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Ast tsarak sinuralan krinawi I reread the first Dragonlance book earlier this year after decades and was surprised that my brain had remembered the magic words to cast sleep but had completely forgotten about Berem Everman the gem dude who was apparently pretty important to the plot of the trilogy. I kind of want to revisit some of their older non-D&D books. I borrowed Darksword from a friend and didn't like it though it was his favorite. Rose of the Prophet with the gods and djinnis I remember being a lot of fun and a bit juvenile, it looks like it doesn't have ebooks still. Deathgate Cycle had some great world building. I really enjoyed 2 and 3. I had hardcovers of both and the cover art was awesome. I didn't like how the series wrapped up and liked the series less on a reread.
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Oct 19, 2023 19:23
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a friendly penguin posted:Well this is me, so on the list it goes. A Stranger in Olondria was already there, but I'll start with The Winged Histories instead. Probably the former, in that ultimately this is “everything she wanted to say about epic fantasy”, according to the author. No big battles but it is a definite secondary world with, I think, only two explicitly fantastical elements: giant birds of prey, tamed and kept in a zoo by the ruling family, and an extinct race of winged vampiric humanoids that are symbolically important and somewhat obscurely significant to the plot. That said, in terms of style and approach it has more in common with Proust, in the overriding focus on memory, or works following, like, a family of landed gentry as war overtakes them. Samatar herself said she was strongly inspired by 20th c. postcolonial works like A Season of Migration To The North or the works of Assia Djebar, and it’s pretty evident. Sailor Viy posted:Yeah, A Stranger in Olondria is next on my list. I wasn't quite sure if Winged Histories was a sequel or a sidequel or what, but it mostly made sense without any other context. Cool, you have some good stuff ahead of you. Sidequel probably covers it? Some of the same events and one or two characters that appear in both. Ultimately they have very different focuses, TWH is an epic about four women’s part in and experiences of civil war, ASiO is I guess a bildungsroman about a young man coming to a fantastic city he’d only ever read about and finding a very different experience. Also a ghost story.
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Oct 19, 2023 20:22
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bagrada posted:Ast tsarak sinuralan krinawi I haven't gotten to him yet but I'd completely forgotten about him too. I'm also realizing how many plot beats I'd thought were part of Dragonlance were actually from Record of the Lodoss War. Might do The Riverrun trilogy next on my nostalgia rereads since the only thing I really remember from that was dimensional traveling by the power of boofing peyote. Macdeo Lurjtux fucked around with this message at 21:42 on Oct 19, 2023 |
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Oct 19, 2023 21:39
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Macdeo Lurjtux posted:I'm also realizing how many plot beats I'd thought were part of Dragonlance were actually from Record of the Lodoss War. Lodoss War is only second to Final Fantasy 1 when it comes to being D&D with the serial numbers partially filed off (or covered with scotch tape and crayons in FF1's case)
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Oct 19, 2023 21:44
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I respect Lodoss' commitment to Big Pauldron.
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Oct 19, 2023 21:57
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Ror posted:
Reread it this year, holds up better than Dragonlance imo but it's still quite juvenile compared to 'modern fantasy'. I like the arrogance of power, the paternalism turns bad of colonial and class that I don't think I was quite aware of as a teen. I won't lie I enjoyed it, mostly, although I don't think they have the chops to pull off the elven drawing room drama meets class war on the tree world they were going for. Nice to see fizban in there too, even if he wasn't called that due to TSR licencing
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Oct 19, 2023 23:33
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The Black Company is $2.99 for a week. https://www.amazon.com/Black-Company-First-Novel-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B009WUGAJE
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Oct 20, 2023 04:56
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a friendly penguin posted:Well this is me, so on the list it goes. A Stranger in Olondria was already there, but I'll start with The Winged Histories instead. It's really tricky to categorise it either way. On the one hand, it has a big ole fantasy map in the front, plus a genealogy tree and a glossary of invented terms. And it's set in a beautifully realised fictional world. On the other hand, as GhastlyBizness says, it's very literary in its style and structure. Traditional fantasy readers who expect a normal story arc and resolution would be disappointed. Knowing your style I think you'd definitely appreciate it though.
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Oct 20, 2023 07:22
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So I've been reading the sequel trilogy to Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. I'm presently in the middle of Book 3, which I found when starting it is not actually the last book. Anyways apart from a few things that pissed me off I enjoyed revisiting MST a lot. And my sense in the first book of the sequel trilogy was that Tad Williams had learned pacing better. Midway through Book 3? Oof. I was fuckin wrong. Several main characters have been doing what amounts to jack poo poo for two entire books now. All the trolls have just been loving around uselessly in the forest, for example, with no real end in sight. And we've reached the "characters acting like loving idiots so the author can set the scenes he wants to get to or else waste more time" stage, too. Very few of the decisions Simon and Miri are making right now make a lick of sense even with their beliefs that the other is dead. And I'm really losing my patience with the whole thing. I've appreciated a lot of things about this series, like the Norn characters and treating them as people, but I'm hoping it turns this poo poo around and lets things happen in the last 8 hours/23% of this audiobook. Edit - I'm gonna finish it, and also grab the final book as soon as it's out (next month?) - but drat. I'm sad he's not remotely sticking the landing at this point. It's like he got his timelines so hosed up he is just stalling on most plots. And I disbelieve his assertion this couldn't have been wrapped up in a single book right now. dwarf74 fucked around with this message at 13:03 on Oct 20, 2023 |
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Oct 20, 2023 12:53
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Awkward Davies posted:I read all of them circa 1995 (?) when I was elementary/middle school aged. Are they worth revisiting? I recently re-read the first couple of the Drizzt books and felt medium to bad about the experience. I tried to reread Dragonlance a few years ago as part of a 'Revisiting Fantasy books from my childhood' thing. Found it unreadable. Honestly i got further into The Sword of Shanhara than I did that first Dragonlance book (DNF either, there was a lot of DNF in this project) Most readable? Elfstones of Shanhara still pretty decent, as was Feists Magician. dwarf74 posted:So I've been reading the sequel trilogy to Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. I'm presently in the middle of Book 3, which I found when starting it is not actually the last book. I read that first Trilogy during a period of unemployment and I still felt like he'd abused my time at the end of it.
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Oct 20, 2023 14:45
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Deptfordx posted:I read that first Trilogy during a period of unemployment and I still felt like he'd abused my time at the end of it. It's been probably 150-200 hours between both at this point and I don't want that anymore. I want things to happen and people to not act stupid so more important things can happen.
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Oct 20, 2023 17:03
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Deptfordx posted:I tried to reread Dragonlance a few years ago as part of a 'Revisiting Fantasy books from my childhood' thing. I think the first three Shannara books are surprisingly decent, if you can overlook how shamelessly Sword rips off Tolkien. Of course, if I were to do a "revisiting fantasy books from my childhood" thing, it'd probably involve way too much Piers Anthony.
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Oct 20, 2023 17:10
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Selachian posted:I think the first three Shannara books are surprisingly decent, if you can overlook how shamelessly Sword rips off Tolkien. Yeah we can all just agree to not revisit Piers Anthony, right? I've got Redwall I could go for instead.
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Oct 20, 2023 17:15
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Selachian posted:I think the first three Shannara books are surprisingly decent, if you can overlook how shamelessly Sword rips off Tolkien. I certainly didn't remember A Spell for Chameleon being such absolute rapey misogynistic trash. I also got super tired of "I was tricked/coerced into a stupid promise so I will destroy all I love and cause limitless pain for my friends and myself while fulfilling it because my honor demands no less" plot lines in his other books. It was a very brief revisit.
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Oct 20, 2023 17:16
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Selachian posted:I think the first three Shannara books are surprisingly decent, if you can overlook how shamelessly Sword rips off Tolkien. There's at least one goon who mentioned reading Sword before they read Tolkien and when they did repeatedly being "Hey! This is ripping of that scene from Brooks book where........oh wait.' dwarf74 posted:
Oh yeah, that was another of the books and yikes!, so much stuff that totally went over 12 year old me's head.
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Oct 20, 2023 18:01
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I'm four books into Susan R. Matthews's An Exchange of Hostages series. I have just realized Andrej Koscuisko is what John Kessel called an "innocent killer". (Read Creating the Innocent Killer. It's a great analysis of Ender's Game.) Why? 1. The people we see him torturing up-close are actually guilty. The books do not, at all, consider what happens to innocent people in a fundamentally corrupt government system. Andrej never connects "Gosh, the people around me are corrupt" with "maybe some of them are torturing people for bad(see * below) reasons." 2. After the first book, we never witness him torture people. It's not that I want more detail, it's that Andrej looks much less dreadful when we don't know what he's actually doing except that he feels very bad about it afterward. 3. It never occurs to him to resist the system in any way. It would satisfy me if he thought "This sucks, I hate it, but unfortunately I want to stay alive more than I want to futilely Fight The Man". Nope, he has to obey his dad, so what can you do. 4, and most important. *The books never consider that torture doesn't work. There's lots of analysis on the subject. Torturing people will make them scream what they think you want to hear, which means you get a lot of false garbage. Somehow in this series' system, torturing people elicits true information. I guess Andrej is just that good.
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Oct 20, 2023 18:51
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Red Country (First Law) by Joe Abercrombie - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0076DEJMO/ Red Knight (Traitor Son #1) by Miles Cameron - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007ZFPUL2/ Tales of Pirx the Pilot by Stanislaw Lem - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0077FC55Y/
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Oct 21, 2023 17:02
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Hugo awards were announcedquote:BEST NOVEL Think I need to check out more of T. Kingfisher’s work. theblackw0lf fucked around with this message at 17:40 on Oct 21, 2023 |
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Oct 21, 2023 17:34
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Children of Time deserves that win!
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Oct 21, 2023 17:45
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theblackw0lf posted:Think I need to check out more of T. Kingfisher’s work. Deserved, she writes excellent fantasy and romantic fantasy. And excellent horror under her other name (Ursula Vernon)
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Oct 21, 2023 18:23
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theblackw0lf posted:Hugo awards were announced
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Oct 21, 2023 18:41
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Tales of the Dying Earth: The Dying Earth, The Eyes of the Overworld, Cugel's Saga, Rhialto the Marvellous by Jack Vance - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01BKKVK20/ *Buy this* Veniss Underground by Jeff VanderMeer - $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09Y46XTFM/ A Deadly Education (Scholomance #1) by Naomi Novik - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B083RZC8KQ/ Ithaca (Songs of Penelope #1) by Claire North - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09HQMF3M2/ Life After Life (Todd Family #1) by Kate Atkinson - $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008TUQ60G/
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Oct 22, 2023 17:26
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ooooo yeah the Dying Earth stuff is awesome
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Oct 22, 2023 19:17
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I was sad that “If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You”, by John Chu didn't win the Hugo, although it did win the Nebula, so. link Disclaimer: he's an Internet friend, although not a close one. More to the point, it's a great story, with a slow-building, subtle plot.
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Oct 22, 2023 19:22
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Liaden: I started with Local Custom and he's just proposed (finally!) and I'm really enjoying this! Love "... of manners" type stories and this is exactly up my alley. One question though: do the Liaden as a group get any less obsessed with eugenics? Reallyyyy not enjoying that aspect of their culture.
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Oct 22, 2023 20:59
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pradmer posted:Tales of the Dying Earth: The Dying Earth, The Eyes of the Overworld, Cugel's Saga, Rhialto the Marvellous by Jack Vance - $2.99 Immediately after I read this very ebook I sent two friends copies as gifts, something I had never done before. It really amazed me.
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Oct 22, 2023 21:19
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Future Video GamesUK posted:ooooo yeah the Dying Earth stuff is awesome
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Oct 22, 2023 21:35
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Jack Vance is foundational.
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Oct 22, 2023 22:28
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StrixNebulosa posted:Liaden: I started with Local Custom and he's just proposed (finally!) and I'm really enjoying this! Love "... of manners" type stories and this is exactly up my alley.
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Oct 22, 2023 22:29
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So I just finished Book 8 of Adrian Tchaikovsky's Shadows of the Apt series; and I made a serious mistake. I went to the bookstore and thought Seal of the Worm was book 9--it's book 10. In the process I read the inside cover, which of course spoils the fact that the Wasp Empire defeats Collegium. I still picked up The War Master's Gate, but after 3 abortive tries over the last couple of weeks I have failed to make it more than 5 pages in. I just cannot do it, even though I loved most of the series (I really shouldn't have tbh). I had noticed the tone of this series really takes a dark turn around book 6, but now that I know there isn't payoff for routing for CollegiumI I am not sure I will ever finish the series. I also secretly feel like being a Joe Abercrombie reader means I am excused from reading anyone else's bleak as poo poo fantasy series.
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Oct 22, 2023 22:35
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Arsenic Lupin posted:The society absolutely stays eugenics-based, but the Korvals pretty much marry where they please. OK sounds good. Trying to differentiate author belief vs character belief and I’m down with depicting a weird sci-fi society.
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Oct 22, 2023 22:42
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ZombieLenin posted:So I just finished Book 8 of Adrian Tchaikovsky's Shadows of the Apt series; and I made a serious mistake. try his the tiger and the wolf trilogy
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Oct 23, 2023 01:27
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Doktor Avalanche posted:try his the tiger and the wolf trilogy These days, other than Joe Abercrombie, I mostly read science fiction, and so I came to this series via his science fiction--and none of his science fiction takes such a dark loving turn. This is also totally one of these things where I'm 8 books into a series with just a couple to go, and the fallacy of sunk costs feels very real. I just don't think I can stomach having the villain empire poo poo all over the central protagonists at the end of the series. And honestly, if this was the direction he was going to go, I have no idea what the build up and coalition building through 8 novels has been all about. In fact, the worst novel in the series the Sea Watch that introduced the oh so exciting Sea Kinden seems absolutely pointless. He could have told this story in at least five fewer books. I almost stopped reading the series half way through that book, and now I just feel like I should have--and that Adrian Tchaikovsky stole the 20 or so hours of my life that I spent reading that book. Of course I'm talking out my rear end a bit because I don't actually know how the story ends.
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Oct 23, 2023 02:03
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StrixNebulosa posted:OK sounds good. Trying to differentiate author belief vs character belief and I’m down with depicting a weird sci-fi society.  The books mention these matchup checks in passing, but their focus is on the hosed-up politics of negotiating which family to have a baby with, and who gets to keep the baby.
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Oct 23, 2023 02:31
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ZombieLenin posted:Of course I'm talking out my rear end a bit because I don't actually know how the story ends. Like seriously don't bail after 80% of the series because you know a bare outline of one thing that happens (and probably not even how or in the way you think it does). dwarf74 fucked around with this message at 02:52 on Oct 23, 2023 |
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Oct 23, 2023 02:40
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ZombieLenin posted:These days, other than Joe Abercrombie, I mostly read science fiction, and so I came to this series via his science fiction--and none of his science fiction takes such a dark loving turn. Okay just gonna throw this out there you should finish the series. It doesn't go where you're assuming
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Oct 23, 2023 02:48
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ZombieLenin posted:These days, other than Joe Abercrombie, I mostly read science fiction, and so I came to this series via his science fiction--and none of his science fiction takes such a dark loving turn. I'd read to the end before kicking off like this, personally. No doubt it could have been less than 10+short stories though.
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Oct 23, 2023 04:08
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ZombieLenin posted:These days, other than Joe Abercrombie, I mostly read science fiction, and so I came to this series via his science fiction--and none of his science fiction takes such a dark loving turn. read to the end
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Oct 23, 2023 07:16
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I enjoyed Shadows of the Apt overall but I feel anything featuring the Mantises could have been cut without any loss and to a considerable benefit. IIRC it was based on RPG sessions, Tisamon is the most Player Character imaginable and if there's a pointless book in the series, it's Heirs of the Blade. Anyway, yeah, saying that the evil empire wins is reductionist and not really how the things play out. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 19:28 on Oct 23, 2023 |
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Oct 23, 2023 12:52
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anilEhilated posted:I enjoyed Shadows of the Apt overall but I feel anything featuring the Mantises could have been cut without any loss and to a considerable benefit. IIRC it was based on a RPG sessions and Tisamon is the most Player Character imaginable and if there's a pointless book in the series, it's Heirs of the Blade. Challenging you to a duel right now
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Oct 23, 2023 13:13
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