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I didn’t help that I was listening to the book so I couldn’t just power through it,I had to go through at agonizingly slow reading pace. But if laundry files stays so dated I don’t know if I can get past it.
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Sep 28, 2023 00:55
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Demon_Corsair posted:I didn’t help that I was listening to the book so I couldn’t just power through it,I had to go through at agonizingly slow reading pace. I mean, he wrote it at the end of the 90s, it’s reflective of the time. It definitely tails off as time goes on.
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Sep 28, 2023 01:37
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Yeah that changes. Enjoy it as a historical artefact of what once had to be put up with because I can tell you some of it is horrifically accurate. There's decades of brilliant sci fi and fantasy with dated technological circumstances you shouldn't deprive yourself of. Just treat it as part of the visit to another world. It doesn't last for long. One of the novels is a brilliant take on a Bond caper. Some of them get very deep into eldritch horror etc. They are quite varied in tone depending on who is the protagonist. There is a short story about the real story behind unicorns and it is *eeeeeeep* the whole way.
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Sep 28, 2023 07:25
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Kalman posted:I mean, he wrote it at the end of the 90s, it’s reflective of the time. It definitely tails off as time goes on. What the gently caress, the first one was published in 2004. Why does it read like 1993? I'm unreasonably shook by this.
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Sep 28, 2023 17:33
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I read one book by Stross (Accelerando, so probably rather different than his UF stuff) and I enjoyed the book and it did not leave me with a need to read anything else by him. I'm not quite sure how to reconcile this seeming contradiction, it's just how I feel.
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Sep 28, 2023 18:47
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Demon_Corsair posted:What the gently caress, the first one was published in 2004. Why does it read like 1993? I'm unreasonably shook by this. Because it was written around then and sat around for years while he tried to get it published?
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Sep 28, 2023 22:59
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The new Benedict Jacka book An Inheritance of Magic is now available in the UK. The US has to wait till the 10th. Is there anyway to snag a kindle copy if I live in the US? Maybe a VPN to the UK or something? I can't be the first goon to want international releases sooner. 
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Oct 6, 2023 00:40
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Hughmoris posted:The new Benedict Jacka book An Inheritance of Magic is now available in the UK. The US has to wait till the 10th. Don't think you need a VPN, just buy it from the UK store. (I just got it on audible)
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Oct 6, 2023 03:56
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Miss Mowcher posted:Don't think you need a VPN, just buy it from the UK store. I gave that a go. Only options were shipping hard copies, no kindle edition available. I guess I'll have to wait till Tuesday.
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Oct 6, 2023 14:09
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Hughmoris posted:I gave that a go. Only options were shipping hard copies, no kindle edition available. I guess I'll have to wait till Tuesday. You can change the store region, I’m neither in the US or the UK but my kindle stayed for a time on the US store. Well, it’s only a couple of days anyway, might not be worth some possible sync problems
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Oct 6, 2023 18:53
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https://twitter.com/StupefyingSF/status/1710259286020849716 https://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com/2023/10/til-experience-change-thy-mind-by-julie.html
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Oct 9, 2023 09:52
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Benedict Jacka's new book is out, https://benedictjacka.co.uk/inheritance-of-magic/. It's...fine so far.
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Oct 19, 2023 18:22
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xsf421 posted:Benedict Jacka's new book is out, https://benedictjacka.co.uk/inheritance-of-magic/. It's...fine so far. That's been my verdict for the first few chapters. I wish he would have kept the same magic system but we'll see if it pays off.
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Oct 19, 2023 18:33
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xsf421 posted:Benedict Jacka's new book is out, https://benedictjacka.co.uk/inheritance-of-magic/. It's...fine so far. That was my overall verdict too. Fine shaving up to "pretty ok". Popcorn I read in a day. I'll probably read the next one. I think it'll be the sort of thing that's better once more of the books are out and you can see more of an arc.
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Oct 19, 2023 18:43
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Also found it fine, but there was far too much “magic mechanics” talk with lots of repetition
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Oct 22, 2023 04:02
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Miss Mowcher posted:Also found it fine, but there was far too much “magic mechanics” talk with lots of repetition
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Oct 22, 2023 15:29
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anilEhilated posted:This poo poo right here is killing fantasy. Can't we just have magic that remains... magic? Where's the wonder and mystery? Harder to write. Plus there's sort of a natural synergy with young protagonists learning things generally. That said with this particular series the author seems to have literally looked at the market for "progression" stories, litrpgs, etc., and gone "I can do that but better, with character development and tighter writing" and, I mean, fair, dude has to make a living.
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Oct 22, 2023 15:51
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anilEhilated posted:This poo poo right here is killing fantasy. Can't we just have magic that remains... magic? Where's the wonder and mystery? Nerds really want to read about how many specific magic points a character puts into a spell and I do not get it.
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Oct 22, 2023 16:17
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Lumbermouth posted:Nerds really want to read about how many specific magic points a character puts into a spell and I do not get it. I noticed when Sanderson took over the Wheel of Time that there was an immediate shift in how combat scenes were written, from "feels like a dude who has seen combat" to "feels like a dude who has seen movies." Most of today's audience for fantasy novels has played a lot of video games.
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Oct 22, 2023 16:58
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I knew this was the type of book where they have to explain the magic system. But reading, there were many times I was thinking “wait, didn't he already explained how this works / did the same thing before?” a couple of times.
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Oct 22, 2023 17:33
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Nothing turns me off to a book faster than seeing the words "magic system." I want magic to be spooky and wonderful and mysterious, not come straight out of a loving RPG manual. There are a weird number of nerds who seem incapable of relating to a story that isn't put in gaming terms. It's depressing how often people come to r/fantasy and post poo poo like "Aragorn is described as a ranger so why doesn't he get spells like in D&D?" or "Why is this character called a warlock in this book, when he doesn't have a demonic patron? That's not how warlocks are supposed to work" like there's some kind of uber-fantasy-canon that's defined by the Players Handbook. The idea that all this poo poo is just made up and can mean whatever an author imagines is alien to them.
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Oct 22, 2023 18:57
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Just gonna chime in on the magic system. It's fun to learn about a new system, specially if you can figure things out in the book before its revealed. I'm not saying every book has to have a magic system, but I do see why they exist and why they are popular.
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Oct 22, 2023 19:12
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DropTheAnvil posted:Just gonna chime in on the magic system. It's fun to learn about a new system, specially if you can figure things out in the book before its revealed. I'm not saying every book has to have a magic system, but I do see why they exist and why they are popular. Agreed. If the author is doing a bog basic D&D ripoff, they can shut up about how it works. If you've got something interesting to say, especially if the mechanics advance the plot, let's hear it.
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Oct 22, 2023 21:14
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Fantasy authors are all cowards because the magic system from Unknown Armies is RIGHT THERE and no one will touch it. Give me Harry Dresden literally getting his powers from making people mad at him or Daniel Faust having to juice up by running across the freeway.
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Oct 22, 2023 22:44
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Lumbermouth posted:Fantasy authors are all cowards because the magic system from Unknown Armies is RIGHT THERE and no one will touch it. Give me Harry Dresden literally getting his powers from making people mad at him or Daniel Faust having to juice up by running across the freeway.
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Oct 22, 2023 22:50
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In the Incryptid series, route witches get their powers from travelling. I thought that was cute.
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Oct 22, 2023 23:00
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cardinale posted:In the YA Scholomance series by Naomi Novak, the protagonist is a "strict mana" witch so gets her magical energy from doing tons of exercise, push ups and sit ups which I thought was a fun detail because she was otherwise a crabby teenage goth but presumably had sick abs And crochet. Evil sorceress of death and destruction fuming as she counts her stitches.
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Oct 22, 2023 23:03
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In the Craft Sequence the witches get power through obscure accounting practices and winning legal battles.
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Oct 23, 2023 02:55
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Rereading Rosemary and Rue, book one in the October Daye series and while I'm really digging the fae characters and setting, and I'm enjoying the incredible horror of the koi part, I think another part of me is more exasperated by Toby as a protagonist, mostly because I've been reading a lot of urban fantasy lately and almost all of those have hardboiled angry women who don't belong to society but strive to do good anyways and they reject help and fight good things and and I think my brain is trying to ask me to reread the Elantra series just because Kaylin there is a doofus instead of this writ large: "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness." — "The Simple Art of Murder," Raymond Chandler
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Dec 16, 2023 22:08
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Edit: Corrections from phone posting. I recently started a relisten as well. I was surprised how early she starts seeding ideas that will be important later. Soonmot fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Dec 17, 2023 |
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Dec 16, 2023 23:19
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If you're doing a setting that's all about magic, I think it's fine to want to know how it works. What determines a person's power? Does it exhaust them? Is it something anyone can do? The more relevant it is to the plot, the more I want to know. If it's more character based or surreal like a China Mieville novel or something, then it isn't really as important. I always thought Verus' system was a little aggravating because it rode a line between making it more about the characters or more about the 'system', but didn't really settle on either. And what made it worse was that there was never really a clear enough distinction of 'this is the way magic works' vs 'this is the way Verus thinks it works'. For instance, Verus says how fire magic works, but you never get one of the two prominent fire mage characters talking about their magic. Lumbermouth posted:The horniness in the Sandman Slim books is surprisingly subdued for how aggro and over the top the rest of the books are. Sandman Slim has a sex scene where the male protagonist doesn't climax, and he's OK with that, because it was more about the intimacy than the sex itself. That is the last thing I expected to find in a Sandman Slim book but it's cool to see something like that in fiction.
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Dec 16, 2023 23:33
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M_Gargantua posted:In the Craft Sequence the witches get power through obscure accounting practices and winning legal battles. I kind of prefer Pratchett's witches, who seem to get their power through being more stubborn than reality and forcing it to conform to their belief in what it should be.
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Jan 22, 2024 12:56
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Liquid Communism posted:I kind of prefer Pratchett's witches, who seem to get their power through being more stubborn than reality and forcing it to conform to their belief in what it should be. That's but one method, predominantly used by Granny Weatherwax and, later, Tiffany Aching. Nanny Ogg, on the other hand, invites reality over for a cuppa, tells it fourteen inappropriate jokes for the setting, and rewrites reality while it's flustered.
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Jan 22, 2024 15:58
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Granny tells reality what it should be. Nanny convinces reality it should let her get away with stuff because it can't think of a good reason to stop her. Magrat picks a archetype and embodies it, and reality goes along for the ride. All different takes on the same theory.
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Jan 23, 2024 04:29
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And Agnes is two minds about everything and makes it work for her.
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Jan 23, 2024 05:42
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Are there any upcoming release dates for the various UF series? Dresden, RoL, etc?
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Mar 6, 2024 14:29
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Are there any upcoming release dates for the various UF series? Dresden, RoL, etc? Michelle Sagara's Cast in Atonement is dropping August 6, 2024 No ETA on new LKHs for now Kim Harrison's Demon's Bluff drops Oct 22, 2024 Patricia Briggs' Winter Lost drops Jun 18, 2024 Nalini Singh's Archangel's Lineage drops April 23, 2024 Seanan McGuire's Aftermarket Afterlife drops March 5, 2024 I'm using fantastic fiction for the dates and the author's personal websites and we've got a stacked year this year, it's great, even if I'm sad there's no new LKH.
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Mar 6, 2024 14:36
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Whew. I'm re-reading the Joe Pitt casebooks. That is some different, dark urban fantasy and it's such a tonal change from Rivers/Dresden and the rest. Charlie Huston does good work. His non-UF stuff is pretty drat good, too.
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Mar 6, 2024 14:42
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Not sure if it counts as urban fantasy, but the second book in the craft wars drops the first week of April.
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Mar 6, 2024 14:51
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StrixNebulosa posted:Michelle Sagara's Cast in Atonement is dropping August 6, 2024 I should try some of those, I'd mostly written a lot of those authors off as more "paranormal romance" than "urban fantasy". Seanan McGuire especially, in the October Daye series she kept retconning things in annoying ways and then it was all magical kittykat boyfriend all the time and I just checked out. What I really miss is the first few books of Dresden where the noir influence was still strong and it hadn't devolved into a MMORPG with level-ups. Even Alex Verus is over now and Jacka's new series is expressly progression fantasy.
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Mar 7, 2024 00:00
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