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BananaNutkins posted:It's a decent book that makes a bunch of amateur mistakes in the plotting department. You can tell it was an agonizing thing for Lynch to write in places...and in others the old magic is there. I don't think the book as published has too many amateur mistakes, but its flaws are the result of Lynch cocking up the plot in the first place. He realised 75% of the way in that he'd made a major error in the original con and had to rewrite it all. I would say that The Republic of Thieves is the weakest of the three books, but it's still a good book and if you don't like it you are literary Hitler.
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Nov 4, 2013 23:20
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Srice posted:Did he ever say what that original con was? Because with the way the book was written it really doesn't feel like it would deserve a massive rewrite to fix that problem. Between the flashbacks and the mass infodumping in the first quarter, the main plot was kinda underwhelming as heck. That's the point. Lynch had to pull out most of the con. What you're seeing is the holes where it used to be.
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Nov 5, 2013 09:40
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ace_beef posted:I was trying to work out which fantasy series I wanted to read next. Wrap your eyeballs round David Gemmell's Rigante series.
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Nov 6, 2013 15:45
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In Peter F Hamilton's Night's Dawn series there are living ships, some of which get possessed by the souls of the dead, who find they rather like being spaceships.
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Nov 10, 2013 12:42
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The Duck of Death posted:What is a good SF series along the lines of Dread Empire's Fall by Walter Jon Williams.
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Nov 21, 2013 21:11
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The Duck of Death posted:Cool, thanks for the rec. I'm picking up House of Suns today and I'll add this to my list. In case you go looking for a book called Dread Empire's Fall and can't find it: the books in the series are The Praxis, The Sundering and Conventions of War.
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Nov 22, 2013 01:42
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LmaoTheKid posted:I'm watching 2010 after reading the book and I really hate what they left out and added. Obviously it's the old "the book was better" thing but the kept 2001 pretty close to the book. I love Roy Schieder too. What a waste of a movie. They didn't exactly keep 2001 close to the book; they were written at the same time, and informed each other.
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Nov 23, 2013 11:53
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navyjack posted:For some reason I picked up the Pern books for a re-read after 15 years and WOW there's a lot of rapin' goin' on. The women end up liking it in the end, naturally, but yeah...rapin' all up in those weyrs. Don't pick up any of the Tower and the Hive series, then. It adds the word "statutory" to the sentence.
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Nov 24, 2013 20:54
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muscles like this? posted:The weird thing about the whole 200X series is how each time Clarke wrote a new one it was slightly out of continuity with the last. 2010 the book is a sequel to the movie version of 2001 and 2065 is a sequel to the movie version of 2010. Then there's 3001 which has an Independence Day ending. And something weird about circumcision. I enjoyed seeing Frank Poole get a fair crack of the whip, though. He was basically in the movie just to die.
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Nov 25, 2013 20:12
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coyo7e posted:I believe that it was one book of Gemmell's newest Trilogy. Nope. Gemmell's last trilogy was the Troy books. The book Flander is thinking of was Ironhand's Daughter, but that was written years before Gemmell died and it wasn't a trilogy. The titular character in the Hawk Queen books also does not turn evil, although like most Gemmell characters who aren't Druss she does do some bad things. There is a queen who turns evil in the Skilgannon the Damned books, but she's not the main character.
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Dec 3, 2013 00:15
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fritz posted:This loving genre: “Instead of insulting us, [Hines] could be using whatever influence he has in social media to help recruit more PoC into our circles. They need to know they’d probably be much more welcome here than they might be elsewhere. (After all, many of us would love to befriend extra terrestrials or anthromorphs.)” In fairness, it's probably a case of someone engaging the mouth before the brain was in gear.
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Dec 7, 2013 11:28
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Cingulate posted:Please recommend to me huge robot fiction. I don't even know what I'm looking for specifically, just .. looking for what exists in the world of huge robot fiction. Mechas welcome, too. That genre is pretty much exclusively comprised of Battletech and Robotech tie-in novels. The closest you're likely to get outside of that are things like The Amtrak Wars, so if you want robots punching each other you may be out of luck. You might want to look at Fred Saberhagen's Berserker novels, though, particularly Berserker Blue Death. Berserkers aren't strictly speaking robots and much of the fighting takes place on the human scale, but I think they may have the vibe you're looking for.
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Dec 29, 2013 01:32
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andrew smash posted:Wow. If you don't mind my asking, what made you decide to register here at age 70? He's not even the oldest goon. There's that guy - I think he's a retired cop - who dinged 70 last year. Back to Banks: don't automatically assume that because you liked The Player of Games you'll like any of the others. I do like TPOG, but it's the only Banks book I've ever thought was any good.
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Jan 14, 2014 01:06
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Hedrigall posted:I read a description somewhere that summed Saga up perfectly: it's like Star Wars with way more dicks in it. That would be the title of the Saga thread on these very forums. Howevermanything the recommendation, of course.
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Jan 23, 2014 15:48
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:I've been reading a lot of Tom Holt lately, and while it is sort of pratchett-esque it's not really fantasy per se. It's more of an urban fantasy. If by that you mean it's the same book written twenty times, yes. Who's Afraid of Beowulf? is still a pretty funny read, mind you, but it's dated horribly.
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Jan 31, 2014 17:05
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:If you like Le Guin and Dick, have you tried Stanislaw Lem? I read "technically ineligible" as "technically illegible" at first, and thought "No, that doesn't mean unreadable". I could never get into Lem, so be warned - he's not the easiest read.
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Feb 14, 2014 10:26
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Grimwall posted:Which books that you read while a teen hold up well after 15 years? Legend by David Gemmell. It needed a bit of a tighter review in the editing process (a few errors made it to print), but it was a fantastic debut. Gemmell was and is the greatest writer of the muscular fantasy since Robert E Howard.
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Feb 16, 2014 02:18
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andrew smash posted:If you are, like me, bothered by an author being a massive shitlord don't read SM stirling. I'm not bothered by it, "death of the author" and all that. In the case of SM Stirling, though, I wish death of the author applied literally so he wouldn't write any more lovely books. "Excellent genre fiction" is not a sin of which he can be accused.
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Feb 18, 2014 11:28
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Gaiman's reputation is built on Sandman, Neverwhere, and Stardust, imho. Stardust is impressive because it's a good book and based on a sortof Pre-Tolkien fantasy style that nobody else had bothered to even try to write for the past few decades. Neverwhere basically started the whole "alternate magical London" craze that a hundred authors have since imitated. Sandman is legitimately amazing and beautiful and everything a work of fantasy should dream of being BUT you're going to need to read all ten volumes at about $20 a volume to get the full effect. Coraline was a good book, but I enjoyed it much more when it was published as The Thief of Always by Clive Barker.
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Mar 9, 2014 02:26
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homercles posted:I haven't read much fantasy, is it normal that magic is a renewable resource recharged by sunlight? Or dredged up from a special well? This is all very silly. Don't read Wild Cards. It's reasonably common for writers to make magic into an unexplained science. It limits the power of magic-using characters, which is useful because the reader won't question at every turn why the wizard doesn't just wave a hand and solve the problem.
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Mar 10, 2014 00:44
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anathenema posted:Because "don't have sex scenes unless you're writing porn" is one of the weirdest "rules" I've ever heard of. What's wrong with a sex scene? Spoken like a man who's never read one. Writing about sex is a lot like having sex. In both cases bad sex is easy because it requires minimal skill and effort, while consistent good sex takes a lot of work and no matter how good you are sometimes your partner just isn't going to be in the mood for it. To extend the metaphor: if you were in bed with someone who was all "yea, woo, isn't this fantastic?" while you just want to finish, you wouldn't want to sleep with them again. That's the main cause of bad sex in fiction - the author enjoyed writing it more than you're enjoying reading it.
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Mar 10, 2014 08:55
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Chairchucker posted:Guess it also depends on the point of the sex scene in question. If the book's not porn, the point might not be to excite you. Then why write the sex scene? If it's purely there for plot purposes you can make it clear that the characters are going to have sex then pan to the lightbulb.
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Mar 10, 2014 10:32
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nutranurse posted:I mean, I can stomach a lot of awful viewpoints—it's how I manage to be a Conan fan—but this poo poo gets tiresome and when it's blatant "THULLS ARE ALL DUMB; TOLNEDRANS ARE ALL GREEDY" I'm just gonna throw in the towel cause clearly the writer's not even trying. That's a little unfair, because it's explained more than adequately. Tolnedrans tend to be acquisitive and fond of money because that's the way their god encourages them to be. The Thulls are similar, except in their case it's because they've literally been bred to be stupid. In fact, they're not even a race at all; Torak divided the Angaraks in the West by social class and his priests have been keeping the labourer class - the Thulls - suppressed by killing off anyone who showed signs of intelligence or independent thought.
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Mar 16, 2014 19:06
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coyo7e posted:I think Gemmell's Ghost King is my favorite Arthurian rewrite. The Once And Future King, T.H. White. Gemmell was a master of the plot muscular, though; Joe Abercrombie wishes he was as good.
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Mar 18, 2014 00:54
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systran posted:Hmm...I'm rarely getting "funny," from any of his dialogue or characters, but I agree that he's pretty good at regular dialogue. If anyone hasn't read Way of Kings yet, the most unintentionally hilarious thing is a character who is actually named, "Wit," and all he does it make "witty" jokes that are painful to read because they just come off as forced and trying to be clever. That's the point. Wit is the local equivalent of a court jester.
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Apr 28, 2014 16:26
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Cardiac posted:This always annoyed me with Jordan, since it is so much bull-poo poo and really shows he had no concept of weapon-based fighting. Or he just wanted something to sound cool. You're talking about fencing, whereas Jordan's sword play is more analogous to the Oriental broadsword. Japanese swordmasters do give those kind of names to strikes, attitudes and stances.
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May 1, 2014 22:44
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Chairchucker posted:Sounded like maybe he was already a huge dickwad. It's a common symptom of being born again. Some people feel like they have to follow the Bible to the letter or they're letting God down after he was good enough to cure their atheism.
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May 8, 2014 15:19
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RVProfootballer posted:Also I'm sure this is old news to everyone here, but I never read or saw anything about John C Wright til now, and holy poo poo he's perfect: Awww, it's fedorable. 
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May 10, 2014 12:14
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Sekret posted:I would like to read about humans on an alien planet that have to establish settlements and deal with the native flora and fauna. Bonus points for abandoned ruins and/or alien technology. Can anyone recommend anything like that? Zelazny's Lord of Light is not like that, but you might like it anyway based on what you're looking for.
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May 24, 2014 23:27
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GENDERWEIRD GREEDO posted:Agreedo American Gods just isn't that great If you're reading Coraline, he did.
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Jun 5, 2014 12:59
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Cardiovorax posted:If you can bear any more Alan Dean Foster then his Humanx Commonwealth are pretty entertaining space opera stuff of that stripe. They're also mostly not sequential, so you can start more or less anywhere and not miss out on anything. They're actually quite sequential, unless you're talking about the ancillary series to the main Flinx novels. Those can be read in any order, or indeed not at all. I would read The Tar-Aiym Krang and possibly Orphan Star before anything else, though. Also, while it's not obvious at first because he isn't a main character, Bloodhype is a Flinx novel. It falls somewhere between Orphan Star and Flinx in Flux.
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Jun 10, 2014 10:09
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Lowly posted:Has anyone picked up "The Girl With All the Gifts?" I've read a lot of buzz about it, but it seems to be one of those books where no one will talk about specifics because getting spoiled will ruin some of the enjoyment. Just curious as to whether anyone had read it yet and what people thought. The author seems to be mostly notable for writing comic books. I'm not particularly a comic book fan so I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Read this and you'll know. Mike has written some mainstream comics, but he's best known for his Vertigo stuff. The Unwritten, which finishes in December, is his magnum opus and belongs in this thread more than half the prose novels.
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Jun 22, 2014 12:24
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Amberskin posted:Thanks for that summary. I am adding "Saturn's Children" to my reading queue... which is about to overflow! You should read Lensmen just for the absurd escalation. By the end, wars are being fought by throwing planets at each other.
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Jul 1, 2014 13:12
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navyjack posted:Aw I forgot about Falameezar! "ARISE, YE PRISONERS OF SALVATION!" Also, fwiw, although there is some inter species speculation and attraction, the main character never crosses the Rubicon in that sense. If that is worrying anybody. In fact, he specifically goes the other way. There's a scene early on where Jon-Tom gets into major trouble because he isn't attracted to the other animals. It's also alluded to that most animals aren't particularly attracted to humans, either, and that the humans almost exclusively stick to their own. Mostly it's played for laughs. Basically, the Spellsinger books are Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll: the Fantasy Series and should not be taken seriously.
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Jul 11, 2014 10:23
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Fart of Presto posted:Todays Science Fiction & Fantasy Daily Deal on Amazon is The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner for $1.99 (Kindle) It is, I've been curious about it for years, and I can't buy it cheap now because of Nazizon regional lockout. 
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Jul 24, 2014 11:58
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Mr Darcy posted:You've read Harry Turtledove as well then? Even his fantasy does it. The Videssos Cycle is set in a geographically flipped Byzantium.
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Jul 30, 2014 10:07
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Fraction posted:I love urban fantasy in general (Kate Griffin, Melissa Marr, Kelley Armstrong and Patricia Briggs are some people I've read recently) so if anyone knows of any cool urban fantasy series that isn't just (ick) twilight with a different name I'd love to hear any suggestions. So far there have been at least three recommendation posts that did not mention Mike Carey's Felix Castor series, and hence are incomplete.
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Aug 6, 2014 09:16
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savinhill posted:I've never gotten around to reading the whole thing but Steven Donaldson's Gap Cycle has a space pirate main character and people seem to like it a lot. You're going to make that recommendation on this forum? You're a brave, brave man/woman/eldritch thing.
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Aug 11, 2014 10:01
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Cardiovorax posted:Weis and Hickman aren't so bad when they aren't writing lovely D&D fanfiction. Darksword was pretty okay. Star of the Guardians still holds up. It's essentially a more political Star Wars with shades of grey, which helps.
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Aug 15, 2014 02:11
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Cardiovorax posted:Ancillary Justice is honestly a joke of a book. It's a total and ridiculously transparent ripoff of the Culture books, even to the point where the language of the empire intentionally uses gender-neutral pronouns. If it was any more obvious about its plagiarism it would just be a reprint of Use of Weapons. Wasn't it also one of the entries where the publisher only gave out a sample of the book to the panel instead of the complete text?
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Aug 18, 2014 13:29
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