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bovis posted:There's this new Humble Bundle with a load of John Scalzi books in it Read old man's war and however many more books, but stop whenever you want safe in the knowledge that it's all downhill from whatever point you're at.
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Nov 24, 2023 04:18
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Finished The Night-Land - boy howdy is THAT a thing. The first 50% is genre-foundational stuff, utterly fascinating and occasionally quite unsettling. The second half is... Well. He does tell you right up front that it's a romance, but I didn't expect all the foot fetishism and "my dearest baby-slave" tbh. Have to admit, I basically skimmed every "camp scene" in the second half. Glad I read it, not something I'm ever going to touch again. Definitely going to check out his House on the Borderland, however. After the workout of deciphering Night-Land's weird prose style, I wanted some easy reading, so I'm now about halfway through Aching God. Mike Shel, my dude, when I can tell which specific edition of D&D you're referencing, the setting starts feeling a little thin. Using the exact names of the D&D schools of magic, Identify spells that you get cast on your new magical items between adventures, hirelings and stereotypical bards, using the names of actual D&D spells but just removing the capital letters so they aren't proper nouns - yeah, I can see why this was published on Kindle Unlimited. That said, it'd be a fun setting to steal for a campaign of Torchbearer, and the premise of "we have to put the artifact back at the bottom of the dungeon" is a nice twist on the formula, so I'm along for the ride. It does have me wondering who's done the best "this is obviously the author's RPG campaign" bit. Malazan has to be up there, since it's straight-up the author's AD&D 2e and GURPS game; The Expanse was also a GURPS game iirc. For my money though, my favorite RPG tribute has to be the adventuring party in Perdido Street Station, both because they're fun characters and for doing an artful deconstruction of the D&D adventuring party way before anyone else I can think of. Are there any fun ones I'm missing?
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Nov 24, 2023 06:33
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Kestral posted:Finished The Night-Land - boy howdy is THAT a thing. The first 50% is genre-foundational stuff, utterly fascinating and occasionally quite unsettling. The second half is... Well. He does tell you right up front that it's a romance, but I didn't expect all the foot fetishism and "my dearest baby-slave" tbh. Have to admit, I basically skimmed every "camp scene" in the second half. Glad I read it, not something I'm ever going to touch again. Definitely going to check out his House on the Borderland, however. I recently finished Gareth Hanrahan's The Sword Defiant and it's both clearly an RPG setting and about an RPG adventuring party. It does a bit of deconstruction as well.
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Nov 24, 2023 06:47
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fez_machine posted:I recently finished Gareth Hanrahan's The Sword Defiant and it's both clearly an RPG setting and about an RPG adventuring party. It does a bit of deconstruction as well. Hanrahan's been on my radar for a while now since my weekly podcast is Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff, an RPG-focused pod by two of his coworkers, but I've never gotten around to reading any of his stuff. Went to check this out and -- The Sword Defiant posted:Many years ago, Sir Aelfric and his nine companions saved the world, seizing the Dark Lord’s cursed weapons, along with his dread city of Necrad. That was the easy part. Now, when Aelfric – keeper of the cursed sword Spellbreaker – learns of a new and terrifying threat, he seeks the nine heroes once again. But they are wandering adventurers no longer. Yesterday’s eager heroes are today’s weary leaders – and some have turned to the darkness, becoming monsters themselves. If there’s one thing Aelfric knows, it’s slaying monsters. Even if they used to be his friends. Necrad. Oh my lord it's the most "the D&D campaign you played in high school after reading Elric" thing ever. I know Gutter Prayer has a lot of fans here, but I just... I can't imagine this actually being good. Is it good? And is it as airbrushed-on-a-van as that description makes it sound?
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Nov 24, 2023 10:49
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Kestral posted:For my money though, my favorite RPG tribute has to be the adventuring party in Perdido Street Station, both because they're fun characters and for doing an artful deconstruction of the D&D adventuring party way before anyone else I can think of. Yeah, I read that when it came out and almost died laughing over the line about "mercenary scum who will do anything for gold and experience".
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Nov 24, 2023 10:52
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Kestral posted:Finished The Night-Land - boy howdy is THAT a thing. The first 50% is genre-foundational stuff, utterly fascinating and occasionally quite unsettling. The second half is... Well. He does tell you right up front that it's a romance, but I didn't expect all the foot fetishism and "my dearest baby-slave" tbh. Have to admit, I basically skimmed every "camp scene" in the second half. Glad I read it, not something I'm ever going to touch again. Definitely going to check out his House on the Borderland, however. Don't sleep on his other stuff. Boats of the Glen Carrig is "ship's crew stuck on a creepy swampy archipelago; who's going to get et by which weird poo poo this chapter?"; The Ghost Pirates is incredibly badly named in one sense because it's nothing like what the title makes you think of, but "the creepy poo poo is happening on a sailing ship in the middle of the ocean" is a great answer to "why don't they run away" and, well, the title eventually makes a lot more and different sense. And the Carnacki stories are immense fun, especially for his proto-Ghostbusters gear (dude loves his fluorescent tubes), and that it sometimes turns out to be fake ghosts, which is pretty unusual in the occult detective genre*. (*unless you count Scooby-Doo.)
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Nov 24, 2023 12:26
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Kestral posted:Hanrahan's been on my radar for a while now since my weekly podcast is Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff, an RPG-focused pod by two of his coworkers, but I've never gotten around to reading any of his stuff. Went to check this out and -- I haven't read it, but I would assume any parodic sounding rpg stuff is there knowingly. gutter prayer is extremely gritty and novel, I'd guess he is just taking the opportunity to have fun with the tropes.
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Nov 24, 2023 13:54
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Kestral posted:Hanrahan's been on my radar for a while now since my weekly podcast is Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff, an RPG-focused pod by two of his coworkers, but I've never gotten around to reading any of his stuff. Went to check this out and -- I enjoyed my time with it. I will say for as much airbrush as there is in the book and there's as much undercutting the epic with the prosaic.
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Nov 24, 2023 14:11
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Kestral posted:It does have me wondering who's done the best "this is obviously the author's RPG campaign" bit. Malazan has to be up there, since it's straight-up the author's AD&D 2e and GURPS game; The Expanse was also a GURPS game iirc. For my money though, my favorite RPG tribute has to be the adventuring party in Perdido Street Station, both because they're fun characters and for doing an artful deconstruction of the D&D adventuring party way before anyone else I can think of. Are there any fun ones I'm missing? Gary Gygax's Gord the Rogue books. I'm not sure I would call them good, but they're so D&D you can practically hear the dice rolling during the fight scenes. The Wild Cards series started as a RPG campaign as well. Selachian fucked around with this message at 17:34 on Nov 24, 2023 |
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Nov 24, 2023 15:26
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Has anyone read The Shadow of What was Lost, by Islington? I’m about 2/3 of the way through it and contemplating dropping it. The characters are cardboard thin, and I genuinely have no idea what’s happening anymore.
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Nov 24, 2023 16:00
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Kestral posted:
The Deed of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon is probably up there in both categories. Like, you can tell when she hits fourth level because she gets her magical steed, it just shows up, 1st edition GO, but it's far more competently written than most such stuff especially given that it came out in the 90's. The actual answer though is probably Blacktongue Thief because it's clearly a situation where Buehlman's more experimental and interesting stuff wasn't selling (Between Two Fires almost went out of print I believe) so his publisher told him to write something more conventional and so he knocked it out of the park. Like Zelazny and the Amber books.
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Nov 24, 2023 16:31
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Between Two Fires is a success story of an author taking back his work after it was mis-marketed or just didn't hit at the right time: https://twitter.com/Buehlmeister/status/1465910566061580290
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Nov 24, 2023 16:46
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Selachian posted:Gary Gygax's Gord the Rogue books. I'm not sure I would call them good, but they're so D&D you can practically hear the dice rolling during the fight scenes. It eventually goes WILDLY off the rails.
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Nov 24, 2023 16:54
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< Nice, I love it! Harrow the Ninth (Locked Tomb #2) by Tamsyn Muir - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07WYSGHC7/ The Blade Itself (First Law #1) by Joe Abercrombie - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TOT9LDK/ Annihilation (Southern Reach #1) by Jeff VanderMeer - $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EGJ32A6/ Jade City (Green Bone Saga #1) by Fonda Lee - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XRCBRX8 A Master of Djinn (Dead Djinn #1) by P Djčlí Clark - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08HKXS84X/ Legends & Lattes (#1) by Travis Baldree - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B3755RV9/ A Clash of Kings (Song of Ice and Fire #2) by George RR Martin - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC1HBY/ Dawnshard (Stormlight Archive) by Brandon Sanderson - $1.49 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08MXXWYT7/ novella Parable of the Sower (Parable #1) by Octavia E Butler - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BZHT26LV/ The Poppy War (#1) by RF Kuang - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072L58JW6/ The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01DV1Y7D0/ Assassin's Apprentice (Farseer #1) by Robin Hobb - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FBFMG6/ The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi (#1) by Shannon Chakraborty - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B3XQBGPS/ The Silmarillion by JRR Tolkien - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007978PGI/
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Nov 24, 2023 17:44
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VaultAggie posted:Has anyone read The Shadow of What was Lost, by Islington? I’m about 2/3 of the way through it and contemplating dropping it. The characters are cardboard thin, and I genuinely have no idea what’s happening anymore. I quit about the same time you did probably. I assume the "no idea what's happening anymore" is on account of the time travel? Because that was where I abandoned ship, everything just kept happening to the characters as they wandered around doing very little of their own accord and that was the last straw for me. Uncle Lloyd fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Nov 24, 2023 |
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Nov 24, 2023 18:29
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A Master of Djinn is great fun, mostly for the worldbuilding. It's an AU where in the 1800s, Egypt discovered how to harness djinn for energy, became paramount in their use of djinn, and as a result colonization on the subpeninsula stopped dead in its tracks, then backed up. The food descriptions are masterly.
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Nov 24, 2023 20:33
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It was a breezy read, but I didn't particularly care for it.
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Nov 24, 2023 20:37
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Selachian posted:Gary Gygax's Gord the Rogue books. I'm not sure I would call them good, but they're so D&D you can practically hear the dice rolling during the fight scenes. I've only read some of the Gord short stories that showed up in Dragon magazine. They had some of the very most overwrought, incompetent prose I've ever read. They're almost worth reading just to see what the opposite of competent writing is. The Deed of Paksennarion is good. It's not great, but is competently writing, has a good take on some classic tropes, and has a lot of heart. The books can be justly criticized in spots, but I stan Paks.
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Nov 24, 2023 20:59
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Now that I have the ebook of Zelazny’s collected short fiction, I reread “A Rose for Ecclesiastes”, which was excellent. I was surprised by the notes, where Zelazny’s commentary indicated that he thought it was a sad story. This confused me, because I’d just read a hilarious story about a poet who thought that his genius justified his total lack of redeeming qualities, and was distressed to meet a group of women who were capable of separating the work from its creator.
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Nov 24, 2023 21:48
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Rand Brittain posted:Now that I have the ebook of Zelazny’s collected short fiction, I reread “A Rose for Ecclesiastes”, which was excellent.
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Nov 24, 2023 22:21
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It is a sad story because the protagonist is the *hero* and all his hero-ness doesn't get him the girl. Who tried to love him, but couldn't, so he was used. e: I'm quite serious, this was the viewpoint at the time.
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Nov 24, 2023 22:58
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mllaneza posted:I've only read some of the Gord short stories that showed up in Dragon magazine. They had some of the very most overwrought, incompetent prose I've ever read. They're almost worth reading just to see what the opposite of competent writing is.
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Nov 25, 2023 00:00
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pradmer posted:The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01DV1Y7D0/ Incredibly funny book, also a great audiobook. I'm not sure if it is the Best Novel Of The 20th Century as it is sometimes called but it's a joy to read. There is a part where the KGB (I think) gets in a shootout with Satan's cat General Battuta fucked around with this message at 06:51 on Nov 25, 2023 |
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Nov 25, 2023 06:46
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General Battuta posted:Incredibly funny book, also a great audiobook. I'm not sure if it is the Best Novel Of The 20th Century as it is sometimes called but it's a joy to read. The prose in the Pilate parts is so incredibly crisp.
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Nov 25, 2023 08:29
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Who's the biggest name you've hardly touched? When it comes to Asimov, I've only read the first ten pages of Foundation before getting distracted.
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Nov 25, 2023 08:45
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The Deed of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon is probably up there in both categories. Like, you can tell when she hits fourth level because she gets her magical steed, it just shows up, 1st edition GO, but it's far more competently written than most such stuff especially given that it came out in the 90's. In a lot of the second book she's in the most thinly veiled expy ever of T1 Village of Homlett and ends up leading a party to investigate the bandits at The Moathouse. Who are led of course by a cleric of an evil spider deity.
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Nov 25, 2023 09:29
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I'm reading reviews of Poul Anderson's The Boat of a Million Years and for the life of me I can't think of any other stories that go into that kind of detail following immortal characters through hundreds or thousands of years of real history, rather than just seeing them over one particular period of time. Edit: I finished Jo Walton's Informal History of the Hugos. About 80% of the text was name-drops for winners, nominees, and ignored possibilities of hundreds of books and short stories I'll never ever be able to read in a lifetime. Most of them I didn't check out, but I have come out of it with a new desire to read Cyteen, Cuckoo's Egg, The Doomsday Book, and Metropolitan by Walter Jon Williams. Gardner Dozois posted:It also reconfirmed my feeling that the bulk of the really good work is done at shorter lengths, particularly novella and novelette, and especially novella. Unfortunately, what everybody talks about in a year, and what the quality of a year is judged on, is the novels, which often are the weakest stuff. Even here in this series, there were always far more comments about the novels than about the short fiction, and I can only conclude that many more people read the novels than ever get around to the short fiction. Too bad, in a way, since they’re missing the bulk of the good fiction published that year. FPyat fucked around with this message at 12:42 on Nov 25, 2023 |
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Nov 25, 2023 10:14
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FPyat posted:Who's the biggest name you've hardly touched? When it comes to Asimov, I've only read the first ten pages of Foundation before getting distracted. I've read Robert E. Howard's Solomon Kane stories and a handful of Conan but I don't feel particularly well-read in his stuff.
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Nov 25, 2023 15:43
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FPyat posted:
That's a fun book. If you haven't read it, her collection of essays and reviews "What Makes This Book So Great?," which I think mostly collects her tor.com essays is similarly a fun read.
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Nov 25, 2023 15:49
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FPyat posted:I'm reading reviews of Poul Anderson's The Boat of a Million Years and for the life of me I can't think of any other stories that go into that kind of detail following immortal characters through hundreds or thousands of years of real history, rather than just seeing them over one particular period of time. I did see a Kindle Unlimited book about a girl who becomes immortal due to gaining huge amounts of magical power at a young age, and the second book apparently starts off with her visiting the town she spent all her time in the first book decades later and meeting the people she knew as old men and women and their children.
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Nov 25, 2023 17:00
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Sea of Tranquility by Emily St John Mandel - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B099DRHTLX/ The Cosmic Puppets by Philip K Dick - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005LVQZFM/
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Nov 25, 2023 17:45
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FPyat posted:Who's the biggest name you've hardly touched? When it comes to Asimov, I've only read the first ten pages of Foundation before getting distracted. Arthur C. Clarke. Bored now.
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Nov 25, 2023 17:54
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Zelazny, somehow. Barely touched his stuff.
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Nov 25, 2023 18:14
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HopperUK posted:Zelazny, somehow. Barely touched his stuff. i tried reading his amber, but put down the first book after 40 or 50 pages a night in the lonesome october was a breeze though, it's fantastic
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Nov 25, 2023 18:51
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I read some of the amber books years ago but the only thing I remember is that it felt like each subsequent book really obnoxiously retconned everything in a way that rendered the plot of the previous book 100% meaningless
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Nov 25, 2023 18:57
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pradmer posted:Sea of Tranquility by Emily St John Mandel - $2.99 This book gave me surprisingly strong flashbacks to the worst parts of early Covid
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Nov 25, 2023 19:04
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pradmer posted:Sea of Tranquility by Emily St John Mandel - $2.99 My review of this book is to quote Le Guin: The GOAT posted:A writer sets out to write science fiction but isn’t familiar with the genre, hasn’t read what’s been written. This is a fairly common situation, because science fiction is known to sell well but, as a subliterary genre, is not supposed to be worth study—what’s to learn? It doesn’t occur to the novice that a genre is a genre because it has a field and focus of its own; its appropriate and particular tools, rules, and techniques for handling the material; its traditions; and its experienced, appreciative readers—that it is, in fact, a literature. Ignoring all this, our novice is just about to reinvent the wheel, the space ship, the space alien, and the mad scientist, with cries of innocent wonder. The cries will not be echoed by the readers. Readers familiar with that genre have met the space ship, the alien, and the mad scientist before. They know more about them than the writer does. I actually enjoyed it okay. Mandel is a fine writer and the book mostly succeeds as literature. It just sucks at being sci-fi.
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Nov 25, 2023 19:17
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Jimbozig posted:My review of this book is to quote Le Guin:  Le Guin is one of the vanishingly few writers whose opinions are worth reading outside the context of their fiction. A writer that concise and lucid, imagine how powerful she could have been on twitter.
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Nov 25, 2023 19:32
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HopperUK posted:Zelazny, somehow. Barely touched his stuff. Lord of Light is the only thing I've read by him but it's extremely good.
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Nov 25, 2023 19:36
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mystes posted:I read some of the amber books years ago but the only thing I remember is that it felt like each subsequent book really obnoxiously retconned everything in a way that rendered the plot of the previous book 100% meaningless Yeah, I enjoyed the Amber books back in the day, but it is incredible obvious that Zelazny was making everything up as he goes along. The more you think about the setting, the less sense it makes.
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Nov 25, 2023 19:46
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