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freebooter posted:I read Dune in my early 20s and thought it was extremely loving dumb and something that obviously just hit a sweet spot in enough counter-cultural back-to-nature 1960s boomers' minds to become a classic, but I am still very excited to see the film because he's a great director and this is one of those stories where style over substance will be a compliment not an insult. Kind of hoping that Australia's first proper "this is never going away now" COVID wave has subsided by the time it comes out, I've already resigned myself to watching the Green Knight on a TV screen. Me. It was great, I beat the whole thing by chain building turrets from my base into the enemy's. It was so much fun it led me into command and conquer and warcraft from there. I read the book a couple years later but didn't appreciate it until I bought a fancy edition last year, after a friend bought two fun dune board games and broke them out a few times. Looking forward to the new movie.
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Oct 12, 2021 18:45
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I mean, has your friend read Lord of Light Oh yeah, it's definitely on the list. I'm fairly sure she'd like it, and probably the pseudo-sequel with Egyptian gods, but I haven't read that one myself so I'm not positive. Sham bam bamina! posted:The Majipoor books, by Robert Silverberg. Well these are up my alley if nothing else! I think these are right along the lines of what she's looking for, thank you! Selachian posted:C. J. Cherryh's Morgaine books? Planet of Adventure is on my list just because I absolutely loved the Dying Earth books, but yeah I'm not sure they're what she's looking for. I'll look into the Morgaine books, I'm not familiar with them at all.
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Oct 12, 2021 18:45
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MockingQuantum posted:Oh yeah, it's definitely on the list. I'm fairly sure she'd like it, and probably the pseudo-sequel with Egyptian gods, but I haven't read that one myself so I'm not positive. The other one of Zelazny's I genuinely love is "Isle of the Dead." Far future, earthling learns psychic powers from an alien; alien and Earthling both believe the religious structure to the training is just a necessary psychic training tool and not actual invocation of dieties; whoops maybe that's not quite accurate
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Oct 12, 2021 18:52
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MockingQuantum posted:What are some good science fantasy or sword & planet novels? My partner wants some stuff that scratches that "wizards in space" kind of itch. I actually don't know that I've read much that fits the bill. I think she'll like Ninefox Gambit, but I could use some stuff that's closer to, say, Phantasy Star in terms of style and tone. There's Morin's Galaxy Outlaws, which while I'm not sure are really good, they're at least listenable, or I found them so. Rather a "Firefly with wizards" kind of a deal. https://www.audible.com/pd/Galaxy-Outlaws-The-Complete-Black-Ocean-Mobius-Missions-1-165-Audiobook/B079YYJK47 jng2058 fucked around with this message at 17:56 on Oct 13, 2021 |
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Oct 12, 2021 18:54
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MockingQuantum posted:Oh yeah, it's definitely on the list. I'm fairly sure she'd like it, and probably the pseudo-sequel with Egyptian gods, but I haven't read that one myself so I'm not positive. I've read Lord of Light and this sounds interesting. Can anyone recommend?
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Oct 12, 2021 18:56
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I finally looked it up and it's called Creatures of Light and Darkness.
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Oct 12, 2021 18:58
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MockingQuantum posted:God Emperor is truly weird, and I could see it being a real roadblock to a lot of fans of the first few books, but it does an interesting job of picking apart the legend of Paul Atreides. Since I seriously doubt any attempt at another Dune series will ever make it to God Emperor, I’d love to see one of the wilder directors attempt a standalone movie of God Emperor. Jodorowsky probably would have done a much better job of that one than Dune because it better fit his kind of weird
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Oct 12, 2021 19:00
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It's brilliant and also pretty experimental with chapters written in wildly different styles. It's great but weird. If Lord of Light is sci fi dressed as fantasy, Creatures of Light and Darkness is fantasy dressed a bit like sci fi.
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Oct 12, 2021 19:03
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Stuporstar posted:Since I seriously doubt any attempt at another Dune series will ever make it to God Emperor, I’d love to see one of the wilder directors attempt a standalone movie of God Emperor. Jodorowsky probably would have done a much better job of that one than Dune because it better fit his kind of weird I'd love to see God Emperor made into a movie by someone like Panos Cosmatos. It'd be way over-the-top weird but probably in an interesting way.
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Oct 12, 2021 19:10
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thotsky posted:I enjoyed the new Dune movie, but I love the David Lynch one too so maybe I am not the best judge. Book is pretty good too. Wait, how did you see it already? It isn't out until the 22nd?
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Oct 12, 2021 19:36
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D-Pad posted:Wait, how did you see it already? It isn't out until the 22nd? It’s out in Other Country.
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Oct 12, 2021 19:46
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D-Pad posted:Wait, how did you see it already? It isn't out until the 22nd? I saw it a week ago; in Norway. Had already been out for a while by then I think.
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Oct 12, 2021 22:42
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World of Howl Collection: Howl's Moving Castle, House of Many Ways, Castle in the Air by Diana Wynne Jones - $5.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KACIMUS/ A Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle #1) by Ursula K Le Guin - $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008T9L6AM/ Eon by Greg Bear - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J3EU5RC/
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Oct 12, 2021 23:09
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MockingQuantum posted:What are some good science fantasy or sword & planet novels? My partner wants some stuff that scratches that "wizards in space" kind of itch. I actually don't know that I've read much that fits the bill. I think she'll like Ninefox Gambit, but I could use some stuff that's closer to, say, Phantasy Star in terms of style and tone. I'll throw in a recommendation for The Ordinary by Jim Grimsley. It's about a technologically advanced culture and a magic-based culture getting linked by a portal and slowly sliding towards war . There's technically a book that comes before it but it reads more as pure fantasy and isn't really necessary to enjoy The Ordinary.
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Oct 13, 2021 05:00
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I picked up the first Commonweal book after the talk about it in the thread. I quite liked the first one. Had a real Black Company vibe to it, the whole 'scrappy undersized company suddenly paired with legendary ancient terrors". The second is like, uh, lovely wizard homeschooling? I couldn't put the first one down but I'm sort of bouncing off of the second.
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Oct 13, 2021 08:48
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MockingQuantum posted:What are some good science fantasy or sword & planet novels? My partner wants some stuff that scratches that "wizards in space" kind of itch. I actually don't know that I've read much that fits the bill. I think she'll like Ninefox Gambit, but I could use some stuff that's closer to, say, Phantasy Star in terms of style and tone. every sky a grave by jay posey. has the language/logic 'magic' of ninefox on a planetary scale, used by an organisation who maintain orthodoxy on all inhabited planets. i never see him recommended here but like his mil-scifi too.
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Oct 13, 2021 12:00
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Khizan posted:I picked up the first Commonweal book after the talk about it in the thread. I quite liked the first one. Had a real Black Company vibe to it, the whole 'scrappy undersized company suddenly paired with legendary ancient terrors". I loved the black company so I'm gonna start the first Commonweal book then
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Oct 13, 2021 15:11
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SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:I loved the black company so I'm gonna start the first Commonweal book then Same. Congrats to the Graydon alts.
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Oct 13, 2021 15:20
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Wheel of Time book 2 done. I was strongly considering switching off the series but the ending finally got interesting again so I am cautiously wading in to book 3. Odds I am going to even get close to finishing this series are dropping rapidly
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Oct 13, 2021 17:59
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Aardvark! posted:Wheel of Time book 2 done. I was strongly considering switching off the series but the ending finally got interesting again so I am cautiously wading in to book 3. Odds I am going to even get close to finishing this series are dropping rapidly What don't you like about and what's holding your interest? Just curious.
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Oct 13, 2021 18:20
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Aardvark! posted:Wheel of Time book 2 done. I was strongly considering switching off the series but the ending finally got interesting again so I am cautiously wading in to book 3. Odds I am going to even get close to finishing this series are dropping rapidly I'm impressed, I made it somewhere around a third to a half through the first book before dropping it, maybe a month ago now. It's definitely the kind of poo poo I would have blown through very rapidly as a teenager and loved every minute of it. And it's actually not terrible, in terms of general quality of the writing. Good enough for a doorstopper fantasy, at least. I mostly got tired of extensive sections where very little was happening, or being able to see the next plot point miles off and knowing the book would take forever to get there. I have no idea if the books ever really break away from standard Tolkien-mimicry, let's-follow-the-destined-child-and-his-friends plots but I'm not sure I'm interested enough in any of the characters to find out.
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Oct 13, 2021 18:23
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Khizan posted:The second is like, uh, lovely wizard homeschooling? I couldn't put the first one down but I'm sort of bouncing off of the second. Second definitely has a different vibe. I enjoyed it but it is different; there will be Serious Magic done in the back half though so I recommend hanging on. The third is similar to the second but after that things are closer to the first (the most recent book is very stylistically similar to the first).
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Oct 13, 2021 18:27
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Aardvark! posted:Wheel of Time book 2 done. I was strongly considering switching off the series but the ending finally got interesting again so I am cautiously wading in to book 3. Odds I am going to even get close to finishing this series are dropping rapidly interesting, on my recent listen #2 had a couple of hugely memorable moments for me - specifically the portal stone stuff and nynaeve's testing in the white tower. Felt like a big theme of the book was parallel lives / roads not taken. definitely felt much stronger than the first book imo
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Oct 13, 2021 18:31
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:What don't you like about and what's holding your interest? Just curious. There are genuinely fun bits of epic fantasy sprinkled throughout that I really like. The first one felt like it had more of them, like the Green Man.. the second book just felt like it had less of that, I guess? I don't mind the lengthy prose or backstories of random farm folk, that stuff's all charming. It felt like the moments of wonder were kind of further between from the first one, and given that this was book 2 of a massive series I've been told over and over goes on forever + only goes downhill. The ending to the second book had some great stuff, and I do still like the characters and the writing, hence buying book 3. In a grand sense I feel like I'm signing myself up for a lot of disappointment at big picture things and wheels spinning. Rand being publicly outed as the Dragon was interesting enough a change of pace to make me want to see where things go in book 3, which I can only presume is The One In Which Rand Fights The Whitecloaks based on the ending of book 2
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Oct 13, 2021 18:36
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buffalo all day posted:interesting, on my recent listen #2 had a couple of hugely memorable moments for me - specifically the portal stone stuff and nynaeve's testing in the white tower. Felt like a big theme of the book was parallel lives / roads not taken. definitely felt much stronger than the first book imo I did really enjoy Nynaeve's testing, especially the grim view of Emond's Field, which is one of those things pushing me on to book #3. The thing I didn't like about the portal stones was their inital use with Lanfear and Rand. I thought she was heavily telegraphed as being evil and then it also didn't really matter in the book maybe rubbed me the wrong way? And also they were basically just the same as the Ways at first which felt cheap. Wasn't a fan of any of the stuff with her. The lost time part with the portal stones later on was cool though. And I was not expecting them, particularly it being Mat, to blow the horn at this point in the series, so that stuff was cool too.
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Oct 13, 2021 18:43
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thanks for posting your taeks itt, its cool to see someone experiencing it for the first time. will be interested to hear what you think of book 3, esp. mat
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Oct 13, 2021 18:45
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Khizan posted:I picked up the first Commonweal book after the talk about it in the thread. I quite liked the first one. Had a real Black Company vibe to it, the whole 'scrappy undersized company suddenly paired with legendary ancient terrors". Welcome to the club.
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Oct 13, 2021 18:57
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The first WoT is one of those weird books where I put it down a month ago because I didn't feel like I was enjoying it/in the right mood for it, but I keep thinking about picking it back up, for a lot of the reasons Aardvark is talking about. I think I'll really need to be in the mood for that kind of book (ie charming high-fantasy played unapologetically straight). I think those sort of books for me are like snack food, where sometimes its fun to just binge it for a while, but I get overloaded on it kind of quickly. I don't know that I actively disliked anything, at worst I find one of the characters to be pretty annoying, but she seems to be written to be annoying, at least at the point where I was in the story.
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Oct 13, 2021 19:17
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another end of book 2 moment that made me  Perrin finding a stick to use and becoming his literal bannerman spine tingling, tearing up style satisfying moments. honestly if he can manage a few of those every book I may make it through yet. Thinking on it more I think the highs of book 2 might be even higher than the first book, just largely jammed in to the last few chapters.
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Oct 13, 2021 19:29
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MockingQuantum posted:I have no idea if the books ever really break away from standard Tolkien-mimicry, let's-follow-the-destined-child-and-his-friends plots but I'm not sure I'm interested enough in any of the characters to find out. Yes and no. It's an American vietnam movie where Tolkien was a british WW1 movie. There's more shades of grey and more psychological realism and everything's bigger and takes longer and is a bit less classy with more explosions because it's American. The first book is a lot closer to Tolkien than the later ones. Aardvark! posted:another end of book 2 moment that made me There are moments like this throughout, but the gaps between them get longer and longer. Books 3 and 4 are probably the series high point in terms of cool-moment-density-per-page. The one weird thing about the series is that, unlike most doorstoppers, it doesn't actually get progressively worse with each book -- it slows down dramatically and books 7-10 have very significant problems BUT most everyone agrees that the series starts getting good again with book 11 and then the conclusion is satisfying. OTOH it's fifteen goddam books so I'm not gonna fault anyone who goes "gently caress it, I'm done, I don't have time for this poo poo" at whatever point. The general consensus for a while now seems to be "there's a really great six or eight book series in there if it got cut down" and the TV series seems to be aiming at eight seasons so, hey, maybe just wait for the show. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 19:47 on Oct 13, 2021 |
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Oct 13, 2021 19:42
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Books 7-10 catch a lot of hell from readers, but I think a lot of that is from people who were waiting on the books as they were being written. In my last re-read I was surprised that I really quite liked book 8, and I think that's because I didn't have that "I waited that long for this and now I have to wait again?" feeling at the end of it.
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Oct 13, 2021 19:49
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Khizan posted:Books 7-10 catch a lot of hell from readers, but I think a lot of that is from people who were waiting on the books as they were being written. There's that but there's also a lot of stuff that is a lot more interesting if you're re-reading and not reading for plot any more. On a second or third pass stuff like the architecture of Tanchico or the Real Housewives of Cairhien or internal White Tower politics or whatever stops being annoying filler and becomes interesting worldbuilding.
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Oct 13, 2021 19:54
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MockingQuantum posted:I think I'll really need to be in the mood for that kind of book (ie charming high-fantasy played unapologetically straight). I think those sort of books for me are like snack food, where sometimes its fun to just binge it for a while, but I get overloaded on it kind of quickly. Yeah, for me at least WoT kinda put the stopper on that whole genre and I barely ever read any of it any more -- if I read new fantasy now I want something weird or different about it or it's just kinda boring. But I started reading Wheel of Time back in the day when I was a lot younger and so it still has that charm. For me, especially the early books, it's kinda like childhood in book form and I can just go back to it and be twelve years old on my parent's couch getting carried away, the same way I feel reading the Hobbit and for the same reasons. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 20:00 on Oct 13, 2021 |
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Oct 13, 2021 19:58
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The Red Knight (Traitor Son Cycle #1) by Miles Cameron - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007ZFPUL2/
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Oct 13, 2021 22:46
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I think I stuck it out to WoT book 12, but if I wasn’t reading to kill time while working at a call centre I probably would have given up sooner. The first three had some great scenes though THE GRAVE IS NO BAR TO MY CALL  Hopefully the series is worth watching, whenever that comes out. Speaking of adaptions, anybody catch the Foundations series yet?
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Oct 13, 2021 23:42
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Aardvark! posted:another end of book 2 moment that made me Yeah, you'll definitely like books 3+4, probably like 5+6 but will almost definitely tap out around book 7 if you continue. 7-10 are a lot slower than the rest of the series, most of the main cast is scattered across the world dealing with their own plots and the POV cast has bloated enormously at that point. The story also deals with a much, much wider scope in general. Like by the end of the series there are 147 POV characters, 79 of which have multiple chapters while the rest are one offs.
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Oct 13, 2021 23:49
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Khizan posted:Books 7-10 catch a lot of hell from readers, but I think a lot of that is from people who were waiting on the books as they were being written. Yeah, I was one of those readers back in the 90s. Actually fell off around book 8 and never got back on. (Have often considered going back and finishing up, especially after the series concluded, but...  )
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Oct 13, 2021 23:56
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Another Dirty Dish posted:
November 19th
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Oct 14, 2021 00:12
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Another Dirty Dish posted:Speaking of adaptions, anybody catch the Foundations series yet? theres spaceships and people and empires and lots of WWHSD i like it
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Oct 14, 2021 04:58
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Recently I took a few months and I finished the Diving Universe books by Kristen Kathryn Rusch and am now looking for other stuff with that general vibe- space ships, astroarchaeology, shipwrecks, etc.
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Oct 14, 2021 06:34
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