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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Hahah, ok then That's damned true. On the plus side, issola does have Lady Teldra in it as an actual character, and your reward for plugging away at it is Dzur, which features a meal at Valabar's in the chapter headers.
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Oct 25, 2017 22:08
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anilEhilated posted:This is exactly why Issola sucks - from what I've seen, Brust just can't do high fantasy in any interesting way and whenever he heads there it ends up being mediocre at best. Thankfully the books get back on track. I think he kinda needed to rationalize why all those high and mighty elves hang out with a common human assassin but the Chosen One bullshit pretty much never works. Yeah. Songs of the Dying Earth, GRRM's Vance tribute story collection, is actually fairly decent as well.
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Oct 25, 2017 23:00
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anilEhilated posted:This is exactly why Issola sucks - from what I've seen, Brust just can't do high fantasy in any interesting way and whenever he heads there it ends up being mediocre at best. Thankfully the books get back on track. I think he kinda needed to rationalize why all those high and mighty elves hang out with a common human assassin but the Chosen One bullshit pretty much never works. Issola is actually very good, but not for reasons that have much to do with the plot.
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Oct 25, 2017 23:13
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:why do perfectly good fantasy noir series always insist on mucking everything up with World Shaking Epic Magic and Gods and not just staying focused on small scale gritty crime stories It's not as if that stuff wasn't there from literally book one.
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Oct 26, 2017 00:04
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Syzygy Stardust posted:Issola is actually very good, but not for reasons that have much to do with the plot. Agreed. I will have to say, I think my favorite books are the ones that at core are heists or stings.
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Oct 26, 2017 00:16
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:midway through Book 9 now, Issola IIRC, Vlad made his character turn after one of Brust's friends was murdered and he had second thoughts about glamorizing murder-for-hire.
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Oct 26, 2017 01:13
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Megazver posted:Yeah. Songs of the Dying Earth, GRRM's Vance tribute story collection, is actually fairly decent as well. It's not exactly clear in this post but GRRM is just the editor. Maybe this was implicit since it's well known GRRM doesn't write.
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Oct 26, 2017 01:50
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Y'know, I actually like a fair bit of GRRM's short stories. Definitely more than any novel he wrote.
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Oct 26, 2017 07:50
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anilEhilated posted:Y'know, I actually like a fair bit of GRRM's short stories. Definitely more than any novel he wrote. Well, they were his most important claim to fame before he started on ASOIAF. Not without reason.
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Oct 26, 2017 10:23
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anilEhilated posted:Y'know, I actually like a fair bit of GRRM's short stories. Definitely more than any novel he wrote. I haven't read ASOIF but the few shorts I've read from GRRM were alright. He's also famous and connected enough to be able to attract a lot of talent to his anthology projects, so a lot of those are pretty decent. Old Mars and Old Venus were the best of those I've read, though Dangerous Women was kind of a disappointment.
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Oct 26, 2017 15:07
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Khizan posted:IIRC, Vlad made his character turn after one of Brust's friends was murdered and he had second thoughts about glamorizing murder-for-hire. It's worse than that...Brust's friend was a labor organizer killed by organized crime. You can see the echoes in Teckla very clearly.
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Oct 26, 2017 16:34
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ulmont posted:It's worse than that...Brust's friend was a labor organizer killed by organized crime. You can see the echoes in Teckla very clearly. Well *that* makes sense and now I feel shallow The "deleted scenes" at the end of Ioreth are the best thing in the series so far
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Oct 26, 2017 18:48
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Ok, was not expecting such a shift in style with the Khaavren Romances but I'm enjoying it, especially the detailed descriptions of everyone's clothing. It's really well done - just enough there to evoke and lightly parody Dumas's style, without getting annoying. Kinda amazed that he actually worked The Vicomte de Bragelonne in there though, impressed Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 20:08 on Oct 26, 2017 |
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Oct 26, 2017 19:48
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Brust surprised me with the style shift from Taltos to Khaavren, though it's been a long time since I read either. Another book he worked on was in an epistolary style, Freedom and Necessity, with Emma Bull. It's a Victorian adventure novel with some minor supernatural elements--SFF mostly because the authors are SFF. But it's a fun story anyway, and the two of them managed to pool their talents well.
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Oct 26, 2017 20:00
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Ok, was not expecting such a shift in style with the Khaavren Romances but I'm enjoying it, especially the detailed descriptions of everyone's clothing. It's really well done - just enough there to evoke and lightly parody Dumas's style, without getting annoying. Brust-as-Paarfi is amazing
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Oct 26, 2017 21:48
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My local library doesn't have any Brust books but all this talk about him means I'll probably be getting some on Kindle. I've already listened to some videos where he talks about his stories and publishing and he seems like a cool guy. I like his "Cool stuff" theory of literature.
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Oct 26, 2017 21:57
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navyjack posted:Brust-as-Paarfi is amazing I was disappointed at first because it seemed that he was going to skip or elide the classic everybody-duels-with-everyone-else opening of The Three Musketeers, and then . . . perfection, like an unfolding flower If he keeps this up it has the potential for brilliance. If he manages to turn Vicomte de Bragellonne into a readable book that'll take genius.
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Oct 26, 2017 22:03
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I was disappointed at first because it seemed that he was going to skip or elide the classic everybody-duels-with-everyone-else opening of The Three Musketeers, and then . . . perfection, like an unfolding flower I think The Viscount of Adrilankha is the weakest of the three, in part because it was published in three volumes and just not a lot happens in the second one. I still enjoyed it, though. Honestly I like Brust-as-Paarfi-as-Dumas a lot more than Actual Dumas. In other news, I just finished The Fall of Ile-Rien, and despite Wells clearly shipping different characters than I was I enjoyed it a great deal. Definitely going to check out her other, more recent stuff now that I've been reminded she exists. For now, though, I need to read Provenance and then go on a Taltos binge.
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Oct 26, 2017 23:43
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I was disappointed at first because it seemed that he was going to skip or elide the classic everybody-duels-with-everyone-else opening of The Three Musketeers, and then . . . perfection, like an unfolding flower The Pheonix Guards is a masterwork. The follow-up, 500 Years Later is very good, not quite achieving the heights of the former. I do agree with others that the Viscount of Adrilankha being broken into three volumes kind of hosed with the pacing, but it's still good.
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Oct 27, 2017 01:57
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ToxicFrog posted:In other news, I just finished The Fall of Ile-Rien, and despite Wells clearly shipping different characters than I was I enjoyed it a great deal. Definitely going to check out her other, more recent stuff now that I've been reminded she exists. For now, though, I need to read Provenance and then go on a Taltos binge. I like all of her Il-Rien books. The first Il-Rien novel, Element of Fire is pretty good and a fun read. The 2nd book, Death of the Necromancer is up there on my favorite books list. It's kind of a half-heist/half-Holmsian Adventure.
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Oct 27, 2017 02:03
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Proteus Jones posted:The Pheonix Guards is a masterwork. The follow-up, 500 Years Later is very good, not quite achieving the heights of the former. I do agree with others that the Viscount of Adrilankha being broken into three volumes kind of hosed with the pacing, but it's still good. Sounds like it's following the structure of Vicomte de Bragellone, which was broken up into three volumes: Ten Years After, Louise de Vallerie, and The Man in the Iron Mask. So he's following Dumas' order strictly. Ten Years After / Louise de Vallerie are fairly awful books and among the worst things I've ever read by Dumas; I strongly suspect they were written by ghostwriters under his name (Dumas did a lot of that).
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Oct 27, 2017 04:42
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occamsnailfile posted:Brust surprised me with the style shift from Taltos to Khaavren, though it's been a long time since I read either. Another book he worked on was in an epistolary style, Freedom and Necessity, with Emma Bull. It's a Victorian adventure novel with some minor supernatural elements--SFF mostly because the authors are SFF. But it's a fun story anyway, and the two of them managed to pool their talents well. Oh, F&N ? I lent that to my mother, one chapter or so from the end I got an absolutely vicious email from my mother ranting about horrible endings and how could I do this to her. Then she read Bull's followup to what was obviously a Brust finale and all was forgiven. It's a terrific book with an interesting structure; Brust and Bull wrote alternating chapters as news reports, letters, telegrams, etc. to alternately develop the story. Lucky them, it worked. Read. This. Book. Viscount of Adrilankha would have benefited from being more tightly plotted, but by the structure he'd chosen he had three books to get Zerika on her way to the Paths of the Dead, through them, and settled on the throne. There's still a lot of good stuff in those novels; "The conclusion is inescapable: in this dream of sequence, time has no meaning" for example. That's just a beautiful phrase and a really good sequence that just naturally sounds like Paarfi describing something metaphysical that we've also seen from Vlad's POV.
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Oct 27, 2017 08:31
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Proteus Jones posted:I like all of her Il-Rien books. I should reread Death of the Necromancer one of these days; I read it back when it first came out and didn't like it nearly as much as Wheel of the Infinite, although it's been long enough that I can't remember. And I've never read Element of Fire.
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Oct 27, 2017 17:16
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Khizan posted:And some of the books have two or more storylines in them that are taking place at different times in the chronology, despite being in the same book. This makes the Malazan books sound like a well organized series. 
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Oct 27, 2017 22:47
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ToxicFrog posted:I should reread Death of the Necromancer one of these days; I read it back when it first came out and didn't like it nearly as much as Wheel of the Infinite, although it's been long enough that I can't remember. And I've never read Element of Fire. Death of the Necromancer has a tighter plot than Wheel of the Infinite but Infinite's setting is more interesting. Still, I liked both a lot. I think Necromancer got more praise for hitting part of the 'steampunk' aesthetic (though I wouldn't describe it as what we generally call a 'steampunk' novel; it's just fantasy that's set a in a vaguely 18-19th century technological level) and being a more traditional adventure novel. I also liked the other Ile-Rien novels. And her other works. Her latest is SF, and I feel like it isn't quite as strong as the Raksura stuff but it's still enjoyable. "Thorns" is also still one of my favorite fairy-tale retellings.
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Oct 27, 2017 23:03
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Evil Fluffy posted:This makes the Malazan books sound like a well organized series. The book that really goes hard on that, and I'm forgetting which one it is, cuts the reader a break by making the timeline changes entirely regular, every chapter starts in timeline A, then a sentence in timeline B halfway through, and finishes in timeline C.
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Oct 27, 2017 23:21
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Yeah, the Vlad Taltos books are way, way easier to follow than Malazan.
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Oct 27, 2017 23:27
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occamsnailfile posted:Death of the Necromancer has a tighter plot than Wheel of the Infinite but Infinite's setting is more interesting. Still, I liked both a lot. I think Necromancer got more praise for hitting part of the 'steampunk' aesthetic (though I wouldn't describe it as what we generally call a 'steampunk' novel; it's just fantasy that's set a in a vaguely 18-19th century technological level) and being a more traditional adventure novel. I also liked the other Ile-Rien novels. And her other works. Her latest is SF, and I feel like it isn't quite as strong as the Raksura stuff but it's still enjoyable. She has a new series called The Murderbot Diaries which was kicked off by the novella All Systems Red. I actually liked it a lot, and the next book is a full length novel due in Spring 2018. quote:"As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure."
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Oct 28, 2017 00:31
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quote:Lin-Manuel Miranda to Adapt The Kingkiller Chronicle Series for TV Heh. http://www.signature-reads.com/2017/10/lin-manuel-miranda-adapt-kingkiller-chronicle-tv/
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Oct 28, 2017 00:46
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Evil Fluffy posted:This makes the Malazan books sound like a well organized series. Taltos is exquisitely well organized and planned out, it's just not linear in either its publication or internal chronology.  occamsnailfile posted:Death of the Necromancer has a tighter plot than Wheel of the Infinite but Infinite's setting is more interesting. Still, I liked both a lot. I think Necromancer got more praise for hitting part of the 'steampunk' aesthetic (though I wouldn't describe it as what we generally call a 'steampunk' novel; it's just fantasy that's set a in a vaguely 18-19th century technological level) and being a more traditional adventure novel. I also liked the other Ile-Rien novels. And her other works. Her latest is SF, and I feel like it isn't quite as strong as the Raksura stuff but it's still enjoyable. I still haven't read Raksura! And it's actually the release of The Murderbot Diaries that got me back into Wells -- a friend of mine said "hey, I picked up this new book by Martha Wells and I think you'd really enjoy it", which reminded me that she'd written a whole pile of books I'd never even looked at. Not reading Murderbot until it's finished next year, though.
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Oct 28, 2017 01:34
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ToxicFrog posted:Not reading Murderbot until it's finished next year, though. If the novella is anything to go by, it's going to be a good series. Her one-off, City of Bones, is really good, too.
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Oct 28, 2017 04:18
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All Systems Red was fun. Wasn't nearly anywhere as twee as it's premise would suggest. I'm reading Too Like The Lightning by Ada Palmer right now. I wasn't too hot on it for the first half or so, but I seem to be past all the "fabulous lifestyles of the rich and the famous" stuff and it's getting far more interesting now that everybody's been introduced.
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Oct 28, 2017 08:17
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Proteus Jones posted:She has a new series called The Murderbot Diaries which was kicked off by the novella All Systems Red. I actually liked it a lot, and the next book is a full length novel due in Spring 2018. I'm in the middle of this right now. So far, it's pretty good.
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Oct 28, 2017 12:53
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Proteus Jones posted:If the novella is anything to go by, it's going to be a good series. That was my first Wells, in fact -- picked it up at a book sale for $0.25.
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Oct 28, 2017 14:27
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Evil Fluffy posted:This makes the Malazan books sound like a well organized series. Malazan is not for the faint of heart... re reads are the best
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Oct 28, 2017 18:30
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Cimber posted:RPO was a fun little book that has absolutely no value or reread value. Characters were one dimensional and the plot was pretty baseline. 2/10. Would not read again. I just finished RPO on the recommendation of a friend and yeah pretty much this. The prose felt really poor and janky but if you imagine it as a YA book it fixes it.
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Oct 29, 2017 21:09
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ed balls balls man posted:I just finished RPO on the recommendation of a friend and yeah pretty much this. The prose felt really poor and janky but if you imagine it as a YA book it fixes it. It really is just a generic young adult book, except for the fact that the only audience that is going to get more than a couple of the references in it is rapidly approaching middle age. If you weren't playing PC and tabletop games in the early-to-mid 80's you're not going to know much about anything mentioned in the book. I'm sure they'll solve that for the movie though. Finally today's youth can learn about Super Mario Bros., Transformers, and Freddy Krueger.
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Oct 30, 2017 01:09
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Proteus Jones posted:The Pheonix Guards is a masterwork. Any book where the narrator first goes on a long digression (one of many) about something completely irrelevant (but interesting), and then takes the extra time to directly apologize to the readers for wasting their time, has something going for it.
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Oct 30, 2017 10:27
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I feel like GRRM wants to write short stories, because the last couple ASOIAF books honestly feel like they could be cut into entirely separate novella's and be alot more cohesive than the books.
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Oct 30, 2017 11:00
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No. No more dancing! posted:It really is just a generic young adult book, except for the fact that the only audience that is going to get more than a couple of the references in it is rapidly approaching middle age. If you weren't playing PC and tabletop games in the early-to-mid 80's you're not going to know much about anything mentioned in the book. I'm sure they'll solve that for the movie though. Finally today's youth can learn about Super Mario Bros., Transformers, and Freddy Krueger. The narrator for RPO's audiobook version pretty much sums it up. Wil Wheaton. A man in his 40s with an ironic bit of purple hair who is really into nerd culture who's "glory days" were in the 80's playing a teenager.
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