|
Victorkm posted:Haven't read Iron Prince but I'm about 82% into He Who Fights with Monsters 2 and rather enjoying the series. Not sure when its supposed to go off the rails and people start disliking it. I binged the whole thing up through the stuff that's on Patreon and I enjoyed it. There's some downer moments for sure but it picks itself up out of the depths after wallowing for a little. I'm a huge fan of the creativity involved in all the magic systems too.
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2022 02:28
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 7, 2024 17:41 |
|
|
Gwaihir posted:I binged the whole thing up through the stuff that's on Patreon and I enjoyed it. There's some downer moments for sure but it picks itself up out of the depths after wallowing for a little. I'm a huge fan of the creativity involved in all the magic systems too. Yeah it seems like an original system for sure. One of my favorite parts.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2022 03:03
|
|
|
Victorkm posted:Haven't read Iron Prince but I'm about 82% into He Who Fights with Monsters 2 and rather enjoying the series. Not sure when its supposed to go off the rails and people start disliking it. I haven’t read the series, since it doesn’t seem like my thing, but I haven’t seen many people who get turned off of it later. For people who stopped reading it, it seems to be mostly folks who always hated the main character, hoped they would grow into someone more appealing, and stopped reading when it became clear they wouldn’t.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2022 03:31
|
|
|
nrook posted:I haven’t read the series, since it doesn’t seem like my thing, but I haven’t seen many people who get turned off of it later. For people who stopped reading it, it seems to be mostly folks who always hated the main character, hoped they would grow into someone more appealing, and stopped reading when it became clear they wouldn’t. I'm good with Jason's character as long as there's someone around to tell him he's full of poo poo. There's a point where that really stops happening where I almost put it down.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2022 05:01
|
|
|
Haystack posted:I read Iron Prince, and while it was pleasant enough I don't really plan to read any more in the series. One of the things that took me out of it was the stakes of the plot. The fact that Reidon's entire goal is to be... a really cool sports celebrity kind of deflates any sense of weight to what he's doing. It really compounds the issue where it's easy to see that Reidon's growth spec mean that he's mathematically guaranteed to be the best of the best given, like, any reasonable measure of time or effort. Sure, it's great for him that he's a battle junkie and is well-suited to take advantage of his CAD, but I just can't care much that the failure state for his struggles is that he might have to wait a year before utterly trivializing a sports tournament. I mean it’s pretty clear that eventually he’s gonna fight in that war against the gleep glops or whatever but yeah the stakes are pretty low in the first book Good Citizen fucked around with this message at 05:14 on Aug 24, 2022 |
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2022 05:11
|
|
|
nrook posted:I haven’t read the series, since it doesn’t seem like my thing, but I haven’t seen many people who get turned off of it later. For people who stopped reading it, it seems to be mostly folks who always hated the main character, hoped they would grow into someone more appealing, and stopped reading when it became clear they wouldn’t. reading it as a serial during the downer bits was a real drag, he lost a bunch of readers then. It works better as a book. Also in the later books especially the fight scenes read like wikipedia summaries of action movies, and he cannot stop running his gags into the loving ground (hope you like biscuit jokes/knightrider references/snarky shade because you're gonna be seeing a lot of them).
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2022 05:58
|
|
|
Victorkm posted:Haven't read Iron Prince but I'm about 82% into He Who Fights with Monsters 2 and rather enjoying the series. Not sure when its supposed to go off the rails and people start disliking it. I'm not sure which book it is, but for me the low point was when he returns to Earth, but I kept reading and thought it picked up again towards the end of that arc. I thought the series was pretty good aside from that but I haven't read the most recent RR stuff yet. As the poster above says though, he really repeats a lot of his "jokes".
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2022 07:16
|
|
|
He also cannot stop himself from constantly jerking Jason off about how special of a boy he is. Most progression fantasies do this to some extent, but it's unusually blatant and unsubtle in HWFWM's case.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2022 07:51
|
|
|
OK cool. I like Jason well enough so far so not worried about him getting "Better" later.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2022 12:45
|
|
|
LLSix posted:I just re-read Bloodlines and Reaper. After that, the start of Dreadgod seems to introduce a lot of plotholes. Specifically: The theme in Reaper was also that they can't truly stick together until they're on the same level.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2022 16:18
|
|
|
PerniciousKnid posted:The theme in Reaper was also that they can't truly stick together until they're on the same level. Yeah, the obvious next step after reaper was lindon coming in and handing out training montages which is basically what the book is.
|
|
#
?
Aug 25, 2022 03:44
|
|
|
So I went ahead and have started reading Superpowereds by drew hayes since I enjoyed both Forging Hephaestus and especially Spells, Swords, and Stealth, and yeesh it is all over the place. I get the impression he's trying to do some kind of slice of life thing. I get the impression that he was trying to make something that read like Forge of Destiny? (I know Forge came out more recently just like, that's the sort of book he was trying to write). But I don't think he's good at it, and the third book seems to be a modest improvement by virtue of just not trying to do that anymore. The first two books seem extremely aimless without being charming like slice of life stuff is supposed to be. It doesn't help that, like all drew hayes books, everything reads like somebody's tabletop roleplaying session.
|
|
#
?
Aug 25, 2022 03:49
|
|
|
30.5 Days posted:Yeah, the obvious next step after reaper was lindon coming in and handing out training montages which is basically what the book is. Them heisting training montages 
|
|
#
?
Aug 25, 2022 04:24
|
|
|
30.5 Days posted:So I went ahead and have started reading Superpowereds by drew hayes since I enjoyed both Forging Hephaestus and especially Spells, Swords, and Stealth, and yeesh it is all over the place. I get the impression he's trying to do some kind of slice of life thing. I get the impression that he was trying to make something that read like Forge of Destiny? (I know Forge came out more recently just like, that's the sort of book he was trying to write). But I don't think he's good at it, and the third book seems to be a modest improvement by virtue of just not trying to do that anymore. The first two books seem extremely aimless without being charming like slice of life stuff is supposed to be. It doesn't help that, like all drew hayes books, everything reads like somebody's tabletop roleplaying session. They're OK but yeah. He's got very workmanlike writing, and it gets loving old after a while.
|
|
#
?
Aug 25, 2022 11:12
|
|
|
Larry Parrish posted:They're OK but yeah. He's got very workmanlike writing, and it gets loving old after a while. Those were originally written as web serials as well so might suffer some from that format when translated to a novel. I remember liking them a lot when I read them in serial format.
|
|
#
?
Aug 25, 2022 12:26
|
|
|
Victorkm posted:Those were originally written as web serials as well so might suffer some from that format when translated to a novel. I remember liking them a lot when I read them in serial format. That honestly explains a lot, the whole thing reads like it needs an editing pass which is pretty standard, ime, for serials that become books. Honestly I like Drew Hayes a lot despite the complaints here, but "workmanlike" is a good descriptor of him. He bangs out plot threads that start at the beginning and go to the end. Adding the web serial qualities of rabbit trails, pointless threads and plotlines that don't go anywhere, and scenes that don't seem to have any clear purpose is like oil and water with his writing.
|
|
#
?
Aug 25, 2022 13:53
|
|
|
Like you can see him struggling to write a poignant character moment and it's just like, man, have a fight scene, this isn't working for you.
|
|
#
?
Aug 25, 2022 13:56
|
|
|
There's a lot of dumb poo poo on KU (especially in the litrpg/progression fantasy space!) but the dumbest of all is the "i've failed at playing an MMORPG good and accomplished nothing with my life, oh no i died and got timetravelled back to when it was released, guess im going to play the game again but good this time instead of doing Literally Anything Else". The paucity of imagination just blows me away. Lets take the vr gameworld - the absolute lowest stakes numbers-go-up setting possible - and then somehow make it more boring by giving the protagonist a walkthrough. It's the absolute tamest power fantasy imaginable. margarine on white bread. anyway i dont recommend them and im mad that I accidentally started one
|
|
#
?
Aug 30, 2022 00:56
|
|
|
awesmoe posted:anyway i dont recommend them and im mad that I accidentally started one I hate starting stupid poo poo and having to read 17 stupid books to get closure.
|
|
#
?
Aug 30, 2022 01:50
|
|
|
awesmoe posted:There's a lot of dumb poo poo on KU (especially in the litrpg/progression fantasy space!) but the dumbest of all is the "i've failed at playing an MMORPG good and accomplished nothing with my life, oh no i died and got timetravelled back to when it was released, guess im going to play the game again but good this time instead of doing Literally Anything Else". The paucity of imagination just blows me away. Lets take the vr gameworld - the absolute lowest stakes numbers-go-up setting possible - and then somehow make it more boring by giving the protagonist a walkthrough. It's the absolute tamest power fantasy imaginable. margarine on white bread. The VR MMO poo poo really seems to be in some kind of race to the bottom of most mundane, low stakes story possible. But since this is shoveled out KU garbage, it's usually not written in a way that could make that interesting. I love books about mundane boring poo poo, but the writing needs to bring it in for it to work.
|
|
#
?
Aug 30, 2022 03:59
|
|
|
Larry Parrish posted:The VR MMO poo poo really seems to be in some kind of race to the bottom of most mundane, low stakes story possible. But since this is shoveled out KU garbage, it's usually not written in a way that could make that interesting. I love books about mundane boring poo poo, but the writing needs to bring it in for it to work. Matt Dinniman (Of Dungeon Crawler Carl fame) did this best in his Dominion of Blades series where the twist of “Oh we’re in an MMO” is They’re a starship crew in suspended animation who have been loaded into the game to keep them sane BUT (bigger spoiler) something has gone wrong and there was a mutiny and if they don’t figure out how to get out of the game they are going to slam into their colony target at a noticeable fraction of c and make some very pretty lights. Actual stakes, an endgame, and an answer to save-scumming/death-cheesing makes it way better than most “in an actual MMO” stories. Maybe someday he’ll finish it.
|
|
#
?
Aug 30, 2022 04:06
|
|
|
navyjack posted:Matt Dinniman (Of Dungeon Crawler Carl fame) did this best in his Dominion of Blades series where the twist of “Oh we’re in an MMO” is They’re a starship crew in suspended animation who have been loaded into the game to keep them sane BUT (bigger spoiler) something has gone wrong and there was a mutiny and if they don’t figure out how to get out of the game they are going to slam into their colony target at a noticeable fraction of c and make some very pretty lights. Actual stakes, an endgame, and an answer to save-scumming/death-cheesing makes it way better than most “in an actual MMO” stories. Maybe someday he’ll finish it. Also the fact that if they gently caress up they spend possibly thousands of years going insane in a full pain hellscape or staring at a loading screen and most of the crew is already there. Edit: Dominion of Blades was the first LitRPG I read where I said "Holy poo poo this genre can actually be good." and I felt like I should be recommending to other people.
|
|
#
?
Aug 30, 2022 05:31
|
|
|
exactly, if you want to do the genre then find a way to raise the stakes, either by doing dinniman's semi-horror type stuff or by making the stakes about ~~feelings and friendship~~ or something, rather than simply winning the game.
|
|
#
?
Aug 30, 2022 05:36
|
|
|
Yeah Matt Dinniman is a king. Dominion of Blades, Kaiju: Battlefield Surgeon, and Dungeon Crawler Carl are all amazing. He makes most people in the litrpg 'genre' look like noobs.
|
|
#
?
Aug 30, 2022 08:55
|
|
|
awesmoe posted:There's a lot of dumb poo poo on KU (especially in the litrpg/progression fantasy space!) but the dumbest of all is the "i've failed at playing an MMORPG good and accomplished nothing with my life, oh no i died and got timetravelled back to when it was released, guess im going to play the game again but good this time instead of doing Literally Anything Else". The paucity of imagination just blows me away. Lets take the vr gameworld - the absolute lowest stakes numbers-go-up setting possible - and then somehow make it more boring by giving the protagonist a walkthrough. It's the absolute tamest power fantasy imaginable. margarine on white bread.
|
|
#
?
Aug 30, 2022 09:32
|
|
|
I tend not to kind mind lower-stakes VRMMO stories so long as the story is interesting and the MC is having a good time. Which, granted, has been a grand total of one series so far. Two, if you count manga.
|
|
#
?
Aug 30, 2022 11:46
|
|
|
Haystack posted:I tend not to kind mind lower-stakes VRMMO stories so long as the story is interesting and the MC is having a good time. Which, granted, has been a grand total of one series so far. Two, if you count manga. Bofuri definitely counts as one of these, if we're stretching to anime. The total lack of stakes is an important part of the show's charm - it's just a bunch of lovable dorks doing fun, silly things and making new friends in a game they all enjoy.
|
|
#
?
Aug 30, 2022 12:16
|
|
|
Haystack posted:I tend not to kind mind lower-stakes VRMMO stories so long as the story is interesting and the MC is having a good time. Which, granted, has been a grand total of one series so far. Two, if you count manga. wotakai ftw
|
|
#
?
Aug 30, 2022 12:49
|
|
|
I was thinking of Shangri-La Frontier, but yeah, those work.
|
|
#
?
Aug 30, 2022 13:07
|
|
|
I think VR stories and looper stories benefit from the same approach to death. It works best when the MC dies frequently, and so underscores the danger and difficulty of what they're doing in a way other stories can't. It also works well when it's incredibly chill and relaxing and the lack of real consequences is an intended part of it's charm.
|
|
#
?
Aug 30, 2022 14:20
|
|
|
Larry Parrish posted:Yeah Matt Dinniman is a king. Dominion of Blades, Kaiju: Battlefield Surgeon, and Dungeon Crawler Carl are all amazing. He makes most people in the litrpg 'genre' look like noobs. I agree that his writing is better, mostly because he engages with the cosmic horror and trauma implied by the “stuck in a video game” concept. I’ll hold off on calling him a king until he brings either DCC or DoB to a conclusion. KBS being a stand-alone doesn’t count, although I liked the ending.
|
|
#
?
Aug 30, 2022 19:33
|
|
|
So, what have you folks read lately? Any gems? Turds? I-enjoyed-reading-it-but-I'm-exactly-singing-its-praises? Personally I've been working through the first couple of books in the Alpha Physics series. It's decent. Centering the post-apocalyptic story around the MCs earnest desire to get back to his wife and kids helps make the otherwise flat character a lot more relatable, and the litRPG elements hit the right notes. A solid 8/10.
|
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2022 03:47
|
|
|
No major turds lately. Read the Blackpowder Deliverance a month or so ago? Not a game-changer but a pretty fast and enjoyable read with a good voice to the writing. Also, obviously not self-pub, but I just finished (like, 10 minutes ago) Neverwhere by Gaiman. I feel like the odd man out saying so but his flagship works like Sandman or American Gods dont do much for me. I think his one-offs like Stardust are a lot more fun, and Neverwhere is definitely up there. Edit -- almost forgot Legends and Lattes. I think i heard about from this thread. A little twee in some parts but overall pretty charming without being too sacchrine. Id recommend it for something light. Eason the Fifth fucked around with this message at 10:23 on Sep 6, 2022 |
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2022 04:59
|
|
|
Haystack posted:So, what have you folks read lately? Any gems? Turds? I-enjoyed-reading-it-but-I'm-exactly-singing-its-praises?
|
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2022 05:23
|
|
|
Haystack posted:So, what have you folks read lately? Any gems? Turds? I-enjoyed-reading-it-but-I'm-exactly-singing-its-praises? The author is big on making the protagonist be insulted/tortured/mind-controlled into doing stuff and it turns out that's a deal breaker for me! It's less the mind control and more the fact that he's utterly powerless against the antagonistic/abusive entity living in his head - I found it suuuuuuuuper unpleasant. Still, at least it was interesting, just not in a way that I enjoyed at all.
|
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2022 05:47
|
|
|
I'm reading Rise of the Cheat Potion Maker and it's bad. Maybe not offensively so, but it's very much by the numbers LitRPG, stuff just happens super fast with barely any description, characterization is incredibly simple. Reminds me of watching Reincarnated as a Slime. And of course the protagonist is ultra powerful without even trying (which also reminds me of Slime), and some dryad chick is immediately into him, again, without even trying or anything really happening. A lot of the protagonist's internal narration is really cringey too. Still probably better than Azyl Academy, though.
|
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2022 05:49
|
|
|
RDM posted:She Who Became the Sun and This is How You Lose The Time War are on KU and are outstanding. I would recommend both to anyone. Time War is excellent, I'll also throw a recommendation on that. I just bailed at about 20% on this turd. VR MMO garbage. I hesitate to call it irredeemable - like every Dakota Krout offering - but it is bland, joyless, and wordcount inflated by litrpg statblocks.
|
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2022 06:03
|
|
|
Haystack posted:So, what have you folks read lately? Any gems? Turds? I-enjoyed-reading-it-but-I'm-exactly-singing-its-praises? Been reading through backyard spaceship, basically some farm dude from Iowa becomes a space cop with a lightsaber. Its fairly decent and the author puts them out fairly quickly. Greenlit posted:Time War is excellent, I'll also throw a recommendation on that. Funnily enough I just started this tonight, I found the protagonist immediately unlikable and enjoyed the CEO dudes entire gently caress you approach to him. Ill keep going for a big but with your review my threshold for going nope will be pretty low, which is really helpful honestly. Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 06:14 on Sep 6, 2022 |
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2022 06:11
|
|
|
Telsa Cola posted:Funnily enough I just started this tonight, I found the protagonist immediately unlikable and enjoyed the CEO dudes entire gently caress you approach to him. I generally liked the book, and found the MC grew on me (from unlikable to "eh, fun enough to follow around"). Neither the story nor the MC, thankfully enough, ever actually asks you to be terribly sympathetic to his backstory or stupid money-burning shenanigans. The most you get is the MC commiserating a bit that having a vulture capitalist for a dad is a bit poo poo. It's just a dumb story of a dude having a fun, ultimately-low-stakes adventure with his new friends. I read this stuff with my brain pretty firmly shut off, though, so I can see the setup being poison for anyone with anything approaching good taste.
|
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2022 08:27
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 7, 2024 17:41 |
|
|
the dude in shadeslinger gets better - like he learns to actually have friends and he (and the axe) deal with their issues. it's like that cultivation one, bastion I think - the guy is a dick, and thats the point, but you have to get 80% of the way through the book before your protagonist gets likeable which is a pretty decent ask the shadeslinger fights are still boring tho and the comedy side-quips with the axe go on for about 200% as long as they should, but...i've read worse
|
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2022 09:26
|
|