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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:Has anybody read the Iron Druid books? Amazon kept recommending them to me for ages and they looked like hot garbage. Eh, read the 1st one or two and see what you think, just don't expect to be challenged as a reader. I'd say they're kind of a low-rent Dresden Files. Which I see as the book equivalent of popcorn. Nothing nutritious but still a decent snack.
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Aug 22, 2015 03:08
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The Iron Druid's main character is literally invincible with unlimited magical power which he can use to do anything, so long as he's standing on Earth. If he's not standing on earth he also has a magical amulet that gives him invincibility and unlimited magical power. He has The Worlds Best Sword that he uses to kill a bunch ninjas in the first 20 pages and he also has the capability to live forever and ever (and have anyone he wants also live forever). He is really good at sex and the Goddess of Death loves him utterly. The very best part of the books is a single half-chapter in the third one where a thunder god talks about Thor a bit. It's fine.
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Aug 22, 2015 03:14
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They're super dumb but also super fun. You can burn through one in a couple hours, I suggest giving it a shot.
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Aug 22, 2015 05:07
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:Wild Animus is fantastically bad. The author gave away anywhere between 50,000 and 5,000,000 of free copies all over the place. It's absolutely everywhere, but nobody has ever purchased a copy. Old post but when I saw "I was given a copy at a Phish concert" I had to look it up and sure enough this is the same guy who was handing out copies of his book at a music festival I went to last year, although it was a different book than the one quoted here. I saw these otherwise nicely printed box sets lying all over the place and picked one up since I had no idea what it was and it came with a CD of music that's supposed to sync up with parts of the book. I got about two pages into it and I can't even remember what it was supposed to be about.
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Aug 25, 2015 18:56
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:Has anybody read the Iron Druid books? Amazon kept recommending them to me for ages and they looked like hot garbage. The main character, a millenia old druid, at one point talks about squeeing, verbatim, upon meeting Neil Gaiman at a con. Stay away.
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Aug 26, 2015 01:16
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Theglavwen posted:The main character, a millenia old druid, at one point talks about squeeing, verbatim, upon meeting Neil Gaiman at a con.
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Aug 26, 2015 02:05
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:Ugh, what is it with urban fantasy writers having Gaiman cameo in their story? I mean, I like the guy's writing okay but it's really obnoxious. It ruined the second Shadow Police book for me that the author felt the need to have Gaiman hog a huge amount of pagetime because he's so nice seriously you guys. He straight-up murders one of the protagonists, and it's still somehow played off like he's such a lovely man. There is also a scene where the grown-rear end detective protagonist squees over him, yes. The only acceptable Gaiman cameo was the one in the Simpsons.
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Aug 26, 2015 02:08
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Klaus88 posted:The only acceptable Gaiman cameo was the one in the Simpsons. excuse me but what does it feel like being in the Kingdom of Wrong 
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Aug 26, 2015 02:13
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The Vosgian Beast posted:Someone should do one of those readthroughs of the Brian Herbert dunebooks, because they are super-dumb in ways that are kind of interesting. I don't read any books, and I've never really been a big book reader but for whatever reason I was really into Dune in my teens and ended up reading the Brian Herbert Dune prequel trilogy about Robot Wars 10,000 years before Dune. My memory is pretty fuzzy but even back then I knew it was pure garbage, here's some of the highlights I can remember: -Robots have retained human slaves because "reasons", they've also employed super powerful brain in jar mechs in their army instead of robots because "reasons" -Really loving uncomfortable scene describing sex between two of the said brain in jars mentioned above. -The free humans aren't really concerned that robots have taken over like 90% of civilization until one robot kills one loving baby then they collectively lose their poo poo and decide its time to actually deal with this problem. -Space warp isn't discovered until something like halfway through the second book, so before that interplanetary travel takes years. Despite this both the robots and free humans have no issues managing vast space empires. I may be remembering this wrong but I'm pretty sure one of the characters blatantly tries to rationalize this by saying something like "Well european countries had no issues managing colonies on earth before the telegram so its not a big issue" -The climax of the book has the robots release a virus that kills 80% of the humans then send a super huge mech space fleet to wipe out the survivors. The humans finally prevail by amassing their own giant space fleet (despite society being described as falling apart as a result of said virus in the book), enabling god mode, and warping to all the robot planets and nuking the head robots of each planet. Keep in mind this is like 50 years or something after they've discovered warp travel and they just finally decided to get round to using it as a tactical advantage. I don't even remember what to the giant robot space fleet that was 100% certain to destroy whatever was left of humanity. Somebody could probably provide a much better description but that's the bad stuff I can recall off the top of my head 12 years later. Aside from that there was just general bad writing and piss poor shoe-horning of origin stories for every single thing mentioned in the original series. Probably also worth noting that I lost all interest in the series after reading through those. Were the sequels worth reading or just the same garbage?
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Aug 26, 2015 04:24
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:Ugh, what is it with urban fantasy writers having Gaiman cameo in their story? I mean, I like the guy's writing okay but it's really obnoxious. It ruined the second Shadow Police book for me that the author felt the need to have Gaiman hog a huge amount of pagetime because he's so nice seriously you guys. He straight-up murders one of the protagonists, and it's still somehow played off like he's such a lovely man. There is also a scene where the grown-rear end detective protagonist squees over him, yes. Same, it was just so jarring to suddenly have big name NEIL GAIMAN be an important figure in the story.
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Aug 26, 2015 04:34
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The Saddest Rhino posted:excuse me but what does it feel like being in the Kingdom of Wrong Please tell me that's Arthur.
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Aug 26, 2015 06:19
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22 Eargesplitten posted:Please tell me that's Arthur. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-KKYgmtqqg
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Aug 26, 2015 09:14
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1500quidporsche posted:I don't read any books, and I've never really been a big book reader but for whatever reason I was really into Dune in my teens and ended up reading the Brian Herbert Dune prequel trilogy about Robot Wars 10,000 years before Dune. My memory is pretty fuzzy but even back then I knew it was pure garbage, here's some of the highlights I can remember: I didn't read the robot wars stuff, but got tricked into the other prequels. One of the many things that pissed me off about them was that in the prequels, the Baron was a gay pedophile and was also completely inept at everything, ofttimes in a comedic fashion (Look how he botched the dinner party he held! What a fool!) For those of you who haven't read the original Dune, Baron Harkonnen is one of the antagonists, and in that book, he's renowned throughout the entire human race for being an expert manipulator, politician, tactician, and strategist. He manages to subvert someone whose lifetime of conditioning supposedly made him immune to manipulation, and is the only person in the known universe to have done so. He also convinces the space emperor to engage in some shady shenanigans on the DL with him, which nobody else could ever do. Probably one of the most ruthless and intelligent dudes in the series, and Baby Brian writes him as a loving stooge 
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Aug 26, 2015 15:47
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Well let's be fair: he was a gay pedophile in the original too.
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Aug 26, 2015 15:58
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:He is really good at sex and the Goddess of Death loves him utterly. It's always amusing when the weird mix of desperation and arrogance shows up with these kind of writers. It's not enough that their heroes can have attractive girlfriends, oh no, they have to be literal GODDESSES. Elmeister (sp?) and the goddess of magic, the Iron Druid and this goddess of death...where else does this pop up, I'm sure it does elsewhere too.
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Aug 29, 2015 06:09
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Theglavwen posted:The main character, a millenia old druid, at one point talks about squeeing, verbatim, upon meeting Neil Gaiman at a con. Is this better or worse than President Cory Doctorow and Vice President Wil Wheaton.
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Aug 29, 2015 06:14
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Cornwind Evil posted:It's always amusing when the weird mix of desperation and arrogance shows up with these kind of writers. It's not enough that their heroes can have attractive girlfriends, oh no, they have to be literal GODDESSES. I want to say that Patrick Rothfuss's series involves the main character loving some sort of faerie-queen figure who's basically a goddess of rapacious sexuality, and despite being an 18-year-old virgin, he satisfies her in a way that nobody ever has, possibly to the point that she actually falls in love with him? I'm not sure -- I haven't read these books, in large part because this is the subplot I heard about first. Elminster is kind of amazing in this capacity because it's not enough for Ed Greenwood to have him loving a goddess: he has to also have another girlfriend who's a super-powerful wizard and also crazy (because ladies, amirite?) and to have otherwise hosed his way across the Forgotten Realms, because why have one beautiful I have a lot of regrets about reading that novel.
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Aug 29, 2015 17:55
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Reading Ready player One right now. I can see why people like it, and I probably would myself if the material were handled by a competent author. Parts of it are just cringeworthy to read. And reading this thread I know there's no hope for an ending where the main character gets berated for wasting his life on (someone else's) nostalgia and living in a fantasy world. And the whole, my lead character is infallible in his knowledge of 80s stuff, he's even better than a corporation with it's own 80s research department, and the whole post break up scene where he gets fat buys a sex doll and defends masturbation, then totally does virtual exercise to get fit in his haptic suit... It's also just poorly written. I don't want to say it's worse than the pop-culture laden high fidelity knockoffs I tried to pen back then, but it's on about the same level.
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Aug 30, 2015 15:47
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Piers Anthony's Virtual Mode, the first in a series of four books. It begins with the heroine cutting herself in a school bathroom and thinking about how all the blood will be mistaken for someone's period. Later she plays a party game called "Naked Endurance," wherein she cuts herself some more, while naked. I don't think this has any impact on the plot, but it's described in horrible detail. Then the other protagonist/love interest comes along; he's a dimension-hopping wizard. He hides out in the heroine's garden shed, using an old bucket as a toilet. When he has to return to his homeworld, the heroine cuts herself again, letting the blood fall into the bucket and mingling it with his poo poo. Oh, and the dimension-hopper is shocked and horrified by her immodest clothing-- on his planet, women all wear diapers to hide their "genital contours," but this girl wears tight jeans. This is mentioned about once a page, lest we forget. The sequel, Fractal Mode I don't remember as well, but there was lots and lots of discussion of underwear. I think that people on one of the planets featured have different-colored undies that represent their social class, or something like that. There was also a weird attempted-rape scene where the victim escapes by magicking a deadly snake from her vagina (or someone else does that to save her). I didn't read any farther than that; although the third book in the series had an interesting-sounding premise (alternate Earth where evolution diverged around the Cambrian era and different sentient creatures evolved) I was too disgusted with the first two to pick it up. Supposedly the fourth involves horse-on-human sex as well.
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Aug 31, 2015 16:26
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I don't remember that, but it did have a graphic rape scene that was pretty traumatizing for 14-year-old me. Also child molestation.
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Aug 31, 2015 18:36
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 Can we go back to the military wank off fiction? That's usually horrible as well, but in an impersonal fashion, rather then the specific manner described in the last two posts.
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Aug 31, 2015 18:57
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^^^Didn't see your post when I was typing this. Should I delete it? The Incarnations of Immortality series had some pretty horrible stuff, too, especially the last one, And Eternity. Large chunks of it are basically a rape/pedophile apologist tract. There's a scene early on where a couple of young women are visiting some sort of goddess, and she transforms one of them into a man-- the transformed woman immediately rapes the other because she's just that lovely. Then the victim gets transformed too and rapes the other (now reverted to female) right back. The purpose of this exercise is to make them empathize with men, who according to Anthony are constantly struggling to avoid raping every (sexy) woman they see. Another subplot involves a 15-year-old prostitute and her relationship with a pedophile judge; he makes her dress up and act like a small child. This is portrayed as a perfectly healthy relationship for both of them. Apparently the sequel to that book (Under a Velvet Cloak) was so awful that Anthony had to vanity publish it, and it's wall-to-wall rape including a sex battle between siblings.
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Aug 31, 2015 19:03
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Hot on the heels of Ready player one, I started Michael chabon's telegraph avenue. I'm only about 120 pages in, and It's better written, but it's still a masturbatory nostalgia fest. This time for the 70s and it takes place in a 2004 where people still use 8 tracks. And it does the same thing where every time an album is mentioned it's followed by year and label in parenthesis.
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Aug 31, 2015 19:15
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Klaus88 posted:
How about Clive Cussler? He has an entire line of books devoted to his Gary-Stu car-collecting ultra-badass Dirk Pitt. I've read more of his novels than anyone really should, which I think comes out to about two or three total. In one, some vague bad guys have some vague bad guy weapon that makes people on cruise ships throw up and then die or something. Dirk gets captured by the vague bad guys and then shot and tossed in the ocean - but it's okay, he swam over three miles to shore in salt water with a gaping chest wound. How? Just by being that badass. I can't remember if that's before or after he's stranded on a raft with a sexy babe and catches them fish to eat by using a chunk of his leg he dug out with a knife as bait. Maybe that one is from a different book. I'm all for goofy over-the-top feats of derring-do and pulp machismo, but Dirk Pitt is just so tremendously boring and void of personality that it falls flat. There's no substance to him - he just does whatever is the bloodiest most badass thing someone could do in any given situation and moves on towards the end of the book like the inevitable march of time. Bonus: there are versions of his books edited for young adult readers.
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Aug 31, 2015 20:21
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Ryoshi posted:Bonus: there are versions of his books edited for young adult readers. With the steely aspect of a man who sleeps with death and over whom pain commands no influence, Dirk Pitt went to work and, taking up his PUDDING SPOON, dug out a hunk of raw JELLO PUDDING from the weathered flesh of his SNACK CUP.
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Aug 31, 2015 20:51
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I just read a short story call When Sysadmins Ruled The Earth. The main character, Felix, is dealing with a server issue when civilization breaks down because of hundreds of copycat terrorist attacks. Toronto gets hit with some kind of bio weapon that also somehow makes the CN tower collapse. His wife calls him and says his newborn just died. (Felix has a hard time remembering his sons name because he always referred to him as 2.0) Felix is obviously stricken by this, but he has bigger fish to fry. He sees the end of the world as an opportunity to turn the internet into a free state. He passionately argues his case with the other IT guys and they're so moved they all vow to keep the network up. Felix, conveniently, is elected prime minister of the internet. Felix has been talking to others on Usenet and they find out China remained mostly intact. ("Huh, I guess totalitarianism has its place") At this point, his building hasn't been on lockdown for several days. You would think Felix would jump at the first chance to find his grieving wife, but he's a sysadmin, dammit! That means something. The story ends with him being forced to meet people in meatspace and learning to farm so he can make biodiesel to keep the network running.
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Aug 31, 2015 21:40
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SerialKilldeer posted:Piers Anthony All you needed to say.
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Aug 31, 2015 23:02
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Ryoshi posted:How about Clive Cussler? He has an entire line of books devoted to his Gary-Stu car-collecting ultra-badass Dirk Pitt. I've read more of his novels than anyone really should, which I think comes out to about two or three total. In one, some vague bad guys have some vague bad guy weapon that makes people on cruise ships throw up and then die or something. Dirk gets captured by the vague bad guys and then shot and tossed in the ocean - but it's okay, he swam over three miles to shore in salt water with a gaping chest wound. How? Just by being that badass. Rewind back to my freshman year of high school and one of our summer reading options was the YA cut of Iceberg. The rest of the books seemed really boring to me so that's what I picked, except I got the regular version and when we had group discussion half the time I was super lost because it cut out anything remotely gory or sexual and as a result, the teacher didn't believe I read it. 
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Sep 1, 2015 00:03
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SerialKilldeer posted:The Incarnations of Immortality series Glad to know I dodged such terrible, vile, stories, although the first book in the series alone put me off of of Piers Anthony long before I knew what a creepo he was. I wanted to read about some sap figuring out how to be Death, not about how the Bad Guys are Totally Evil because they tortured his Loyal Girlfriend by (censored even though it's mild in comparison to the bullshit he pulled later) electro-shocking her tits; describing the smell of burning flesh and he refusing to believe it was really her being tortured is a GREAT way to sell your protagonist as the hero approaching the end of the book. That's the only part I remember because it was so disturbing to teenage me.  What were those Miranda Leak roller coaster stories? Someone posted those a few years back and they were just bizarre!
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Sep 1, 2015 02:29
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I remember enjoying the first two Incarnations books but I was also in high school and I barely remember anything (I don't remember the spoilered part above for sure.) I remember the time one being really sad because the dude aged backwards but chances are there's some weird pedo vibe I didn't pick up on at the time.
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Sep 1, 2015 02:58
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SUPERMAN'S GAL PAL posted:What were those Miranda Leak roller coaster stories? Someone posted those a few years back and they were just bizarre! Miranda Leek's Twisted! (check out the Let's Read here), where a woman thought it would be super awesome to anthropomorphize amusement park rides, of all things. They all had terrible names like Railrunner or Merrylegs or Ironwheel and the author also posted a bunch of art of "sexy" rollercoasters, among other rather disturbing rollercoaster subjects. Don't worry, the writing was as bad as the concept. Enjoy this beautiful description provided by Amazon: "What Happens To Amusement Park Rides Once They Are Put Into Storage Or Destroyed? They are magically transported to a place only know as "Amusement Park Between", a park that co-exist within any other and is only accessible by those who are of its blood. There are no limits and no humans. The only residents are the RIDES. However, they are much different from our own. Amusement Park Between's rides are ALIVE, having both the characteristics of man and beast. Amusement Park Between was once merry and joyous, but for the past several years it has spiraled into turmoil. An evil tyrant known as Ironwheel has taken control, casting a dark shadow over Amusement Park Between, and whose evil intensions endanger both their world and our own. The rides only hope is the key to their prophecy, "The Red Will Defeat The Black". That perticular key is the only ride that was created differently. The red roller coaster, Railrunner. And This Is His Story." There was also going to be a sequel called Vertigo, but nothing ever came of it apart from little snippets of info.
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Sep 1, 2015 03:37
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grittyreboot posted:I just read a short story call When Sysadmins Ruled The Earth. The main character, Felix, is dealing with a server issue when civilization breaks down because of hundreds of copycat terrorist attacks. Toronto gets hit with some kind of bio weapon that also somehow makes the CN tower collapse. I'm so glad I stopped trying to read Doctorow.
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Sep 1, 2015 09:16
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Little Brother, also by Cory Doctorow. It's an instruction guide that is presented in the form of a story, told from a first-person perspective. About maintaining privacy, subverting surveillance and using technology to your advantage. Even contains instructions on how to make your own pepper spray device, and it's suggested rather bluntly that it can be used for more than just making food evenly spiced. quote:It was a little stainless-steel aerosol canister that looked for all the world like a pepper-spray self-defense unit. She aimed it at her burrito's exposed guts and misted them with a fine red oily spray. I caught a whiff of it and my throat closed and my eyes watered. Cory knows what he's writing about when it comes to these topics. This is the good part. The bad part is how he writes about it. Like the scaremongering style in his articles on Boingboing, his fiction style is pretty bad too. The book reads like his personal fantasy, where his worst nightmare (country turning into a police state) happens to a younger version of himself, who then starts to fight back. The main character comes across as a total self-insert who would agree 100% on everything with the author. Also the sex: quote:I slipped my hands around, feeling the wetness of her armpits -- which was sexy and not at all gross for some reason
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Sep 1, 2015 11:34
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Stick Insect posted:Little Brother, also by Cory Doctorow. Yeah, his books are not my cup of tea. His online stuff comes across as personable, unless he's channeling Anti-Surveilance Jesus (which was happening more and more). And his snippy little comments to people who dare question his wisdom in the discussion threads on BiongBoin, pretty much drove me from the site years ago.
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Sep 1, 2015 13:44
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So after reading Snow Crash and starting Diamond Age, I'm starting to get the feeling Stephenson has some odd issues with young female characters.
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Sep 3, 2015 18:56
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pentyne posted:So after reading More so the pulp-y kind, but it got to the point when I was binging on sci fi while having a job that let me get through 5-15 books a week I started just assuming any female characters would be raped at some point. Seeking out female authors helped though.
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Sep 3, 2015 22:34
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pentyne posted:So after reading Snow Crash and starting Diamond Age, I'm starting to get the feeling Stephenson has some odd issues with young female characters. No, see, Y.T. was totally into loving the giant, radioactive guy, and she flipped him off at the end. It's totally empowering! That poo poo pissed me off. I wanted to like the whole book as some half-tongue in cheek scifi dumbness, but everything sexualizing Y.T. was just gross.
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Sep 3, 2015 23:26
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Practical Demon posted:No, see, Y.T. was totally into loving the giant, radioactive guy, and she flipped him off at the end. It's totally empowering! There were 3-4 instances of the author just casually stating "And of course everyone stared down at her rear end" in various ways to emphasize that this 15 year old girl had such a great rear end that every male adult would always turn to gaze it at whenever given the chance. ryonguy posted:More so the pulp-y kind, but it got to the point when I was binging on sci fi while having a job that let me get through 5-15 books a week I started just assuming any female characters would be raped at some point. Seeking out female authors helped though. Yeah well I started Diamond Age and sure enough early on Stephenson uses a young girl getting molested for...plot reasons? Just seems really unnecessary and out of place. And earlier in the thread people were mentioning his treatment of women in Cryptonomicon was extremely weird and goony.
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Sep 4, 2015 00:00
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Everything about Amy Shaftoe is loving ridiculous.
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Sep 4, 2015 00:42
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Stick Insect posted:Little Brother, also by Cory Doctorow. Hipster-liberal teachers and parents love that poo poo. The kids themselves seem to want to have nothing to do with it, and good for them.
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Sep 4, 2015 01:03
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