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ben aaronovitch was also mentioned this page and i submit that his books commit the worst crime of all: being aggressively british to the point i can't even understand half the dialoguequote:‘No theory is ever perfect,’ said Lesley. ‘Particularly since we can’t even find a reason for William Skirmish being in the West End that night.’ quote:“Purdy,” I shouted and he looked over. “What’s the griff?” quote:He gave us a pitying look. “An old-style copper would have felt it too, even a tosser like Johnson would have known something was up.” -statements by the utterly deranged
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Sep 29, 2021 04:50
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I remember liking the Laundry books by Charles Stross. How are the later ones holding up?
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Sep 29, 2021 05:18
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Stexils posted:ben aaronovitch was also mentioned this page and i submit that his books commit the worst crime of all: being aggressively british to the point i can't even understand half the dialogue That's perfectly cromulent English my old fellow
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Sep 29, 2021 09:20
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The Lone Badger posted:I remember liking the Laundry books by Charles Stross. How are the later ones holding up? IMO they run into the same issue just described. Escalating stakes fundamentally change the tone of the books. They go from underpaid spooks trying to keep the universe from unravelling while complaining about HR, to: - Milton Keynes is invaded by elves - Something about vampire superheroes joining the police? - The UK is ruled by an ancient egyptian lich who might be able to save us from the apocalypse
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Sep 29, 2021 09:35
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Stexils posted:ben aaronovitch was also mentioned this page and i submit that his books commit the worst crime of all: being aggressively british to the point i can't even understand half the dialogue I read the first Rivers of London book and it's fine for what it is, quirky light urban fantasy, even good. But it so shows that the author wrote scripts for Doctor Who. It's got that same sound and everyone talks like a Doctor Who character, and the humour is that BBC / Hitchhiker's type where they drop a line and you can practically see the characters smugly pausing for you to get it.
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Sep 29, 2021 10:13
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Strategic Tea posted:IMO they run into the same issue just described. Escalating stakes fundamentally change the tone of the books. They go from underpaid spooks trying to keep the universe from unravelling while complaining about HR, to: because they got the Black Pharoh into power through legally sound means, we can be sure they got Nyarlathotep. the Americans summoned Coupthulhu. To help with the power creep, the books now focus on other characters and it's working for me. Anticheese has a new favorite as of 11:44 on Sep 29, 2021 |
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Sep 29, 2021 11:42
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I just read a collection of Robert E Howard's weird fiction, and in the intro the editor was like "He was racist, and had a darkness that led to his suicide, but it's ok because if he wasn't so messed up we wouldn't have so many great stories."  Which on the whole the stories weren't that bad for weird fiction of the time (mostly unspecific degenerative precursor races and a sort of weird fetishism of muslims) until Pigeons from hell, which is wildly racist. I think it's probably a good candidate for a rewrite by a person of color as it's ultimately about a "zuvembie" curse placed on the mistress of a plantation by her abandoned mixed race daughter. but told without any nuance and lots of slurs and problematic characters.
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Sep 29, 2021 11:45
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nonathlon posted:I read the first Rivers of London book and it's fine for what it is, quirky light urban fantasy, even good. But it so shows that the author wrote scripts for Doctor Who. It's got that same sound and everyone talks like a Doctor Who character, and the humour is that BBC / Hitchhiker's type where they drop a line and you can practically see the characters smugly pausing for you to get it. I enjoyed the humor/references up until the last book, where the references were suddenly to things that I didn't care/know about (and things got a bit dull plot-wise). I haven't finished the book yet; I should probably do that soon. Still, I enjoy the series a lot and I like Lesley's character arc.
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Sep 29, 2021 11:50
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Strategic Tea posted:
gently caress, can't be any worse than the current bunch of twats. Not a tory, is he?
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Sep 29, 2021 13:47
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Ichabod Sexbeast posted:gently caress, can't be any worse than the current bunch of twats. Not a tory, is he? He's Nyarlathotep, the Black Pharaoh, aka Fabian Everyman, the People's Mandate. So, basically Tony Blair as a fully-fledged Lovecraftian horror.
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Sep 29, 2021 13:53
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Darth Walrus posted:So, basically Tony Blair.
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Sep 29, 2021 14:49
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Yeah I almost posted 'The UK is ruled by an evil lich - and in the book as well!'
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Sep 29, 2021 16:54
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Stexils posted:blackmoore sucks. i read the first book and the "mystery" was just incredibly obvious. Honestly, I dont read these books expecting a locked room mystery or anything, engaging (if largely predictable) pulp is A-OK with me. And the protaganist having a reasonably clearly defined (and expressly limited in scope) power set also helps prevent too much "Ahah, I actually had the perfect spell for this all along!" bullshit. Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:The sandman slim series is a pro read to me simply for the fact that over the series the main character acknowledges the fact he's hosed up, he's been through some seriously traumatic poo poo, and goes through the whole PTSD thing of getting help/recognizing the problems/changing his life around. That doesn't really happen much in urban fantasy. Yeah, so many Urban Fantasy novels go hard on either Norse or Roman/Greek gods that someone using Mesoamerican mythology is a real breath of fresh air. I enjoyed the Verus series up to a point but I was never on board with the romance between Verus and... whatever the other character was called. Also they had sort of the opposite problem from power creep in that I felt the main character rarely actually managed to achieve anything at all. I was already kind falling away from them when one of the later ones had the main character give an angry "People are sick of being told what to do by experts!" rant at a dinner party. Now for those of you not from the UK, "sick and tired of experts" is pretty much a pro brexit slogan, as every expert in basically everything warned that brexit would be the UK cutting their own throat, so having the main character of the book give this speech made dropping the entire thing and ticking "do not recommend me books by this author again" a real easy decision to make. It was also HILARIOUSLY out of character as the entire premise of the book is that this character is an expert in magic who tells people what to do and gets annoyed when they dont listen and poo poo goes sideways.
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Sep 29, 2021 17:11
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Strategic Tea posted:Yeah I almost posted 'The UK is ruled by an evil lich - and in the book as well!' I'd lay good odds Stross himself has said something to that effect. He does mention the latest "Laundry" book isn't about the Laundry at all for the reason that British politics have become so bizarre they're impossible for him to satirize. It's the Onion problem.
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Sep 29, 2021 17:28
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I soured on stross when he came out with the tentacle rape unicorn poo poo
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Sep 29, 2021 18:03
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Broadly speaking I like his stuff but he's really bad at understanding real life politics - I mean he had a book delayed because he didn't believe that any cabinet members could actually be dumb, they must have all been 4D geniuses and yet whoops.
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Sep 29, 2021 18:25
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Nah he always thought they were dumb but just underestimated how dumb
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Sep 29, 2021 18:57
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Ambitious Spider posted:I just read a collection of Robert E Howard's weird fiction, and in the intro the editor was like "He was racist, and had a darkness that led to his suicide, but it's ok because if he wasn't so messed up we wouldn't have so many great stories." There's also Red Shadows which was the first Solomon Kane short story and it pretty quickly gets super racist as Solomon ends up chasing a guy who takes refuge in a native village and the descriptions of the villagers get pretty bad. (spoilered for racism) quote:A giant Negro stalked into the space between them. He was the hugest man that Kane had ever seen, though he moved with catlike ease and suppleness. His arms and legs were like trees, and the great, sinuous muscles rippled with each motion. His apelike head was set squarely between gigantic shoulders. His great, dusky hands were like the talons of an ape, and his brow slanted back from above bestial eyes. Flat nose and great, thick red lips completed this picture of primitive, lustful savagery.
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Sep 29, 2021 22:14
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muscles like this! posted:There's also Red Shadows which was the first Solomon Kane short story and it pretty quickly gets super racist as Solomon ends up chasing a guy who takes refuge in a native village and the descriptions of the villagers get pretty bad. (spoilered for racism) So that description sorta implies that Solomon Kane's head isn't situated between his shoulders. Which raises some questions about the prevalence of scoliosis among white people, I guess.
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Sep 29, 2021 22:56
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Ichabod Sexbeast posted:gently caress, can't be any worse than the current bunch of twats. Not a tory, is he? If I remember right, one of the reasons he comes into power is because the try PM is loving up so hard that they have to get loving Nyharlothep to set it right.
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Sep 29, 2021 23:07
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muscles like this! posted:There's also Red Shadows which was the first Solomon Kane short story and it pretty quickly gets super racist as Solomon ends up chasing a guy who takes refuge in a native village and the descriptions of the villagers get pretty bad. (spoilered for racism)  What kind of apes did they have in 1928?
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Sep 30, 2021 01:49
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Strategic Tea posted:IMO they run into the same issue just described. Escalating stakes fundamentally change the tone of the books. They go from underpaid spooks trying to keep the universe from unravelling while complaining about HR, to: The Laundry Books make much more sense when you realise the series started as sysadmin war stories told in Lovecraftian. IT workers down the pub bitching about technology being poo poo. Main character BOFH and his assistant PFY.
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Sep 30, 2021 09:07
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Sobatchja Morda posted:If I remember right, one of the reasons he comes into power is because the try PM is loving up so hard that they have to get loving Nyharlothep to set it right. So what you're saying is that Britain's next prime minister will be the Crawling Chaos itself? I think that sounds like an improvement tbh.
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Sep 30, 2021 09:11
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Strategic Tea posted:The UK is ruled by an ancient[..]lich Not sure why this is spoiler tagged, she's on the money.
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Sep 30, 2021 09:14
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Don Gato posted:So what you're saying is that Britain's next prime minister will be the Crawling Chaos itself? The Bumbling Chaos
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Sep 30, 2021 09:14
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Ferrosol posted:That's perfectly cromulent English my old fellow If you want to further overdose on londonness try A Madness of Angels and its sequels by Kate Griffin.
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Sep 30, 2021 09:15
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SiKboy posted:Yeah, the Dresden Files have come up a few times, but on a basic level a) they are a deliberate (and originally spite fuelled*) attempt to write pure pulp, and b) the Urban Fantasy genre is so haunted by self insert protagonists, thinly veiled erotica and awful writing that the Dresden Files are easily in the top 10% of the genre by virtue of the protaganist having actual acknowledged flaws and broadly competant writing. IIRC there is literally one (maybe two?) sex scenes in the entire run of the books to date, and it is pretty cringey (writing sex is definitely not Butchers forte...) but thats incredibly restrained compared to some. I feel like every time Butcher writes something extremely stupid or terrible he always claims he was dared to do it. Kchama has a new favorite as of 04:13 on Oct 1, 2021 |
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Oct 1, 2021 03:49
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Kchama posted:I feel like every time Butcher write something extremely stupid or terrible he always claims he was dared to do it. Yeah, that poo poo is weak. I prefer the Stephen King approach of just admitting "I was sitting around and had a weird idea so I wrote it" and/or "literally no idea, that was all cocaine"
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Oct 1, 2021 03:57
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"What's Cujo and why am I getting royalties for it?"
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Oct 1, 2021 04:00
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Kchama posted:I feel like every time Butcher writes something extremely stupid or terrible he always claims he was dared to do it. I mean, my read of that story is more a "listen to criticism of your writing, you are often too close to it to be objective" anecdote rather than "dthe books that pay my bills are stupid but its not my fault" anecdote to be fair. He may have claimed he was dared to write some parts of the dresden files (I'm guessing the dreadful sex scene? If I wrote the dresden files thats the first bit I'd disown myself), but if so I've not heard that one. But then I generally avoid learning anything about authors whose work I enjoy where possible, there is very little I could learn about an author that would make me like their writing more, and whole lot that would make me like it less. See, for example, a lot of poo poo in this thread! I only know the "this is stupid advice... Oh poo poo, actually this was good advice" story because its in the introduction to the short story collection, or one of the stories in it. On the subject of urban fantasy authors, one thing that drives me up the wall is when they put "cute" references to each others poo poo in. The general standard of writing isnt high in the genre, so it always sticks out like a sore thumb. The first alex verus novel (I think) has a line about "I heard about one guy in chicago advertises himself as a wizard in the phone book oh ho ho!" which is a reference to the dresden files where (back in the early ones where the premise was still private detective but magic) a recurring thing was his advert in the phone book that no-one took seriously. Dont remind people of another, more successful, book series they could be reading. If they like the dresden files it feels a bit like you are trying to claim some success by association, and if they dont it's a bad sign that you are obviously referencing a series the reader already doesnt like. I'm pretty sure there was a similar thing in an early Daniel Faust novel by craig schaefer, but dont hold me to that. But that isnt as bad as when authors (and I have only encountered this in urban fantasy and comic books, but I'm sure it happens elsewhere too) write each other in to their stories. For example I was reading one of the more recent stephen blackmoore books, I think it was Fire Season, and there is a cop character who gives his full name. And its super clunky too, like in a situation where it would feel natural for him to say "I'm Kevin", or "I'm Officer Hearne" he says "I'm Officer Kevin Hearne" and I was like "huh, that seems really weird..." then I noticed that one of the pull quotes on the first page of the book is by "Kevin Hearne, author of the Iron Druid Chronicles". In the introduction of the book (which I'd skipped) Blackmoore mentions that Hearne killed him off in one of Hearnes stories first. I just hate that poo poo. The absolute worst, and I completely mean the ABSOLUTE WORST example of this is in The Severed Streets by Paul Cornell. He writes Neil Gaiman in as himself. Like at a bar frequented by the magically sensitive, one of the characters bumps into a tall, tousle haired man with sunglasses and literally goes "Oh my god, arent you Neil Gaiman, the author?" And Neil Gaiman goes "Yes." and there is a whole conversation about how much the character loves Neil Gaimans books. Its absolutely painful. And that would be bad enough but a few chapters further on they go back and interview Neil Gaiman again as a witness who is integral to the loving plot. Thats where I tapped out.
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Oct 1, 2021 19:04
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That sounds insufferable and weird. I'd almost suspect there was betting involved.
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Oct 1, 2021 19:13
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Hey, at least gaiman had a reason for being in there. The others were just random mentions. I don't mind that so often as it's not done in every book. A few of the authors I read all sort of write in the same "universe", and when there's a crossover it's a bit strange. Rarely a name mentioned but it's more like "Oh, weird, someone is blowing up party of the city and it's not us this time..." kinda thing. Luckily it's only happened I think twice? and iirc they were both in short stories between the main books. No marvel team ups or anything.
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Oct 1, 2021 19:14
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Sobatchja Morda posted:If I remember right, one of the reasons he comes into power is because the try PM is loving up so hard that they have to get loving Nyharlothep to set it right.
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Oct 1, 2021 19:19
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Sham bam bamina! posted:I don't think you could have mangled that name any harder if you tried. Can you really blame people for messing up names that were deliberately chosen to be difficult to spell and pronounce?
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Oct 1, 2021 19:24
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HopperUK posted:That sounds insufferable and weird. I'd almost suspect there was betting involved. Its super uncomfortable, and really weird. Especially as the writer, Paul Cornell, is a reasonably successful british comics writer who has written for doctor who, while neil gaiman is a wildly successful british comics writer who has written for doctor who. So its entirely probable that they know each other (british comics isnt that big a world) and I'd hope that Gaiman gave his okay to it, but that doesnt make it actually read any better.
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Oct 1, 2021 19:24
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Reference is such a tricky art. I grew up on early Simpsons, so I love it when it's done well, but I swear to god nothing is worse than media that goes "don't you wish you were partaking of other, better media right now?"
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Oct 1, 2021 19:33
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I kind of hate cutesy references to nerd media in other nerd media in general (this is the major reason I haven't read the Locked Tomb books yet despite many friends saying they're great), but that really sounds next-level irritating. Let me suspend disbelief for a minute!
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Oct 1, 2021 22:56
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It sounds loving epic, actually.
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Oct 1, 2021 23:11
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Antivehicular posted:I kind of hate cutesy references to nerd media in other nerd media in general (this is the major reason I haven't read the Locked Tomb books yet despite many friends saying they're great), but that really sounds next-level irritating. Let me suspend disbelief for a minute! Yeah, it's legit to be wary on these gounds-- I think they work well there (mostly, but there's a couple of really strained groaners in the second book) and I think they're worth giving a try even if you're unsure, but opting to Not is legit.
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Oct 1, 2021 23:48
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Antivehicular posted:I kind of hate cutesy references to nerd media in other nerd media in general (this is the major reason I haven't read the Locked Tomb books yet despite many friends saying they're great), but that really sounds next-level irritating. Let me suspend disbelief for a minute! The real issue for me with Locked Tomb was 95% of the second book being written in second loving person for no good reason.
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Oct 1, 2021 23:58
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