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pradmer posted:The Color of Magic (Discworld #1) by Terry Pratchett - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000W9399S/
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Jan 2, 2024 00:32
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Mort was my Terry Pratchett / Discworld intro and if it ever goes on sale it's a 100% recommend... probably also if it is not on sale.
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Jan 2, 2024 00:49
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Kestral posted:It is indeed! It's a fun scene, too. Don't forget there are two more completely bonkers followup books too - there's a scene in the third book where a demon has built a computer using imps - there's a full https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic-core_memory built using their tongues and a whole lotta string.
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Jan 2, 2024 00:54
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Arsenic Lupin posted:By contrast, this is not the right Pratchett to buy if you've never read one. It's where the whole shebang starts, and it's funny in its own right, but it's not as deep or as funny as he became. I found a copy when it when it first came out and yeah. A fun light pisstake of various oldschool fantasy writers, but he got so much better.
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Jan 2, 2024 00:57
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My favorite thing about that Pratchett was the cover artist not understanding what four eyes meant with regards to glasses so he drew the guy with 4 literal eyes.
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Jan 2, 2024 01:30
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:My favorite thing about that Pratchett was the cover artist not understanding what four eyes meant with regards to glasses so he drew the guy with 4 literal eyes. I don't have any evidence for this and base my conclusions entirely on how he painted everything else, but I am pretty sure the celebrated illustrator Josh Kirby knew what "four eyes" means, but just didn't give a single gently caress.
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Jan 2, 2024 02:01
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Ccs posted:This has probably been asked before in this thread but I just got an audible account and wondering which audio books I should check out. My favorite books tend to be fantasy, stuff like Abercrombie, Buehlman (Between Two Fires) and Pratchett. If you like wheel of time, the audiobooks are fantastic, either the ones by Kate Reading and Michael Kramer, or the recent ones by Rosamund Pike. Good value per credit, since, ya know, giant books. If you like the locked tomb, Moira Quirk's narration of those are *ridiculously good*.
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Jan 2, 2024 02:09
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Runcible Cat posted:I found a copy when it when it first came out and yeah. A fun light pisstake of various oldschool fantasy writers, but he got so much better.
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Jan 2, 2024 02:27
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Ccs posted:This has probably been asked before in this thread but I just got an audible account and wondering which audio books I should check out. My favorite books tend to be fantasy, stuff like Abercrombie, Buehlman (Between Two Fires) and Pratchett. I know it's been coming up over and over again but the audiobooks for MASTER & COMMANDER and sequels are really, really, really good. Might be the best way to experience the series.
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Jan 2, 2024 02:42
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Megazver posted:I don't have any evidence for this and base my conclusions entirely on how he painted everything else, but I am pretty sure the celebrated illustrator Josh Kirby knew what "four eyes" means, but just didn't give a single gently caress. The biography said it was a mistake (and he got rincewinds beard wrong), but Pratchett didn't care because it's a rad picture
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Jan 2, 2024 02:51
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pradmer posted:Three Parts Dead (Craft Sequence #1) by Max Gladstone - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0085UEQDO/ although I will say that I liked the first few books more than where he's taken the series since, because the emotional beats that he was hitting were different ones that I prefer to read about. which is not a flaw in any way just a personal taste thing.
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Jan 2, 2024 03:10
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pradmer posted:Three Parts Dead (Craft Sequence #1) by Max Gladstone - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0085UEQDO/ Picked up Starfish and Beguilement. Very glad that you post these, thank you!
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Jan 2, 2024 03:57
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Precambrian Video Games posted:I read The Jack Vance Treasury recently, not long after finishing Elder Race, and several of the stories in there - The Dragon Masters and The Last Castle in particular - made me think of it. Maybe it's just the superficial similarities of largely forgotten sci-fi tech in a low-tech world (of course there are many other non-Vance examples) but I wonder if Tchaikovsky was going for a retro vibe/homage with the plot of Elder Race. Anyway, the Treasury was worth reading and has an autobiographical afterword where Vance discusses some of his own influences which... well maybe one day I'll get to, I haven't really enjoyed much of the pre-WW2 SF&F for its own sake rather than just as context for later writing. I posted this a while back and yeah I think Adrian Tchaikovsky read him some Vance in his formative years  NoneMoreNegative posted:Last night I finished Adrian Tchaikovsky's Redemption's Blade, the first in the 'After the War' series and it gave me some Vance feelings; the hero character making a winding travel with a set of dissimilar companions, each stop on the journey having to deal with a new set of people and rules, and them being helped by a pair of Magical Artefact hunters was especially JV.
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Jan 2, 2024 07:12
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sebmojo posted:The biography said it was a mistake (and he got rincewinds beard wrong), but Pratchett didn't care because it's a rad picture There’s a quote from Pratchett somewhere about how Josh Kirby would always discuss the brief with him, listen politely, and then go off to do whatever the hell he wanted regardless. You could tell Pratchett was contrasting him with his successor, Paul Kidby, in approach but there was some kind of admiration there too.
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Jan 2, 2024 10:09
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I remember how Robert Silverberg wrote the forward to Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials where he recounted how frustrated he was by artists' seeming inability to accurately follow descriptions as written until he found out that the publishers were hardly ever giving them anything in the way of instruction for their commissions.
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Jan 2, 2024 11:07
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DACK FAYDEN posted:If anyone's managed to skip these despite people like me constantly praising them, it's real cheap, now's your chance I really liked where the new series is going, Tara Abernathy was my favourite character of the original run of craft books and maybe it's me ageing but I liked her dealing with middle aged issues in this latest one ageing, homecoming and parental death
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Jan 2, 2024 11:59
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branedotorg posted:I really liked where the new series is going, Tara Abernathy was my favourite character of the original run of craft books and maybe it's me ageing but I liked her dealing with middle aged issues in this latest one ageing, homecoming and parental death
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Jan 2, 2024 14:09
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I have an interview in this month's Clarkesworld, posting it here probably counts as self-promo but maybe it's fun. Give it an ogle I scanned it for a pull quote but couldn't find anything I liked in particular so maybe it's dull. Here's the least fun thing I said quote:But that kind of experimentation stopped feeling tenable for a lot of reasons. And the short fiction community, the people you’d be most likely to connect with, were all on Twitter, which I think is caustic to any kind of community or moral competence. Why would you want to connect with a community on Twitter? The worst thing that can happen to a writer is getting attention from their colleagues on Twitter. If you’re on Twitter, you live in constant fear of Twitter, which is why you keep going back, because the fear is addictive.
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Jan 2, 2024 15:20
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DACK FAYDEN posted:If anyone's managed to skip these despite people like me constantly praising them, it's real cheap, now's your chance There's a definite shift in Gladstone's writing style starting with Empress of Forever. I'm not sure when he had his child, but I've wondered if they aren't related. I get the sense of someone who would much prefer to be hopeful now. It actually may have started back as far as Ruin of Angels, but it's probably my favorite book in the Craft Sequence because I love everything about the Paladin character.
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Jan 2, 2024 15:20
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General Battuta posted:I have an interview in this month's Clarkesworld, posting it here probably counts as self-promo but maybe it's fun. Give it an ogle So what you're saying is if I want to make a living as an author my social media should consist of SA and booktok. Ok lemme tweet that out.
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Jan 2, 2024 15:24
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General Battuta posted:I have an interview in this month's Clarkesworld, posting it here probably counts as self-promo but maybe it's fun. Give it an ogle You have read some DWJ now, right?
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Jan 2, 2024 15:26
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I read uh Deep Secret I think.
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Jan 2, 2024 15:26
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General Battuta posted:I read uh Deep Secret I think. I'm shaking an angry finger in your direction, hmph. Still, fun interview, definite excitement building for the novel! (I accept that Diane Duane rules, though)
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Jan 2, 2024 15:31
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General Battuta posted:I have an interview in this month's Clarkesworld, posting it here probably counts as self-promo but maybe it's fun. Give it an ogle "...like Annihilation (the book) meets Event Horizon or The Andromeda Strain" seems like a fine pull quote if you want to sell the book, although I suspect you won't like it much.
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Jan 2, 2024 15:36
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I was told the pitch they were going with was "Gravity's Rainbow meets Marvel's Venom" 
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Jan 2, 2024 16:02
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General Battuta posted:I was told the pitch they were going with was "Gravity's Rainbow meets Marvel's Venom" Can I cameo as the light bulb
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Jan 2, 2024 16:05
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Oh, I fell in love with the first book when it came out, and eagerly sought out the UK editions because for some reason the US publisher decided we should get the new books a year after they appeared. But, as you say, he got so much better. I was grumpy about the end of the first one thanks to Rincewind and Twoflower plunging into oblivion in a spaceship (yeah alright, probably the least necessary spoiler in history sue me), but the sequel came out a few months later which delighted me; I thought TCOM was a one-off... Probably not intended as a Reichenbach Falls-alike, but well, y'know.
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Jan 2, 2024 16:05
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Can I cameo as the light bulb Dibs on the octopus
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Jan 2, 2024 16:11
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Can I cameo as the light bulb I didn't have you down as a Romantic... Nice interview, General!
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Jan 2, 2024 16:24
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silvergoose posted:(I accept that Diane Duane rules, though)  I've read a bunch of both DDuane and DWJ, and enjoyed DWJ's stuff but I don't love it the way I do Duane's. Some of that is definitely nostalgia from reading So You Want To Be A Wizard at a young age, but it also applies to most of her works I didn't read until adulthood, so!
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Jan 2, 2024 16:29
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I read both constantly as a kid, and I think about half a dozen DWJ are higher than most of Duane...except Book of Night with Moon, one of the cat wizard spinoffs, was so fabulous.
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Jan 2, 2024 16:40
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That Diane Duane is a really awesome person on social media is one of those really happy things for me, given, uh, what often happens to authors very active on there.
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Jan 2, 2024 16:41
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Started Alastair Reynolds' Galactic North short story collection yesterday, and after Great Wall of Mars really got a hankering for some new Revelation Space stuff. Even when Absolution Gap and Inhibitor Phase in particular really were underwhelming, there's something in the universe itself that I really dig. Then remembered that the new Prefect Dreyfus series book Machine Vendetta should be out this month, and I did enjoy the two first ones pretty well!
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Jan 2, 2024 17:51
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Lunsku posted:Started Alastair Reynolds' Galactic North short story collection yesterday, and after Great Wall of Mars really got a hankering for some new Revelation Space stuff. Even when Absolution Gap and Inhibitor Phase in particular really were underwhelming, there's something in the universe itself that I really dig. Then remembered that the new Prefect Dreyfus series book Machine Vendetta should be out this month, and I did enjoy the two first ones pretty well! Read Diamond Dogs before "Grafenwalder's Bestiary" if you haven't already, it'll make more sense. And is also probably his best standalone story.
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Jan 2, 2024 18:10
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General Battuta posted:I know it's been coming up over and over again but the audiobooks for MASTER & COMMANDER and sequels are really, really, really good. Might be the best way to experience the series. I might give this a try, as mentioned prior, I love the movie but find reading the books tedious as gently caress.
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Jan 2, 2024 18:17
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I don't have much to say about books read last year since I didn't read as much as I wanted to, but here's my finished audible books for the year. I plodded through them slowly and steadily at 20 minutes per day on average. I want to get more practice at writing up my thoughts for various year-end reviews so I may as well post these here. Equal Rites (Discworld 3) - I never read Pratchett because my libraries didn't stock it for some ungodly reason, and I never thought to request it. I guess I was aware of it thanks to Good Omens and a Neil Gaiman obsession in my late teens, but I bounced off the Colour of Magic despite growing up on Conan and Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser. So last year I listened to Colour of Magic when they did the new re-recordings and enjoyed it a bit better, though it still felt maybe a bit too British for my delicate American sensibilities. Equal Rites was better. I liked Indira Varma as the reader, and Granny Weatherwax was as great a character as I'd heard. I'll probably skip ahead to Mort or Guards, Guards next since I keep seeing them mentioned. Mark of the Demon (Kara Gillian book 1) by Diana Rowland, narrated by Liv Anderson - a whodunnit featuring a police detective who summons demons as a hobby. Demons in this case being basically alternate universe sidhe, obsessed with honor and dominance, and extremely capable of violence. The murder mystery she investigates also has traces of summonings so she puts her skills to use, trying to hide her expertise and magic use from her coworkers when she's already facing the difficulty of being a woman in the boys' club of the police force. The overall story kicks off when she accidentally summons a demon lord, which not only shouldn't be possible but should mean her immediate messy death. Instead, while overwhelming her with his godlike power and force of personality, he flirts with her. This obviously leads to a love triangle with her torn between the demon lord and her fbi partner, with lots of power imbalance warning signs and red flags that she acknowledges then mostly ignores. The mystery was interesting, the background of secret demon summoners was a fun take on it, and future books apparently spend more time with the demon's world and political interplay. I'm not sure when/if I'll go back to the series but I haven't crossed it off my list yet. The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch, narrated by Brittany Pressley - this was recommended either here or in the horror thread, or both, and was a fun creepy listen. It's a very dark and serious book and I have to admit I pictured the tv show every time the main character said she was with NCIS. Reminded me quite a bit of Fringe and True Detective. Great sci fi horror with an interesting take on time travel. A Court of Thorns and Roses (audio drama part 1) by Sarah J Maas - a decent enough take on Beauty & the Beast etc, but the main actress read in such a way that you didn't know whether she was thinking to herself or talking to someone, sometimes switching mid-sentence. I told a friend who loves them that I'd read these books and the assassin ones so I'll get through them eventually but I'm not really the target audience. Mistress of the Night (Forgotten Realms: The Priests book 2) by Don Bassingthwaite and Dave Gross, narrated by Jean Brassard - I miss the dumb fun of the Dungeons & Dragons Forgotten Realms novels I read as a teen so while waiting for the PC game Baldurs Gate 3 to release, I dug up this one on sale. The narrator is good but has a strong french accent which makes him an interesting choice for an audiobook narrator. He was a bit hard to understand and it would have been worse had I not been familiar with all the Forgotten Realms mumbo jumbo. This book has a country bumpkin werewolf priestess called in from the country, where she was hunting down and killing beast cultists while healing and midwifeing for the locals. She arrives at a big church for the benevolent goddess of the moon and is made acting high priestess while the current one steps down to research warnings she is receiving in her dreams. She has to deal with church and city politics, rumors that a vicious werewolf has been spotted in town, as well as suspicions of a rising cult of evil goddess of the moon and darkness, Shar (made famous recently by her cleric Shadowheart in Baldurs Gate 3). Also stars a swashbuckling noble failson falling under the sway of the evil cult. I'd have to say this story wasn't good, but it wasn't terrible either. A Deadly Education (Scholomance book 1) by Naomi Novik, narrated by Anisha Dadia - I enjoyed the audiobook reader and the fact the kids had to work for their magical power or borrow or take it from others. It's great that the main character builds up her magical reserves by doing pushups and needlework. The titular school and the book are a bit too nihilistically violent towards its school children but that seems to be what the main arc of the story is addressing. I haven't read the author's Temeraire books but my mother loves them so I may try one of those before returning to this series. Cyberpunk 2077: No Coincidence by Rafal Kosik translated by Stefan Kielbasiewicz, narrated by Cherami Leigh - Read by Female V from the game, this one was a bit hard to follow at first, and I'm not sure whether to blame the writing or the translation. It took me a while of 10-minute chunks to get the characters straight in my head. It's an interesting cyberpunk story if you want more cyberpunk after playing the game but I hear the comic books are even better. I think its biggest failing is it crams in too much with the characters. I think it should have cut out the teenage hacker for his own novel to let the other characters' stories breathe a bit more. It made a bit more sense once I finished the game, which I was playing concurrently for the first time, but there aren't many crossovers besides one side character and the setting and themes. Maiden of Pain (Forgotten Realms: The Priests book 3) by Kameron Franklin, narrated by Jean Brassard - I had to come back for the next one after reading the blurb. A young cleric of the Lady of Pain, normally evil goddess Loviatar, is hired as a governess for a rich girl in a neighboring country that has banned arcane magic. The story kicks off when the little snot gets her framed for witchcraft. It has an interesting take on how a goddess like that would play out in a civilized public (gaining strength through pain and personal growth through adversity). The story was all over the place and didn't showcase the main character as a cleric much. She does a lot more sneaking around like a spy. I couldn't recommend it unless you are deep in the Forgotten Realms weeds and are curious about the setting or the goddess. That said I'll probably finish the Priests series at this point, just because its interesting which evil gods they chose to write books about. The other two books are about the Bitch Queen of the Sea and the Lady of Poison. Aching God (Iconoclasts book 1) by Mike Shel, narrated by Simon Vance - recommended over in the horror books thread, I enjoyed this one. It did make sense to find out partway through that the author is a veteran of making Pathfinder and D&D adventure modules. A retired aged fighter is called back to service when a magical plague erupts at the adventuring guild headquarters, stopped only by the efforts of his daughter who is comatose as a result. He and his new young companions are tasked with taking a cursed relic back to the dungeon where it was found. The narrator is excellent and extremely prolific. The book itself couldn't quite reconcile whether it was a tabletop adventure or a horror/zombie tale. The young cleric is the best character but is also a bit too wise for her years especially given how she is introduced losing a limb because she thought she could pet a dangerous but cute animal. Also this book made me wonder how any adventuring party from tabletop gaming or fiction ever made do without having an Alchemist along. Yndrasta the Celestial Spear (Warhammer Age of Sigmar) by Noah Van Nguyen, narrated by Emma Gregory - an immortal storm angel is hunting for her white whale, a monstrous kraken, in the fantasy realm of kaiju. Her obsessive superpowered hunt is contrasted with the struggle of a handful of survivors of the latest kraken attack, natives of a nomadic arctic sled city who had been protected by a massive white bear they honored as Brother. The book opens with the setting's poster boy Stormcast Eternal knights turning their back on Yndrasta as her obsessive hunt and impatience has lead to too many preventable deaths. The human main characters are flawed and likeable, and this is the first time in many Warhammer audiobooks that I've heard Emma Gregory do a different accent from her normal imperious British accent she uses for various angels, power-armored battle nuns, and Minthara the dark elf from Baldurs Gate 3. Though she still uses that voice for Yndrasta and her narration. The humans make their way across unforgiving country towards the nearest city, braving the elements, local threats both expected and not, and the opportunistic attacks of the stupidly named Kruleboyz I'm about ready for book 2 of Master and Commander after listening to book 1 last year, then probably on to another Pratchett. I like to change around the type of book and narrator I listen to in order to keep things fresh.
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Jan 2, 2024 18:48
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General Battuta posted:I have an interview in this month's Clarkesworld, posting it here probably counts as self-promo but maybe it's fun. Give it an ogle quote:[Anna] believes she can only resist Ssrin’s temptations by killing Ssrin [...] Ssrin thinks it’s the most normal thing in the cosmos for Anna to want to kill her, since, as a friend, it’s her responsibility to be hard to kill. 
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Jan 2, 2024 18:55
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bagrada posted:Granny Weatherwax was as great a character as I'd heard. also I have no idea how Discworld tends to be sorted on Amazon, is that publication order? I mean, mostly they're all good once you're past the first two, except maybe Eric which frankly I think is forgettable garbage. DACK FAYDEN fucked around with this message at 19:11 on Jan 2, 2024 |
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Jan 2, 2024 19:09
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DACK FAYDEN posted:I have really good news for you about the entire rest of Pratchett's work (okay fine she's only in like 33% of them tops, but I'm pretty sure she has the highest raw number and they're all good, even the short story about apples) Publication order near as I can tell, it matches up with the list on wikipedia.
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Jan 2, 2024 19:12
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Oh, then yeah. Not saying Equal Rites is bad (I think it's pretty okay, though probably still lower half of the mainline Discworld books quality-wise) but it's all uphill from there aside from Eric unless you don't know your Shakespeare, in which case Wyrd Sisters is probably worse too.
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Jan 2, 2024 19:18
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