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nice of her to draw him pictures after his unfortunate banning from the local butterfly pavilion
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Feb 14, 2022 19:02
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Currently reading How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu. It’s set in the near future, where everything sucks in a similar way to the present: there’s a pandemic, due to a mysterious virus found in the melting Siberian permafrost. It seems to mutate organs in unpredictable ways, and primarily infects children and advanced elderly, though there’s heavy foreshadowing for it mutating into something that can infect adults. It’s a great book to read if you want to ruin your whole day: chapter 2 features an underemployed comedian who ends up working as a Mickey Mouse analogue at a euthanasia park for children, complete with a 2000 foot murdercoaster; a few chapters later we get a lab pig that became sentient and learned to talk, and it’s about to learn that it was raised to grow organs for harvesting, and that the mutation in its brain is going to kill it eventually. There’s even a funeral industry cryptocoin: “For only one thousand bereavement crypto-tokens, you can scatter your loved one’s ashes on a one-hour cruise around SanFancisco Bay.”
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Feb 14, 2022 20:39
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Eon by Greg Bear - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J3EU5RC/ Bloodchild: And Other Stories by Octavia E Butler - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008HALO0U/ Rule 34 (Halting State #2) by Charles Stross - $4.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004Y3I6XW/ The Rising (Alchemy Wars #2) by Ian Tregillis - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00W22IMAO/ A number of KJ Parker books The Belly of the Bow (Fencer #2) - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B3VX3S6/ The Proof House (Fencer #3) - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B3VX3UE/ Shadow (Scavenger #1) - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B3VX3TA/ Pattern (Scavenger #2) - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B3VX3Y0/ Memory (Scavenger #3) - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B3VX3T0/ The Folding Knife - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0035IICZO/ And lastly some Robert Jackson Bennett Mr Shivers - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002ZDK0NC/ The Troupe - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004RD854O/ American Elsewhere - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008AS84PM/
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Feb 14, 2022 23:07
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I'm a fair-weather fantasy fan and one of the authors people have been telling me I'd like is Michael Moorcock. The series that seems to be the most popular is his Elric series so I looked for it on Audible at work and found out some of the books are getting released as part of a collection tomorrow. Odd coincidence. https://www.audible.com/pd/Elric-of...JX1Q16S23QP5S8P
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Feb 14, 2022 23:21
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Another Dirty Dish posted:Currently reading How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu. It’s set in the near future, where everything sucks in a similar way to the present: there’s a pandemic, due to a mysterious virus found in the melting Siberian permafrost. It seems to mutate organs in unpredictable ways, and primarily infects children and advanced elderly, though there’s heavy foreshadowing for it mutating into something that can infect adults. It’s a great book to read if you want to ruin your whole day: chapter 2 features an underemployed comedian who ends up working as a Mickey Mouse analogue at a euthanasia park for children, complete with a 2000 foot murdercoaster; a few chapters later we get a lab pig that became sentient and learned to talk, and it’s about to learn that it was raised to grow organs for harvesting, and that the mutation in its brain is going to kill it eventually. There’s even a funeral industry cryptocoin: “For only one thousand bereavement crypto-tokens, you can scatter your loved one’s ashes on a one-hour cruise around SanFancisco Bay.” Haha! Holy poo poo just your description really brought me down. I guess I'll pass on that one.
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Feb 14, 2022 23:32
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Sibling of TB posted:Haha! Holy poo poo just your description really brought me down. I guess I'll pass on that one. It becomes sort of more hopeful as time moves on but it's never not entirely not a bummer and the resolution is a sort of long term, existential resolution rather than anything that's really happening on a human scale.
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Feb 14, 2022 23:40
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First one was on my wishlist because space freighter stuff but I don't remember it being mentioned in this thread Fortuna (The Nova Vita Protocol Book 1) by Kristyn Merbeth $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NCWQRF6/ Memoria (The Nova Vita Protocol Book 2) by Kristyn Merbeth $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B086SWJ26K
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Feb 15, 2022 00:27
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Coquito Ergo Sum posted:I'm a fair-weather fantasy fan and one of the authors people have been telling me I'd like is Michael Moorcock. The series that seems to be the most popular is his Elric series so I looked for it on Audible at work and found out some of the books are getting released as part of a collection tomorrow. Odd coincidence. I wonder how they chose the books for that collection. Elric of Melniboné, The Sailor on the Seas of Fate, and The Weird of the White Wolf were all written in the 60s/70s, and The Fortress of the Pearl was written almost 25 years later. As a Moorcock fan, I have to admit the early Elric books can be pretty rocky going, but he does improve rapidly.
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Feb 15, 2022 00:31
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Selachian posted:I wonder how they chose the books for that collection. Elric of Melniboné, The Sailor on the Seas of Fate, and The Weird of the White Wolf were all written in the 60s/70s, and The Fortress of the Pearl was written almost 25 years later.
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Feb 15, 2022 00:45
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Rand Brittain posted:It looks like Diane Duane's personal ebook store replaced all the kind-of-sorry ePub files they previously had with some new ones that are much better quality, so I bought them all again. No regrets! I'll make it easy for people, it'd be easier if I could link direct to their pages in the store: https://www.dianeduane.com/ebook-store/ https://www.dianeduane.com/portfolio/stealing-the-elf-kings-roses/ This one's a standalone detective story with magic and elves. Pretty drat good as both a mystery and a novel. https://www.dianeduane.com/portfolio/the-book-of-night-with-moon/ https://www.dianeduane.com/portfolio/to-visit-the-queen/ https://www.dianeduane.com/portfolio/the-big-meow/ The three Feline Wizards novels. Absolutely first rate urban fantasy with interesting characters, compelling plots, and a very inventive setting.
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Feb 15, 2022 00:52
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ToxicFrog posted:What was wrong with the old ones? Just the usual sort of "ugly formatting from somebody autoconverting to ePub without styling." The new ones (except for The Big Meow, apparently) are made in Vellum and look nice.
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Feb 15, 2022 00:58
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mllaneza posted:I'll make it easy for people, it'd be easier if I could link direct to their pages in the store: https://www.dianeduane.com/ebook-store/ Book of night with moon really is so fun.
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Feb 15, 2022 01:26
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mllaneza posted:I'll make it easy for people, it'd be easier if I could link direct to their pages in the store: https://www.dianeduane.com/ebook-store/ Thanks for linking that! Ended up picking up the book of night with moon, been considering it for a while but when the link is just right there.... How can I say no! Gotta say, the cover of book 3 makes me want to hurry up and read the first two ASAP.
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Feb 15, 2022 01:50
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Tars Tarkas posted:First one was on my wishlist because space freighter stuff but I don't remember it being mentioned in this thread has anyone read these? i don't mind a bit of large scale soap/space opera but the sale price, as ever, excludes aus readers and au$20 is a lot for a three year old book.
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Feb 15, 2022 02:03
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Selachian posted:I wonder how they chose the books for that collection. Elric of Melniboné, The Sailor on the Seas of Fate, and The Weird of the White Wolf were all written in the 60s/70s, and The Fortress of the Pearl was written almost 25 years later. Chronological within continuity. Fortress of the Pearl is set between Elric of Melnibone and Sailor on the Seas of Fate. That's also how Gollancz republished them in 2012.
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Feb 15, 2022 02:04
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tokenbrownguy posted:spellmonger is... pretty horny It really is. I bought it for the promise of “hedge wizard uses weak magic and strong organisation cleverly to solve problems” and nearly put it down for “and is also a SEX wizard!” But the rest is good enough to hold it; competently written competence porn, as it were. And the sex somehow isn’t prurient, it’s just..there. It’s not Robert Jordan’s Conan levels of one-handed writing. Like, the wizard fucks, ok.
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Feb 15, 2022 02:05
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I kind of forgot about the sex magic in the first book but I thought it was extremely funny that it really is a serious topic of magical theory. Anyway the first book is probably the horniest, and it isn't really. I can't believe I'm trying to claim a fantasy sex scene is a plot element but, it is lmfao.
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Feb 15, 2022 05:27
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I think the skeevier part is like... "and then I hosed the innskeeper's daughters, who were 15 and 19."
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Feb 15, 2022 07:04
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God drat, I bought the first Spellmonger book based on thread recommendations for when I finish Too Many Magicians, and now I hear its all horny? Aughhh. Maybe Ill just skip to Between Two Fires instead... Where the drat editors at? Keep it in your pants, authors of the world!
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Feb 15, 2022 07:43
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I think it's okay to have romance and sex in fantasy novels. It's not really my thing, but for some people it is. Of course sometimes it's hosed up and that's more iffy. Cicero fucked around with this message at 12:23 on Feb 15, 2022 |
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Feb 15, 2022 07:46
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I think there is room for both horny and not horny books.
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Feb 15, 2022 10:55
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the horny should be good, or charmingly bad
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Feb 15, 2022 13:43
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Moreau posted:God drat, I bought the first Spellmonger book based on thread recommendations for when I finish Too Many Magicians, and now I hear its all horny? Aughhh. Maybe Ill just skip to Between Two Fires instead... You think between two fires isn't going to be horny? Though maybe it's different when it's not the pov character that's horning it up.
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Feb 15, 2022 15:42
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Coquito Ergo Sum posted:I'm a fair-weather fantasy fan and one of the authors people have been telling me I'd like is Michael Moorcock. The series that seems to be the most popular is his Elric series so I looked for it on Audible at work and found out some of the books are getting released as part of a collection tomorrow. Odd coincidence. Well thank you for this! Always wanted to get around to checking out the Elric stuff, and also need a new audiobook.
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Feb 15, 2022 17:34
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Sibling of TB posted:You think between two fires isn't going to be horny? I know, right? Right from the get-go with the satan-eel, like - just jerk off, weirdo!
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Feb 15, 2022 17:35
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The thing with the Elric collections is they are a mix of novels, that he spent time and effort on, and quick one offs that he wrote for SF/Fantasy magazines for a quick buck, so the quality jumps around quite a bit, but overall they are classics for a reason.
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Feb 15, 2022 18:15
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Whoever is doing the Michael Moorcock readthrough or plans on re-reading some of Moorcock's work, let us know how often Moorcock stuck to the Michael Moorcock guide to writing a 60000 word fantasy novel. As per Moorcock himself, "break it down into four 15000 word parts each of three chapters. An incident must happen every three pages to keep the reader engrossed". [source: SFL Archives Vol 19a] Heinlein chat from a few pages ago: Heinlein by himself is relatively harmless, everything he was a failure at in real life his characters were amazing at in his scifi stories. It's the cult of personality that latched onto Heinlein's work and Heinlein himself that is really terrible. Can't read Stross anymore because where there isn't Heinlein 23/7 there is creepy rear end poo poo like self-lubricating sexbot nipples. Moreau posted:Where the drat editors at? Keep it in your pants, authors of the world! fantasy and scifi editors have been terrible on editing away stuff like that since the 1960's at least. Horniness wish fulfillment crap like GOR, Jack Chalker, GRRM, Terry Goodkind, etc sold like crazy, and has kept more than a few book publishing houses afloat.
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Feb 15, 2022 20:23
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quantumfoam posted:Whoever is doing the Michael Moorcock readthrough or plans on re-reading some of Moorcock's work, let us know how often Moorcock stuck to the Michael Moorcock guide to writing a 60000 word fantasy novel. You can find Moorcock's guide here. It's heavily inspired by the Lester Dent Master Plot, as formulated by the author of the Doc Savage pulp novels. (And since I haven't mentioned it in forever: if you're new to Moorcock and want to try just one book to see how you like him, you want The War Hound and the World's Pain.)
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Feb 15, 2022 20:52
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Screaming_Gremlin posted:I am a little over half way through Ada Palmer's Too Like the Lightning. Uh, cannot say that I predicted the direction the story went with Mycroft Canner's background. The first part of the book has you thinking his crime and punishment are related to the canner device and his ability to bypass security. But nope, turns out he was a serial killer that engaged in a little wholesome cannibalism. This reveal came *just* after I got hooked and had been reading for hours, but it was such an unexpected and gut-wrenching twist that I put the book down and was just in shock. But now I've read all four and I utterly love Mycroft so I don't know what the hell. Very glad I did pick it up and read on because I felt every book just got better and better.
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Feb 15, 2022 23:03
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Selachian posted:You can find Moorcock's guide here. It's heavily inspired by the Lester Dent Master Plot, as formulated by the author of the Doc Savage pulp novels. The Doc Savage novels are also really fun if you’re looking for pulp adventure with some dashes of sci-fi.
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Feb 15, 2022 23:07
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The Road by Cormac McCarthy - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000OI0G1Q/ The Wind's Twelve Quarters: Stories by Ursula K Le Guin - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MG75652/ Unexpected Stories by Octavia E Butler - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00K04NWG0/ Promise of Blood (Powder Mage #1) by Brian McClellan - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0092XHPIG/ or The Powder Mage Trilogy: Promise of Blood, The Crimson Campaign, The Autumn Republic by Brian McClellan - $6.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NZNTK6V/ The Legend of Eli Monpress by Rachel Aaron - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0058ECNXU/ Red Moon by Kim Stanley Robinson - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079L5PTZS/
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Feb 15, 2022 23:21
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Moreau posted:God drat, I bought the first Spellmonger book based on thread recommendations for when I finish Too Many Magicians, and now I hear its all horny? Aughhh. Maybe Ill just skip to Between Two Fires instead... Spellmonger is self-published
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Feb 16, 2022 02:47
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That's no excuse for not having an editor. 
cptn_dr fucked around with this message at 03:57 on Feb 16, 2022 |
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Feb 16, 2022 03:35
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quantumfoam posted:Whoever is doing the Michael Moorcock readthrough or plans on re-reading some of Moorcock's work, let us know how often Moorcock stuck to the Michael Moorcock guide to writing a 60000 word fantasy novel. Okay, this is actually making me excited to read his stuff. While it's nice that fantasy doesn't seem bound by the rules of a lot of literature, I cannot for the life of me deal with their penchant of just spinning their wheels for a hundred pages without so much as an interesting dialogue here or there.
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Feb 16, 2022 03:56
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Coquito Ergo Sum posted:Okay, this is actually making me excited to read his stuff. While it's nice that fantasy doesn't seem bound by the rules of a lot of literature, I cannot for the life of me deal with their penchant of just spinning their wheels for a hundred pages without so much as an interesting dialogue here or there. That's mostly a modern (that is, post-GRRM, Jordan, and Tad Williams) fantasy thing. Before that, fantasy writers of Moorcock's era were a lot quicker to get to the point.
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Feb 16, 2022 06:06
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Each of the Moorcock novels in the Elric collection released today is divided into three parts of around five chapters in the index, so he wasn't following his 3-day-novel formula for these. Maybe these were written before he came up with it, or maybe he applied different rules depending on how much effort he was putting into a particular novel. I've only read Elric of Melnibone so far, but there are definitely three distinct parts rather than four. Something happening every three pages seems accurate for Elric of Melnibone though. Moorcock reminds me of Jack Vance for how many ideas he can cram into a short book.
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Feb 16, 2022 08:50
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AngusPodgorny posted:Each of the Moorcock novels in the Elric collection released today is divided into three parts of around five chapters in the index, so he wasn't following his 3-day-novel formula for these. Maybe these were written before he came up with it, or maybe he applied different rules depending on how much effort he was putting into a particular novel. I've only read Elric of Melnibone so far, but there are definitely three distinct parts rather than four. Most of the Elric "novels" are actually short story collections.
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Feb 16, 2022 13:13
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The Elric stuff is fun and one of the major influences on a lot of "dark" fantasy from the last few decades. But the real Moorcock goodness is his time travel fiction. Some of Behold the Man is fedora grade atheism, but it's overall a fun, twisted retelling of the Christ story. The Nomad of Time novels are full weird and violent alternate 20th centuries. And the "End of Time" stories are wonderful comic stories about people who have everything, especially an excess of ennui.
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Feb 16, 2022 17:26
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branedotorg posted:has anyone read these? i don't mind a bit of large scale soap/space opera but the sale price, as ever, excludes aus readers and au$20 is a lot for a three year old book. I think it might be six months before I get to them due to my current queue and how slowly I am getting through what I am reading now due to a kid and trying to finish a few other projects. I really only saw people talking about them on the lists of new scifi books each month so have almost nothing to go on beyond them being in a genre I usually like.
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Feb 16, 2022 17:38
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Tars Tarkas posted:I think it might be six months before I get to them due to my current queue and how slowly I am getting through what I am reading now due to a kid and trying to finish a few other projects. I really only saw people talking about them on the lists of new scifi books each month so have almost nothing to go on beyond them being in a genre I usually like. thanks, i'm in a similar boat, might wait till they go on sale again then
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Feb 16, 2022 22:09
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