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JerryLee posted:I wanted to thank this thread for turning me on to Barron. I just finished Imago Sequence and it's pretty much a given that I'll be picking up Occultation next time I visit the library. I definitely see what people say about his work being really weird but it didn't seem like more than what I know I'm signing up for when I read cosmic horror, so to speak. I've read more uncomfortable stuff in bog-standard epic fantasy novels. I've been reading Imago Sequence for the past couple of days. The stories are really hit-and-miss - some of them just go on for way too long and just kind of peter out.
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Jun 24, 2013 02:41
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Ornamented Death posted:As much as I love Barron, "Procession of the Black Sloth" may be the worst short story I've ever read. It goes on and on and on forever and nothing loving happens! That's the exact one I was thinking of, and the name was on the tip of my tongue. "I get it already, it's like Jacob's Ladder!" Tiny Timbs fucked around with this message at 04:13 on Jun 24, 2013 |
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Jun 24, 2013 04:10
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The Rat posted:The ending to that one was hilarious, in an unintentional manner. Instead of opening the door and seeing the horrors inside, the butler just stops and goes NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE and high tails it out of there. Properly rational on his part. I think that was intentionally subverting your expectations. I mentally cheered the guy for making the smart move.
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Sep 23, 2013 03:49
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Neurosis posted:I thought More Dark was all in good fun. My image of the story has been shattered; the Ligotti stuff made me giggle. Why? I read the review with the "sour tone" and my image of the story wasn't exactly shattered by somebody saying "there's more to it, I don't understand why he wrote it". I like Ligotti and the caricature was still hilarious and not that mean-spirited.
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Nov 19, 2013 15:24
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Procession of the Black Sloth was clearly intended to be a meta-story to cause the reader as much pain as possible trying to trudge through it.
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Feb 25, 2014 15:29
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Neurosis posted:So apparently there will be a follow-up story and novel to The Croning with more sci-fi elements. I really enjoyed it despite it reeking of a short story writer's first longer work, and look forward to it. I hope it doesn't feature 80-year-olds acting like people decades younger.
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May 31, 2014 00:41
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fez_machine posted:Read my posts, I HATE the constant repetition of Laird Barron as a recommendation in this thread, it shows a lack of imagination and investigation into the genre as he's the current nerd king of horror and I will be a dick to anyone who mentions him as their go-to author. It's like some people just stop with him and never read anything else. 
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Nov 1, 2014 01:17
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echopraxia posted:Is there any really hard SF cosmic horror like Watts out there but without the kind of aspie snark that comes with his style? Like I love the indifferent sense of dread that pervades Blindsight and the Rifters series (and that they both make you think long and hard about how being a living thing, much less being self-aware is pretty terrifying and weird) but the Dawkins-like sneering tone he has is annoying and gets in the way a lot. Did you come by this opinion before or after the name choice Ship of Fools/Unto Leviathan (Russo) and The Void (Talley) are the go-to recommendations for SF horror. I thought the first Expanse novel was really good horror, too, but they dropped that in the sequels.
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Jun 6, 2015 21:46
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Dr. Killjoy posted:So Charles' Stross latest installment of the Laundry Files, The Annihilation Score, came out. This one takes place from Mo, the wife of the series main protagonist, so it had a nice change in form, unfortunately Stross decided to keep up with his "spend 75% of the book on bureaucratic circlejerking" balance of content from the Rhesus Chart. I guess it's naturally goes in hand with the protagonists being in management positions as opposed to the lowly IT job Bob was working at the beginning of the series. Stross intends to use Alex the Aspie Vampire from Rhesus Chart as the protagonist for the next book so I'm guessing Stross will hold in his desire to write about British Government Bureaucratic form and satire, hopefully. Unless the book picks up in a major way in the last 20% I'm kind of getting the opinion that Stross really fell off with this. It tips the balance way in the direction of the bureaucratic nonsense, and though I liked that aspect a lot in the previous novels apparently it's gotten a bit much for me. There's a lot less cosmic horror going on, and he immediately takes the wind out of Case Nightmare Green's sails. Tiny Timbs fucked around with this message at 15:52 on Jul 18, 2015 |
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Jul 18, 2015 15:49
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I agree that Stross should just end it. Rhesus, Annihilation, and his next book from another new PoV should've just been one novel concluding the setup from Apocalypse. I kinda don't get it, why is this the series he's giving the endless watered down sequel treatment? I don't think he's had an issue cutting off his other storylines.
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Jul 20, 2015 17:07
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I finished Annihilation Score. gently caress Annihilation Score. It would've been perfect as one of those short side stories, but it absolutely doesn't work as a full novel.
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Jul 23, 2015 03:18
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Pistol_Pete posted:Yeah, Simmon's worst flaw is that his books are far too long. He could easily have cut a few hundred pages from The Terror without interfering with the slowly mounting suspense or whatever. I wouldn't call that the man's worst flaw by a long shot, but yeah it doesn't do The Terror any favors. I swear I caught him repeating the same passages, as if he forgot what he'd already written.
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Sep 20, 2015 15:47
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That's hilarious and I hope you cherish the intense emotional impact you got that most books surely fail to evoke.
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Sep 20, 2015 22:49
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See also: Mass Effect Blindsight, by Peter Watts, has probably my favorite take on the Fermi paradox and I'd say it qualifies as cosmic horror.
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Nov 14, 2015 03:03
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Making fun of a fantasy/horror author for being goofy is like making fun of a chef for being fat
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Feb 23, 2016 21:05
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MockingQuantum posted:Speaking of Barron, is it just me or is Procession of the Black Sloth a slog to get through? I've been jumping around Imago Sequence and Occultation but finally sat down to actually read all the ones I'd skipped before, and this one is just... not holding my interest. Nah that story loving blew, I caught on to the twist early because I kept telling myself "Boy I feel like I'm in hell reading this"
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Feb 23, 2016 23:16
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coyo7e posted:My personal favorite Lovecraft story is probably The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, because it reads almost like an epic poem or old-style fantasy novel, before it was all orcs and dwarves and elves. There's just a strange lyricism to that one, which reminds me of reading 1001 Arabian Nights and old mythology books as a kid. There's also a pronounced lack of fish-people or tentacles. The White Ship is similar. I always preferred his dreamier works.
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Mar 6, 2016 00:45
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ravenkult posted:itt: Goon thinks Alaska/dogs/disabilities shouldn't exist. i don't think you're talking about me but agreed
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Mar 6, 2016 19:42
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Reason posted:I just finished The Cipher the other day and didn't really find it horrifying or interesting. It felt like it imitated the attitude it seemed to be taking a stand against in a lot of ways with regards to pretentious artsy fartsy crap. "This Hole is too complicated for you to understand, you will never understand it like I understand it." Maybe that was the point of the book, and maybe artsy types get more enjoyment out of it. I finished it recently, too, and thought it would have been much better as a short story or a novella. So much of the novel is completely unnecessary.
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Apr 4, 2016 03:39
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General Battuta posted:I'm pretty opposite, I wrote a big post earlier about what The Cipher is about (but chickened out of posting it), and what impressed me is that it's very hard to explain what that book's doing without replicating a lot of the text — it's very hard to compress! I'd be interested in reading that because I am not a clever man and subtext is lost on me.
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Apr 4, 2016 04:24
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Would it help if I told you The Cipher was actually an extremely sideways story set in Wayside School
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Apr 19, 2016 04:00
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Darth Walrus posted:She's said some pretty questionable poo poo, and she's often been meaner than the situation really warrants Well that's certainly a tame way to say "routinely posted death and rape threats" Has anybody heard from Richard Paul Russo lately? It's been a couple years since I learned that he was working on a sequel to Ship of Fools and I haven't heard any buzz since then. Tiny Timbs fucked around with this message at 03:50 on Nov 7, 2016 |
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Nov 7, 2016 03:46
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Neurosis posted:Did you hear that through these forums? That was based on a goon recounting talking with him in person so who knows how firm those plans were. That was me but there's no way I'm going to bug the guy again with a personal email. I don't even care so much about a sequel in particular, I've enjoyed most of what he's written but he's never had much of a public persona and that makes me a little sad. Tiny Timbs fucked around with this message at 00:48 on Nov 8, 2016 |
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Nov 8, 2016 00:44
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Remember when every goon was into that "splatterpunk" poo poo lol
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Jun 30, 2017 20:05
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Ornamented Death posted:The Delirium Brief (Stross) also came out in July. Not much more to say here, if you're following the series, you probably already have it. I'm about 2/3 through this right now. When did reading Stross's novels become such a chore? I'm getting nothing positive about it. Craig Schaefer churns through novels and still seems like he's having fun with it; the Laundry Files just feel rote in comparison.
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Sep 27, 2017 03:52
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While I think he's still a fairly rough writer, James Smythe's The Testimony and The Explorer/The Echo have lots of concepts that legitimately spooked me.
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Oct 27, 2017 02:57
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chernobyl kinsman posted:that said these interpersonal slapfights between genre authors are extremely embarrassing and do not reflect well on the maturity of the genre lol I just googled “literary feuds” and I’m left thinking it has nothing to do with the “maturity of the genre” lmao
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Nov 24, 2017 17:36
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chernobyl kinsman posted:Paul Theroux loving Naipaul's wife is exactly the same as b-listers writing angsty blog posts at one another, noted I’ll get back to you in a few weeks with a pissy op-ed
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Nov 24, 2017 17:46
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Levitate posted:Be vaguely warned that there's some weird sex torture scenes in the third book I think, though I don't remember them being as bad as some people initially sold them as. Basically some of the characters that Watts writes are hosed up. That’s the best kind of torture
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Dec 9, 2017 22:44
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Skyscraper posted:I just read 9mother9horse9eyes9 and while it's not a book yet, apparently it's about to be, so I hope it qualifies for this thread and not the creepypasta thread. Is there a pdf or website that rolls everything up into one document?
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May 14, 2018 19:10
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