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God I love it when people post photos of their book stacks; also I am jealous this man has a hardback of Absolute Book instead of my giant softback https://twitter.com/AndrewLiptak/status/1355927569892315141
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Jan 31, 2021 18:23
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freebooter posted:This was also the first one I ever read! And I just recently read it again as part of the slow, ongoing re-read I've been doing since his death. It really holds up as one of the best books in the series, certainly the second-best in the City Watch arc. And I picked up on a lot more of the very well-interwoven themes of multiculturalism, immigration and change than I did as a kid. Minor interesting point: the new Low King is a compromise candidate who comes from a less powerful clan in Llamedos, Pratchett's Wales stand-in, and clearly has a Welsh accent as he peppers his speech with "see" and "look you;" as an Australian kid that would've gone entirely over my head but as an adult I can see very specifically why that accent, considering what a provincial accent represents in Britain's class system, was chosen by Pratchett for that particular character. That's interesting, I would have put it at 3 in the Watch series but it was also my first book of his - I'll have to go back and read it again. What do you think it's the best Watch book, out of curiosity?
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Jan 31, 2021 19:44
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Cavelcade posted:That's interesting, I would have put it at 3 in the Watch series but it was also my first book of his - I'll have to go back and read it again. It was also my first Pratchett. I wonder if U.S. libraries ordered more of The Fifth Elephant than others by mistake thinking it was The Fifth Element? It was the only one available at my local library at the time.
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Jan 31, 2021 19:51
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while looking up hannu rajaniemi, i just realised ive never read the quantum thief, even though i have it in my kindle library, because i HAVE read the quantum magician (by derek künsken) and always assumed it was just the same book
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Jan 31, 2021 20:03
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quantumfoam posted:Ok. My definition of awful author behavior has repeatedly been reset by reading the SFL Archives. To be fair I was just talking about why his writing instead of his personal conduct. Rothfuss also runs a charity that does some shady things like pay his own company (that is to say, a company that is made up of him and nothing or no one else) 90k a year on 'rent', and there's umm... stories going about of him basically using conventions to get sex including one I remember where he went from that grinning jolly image he presents to everyone to the sneering rage when a fan turned him down for sex. And well, it's pretty much tolerated and not very openly spoken of for similar 'big author' reasons. So he seems fairly in line with some bad people, even if he's not like, Harlan Ellison bad. Kchama fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Jan 31, 2021 |
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Jan 31, 2021 20:28
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He’ll probably end up just as forgotten as Daniel Keys Moran (I sure as hell didn’t know who this guy was), especially if Rothfuss never finishes his trilogy that went nowhere and was just a bunch of over-indulgent bullshit. Sure it sucks he’s sucking up a ton of undeserved attention when there’s so many better authors. Hopefully he’s among the last relics of the unearned fame of the failing upward mediocre white man
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Jan 31, 2021 20:51
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Rothfuss strikes as the kind of guy who enjoys being a Writer more than he does actually writing. I keep seeing him on YouTube and at cons (back when cons were still a thing) and the like, but very rarely doing anything besides being a nominally famous writer. For all that, I actually enjoyed The Name of the Wind as setup for presumably a greater story yet to come, but then Wise Man's Fear came out and it....wasn't. And now it's been so long that even if the fabled third book ever does come out, I don't think I'll care. I've moved on. 
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Jan 31, 2021 21:00
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Jordan7hm posted:Among Others by Jo Walton
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Jan 31, 2021 21:00
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jng2058 posted:Rothfuss strikes as the kind of guy who enjoys being a Writer more than he does actually writing. I keep seeing him on YouTube and at cons (back when cons were still a thing) and the like, but very rarely doing anything besides being a nominally famous writer. His big claim to fame publisher-wise was that he had his trilogy pre-written, so that there wouldn't be years-long wait between each book because they'd all obviously just need editing and that's it. That was his original pitch. It turned out how lied pretty big about that.
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Jan 31, 2021 21:09
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False Value (Rivers of London #8) by Ben Aaronovitch - $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QBLNTX4/
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Jan 31, 2021 21:12
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Kchama posted:sneering rage when a fan turned him down for sex.
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Jan 31, 2021 21:15
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90s Cringe Rock posted:I think I missed this story. I don't know if I want to know. It's been a bit but if I remember correctly he invited her back to his room for 'ice cream' and when she turned him down, not being hungry, he made it very clear that he meant 'sex' and when she refused that he flew into a rage.
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Jan 31, 2021 21:34
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Cardiac posted:Speaking of lesbians, the Nevernight Chronicles was surprisingly good for being an fledgling assassin series. buying these right now, I loving love a well-deployed footnote and it's a drat shame they're all but extinct
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Jan 31, 2021 21:54
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I don't know about anybody else, but I can't stand footnotes on Kindle. I wish I could set it to just auto display the footnote on the bottom half of the screen below the point or something, with no button pressing. I'm always going to read them, I hate clicking the little asterisk and going back and forth.
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Jan 31, 2021 21:58
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jng2058 posted:Rothfuss strikes as the kind of guy who enjoys being a Writer more than he does actually writing. I keep seeing him on YouTube and at cons (back when cons were still a thing) and the like, but very rarely doing anything besides being a nominally famous writer. Yeah, a lot of the shine came off Rothfuss when he finally released a second book and there was almost no forward motion to the story and it was pretty clear that no, he did not have everything all done beforehand. Also the Baru fanart being posted made me realize that apparently I had interpreted a description differently than everybody else. Namely Baru's "half mask" which I imagined being like a half mask horizontally, not vertically.
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Jan 31, 2021 22:07
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Aardvark! posted:I don't know about anybody else, but I can't stand footnotes on Kindle. I wish I could set it to just auto display the footnote on the bottom half of the screen below the point or something, with no button pressing. I'm always going to read them, I hate clicking the little asterisk and going back and forth. Kindle still does footnotes like that? Koreader, at least, has two footnote modes: - EPUB3 books with proper footnote annotations display the footnote at the bottom of the page like a print book (most books, including commercial ones, do not have these annotations even if they're nominally EPUB3, but I have read a few) - Books that just half-rear end it and use links for footnotes will display them in a little popup when you tap the *, and tapping again dismisses the popup; no loving around with the navigation UI The stock Kobo firmware does the popup window for both kinds, I think.
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Jan 31, 2021 22:16
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ToxicFrog posted:buying these right now, I loving love a well-deployed footnote and it's a drat shame they're all but extinct There's this weird thing that Pratchett does where he will have something1 and then reference it in the next paragraph of the main text. Which really throws my rhythm in how the whole thing reads, and just feels disjointed. 1 in a footnote
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Jan 31, 2021 22:18
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Jordan7hm posted:I have a cart from book outlet filled with a bunch of speculative fiction and looking for thoughts on the following before I click buy. Anything stand out as particularly high or low quality? I enjoyed both of these. Among Others is something of a modern fairy tale. Maybe it's magical realism? I'm not sure how to describe it but it's different. I bought City in Middle of the Night after a good reviews.
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Jan 31, 2021 22:24
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ToxicFrog posted:Kindle still does footnotes like that? It treats them all as end notes still as far as I have seen. I think really short ones might do the popup, but the last couple books I read with them it takes you to a different page and you have to use the back button to get out. It's not that much of an issue when used sparingly, but a book with a shitload of them in it really takes me out of it, in a way that glancing down at a footnote doesn't.
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Jan 31, 2021 22:25
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Jordan7hm posted:The Brotherhood of the Wheel by R.S. Belcher (this one seems the most dubious to me... I’m ok with trashy, but I have my limits)
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Jan 31, 2021 22:33
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Yeah I missed out on half the fun of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell reading it on Kindle because all the footnotes were at the end.
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Jan 31, 2021 22:33
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I just finished Hamilton's Salvation series. So, it's just going to end like that?
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Jan 31, 2021 22:41
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Aardvark! posted:It treats them all as end notes still as far as I have seen. I think really short ones might do the popup, but the last couple books I read with them it takes you to a different page and you have to use the back button to get out.  EPUB2 endnotes. The popup here covers the last few lines of text, so it must be dismissed to continue reading. Particularly long footnotes get paginated and you can tap through them; I think it paginates if the footnote would otherwise cover more than 30% of the screen or so. If there are multiple footnotes on the same page it sometimes gets confused and displays all of them at once if you open any of them.  EPUB3 inline footnotes. The footnote placement becomes part of page layout, so it doesn't obscure the main text and is always visible.
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Jan 31, 2021 22:42
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muscles like this! posted:Also the Baru fanart being posted made me realize that apparently I had interpreted a description differently than everybody else. Namely Baru's "half mask" which I imagined being like a half mask horizontally, not vertically. I also did this.
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Feb 1, 2021 00:28
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Aardvark! posted:It was also my first Pratchett. I wonder if U.S. libraries ordered more of The Fifth Elephant than others by mistake thinking it was The Fifth Element? It was the only one available at my local library at the time. There was a long time in the 90s when Pratchett wasn't being published in the US at all, it wasn't the first to come out in hardback but maybe it took a bit to get momentum. (The last one to come out pre-hiatus was 'Witches Abroad' and I can remember having to convince my mom to let me use her credit card to buy 'Soul Music' and 'Men at Arms' from a California bookstore over the internet in I think 1995. The internet's got its problems but drat if it hasn't made ordering books from elsewhere in the world a lot easier)
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Feb 1, 2021 00:59
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tiniestacorn posted:I also did this. Me too! But it's whatevs.
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Feb 1, 2021 02:14
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Cavelcade posted:That's interesting, I would have put it at 3 in the Watch series but it was also my first book of his - I'll have to go back and read it again. With the caveat that I haven't read it since I was a teenager, Night Watch. It's a culmination of Vimes' entire journey so far that cleverly literally takes him back to the start of it, and probably has some of Pratchett's smartest political writing. I think it's probably also the best Discworld book overall. (I have seen the point made though, which I think is fair, that it's more of a Vimes book than a City Watch book because he's alone for basically all of it.) They're very hard to rank since they're nearly all excellent, and because they are such a journey with a lot of books building on the previous ones, I think the later ones have an advantage over the earlier ones. But if I was forced to rank them, again with the caveat that I haven't revisited all of them yet: 1. Night Watch 2. The Fifth Elephant 3. Men-at-Arms (much higher than I would've ranked it before re-reading) 4. Feet of Clay (barely any daylight between this and Men-at-Arms, though) 5. Guards! Guards! (feels insane to rank this so low and yet that's how good the other four are) 6. Jingo (this one surprisingly fell quite flat for me in the re-read) 6. Thud 7. Snuff (not as bad as Raising Steam, in fact it's fine, but it's the start of late Pratchett where the world is presented to you as a bit more black and white and Vimes is becoming Flanderised) I'm reviewing all of them as I re-read through them here, if you're interested in longer thoughts - https://grubstreethack.wordpress.com/2015/05/03/rereading-discworld/ Aardvark! posted:It was also my first Pratchett. I wonder if U.S. libraries ordered more of The Fifth Elephant than others by mistake thinking it was The Fifth Element? It was the only one available at my local library at the time. Both my school library and local bookstores in Australia were always overflowing with Pratchett, I think the reason it was my first is because it just happened to be the latest one out around the time I was old enough to be interested in reading them (around 12/13ish).
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Feb 1, 2021 03:06
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Kchama posted:To be fair I was just talking about why his writing instead of his personal conduct. Kchama posted:His big claim to fame publisher-wise was that he had his trilogy pre-written, so that there wouldn't be years-long wait between each book because they'd all obviously just need editing and that's it. That was his original pitch. Welcome to the 1990's version of that. DKM's 1992 status update to the SFL Archives contains lots of hype and stories that-never happened. Take note of the references to his editor and people getting fired. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 24 Aug 92 07:47:32 GMT From: d_moran@pain.la.ca.us (Daniel Keys Moran) Reply-to: sf-lovers-written@Rutgers.Edu Subject: Continuing Time Daniel Keys Moran P.O. Box 667 Van Nuys, CA 91408 ***NEWS RELEASE*** August 13, 1992 Okay, in response to the questions, for those of you who asked. (This is a very lengthy document.) 1) There is a new Continuing Time novel. It's called "The Last Dancer," and it's set principally in 2076, though there is a lengthy section set 50,000 years in the past. The book is principally about Denice Castanaveras, during a TriCentennial Rebellion. Trent is in the book for about one hundred pages; as I said, it's mostly Denice's story. "The Last Dancer" expands the stage on which events are taking place; you'll finally learn something substantial about the Continuing Time at large, as opposed to learning only about post-Unification Earth. The book is more than twice as long as "The Long Run", which is part of why it took as long to write as it did. Also I got divorced midway through it; and then my editor had a baby, so she couldn't edit it for about five months; and then Bantam fired her, along with a whole bunch of other people . . . The upshot is that "The Last Dancer" is completed, Bantam has it and has paid for it; but the book may not see publication for nine months or a year, until Bantam has the first draft of the *next* Continuing Time novel in hand. You will *never* have to wait this long again for a new book from me. My promise to everyone who wrote... and wrote... and wrote... 2) The Continuing Time novel I'm currently at work on is "Lord November: The Man-Spacething War." It's set in approximately 2680, six hundred years after the Trent/Denice stories. It's another very big novel, and the first Continuing Time novel that's really *set* out in the Continuing Time. Its principal characters are Tyrel November, one of Denice Castanaveras' descendants, and Bodhisatva Sill, a Pinkerton Agent who also happens to be a Trentist, a member of the Exodus Church, aka "The Church of His Return." "Once there was a thief, and the thief was God..." I think you'll like it. 3) There are two more novels coming about the Trent you have come to know and argue over. Unlike "Last Dancer," Trent will have about as much time on stage as in "The Long Run." The two books are due soon after "Lord November" - and I do mean soon. They'll be published pretty much back to back. Coming in 1994: The discovery of star travel, the passing of an era, and the end of the story of Mohammed Vance, Denice Castanaveras, and Trent the Uncatchable PLAYERS: Book One: The AI War Book Two: Revolution 4) And to close, some news about "The Long Run," and "Emerald Eyes," the novels that got everyone's attention in the first place. A. There is a "Long Run" screenplay. It's being shopped around Hollywood as we speak. It covers events in both "Emerald Eyes" and "The Long Run." Copies are available directly from yours truly at $80 a pop. $40 of this goes to either AIDS Project L.A., or RLA (Rebuild L.A.). The other $40 is approximately what it costs me (time and expense) to have a copy of the screenplay printed, bound, and mailed. (You get to decide which of those two worthy causes your extra $40 goes to.) Receipts will show contribution. B. Copies of EE and TLR. *drat* good question. If anyone out there finds a place where they can buy copies, let me know. I'd be interested. On a (slightly) more optimistic note, my editor said that Bantam would be re-issuing EE and TLR when "The Last Dancer" comes out. Of course, this was right before they fired her... Several people have requested that I make EE and TLR available as data files - a sort of literary "shareware." I actually find this an attractive idea, and I'm thinking of releasing some short Continuing Time fiction this way - write if you're interested - but for EE and TLR, I can't. Except for screenplay rights, Bantam essentially owns those novels - I was 24 and naive when I signed those contracts. Inevitably all fiction will be available digitally; I'm disinclined to fight the inevitable, even if I thought it a bad thing, which I don't. C. R. Talsorian Games is currently negotiating with Bantam for the rights to do a "Long Run" module for their "Cyberpunk" RPG. RTG seems serious, but I have no idea if anything will come of it; I'd like to see it happen, but Bantam controls the game rights to TLR, not me. This does not mean there will not be a "Continuing Time" based RPG, even one with Trent in it; however, it may be based on scenarios from "The Last Dancer" or "The AI War," stories to which I control the rights. D. Capstone Studios, a startup graphics company in L.A., run by John Dismukes and Geoff Miller, is by an odd coincidence also currently negotiating with Bantam for the rights to do a "Long Run" graphic novel. Once again, I have no idea if anything will come of this, and it's out of my hands. *However,* it looks very likely that "The AI War," the next Trent book, *will* be done as a graphic novel, possibly even before book publication, regardless of whether or not "The Long Run" ever sees such publication. I *do* control the rights to that. I want to thank everyone out there who's kept the faith with me these last three years. The stories are coming; I haven't abandoned Trent or Denice or my readers, or myself. I've been working on the Continuing Time since I was thirteen, and I'm not stopping now. Titles in quote marks are individual novels; the rest are short stories. These are the Tales of the Continuing Time: DATE: VOLUME ONE: "IN THE BEGINNING..." Starcloud...................Previous Cycle of the Wheel Spacethings..............................7 Billion B.C. The Revolt of the Living...............4.5 Billion B.C. The Time Wars..........................3.5 Billion B.C. The Continuing Time.........................62,000 B.C. "The Last Dancer: The Dancer"...............48,000 B.C. The Painsharing of Ifahad....................5,800 B.C. The Lord in His Castle..................540 to 589 A.D. Remembrance........................................1963 Driving in the Dark................................1982 "Emerald Eyes: The Ancestors"......................2030 The Shepherds......................................2049 "Emerald Eyes".....................................2062 Faster than the _Wind_.............................2063 "The Long Run".............................2069 to 2070 o The Last Summer of His Youth o The Long Run o The Wall "The Last Dancer: Spring 2072"....................2072 "Bordered in Blue".................................2072 o Sea Songs o Death Songs The Mechanism of Desire............................2074 "The Last Dancer"..........................2075 to 2076 o Summer: 2075 o Spring: 2076 o Back to the Beginning: Dvan's Story o The TriCentennial Summer o The Last Dancer VOLUME TWO: ON THE ROAD TO REVOLUTION "Players, Book One: The AI War"............2078 to 2080 o Trent the Uncatchable and the Temple of 'toons o The Big Boost o A Good Hair Day (The Lay of the Rose) o The AI War o Trent's Return Moving.............................................2082 "Walk Against the Wind"....................2087 to 2090 "The Last Detective".......................2090 to 2091 o Master of the loving Obvious o Deathjokes, Part One o Catch Me If You Can "Players, Book Two: Revolution"............2090 to 2100 o The Telepath, the Politician, and the Thief o Deathjokes, Part Two o The Light From the Crystal o The Voyage of the Dauntless o A Revolt in 2100 VOLUME THREE: THE WAR WITH THE SLEEM "A Song as Yet Unsung".....................2111 to 2119 "A Tale as Yet Untold".....................2121 to 2139 "Legend"...................................2145 to 2149 Post one of two. d_moran@pain.la.ca.us ------------------------------ Date: 24 Aug 92 07:50:18 GMT From: d_moran@pain.la.ca.us (Daniel Keys Moran) Reply-to: sf-lovers-written@Rutgers.Edu Subject: Continuing Time VOLUME FOUR: THE EXODUS FROM EARTH The Corridor of Dawn...............................2290 "The House of November"....................2291 to 2294 o Ares o Sondra o Richard: the First Lord of November o Lorn The Lords of Shadow................................2309 The Left Handed Hunter.............................2341 "Kinderjim on Earth"...............................2347 "The Serendip, the Starclouds, and the Scout".....................2349 to 2361 o Discovery o Looking for Home "Domain"...................................2382 to 2389 o Homecoming Day o The Domain of Kinderjim o Domain "The Always Rising of the Night"...........2468 to 2501 (Being the true story of Our Lady of Nightways, Ola Blue, who was Lady Blue, who was Leiacan of Eastersea.) Honorable Enemies..................................2614 "Lord November: The Man-Spacething War"............2676 to 2682 The Face of Night..................................2696 VOLUME FIVE: CAMBER'S WAY "Young Camber".............................3000 to 3018 o Young Camber o The Darkness Has a Name o The Hunted Man "The Winding Way Home".....................3022 to 3030 o The Song of Camber and S'Reeth o The Song of S'Reeth and the Freebooters o The Old Humans o Mithian the Mercenary o Homecoming Day 3030 "Lord Camber"..............................3036 to 3038 o The Traveler o Cities in the Darkness o The Borderland of Night "Camber's Way".....................................3040 VOLUME SIX: THE TIME WARS "Comes A Man"..............................3106 to 3107 "In Time of Legend"..........................Irrelevant "All of the Things That You Are".............Irrelevant "In All of Your Brilliance: The Writings of Camber"........3397; Irrelevant VOLUME SEVEN: THE FAILURE OF THE MAP "Platformer"...............................2964 to 3031 Shiva..............................................3042 Chauki November....................................3392 The Return of the Ultimate Webdancer...............4600 The High Servant...................................7822 "Anarchist"................................8864 to 8976 o The Last Lord of November o The Way the World Ends o Anarchist "End of Empire"....................................9082 "Monument: The Day of Its Release"...............10,400 (In which the Chained One, Creator of the Great Wheel of Existence, is released; the Starclouds and the Zaradin return; heroes who died before die again; and the Continuing Time draws to an end.) The Cold Time..............................circa 12,000 Related Works (fictional and otherwise): "The Encyclopedia of the Continuing Time" (Non-Fiction) "Tales of Old and New Earth" o Other Times and Other Places o Tales of Old and New Earth "The Way off the Wheel" (In the universal heat death, as the Great Wheel of Existence collapses around them, a group of heroes searches for the Way off the Wheel.) "The Collapse of the Levels" (A fantasy trilogy unlike _anything_ you have ever seen before, deeper and more detailed than "The Lord of The Rings." Of course you won't _get_ to see it for about twenty years; a trivial enough wait for a classic of this magnitude.) And, last but _certainly_ not least: TRINITY Earth Angel Sun Magic The Poet of the Apocalypse d_moran@pain.la.ca.us ------------------------------ The real story is that DKM had a long term sexual relationship going on with that editor and the baby mentioned was his. Bantam Spectra cleaned house after finding out, and seems to have published his The Last Dancer unedited to close out any commitments with DKM. (DKM probably still appears as a radioactive bullet point in the Bantam Spectra H.R. sexual harassment training courses).
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Feb 1, 2021 06:29
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freebooter posted:With the caveat that I haven't read it since I was a teenager, Night Watch. It's a culmination of Vimes' entire journey so far that cleverly literally takes him back to the start of it, and probably has some of Pratchett's smartest political writing. I think it's probably also the best Discworld book overall. (I have seen the point made though, which I think is fair, that it's more of a Vimes book than a City Watch book because he's alone for basically all of it.) For me, TFE was the one my brother left at home when he went to college and must of my reading at first was whatever he left there. I agree on NW almost entirely, I think its focused nature is part of what makes it so strong, as well as it being the peak of his powers before, well... The only thing I'd swap in that order is I'd have Men at Arms (the city watch needs men!) at 2nd but I'll admit I read that one until it fell apart so it could be nostalgia from that... I'll check out your reviews, thanks! I'm curious what might be there I didn't see as a child.
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Feb 1, 2021 07:16
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Ccs posted:Yeah I missed out on half the fun of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell reading it on Kindle because all the footnotes were at the end. Strom Cuzewon posted:There's this weird thing that Pratchett does where he will have something1 and then reference it in the next paragraph of the main text. Which really throws my rhythm in how the whole thing reads, and just feels disjointed. It's been a while since I revisited it but I remember something similar happens in Strange and Norrell with a lot of material about the Raven King regulated to footnotes during the first two thirds then paying off in the main text during the climax
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Feb 1, 2021 07:38
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freebooter posted:I'm reviewing all of them as I re-read through them here, if you're interested in longer thoughts - https://grubstreethack.wordpress.com/2015/05/03/rereading-discworld/ I enjoyed reading these! For some reason I can't access the entries on Maskerade or Feet of Clay review, it asks me to log in. I finished The Fifth Elephant over the weekend, these are really quick books though I remember them being around 300 pages in printed form. I've tried reading a ton of fantasy books recently of similar length and getting bogged down, reluctant to continue. Pratchett really is a master of story flow, even with quick little scenes that seem like they should be harder to read because the reader keeps having to reorient themselves to which city and set of characters they're suddenly focusing on. But it never seems to be an issue. Ccs fucked around with this message at 19:38 on Feb 1, 2021 |
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Feb 1, 2021 19:34
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Ccs posted:I enjoyed reading these! For some reason I can't access the entries on Maskerade or Feet of Clay review, it asks me to log in. The links are broken for some reason. Try: https://grubstreethack.wordpress.com/2018/05/19/rereading-discworld-maskerade/ https://grubstreethack.wordpress.com/2018/11/29/rereading-discworld-feet-of-clay/ (I also enjoyed reading them)
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Feb 1, 2021 20:08
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tiniestacorn posted:I also did this. Same. It's because the classic masquerade masks are like that. General Battuta posted:Me too! But it's whatevs. It doesn't really hurt it to be the other way around, yeah, so it doesn't bother me to see that interpretation of it. quantumfoam posted:Welcome to the 1990's version of that. Yikes! At least in Rothfuss's case he does not seem to be up to any hanky panky with his editor, as she ended up revealing not that long ago that despite Rothfuss talking about how 'close' he's been for ages, she's literally never seen a single word on book 3.
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Feb 1, 2021 22:29
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freebooter posted:With the caveat that I haven't read it since I was a teenager, Night Watch. It's a culmination of Vimes' entire journey so far that cleverly literally takes him back to the start of it, and probably has some of Pratchett's smartest political writing. I think it's probably also the best Discworld book overall. (I have seen the point made though, which I think is fair, that it's more of a Vimes book than a City Watch book because he's alone for basically all of it.) I'd rank a lot of them differently, interestingly enough, although I agree that they're all quite good and worthwhile. Snuff's still down there at the bottom, and I'd put Night Watch at the top if my ranking it trying to be objective (for what miniscule amount that's worth), but in my personal rankings Thud! barely beats out Night Watch; it just covered a lot of things that mean a lot to me, and covered them well.
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Feb 1, 2021 22:40
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I think the ranking is ok, but to me meaningless. Most of the later Watch books, while not reliant on, do certainly benefit from having read them from the start.
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Feb 1, 2021 23:50
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Big grab bag of stuff today for the new month. The Last Light of the Sun by Guy Gavriel Kay - $4.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000OCXHUY/ The Last Days of New Paris by China Miéville - $4.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0180SQC32/ Annihilation (Southern Reach Trilogy #1) by Jeff VanderMeer - $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EGJ32A6/ Emergency Skin (Forward #3) by NK Jemisin - $0.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07VFMFPP4/ Empire in Black and Gold (Shadows of the Apt #1) by Adrian Tchaikovsky - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003GK21XK/ Recluse Tales by LE Modesitt Jr - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01H02TP5G/ Crack'd Pot Trail (Malazan) by Steven Erickson - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004WJR7LU/ Metatropolis by John Scalzi - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003JTHYAS/ The Tower of Fools (Hussite Trilogy #1) by Andrzej Sapkowski - $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07ZZ22J48/ The Very Best of the Best: 35 Years of The Year's Best Science Fiction by Gardner Dozois - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07D2BGWRF/
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Feb 2, 2021 00:24
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A vertical (left-right) split is a weird interpretation given the point of the mask is to turn individual people into anonymous avatars of the Immortal State.
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Feb 2, 2021 00:50
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Qwertycoatl posted:The links are broken for some reason. Try: Thanks, those are fixed now. And glad you guys enjoyed reading them! It's mostly just stuff I scribble for myself so it's nice if other people are finding it interesting.
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Feb 2, 2021 00:53
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pradmer posted:The Last Days of New Paris by China Miéville - $4.99 Dope, been meaning to read this.
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Feb 2, 2021 02:14
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Kept hearing about Brandon Sanderson for years, so I picked up Way of Kings because it was a series-starter and on the top of the list when I searched for him. I really liked it. It's the first fantasy book I've finished in about ten years. A few thoughts: -Kaladin's arc is the real story here. I think Brandon did a really good job of just having the world poo poo on him in a way that actually made sense as opposed to other stories that feel like the authors pile on misfortunes just for the sake of having conflict. It did get a little heavy with the foreshadowing for what happens near the end. Not long into the book, I basically assumed that Kaladin was going to do some thing where his bridge crew impressed Dalenar in some way . -I'd say the story's pacing was inconsistent up until maybe the last 2/3rd of the book. I think Brandon realized that Shallan's story needed to be given some tension early on, so thank god he pretty much came out of the gate early and say that she wanted to steal Jasnah's Soulcaster, or the first chunk of the book would have been rough for me. The early passages were a little frustrating because Kaladin's story kept getting halted on cliffhangers to go and see fishermen talk to one another or to go on with longish world-building screeds. I was originally not hot on Dalenar's arc because it came after Kaladin's story kept getting interrupted, and I was not excited about how long it took for these poncey high fantasy nobles to do anything interesting. And then I did eventually get super-invested in Dalenar's story just to have it abandoned for what felt like half of the book later on. -The final battle at the tower is one of the best-handled battle scenes I've read in a book. -As is usually the case with fantasy, the humor is mostly a miss (for me). I'm not really fond of humor being limited to clever wordplay, which is how most humor seems to be handled in fantasy. Sometimes when I saw characters in this book throwing clever phrase-turns or puns at each other, I just kept thinking of them getting owned by some middle school bully who calls them a bunch of dumb nerds. -The only sections I outright didn't like were Szeth's, mainly because of how Brandon wrote his fight scenes. There were all this unnecessary "he lashed to the ceiling" and then "grabbed the blade with both hands," and then "lashed one leg up on the ceiling and another onto the end table," lines that dragged out the fight and just made it feel like I someone transcribed a Pong match. It got a little ridiculous to read, and felt absent of pathos. As absurd as the shardbearer fights could get with everyone "spinning" into groups of Parshendi, Brandon at least tied the fight scenes to Dalenar's inner turmoil when it came to slaughtering Parshendi. The last part of Szeth's story was a really well-handled reveal, though. -Overall, this is the first time I've felt invested in a high fantasy story. Usually when a high fantasy story throws in anime sword men and super-magic, I start checking out because it starts making 99.9999% of people in the world useless to the overall story, but I love how Dalenar's story almost directly addresses that concern of mine.
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Feb 2, 2021 03:59
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