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Ika posted:Might pick up the first one next time I'm in town, has anyone else read them? Yes. I prefer Alex Verus over the Iron Druid.
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Jun 28, 2014 01:23
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:It'd be nice if someone was writing a series that was just "noir wizard PI", similar to the early Dresden books. There are a few authors who seem to be trying it (Glen Cook's Garrett PI, Simon R Green's Nightstalker) but somehow the execution never quite comes together. The Garrett books started in 1987 and were always Raymond Chandler + Rex Stout + Vietnam. In some of them you can even tell exactly what works are being mined (Old Tin Sorrows, Book 4, is very specifically The Big Sleep). They didn't suffer from power creep so much as Cook running out of ideas along the way.
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Sep 17, 2014 02:41
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coyo7e posted:Me-yow! I occasionally play a game I call "gently caress This Book", where you and friends exchange copies of the cover blurb and decide at what point you reach Seinfeld-nope.gif. With that in mind, I present to you the blurb for Generation V: quote:Fortitude Scott’s life is a mess. A degree in film theory has left him with zero marketable skills, his job revolves around pouring coffee, his roommate hasn’t paid rent in four months, and he’s also a vampire. Well, sort of. He’s still mostly human. I'm out on "Fortitude Scott", "still mostly human", and "dangerous and sexy shape-shifter." For comparison, here's the incredibly badly named Storm Front: quote:For Harry Dresden, Chicago's only professional wizard, business, to put it mildly, stinks. So when the police bring him in to consult on a grisly double murder committed with black magic, Harry's seeing dollar signs. But where there's black magic, there's a black mage behind it. And now that mage knows Harry's name.
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Aug 3, 2015 03:42
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JohnnyCanuck posted:Caveats: Let me amplify the above and recommend skipping the Necroscope series.
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Mar 30, 2016 04:11
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thrawn527 posted:A couple of hours? Like...how? From some math, and a word count pulled from Reddit that could be bullshit, that's about 21 words per second. Or if you were rounding, and it were 3 hours, 14 words per second. You'd be surprised. I just did a quick reading speed test at staples.com (which is an excerpt from War of the Worlds) and got 1,262 words per minute (21.03 words per second, or more or less exactly your number) while answering the three questions they had after the excerpt correctly. http://www.staples.com/sbd/cre/marketing/technology-research-centers/ereaders/speed-reader/
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Apr 25, 2016 19:07
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Slanderer posted:The 3rd Justis Fearsson (god, what a bad name) book came out today: The blurb is not real promising. quote:Justis Fearsson is a weremyste and a private detective. He wields potent magic, but every month, on the full moon, he loses his mind. His battles with insanity have already cost him his job as a cop; he can’t afford to let them interfere with his latest case
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May 4, 2016 00:11
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anilEhilated posted:I think most of us did. You could reason that it's her being at her worst but it's just not fun or interesting to read. Charlie Stross posted:[Q]uite a few readers seemed to absolutely hate "The Annihilation Score"; they specifically disliked Mo, accusing her of being bitchy, nasty, aggressive, self-centered ... all the epithets that get hurled at assertive, competent, strong women (and especially managers) in day to day life.
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Jun 26, 2016 22:01
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SystemLogoff posted:I'm the opposite, I really liked the book. I could see how someone in that situation would be really out of sorts, and rear end in a top hat violin did not help.  Ready for The Nightmare Stacks.
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Jun 27, 2016 01:45
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AlphaDog posted:Isn't Bob's narration explictly, by his own admission, unreliable? Also didn't Stross specifically say (maybe in an interview or online, not in the books) that Bob's not a reliable narrator? Can't remember the first, but yes re: the second, reaffirmed as recently as June 21. Charlie Stross posted:A point that was becoming clear by book 3 or book 4 is that Bob is an unreliable narrator. This was (spoiler!) originally an accident, but then a bonus.
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Jun 29, 2016 17:08
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:Well, this thread was posted when the last book came out and that was in 2014. Can't be long now, maybe summer of 2017, spring of 2018.
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Oct 12, 2016 18:53
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biracial bear for uncut posted:No, because it isn't available for those of us that live in the US and can't be bothered to change their address to one in the UK because we can't be bothered to look up a fake address to use. biracial bear for uncut posted:I'd rather stick to my electronic copies because my dead tree book storage shelves are fully loaded and I haven't enough space to store more books. This, but mostly unironically and I already did look up a fake address but after switching for the last 2 PC Peter Grant books I can no longer be arsed. A. Beaverhausen posted:I'm sorry, but you can never have too many bookshelves.* My makeshift bookshelves before I gave up were made of books.
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Dec 2, 2016 20:46
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Velius posted:Really, I should fake a U.K. Address because gently caress the us publishers for constantly releasing three to six months later in the states for no loving reason. Malet Street London, WC1E 7HU United Kingdom Phone: +44 (0)20 7862 8000 Go nuts.
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Dec 3, 2016 04:20
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Entirely too cute Myfanwy can manage cute, but has dark hair (as noted, you can dye that). quote:I am nondescript, she thought. Nondescript features with shoulder-length dark hair. quote:I won’t be able to hit the level of Hot, but I might be able to manage Cute. For people targeting age-appropriate casting, Myfanwy is 31.
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Aug 31, 2017 20:58
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Junkenstein posted:It's muh-van-oo-ee, but that oo-ee is one syllable. Can't really think of a way to type it. Sounds like Muh-van-way to me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s885Ek2T85M&t=24s
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May 7, 2018 18:45
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jivjov posted:Unless you bought a copy of Peace Talks already, Butcher doesn't owe you jack poo poo. Part of the commitment in buying an unfinished work is in exchange for the promise that the work will be completed. ...to make this more clear, since I know you’re an idiot: if I had known Butcher / GRRM / Rothfuss would never finish their series, I never would have bought the first ones.
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Dec 27, 2018 02:31
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anilEhilated posted:Anyone read Jade City? Amazon is trying to hawk it to me for one euro and at that price I'm willing to take the plunge, but still... Your answer to the question "wouldn't it be great if somebody crossed the Godfather with wuxia?" will answer the question "would I like to read Jade City?"
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Feb 27, 2019 22:19
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biracial bear for uncut posted:I'm pretty sure there is a section in The Rook specifically about that. There is. Do you know the name of the body you are in? It’s Myfanwy. Myfanwy Alice Thomas. I would say that it’s my name, but you’ve got the body now, so I suppose you’ll be using it. People tend to mangle its pronunciation, but I would like it if you at least knew how to say it. I don’t embrace the traditional Welsh pronunciation, so for me the w is silent and the f is hard. Thus, Miff-un-ee. Simple. In fact, now that I think about it, it rhymes with Tiffany.
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Mar 16, 2019 00:29
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Junkenstein posted:Muh-van-oo-ee is probably the closest, with the "oo-ee" being one syllable. How close is this video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s885Ek2T85M&t=24s
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Mar 20, 2019 01:14
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I just got through reading these and they're neat. Very Tim Powers Last Call esque. You can tell the author actually lives in new orleans. ...the author is going to an unhealthy amount of effort to specify the bars the character is wearing a t-shirt from, the bars the character goes to, etc. He's not wrong, but it reads like a travelogue at points.
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Jun 30, 2019 20:33
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:A lot of those locales have their own personality and history too (tipitina's is a storied venue, etc.) I live there (city not bar; I am far from tipitina’s); I know.
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Jun 30, 2019 21:14
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biracial bear for uncut posted:Isn't she not actually a succubus, and more of a demon enforcer that was under a geas to act like that when she was captured? Nah, Caitlin is a succubus, just a violent one. e;f,b.
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Jan 25, 2020 18:05
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bobjr posted:I kind of want to watch it only because I've heard nothing but bad things about it, but in a forgotten way where no one wants to remember it rather than a hateful way. I didn't think it was bad at the time, and I was sad when it went off the air, but I haven't rewatched it in the intervening 13 years.
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Apr 20, 2020 04:35
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ConfusedUs posted:I really love Gil's All-Fright Diner, and most of that author's stuff is good too. The Automatic Detective is probably my favorite of them all. drat, I'm going to have to reread Gil's All-Fright Diner and the rest of Martinez' stuff again now.
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Apr 21, 2020 04:02
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Coca Koala posted:When Quentin graduates from Magic College, the principal makes a huge speech about where magic comes from, and he explicitly says “I’m pretty sure we can do magic because we’re massive whiny babies who refuse to grow up and deal with the fact that the real world is hard and so we force reality to bend to our whims because the alternative is learning how to be a functioning adult and none of us want to do that” The Dean says that, but it's not as negative as you make it sound. The Magicians posted:“Sometimes I wonder if man was really meant to discover magic,” Fogg said expansively. “It doesn’t really make sense. It’s a little too perfect, don’t you think? If there’s a single lesson that life teaches us, it’s that wishing doesn’t make it so. Words and thoughts don’t change anything. Language and reality are kept strictly apart—reality is tough, unyielding stuff, and it doesn’t care what you think or feel or say about it. Or it shouldn’t. You deal with it, and you get on with your life.
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Apr 26, 2020 23:37
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Coca Koala posted:How much more clearly should the series have stated this, that some people feel like it was left ambiguous? The series did not hold my interest to the point of book 2, but really, I didn't see the "magicians" as anyone worse than the characters in the standard Ivy League coming of age bullshit stories. ...so I basically read The Magicians as the Wild Cards/Frank Miller version of Harry Potter and then moved on.
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Apr 28, 2020 05:27
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:Ah. A bad case of the X-Files. On the other hand, the portion you spoiled was foisted on Schafer by the publisher and disappears after those first two books...
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Sep 25, 2020 22:45
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Drone Jett posted:Yeah, I wonder if this was really always supposed to end this way, with Hard No Fucks Given Verus snuffing her to deliberately subvert our expectations, or he just couldn't see a way to convincingly reform her and make it reasonable and matter. The HNOFGV solution was consistent with his character development through the series, maybe it just wasn't adroit enough. Forged spoilers: I liked it. Basically, Verus has done everything he's done through being backed into a corner and refusing to give up, but at this point he has more than justified all of the Light Council's hate for him and attempts to kill him, and he's still kinda screwed...which is backed up by the reveal that Alex always was Richard's chosen and can't get away from fate no matter how he weaves it.
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Nov 29, 2020 01:39
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:That's the hook for the first story, if you like that keep going. Was coming here to post that.
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Feb 3, 2021 19:11
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biracial bear for uncut posted:Anybody else interested in the totally different Urban Fantasy series Benedict Jacka is writing now that Verus is wrapping up? Interested but it's realistically 18-24 months out so not excited yet. Jacka blog posted:If all goes perfectly, I’ll finish the book by the end of the year, about a month after Alex Verus #12 comes out. Though even if I do, the most likely release date is going to be somewhere in late 2022 or early 2023.
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Aug 7, 2021 02:04
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Doctor Jeep posted:Mike/M. R. Carey is a recommendation whatever genre/medium he's working in. I haven't read his Felix Castor series but everything else has been very good. Yeah, I was about to say to move up Mike Carey (and Harry Connolly) over Paul Cornell (first one was fine but that sequel, whoof).
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Aug 21, 2021 04:05
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Ninurta posted:I am finishing up the second book in L.E. Modesitt's Grand Illusion trilogy Oh, wow, I've read approximately 1 zillion of Modesitt's books but somehow missed 3 newer ones, so thanks for the headsup.
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Jan 30, 2023 04:02
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Saltpowered posted:Speaking of Incryptid, the last few books have been pretty dark. Aftermarket Afterlife spoilers: Spoiler tag didn’t work for me, but glad to know there’s another in the series I need to pick up.
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Mar 16, 2024 04:27
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