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Mars4523 posted:I finished the 3 books of the Generation V series by M.L. Brennan. It's seriously good. The main character Fortitude is, as the title implies, a millennial, a college graduate with a degree in film theory, a vegetarian, and a (reluctant, sort of) vampire, and the series follows him as he adapts to the supernatural world he's been avoiding, his true nature, and his service as a troubleshooter for his powerful family. Fort's friend/partner/prospective love interest Suzume is ten kinds of awesome and badass, as is her extended family, and the supernatural setting itself is pretty interesting. And there are a few serial threads that will play out in future books (the next one comes out in August) that are promising. Yeah, that's a fun series.
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Jul 10, 2015 06:58
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Wheat Loaf posted:I got a book called Half-Resurrection Blues today - it was reduced in the shop and I thought the cover looked interesting. How bad a decision have I made? I was looking at that too, but never got around to reading it either, unfortunately.
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Jul 14, 2015 15:34
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Generation V hardly romanticises vampires, the whole gimmick is that they are the horrible, mostly sociopathic, cannibalistic monsters wearing a pretty skin suit straight out of any horror movie/novel and probably worse than some - but due to the disturbing way they're 'born', they are sort of incubated as a human and the main character is terrified of becoming a sociopathic cannibal like his family. He was raised by humans as a sort of experiment by his mother to see if he could 'get' humans and pass for them better than the rest, but when he got too attached to his parents as a kid, his sister ate them and dragged him home. It always seems weird that people are so opposed to the idea of vampires having a personality other than mindless cannibal, but a character struggling against turning into a monster is more interesting than just bam instant one dimensional sociopath. torgeaux posted:Yeah, it is. It's badly written, mostly cliched, and I recommend anyone who wants to try it borrow it and read the first bit. You'll know if you can stand it or not right away. I know that everyone has different tastes and all, but people do get a bit snobbish in the Dresden Files thread of all places, which is hardly high literature. Most urban fantasy's gunna be a little trashy and pulpy and cliche and that's the fun of it. Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 11:20 on Jul 21, 2015 |
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Jul 21, 2015 11:07
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Mars4523 posted:Generation V also wins for having the female lead character be a kitsune, and also allowing her to consistently be as or more awesome than the lead dude. Not a lot of male lead urban fantasy does that. I rolled my eyes at her at first, but she grew on me by not being stereotypical hot babe lusting after the main character or being a damsel in distress (she's the one who saves his rear end instead).
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Jul 21, 2015 12:05
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You can make almost any UF or fantasy, including dresden, sound stupid if you analyze it too closely, it's mostly a matter of 'is it remotely well written/edited' 'does it have an interesting plot' and 'are the characters enjoyable' and it's better than most on the genre and is a good fun read that's at least worth a skim if you like UF. I don't mind him starting off as a relatively ordinary, boring pushover that gets shoved into unpleasant things and forced to grow up, since it's least it's different from the typical brooding PI/problem solver/wanderer with a ~dark past~ (not that there's anything wrong with that)
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Jul 25, 2015 15:56
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Slanderer posted:Earlier in this thread someone suggested Spell Blind by David B. Coe, which was a decent first start for a series about a former cop-turned-wizard PI in a world where the wizards (at least the ones we know about) are weremystes, whose powers are tied to the phases of the moon and who go crazy the 3 nights of the months when they are the most powerful. I preordered the sequel after finishing it, and Amazon let me know it would be shipping next week. However, the Kindle version came out almost 2 weeks ago: I was the one who tossed that recommendation, didn't realize the sequel was already out, thanks for the heads up.
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Jul 29, 2015 02:16
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coyo7e posted:The entire thing just sounds like classic teen angst of "I don't want to grow up to be my dad/mom." Is Generation V on the shelf next to Animorphs and Goosebumps? It's definitely not giving the YA vibe you're imagining. He's a college-age adult for one, the whole vampire thing kicks in very slowly. The thing with his family is they aren't even the villains of any of the books so far, in fact, they're strangely supportive, and sometimes even likeable and sympathetic while at the same time being hella creepy. The arc of the books is less him doing some teenage rebellion against them and more him learning to accept the inevitable on his own terms and getting groomed to take his place in the family business - everyone's scared shitless of vampires so they're pretty much feudal lords divvying up the continent who everyone pays tribute to, so generally the plot of most of the books is him having to fix some problem for his family as bloodlessly as possible before they get annoyed and just kill everyone involved.
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Jul 31, 2015 12:45
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coyo7e posted:oh well that totally doesn't sound like an entitled-kid power fantasy tied up with the angst of pubescence As much as you're bizzarely convinced they're some sort of trashy YA Animorphs-level series (possibly because of the name?), the books themselves aren't anything like what you are apparently imagining. it's just a decent UF series, better than many, including the early Dresden books. The main character isn't a teenager, isn't even particularly angsty , is only somewhat physically stronger than the average human at the start of the series and has no super amazing vampire powers, isn't amazingly attractive or smart or special, and relies on other people to do the fighting in most cases. The main plots are, in the typical UF fashion that has spun off of Dresden, a main character detectiveing some sort of supernatural murder. Some people find those kinds of books fun, presumably, considering we're reading this thread. 
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Aug 2, 2015 13:19
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coyo7e posted:Me-yow! Three books in, he still doesn't have a bunch of/practically any powers. He's a bit slightly physically stronger, I guess. Vampires don't really have powers other than 'freakishly strong and fast', which comes over the decades/centuries. He gets his rear end beat by most things tougher than a human. coyo7e posted:So we've got "the outsider", who is nearing their own personal coming of age - yet hasn't fully embraced, accepted, or learned his own powers! - takes up "a quest" which the general group he's familiar with cannot/won't take up, and which they don't feel he can overcome.. He meets a magical sidekick and goes through a small training montage to make the most of his unique powers - even if his opponents have the same powers and are more practised, he's got a secret weapon to beat the odds! Because back-cover blurbs are totally representative of the book. Hell, are they even written by the author? Because I'm pretty sure that wasn't. The 'sexy sidekick' is more of a second main character and is treated way, way, way, better than Susan was in the early dresden books (who was pretty much just a sexy sidekick) considering that suzume is considerably more competent, smart, and useful than the main character for most of the first book, and the author never goes into detailed descriptions of her tits or how amazingly hot she is (unlike dresden), and is more of a slightly irritated bodyguard hired by his family. There's no 'training montage' and he has no unique powers or secret weapon and is in fact mostly a pushover that's pretty much as close as you can be to a normal human dealing with supernatural beings that could beat the poo poo out of him, and solves things with talking in the majority of cases. Dunno why you got such a hate-on for this book, Sure it's an urban fantasy book and not high literature, but if you looked at brief summaries of Dresden (and not poorly written back cover blurbs) with the same overly cynical eye, Dresden would honestly come out poorer for many of the books. The main character of Dresden is a loner rejected by his peers, but has special powers and is the chosen one and is really the strongest wizard ever! He has many magical and/or sexy sidekicks, and beats overpowering enemies with a trick up his sleeve or a secret weapon to beat the odds!! Clearly, this means that Dresden Files is YA and belongs next to Goosebumps. Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 08:03 on Aug 3, 2015 |
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Aug 3, 2015 07:56
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Einander posted:Read through Generation V a little while back, read through Book 4 today. You're right, pretty much every book up until that one was just introducing more political factions to lead up to what happened in book 4. I wonder if it'll continue on the same trend, when I started reading I was sure that he'd have to kill or at least make an enemy of Prudence to forestall disaster, but there's no way in hell she'll just wait a couple decades for it to backfire like she said, that'd take too long I wouldn't be surprised if other territories start butting in after what probably looks like quite a show of weakness.
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Aug 5, 2015 01:54
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OneTwentySix posted:Just finished the new Gen V. I thought it was overall a pretty boring book, more of a setup for the next one than anything. Big events happen, and yet at the same time, nothing really happens. Fort goes around undermining his family's authority the whole book, which could have dangerous consequences in a world where monsters are real, and then starts completely acting on his own, which would more likely than not end with his sister doing the same and just going on a massacre. The end, where he leads his coup, he's basically telling the other races that if they want to, they could rise up and go French Revolution on the Scotts, which would end badly for everyone since something worse would move in and take over the territory. Doing the right thing the wrong way can get everyone killed, and I just found the book frustrating and Fort naive as gently caress. He's a mafia vampire, and he's constantly going around trying to make everyone happy, which is just going to have people take advantage of him to the detriment of everyone. If he wants to make progressive changes, great, but that's the kind of thing that he should be doing slowly. He also needs to be willing to give a little; he's a late twenty year old with a useless degree and lovely work and world experience and isn't willing to even listen to his siblings who have tens of decades of experience on him. I have a feeling that just like you think a lot of it's going to backfire in his face, and the deal with the Neighbors is just the beginning of that, especially if he loses the ability to use Prudence as a threat. There's a feeling that they're definitely living on a house of cards there, though - he can't please everyone forever. He seems to have real slow character growth over the books, though, but I have a feeling reality's going to punch him in the gut soon, there's a lot of little disaster dominos being lined up. Dan's boyfriend, Keiko's husband, the Neighbors still being alive, as well as the unhappy changelings, the kobolds, the skinwalkers, plus the old friend of his adoptive family that was investigating his family that I can't remember the name of because he wasn't mentioned in this book (which makes me even more suspicious). At the same time though his siblings having centuries of experiences didn't necessarily make them much smarter to the reality of their situation due to the complete overconfidence in their families total superiority and that they could just run things as they always have without any changes. Chivalry was honestly completely uninterested in anything other than his new wife and getting Prudence and Fort to work out their differences, and Prudence is mostly irrationally, unnecessarily violent, in ways that would just make enemies when none were needed. Having all your political power rely entirely on the fact that you can beat anyone in a one on one, (or one on ten) fight seems incredibly dangerous, especially as organizing and communicating with larger groups of people is considerably easier (and considerably larger amounts of firepower is available) than when his family grew up. There's a good chance that a coup might have eventually happened anyway if Prudence had been given free reign, one that would have outed or killed the Scotts altogether, or someone or thing will invade that they can't beat in a fight by themselves. The ending was a bit abrupt, but I still found it at least interesting for what might happen because of it Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 10:53 on Aug 5, 2015 |
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Aug 5, 2015 10:41
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The Fool posted:I was looking at the stuff available in amazon's new kindle unlimited service. I don't think I had fully grasped how much hot garbage is in this genre. Yep. I usually poke around for new books on amazon, but I have to dig through so much garbage to find even mediocre trashy entertainment books, most are too painful even for that. Amazon starts recommending increasingly awful books if you even look at a few bad ones, too. God help you if you end up looking at a book that is also in the paranormal romance genre. A single look at the wrong book a month ago and you'll be getting weekly emails recommending fifty trashy werewolf/vampire romance books. Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 09:53 on Aug 9, 2015 |
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Aug 9, 2015 09:50
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Blasphemeral posted:Since I don't know who Matthew Swift is, this doesn't help me much. The Matthew Swift books are really weird, interesting books, where magic is much more abstract and artistic than anything I've read in any other UF. It draws power from the concept of a city, its patterns and rules and superstitions and history and so on. Most of the supernatural creatures are concepts or beliefs that gained life. It's real trippy at times. And yeah it doesn't give a poo poo about technology because technology is an irreplacable essential part of London, and in fact works through technology in many cases. The magic of other places, like the rural countryside, while it won't like flat out short circuit technology, it won't work well with it or might not work at all, though.
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Aug 11, 2015 21:46
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Slanderer posted:Combining magic and technology inevitably leads to authors jerking themselves off by having their characters transform magic into systematized and quantified technology so that nerds like them can become wizards too. The interest in magic is that it is unknown and new and special. In order to combine it with technology, the world has to understand magic and then its just boring science. I dunno about magic + technology inevitably leading to that. I mean, sure, there's a lot of trashy fantasy novels where a self-insert super genius engineering major is teleported to a magical world and totally becomes the best wizard ever but I'm pretty sure those would be trashy books no matter what the author wrote about. At the same time, magic is, pretty much like you said, just a universe with different rules, so plenty of fantasy and/or sci-fi universes can be internally consistent and still have magical things that people use in place of/with technology to do things normal technology could never do, because hey, fantasy/science fiction. Khizan posted:Clarke's 3rd law is that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." In a similar vein, I think that any sufficiently explained magic is just technology. I dunno about that, you could explain all the nitty gritty details about why wiggling your fingers and saying the magic words creates a fireball, but I wouldn't call it 'just' technology even if you had a robot that could wiggle his fingers and say the magic words and make a fireball. Unless his fingers had flamethrowers in them. Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 05:59 on Aug 12, 2015 |
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Aug 12, 2015 05:47
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Wheat Loaf posted:As far as magic systems / ruminations on how magic works within the context of the narrative go, while I don't tend to mind Brandon Sanderson's ultra-intricate formulations, I am usually content if magic is basically just the Force, you know? I'll give it a try then, I had it on my backlog but had been waffling over reading it since I saw your bored sounding reviews.
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Aug 13, 2015 04:08
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), and while it was slow to start, I think it picked up strength as it went along. I ended up enjoying it (not as much as Dresden or RoL) and I will certainly look forward to reading the next one in the series when it's out.
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torgeaux posted:Robert Heinlein wrote a couple of fantasy books (well, a novel and a novella). Magic, incorporated, the novella, is basically a normal, modern (50's) world, but magic instead of industry. Dated, but a decent approach to the concept. Glory Road, the novel, is best kept for people like me, who read all his stuff without judging. There's also the Craft Sequence books where a practically futuristic society runs almost entirely off of corporate lawyer magic that uses soulstuff as fuel (which incidentally makes souls a major currency), and almost any and all technology is built off of it.
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Aug 13, 2015 07:49
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XyrlocShammypants posted:Anyway I am totally late to the party with Skin Game and more than any other book in the series my feelings were mixed, leaving me with a weakly net positive impression of the book. The idea of connecting the way between the vaults was interesting but exposed the obvious collaboration with Marcone/Mab. When people talk about reveals, I imagine they are excited about Butter's transition to Jedi Knight, which was funny and very "dresden-files-like." However, the other reveal with Goodman Grey was at the other extreme for me. The character enters the novels as a potential Ferrovax-light figure; that is, someone with long-term potential to influence the broader narrative. Instead, his deception is obvious and the conclusion, with the $1 payment had no affect on me as a reason. Was it intended to be funny or obvious in the broader context of the world? I don't know. I was hoping the repayment of Grey involved giving him one of the sacred relics from the vault or something else, but instead they set up Grey to be a 'friend of Harry's family.' Lame.. The deal with the one dollar bill was supposed to be a bit mysterious and not fully explained (it will probably come up again later) but the way I read it was that it implied that he was bound in the way supernatural beings can be to have debts and obligations be a big deal - if he asked for nothing Harry would be in his debt. By asking for 1$, he freed harry of any obligation by accepting the 1$ as a trade. Presumably as an immortal shapeshifter he doesn't give a poo poo about money, but the way he was talking about 'The Rent' made me think that what he did for Harry was something that benefitted him personally in a way that he didn't actually feel like he needed any further compensation. My theory is that it's some sort of penance that lets a him, as the child of a Naagloshi, who are essentially native american fallen angels, be reedemed and go to native american heaven where all the naagloshi that didn't turn evil went, since he wasn't actually one of the original Naagloshi. Or it's just something that lets him hold off the curse/corruption that turned all the naagloshi into psychopathic monsters, since divine beings like that tend to have very limited free will, so he's making some sort of bargain to get around that.. Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 09:34 on Aug 14, 2015 |
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Aug 14, 2015 09:30
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Megazver posted:The Mindscape Investigations series by Alex Hughes. The Breach series by Patrick Lee. The Joe Ledger series by Jonathan Maberry. Mindscape's a good example (I haven't read the other two). If you want UF-like sci-fi, you probably want some mystery/thriller with a main character that's a cyborg/genetically modified/a clone/an alien/telepathic/whatever. UF seems pretty defined by the main character having some sort of unusual abilities or knowledge of some sort, or are part of some secret community. Something that separates them from normal society, which makes them uniquely capable of solving some problem everyone else can't. Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 06:22 on Aug 19, 2015 |
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Aug 19, 2015 06:18
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Wheat Loaf posted:I guess it can depend on how anything paranormal is treated vis-a-vis its source. In most urban fantasy it's going to stem from magic - I think science-fiction is more likely to attribute it to genetic mutations, cybernetic augmentation etc. Functionally, they're pretty similar, though. I like it, it's pretty good. Nothing amazing, but it's an enjoyable enough read. For some reason I've noticed that a large number of people who dislike it name the fact that the main character is a (recovering) junkie as a big minus like Megazver. It doesn't bother me, but some people really seem to hate having the point of view of an addict. I think it works well enough, it gives the main character a rock bottom to crawl out of and a reason to be in the dire straits he's in and made him a bit more sympathetic. It's not like it lingers too excessively on it, as far as I can remember. (It's been a while since I read book 1).
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Aug 19, 2015 12:49
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anilEhilated posted:That really isn't this type of book. Some are even (arguably) better at Dresden-style UF than Dresden.
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Sep 22, 2015 04:11
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Man, if it IS denarian Harry I really can't wait to read Mirror Mirror.
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Sep 23, 2015 17:17
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Rygar201 posted:I like the theory that it's literally just Laura manipulating Thomas in such a way that he won't question it. And then erase your memory about it afterwards so you can't even remember anything that might make you suspicious.
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Sep 26, 2015 03:51
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Has anyone else read the first book in the Daniel Faust spinoff series "Harmony Black" yet? Just finished it, and really enjoyed it. It has a distinctly different tone and I came into it expecting to find Harmony irritating, but by the end she had definitely grown on me a ton. I'm excited to read the next book in the series out in april after the dangling plot hooks left at the end of the first book, and it'll definitely be interesting to see the two characters and perhaps series collide again, as she's pulled the stick out of her rear end in large part by the end of her book and is no longer the clueless federal agent who doesn't actually know poo poo and is only there to get in the way.Wade Wilson posted:I like how everyone ignores the abysmal editing on the ebook editions of his books. Lots of typos or poor word substitutions of the there/their/they're variety and some godawful punctuation abuse. I ignore it because I literally tend to notice it at all in most cases. When I get really wrapped up in a book it takes some really purple prose to knock me out of the story - I imagine a lot of people are similar or just don't care enough about it to remember or mention it. I always find it irritating when a really good story has a review along the lines of "Really good story, I enjoyed it a lot! But the editing was terrible, 2 1/2 stars" Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 13:44 on Feb 3, 2016 |
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Feb 3, 2016 13:39
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:Yes to your first question, sort of to your second. Murphy doesn't get developed? She becomes /considerably/ less annoying as time goes on. She is becoming somewhat.. extraneous but she's nowhere near as bad as in the first two books.
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Feb 22, 2016 03:48
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Skippy McPants posted:Well, on the one hand, those pod-casters aren't exactly wrong and a lot of the pandering that the predominantly male audience of UF expects is horribly sexist. But on the other hand, plenty of the pandering that the predominantly female audience of Romance expects is also horribly sexist. We're talking about the pulpiest of pulp here and asking people to step outside their comfort zone while reading indulgent fiction is probably asking a bit much. I wouldn't really call it sexist - like people have said, I don't mind romance, where two people have a relationship, but I mind Romance, where the male lead is an incredibly hot (and usually dickish and overly controlling) vampire/werewolf/gargoyle/demon hunter/navy seal/all of the above and the protagonists immediately fall mutually in lust on sight. It's true that most male-written UF doesn't really even have lower r romance as wives and girlfriends are usually there to be fridged (or were already fridged as part of his tragic backstory) to poo poo on the main character as much as possible. A lot of the better female UF writers that don't fall into the paranormal romance trap do tend to have better written relationships - Seanan Mcguire, while not necessarily my favorite author, does low-key relationships and romance pretty well that develops slowly over the course of series instead of insta-love/lust. I enjoy her books pretty well. I've seen a lot of recommendations thrown around here for some of the various werewolfy books by female authors but i've been too iffy to start them - I'm really not a fan of the creepy relationship dynamics in paranormal romance-leaning werewolf books - the whole slightly (or sometimes not-so-slightly) rapey overly controlling douchebag male lead that's justified because he's an 'alpha' werewolf is just too weird for me even if the book might be good otherwise.
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Mar 2, 2016 13:48
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anilEhilated posted:Particularly impressive by genre standards since she's both the hero's girlfriend AND a succubus. Schaefer generally uses the character pretty well, first book aside. Yeah, in the hands of practically anybody else (including most female authors) she'd be a dubious character at best but instead she's just a terrifying badass who rescues the main character more than ever needing to be rescued beyond the one time in the first book where he simply gave her the opportunity to rescue herself.
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Mar 3, 2016 11:51
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Found another pretty good UF series - Domino Finn's Dead Man and Shadow Play It's a real solid series so far. It's about a Cuban-American from Miami sort of jack-of-all-trades magician who dabbles shallowly in voodoo, shadow magic, necromancy, black magic, etc - a loose mishmash of the magical traditions that came to Florida with immigrants, and ends up getting caught up in something way over his head and is ritually murdered. He wakes up inexplicably ten years later in a dumpster, with most of his family dead, and his friends and fiance (never having been thrilled with him dabbling in black magic) having already grieved and moved on without him and not exactly happy with the violence and destruction he's brought back with him, and a whole lot of angry Cuban gangsters who really want him to go back to being dead. It's considerably better than I thought it'd be, and the twist/cliffhanger at the end of Shadow Play completely blindsided me and makes having to wait for the next book pretty irritating. Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 12:05 on Mar 12, 2016 |
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Mar 12, 2016 12:01
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Megazver posted:http://io9.gizmodo.com/audiences-are-finally-ready-to-root-for-a-damaged-viol-1764327161 I guess she's got down the 'unlikeable' part, but I wouldn't really want to read about a male main character who bludgeons someone in the head with a cane over a snide insult either. Maybe it's more understandable in context, but still.
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Mar 13, 2016 12:56
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Blasphemeral posted:The coins are, yeah, but the beings inside them are much, much older. it's balanced more in the sense that all-powerful beings are deliberately not allowed to act freely and manipulate mankind because they work to cancel each other out instead of that the world isn't necessarily becoming a better place or not. All the angels could easily cure all hunger and disease and suffering in the world (and in the process destroy free will), but don't because of their self/god-imposed rules - the unbound denarians and Lucifer could easily take over the world and cause untold misery, but can't, because every time they escalate the angels are allowed to counter, and if they push it too far, in the end Lucifer can't do poo poo against God. The D&D sense of neutral/balance is nonsense, of course, where you have druids who practically have to kick a puppy to make up for doing a good deed in some cases, but this isn't that. Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Mar 18, 2016 |
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Mar 18, 2016 16:33
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Rygar201 posted:If you can actually shut your brain off, try the Iron Druid Chronicles. The highest quality dresden-style UF series is probably Craig Schafer's Daniel Faust series starting with The Long Way Down. A couple of other good ones that are good fun and mostly the same style are Benedict Jacka's Alex Verus series (starts off looking dubiously like it might be a dresden ripoff and ends up going in a different direction and becoming its own interesting thing) and Elliot James' Pax Arcana.
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Mar 29, 2016 03:40
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Khizan posted:I think that Verus and the Pax Arcana are both better than the Daniel Faust books, by quite a bit. The Faust books are good, but I don't see how they're so loved here in comparison to the other UF series. They have a distinct tendency towards "Haha! That was my plan all along!" endings and I really dislike his succubus girlfriend. She just doesn't feel... demony enough? I'd like her to be a bit more shady, seem a bit more like a bad idea. I honestly like all of them in their own way but Faust is the series the least number of people seemed to disagree with me with on (until now, apparently), so I recommended it first to be safe  . Plus, it is a really solid series that's gotten better with every book and is pumping out books rapidly.Something about Rivers of London got on my nerves after a few books and I haven't read the last two (possibly 3 by now?). The Rook is great but is just one book, unfortunately. I might as well throw out some more recommendations now that they've popped to mind - London Falling's pretty good, though the second book wasn't as good as the first it was still good. Alex Hughes' Mindscape series is practically UF under the veneer of sci-fi, though a lot of people consider it too dry or hate the fact that the main character's an addict. Twenty Palaces and Generation V were both decently enjoyable series that got canceled. James Hunter's Yancy Lazarus is pretty good but sort of bland, though it might get better with more books as it's sort of early in the series. Domino Finn's Dead Man was a pretty solid start to a series, too. Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 05:18 on Mar 29, 2016 |
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Mar 29, 2016 05:09
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The latest Alex Verus book, Burned was real good. Essentially, the previous book was the straw that broke the camel's back and the mountains of people Verus has pissed off throughout the series (pretty much the entire magical government minus a small handful and every dark wizard under the sun) all put their heads together and decided they didn't want to deal with him any more and he has to die. It was practically the Changes of the series in a way in how it completely and irreversibly stomped all over the comfortable life Verus had and sent the plot and characters careening in completely different directions, if not quite as completely and utterly scorched earth as Changes. Of course, now I have to wait for the next book to see the consequences. Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 09:02 on Apr 9, 2016 |
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Apr 9, 2016 08:47
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SystemLogoff posted:Recent Reads: Charming/Pax Arcana starts off a bit awkwardly but gets a nice groove going as the series goes on.
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Apr 12, 2016 07:27
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In Shining Armor was pretty drat good. Book 1 was the roughest of the bunch but enjoyable, and from then on each book has been better than the last.
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Apr 28, 2016 10:16
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navyjack posted:I'm still trying to process the avalanche of action. This was a very active novel. No kidding - if he wanted to, he could have practically cut the book into two and stretched out the kidnapping and skinwalker drama and then turned the redcaps, banshee, and half-elf conspiracy into a second book. The skinwalkers were a little too easily ferreted out, though, you'd think they'd be able to turn off the invulnerability thing that gave them away. Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 14:23 on Apr 28, 2016 |
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Apr 28, 2016 14:20
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ulmont posted:The blurb is not real promising. It's decent, nothing amazing, but it's a level above the average trashy UF you find sifting through amazon, which is enough for me read it  .
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May 4, 2016 01:46
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Mr Scumbag posted:After pushing through the first three books (the third one was quite a bit better than the first two but still not great), I've really gotten into TDF and I'm enjoying it way more than I expected to. Currently about halfway through "Small Favor" and the the difference in writing quality from the first novel to here is pretty huge. Already starting to get a little melancholy knowing that I'm 2/3 through the currently available books. The interjections didn't bother me when it was my first real experience with urban fantasy, but now that I've read many UF series I notice it a lot more when some books try too hard to imitate Dresden Files. Since Dresden pretty much kickstarted the mostly dead non-paranormal romance UF genre, a lot of books blatantly rip him off with 'snarky magical PI solves crimes with noir trappings' (though some of them become their own genuinely good thing after they get a groove going) and I see some of them take the whole 'stop in the middle of action and snark at the reader for a page or two' thing even further than Butcher did, and it can get incredibly grating. Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 09:55 on Jun 26, 2016 |
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Jun 26, 2016 09:52
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A lot of people say that - and while it's probably true to some extent in real life, it's not quite the same thing when you're writing fictional characters. I wouldn't really like an excessively bitchy, nasty, aggressive, self-centered male protagonist either. I prefer characters I can empathize with to a degree, and one of the problems that writers sometimes give to their 'assertive strong women' characters is that they make them even more hostile and aggressive and self-centered than an equivalent male character, as if to try and emphasize how 'strong' they are. A protagonist who constantly lashes out and treats everyone they know like poo poo isn't a protagonist anyone likes.
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Jun 27, 2016 00:50
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Grimson posted:She doesn't appear to be remarkably hostile, self centered, or nasty and doesn't lash out to any particular degree. She is stressed, but highly competent. She lashes out a single time and then makes good, and doesn't transgress the bounds of her relationship that much farther than Bob (especially considering he was the one who moved out.) To be fair - I haven't actually read the book in question. I was more talking about Stross's implication that a fictional female character that people consider bitchy would be one that we would tolerate if it was a man with a similar behavior, which is an argument I've heard a few times but don't really agree with in most cases. I've seen much worse written 'tough' female characters in UF that do fit all those criteria and just come off as massive, slightly unstable assholes instead of 'tough' or 'strong'. Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Jun 27, 2016 |
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Jun 27, 2016 23:32
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Geokinesis posted:Is there any "Rural Fantasy"? The Matthew Swift series is pretty much a universe where you would literally have that very thing happen with harvest spirits, and it even teases the possibilities of a rural setting briefly (literally the cotswalds iirc) in one book before leaving and never coming back, because magic, and magical beings, are shaped by a place and the people that live in it and their behaviors and beliefs, and the MC uses the magic of London which is as far from a rural countryside as you could imagine. I remember being disappointed we never got to see rural magic considering how interesting the weird city magic/folklore/creatures were in that series. That was honestly one of the more original urban fantasy series I've ever read. Edit : huh, I just discovered this author is a pseudonym for Claire North, the author who wrote The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, I'll have to actually read that. Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Jul 3, 2016 |
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Jul 3, 2016 22:06
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