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I just started an audible account to use at the gym and I've got to say the dune audio book is loving fantastic.
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Sep 30, 2013 14:23
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nessin posted:I got through the first book of Black Sun Rising but didn't follow through with the rest. I'd primarily read it just for that, but the "bad guy" ended up not being very bad or even all that neutral in the book. All of his "bad guy" nature came from rumors and history prior to the book, so while I liked the story in general I ended up hating that character in particular because it was just a constant stream of contradictions.
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Sep 30, 2013 15:23
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BananaNutkins posted:No, it's real. Happens sometime after Vi reminisces about going to a festival dedicated to Nysos, the god of blood and semen (really), and not being able to turn down any man's sexual advances for a week. I wish I could find it for you but I don't have my books with me. Jesus Christ, this loving genre.
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Sep 30, 2013 17:30
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nessin posted:I've been on the lookout lately for something I'm not 100% sure how to describe. Comparison wise I'm looking for more stuff like the Taltos series. Something with a core protagonist who isn't necessarily evil or good, but a solid middle ground, and isn't as weighty as Song of Ice and Fire or even something like The First Law series. Just getting real tired of the overly "good" heroes, and have given up on any kind of decent anti-hero, especially since I've been looking at a lot of books lately that have heroes that the author tries to continually present as middle of the road but end up in situations where they're always playing the knight in shining armor. Jack Vance's Cugel books (the middle two volumes of the Tales of the Dying Earth compilation) and Hugh Cook, whose only book in print, The Walrus and the Warwolf, fits the bill perfectly. Try looking for older stuff labelled as sword and sorcery rather than fantasy in general.
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Sep 30, 2013 19:52
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House Louse posted:Jack Vance's Cugel books (the middle two volumes of the Tales of the Dying Earth compilation) and Hugh Cook, whose only book in print, The Walrus and the Warwolf, fits the bill perfectly. Try looking for older stuff labelled as sword and sorcery rather than fantasy in general. coyo7e fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Sep 30, 2013 |
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Sep 30, 2013 20:38
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House Louse posted:Jack Vance's Cugel books (the middle two volumes of the Tales of the Dying Earth compilation) and Hugh Cook, whose only book in print, The Walrus and the Warwolf, fits the bill perfectly. Try looking for older stuff labelled as sword and sorcery rather than fantasy in general. Dying Earth is excellent, but come on, Cugel makes Walter White look like a Peace Corps volunteer. EDIT: "At different times, [Hugh Cook's] novels portray or allude to murder, bestiality, female genital cutting, cannibalism, racism, sexism, speciesism, abortion, masturbation, mutation, incest, inbreeding, constipation, assassination, gambling, drunkenness, brawling, diarrhea, capitalism, leprosy, castration, slavery, evolution, patricide, regicide, venereal disease, forgery, treason, dwarf tossing, torture, orgies, incontinence, suicide, disembowelment, capital and corporal punishment, drug use, religious fraud, bribery, blackmail, animal cruelty, disfigurement, infanticide, the caste system, democratic revolutionary movements, rape, theft, genocide, transvestism, premature ejaculation, prostitution, piracy, and polygamy." Well poo poo, surprisingly autistic Wikipedia article, now I have to read this. Megazver fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Sep 30, 2013 |
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Sep 30, 2013 22:15
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I recently picked up a Golden Age science fiction anthology and quite enjoyed it. It's fun reading early science fiction and seeing how the genre has changed over the years. Does anyone have any recommendations for good Golden Age/pulp sci-fi? I found an old copy of Triplanetary at a local store, so I think I'll start off with the Lensmen series.
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Oct 1, 2013 02:43
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Inadequately posted:I recently picked up a Golden Age science fiction anthology and quite enjoyed it. It's fun reading early science fiction and seeing how the genre has changed over the years. Does anyone have any recommendations for good Golden Age/pulp sci-fi? I found an old copy of Triplanetary at a local store, so I think I'll start off with the Lensmen series.
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Oct 1, 2013 04:23
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Lex Talionis posted:Probably not pulp but apparently required reading if you're interested in the history of the genre is something by Olaf Stapledon, either Last and Fire Men or Star-Maker (I confess I haven't gotten to him yet myself). Those are great once you get past the rather hilarious "near-future" bits of The Last and First Men. To give you an idea of the scales this guy was working his imagination on... that book chronicles the future of humanity and its successors divided into 18 separate species over two billion years; the first few chapters go from the present day to the extinction of our own species (the First Men) a hundred thousand years later, and that's basically just the introduction. Star Maker goes further (as I recall it starts off with what amounts to a very brief synopsis of the previous book then zooms out to a rather wider perspective). Another more obscure work I might recommend is The Death Guard by one Philip George Chadwick. It was written shortly after WW1 but only published in 1939, almost the entire print run was destroyed by a bomb, and it was only reprinted in 1992, at which time I randomly found a copy in a bookstore. Rather haunting; it's basically a cautionary tale about an unbridled arms race leading to a future apocalyptic war between Britain and continental European powers; the Death Guard of the title being a militarized artificial life form which, obviously, proves rather more difficult to control than its creators expected. Do be aware that the book is exceptionally racist even for the period (I mean, you might think Lovecraft was a racist but this goes above and beyond).
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Oct 1, 2013 06:04
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Megazver posted:Dying Earth is excellent, but come on, Cugel makes Walter White look like a Peace Corps volunteer. I dunno man, some of the PCVs I've met... anyway, most of Cugel's schemes are aimed at people who richly deserve it or are him attempting to survive and find his way home. The worst things he does are mostly accidental (e.g. the village that gets eaten by a lake monster or eating the universe) and he has such awful things done to him that he got a bit of sympathy from me by the end. coyo7e posted:You can find Hugh Cook's stuff here and there, and Walrus and Warwolf is free online (and is the third in the series iirc?) In the US the first couple books can be found under different (worse) titles. I'm still trying to get my hands on the others after the first 3 or four but I really loved how it seems to be (small spoiler if you haven't read more than one of the books) the same world and time frame from different characters' perspectives. Yes, although some of the books are more closely interconnected than others. 6 & 7 are basically a mini-series in the series, and 8 & 9 are only tenuously connected to the others. It's occasionally interesting to see characters develop s Cook writes them, but as long as you read book 6 before 7 and 10 last, you're ok. Now everybody stand back, she's gonna  :The Chronicles of an Age of Darkness is ten books, all of which were published in the UK, and all of which have titles in the form of The W--- and the W---. Book 4, The Walrus and the Warwolf, is in print in the US. Books 2, 9, and 10 were free on Cook's website, but that vanished recently; you can probably find them on the internet somewhere. For the rest, eBay is probably your best bet. The first first third of the 10-book series was published in the US; the first as Wizard War and the third as The Oracle. The second and shortest volume was split into two, called The Questing Hero and The Hero's Return. And the first third of Walrus & Warwolf was published as Lords of the Sword... but not the rest. If it's not obvious, the series had major commercial trouble; the first book sold 150,000 copies and the last few under 10,000, so if you see a copy of The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster buy it and flog it on eBay. One of the reasons they sold so poorly is that they're very various in terms of length, setting, character, genre, and tone, so do consider reading a couple before you decide they're all bad. Generally, they get weirder as you go on, and I think the best ones are in the middle. Inadequately posted:I recently picked up a Golden Age science fiction anthology and quite enjoyed it. It's fun reading early science fiction and seeing how the genre has changed over the years. Does anyone have any recommendations for good Golden Age/pulp sci-fi? I found an old copy of Triplanetary at a local store, so I think I'll start off with the Lensmen series. Here.
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Oct 1, 2013 10:03
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House Louse posted:I dunno man, some of the PCVs I've met... anyway, most of Cugel's schemes are aimed at people who richly deserve it or are him attempting to survive and find his way home. The worst things he does are mostly accidental (e.g. the village that gets eaten by a lake monster or eating the universe) and he has such awful things done to him that he got a bit of sympathy from me by the end. He rapes a woman and sells her into slavery to barbarian rapists. He's pretty loving evil. Awesome books, though. He does become a little less evil later on, I'll admit, but that is not setting a high level of achievement. Edit: I actually think Rhialto the Marvellous might be a little closer to what's desired. He does some pretty questionable things but isn't as out and out evil as Cugel. Neurosis fucked around with this message at 11:16 on Oct 1, 2013 |
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Oct 1, 2013 11:10
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The guys behind Penny Arcade may have been responsible for saying a whole lot of stupid, terrible poo poo, but I thought they really hit it out of the park for once with this Brandon Sanderson comic.
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Oct 1, 2013 11:19
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Well you could apply that to all epic fantasy..
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Oct 1, 2013 12:42
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sotamarsu posted:Well you could apply that to all epic fantasy.. Nah, other authors have a tendency to gloss over exact details in how the magic works. Not so for Sanderson, which is what most critique focus on, and I guess his fans loves.
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Oct 1, 2013 13:46
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Neurosis posted:He rapes a woman and sells her into slavery to barbarian rapists. He's pretty loving evil. Awesome books, though. He does become a little less evil later on, I'll admit, but that is not setting a high level of achievement.  I don't remember this... I'll stop defending him now. I didn't suggest Rhialto because one of the stories is about the wizards stopping an uppity witch who's trying to turn them into women, and the wizards say things like "the Murthe must be thwarted if we are not to witness the final triumph of the female race!"E: To be clear, I like complex, amoral, and ridiculous characters, but this story, "The Murthe", is flat-out misogynistic. Safety Biscuits fucked around with this message at 20:48 on Oct 1, 2013 |
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Oct 1, 2013 14:29
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House Louse posted:
I never thought Vance intended for the reader to root for most of the Dying Earth characters, or think that their goals were admirable in any way. I always thought they were poking fun at how hosed up all the characters and world were, especially the wizards, and how they would use their powers in pursuit of some of the stupidest poo poo.
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Oct 1, 2013 14:57
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So, I'm going to flog Harry Connolly's Kickstarter for his epic fantasy trilogy one more time. Sorry. The Kickstarter is doing good. With eighteen days still to go he's at 30K, which is 20K over the goal and in four more thousand dollars he'll hit the stretch goal where the books get covers done by Chris McGrath. His style a little... colder than what I expected from Harry's description of what he wanted to achieve with the books, but the guy obviously knows his poo poo and he did the covers for 20P, so it seems that they already have a working relationship. More importantly, he started posting the beginning of the first book on his blog for those who wanted to check it out before deciding whether to pledge. He posted two chapters so far (links: one, two) and he'll keep posting a chapter a day for the next five days. I was a little anxious to start reading them, worried the book wouldn't live up to my expectations but I'm very relieved to say that two chapters in, I'm already into this poo poo. Even in this early pre-editor draft, it's engaging as hell. Oh, also, if the Kickstarter gets thirty-ish more backers, everyone who pledged $12+ will get a free ebook of the Twenty Palaces prequel novel and, when he does some rewriting and a whole bunch of editing on it, a free ebook of his other trunk novel 'A Key, An Egg, An Unfortunate Remark'. That one's a lighthearted UF novel that he describes as Auntie Mame + Dresden Files which he wrote because he wanted to write something that was the complete opposite of Twenty Palaces. That... actually sounds like fun to me.
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Oct 2, 2013 00:03
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For people looking to buy Hugh Cook's stuff, which I highly recommend based on what I've read, you can find a lot on Lulu.com, which also happens to include the latest novels he wrote: http://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?contributorId=213237
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Oct 2, 2013 00:59
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Inadequately posted:I recently picked up a Golden Age science fiction anthology and quite enjoyed it. It's fun reading early science fiction and seeing how the genre has changed over the years. Does anyone have any recommendations for good Golden Age/pulp sci-fi? I found an old copy of Triplanetary at a local store, so I think I'll start off with the Lensmen series. Dunno how we are defining Golden Age but Erick Franck Russell's Wasp was written in the late 40s and is absolutely top-notch. I might be alone in this but I would loving love seeing it made into an HBO series. Main character goes undercover on alien world to be a terrorist on behalf of the human race? This thing sells itself!
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Oct 2, 2013 02:51
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House Louse posted:
And the Saga of Cugel is one giant karma kick to Cugel's balls. By the end he even shows growth because he finally kinda realizes his scheming abilities are garbage and just gives up trying to get "ahead" in favor of being the least lovely person in the room. quote:I didn't suggest Rhialto because one of the stories is about the wizards stopping an uppity witch who's trying to turn them into women, and the wizards say things like "the Murthe must be thwarted if we are not to witness the final triumph of the female race!"
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Oct 2, 2013 05:13
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andrew smash posted:I just started an audible account to use at the gym and I've got to say the dune audio book is loving fantastic. After getting through this a bit further I'm a little disappointed with parts of it. They got some really good voice actors to play important characters but in some scenes the narrator speaks those lines instead of the VAs. The most jarring one is the baron harkonnen, the VA has a really deep voice and the narrator doesn't so when he gives a line as the baron it's just disappointing.
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Oct 2, 2013 05:14
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Zachack posted:I remember the second part but not the first. It's pretty strongly implied in one line where Cugel is talking about his first 'coupling' with her. I can't remember the exact phrasing but it was pretty clear. Zachack posted:I think the only "good" person in the entire series is literally in another dimension (or world, I don't recall where the initial story was meant to portray), everyone else is on one tier or another of FYGM. There's the guy who had his face stolen. And that guy who's really curious and is sent as a ritual sacrifice while on some sort of pilgrimage of curiousity. And arguably the protagonist in the story about the city where the inhabitants wear different colours and are oblivious to each other. The dude who makes those towers for that ridiculous village where the husband sun themselves on pillars wasn't so bad, he at least took a drifter like Cugel in and fed and clothed him. Probably some I am forgetting. The characters in the independent short stories are really not all bad. The world is pretty clearly inhabited by absolute pieces of poo poo, though. I also don't agree the story about the Murthe was misogynistic at all. Rhialto and his pals just felt like a pathetic little boys' club with a "NO GIRLS ALLOWED" sign stuck to the door, and the story said very little about women that didn't come from that kind of juvenile mentality which the characters had but I have no belief the author possessed. Neurosis fucked around with this message at 07:37 on Oct 2, 2013 |
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Oct 2, 2013 07:25
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I just got finished reading The Great North Road. It was pretty interesting, being about half a whodunnit and half a survival horror story, with some cool bits of technology as well. It is very long, though, and feels it in places. Overall, pretty enjoyable. I think I'm about to start Wool based on a friend's recommendation, and she says I should go in blind, so I've been avoiding everything about it. I read fairly recently as well To Say Nothing of the Dog on the thread's recommendations and, well, I'm not sure what I think of it. The time travel aspect of it was pretty cool, but it did feel at times like a fanfic of Three Men in a Boat.
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Oct 2, 2013 17:56
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Neurosis posted:It's pretty strongly implied in one line where Cugel is talking about his first 'coupling' with her. I can't remember the exact phrasing but it was pretty clear. Do you remember which story this was in? I don't, not that I doubt you. Neurosis posted:I also don't agree the story about the Murthe was misogynistic at all. Rhialto and his pals just felt like a pathetic little boys' club with a "NO GIRLS ALLOWED" sign stuck to the door, and the story said very little about women that didn't come from that kind of juvenile mentality which the characters had but I have no belief the author possessed. Zachack posted:The characters in Rhialto are portrayed as complete buffoons who keep control because they hoarded enough trinkets. Yeah, they don't want their boys club ruined, and the reader isn't supposed to pity them. The Murthe is bad because she wants to be part of club, not because the book hates her. They beat her in the end and their reward is going back to their stupid existence where they wait for the world to end and act jealous of Rhialto. I agree that the wizards are pretty ridiculous (not even able to cast their own magic), but I think the story portrays them as ridiculous people responding to a serious situation, like "Morreion". It has more weight than just wizards screwing around while the world ends, like "Faders Waft". The witch/wizard war is one woman trying to turn all the men into women reads like a parody of feminism, and the end of the story, showing that the Murthe's motive is being in love with the wizard who defeated her back then (and is the only half-way admirable character), and she acts on it by turning to misandry, looks particularly bad from this point of view. It's not just that the characters are terrible people, but when it's bound up in gender themes and the only woman is this awful, it turns nasty.
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Oct 2, 2013 20:45
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fez_machine posted:For people looking to buy Hugh Cook's stuff, which I highly recommend based on what I've read, you can find a lot on Lulu.com, which also happens to include the latest novels he wrote:
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Oct 2, 2013 23:03
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House Louse posted:Do you remember which story this was in? I don't, not that I doubt you. The Mountains of Magnatz posted:For a brief period after their expulsion from Cil she had carried herself with an inappropriate hauteur, which Cugel tolerated with a quiet smile for himself. Their first couching has been both eventful and taxing; thereafter Derwe Coreme had modified at least her overt behavior. Her face, delicate and clear of feature, lost little of its brooding melancholy, but the arrogance altered, as milk becomes cheese, to a new and wakeful appreciation of reality.
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Oct 2, 2013 23:23
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I recently discovered author Gavin Smith and read his first 2 books Veteran and War In Heaven. He just released a new book The Age Of Scorpio that is 1/3 fantasy, 1/3 modern thriller and 1/3 Space Opera with all stories (so far unrelated) going at once. I'm not quite recommending it - I haven't finished it - but I wonder of anybody else here has read this guys stuff and what your take on it is. I'd say that if Abercrombie, Morgan and Asher wrote a book together it would be like this.
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Oct 3, 2013 00:22
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Megazver posted:So, I'm going to flog Harry Connolly's Kickstarter for his epic fantasy trilogy one more time
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Oct 3, 2013 04:17
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specklebang posted:I recently discovered author Gavin Smith and read his first 2 books Veteran and War In Heaven. He just released a new book The Age Of Scorpio that is 1/3 fantasy, 1/3 modern thriller and 1/3 Space Opera with all stories (so far unrelated) going at once. I'm not quite recommending it - I haven't finished it - but I wonder of anybody else here has read this guys stuff and what your take on it is. I'm about halfway through it, but I keep dropping it to read other stuff inbetween. It's a pretty challenging book, however i'm not quite enjoying the fantasy stuff too much. Loving the modern/Space Opera sections though, some really cool ideas present and his writing style is quite easy to lap up even if you don't have a loving clue what's going on. I'll finish it eventually.
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Oct 3, 2013 04:33
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Is "Ancillary Justice" and good? I've read positive things but all of it just seems like ad copy from the publisher. I was also wondering if anybody has any idea when "On the Steel Breeze" will be released as an ebook.
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Oct 6, 2013 03:53
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I got a copy of it to read but I dunno if it's good or not. Hoping it is though. The plot sounds neat enough.
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Oct 6, 2013 04:27
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Nondescript Van posted:Is "Ancillary Justice" and good? I've read positive things but all of it just seems like ad copy from the publisher. A lot of people I know and respect are really, really excited about this book, so while I haven't read it yet, the hype is at least not all ad copy.
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Oct 6, 2013 04:34
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Nondescript Van posted:Is "Ancillary Justice" and good? I've read positive things but all of it just seems like ad copy from the publisher. There is a lot of hype for it, but a large amount of it is about how ~*socially progressive*~ it is with the default pronoun for everyone in the book being 'she', etc. I'm not a person who thinks that, say, Sleepy Hollow the new TV show is automatically good because one of the leads is a black lady or that Elementary is automatically better than Sherlock because Watson is played by Lucy Liu, so I'm going to wait until the hype subsides a bit and check it out then. A good method of evaluating books in these cases is one that I think I'll follow and that's to wait for some negative reviews on Amazon and see whether they're written by total twats and thus make the book look good or if there's some genuine criticism in there. That's what I recommend to you.
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Oct 6, 2013 04:46
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Nondescript Van posted:I was also wondering if anybody has any idea when "On the Steel Breeze" will be released as an ebook. It already is. Kindle version, anyway.
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Oct 7, 2013 12:18
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Junkenstein posted:It already is. Kindle version, anyway. Are you in the UK? The US store shows it as unavailable for me at least.
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Oct 7, 2013 13:52
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Just looked and it's not available for me on Kindle or Google Play.
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Oct 7, 2013 14:28
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Junkenstein posted:It already is. Kindle version, anyway. I've got it in paperback, which was released in Sweden 1 week ago. Couple of chapters in and Reynolds are rehashing the space journey in Chasm City.
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Oct 7, 2013 14:33
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shrike82 posted:Are you in the UK? The US store shows it as unavailable for me at least. Yeah, UK. Seems really silly that ebooks don't get worldwide releases.
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Oct 7, 2013 15:04
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Junkenstein posted:Yeah, UK. I mean, they're still a pain, but they're one of the main reasons many of my favourite authors can write as a career instead of a hobby, so I'm ok with it.
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Oct 8, 2013 03:47
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:It used to piss me off (I live in Asia/Pacific, and tons of good stuff isn't available), but somebody linked a great article about how international royalties work and I feel a bit better about it now. Don't know where the article is, but long story short, limitations on international ebooks allow authors to get multiple advances for a single book. Advances are how most authors (who aren't Stephen King/Dan Brown etc) break even, but even then they're not fantastic: usually 8-10k per book. Considering writing/editing/publishing usually takes a year or two, being able to get multiple advances for different parts of the world is the only way a lot of authors can make bank. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/03/cmap-4-territories-translation.html maybe?
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Oct 8, 2013 18:05
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