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House Louse posted:That's interesting, as in "interesting times". Someone with a backlist the size of that, who can't sell a book that looks rather easy to sell. I'm not quite sure what to make of it, but it's interesting the target is so low - he's figuring a print run of 200 copies. It's nice that the reward tiers are named after aspects of the novel, too. Maybe it's a bad book. The dialogue snippet certainly isn't doing anything for me.
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Jun 25, 2013 23:48
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Anyone read Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay? I got it for my birthday and I really don't like it so far. For one, its incredibly boring. Nothing cool has happened in over two hundred pages. The omniscient viewpoint is jarring, with the narrator dropping in at climactic points to say stuff like, "But if he only knew what lay in store for him he would not have followed her..." The plot is unrelatable to me. So what a fictional fantasy country lost its name? It's not worth dying for. Just move somewhere else you tools.
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Aug 7, 2013 22:55
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Peel posted:This was fantastic, thanks. And it has inspired me to get going again on a story of my own. I've published 2 stories at the semi-pro level this year. The first through Isotropic Fiction and the second through Alt Hist magazine. I have good reason to believe that my first pro sale will happen in the next few months.
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Aug 20, 2013 22:25
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Datasmurf posted:
Why, yes. Have you heard of a Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin? It is the light-hearted tale of a loveable scamp named Reek (it rhymes with meek, the book likes to tell you) as he attempts to win the heart of the Lady Jeyne Poole in the most romantic way possible. Along the way we meet a dragon queen (with somewhat irritated bowels), adorabe dire wolves, and a boy who becomes a tree. It's an all-ages instant classic that you can enjoy by yourself (grown up time) or read aloud to your kids for a fun bedtime treat,
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Aug 25, 2013 03:47
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I highly recommend Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series as the best fantasy series ever written. Scott Lynch agrees with me.
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Sep 11, 2013 17:49
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AreYouStillThere posted:I just finished one hell of an audiobook (Les Miserables. It was over 60 hours long Escapepod and podcastle are both pretty good. They get a wide range of stories that have mostly been professionally published before in magazines like Asimov's or SF&F. Two minor complaints: the quality of the readers fluctuates wildly. Sometimes they have authors read, which is cool, but sometimes they have wannabe's who ruin good stories. The other complaint I have is that the majority of the stories chosen push an agenda. Seriously, not every story has to be super pro feminism, or LGBT, or about minorities. It's fine when the stories are good, but not when the stories just obviously got a pass because of the editor's political leanings. But this is a problem that is endemic in the short fiction industry, not just escapepod and podcastle.
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Sep 17, 2013 09:14
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) and I'm understandably looking to take a break from listening to books. Can anyone recommend a couple good scifi/fantasy podcasts? Or anything that is a generally awesome podcast, really. Preferably not a book club.
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Oh Snapple! posted:That is really depressing and I was hoping this general obsession with grimdark bullshit would recede, not get worse to the point that it is actually a publisher demand. I have a feeling that it was more that his new series was a little too quirky to be considered a mainstream moneyticket. That, coupled with his sales record. With that said, I do feel we've just about hit peak grimdark. Sanderson's Way of Kings was refreshing to me because of how positive it was, despite some iffy writing and character work.
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Sep 20, 2013 18:31
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coyo7e posted:OH poo poo you're right, I was talking about Night ANgel, not Black Prism. What weirded me out about that series is that each book got successively worse in all respects. In the first book there was some adult themes about sexuality that were handled in a way that wasn't cringeworthy. By the third book, you have the series' hot girl reminiscing about having sex with a horse.
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Sep 27, 2013 21:26
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Sorry!
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boneration posted:Is this an exaggeration/embellishment? I just finished Night Angel series, and was eyeing the Black Prism series, bu... No, it's real. Happens sometime after Vi reminisces about going to a festival dedicated to Nysos, the god of blood and semen (really), and not being able to turn down any man's sexual advances for a week. I wish I could find it for you but I don't have my books with me. Edit: Ah, in archives I found an older post I wrote on the books, and remember something disturbing. banananutkins posted:The prophet character has the most poorly handled redemption scene And certain elements of his fall from grace were simply ridiculous for the sake of being as shocking as possible...him raping a 13 year old in front of the girl's father because it was the right thing to do at the time politically due to some strange element of their culture...what? MartingaleJack fucked around with this message at 22:14 on Sep 28, 2013 |
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Sep 28, 2013 21:59
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Geek U.S.A. posted:Anyone here read the latest Locke Lamora book? Looking for some impressions but scared of clicking on the series thread and getting insta-spoiled about everything. 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. My main complaint is that Locke doesn't ever of any real thievery, and that the big reveal of the novel is an answer to a question no one cared about.
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Nov 4, 2013 23:12
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Cardiac posted:Yeah, that's hardly a polarizing review. Actually, if you open the first few pages of Prince of Nothing there are so many fantasy words that it reads like a hilarious parody of fantasy. Those were my very first thoughts on the series. I ended up mostly liking PoN, but I feel its a legitimate complaint in his case.
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Nov 11, 2013 12:13
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wiegieman posted:I read through Promise of Blood in one sitting, and greatly enjoyed it. I'll buy the next one. Dude makes Sanderson seem like Shakespeare from the first couple pages. Tin ear for prose. I don't know if I can get into it.
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Nov 25, 2013 15:18
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John Charity Spring posted:I really do need to read more female SF authors (up to now it was basically just Atwood). Octavia Butler is my favorite. Try Wildseed. To get a quick taste, google Bloodchild and listen to the free audio of it that was recently done on escapepod.
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Dec 18, 2013 17:28
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Consider Phlebias is like Ian m Banks' Colour of Magic. It's not very good and people who start there often write the series off. But read Use of Weapons. It's one of the best SF books ever written. I love that it makes ZERO concessions to reader. Some people call that bad writing, the author sabotaging himself, but I call it balls. MartingaleJack fucked around with this message at 15:28 on Dec 28, 2013 |
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Dec 28, 2013 15:25
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John Charity Spring posted:I think it's fine for people to start with Consider Phlebas (I did) but if you must skip it and start somewhere, else The Player Of Games is where to go rather than Use Of Weapons. I think Use Of Weapons relies much more on you knowing at least a little about the Culture beforehand. I read it first and it was the only one I really liked. Player of Games is more accessible, but I never felt like it went anywhere. It was on the cusp of saying something profound, but never got there. The characters weren't satisfying to me. Still, it's pretty good book.
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Dec 28, 2013 21:09
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Only the first Caine book is good. The second one is a fun read as long as you go into it knowing to expect Ayn Rand's version of the first book.
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Jan 2, 2014 13:28
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SF and F should be about entertainment. If you want to be socially progressive/regressive, fine, but the point of all this is to entertain. I'm sick of SFWA arguments and crappy authors acting all noble about their "art" and furthering society through their visionary writing. We write schlock. Even when it's really good, it's still schlock. All this argument and these are the readership numbers: [Taken from Gardner Dozois] Asimov's Science Fiction circulation went up for the third year in a row. Circulation went up 10.8 percent from 2011, to 25,025. Analog Science Fiction and Fact circulation went up 4.9 percent, to 27,803. The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction circulation went down 20.4 percent, to 11,510. Maybe if schlock authors started writing better short stories and books that people actually like instead of pushing agendas, we'd see some actual numbers. Until then everyone's pissing in the same kiddypool every time an argument erupts. I was at a Worldcon and the YA panel turned into a bunch of hacks talking about how huge a market there was for transgendered YA. What an obvious crock.
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Feb 20, 2014 06:30
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I'm of the opinion that books should never be censored. There should be books with casual sexism, hate crimes, religious persecution, etc, basically every aspect of human existence good or bad, even if the book is didactic and saying that such things are good and should be emulated. Obviously, if an author does any socially unacceptable thing in the real world, they should face the ire if society, but that really had nothing to do with writing at all. The only line I believe should be drawn is in the sale of inappropriate books to children.
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Feb 20, 2014 12:33
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Fried Chicken posted:
That's amazing. MartingaleJack fucked around with this message at 14:18 on Feb 20, 2014 |
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Feb 20, 2014 14:14
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GrannyW posted:Blacklists are bad mmmkay? Just as without pain there is no joy, without bad there is no good, without banal pap there is no originality. In short, how would you know if you have nothing to compare against, if you know nothing else. Agreed. I feel like blacklists are just a springboard away from government censorship.
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Feb 21, 2014 06:33
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Golf clap. I would read more. It's like that Christian website that reviews movies based on how sinful they are.
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Feb 21, 2014 20:10
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General Battuta posted:If you're looking for top-quality SF short fiction online read Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and Strange Horizons. Beneath Ceaseless Skies is good if you're into fantasy. Apex and Shimmer are also really cool. Also escapepod.com, podcastle.com, and drabblecast.com. They are audio casts of short stories, but I believe the full text is usually available online for free.
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Mar 2, 2014 01:33
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General Battuta posted:Ellen Kushner has been writing elegant, complex, brutal intrigue stories that just happen to be full of bisexual characters for decades now. She is super awesome. Cat Valente's Palimpsest, one of those rare SF/F books that is both wholly about sex and not incredibly goony and creepy, is enormously queer-friendly (and also thoroughly gorgeous, it has some absolutely incendiary prose - it's about a sexually transmitted city, rendered in prose poetry so dense it'll leave you feeling physically sated). Ellen Kushner's Privilege of the Sword is a really nice read. Tight little fantasy book with good characters, some of whom happen to be gay. I wasn't left with the feeling I had read something didactic and politically motivated, which is an issue that often dampens my enjoyment of books with LGBT characters. Either they're a punch line or so obviously chosen by the author as a rejection to classically Hetero male dominated SF. But Kushner gets it right, and I highly recommend that book.
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May 13, 2014 08:24
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Throwing my hat in the ring to say that Jonathan Strange is still the best fantasy book since its release. Maybe The Heroes comes close, in terms of my enjoyment, but Clarke's writing is the best.
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Mar 7, 2018 02:25
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Hot take! Her books are about as fun to read as Ayn Rand's, but less important.
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Mar 7, 2018 22:55
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Hey, Ayn Rand sucks but you can't argue that her works left a smaller cultural imprint than Leguin.
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Mar 7, 2018 23:07
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Also, Rand pretty much created Terry Goodkind, which is the fantasy genre equivalent of being personally responsible for the holocaust.
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Mar 7, 2018 23:09
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uberkeyzer posted:You should read the Earthsea books. They’re short, tight, exciting stories with interesting and well drawn characters. They also obviously inspired Harry Potter so they will feel more comfortable. The Wizards of Earthsea. It was alright. The Disposessed. It was boring, but I was able to care a little about one of the characters. The Left Hand of Darkness. Someone forgot to put a plot in this book. The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. Probably her best. It was short enough that her sparse prose seemed poetic rather than sparse. Short enough that you don't realize how boring it is until it's over. Just because a book upholds political opinions I agree with doesn't make it an entertaining read. If I want to read lectures on capitalism I'm not turning to a genre book. MartingaleJack fucked around with this message at 14:39 on Mar 8, 2018 |
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Mar 8, 2018 14:33
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I'm reading Ian M. Banks' State of the Art right now and just got to the one with the guy rotting away in the sentient space suit. It was rad. BUT the other short stories before? Not so much. Its sad that none of the magazines he originallly sold to are still publishing.
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Mar 9, 2018 19:54
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Yea, that short was structured exactly like the Banks one, but it doubled down on the vagueness. The prose was sparser than Banks' and I never got the sense that the passenger had much character.
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Mar 10, 2018 06:13
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A Proper Uppercut posted:Started reading The Fifth Season. It gets real dumb real fast, my rogga. I had to read it for my MFA and around 80% of us hated the second person gimmick and the "Omelas" twist. I never felt like the world was a real place with it's own culture. The closest to interesting was the way the tremor school was structured, like the ninja clans in Naruto, but with mandatory sex with people who don't want to have sex and aren't attracted to each other. Jemisin spoke later that year to my class and all she wanted to talk about were the Trump supporters who personally wanted her dead and how we all needed to #resist. I didn't feel compelled to read the sequels. MartingaleJack fucked around with this message at 19:32 on Mar 10, 2018 |
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Mar 10, 2018 19:25
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andrew smash posted:lol seriously I don't think fantasy euphemisms ever work. That one got on my nerves more than most.
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Mar 10, 2018 21:00
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I thought it wasn't bad, as far as the virtual reality sub-genre goes. The thing that annoyed me most was that it half-heartedly included a dumb message about not escaping into a vr world just because that theme was within easy reach, and the rest of the story didn't reinforce the message in any way. I might have had a more positive experience than most because I was pretty sure it was supposed to be schlocky like Hackers the movie, and l got the audio version read by Will Wheaton, who convinced me it was definitely intended to be as schlocky as I thought. The last book I liked that most forums people seemed to hate was the first Hunger Games, and I still don't understand that one.
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Mar 11, 2018 00:56
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I get the urge to write something wild and crazy, because the writer can shrug off bad reviews and be all like, "Its a book called Taken by the T-rex, why would you expect great literature" but when the reviews are better than expected they can pat themselves on the back, knowing they took an awful concept and made it readable using their superior writing talents.
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Mar 11, 2018 23:24
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The most interesting thing RP1 does is give pretend validation to obsessive nerds that all the archaic but totally pointless knowledge they've spent their life accumulating might actually be worth something. Its the dream of going on Jeopardy and getting only categories that you know, but way more pathetic.
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Mar 12, 2018 00:40
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Read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell
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Mar 12, 2018 05:35
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Not a real criticism. Do girls who play mmos usually pick uglier version of themselves? The review attacks a female character for being attractive. So attractive that how dare she have image issues because of a highly visible birth defect because she's so attractive it shouldnt matter. I think an ugly person wrote this review.
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Mar 13, 2018 00:51
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Sex in myths is rarely descriptive, and if it's mentioned at all, its almost always summarized like a biblical account. "She lay with him" and that kind of thing. Who begat who is usually more important. Sanderson is just as censored and can sell to middle class protestant households and even in the bible belt. There is definitely a correlation between audience size and cultural acceptance of depicted sex and adult content. Look at how impossible it is to make a big budget R rated movie made. Lord of the rings, Harry Potter, Sandersonverse are all much more successful because they didn't include sex, but still having enough complexity that adults read them. Its the whole reason the YA genre ius always the one with explosive sales success.
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Mar 13, 2018 09:28
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Thrones could never become as broad a success as Lord of the Rings or something that censors sex because it limits it's own audience. It connects only with an adult audience and is very successful in that arena, partly because the adult audience was ripe for exploitation after so many years of sexless fantasy.
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Mar 13, 2018 19:15
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A Proper Uppercut posted:I didn't realize Sanderson had released the next Stormlight Archive book. I know his stuff is kinda divisive around here, but anyone read it? Thoughts? It's not as good as the last two, but still a little better than most D&D books.
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Mar 20, 2018 20:20
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