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Walh Hara posted:If you post links at all, link to wikipedia. It contains all the relevant information (author, links to other books in the series, genre, short description, number of pages, year it was published, tv/film adaptations, awards won, etc) and the reception section (if available) is much more useful than amazon ratings or whatever. I personally don't object to someone posting a direct link to Amazon if it's to link directly to a special or something, I've done it myself with Bridge of Birds when the trilogy was on sale on Kindle, but it has to be a direct link, not a referral link.
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Jun 16, 2013 20:19
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KingAsmo posted:Hey guys I've been on a two year long sci-fi binge and I'm running out of ideas for what to read next, was hoping you had some suggestions for me. Try the Petrovitch trilogy. Adventure cyberpunk.
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Jun 30, 2013 04:44
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Mandragora posted:I haven't really met a Gaiman story I disliked but I would definitely say that he really works best in the comic, short story and novella settings more than he does the full length novels. He has some of the coolest ideas out there but he has trouble stretching them for more than a hundred pages of narrative prose without losing steam in character development and overall pacing. Past a certain point they stop being stories and start being "here's a stroll through Neil Gaiman's brain, check out what obscure folklore he researched this month" (which can be fun in and of itself, I think). Yes, EXACTLY. I like Neil Gaiman a lot, and have just about all of his books. And while it's gotten better, it seemed to me that a lot of his early stuff read more like a synopsis of a story rather than a story because it really seemed short on the fleshing-out. At the time, I attributed it to his being more accustomed to working in a visual medium and needing practice in describing what he used to simply show in a picture. I still think that's true to an extent, but I also agree with your point, and I think it's because those formats prevent him from rambling. He has to tell a story and only has so much space to do it in, so he stays on-point and really works to get all the information into the smaller space, and it really does make a difference!
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Jul 11, 2013 15:18
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mllaneza posted:Try the Tuf stories and really see him get creative. Tuf Voyaging is the collection of those stories. I was lucky enough to be an Analog subscriber when those first appeared. And here I thought I was the only one who read the book. I second the rec, it's a good read, if a trifle disturbing.
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Jul 12, 2013 14:12
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BlazinLow305 posted:Redoing this post to make it more succinct. Basically I need a fantasy recommendation. Something that's a Trilogy or longer preferably. I've already read these series: A few more possibilities for you David Eddings. Best known for The Belgariad series Mike Jefferies Not very well known, but the "Loremasters of Elundium" series really sounds like the kind of thing you're after. Terry Brooks At the least, read the Sword of Shannara.
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Jul 21, 2013 14:53
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Megazver posted:But he's already read LOTR? Yes, but he said he liked that style and mentioned the Forgotten Realms books, so...
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Jul 21, 2013 16:01
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Vinterstum posted:Plus his two main series are essentially carbon copies of each other, with the names of the characters and locations replaced. I recommended these books based on what the poster said he liked, not by literary merit. BlazinLow305, also check out Gary Gygax, The Anteros books (Alan Cole and Chris Bunch), The Dragonlance novels and other series by those authors, and maybe even Melanie Rawn's Dragon Prince and Dragon Star trilogies. I know I'm repeating myself, but Goons please note--this list comes from the books that were popular with my gaming group when they came out when we were all reading Forgotten Realms etc, and does not imply anything other than "these books are like the ones the poster said he liked". That being said, I don't recall ever discussing the Far Kingdoms (Anteros) or Rawn's trilogies so that might be interesting for the thread.
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Jul 21, 2013 19:08
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Hrm, maybe I should give it another chance and re-read it assuming it's a deconstruction. It just uses a lot of stuff that's very clearly drawing on the 1st Edition D&D manual, but I hadn't considered the possibility she was trying to deconstruct the idea. If you go to Amazon and look at the review titled "The true Way of the Paladin is shown here." (Ryk E. Spoor), he discusses an email exchange where she was observing a game and thought it was all wrong.
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Jul 24, 2013 22:54
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Walh Hara posted:To Say Nothing of the Dog is the best time travel book I ever read, it's really awesome. The cool thing is that the rather unique time travel mechanics are experimented with and a central part of the story. I second the rec, and it's also very funny.
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Aug 14, 2013 23:48
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ZerodotJander posted:I read a lot of fantasy but I mostly find new authors through this thread, I rarely browse in bookstores and never check out awards lists. I have never heard of Mira Grant until this page of the thread. She's not even recommended in the OP. That probably has something to do with why she lost a popularity contest. Now that I'm aware of her, those Newsflesh books sound really interesting and I will look to check them out, but she's definitely not well marketed. I read them recently. Good, solid workmanship, even when zombies aren't particularly my thing.
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Sep 5, 2013 02:37
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Decius posted:After thinking "Why the hell would the drummer of the Sex Pistols have an opinion on SF?" I goggled the guy and it seems his claim to fame is that he has taught some famous writers back in the day? While I don't necessarily agree with his opinions, I can tell you he's an author as well. I didn't realize he had written Tintagel, which had a very interesting concept and was well done, at least as I remember. I still have the book on the shelf, let me re-read it and I'll let you know if it aged well.
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Sep 6, 2013 15:53
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RBA Starblade posted:I liked them but really could have done without the incest and justification for why its totally ok at the end of the last one. Also the one character at the very end died because no one knew to just drop the pda. It's an upload, you don't need to do anything else with it!
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Sep 6, 2013 22:31
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I've never been able to get more than a page or two into To Say Nothing of the Dog because every time I start reading it I'm like "Ok, I see what you're doing here, but I've read Three Men in a Boat, and this is no Three Men in a Boat." And then I go read Three Men in a Boat. I probably need to give it yet another go. I had read Three Men in a Boat shortly before To Say Nothing of the Dog, and she is not attempting to write another Three Men in a Boat. It's an homage, if anything, and well done, at least in my opinion. If that's not your style, that's great, but I think you're missing out.
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Sep 12, 2013 17:26
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GrandpaPants posted:For some reason I've gotten a bit nostalgic about the Charles de Lint Newford stories that I read when I was a teenager. Were these actually any good or am I going to ruin my memories by rereading them as an adult? This feels like a stupid question, but I'd rather not ruin something I think fondly of. Unless, y'know, it's worth the fondness, I guess? I did a reread of a bunch of my Charles De Lint books somewhat recently, and most of them held up just fine. The earliest ones tended to be the roughest (Svaha, Harp of the Gray Rose). I don't think you'll regret re-reading them.
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Sep 22, 2013 15:27
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I just finished the first Sirantha Jax novel (Grimspace) and while it was overall well-written, it seemed to have a breathless quality to it, like A Series of Unfortunate Events on speed. (My husband says it's melodramatic in the same way as a SyFy original movie, but agreed on the well-written). Does the series improve as the author gets more comfortable with her characters?
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Sep 27, 2013 23:43
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TheWorldIsSquare posted:I've also been reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? recently. Despite the many plotholes it's a fascinating read and highlights a lot of the irony of the situation even better than the movie. Society loves electronic animals and killing one is considered a huge crime, yet we hunt down electronic humans with no hint of remorse. We decry androids because they supposedly cannot feel real empathy, yet humanity gets its empathy from plugging into a robotic machine and watching some guy crawl up a mountain. It's really thought-provoking stuff. I saw Blade Runner before I read the book, and my hat is off to Ridley Scott for capturing the dark feel of the book despite cutting out huge chunks of it and inventing parts that didn't exist. That being said, the book is definitely more thought-provoking. I have to confess that when it's revealed that there's likely already a Nexus-7 in the works, I had a vision of a ruined Earth populated by artifical animals and people, going through the motions, as if the Earth itself had become a clockwork toy.
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Oct 11, 2013 02:18
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ConfusedUs posted:I've come to the conclusion that I read too much SciFi/Fantasy. How about older stuff? Have you read Larry Niven's Known Space stories? What about L. Sprague De Camp? Keith Laumer? The Liaden Universe? CJ Cherryh? Do you like non-softcore vampire tales? Barbara Hambly has a great series that got resurrected when vampires got popular again. In fact, speaking of Barbara Hambly, I've enjoyed all of her fantasy offerings (scroll down a bit for the fantasy). What about Melissa Scott? While she is sometimes categorized as an LGBT author, believe me, she really isn't. She's an author whose characters have a wide variety of sexual preferences, some of which are LGBT. I particularly recommend The Silence Leigh Trilogy. What are you in the mood for?
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Nov 21, 2013 15:49
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I've mentioned Barbara Hambly before. I've said if you actually like stories about vampires and don't care for the accompanying porn in most recent vampire stories, her James Asher series is worth checking out. It's almost steampunk as it take place in Edwardian England, and the vampires are actually creepy, not thinly disguised romance heroes. So today on the Kindle Daily Deal, I noticed the second book in the series was on sale (US Amazon daily deals), and when I investigated further, I discovered the first book was also on sale. Here's the Kindle links Those Who Hunt the Night for 1.99 Traveling With the Dead for 1.99 and Blood Maidens is available for 3.999 Magistrates from Hell is still full price. Something that made me even happier is that some of her other out-of-print books are also on sale: The Sun Wolf and Starhawk Series: The Ladies of Mandrigyn, The Witches of Wenshar, and The Dark Hand of Magic for $3.99 The Darwath Series: The Time of the Dark, The Walls of Air, and The Armies of Daylight for 3.99 They also have a great price on the Windrose Chronicles The Silent Tower for 1.99 The Silicon Mage for 1.99 Dog Wizard for 1.99 I highly recommend Barbara Hambly, she does meticulous research so even her fantasy novels have the sort of detail that make them really come to life, and at those prices, you can't go wrong. Edit: Those are just the plain Amazon links for convenience, not kickback links. Zola fucked around with this message at 03:31 on Dec 3, 2013 |
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Dec 3, 2013 02:16
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Megazver posted:Max Gladstone's Three Parts Dead and Two Serpents Rise are probably something you'll get a kick out of. Is Two Serpents Rise any good? I picked up Three Parts Dead on Kindle for $3.99 and I thought it was really fresh and original, but I'm not sure I liked it enough to pay $11.04 for the next one when I can probably pick both books up secondhand.
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Jan 19, 2014 19:56
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paradoxGentleman posted:I would like to learn more about the Arthurian legend, as what little I know of it comes form Horrible Histories, and while they are amusing I don't feel comfortable basing all my knowledge of such a cornerstone of fantasy on them. I would like to read something that encompasses as much of the original legends as possible; although I consider myself a robust reader but I'm not sure if I can tacke the source material. What would you suggest? In looking up T.H. White to see how accurate his Arthur stories are, I found this list, perhaps it will be useful
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Jan 20, 2014 16:06
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Crisco Kid posted:Last year there was an anthology showcasing the work of authors eligible for The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, an award given annually to the best new writer whose first professional work of science fiction or fantasy was published within the two previous calendar years. Oh, excellent. Last year's anthology was a joy to read, great stories. I can't wait to check out this year's!
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Jan 31, 2014 20:42
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Fried Chicken posted:My Side of the Mountain was a young adult book, but I remember it as enjoyable I'll second that rec. When I re-read it as an adult, I liked it just as well as I had when I was a kid.
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Feb 3, 2014 03:08
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Cardiovorax posted:What's the closest you can get to David Edding's Belgariad without actually being David Eddings? I know it's shallow and about the most generic fantasy you can get, but somehow I feel like I need to read something in that general mindset right now - wholesome, a large cast of characters who like and care each other, nothing really bad happens to anyone on screen and in the end the Bad Guys are defeated and everybody is happy forever. I've been having kind of a bad week, I needs me some brain fluff. I suppose you could try Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks (I know, I'm going to hell...)
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Feb 3, 2014 22:53
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Decius posted:The Cherryh-stuff is some disappointing poo poo. I thought better of her. I am not sure what you find disappointing. I took the trouble to find her actual post on Facebook and saw nothing inflammatory. CJ Cherryh posted:The SFWA thing that will not die. Actual Post There is no other quote, and I am not even sure she actually signed the petition (her name is there without comment).
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Feb 19, 2014 13:23
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The post I linked to is the one that is quoted in the opening quote of that web page from the link. Assume you are correct and a post was deleted. Would you prefer she had made a post against free speech? Again, I don't get what's to be offended about. I've been following her for a long time, and getting into this sort of tempest in a teapot is not her style at all. You don't have to take my word for this, just look at her blog and Facebook page for yourself. With a complete lack of evidence, I'm inclined to think that something was taken out of context.
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Feb 19, 2014 13:58
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Cardiovorax posted:Because "free speech" is a dogwhistle code word for "stop telling me not to be racist/sexist/homophobic!" The MRA movement in particular loves to tell people that they're just about free speech, not hating women. I agree that there are some people who use the term "free speech" in the way that you describe. However, I think you are doing a huge number of people a disservice by assuming that any person using the term "free speech" is using it as a "dogwhistle code word". CJ Cherryh posted:Sometimes these communications have contained words that mean something worse to one side than they did in the intent of those that fired them off. This is the heart of the problem, I think. Just because a person interprets a word in one way doesn't mean the rest of the world does. There's a big difference between saying "I think he's right" and "I think he has a right to express his opinion and I don't think he should be stopped from doing so". Given what I have seen of CJ Cherryh, I'd believe her intent was the latter.
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Feb 19, 2014 14:34
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crowfeathers posted:I read Sheri Tepper's books sometimes. Gonzo crazy woman who writes very strange science fiction. I used to really enjoy Sheri Tepper because she's one of the few authors that has been able to surprise me with a plot twist. Unfortunately, she seems to have become increasingly shrill and (dare I say it?) anti-man with each subsequent book. By the time I got to The Fresco, I gave up. At the end, when Benita becomes sort of superwoman due to her friendly alien backup and there's the little diatribe about not needing men (what the gently caress is the difference between a woman relying on a man and relying on some super-powerful alien? She still isn't doing gently caress-all on her own behalf without needing help), I gave up. I do still trot out the True Game series once in a blue moon, though.
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Feb 22, 2014 03:14
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fritz posted:The full nine set or just the Peter books? The Peter books, I'm still trying to get my hands on the other six.
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Feb 22, 2014 13:01
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Darth Walrus posted:The Waters Rising is pretty bizarre by all accounts as well. Good God, I am so glad I stopped at The Fresco.
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Feb 23, 2014 16:26
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:This is amazing. It's like the anti-thesis for Oh John Ringo No. Part of me would love to see a thread of these horror screeds but I'm quietly afraid of what it could turn into. The thing that's really awful is that she has such interesting ideas! In The Fresco, for example, there is a set of painted panels with incredible religious significance to the aliens who live there. There are scholarly treatises based on the panels which interpret each element and its meaning, and there's a whole philosophy based on the interpretation of the, etc etc etc. So what happens when the panels are cleaned? It sounds like it would be a loving fantastic novel, doesn't it? And instead we get man-hating diatribes. Ugh. She has been pissing me off so bad for the last decade or so, which is why I gave up buying her books completely.
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Feb 24, 2014 00:32
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Cardiac posted:On something else, based on this thread I read Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin. Partly because it won all kinds of awards, partly because it was groundbreaking in its time, and partly because it's 45 years old and it's still a great story.
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Mar 8, 2014 19:56
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GrannyW posted:At the very foundation, regardless of how you define or explain the magic, if you don't have a solid believable and intriguing character, its all crap. The very best, most fantastic world or science or magical laws don't do anything at all for the reader if they don't enjoy and live through the characters, be they "human" or "other" Agreed, and I think that the underlying issue is that magic in any story must have some sort of limits, otherwise it's just a Mary Sue/Marty Stu wish fulfillment. If being able to do magic basically makes you God, where's the conflict? You can have anything you want, and while a story about multiple magicians bickering with one another might be interesting, that's about the limit of it. So the limits get handled in varying ways. Some make the magic follow certain laws, like Sanderson (since we've been talking about him), or even Aaronovitch (Rivers of London), at least for magic as it is practiced by humans. Some handle it like LeGuin or Eddings in the example Stupid_Sexy_Flander was chuckling over, that you can do just about anything you can imagine but there's some kind of price to pay in upsetting the natural balance of things. Andre Norton and Mercedes Lackey also did that in the Elvenbane series, the more powerful mages would just "adjust" the weather and others had a terrible time cleaning up the resulting messes. Still others, like Barbara Hambly in the Windrose Chronicles, have boundaries in that complicated magic has to be done via some sort of ritual (although simple things can be accomplished with the traditional wave of the hand), and in her case, in order to learn the really interesting stuff, you must become a Council mage and forswear use of your power in all matters touching on humans. The penalty for meddling is death, even when it's something seemingly innocuous like making a farmer's crops grow. Again, it works with the idea of a balance, and that no human being can truly predict the long-term consequences of a given action. There are probably other authors that handle it in still another way, but I can't think of any off the top of my head.
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Mar 12, 2014 15:51
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Cardiovorax posted:If not for this weird assumption that any use of supernatural elements must necessarily mean "anything goes" unless it's explicitly described why it doesn't, all those awkward circumscriptions probably wouldn't be necessary. I don't know where that even comes from. How many fairy tales go into paragraph-long descriptions of the underpinnings of magic before making the witch turn the prince into a toad? There's no less of a conflict to the story for that. You just proved my point, though. Even in fairy tales, there's a limit to what the magic can do, otherwise the forces of Good wouldn't be able to overcome the evil witch/warlock/fairy what have you. If a witch can turn someone into a toad, why can't she make the toad invisible too? The fairy tales imply limits, and its the limits that make the conflict possible.
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Mar 12, 2014 16:49
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Cardiovorax posted:The obvious counter-question would be "why would you expect her to be able to do that?" Has the character done anything to make that a reasonable question? My point is, the author obviously needs to have a clear idea of what their characters are capable of, but they shouldn't have to tell us that. It should be implicit in what they show the character actually doing. I understand your point. You don't like magic systems that explain everything. I personally define magic as anything that is caused to happen contrary to known physical reality. Like princes don't turn to toads. The dead remain dead. A rose doesn't give forth buttercups. Spring flowers growing outdoors don't bloom in the middle of winter. But we have an entire body of fairy tales that suggest these things can happen, under the guise of "magic". If I am told that the character can do "magic", I am prepared for just about anything. So my point, which you are missing entirely, is that in order for magic to "work" in a story, it has to have some kind of limitation. Otherwise you just have a godlike being who waves a hand and gets whatever s/he wants. I then described some of the ways that magic could be limited. I get it already, you don't like the physics of magic style, but it's a valid approach. So is the idea of "balance" in the universe that magic must not disturb, or that one can only use one's powers in certain ways, or whatever. When I posted, I confess I hoped that other people might post about other ways magic can be limited and avoid the whole limitless power trap. All of the different methods are valid, no matter which method you prefer.
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Mar 12, 2014 20:43
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syphon posted:I don't think this is necessarily true, and would flip the statement around. One sign of bad fantasy writing (IMO) is when there are no obvious or implied limits to what magic can and can't do, so it's used inconsistently to solve problems. The trope/meme 'A wizard did it' came about for a reason, after all. Thank you, that's exactly what I was saying. My post had nothing to do how well an author did or didn't write a magic system. My post was about how magic had to have limits otherwise there wasn't much to write a story about, and I listed some of the ways that I have seen various authors handle the need for limits.
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Mar 12, 2014 21:53
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Anyone have any recommendations for good, fun fantasy where no one dies and it's actually kinda funny? Pratchett style. but also going towards something like Disenchanted or A Lee Martinez's books. Just kinda getting tired of GRIMDARK WORLD IS ENDING QUICK LET'S RAPE SOMEONE AND THEN SET FIRE TO THE CITY BECAUSE WE HAVEN'T KILLED ANYONE IN 4 PAGES. I just re-read a trilogy, that, while not particularly humorous, was interesting and did some great world-building. It's by Sydney Van Scyoc, the first is called Darkchild, followed by Bluesong, then Starsilk. It really aged well, you may enjoy it. Although it's out of print, Amazon has used copies at a reasonable price. The other one I would recommend is the Kencyrath series, which starts with God Stalk by PC Hodgell. This is in print and is often amusing. The newer covers are awful, disregard them because they really have very little to do with story. It has some darker elements, but not grimdark elements.
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Mar 16, 2014 03:42
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I even have a draft of it in my head, just a matter of laying it all out. I did a big paper on the Holy Grail aspect of it, I will have to see if I can find it.
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Mar 17, 2014 21:27
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Joramun posted:The Golem and the Jinni was astounding. I second that, what a great read.
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Mar 28, 2014 13:41
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 Just a heads up for everyone with a KindleSolaris is on sale for 99 cents on Amazon (at least for today 04/09/2014)
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Apr 9, 2014 17:32
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Hedrigall posted:Yeah that was a cool surprise Page looked good. I also added a book to the list on Goodreads, it's an older novel, Farewell, Earth's Bliss. I got it as a gift on Secret Santa a few years ago, so I was pretty much going in blind, and it turned out to be really grim psychological space horror. The husband really liked it, which is saying something because he loves horror and reads and watches everything he can get his hands on and he isn't easily impressed.
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Apr 17, 2014 04:23
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