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freebooter posted:Also that section at the end set in Ireland in the 2140s (?) is so loving prescient in retrospect. An apocalyptic future where there hasn't been any one big event, just a whole bunch of little ones, until your lives are measurably way worse than when you a kid and you know they're never, ever getting better.
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Aug 23, 2021 14:44
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I’m in the mood for some simple, competently executed D&D-ish fantasy. Something along the lines of Elizabeth Moon’s Paksennarion stuff. Does anyone have any good suggestions?
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Aug 23, 2021 15:25
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Beefeater1980 posted:I’m in the mood for some simple, competently executed D&D-ish fantasy. Something along the lines of Elizabeth Moon’s Paksennarion stuff. Does anyone have any good suggestions? The Shannara series by Terry Brooks The Heroes of Phlan trilogy is straight up D&D based. Also the Penhaligon Trilogy is pretty good.
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Aug 23, 2021 15:31
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Ror posted:
The closest authors in terms of theme and style to Susannah Clarke are Hope Mirrlee's Lud in the Mist -- which we did as book of the month a few years back: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3781830 And Lord Dunsany. Start with "Idle Days on the Yann" : https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/dun/swld/swld09.htm
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Aug 23, 2021 15:42
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Beefeater1980 posted:I’m in the mood for some simple, competently executed D&D-ish fantasy. Something along the lines of Elizabeth Moon’s Paksennarion stuff. Does anyone have any good suggestions? Mary Gentle’s Ash is an excellent low fantasy series, but it’s also really brutal and filled with unpleasant sexual violence. So is Paksennarion, of course, so that may not be a deal breaker. Drew Hayes has some kindle unlimited stuff that’s explicitly D&D like (NPCs and sequels) but it’s kindle unlimited and not high literature by any measure. Orconomics is decent and in a similar vein.
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Aug 23, 2021 15:48
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Beefeater1980 posted:I’m in the mood for some simple, competently executed D&D-ish fantasy. Something along the lines of Elizabeth Moon’s Paksennarion stuff. Does anyone have any good suggestions? The Misenchanted Sword by Lawrence Watt-Evans. Jig the Goblin series by Jim Hines.
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Aug 23, 2021 15:49
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Beefeater1980 posted:I’m in the mood for some simple, competently executed D&D-ish fantasy. Something along the lines of Elizabeth Moon’s Paksennarion stuff. Does anyone have any good suggestions? Master of the Five Magics by Lyndon Hardy. It has sequels of more or less the same quality, Secret of the Sixth Magic and Riddle of the Seven Realms.
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Aug 23, 2021 15:51
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The Misenchanted Sword by Lawrence Watt-Evans. Jig the Goblin series by Jim Hines. I will never skip a shot to double recommend Misenchanted Sword. What a fun book. Even though it’s kinda tropey, it’s executed so well that it doesn’t matter.
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Aug 23, 2021 17:00
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Beefeater1980 posted:I’m in the mood for some simple, competently executed D&D-ish fantasy. Something along the lines of Elizabeth Moon’s Paksennarion stuff. Does anyone have any good suggestions? Mike Shels The Aching God. It's an attempt to do a party of professional adventurers does exploration and dungeon bash in a world that makes such activities plausible. Does get a bit dark in places if you're looking for something cheerful however. He's turned it into a series, but the first is perfectly reasonable to read as a self-contained adventure.
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Aug 23, 2021 17:20
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Beefeater1980 posted:I’m in the mood for some simple, competently executed D&D-ish fantasy. Something along the lines of Elizabeth Moon’s Paksennarion stuff. Does anyone have any good suggestions? If I'm running the game, then the Black Company fits.
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Aug 23, 2021 19:45
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The Misenchanted Sword by Lawrence Watt-Evans. Most of the books in the setting will fit their needs as well, though Misenchanted Sword is definitely one of the better ones.
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Aug 23, 2021 19:59
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Less Fat Luke posted:That section in The Bone Clocks has stuck with me for 5 years since reading it. Yeah, I'm not sure if it's just my personal perception of climate change, but 2014/2015 was for me the point where it tipped from "huge problem that will hopefully be addressed" to "this is going to be really hosed, well within my lifetime." And the end of the Bone Clocks just perfectly chimed with how I was feeling. That bit within that section that's always stuck with me is how the collapse of society is unevenly distributed - Ireland and the UK are on the brink of balkanising into post-apoc warlord territory, but Iceland and Australia still have functioning governments and relatively normal life, and China is booming. William Gibson's The Peripheral came out around the same time and does the same thing, as does the David Michod film The Rover. So it's the idea that, not only is the apocalypse not going to be one big event, it's going to be little different events for different places, in the same way that (say) Miami will be hosed from climate change generations before Denver. The other bit that's always stuck with me is when the young raiders from the neighbouring warlord come and start stealing the elderly protagonist's solar panels and livestock, and she protests that she's never done anything to hurt them, and they retort with something along the lines of "yes you did - every time you filled up your car, every time you turned on the lights."
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Aug 23, 2021 22:52
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The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IQO403K/ The Color of Magic (Discworld #1) by Terry Pratchett - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000W9399S/ Bloodchild: And Other Stories by Octavia E Butler - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008HALO0U/
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Aug 23, 2021 23:20
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Yknow what with their masks and handwashing gestures I think those Incrasticism guys were on to something.
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Aug 24, 2021 03:54
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Ccs posted:Yknow what with their masks and handwashing gestures I think those Incrasticism guys were on to something. The good hygiene and fun cosplay options are just there to seduce you into eugenics programs and fascist purges
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Aug 24, 2021 03:55
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issuing correction on a previous post of mine, regarding the Empire of Masks. you do not, under any circumstances, "gotta hand it to them"
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Aug 24, 2021 04:00
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cptn_dr posted:issuing correction on a previous post of mine, regarding the Empire of Masks. you do not, under any circumstances, "gotta hand it to them" admit it you want to send all the people who wear their mask nose-out to a falcresti reeducation camp
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Aug 24, 2021 04:25
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Nomnom Cookie posted:admit it you want to send all the people who wear their mask nose-out to a falcresti reeducation camp That's all of them, isn't it?
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Aug 24, 2021 09:52
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Just wanted to say thanks all for the recommendations, that’s a good month of reading taken care of and it’s much appreciated.
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Aug 24, 2021 10:33
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freebooter posted:Yeah, I'm not sure if it's just my personal perception of climate change, but 2014/2015 was for me the point where it tipped from "huge problem that will hopefully be addressed" to "this is going to be really hosed, well within my lifetime." And the end of the Bone Clocks just perfectly chimed with how I was feeling. Or to quote CS Eliot: This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper
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Aug 24, 2021 12:38
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Ccs posted:Yknow what with their masks and handwashing gestures I think those Incrasticism guys were on to something. I really should have saved a link to that review because it makes me laugh every time when I think of it 
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Aug 24, 2021 12:44
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DACK FAYDEN posted:the book that is science fiction because it takes place in a world where women are better at math than men What? Has anyone got this? It sounds hilarious.
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Aug 24, 2021 12:47
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One of the final copy-pastes from the SFL Archives I will be making to this thread. Someone 20+ years ago (pretty sure it's James Cambias, future sff author) in the SFL Archives summed up why I could never get into Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy. == Subject: Re: Opinions on Red Mars/Kim Stanley Robinson Actually, the infodumps weren't bad -- no worse than the whale chapters in Moby Dick, which are kind of interesting. For me the problem was more fundamental: I couldn't believe in the world he was presenting, and I couldn't believe in his characters either. By the time we got to the second book I was making irritated snorting noises every couple of pages. Among the irritated snort inducers I remember: The constitution of the Martians, which reads like it was drafted by a bunch of sophomores at the University of Wisconsin; the idea of a stowaway on an interplanetary voyage; the way the main characters turned into walking, talking symbols of ideological positions; the inevitable Asian sex goddess; the convenient good-guy megacorporation which descends from the fly gallery to put things right; the motiveless black hat behavior of the bad-guy megacorporations ("We're TransCo! We're Evil!"); the colorful Third World people who go to Mars and exactly recreate their colorful Third World cultures with high-tech trappings; the way the rebels spend lots of time talking about a consensus-based society but continue to behave like rogue elephants themselves; the motiveless paranoia and scheming of all the main characters; other stuff. == KSR's Mars trilogy always heavily reminded of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri turn-based strategy game, but more shoehorned for conflict than SMAC. quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Aug 24, 2021 |
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Aug 24, 2021 17:39
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Beefeater1980 posted:I’m in the mood for some simple, competently executed D&D-ish fantasy. Something along the lines of Elizabeth Moon’s Paksennarion stuff. Does anyone have any good suggestions? Barbara Hambly has some fitting series. Time of the Dark (three books) Silicon Mage (three or four, can't remember) Dragonsbane (one book, avoid the sequels like the plague) Sun Wolf (three books).
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Aug 24, 2021 18:14
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I'd say the Druss series by Gemmell, because basically Druss is basically a barbarian paladin with an honor code and he smashes the gently caress out of evil with his axe. The fact the axe may contain a demon is pointless, because Druss does not give a gently caress, he smites what he thinks is evil with it. They never really get into the d&d minutia, but the archetypes are there.
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Aug 24, 2021 18:50
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Of Gemmell's stuff I've only read Legend; but that fuckin' owned.
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Aug 24, 2021 19:42
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My hot David Mitchell take is that The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is his best book 
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Aug 24, 2021 20:42
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I actually like the sfl copy paste but maybe it's own thread idk.
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Aug 24, 2021 20:46
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quantumfoam posted:the colorful Third World people who go to American spotted mrs. nicholas sarkozy posted:My hot David Mitchell take is that The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is his best book Re-reading this again after The Bone Clocks was great because, while it completely went over my head the first time around (and probably a lot of people's) it's very clear that he didn't just retcon Marinus being immortal down the track, he already had not just the idea for it but the entire system of how it works already in place. Marinus talks about how "this life began" around age five, when the rest of his family was killed by fever, and we know the Horologists get reincarnated into bodies around that age where children's souls have recently died. And he even outright says things sometimes about how he can't die, and will just turn up again somewhere else, but the other characters (and the fresh reader) just chalk that up to him being an eccentric old weirdo. It's great. edit - oh, and of course the Japanese cult up the mountain killing babies seemed silly and lurid the first time around but can now be recognised as a nest of Anchorites. When de Zoet first meets the abbott he says something about how he used to be fluent in Portuguese, which puzzles de Zoet because the Portuguese were expelled from Japan 200 years ago. freebooter fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Aug 24, 2021 |
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Aug 24, 2021 21:49
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I love David Mitchell for many reasons, but a big one is that no matter how literary the book may seem, there's always also a secret war between immortals and vampires going on in the background, and that rules. And also yes, Thousand Autumns is his best book. I liked Utopia Avenue quite a bit too, even though the immortals vs vampires took over the story a bit too much for a while there.
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Aug 24, 2021 22:02
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quantumfoam posted:KSR's Mars trilogy always heavily reminded of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri turn-based strategy game, but more shoehorned for conflict than SMAC.
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Aug 24, 2021 22:25
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SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:I actually like the sfl copy paste but maybe it's own thread idk. I think Post My Favorites would be a great place for it, personally.
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Aug 24, 2021 22:27
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Jade City (Green Bone Saga #1) by Fonda Lee - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XRCBRX8/ VALIS by Philip K Dick - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005LVQZ98/ I, Robot by Isaac Asimov - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC1PW0/ Kings of the Wyld (The Band #1) by Nicholas Eames - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KT7YTXW/ Red Mars (Mars Trilogy #1) by Kim Stanley Robinson - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000QCS914/ Zero History (Blue Ant #3) by William Gibson - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003YL4AGC/ The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DDGX4KY/
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Aug 24, 2021 22:57
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Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir - $6.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08FHBV4ZX/
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Aug 25, 2021 00:40
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LMAO. Thanks for the recommendation, thread. quote:They shared their simple supper of oatmeal and blue cheese dressing in a beaten-down silence.
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Aug 25, 2021 14:21
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Spotted at Barnes & Nobles in San Mateo
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Aug 25, 2021 22:13
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I just finished Carrier Wave. I do kind of regret it. This has probably been endlessly litigated here, but...did the author forget that places outside the US exist?
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Aug 25, 2021 22:33
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From its BotM thread:Take the plunge! Okay! posted:I really appreciate the fact Brockaway just wrote an American novel instead of inserting unnecessary Emmerich-style scenes of the Eiffel Tower on fire or whatever to make the story feel global.
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Aug 25, 2021 22:42
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Tars Tarkas posted:Spotted at Barnes & Nobles in San Mateo my mom liked Tyrant a lot, enough that she immediately went on the internet and purchased Monster upon finishing (my mom does not purchase books under normal circumstances, but rather acquires them through inter-library exchange) i haven't asked her how she felt about Monster yet, i was a little worried that as a cancer survivor she would be very bothered by the Cancrioth anyway the Baruniverse is good PupsOfWar fucked around with this message at 22:53 on Aug 25, 2021 |
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Aug 25, 2021 22:49
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Harold Fjord posted:LMAO. Thanks for the recommendation, thread. Shards of Honor does have its moments.
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Aug 25, 2021 22:55
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