|
I'd go with "you've got a situation that could probably be a premise for a horror story, but the protagonist is someone not only equipped to handle it, but probably someone who deal with poo poo like this for a living." Cities are kind of incidental, they're just a side-product of the story taking place in modernity, since you need modernity for supernatural to be supernatural and not just, like, oh of course ghosts and the Devil are real.
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2017 22:49
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 5, 2024 23:19 |
|
|
It's pretty weird to read Revanche after Daniel Faust looking for the cosmic overstory elements that are allegedly shared and detailed in the later Faust books. I thought Mari was the Revanche universe's Paladin equivalent. 
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2017 23:02
|
|
|
angel opportunity posted:Reading the blurb, it sounds a lot like "fantasy taking place in a city." Isn't that urban fantasy? To me, Perdido Street Station is urban fantasy as well. I've always found Urban Fantasy to be a category that sounds real broad, but is actually used fairly narrowly, and mostly for Magic London type stuff. I'd call Craft Urban Fantasy. Like when your main plot point is Magic Risk Manager has to secure water for a city, the city is pretty integral. Or the gentrification stuff in the last one. Most of the parallels to banking and corporations only work with a large urban environment. PSS usually gets in (or defines) the New Weird genre, but given that New Crobuzon is basically a character in the book, I'd think Urban Fantasy is a fair qualification, though perhaps not the most useful one.
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2017 23:29
|
|
|
I got into the Craft Sequence because I read an interview of Gladstone where he said that the setting came to him during the financial crisis in 2008, when he realized that the international system of finance was built out of what could be described as consensus-based magic. Magic that falls apart if people stop believing in it. I find urban fantasy a really difficult genre to nail down. It always seems to me more a question of tone than anything else, and it's a tone I don't really enjoy. But describing that tone itself is also a struggle. Whenever a book I liked is called "urban fantasy" somewhere I always balk because it doesn't really match my schema of urban fantasy. Take, for example, Daniel O'Malley's The Rook. Certainly "fantasy taking place in a parallel modern world setting" or "modern world setting with magic" are not urban fantasy. It always feels like a genre that's extremely particular to London, anyway.
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2017 00:04
|
|
|
is max gladstone a real name because lol
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2017 00:06
|
|
|
angel opportunity posted:Reading the blurb, it sounds a lot like "fantasy taking place in a city." Isn't that urban fantasy? To me, Perdido Street Station is urban fantasy as well. Urban Fantasy as a publishing term, means just barely above supernatural romance that takes place in the modern day. It's basically where all the people who would have been publishing sub-par Tolkein and D&D rip off fantasy 20-30 years ago went. Tor.com has a here is what's being published in Urban Fantasy this month, and every time I read it, it's obvious that everything is just trash. Very rarely does it have anything to do with cities and how they work, instead being poo poo detective stories with a magic/supernatural gloss. Actual Urban Fantasy is stuff like Mielville, Pratchett, Gladstone, and Harrison. fez_machine fucked around with this message at 00:18 on Jan 7, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2017 00:14
|
|
|
I've always thought of most of the Vlad Taltos books as urban fantasy, as they're mostly about one guy trying to scrape his way through city living.
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2017 00:36
|
|
|
The Ninth Layer posted:I've always thought of most of the Vlad Taltos books as urban fantasy, as they're mostly about one guy trying to scrape his way through city living. I thought about classifying the Vlad Taltos books as urban fantasy, but they're really not. Only the first few books (note I stopped reading at Orca) really press the city setting, and even then it's drowned out by the mechanics of the aristocracy and castle adventures. An urban book should ideally focus on the mechanics of society at large, rather than the interactions between influential or powerful families/individuals.
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2017 00:45
|
|
|
The best urban fantasy is Master and Margarita.
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2017 00:46
|
|
|
Magic as finance is the entire appeal of the Craft Sequence and all one-line pitches should be written as if they're describing finance. Alternately, you could talk about the King in Red wearing swim trunks and drinking fruity cocktails on the beach.
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2017 01:09
|
|
|
But fantasy readers think finance is boring. You gotta get all 'magic systems' on them.
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2017 05:43
|
|
|
What's jack Campbell's Lost Fleet like? I just got like 9 books
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2017 05:44
|
|
|
Rocksicles posted:What's jack Campbell's Lost Fleet like? It's the 1st book re-done 8x times.
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2017 06:02
|
|
|
General Battuta posted:But fantasy readers think finance is boring. You gotta get all 'magic systems' on them. Dagger and Coin series tho
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2017 06:05
|
|
|
Rocksicles posted:What's jack Campbell's Lost Fleet like? Good space battles but everything else is about average for military SF. I enjoyed them. The Lost Stars spinoff series has some hilariously cringey characters and romance, but on the other hand David Weber never gave the Havenites their own series. C.M. Kruger fucked around with this message at 06:39 on Jan 7, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2017 06:08
|
|
|
Rocksicles posted:What's jack Campbell's Lost Fleet like? Think of it as Honor Harrington, but Honor is a straight white male who is the only person in the galaxy who knows anything about space tactics and the two most prominent female characters in the series do little else but fight over his dick. If you like a long succession of ludicrously one sided space massacres against interchangeable villainous popup targets, then Lost Fleet is the series for you. Mars4523 fucked around with this message at 06:29 on Jan 7, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2017 06:26
|
|
|
FastestGunAlive posted:Dagger and Coin series tho You misspelled Baroque Cycle.
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2017 06:29
|
|
|
Mars4523 posted:It's really bad. Sounds like Stargate, i'll probably love it.
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2017 06:56
|
|
|
Rocksicles posted:Sounds like Stargate, i'll probably love it.
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2017 07:40
|
|
|
General Battuta posted:But fantasy readers think finance is boring. You gotta get all 'magic systems' on them. The Craft Sequences magic system is the most novel and interesting take I've seen on it in years. Almost infinite flexibility and depth.
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2017 10:32
|
|
|
Doorknob Slobber posted:is max gladstone a real name because lol Of course not, there aren't any apostrophes in it.
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2017 11:08
|
|
|
I've had some free Craft Sequence ebooks lying around for years and this is the conversation that's made me actually want to read them.
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2017 15:45
|
|
|
General Battuta posted:But fantasy readers think finance is boring. them and everyone else
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2017 15:51
|
|
|
NoNostalgia4Grover posted:It's the 1st book re-done 8x times.
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2017 17:34
|
|
|
Bhodi posted:Yeah. They're bad. If you want sailing in space and starship mil combat there are a dozen better series. On the other hand, if you want to know what the difference between a cruiser, battlecruiser, and battleship is and are incapable of forming long-term memories, they're just what you need.
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2017 17:40
|
|
|
loving Sci-Fi can't get it right. I read something recently It was dumb as poo poo Space marine action.... man can't remember the name of it. Space special forces, upload brains to massive armoured golems, horrible aliens sort of Halo type things i guess. Many, many people killed... Ideas? I've drawn a total blank.
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2017 17:59
|
|
|
Rocksicles posted:loving Sci-Fi can't get it right. Hamilton? The dreaded Ringo? Resnick? A methdream?
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2017 18:05
|
|
|
Rocksicles posted:loving Sci-Fi can't get it right. Legion of the Damned? French Foreign Legion but they're in space and killer cyborgs.
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2017 18:25
|
|
|
Figured it out, Lazarus War, not bad. Burned through them pretty quick, which is what I like.
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2017 18:29
|
|
|
Rocksicles posted:Figured it out, Lazarus War, not bad. Burned through them pretty quick, which is what I like. drat. Too late. Yeah, there were two books. Artefact and Legion . They weren't terrible, but they were completely forgettable. E: Just checked. Apparently there's a third: Origins. Eh, I may get it if I run out of stuff to read.
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2017 20:40
|
|
|
VagueRant posted:Help me, thread! I am desperate for a new fantasy novel to get into. It's been so long since I enjoyed reading (and I really like swords). What about Way of Kings did you not like?
|
|
#
?
Jan 8, 2017 01:54
|
|
|
Phew, thanks for all the recommendations, guys. A lot to reply to and look into (y'all recommended Mark Lawrence's Prince of Fools the most, but Amazon strangely doesn't have a preview of it, so I'll look into that at a later date). Anyway, to start with, I just ordered:
gohmak posted:What about Way of Kings did you not like? Sanderson's prose reads well enough and there were a couple of moments that affected me but it really felt like he'd stretched a Harry Potter sized novel into a Lord Of The Rings sized monstrosity that didn't even intend on resolving anything in that pagecount. (Am I remembering right in saying it takes about 800 pages just to explain what happened between chapter 2 and 3?) Plus it had some genre tics that have always bothered me, like nameless soldiers being casually wiped out by the hundreds while all the named characters were kind of celestially important and totally invulnerable, you know? Clark Nova posted:The Malazan series does have some great comedic bits but you're right to be scared of it. Groke posted:Have you tried KJ Parker? Mostly quite low on the fantasy elements, a good deal of humour of the extremely black variety. Cheerfully nihilistic may be an appropriate term. Ooh, I've always meant to read a book that got into the fascinating nitty gritty of sailing ships. And I always wanted more of what that Master and Commander movie teased. So I'm super down for that. Is there a particular standout entry to start with? VagueRant fucked around with this message at 21:11 on Jan 8, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jan 8, 2017 21:08
|
|
|
VagueRant posted:Hah! I really do want to "get" Malazan, but it's hard to commit to a thing where even the fans are like "none of this will make sense for another five books". I'm kind of holding out hope it gets adapted to give me a better gateway into it. I found that figuring out how the setting worked as I read instead of having it dumped on me in blocks of clunky exposition was actually a lot of fun. You'll always have questions but shouldn't ever be entirely unable to comprehend the action and plot line in each book. The real problems are the meandering philosophical asides, the repetitiveness (when a new book revisits a locale, the same damned thing is probably going to happen all over again) and the sheer scope of it.
|
|
#
?
Jan 8, 2017 22:19
|
|
|
VagueRant posted:
Read them in order or you miss out on stuff. Also read them ASAP IMO. withak fucked around with this message at 23:38 on Jan 8, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jan 8, 2017 23:36
|
|
|
Clark Nova posted:I found that figuring out how the setting worked as I read instead of having it dumped on me in blocks of clunky exposition was actually a lot of fun. You'll always have questions but shouldn't ever be entirely unable to comprehend the action and plot line in each book. The real problems are the meandering philosophical asides, the repetitiveness (when a new book revisits a locale, the same damned thing is probably going to happen all over again) and the sheer scope of it. And the dumb loving na'mes.
|
|
#
?
Jan 8, 2017 23:46
|
|
|
holocaust bloopers posted:About 1/3 of the way through Republic of Thieves. Yea, it's a Locke Lamora book but one going through the motions. Its definitely the weakest of the three I feel like as important as the death of the rest of the gang was for the first book, it has made the subsequent books worse because of the lack of different personalities for things to bounce off of. Doesn't help that nothing loving happens in this book until the end, and even that twist feels like it could pull the series further into unfun directions. I'm not shocked that the next book is taking him forever since he is trying to figure all of this poo poo out. Also, I will nth the recomendation of The Red Queen's War series to anyone. I actually read it before Prince of Thorns, and its amazing how much more interesting Jalen is as a character, and the poo poo he goes through is far more interesting. I am also going through the Rogues of the Republic series, and it is pretty good. But yeah, go read Red Queen's War 90s Cringe Rock posted:There's nothing wrong with arranging books to look pretty, especially if you do most of your reading with ebooks and only buy hardcopies if they're something you really want to own, or because they were cheap secondhand books, or you were stuck waiting for a train and your phone's battery was too low to get a few hours of reading done. The Glumslinger fucked around with this message at 03:00 on Jan 9, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jan 9, 2017 02:41
|
|
|
The Glumslinger posted:Its definitely the weakest of the three Personal Thoughts, while Chains being dead and Locke taking over leadership in the present in the first book makes sense, thematically it would have been better maybe if it was Chains who dies to the Falconer even if that would have been a bit cliche. I agree that taking out everyone was a problem, Locke and Jean have good chemistry however as mentioned in book Jean plays a straight man well, but thats his only role and Locke is kinda a serious sourpuss, they don't have anyone to lighten the mood between them. They definitely are missing the Sanza comic relief or Bug being an earnest apprentice, honestly it would have been better if only one or the other died in Lies in my opinion instead of both. Or just one of the Sanza's dies and the other still does the comic relief, but it comes from a darker place without his brother? Overall the dynamic between the five gang members was the best bit of the Lies and Republic and it really feels like lynch shot himself in the foot. The first book is so good, the second one is still good in my opinion although not as strong and the third has good parts although it is overall a downgrade in quality, which hopefully is attributable to Lynch getting divorced around that time (I think). Also again Red Queen's war books are very good and will reinforce that, one of the few series that is able to combine humor and horror together without feeling out of place. Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 07:49 on Jan 9, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jan 9, 2017 07:46
|
|
|
VagueRant posted:Hah! I really do want to "get" Malazan, but it's hard to commit to a thing where even the fans are like "none of this will make sense for another five books". I'm kind of holding out hope it gets adapted to give me a better gateway into it. The story within each Malazan book is more or less self-consistent, so when we say that "things won't make sense for another five books" we mean explanations for various phenomens in the world. If you are one of those people that requires fantasy to be like a RPG rulebook, I wouldn't recommend Malazan. If you on the other hand see reading as a journey in a fantasy, Malazan is probably a good idea. There are like 3 books that can serve as introduction to the series.
|
|
#
?
Jan 9, 2017 09:25
|
|
|
VagueRant posted:Sharps by KJ Parker - of the few previews I read on Amazon, this and The Folding Knife really stood out to me because it focused on immediate and interesting tragicomic situations, instead of the worldbuildy worldbuilding and neverending Fictional Nouns of some other books' opening pages. Went with Sharps because googling came up with the most recs for that one and apparently it's a standalone? Hope it was the right choice. Yeah, it's a standalone. The first nine KJ Parker novels are in three (completely separate) trilogies, all the ones since then are standalones. Actually most of them seem to be set in the same world, but widely scattered across history and geography, you can tell by various little references to places or political entities that occur in different books (sort of like one novel might be set in Rome during the last days of the republic, another on the frontier of the expanding Roman empire some centuries later, and a third in South America in the 1800s with references to the Roman Catholic church).
|
|
#
?
Jan 9, 2017 10:14
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 5, 2024 23:19 |
|
|
Hugo nominations are open for this year. Any good sources for works that are eligible?
|
|
#
?
Jan 9, 2017 11:31
|
|