|
rollick posted:The only other fantasy campus novels I can think of are Tam Lin by Pamela Dean and The Fool on the Hill by Matt Ruff. I guess Rothfuss too? Can't think of any SF ones. Does Ender's Game count?
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 18:57
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 19, 2024 06:29 |
|
|
I originally read The Magicians based on a recommendation, years ago, from this thread. I enjoyed it and I'm not ashamed of it. It wasn't perfect - come on, we're reading fantasy and sci-fi novels, what do you expect - but I enjoyed it. In fact maybe I enjoyed it because of the contempt the author has for the genre. I'm not saying his contempt is justified; people are allowed to enjoy things that other people don't. But maybe his contempt for the genre caused him to write something that was more novel than the pile of other fantasy books I've read. So thanks for the recommendation, whoever posted that book in this thread years ago, and I hope we never get to the point where we think we're too cool to recommend books like The Magicians.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 19:01
|
|
|
I don't know why people think Grossman doesn't like fantasy. In one interview he says: "To say that I was a fantasy fan is an understatement. I read all the time. That was who I was. Lewis, Tolkien, Le Guin, Anne McAffrey, Piers Anthony, T.H. White, Fritz Lieber, Michael Moorcock … those are the writers who made me who I am. Plus, yeah, I played a lot of D&D. I was even a fan of that TV show, Wizards & Warriors. Remember that? And yes, they followed me into adulthood. (Well, not W&W, but the others.) In a way it’s weird that it took me this long to start writing fantasy. I don’t think I was ready. It was too much of a big deal to me." "I spent a long time living with one foot in the world of conventional novels, as a graduate student in literature and then later as a professional book reviewer. When you sit down to write a novel about people who cast spells for a living, you say goodbye to that world. Not that I was going to win a National Book Award anyway, but when you do that you can’t even PRETEND that you’re going to win a National Book Award. You just give all that up. I’ve made my peace with that. There wasn’t even really a choice. Fantasy was what I wanted. Though I do think the climate has changed for fantastic fiction. Harry Potter helped change it, just in terms of expanding mainstream awareness of the genre. The real turning of the tide, at least for me personally, was Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, a book so fantastical and so beautiful that critics on all sides were forced to bow down before it." Ccs fucked around with this message at 19:13 on Feb 5, 2021 |
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 19:05
|
|
|
rollick posted:The only other fantasy campus novels I can think of are Tam Lin by Pamela Dean and The Fool on the Hill by Matt Ruff. I guess Rothfuss too? Can't think of any SF ones. Sergei Lukyanenko's Watch stories aren't exactly campus novels, but there's a fair number of scenes set in and around the classrooms where Light Others are taught.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 19:36
|
|
|
I found the Magicians trilogy to be uneven but overall pretty good. I did like that the third book ends with a giant metaphor for intertextuality as Quentin's world literally provides a bridge back to Fillory. Doing a reread with the ending in mind was enjoyable. A lot of fantasy books can be read with magic as an analogue for art in general or writing in particular, of course, but I enjoyed Grossman's spin on it. There were a lot parts that dragged or seemed ill-advised to me. The (book 2)fox god stuff in particular -- woof. Also, this: Ccs posted:The real turning of the tide, at least for me personally, was Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, a book so fantastical and so beautiful that critics on all sides were forced to bow down before it. I can't speak to effects on the industry or the genre, but for me personally, Susanna Clarke was a revelation.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 19:39
|
|
|
I started reading The Black Prism by Brent Weeks yesterday and bounced off of it by chapter two. I was in the mood for semi-generic epic fantasy that I hadn't already read, but when it started painstakingly describing the apparent protagonist casting what seemed to be a inconsequential spell to start his day, before it told me much of anything about the character, I decided it wasn't what I wanted at the moment. I have since switched to City of Stairs instead which is not semi-generic high fantasy, but I'm already liking it pretty early on, and it's come recommended to me by friends I trust. I'm mostly wondering, should I try Black Prism again some other time? I didn't strongly dislike it or anything, nor did I give it near enough time to be fair to it, it just wasn't what I wanted at the time. It seems to be very popular. And I am typically unapologetically all for high/epic fantasy when the mood strikes me.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2021 22:19
|
|
|
pradmer posted:A Scifi comic by NK Jemisin. Issues 1-7 - $0.99 each This is Jemisin writing a Green Lantern story, and those are always better the further from Earth you get. It's pretty out there. darkgray posted:I vaguely remember thinking (part of) this was great, many many years ago. Armor is all great. The powered armor bugs&despair sequences are great in their own way. The rest of the book is about the kinds of psychological armor that people put on, and they're also great. I don't think anybody who reads it will ever forget the puppy story. mllaneza fucked around with this message at 00:45 on Feb 6, 2021 |
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2021 00:41
|
|
|
I'm quitting Alistair Reynolds's Terminal World a third of the way in. The beginning of the novel sets up a fascinating scenario of technologies but he really just wants to write some steampunk mad max poo poo and I am not interested at all 
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2021 00:51
|
|
|
Japanese Dating Sim posted:
I read all of them, and it was very much a, "this isn't that great but I want to find out what happens," situation. And then the ending wasn't very good.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2021 04:37
|
|
|
Japanese Dating Sim posted:
I posted like 20 pages back about each book because I just read these myself. The TL;DR: The Black Prism is overall good, minus the author's need to have women boobily boobing everywhere. The Blinding Knife was also fine but has an obvious cliffhanger. The Broken Eye starts going off the rails. The Blood Mirror was  and then The Burning White was just  Weeks that's a dumpster fire of an ending. I was so pissed off at the end that I'm glad I only bought the first book and borrowed the rest from the library and I still felt ripped off.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2021 09:22
|
|
|
rollick posted:The only other fantasy campus novels I can think of are Tam Lin by Pamela Dean and The Fool on the Hill by Matt Ruff. I guess Rothfuss too? Can't think of any SF ones. Edit: actually for progression fantasy there's a decent number with a magic school on some level: Mother of Learning, Arcane Ascension, Mage Errant, Iron Prince all come to mind. Iron Prince is basically science fantasy and feels like Cradle got crossed with Ender's Game. Cicero fucked around with this message at 10:40 on Feb 6, 2021 |
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2021 10:37
|
|
|
wizzardstaff posted:Does Ender's Game count? I think Ender's game is in a different category to school or campus novels -- maybe more in line with Starship Troopers idk. There's a great bit in Justin Cronin's Passage trilogy where one of the vampires spends 200 pages going to Harvard. I remember wishing the whole series was like that, rather than the shoddy post-apocalyptic thing it ended up being.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2021 10:39
|
|
|
https://twitter.com/dedbutdrmng/status/1358048927203868672
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2021 14:50
|
|
|
Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C Clarke - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07XD75HGV/ Eon (The Way #1) by Greg Bear - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J3EU5RC/ Earthseed: The Complete Series by Octavia E Butler - $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072NZBPFG/
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2021 19:14
|
|
|
So I finished Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City. I was really enjoying it, but had been primed to think of it as lighter than works like The Folding Knife. But it’s about the same level of grim, where competence against great odds rules for much of the narrative before it all comes crashing down. In fact The Folding Knife might end happier because Basso survives, whereas this protagonist doesn’t. But the city he was defending might survive, its ambiguous. I’ll probably pick up the next Seige book by Parker but I’m not expecting any happy endings anymore.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2021 20:19
|
|
|
Ccs posted:So I finished Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City. I was really enjoying it, but had been primed to think of it as lighter than works like The Folding Knife. But it’s about the same level of grim, where competence against great odds rules for much of the narrative before it all comes crashing down. In fact The Folding Knife might end happier because Basso survives, whereas this protagonist doesn’t. But the city he was defending might survive, its ambiguous. By Parker standards, that was a happy ending.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2021 20:34
|
|
|
Yeah, what turned me off the Engineer trilogy wasn't the tragic end that the protagonist was riding towards (presumably; I DNFed), it was the fact that I don't actually want to read three books of a sociopathic manipulator teaming up with a serial rapist to commit as much genocide as humanly possible before they finally get taken down, starting with the only actually likeable characters. So yeah, if the protagonist dies at the end but your reaction is "oh no" rather than "loving finally", that is probably comparatively upbeat.
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2021 00:58
|
|
|
SFL Archives Vol 18b has been a rough tiring read. Every further post I read has me considering abandoning future detailed SFL Archives readthroughs in favor of reading the highly curated Ansible UK newsletter and seeing what new interesting things the Del Rey Books monthly newsletter contains. So many things I give zero-f*cks about or actively loathe keep coming up. Robert Heinlein, Miles Vorkosigan, Tim Powers, SeaQuest DSV, Ursula LeGuin, Neal Stephenson, CJ Cherryh, Samuel Delany, Stephen Donaldson, Hugo Awards, Star Trek Voyager, Libertarianism in SF, the deepness of Heinlein/Heinlein defense squad, everything X-Files, TOR Books editors giving hot takes, Daniel Keys Moran worship, recommended Libertarian fiction reading lists, SF&F convention drama, kickoff of the Deep Space Nine versus Babylon Five fandom war, etc.
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2021 04:37
|
|
|
Really liked this one, pretty grim pirate book on a failing water world where the ships are made of extinct dragon bones. Non as gritty as that dark assassin series by the same author but still not cosy at all.
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2021 06:55
|
|
|
quantumfoam posted:SFL Archives Vol 18b has been a rough tiring read. Every further post I read has me considering abandoning future detailed SFL Archives readthroughs in favor of reading the highly curated Ansible UK newsletter and seeing what new interesting things the Del Rey Books monthly newsletter contains. Couple things from the latest: quote:Langford maintained/ran the Ansible newsletter as of 1993, unsure who currently manages ANSIBLE Ansible is Langford's baby through and through, latest issue here : https://news.ansible.uk/a403.html quote:Yet another attempt by SFLer Jeremy York to drum up interest in a comic book series called BEANWOR Beanworld is great and it's a shame there's not more of it, imo.
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2021 16:47
|
|
|
fritz posted:
Yeah! It's quite unlike everything else I know of.
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2021 17:21
|
|
|
fritz posted:Couple things from the latest: Groke posted:Yeah! It's quite unlike everything else I know of. e: it wasn't broken on the offsite blog, did fix a few things in the 1993 pop-culture mentions. Each time BEANWORLD gets promoted, the same teaser description is used. &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& It works like this: Gran'Ma'Pa provides a sprout-butt. The beans take the sprout-butt to the Hoi-Polloi Ring Herd and perform a violent exchange that nets the beans a supply of chow; they leave the sprout-butt as compensation. The beans then dissolve the chow and soak in it to gain their nourishment. The Hoi-Polloi turn the sprout-butt into more chow, which they use as currency in their endless gambling games. The food chain is simple at first glance, but then you have to ask what the Hoi-Polloi get in the exchange, what does Gran'Ma'Pa get out of this, and just who ARE all these players? The brief description also doesn't reveal the balance of the system, and how it might respond to stress. &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& it sounded like gibberish the first time the BEANWORLD setting got promoted, it still sounds like gibberish the 8th? time around. quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 18:05 on Feb 7, 2021 |
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2021 17:33
|
|
|
Annihilation (Southern Reach #1) by Jeff VanderMeer - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EGJ32A6/
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2021 18:26
|
|
|
So I blazed through the sequel to 16 Ways to Defend a Walled City, How to Rule an Empire and Get Away With It. The title is a double meaning and the tone of the entire book is probably the most lighthearted Parker has ever been. It makes me think that since revealing he was Tom Holt he’s stopped being so relentlessly grim. Or he got that out of his system with earlier novels. The beginning of the sequel also starts with a bit that seems to be chiding readers who didn’t like the downer ending of the first book.  The blurb for the book shows the laziness of publishers though. At first I thought this book would take place in a neighbouring city also under seige and not be a direct sequel because it says “the citizens of Classis”. The first book establishes that’s a nearby city that houses military equipment. The actual place the whole book takes place is The City, which is never referred to by anything else. I’m surprised the author didn’t get them to correct that. The other slight oversight in this book is they mention the man who the protagonist is impersonating was carrying on affairs with both men and women, but tended towards men. So I was surprised that whoever his main male consort had been never made an appearance wondering what was up. It can be explained away by the Emperors handlers controlling who sees him, I guess, but it would have been an opportunity for drama. I’m guessing Parker just didn’t want to get into too much additional relationship stuff and was maybe not interested in writing a gay character. Ccs fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Feb 7, 2021 |
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2021 19:03
|
|
|
pradmer posted:Annihilation (Southern Reach #1) by Jeff VanderMeer - $1.99 Edit: Some Craig Schaefer books on sale. The Long Way Down (Daniel Faust #1) - $0.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JYIUH8O/ White Gold Score (Daniel Faust #1.5) - Free https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01C86LWS2/ Sworn to the Night (Wisdom's Grave #1) - $0.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078S7SK9T/ Winter's Reach (Revanche Cyle #1) - Free https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00PA0T0W4/ The Complete Revanche Cycle - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071VZRD8D/
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2021 22:53
|
|
|
rollick posted:Harry Potter is in part a fantasy take on the classic British boarding school novel. I want to see a Harry Potter book from the POV of a muggle, particularly one with wizard family members because it'd probably read like a conspiracy theory horror story.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2021 02:32
|
|
|
Evil Fluffy posted:I want to see a Harry Potter book from the POV of a muggle, particularly one with wizard family members because it'd probably read like a conspiracy theory horror story.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2021 08:04
|
|
|
Evil Fluffy posted:I want to see a Harry Potter book from the POV of a muggle, particularly one with wizard family members because it'd probably read like a conspiracy theory horror story. Potter from the perspective of Neville Longbottom would also be this
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2021 08:37
|
|
|
90s Cringe Rock posted:I'm going to leap headfirst into this trap and say that D&D crossover fanfiction Harry Potter and the Natural 20 greatly improves when a muggle cop side character is introduced for precisely this reason. or the joke where the wizards showed up and literally smashed her computer Zoolander-style quantumfoam posted:it sounded like gibberish the first time the BEANWORLD setting got promoted, it still sounds like gibberish the 8th? time around.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2021 10:48
|
|
|
Ccs posted:So I blazed through the sequel to 16 Ways to Defend a Walled City, How to Rule an Empire and Get Away With It. The title is a double meaning and the tone of the entire book is probably the most lighthearted Parker has ever been. It makes me think that since revealing he was Tom Holt he’s stopped being so relentlessly grim. Or he got that out of his system with earlier novels. Oh please Author, tell me more about your Opinions on the differences between Literature and Mass Market Media
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2021 14:11
|
|
|
So I'm now reading what might be one of the best fantasy novels I've ever read? Still too early to say but scene-wise, this has had passages that haven't been equaled in other work I've encountered. The book is Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman. quote:The year is 1348. Thomas, a disgraced knight, has found a young girl alone in a dead Norman village. An orphan of the Black Death, and an almost unnerving picture of innocence, she tells Thomas that plague is only part of a larger cataclysm—that the fallen angels under Lucifer are rising in a second war on heaven, and that the world of men has fallen behind the lines of conflict. I wasn't totally sold by this blurb. Badass knight ferrying a defenseless yet mystical individual across and unforgiving landscape sounds good, but angels and demons have never really been my thing. But holy hell the story makes good use of the religious imagery. There's a fight with a demon in a lake fairly early on that is incredibly tense, brutal, and unnerving. Up until that point all the talk of devils was metaphorical, but here the character comes face to face with something that's not of this world. And the next bit is even better, where they come across a castle that is oddly immune to the plague, and what seems welcoming devolves from there. I haven't had much patience for grim work that wasn't filled with gallows humor, which is why I gravitate to Abercrombie and Parker. They temper their violence with plenty of cynical asides. Buehlman doesn't have time for that. He's writing about a world in which pure good and pure evil evidently exist in the form of supernatural entities, so snark about the morally grey nature of the universe wouldn't work. What has to carry the book is the imagery, tension, and amount we come to care about the characters, and so far he's knocking it out of the park. Ccs fucked around with this message at 17:09 on Feb 8, 2021 |
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2021 16:42
|
|
|
Ccs posted:So I'm now reading what might be one of the best fantasy novels I've ever read? Still too early to say but scene-wise, this has had passages that haven't been equaled in other work I've encountered. The book is Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman. This is a good post, and I'm off to pick up this book. Thanks!
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2021 16:51
|
|
|
Against a Dark Background by Iain M. Banks - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002CT0TXK Once again a Banks title I've never seen on sale before. Yay! Edit: Transition by Iain M. Banks - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/Transition-Iain-M-Banks-ebook/dp/B002O0Q6YS Transition is on sale as well, but I'm honestly not sure if this fits in this thread. It was published in the US under the "M" name, while in the UK under his non-SciFi name, Iain Banks. Anyone who can comment on this title? Fart of Presto fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Feb 8, 2021 |
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2021 18:37
|
|
|
It's definitely SF. Loads of dimension hopping and weird poo poo. Plus a man gets a mysterious finger stuck up his bum which I'm sure qualifies as fantasy for someone.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2021 19:07
|
|
|
Ccs posted:So I'm now reading what might be one of the best fantasy novels I've ever read? Still too early to say but scene-wise, this has had passages that haven't been equaled in other work I've encountered. The book is Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman. If it holds up by the end, you just picked my next book for me, this sounds great. Let us know how you feel about it once you've reached the conclusion, please!
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2021 19:51
|
|
|
quantumfoam posted:it sounded like gibberish the first time the BEANWORLD setting got promoted, it still sounds like gibberish the 8th? time around. Yeah that's BEANWORLD, it's not something that's suitable for description.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2021 21:25
|
|
|
Thank you SFL Archives for these two things. &&&&&&&&&&&& According to the December issue of Locus. George R.R. Martin sold an epic fantasy trilogy, "A Song of Ice and Fire," to Bantam for a large amount of money. The three titles are: A Game of Thrones A Dance With Dragons The Winds of Winter Bad news is that the first novel isn't due until early 1996. &&&&&&&&&&&& &&&&&&&&&&&& THE LAST DEADLOSS VISIONS An enquiry into the non-appearance of Harlan Ellison's THE LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS written by Christopher Priest with comments from: Brian Aldiss Michael Bishop Graham Charnock John Christopher Harry Harrison Barry Malzberg George R.R. Martin Charles Platt Bob Shaw Ian Watson (...and many others) Copyright (c) 1987 - 1994 Christopher Priest. All rights reserved. Published in England &&&&&&&&&&&&
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2021 23:02
|
|
|
anything interesting come up about Wheel of Time?
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2021 23:30
|
|
|
Ccs posted:I haven't had much patience for grim work that wasn't filled with gallows humor, which is why I gravitate to Abercrombie and Parker. They temper their violence with plenty of cynical asides. I'm going to nudge you towards Glen Cook, particularly the Black Company and Dread Empire series. The narrator changes from book to book, but the first and most common, Croaker, is one cynical son of a bitch. I think you'll like him. Dread Empire uses a third person narrator, but none of the characters are afraid of taking the piss out of anyone who needs it, especially Mocker.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2021 01:47
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 19, 2024 06:29 |
|
|
Revenger by Alistair Reynolds - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LXW2IUQ/ Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002MV2Z1C/ I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JVCHEMU/ The Alchemy Wars series by Ian Tregillis - $2.99/$1.99/$2.99 The Mechanical - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IRIR85M/ The Rising - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00W22IMAO/ The Liberation - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01BKSLGTE/ A bunch of KJ Parker books Sharps - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005WK2ZXS/ The Belly of the Bow (Fencer #2) - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B3VX3S6/ The Proof House (Fencer #3) - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B3VX3UE/ The Escapement (Engineer #3) - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0010SEMLE/ The Two of Swords: Volume Three - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06Y5K2CK2/
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2021 02:14
|
|