The first 20% or so was clearly written directly after watching Our flag means death and wanting to do something similar, and the rest involved trying to do something for the fae. However, the fae were not allowed to tell Clyde what they wanted due to fae rules so there were repeated conversations which each go on for multiple pages of just nonsense talking around the issue in the hopes Clyde will pick up on the gaps in the conversation or otherwise work things out. This goes on and on and on. It's classic fae poo poo I suppose, but it makes for very tedious reading when they're the only characters Clyde has to talk to.
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Jul 9, 2022 12:45
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Victorkm posted:Haven't read Iron Prince but I'm about 82% into He Who Fights with Monsters 2 and rather enjoying the series. Not sure when its supposed to go off the rails and people start disliking it. I'm not sure which book it is, but for me the low point was when he returns to Earth, but I kept reading and thought it picked up again towards the end of that arc. I thought the series was pretty good aside from that but I haven't read the most recent RR stuff yet. As the poster above says though, he really repeats a lot of his "jokes".
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Aug 24, 2022 07:16
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Cicero posted:Menocht Loop book 4 is out. I like the series quite a bit. Book 2 was meh, but 1 and 3 were good. Book 2 was so boring I never started 3. Does stuff actually happen in it? I'm currently reading the Mage Errant series, and I have really enjoyed it. Book 1 was a bit generic-feeling, "oh another magical school where the MC is terrible at magic until he finds he really has a rare skill", but the series really picks up and goes its own way from there. I did find book 2 dragged a bit in the middle, but aside from that it's great. I'm currently on book 6 and the 7th and final book should be out soonish. There's a number of discworld easter eggs which I apricate as well.
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Sep 25, 2022 15:54
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