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I found Piranesi quite cozy. Nona the Ninth too. The settings are rather bleak, but I bought into the perspectives of the POV characters.
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Mar 1, 2024 19:18
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DurianGray posted:Me. I'm one of those people. It’s funny because I consider Ghibli movies cozy because those moments relieve all the loss, grief, war, etc. and they tend to end on an uplifting note. But I get other people’s definition of cozy is, as you say, the whimsical stretched out to novel length. It’s why I always have to be careful recommending books to my mom, cause the number of times I’ve gone, “I think you’ll like this book it’s nice and cozy” and had her read it and go, “That was so awful, the part were [horrible thing happened]” like I’d fed her poison lol
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Mar 1, 2024 19:20
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Bilirubin posted:well, good. my memory is bad but not that bad I guess. e: DurianGray posted:E: I guess what I'm really looking at when I read is for things to have some sort of ebb and flow, some kind of dynamic contrast, even if the overall thing is intended to feel cozy. I want the tempo and the keys the change. This! This exactly. Cozy, to me, does not mean "nothing bad happens and nothing bad is going to happen". It means no rape, no explicit torture, and most of the characters are not in a worse situation at the end than they were at the beginning. Bad things happen to people, but not horrible things. So, K J Parker is not cozy. The Thursday Murder Club absolutely. (Which I recommend! They're funny!) Arsenic Lupin fucked around with this message at 19:35 on Mar 1, 2024 |
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Mar 1, 2024 19:29
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Xenix posted:That's an interesting take, especially for Abercrombie, because it's not until the very end of the third book in the first trilogy that this is made well and truly clear. Up until then, things happen that give cause for hope, both for the characters and society as a whole. There’s an underlying fissure in the definition that I think gets pinned to the idea of justice: in one story, terrible things happen to all the characters but it’s because we’re all messed up and all of humanity deserves what it’s getting. In another, terrible things happen to characters whether or not they deserve it, and to some extent the “upstanding” characters deserve what they get more than the others (I am still willing to term this the Stannis effect). The first has a bleak view of people/culture/society/systems and the second may or may not. Neither version is necessarily nihilistic, so there’s a third model that can coexist with the others. “Grimdark” can certainly apply to works with a strong moral center or which believe in a fundamental goodness people can express. I’d argue all the sequels to Glen Cook’s The Black Company have a foundational belief in goodness even if it’s rarely seen or seen only as dim glimmers in the darkness. Cook also shows how a noble motive can produce villainy. Erikson’s Malazan books seem to be saying that justice is possible, just really drat unlikely, and I think in an overall sense the series moves towards the “there’s always hope, even for people like us” framework even if hope rarely pays off and victories can often look like defeats when viewed from history’s (or myth’s) perspective. I feel like Abercrombie’s work isn’t always so sure in either direction, though I’d agree First Law is pretty bleak. But I also suspect he’s leaning in existentialist directions and maybe even hinting at a moral like “Virtue is its own reward, and it better be, because that’s all you’re getting.” “Cozy” has a range, too. Goblin Emperor is heavy into the “reform within the system is possible” although I think some readers underestimate the number of caveats to that message; Watt-Evans has a range, but I especially love the stories where somebody ordinary gets dropped into extraordinary circumstances and just tries their best to muddle through, without much hand-wringing or broader moral discourses. If anything, he’s somewhere between “ordinary people aren’t ever going to get to influence systems anyway, and that’s OK” and “on some level, everyone is either ordinary people or used to be, so the question is what you choose to do with the problems life presents you.”
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Mar 1, 2024 19:37
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For me, "cozy" is definitely about escapism. But I get that more from traditional/old school narrative arc than anything. Hero's journey stuff, good vs evil stuff, etc. I don't mind as much if there's horror or suffering or uncertainty or difficult choices or whatever along the way, it's a matter of whether I trust the author to deliver good things to good people and bad things to bad people, and ultimately for there to be a clear division. Most YA fantasy still follows those formula, but there's plenty of adult stuff too.
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Mar 1, 2024 19:43
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"The good ended happily, and the bad, unhappily. That is what Fiction means. " (Miss Prism, in The Importance of being Earnest)
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Mar 1, 2024 19:49
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The cosy mystery has been a genre for about a hundred years now. It always starts with a murder, but they deserved it, then people get what they deserve, and in thr meanwhile everyone is rich and good looking.
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Mar 1, 2024 19:49
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The cosy mystery has been a genre for about a hundred years now. It always starts with a murder, but they deserved it, then people get what they deserve, and in thr meanwhile everyone is rich and good looking. Strongly disagree on point 3. Miss Marple, Poirot, Agatha Raisin, are none of them attractive. And neither are many of the murder victims.
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Mar 1, 2024 19:53
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Narsham posted:I feel like Abercrombie’s work isn’t always so sure in either direction, though I’d agree First Law is pretty bleak. But I also suspect he’s leaning in existentialist directions and maybe even hinting at a moral like “Virtue is its own reward, and it better be, because that’s all you’re getting.” My fav Abercrombie is Best Served Cold and I feel that it's irrefutably bleak. This thread posting about Baru suffering reminded me of how viscerally Abercrombie would describe injuries. I enjoyed how the main character Murcatto advocated living a life with utter ruthlessness devoid of mercy, then is horrified/disgusted when Caul Shivers actually adopts that mindset.
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Mar 1, 2024 19:58
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Strongly disagree on point 3. Miss Marple, Poirot, Agatha Raisin, are none of them attractive. And neither are many of the murder victims. This is mustache slander and I won't tolerate it Have you seen the glorious suits David Suchet wears! https://youtu.be/i9iQ1yU5Ops?si=bhd5mtL5egLyVi-U
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Mar 1, 2024 19:59
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The cosy mystery has been a genre for about a hundred years now. It always starts with a murder, but they deserved it, then people get what they deserve, and in thr meanwhile everyone is rich and good looking. I want a resurgence of the wodehousian cozy farce, where everyone's a giant idiot except for one or two designated smart people and somehow it works out. Also the cozy heist, gently caress what's the guys name who wrote the parker novels under a different pen name. Just a whole series of capable and competent but perennially unlucky thieves.
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Mar 1, 2024 20:09
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I'm fine with bleak have the main character shoot their puppy fifty pages in, I don't care. Oh you put everyone you love on a spaceship and it got eaten by a black hole? Cool. It's too much late stage capitalism that I can't deal with, makes me walk away. I suspect 84k is a good book but honestly I'm never gonna find out, the corporate hellhole was too much for me.
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Mar 1, 2024 20:16
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Benagain posted:I want a resurgence of the wodehousian cozy farce, where everyone's a giant idiot except for one or two designated smart people and somehow it works out.
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Mar 1, 2024 20:17
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DACK FAYDEN posted:Tom Holt is his actual name. I think he was referring to the Parker crime novels, which were written by Donald Westlake under the pen name Richard Stark. Westlake, under his real name, is also known for the Dortmunder novels, which are mostly light and funny stuff about a crew of very unlucky crooks. (And if you like Dortmunder, maybe check out Lawrence Block's Bernie Rhodenbarr books.)
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Mar 1, 2024 20:40
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Benagain posted:I want a resurgence of the wodehousian cozy farce, where everyone's a giant idiot except for one or two designated smart people and somehow it works out. 
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Mar 1, 2024 21:05
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zoux posted:I was Going Through Some Stuff recently and needed absolutely brainless fiction to distract myself. I read a few of the DS9 relaunch novels, which were the easiest things I've ever read, and they worked great. There's no moral imperative to read challenging literature or stuff that stress you out, reading is supposed to be enjoyable. 100% this. I was going through a bout of severe anxiety, and I cannot say strongly enough that should you ever find yourself in such a place: do not pick then to read PK Dick's VALIS trilogy.
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Mar 1, 2024 22:01
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Against a Dark Background by Iain M Banks - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002CT0TXK/ Dead Country (Craft Wars #1) by Max Gladstone - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B3762QDG/ To Hold Up the Sky by Cixin Liu - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B082RT6BGG/ Inhibitor Phase by Alistair Reynolds - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08HLQV5ZG/ Kill the Dead (Sandman Slim #2) by Richard Kadrey - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0042FZVX0/ A Scanner Darkly by Philip K Dick - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005LVR6NC/ Tsalmoth (Vlad Taltos #16) by Steven Brust - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09XL5FXZ3/ The Compleat Traveller in Black by John Brunner - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J5X5OM2/ Bloody Rose (The Band #2) by Nicholas Eames - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074M6KW1X/ Zodiac by Neal Stephenson - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008UX8SNU/
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Mar 1, 2024 23:56
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:I had a big post written up and I must've tapped F5 and made it vanish because I lost it thirty seconds ago and I'm not sure why or how. So, uh, quick and messy. This might be me being very pessimistic, but I'm not sure anyone can envision the kind of future that would enable that general vibe of "coziness". I wrote a little thing for the Thunderdome thread here (I should really do more of those) about a bunch of workers living on a small space station that was fairly cozy, but the background assumption I had to make for any of that to feel right was that modern capitalism perished and was replaced with something better off-screen. If I wrote it as what our current mode of production might develop into with the passage of time, I'd have probably made something about as cozy as the society of tomorrow as depicted in any of Peter Watts' books. Fantasy can simply run with the assumption that magic sands off the harsh edges of pre-industrial life. Isekai is also very fascinating to me because so much of it is bleak; I often dip my toes in for a chapter of the worst poo poo possible in that genre because reading garbage makes me feel so much more confident as a writer. As you mentioned, its dire that the greatest fantasy that the slice-of-life isekai posits is "you are happily retired with a loving girlfriend in a peaceful world", but the power fantasy adventure stuff is also depressing in a different way. Honestly, I think the scariest thing they do that none of them really consider is that often the world these guys reincarnate into is literally fictional in-setting; they loving DIED and the place they went to is not Heaven or a new earthly body on the long path to enlightenment, but a legally distinct version of such popular games as Genshin Impact, Final Fantasy XIV, or Dragon Quest, where their gameplay rules and coding quirks are the very laws of the world. loving Exordia's metaphysics has nothing on this poo poo to me in terms of the horror it inspires. Whirling fucked around with this message at 00:34 on Mar 2, 2024 |
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Mar 2, 2024 00:28
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This convo was super interesting/enjoyable to read but it also made me chuckle because the other thread I regularly visit here is the horror movie thread where everyone bonds over some movies where absolutely heinous poo poo occurs and it's totally normal to be like "what's everyone's favorite cozy castration scene".
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Mar 2, 2024 00:31
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pradmer posted:Against a Dark Background by Iain M Banks - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002CT0TXK/ Highlighting this since I just had cause to recommend it as an anti-cozy option.
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Mar 2, 2024 00:36
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pradmer posted:Inhibitor Phase by Alistair Reynolds - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08HLQV5ZG/ Looking at GoodReads, though, I see I gave Revenger a 5 and Shadow Captain even a 3?? Strange how memory recasts things—I recall the latter direly needing an editor to trim the redundancies and my struggling to get through it. I guess these were stamped as YA, so that might explain the stylistic difference?
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Mar 2, 2024 00:50
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I finished Between Two Fires just now and drat, that was a ride. Highly recommend for a jaunt through Boschian horrorscapes. E: not cozy. Also...not really bleak? Ravenfood fucked around with this message at 02:28 on Mar 2, 2024 |
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Mar 2, 2024 01:05
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Jack Vance often has very cosy and bucolic settings that are implacably hostile to the protagonist
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Mar 2, 2024 02:14
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fez_machine posted:Jack Vance often has very cosy and bucolic settings that are implacably hostile to the protagonist I only read Lyonesse but Jack Vance seemed implacably hostile to his characters in that. Extremely fun and arch writing style, good story in itself, but felt like there was a gleefully nasty streak running through it.
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Mar 2, 2024 02:30
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fez_machine posted:Jack Vance often has very cosy and bucolic settings that are implacably hostile to the protagonist 
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Mar 2, 2024 02:45
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trip9 posted:This convo was super interesting/enjoyable to read but it also made me chuckle because the other thread I regularly visit here is the horror movie thread where everyone bonds over some movies where absolutely heinous poo poo occurs and it's totally normal to be like "what's everyone's favorite cozy castration scene". I find From Beyond to be a very comforting movie and I couldn't start to articulate why except that the three leads are all very easy to look at. I think Star Trek is probably closet to a 'cosy future'. Post-scarcity, a generally optimistic outlook.
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Mar 2, 2024 03:22
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malbogio posted:I found Piranesi quite cozy. Nona the Ninth too. The settings are rather bleak, but I bought into the perspectives of the POV characters. Piranesi is kind of cozy yes, but I believe it has stuff to say about cozyness. Pointedly, the protagonist has to leave the life he's gotten comfortable with behind. It's not an indulgent work.
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Mar 2, 2024 03:27
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If you like bleak isekai, I recommend Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children series. There's a boarding school for children who have returned from a portal fantasy and cannot adapt to "the real world". Some of the stories have comfortable endings, others are grim.
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Mar 2, 2024 03:41
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Does anyone else like the "Red Rising" series by Pierce Brown? I started listening to the first audiobook because it was included in Audible Plus for free and I loved it. I immediately started the 2nd book "Golden Son" afterward because it was also free on Plus; I've got about 4 hours left on "Golden Son". It seems like it's copying some elements from Game of Thrones and The Hunger Games, but it's compelling enough that I don't mind. The audiobook narration has been great so far as well, it makes it easier to keep track of who is who with the narrator using different voices for each character. Has anyone read/listened to the whole series; if so what did you think? Does the quality continue from book 3 onwards?
MarksMan fucked around with this message at 03:58 on Mar 2, 2024 |
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Mar 2, 2024 03:56
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Cugel the Clever posted:I've loved a lot of Reynolds' works, but was really put off by his Revenger series' drastically lower quality... Anyone have thoughts on how this and Machine Vendetta hold up? Haven't read Machine Vendetta but I don't think Inhibitor Phase is as good as the earlier stuff in that series. In general I enjoyed Reynold's older works more than his newer ones... I didn't think Elysium Fire was very good
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Mar 2, 2024 04:39
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MarksMan posted:Does anyone else like the "Red Rising" series by Pierce Brown? I started listening to the first audiobook because it was included in Audible Plus for free and I loved it. I immediately started the 2nd book "Golden Son" afterward because it was also free on Plus; I've got about 4 hours left on "Golden Son". It seems like it's copying some elements from Game of Thrones and The Hunger Games, but it's compelling enough that I don't mind. The audiobook narration has been great so far as well, it makes it easier to keep track of who is who with the narrator using different voices for each character. Has anyone read/listened to the whole series; if so what did you think? Does the quality continue from book 3 onwards? I've read I think seven of them? They're very melodramatic and over the top. They start as a much more bloodthirsty Hunger Games but end up very over the top space opera with heavy Wagnerian and 40k inspiration. I do like them but it's a bit of a guilty pleasure.
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Mar 2, 2024 05:16
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I’m a bit sceptical of the cozy fantasy/sci fi label, the two common examples of which that get cited are the Becky Chambers books and the Goblin Emperor, probably because I don’t think either are that good. (Obvious caveats, like what you like, personal opinion only etc) When I try and understand what people are getting at in terms of wanting comfortable, reassuring books that know they will enjoy, I absolutely get that and have fifty gazillion on my shelves that work for me that way (as others have said, it’s a bit up to the reader) - for me it’s PG Wodehouse, Rex Stout, and similar authors who play with language and humour. In sci-fi/fantasy, it’s Terry Pratchett, Roger Zelazny, Douglas Adams…especially a book like Night in the Lonesome October is a perfect example for me. They are relaxing and entertaining, well written and thoughtful (mostly). I guess I am a bit suspicious that what people really mean when they talk about these more specific subgenre cozy fantasy is stuff without real tension or conflict - not just a tone or vibe, but actually very little plot. I haven’t read any of the LitRPG stuff but I am guessing this is similar. My MAIN beef is I wonder if whatever people want out of these books, they may not get it out of say PG Wodehouse or Terry Pratchett but just haven’t either been exposed to it or it’s just too alien to them in terms of their existing reading experience (eg they want to stick with genre). Because I feel like these other books are kind of empty calories, they just keep going without much happening or much artistic merit. (For Wodehouse it’s his skill with language and humour) The closest example to my own weak spot here is LE Modesitt who I think can write some good stuff but also hundreds of repetitive pages in between it on every mornings breakfast, commute, and fantasy forex movements in the newspaper. Cozy isn’t the term for his books but I feel like there is something similar going on in terms of pages of detail without purpose, characterisation or momentum. Essentially though whenever I hear a book described as cozy fantasy my initial sceptical reaction is it’s a bad book probably with nothing to say, no interesting characters and no plot, because all of those things require some kind of conflict in a narrative setting and conflict is the heart of a good story. Blamestorm fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Mar 2, 2024 |
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Mar 2, 2024 05:52
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I have been binge reading Pratchett. He is immensely comforting because he believes in decency, he knows there's not enough of it, but he demands more. Auden's self-chosen epitaph was "he had a lovers' quarrel with the world" and that is absolutely Pratchett. Neil Gaiman said Pratchett was the angriest man he knew, and I believe it. The theme of his books is 'do better, dammit.' For me, that's the deepness of Pratchett. He is hilarious. He also knows that it is a constant battle to be decent in a world that is not, and he praises the people who take up that battle. See Granny Weatherwax on treating people as things.
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Mar 2, 2024 06:17
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branedotorg posted:I've read I think seven of them? They're very melodramatic and over the top. They start as a much more bloodthirsty Hunger Games but end up very over the top space opera with heavy Wagnerian and 40k inspiration. Page 150: I have been betrayed in a shocking twist by my closest confidant, Backstab Hardchest. Page 200: I have been betrayed in a shocking twist by my closest confidant, Quisling vanDerTheif.
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Mar 2, 2024 06:29
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branedotorg posted:I've read I think seven of them? They're very melodramatic and over the top. They start as a much more bloodthirsty Hunger Games but end up very over the top space opera with heavy Wagnerian and 40k inspiration. Yep, a melodramatic guilty pleasure is exactly how I'd describe them. They're a fun romp in a neat if a little over the top setting. Pierce Brown is still a very young author all things considered, and I think the first trilogy definitely reads like an author in their twenties writing it. There's so many twists, double crosses, and reverse double crosses (triple crosses?) some of which strain fourth wall considerably, but if you can turn your brain down and go "hell yeah IRON RAIN and THE SICKLE!!!" they're a good time. edit: RDM posted:Page 100: I have been betrayed in a shocking twist by my closest confidant, Treason McLiar. 
theysayheygreg fucked around with this message at 06:43 on Mar 2, 2024 |
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Mar 2, 2024 06:40
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prokaryote posted:Haven't read Machine Vendetta but I don't think Inhibitor Phase is as good as the earlier stuff in that series. In general I enjoyed Reynold's older works more than his newer ones... I didn't think Elysium Fire was very good I'm like 20% into Elysium Fire at the moment and I'm not hating it so far, space opera police procedural like The Prefect which I quite liked (and it helps if you've read before this). I liked some parts of Inhibitor Phase, it was interesting getting a bit more insight into what makes the Inhibitors tick and seeing post-apocalypse Yellowstone was pretty cool. I did not find the ending very satisfying though, especially regarding the final fate of the Nostalgia for Infinity.
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Mar 2, 2024 06:42
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Benagain posted:I want a resurgence of the wodehousian cozy farce, where everyone's a giant idiot except for one or two designated smart people and somehow it works out. A buddy of mine lent me some of his Wodehouseses as character prep for a tabletop RPG we were running. I called 'em "low stakes shenanigans". Very fun and readable.
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Mar 2, 2024 07:08
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Poldarn posted:A buddy of mine lent me some of his Wodehouseses as character prep for a tabletop RPG we were running. I called 'em "low stakes shenanigans". Very fun and readable. People genuinely do not understand how technically complex farce is.
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Mar 2, 2024 07:10
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MarksMan posted:Does anyone else like the "Red Rising" series by Pierce Brown? That narrator absolutely makes that series, he chews scenery left right and center - I listened through to... Book four or five years ago and can STILL hear "PAX AU TELEMANUS". Don't recall any specific reason why I stopped following the series, just lost interest - it did remind me heavily of creeplord Piers Anthony's Bio of a Space Tyrant (though with much less discussion of the benefits of flat tax and lowering the age of consent, thankfully).
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Mar 2, 2024 07:43
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I often struggle to get started with reading a new book but for some reason nothing motivates me more than an impending adaptation by total hacks. So I'm currently ripping through The Three Body Problem and sequels, finally, and having a grand old time. I don't normally get on with hard sci fi but mix in some political philosophy and apparently I can't get enough.
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Mar 2, 2024 08:23
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