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I could post this in the Abercrombie thread but it might get a better range of responses here. I introduced The First Law trilogy to a friend looking for something to read since they hadn’t bothered with fantasy since Wheel of Time. They were struck by how in Abercrombie books characters seem to get crippled as a result of their hubris. They consider this ableist and very disrespectful. They also took issue with Glokta being described as a “cripple”, as that word is apparently considered pretty bad. I’m well aware of the other criticism of Abercrombie’s work. I remember BotL did a big takedown of his stuff in the past, some of which I agreed with. But this was a new one I hadn’t seen touched on before. Since I’ve been reading Abercrombie for ages I would’ve expected to see at least one r/fantasy post in that vein. Still, friend made some good points and their job brings them into contact more with the disabled than I ever am so they’ve got more insight.
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Oct 30, 2021 23:29
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what are you going to do, tell your friend not to be offended? If he doesn’t like it fine, make up your own mind. who cares. now, tel me more about this commonweal(t(h)) I’ve been hearing so much about, and the skilled and handsome author writing them…
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Oct 31, 2021 00:23
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smackfu posted:Me too. I even have a bunch of KJ Parker books despite never reading a word they’ve written. This is very much the way to do books, IMO. That part of the human brain that makes us gloss over the reality of our own mortality has convinced me that I will, some day, have time to read them all. For example, I have at least three unread Joe Abercrombie books on my shelves, so at some point in the next forty or fifty years I might even be able to offer an educated answer to Ccs's post above.
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Oct 31, 2021 00:27
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Carrier posted:This is unironically one of the things I hate most about r/Fantasy. There's a subset of authors that post on there religiously (the other ones that spring to mind are the prince of thorns dude and the sufficiently advanced magic dude) and I think it makes it such a weird environment. Firstly it somewhat feels inauthentic, which is probably not remotely fair to them since I imagine a lot of them were posting on there or similar forums years before they made it big, but nonetheless it feels like its a permanent advertising campaign. Secondly, I swear it cultivates weird parasocial relationships where no matter what, some subset of people will always recommend these authors because they've interacted with them a lot, regardless of whether its actually an appropriate recommendation (a problem r/Fantasy and r/PrintSf and probably every forum already has anyway). Finally it just makes it feel weird and a bit icky ever posting any sort of criticism of their work on there knowing that they will likely read it. It just feels mean even when it really shouldn't and I think it stifles discussion (since neither post here, I'm going to lean into my meanness and say that both prince of thorns and SAM are crap versions of already bad HP fanfiction I read 15 years ago. I thought tower of babel was decent though). God Andrew Rowe (sufficiently advanced magic) has such a little brigade on that board, constantly representing his bland LitRPG fiction. But the same ten series keep getting recommended there, anyway. 1) Joe Abercrombie's series; 2) Mark Lawrence's series; 3) Towers of Babel 4) Andrew Rowe's LitRPG series; 5) Cradle 6) Kings of the Wyld; 7) Scott Lynch; 8) Patrick Rothfuss; 9) Malazan; and 10) Dresden.
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Oct 31, 2021 00:28
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Is the blue remembered earth trilogy any good? It’s the only Alastair Reynolds available through Libby where I live. I read revelation space before and liked it.
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Oct 31, 2021 00:29
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GrandmaParty posted:God Andrew Rowe (sufficiently advanced magic) has such a little brigade on that board, constantly representing his bland LitRPG fiction. And Wheel of Time. God, WoT reddit fans are insufferable.
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Oct 31, 2021 00:30
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buffalo all day posted:what are you going to do, tell your friend not to be offended? If he doesn’t like it fine, make up your own mind. who cares. Nah I’m not really interested in convincing them otherwise. It was just a new criticism I hadn’t seen before. I wonder if authors should refrain from using certain terminology like cripple or whether they should just keep it in but be prepared for backlash.
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Oct 31, 2021 01:05
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Ccs posted:Nah I’m not really interested in convincing them otherwise. It was just a new criticism I hadn’t seen before. I wonder if authors should refrain from using certain terminology like cripple or whether they should just keep it in but be prepared for backlash. they're gonna keep it in and get no backlash
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Oct 31, 2021 01:19
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StrixNebulosa posted:And Wheel of Time. God, WoT reddit fans are insufferable. Are you pulling your braid in frustration?
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Oct 31, 2021 01:30
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Sufficiently Advanced Magic and the Methods of Rationality
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Oct 31, 2021 01:31
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Ccs posted:Nah I’m not really interested in convincing them otherwise. It was just a new criticism I hadn’t seen before. I wonder if authors should refrain from using certain terminology like cripple or whether they should just keep it in but be prepared for backlash. Are you familiar with the euphemism treadmill? Your friend's position is just one or two steps farther on it than yours.
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Oct 31, 2021 01:38
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buffalo all day posted:Is the blue remembered earth trilogy any good? It’s the only Alastair Reynolds available through Libby where I live. I read revelation space before and liked it. It's middle-of-the-road Reynolds. I remember the first book as being the best, but they were all ok. Speaking of Reynolds, I finished 'Inhibitor Phase' recently. He had a note at the beginning about how you shouldn't need to have read any of the other books to understand this one, and speaking as someone who has read all the books and a bunch of the shorts I don't agree one bit. For example: the lady who had an implanted alien, I have no idea where that happened.
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Oct 31, 2021 01:39
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Sufficiently Advanced Magic was what made me realize that I no longer had any reason to talk with one of my friends about books. 
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Oct 31, 2021 02:22
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pradmer posted:Lilith's Brood: The Complete Xenogenesis Trilogy by Octavia E Butler - $3.99 I use your deals a ton, probably 15 in the past six months. I literally just finished an ebook from one of your deals a few minutes ago.
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Oct 31, 2021 02:35
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pradmer posted:Lilith's Brood: The Complete Xenogenesis Trilogy by Octavia E Butler - $3.99 they are nice discussion prompts too. good posts, very nice
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Oct 31, 2021 02:37
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buffalo all day posted:they are nice discussion prompts too. good posts, very nice
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Oct 31, 2021 02:38
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Commonweal series: sounds pretty harmless, have no idea why discussing it causes people to angrily report positive or negative posts about it. Probably won't ever read the Commonweal series since A) I still have 18 yrs of "interesting" sounding books/tv-series to go through from my SFL Archives readthrough project, and B) people in this thread highly recommended the Cradle SF&F series and I bounced off the first Cradle book so hard I stopped reading modern SF&F for a couple of months now. Donating a bunch of old SF&F books to the Internet Archive Open Library project; you can thank me (or blame me) when a few more rare M John Harrison & Strugatski Brothers books get scanned and posted there.
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Oct 31, 2021 02:54
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Does anyone remember Mary Gentle’s books about the alien planet with lizard mounts and lion people and ancient tech and stuff? I remember enjoying them and being completely blindsided by the ending: did everyone on the planet die when the alien super weapon that glasses everything went off or was it local?. Beautiful writing though.
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Oct 31, 2021 02:58
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Beefeater1980 posted:Does anyone remember Mary Gentle’s books about the alien planet with lizard mounts and lion people and ancient tech and stuff? I remember enjoying them and being completely blindsided by the ending: did everyone on the planet die when the alien super weapon that glasses everything went off or was it local?. Beautiful writing though. That's... Orthe, right? Golden Witchbreed. It's a duology and I remember reading some reviews about how people read the first book and LOVED it but hated the second book because of the spoilered ending you mention. Talk about an author deciding that no, she's not going to write sequels and being final about it.
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Oct 31, 2021 03:03
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I enjoy the sale posts cause they tend to have some cool stuff that tends to fly under the radar and I'm all about saving a buck when I can.
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Oct 31, 2021 03:57
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Ccs posted:I could post this in the Abercrombie thread but it might get a better range of responses here. I introduced The First Law trilogy to a friend looking for something to read since they hadn’t bothered with fantasy since Wheel of Time. They were struck by how in Abercrombie books characters seem to get crippled as a result of their hubris. They consider this ableist and very disrespectful. They also took issue with Glokta being described as a “cripple”, as that word is apparently considered pretty bad. isn't the entire point that society discards glokta as useless because he got tortured and crippled in service of the state but he absolutely isn't. i guess you could say using the terms at all is inherently offensive but that would be completely missing the point. furthermore i think it's kind of baby brained.
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Oct 31, 2021 04:12
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pradmer posted:
It's pretty useful to people in this thread. However if you're getting burnt out on posting them, there is no hard feelings if you stop doing them or any kind of demands that you continue to do something you are burning out on. Just to distract you from deal posting...pradmer, what is the last SF&F book, or any genre really book that you've read. I recently finished reading "Bricks & Mortals: Ten great buildings and the people they made", a non-fiction genre (architecture) book which really isn't a field I normally read but ended up interesting because of the multiple digressions the author made and builds on for each successive building the author covered in the book(Tower of Babel/Nero's Golden House/Djinguereber Mosque, the Highland Park Ford Car Factory, etc).
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Oct 31, 2021 04:32
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Lol, of course Larry thinks caring about ableism is "baby-brained."
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Oct 31, 2021 04:49
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GrandmaParty posted:God Andrew Rowe (sufficiently advanced magic) has such a little brigade on that board, constantly representing his bland LitRPG fiction. I don't know if it was just that series, though, maybe his other series have different-enough styles. Fortunately, they're about two hundred entries down my list of things to read.
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Oct 31, 2021 04:57
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packetmantis posted:Lol, of course Larry thinks caring about ableism is "baby-brained." It's a fantasy book and the people calling glokta a cripple are generally outdone by... Glokta. Idk
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Oct 31, 2021 05:09
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For some weird reason I binged on Cameron Johnston books simply based on the titles and synopsis. Malificent seven is about a retired demonologist coming back and recruiting her old villain companions to defend versus a theocracy. Traitor god/God of broken things is fantasy noir type where the main protagonist is the usual misfit, where the twist is that the protagonist’s magic is mind control. First one is detective story, second one more of a military campaign. All of them are light reads and decently fun. The author has a thing for powerful women that treats others as children. Oh, and for the record I never reported anyone, because lol why bother. I am merely thrashing a bad fantasy series, something which is standard in this thread. But I’ll shut up and hopefully the
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Oct 31, 2021 05:59
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Ccs posted:They were struck by how in Abercrombie books characters seem to get crippled as a result of their hubris. I suppose I can see the thread of reason if you somehow think that Abercrombie's trying to say "people who get crippled always deserve it" but like one of the central tenants of the First Law is almost nobody gets what they deserve.
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Oct 31, 2021 08:20
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packetmantis posted:Lol, of course Larry thinks caring about ableism is "baby-brained." That wasn't what I meant but sure dude. I didn't think it was ableist to have a story about a dude who got tortured in a war and then largely spat on by society own a bad label and use it to advance his career. Maybe that's ableism though and the real way we be a Good Ally is to just never discuss it even in a fantasy novel. Sinatrapod posted:I suppose I can see the thread of reason if you somehow think that Abercrombie's trying to say "people who get crippled always deserve it" but like one of the central tenants of the First Law is almost nobody gets what they deserve. i like Glokta a lot because he probably deserves what happened to him the least out of anyone despite being the medieval CIA official torturer, and somehow he's one of the least rear end in a top hat characters in the novel. Larry Parrish fucked around with this message at 11:51 on Oct 31, 2021 |
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Oct 31, 2021 11:48
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pradmer posted:Lilith's Brood: The Complete Xenogenesis Trilogy by Octavia E Butler - $3.99 I've noticed that when Amazon does not have anything really special to offer, they pump out the same 20 titles, one of them being the above Octavia Butler omnibus, along with a lot of really bad looking stuff. The same goes for the monthly deals. There might be a handful of good/"big" titles, and the rest seems like they are repeats from two months ago, eg. The Paper magician series, Marko Kloos milsf series, Evan Currie milsf etc. If you start to feel a but burnt out, just stop posting whenever one of those rotational Daily Deal titles show up. I'm sure everyone who are interested have now grabbed 2001/Rama, Lilith's Brood, whatever Terry Goodkind title is being repeat posted, etc. I usually only post deals if there something on my wish list has dropped significantly in price (which I also check every day), and when I have bought it, will never post about it again, as it's gone from the wish list.
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Oct 31, 2021 14:14
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pradmer posted:Lilith's Brood: The Complete Xenogenesis Trilogy by Octavia E Butler - $3.99 Joining to chorus to say i have benefited greatly from your deal postingAnd even randomly pick up some unknown stuff from it. It has beennhandy but as others are saying if its a pain in the rear end, no need to continue. Pervis posted:I refresh this thread multiple times a day purely to see what sales you or others (but mostly you) post. I used to periodically read the thread to get ideas of what books to get, but it turns out that building a backlog of books from sales is a way better approach. Yeah my backlog has grown a lot but a fair amount kf what ive reqd this year has come from this thread and those deals. Speaking of, the free Gideon the Ninth got me to read it and then i had to read Haarow the Ninth. Now i feel like i hosed up as i gotta wait till around 2023 for the last book in the trilogy! Regardless I quite enjoyed Gideon but if Harrow is what we have to go off im very interested in the last book as Harrow really gripped me and i quite enjoyed the use of second person there.
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Oct 31, 2021 14:35
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If you like enamel pins: https://www.instagram.com/p/CVqLDxxLYkf/?utm_medium=copy_link quote:Spooky collab with @authorcstarling: #TheLuminousDead pins are launching Halloween at 2pm EST. There are only about 200 for this run, and it is likely when they are made again they will be a different variation, so get em while you can
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Oct 31, 2021 15:25
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Cerepol posted:Speaking of, the free Gideon the Ninth got me to read it and then i had to read Haarow the Ninth. Now i feel like i hosed up as i gotta wait till around 2023 for the last book in the trilogy! Regardless I quite enjoyed Gideon but if Harrow is what we have to go off im very interested in the last book as Harrow really gripped me and i quite enjoyed the use of second person there. Like all great* fantasy trilogies** it's had a book split so it's going to be four now.
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Oct 31, 2021 17:41
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Cardiac posted:For some weird reason I binged on Cameron Johnston books simply based on the titles and synopsis. Suuuuuure you did......CAMERON
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Oct 31, 2021 17:42
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Is there an explanation for why trilogies are the go-to for the genre? Like, yes it's a fun format but is everyone ripping off LotR's editor or what?
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Oct 31, 2021 17:45
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StrixNebulosa posted:Is there an explanation for why trilogies are the go-to for the genre? Like, yes it's a fun format but is everyone ripping off LotR's editor or what? gotta be the influence of star wars too, right?
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Oct 31, 2021 17:54
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The number of the writing shall be three.
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Oct 31, 2021 17:59
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quantumfoam posted:It's pretty useful to people in this thread. However if you're getting burnt out on posting them, there is no hard feelings if you stop doing them or any kind of demands that you continue to do something you are burning out on. I'm not worried about burning out because, like Fart, I check the deals everyday for myself anyway. It's not much work to grab the ones I've seen discussion on and post them. It sounds like people still like them even with all the repeats so I'll just keep forging on. The last books I finished was the Southern Reach trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer. It was good enough that I read all three of them, but I couldn't help being disappointed over all. Great evocative language and a setting that was interesting and creepy, but the author didn't really take advantage of it. There was very little action throughout the entire series. It felt like it was mostly characters having internal dialogue and descriptions of things. It just could have been so much more. In that vein, does anyone have any recommendations for books with journeys through weird and alien settings. The best examples I can think of are Cugel's Saga by Jack Vance and Kameron Hurley's The Stars Are Legion when they're traveling through the inside of the world. Not so much Arthur Clarke's Rendezvous at Rama because I found that pretty sterile. The Girl with All the Gifts by MR Carey - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CO7FLFG/ This also fits what I'm looking for pretty well.
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Oct 31, 2021 18:08
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pradmer posted:
I'm betting you've probably already read Piranesi and House of Leaves (if not, those both definitely count), but the only other ones I can think if off hand that I've read recently are (kind of) There Is No Antimemetics Division (it's explicitly based on the whole SCP concept but honestly it stands really well on its own if you don't know anything about those/don't care) by qntm, and for a more lighthearted take, Finna by Nino Cipri (about interdimensional not-Ikeas connected via wormhole). Caveat that both of those are novellas so they don't really linger on the exploration the way that Stars Are Legion or the Southern Reach Trilogy/Area X books do. (Also, just want to add to the chorus of your deal posts being useful and appreciated -- I've definitely picked up more than a few things from them, too.)
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Oct 31, 2021 18:22
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StrixNebulosa posted:Is there an explanation for why trilogies are the go-to for the genre? Like, yes it's a fun format but is everyone ripping off LotR's editor or what? You put out the first as a kind of self contained story but with a hook so if it sells you move on to the next one. The second one is mostly setup for the third which you just keep delaying so the fans are still involved and buy merch since the true ending will come any day now. But honestly I just thinking it's a comfortable midpoint between single or duologies and tying themselves up in contracts for full on 15 book series. Because even when everyone is looking for the next Tolkien and fantasy is in vogue not all of them sell well enough, but the story still has to end. Compare with for example detective novels where the series can end after any book and it wouldn't really make a difference since they are self contained.
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Oct 31, 2021 18:34
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The ideal number of books for a series is
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Oct 31, 2021 19:02
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