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Jedit posted:She's also got some balls outright calling her young teenage girl learning to control dangerous I thought the Scholomance books had their problems with needless exposition at times but they were a fun read and I’m really not sure where the comparisons to HP come in besides them both being about wizard schools, which is hardly an invention of Rowling’s. I do think the last book suffered a bit from the (overly-cautious spoiler) sudden increase in scope and relatively break-neck pace not letting the new characters or locations really breathe and become memorable, though.
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Dec 27, 2022 11:44
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Leng posted:
Good for her, yeah. I read a lot of Temeraire and ended up really hating it because, yeah, lots of just extremely poor narrative choices -- characters making choices that would have been wildly out of character for anyone in the time period, a plot that felt driven more by fanfic logic than like it was its own story. It may have suffered due to the inevitable comparison with Patrick O'Brian, who never makes those kinds of mistakes. I can see why she'd want a do-over and credit to her for realizing the problem.
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Dec 27, 2022 12:40
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Good for her, yeah. I read a lot of Temeraire and ended up really hating it because, yeah, lots of just extremely poor narrative choices -- characters making choices that would have been wildly out of character for anyone in the time period, a plot that felt driven more by fanfic logic than like it was its own story. It may have suffered due to the inevitable comparison with Patrick O'Brian, who never makes those kinds of mistakes. I can see why she'd want a do-over and credit to her for realizing the problem. Yeah, I really like the first couple of Temeraire books but that's a series where you *have* to dip out the instant you start enjoying it less, because it's not gonna get better.
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Dec 27, 2022 13:28
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rohan posted:Gotta say I never picked up on that (assuming you’re going for the Stranger Things ref and not something else entirely) but her full name being Galadriel as an explicit LOTR reference works well in the story. I doubt the overt reference is meant to cover for her riffing on a character in a Netflix show. Yeah she is full on Galadriel, right down to her affinity, the moment she gives in to any temptation she expects to go full "all shall love me and despair", and probably could.
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Dec 27, 2022 14:03
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Runcible Cat posted:Grew a pretty nice beard 
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Dec 27, 2022 14:22
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Runcible Cat posted:Grew a pretty nice beard, wrote a space opera that Tor pushed heavily but I've no idea if it's actually any good and no interest in finding out. It's precisely Fine. I read the whole thing and kept expecting it to get worse or better and feeling like I was on the verge of switching to something else but it was just the most completely Fine book i ever read
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Dec 27, 2022 15:10
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Siivola posted:How is Paolini doing these days? I only remember Eragon being dog poo poo awful, but that was twenty years ago. Was it really bad? I never actually read the books. I saw the one movie that was based on Eragon and thought it was mostly okay for a title that was Dragon spelled with an E. The movie seemed like a mash-up of Star Wars and J. Crew's Lord of the Rings. I remember deciding that even so, I didn't plan to come back for Galbatorix Strikes Back or Return of the Dragon Rider.
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Dec 27, 2022 19:27
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I remember laughing out loud at the movie theatre, but in fairness I went in there to dunk on it.
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Dec 27, 2022 19:30
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rohan posted:I thought the Scholomance books had their problems with needless exposition at times but they were a fun read and I’m really not sure where the comparisons to HP come in besides them both being about wizard schools, which is hardly an invention of Rowling’s. The Scholomance was created to answer the questions "What if JK Rowling wasn't a useless hack and explained why the Muggles don't know magic exists (despite magic being amazing) and why do wizard parents willingly send their children off to die at wizard school?"
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Dec 27, 2022 21:46
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It was just a very teenage first novel that heavily cribbed from Star Wars. I think it made fantasy fans mad due to not deserving its level of success compared to less popular, better novels. People play the nepotism card as Paolini's parents were publishers, but IIRC they spent ages touring schools and doing promotions in full ren fair costume - it's not like they just dumped it on the Harper Collins 'heavy promote' list via favours.
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Dec 27, 2022 21:47
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Strategic Tea posted:It was just a very teenage first novel that heavily cribbed from Star Wars. I think it made fantasy fans mad due to not deserving its level of success compared to less popular, better novels. The funniest bits for me weren't the movie so much as the book fans having screaming shitfits over the movie adapting the book to being, y'know, a movie. The movie didn't really sell me on the books aside from "Yeah, I can believe a fairly talented 15-19 year old kid wrote this."
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Dec 27, 2022 22:24
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Strategic Tea posted:It was just a very teenage first novel that heavily cribbed from Star Wars. And Lord of the Rings. And Wheel of Time. And Pern. And Earthsea. Derivative isn't necessarily the problem—there is an entire niche devoted to fairytale retellings and people eat that stuff up. Not even just in self-pubbed fantasy romance (or romance fantasy): Daughter of the Moon Goddess and The Stardust Thief (which I just finished and my opinion on it is, Daevabad is better) and The Book of Gothel are all recent examples from trad publishing. Eragon's problem is it didn't have anything new or personal to add. Strategic Tea posted:I think it made fantasy fans mad due to not deserving its level of success compared to less popular, better novels. Think their touring was what ended up getting the book picked up. A kid at a school got a copy and one of his parents happened to be a published author who passed it on to his publisher. During the Penguin Random House/Simon & Schuster DoJ testimony, one of the publishers they put on the stand said something to the effect of marketing can amplify success but it can't create it from scratch. The book was primarily marketed to kids, most of whom I'd wager weren't necessarily that well-read in fantasy and so wouldn't have necessarily experienced the book as derivative. It found an audience and took off. Everyone posted:Was it really bad? I never actually read the books. For what it's worth, I finished all four books like a decade ago or so. They were readable and fine pastiches of generic chosen one farmboy goes on epic quest if you disengaged your brain while reading and nothing much of them stayed in my memory afterwards. What is impressive about it is that he wrote the first one when he was fifteen and it reads that way too. I'm not sure how much it was revised before it was self-published or after it got picked up by a trad publisher. Also something fun: we've now reached the point where The Inheritance Cycle has been out long enough that people are reviewing other fantasy books as Eragon rip-offs. Leng fucked around with this message at 22:33 on Dec 27, 2022 |
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Dec 27, 2022 22:29
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Has anyone read the Death Gate cycle by Weis and Hickman? I remember reading the first few (maybe 3?) of them but never had the full set. I seem to remember them being quite good but no idea if that's nostalgia coupled with me reading them as a 10-12 year-old and having zero ability to tell good from trash. My wife has gotten me back into reading fantasy, and while I have fond memories of some of the stuff I read back then, I suspect the fantasy genre has moved on a bit since.
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Dec 27, 2022 23:26
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Surprise T Rex posted:Has anyone read the Death Gate cycle by Weis and Hickman? I remember reading the first few (maybe 3?) of them but never had the full set. I seem to remember them being quite good but no idea if that's nostalgia coupled with me reading them as a 10-12 year-old and having zero ability to tell good from trash. I never actually read them so much as remember seeing them in bookstores. I think by the time Death Gate came out I was just sick to death of Weis and Hickman because of Dragonlance. And not even really because of Dragonlance exactly. DL had a pretty decent novel trilogy followed by a semi-decent sequel trilogy. And then it proceeded to do Hidden/Lost/Misplaced/Super/Duper/Speshal Chronicles Vol. Whatever to the point that I expected The Toilet Training of Tanis Half-elven to hit shelves any day.
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Dec 27, 2022 23:49
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Surprise T Rex posted:Has anyone read the Death Gate cycle by Weis and Hickman? I remember reading the first few (maybe 3?) of them but never had the full set. I seem to remember them being quite good but no idea if that's nostalgia coupled with me reading them as a 10-12 year-old and having zero ability to tell good from trash. I remember them, but I burned out on Weis and Hickman somewhere around their Rose of the Prophet series and never picked up the Death Gate books.
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Dec 28, 2022 00:10
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Everyone posted:[...] I was just sick to death of Weis and Hickman because of Dragonlance. And not even really because of Dragonlance exactly. They were certainly, uh, prolific. I had a few random Dragonlance and Darksword Trilogy books as well as the first few Death Gate books, but never in a sensible order since it was all random stuff picked up second-hand from charity shops or car-boot sales, so trying to understand what's going on in book 3 with zero context was interesting. The sheer amount of material and overall "feel" of Dragonlance gave me Forgotten Realms D&D setting vibes, and not necessarily in a good way.
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Dec 28, 2022 00:16
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Surprise T Rex posted:Has anyone read the Death Gate cycle by Weis and Hickman? I remember reading the first few (maybe 3?) of them but never had the full set. I seem to remember them being quite good but no idea if that's nostalgia coupled with me reading them as a 10-12 year-old and having zero ability to tell good from trash. I'm actually in the middle of a re-read right now. They're relatively decent fantasy with a bit too much of a fondness for using footnotes for world-building. The series sags a bit around book 5, but the ending satisfies. They're probably the best thing that Weis and Hickman wrote together, but Weis has written better by herself.
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Dec 28, 2022 00:38
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Good for her, yeah. I read a lot of Temeraire and ended up really hating it because, yeah, lots of just extremely poor narrative choices -- characters making choices that would have been wildly out of character for anyone in the time period, a plot that felt driven more by fanfic logic than like it was its own story. You know she was one of the creators of Archive of Our Own, right?
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Dec 28, 2022 00:56
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He’s got one testicle and he cheats at cycling. Ey Tone, you hear what I said? He’s got one ball and he cheats at cycling. I’m Dragonlance here
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Dec 28, 2022 01:04
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i don't know what the hell a discovery writer is but it sounds like an excuse more than a method.
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Dec 28, 2022 01:14
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https://twitter.com/understatesmen/status/1607175643921539072
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Dec 28, 2022 01:18
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Larry Parrish posted:i don't know what the hell a discovery writer is but it sounds like an excuse more than a method. Also known as "writing by the seat of your pants". Stephen King and George R. R. Martin (lol) are examples.
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Dec 28, 2022 01:22
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Larry Parrish posted:i don't know what the hell a discovery writer is but it sounds like an excuse more than a method. No, it's valid! Instead of sitting down and outlining a story, you write and find out what happens. It's a lot of fun, and imho just as valid as outliners - as long as you can take a critical eye to your work and edit it into shape, it's solid. But I can also see that being hell for poor Naomi Novik - as a fellow discovery writer I can easily see her uncovering a better way to handle a plot point or setting detail, but you can't go back and edit previous novels if they've been published!
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Dec 28, 2022 01:46
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StrixNebulosa posted:No, it's valid! Instead of sitting down and outlining a story, you write and find out what happens. It's a lot of fun, and imho just as valid as outliners - as long as you can take a critical eye to your work and edit it into shape, it's solid. This is why I’ve drafted (or partially drafted) half a dozen in my series before finishing and publishing them (that and ADD)
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Dec 28, 2022 02:08
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tiniestacorn posted:You know she was one of the creators of Archive of Our Own, right? That sounds familiar but I can't say I knew it for fact. I knew Temeraire was originally Patrick O'Brian fanfic. What ultimately bothered me about it was that the story became driven by the logic of what a modern reader would like to happen, not any logic internal to the story or the characters themselves. It all felt cheap and un-earned and painfully predictable, and it was an especially harsh contrast because Patrick O'Brian was the master at not doing that, at always making sure his characters were realistic for the setting and their actions and reactions were always narratively earned.
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Dec 28, 2022 02:09
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StrixNebulosa posted:No, it's valid! Instead of sitting down and outlining a story, you write and find out what happens. It's a lot of fun, and imho just as valid as outliners - as long as you can take a critical eye to your work and edit it into shape, it's solid. Sounds like solo roleplaying. I would need my book of random tables to do this properly
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Dec 28, 2022 02:14
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:That sounds familiar but I can't say I knew it for fact. I knew Temeraire was originally Patrick O'Brian fanfic. i can't speak to the author in question cuz I haven't read any of their stuff but lol if true. you're right that's such a spit in the face to the Aubrey/marturin books. More importantly it's a spit in the face to the reader- I don't want to read what I want to happen. I want to read a damned narrative.
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Dec 28, 2022 02:49
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Surprise T Rex posted:Has anyone read the Death Gate cycle by Weis and Hickman? Selachian posted:I remember them, but I burned out on Weis and Hickman somewhere around their Rose of the Prophet series and never picked up the Death Gate books. Death Gate books are decent. I also liked the Rose of the Prophet trilogy which has a religion with deities and alignments that's literally based on a d20. (I laughed.) Everyone posted:DL had a pretty decent novel trilogy followed by a semi-decent sequel trilogy. And then it proceeded to do Hidden/Lost/Misplaced/Super/Duper/Speshal Chronicles Vol. Whatever to the point that I expected The Toilet Training of Tanis Half-elven to hit shelves any day. The only later series I read and enjoyed was the trilogy centered on Mina, The Dark Disciple.
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Dec 28, 2022 04:05
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Stuporstar posted:This is why I’ve drafted (or partially drafted) half a dozen in my series before finishing and publishing them (that and ADD) I guess that explains why all the d&d campaigns I run are basically a single big idea and an enormous amount of furious improvising
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Dec 28, 2022 05:34
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Leng posted:The only later series I read and enjoyed was the trilogy centered on Mina, The Dark Disciple. Those were okay. I did really enjoy The Doom Brigade and Draconian Measures.
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Dec 28, 2022 06:58
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Surprise T Rex posted:Has anyone read the Death Gate cycle by Weis and Hickman? I remember reading the first few (maybe 3?) of them but never had the full set. I seem to remember them being quite good but no idea if that's nostalgia coupled with me reading them as a 10-12 year-old and having zero ability to tell good from trash. I remember the writing being a bit better than Dragonlance but nothing special - I did like the way the first four world's interacted into some kind of giant machine
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Dec 28, 2022 12:00
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Rutibex posted:Sounds like solo roleplaying. I would need my book of random tables to do this properly I've written several SF short stories based on ideas I rolled up on the Ironsworn: Starforged oracle tables. None of them sold so far, so but I have had high-tier rejections.
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Dec 28, 2022 14:45
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Larry Parrish posted:i can't speak to the author in question cuz I haven't read any of their stuff but lol if true. you're right that's such a spit in the face to the Aubrey/marturin books. More importantly it's a spit in the face to the reader- I don't want to read what I want to happen. I want to read a damned narrative. The dragon series collapses under the weight of her sitting down and thinking "wait wouldn't most of world history be different if everyone has an air force" and then just winging it. I would stop short of describing that as a spit in the face to readers or the Aubrey maturin books, also it's more Hornblower fanfic imo. She then went on to do a series of awesome one off fairy tale inspired novels and the scholomance series
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Dec 28, 2022 15:03
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Rutibex posted:Sounds like solo roleplaying. I would need my book of random tables to do this properly I'd read Sweaters by Hedgehog as a series.
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Dec 28, 2022 15:04
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Leng posted:I enjoyed Scholomance for a fun take on what if Hogwarts were actually real but if you're not enjoying the narration and El's character, no amount of plot is going to make you change your mind. (But the payoffs in the Golden Enclaves are pretty awesome.) The main character was kinda poo poo though. It's a bad YA trope to make your teenage wizard the most powerful being in the universe and the smartest thing Harry Potter did was to avoid it. It's also such a grimdark cliche that the ultimate monster which traps and tortures victims for eternity is *of course* built by the rich and powerful to harvest energy from people for their own use. So every grand reveal in the third book ends up kinda flat and it's more like ok how have you not realized this by now, why did someone have to exposition it for you, most powerful wizard teenager. It was well written though, and the first book is the best, even if it's padded out with a lot of angsty internal monologues.
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Dec 28, 2022 15:37
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The Silmarillion by JRR Tolkein - $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007978PGI/ Eric (Discworld #9) by Terry Pratchett - $0.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GU32WNY/ The Divine Invastion (VALIS #2) by Philip K Dick - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005LVQZS4/
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Dec 28, 2022 16:57
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Novik's action writing was pretty good in the Temeraire books. I liked Uprooted, I'm liking the Scholomance so far.Hieronymous Alloy posted:Patrick O'Brian was the master at not doing that, at always making sure his characters were realistic for the setting and their actions and reactions were always narratively earned. He bent reality left and right for Stephen to always have enough money to do whatever he wanted; he got real vague about what year it was to cover more history than was possible. Above all he generally wheeled out whatever machina he needed to let his literal goldilocks captain and his irish/spanish friendzoned doctor/spy/duellist continue to have boat adventures together, in the size of boat he liked to write about. He even publicly rued that he did not start the series earlier in time when there were more boat adventures to be had. I don't think any kind of writer is immune to discovering, a few books into a series, that there's stuff they wished they'd done differently. Writers are always admitting these things. FWIW I think Novik is a little "cozy" of a writer for some tastes, and that's the sum of it.
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Dec 29, 2022 02:12
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I am in fact a cozy bitch, I will admit that.
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Dec 29, 2022 02:19
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RDM posted:The main character was kinda poo poo though. It's a bad YA trope to make your teenage wizard the most powerful being in the universe and the smartest thing Harry Potter did was to avoid it. It's also such a grimdark cliche that the ultimate monster which traps and tortures victims for eternity is *of course* built by the rich and powerful to harvest energy from people for their own use. So every grand reveal in the third book ends up kinda flat and it's more like ok how have you not realized this by now, why did someone have to exposition it for you, most powerful wizard teenager. Counterpoint: I'd say Scholomance is one of the rare instances where that trope is done well and the world building supports it. Why El is insanely overpowered is explained and balanced by the nature of her affinity and she spends the whole series trying to work around it. I vastly prefer it to Harry Potter. I reread the first book earlier in the year with my daughter because she got invited to a Harry Potter themed birthday party and just, ugh. Harry Potter literally is the hero for no reason other than because his mother died for him. Hermione and Ron do all the work and Harry still gets more credit and kudos simply because of the circumstances of his birth.
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Dec 29, 2022 02:43
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Also, El’s not precisely “overpowered.” She’s really really good at murder magic and struggles with literally everything else.
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Dec 29, 2022 02:51
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