|
PreacherTom posted:Are you kidding me? "Nightingale and the I Armored Corps": I'd read the poo poo out of that. So would I - now. But before Nightingale had been established as someone to be curious about? "Wizard blows up tanks" is a book I'd have left on the shelf as puerile wish fulfilment. Edit for spelling. Lemniscate Blue fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Mar 26, 2019 |
#
?
Mar 26, 2019 14:38
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 06:27 |
|
|
Yeah, Nightingale is basically British Empire: The Nazi-Fighting, James Bond Cool Parts, and the dynamic in the series is New Britain as represented by Peter as successor to Nightingale.
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2019 15:47
|
|
|
Lemniscate Blue posted:So would I - now. But before Nightingale had been established as someone to be curious about? "Wizard blows up tanks" is a book I'd have left on the shelf as peurile wish fulfilment. "Wizard blows up tanks" is, yeah, not a great concept on its own. "Gentleman wizard in the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare blows up Nazi tanks," though, is something I can get behind.
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2019 16:17
|
|
|
MonikaTSarn posted:I really liked the parts in several differnt books where there's a culture clash, like when in Iron Druid his old druid master gets revived. Are there any urban fantasy books where the main character discovers our modern world for the first time ? Most interesting would probably a female viewpoint. Rivers of London kind of has this with Nightingale. Nightingale isn't the viewpoint character but the culture clash pops up from time to time. I can't believe I'm saying this, but Anne Rice's vampires are all several hundred years old. The movie isn't that similar to the books, especially since most of the books have Lestat as the main character. This isn't really a recommendation (I barely remember them and certainly didn't like it enough to read a second time), but I can't think of anything else that has a main character from the past in modern times. FWIW a lot of vampire novels have old vampires show up at some point. I can't recommend any because its not a sub genre I've read much of. There are lots of books that take a modern person and put them in the past. Most of them don't really focus on the culture much though. Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague de Camp does a decent job of presenting the culture of post-fall Rome even though its not the main focus if I remember right.
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2019 17:25
|
|
|
MonikaTSarn posted:Which gets me thinking, I often feel many books start in the middle of the story, with the character already well established in his world instead of discovering all the weirdness along with us. And then lots of backstory gets told over many books, and eventually prequels migth be added. Why is that so often the case ? Because in media res is drilled into many an author's head as the quick and effective way to hook new readers. Once the audience is invested, there's more time to exposit various essentials of backstory and world building.
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2019 06:54
|
|
|
About a third of the way into The Rook right now. Really enjoy their take on the whole "magical" government agency thing a lot more than I did Laundry Files. I can't say I'm a huge fan of the amount / duration of some of the info dumps, but it is a good book.
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2019 16:13
|
|
|
NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:About a third of the way into The Rook right now. Really enjoy their take on the whole "magical" government agency thing a lot more than I did Laundry Files. I can't say I'm a huge fan of the amount / duration of some of the info dumps, but it is a good book. The Rook has a weird structure and blends several genres. That might be part of why I like it so much. The really long info dumps (while necessary at first) gradually reduce in both length and frequency. You hear more from old Mifwany in the beginning because, well, the main character is relying on that information to do everything. As new Mifwany gains in confidence, she stops referring to the binders as much or just reads the summaries. It's a murder mystery where the victim is investigating their own demise. It's a frame story where the different PoVs are all the same person. It's an urban fantasy where the superpowers are mostly background rather than vehicle by which the characters express agency (to the point that it's notable--by everyone--when Mifwany uses hers). And it's funny as hell. You haven't got there yet, but the duck chapter is solid gold. "The duck tells me nothing!"
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2019 17:57
|
|
|
The duck was pretty good. And yeah, The Rook is- different. I feel like you could calve off a number of different parts of the book into its own novel with distinctly different tones. If it were less charming and interesting, it would read a bit disjointed. The info-dumps can get a little irritating early on, but as they get smaller they get more interesting, and they serve the purpose of characterizing Thomas and her prior relationships so. It was really satisfying to see her grow and take charge. And its nice to see a cast with a bunch of ladies, as well. Her phonecall with the Belgian in the jar was pretty hilarious, where she just started swearing at him and she said something about "angry pool sloshing sounds" in the background. The one thing I didn't like was that the narrator for the audiobook had a habit of putting a strange inflection on some of her words that was really noticeable in parts.
|
|
#
?
Mar 29, 2019 15:47
|
|
|
I'd like the Rook a lot more if it were set in NY or DC instead of London. Goddam everything is in London and the net effect is to make it extremely obvious that the author doesn't actually live in London at all. Breaks the suspension of disbelief. OTOH I really like that it passes the Bechdel test with flying colors. The whole book is one woman talking to another woman (herself, from before) about things that have nothing to do with romance.
|
|
#
?
Mar 29, 2019 15:53
|
|
|
I rather suspect his home Australia would be pretty difficult to get engaged in a secret war with Belgium. On the other hand, I'd love to see some Australian UF - there's a whole basically untapped mythology, issues of colonialism, every single goddamn animal trying to murder you in some creative way... anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 16:28 on Mar 29, 2019 |
|
#
?
Mar 29, 2019 16:26
|
|
|
anilEhilated posted:I rather suspect his home Australia would be pretty difficult to get engaged in a secret war with Belgium. Yeah, exactly. It would be a lot more interesting and original. Write what you know. Not everything has to be London.
|
|
#
?
Mar 29, 2019 16:36
|
|
|
Why do you think London is so popular? The big name in UF for the last decade has been Dresden and he's based out of Chicago so I would have expected more copycats to show up in Chicago than London.
|
|
#
?
Mar 29, 2019 17:22
|
|
|
It's because for the large part we are all reading in english and London is the old timey anglosphere capital thats still accessible to US audiences. Setting stuff in say, Prague or Vienna would be cool af but probably wouldnt sell nearly as well or be easy to write. Urban fantasy around Eastern European folklore would be extremely metal, theres some seriously hosed up but cool stuff.
|
|
#
?
Mar 29, 2019 17:30
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yeah, exactly. It would be a lot more interesting and original. Write what you know. Not everything has to be London. The problem with this is that if you don't know a big city, you either fall into a giant pit of research or whatever city you write will end up feeling kind of 'vague' anyways. Set it somewhere else? Well. Uh. Where? There's a reason they don't make CSI: Bumfuck Egypt. More than any other series ever, I believe Sandman Slim's setting because of how he writes it, feels about it. It's a space only an author could loathe. But a lot of people aren't going to ever get to live in a city the size of LA, or form a relationship with it like his.
|
|
#
?
Mar 29, 2019 17:46
|
|
|
LLSix posted:Why do you think London is so popular? The big name in UF for the last decade has been Dresden and he's based out of Chicago so I would have expected more copycats to show up in Chicago than London. What other city in the English-speaking world has as much history? The average person likely doesn't consider history any earlier than medieval times, but London's history stretches back over 2000 years. It's older than Christianity. Now that's certainly not unusual for major European cities (not to mention African and Asian cities) but again, I'm speaking only of cities in English-speaking countries as a matter accessibility, as Saros said. There's also the matter of distance. Everybody knows of London, but few people know enough to spot mistakes, and fewer still care enough to verify if some detail is accurate, so there's a lot of room to gloss over detail.
|
|
#
?
Mar 29, 2019 17:47
|
|
|
On the subject of UF set in anywhere other than London, I've just started on The Witch Who Came In From The Cold which is set in Prague in the 70s. It was written as a serial with five different authors (Lindsay Smith, Max Gladstone, Cassandra Rose Clarke, Ian Tregillis and Michael Swanwick) all doing solo/duo writing duties across 13 episodes. If anyone's interested, the setting features Cold War and magical conflicts going on perpendicular to each other, where people on one side of the political divide might be on opposite sides of the magical one. I can't say the book has really gone into the city's history much so far (certainly nowhere near as much as the Peter Grant series, which is my benchmark for City Porn), but at least it's a different setting? Some of the reviews complained about varying characterisation and character voices due to there being multiple authors, but I haven't noticed that much. Of course, that might be due to the fact that I've got the audiobook version which might help with consistency (the same two voice talents throughout) and am only three chapters in (two of which were written or co-written by Gladstone).
|
|
#
?
Mar 29, 2019 19:15
|
|
|
LLSix posted:Why do you think London is so popular? The big name in UF for the last decade has been Dresden and he's based out of Chicago so I would have expected more copycats to show up in Chicago than London. It's probably easier to be a fiction writer in England than it is elsewhere, just because of the more robust public assistance programs. Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book while on the dole. There are also a lot of quotes about how the British Invasion happened in rock music because so many musicians were supported by the dole. Past that, a lot of UF draws on the spy / thriller tradition and to english speaking audiences that generally means James Bond which means England which means London.
|
|
#
?
Mar 29, 2019 19:26
|
|
|
I've really enjoyed Angela Slatter's Verity Fassbinder UF novels, set in Brisbane, but I've held back on recommending them because I'm not sure how much of the enjoyment is just the novelty of seeing something written about my home town. They're very good books, but in the first one at least you can tell that Slatter is more used to writing short fiction. It almost feels like a short story and then the novel, but it comes together at the end. The next two books flow a lot more smoothly. Also, the barest of bare minimum romance!
|
|
#
?
Mar 29, 2019 23:49
|
|
|
anilEhilated posted:I rather suspect his home Australia would be pretty difficult to get engaged in a secret war with Belgium. There is The Wind City, set in New Zealand. It's a bit tumbleresque, but it pulls upon New Zealand mythology.
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2019 00:02
|
|
|
Saros posted:It's because for the large part we are all reading in english and London is the old timey anglosphere capital thats still accessible to US audiences. Setting stuff in say, Prague or Vienna would be cool af but probably wouldnt sell nearly as well or be easy to write. Ilona Andrews has been mining ee folklore for a long while now.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2019 19:58
|
|
|
So, as a beta reader I cannot say anything specific about what's happening in Peace Talks. I can say, however, that poo poo is going down.
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2019 21:08
|
|
|
Captain Capacitor posted:So, as a beta reader I cannot say anything specific about what's happening in Peace Talks. I'm curious as to how many PMs you get due to this post.
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2019 21:39
|
|
|
Ornamented Death posted:I'm curious as to how many PMs you get due to this post. I hold my vow of silence in high regard so I'll answer nothing. I am simply saying the wait has been worth it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2019 21:51
|
|
|
two entire chapters packed with action Can't wait for 2025 when it gets released.
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2019 22:59
|
|
|
Up Circle posted:two entire chapters packed with action If Butcher goes down the GRRM route that release date may be quite optimistic.
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2019 23:05
|
|
|
Captain Capacitor posted:I hold my vow of silence in high regard so I'll answer nothing. Hmm, not an April 1st post...
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2019 00:10
|
|
|
Captain Capacitor posted:So, as a beta reader I cannot say anything specific about what's happening in Peace Talks. Honestly just the confirmation that there are words on a page is comforting at this point.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2019 01:13
|
|
|
Can he just release it chapter by chapter like Dickens or something.
|
|
#
?
Apr 5, 2019 21:42
|
|
|
Up Circle posted:Can he just release it chapter by chapter like Dickens or something. Or just hire some ghostwriters like good ol' Dumas.
|
|
#
?
Apr 5, 2019 23:44
|
|
|
Allow me to interrupt the bi-monthly Butcher whining session with a UF recommendation: Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott is really, really good. Also very, very British. It's fairly unconventional for a UF, focusing on a wider cast of inhabitants of a town that is, uh, rather weird, but the mysteries are engaging and clues to solutions a lot less obvious than the UF standard (of generally having none and dropping answers out of the left field). Enjoyable through and through. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Apr 6, 2019 |
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2019 16:13
|
|
|
anilEhilated posted:Allow me to interrupt the bi-monthly Butcher whining session with a UF recommendation: Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott is really, really good. Also very, very British. Looks good. Unfortunately, not available to me until June. Looking forward to it. Edit: I can buy book 2 in the series now. What the hell?
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2019 17:33
|
|
|
torgeaux posted:Looks good. Unfortunately, not available to me until June. Looking forward to it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2019 19:51
|
|
|
Looks like the US hardcover of the first book isn't out until June, but the ebook and paperback have been available for a while.
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2019 20:13
|
|
|
Ornamented Death posted:Looks like the US hardcover of the first book isn't out until June, but the ebook and paperback have been available for a while. anilEhilated posted:The third one won't be available until June, maybe you clicked on that? The first one is called just "Rotherweird". Nope. Rotherweird is available 4 June on Kindle and hardcover, available now in paperback.
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2019 20:32
|
|
|
torgeaux posted:Nope. Rotherweird is available 4 June on Kindle and hardcover, available now in paperback. Huh, that's weird. They must have pulled it for some reason; you can see reviews for the Kindle version going back a couple of years if you scroll down.
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2019 20:44
|
|
|
Ornamented Death posted:Huh, that's weird. They must have pulled it for some reason; you can see reviews for the Kindle version going back a couple of years if you scroll down. That's weird. Oh, well, I can wait. Looks really interesting.
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2019 21:09
|
|
|
Captain Capacitor posted:So, as a beta reader I cannot say anything specific about what's happening in Peace Talks. Not gonna ask about spoilers but I’m real curious how you became a beta reader.
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2019 23:11
|
|
|
BIGFOOT EROTICA posted:Not gonna ask about spoilers but I’m real curious how you became a beta reader. By being a beta in literally every other aspect of their life. 
|
|
#
?
Apr 7, 2019 01:01
|
|
|
Don't know if it's a limited time thing, but Schaeffer's latest (non Faustverse, new series) book out today is only £1/$1.32 on Kindle.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2019 16:32
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 06:27 |
|
|
Junkenstein posted:Don't know if it's a limited time thing, but Schaeffer's latest (non Faustverse, new series) book out today is only £1/$1.32 on Kindle. I'm not seeing that on US Amazon. You can choose either Kindle Unlimited or $4.99 to purchase. You are talking about Ghosts of Gotham, right?
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2019 21:53
|
|
