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Science Fiction and Fantasy books. I will post something to contribute instead of just telling people what not to post: I am currently reading The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold and think it is pretty good. The second book in the series won a Hugo a few years back, and the first book definitely feels like it is largely setting up the sequel. I've heard the third book isn't that good though, so I may just finish the first two and see if I really want to continue. The first book is quite character driven, and even though the world is very generic fantasy not-Europe, it creates a religion that factors heavily into the plot. Almost all of the world building is saved for the religion, and the author seems to have made it a conscious choice not to indulge in huge effort worldbuilding that would pad out the book and dilute the actual plot. I'm 90% done with it, so I don't know how good the ending will be at making it really pop. So far it's been enjoyable and well written, but slightly too vanilla and subdued.
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Oct 15, 2014 15:59
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Is The Curse of Chalion a series? From the way people mention it, I got the impression it was a single novel.Darth Walrus posted:And people are making 'em right back. In considerable volumes, greater potency, and with actual, physical danger backing 'em up rather than just ranty hyperbole. Link to lots of people in Thailand threatening Sriduangkaew with worse than acid baths and being raped by dogs please.
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Oct 15, 2014 16:04
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Oh drat, the "second one" is a prequel. I didn't realize that. The third one is another stand-alone in the same world. I hope the ending to Curse is really good, because as a standalone it's even more "subdued" than I previously indicated.
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Oct 15, 2014 16:08
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What's the plot? It's always a bit confusing when someone starts talking about the details of a book or series but neglects to mention what it's actually about.
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Oct 15, 2014 16:10
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I never like saying the plot because a lot of people have different ideas about what constitutes a spoiler. I could give you a much clearer image of the plot, but to many it would include a spoiler. To be safe I guess I could say that the protagonist was betrayed and sold into slavery. He is pretty broken and just wants to live an easy life, so he goes back to the old royal lady he served as a page. She charges him with tutoring her heiress daughter and he's happy to do it. Then she gets summoned to court, and the people who betrayed him are there and in a position of power. He tries to stay out of it and keep his head down, but the people who betrayed him start interfering with the girl he tutors, and since he's grown to care for her he has to decide what to do and whether to stick his neck out and butt heads with them again to try to protect her.
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Oct 15, 2014 16:15
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Thanks, that's all I needed to know. The back cover blurb would probably be enough, I just like to have an idea of what actually happens in the story.
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Oct 15, 2014 16:18
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House Louse posted:Is The Curse of Chalion a series? From the way people mention it, I got the impression it was a single novel. OK, I can do some digging, but there's already been grumbling about us straying off-topic. Do you really want another page of death and rape threats? For starters, I'm getting second-hand reports of physical stalking from her close friends and acquaintances. That's the best I can get on the real-world stuff, for obvious reasons - popping over to Hong Kong (which is where I believe she presently lives, hence Scale-Bright's setting) to confirm this in person might be a bit tricky.
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Oct 15, 2014 16:42
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systran posted:Oh drat, the "second one" is a prequel. I didn't realize that. The third one is another stand-alone in the same world. Paladin of Souls is not a prequel. It picks up a minor character and makes her the hero of the next story. The third one is largely unconnected to the first two, which makes it a bit less approachable. It's still good though.
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Oct 15, 2014 16:45
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mllaneza posted:Paladin of Souls is not a prequel. It picks up a minor character and makes her the hero of the next story. The third one is largely unconnected to the first two, which makes it a bit less approachable. It's still good though. It's kind of a shame that Bujold's fantasy hasn't taken off more, IMO.
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Oct 15, 2014 16:53
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I'm cool with that. I wish more authors would do stand-alones. I think doing stand-alones in an established setting is a nice halfway point between doing bloated ten-book series and starting a world from scratch every time.
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Oct 15, 2014 16:58
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ulmont posted:It's kind of a shame that Bujold's fantasy hasn't taken off more, IMO. I always had a bit of difficulty with her books that didn't feature Miles Vorkosigan. They're decently-written and plotted, and quite entertaining, but he brings a manic energy that really spices the story up. Her other works tend not to have that delicious spoonful of batshit insanity to elevate them. Curse of Chalion was pretty good, though.
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Oct 15, 2014 17:08
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Pretty much all of Gemmell's books are hard core archetype fantasy. That being said, they are all awesome. Well, 90% of them are awesome. Some are kinda "meh". Druss is always a good character to read since he has a very black and white moral code and doesn't bother with bullshit. He just up and fucks up everyone who does bad poo poo. Skilgannon is a decent character as well. Pretty much the archetype antihero who's trying to be a better person though. Basically if you are looking for something NEW AND AMAZING in fantasy don't read Gemmell. If you are looking for some awesome fantasy books, read him.
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Oct 15, 2014 17:20
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ulmont posted:It's kind of a shame that Bujold's fantasy hasn't taken off more, IMO. And then she goes off and does four volumes of The Sharing Knife. It's good character-driven romance in a fantasy world, but the Miles fans don't want that.
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Oct 15, 2014 17:23
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Darth Walrus posted:As mentioned, her criticism can get a bit more nuanced and intelligent than that beneath all the rage (see all the 'yeah, she was actually kind of right about Bakker' posts in this thread), but it's worth remembering that her acrackedmoon persona was a troll in the classic sense, adopting a provocative, confrontational attitude in order to rile up people and get them to reveal very ugly things about themselves and their assumptions. Slating Tolkein may be low-hanging fruit, but the primary purpose was to see who and what came crawling out of the woodwork to defend his tendencies towards racism and sexism and how they decided to do it. In other words, she is actually not mentally ill at all and is in fact a puppet master who was pulling the strings all along. Do you honestly believe this stupid poo poo you typed? Who the gently caress does that for years? Who wishes people got acid thrown in their faces as a strat to prove how the readers are the real bad guys and totally not her?
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Oct 15, 2014 18:55
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Cardiac posted:It is also one of the few truly original fantasy series that have been published the last 10 years.
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Oct 15, 2014 19:20
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Vorik posted:In other words, she is actually not mentally ill at all and is in fact a puppet master who was pulling the strings all along. Do you honestly believe this stupid poo poo you typed? Who the gently caress does that for years? Who wishes people got acid thrown in their faces as a strat to prove how the readers are the real bad guys and totally not her? The question was whether she's capable of intelligent criticism. I was excluding the moral element because Srice said that wasn't a dealbreaker. Don't get me wrong, her actions are incredibly hosed up, and would be regardless of whether she's crazy or not (I prefer not to speculate on that matter, because it leads down dark, dark paths), but in the context of 'is she capable of turning off the ragefest and producing something with some braincells behind it?', there's decent evidence that she can and has. Her Tolkein article, for instance, is obvious bait designed to get people riled up by saying mean things about a beloved author, but articles like this and this (possibly NSFW) have rather more nuance and thought put into them.
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Oct 15, 2014 20:02
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mallamp posted:Come on, you got to be living pretty deep in epic fantasy bubble to say that, Bakker isn't that original. He writes interesting things that are different from other epic fantasy writers, but compared to some actually good writers who don't write to entertain, like Mieville or something like that (I hate Mieville myself, not trying to be an advocate of literary wankery, just saying), there isn't that much originality to be found. It's good stuff but still just another epic fantasy series, with better "source material" for worldbuilding than you usually see. He's plenty original imo with the whole old testament biblical thing he got going on in his series, plus you can pretty much pigeon-hole any modern writing as unoriginal if you just write stuff off as derivative of an author's influences. No way is he just some run of the mill fantasy fluff hack.
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Oct 15, 2014 20:35
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mllaneza posted:And then she goes off and does four volumes of The Sharing Knife. It's good character-driven romance in a fantasy world, but the Miles fans don't want that. Really, it's the first book. If you ignore the middle half of the first book (which can be summarized with "and they fall in love in the sappiest way possible"), the rest of the series is drat good fantasy adventure in a really interesting world. The magic, the castes (magical vs non-magical) and their politics, the history of the malice war, it's all quite engaging. The really awful romance stuff is just part of the first book. You know that criticism of lazy fantasy, where they make fun of the story always being about "bringing the PLOT ring to Mount PLOT"? None of that in these books. If our heroes even have a quest, it's to find some way for the castes to live besides "total isolation from each other" and "mages as lords over their lessers." Which, you know, does sound like a problem, especially when even these fallen, lesser mages are capable of essentially total mind control of the magicless without their even knowing.
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Oct 15, 2014 22:19
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Pretty much all of Gemmell's books are hard core archetype fantasy. Gemmell is the best writer of heroic fantasy, and he owes a lot to Robert E Howard. Druss and Conan share a lot of DNA, as do Jon Shannow and Solomon Kane. However, the OP has said he read the first two Drenai novels, by which I presume he means Legend and The King Beyond The Gate rather than the first two Waylander books. If he's read Legend and didn't get anything from it then it's best to go no further. Legend isn't the strongest written book, but it does have the most interesting characters.
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Oct 16, 2014 00:24
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Cardiac posted:You don't think this is simplifying his writing a lot? No, not really. quote:It is also one of the few truly original fantasy series that have been published the last 10 years. I read his first trilogy and I didn't think it was original at all.
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Oct 16, 2014 02:22
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Cardiac posted:You don't think this is simplifying his writing a lot? I think the biggest problem is that he also uses the books as a soapbox for his creepy as gently caress opinions about gender relations, without which the books would be top-shelf GRRM-derivative epic fantasy. However, those opinions color the entire work, which is technically well written but deeply flawed. I read the first two Prince of Nothing books and got some way into the third before it got creepy enough for me to start poking around online for reviews of the second trilogy, as I wanted to understand if I should keep going, and that inadvertently led me to a critical blog post that dug into his views, and then I felt like I needed a long shower. As a rule, I don't read about author's beliefs via blogs or their own sites, as I prefer to not know about their intent and would rather let the work succeed or fail on its own merits. However, R. Scott Bakker is the one place where I would encourage people to dig into the author's views. I have read plenty of schlocky writing and I have read plenty of writing from people with horrible opinions, and goodness knows I have enjoyed a lot of it, but Bakker hits a certain nerve in me that only blatant political fiction usually hits. I think it is the way he presents his biotruths bullshit as objective fact that irks me so much. That said, I wouldn't discourage someone from reading Bakker in the same way I would Terry Goodkind, but I would make sure that the prospective reader understood Bakker's views before starting into his books.
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Oct 16, 2014 04:01
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lol at people who try to act like a book's objectively bad just cuz it doesn't 100% line up with your worldview
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Oct 16, 2014 04:30
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mllaneza posted:And then she goes off and does four volumes of The Sharing Knife. It's good character-driven romance in a fantasy world, but the Miles fans don't want that. I liked those too, but I thought they were more romance and more western than fantasy. Certainly by comparison to Chalion etc.
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Oct 16, 2014 05:04
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Azathoth posted:No, he's a decently talented genre writer who thinks he is way more talented than he actually is. He thinks he is creating this incredibly subtle work of art where he deftly plays with the reader's perceptions of morality or psychology or something, but it's nowhere near as effective or clever as he thinks.
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Oct 16, 2014 05:57
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Bakker writes a lot of cool interesting poo poo that I think really stands out. He evokes a really unique sense of scale, history, and mythological weight, particularly when he's working with the creepy deep history of his setting. I thought his battle scenes and imagery around magic were great. He also, by his own description, writes books specifically for male readers, including titillating rape scenes intended to force men to confront the fact that we are (in his view on evolutionary psychology and  ) biologically programmed rape machines. His goal with his female characters is to depict the impossibility of liberation or equality for women. I used to be a huge Bakker apologist - I think my first posts in an earlier incarnation of this thread were in Bakker's defense. Then I read Neuropath and his blog, and, well. I'd never go to bat for him these days, but I'll probably pick up his next book and skim it for the good scenes. General Battuta fucked around with this message at 06:13 on Oct 16, 2014 |
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Oct 16, 2014 06:10
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In regards to Bakker, I found this blog post that was a breakdown of why the author (and many others) find Bakker's attempts at 'challenging' men to be harmful and born out of a really ugly place. As an added bonus Bakker shows up in the comments and both he and the author spend a good deal of time hashing things out. I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions about Bakker, but the blog's author identifies the nihilistic bent in Bakker's philosophy of "the best way to educate men about their evil is to display it to them constantly, in pornographic detail, and explicitly written only in the most malest of male gazes." The rest of the blog itself has occasional posts touching on topics that tend to make white dudes (especially the ones immersed in the SFF community) cry foul (racism, sexism), but you have to dredge those out of the myriad of supernatural posts.  Really though, her post on Bakker's thought-provoking enough on its own. And, again, Bakker himself contributes to the discussion via the comments. The post is 2 years old though, dunno how much that matters. IMO you can't go around writing these awful, graphic depictions of violence directed towards women and then hand wave criticisms about the misogynist views on display (both on the page and acting as the driving force for how Bakker's thematic composition) with the rationale that "I can’t apologize for being a misogynist, because I’m not. Men are the ‘weaker sex'" and just are biologically programmed to be rapey, rape machines who can, at best, tone down the level of sexual violence directed towards women on a societal level. Because it will never really go away. Because all men are rapey, rape machines. But what I find most suspect is Bakker's apparent belief that the inclusion of strong, female characters is navel-gazing wishful-thinking or, to use his own words, "magic exemptions" that add to "the boot-strapping illusion that is strangling contemporary feminism: the assumption that the individual can overcome their social circumstances."  e2: Ha, this rabbit hole goes deep! But I want out so I'm not gonna bother. e3: But still, I enjoyed the books by him that I read so long as I skimmed and forgot the creepier parts (I'd hesitate to give my recommendation, because someone might read the creepier parts and then think much less of me for recommending they suffer through them). Being a black SFF fan teaches you how to take your lumps, though I honestly hope for better once we have more minority authors recognized by the community. MLKQUOTEMACHINE fucked around with this message at 16:38 on Oct 16, 2014 |
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Oct 16, 2014 06:40
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I'm about a quarter of the way through City of Stairs and it's great. Team Sigrud all the way
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Oct 16, 2014 08:56
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nutranurse posted:Men are the ‘weaker sex'" and just are biologically programmed to be rapey, rape machines who can, at best, tone down the level of sexual violence directed towards women on a societal level. Because it will never really go away. Because all men are rapey, rape machines. Well, it is not hard to see how he comes to that conclusion due to you know, the whole human history. The same thing is argued by Pinker in "The better angels of our nature". Personally, the rape scenes in Bakkers books are the low points of some pretty amazing books. Also Neuropath is pretty bad, but that is more to the story being bad. Jedit posted:Gemmell is the best writer of heroic fantasy, and he owes a lot to Robert E Howard. Druss and Conan share a lot of DNA, as do Jon Shannow and Solomon Kane. I didn't say they were bad, they are definite page turners, but after Malazan I expect more variety in my badasses. Interesting question is whether Erikson could have written his books without the influences from Cook and Gemmel? mallamp posted:Come on, you got to be living pretty deep in epic fantasy bubble to say that, Bakker isn't that original. He writes interesting things that are different from other epic fantasy writers, but compared to some actually good writers who don't write to entertain, like Mieville or something like that (I hate Mieville myself, not trying to be an advocate of literary wankery, just saying), there isn't that much originality to be found. It's good stuff but still just another epic fantasy series, with better "source material" for worldbuilding than you usually see. So why do we keep discussing Bakker then? If he was another run-of-the-mill author that produced mediocre fantasy and had lovely opinions, we wouldn't care less. It is not like we discuss Kevin J Andersons work here (if we are discussing mediocre authors and not lovely opinions). The issue with Bakker, Simmons, Mieville and Card is that they have written some very good books, but they all have deplorable opinions.
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Oct 16, 2014 08:57
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Cardiac posted:Well, it is not hard to see how he comes to that conclusion due to you know, the whole human history.
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Oct 16, 2014 08:58
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Yeah that's biotruthing alright. 'Well this thing looks sorta like a trend of some kind, it must be preprogrammed.'nutranurse posted:"the best way to educate men about their evil That's the funniest justification for authorial fetish material I've ever heard. He may even believe it.
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Oct 16, 2014 12:06
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"Cardiac" posted:The issue with Bakker, Simmons, Mieville and Card is that they have written some very good books, but they all have deplorable opinions. Do you seriously lump China Mieville in with those other guys?
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Oct 16, 2014 12:57
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The Supreme Court posted:Do you seriously lump China Mieville in with those other guys? cardiac never wastes an opportunity to smug out at china mieville for being a stupid dumbdumb leftist.
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Oct 16, 2014 13:32
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Cardiac posted:So why do we keep discussing Bakker then? People sometimes talk about Gor in this thread too.
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Oct 16, 2014 13:36
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nutranurse posted:
I think Bakker is a good, but flawed writer. That makes him interesting. If he has a fatal flaw, though, it's this thing I quoted above. He creates a world where people can literally do magic but finds the idea that women might be able to escape oppression unrealistic. It reminds me of how Ender's Game actually shows the opposite of what Card thinks it is about. Getting authors to really explore their bad ideas often leads to the demonstration (at least to other people) of the flaws in those ideas. The idea that we shouldn't read or should avoid those books because they are about bad ideas is asinine.
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Oct 16, 2014 15:01
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regularizer posted:I'm about a quarter of the way through City of Stairs and it's great. Team Sigrud all the way Dude owns. Seldom Posts posted:
Could you actually go into a little more detail on this? It's been a long time since I read Ender's Game so I'm not trying to coax an argument or anything, I'm just genuinely curious about the details (and yes, I know Card is a douche regarding some of his opinions, if that has something to do with it).
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Oct 16, 2014 15:17
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Cpt. Mahatma Gandhi posted:Could you actually go into a little more detail on this? It's been a long time since I read Ender's Game so I'm not trying to coax an argument or anything, I'm just genuinely curious about the details (and yes, I know Card is a douche regarding some of his opinions, if that has something to do with it). Well, my recollection is that Card thinks the point is that you can't evaluate morality without intention, and that Ender is innocent of the individual murders and the genocide he commits because he never formed any intention to do those things. But, it's clear from the writing and the story that you could never do those things without forming an intention unless you were willfully blind or in an entirely implausible situation. This is most clear with regard to the individual murders, where the writing just obviously glosses over the fact that this super-genius kid is not able to tell that he's obviously killed someone. I think you could make a similar argument with regard to the genocide, but in even if you don't buy it in that case, the situation itself is so contrived that it becomes clear that would impossible to do something like that without knowing what you were doing. Anyway, that's a bit rushed, but I hope you get the idea of where I was going with it.
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Oct 16, 2014 15:25
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Seldom Posts posted:I think Bakker is a good, but flawed writer. That makes him interesting. If he has a fatal flaw, though, it's this thing I quoted above. He creates a world where people can literally do magic but finds the idea that women might be able to escape oppression unrealistic. Bakker does raise a legitimate point in his criticism of magic feminism. Look at WoT by comparison - women have equality and political power in the form of the Aes Sedai. Is this because of consciousness raising? Or organised protest? The dismantling of patriarchy? No. It's because they can explode your loving head. It's the Joss Whedon power-girl. Take a woman, drop her in a nightmarish patriarchy and then give her the ability to beat up near infinite rapists. Its a cartoon of feminism that doesn't help anybody, because its "strong independent woman" literally cannot exist in the real world. Esmenet I would argue is a good take on women's subjugation, I might even go so far as call it feminist. Her prostitution isn't a relentless degrading grind, but neither is it a sanitised risk-free occupation (like Whedon again with Firefly) - the oppression is there, but mixed in with small moments of joy. At times she even seems to enjoy it, although her nostalgia smacks of her just trying to rationalise it. Then in the second trilogy we see her oppresed more diffusely - she's the empress, the most powerful woman in the world, but nobody respects her because her power is seen to come entirely from Kellhus. Which to some extent it does, but the real tragedy is how it eclipses her actual talents, causing her to start doubting her own intelligence, despite her being introduced right from the start as more than a match for the likes of Akka or any non-Dunyain.
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Oct 16, 2014 15:48
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Bakker writes the most boring grimdarkest grimdark rapefantasy bullshit.
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Oct 16, 2014 16:24
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andrew smash posted:cardiac never wastes an opportunity to smug out at china mieville for being a stupid dumbdumb leftist. Mieville has been very vocal in his support for drum 'n bass music. We really don't want that sort of worldview to spread and corrupt fandom, now, do we?
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Oct 16, 2014 20:45
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BigSkillet posted:Mieville has been very vocal in his support for drum 'n bass music. Link, please. Am I gonna have to add him to my banned list with Piers Anthony and Marion Zimmer Bradley?
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Oct 16, 2014 20:52
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