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anilEhilated posted:Is that the book that was marketed as "totally must be true because this child of a preacher has never heard about Heaven before"? And middle America ate it right the gently caress up
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Sep 4, 2017 19:31
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Yep a kid who's like 5 has a near death experience and went to heaven and rode magic horses with Jesus. Because children definitely never make poo poo up, nor do unscrupulous parents try to market their kids. I remember when I was 5 I knocked over an indoor planter and ground potting soil into our off white carpets. Then I got some packs of dental floss and strung it all around my parents bedroom. If only my mom would have believed my assertion that a strange bad man broke inside and did it we could have had a best selling true crime book!
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Sep 4, 2017 19:39
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I went with Malazan, though I'm having to re-read book one since I've forgotten so much. The thing that drew me in to Wheel of Time was its traditional set up of a country bumpkin discovering the world along with the reader, similar to Frodo in LOTR. What's a series that doesn't suck in which you follow an ignorant hero who discovers the world as he goes, a kind of audience surrogate?
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Sep 4, 2017 22:54
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blue squares posted:I went with Malazan, though I'm having to re-read book one since I've forgotten so much. Malazan is basically that, except you're following new readers and mentoring them through the books like a pretentious Bigger Brother program.
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Sep 4, 2017 22:58
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Real talk, I love Malazan but I would say that if you read the first one once you can totally skip it again. there's not really anything that ties it into the second and third novels that you'll care about particularly, and the basic themes are better pronounced and explained in other later books. About the only important thing that happens in all of book one is probably Whiskey Jack hurting his leg or tattersail getting ganked.
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Sep 4, 2017 23:13
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You forgot Kruppe and Kruppe doing what Kruppe does best.
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Sep 5, 2017 03:58
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Pretty sure everyone sane agrees the best part of any of the Malazan books is the Chain of Dogs plotline in Deadhouse Gates.
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Sep 5, 2017 04:01
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blue squares posted:I went with Malazan, though I'm having to re-read book one since I've forgotten so much. Having read both I prefer Wheel of Time to Malazan. Each series has its respective charms but each gets tedious in its own way too. Wheel of Time has a pretty conventional overall structure but good worldbuilding, some of the best written battle scenes in modern genre fantasy, and doesn't get enough credit for breaking some norms at the time it came out; by comparison with modern fantasy it's pretty dated, but by comparison with 1990's fantasy it was breaking down gender barriers and taking the genre in new directions (relative psychological realism in the fantasy protagonists, major female characters that pass the Bechdel test, complex multi viewpoint narratives, etc.) Without Wheel of Time there wouldn't be a Game of Thrones (quite literally; Jordan gave the first Song of Ice and Fire novel a jacket quote of "Brilliant" that catapulted its sales). The downsides are that it's way too loving long, that a lot of things that would be minor verbal tics become incredibly annoying over 14 800 page volumes (skirt smoothing, etc.), the gender stereotyping is more than a little painful sometimes even if he's trying to be egalitarian, and most importantly books 8-10 or so are just a morass of pointlessness to the point you're best off just reading the wikipedia summaries and skipping ahead to Book 11 again. Most of the ire comes from people who (justifiably) quit around book 9 or 10 and don't bother finishing it out. Malazan on the other hand . . . ok I lied, I got to like book 8 and just couldn't keep going. There's probably a story in there somewhere and there seem to be a lot of neat-ish ideas floating around but mostly it just read like the author fed a thesaurus through a shredder and then rearranged the scraps to tell the story of his totally badass GURPS campaign, gluing the syllables together with spare apostrophes whenever they didn't quite fit. It does some stuff well, but most of what it does well was done better in Glenn Cook's Black Company series, and most of the rest seems to be hidden behind the author's cogenital inability to provide any kind of explication or exposition whatsoever. I guess I can see how it could appeal to a certain kind of puzzle-drive reader but that reader isn't me at all. The real answer to your question though is Terry Pratchett's Guards, Guards and the character you're following is Carrot. He's a young dwarf who's been kicked out of the mine and sent to live in the big city because he's 6'5" and human and adopted and he doesn't fit in the mine any more. Then read all the Guards mini-series books, then the rest of Discworld after that. You could also try Neil Gaiman's Stardust but it's just one book, not a series; get the edition illustrated by Charles Vess. Deed of Paksenarrion mentioned above could also work if you don't mind the fact that it quite literally follows AD&D 1st Edition Paladin character progression, to the point that you can tell when Paksenarrion hits fourth level because she gets her Paladin's Warhorse. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 05:16 on Sep 5, 2017 |
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Sep 5, 2017 04:19
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Arcsquad12 posted:I have a bit of a specific request for a book. Are there any good Military SF books where, instead of the story being about the underdogs up against overwhelming odds, the story instead focuses on the side that is winning handily, but deals with the psychological trauma that fighting causes? Inevitable victory, but uncertain costs involved in achieving it. John Scalzi's Old Man's War covers that in the first novel in the series (not so much in the later ones).
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Sep 5, 2017 04:28
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Arcsquad12 posted:Inevitable victory, but uncertain costs involved in achieving it. In a more post-war context (similar to the Leckie stuff), Susan R. Matthew"s novels if you ignore how noble the torturer protagonist is meant to be and focus on how hosed-up everything about the society is.
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Sep 5, 2017 05:02
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CapnAndy posted:I read The Way of Kings, and I feel like it was 1/3rd of a good book that a proper editor would have carved about 600 useless pages out of. I feel like there's a story buried under all the wheel-spinning, but really didn't appreciate the pacing at all, or how the book waited until the literal last page to actually explain what the gently caress was going on and what the stakes were, and to put characters in a position where they might learn things and so something interesting -- which they quite conspicuously did not do in the entire first book. I don't know if it's a fair comparison or not, but in less pages, Game of Thrones managed to explain the history of the setting, set the stakes, introduce me to everybody, and then move the plot forward a great deal while throwing multiple plot twists at me. Here I got... introductions, and stakes right at the end. Words of Radiance was only slightly better pacing wise. I still got super frustrated midway through because things felt slow... But, just like The Way of Kings, the last bit was super satisfying.
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Sep 5, 2017 05:11
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New Craft book is out on Kindle. (Ruin of Angels)
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Sep 5, 2017 05:21
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:
Also yes I like those both a lot.
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Sep 5, 2017 07:26
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For my silly Baen military sci-fi stuff recommendations, I think my personal favorite was the General Series, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_General_series by S.M. Stirling Its essentially the Wars of Justinian (With Sci-Fi Belisarius as the main character) going around and re-conquering the planet Bellevue from the barbarians. Except in this case the technology is more 1800's than 600's and horses don't exist and people ride giant war dogs. The idea was re-hashed into a shittier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belisarius_series by Eric Flint.
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Sep 5, 2017 08:38
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Jack2142 posted:For my silly Baen military sci-fi stuff recommendations, Didn't Harry Turtledove also write a lovely Belisarius knockoff series? Fake edit: Krispos Rising! Also in the "farm boy comes to the big city and owns people" genre. Turtledove is actually a Byzantine historian though, for what it's worth.
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Sep 5, 2017 14:06
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Hobnob posted:In a more post-war context (similar to the Leckie stuff), Susan R. Matthew"s novels if you ignore how noble the torturer protagonist is meant to be and focus on how hosed-up everything about the society is. The Jurisdiction books are good, and that's a really hosed up society.
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Sep 5, 2017 14:16
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Having read both I prefer Wheel of Time to Malazan. You stopped at the point where Erikson had the same problem Jordan had, a lack of an editor reigning him in. There's a lot of bloat at that point in the series, monologues that just never end etc. I canno't de'fend the ridicu'lous nouns and apostrophes, but Erikson was always good at a thrilling climax, the page turning I-need-to-sleep-but-I-can't-stop-reading payoff at the end of a novel, and sad to say you missed some good stuff, because that's what book 9/10 feels to me to be for the series as a whole.
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Sep 5, 2017 15:26
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Erikson actually has some kind of justification for all those apostrophes, though.
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Sep 5, 2017 18:43
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New Craft Sequence book! New Craft Sequence book!  The first couple chapters include a dragon-powered not-airplane where prayer is restricted during takeoff and landing because it interferes with the avionics, a demon handling internal corporate magic email, and a banker who is perpetually on drugs because her main investment niche is dreams and other alternate consciousness modes Also we finally get to hang out in a goddamn Iskari polity 
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Sep 6, 2017 20:19
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How wacky and random.
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Sep 7, 2017 04:25
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:How wacky and random. How joyless and dull.
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Sep 7, 2017 04:54
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:How wacky and random. It's Gladstone. None of it is random; it's carefully executed worldbuilding that systematically parallels our modern day but using a totally different (and vastly creepier) basis for techno - er, I mean, sufficiently advanced magic in order to throw shade and do social and political commentary in the best traditions of science fiction. Max Gladstone is a treasure. cptn_dr posted:How joyless and dull. Also this.
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Sep 7, 2017 06:40
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cptn_dr posted:How joyless and dull. It does sound like that.
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Sep 7, 2017 07:39
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cptn_dr posted:How joyless and dull. Yeah, genre novels usually are. Kesper North posted:it's carefully executed worldbuilding 
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Sep 7, 2017 13:31
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Having read both I prefer Wheel of Time to Malazan. I think Malazan can be easily enjoyed if you only read books 2, 3 and 5 and take the overall plot as just neat background filler. Deadhouse Gates, Memories of Ice and Midnight Tides are some really great fantasy books and I think they stand alone fairly well.
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Sep 7, 2017 14:04
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GreyjoyBastard posted:New Craft Sequence book! New Craft Sequence book! I finished it. I think it's up there for one of my favorites in the series. The Knight, Gal, turns out to be one of my favorite characters so far I think. It's also a really cool book in that it does a lot of worldbuilding, but does it in the way that Gladstone has been good at so far in that it feels pretty natural. There's one infodump type conversation about halfway through the book, but I only just now realized it while searching my memory for details. Otherwise, it fills in a lot of bits and pieces you might have wondered about without over-explaining. We even hear a little bit more about what kicked off the God Wars in the first place. If you like things TheMostBoringOfLamps hates, then you might like this book.
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Sep 7, 2017 16:07
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Yeah, genre novels usually are. Wow, your rap sheet really says it all, doesn't it.
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Sep 7, 2017 16:30
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I'm about a third into it and so far it's by far the weakest. Kai's parts are great but whenever the focus shifts to Zedding's Amazing Crew it just doesn't work and all the characters are irritating as hell. Ley in particular feels extremely punchable.
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Sep 7, 2017 16:30
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anilEhilated posted:I'm about a third into it and so far it's by far the weakest. Kai's parts are great but whenever the focus shifts to Zedding's Amazing Crew it just doesn't work and all the characters are irritating as hell. I did laugh out loud at the three startup pitches Kai had to sit through that all said literally the exact same thing about "we take two existing things and combine them and that's our app give us thousands of souls please".
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Sep 7, 2017 17:17
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Max's books are good because they're entirely about the modernity trap we exist in now and the way in which our systems for making ourselves richer/happier/more prosperous have also condemned us to a nightmare future.
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Sep 7, 2017 19:54
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The future looks pretty bright actually: https://singularityhub.com/2016/06/27/why-the-world-is-better-than-you-think-in-10-powerful-charts/
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Sep 7, 2017 20:55
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anilEhilated posted:I'm about a third into it and so far it's by far the weakest. Kai's parts are great but whenever the focus shifts to Zedding's Amazing Crew it just doesn't work and all the characters are irritating as hell. Those parts improve imo. And Ley is absolutely 100% intentional. Edit: also yeah don't totally ignore Gal, there's a payoff I swear and it's actually really good and ties in with the characterization of the people she used to work for I'll do a longer spoilerpost at some point about the Big Ideas and whatnot Double edit: if you must respond to BotL strip out his actual words and just leave the link to the post, thanks Triple edit: oh poo poo and the bonus payoff for Fontaine the druggie banker, I love her, she goes from a one note if entertaining clockpunching banker to extremely cool Goatse James Bond fucked around with this message at 21:25 on Sep 7, 2017 |
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Sep 7, 2017 21:14
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Surely a book can't possibly be any good if it has fun with things that sound absurd out of context. Silly things and good writing are 100% mutually exclusive and do, in fact, devour each other. That's why bookstores and libraries are empty but for shredded paper and bite marks.
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Sep 7, 2017 21:43
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General Battuta posted:Max's books are good because they're entirely about the modernity trap we exist in now and the way in which our systems for making ourselves richer/happier/more prosperous have also condemned us to a nightmare future. I haven't read the new one yet but so far the series has basically seemed like an extended critique of capitalism using "magic" as an an emblem for economics. Kinda want to see a marxist state in his universe. edit for clarity: a revolutionary marxist state Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 21:53 on Sep 7, 2017 |
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Sep 7, 2017 21:47
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Kinda want to see a marxist state in his universe. That's the gods in the metaphor, at least in Two Serpents Rise.
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Sep 7, 2017 21:49
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less laughter posted:The future looks pretty bright actually: https://singularityhub.com/2016/06/27/why-the-world-is-better-than-you-think-in-10-powerful-charts/ Nah, these are all amazing achievements made possible by an engine of capitalist consumption which (if not rapidly course-corrected and redesigned) will gently caress us all. Or at least that's the general argument of Max's books, and one I tend to agree with.
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Sep 7, 2017 22:30
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Megazver posted:That's the gods in the metaphor, at least in Two Serpents Rise. Alt Coulomb is less revolutionary but pretty clearly in the general vein of socialism. The end of the second book in it even involves nationalizing the airspace 
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Sep 7, 2017 22:31
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i'm less high on the craft sequence than others. they're okay books, i've recommended a couple of people check them out. the premise is good, they're decently plotted, and the characters are serviceable. but they just seem so... bland. perhaps it's because he's set up this fantasy world to ape ours in most respects, but the fantastical bits that should tickle my imagination simply fail to (the big secret about the hydro project in two serpents rise is the example i can think of offhand that provoked at most a stifled yawn). this is going off the first three, anyway.
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Sep 7, 2017 23:38
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Neurosis posted:i'm less high on the craft sequence than others. they're okay books, i've recommended a couple of people check them out. the premise is good, they're decently plotted, and the characters are serviceable. but they just seem so... bland. perhaps it's because he's set up this fantasy world to ape ours in most respects, but the fantastical bits that should tickle my imagination simply fail to (the big secret about the hydro project in two serpents rise is the example i can think of offhand that provoked at most a stifled yawn). this is going off the first three, anyway.
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Sep 7, 2017 23:48
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Nakar posted:I felt the same way about them, though I'm not sure I'd call the plotting and characters decent even. They're definitely lacking of some kind of imaginative spark. first book had garbage characters, second were good, third was kind of ehhh in ever respect;. perhaps i should amend my faint praise to 'not a glaring weakness'.
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Sep 8, 2017 01:21
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