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HIJK posted:I vote we turn this into the Legitmately Good Fantasy and Sci-Fi Books thread. I like Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora a lot. Unfortunately he isn't terribly consistent with releases but the first book works super well as a standalone. People aren't super into the two following novels but they are mostly good and enjoyable just slightly disappointing as the setting of the first book was so excellent. Lynch wrote one of the most interesting fantasy worlds I've read that really goes beyond "medieval europe with magic and possibly dragons" There's female characters everywhere in every role. The only explicitly gendered position from what I remember are female gladiators that specifically fight sharks in elaborate matches in floating arenas. I find a lot of the time writers are terrible at using misogyny as characterisation. For example I don't wholly buy that Harry Dresden was always written as intentionally misogynistic. The Lies of Locke Lamora basically restored my faith in the genre after reading Rothfuss. Earwicker posted:I get the impression the books just get grosser and more rape-centric as his series continues, which a lot of people find disgusting because it is. However, it also sells well. See: George R. R. Martin I think it's pretty disappointing how many fantasy authors hand-wave rape and gendered violence to women as something intrinsic to their setting. The fictional setting that they wholly control...
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Feb 3, 2016 01:38
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On the other hand I don't think readers of Twilight, 50 Shades of Grey, The True Blood books etc. were under the illusions as to what they were reading. Urban Fantasy readers are pretty happy with their niche except if you're reading Dresden in which case people are falling over backwards to distance it from the rest of it. The conversation around Rothfuss especially but exists for GRRM etc. speaks to an insecurity in how fantasy is perceived and the need for readers to hang their hat on a "literary" fantasy novel. NotW is consistently presented as this genre transcending must read book when in reality its about par for the genre. Fantasy readers don't want good books as much as they want things that check their boxes.
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Jul 17, 2016 09:52
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Strom Cuzewon posted:Are they distancing urban fantasy from Dresden, or Dresden from urban fantasy? Dresden from urban fantasy. I think a lot of (mostly male) readers think UF is mostly icky and don't want Dresden associated in that. Despite it pretty much being the Sookie Stackhouse books for boys. anilEhilated posted:The main thing I'm getting from the discussion is that NotW is supposed to be "on par" for the genre which somehow means it's not a bad book? Not sure; I read a fair bit of fantasy and still wouldn't touch Rothfuss with a ten foot pole after wherever the gently caress I gave up on WMF. sadly I think par for fantasy means that its a pretty awful book. NotW was recommended to me after a long break from the genre and I remember how disappointed I was if this was supposed to be the standard bearer for quality in fantasy. fantasy readers seem to want to read the same book again and again. Atlas Hugged posted:I think this is a huge part of it. I hate generalizing, but it's hard to talk about people who like a genre without doing so. That said, I think it's somewhat safe to say that people who read fantasy novels tend to self identify as nerds or geeks. One of the pillars of nerd culture is being in the know and smarter than the people around you. They have to see their books as smart because otherwise it's admitting they're doing something as low brow as people who read Dan Brown. I think this is a great point and something I was trying to articulate. The sort of arrogance that their wizard book is better than some vampire book. Of course the huge asterix is that its hard to critique how people consume entertainment if they get enjoyment out of it. It just bums me out seeing people act like Rothfuss is Nabakov and are unwilling to explore outside the genre.
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Jul 17, 2016 18:02
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Ornamented Death posted:Odd. I can only speak to what goes on around here, because goons are the only subset of fans I can remotely tolerate, but it's more that Dresden fans fight to differentiate between urban fantasy, which includes Dresden, and paranormal romance, which would be your Sookie Stackhouses and Anita Blakes. i think goons end up calling the ones they "approve" of urban fantasy and ones they find icky paranormal romance. A lot of people consider Anita Blake and Charlene Harris to be urban fantasy. It ends up being a really wishy washy difference.
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Jul 17, 2016 19:26
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Hughlander posted:That's just Johnny come lately trying to misappropriate a term in use before they arrived. First Anita Blake was published in 1993 before those people learned to read. oh yeah the hyper specificity of genres is definitely a new largely marketing driven thing. It just ends up feeding into the entitlement of fantasy readers and encouraging people to stay in walled genre gardens. Again the caveat is reading is cool and good and we shouldn't judge people for it. Just you get stuff like people thinking NotW is the best thing because they've only read in the fantasy garden and next to a dozen D&D novelisations and Terry Goodkind, Rothfuss seems rad and good.
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Jul 18, 2016 10:01
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I liked The Goblin Emperor although it seems to an incredibly specific sub-niche in fantasy.
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Jul 28, 2016 22:19
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What I don't get is how Rothfuss seems to be universally beloved by other fantasy writers and often gets cited as an inspiration. Is he that much of a kingmaker in the genre that so many people are angling for book jacket quotes?
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Nov 7, 2016 23:45
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Lottery of Babylon posted:And because that is ultimately how he views women, Rothfuss is not a feminist. This is a great and telling post.
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Nov 8, 2016 21:14
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Lynch does a reasonable job with background characters being women. Random clerks and guards as as often women as they are men. Its something a lot of fantasy tends to overlooks. I really appreciated TFA for having women and minorities peppered through the movie as stormtroopers and pilots. It's nice when the background of a world feels rounded like that. I think stuff like that can be as important as a strong female protagonist succeeding in a man's world. Not that it absolves Lies not having better female characters but it does have a higher batting average than the norm for the genre which unfortunately is more telling about the genre than Lies.
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Nov 9, 2016 20:11
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I think women in general are more cognisant that their schlock is schlock and men tend to want to justify their schlock by trying to elevate its merits. 50 Shades of Grey readers aren't in a hurry to stack it next to Jane Austen but you'll see a huge amount of threads upset that literary communities doesn't take game of thrones or kingkiller seriously.
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Mar 1, 2017 22:59
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Didn't Rothfuss say he had orders for his notes and stuff to be destroyed in the event of his death or am I conflating him with GRRM?
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Apr 23, 2017 22:33
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quote:I don’t really have a big fear about releasing book 3. I’m really looking forward to releasing book 3. Any fears that I have about releasing the book are extraordinarily metatextual and ephemeral. Because I work until I am really certain that the book is as good as I can make it, and so my fear of releasing any book is what is the effect—it’s not like “will they enjoy it?” because I wouldn’t release it unless I was pretty sure it was as good as I could make it and that people would enjoy it. My fear is, what is the larger effect of my book on the world and on the minds of the people who take the time to consume it? Am I contributing in a positive way to the overall kind of collective consciousness of people in the world? I worry about that. http://www.tor.com/2017/02/03/patrick-rothfuss-kingkiller-chronicle-book-3-update/
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May 11, 2017 22:52
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ChickenWing posted:For me it was more putting aside my "this was fun to read and therefore above criticism" and being able to actually see the deep flaws that I originally ignored in favour of the abundant fluff. I still consider the book an entertaining "I am shutting the critical part of my brain off" read, I just know that that's all it is now. I think the problem is that very few people are see Kingkiller as a schlocky fantasy and I can forgive its flaws. Jim Butcher gets a huge pass on the lovely stuff about Dresden because of the oh its just a popcorn series etc. Kingkiller is put on a pedestal - not just by Rothfuss - but by the industry at large as a consensus best modern fantasy book. It has enormous critical acclaim. So its fair game for pretty involved criticism.
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May 16, 2017 21:27
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PJOmega posted:Whether we like it or not, Harry Potter and other escapist young adult genre fiction has entered the adult zeitgeist. There is plenty of room to explore it from a less kid friendly vantage, especially if 30+ year olds continue to cling to the fandoms if their tweens. Right. If people insist on making Harry Potter metaphors about virtually any real world scenario I think there's space to critique it. Subvisual Haze posted:The book had some interesting threads but it felt like it was too determined to beat you to death with its message. Yeah, human beings in general are miserable self-destructive shits and having access to "magic" probably wouldn't make us any less so. Deconstructing the settings and flaws inherent in the illogical worlds of Potter and Narnia, silly fantasy books literally designed for the amusement of children, just didn't strike me as particularly clever. Also everyone and their cat seems to be piling on the "what if whimsical fantasy settings were actually more realistic and adult?" bandwagon nowadays. and CS Lewis is now a pedophile who stole his stories from the kid he was molesting. edgy. Potter as the story continued is a sometimes confusing mess of tones and target audiences. Its fourth book has more pages than the first three combined. Rowling takes stabs with varying levels of success at themes beyond silly fantasy for the amusement of children.That coupled with its cultural impact I think makes Harry Potter worthy of critique. Narnia as well is deserving of further analysis. The Lewis analogue in The Magicians is superficially obvious but if you dig deeper you could read it as how a genre exploits its source materials.
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Jun 10, 2017 12:42
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Grenrow posted:I don't think that the problem is that they're not deserving of critique or analysis, I think the problem is that "what if CS lewis was a pedophile" is a Robot Chicken episode instead of a critique. Shallow reversal isn't analysis. To bring this conversation back to Kingkiller: that's why Rothfuss can't actually incorporate any of the themes about stories or legends or heroism that he claims to be addressing in his books. It's tvtropes style obsession with "subversion" instead of actually saying something. I think saying that story arc is a Robot Chicken episode or edgy for edgy's sake is reductionist. It's part of the story and not some kind of attack on CS Lewis there's context to its inclusion in the narrative. I'm not saying Grossman is pulling a Nabakov level seminal masterpiece including that element but just because The Magicians isn't a 10/10 doesn't mean its without merit. And yeah to bring it back to Rothfuss - Kingkiller is frequently bandied about to be the genre deconstruction that Grossman did far more successfully which I think makes it an interesting comparison.
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Jun 10, 2017 18:09
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Lightning Lord posted:A lot of nerds view deconstruction as "thing, but dark/somewhat cynical" so of course they'd view Kingkiller as an example of it. I think that's pretty much it and might be why The Magicians ends up being so divisive. At its core fantasy is about escapism and The Magicians undercuts that in a way that Kingkiller does not. I respect if people want to read what they expect and The Magicians certainly isn't a good read for them in that case. I enjoyed it as a different take on a genre that has become more homogenous with only a few exceptions. Which is what frustrates me about Kingkiller because it was presented to me as a seminal genre defining work. At least Grossman attempts something more interesting even with the weird reoccurring fox stuff.
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Jun 11, 2017 11:12
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Nakar posted:Is it though? I think that ends up reducing the entire genre to trivialities. All fiction is to some extent escapist, but I don't think any form or genre is inherently "at its core" solely about escape. I think you're overestimating the extent to which Grossman's work actually undercuts anything. If I was writing an academic paper I would have qualified that term more. I don't think escapism is a trivial theme I'm sorry if I presented it as that. I do think it is an important part of the fantasy genre though. Portal fantasy, a huge subgenre within fantasy, is literally protagonists escaping their typically bad lives to explore a fantastical world. Other fantasy heavily leans on mundane protagonists finding out they're relevant to the world. It is more debatable if you consider stuff like Conan and the more contemporary grim dark stuff to be escapist in the way it explores power fantasies. I think that's a fair criticism of Grossman especially with the subsequent sequels. I think what is interesting about The Magicians is the last few chapters where the protagonist does gain access to ultimate power and kind of just hates it. I'd say it was pretty poorly paced but it's far more successful at what it wants to do than Rothfuss being all oh yeah there was a huge pirate battle but that's a story for another day.
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Jun 11, 2017 14:14
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Rothfuss is out 750k apparently according to Geek Chic's bankruptcy filing. https://www.polygon.com/2017/7/19/15999728/geek-chic-bankruptcy-filing-documents-patrick-rothfuss
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Jul 20, 2017 19:46
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Benson Cunningham posted:His name is money. He won't get advanced as much for a new book series, sure, but there is no reason for a publisher not to make a deal with him. The upside for them is huge and the downside for them is still a big full page announcement that they just signed LEGENDARY AUTHOR PATRICK ROTHFUSS to a deal. not to mention that every author wants a Rothfuss blurb and the community will probably carry the 3rd book enough to be a commercial success.
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Jul 28, 2017 19:28
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Well Patty certainly doesn't need to worry about the geek chic drama anymore I guess. Wow, this is pretty much as close as you can get to printing money.
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Aug 16, 2017 21:51
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Harrow posted:
pop culture criticism is unfortunately driven by clicks which is why you get aggressively superlative or negative reviews instead of substance. It's especially bad on youtube - movie criticism is particularly dire. There isn't really a great solution because a lot of amateur criticism lacks the vocabulary to really do much. The existence of "booktube" is especially hilarious to me. Pro criticism seems to be fairly limited in what they're looking at especially for genre. Books that publishers are pushing tend to get a lot more attention.
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Aug 28, 2017 16:58
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ChickenWing posted:I never particularly noticed Twilight and The Hunger Games being marketed as YA - I think they just ended up looking like it because of the sheer volumes of tweens that dove into them, and the slightly lower quality of writing from those two particular authors. Having never read Twilight, I can only repeat what I've heard, but I can directly attest that Collins definitely reads like a YA. There's a good argument that Twilight essentially solidified the YA genre as it exists today after Harry Potter's success. The Hunger Games is very much categorised as Young Adult as well. Young Adult primarily exists as a marketing category more so than it being a quality label which a lot of people seem to use it as. Its technical definition can be super subjective and varies greatly. I've seen people refer to YA as the audience but also specifically about the age of the protagonist. Functionally it makes it easier for readers to find the next thing in a walled garden.
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Oct 3, 2017 19:32
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YA protagonists are overwhelmingly young adults and is usually a central part of its definition so you might be hard pressed to sell a story with adults as a YA. I just think labelling something as YA as a sign of low quality is poor criticism as if most genres aren't dominated by terrible books. A lot of the attraction to YA for readers is similar to Sci-fi/Fantasy in that its a reader's market in perhaps not the best way. Like if you find a niche that's your absolute jam its very easy to find more of the same but its easy to get stuck in the same loops.
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Oct 4, 2017 03:01
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Evil Fluffy posted:This is literally true. For anyone who doesn't know: 50 Shades started out as a Twilight fanfic. Because the original premise of David Wooderson, vampire edition, wasn't creepy enough for some people. I find the whole 50 Shades of Grey and Twilight thing fascinating because its really representative of a facet of fan culture. It is the same story but through two incredibly different lenses. Meyer is a sincere mormon essentially trying to work through a sex dream through a best selling young adult book. It's all very chaste and weird. 50 Shades is a much more cynical attempt at writing. Sham bam bamina! posted:If that's true, it's a very recent development. Source? Here's a 2012 Atlantic article referencing how adults are reading YA. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/04/what-does-young-adult-mean/329105/ A human heart posted:its not really weird that a bunch of adults who live in the contemporary world want to retreat into escapism with a heavy focus on 'worldbulding' and simple black and white morality, although it is obviously bad. I have a feeling that most readers heavily read inside a relatively narrow genre without straying too far. Fantasy, True Crime, Tom Clancy etc. There is a certain amount of diversity in YA where you have contemporary sitting alongside fantasy and dystopia etc. It's easier to jump between those genres under the YA umbrella because the online community and marketing brings information about them to the same place.
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Oct 4, 2017 11:09
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