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Leng posted:Curse of the Mistwraith was the first Janny Wurts book I read; I only stumbled onto The Empire Trilogy later (and that was cowritten with Feist). If you don't want to commit to an 11 book series, try out To Ride Hell's Chasm which is her standalone first, or the Cycle of Fire which is her shorter series. I confess that while I adore Mistwraith and To Ride Hell's Chasm, I have struggled with Cycle of Fire. I don't care for child protagonists, and there are three of them! But the worldbuilding seemed really interesting... perhaps I should try again. Reading it could buy me more time as I wait for the final Mistwraith volume
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Apr 19, 2023 00:22
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about the impending convergence of disaster about to go doooooooooown and even though I know Wurts is no grimdark author I weep for the characters right now.
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Even official digital copies have a tendency to be extremely low effort. My copy of Mumbo Jumbo had the pictures be unreadable; not great when you're climactic scene involves a picture of a letter. It's even worse though with things in Public Domain. There's so many awful, non formatted works with slapped on Amazon for $.99
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Apr 19, 2023 00:26
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Velius posted:I think Hamilton is more an idea guy than a “what are the actual moral consequences of this idea” guy. I guess what I want is “The Overly Indulgent Space Opera (with) Baru Cormorant”, what can I do to make this happen? That's Blue Planet: Age of Aquarius and Blue Planet: War in Heaven, OP.
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Apr 19, 2023 01:19
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Gaius Marius posted:…There's so many awful, non formatted works with slapped on Amazon for $.99 Which is also a great way to find obscure stuff out of copyright, embarrassing things rich people said, and frankly copyright violations that seem more archival/evidence than willful.
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Apr 19, 2023 01:28
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Project Gutenberg also has a lot of ebooks in various formats.
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Apr 19, 2023 02:27
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I have ordered Mistwraith and it's arriving tomorrow and I have five days off work It's going UP
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Apr 19, 2023 02:51
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Leng posted:Curse of the Mistwraith was the first Janny Wurts book I read; I only stumbled onto The Empire Trilogy later (and that was cowritten with Feist). If you don't want to commit to an 11 book series, try out To Ride Hell's Chasm which is her standalone first, or the Cycle of Fire which is her shorter series. Could you share your thoughts on Cycle of Fire? I've been curious about Wurts for a while but Mistwraith is very long and I have a lot of stuff to read, so a shorter series sounds nice to get a sampler. Strix's mention of child protagonists also has me a bit wary: I'm not at all against child protagonists, but they're often written in ways I find frustrating. I'm around kids enough through volunteer work that it stands out to me when children are written as tiny adults, instead of people with meaningfully different ways of thinking about the world and who need to get creative in order to reach the high shelves.
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Apr 19, 2023 02:59
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I read Cycle of Fire as a kid and thought it was pretty dope. That's uhhh about the limit of my contributions on this topic. There's wizards and they have to fight demons. And a lot of sailing. I like sailing wizard books.
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Apr 19, 2023 03:45
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:That's Blue Planet: Age of Aquarius and Blue Planet: War in Heaven, OP. I have played and adore both, but thank you for the recommendation. I’m not sure there’s any IP I would rate higher than War In Heaven.
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Apr 19, 2023 04:47
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habeasdorkus posted:Project Gutenberg also has a lot of ebooks in various formats. https://standardebooks.org/ There is also Standard Ebooks, who created beautifully formatted public domain ebooks. Not nearly as big a selection as Project Gutenberg, but what is there is very nice.
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Apr 19, 2023 06:49
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Incidentally Blish's Devils Day is a really interesting read if you've never read it, goes hard into depictions of traditional goetia in a way that puts say Dennis Wheatly and the like to shame.
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Apr 19, 2023 12:31
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HopperUK posted:I have ordered Mistwraith and it's arriving tomorrow and I have five days off work Jooooiiiin ussssss I have just gotten to the 50% mark of Destiny's Conflict and HOLY poo poo there was a payoff I've been waiting for for the entire series  well done Wurts I just about screamed when I realized what was about to go down, the trajectory of my emotions during the events leading up to it and then the double fist pump in the air coming out of it was the world's biggest V.StrixNebulosa posted:I confess that while I adore Mistwraith and To Ride Hell's Chasm, I have struggled with Cycle of Fire. I don't care for child protagonists, and there are three of them! But the worldbuilding seemed really interesting... perhaps I should try again. Reading it could buy me more time as I wait for the final Mistwraith volume Kestral posted:Could you share your thoughts on Cycle of Fire? I've been curious about Wurts for a while but Mistwraith is very long and I have a lot of stuff to read, so a shorter series sounds nice to get a sampler. I pretty much agree with the General: General Battuta posted:I read Cycle of Fire as a kid and thought it was pretty dope. That's uhhh about the limit of my contributions on this topic. I read The Cycle of Fire when I was in my early teens and enjoyed it a lot then. Not sure how it'd hold up now if I reread it but it has good odds; The Empire Trilogy still holds up really well and I've reread that many many times from when I was a teenager to this year. That said, maybe The Master of Whitestorm would be more your alley. It's also a standalone and less well known compared to To Ride Hell's Chasm. No child protagonists in that one.
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Apr 19, 2023 12:41
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Deptfordx posted:Incidentally Blish's Devils Day is a really interesting read if you've never read it, goes hard into depictions of traditional goetia in a way that puts say Dennis Wheatly and the like to shame. Yeah, that's why I wanted to read it, but I don't know if I can in this format, it's really annoying. Checking those recommended sites to see if a better version exists, but I'm not optimistic. E: yeah nope zoux fucked around with this message at 14:57 on Apr 19, 2023 |
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Apr 19, 2023 14:34
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Leng posted:Jooooiiiin ussssss I would but I'm currently committed to reading the third act of this other book... Also I'm on this Victoria Goddard kick right now as well. I just finished The Redoubtable Pali Avramapul (still haven't found At the Feet of the Sun) and Friday I plan to read Bride of the Blue Wind and probably Warrior of the Third Veil as well.
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Apr 19, 2023 17:28
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I love a good hubristic wizard in high fantasy, but Mistwraith's Fellowship is really cracking me up I'm gathering that they're closer to living gods than humans, what with their enormous lifespans (where physical death isn't much more than a small inconvenience??) and an extreme focus on the big picture. It gives them a different perspective that is frequently incompatible with human priorities. But it's hard not to see them as monstrous psychopaths For example, they invented magical eugenics to produce the perfect monarchs - an iffy proposition from the start - only for it to blow up in their faces. They manipulate events to match possible futures they desire, including some real hosed up arm twisting to get people to do what they want, only for their choices to often be wrong or come with a far more horrible cost than they thought They viewed Lysaer as "sacrificial" when the Mistwraith was contained but then oh whoops actually that just gave the Mistwraith the foot in the door needed to gently caress up both brothers (thanks again to the magical eugenics; good job, wizards). Their little house of cards collapses and what do they do? They slink out of town while everyone they manipulated is left holding the bag, either to die in the riots or the war that immediately follows. "lol good luck figuring this poo poo out. if you survive to have descendants then hopefully they'll see it was worth it when in several centuries there's a small chance our group is back together and the unicorns return" and then when Dakar calls them out, the response is almost literally "well, pobody's nerfect, eh?" I just read the scene in which Lysaer flash-fries a group of women and children to save them from an even worse fate, and I'm internally yelling at these stupid wizards that all this misery is on them phew, man. wizards!!!
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Apr 19, 2023 18:41
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WarpDogs posted:I love a good hubristic wizard in high fantasy, but Mistwraith's Fellowship is really cracking me up The Fellowship fascinate me because they're simultaneously an incredible force for good and dealing with really greater scope stuff... but also they're GIANT ASSHOLES and keep making mistakes. Love how they completely ignored the details of the Black Rose prophecy to hurry onto the good bits. Like. C'mon. A lot of the tragedy of the first book is watching them high-handedly decide things without talking to like. anyone? Ever? Asandir even fuckin' opened the book by betraying Arithon's trust and like, what the gently caress were you thinking man. Anyways they're some of my favorite wizards in fiction because they're the incredible opposite of this:  they have a sense of right and wrong and CARE ABOUT IT SO MUCH YOU GUYS but also they're equally as moronic as shotgun wizard
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Apr 19, 2023 18:48
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I love that one wizard group has the magic orb that’s special to the other wizard group, and they’ll happily give it back if they ask nicely. And it’s been literally centuries and no. No they will not ask nicely.
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Apr 19, 2023 18:54
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WarpDogs posted:I love a good hubristic wizard in high fantasy, but Mistwraith's Fellowship is really cracking me up You sold me on this series right here. I bounced off the first few novels a while back, but I'm going to finish them now.
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Apr 19, 2023 19:19
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StrixNebulosa posted:they have a sense of right and wrong and CARE ABOUT IT SO MUCH YOU GUYS but also they're equally as moronic as shotgun wizard Well poo poo, how did this comment cause a Mistwraith book to manifest on my Kobo??? Need to finish The Spear Cuts Through Water first, though. What a fascinating thing this is: lovely prose, well-written characters, multiple layers of narrative, surprisingly good fight scenes and sense of place. I am not thrilled by the end of “Before” where it admits ”This is a love story to its blade-dented bone.” but it has definitely earned some more reading.
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Apr 19, 2023 19:43
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StrixNebulosa posted:I love that one wizard group has the magic orb that’s special to the other wizard group, and they’ll happily give it back if they ask nicely. I literally laughed out loud at that scene, because this very important magic orb on par with a palantir is stored on a random shelf in the equivalent of a dusty old basement. it's treated like a piece of borrowed tupperware Wurts' writing is really what helps make the Fellowship work, because you're constantly given access to their internal thought processes and reactions, and you can see how that differs from what appears to be cold calculation on the outside. They aren't stupid and they definitely aren't unaware or unsympathetic to the pain they're forced to inflict. Their perspective of life is line one continuous stretch of trolley problems and they're tasked with flipping the lever back and forth but that's cold comfort to Arithon, Lysaer, and the literal thousands of corpses lol (and it's early counting yet!)
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Apr 19, 2023 20:17
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WarpDogs posted:I literally laughed out loud at that scene, because this very important magic orb on par with a palantir is stored on a random shelf in the equivalent of a dusty old basement. it's treated like a piece of borrowed tupperware In Discworld, Sethvir would be the nicest floppy wizard who has a messy library tower and drinks tea and talks total nonsense and it'd be some loving tribute. Here, well, he's exactly that but in a tragic, awful kind of way and I don't know if I love or hate him. He's great to read though!
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Apr 19, 2023 20:20
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I am also extremely, profoundly curious to know if we'll ever find out where Dakar's prophecies come from. There's a whole ceremony for explaining how the wizards can do some kind of limited foresight, but what Dakar has is altogether in another level, and I've read enough fantasy that I don't trust any prophecy without knowing where it came from.
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Apr 19, 2023 20:22
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The Boy on the Bridge (Girl with All the Gifts #2) by MR Carey - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LL8BX9Q/
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Apr 19, 2023 22:19
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I created a thread for the Wars of Light and Shadow series: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4030263 With the final book on the horizon it's the perfect time to start (or restart) the series, so hopefully there's some good posting to be had 
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Apr 19, 2023 23:25
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I put a link to it in the thread, but if anyone’s getting started with the series and feeling a bit overwhelmed by the density/ornamentation in the prose, this might help. I think I was using a different set of chapter summaries when I was reading the first book a couple years back, but either way, it helps clarify a lot of things that, to me at least, weren’t self-evident on a first pass. Really cool series and really cool author.
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Apr 20, 2023 00:34
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WarpDogs posted:I created a thread for the Wars of Light and Shadow series: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4030263 Yeeeees, you legend, thank you for doing the needful. I fully plan to binge the rest of Destiny's Conflict today, after which I do not know what I'll read. I doubt I'll be in the mood for anything super dense or mentally taxing to read so I guess Orconomics might be fun?
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Apr 20, 2023 04:18
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I've been in one of those ruts where you just can't find anything you like, bouncing off even well-written, well-plotted stuff, so I was surprised at how hard Library of Mount Char grabbed me. Fantastic scope, outstanding characters and dialogue, intricate and elegant plotting, I could go on forever. What a unique book! Anyway, I need 100 recommendations for books exactly like it. I can't believe this dude has written one fiction book almost 10 years ago, what's he doing with himself
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Apr 22, 2023 14:53
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There are no books like it. I emailed with him a few times and he just has had a super rough time. poo poo sucks.
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Apr 22, 2023 15:01
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Yeah it’s a mix of a lot of different influences blended together in an unusual way. If you liked the warring gods aspect you could try lord of light, which is also extremely well written.
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Apr 22, 2023 15:08
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Read Kraken, I guess. Edit: The most Char-esque fiction I can point to is web fiction. A few SCP entries, primarily Tufto's SCP-001. The 9MOTHER9HORSE9EYES9 saga also captivated me. FPyat fucked around with this message at 15:18 on Apr 22, 2023 |
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Apr 22, 2023 15:14
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The King Must Die (Theseus #1) by Mary Renault - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DCGJ6UO/
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Apr 22, 2023 16:29
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pradmer posted:The King Must Die (Theseus #1) by Mary Renault - $2.99 This will probably be a Book of the Month soon, so it'd be a good one to grab now if you're on the fence.
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Apr 22, 2023 17:02
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General Battuta posted:There are no books like it. Genuine question: are there any modern authors who haven’t had a super rough time? It seem like the more I learn about the publishing process, the more I see that authors are uniquely overworked/underpaid/neglected/poo poo-on, even by the standards of the entertainment industry in general.
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Apr 22, 2023 18:00
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Pynchon and McCarthy
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Apr 22, 2023 18:20
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Nae posted:Genuine question: are there any modern authors who haven’t had a super rough time? It seem like the more I learn about the publishing process, the more I see that authors are uniquely overworked/underpaid/neglected/poo poo-on, even by the standards of the entertainment industry in general. Ada Palmer seemed to be really excited to get published, but she also has a bunch of health issues that make it super hard to write.
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Apr 22, 2023 19:43
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I specifically thought "that reminded me of The Library at Mount Char" after finishing qntm's There Is No Antimemetics Division a few weeks ago.
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Apr 22, 2023 21:09
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Prolonged Panorama posted:I specifically thought "that reminded me of The Library at Mount Char" after finishing qntm's There Is No Antimemetics Division a few weeks ago. I feel like qntm’s stuff in general is a good follow-up to Char, but damned if I can put my finger on why.
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Apr 22, 2023 21:14
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zoux posted:I've been in one of those ruts where you just can't find anything you like, bouncing off even well-written, well-plotted stuff, so I was surprised at how hard Library of Mount Char grabbed me. Fantastic scope, outstanding characters and dialogue, intricate and elegant plotting, I could go on forever. What a unique book! Gaiman's Sandman, a little bit.
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Apr 22, 2023 21:23
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General Battuta posted:Ada Palmer seemed to be really excited to get published, but she also has a bunch of health issues that make it super hard to write. Meanwhile I’m trying to figure out how Spotify knew to offer me Nona the Ninth as an audio book when I’ve never purchased an audio book in my life, much less from them. I am such a loving slacker. Remulak fucked around with this message at 21:43 on Apr 22, 2023 |
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Apr 22, 2023 21:36
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Remulak posted:Severe health issues, several novels, Campbell award, authored and and coauthored major academic books in her field, and got tenure at loving U of C. You are not a slacker, nor a failure. Comparing your successes to others is just one fast way to stress for no benefit.
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Apr 22, 2023 22:01
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