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Norns posted:My nostalgia brain remembers these being a really fun read. I was a stupid tween at the time though. It's Piers Anthony. Avoid.
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May 13, 2015 18:27
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Norns posted:My nostalgia brain remembers these being a really fun read. I was a stupid tween at the time though. The first one sucks least, but that's damning with faint praise. If you absolutely must, stop there.
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May 13, 2015 18:43
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It's Piers Anthony, faint praise isn't damning, it's just about the best recommendation you can give.
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May 13, 2015 20:29
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Wade Wilson posted:Things are probably out of the bag right now anyway thanks to what the Fomor have been up to after the Red Court fiasco. Yeah, they mention at the end of Changes that (spoilering for thrawn527's benefit, since I don't think anyone's been two specific about the details yet) Central and South America are in a massive state of emergency and nobody can understand why, because the destruction of the Red Court took out every vampire who'd infiltrated key positions. One thing I like about Dresden is how each vampire court has a particular part of the world it sticks to; the White Court are North America; the Red Court are South America; the Black Court were Europe; and the Jade Court are East Asia. Come to think of it, since each vampire court seems to have the traits of whichever vampire portrayal is common to their region (at least insofar as the White Court are Buffy/Twilight/True Blood vampires and the Black Court are Bram Stoker's Dracula; I don't know how vampires are portrayed in South American genre fiction), I wonder if the Jade Court are all penanggalan? They've not really been featured in the series yet.
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May 13, 2015 21:18
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Lemniscate Blue posted:The first one sucks least, but that's damning with faint praise. If you absolutely must, stop there. Agreed.
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May 13, 2015 21:27
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Apoffys posted:Isn't that fairly standard in urban fantasy? Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but isn't that how magic is treated in series like Harry Potter, Rivers of London and Sandman Slim? There's usually some level of effort to keep it under wraps so the general populace doesn't find out, but they usually don't have to try very hard since nobody believes in magic. Books where magic is either common knowledge or a tightly kept secret seem far more rare to me. I'm talking how specifically in like Batman comics, Gotham PD doesn't acknowledge that Batman exists as a means of liability and yet when the Joker shows up in a cell, they shrug their shoulders and turn him in. Or how even most people within Gotham think he's nothing more than just an urban legend until they see him and even then, they'll know that nobody would believe them that they really saw him. That's what I mean by an open secret. If a wizard throws a fireball and a kid copies it on his phone, the wizard would shrug and ask "Who would believe you?" With our technology, millions would call "fake" on the Youtube comments and the wizard would be dismissed as a magician. I'd like to see an urban fantasy series where some sort of practitioner doesn't necessarily abuse the security of an open secret, but can or will use it to their advantage.
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May 13, 2015 21:34
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Benny the Snake posted:No, in Harry Potter, they Ministry of Magic would immediately wipe the memory of any muggle who witnessed any magic. That's pretty much what Dresden does. Even when Murphy was literally recorded killing a werewolf everyone called it a fake. It works against Harry but for the White Council/vampire courts/ect.
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May 13, 2015 21:38
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computer parts posted:Which hasn't really been elaborated anywhere outside of Side Jobs, right? I never read that book and was confused with who these Fomor guys were in Ghost Story. Assuming he is keeping their origin the same as the myth they started as a group of not-elves banished by the Danannan (Celtic founder/pantheon head, probable original owner of the Blackstaff, I think he confirmed that spoiler but can't recall) when he defeated them. Butcher explains in Ghost Story I think that they have since expanded from being a specific race to being more a confederation of similarly vanquished races/factions. Basically if someone tried to rub them out and were mostly successful like the White Court vs the Black Court or the groups alluded to in the Thomas novella who are supposed to have been taken down by the Void War and are hanging on to reality by a hair. In the Molly novella it is mentioned that they practice a lot of weird body modification on their footmen, something they picked up by mixing and matching the traits and abilities of all the different factions, giving them a sort of neo-lovecraftian/Lemurians from Rifts look. Given Butcher's penchant for nerd stuff and RPGs I'm assuming the Rifts-like description is intentional. So they are a bunch of races nearly wiped out by the existing supernatural order, who very very much want revenge and to reclaim their former position. Which on the face of it appears to match the ideology Harry speculates is behind the symbol carved on the wall in Small Favor - overthrow of restraints and conditions (the unseelie accords), let magic flow freely and rule (like it did in the pre-modern era, when these races would have been in power). I think we've only seen one "proper" formor (as opposed to their footmen) in the Marcone short, and he was REALLY low on the totem pole and implied to be on par with Harry strength-wise, given what it took to bring him down From a relevant story POV, they are the source of the putties Harry has to blitz through while solving the mystery and where he gets a bunch of his injuries leading up to his confrontation with <antagonist>
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May 13, 2015 21:41
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Wheat Loaf posted:Yeah, they mention at the end of Changes that (spoilering for thrawn527's benefit, since I don't think anyone's been two specific about the details yet) Central and South America are in a massive state of emergency and nobody can understand why, because the destruction of the Red Court took out every vampire who'd infiltrated key positions. I forget the name of the myth, but in the old thread someone pointed out there is an old story (Thai I think) of a humanoid water monster that would siphon off karma/spirit energy from the victim. But they were seen in a positive light in a few of the stories because they would eat the evil from people. Which would be an interesting take.
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May 13, 2015 21:46
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Doesn't a kappa do something like that?
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May 13, 2015 21:54
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I hope they are Jiangshi. I want to see how Harry reacts to green skinned hopping vampires suffering from rigor mortise.
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May 13, 2015 22:22
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Norns posted:My nostalgia brain remembers these being a really fun read. I was a stupid tween at the time though. They're not awful but they are dated at this point and it's anthony (and anthony -is- awful). If you want to read magic is accepted as a real thing there's better books, although they tend to post-apocolyptica in the most recent set. The Kate Daniels stuff goes there, for example, as do the Charlie Madigan books. There's a few others in that vein, although I can't remember the name offhand. One of the premises of the KD books is that magic<---->technology is a spectrum that varies with regards to time and the various central tenets, such as the Conservation of Mass, Energy, and Momentum behave differently depending on where you are (in time). Given that travel through time generates friction against that spectrum, when you eventually reach peak technology or peak magic you have a rebound/wave-motion effect as the spectrum normalizes, and then you start moving towards one of the poles again...We hit peak technology and during the first magic wave the planes fell out of the sky. The worldbuilding is interesting, but the story is mostly "Kate is a badass" which you may or may not enjoy depending on your taste in badassery.
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May 13, 2015 23:18
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Libriomancer book three reveals magic to the world in a brilliant way.
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May 13, 2015 23:41
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So I just finished "Foxglove Summer" and Daniel O'Malley's sequel to "The Rook"-"Stiletto"-isn't comming out for another month and only electronically  I have "A Plain-Dealing Villain", the latest Daniel Faust book, but I kinda feel like decompressing a bit from that series. I'm looking for another urban fantasy series and my tastes are definetly more towards the Rivers of London/The Rook spectrum of minority/female protagonists and mindful writers. Or at the very least, something like the David Faust series where it reads like something I'd watch on HBO. Any suggestions? And on that note, what's the consesus on "The Wolves of London"? I've seen it in my bookstore and I've been curious about it.
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May 14, 2015 00:42
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Benny the Snake posted:So I just finished "Foxglove Summer" and Daniel O'Malley's sequel to "The Rook"-"Stiletto"-isn't comming out for another month and only electronically Check out London Falling by Paul Cornell.
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May 14, 2015 01:18
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Ornamented Death posted:Check out London Falling by Paul Cornell. I like that he is also a former dr who writer. But I do wonder if you can't throw a rock in London without hitting one.
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May 14, 2015 01:36
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Why do the covers of the Dresden Files books look more and more like David Gemmell's Jerusalem man, as they progress?
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May 14, 2015 01:48
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coyo7e posted:Why do the covers of the Dresden Files books look more and more like David Gemmell's Jerusalem man, as they progress? Because Chris McGrath is terrible.
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May 14, 2015 02:07
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ImpAtom posted:Yeah, almost no books are willing to openly reveal magic because it requires basically a drastically different worldsetting. Which is one reason why I absolutely love Unbound's plot arc/.
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May 14, 2015 02:53
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Ornamented Death posted:Check out London Falling by Paul Cornell. And while I'm here, I really enjoyed "American Gods", I take it it's more Magical Realism than Urban Fantasy. I've heard how there's a long tradition of MR within Latin America, are there any UF books or writers from Latin America as well?
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May 14, 2015 05:23
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Benny the Snake posted:So I just finished "Foxglove Summer" and Daniel O'Malley's sequel to "The Rook"-"Stiletto"-isn't comming out for another month and only electronically Where are you getting this? Amazon seems to have it releasing in January 2016.
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May 14, 2015 05:52
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Zore posted:Where are you getting this? Amazon seems to have it releasing in January 2016. Benny the Snake fucked around with this message at 06:05 on May 14, 2015 |
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May 14, 2015 05:58
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Benny the Snake posted:I asked my local Barnes and Noble a couple weeks ago. Yeah, it looks like the release was recently pushed back another six months to next January. 
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May 14, 2015 06:03
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Zore posted:Yeah, it looks like the release was recently pushed back another six months to next January.
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May 14, 2015 06:06
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Benny the Snake posted:I mean, does London just call to UF writers like Seattle does to Cyberpunk writers? There's only a few cities with enough personality and renown to pull off an urban fantasy, imo. LA, NY, Vegas, Chicago, London. SF and Boston, maybe. You stage your UF in Chicago or LA and I've got a mental image of the setting immediately. Indianapolis or Oklahoma City? Nobody but locals will have any idea about the setting. That matters, imo.
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May 14, 2015 07:25
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Khizan posted:There's only a few cities with enough personality and renown to pull off an urban fantasy, imo. LA, NY, Vegas, Chicago, London. SF and Boston, maybe. There's a bunch of similar cities you can pull off. It just depends on tone. Atlanta if you want the southern hospitality, New Orleans Mardis Gras and Voodoo, Cairo for Mummies (even if it's a bad fit per the locals it'd still work). London has been popular recently but not overly so.
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May 14, 2015 07:31
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Dienes posted:Which is one reason why I absolutely love Unbound's plot arc/. This is not how to use spoiler tags. Benny the Snake posted:So I just finished "Foxglove Summer" and Daniel O'Malley's sequel to "The Rook"-"Stiletto"-isn't comming out for another month and only electronically Have you read Worm? It's not set in London, it has a female protagonist, and it certainly seemed like something HBO or Netflix might pick up if the author could catch a break. It's superheroes rather than wizards, but might make for a change of pace if all you've been doing is magicmagicmagic these last few weeks/months. https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2011/06/11/1-1/
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May 14, 2015 08:43
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I took another quick flick through Broken Homes and I think if you pay attention to how Lesley is written you can guess at the twist that's coming at the end. I suppose the big question is whether she allied with the Faceless Man between the last book and this one, or if there's a moment in this book where she decides to go over to his side. It's hard to tell, but I suppose that could be a question for Foxglove Summer, which I'm looking forward to. Speaking of which, did someone say it's been pushed back in the UK? Amazon says it's still due out for this July.
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May 14, 2015 09:12
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Zore posted:Where are you getting this? Amazon seems to have it releasing in January 2016. Damnation, i was excited for a second till i looked up Amazon UK; 2020 release date for £7.99, hopefully a placeholder until nearer release. 
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May 14, 2015 09:42
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Wheat Loaf posted:I took another quick flick through Broken Homes and I think if you pay attention to how Lesley is written you can guess at the twist that's coming at the end. I suppose the big question is whether she allied with the Faceless Man between the last book and this one, or if there's a moment in this book where she decides to go over to his side. It's hard to tell, but I suppose that could be a question for Foxglove Summer, which I'm looking forward to. I don't have the book to check with, but I read it as faceless dude using the dead woman at the start of the book as a bait for lesley in the same way team police was trying to use the staff making to bait him out
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May 14, 2015 09:42
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Grundulum posted:This is not how to use spoiler tags. Seconding this. The whole thing is a lightly edited first draft, but it really is quite good.
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May 14, 2015 16:05
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Error 404 posted:Seconding this. And third. Worm is incredible.
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May 14, 2015 16:39
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Wheat Loaf posted:I took another quick flick through Broken Homes and I think if you pay attention to how Lesley is written you can guess at the twist that's coming at the end. I suppose the big question is whether she allied with the Faceless Man between the last book and this one, or if there's a moment in this book where she decides to go over to his side. It's hard to tell, but I suppose that could be a question for Foxglove Summer, which I'm looking forward to. Foxglove Summer is already out? Stiletto was the book that got pushed back. edit: Foxglove Summer is out in Hardcover and ebook, paperback is out in July. The Fool fucked around with this message at 18:01 on May 14, 2015 |
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May 14, 2015 17:59
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Khizan posted:There's only a few cities with enough personality and renown to pull off an urban fantasy, imo. LA, NY, Vegas, Chicago, London. SF and Boston, maybe. The Joanne Walker books are set in Seattle, which I appreciated when I was younger. I haven't read any of them since I was in my late teens, though, so I don't know how well they hold up.
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May 14, 2015 18:34
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Grundulum posted:This is not how to use spoiler tags. I'd like to ask again, given how there's a rich tradition of Magical Realism within Latin America, are there any Latin American/Hispanic UF authors out there?
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May 14, 2015 19:51
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Carlos Zafón was already mentioned, he's Spanish. Probably the best place to start is The Angel's Game. He's more on the magical realism side, though.
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May 14, 2015 20:45
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anilEhilated posted:Carlos Zafón was already mentioned, he's Spanish. Probably the best place to start is The Angel's Game.
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May 14, 2015 21:10
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Benny the Snake posted:I'd like to ask again, given how there's a rich tradition of Magical Realism within Latin America, are there any Latin American/Hispanic UF authors out there? You might like Half-Resurrection Blues.
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May 14, 2015 21:51
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Megazver posted:You might like Half-Resurrection Blues. Benny the Snake fucked around with this message at 22:35 on May 14, 2015 |
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May 14, 2015 22:30
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Benny the Snake posted:It looks interesting! What's the goonsensus? I don't believe there is one. I've read it, though. It's a good read. The voice is the strongest part of the book. It's very snappy and vernacular, written from the perspective of someone who enjoys being an eloquent motherfucker just for the gently caress of it. I mean, he's really good at it. It's fun to read. The story is a bit on the simplistic side, but quite good for a first book in a UF series, and, once you think about it, the protagonist isn't... a very complicated man, but I enjoyed it. An amusing thing to me, as a Russian, was that the author is obviously Tumblr-level into the identity politics poo poo with a bit of a chip on his shoulder and it shows. The main character is Puerto-Rican and every non-negative character, like fifteen of them, is a glorious Person of Color and the only whites are the villain, the stereotypical old powerful white guy who orders the protagonist around who's probably a future villain anyway, a few clueless annoying hipsters and a somewhat sympathetic Hasidic Jew. (Because Jews are kiiiinda minorities, I guess, especially when they go Hasidic?) But he later goes evil anyway BECAUSE gently caress HIM, STILL WHITE. It's subtle and it didn't spoil my enjoyment, heck, added to it actually, as I started playing the minority bingo halfway through the book.
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May 15, 2015 00:14
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