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Hyperion is, in my opinion, a brilliant book. Fall of Hyperion completely ruins it and Simmons himself ruins any desire I have to read anything else by him. I prefer to try and remember it in isolation of anything else and assume the author died before he could continue the story.
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Aug 28, 2022 23:01
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Everyone posted:Probable minority view but I remember really liking Carrion Comfort from when I was in college. Of course that was when I was much younger and way before Simmons went Muslim hate cray-cray. Same. It was a very fine, tense, paranoia-laden horror story. I actually quite liked Simmons until the Ilium/Olympos thing. Which, goddamn.
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Aug 28, 2022 23:43
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A Proper Uppercut posted:I like his Land Fit for Heroes trilogy. What really hit me over the head when I read those was that basically all character interactions were staring the opposition into submission, which is fine for one POV, but it was basically all of them.
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Aug 29, 2022 00:00
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First Binding having, within the deigesis, a book about a redheaded kingkiller was ... a biiiit arch? there's homage then there's being fuckin cheeky that opening is also, I mean, it's Kingkiller, tell me which of these is Kingkiller and which is First Binding quote:The worst sort of prison held the Three Tales Tavern.  It's not plagiarism but it is a ripoff, possibly the most naked ripoff I've seen in years also holy god purple prose, how the gently caress does a cord gone taut hang SurreptitiousMuffin fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Aug 29, 2022 |
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Aug 29, 2022 01:34
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I feel like the purple prose drops off a little after the first few chapters. Like how Robert Jordan intentionally made the first part of The Eye of the World so much like The Lord of the Rings, it might have been to pull in the Kingkiller fans. It's possible I'm just numb now though.
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Aug 29, 2022 01:47
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edit: you know what this was probably too mean but I think it's safe to say I did not enjoy First Binding
SurreptitiousMuffin fucked around with this message at 02:04 on Aug 29, 2022 |
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Aug 29, 2022 01:54
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Oh, neat. The second book for Beware the Chicken is on royalroad.
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Aug 29, 2022 01:56
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Carrier posted:Hyperion is, in my opinion, a brilliant book. Fall of Hyperion completely ruins it and Simmons himself ruins any desire I have to read anything else by him. It's one of the worst offenders for me in the 'sequel so crappy it ruins the first book' department. I would be able to say I loved Hyperion if it didn't exist.
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Aug 29, 2022 02:31
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:edit: you know what this was probably too mean but I think it's safe to say I did not enjoy First Binding I'm only defending it in the mildest way possible which is to say that I'm not hating it, but it has yet to impress me. If i'm still reading it when something I'm more interested in comes out... Oh, wait, the finale of Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse is out. Well I'm going to read that now. I guess we'll see if it's ever worth coming back to The First Binding.
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Aug 29, 2022 02:43
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Danhenge posted:I'm only defending it in the mildest way possible which is to say that I'm not hating it, but it has yet to impress me. If i'm still reading it when something I'm more interested in comes out... It's not the worst book I've ever read, it's just ... not good.
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Aug 29, 2022 02:47
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Yeah. I guess the author is the Monster Slayer Online guy? This is his attempt to transition from self-pub.
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Aug 29, 2022 02:53
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Recent discussion about how Simmons and Rothfuss are turds, and previous knowledge about how Orson Scott Card is a mega turd, got me thinking... Which fantasy writers out there are certified super cool people in real life? (OSC wrote a regular editorial column for my hometown newspaper and it was so often every type of -phobic you can think of that I can never in my life enjoy an Ender book)
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Aug 29, 2022 03:09
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Nabokov.
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Aug 29, 2022 03:11
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Taz Muir seems pretty chill.
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Aug 29, 2022 03:15
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Ann Leckie has always been incredibly sweet to me, and not in a way that seems to suggest a deep reservoir of interior shittiness. Kameron Hurley is an ornery cranky grouch (in the best way) and also very genuine and supportive and willing to put herself out there for you. She also has huge dogs. Yoon Ha Lee is a really nice nerdy guy who I am always happy to see at one of the dreaded "cons"
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Aug 29, 2022 03:22
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I have friends that play Warhammer with Adrian Tchaikovsky and he’s a very chill dude by all accounts.
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Aug 29, 2022 03:33
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I met Joe Abercrombie once a decade ago at Comic Con and he seemed cool. Sanderson was also nice but painfully awkward and did not seem to enjoy being in NYC.
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Aug 29, 2022 03:46
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Count Thrashula posted:Recent discussion about how Simmons and Rothfuss are turds, and previous knowledge about how Orson Scott Card is a mega turd, got me thinking... Met Sanderson twice at cons, and he was universally gracious and kind. One of those times he was REALLY clearly stressed out as gently caress about something but making a real effort to give everybody face-time and not let it affect the signing, even preemptively apologizing to people for seeming stressed. StonecutterJoe fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Aug 29, 2022 |
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Aug 29, 2022 03:58
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Amal El-Mohtar is loving lovely, she's legit one of the nicest people I've ever met silvergoose posted:Taz Muir seems pretty chill. SurreptitiousMuffin fucked around with this message at 04:31 on Aug 29, 2022 |
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Aug 29, 2022 04:26
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General Battuta posted:Ann Leckie has always been incredibly sweet to me, and not in a way that seems to suggest a deep reservoir of interior shittiness. I hope Ann is going ok. Nothing new from her since early 2019, hasn't blogged since her post about two years ago when she talked about removing Raven Tower from the Hugo noms. This is not a request for secret author info, just kind of thinking out loud.
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Aug 29, 2022 04:35
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why did she pull it? puppies poo poo?
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Aug 29, 2022 04:37
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moonmazed posted:why did she pull it? puppies poo poo? Like, re Taz Muir being super cool, she pulled out of the New Zealand book awards thing that I ended up winning, which was what got me a book deal, and that wasn't nearly Hugos-scale. If she hadn't done that, she would've steamrolled me and I'd probably still be nowhere.
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Aug 29, 2022 04:41
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zoux posted:New exhaustive list of "problematic authors" just dropped on book twitter My favorite part is wanting to cancel Emily Duncan for "mocking book bloggers." If anything I consider that one to be a positive action.
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Aug 29, 2022 05:58
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What's their beef with Colleen Hover? The "Reason" section for her is blank. Is it the book-blogger version of "I don't like her books/face/word processor?"
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Aug 29, 2022 06:10
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Please let the list some dumb kid wrote die.
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Aug 29, 2022 06:17
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Yeah she's 20. It's a hilariously bad list but college students often have terrible opinions, it's normal, it's part of growing up, it deserves an "ok whatever  " not 10k strangers dunking on you for a solid week
SurreptitiousMuffin fucked around with this message at 08:01 on Aug 29, 2022 |
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Aug 29, 2022 07:58
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Groke posted:Same. It was a very fine, tense, paranoia-laden horror story. I enjoyed The Terror, though it could have been a lot shorter and still maintained the tension. I feel like the seeds of Simmons' freak out were there from the start though. Song Of Kali is quite short by his standards and it's very effectively written, but the basic premise is that an American in a foreign country is being targeted by a deliberately distorted and evil version of something culturally specific to that country. General Battuta posted:Kameron Hurley...also has huge dogs. It's funny what can get someone bumped up the to-read pile
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Aug 29, 2022 08:16
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Count Thrashula posted:Recent discussion about how Simmons and Rothfuss are turds, and previous knowledge about how Orson Scott Card is a mega turd, got me thinking... I met Mike Carey a bunch of times when he was mainly writing comics. Sound guy. And of course Terry Pratchett was just an amazing person.
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Aug 29, 2022 09:10
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Count Thrashula posted:Recent discussion about how Simmons and Rothfuss are turds, and previous knowledge about how Orson Scott Card is a mega turd, got me thinking... I hung out with Jo Walton and a bunch of her friends in Wales one summer long ago, they were chill and friendly. No odious politics that I know of either. Also she writes good books. And poured a drink on David Brin on purpose once.
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Aug 29, 2022 09:19
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Just wanted to say thanks to everyone who recommended Cherryh to me. I just finished Downbelow Station and it scratched exactly the itch I wanted it to. It's the first Cherryh novel I've ever read, and now I'm going to have to make my way through — at the very least — everything else in the Alliance/Union setting.
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Aug 29, 2022 11:07
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MartingaleJack posted:Rothfuss obsessively writes blocking in his conversations. It's mostly description about what the characters faces are doing. I thought it was stupid at first, but maybe he's onto something. It's like there's a huge audience of people out there who can't read facial cues. What is "blocking?" Carrier posted:Hyperion is, in my opinion, a brilliant book. Fall of Hyperion completely ruins it and Simmons himself ruins any desire I have to read anything else by him. Read them when I was a teenager and loved both, Fall particularly so because it has a big high-stakes explosiony fight for civilisation. In line with the discussion that brought this up, I vaguely remember that he had Keats or someone in it as a character, which if I read it today would probably feel wanky but when I was 19 I didn't know who Keats was and therefore didn't care.
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Aug 29, 2022 12:33
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Yes, Keats is central to the plot and some of his poetry is quoted, making the Simmons’ original verse look even worse
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Aug 29, 2022 12:35
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freebooter posted:What is "blocking?" theatre term. It's not bad in itself but can be a bit annoying when the writer is describing every single movement, like they're anxious that you won't Get It unless they explain well enough
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Aug 29, 2022 12:38
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sebmojo posted:theatre term. Ah right. I haven't read Rothfuss, but over-describing characters' reactions during dialogue feels like a pretty common sin across SFF.
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Aug 29, 2022 12:45
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:Simmons’ original verse OK lol I think I need to re-read those books now
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Aug 29, 2022 12:46
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I swore off Sanderson back in the day because he was donating money to anti-LGBT causes. I think more as part of his church affiliation than on a personal level, but still. Has he distanced himself from that?
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Aug 29, 2022 12:56
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sebmojo posted:theatre term. It's a habit I see a lot in people who've moved into writing from text-based roleplay. I do text RP, it's like, my main hobby besides painting, and you really *can't* write prose the way you write roleplay poses. It's completely different.
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Aug 29, 2022 12:57
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Danhenge posted:I hope Ann is going ok. Nothing new from her since early 2019, hasn't blogged since her post about two years ago when she talked about removing Raven Tower from the Hugo noms. This is not a request for secret author info, just kind of thinking out loud. She posts on tumblr occasionally and recently implied that she was writing a new Radch novel. The Presger are involved. Also she posted a link to her Minecraft server if you're into that I guess.
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Aug 29, 2022 14:57
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The idea that we might see a wave of Kingkiller-inspired fantasy sounds like some next level Twilight Zone hell. Even without the factor of him being a creepy rear end in a top hat, the books are just so meandering and what promise he showed as a first time author in NotW is dragged out into the road and set on fire in WMF. The 2nd book is genuinely bad and makes me glad he's pulling a GRRM and will never write Doors of Stone. Especially since his horde of fans will sing its praises even if the entirety of the book is Rothfuss writing a jordan petersen-tier screed about his detractors.
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Aug 29, 2022 15:24
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I think the bright side look at it would be if they DO write these big super weirdo novels, at least they probably will have an ending worked out. That already puts em above rothfuss.
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Aug 29, 2022 15:39
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