|
Nuclear Tourist posted:Just finished Between Two Fires by Chris Buehlman. Feels like it's been a while since I've read a book that really sucked me in but I found this to be a fantastic page-turner. Apparently a grimdark messianic plague adventure in medieval France was just what I needed, who knew. Now you can join the rest of us roaming the desolate land of "realizing there are no other books like Between Two Fires" - it is a grim and terrible place.
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2023 20:38
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 4, 2024 16:34 |
|
|
Kestral posted:Now you can join the rest of us roaming the desolate land of "realizing there are no other books like Between Two Fires" - it is a grim and terrible place. It's on my list but I've not read it yet, Son of the Morning by Mark Alder seems to have a similar vibe
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2023 20:49
|
|
|
Trainee PornStar posted:It's on my list but I've not read it yet, Son of the Morning by Mark Alder seems to have a similar vibe The problem is that Between Two Fires has a combination of delicious genre elements with surprisingly good prose and character writing, and the combination hasn’t been achieved anywhere elsewhere as far as various seekers in this thread have been able to determine. It really is a unique thing, more’s the pity. I’m certainly going to snap up whatever the author puts out next, although after reading some of his other stuff I’m a bit concerned that Fires may be his one truly great novel.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2023 20:58
|
|
|
I’m visiting the family for the holidays, and their town has a half-price books, whereas mine does not. Thanks to the recent discussion here on Friedman’s works, which reminded me about one of my favorite trilogies, as soon as I saw the Coldfire books just sitting there, I snapped them up right away. Ain’t read them since they came out, but I absolutely loved them. All of her stuff, really.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2023 22:26
|
|
|
It’s not directly adjacent but ASH A SECRET HISTORY lives in the same “grim and well researched medieval world with something Very Weird Happening” as BETWEEN TWO FIRES. Like there’s a part where everything seems normal and then someone puts the sky out and you’re all “whuhhhhbbbh”
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2023 23:27
|
|
|
Seconding Ash, yeah, that book is fantastic. It does require a tolerance for Very Bad Things happening to the protagonist, but if you can manage that and have any interest in a faithfully medieval world gone extremely weird, it’s a must-read.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2023 23:42
|
|
|
Speaking of Ash and Mary Gentle, I could have sworn her first book in more than a decade was due out next month, but it appears to have been pushed a full year back to Dec 2024. I was very excited for it.
|
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2023 00:03
|
|
|
General Battuta posted:It’s not directly adjacent but ASH A SECRET HISTORY lives in the same “grim and well researched medieval world with something Very Weird Happening” as BETWEEN TWO FIRES. Like there’s a part where everything seems normal and then someone puts the sky out and you’re all “whuhhhhbbbh” I've read it twice, the second read I skipped the correspondence bit and just enjoyed the skewed history. Dragon waiting by john m ford and Pasquale's Angel by Paul J McAuley have similarish vibes
|
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2023 00:29
|
|
|
I do have high hopes for The Folly of the World by Jesse Bullington.
|
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2023 01:19
|
|
|
Kestral posted:Seconding Ash, yeah, that book is fantastic. It does require a tolerance for Very Bad Things happening to the protagonist, but if you can manage that and have any interest in a faithfully medieval world gone extremely weird, it’s a must-read. Yeah! 15th century Italian mercenary action, all well and good.. why is everyone swearing by the Green Christ and what's the deal with. Uh ... Carthaginian war golems?
|
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2023 01:37
|
|
|
I started Ash last month and it's really well done, and the whole structure is laser-targeted at me -- epistolary novel alternating between increasingly weird alt-historical mercenary shenanigans and letters between present-day, our-timeline historians losing their poo poo about it, with generous footnotes? That is 100% my jam. I ended up putting it back down after a bit, though, because it just seems like nothing good is every allowed to happen to Ash, and each part ends with things worse for her than the last one. I still want to finish it but I needed to take a break and read some more upbeat, lighthearted stuff, like Machineries of Empire and Witch King.
|
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2023 02:38
|
|
|
branedotorg posted:Vampire Crusader (The Immortal Knight Chronicles) was mentioned earlier in the thread, might be it. Oooh, that's on Kindle Unlimited, time to check out book 1.
|
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2023 03:21
|
|
|
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CKOQC9C/
|
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2023 16:59
|
|
|
Century Rain by Alastair Reynolds ended nicely, though it won't stick with me as strongly as Pushing Ice and House of Suns did. 1959 alternate history Paris was pleasantly drawn, moreso than the space future portions of the book.
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2023 14:41
|
|
|
The r/Fantasy holiday megasale is now on. All books in the sale are $0.99/free and every author is donating $0.02 per sale/download or $10 (whichever is greater) to the Mary Cariola Children's Center. There's a whole bunch of SPFBO9 books in the sale, including mine: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/18r94ge/comment/kezlmhx/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 If post-magic school East Asian-inspired fantasy about an angry female underdog beating up privileged rich kids in a job hunt tournament sounds like your jam, you can pick up Petition for $0.99 worldwide at all major retailers until 31 December 2023: https://books2read.com/petition Thread consensus so far: Dilber posted:I just ripped through Petition by Delilah Waan, whom I think is a goon. I'm pretty sure that I found the book through this thread, and I just wanted to say it's one of the best things I've read recently and I'm excited for book 2. tildes posted:Just finished the Petition, and can also confirm it’s very good. branedotorg posted:Just finished reading Petition (Resonance Crystal Legacy Book 1) by Delilah Waan (hi!) Some time in 2024! I hope. Revisions on the first draft absolutely kicked my butt this year but they're done; I'll be going into the next round of revisions on 1 January.
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2023 16:46
|
|
|
Grabbed a copy of Petition!
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2023 16:52
|
|
|
Sand (#1) by Hugh Howey - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B098SSTWFM/ The Empire of Gold (Daevabad #3) by SA Chakraborty - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YG44LJD/ The Sword of Kaigen by ML Wang - $0.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MNWKF2M/
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2023 17:56
|
|
|
pradmer posted:The Sword of Kaigen by ML Wang - $0.99 BUT while reading with lots of eye rolling (and some guilty pleasure too, I really liked A:TLA and its magic system is fun, and I went through a martial arts phase as a teenager) I was blindsided by an out-of-nowhere left turn into an examination of grief and loss that I found far more emotionally affecting than 99% of what I get from far more respectable and critically acclaimed spaceships and wizards books. It's hard to recommend, both because you have to wade through a lot of other stuff to get to it, and because any more clear articulation of it would be a big spoiler, but hey, it's on sale, if this sounds at all intriguing why not give it a try?
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2023 19:06
|
|
|
FPyat posted:Century Rain by Alastair Reynolds ended nicely, though it won't stick with me as strongly as Pushing Ice and House of Suns did. 1959 alternate history Paris was pleasantly drawn, moreso than the space future portions of the book. I read PI and HoS and I loved the latter. PI's subject and plot was great but the entire book was ruined for me by the terrible main characters.
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2023 19:23
|
|
|
ToxicFrog posted:I ended up putting it back down after a bit, though, because it just seems like nothing good is every allowed to happen to Ash, and each part ends with things worse for her than the last one. I still want to finish it but I needed to take a break and read some more upbeat, lighthearted stuff, like Machineries of Empire and Witch King. I'll just say, keep going, I think you'll love the ending.
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2023 19:38
|
|
|
Kestral posted:Seconding Ash, yeah, that book is fantastic. It does require a tolerance for Very Bad Things happening to the protagonist, but if you can manage that and have any interest in a faithfully medieval world gone extremely weird, it’s a must-read. I just want to straight out say it's rape. The book has a lot of rape and various other sexual assault things. The protagonist is forcibly married at one point and as some one else said it seems like nothing good is ever allowed to happen to her. I'm not saying that it's not worth a read, because the framing story/correspondence stuff is really intriguing and it's very well written all over, but it would have been nice if I had someone spell that out to me before I picked the book up. I still haven't finished it because goddamn let my girl get a win this is so depressing 
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2023 21:30
|
|
|
big dyke energy posted:I just want to straight out say it's rape. The book has a lot of rape and various other sexual assault things. The protagonist is forcibly married at one point and as some one else said it seems like nothing good is ever allowed to happen to her. I'm not saying that it's not worth a read, because the framing story/correspondence stuff is really intriguing and it's very well written all over, but it would have been nice if I had someone spell that out to me before I picked the book up. It's a whole cavalcade of Very Bad Things, which is why I phrased it that way. What's impressive is that Gentle writes Ash's incredible resilience in the face of these Very Bad Things so well that it manages to be believable instead of laughable. Take heart, Ash will continue to kick rear end, and Gentle manages to stick the landing on her extremely ambitious premise.
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2023 21:59
|
|
|
 Oh neat
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2023 23:02
|
|
|
My Little Pony is all grown up.
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2023 23:26
|
|
|
My FIL is named Waldemar, maybe I’ll get that book for him.
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2023 23:31
|
|
|
I haven't read a mercedes lackey book in a really long time I remember when I read Magic's Pawn as a teenager I was really mad at the blurb on the back because it made it sound like the entire plot of the book was just a result of the protagonist being dumb and I had to reread it a few years later to be like "oh yeah that was pretty much true" it probably deserves some points for having been so relatable as a teenager
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2023 23:35
|
|
|
Lackey's Diana Tregarde books are some prime urban fantasy early cheese. Heroic Wiccans against evils like...people who read Aleister Crowley books, because Wiccans are everything good and pure and Crowley fans are predatory evil. (Bonus: Lackey had to stop writing the series not because of sales, but because some RL Wiccans thought the books were real and went into insane stalker mode on her.)
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2023 23:45
|
|
|
Lex Talionis posted:I think I've mentioned this in the thread before, but this book has absolutely no business being any good. Its magic system is Avatar: The Last Airbender with only a few of the serial numbers taped over, massive portions of the narrative are spent on what I think is Naruto stuff (I haven't actually seen any Naruto but, you know, fetishizing martial arts and trying to learn the ultimate techniques and be the very best, blah blah), Yeah it kind of is in the sense that they extol the virtues of vigorous training but true power comes from fairly literal magic and bloodlines. But I thought it was a reasonable attempt to introduce rules-based order into elemental not-bending. Lex Talionis posted:and several important and very serious older characters keep indirectly referring to their college days when they would go out at night as masked superheroes (I assume this craziness was some earlier book or something). I think there were short stories and the setup for the next novel(s) seemed to go back in that direction but then the author announced there wouldn't be any more books in the universe, which... is probably for the best, it worked well enough but needed at least one fresh angle. Lex Talionis posted:Also I will spoiler this because I can't remember if it's a spoiler or not but the overall plot concerns the noble Japanese getting sneak attacked by perfidious enemies from North America and...look WW2 was a long time ago but...really? I dunno, I thought it was a fairly standard critique of pre-Meiji Japanese isolation and imperial Japanese arrogance and patriarchy. Not especially fresh but more coherent than, say, Legend of Korra, where some villains have legitimate grievances about magic in a modern era with, uh, mostly unsatisfactory resolutions.
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2023 23:56
|
|
|
mystes posted:I haven't read a mercedes lackey book in a really long time Lol I started Magic's Pawn and gave up when, around the 10% mark, it still hadn't finished the background story of main character: the angstiest teen who ever did angst.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 00:06
|
|
|
Lead out in cuffs posted:Lol I started Magic's Pawn and gave up when, around the 10% mark, it still hadn't finished the background story of main character: the angstiest teen who ever did angst. sad gay boy in snow, the series
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 00:29
|
|
|
John Lee posted:sad gay boy in snow, the series Teenage me ate that trilogy up like candy and cried SO HARD at certain tragic moments. I kind of want to revisit it but I also suspect I'm too old to really appreciate it now.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 00:36
|
|
|
So the second Paksenarrion series has given me, now, three different readers - and none of them gaf about how the other ones pronounce poo poo. I have now heard "Aarenis" pronounced as: uh-REN-iss AHR-ennis AIR-in-is It has taken me a minute to figure out they're talking about this same place, each book.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 04:00
|
|
|
dwarf74 posted:So the second Paksenarrion series has given me, now, three different readers - and none of them gaf about how the other ones pronounce poo poo. godddd, it burns. The most egregious example of this I've ever encountered in many long years of audiobooking is Woken Furies. I imagine a lot of folks here have read Altered Carbon, but for those who haven't, the protagonist's name is Takeshi Kovacs, and each book in the series has at least one scene in which someone pronounces his name like "Ko-VACKS" instead of the Slavic "Ko-VATCH," and has to be explicitly corrected by the protagonist. This happens enough to be a mild running gag. Books one and two have a great narrator, but for some inexplicable reason, Woken Furies changes horses mid-stream. This person does the "Ko-VATCH" pronunciation, on the same page that it gets corrected by Takeshi, and iirc they continue to mispronounce it for at least a while after that. I'm not sure if they keep making that mistake the whole way through, because it's one of the only audiobooks I've ever deleted mid-listen and switched to a print version.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 04:13
|
|
|
I can't recall what book it was, other than one I recommended to a friend. He was listening to the audiobook format, and the reader hit a big number with a superscript power notation, and read it in a rising tone. Like 36,822x10³ as "thirty six thousand eight hundred and twenty two times one hundred and thrᵉᵉ?" in a rising hesitantly inquisitive form. It's been a running gag ever since with us.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 06:18
|
|
|
Slyphic posted:I can't recall what book it was, other than one I recommended to a friend. He was listening to the audiobook format, and the reader hit a big number with a superscript power notation, and read it in a rising tone. Like 36,822x10³ as "thirty six thousand eight hundred and twenty two times one hundred and thrᵉᵉ?" in a rising hesitantly inquisitive form. Oh my god lmao, I would love to hear this if you ever remember what the book was.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 08:52
|
|
|
Dude pulled a ron burgundy on an audiobook. loving legend.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 08:59
|
|
|
Dune, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune for 99p: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Great-Dune...al-text&sr=1-36 Dunno if thats in the US as well. They have a bunch of other scifi books on sale there as well if anyone wants to recommend any.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 14:37
|
|
|
There's a Dresden Files audiobook - it's been years so I don't remember which - where the incredible James Marsters reads a passage twice and then says "oh poo poo. I already read that." And then goes on.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 14:49
|
|
|
Slyphic posted:I can't recall what book it was, other than one I recommended to a friend. He was listening to the audiobook format, and the reader hit a big number with a superscript power notation, and read it in a rising tone. Like 36,822x10³ as "thirty six thousand eight hundred and twenty two times one hundred and thrᵉᵉ?" in a rising hesitantly inquisitive form. It made me wonder how many more mistakes misparsing sentences I would notice if I actually compared it with the text, because most of the time with an audiobook you wouldn't notice an error as long as it still makes sense on it's own mystes fucked around with this message at 15:00 on Dec 27, 2023 |
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 14:57
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 4, 2024 16:34 |
|
|
I am looking for stuff to read. I really need something that’s decently written and mixes that cosmic horror dread with utter bleakness. Mystical and unexplained is ok. I absolutely loved The Gone World and was very happy with Ship of Fools, to mention some of the thread favorites. Carrier Wave, also very enjoyable. The Last Astronaut was meh, too rational and wrapped up. So please recommend me something I might enjoy.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 16:09
|
|
