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Hieronymous Alloy posted:He is but it isn't obvious in his fiction the same way it is with Mieville. Good twitter follow though. It's pretty explicit in several of his Taltos books.
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Oct 26, 2019 17:24
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tildes posted:NK Jemisin’s Broken Earth is incredibly good but maybe not the chill out and don’t think too much style of fantasy series, and not anywhere near as long as those examples. I am currently reading this and it is excellent. I didn't like The Obelisk Gate as much as The Fifth Season, but it wasn't bad. It seemed to have middle book syndrome, though it was still interesting and a good read. I just started The Stone Sky and am enjoying the POV chapters from Houwha. Jemisin's dry humor is great.
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Nov 13, 2019 06:10
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pseudorandom name posted:Uh, this is a complete misunderstanding of Radch society -- the don't have the concept of gender at all, including any kind of gendered presentation. Breq is confused by it because she doesn't know any of the signifiers since Radch people just do whatever they feel like. Breq says that they don't care much about gender, not that they don't have a concept of it. I believe she even goes on to say at one point that she doesn't understand the signifiers because 1) she spent millennia not having to worry about identifying genders by anything other than what the implants in her human crew told her and 2) they change from place to place in non-Radchaai space, which is where she had the most trouble with it.
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Nov 24, 2019 01:17
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Evil Fluffy posted:youre telling me a super advanced intergalactic human empire was also too stupid to have its life support systems isolated? Even modern governments have critical systems that are closed and wouldn’t be able to receive a doomsday computer virus, allowing them to keep on running properly while everything connected to the space internet went to hell. They were what came after said empire collapsed. Their technology was based on what they could scavenge from the ruins of that civilization an untold number of millennia later once the planet was more livable again. I got the impression they scavenged enough to make their ark ships and shoot them into space as quickly as possible to find a viable place for humanity to live for the long term.
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Nov 29, 2019 21:15
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Cardiac posted:So raven Tower by Leckie was good. NK Jemisin's The Broken Earth series has certain viewpoints told in second person, if that's what you're looking for. The first book uses the different viewpoints in an interesting way, though the second and third do not (the second person viewpoint does continue on, however).
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Dec 21, 2019 06:58
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Cryptozoology posted:I'm finishing up Joe Abercrombie's A Little Hatred after working my way through The First Law trilogy and his three standalone books. Huuuuuge fan of all six, some of my favourite fantasy I've read in a long, long time. I thought so as well. Logen's described as having a star shaped scar on his cheek in Red Country from his fight with Fenris in Last Argument and I'm pretty sure other characters notice a notch in his ear in more than once instance. That said, he doesn't really act like Logen and this is like 30 years after Last Argument, so I'd imagine he's he'd be in his mid to late 60s at that point.
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Jan 21, 2020 16:14
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C.M. Kruger posted:I read I think 2 or 3 books of Daniel Abraham's Dragon and Coin series after finishing what was out of The Expanse at the time, and can't think of much to recommend it. It had a interesting premise but I didn't really care about anything that actually happened with the characters, even the interesting ones. I felt the same way about Dagger and Coin. Unfortunately, I suspect it was in response to the relatively lackluster reception for his Long Price books (which were really good) which seemed to get highly criticized for being not-medieval-european fantasy.
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Mar 2, 2020 01:20
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StrixNebulosa posted:Oh! I have never seen that movie I think that's a crime in some places
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Apr 6, 2020 18:17
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bagrada posted:My brother's favorite series Malazan has some "badass" dragons that might suit a warcraft fan. I wouldn't really recommend Malazan to someone looking for dragons. They're there, but with the exception of Gardens of the Moon, they don't really do anything except as humanoids, which I assume is not the point of the request. Plus Malazan is a huge waste of 3 million words.
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Jun 7, 2020 17:14
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a foolish pianist posted:I'm further into Deadhouse Gates, the second Malazan book and jesus christ there's a lot of rape. Every time Erikson needs to illustrate that people are bad, he just goes straight to sexual violence, sometimes even just casually introducing raped women's corpses in remote areas before never mentioning them again. Then there's the bit where men are gutted, then a bunch of women and girls are raped then strangled with the mens' intestines, which I think might also be the cover art to a Cannibal Corpse album. This isn't even mentioning the teenager girl who gets sent to fantasy Dachau to get turned into an overseer's sex slave and addicted to fantasy opium. It seems to be an unpopular opinion here, but I regret wasting my time on Malazan. I found they were interesting through The Bonehunters (with the exception of Midnight Tides which was bearable but not great) then dropped off precipitously in terms of being enjoyable. The last 2 books were nothing but a bore with a terrible payoff. Virtually every non-Bridgeburner/Bonehunter story threads end without having any bearing on the main thrust of the series in the most limp-dicked manner. I didn't expect everything to be tied up neatly in a bow, but goddamn, talk about a disappointment.
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Sep 14, 2020 21:56
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pradmer posted:The Quantum Thief (Jean le Flambeur #1) by Hannu Rajaniemi - $2.99 I enjoyed this book (and the series as a whole, though I felt each book was progressively weaker). Has anyone read his Summerland book? Is it any good?
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Oct 9, 2020 01:08
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Ccs posted:Funnily enough, even though it was reported that it was Joe's The Blade Itself that was getting the adaption, the actual book that was optioned was for a crime novel also called The Blade Itself, set it Chicago. Journalists just saw "The Blade Itself", googled the book, came across the fantasy novel, and assumed that was the correct one, especially since one could see Raimi directing a fantasy series after his experience with vfx heavy superhero movies. There was also someone who walked by a tv studio in the LA area and found Abercrombie's The Blade Itself being planned out on white boards a couple of years ago. https://imgur.com/gallery/P5gyS
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Jun 27, 2021 00:22
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That's funny. I liked two of swords just enough to keep going through the end of the second volume. I'm now a quarter of the way through the third volume and I just can't bring myself to pick it up. It's just...boring.
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Mar 1, 2022 07:25
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SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:They're good op. The chain of dogs owns So, something that happens in book 2 of 10 is the highlight of the series. They're decent for like 4 books then steadily march down hill and up their own rear end at the same time. The last 2 books were terrible slogs and I wish I hadn't wasted my time on the entire series. There were too many plot threads that either ended up unresolved or had literally no bearing on the main story (like what the gently caress was with the island folks fighting dragons? Or the loving wet fart that was the end of Karsa's story?). Basically thousands of pages of useless, boring chaff that should have been cut. I'm pretty sure his editor was more hands off than Robert Jordan's was.
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May 31, 2022 05:42
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Kchama posted:It is almost completely marketing. And the age of the protagonist. I don't think I've seen a YA without a teen or pre-teen protagonist. That said, Shipbreaker really tackles some tough issues and I'd be hesitant to recommend it to a kid the age of the protagonist. I seem to remember there was a moderate amount of drug addiction, child abuse, child soldiers committing atrocities, etc.
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Jun 7, 2022 23:54
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MartingaleJack posted:For me, listening to audiobooks and reading work different parts of my brain. When I'm reading text, it's a closer experience to writing. I pick up sentence structure and style easier, and I notice errors more, because I'm in a more critical mode. I totally agree with this, but I find the second part resonates with me. It's very true, but can also diminish a work when the opposite is true. I am currently listening to books I've read in the past to refresh my memory of the story before the last book in the series comes out (I tend to only listen to audiobooks while driving for work, so listening to a story I only have to half pay attention to if there is something going on is perfect). The author emphasizes words with italics in a way that seems odd to me, so I just ignore that when reading. When the narrator emphasizes them in the audiobook it's really jarring to me because no one loving talks like that and if they did everyone would think they're a weirdo.
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Aug 1, 2022 21:17
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Why would they spend precious eyeball time on their website trying to sell you the thing you already are buying? It seems clear to me they want to get people into buying ebooks if they don't already and audiobooks of they don't already because those things make the reading experience easier in some ways and they may be able to sell you more (or just complimentary) products.
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Sep 14, 2022 20:40
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After seeing people here talk about Christopher Buehlman, I picked up The Blacktongue Thief and really enjoyed it. I felt like it was Brust's Taltos books meeting KJ Parker, without the stuff about those two that annoys me. I guess it's time to check out Between Two Fires!
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Nov 1, 2022 19:54
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smackfu posted:I am around 2/3 of the way through The Blade Itself. While I like the world building, I really have no idea where the plot is going. It just seems to be meandering to the end of the book. Does it all gel eventually? I like The First Law, but the first book really feels more like a long prologue in the trilogy. Several of the pov characters spend most of the rest of the series together after book 1, though I think 2 of them show stuff happening that isn't part of the "main" story.
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Dec 19, 2022 06:49
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freebooter posted:Disagree re: First Law - the second book is even more meandering and pointless than the first - though I'm in the minority of disliking Abercrombie in general. I think that's a valid complaint, though I feel like the failed hero's journey may have been more novel in the mid 2000s than 2022. I also feel like Bayaz failing is good, given the end of the series, and that the enjoyable parts of Abercrombie's books are the characters, with the plot playing second fiddle, as it were. Not every story has to appeal to everyone.
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Dec 20, 2022 04:15
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team overhead smash posted:I’d agree about the setting heaping large amounts of misery on various characters although to me it’s less all I agree with this. Abercrombie lets his characters enjoy life from time to time. In the Farseer trilogy, I felt like Hobb knocks her characters down from the first time they're introduced and kicks them for the rest of the trilogy.
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Dec 20, 2022 19:18
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I know the expanse is written by a pair of authors, but man, I really enjoyed Daniel Abraham's series about poets. Everything else written by him has interesting ideas but somehow falls flat. I recently read age of ash and don't think I'll continue that. It's disappointing
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Dec 22, 2022 05:45
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I've said it before, but Malazan is one of the series I wished I had quit instead of finishing it. There was way too much time spent on threads that end up going literally nowhere relevant to the main story, the end of Karsas story is the biggest wet fart in any book series I've read, and the hobbling was just disgusting. I don't want to read some dudes torture porn and rape fantasies. I can see the appeal, but there's so much wasted time and the characters have zero agency. Plot just gets thrown at them.
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Jan 13, 2023 02:24
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cptn_dr posted:Man, I couldn't possibly disagree with you more. The end of Karsa's story is the thematic core of the whole drat series and I couldn't imagine a more perfect way of wrapping it up. If the thematic core is "none of this even matters, it's all just a waste of time," then sure, I agree. His ending mattered not one whit for any of the other stories that played out in the books and mattered even less to the reader.
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Jan 13, 2023 04:09
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genericnick posted:On a brighter note I've read Kameron Hurley's The Stars are Legion, I think on the recommendation of this thread and it hit the spot for weird concept scifi. Anything else of hers worth reading? I really enjoyed her book The Light Brigade. It's sort of starship troopers meets the forever war, except with the antagonist being capitalism.
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Feb 12, 2023 21:18
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I wanted to like Two of Swords, but I guess I can only handle Parker's smug as gently caress protagonists in measured amounts.
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Feb 19, 2023 18:39
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pradmer posted:Age of Ash (Kithamar #1) by Daniel Abraham - $2.99 I read this a while back. I really enjoyed Abraham's Long Price series, but was lukewarm on Dagger and Coin. I wanted to like Age of Ash, but I just didn't. It has an interesting conceit, and could have gone in interesting directions, but one of the main characters story lines was just not what I was interested in. I doubt I'll end up reading the sequel.
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Jun 6, 2023 20:33
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pradmer posted:Two from Paolo Bacigalupi I haven't read The Tangled Lands, but I read Ship Breaker a couple years back and enjoyed most of it. It is YA but is probably not something I'd recommend to a kid. It explores some tough stuff, including abusive, drug addicted parents, dangerous child labor, and children soldiers committing atrocities against each other. E: maybe the child soldiers was in the sequel. I can't really remember. Xenix fucked around with this message at 00:44 on Jul 3, 2023 |
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Jul 3, 2023 00:40
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NoneMoreNegative posted:Also I love how the spiders live in a warmly bucolic, Thomas Kincade, cusp-of-steampunk world that's basically just like earth but with more legs; you could almost think they were people after a few paragraphs. It's been several years since I read the book, but I had been under the impression that both of these things were the result of the way the slave translators thought about the spider society and that the spider story was their translation of the radio broadcasts they listened to. When the humans actually met the spiders, they were horrified by them.
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Jul 13, 2023 06:03
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branedotorg posted:Anthony Ryan - the pariah How is this book, and any other newer books by him compared to Blood Song? I remember liking that well enough for a self pub book, but I was extremely disappointed with the sequel and never finished the trilogy. Will the pariah disappoint like Tower Lord?
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Aug 23, 2023 19:29
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Mustang posted:Mostly just how deep the history of the world in Malazan is, how strange it is compared to a lot of other fantasy settings, and having no idea what's actually going on and having to figure it out as you go. His "convergences" were also always extremely satisfying to get to. Not fantasy, but if you like the whole needing to figure it out as you go, I enjoyed The Quantum Thief. There's no (or almost no) info dumping in a weird post-humanity solar system where the last thing closest to us as humans lives on Mars in a moving city. There are sequels, but I enjoyed each one less than the previous book.
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Nov 2, 2023 19:40
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mewse posted:Fog with malicious intent isn't a very interesting villain. I think it's deep in the 2nd half of the book when there is finally confrontation between the protags and the fog, and it shows one of the wizards having his powers stripped away while he closes the portal the fog came from. I haven't read this review, and probably won't until I finish the book, but I'm 40% of the way through it and I am struggling with the writing style. It feels like everything is happening at arms length and the plot is moving incredibly slowly. I've learned more of the story from skimming the glossary than anything else, and it just raises a ton of questions that the story doesn't seem intent on answering.
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Nov 28, 2023 04:31
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Don't bother with Malazan. Like someone said above, if Deadhouse Gates didn't grab you, don't bother with the rest of the series. The first handful of books are interesting, but once it jumps continents, each book gets progressively worse, with the last 2 being awful slogs. The hobbling was also some of the grossest sexual violence I've had the displeasure of reading.
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Dec 6, 2023 08:09
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It's been a while since I read the books, but isn't it explicitly stated in the text Breq has trouble with gender because she spent thousands of years being plugged into the humans she cares about and thus had no need for visual gender cues and now that she doesn't have this, it's difficult because both in and out of raadch space, visual markers for gender are vary by place? That said, I felt like the use of she as a pronoun in the books made me no more and no less interested in them. It was pretty easy to get used to and not pay much attention to until a couple of instances Breq stuck her foot in her mouth over someone's gender.
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Dec 18, 2023 05:40
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Ccs posted:Contrast that with books by Abercrombie and Parker where even rare attempts to do so are met with ruin because of unintended consequences or humanities general shittiness. Those books can be more fun to read and seem less bleak though because they use so much humor, laughing at the characters futile attempts to even imagine they could make progress for themselves let alone the world. That's an interesting take, especially for Abercrombie, because it's not until the very end of the third book in the first trilogy that this is made well and truly clear. Up until then, things happen that give cause for hope, both for the characters and society as a whole. Does that mean, then, that you don't know something is bleak until the story plays out in its entirety? I am not sure I agree with that.
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Mar 1, 2024 18:38
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