|
Arcsquad12 posted:Are there any decent Gunpowder Era fantasy novels out there? And don't say Harry Turtledove. The third and fourth of Gemmell's Rigante novels are set in the gunpowder era. Also technically his Jon Shannow novels, although those are post-apocalyptic and society has fallen back to the point where the percussion cap has just been rediscovered. Also Amber, sort of. Our world is contemporary, but Amber itself is mediaeval and a major plot point revolves around Corwin introducing gunpowder warfare to it.
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2015 00:02
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 16, 2024 06:09 |
|
|
navyjack posted:History book, eh? It's basically not-France (re-)colonizing not-North Africa . There's not even a little bit of nuance in there. Megazver posted:Oh no. Seriously, it's 201x and dude writes a book like that, main plot could have been straight out of cheap 19th-century hoo-rah trash.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2015 00:44
|
|
|
got this in the mail https://www.amazon.com/Texas-Israeli-War-1999-Howard-Waldrop/dp/0345277368/
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2015 00:56
|
|
|
Snuffman posted:Stick with just Hitchhiker's and Restaurant. Maybe "Life"...but the series goes downhill "Life" onwards. I stand by this. The back end of the series is worth it just for the bit on sandwiches.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2015 01:46
|
|
|
Thirding or fourthing the Powder Mage series.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2015 01:53
|
|
|
fritz posted:It's basically not-France (re-)colonizing not-North Africa . There's not even a little bit of nuance in there. You don't need to keep hyping it for me, I already bought it.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2015 02:07
|
|
|
I thought The Thousand Names had a very readable style. But I didn't get very far. There's a saying that, if you read a fantasy novel close enough, you can tell when the author started touching themselves. With that book, I think it started with the word "battle square" and didn't stop until 100 pages of tactical formation descriptions later.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2015 02:09
|
|
|
fritz posted:It's basically not-France (re-)colonizing not-North Africa . There's not even a little bit of nuance in there. So? I'm failing to see a problem beyond reactionary hand-wringing. 'If we never think about it, it never happened!' PS. also buying the book now.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2015 03:00
|
|
|
thehomemaster posted:So? I'm failing to see a problem beyond reactionary hand-wringing. I haven't read this book, but there is a MASSIVE difference between writing something that parallels history and writing something that glorifies our ugly history. Believe it or not, but this is important.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2015 03:34
|
|
|
fritz posted:This book is hundreds of pages of white colonialists regularly outwitting and blowing up indigenous non-white strongly-religious people wholesale. At least it's not Harry Turtledove
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2015 03:43
|
|
|
blue squares posted:I haven't read this book, but there is a MASSIVE difference between writing something that parallels history and writing something that glorifies our ugly history. Believe it or not, but this is important. Maybe the people complaining about it should say how much of it they've read?
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2015 03:45
|
|
|
fritz posted:It's basically not-France (re-)colonizing not-North Africa . There's not even a little bit of nuance in there. I'm pretty sure he just wanted to rewrite Sharpe's Rifles with some magic tacked on. In that, he succeeded.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2015 03:52
|
|
|
blue squares posted:I haven't read this book, but there is a MASSIVE difference between writing something that parallels history and writing something that glorifies our ugly history. Believe it or not, but this is important. Should German publishers (or any really) publish Mein Kampf y/n?
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2015 03:54
|
|
|
Drifter posted:Maybe the people complaining about it should say how much of it they've read? I bought and read the entirety of the first book in the series based on a mini-review of the second that made it sound like the kind of thing that would be totally up my alley.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2015 03:56
|
|
|
thehomemaster posted:Should German publishers (or any really) publish Mein Kampf y/n? Not the same thing. Plus, I said nothing about censorship. People can express themselves however they want, as long as they aren't directly hurting people. But some forms of expression are better than others.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2015 04:06
|
|
|
Well that's arguable, and I was using it to gauge your stance(s).
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2015 04:09
|
|
|
^^^^^I have read it and it doesn't try to glorify colonialism, if anything it portrays the Euro-parallel occupying country's ruling class and top military leadership as out-of-touch, decaying failures of institutions for stubbornly trying to hold onto their colonies way past the point of futility and stupidity, and also for holding onto social policies & traditions that treat their own lower classes very poorly. edit:(the Django Wexler series that is)savinhill posted:I started reading Low Town by Daniel Polansky today and, man, it's really good so far. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9755449-low-town?from_search=true It's been out a few years already, don't know how it escaped my attention all that time, this is the low-magic, dark type fantasy I like the best. I finished this and liked it a lot. It was a noir novel in a slum-city fantasy setting. It had a great plot featuring military wizards experimenting with Lovecraftian dark magic and it's aftermath. It also had some good characters, including a first for me of a medieval-fantasy rapper. Really fast, enjoyable read. savinhill fucked around with this message at 04:27 on Mar 31, 2015 |
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2015 04:22
|
|
|
fritz posted:It's basically not-France (re-)colonizing not-North Africa . There's not even a little bit of nuance in there. I got a serious napoleon in Egypt vibe out of it.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2015 04:33
|
|
|
Arcsquad12 posted:Are there any decent Gunpowder Era fantasy novels out there? And don't say Harry Turtledove. H Beam Piper's Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen is pretty drat good.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2015 04:52
|
|
|
mllaneza posted:H Beam Piper's Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen is pretty drat good. Another series I just remembered with the gunpowder, cannons and all is Paul Kearney's Monarchies of God.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2015 05:49
|
|
|
vuk83 posted:I got a serious napoleon in Egypt vibe out of it. This is pretty much explicitly what's going on. Book one is Sherlock Napoleon in Magic Egypt, book two is the not-French revolution in Paris-London, and from the epilogue to 2, #3 will be the Holy War of the Grand Coalition. I guess there are less interesting portions of history you could jam wholesale into your fantasy 18th century setting?
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2015 06:06
|
|
|
Doesn't he know the Revolution was before Napoleon's reign!?! Gross negligence of history, appalling.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2015 06:11
|
|
|
Polikarpov posted:I'm pretty sure he just wanted to rewrite Sharpe's Rifles with some magic tacked on. In that, he succeeded. In which case, why bother? Sharpe is still awesome without extraneous magic. Perhaps fantasy wasn't the best word to describe what I'm after. I'm not so much about the magic as I am about a fictional world entering the industrial era. In that I've seen very few works outside of the novels suggested here. Before you guys told me, pretty much the only thing I noticed with this vibe was Fable 3.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2015 07:16
|
|
|
Read Pavane. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/599588.Pavane?from_search=true
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2015 07:43
|
|
|
savinhill posted:I finished this and liked it a lot. It was a noir novel in a slum-city fantasy setting. It had a great plot featuring military wizards experimenting with Lovecraftian dark magic and it's aftermath. It also had some good characters, including a first for me of a medieval-fantasy rapper. Really fast, enjoyable read. One thing I really liked about this series is that the protagonist is a crime lord who feels refreshingly gritty. He's not a slick talking con artist or some rapier-wielding prince of thieves or shadowy master assassin. He's a drug dealer who rules his patch because he arranges for anybody intruding on his turf to die, which I found to be a refreshing change of pace.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2015 11:19
|
|
|
fritz posted:This book is hundreds of pages of white colonialists regularly outwitting and blowing up indigenous non-white strongly-religious people wholesale. Non-fiction doesn't belong in the Sci-Fi thread. 
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2015 15:04
|
|
|
Interesting that Low Town/The Straight Razor Cure is getting this much buzz - Ferretbrain and Strange Horizons didn't like it at all.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2015 15:51
|
|
|
Arcsquad12 posted:Are there any decent Gunpowder Era fantasy novels out there? And don't say Harry Turtledove. The Half-Made World is about a conflict between magic train demons and magic gun demons in a U.S. style old-west colonial expansion setting. It's also really drat good.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2015 16:06
|
|
|
Seldom Posts posted:The Half-Made World is about a conflict between magic train demons and magic gun demons in a U.S. style old-west colonial expansion setting.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2015 16:50
|
|
|
Thirding it. It's one of my favorite fantasy novels I've read in a long while. The sort-of-sequel, The Rise of Ransom City, is also good.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2015 17:30
|
|
|
Rabbit Hill posted:Thirding it. It's one of my favorite fantasy novels I've read in a long while. The sort-of-sequel, The Rise of Ransom City, is also good. I mean, yeah, sort-of sequel, it's about different characters, but the first book just... fizzles.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2015 19:05
|
|
|
anilEhilated posted:Is it? I kind of waved over that one after not being able to finish The Revolutions but it might be worth a try. Does it actually continue the story from Half-made World? It takes place chronologically afterwards and has a few scenes with the original characters, but it's really more of a side-quel or something than a straightforward sequel. I liked it a whole lot though, it still touches on the frontier mythology of the original, but it's also really American Dream(tm)-ish.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2015 19:14
|
|
|
Apparently the new StoryBundle is a bunch of time travel books. Anything good? I know I don't hate Kevin J. Anderson, but I don't know if I like him enough to buy an entire bundle, because he can be hit-or-miss.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2015 21:27
|
|
|
Amberskin posted:Aaaand... I'm done with the Three Body Problem. Agreed, it owned. The juxtaposition of the Cultural Revolution bullshit with rear end in a top hat alien contact really made it special.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2015 21:45
|
|
|
Groke posted:Agreed, it owned. The juxtaposition of the Cultural Revolution bullshit with rear end in a top hat alien contact really made it special. The insights into chinese culture are nice. And, by the way, if the author were a westerner that hilarious computer construction project, solved simply adding more chinese people into the fray would be very close to a bad taste ethnical joke.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2015 22:29
|
|
|
savinhill posted:Another series I just remembered with the gunpowder, cannons and all is Paul Kearney's Monarchies of God. It has it's moments. It rather wanders tonally however and even the author is on record as saying the last book is rushed.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2015 23:24
|
|
|
Amberskin posted:The insights into chinese culture are nice. And, by the way, if the author were a westerner that hilarious computer construction project, solved simply adding more chinese people into the fray would be very close to a bad taste ethnical joke. its still bad taste, everything must be ethically pure imho
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2015 00:11
|
|
|
Haha you have to be kidding me, now the PC brigade are theorizing racist writing?
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2015 00:36
|
|
|
I started reading "The Reality Dsyfunction" by Peter Hamilton. It started great. Then I felt something was off when the space commie atheists, the edenist, started explaining how logical it was that they didn't believe in God in the way no atheist ever does. Then the book sets up the Adamist as the conflicting side as the space Christians. I've set the book down because I'm at the point now where it's been revealed that the convict indentured servant/slave is literally a space satanist there to prey on the space Christians. I caught a glimpse in the Wikipedia about souls from hell coming back, like Al Capone, and being the main villians. Did I pick up some Left Behind bullshit or does it actually get not dumb quickly, or is it space hell the whole way down
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2015 01:22
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 16, 2024 06:09 |
|
|
It's literally about souls coming back from the 'beyond' (which is an afterlife with a sort of Star Trek soft science justification, not a religious construct) and possessing people. Honestly as a ludicrous space opera conceit I think it's pretty cool, but I haven't read it since I was a teenager.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2015 01:28
|
|
