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Maybe it's just me but I really wish this thread was more about the actual books rather than writers' politics and awards gossip for pages on end.
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Apr 20, 2014 17:54
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Joramun posted:Maybe it's just me but I really wish this thread was more about the actual books rather than writers' politics and awards gossip for pages on end. Yeah, that last half page of a 93 page thread was pretty overwhelming. I could barely stand reading almost a dozen posts about the authors and books nominated for a sci-fi/fantasy award and their merits in the sci-fi/fantasy thread.
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Apr 20, 2014 17:58
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It's been one page in direct response to to award nominees being posted for, shockingly enough, a science fiction and fantasy award. There's shitloads of other pages about "actual books", so getting mad about one page seems pretty silly. Thread will change pace once again once someone (potentially you!) posts about a book.
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Apr 20, 2014 17:58
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I noticed that the chart in the op has GoT as low fantasy and the Stormlight Archive as high fantasy. I was recently thinking about genres because I was explaining to my brother what "sword and sorcery" is. I would have thought GoT is also high fantasy; is it not because of the relatively low amounts of magic use? That seems kind of arbitrary to me.
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Apr 20, 2014 18:30
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High fantasy essentially is things operating in part on the basis of magical realism, basically where there are separate fantastic rules or natural laws that guide reality or actions. High fantasy tends to further emphasize that the story is an 'epic'. By comparison, low fantasy operates in what is nominally the 'real world', even if the setting isn't necessarily Earth itself, with fantastic elements that are fantastic because they don't fit in the inherent cosmology or abide by the normal rules of the world. Basically, high fantasy is "things are fantastic because that's the way it is", low fantasy is "things are fantastic because what the gently caress"
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Apr 20, 2014 18:41
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Zorak posted:High fantasy essentially is things operating in part on the basis of magical realism, basically where there are separate fantastic rules or natural laws that guide reality or actions. High fantasy tends to further emphasize that the story is an 'epic'. High fantasy and low fantasy aren't really well-defined labels, though. The best you could probably say is that low fantasy is whatever high fantasy isn't. Do most people in the setting know what magic is and treat it casually? Have they personally seen it, or at least reliable second-hand accounts? Are there many wizards? Are fantastic creatures and magical items common? Are there many non-human sapient races? Is the magic itself comparatively commonplace and more or less reliable, not perilous in and of itself? If so, the setting is probably high fantasy. The less of the above applies, the more likely it is to be defined as "low" fantasy. Are fantastical creatures rare and/or generally really creepy and dangerous? Is magic something most people only know from hearsay and fairy tales? Are magical objects really rare and unusual? Is magic something reserved to a select few, reclusive individuals and/or dangerous, morally dubious or comes at a high price? The more of those points you can check off, the more likely the setting is to be low fantasy. There isn't really any clear dividing line the way there is with hard and soft scifi, because magic kinda by definition does things that aren't considered possible in the real world. It's more about how much the story focuses on the fantastical elements as opposed to keeping them subtle and in the background.
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Apr 20, 2014 19:05
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High fantasy romanticizes poverty b y having the beggar boy grow up and win. Low fantasy has the same kid watch all of his friends end up in horrible circumstances out of their control, and the best they can usually hope for is revenge. Also high fantasy has way more elves and wizzards most of the time, and they're generally obviously good guys or bad guys.
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Apr 20, 2014 19:22
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Cardiovorax posted:High fantasy and low fantasy aren't really well-defined labels, though. The best you could probably say is that low fantasy is whatever high fantasy isn't. Yeah the terms are used to mean a lot of different things. I've seen them used to mean the "level of magic" in a setting, i.e., "high levels of fantasy" vs. "low levels of fantasy,"; I've seen the terms used to differentiate epic or mythological fantasy from pulp or horror; I've seen the terms used as synonyms for "highbrow" and "lowbrow," i.e., "high" fantasy is literary and artistic while "low" fantasy isn't. Ultimately I don't think they're useful terms.
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Apr 20, 2014 19:38
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coyo7e posted:High fantasy romanticizes poverty b y having the beggar boy grow up and win. Low fantasy has the same kid watch all of his friends end up in horrible circumstances out of their control, and the best they can usually hope for is revenge.
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Apr 20, 2014 20:31
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yeah the terms are used to mean a lot of different things. I've seen them used to mean the "level of magic" in a setting, i.e., "high levels of fantasy" vs. "low levels of fantasy,"; I've seen the terms used to differentiate epic or mythological fantasy from pulp or horror; I've seen the terms used as synonyms for "highbrow" and "lowbrow," i.e., "high" fantasy is literary and artistic while "low" fantasy isn't. I think they can be handy if used correctly. Wikipedia has a pretty good definition
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Apr 20, 2014 21:27
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Finished Dennis Mckiernan's Into the Forge last night. I liked it as a kid so I wanted to go back and see how it holds up now. Found it very enjoyable although some of the prose is repetitive and the elves' old English is annoying to read. The endearing characters and fight scenes are the main draw of this book. If you can put aside the fact that it's a Tolkien rip off* it's a fun read (he wanted to write a sequel to LOTR but couldn't get the rights so essentially made his own version). The sequel isn't available on kindle so I'm reading the second Expanse book and then revisiting Mckiernan's other work. *this one isn't too blatant but I believe in the second book the heroes go into an abandoned dwarf mountain with a tentacle filled lake by the entrance.
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Apr 20, 2014 21:36
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Zorak posted:Basically, high fantasy is "things are fantastic because that's the way it is", low fantasy is "things are fantastic because what the gently caress"
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Apr 20, 2014 22:52
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High fantasy - elves n poo poo. Magical things are loving EVERYWHERE. Low fantasy - swords and poo poo, with minor amounts of magical things. That's pretty much how I keep em straight.
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Apr 20, 2014 23:53
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Whalley posted:I think of it more as high fantasy is magic or elves or whatever is common enough that it isn't doubted, low fantasy is where magic doesn't exist or if it does, most (main) people don't believe it or care about it. Like, in Game of Thrones, magic poo poo happens, but it is irrelevant to a large portion of the cast, and story, and the magic that people identify happens on the borders and nobody but those directly involved give a poo poo about it. Yeah this is the one that makes the most sense to me.
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Apr 21, 2014 02:47
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Whalley posted:the magic that people identify happens on the borders and nobody but those directly involved give a poo poo about it. I'd say that that it's less that they don't give a poo poo about it and more that they don't know anything about it. That or it's such a rare/horrible/awful thing that it's basically beyond their grasp/comprehension. When they know about it and don't give a poo poo it's usually high fantasy, imo, because that usually means that magic is so commonplace that nobody gets excited about it.
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Apr 21, 2014 07:18
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I think I preferred the awards bitching.
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Apr 21, 2014 07:28
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Azathoth posted:Could I get recommendations for novels or series of novels that are similar in content and tone to either the Hellboy or The Goon series of comics/graphic novels? If you haven't read them yet you'd probably like Jonathan L Howard's Johannes Cabal series. Its a black comedy series about the titular Johannes Cabal on his bizarre adventures. The first book Johannes Cabal The Necromancer is about Johannes trying to get his soul back from the devil after a bad trade. The second book Johannes Cabal The Detective has Johannes on the run from an Eastern European government after his attempts to bring their deceased ruler back to life backfire and he becomes a ravenous zombie. The third book Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute is about Johannes guiding the titular Fear Institute through HP Lovecraft's Deam Lands in an attempt to kill the personification of fear.
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Apr 21, 2014 14:05
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Out of the 3, I'd recommend the last one the most.
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Apr 21, 2014 14:18
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Yeah, they're all mostly stand alone. Although something happens at the end of the third one that would only be dramatic if you read the first. Of the three I think the second is the weakest since a big chunk of the book is a mystery that you're never really given much incentive to care about, since Johannes doesn't. There's also a fourth book called The Brothers Cabal that I know absolutely nothing about.
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Apr 21, 2014 14:23
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Yea, that was my problem with the second one as well. The first one is just kinda... meh. The second just meanders around plot wise for that mystery, and doesn't get into the "good stuff" till the books almost over. The third one goes from 0 to batshit in about 3 chapters which is why I loved it. Can't recall what the ending thing was regarding the relation to the first book though, but it's been a while since I read it. Can you spoiler it for me please?
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Apr 21, 2014 14:31
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The fact that Johannes' brother shows up again. If you hadn't read the first book you wouldn't know that he was dead so it wouldn't be quite as big of a deal.
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Apr 21, 2014 15:10
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Gave The Traitor's Blade by Sebastien de Castell a go based on the positive buzz from this thread. It's good and well-written, with an engaging narrative voice, but I will warn you here and now that it's heavy on the grimdark, with only just enough moments of rewarded idealism to keep it from being fitfully amusing torture/misery-porn. I'll read more from the series, but I'm viewing it with caution, and if it does end up going much darker with any less light at the end of the tunnel, I'm out. Don't get me wrong, it was a fun read and worth it, but it did keep getting perilously close to being not-fun. Also, the ending was a bit of a deus-ex-machina, which is forgivable in a series when there's more books to come but could have used more buildup anyway. Darth Walrus fucked around with this message at 16:20 on Apr 21, 2014 |
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Apr 21, 2014 16:18
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:The first one is just kinda... meh. The second just meanders around plot wise for that mystery, and doesn't get into the "good stuff" till the books almost over. The third one goes from 0 to batshit in about 3 chapters which is why I loved it.
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Apr 21, 2014 16:29
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I actually really liked the first one. The second one I wouldn't call bad but it isn't quite as good as the first. The third one really depends on how much Lovecraft you can stand because the setting is lifted completely from his works.
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Apr 21, 2014 16:43
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I had the opposite reaction. I really liked the first Cabal book - it was a witty and original take on an old theme. The next two seemed kinda forced. The third felt like it was aimed at fans of the August Derleth post-Lovecraft mythos fiction and I'm sortof a Lovecraft purist so I wasn't as much of a fan.
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Apr 21, 2014 16:46
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Eh, give em a shot. Everyone's tastes are a little different, so they might rock for you. The overall feeling that the second book kinda sucks is a common one though.
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Apr 21, 2014 16:56
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I liked the first one, the only real problem I had with it was the author's at-times baffling use of obscure terminology. I'm told that I was supposed to assume it was Johannes narrating, and thus makes sense in context, but it did get annoying for me when I was looking up words every other page. It felt a lot more to me like the author paid good money for a shiny new thesaurus, and drat it he was going to use it.
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Apr 21, 2014 18:18
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:High fantasy - elves n poo poo. Magical things are loving EVERYWHERE. So ASOIAF is low fantasy then? Admittedly low in a number of things, like the rate of new books coming out.
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Apr 21, 2014 19:40
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Ynglaur posted:I disagree, and think you're confusing genre with theme. The Malazan Book of the Fallen, for example, has plenty of base characters who remain in largely the same, often terrible, circumstances. Most readers would consider it High Fantasy, however.  My point was that you don't get many Campbell-esque Hero Quest stories in low fantasy, or they're at least disguised enough to not be like "oh here is the training montage before we meet the rag-tag group of friends and then everybody beats the bad guys and good wins again!"Joe Abercrombie for instance. Definitely Low Fantasy despite a city being basically leveled by a mage in the climax of his First Law trilogy. There were some training montages, a rag-tag band of scrappy heroes however, you can't say that good won in the end... Or anyone, really. Sanderson? High Fantasy despite being "gritty" a lot of the time - everyone knows you can chug metal tinctures and walk around with spikes through your eyeballs and fling power and/or wear special featherweight anime swords and armor which are obviously not fully material. By the end of a couple of his books we're almost literally in DBZ territory with two warriors flying around in midair throwing energy bolts at each other. Additionally I think that the general population being "magically literate" (as in they recognize it exists and may or may not be able to use it to improve everyday life in lieu of machines to improve quality of life,) means that you're almost definitely treading in High Fantasy. This doesn't even need to be the majority of the population either, but when the "best and brightest" (nobility, sages, etc) don't really think magic is real, you can't claim to be in High Fantasy setting. Cardiac posted:So ASOIAF is low fantasy then? It doesn't mean that by the end of the series people still believe that magic and poo poo doesn't exist (although most peasantry probably would think it was fairy tales tbh), it just means that nobody takes it seriously most of the time. Until it possibly bites them in the rear end. Or doesn't (because it doesn't exist.) coyo7e fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Apr 21, 2014 |
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Apr 21, 2014 19:50
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Cardiac posted:So ASOIAF is low fantasy then? That definition emphasises the amount (or at least how widespread the knowledge is) of magic, whereas other definitions (e.g. in The Encyclopaedia of Fantasy) break it down between a fully-realised fictional world (High Fantasy), and magic/supernatural elements in our world (Low Fantasy). So that would make ASOIAF High Fantasy (along with the usual stuff like Lord of the Rings) whereas, say, The Rook or The Dresden Files are Low. Granted that gives you some odd edge cases like Barbara Hambley's The Time of the Dark which could fit in both.
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Apr 21, 2014 20:20
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I wish I could say this was the dumbest line of discussion in this thread but its not. I just bought the first part of The Book of the New Sun, and it will be the first legit scifi/fantasy thing I have read in a long time so wish me luck. Stravinsky fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Apr 21, 2014 |
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Apr 21, 2014 20:38
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Sorry, should we bring up feminism or Nazi archetypes or something more interesting? Do tell.  Hobnob posted:That definition emphasises the amount (or at least how widespread the knowledge is) of magic, whereas other definitions (e.g. in The Encyclopaedia of Fantasy) break it down between a fully-realised fictional world (High Fantasy), and magic/supernatural elements in our world (Low Fantasy).
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Apr 21, 2014 20:52
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coyo7e posted:Sorry, should we bring up feminism or Nazi archetypes or something more interesting? Do tell. The last couple of pages were the social justice derail. I think we're due for another round of "did he really name a character 'Rob S. Pierre?'"
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Apr 21, 2014 20:58
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coyo7e posted:Sorry, should we bring up feminism or Nazi archetypes or something more interesting? Do tell. As for The Half-Made World, I would argue that it owes more to magical realism than to more "traditional" fantasy genre fiction, though it does take place entirely in a secondary world, and is more fantastic than most magical realism.
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Apr 21, 2014 22:28
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Stravinsky posted:I wish I could say this was the dumbest line of discussion in this thread but its not. Good on you, BotNS is my favorite novel. Don't be too concerned if very little makes sense when you start - the second read is even better than the first. (and the third is better than the second!)
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Apr 21, 2014 22:44
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Clark Nova posted:The last couple of pages were the social justice derail. I think we're due for another round of "did he really name a character 'Rob S. Pierre?'" This is the worst thing I've read in the thread. All kidding aside, and this isn't directed at the person I'm quoting, I know it gets kind of redundant to bitch about bitching but cmon we don't need to hear about how half of the thread hates one topic or another. It's a slow moving thread there doesn't need to be a spinoff thread for these little 1-3 page tangents and bitching about them adds absolutely nothing. I'm gonna go get BotNS from the library because so far every random book I've read from this thread (Quantum Thief, Locke Lamora, Blindsight) has been amazing. Except for Forever War. I got bored during the training parts.
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Apr 21, 2014 22:59
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Popular Human posted:Good on you, BotNS is my favorite novel. Don't be too concerned if very little makes sense when you start - the second read is even better than the first. (and the third is better than the second!) BotNS sometimes seem fractally incomprehensible. The more you understand, the more there is to understand.
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Apr 21, 2014 23:18
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Clark Nova posted:The last couple of pages were the social justice derail. I think we're due for another round of "did he really name a character 'Rob S. Pierre?'"
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Apr 21, 2014 23:23
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I'd like to hear others thoughts on Dennis Mckiernan per my post on this page lost in all the derailing and complaining about complaining about derailing posts. I'm also enjoying Calibans War so far although it is early on. Not crazy about the new characters except the gunny.
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Apr 22, 2014 00:40
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Popular Human posted:Good on you, BotNS is my favorite novel. Don't be too concerned if very little makes sense when you start - the second read is even better than the first. (and the third is better than the second!) I quite liked it when I read it a few months ago, but I've come to appreciate the more modern style with a comprehensible, overarching plot line. BotNS and a few other older fantasy books I've read lately (Viriconium comes to mind) have been good and interesting, but I rarely had any idea what the next stop in the story would be. Stuff just happens and leads to the next interesting vignette. I don't know exactly how to describe it better than that except by contrast. For example, even when something unexpected happens in, say, ASoIAF, it is understandable and fits some overall plot: everyone tries to gently caress over everyone else to get more power, the various separate groups are each working towards a somewhat more specific goal, that kind of thing. Does that seem like a reasonable description of the difference in style when it comes to plot or did I really miss some big plot hints in BotNS?
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Apr 22, 2014 02:35
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