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Azathoth posted:I got a part way through book 5, I think, and it hadn't really gotten much better by the time I gave up. The world and magic were becoming clearer, but he was still introducing new characters and I just ran out of steam to keep going. I gave up after reading the whole first book, but you summarized my beef with it and the reason why reading descriptions later books didn't interest me enough to continue pretty well. The first is a huge turnoff for me unless done very well, and the second is something I'd be dubious about but could handle if it was done really well and didn't cooexist with the first. The combination of those two things is worse than the sum of it's parts - slow/little explanation can be good if you got to stuck with some really good characters and got to get a good feel for them, but that didn't happen because you were lucky to get more than two or three chapters with half the characters. Character swapping could be good if you got a really good feel for the world and what was going on.. and that didn't happen.
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May 28, 2015 13:14
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Azathoth posted:I got a part way through book 5, I think, and it hadn't really gotten much better by the time I gave up. The world and magic were becoming clearer, but he was still introducing new characters and I just ran out of steam to keep going. That's a valid summary I think (enough that I knew you were talking about Malazan without any specific tells). Personally I powered through to like Book 8 because I was on a long trip with no other reading material, but I found it a profound slog. Ultimately, I felt like I was reading someone's incredibly convoluted GURPS campaign: all setting, no characters, and the story was a hot mess. Very few of the characters had depth as people beyond their status as Dragonball Z - esque Power Level 9000000 robots; there didn't seem to be any coherent overarching plot narrative beyond "check this poo poo out." The world was interesting and the mechanics of everything were neat to read about, but there just wasn't any narrative depth. The story wasn't about anything. That and good lord inserting fifteen extra apostrophes into every other word is not good writing. That's been a pet peeve of mine for years and Malazan did not do itself any favors in that regard. I liked the earlier books more I think. As long as it was sticking close to its Black Company inspiration it wasn't a bad read. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 13:57 on May 28, 2015 |
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May 28, 2015 13:54
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Didn't malazan start because of a GURPS campaign? lmao
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May 28, 2015 14:07
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angel opportunity posted:Didn't malazan start because of a GURPS campaign? lmao  maaaaaaybe . . . .I don't want to be too harsh on the series because it did have some really great aspects and I can understand why people like it. Hell, one of my favorite fantasy books was based on a D&D campaign setting (Lawrence Watt-Evans' The Misenchanted Sword). Malazan just collected almost all my fantasy pet peeves in one place. Only way I'd be more biased against it is if Erikson had somehow inserted a bunch of random King Arthur references. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 14:15 on May 28, 2015 |
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May 28, 2015 14:12
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I've never read any of Malazan, but my mental image of it is DBZ with greatcoats in a barren wasteland
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May 28, 2015 14:20
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Amberskin posted:The new Expanse novel (Nemesis Games) is out in Amazon. You sure about that? It's showing a release date of June 2 for me. Next Tuesday. 
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May 28, 2015 15:53
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test
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May 28, 2015 16:39
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Kesper North posted:You sure about that? It's showing a release date of June 2 for me. Next Tuesday. Oh, you are kinda right. I've got a mail this morning, but just read it in diagonal. It can be ordered now (18.39 USD hardcover, 12.99 USD kindle) to be delivered on june 2.
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May 28, 2015 16:45
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Amberskin posted:The new Expanse novel (Nemesis Games) is out in Amazon. June 2 states side.
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May 28, 2015 17:15
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I will say that the general gist of Deadhouse Gates, an expansionist rationalist empire become snarled up by centuries of buried mysticism in a foreign land, was absolutely fantastic, and the first third gave me wonderful Morrowind-vibes. Just so y'all don't think I have some all consuming hatred of these books.
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May 28, 2015 17:20
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Vorik posted:test fail
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May 28, 2015 17:26
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Jack2142 posted:The Witcher is a solid series although it is incomplete in English atm... I would put it on par with the darkness in ASOIAF and if you liked the games it is a really good read that give backstory to them (although none is really needed) Unlike ASOIAF, the Witcher has a sense of humor that isn't just a jerk being a jerk to other jerks though. While it's still there in the games the fairy tale vibe is a bit more pronounced in the books as well.
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May 28, 2015 21:13
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Does Charles Stross have any books that aren't about an intolerable smug Mary Sue that's (usually) right about everything because he's the computer guy? I mostly enjoyed Accelerando outside of Manfred, so I picked up Atrocity Archives, and well I'm 0 for 2.
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May 29, 2015 03:42
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McNerd posted:Does Charles Stross have any books that aren't about an intolerable smug Mary Sue that's (usually) right about everything because he's the computer guy? I mostly enjoyed Accelerando outside of Manfred, so I picked up Atrocity Archives, and well I'm 0 for 2. The Merchant Princes series might be more to your taste, unless you're a political conservative (but then, if you're conservative, you probably wouldn't be reading Stross anyway).
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May 29, 2015 05:03
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Selachian posted:The Merchant Princes series might be more to your taste, unless you're a political conservative (but then, if you're conservative, you probably wouldn't be reading Stross anyway). Well, he could, but then the genre would be horror.
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May 29, 2015 05:22
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So despite being armed with the pile of suggested books I'm reading Revelation Space in the kindle app. Has anyone else read it on an iPhone 6 at default font size? I am getting whiplash from view point changes being separated only by a paragraph break. Also the Audible version combines an accented narrator with enough pronouns I can't automatically parse the spelling of, so I find myself reading only.
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May 29, 2015 05:31
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McNerd posted:Does Charles Stross have any books that aren't about an intolerable smug Mary Sue that's (usually) right about everything because he's the computer guy? I mostly enjoyed Accelerando outside of Manfred, so I picked up Atrocity Archives, and well I'm 0 for 2. I don't think Halting State, Rule 34, Glasshouse, or Singularity Space had IT Godz in them. Give them a shot. Also Bob does starts to tread a somewhat less smooth and smugly perfect road later on in the series, but if you didn't like Archives it's probably best you stay away from the rest. And I was the same way on Accelerando, Manfred is boring and I was very happy when it appeared Stross had gotten tired with him too and promptly discarded him in favor of his much more interesting extended family. Also, I haven't seen mention of it in the thread, but Tanith Lee's death this past Sunday has hit me really hard. I only recently read Bite the Sun and was very pleased to see a much more vibrant exploration of the themes she explored in the Claidi Journals that I wolfed down when I was younger. Worst of all, the big publishing houses thought she was a stone they could no longer squeeze sales out of, and she had apparently had a sizable number of books and short stories tucked away in a cupboard that no one would publish. Hopefully some of them will eventually see the light of day. ...embarrassingly, the Four-BEE Series and the Claidi Journals were actually the only books of her's I read, and while just those were enough to make me pick up her books as soon as I saw them, I had no idea she was such a prolific author. Any suggestions as to which of her works are must-reads? Combed Thunderclap fucked around with this message at 05:39 on May 29, 2015 |
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May 29, 2015 05:37
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Sextro posted:So despite being armed with the pile of suggested books I'm reading Revelation Space in the kindle app. Has anyone else read it on an iPhone 6 at default font size? I am getting whiplash from view point changes being separated only by a paragraph break. There are multiple versions of the audiobook, who is the narrator for the audible version? I like john lee well enough, he did the house of suns audiobook which i enjoyed a lot. The revelation space audiobook though suffers from some of the book's structure, the viewpoint jumps around between sylveste/volyova/khouri fairly frequently and in short segments, and the audiobook recording doesn't offer any indication that you're switching viewpoints other than a barely longer pause between paragraphs. It can be a little jarring. If I hadn't already read the book, i would probably have problems following it.
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May 29, 2015 06:14
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andrew smash posted:There are multiple versions of the audiobook, who is the narrator for the audible version? I like john lee well enough, he did the house of suns audiobook which i enjoyed a lot. The revelation space audiobook though suffers from some of the book's structure, the viewpoint jumps around between sylveste/volyova/khouri fairly frequently and in short segments, and the audiobook recording doesn't offer any indication that you're switching viewpoints other than a barely longer pause between paragraphs. It can be a little jarring. If I hadn't already read the book, i would probably have problems following it. It's John Lee. I like the narration itself well enough. Just has formatting issues.
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May 29, 2015 06:36
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Drifter posted:Well, he could, but then the genre would be horror. Merchant Princes is weirdly generous towards the Bush/Cheney administration, its like Stross looked at their post-9/11 trampling of the Constitution and thought "What could this over-reaction possibly be a cover for? Oh, an interdimensional criminal syndicate is hostile to the US government."
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May 29, 2015 06:48
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Drunk Driver Dad posted:I'm almost done with the last Farseer book that's out, and i will need a new fantasy series to read. I will say I'm not that picky, as long as the plot is somewhat interesting or the world building is good(the longer the better, for the most part) and I can just kind of lose myself in the series, that's all I care about. I actually even don't mind some of the forgotten realms stuff. - The Riftwar books are good overall but some are much better than others. The original trilogy, betrayal at krondor, prince of the blood, king's buccaneer, and most of the serpentwar aren't bad. The more the series gets in to cosmic stuff the more "eh" that stuff gets but there's only a few times where it's really annoying (much of Chaoswar's universe exposition). Give the original trilogy a read and if you like it try the riftwar legacy stuff. Some characters aren't great but nobody's as bad as Fitz is. - The Cycle of Arawn trilogy was $0.99 awhile back when I got it and it wasn't bad. Never read anything else by the author (if they have other works) though.
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May 29, 2015 06:51
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Sextro posted:So despite being armed with the pile of suggested books I'm reading Revelation Space in the kindle app. Has anyone else read it on an iPhone 6 at default font size? I am getting whiplash from view point changes being separated only by a paragraph break. Just started reading Revelation Space myself, and it's the same thing on a Kindle. Sometimes there aren't even a paragraph break, just suddenly the pov changes in the middle of a paragraph. It's pretty annoying, and I'm just hoping it gets better once all the names and places are more familiar. First time I can remember this happening on my Kindle though.
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May 29, 2015 07:46
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angel opportunity posted:I've never read any of Malazan, but my mental image of it is DBZ with greatcoats in a barren wasteland Nah, that is the Dark Tower series by King. Or WoT for that matter. Or anything written by Sanderson.
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May 29, 2015 07:53
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Malazan is a great series. It's full of action, has a large cast of very memorable characters, and takes place in a world with scope and history. There's a lot going on and it's all very thought-out. It has a "show-don't-tell" story which spawns several continents and has a satisfying ending that ties together all those disparate casts of characters people were talking about. The writing is good and there's a lot of humor. The people talking down the series by saying it's a GURPS campaign or DBZ are seriously underselling the quality of the series.RVProfootballer posted:I read up to halfway through book 9 and agree completely, hah. People do stuff for no discernable reason, the ultimate badass from the first half of a book is killed by a single punch from the newer ultimate badass, there's this whole seemingly elaborate back story and world system that is actually just a super thin veneer because it is just the backdrop fluff for a D&D campaign ("no, he just totally isn't going to explain it to the reader, it's all really awesome and definitely exists though"), etc etc. There are like three good books in there, but they were the more locally-focused ones (the tiste back story one? Deadhouse Gates was also good) because the world building is a mess. Like don't listen to this guy complaining about no resolution to a story he was one book away from finishing. The Ninth Layer fucked around with this message at 08:05 on May 29, 2015 |
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May 29, 2015 08:02
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Sjonkel posted:Just started reading Revelation Space myself, and it's the same thing on a Kindle. Sometimes there aren't even a paragraph break, just suddenly the pov changes in the middle of a paragraph. It's pretty annoying, and I'm just hoping it gets better once all the names and places are more familiar. Often pirated ebooks have the formatting all screwed up and are missing things like line breaks. Not that I'm saying your copy is pirated... 
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May 29, 2015 08:14
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Evil Fluffy posted:- The Riftwar books are good overall but some are much better than others. The original trilogy, betrayal at krondor, prince of the blood, king's buccaneer, and most of the serpentwar aren't bad. The more the series gets in to cosmic stuff the more "eh" that stuff gets but there's only a few times where it's really annoying (much of Chaoswar's universe exposition). The Daughter/Servant/Mistress of the Empire books show the other side of the Riftwar at roughly the same time as the Riftwar, and they are best books in that particular series.
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May 29, 2015 09:30
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Khizan posted:The Daughter/Servant/Mistress of the Empire books show the other side of the Riftwar at roughly the same time as the Riftwar, and they are best books in that particular series. I'm only really familiar with his work through the Betrayal at Krondor game, but it's kinda lovely that Feist lifted Kelewan from the RPG setting of Tekumel though. He claims that while it's absolutely true, he wasn't aware of Tekumel because the D&D campaign that the Riftwar books were based on (Midkemia Press was an early third party publisher of D&D supplements after all) was run by someone else, who introduced the idea of one world invading a standard Medieval fantasy realm. http://ferretbrain.com/articles/article-134.html (scroll down to Why I Only Buy His Books Second-Hand)
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May 29, 2015 10:10
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Hedrigall posted:Often pirated ebooks have the formatting all screwed up and are missing things like line breaks. Not that I'm saying your copy is pirated... The first guy was explicitly talking about the Kindle app which is tied to your Kindle store account, I don't think there is a way to load stuff you didn't get straight from amazon into it without a lot of extra work.
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May 29, 2015 13:47
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Combed Thunderclap posted:Also, I haven't seen mention of it in the thread, but Tanith Lee's death this past Sunday has hit me really hard. I only recently read Bite the Sun and was very pleased to see a much more vibrant exploration of the themes she explored in the Claidi Journals that I wolfed down when I was younger. Worst of all, the big publishing houses thought she was a stone they could no longer squeeze sales out of, and she had apparently had a sizable number of books and short stories tucked away in a cupboard that no one would publish. Hopefully some of them will eventually see the light of day. As the Person Who Constantly Recommends Tanith Lee in the recommendation thread, I suggest you try the "Tales from the Flat Earth" books (Night's Master, et al). The Secret Books of Paradys are good if you like Gothic fantasy, and The Silver Metal Lover is a terrific romance.
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May 29, 2015 13:48
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McNerd posted:Does Charles Stross have any books that aren't about an intolerable smug Mary Sue that's (usually) right about everything because he's the computer guy? I mostly enjoyed Accelerando outside of Manfred, so I picked up Atrocity Archives, and well I'm 0 for 2. If you liked Accelerando read The Quantum Thief. And even if you didn't. Everybody just read TQT damnit.
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May 29, 2015 14:12
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andrew smash posted:The first guy was explicitly talking about the Kindle app which is tied to your Kindle store account, I don't think there is a way to load stuff you didn't get straight from amazon into it without a lot of extra work. You can just load the files to the kindle directory on the device or your account has an Amazon e-mail address you can send files to. It doesn't sync progress across devices last I knew, however.
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May 29, 2015 14:16
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andrew smash posted:The first guy was explicitly talking about the Kindle app which is tied to your Kindle store account, I don't think there is a way to load stuff you didn't get straight from amazon into it without a lot of extra work. There's a send-to-kindle app that simplifies to to two or three clicks. File types still matter, though.
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May 29, 2015 14:20
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Ornamented Death posted:There's a send-to-kindle app that simplifies to to two or three clicks. File types still matter, though. I knew you could send to kindle, i didn't know you could send stuff to your ipad and read it in the kindle app though. Interesting.
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May 29, 2015 14:28
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There are a ton of official Kindle store books with awful formatting from the publisher. I've refunded a few of them for that reason 
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May 29, 2015 14:47
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pseudorandom name posted:Merchant Princes is weirdly generous towards the Bush/Cheney administration, its like Stross looked at their post-9/11 trampling of the Constitution and thought "What could this over-reaction possibly be a cover for? Oh, an interdimensional criminal syndicate is hostile to the US government." I'm not sure if the end-of-series nuclear holocaust counts toward being particularly 'generous' 
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May 29, 2015 14:57
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The Ninth Layer posted:Malazan is a great series. It's full of action, has a large cast of very memorable characters, and takes place in a world with scope and history. There's a lot going on and it's all very thought-out. It has a "show-don't-tell" story which spawns several continents and has a satisfying ending that ties together all those disparate casts of characters people were talking about. The writing is good and there's a lot of humor. The people talking down the series by saying it's a GURPS campaign or DBZ are seriously underselling the quality of the series. If he read 8.5 books of a 10 book series and couldn't be arsed to finish, it's probably not a compelling series. I've read the first 4, and will probably read the rest. The series to me is frustrating because it has moments of good writing and compelling action along with moments of "here are the notes of my DnD campaign." The main thing is read to read other non-fantasy stuff as a palate cleanser between books so you don't go insane.
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May 29, 2015 16:18
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Thanks as always for the tips, everyone. Nevvy Z posted:If you liked Accelerando read The Quantum Thief. Way ahead of you, but yes, everybody do that. Speaking of, anybody checked out Rajaniemi's Collected Fictions? I assume it lives up to the gushing NPR review?
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May 29, 2015 16:43
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The Ninth Layer posted:Malazan is a great series. It's full of action, has a large cast of very memorable characters, and takes place in a world with scope and history. At best, the characters each have a quirk that distinguishes them from the myriad of other identical characters, and he could have swapped most of them for another character at random between books and it wouldn't have affected the story one bit. The characters are interchangeable cogs who serve to move the story of the world along, and they are all very one-dimensional.
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May 29, 2015 16:43
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andrew smash posted:I knew you could send to kindle, i didn't know you could send stuff to your ipad and read it in the kindle app though. Interesting. Kindle on ipad/android or w/e gets its own send to kindle address, separate from the one on your dedicated kindle device.
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May 29, 2015 16:54
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If you are an active reader and you enjoy big sweeping stories, you'll most likely enjoy Malazan. If you aren't an active reader, you probably won't like Malazan.
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May 29, 2015 17:19
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