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The_Rob posted:So I ended up buying Blood of Elves because I saw the number one on the spine but then I read that I should read the short stories first. Are they truly that important to read first or will I most likely be ok. i don't think there's an official reading order
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Sep 28, 2021 23:44
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Larry Parrish posted:i don't think there's an official reading order I keep seeing lists online saying to read the short stories first. But yeah on the Witcher books a lot of them have the order numbered on the spines.
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Sep 28, 2021 23:45
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Another Dirty Dish posted:Also got through the Eisenhorn omnibus - much better than I was expecting! Good blend of grimdark fantasy and military sci-fi that remembers to be funny occasionally. The series stays good throughout, and the second book of the third trilogy is the best.
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Sep 29, 2021 00:21
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The_Rob posted:I keep seeing lists online saying to read the short stories first. But yeah on the Witcher books a lot of them have the order numbered on the spines. I highly recommend reading the short stories first, especially or at least those in Sword of Destiny - which I also think is probably the best Witcher book overall (YMMV). When they first came out it was just the Last Wish and Blood of Elves, and IMO the latter doesn't make much sense without the bits in Sword of Destiny. I also believe the Last Wish and Blood of Elves have a different translator than the rest and I think they are a bit rougher in comparison.
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Sep 29, 2021 01:30
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Blamestorm posted:I highly recommend reading the short stories first, especially or at least those in Sword of Destiny - which I also think is probably the best Witcher book overall (YMMV). When they first came out it was just the Last Wish and Blood of Elves, and IMO the latter doesn't make much sense without the bits in Sword of Destiny. Ok awesome this helps a lot.
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Sep 29, 2021 01:46
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Finished The Dark Beyond The Stars which is a generation ship novel about a ship cruising the galaxy looking for alien life but it's never found any. Became a fairly tedious slog because it's mostly about the internal power politics of the crew plotting against their immortal captain and they're all boring cardboard cutouts. Then it ends at precisely the point it might have become interesting. The majority of the crew agree that there's no alien life out there and they want to turn back to Earth even though it's been thousands of years, they successfully overthrow and kill the captain and turn back, knowing that at least Earth can support life even though transmissions lead them to believe human life on earth has either gone extinct or regressed to the stone age. They arrive back on Earth and find no signs left of cities or advanced civilisations, then the final line is the protagonist spotting an alien ship in orbit. The End. If I'd actually found the book interesting to that point I probably would've thought that was a cool ending, but nope, just insanely frustrating instead.
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Sep 29, 2021 04:41
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Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam #1) by Margaret Atwood - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC1BNI/ Skyward by Brandon Sanderson - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BJLB5LY/ The Salmon of Doubt (Dirk Gently #3) by Douglas Adams - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FCK3X2/
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Sep 29, 2021 22:47
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Salmon of Doubt is Dirk Gently #3? No I do not think that is correct.
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Sep 29, 2021 22:50
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smackfu posted:Salmon of Doubt is Dirk Gently #3? No I do not think that is correct. The reasoning is it was originally intended to be a Dirk Gently novel, then it became a collection of Adam’s writing after his death, including the most finished draft of that book.
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Sep 30, 2021 02:46
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On the subject of soup ads in Terry Pratchett, someone on Twitter posted a screenshot of the ad in The Light Fantastic in context with the rest of the book. https://twitter.com/RainerGladys/status/1443552976841412609 My German isn't great, but that looks like the climax. They really interrupted a climactic action scene with some ramble about how it was actually good that Trymon spent all his time reading and neglected his health, but the reader should instead take a quick break to eat some soup. It comes in many delicious flavours. Bon appetit!
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Sep 30, 2021 14:42
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Shwoo posted:On the subject of soup ads in Terry Pratchett, someone on Twitter posted a screenshot of the ad in The Light Fantastic in context with the rest of the book. https://white-eagle.tumblr.com/post/52471397607/tolkien-and-the-black-magic Speaking of the bad Swedish translation, Åke Ohlmark was so pissed about the reception that he wrote an entire book on how Tolkien fans are all degenerate satanists.
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Sep 30, 2021 14:56
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SimonChris posted:Speaking of the bad Swedish translation, Åke Ohlmark was so pissed about the reception that he wrote an entire book on how Tolkien fans are all degenerate satanists. I read and loved that translation as a 12-year-old kid, then reread it in English at age 20 and was massively disappointed. Not sure if it's because the translation made the original writing better, or if it was just an age and nostalgia thing.
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Sep 30, 2021 18:42
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SimonChris posted:https://white-eagle.tumblr.com/post/52471397607/tolkien-and-the-black-magic After reading the article and having read the Swedish translation a number of times, I say that Christopher Tolkien can go gently caress himself. The examples are kinda crap and you cannot really transfer prose between languages without making compromises. It is yet another case of an author (or in this case authors son) being high on his own farts and “artistical” integrity.
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Sep 30, 2021 20:15
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Ashes of the Sun (Burning Blade and Silvereye #1) by Django Wexler - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07ZZ25BCX/ I Am Legend by Richard Matheson - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07XB49BG4/
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Sep 30, 2021 23:03
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Cardiac posted:Christopher Tolkien can go gently caress himself. Coulda shortened it to this
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Oct 1, 2021 00:00
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darkgray posted:I read and loved that translation as a 12-year-old kid, then reread it in English at age 20 and was massively disappointed. Not sure if it's because the translation made the original writing better, or if it was just an age and nostalgia thing. https://twitter.com/Zhinna/status/1443810399569293325
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Oct 1, 2021 21:14
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if lotr had mooing elves i wouldve loved it at 12 years old too
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Oct 1, 2021 22:14
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Borne by Jeff VanderMeer - $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M98T0J7/ Masquerade in Lodi (Penric & Desdemona) by Lois McMaster Bujold - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08L88PCTP/ Ring Shout by P Djèlí Clark - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B082RRJV54/ Ghosts of Gotham by Craig Schaefer - $0.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GZGXP13/ Spiderlight by Adrian Tchaikovsky - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01ARRSVM4/ pradmer fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Oct 1, 2021 |
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Oct 1, 2021 22:16
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I liked spiderlight, its a fun little one-and-done fantasy novella about a band of heroes facing a great evil.
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Oct 2, 2021 13:05
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Matter (Culture #7) by Iain M Banks - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000VMHI98/ Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UG61LNS/ Forge of Darkness (Kharkanas Trilogy #1) by Steven Erickson - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008BU74J6/ Among the Powers by Lawrence Watt-Evans - $3.90 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004FGMTA4/
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Oct 2, 2021 19:49
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Reminds me that two of the Culture books aren’t available on Kindle for some reason.
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Oct 3, 2021 01:20
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I highly recommend Borne if you like weird fiction!
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Oct 3, 2021 06:05
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I'm quite enjoying my sporadic read of Discworld but I refuse to believe a steam engine could possibly matter in a setting with golems.
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Oct 3, 2021 15:40
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What if the golems are unionized.
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Oct 3, 2021 17:15
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2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C Clarke - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01A6E8EQ6/ The Last Wish (Witcher) by Andrzej Sapkowski - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0010SIPT4/ Leviathan Wakes (Expanse #1) by James SA Corey - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0047Y171G/ The Road by Cormac McCarthy - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000OI0G1Q/ The Last Policeman by Ben H Winters - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0076Q1GW2/
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Oct 3, 2021 19:26
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pradmer posted:The Road by Cormac McCarthy - $2.99 Just after I finished reading it, of course. Didn't say anything about it since I wasn't sure if it was thread-relevant, but it's very refreshing to read someone whose prose works the way my brain does. Very good especially at $2.99.
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Oct 3, 2021 20:01
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withak posted:What if the golems are unionized. That, and per Feet of Clay construction of new ones is banned. There's no ban on making steam engines and they don't require wages and days off either. Cardiac posted:After reading the article and having read the Swedish translation a number of times, I say that Christopher Tolkien can go gently caress himself. That's a reasonable position when it comes to word choice and general prose stylings, but it's a harder sell when the translator hosed up major plot points through either malice or incompetence (and given that the book continues to insist that the translation was correct, that sounds more like the translator was really attached to his fanfic where Merry kills the Witch-King and less like he just typoed a word). Also, it was JRR, not Christopher, who banned him from translating further Tolkien works. ToxicFrog fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Oct 3, 2021 |
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Oct 3, 2021 22:51
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Finished the final Scavenger book, Memory. I’ve read a lot of KJ Parker and this feels like him developing a lot of ideas he would return to in the future in better paced narratives with more coherence and continuity between instalments. He follows the same pattern as his first trilogy, Fencer, by having the first book set stuff up in the main empire, then disappears off to an island for the second book, before returning to the empire in the third to wrap things up. There’s also a good bit of engineering and cannon making which would be repeated in Engineer, only by that trilogy he did it better. And the final twist was also more effectively used in one of his future books. So all in all probably my least favourite Parker work. Long, aimless, too many dream sequences, not enough characters to care about, but many ideas developed that would play into his later work more successfully.
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Oct 4, 2021 02:54
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I just finished the Thief's Gamble by Juliet E Mckenna and I take back what I said previously, this book was great! It's the first novel by the author, and first in a five-book sequence. It's about Livak, a thief who steals from a rich man and through that act gets roped into working for a wizard: they're going around buying/stealing artifacts from other rich men so they can use a fancy new spell to use these artifacts as focuses so they can look into the past. Cue my pleasant surprise as a book about a thief main character actually features her stealing and acting like a thief in multiple sequences. The plot gets going when Livak executes a heist and finds.... the rich person dead! The item already gone! After a harrowing escape, one of her traveling companions is found to be kidnapped through magic, and magic her wizard doesn't know at that. It's more of an adventure novel, with lots of traveling, fighting and sneaking around (the finale of the book feels like metal gear solid in how crouch-to-move it is) and revelations about the worldbuilding and why the villains are so scary. I adored it - badass lady lead, diversity, great writing - and heartily rec it if you're in the mood for something fun (with some serious stakes.) Also! I am fascinated by how the writing swapped from first person POV - Livak's - to third for the interludes when our other protagonist showed up - to the written in-universe texts included at the beginning of each chapter. I don't think I've ever seen that, and it worked nicely to delineate the scenes, didn't feel choppy at all.
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Oct 4, 2021 03:06
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Ccs posted:Finished the final Scavenger book, Memory. I’ve read a lot of KJ Parker and this feels like him developing a lot of ideas he would return to in the future in better paced narratives with more coherence and continuity between instalments. He follows the same pattern as his first trilogy, Fencer, by having the first book set stuff up in the main empire, then disappears off to an island for the second book, before returning to the empire in the third to wrap things up. There’s also a good bit of engineering and cannon making which would be repeated in Engineer, only by that trilogy he did it better. And the final twist was also more effectively used in one of his future books. So all in all probably my least favourite Parker work. Long, aimless, too many dream sequences, not enough characters to care about, but many ideas developed that would play into his later work more successfully. So I take it from your posts one could skip the first two trilogies, so a Parker reading order would look something like this: Engineer Trilogy --> Standalones --> Two of Swords --> Short Story Collections--> Siege Trilogy Are all the stand alones worth reading or are any skippable?
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Oct 4, 2021 04:20
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Megasabin posted:So I take it from your posts one could skip the first two trilogies, so a Parker reading order would look something like this: Yeah I’d agree with this. Personally I’m more of a fan of stories happening in cities, empires, or kingdoms than on sparse islands, but The Hammer and The Company will have their fans. I don’t like that really remote feeling though.
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Oct 4, 2021 04:26
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StrixNebulosa posted:I just finished the Thief's Gamble by Juliet E Mckenna and I take back what I said previously, this book was great! Ooh this sounds good!
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Oct 4, 2021 04:46
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I haven't read a good book in a while so I'll toss out things I like/hate and maybe people can throw me a recommendation or argue over my good or badthink. You can assume I've read most of the pre-year 2000 'classics' like Asimov/Tolkien/Heinlein/Herbert and so on. I'm mostly looking for newer stuff that got past my radar. I am cool with any amount of bleak grimdarkness or upbeat positivity. The only thing that hurts my soul is books that are overly precious and twee, so urban fantasy or Pratchett a big no no, as is just about anything where the protagonist is a Magical Girl or Specially Chosen Boy. The below lists of stuff I liked is not comprehensive, but just to give an idea of what I read within the last ten years that landed with me. SciFi I've Liked: - Revelation Space and some other Reynolds. I think generation ships are such an interesting concept but just about every book I read on the topic is garbage except for Chasm City. - Children of Time and its sequel, about the sentient spiders and octopi. - Neal Stephenson - Philip K Dick, though verrrrrry hit or miss - Liminal Space - Paolo Baciagulpi - Peter Watts - Margaret Atwood - Ian Banks Fantasy I've Liked: - China Mieville - Joe Abercrombie - GRRM, but I started reading him in the 90s and still have blue balls so if you have fantasy series to recommend please let it be someone who actually finishes what they start. - Between Two Fires - Brothers Grossbart - Half Made World - Van Der Meer, though he rolls Sci Fi too Well Known Stuff I Tried But Haven't Liked: R Scott Bakker: Got tired of wanking on endlessly Locke Lamora: 2 good books and then a big wet fart. KJ Parker: I read one of them I liked (Walled City) and then proceeded to read two more of basically the same book about a really Clever Dude and how everyone else is a dumb moron and THIS is the way you win in Constantinople. I gave up on Book 2 of the Fencer trilogy. Murderbot (this went too cutesy for me) The Expanse Wheel of Time Kim Stanley Robinson I am twice as likely to be interested in a good standalone book than a series, and definitely uninterested in any unfinished series that seems like the author drags their feet even a little. I been burned too many times before. Mr. Grapes! fucked around with this message at 13:33 on Oct 4, 2021 |
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Oct 4, 2021 13:24
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Mr. Grapes! posted:- Children of Time and its sequel, about the sentient spiders and octopi.
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Oct 4, 2021 13:31
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Crashbee posted:Tchaikovsky can be a bit hit and miss but if you liked these I suggest his book Dogs of War, which is more sentient animal stuff. It also has a sequel called Bear Head, though I didn't like that as much. Cool - somehow missed this one.
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Oct 4, 2021 13:34
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You could try Malazan and see if you like the writing. Or Black Company for 'morally ambiguous mercenaries end up working for Satan'
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Oct 4, 2021 13:39
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I don't think I saw Baru on that list
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Oct 4, 2021 13:45
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Mr. Grapes! posted:Cool - somehow missed this one. Vernor Vinge’s books (A Fire Upon the Deep, A Deepness in the Sky) are musts if you haven’t read them if you liked Children of Time.
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Oct 4, 2021 14:30
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quote:Thank you for your previous support of my Patreon. My debut novel Plague Birds was recently released by the award-winning small press Apex Books. Without the support of my Patreon backers over the last few years, I wouldn't have had the financial ability to take time off from paying projects to complete the novel. https://www.apexbookcompany.com/products/plague-birds?variant=39479218929801 I gave this dude a dollar a month for about six months and definitely don't deserve a free copy of his book. Therefore I'm going to give him a small marketing boost and mention it here. I haven't read it yet (busy with Through Wolf's Eyes by Jane Lindskold) but for those six months he wrote up a solid newsletter on the state of the sci-fi/fantasy publishing industry and probably knows how to write a decent book.
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Oct 4, 2021 15:19
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Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota is in line with your list, and the last part is coming this month.
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Oct 4, 2021 17:56
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