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Dresden starts badly but is good fun from book 3 onwards if you make it that far. Sure its not amazing prose or brilliant ideas, but they fill a similar niche to stuff like cradle in my opinion. Lots of people love hating on Dresden for some reason or another though.
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Aug 18, 2021 09:45
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buffalo all day posted:The Wheel of Time is turning into a big Amazon show in a few months and the first book (the eye of the world) should give you all the big dumb adventure you could ask for. (in lockdown in Melb Aust) an old friend of mine told he was really depressed as his 6 yo old had his second straight birthday in lockdown, he was so depressed he started reading WoT again. Long story short last night i did too, got about 150 pages into it and it was like slipping into something old and comfortable, but not something you want to be seen in in the street if you know what i mean. I started reading them in about 93 and stopped when Jordan died so i'll try and push through to the end this time but i can guarantee i'll need a palate cleanser between a few of them, especially the braid pulling heavy books in the middle. branedotorg fucked around with this message at 10:30 on Aug 18, 2021 |
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Aug 18, 2021 10:28
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The first couple of Dresden Files books are a bit amateurish, but the series does settle into a pretty competent rhythm that fans of stuff like Buffy: The Vampire Slayer might like.
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Aug 18, 2021 10:49
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Wheel of Time has problems with weird gender stuff, too. Like it's not exactly misogynistic imo but it's a constant low-grade buzz of 'women are like this, and men are like that' and it gets tiresome. The first Dresden Files book is loving awful, Harry is insufferable. I am told they get better later but there's other things to read.
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Aug 18, 2021 11:21
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Jedit posted:That's certainly a take when you consider that there is an entire book about the bourgeois head of the guard leading a revolution in his city. a bourgeois revolution, so not that much of a take
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Aug 18, 2021 12:01
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thotsky posted:The first couple of Dresden Files books are a bit amateurish, but the series does settle into a pretty competent rhythm that fans of stuff like Buffy: The Vampire Slayer might like. That's a pretty fair take I think. They aren't by any means the best thing even in their own genre, but there is after all a reason they've been a huge commercial success, and it isn't just first mover advantage in the urban fantasy market. branedotorg posted:
Yup.
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Aug 18, 2021 12:45
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branedotorg posted:(in lockdown in Melb Aust) I think as a teenager I stopped reading them somewhere around the fifth or sixth book - after they very slowly go into the desert and very slowly make their way out again - something about the pacing really dies around then? I'm not sure how much of it is that it starts getting really political and complex and has a cast of hundreds that you're expected to remember around the same time. The first three-ish books are just fun bildungsroman adventure fantasy novels about a core group of around ten characters. Jedit posted:That's certainly a take when you consider that there is an entire book about the bourgeois head of the guard leading a revolution in his city. Doctor Jeep posted:a bourgeois revolution, so not that much of a take The most widely quoted phrase in all of Pratchett's writing comes from this book and is specifically about the kind of person who unironically uses the word "bourgeois"
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Aug 18, 2021 13:07
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Carrier posted:Dresden starts badly but is good fun from book 3 onwards if you make it that far. Sure its not amazing prose or brilliant ideas, but they fill a similar niche to stuff like cradle in my opinion. Lots of people love hating on Dresden for some reason or another though. I have a real problem with sexism and the first book treated a love potion as a joke. I HATE love potions.
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Aug 18, 2021 13:22
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Doctor Jeep posted:a bourgeois revolution, so not that much of a take Ah, yes, the bourgeoisie. Here defined by noted philosopher Doctor Jeep as including prostitutes and people too poor to buy food.
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Aug 18, 2021 13:36
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As opposed to what, the Marxist vanguard of philosopher princes in urban 20th c coffee shops (v egalitarian we promise)
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Aug 18, 2021 13:43
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freebooter posted:
Which one is that again? I'd have figured the widest quote would be the Boots Theory, but it's been a while since I've read Pratchett.
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Aug 18, 2021 13:49
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I've been reading Shards of Honor and while I'm enjoying it, it definitely feels like a somewhat trashy romance novel, but in space. I'm curious to see how the series develops, but it isn't quite what I was expecting.
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Aug 18, 2021 13:53
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redcheval posted:Kind of a shot in the dark but I am itching to read something new and have no idea what. I’m desperate for an easy trashy comfort read, and because the Shadow and Bone Netflix show has been going around with some of my friends, that’s the first thing that comes to mind, but I don’t think I would actually be that into it — too YA? I would love something that vibes like old Tamora Pearce books but aged up a bit. I've only read the two sort of spin-off books in that series, Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom. Six of Crows was.... fine? There's a decent heist storyline in there, and I found it surprisingly grimdark and violent for how YA it is (the background of one of the main characters is that she was kidnapped and sold into sex slavery when she was like, 12. The leader of the Teen Crime Squad tortures a guy and rips his eyeball out with his fingers before tossing him off the side of a boat to drown. That kind of thing.). Depending on how you feel about romance sub-plots, there's a (imo) tedious but not overwhelming amount of time devoted to those. And since it's YA, of course each teen either literally has magic powers or might as well because of how supernaturally skilled they are. However, Crooked Kingdom is not worth reading even though Six of Crows ends on a little bit of a cliffhanger. It really feels like it was rushed out, and maybe it was because it was published just a year after the first one. It repeatedly spends a ton of time building up various plotlines only to completely drop them for the next one without any resolution. And then at the end there's maybe a couple paragraphs explaining "Remember when we did A, B, and C? Well it turns out that those actually had X, Y, and Z effects in the background, all neatly tying everything together, and this is the first time it's being acknowledged or addressed!" Oh, and while it initially happens toward the end of the first book, there's a white character who spends almost all of the second book in magic-induced yellowface and it's... a little awkward. Not that there's really any good way to handle something like that.
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Aug 18, 2021 13:55
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Hiro Protagonist posted:I've been reading Shards of Honor and while I'm enjoying it, it definitely feels like a somewhat trashy romance novel, but in space. I'm curious to see how the series develops, but it isn't quite what I was expecting. It picks up a lot when the hiking trip part ends.
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Aug 18, 2021 13:56
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The internet tells me the Wheel of Time is about 4.9m words. I'm not sure I recall how chaptery it is, but someone could probably just set up a script to send it to you 10-20k words at a time, two or three times a week and you'd burn through it in just over two years while hardly noticing it, three years at the outside. Just one more serial in the RSS reader. Oh crap this is the respectable sff thread. I went with audiobooks while I spent six months in bed, for the part of the series I did anyway. Not sure I can recommend that.
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Aug 18, 2021 14:07
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Hiro Protagonist posted:I've been reading Shards of Honor and while I'm enjoying it, it definitely feels like a somewhat trashy romance novel, but in space. I'm curious to see how the series develops, but it isn't quite what I was expecting. Barrayar is better (space opera; military action; body and reproductive autonomy) but reading shards then barrayar, as someone noted earlier, highlights Miles' internal drive and legend as constructed. It's a really nice layer of depth to the writing and characterisation that for all his advantages and disadvantages he succeeds through self-confidence ultimately but even that has a foundation of naivete in his idolisation of his parents.
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Aug 18, 2021 14:36
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Thanks all for the recs, I had not heard of any of those and I’ll check them out! And I’ll pick up Guards! Guards! I should have mentioned but I did go on to absorb all the rest of the related Farseer books so I’ve tapped that well dry.
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Aug 18, 2021 14:41
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DurianGray posted:I've only read the two sort of spin-off books in that series, Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom. Six of Crows was.... fine? There's a decent heist storyline in there, and I found it surprisingly grimdark and violent for how YA it is (the background of one of the main characters is that she was kidnapped and sold into sex slavery when she was like, 12. The leader of the Teen Crime Squad tortures a guy and rips his eyeball out with his fingers before tossing him off the side of a boat to drown. That kind of thing.). Depending on how you feel about romance sub-plots, there's a (imo) tedious but not overwhelming amount of time devoted to those. And since it's YA, of course each teen either literally has magic powers or might as well because of how supernaturally skilled they are. The only Bardugo I've read is Ninth House, which is an urban fantasy; the premise is that the various Yale secret societies, like Skull and Bones, are actually magical orders. I thought it was pretty good; the actual fantasy bits were so-so, but the parts where the protagonist has to deal with the sort of entitled legacies and lunatic tryhards who actually get into Yale were fun. And hey, I liked Little Heroes. It does contain one of Spinrad's sharper bits of prediction: one of the main characters is a middle-class woman who was pressed from childhood to go into computers because her parents are convinced that it's the Career of the Future ... and when she gets to adulthood, finds that everything she's been taught can be done easier and cheaper by an AI.
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Aug 18, 2021 14:46
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Strategic Tea posted:As opposed to what, the Marxist vanguard of philosopher princes in urban 20th c coffee shops (v egalitarian we promise) I don't see much point in discussing characters that do not exist in the book. Reg Shoe is strongly informed by Wolfie Smith, but he's the only character even close to what you're talking about and unlike Wolfie he's actually willing to sacrifice for the cause. The revolution itself is started by the poor rioting over the price of bread while Lord Winder literally dies while eating cake - I don't think it's possible to draw a more obvious parallel than that. And the Republic of Treacle Mine Road is a secondary product of the revolution, not the focus of it or even really a part of it. Vimes initially only erects some barricades to protect a few streets around the Watch House, then Fred Colon moves them outwards until a significant portion of the city is within. It's only then that people start asking why they need to wait for outside help when they have everything they need to help themselves. Yes, Night Watch has a literal "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" moment. But Pratchett made it clear both in this book and others that the people who take over after a revolution will by definition be the new rulers that people rail against, the most famous example being when he said that "We Shall Overcome" is a song always sung by the people that the next generation will sing it about.
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Aug 18, 2021 14:47
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Jedit posted:Ah, yes, the bourgeoisie. Here defined by noted philosopher Doctor Jeep as including prostitutes and people too poor to buy food. Jedit posted:I don't see much point in discussing characters that do not exist in the book. Reg Shoe is strongly informed by Wolfie Smith, but he's the only character even close to what you're talking about and unlike Wolfie he's actually willing to sacrifice for the cause. The revolution itself is started by the poor rioting over the price of bread while Lord Winder literally dies while eating cake - I don't think it's possible to draw a more obvious parallel than that. blah blah blah, so as I said, it's a bourgeois revolution that's NOT AN INSULT and no, the fact that prostitutes and poor people mutinied against the powers that be doesn't mean that it's a proletarian revolution or are you telling me that ankh-morpork is a people's republic now? vetinari would probably say that it's a person's republic, the person being himself
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Aug 18, 2021 15:16
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Dresden is good, action movie fun. But, also the author sexualizes every woman, including the young children of the protagonists friends. WoT the author wrote women in a very dislikeable way. They're very much the might makes right gender, and men are definitely written as second class. It's an interesting twist on gender roles, but it's not written in a "makes you think" way, and more "the female characters are uniformly bullies" way. But, of course, the heroes are all men. On rereads, there comes a time when I just skip chapters devoted to some characters, and by the end, I'm only interested in one character, Matt.
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Aug 18, 2021 15:20
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I don't care how the author describes him, my mind's eye rejects any Harry Dresden but this classic from Rogue Trader: The name's Obiwan Sherlock Clousseau. Look in the phone book, under Inquisitor.
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Aug 18, 2021 15:29
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torgeaux posted:Dresden is good, action movie fun. But, also the author sexualizes every woman, including the young children of the protagonists friends. Given the existence, prominence, and indeed heroics of characters in the WoT like Moiraine, Egwene, Nynaeve, Elayne, and Aviendha to say that "the heroes are all men" is quite frankly factually incorrect. 
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Aug 18, 2021 15:30
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jng2058 posted:Given the existence, prominence, and indeed heroics of characters in the WoT like Moiraine, Egwene, Nynaeve, Elayne, and Aviendha to say that "the heroes are all men" is quite frankly factually incorrect. Could the story be completed without the male characters? No. Who drives the change? Men. Who opposes them, including those listed above? But, sure, women were important "good guys". Overcoming the women's inclinations is an important part of the journey in the books. The fact they end up important parts of the win doesn't make them one of the heroes.
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Aug 18, 2021 15:39
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My take on Wheel of Time's pacing is that when I reread the books for the first time in years, I got several hundred pages into the first one before sighing to myself and thinking "they only just made it to loving Bree." Listening to them on audio at 1.5x speed helped me power through until about book 9 or so, when the entire volume is dedicated to catching up with all the characters who weren't able to fit in the previous book. The gender stuff is weird, there is a ton of gender essentialism about how women's influence is all "soft power behind the throne" except they also sit on the throne too.
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Aug 18, 2021 15:46
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torgeaux posted:
This is dead wrong. Major last book spoiler The main emotional conflict in the last book is between Rand and Egwene and is resolved only because Moirane and Aviendha convince Rand that he’s wrong. The good guys win because the man realizes that “going it alone” won’t work and that the women are right.
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Aug 18, 2021 15:47
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90s Cringe Rock posted:I don't care how the author describes him, my mind's eye rejects any Harry Dresden but this classic from Rogue Trader: Nah, it’s Paul Blackthorne.
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Aug 18, 2021 15:52
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wizzardstaff posted:
Others disagree but I think the best way to look at gender in WOT is that it reflects a middle age cishet, reasonably progressive white dude’s views of gender in the 90s. Lots of men are from Mars, women are from Venus stuff (inherently different but equal and necessary to the other), basically no consideration of non-binary, trans, etc. I think if he were writing those books now he’d take an open-minded and progressive view and include them because he was open-hearted and compassionate to basically all his characters (and his readers) and took a very clear stance against those who were bigoted (and IIRC he started including queer characters at the end without any fuss or weirdness) but I can’t base that on anything in the text.
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Aug 18, 2021 15:54
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torgeaux posted:Could the story be completed without the male characters? No. Who drives the change? Men. Who opposes them, including those listed above? Yes, it does. And no, the story could not have been completed without the characters listed above. And for that matter, the main male characters learning that they CAN'T just "gut it out, be manly men, and solve all their problems themselves" is a huge part of their character arcs, especially for Rand and Perrin. And for that matter, Egwene alone is more important to the conclusion than Perrin is, by a long shot. That's kind of the whole point of the series, that even Rand the literal chosen one could not in fact win by himself, and needed help every step along the way, including at the very end. To say that the Wheel of Time is only about "men ignoring women" is at best skewed, and in truth blatantly disingenuous. What the series is about is a group of young people, men and women both, starting from places of insecurity, weakness, and fear and learning to overcome that to become better versions of themselves. It isn't a gendered thing, since growing in power and becoming a figure of authority in your own right, which includes standing up to people whose authority you once respected, is as much a part of Egwene's and Elayne's stories as it is Rand's or Perrin's. Take, for one example out of many, Rand and the Maidens of the Spear. Throughout the series, Rand keeps trying to keep them out of danger despite the fact that they're as dangerous in combat as their male counterparts. Is Rand correct in that? Should the Maidens just throw down their weapons and go home and have babies? No, the books are explicit that Rand is wrong to treat them that way, and it's a sign of his growing madness that he keeps obsessing over their deaths in battle. And at the Last Battle, do they sit it out and stay home? No, they go and fight alongside the male Aiel and many of them die to help save the world. It's far more complicated and interesting than "men are right, women are wrong" and if you think that it is, then you probably haven't read the books in years and are forgetting a lot of the character arcs. jng2058 fucked around with this message at 16:08 on Aug 18, 2021 |
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Aug 18, 2021 15:58
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Also I do think its weird for Wheel of Time how memetic braid pulling had become. There's uh exactly one character who pulls her braid as an individual tic.
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Aug 18, 2021 16:10
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buffalo all day posted:Others disagree but I think the best way to look at gender in WOT is that it reflects a middle age cishet, reasonably progressive white dude’s views of gender in the 90s. Lots of men are from Mars, women are from Venus stuff (inherently different but equal and necessary to the other), basically no consideration of non-binary, trans, etc. For me it seems to come from a place of asking "what if women ran the world, wouldn't that be so progressive" but also "what if all the sexist traditions and stereotypes based on male dominance were still true". Like he was interested in constructing a society with a different structure, but he treated everything derived from our current structure as innate. The best visual metaphor I can think of to explain it is when you edit an image to swap two people's positions in a photograph, but you do it with a simple cut-and-paste so all the shadows and lighting are wildly out of place with the rest of the picture.
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Aug 18, 2021 16:10
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90s Cringe Rock posted:I don't care how the author describes him, my mind's eye rejects any Harry Dresden but this classic from Rogue Trader: I’ve never made the connection before but you’re right, this is 100% Harry Dresden.
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Aug 18, 2021 16:14
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Zore posted:Also I do think its weird for Wheel of Time how memetic braid pulling had become. There's uh exactly one character who pulls her braid as an individual tic. There is some discussion on that in this reddit thread with stats. I was surprised to look at them and see how unevenly distributed the braid tugging is: she does it once in book 1, never in book 2, and then twenty times in book 3. It's probably that huge jump in frequency early in the series that sticks in people's minds.
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Aug 18, 2021 16:17
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Doctor Jeep posted:vetinari would probably say that it's a person's republic, the person being himself
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Aug 18, 2021 16:19
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buffalo all day posted:This is dead wrong. Major last book spoiler The main emotional conflict in the last book is between Rand and Egwene and is resolved only because Moirane and Aviendha convince Rand that he’s wrong. The good guys win because the man realizes that “going it alone” won’t work and that the women are right. Yes. They are right in a specific instance in the last book. How much of the earlier books is that becoming their inclinations/ideas?
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Aug 18, 2021 16:24
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jng2058 posted:Yes, it does. And no, the story could not have been completed without the characters listed above. And for that matter, the main male characters learning that they CAN'T just "gut it out, be manly men, and solve all their problems themselves" is a huge part of their character arcs, especially for Rand and Perrin. And for that matter, Egwene alone is more important to the conclusion than Perrin is, by a long shot. That's kind of the whole point of the series, that even Rand the literal chosen one could not in fact win by himself, and needed help every step along the way, including at the very end. Double post, but there you go. Never said anything like men ignoring women. The book has the major female characters as scolds and bullies. They're also generally wrong about the male characters, and their inclinations have to be overcome as the books progress. They're not the villains, and as stated, important good guys, especially at the end. I'm not as generous to the author as it seems he doesn't like women too much. Are any written in a sympathetic manner in the first four or five books?
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Aug 18, 2021 16:29
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wizzardstaff posted:For me it seems to come from a place of asking "what if women ran the world, wouldn't that be so progressive" but also "what if all the sexist traditions and stereotypes based on male dominance were still true". Like he was interested in constructing a society with a different structure, but he treated everything derived from our current structure as innate. The thing is, that isn't entirely true either. I mean yes, the Two Rivers is explicitly sexist, with "men do this and women do that", and since most of our main characters are from there, that point of view is expressed by a lot of the characters, especially Rand and Perrin and to a lesser degree Mat. But the thing is, there are a LOT of different cultures in WoT, and while most of them have some variation on "men do this, and women do that" what those things ARE change drastically from culture to culture. Women among the Seafolk do different things than women among the Aiel who do things differently than the women of the Two Rivers, and so on and so forth. Jordan really isn't saying that men and women can only do certain things, because across the books, you can find men and women doing almost everything. What he may actually be saying is that gender roles are often imparted to us by the culture that we grow up in, and that one need only look at a different culture to see how those roles change, which in turn suggests that the whole notion of gendered roles is a purely artificial one.
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Aug 18, 2021 16:31
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jng2058 posted:The thing is, that isn't entirely true either. I mean yes, the Two Rivers is explicitly sexist, with "men do this and women do that", and since most of our main characters are from there, that point of view is expressed by a lot of the characters, especially Rand and Perrin and to a lesser degree Mat. But the thing is, there are a LOT of different cultures in WoT, and while most of them have some variation on "men do this, and women do that" what those things ARE change drastically from culture to culture. Women among the Seafolk do different things than women among the Aiel who do things differently than the women of the Two Rivers, and so on and so forth. Jordan really isn't saying that men and women can only do certain things, because across the books, you can find men and women doing almost everything. What he may actually be saying is that gender roles are often imparted to us by the culture that we grow up in, and that one need only look at a different culture to see how those roles change, which in turn suggests that the whole notion of gendered roles is a purely artificial one. That's an interesting look at it. Are there any societies in the books truly run by men, though? Even where the ostensible ruler is a man, aren't they typically dominated by their female advisors? The Photoshop analogy seems apt, the roles are changed, but the nuance isn't there to support it.
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Aug 18, 2021 16:39
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I didn't get through the first Dresden book but I'd heard bits and pieces about his misogyny throughout the years. What I found interesting is he actually knows he's a misogynist. Like he remarks about women and does stuff he thinks is chivalrous and always thinks "yeah the women hate when I do this but that's just how I am." It's so strange. I guess it's the author going "I'm going to write this hardboiled detective type character and he has all the flaws that old hardboiled detectives had, but because we're in modern times he's going to know that what he's doing is either wrong or old fashioned. But he's still going to do them, because that's part of his character." Which.... I mean, I've read a lot of book with horrible characters as protagonists. Everyone in The First Law is some sort of misogynist. Most men in Song of Ice and Fire don't think much of women. Dresden I think gets picked out as a particular problem because he's being so misogynist in the modern day, where he should know better. I didn't find his misogyny unrealistic though, considering the kind of men there are in the world, but it can get tiresome to read a book where he's the only viewpoint character and held up as the (flawed) hero.
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Aug 18, 2021 16:40
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Ccs posted:I didn't get through the first Dresden book but I'd heard bits and pieces about his misogyny throughout the years. What I found interesting is he actually knows he's a misogynist. Like he remarks about women and does stuff he thinks is chivalrous and always thinks "yeah the women hate when I do this but that's just how I am." It's so strange. I guess it's the author going "I'm going to write this hardboiled detective type character and he has all the flaws that old hardboiled detectives had, but because we're in modern times he's going to know that what he's doing is either wrong or old fashioned. But he's still going to do them, because that's part of his character." I get completely what you're saying, but for me the first Dresden book was so eyerollingly goony to read I just couldn't continue. Like honestly just using prose to evolve into a helldump 2005 goon is an incredible achievement.
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Aug 18, 2021 16:47
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