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Soysaucebeast posted:So apparently every year this guy on Reddit organizes a huge two-day book sale for charity (don't ask me details, I just found out about it this morning lol). This year it's 400 sci-fi/fantasy e-books for 0.99$ each, with the proceeds going to St. Judes. If you've got reddit, here's the direct post, but if you don't wanna go there here's the google doc spreadsheet with everything (and links to the non-US Amazon pages). There's some good stuff on there, and A LOT of stuff I've never heard of, but I figure for a buck a book you can't really go wrong. It seems like a ton of these litrpg books feature army people as characters or were written by veterans. I wonder if it's bc the linear advancement of a litrpg is similar to how the up the ranks hierarchy works in the army. (half my family were army)
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Dec 26, 2021 20:54
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Pretty much every genre of amateur fiction available on the internet has a noticeable fraction of it being veteran-oriented these days. Maybe they have time on their hands and issues to work through?
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Dec 26, 2021 21:13
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pradmer posted:Tales from Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle #1) by Ursula K Le Guin - $2.99 This is #5 not #1, I think.
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Dec 26, 2021 21:22
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Soysaucebeast posted:So apparently every year this guy on Reddit organizes a huge two-day book sale for charity (don't ask me details, I just found out about it this morning lol). This year it's 400 sci-fi/fantasy e-books for 0.99$ each, with the proceeds going to St. Judes. If you've got reddit, here's the direct post, but if you don't wanna go there here's the google doc spreadsheet with everything (and links to the non-US Amazon pages). There's some good stuff on there, and A LOT of stuff I've never heard of, but I figure for a buck a book you can't really go wrong. there's so much litrpg out there 
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Dec 26, 2021 21:24
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Soysaucebeast posted:So apparently every year this guy on Reddit organizes a huge two-day book sale for charity (don't ask me details, I just found out about it this morning lol). This year it's 400 sci-fi/fantasy e-books for 0.99$ each, with the proceeds going to St. Judes. If you've got reddit, here's the direct post, but if you don't wanna go there here's the google doc spreadsheet with everything (and links to the non-US Amazon pages). There's some good stuff on there, and A LOT of stuff I've never heard of, but I figure for a buck a book you can't really go wrong. Hey thanks! Grabbed a bunch of random stuff.
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Dec 26, 2021 21:50
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Even as late as 1968, US involvement in Vietnam had plurality (around 48%) support from the US population as a whole, with the next largest bloc being "not sure". Despite the famed protests, "get out" was a distinctly minority opinion. It wasn't until after the war ended (and a lot of the dirty laundry from behind the scenes started being aired) that the public opinion hit super-majority disapproval.
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Dec 26, 2021 22:07
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SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:It seems like a ton of these litrpg books feature army people as characters or were written by veterans. I wonder if it's bc the linear advancement of a litrpg is similar to how the up the ranks hierarchy works in the army. (half my family were army) Its really not this. Its either vets working through issues with fiction, which is incredibly common, or its people going with soldier main characters because they are generally easier to write with the poo poo ton of examples out there and you get a character that readers can generally understand the background and viewpoint of without a bunch of explaining.
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Dec 26, 2021 23:08
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the soldier is kind of like the cop or detective as a useful background for someone who doesn't know anything about the situation to have
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Dec 26, 2021 23:16
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Yeah. Why are you here? Dunno, unit got deployed/sent on exercise, then poo poo got weird and the trees started speaking elvish or whatever. Also being a soldier is an easy explanation for why someone might have necessary skills & stuff for an adventure story.
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Dec 26, 2021 23:31
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SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:It seems like a ton of these litrpg books feature army people as characters or were written by veterans. I wonder if it's bc the linear advancement of a litrpg is similar to how the up the ranks hierarchy works in the army. (half my family were army) If Tolkien and Jordan are any example, it's because veterans tend to have shitloads of trauma to work through and so they sometimes do it by writing.
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Dec 26, 2021 23:34
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Speaking of vets and fantasy, has anyone done a fantasy take on WWI or trench warfare? A lot of sitting in one awful place punctuated by raw terror? Black Company sorta kinda has what I mean, but it’s the trenches that I’m most interested in. That kinda dynamic is not often visited in genre fiction to my knowledge.
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Dec 26, 2021 23:52
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:If Tolkien and Jordan are any example, it's because veterans tend to have shitloads of trauma to work through and so they sometimes do it by writing. David Drake too. Redliners is basically the poster child for this.
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Dec 26, 2021 23:55
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TOOT BOOT posted:This is #5 not #1, I think. Darn, you got me. I was in a hurry this morning. Thanks.
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Dec 27, 2021 00:10
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:If Tolkien and Jordan are any example, it's because veterans tend to have shitloads of trauma to work through and so they sometimes do it by writing. Yeah maybe just noticed it because I went through the books on sale and looked at the authors all at once.
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Dec 27, 2021 00:25
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BurningBeard posted:Speaking of vets and fantasy, has anyone done a fantasy take on WWI or trench warfare? A lot of sitting in one awful place punctuated by raw terror? Black Company sorta kinda has what I mean, but it’s the trenches that I’m most interested in. That kinda dynamic is not often visited in genre fiction to my knowledge. Forever War by Haldeman is scifi, but it's probably the best representation of hurry up and wait in a novel. Soldiers going stir crazy sitting in a barren outpost for months and months only for a quick attack to blow up all the futile work they've done in seconds.
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Dec 27, 2021 00:30
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Famethrowa posted:Forever War by Haldeman is scifi, but it's probably the best representation of hurry up and wait in a novel. Soldiers going stir crazy sitting in a barren outpost for months and months only for a quick attack to blow up all the futile work they've done in seconds. I've read it. It gets bonus points for dealing with the aftermath, too.
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Dec 27, 2021 00:49
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Soysaucebeast posted:So apparently every year this guy on Reddit organizes a huge two-day book sale for charity (don't ask me details, I just found out about it this morning lol). This year it's 400 sci-fi/fantasy e-books for 0.99$ each, with the proceeds going to St. Judes. If you've got reddit, here's the direct post, but if you don't wanna go there here's the google doc spreadsheet with everything (and links to the non-US Amazon pages). There's some good stuff on there, and A LOT of stuff I've never heard of, but I figure for a buck a book you can't really go wrong. A lot of things seem interesting, will go through these more thoroughly later tonight, shocked at the amount of litRPG but probably shouldn't be.
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Dec 27, 2021 00:53
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Number Go Up is easy to write and everyone’s played video games, writers and readers
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Dec 27, 2021 01:14
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thotsky posted:It's also a really boring book where we skip between unlikable characters with no character development until they finally meet up so nothing can happen. I also felt this when I first read it years ago, but only just reading the sequels now, I think he improves on this a bit. Or at least some of his characters now feel like actual human beings instead of uber-competent psychopaths, even if they are all a bit samey and blend into each other. And the second book has at least two very good setpieces Clavain escaping the comet and then the speed-of-light chase towards the end
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Dec 27, 2021 02:06
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I'm a vet of the 2nd Gulf War. We didn't have access to all the media soldiers probably do now, but even if we did, books were the easiest form of escapism. You could keep a book at your desk or in a cargo pocket and pull it out whenever the brass wasn't looking. I rember ruining a paperback copy of Perdido Street Station that way--it just barely fit in my side pocket. The spine broke before I'd finished the book and loose pages kept falling out, much to the bewilderment of the officers who kept finding them. The funniest time was when one of the old colonels found a page about a mutant (she was Grafted or something like that in the Miéville universe) puppy girl in the brothel and read it aloud quietly to himself, said nothing, and just had this middle distance stare for the rest of the day.
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Dec 27, 2021 02:43
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BananaNutkins posted:The funniest time was when one of the old colonels found a page about a mutant (she was Grafted or something like that in the Miéville universe) puppy girl in the brothel and read it aloud quietly to himself, said nothing, and just had this middle distance stare for the rest of the day. Hahaha that’s amazing. As far as I’m aware Abercrombie never served in a war but the few times I’ve wandered into his subreddit there were vets talking about how “The Heroes” really captures warfare. Everyone who enlisted apparently knows someone like Corporal Tunny.
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Dec 27, 2021 02:59
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BananaNutkins posted:The funniest time was when one of the old colonels found a page about a mutant (she was Grafted or something like that in the Miéville universe) puppy girl in the brothel and read it aloud quietly to himself, said nothing, and just had this middle distance stare for the rest of the day. Gotta imagine how he would have reacted to reading some of the pages where the slake-moths do their thing.
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Dec 27, 2021 03:12
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StrixNebulosa posted:David Drake too. Redliners is basically the poster child for this. Nah, it's Hammer's Slammers. Drake didn't write Redliners until 1996 and he had gotten a lot out of his system by them. If you go back and read Hammer's Slammers...realize that basically every character is somebody Drake knew in Vietnam. Joachim Steuben is significantly creepier with that in the back of your head.
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Dec 27, 2021 03:38
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ulmont posted:Nah, it's Hammer's Slammers. Drake didn't write Redliners until 1996 and he had gotten a lot out of his system by them. If you go back and read Hammer's Slammers...realize that basically every character is somebody Drake knew in Vietnam. Joachim Steuben is significantly creepier with that in the back of your head. Its both, but in a couple of interviews Drake specifically said how Redliners was the book that finally helped him put it all behind him.
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Dec 27, 2021 05:12
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I literally added this book to my books wishlist today as I realized I only had the first one on it and then was checking the list just now to see if any of the fantasy books from that big sale were on it and saw it got discounted to $1.99: Prime Deceptions: A Novel (Chilling Effect Book 2) by Valerie Valdes https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B082J2PRHH
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Dec 27, 2021 09:01
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Groke posted:Yeah. Why are you here? Dunno, unit got deployed/sent on exercise, then poo poo got weird and the trees started speaking elvish or whatever. Everybody gangsta until the trees start speaking Elvish.
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Dec 27, 2021 12:24
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Cardiac posted:If it’s like Red Wolf Conspiracy (another great series by Redick), Hobb or Tad Williams in terms of style. Walh Hara posted:There is just one POV and he has no idea what's going on, just wants to stay alive, and can't trust anybody - pretty much everybody has secrets. The seting is probably inspired by Indonesia and contains both references to a more technologically advanced outside world and hints of supernatural elements (no magic as such). Thanks for the replies, will buy branedotorg fucked around with this message at 01:02 on Dec 28, 2021 |
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Dec 27, 2021 13:18
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Read The Sentinel, and it was not good. It's a good "we found weird poo poo and dunno what it does" kinda book idea but the overall arc of the story from them finding it to the ending is just bleh. I kept hoping it'd get more interesting or just more lively, but nope. If you are absolutely dying for a new mystery object book, give it a whirl. That's about the only recommendation I can make for it. Is this Clarke's The Sentinel you're talking about? The book that accompanied 2001: A Space Odyssey?
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Dec 27, 2021 13:46
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Blood of Elves (Witcher #1) by Andrzej Sapkowski - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00276HAEY/ CIRCE by Madeline Miller - $4.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074M5TLLJ/ The Rook (Rook Files #1) by Daniel O'Malley - $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004QX07EG/
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Dec 27, 2021 19:29
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pradmer posted:
Dunno if these are too normie for this thread but she’s a decent writer and there’s some good character work here, especially for those who like Greek myth.
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Dec 27, 2021 20:43
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Jedit posted:Is this Clarke's The Sentinel you're talking about? The book that accompanied 2001: A Space Odyssey? Nope. New book by T. M. Haviland. Sorry, forgot to put the author there.
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Dec 27, 2021 20:51
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buffalo all day posted:Dunno if these are too normie for this thread but she’s a decent writer and there’s some good character work here, especially for those who like Greek myth. Can't see how they would be, it's explicitly fantasy. And it's incredible, you're right, her character stuff is amazing.
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Dec 27, 2021 20:52
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buffalo all day posted:Dunno if these are too normie for this thread but she’s a decent writer and there’s some good character work here, especially for those who like Greek myth. It's only normie if it turns out everything in there happened exactly as written, and if it did, I have questions for Madeline Miller.
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Dec 27, 2021 21:02
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buffalo all day posted:Dunno if these are too normie for this thread but she’s a decent writer and there’s some good character work here, especially for those who like Greek myth. It can be considered "normie" because of how it was marketed. The character work and relationships are definitely wonderful which made it easy for blurbers to be like, "it's just like fiction and not at all that genre stuff we know can't possibly have these features." Just more gatekeeping. But personally I wanted it to be weirder.
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Dec 27, 2021 23:13
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Circe is excellent. I don't consider it fantasy, mostly because it's a book you can easily recommend to somebody who never reads fantasy. In my opinion a book is fantasy if and only if the publisher/author thinks marketing it as fantasy will increase sales.
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Dec 28, 2021 00:42
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By this metric Ursula K Leguin’s Lavinia is too “normie” which is lol, just stop
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Dec 28, 2021 00:49
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anyone read the new Ishiguro book? The buried giant and never let me go are both incredible. Was given it for Xmas so will post reacts when done
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Dec 28, 2021 01:44
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buffalo all day posted:anyone read the new Ishiguro book? The buried giant and never let me go are both incredible. Was given it for Xmas so will post reacts when done Klara and the Sun? Oh yeah, it’s drat good, but feels like a punch in the heart
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Dec 28, 2021 02:03
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Been having a hard time getting into new books lately but yeah Circe is excellent, it’s keeping me from checking the covid graphs every hour which is high praise for engagement.
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Dec 28, 2021 03:07
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Stuporstar posted:By this metric Ursula K Leguin’s Lavinia is too “normie” which is lol, just stop This is an excellent novel by the way. Lavinia is namedropped in the Homeric/Virgilian epic, but is never present as a character. LeGuin uses her as a main character to tell much the same story. It's a true epic and has a great mix of day to day life in the period and the sweeping scope of great events that changed the course of history. It's not :eGuin's usual style, but she's more than up to it. Highly recommended.
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Dec 28, 2021 03:34
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