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Xtanstic posted:Aurgh now I need a new series to walk the dog to. Rook, Rivers of London, Verus and Libriomancer are done. I guess it's a toss up between Daniel Faust, Harmony Black or Laundry Files? I notice you've downgraded Laundry Files down a tier since the last OP. If Dresden Files and Rivers of London are the top shelf liquors of urban fantasy, Faust would be Bud Light and Harmony Black would be hand sanitizer. Laundry Files is easily the best of those series. I'd also look at Seanan McGuire's October Daye books and Elliot James' Pax Arcana.
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Jun 13, 2017 00:58
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Xtanstic posted:I finally finished the latest Alex Verus book and liked it a lot besides a couple annoyances, but they're pretty minor and basically just me being an impatient baby: When the Laundry Files is good, it's very good, but it kinda has the Zelazny Problem: Stross is a good writer but he's always pushing his own boundaries, so every new book is a new experiment in a slightly different sub-genre each time, and inevitably some of those experiments fail pretty badly. I have a theory as to Drakh: He could be a diviner but I think the twist is that he's going to be a Fate mage -- i.e., the same kind of magic the Fateweaver grants, where rather than seeing among possibilities, you force what you want to happen and make it happen. From blog posts on Benedict Jacka's site: There are supposed to be some branches of fate magic where you can make predictions that are guaranteed to come true. That’s always seemed pretty strange to me, I’ve no idea how that could work. [/quote] http://benedictjacka.co.uk/2014/06/13/ask-luna-30/ [spoiler] Fate and chance magic are similar in the same way that lightning and fire magic are similar – they have similar strengths and weaknesses, and the end result when you use them tends to be pretty much the same, but the way they do it is different. Chance magic works by bending luck, so that something that might happen under very very unlikely circumstances happens exactly when you need it. Fate magic works by selecting a path that you want to happen. They can both do the same sorts of things, but the mindset is different. When I’m using my magic, I often don’t know exactly what I’m aiming for – I just make myself lucky, and I trust that it’ll work out somehow. From what I understand, that kind of thing doesn’t work for fate magic. You have to know exactly what you’re trying to do, and if you pick something that’s too unlikely, it won’t work at all. To be honest, Alex made it sound as though it was a lot weaker than my own kind is, but he claims it’s a lot more precise, which I guess has its upsides. http://benedictjacka.co.uk/2016/10/28/ask-luna-74/ The thing is, though – and I don’t know why – you don’t get human fate mages any more. There are legends that they used to exist, but nowadays they’re either incredibly rare or all gone. So there isn’t much information floating around on how it works, because there’s no-one who actually knows the answers. (Well, okay, there’s the fateweaver, but for obvious reasons no-one really wants to try that.) http://benedictjacka.co.uk/2014/07/11/ask-luna-31/ Add to that that his mage name is "Drakh" -- i.e. dragons, which in this universe are basically decree-givers -- and that his magic seems to look like wish magic -- it makes the same tendrils that the monkey's paw does, if we presume that it was Richard casting during the fight scene, and not his armor. This also could explain his apparent ability to create dimensional portals at will (he's using fate magic to just bore through possibility) and the fact that sometimes Drakh's predictions are wrong and sometimes Verus's can't predict Drakh (Drakh gets the # of enemies Verus will kill wrong in the big fight; Verus doesn't predict Drakh's appearance at the big fight). Plus we know your magic is party of your personality and Drakh is crazy willful and always gets what he wants and always speaks the truth. And talk about a type of magic that would make Verus turbofucked. All that said, Diviner is probably the top choice yeah, but it wouldn't surprise me if the twist is he's a fate mage. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 01:10 on Jun 13, 2017 |
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Jun 13, 2017 01:03
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Xtanstic posted:2- re: Anne I can't be the only one wanting Verus and her to hurry up and gently caress already right??? aurgh I guess now we're setting up for a tragic sacrifice and death somewhere down the line and unconsummated love. Or love saves Anne. Although the series has been pretty good at avoiding cliches so maybe we'll see the plot thread resolved satisfactorily. The Verus books are pretty good, but they're super, duper light on the whole "human" element. Seeing Alex and Anne interact is like watching your work colleagues interact at the office; it's professional, even cordial, but everyone involved has clearly siloed off a major part of their personality and stuck it in a box until the end of the say so that they don't end up in front of HR.
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Jun 13, 2017 02:09
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Old Kentucky Shark posted:It's not even that i want them to gently caress, it's that I want them to behave like normal, casual human beings and acknowledge that loving is a possibility that exists. e: I don't mean to say that it's not annoying to read, I'm just pointing out that it doesn't seem to be an oversight. awesmoe fucked around with this message at 02:15 on Jun 13, 2017 |
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Jun 13, 2017 02:11
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awesmoe posted:Alex gets called out for being an emotionally shut-down freak by that emotion mage in book....2? or 3? All of the other characters agree with you. It's not even just Verus, though, it's the entire book series. No wizard in the Verus-verse apparently has a happy sex life, or any kind of sex life whatsoever*. Take Caldera, for instance; does Caldera have a boyfriend? A girl friend? An Ex-husband? Kids? Has it ever even come up? She was Verus's partner for several books; I can't remember a police procedural where the brash rookie gets introduced to the grizzled partner where i didn't know about his/her ex-wife/kids/retirement plans within the first fifteen minutes. It's not that i want to read sex scenes -- I really, really don't -- but the characters in the Verus-verse are very dry and stiff and lacking in background detail. We learn more about the composition of Verus's magical armor than we do abut anyone's home lives or pasts before magic. *Except for child prostitution rings, apparently.
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Jun 13, 2017 02:37
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Yeah now that you mention it I remember that Verus callout. There was a brief period where the 3 main characters seemed to be normal-ish with their playdates and board games but I guess things have pretty much been on the back burner in terms of low level character interactions to add flavour.Khizan posted:If Dresden Files and Rivers of London are the top shelf liquors of urban fantasy, Faust would be Bud Light and Harmony Black would be hand sanitizer. Hieronymous Alloy posted:When the Laundry Files is good, it's very good, but it kinda has the Zelazny Problem: Stross is a good writer but he's always pushing his own boundaries, so every new book is a new experiment in a slightly different sub-genre each time, and inevitably some of those experiments fail pretty badly. Alright thanks for the rec, I'll definitely check out Laundry Files first. Also, what exactly is Drakh's endgoal so far? Being big bossman of all Mages seems quite pedestrian and more of a Mordin type thing. He seems to be moving his pieces, gaining ressources and is readying for a total war with the White Council though.
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Jun 13, 2017 03:44
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Oh, and the other author people should read is Tim Powers, specifically Declare.
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Jun 13, 2017 03:53
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I always assumed the sort of vaguely distant tone of the Alex Verus books was because of Verus' point of view. I've only had my hands on the first two so far, but if anything, he seemed closer to Starbreeze or Arachne than anyone remotely human. It reads like his past has given him a very skewed view of people in general, mages especially.
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Jun 13, 2017 04:31
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He does talk about human contact in the sections where he's talking about why he runs the shop and takes the subway. The general picture he draws of mage society is that it's just massively cutthroat at all levels. I liked the bit from the emotion mage especially. It makes a certain amount of sense though, given that he's almost certainly got PTSD, he's a killer many times over. Being able to predict what the other person's going to say can't make for healthy relationships. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 04:46 on Jun 13, 2017 |
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Jun 13, 2017 04:43
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I liked Vehela (I can never spell names from Audiobooks) calling Verus as being 'sentimental but ruthless'. He's a dummy, but at least he will pull no punches and murder his way out of his problem. 
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Jun 13, 2017 05:18
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Oh, and the other author people should read is Tim Powers, specifically Declare.  Xtanstic posted:I finally finished the latest Alex Verus book and liked it a lot besides a couple annoyances, but they're pretty minor and basically just me being an impatient baby: Kate Daniels' series, written by Ilona Andrews is really fuckin' neato. Like it a lot. Don't judge it by its covers, please. Those are terrible. Max Gladstone's Craft Sequence is really fuckin' neato as well. Pax Arcana is supposed to be good, right? I can't remember other UF off the top of my head. Is Harmony Black really that bad of a series? jesus. Drifter fucked around with this message at 06:03 on Jun 13, 2017 |
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Jun 13, 2017 05:59
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Oh, and the other author people should read is Tim Powers, specifically Declare. i dont care if its UF or not but declare is the poo poo (and I remain impressed by how well he jacked le'carre's style) Hm, thinking about it I haven't read Tim Powers' fisher king stuff. Is it good compared to the rest?
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Jun 13, 2017 06:33
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awesmoe posted:i dont care if its UF or not but declare is the poo poo (and I remain impressed by how well he jacked le'carre's style) I only read Last Call, and it wasn't bad, but it has nothing on Declare. Of the Tim Powers I've read so far, Declare and The Stress of Her Regard are my favorites (and the most coherent, although the latter overreaches in a number of spots with the myths it tries to tie together) EDIT: The overreaches in The Stress of Her Regard are one of the reasons why the sequel, Hide Me Among the Graves, didn't click with me. I was able to suspend my disbelieve that the lamia are winged serpents, shapeshifting people, stone statues, the loving sphinx, greek witches, nephilim, muses, flying spirits of the air, vampires, vampire-creators and who loving knows what else. Ok, writing that out, I'm honestly not sure how I was able to suspend my disbelief. But in the sequel, they added a bunch more really bits of identity and it stopped making sense. Slanderer fucked around with this message at 06:52 on Jun 13, 2017 |
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Jun 13, 2017 06:44
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If you've read the latest Verus book, Variam calls him out on his relationship with Anne. It was very "Thomas rolling his eyes at Dresden about Karen in Cold Days". As for loving in the Verus books, there was that time he hosed the Emotion mage. It was just glossed over in the prose because Alex didn't really care about it.
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Jun 13, 2017 08:04
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Harmony Black is not that bad. It just doesn't have as tight an identity as the Daniel Faust series.
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Jun 13, 2017 08:17
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Of course I always recommend the Diogenes Club series, but I acknowledge it's tricky to get hold of.
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Jun 13, 2017 08:22
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Mars4523 posted:Harmony Black is not that bad. It just doesn't have as tight an identity as the Daniel Faust series. It kind of falls apart when Harmony beats down an Incarnate when in previous books it's established that if you're anywhere near one of those it takes an awful lot of luck to escape with your life. And this is without any kind of power creep explanation whatsoever.
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Jun 13, 2017 11:41
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biracial bear for uncut posted:It kind of falls apart when Harmony beats down an Incarnate when in previous books it's established that if you're anywhere near one of those it takes an awful lot of luck to escape with your life. Except...that doesn't happen? In the Nadine fight, it's Jessie who goes hand to hand (while Harmony shoots at her from a safe distance) and it's established from book one that Jessie is faster, stronger, and can soak way more damage than a normal human. She still gets beaten down, and the second Nadine gets close enough to touch Harmony, the fight's over. Harmony literally never gets a punch in.
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Jun 13, 2017 12:27
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Harmony Bad Harmony Blah Harmony Barf Har-you-loving-kidding-me Black
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Jun 13, 2017 12:53
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StonecutterJoe posted:Except...that doesn't happen? In the Nadine fight, it's Jessie who goes hand to hand (while Harmony shoots at her from a safe distance) and it's established from book one that Jessie is faster, stronger, and can soak way more damage than a normal human. She still gets beaten down, and the second Nadine gets close enough to touch Harmony, the fight's over. Harmony literally never gets a punch in. I'm talking specifically about the rematch, not the first fight in the book.
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Jun 13, 2017 14:51
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Slanderer posted:I only read Last Call, and it wasn't bad, but it has nothing on Declare. I also like Dinner at Deviant's Palace a lot but apparently that's not everyone's jam, still, if you like the idea of a post-apocalyptic take on Orpheus and Eurydyce... e: Hey, I like Harmony Black. Admittedly, I haven't gotten around to reading the third book yet but the first two were a lot of fun and took the UF stereotypes into interesting places - we need more space age mythology that's not just aliens. Again, I haven't read the last book, but nitpicking about what does and does not make sense in-universe seems a pretty stupid way to judge a book on - does it really get into the way of the story? anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Jun 13, 2017 |
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Jun 13, 2017 17:12
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anilEhilated posted:does it really get into the way of the story? The enemy in question was the mother that Nyx was afraid of in the first book. There's no loving way Harmony and Jessie could take her in a fight. EDIT: Reminder that Nyx was the demon that took the Totally-Not-Inspired-By-Geiger's-Alien appearance the way she was described in the book when she was in a fighting mood. Some Pinko Commie fucked around with this message at 18:11 on Jun 13, 2017 |
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Jun 13, 2017 18:06
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Chiming in to say I really like Harmony Black, more so than the Faust series itself though they are enjoyable. I like how she is, it's rarer to find such a closed off possibly ASD woman character and I like her x files with demons vibe
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Jun 13, 2017 18:26
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biracial bear for uncut posted:The enemy in question was the mother that Nyx was afraid of in the first book. There's no loving way Harmony and Jessie could take her in a fight. Assuming you're talking about the latest book, they didn't take her in a fight, they survived long enough for a much more powerful entity to enter the frey. They also spent a lot of time preparing and the Faust/Black universe is similar to Dresden in that wizards are a lot more powerful with time to prepare and knowledge of what they're facing.
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Jun 13, 2017 18:28
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biracial bear for uncut posted:The enemy in question was the mother that Nyx was afraid of in the first book. There's no loving way Harmony and Jessie could take her in a fight. And they didn't. They surprised her, had a trap in place to keep her from escaping, got in a few good licks...and promptly got their asses kicked.
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Jun 13, 2017 18:29
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LOL at criticizing Harmony Black without mentioning flat characterization or boring and cliched dialogue.
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Jun 13, 2017 19:00
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Also the entire godawful love interest part he crammed in there.
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Jun 13, 2017 20:06
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I feel like you could use Sheriff Fuckwit in a writing textbook as an example of bad love interests, but I can't put my finger on why. On paper, taken in the abstract, he is a perfectly fine gentleman with many sterling qualities, but every time he actually showed up in the book it slowed every loving thing down to a crawl. It's like Riley on Buffy*; there's something almost atomically bad about male love interests for female protagonists written by male writers. *Who was also fine in the abstract and great when he was no longer Buffy's love interest later on and I really don't want to relitigate a more-than-a-decade-old nerd argument.
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Jun 13, 2017 20:48
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The good news is that Schaefer pretty well fixed that one in the latest book.
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Jun 13, 2017 21:29
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I didn't hate Deputy Love Interest (and was kind of surprised that that was a thing), but then again I don't actually remember his name. On a surface level I'm glad that he's an atypical love interest for a female protagonist in that his need to be the man in the relationship and the protector doesn't get vindicated. I guess the problem was in the execution. It'd be interesting to see John and Sig's relationship in Pax Arcana from Sig's perspective , because like Harmony Sig doesn't need a man to protect her physically. I guess another similar dynamic would be Fort and Suze's relationship in ML Brennnan's Generation V series, but then again Suze is a far more interesting and dynamic character than Fort is.
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Jun 13, 2017 21:35
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I just picked up Declare based on the recommendations here and whoa, I wasn't expecting prose of that complexity.
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Jun 13, 2017 21:40
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ConfusedUs posted:I just picked up Declare based on the recommendations here and whoa, I wasn't expecting prose of that complexity. Just a heads up that Declare is a Le Carre novel with some very, very mild fantasy/horror spices thrown in, not a fantasy/horror novel with flavorings of Le Carre.
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Jun 13, 2017 22:04
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ConfusedUs posted:I just picked up Declare based on the recommendations here and whoa, I wasn't expecting prose of that complexity. Powers is an author who has done some UF, not a UF author.
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Jun 13, 2017 23:45
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Deputy Love Interest is on like 10 pages of the first Harmony Black book so it's really weird to me that people have found the effort to hate him. He doesn't come in and save the day or derail the story or anything. I don't know if he suddenly becomes more of a thing in later books since I haven't read them yet but Cody in the first book is about as inoffensive as they come. I don't even think they did anything besides kiss once when she was have a rough night.  Like there's been a lot of discussion about how girls in video games aren't allowed to have male love interests if they're the sole lead because male players find it icky. (Lesbians are okay though!) I wonder if the same holds true for book leads because if you're mad about someone as non-existent as Cody, boy oh boy.
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Jun 14, 2017 02:20
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I've met Powers once! He's a great guy.
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Jun 14, 2017 02:30
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mistaya posted:Deputy Love Interest is on like 10 pages of the first Harmony Black book so it's really weird to me that people have found the effort to hate him. He doesn't come in and save the day or derail the story or anything. I don't know if he suddenly becomes more of a thing in later books since I haven't read them yet but Cody in the first book is about as inoffensive as they come. I don't even think they did anything besides kiss once when she was have a rough night. It's more the way he was awkwardly crammed into the second book than anything else. Felt very clumsy.
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Jun 14, 2017 03:13
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Two and a half books into October Daye. It's weird. Good prose, well characterized, good sense of place, well constructed setting, but so far the plots are achingly predictable -- in the first two books I had already guessed the whodunit by the halfway point.
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Jun 14, 2017 03:23
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Two and a half books into October Daye. Is that even a valid criticism for most UF? A good, challenging detective story? That's like saying you didn't like The Avengers movie because you knew Loki was the bad guy from the get go, no?
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Jun 14, 2017 04:29
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Drifter posted:Is that even a valid criticism for most UF? A good, challenging detective story? That's like saying you didn't like The Avengers movie because you knew Loki was the bad guy from the get go, no? Logan was a good movie in how it re-told a Western story in a heartbreaking way like how The Rook wowed by telling the old amnesia story from a different perspective. Genre fiction has no excuse for being derivative in any way, shape, or form 
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Jun 14, 2017 05:50
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Benny the Snake posted:Logan was a good movie in how it re-told a Western story in a heartbreaking way like how The Rook wowed by telling the old amnesia story from a different perspective. Genre fiction has no excuse for being derivative in any way, shape, or form If you consume a lot of any form of media you will eventually be able to pierce the veil of its storytelling because beyond a certain point there are a limited number of tricks you can use. Especially with mysteries short of the mystery cheating you will be able to figure out the solution (more or less) relatively early because you'll recognize the things that are supposed to fly under your radar. (Characters being focused on,specific word choices, etc.) Logan is derivative as hell. It's pretty much a bog-standard story except the protagonist has magic claws. That doesn't make it bad.
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Jun 14, 2017 05:57
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