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Fried Sushi posted:Always felt WoT could have been great as a 4-5 book series, just so much fluff in them that could easily be removed or compressed. Remove the 6.5 books worth of braid tugging and dress descriptions and you are halfway there. I agree. It is so tiring. Doesn't help most of the main characters are unlikable bullies or literal children.
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Oct 2, 2018 19:48
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navyjack posted:Most recent thing I saw implied they are doing exactly that, saying that the first season would focus on Moiraine. That seems like it would spoil a lot of the first few books Also, there are a lot of plotlines in the middle books that should be cut out completely. On the other hand, it feels a lot harder to compress the first 4-5 books, since they are probably the best ones in the entire series
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Oct 2, 2018 19:56
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Fried Sushi posted:Always felt WoT could have been great as a 4-5 book series, just so much fluff in them that could easily be removed or compressed. Remove the 6.5 books worth of braid tugging and dress descriptions and you are halfway there. I picked up The Eye of the World when it first came out. After a bit of reading, I realized I was 150 pages in and nothing had actually happened. That was the end of my interest in the series.
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Oct 2, 2018 20:01
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The best parts of WoT is reading Puritans getting horny because they see an ankle or shapely calf.
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Oct 2, 2018 20:06
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Mr Hootington posted:The best parts of WoT is reading Puritans getting horny because they see an ankle or shapely calf. No, its the Robert Jordan's very unsubtle spanking fetish
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Oct 2, 2018 20:08
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The Glumslinger posted:No, its the Robert Jordan's very unsubtle spanking fetish Don't you take that tone with me or I will switch you from toe pads to shoulders and make you wish for your ma's, whom has lustrous brown hair in a tight bun melted above her head, the woman plump, but the plumpness of a woman who has born a number of children, wearing a stout woolen yellow dress, white stockings peeking out of the top of brown deer skin moccasins, harsh words. Mr Hootington fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Oct 2, 2018 |
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Oct 2, 2018 20:14
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StrixNebulosa posted:...That actually sounds cool as a book concept. With a skilled writer, that could be really evocative. If it's the bit I'm thinking of, it follows a character bumbling around doing some nonsense, and then each section ends with them noticing a metaphorical mushroom cloud on the horizon. So it's not even the interesting bit. I would totally read an entire book of "argggh holy poo poo magic wtf do we do now". Especially as the whole conceit of the series is "what if the Chosen One, Merlin Reborn, destined to defeat Not-Sauron, is also destined to go insane"
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Oct 2, 2018 21:18
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The Glumslinger posted:It'll be interesting to see the casting and how they manage to compress the series because I can't imagine they're gonna do 14 seasons Hell, just removing the braid tugging and skirt smoothing scenes alone would shave 2 to 3 seasons worth of time.
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Oct 2, 2018 22:57
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tbh I enjoy the domesticity and fantasy village logistics of WoT more than I enjoy the grand fatansy elements if I want that there are plenty of already existing tv shows to watch though
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Oct 3, 2018 00:57
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I didn't see this mentioned, forgive me if I missed it, but The Traitor Baru Cormorant is up on Amazon US for 2.99 on Kindle  https://www.amazon.com/Traitor-Baru-Cormorant-Masquerade-ebook/dp/B00V351EOM
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Oct 3, 2018 01:39
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WoT has some great cinematic moments and the wonky pacing makes it easy for them to adjust the length. If they want to drag the show out to a dozen seasons they have the content for it, but if they want it shorter they could cut thousands of pages without messing up any plot. I think Amazon's 3 Body Problem series is going to be way weirder to adapt. Some of the best moments of those books are characters pondering things in their head and the wallfacer in book 2 is just such an odd character to depict on screen. Actually both book 1 and 2's protagonists make for wonky TV characters. Book 3's protagonist is at least a lot more interesting character even if I'm still uncertain about the gender politics at play in the book ( all her decisions having apocalypticly bad outcomes is definitely saying something).
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Oct 3, 2018 01:40
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How up it's own nose does Jodi Taylor's St Mary's time-travelling historians book series get? I stumbled across one of the series books (book 7) in a local library, skimmed it, and got major Kage Baker vibes. Also came across Lies of Locke Lamora. Hoping it's better than book 1 of Stephen Brust's Taltos series. Started the first book of Ken Macleod's Corporation Wars. The main character listed on the book synopsis already died once and the AI insurgency has kicked off by chapter 3. Much better than Macleod's Executioners Channel and Restoration Game so far.
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Oct 3, 2018 03:36
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Proteus Jones posted:Final Murderbot installment, Exit Strategy, is out today. Relatedly, does anyone have an opinion on the rest of Martha Well’s output?
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Oct 3, 2018 03:47
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Autonomous Monster posted:Relatedly, does anyone have an opinion on the rest of Martha Well’s output? Martha Wells is a pretty strong author. Haven't been disappointed by anything she's published so far. Her standalone books (City of Bones + Wheel of the Infinite) are solid, and her various book series (murderbot, ile-rien + raksura) are solid++.
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Oct 3, 2018 03:55
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Autonomous Monster posted:Relatedly, does anyone have an opinion on the rest of Martha Well’s output? I finished the Books of the Raksura earlier this year, and read Ile-Rien, City of Bones, and Wheel of the Infinite some years ago, and I enjoyed it all. She tends to write swashbuckling adventure sort of books with a small cast of characters rather than epic fantasies, and while I don't think she's as good at that as (say) C.S. Friedman at her best, I also haven't ever been disappointed by one of her books. NoNostalgia4Grover posted:Also came across Lies of Locke Lamora. Hoping it's better than book 1 of Stephen Brust's Taltos series. IMO, Lies of Locke Lamora is better than Jhereg on first read, but the series goes steadily downhill after that, while the Taltos books just keep getting better; nor does it improve with rereads as most of the Taltos books do. I would recommend it, but don't expect the sequels to live up to the promise of the first book. (Fortunately, it works alright as a standalone.)
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Oct 3, 2018 04:08
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ToxicFrog posted:IMO, Lies of Locke Lamora is better than Jhereg on first read, but the series goes steadily downhill after that, while the Taltos books just keep getting better; nor does it improve with rereads as most of the Taltos books do. I would recommend it, but don't expect the sequels to live up to the promise of the first book. (Fortunately, it works alright as a standalone.) I still liked the second book alot, even though it felt like it should have been 2 books. The third book was so dissapointing
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Oct 3, 2018 04:21
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The Glumslinger posted:I still liked the second book alot, even though it felt like it should have been 2 books. The third book was so dissapointing I liked it in theory, but found it underwhelming in practice; it would have worked a lot better as two separate books, Locke Lamora on the High Seas and Locke Lamora Robs The gently caress Out Of A Casino. That I think could have been a worthy follow-up to Lies, but as it is when I read it I mostly just see wasted potential.  It does have some fantastic scenes and ideas in it, though.And then Republic of Thieves spends 90% of the book on an idiotic, juvenile prank war before suddenly swerving into the main character is actually the reincarnation of a mage with unique, spooky powers! but he's being hunted by an insane cyborg superwizard! oh no which pretty much completely killed my interest in the series, even if Thorn of Emberlain does ever come out. I mean, I got into Lies for the intricate heists and cons; if I want to read books about the reincarnation of a wizard who killed a shitload of people doing forbidden experiments, on the run from extremely scary people who want him very dead the Taltos books are right there. 
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Oct 3, 2018 05:14
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Zore posted:Wheel of Time is really easy to compress since a good 50% of it is just tertiary characters giving ground level perspective on stuff. You also have a ton of extraneous characters you could combine, and you don't need to have people spinning their wheels on all the subplots for as long as they do. Doing the grunt work of tracing out all the plotlines and figuring out where they intersect and what could be jettisoned would be nightmarish. Makes me suspect they'll gloss over a lot or change major story elements and go off on their own path for a lot of stuff to simplify things.
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Oct 3, 2018 05:19
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Proteus Jones posted:Michael Whelan cover-art is always fantastic. I think he was the go to cover artist of Fantasy books (and some SF) for Ballantine/DelRey covers in the 80s and 90s. Whelan is the exception to the rule about not buying books based solely on their covers. This is mainly because he's so insanely good that publisher only pay his rates for books they think will do well anyway. FuzzySlippers posted:I think Amazon's 3 Body Problem series is going to be way weirder to adapt. Some of the best moments of those books are characters pondering things in their head and the wallfacer in book 2 is just such an odd character to depict on screen. Actually both book 1 and 2's protagonists make for wonky TV characters. Book 3's protagonist is at least a lot more interesting character even if I'm still uncertain about the gender politics at play in the book ( all her decisions having apocalypticly bad outcomes is definitely saying something). it'll be better than this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Zscui21JuA
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Oct 3, 2018 06:10
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Neurosis posted:Doing the grunt work of tracing out all the plotlines and figuring out where they intersect and what could be jettisoned would be nightmarish. Makes me suspect they'll gloss over a lot or change major story elements and go off on their own path for a lot of stuff to simplify things. The books did a thing where one major character gets completely left out of each book, rotating, for a long stretch. That would not fly on TV, the whole thing will need re-pacing.
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Oct 3, 2018 06:59
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Autonomous Monster posted:Relatedly, does anyone have an opinion on the rest of Martha Well’s output? Seconding or thirding or whatever that Wells is pretty solid. She has done a reasonable amount of historical research to give her a backbone for her fantasy cultures and is able to drop in flavorful details without derailing the story to tell us about her worldbuilding. She also writes fantasy set in later early modern eras but is very much not steampunk, and also often writes about non-white cultures or characters. Her books include raised stakes but avoid the urge so many fantasy authors seem to have now to throw in a bunch of gore or rapey stuff to show how edgy they are. She also wrote a retelling of Sleeping Beauty from the witch's perspective which I still find greatly amusing.
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Oct 3, 2018 07:14
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I actually finished her Raksura series a week ago. They weren't quite as fun as murderbot, but they were meatier and the characters were all great to read.
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Oct 3, 2018 08:14
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Some of her older book rights are directly hers (at least the eBook versions), so she gets a much bigger cut. Also, the prices are much more reasonable. I know everyone likes the Raksura series (which is good), but Death of the Necromancer will always be my favorite since it was my introduction to her. She builds worlds you *know* are rich with history and culture, but she paints only enough details for you to feel it lurking under the surface. Her characters always feel fully realized, with motivations and actions that make sense. It can also be a considered a prelude, along with The Element of Fire, to The Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy. Harper-Collins still has the e-rights to the trilogy, but the prices are still not onerous for novel length books. City of Bones is another great stand-alone novel (and a steal at $3) and I’d love for her to return to it.
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Oct 3, 2018 08:25
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I just realised I think of Murderbot as female even though the books are very careful to keep it neuter at all times. Thanks, brain?
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Oct 3, 2018 13:26
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FuzzySlippers posted:Book 3's protagonist is at least a lot more interesting character even if I'm still uncertain about the gender politics at play in the book ( all her decisions having apocalypticly bad outcomes is definitely saying something). Plus it doesn’t help that Thomas Wade Did Literally Nothing Wrong not even the bits where he murdered people and rebelled against the government somehow, what the hell
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Oct 3, 2018 13:47
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Autonomous Monster posted:I just realised I think of Murderbot as female even though the books are very careful to keep it neuter at all times. Men can watch soap operas too!
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Oct 3, 2018 14:47
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I was just so happy when they set up a little security network for Murderbot at the end. But now I'm back to being grumpy because there's no new Murderbot to read.
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Oct 3, 2018 15:08
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Proteus Jones posted:Some of her older book rights are directly hers (at least the eBook versions), so she gets a much bigger cut. Also, the prices are much more reasonable. Are the characters in her other books as sympathetic as Murderbot? Because I love Murderbot like a goddam teddy bear
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Oct 3, 2018 15:15
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Thranguy posted:The books did a thing where one major character gets completely left out of each book, rotating, for a long stretch. That would not fly on TV, the whole thing will need re-pacing. The books also did the thing where they summon the reincarnation of an ancient and legendary heroine, and their first act with her is to go and join the circus. I love the idea of WoT, but the execution.....
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Oct 3, 2018 15:18
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Are the characters in her other books as sympathetic as Murderbot? Her other leads are all interesting and sympathetic but Murderbot is kind of a stroke of genius. Wells has always had a certain amount of dry wit but it's on full display in the Murderbot stories, and bot's exasperated annoyance with humans could have become grating after a while if it weren't also so utterly fascinated with human lives (through soap operas of course). I agree, there haven't been many characters I've read in the last few years who just made me want to hug them, especially since I know Murderbot would hate it. The bit about bots sitting on the furniture in the third one was pretty touching, and then in the last of course Murderbot makes a point of sitting on furniture with humans which none of them notices as anything strange but you could almost see an achievement banner springing up in Murderbot's HUD But really her other books are good reads too and her career has really struggled for a long time so I'm quite glad to see Murderbot getting her a lot of attention. I bought all of Fall of Ile-Rien in hardback, and my preference at the time was to physically visit a bookstore and purchase a newly released book. Apparently this was sheer lunacy and they (Probably B&N but might've been Borders) had trouble finding their own stock and just straight up did not have the third one on release day, good job losing that sale to Amazon, jerks.
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Oct 3, 2018 16:02
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occamsnailfile posted:Her other leads are all interesting and sympathetic but Murderbot is kind of a stroke of genius. Wells has always had a certain amount of dry wit but it's on full display in the Murderbot stories, and bot's exasperated annoyance with humans could have become grating after a while if it weren't also so utterly fascinated with human lives (through soap operas of course). I agree, there haven't been many characters I've read in the last few years who just made me want to hug them, especially since I know Murderbot would hate it. Moon from the Books of the Raksura is also pretty high on the "badly needs a hug" list, I think.
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Oct 3, 2018 16:12
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Strom Cuzewon posted:The books also did the thing where they summon the reincarnation of an ancient and legendary heroine, and their first act with her is to go and join the circus. I will forever look upon it with nostalgic fondness because it was the first fantasy I read after LOTR as a kid but I never read the last three books and I probably never well.
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Oct 3, 2018 16:18
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Tor has the first two chapters of Baru 2 up, after the prelude which was already posted. You actually get back to Baru's POV instead of some poor guy on a boat!
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Oct 3, 2018 20:26
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DACK FAYDEN posted:I think she’s really poorly served by being a woman. Like, there’s an interesting contrast between her and Thomas Wade or whatever his name is, but that contrast, to Western readers, is totally swamped out by the gender thing because holy poo poo is it ever tone-deaf. So what's the contrast supposed to be here? We have 2 men (Wade and the old wallfacer) who make the 'hard decisions' which all turn out to be correct. Then you have her (the first significant female character since the one who betrayed Earth in book 1) who makes seeming very sensible compassionate decisions that all turn out to be horrifically wrong. No place for compassion in politics? That's something that is said of women in politics (too soft for politics except when they are HRC assassin extraordinaire I guess) but maybe that's just a Western thing. Her early kinda harsh decision to send her old creepy college friend dead into space turns out to be correct I guess.
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Oct 3, 2018 21:16
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I know this was awhile back but from my reading everything the man wrote this would be my Heinlein rankings Worth: Between Planets Farmer in the Sky The Rolling Stones Orphans of the Sky Starman Jones Tunnel in the Sky Double Star (this is real fun) Time for the Stars ( watch out for that ending Heinlein showing his weird early) Citizen of the Galaxy ( penultimate of the Juveniles and the best) Have Space Suit—Will Travel Friday Job: A Comedy of Justice Honorable Mentions: If This Goes On— Glory Road (lol) Don't push your politics on me pal: Stranger in a Strange Land Starship Troopers The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress  I Will Fear No Evil My name is Lazarus Long get it? Warning entering a very dark place: Farnham's Freehold shirunei fucked around with this message at 22:36 on Oct 3, 2018 |
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Oct 3, 2018 22:31
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shirunei posted:I know this was awhile back but from my reading everything the man wrote I mean... why though?
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Oct 3, 2018 22:42
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ShutteredIn posted:I mean... why though? Inheriting a complete bibliography at a young age. Naivety and a lot of free time.
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Oct 3, 2018 22:45
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General Battuta posted:Tor has the first two chapters of Baru 2 up, after the prelude which was already posted. You actually get back to Baru's POV instead of some poor guy on a boat! Is Baru able to find the man in the boat? Enquiring minds want to know.
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Oct 3, 2018 22:54
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General Battuta posted:Tor has the first two chapters of Baru 2 up, after the prelude which was already posted. You actually get back to Baru's POV instead of some poor guy on a boat! That was a lot of internal monologue. Some of it seems quite similar to your personal webpage discussion about the ending of Traitor, and maybe a little too explicit about the meaning and motivation of it. Or maybe I feel that way because I read your webpage? I’m kind of curious as to whether that sort of thing might have been suggested so the reader who misses the subtext doesn’t get too lost.
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Oct 3, 2018 23:44
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shirunei posted:I know this was awhile back but from my reading everything the man wrote this would be my Heinlein rankings Puppet Masters belongs in the first group. And I don’t think the politics in TMIAHM are effectively pushing anything given how it ends and how Prof’s idealism ends up getting put into practice. Or rather, I think the good characters outweigh the politics pushing. I agree on Stranger though.
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