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Dhulyn and Parno omnibus 1 arrives in the mail, I pop it open, and the author's note starts by explaining that this series was directly inspired by Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories, but she wanted more women in it with the caveat that there would be no sexual tension. She then explains the other inspiration was the Three Musketeers and if I hadn't already bought this book I'd be sold already. ![]()
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# ? Jun 3, 2024 22:40 |
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:If I really enjoyed the Quantum Thief/Jean Le Flambeur series, especially the later books where the whole fundamental structure of the universe is going apeshit, what else should I check out? Have you read the Hexarchate books yet?
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Does anyone have suggestions of books similar to The Lies of Locke Lamora? I'm not sure what about it, maybe it's just the heist aspect because I also liked the Great Train Robbery.
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SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:Does anyone have suggestions of books similar to The Lies of Locke Lamora? I'm not sure what about it, maybe it's just the heist aspect because I also liked the Great Train Robbery. The other Gentleman Bastards books?
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SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:Does anyone have suggestions of books similar to The Lies of Locke Lamora? I'm not sure what about it, maybe it's just the heist aspect because I also liked the Great Train Robbery. Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson is a neat fantasy heist novel. It kicks off a big series that aren't heist-like at all, though
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XBenedict posted:The other Gentleman Bastards books? Haha yeah sorry should have said I read those already. Mistborn seems right up my alley and I like Sanderson
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SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:Does anyone have suggestions of books similar to The Lies of Locke Lamora? I'm not sure what about it, maybe it's just the heist aspect because I also liked the Great Train Robbery. Googling 'fantasy heist novel' shows a list of all the novels/authors that I've heard are similar but haven't personally read. So maybe try some of those.
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SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:Does anyone have suggestions of books similar to The Lies of Locke Lamora? I'm not sure what about it, maybe it's just the heist aspect because I also liked the Great Train Robbery. ![]()
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SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:Does anyone have suggestions of books similar to The Lies of Locke Lamora? I'm not sure what about it, maybe it's just the heist aspect because I also liked the Great Train Robbery. Godstalk by PC Hodgell is a fantasy thief book. The sequels are different and become progressively worse, but I like Godstalk as a stand alone.
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RJB's Foundryside likely counts, but so far only 1 book in the proposed series is out.
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SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:Does anyone have suggestions of books similar to The Lies of Locke Lamora? I'm not sure what about it, maybe it's just the heist aspect because I also liked the Great Train Robbery. The Thief series by Looking Glass Studios/Ion Storm. A goon did a good completionist LP of the series a few years back, along with some of the better levels for the community-made Dark Mod sequel, which should be on the LP Archive.
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C.M. Kruger posted:The Thief series by Looking Glass Studios/Ion Storm. A goon did a good completionist LP of the series a few years back, along with some of the better levels for the community-made Dark Mod sequel, which should be on the LP Archive. Damnit C.M. Kruger. They asked for "suggestions of books similar to The Lies of Locke Lamora?", not video-games/completionist LP's with audiovisual components. This thread is barely 3 pages long, do I have to bold and make the thread rules ALL CAPS in the OP or something? Back on topic: SSJ_naruto_2003 Although the setting is science-fiction and the stories were mostly written in the 1960s -1980s, Harry Harrison's The Stainless Steel Rat series is all about heists and reader-friendly crime. Main ding on the Stainless Steel Rat stories is the main characters insane over-confidence levels ala Locke Lamora, and the plethora of situation-saving gadgets that get pulled out of nowhere to save the day.
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Done with Gideon. If you scrape off the bones(but why would you?), the story turned out to be a nice isolated island paranoia thing, though it never leans too hard into it, the characters are interesting, the setting is verywarhammer and the author's voice is Let's Play riddled with dad jokes. And I don't even mean this as a critique.
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wizzardstaff posted:The Blending by Sharon Green. Do it! Give in to your hate and it will make you stronger!
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https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3643994 (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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did you just discover TBB or
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wizzardstaff posted:The Blending by Sharon Green. You know there's a sequel series, right? Please hate-read these to us, I own all five and never finished them and I'd like to know what happens.
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Cardiac posted:It is more the style than the actual author, where the purpose of the text is to be flowery with words instead of using words to drive the story. Is that always a bad thing? I don't mind utilitarian prose, but sometimes I like when it has a nice aesthetic to it.
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Yeah not every book needs to read like Cormac McCarthy.
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I really liked the first two books but was left kind of cold on the third. Especially the ending which just feels super rushed.
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I don't read as much SF/F in books as I do from Analog, is this the right thread for that or is there a separate SF/F magazine thread?
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Absurd Alhazred posted:I don't read as much SF/F in books as I do from Analog, is this the right thread for that or is there a separate SF/F magazine thread? Tell me about these sci-fi/fantasy short stories please, maybe they'll get me to read short stories. e: or magazine articles, tell me details. I like reading genre fiction, I could be down for magazines.
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StrixNebulosa posted:You know there's a sequel series, right? Please hate-read these to us, I own all five and never finished them and I'd like to know what happens. I've never read the sequel series but it's why I reread the first five so many times. I'd think, "Man, I'm really curious how those sequels went but I should refresh myself on the originals first. It's light reading, it should go fast." And then by the time I'm done I just want to throw the books in a fire. If people would be entertained by it I could start a thread in a month or so when I have more time.
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wizzardstaff posted:I've never read the sequel series but it's why I reread the first five so many times. I'd think, "Man, I'm really curious how those sequels went but I should refresh myself on the originals first. It's light reading, it should go fast." And then by the time I'm done I just want to throw the books in a fire. I would be entertained by this, yes. ![]()
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Solitair posted:Is that always a bad thing? I don't mind utilitarian prose, but sometimes I like when it has a nice aesthetic to it. Utilitarian and aesthetic prose are not opposites imo, but flowery text for the purpose of flowery text makes me believe the author is a smug wise rear end. Also, for being a PhD in history, Palmer sure seems to believe that the current premier nations are going to be the same in 500 years. The paragraph about China, Japan and Korea deciding on a neutral capital in Indonesia is kinda funny, given where for example Korea was less than 100 years ago. So much sci-fi with respect to Earths politics is going to be dated in 50 years, considering that Nigeria is predicted to be the 3rd most populous country on Earth in the end of this century.
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StrixNebulosa posted:Tell me about these sci-fi/fantasy short stories please, maybe they'll get me to read short stories. Well, I only know Analog well, as I've been subscribed for more than a year now: it's got science fiction, mostly "hard" stuff, although what that means varies. I like that they will often have really interesting depictions of aliens, either from first- or third-person perspective. There was one recently called Better, about a soldier in some war nobody understands that Earth was conscripted into, who is brought back to a highly depopulated Earth by the weird creatures running the show to help yet another weird species integrate. They also have weird alt-history stories, like Bone Hunters by Harry Turtledove, where lizard people roam the Earth, which made an uncomfortable recreation of the Old West with a different subspecies as a Native American analog. Asimov's is a bit more open about doing "softer" science fiction and science fantasy, but I haven't read as much of it. Analog also has interesting science fact articles, about biology, cosmology, etc.
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wizzardstaff posted:The Blending by Sharon Green. I'm amused by the "villains are bad because they do BDSM" thing, because Green's books from the early 80s were BDSM wank fantasies aimed at the Gor audience (although in Green's books, the women were occasionally allowed to get on top).
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wizzardstaff posted:I've never read the sequel series but it's why I reread the first five so many times. I'd think, "Man, I'm really curious how those sequels went but I should refresh myself on the originals first. It's light reading, it should go fast." And then by the time I'm done I just want to throw the books in a fire. Count me in on being entertained by watching a slow melt-down Let's Read ending with incoherent posts composed while in the grip of a frothing rage.
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Recently finished reading a non-fiction book about a internet criminal kingpin that reads like a bizzare scifi/milscifi book series given the various schemes and plans the internet kingpin had going on. But it was all real apparently, and why I'm cross-posting this recap-review to a few book barn threads. == A guy who created the online infrastructure and billing system for a unlicensed U.S. pill-mill (that he also created) made so much money he started hiring mercenaries to supply/guard/stay in the dozens+ of safe-houses he had filled up with gold bars and weapons. This escalated into the guy branching out into arms smuggling and of course drug smuggling along with lowest-bidder hit squads being sent out if the sums in the monthly (encrypted) budget expenditure (Excel spreadsheet) reports he required didn't add up. Toss in a stab at a legitimate business but make it a fishery specializing in rare fish stocks that was based in Somalia. Yes, Somalia (something about the decades of war + boat pirating allowing the depleted fish stocks along the Somalian coast to rebound and a fishery there being a fish-goldmine). Did I also mention that the guy gave his mercenary teams detailed load-outs of what weapons and gear they should bring on each mission, and where he thought they should setup defensive positions like he was playing Jagged Alliance 2? Or that he was the brains and funding behind two major open-source disk encryption projects that were NSA resistant. Or that the sex addiction documented throughout the book was really a scheme for getting Anchor Babies in every non-extradition treaty nation or limited extradition treaty nation in case he had to flee and needed that extra leverage to resist getting extradited to the U.S.A.? == Well, all that stuff is true and real. Book is The mastermind : drugs, empire, murder, betrayal by Evan Ratliff. And the two open-source disk encryption projects, in case anyone cares, were E4M and TrueCrypt.
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So, I finally got around to reading Bridge of Birds and oh man, after reading semi serious stuff for years it was hard for me to grasp the tone of the book, I kept falling into the trap of trying to seriously understand it all, instead of just... Enjoying the crazy stuff? I can't really explain it, I think until the end I never got the way to read it right, I'll probably need a reread. It's so different to everything I'm used to. Like, even all the pulpy, camp stuff I've read didn't compare in tone to Bridge of Birds.
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orange sky posted:So, I finally got around to reading Bridge of Birds and oh man, after reading semi serious stuff for years it was hard for me to grasp the tone of the book, I kept falling into the trap of trying to seriously understand it all, instead of just... Enjoying the crazy stuff? I can't really explain it, I think until the end I never got the way to read it right, I'll probably need a reread. It's so different to everything I'm used to. I can see how A Brief Interlude for Murder and The Triumph of Henpecked Ho can be hard for some people to vibe on the same level as The Art of Porcupine Cookery. It's best on a reread when you can enjoy the three part structure, the hidden main plot points, the repetitions, the language (and the alliteration) without having to worry about figuring out what's going on with the episodic story chapters and how they fit into the overall quite intricately plotted structure. Apparatchik Magnet fucked around with this message at 19:46 on Oct 8, 2019 |
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orange sky posted:So, I finally got around to reading Bridge of Birds and oh man, after reading semi serious stuff for years it was hard for me to grasp the tone of the book, I kept falling into the trap of trying to seriously understand it all, instead of just... Enjoying the crazy stuff? I can't really explain it, I think until the end I never got the way to read it right, I'll probably need a reread. It's so different to everything I'm used to. Yeah. Just let it unfold in your mind like a flower.
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quantumfoam posted:Recently finished reading a non-fiction book about a internet criminal kingpin that reads like a bizzare scifi/milscifi book series given the various schemes and plans the internet kingpin had going on. But it was all real apparently, and why I'm cross-posting this recap-review to a few book barn threads. Bought this book on your recommendation and it's already sucked me in after 10 minutes. Thanks for that.
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Finished Gideon the Ninth. Great book. One thing that I really enjoyed early in the novel was that the fight scenes were short and brutal as you'd expect fights with live weapons to be. Was a little disappointed it escalated into "fight to end all fights" by the end, but I guess that's the nature of dramatic tension.
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quantumfoam posted:Recently finished reading a non-fiction book about a internet criminal kingpin that reads like a bizzare scifi/milscifi book series given the various schemes and plans the internet kingpin had going on. But it was all real apparently, and why I'm cross-posting this recap-review to a few book barn threads. I think that's the guy who was a coworker of a friend of mine. Edit: No, that was a different criminal involved with mercenaries and such. xcheopis fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Oct 8, 2019 |
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Cardiac posted:Utilitarian and aesthetic prose are not opposites imo, but flowery text for the purpose of flowery text makes me believe the author is a smug wise rear end. Too Like The Lightning is one of the few books I've abandoned in the last ten years. Found it insufferably pretentious.
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Speaking of lovely books that give you a warm fuzzy feeling. I just finished library at Mount char. Such a feelgood book. Eeek. Why did C not ask the massive shithead how he reversed time 8 times if he was dead and David lost to the monster? Like the idea of the cosmic horror scoobie gang tho.
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Collateral posted:Speaking of lovely books that give you a warm fuzzy feeling. I just finished library at Mount char. Such a feelgood book. Eeek. I liked Library at Mount Char a lot but would strongly disagree with it being a feelgood book. While it doesn't focus on such things entirely, it does include someone being raped and killed (then resurrected), a boy being roasted alive over the course of a day in a giant metal oxen or whatever it was, a few instances of being being torn apart by superhumans and a worldwide apocalypse happening in the background.
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Is this one of those deadpan reverse irony things the cool kids do these days?
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# ? Jun 3, 2024 22:40 |
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So I read Priory of the Orange Tree recently and thought it was loving phenomenal. I also realized that I've barely read any fantasy novels, apart from Terry Prachett and the one time I read the Hobbit. I'm looking for more sweeping epic fantasy written by women/lgbt folk, especially ones featuring women/lgbt characters. i know it's sci-fi but I've also read all of Becky Chambers' stuff as well, which I also love, and I think Record of a Spaceborn Few is my favorite of her Wayfarer's triology. Haven't read her new one yet, but I have a hold on it at the library. ...tbh I'm probably just going to read Priory again, I really loved it.
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