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As others have said, the Dresden books are good enough for what they are; Pulpy urban fantasy adventure books. In a genre that is filled with much worse sins, I'll take a fun pulpy potboiler with a little sense of humour about itself over 90% of the stuff published with the Urban Fantasy label. So yeah, enjoyable though not objectively good. The main character isnt the most special best at everything badass (instantly elevating the series over a good 70% of its competitors), they arent thinly veiled porn (although a lot of that nowadays I've seen moved out of urban fantasy into "paranormal romance" as a seperate section. There is a good chance that stuff sells better than the stuff I enjoy reading in all fairness), there is an actual recurring cast of supporting characters and things progress and change with some actual character growth and development. Its a low bar, but compare the Dresden books with many of their competitors and they actually look pretty good. I'm pretty sure I've said something similar in this thread, I remember complaining about the Iron Druid series as a specific example of the dogshit that infests the genre. Stuff I'd recommend in Urban Fantasy is a much shorter list than the stuff I'd recommend avoiding, and even then the stuff I'd recommend also tends to skew towards "fun but not necessarily objectively good". Rivers of London, Rook, American Gods, Dresden... Whoever recommended Dead Things (I think in this thread) that turned out to be a good shout, I read the three books in the series back to back. Sandman Slim and Nightside (I think, I burned through the nightside books really fast a few years ago so my memory of them is hazy) probably fall into "legitimately bad, but enjoyable anyway). SiKboy has a new favorite as of 10:26 on Sep 16, 2017 |
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Sep 16, 2017 00:25
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The correct choice is to just watch Blade. Smartass answer: The Master and Margarita
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Sep 16, 2017 01:07
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Okay, this is a terrible book. It is my favorite terrible book because it made me laugh, although I don't think it meant to. But it also really let me down. Mad City: The True Story of the Campus Murders that America Forgot, by Michael Arnfeldt. It is an Amazon imprint, Little A, and was one of the Kindle First choices for September. The wrong choice. I thought, "Well, it's true crime. I haven't read any true crime in a while." But the thing is, there may well be a story here, but it's very hard to extract it out of the tangled prose. It started with the prologue. A woman is in Flagstaff, Arizona. She takes a cab. We go briefly into the cab driver's point of view, for no apparent reason. She has a goal, she's looking for somebody, in the library. She looks in two places, but he's not there. She's been following him, or looking for him, for 10 years. But in this prologue, nothing happens. She doesn't find him, and we don't know who he is. At this point I assume all will be explained and there are reasons for all of this. Then we get into a description of Madison, Wisconsin. Despite some sentences like this: "It's a distance from which the skeletons long since buried are no longer visible through the kaleidoscope of the naked and optimistic eye, none of the pain and trauma wrought upon the city visible from the proverbial nosebleeds of Madison's outer limits." Uh, "the kaleidoscope of the naked and optimistic eye"? "Proverbial nosebleeds?" Okay, kind of bloviated, but there is some information about Madison. Particularly, "It's not only a place seated along a picturesque isthmus and circumscribed by four lakes when viewed on a map from above, but also a place shunted squarely in the mouth of madness once you're actually on the ground. As time and space battle it out, Madison is a city surrounded by reality on all sides yet still defined by a certain surrealism. It is, in fact, less a physical place as much as an idea or metaphysical construct of that same place. It's an abstraction of America and the requisite American Dream while at the same time, curiously enough, serving as the state capital." Curiously enough! Okay, not your typical true-crime story. But onward. On to the murders and the persistence of the protagonist in bringing him to justice. After hacking my way through the underbrush of periphrastic prose, excessive alliteration, appositive errors galore, and a strained, extended, mixed metaphor every sentence or so (and there are some really long sentences), I get to the victim, and the victim's friend--the one found in Flagstaff 10 years later. [Yi, it's contagious!] Along the way various dark parts of Wisconsin have been mentioned at length. Now the best friend has resolved to stay in Madison until the case is solved, even though apparently everybody knows who killed her friend. She's looking for untapped knowledge. "Happening upon a mild-mannered hospital custodian on his dinner smoke break, the worker had no sooner flicked open his Zippo lighter when Linda engaged him in small talk as an inroad to her real reason for talking to him....Sure enough, he soon cut to the chase as though he'd been waiting for the chance--chomping at the bit to spill the beans." There is so much of this, on every page, along with a very confusing narrative, that I had to quit. I gave it up. This is no Devil in the White City here. I think it could have been. Now, Arnfeldt does make some interesting points, such as: fiction written as history is still fiction, people tend to try to find patterns in unsolved murders when there may not be any correlation, because that's a human tendency (i.e., Jack the Ripper could have been a different killer for each victim), and he knows a lot about all the famous cases and brings up some that are not so famous. The bio says he "offers a unique perspective into unsolved murder case that combines suspenseful storytelling, academic knowledge, and investigative technology." Unique perspective, okay. Academic knowledge, check. Suspenseful storytelling, uh-uh, no way. He thanks his agent and editors. Maybe he should thank his agent, but I feel like he should throw his editors into a pit. Rhymes With Clue has a new favorite as of 21:01 on Sep 18, 2017 |
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Sep 17, 2017 07:50
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Perestroika posted:I have read the the steampunk one, Aeronaut's Windlass, though I don't really remember anything too remarkable from it except that some of its gimmicks (Cats can talk and are super catty and arrogant! All the magic users have super weird mental quirks!) Sold. What? Otherwise I'd be rereading something worse. Edit: I do have some content for this thread, if I can find it again. It was a Whitley Streiber fiction book, and its one of the worst things I've ever read. The only redeeming feature was... the perils of genetically engineered cats. (They could talk and held grudges forever.) Edit 2: It was Nature's End. If I can't find my copy I'll get it from the library and do a thing here. Agents are GO! has a new favorite as of 11:22 on Sep 17, 2017 |
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Sep 17, 2017 11:14
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Rhymes With Clue posted:It's an abstraction of America and the requisite American Dream while at the same time, curiously enough, serving as the state capitol.
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Sep 17, 2017 12:21
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Dresden chat might have me giving the books another try in the future. Is it possible to jump in to the later/better stories without the first book or two? True crime talk reminded me of The Forensic Files of Batman, a collection of stories by Doug Moench (best known for his Batman comics) where the focus is real forensic work. Some of the passages are incredibly technical and dry because it's meant to be a young Bruce Wayne's study notes. One I still remember is an interview with The Joker in Arkham that turns into a long rant about how psychological profiling is totally useless, which stood out because it felt as if Moench was venting using Batman as a proxy.
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Sep 17, 2017 14:52
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SUPERMAN'S GAL PAL posted:Dresden chat might have me giving the books another try in the future. Is it possible to jump in to the later/better stories without the first book or two?
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Sep 17, 2017 15:26
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Start with Book 3, "Grave Peril". It was the first one written while working with a publisher and the extra editing shows. It also introduces most of the recurring main cast for the first time with the exceptions of: -Karen Murphy - hard boiled cop lady, who as of Book 3 realizes Harry isn't full of poo poo re: magic -The Warden - some dude from the wizard council or w/e who was convinced Harry was evil and was tasked with beheading him if he ever used his wizard juju wrong -Billy - leader of a pack of teenage/twentysomething werewolves. Harry plays tabletop RPGs with them -Susan - a reporter I think? Harry's love interest -Bob - a perverted skull basically loaded with arcane Wikipedia. Stolen from Harry's evil warlock uncle that taught him magic before trying to betray him, forcing young Harry to magic him to death (and putting him on the Warden's radar, see above) Even these guys usually get small introductions, at least in the earlier books. Fake edit: I forgot he totally also has a fairy godmother, but like all fairies she's capricious and completely goddamn nuts (from a mortal perspective, at least). Pretty sure she wants to turn Harry into a guard--dog-person or something?
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Sep 17, 2017 15:29
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Zore posted:Yeah, 3 is fine as a jumping on point. Yep. Anything vital to the overall arc of the books will be relayed in one of a multitude of little narrative re-caps.
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Sep 17, 2017 15:31
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If you wanna read some straight up tripe but have one great god damned time, I cannot recommend The Order of Sanguines trilogy enough. James Rollins was mentioned earlier in the thread and I loving love this guy. The trilogy is three books; The Blood Gospel, Innocent Blood, and Blood Infernal. I wish I was creative enough to come up with poo poo this fucken bonkers. This book has: An order of vampire knight priests who renounced Satan and now worship God. They satiate their lust for blood by, I poo poo you not, consecrating flasks of wine into the literal Blood of Christ. The titular Blood Gospel is a lost book of the Bible that Christ wrote. In his blood. One of the three primary protags finds it early in the trilogy and becomes its guardian of sorts. The book is supposed to contain instructions on how to prevent the apocalypse, and the twist associated with the book is one of my favorites ever. At one point, a vampire priest is put into Not Thunderdome by the vampire lord Rasputin (this all takes place in modern times) underneath St Petersburg and has to fight a vampire demon bear. He defeats it by crucifying it. Aforementioned vampire priest, who murders approximately 600,000 bad guys over the course of the story, wields a karambit like some kind of Pope Sam Fisher. He also gets a magical pet tiger. Another protagonist, Jordan Stone (JORDAN STONE!) gets blessed by a fragment of an archangel and can no longer die. Lazarus is the first vampire. Get it? He also gets the coolest scene in the trilogy. One guy starts fishing through the the Middle East for solidified, onyx-like drops of SATAN'S BLOOD. So much awkward sex. That plot twist with the Blood Gospel? The crux of the plot is the heroes trying to stop a gate to Hell opening, which would bathe the world in darkness and allow vampires and monsters to swarm the earth. In the finale of the last book, the gate opens. All hope is lost. Lucifer shows up. Then the guardian of the Blood Gospel figures out what she had to do all along...Let Lucifer read it. The whole point of Christ writing it was to give Lucifer his final instructions to achieve forgiveness so he could go back to heaven. I'm loving hollering. It's trash, it knows it's trash, and it's written with such sincerity you can't help but get into and enjoy it. James Rollins is the pulp king.
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Sep 17, 2017 19:33
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Oh, James Rollins. It's like every other page is poo poo where I go "Wait, what? That't not... I mean... REALLY?" But his poo poo is so god drat over the top insane I end up enjoying it. I put him with Matthew Rielly. So crazy and awful I end up have a great time despite myself.
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Sep 18, 2017 01:29
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He's like a slightly more scientific Reilly. He still writes batshit crazy things, but they have SORT of a connection in the real world, almost. Wasn't the blood thing one of those where he was a co writer? That might explain some of the crazy. And how the hell does holy blood not burn the gently caress out of a vamp if holy water is like acid to em?
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Sep 18, 2017 06:20
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:He's like a slightly more scientific Reilly. The regular vampires still fry. These are special consecrated vampires that are part of a secret Vatican Order. Who are ordained priests. I am not making this up.
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Sep 18, 2017 06:23
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Catholic superheroes are all either demons or vampires, or at least look or dress like demons or vampires.
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Sep 18, 2017 07:27
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I get a lot of advertisements on the Facebook for books like "James Bond vs Cthulhu" and "Sherlock Holmes vs Hellraiser" Has anyone ever read one of these? They seems so bonkers and I just presume they're utterly terrible when I stop wondering how they even get made. But I've got to say I'm kinda intrigued.
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Sep 18, 2017 14:32
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Sharknado and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter hosed everything up for all of us by popularising low effort monkey cheese Intentionally-"bad"-but-actually-just-bad entertainment, and now everyone wants to cash in.
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Sep 18, 2017 16:02
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Still waiting on Teddy Roosevelt: Sasquatch Hunter
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Sep 18, 2017 16:14
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The reason they get made, as TenCentFang said, is because they're really easy once the premise percolates in your head. In most cases they're not worth reading even for comedy's sake because the effort put into writing them is so low that they expect the premise to carry the entire thing and -- shocking, I know -- it can't and doesn't.
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Sep 18, 2017 16:19
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Nakar posted:they expect the premise to carry the entire thing
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Sep 18, 2017 17:06
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Nakar posted:The reason they get made, as TenCentFang said, is because they're really easy once the premise percolates in your head. In most cases they're not worth reading even for comedy's sake because the effort put into writing them is so low that they expect the premise to carry the entire thing and -- shocking, I know -- it can't and doesn't. The "joke" is the existence. They're shelf decorations. They'd probably be better filled with blank pages. At least from the consumer side of it. It's the same damned mindset that led to Kevin Spacey's "Nine Lives." Some creator went "talking animal is funny" and then was so enamored with that "joke" they didn't put anything else down.
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Sep 18, 2017 17:13
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Enjoying things that are so bad they're funny was colonized by the industry and turned into a marketing scam, basically.
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Sep 18, 2017 17:24
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Drunken Baker posted:"Sherlock Holmes vs Hellraiser" Looked this up because I thought you were mixing genres just as an example but hell if it ain't real! 3.58 on Goodreads, must be middling-to-bad in that case. At least you can read Sherlock Holmes v Slenderman for free on the internet and I'll wager that short fic was of equal or better quality (it was BBC Sherlock to begin with).
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Sep 18, 2017 18:29
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Drunken Baker posted:I get a lot of advertisements on the Facebook for books like "James Bond vs Cthulhu" and "Sherlock Holmes vs Hellraiser" James Bond vs Cthulhu is loosely what Charles Stross' 2nd Laundry novel was going for (the first was Harry Palmer vs Cthulhu). The Laundry novels are fun, at least as far as I've read; I'm a couple behind.
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Sep 18, 2017 18:47
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Sham bam bamina! posted:How can someone pump so much ten-dollar verbiage into their book and not know the difference between "capitol" and "capital"? Is this just Suzanne Collins with a thesaurus? Nope that's on me. Typo I didn't catch because that's one I always have to think about. Now fixed, so you didn't imagine it.
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Sep 18, 2017 21:02
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Inescapable Duck posted:Catholic superheroes are all either demons or vampires, or at least look or dress like demons or vampires. His Robin equivalent is called Altar Boy  (Once he dies and his vampire secret is outed and Altar Boy takes up the mantle multiple people try to fend him off with sunlight, holy water, garlic, etc and it's good for a cheap laugh)
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Sep 18, 2017 21:39
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DACK FAYDEN posted:(Once he dies and his vampire secret is outed and Altar Boy takes up the mantle multiple people try to fend him off with sunlight, holy water, garlic, etc and it's good for a cheap laugh) I'm surprised superheroes don't leak fake weaknesses more often.
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Sep 18, 2017 21:41
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The fact that Wikipedia put "Roman Catholic Church" under "team affiliations" where they'd usually put like The Avengers or The Sinister Six or whatever is cracking me up.
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Sep 19, 2017 01:35
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TenCentFang posted:Sharknado and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter hosed everything up for all of us by popularising low effort monkey cheese Intentionally-"bad"-but-actually-just-bad entertainment, and now everyone wants to cash in. Wasn't it Pride and Prejudice and Zombies that kicked that trend off?
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Sep 19, 2017 05:33
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Tiggum posted:Wasn't it Pride and Prejudice and Zombies that kicked that trend off? I was actually going to say "Sharknado and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies", but my OCD really gave me fits over all the and's.
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Sep 19, 2017 06:04
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Agents are GO! posted:Sold. I read this in middle school! I remember it being so bad it made me think environmentalism was bullshit until early high school.
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Sep 19, 2017 07:52
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Hate Fibration posted:I read this in middle school! I remember it being so bad it made me think environmentalism was bullshit until early high school. I couldn't find my copy so Im grabbing it from the library. It is really bad. It was written in the mid-80s so even the climate science is really bad, but I'm not savvy enough to know if it was bad by mid 80s standards. Really, if your claim to fame is being abducted by aliens, stick with what you know.
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Sep 19, 2017 11:01
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Agents are GO! posted:Edit 2: It was Nature's End. If I can't find my copy I'll get it from the library and do a thing here. It's from 1986 but that cover makes it look like a 90s techno-thriller. Meanwhile, The Coming Global Superstorm under "customers also viewed" on that page is apparently in the "speculative non-fiction" category but looks like one of the many, many, many jaundiced Hal "THE WORLD WILL END IN 1994 WHEN THE USSR INVADES ISRAEL" Lindsey books my grandmother has in her attic.
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Sep 19, 2017 11:11
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TenCentFang posted:I was actually going to say "Sharknado, and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies", but my OCD would not let me use the Oxford comma. FTFY
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Sep 19, 2017 12:55
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Runcible Cat posted:James Bond vs Cthulhu is loosely what Charles Stross' 2nd Laundry novel was going for (the first was Harry Palmer vs Cthulhu). The Laundry novels are fun, at least as far as I've read; I'm a couple behind. The first Laundry novel was real good. I heard they get real fuckin' loopy the longer they go on though. Like comically absurd even compared to the first book which has an alien planet where the moon is in the shape of Hitler's head.
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Sep 19, 2017 13:45
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I've read all the Laundry Files novels up to the last one where Bob is the viewpoint character; narratively it makes sense that they get bleaker and bleaker and bleaker as they go on but I think they suffer for losing out on the sense of humour the early ones had.
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Sep 19, 2017 13:54
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I'm only going on second hand comments from the weird fiction thread in the book barn. I meant it gets barmy in that vampires and elves show up and Mo abseils from a helicopter playing a violin which doubles as a gun.
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Sep 19, 2017 13:57
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Drunken Baker posted:I'm only going on second hand comments from the weird fiction thread in the book barn. I meant it gets barmy in that vampires and elves show up and Mo abseils from a helicopter playing a violin which doubles as a gun. eh, the "elves" and "vampires" at least fit consistently in universe. The elves in particular have a really creepy hierarchy. And that violin is without a doubt a horrifying weapon/entity. The violin doesn't double as a gun. It's a weapon in and of itself that shreds people's psyches and souls. It also tries to meld with it's player by offering more and more power until it absorbs them. Ultimately, it's to each their own. Personally Apocalypse Via Cosmic Horrors Unleashed by Man's Ignorance is totally my jam. I'm also liking how the series has been sliding into a darker and darker take of everything. It feels like everything is starting to constrict and the portagonists are starting to feel equal parts despair and resignation. No longer trying to save the world, but trying to choose the least horrible way for it to end without destroying everyone's souls Proteus Jones has a new favorite as of 14:07 on Sep 19, 2017 |
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Sep 19, 2017 14:04
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Proteus Jones posted:eh, the "elves" and "vampires" at least fit consistently in universe. The elves in particular have a really creepy hierarchy. And that violin is without a doubt a horrifying weapon/entity. The violin doesn't double as a gun. It's a weapon in and of itself that shreds people's psyches and souls. It also tries to meld with it's player by offering more and more power until it absorbs them. iirc, the violin is actually a vampire, because anything can be one based on how magic works in the Laundryverse.
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Sep 19, 2017 14:19
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Oh yeah, not saying it's bad or anything. It just sounds really out of left fiend compared to the "cosmic" stuff is all. I'm trying to space out the Laundry books between other non fiction novels so I don't get burnt out... Probably should have qualified that in a "bad book" thread I wasn't talking about a bad book. Sorry. Speaking of cosmic horror and weird fiction, it feels like a lot of the short stories I read are really obtuse. Now, I know weird fiction isn't meant to explain everything and it'd be pretty terrible if it did, but I've read a lot of short stories that feel like they're literally just bad dreams someone has had written down on paper. I forget the story name, but from a recent collection there's these two dudes. One of them has a hole in his head that shines out a dark light. Yeah, it's weird and creepy... But it's not a story. Maybe that's the way it is with weird fiction? But at the same time you read Brian Hodge and his stuff is bonkers, but it still reads as a good yarn. Things happen, there's a bit of conflict and it doesn't just end with, "Then the guy screamed." Or maybe I was spoilt by reading the Books of Blood as a teen. I know Barker's work isn't technically "weird fiction" but I think the point still stands.
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Sep 19, 2017 14:27
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Wheat Loaf posted:iirc, the violin is actually a vampire, because anything can be one based on how magic works in the Laundryverse. Well, it's not a hemovore which is what a vampire is there. I thought it was made pretty clear that "Lector" was specifically in place to bond and influence someone who was powerful enough to not burn out until then finale of Carcosa (I can't remember the full name of what was performed off-hand), which would bring the King in Yellow into our realm. Lector was more a demon than anything. Or to put it in Laundry terms, a piece of metaphysical malware that tried to grab an anchor point (a wizard) that had enough juice to download the main payload, which opened a door to the King in Yellow's court in Carcosa.
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Sep 19, 2017 14:31
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