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Nckdictator posted:"Dragon's Fury" Holy poo poo
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# ? Jul 2, 2015 19:59 |
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# ? Apr 20, 2024 11:14 |
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KozmoNaut posted:Holy poo poo
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# ? Jul 2, 2015 20:23 |
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Alter Ego posted:This many posts and no mention of the goddamn Twilight series? It was mentioned before your post, yes.
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# ? Jul 2, 2015 20:35 |
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my favorite horrible self-published author is Anne Hart, whose titles include A Private Eye Called Mama Africa: What's an Egyptian Jewish Female Psycho-Sleuth Doing Fighting Hate Crimes in California?; Four Astronauts and a Kitten: A Mother and Daughter Astronaut Team, the Teen Twin Sons, and Patches, the Kitten: The Intergalactic Friendship Club; and Murder in the Women's Studies Department, which reminds me of The Room for some reason... for some really hilarious right-wing "non-fiction," try reading the word salad that is Beyond O'Dark 30
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# ? Jul 2, 2015 20:36 |
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funkybottoms posted:A Private Eye Called Mama Africa: What's an Egyptian Jewish Female Psycho-Sleuth Doing Fighting Hate Crimes in California? Ha ha ha what the gently caress?
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# ? Jul 2, 2015 20:46 |
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Battlefield Earth was absurd but fun to read.
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# ? Jul 2, 2015 21:05 |
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Alter Ego posted:This many posts and no mention of the goddamn Twilight series? Yeah, somebody mentioned 50 shades. R.L. Stine, the author of the lovably campy Goosebumps "horror" children's books, tested his might at writing an adult book. He produced Superstitious. It's easily the worst book I've ever read. I almost had to give up on it, but I just had to see how the circus would end. Answer: Poorly. Very poorly.
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# ? Jul 2, 2015 21:53 |
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Baxter posted:Battlefield Earth was absurd but fun to read. I'm told there's a good 300-page book in there that would probably have escaped if LRH hadn't had immunity to any form of negative evaluation whatsoever, let alone editors, by that stage. (On that note, read Robert Vaughn Young on having to edit Mission Earth.) Something like Dilbert in Space. (The same thing the movie would have been if it hadn't been mindbogglingly terrible.)
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# ? Jul 2, 2015 22:12 |
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Unintended Consequences, a self-published 1995 "patriot fiction" novel in which the independently wealthy and heavily armed (he shoots down two National Guard helicopters) author-insert protagonist leads a war against gun control by murdering senators and posing their bodies in gay sex orgies, planting child pornography on their corpses, etc. Eventually works his way all the way up to threatening the president at gunpoint, which leads to all gun control being made illegal forever and also he gets a full pardon. And on a similar note, The Enemies Trilogy, an entire series that expands on the same basic theme. ATF agents pull off a double-false-flag operation, framing a disturbed Iraq veteran for a mass shooting and making it look like he was trying to frame Muslim terrorists, and in response the government makes guns illegal. The protagonists are forced to defend themselves as the ATF begins murdering gun owners everywhere. Book two takes place five years later, as the Southwest is reeling from the passage of a new US constitution and the secession of Nuevo Mexico, and book three takes place shortly afterward in the hurricane-and-superplague-stricken (this is the liberals' fault somehow) martial law zones on the Gulf Coast. The author wrote another book that arguably takes place between 1 and 2, but with unrelated characters. I've had some very long threads in TFR dissecting all of these over a period of years, along with a bunch of predictable short stories by the second author. Currently bogged down in that last book, though, which is just as crazy but unfortunately not as interesting and really preoccupied with sailboats.
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# ? Jul 2, 2015 22:23 |
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# ? Jul 2, 2015 22:27 |
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Just thought of another one: Seven Deadly Wonders by some guy I won't honor by looking up but I think there was a Matt in his name or something. A friend recommended it to me and so I gave it a shot. And don't get me wrong, on some levels it's fun because of how goofy it is. But...the main character is a grizzled dude with a hawk and a mechanical super arm who needs to go raid the trap-filled seven wonders of the ancient world to Do Magic poo poo at the great pyramid. And he quizzes his adopted magic daughter on Lord of the Rings trivia, which saves both of their lives at one point. Even looking past all that, if you can, the writing is just flat out bad. (And I still kind of want to read the sequel.)
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# ? Jul 2, 2015 22:43 |
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Ryoshi posted:Just thought of another one: Seven Deadly Wonders by some guy I won't honor by looking up but I think there was a Matt in his name or something. Matt Reilly, he typed explosively!! CLICK-CLACK! The keys were flying but little did flosofl know... a short was developing! Soon, his fingers would tingle... WITH A MILD JOLT OF ELECTRICITY! His book The Contest is particularly poo poo and reads like the teenage wish-fulfillment fantasy that it is (he wrote it when he was 19)
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# ? Jul 2, 2015 22:49 |
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For those of you who don't know Isaac Asimov's Foundation series is generally considered one of the great classics of sci-fi. The idea is that in the distant future, when earth has been forgotten for thousands of years, and humanity has grown into a galaxy-spanning empire, a mathematician named Hari Seldon develops this theory of 'psychohistory', which is sort of a large-scale economic/social/cultural statistical model of the entire human race. What he finds, though, is that his theory predicts the coming fall of the galactic empire, which will plunge the entire human race into a thirty-thousand year dark age. He figures out a plan, though, which will be able to shorten this dark age to 'only' a thousand years, and he establishes a secretive 'foundation' to influence the course of history. Asimov wrote five novels about the evolution and struggles of the foundation, and then two more prequel novels near the end of his life about Hari Seldon and the development of psychohistory. The first three are classics, the others are simply good, but I don't want to talk about them. I want to talk about Foundation's Fear, by Gregory Benford. What you have there is pretty clearly a collection of stories and half-baked ideas that Benford was working on when he was approached to do the novel, which were unceremoniously bundled together and rushed to the printers with a big 'Foundation' sticker slapped on the front. The novel is ostensibly about Seldon continuing to develop his theory of psychohistory, but that part of the story is so tangentially related to most of what happens that I won't say a lot about it. So, there's a planet where they've been digging up old computerized sentient personality simulations of Earth-era historical figures (what?) so that they can make computer-Voltaire and computer-Joan of Arc have a public debate (what?) on whether or not robots have souls (what?). Voltaire and Joan of Arc, who are in fact the main characters of the novel, decide that they agree that robots do have souls, and then start having computer simulation sex in front of everybody watching (?????), and then escape into the planetary network of the galactic capital. There they dick around for a while and ponder their existence for three hundred pages, then they find out that there are aliens already living in the planetary computer network, who have abandoned physical form in order to live inside their Second Life accounts. Also, at some point, Hari Seldon decides to go to another planet and Matrix his way into the mind of a genetically modified chimpanzee with a chip in its brain, so that he can try his hand at developing a simplified version of psychohistory. Also at the very end Seldon finds out that Voltaire and Joan of Arc exist, they agree to be his secretaries, and the computer aliens remote-control some toasters to prevent Seldon being killed in a political assassination. That's it. This novel is a tragedy. It is very very bad. You know how for even really awful things, you'll still see a huge number of five star reviews? The astonishingly bad videogame Sonic 2006 has 36% five star reviews. This novel? I feel vindicated.
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# ? Jul 2, 2015 23:27 |
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Emma Donoghue's Frog Music is outlandishly bad, a horrible unpleasant slog full of characters who aren't even unlikeable in an amusing way and a plot that reads like the dullest-ever CYOA. A shame since Room was loving brilliant. What happened?
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# ? Jul 3, 2015 00:56 |
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I can't be bothered to bang on about it, but the last Dark Tower book was absolute loving bullshit. Stephen King finished an epic set of books written over 20 years, with over 4,200 pages with what amounts to no resolution. That's some blue balls right there.
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# ? Jul 3, 2015 01:04 |
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de la peche posted:I can't be bothered to bang on about it, but the last Dark Tower book was absolute loving bullshit. Stephen King finished an epic set of books written over 20 years, with over 4,200 pages with what amounts to no resolution. That's some blue balls right there. I liked the final final ending bit. Everything else was dumb.
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# ? Jul 3, 2015 01:18 |
The Vosgian Beast posted:I liked the final final ending bit. I also thought the ending was excellent, but the rest of the book wasn't awesome.
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# ? Jul 3, 2015 01:22 |
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Wild Animus is fantastically bad. The author gave away anywhere between 50,000 and 5,000,000 of free copies all over the place. It's absolutely everywhere, but nobody has ever purchased a copy. quote:i got this as a freebie at the final Phish concert. quote:This book came to me very awkwardly, they dropped a copy of it in the front yard and i read it quote:Oh, that's right, our book group got a bunch of copies for FREE from the publisher along with smoked fish. quote:Venture capitalist puts id firmly in anus. Becomes furry. Blathers. quote:Not to mention the audiobook, which was also given away in huge quantities. In 2009, a librarian used the WorldCat database to determine which sound recording was available in the greatest number of libraries in the world. Harry Potter books came in at second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth. Number one? Yep. Wild Animus. While I'm here, I should also mention Tyra Banks' debut novel Modelland. The official theme song should be enough to let you know what you're in for: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjC-L2O3I4g SurreptitiousMuffin has a new favorite as of 02:40 on Jul 3, 2015 |
# ? Jul 3, 2015 01:57 |
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i'm just gonna cross-post what i put at the idiot at social media thread because this loving comicThe Saddest Rhino posted:So i discovered this guy tried to sell a comic for MYR10 (USD 3 equivalent) to fund his trip to Nepal (which didn't work out) and put it out for free
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# ? Jul 3, 2015 07:11 |
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Pastry of the Year posted:I will fight you Are you really going to argue that it's a well-written book? And anyways it's my favorite.
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# ? Jul 3, 2015 08:13 |
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quote:‘This was a world known by so many names in aeons past, whose indigenous life intelligence had evolved through millions of years; through epochs of profound science and technology, through an age when they had mastered space travel; ventured to the far stars and had brought back many alien things. Super minerals and materials, life forms of numerous kinds; thus had created a world of time resilient synthetics; a world of hybrids, of humans; a mixture of countless breeds gone wild.’ quote:He had heard of the great immortal city; the citadel of mystery and foreboding. It was the fabulous infamous city all outsiders feared to enter. Yet the bold wayfarer became obsessed by its existence, thus he sought to find it. On his far journeys he would confront all evil obstacles, encounter the wizards of science, the wondrous characters; wild and weird communities. He visited the inns and taverns, braved the deep forests, and he relished the damsels. But he knew he must one day find and behold the phenomenon; thence brazenly enter into the citadel of Bilbabalbabul. quote:He climbed the hill for to get a better vista quote:Thus I reassert you; my house, my ladies, viands and refreshments are yours quote:You have style in your mode quote:And one room in his grange was said to be filled with a great jumble of curios, antiques, preserved ancient books of wizardry, incantations, and tales of bygone aeons, and everything. quote:Gyral was ever vigil with shifty eyes, hand ready with sword. He then heard voices again and saw something shifting among further Orcle trunks. He just kept walking until he came to a clearing. And nothing happened. quote:A couple of pigmy beings then came out from a hut, hobbling in that odd swaying simian manner. In fact they looked like pigmy simians. Nanomashoes has a new favorite as of 08:17 on Jul 3, 2015 |
# ? Jul 3, 2015 08:13 |
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That's "Eye Of Argon"-style bad, wow.
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# ? Jul 3, 2015 09:36 |
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LORD OF BUTT posted:The "born at an early age, in a log cabin I helped my father build" thing is an ancient joke, sometimes attributed to Abraham Lincoln. So Abraham Lincoln made the first Chuck Norris joke.
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# ? Jul 3, 2015 11:18 |
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I know it's popular and optioned and everything but Ready Player One was physically painful to get through. The protagonist is the geekiest geek of all geekdom, gets super buff, gets an online girlfriend, repeatedly outsmarts an entire corporation of evil murderers and wins the world by having an 'on the spectrum' dedication to rewatching 80s movies and TV shows. All while making frequent terrible references to pop culture. Adamantium! Godzilla! TIE fighters!
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# ? Jul 3, 2015 12:12 |
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My brother loaned me Ready Player One and good loving lord is that infuriating bullshit of the most childish kind. It was so bad. Apparently there's a whole thread about it in GBS but no way am I going to go in there. I like dumb escapist fantasy and science fiction, I've read many bad books that I kinda enjoyed but the whole shtick of being a total badass because you know all these obscure 80s pop culture references was just sort of sad. Plus the writing was awful. That's the only one that really sticks out from the last few years. Thankfully I have a merciful memory when it comes to bad books in that I just tend to forget I've read them. edit: oh hey what do you know, two in a row. edit2: Ah I forgot The Dresden Files: "Urban Magician" Harry Dresden Private Eye etc. is too cool for all of your bullshit. Dames, trenchcoat gets into the establishment's face, scrapes through each situation in banter and blood, general fuckup but only so that he can shrug through it all but actually he's really miserable and man just awful all around. A pastiche of a noir sleuth meets Die Hard and magic. I got through three books of this now 15 book series for some reason (people told me that's when it gets good I think). Now all this might sound ok again as a dumb escapist fantasy (which, yeah, got no problem with that kind of thing) if it wasn't so miserably badly written. One of those I won't ever understand being quite as popular as it is. Another one to thank my bro for. Thbro. To get an idea, this is in the OP of the Book Barn Dresden Files thread: "Badass" NLJP has a new favorite as of 12:50 on Jul 3, 2015 |
# ? Jul 3, 2015 12:26 |
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This is pretty much what I need to know about Ready Player One. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71VFzClEoG0
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# ? Jul 3, 2015 14:03 |
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Nckdictator posted:"Dragon's Fury" makes Tom Clancy look subtle and nuanced. What the gently caress did I just read
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# ? Jul 3, 2015 14:19 |
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Palpatine MD posted:
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# ? Jul 3, 2015 15:31 |
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The Legend of Rah and the Muggles by Nancy Stouffer is an 80's children's book which would have lingered in (well-deserved) obscurity had the author not sued J. K. Rowling for allegedly ripping off the name "Muggles," among other dubious claims. As for the book itself, it begins with a prologue (available on the author's official website)about a global nuclear war brought on by abuse of eminent domain laws. A nation called Aura gets nuked, causing it to be covered in a purple "cloud of radiation" that blocks out the sunlight (but not moonlight) and mutating the people left behind into hairless big-headed dwarves called Muggles. quote:The nuclear holocaust had blanketed the sky with dark, poisonous clouds of radiation. The sun disappeared behind the radiated eclipse just as Aura citizens fled their homeland. Beaten, tired, and nearly starving, they deserted the ruins, leaving behind the imprisoned "have-nots" who had taken refuge in caves after the bombing had begun. They were injured, and handicapped for many reasons. The unfortunate soul’s who were considered to be ethnically impure, too old, or simply undesirable for one reason or the other, were abandoned. The rest of the book tells the story of two human boys from another continent, whose mother casts them adrift on a raft (with her jewelry box for some reason) when her own land is ravaged by war. After a pointless interlude with annoying talking sea creatures-- one of whom talks with a transcribed stammer, another with a stereotypical Brooklyn accent-- the boys are then found and raised by the Muggles, and somehow (yes, the text actually says "somehow") the jewels in the box absorb sunlight and illuminate Aura. quote:Like magic, the flowers burst into bloom, the tumbleweed shrubberies filled with bright green leaves, and orange honeysuckle blossoms dripped with nectar. The huge redwood branches spread out above them with a lush canopy of blue-green foliage. Squirrels stuck their heads out of knotholes up and down the sides of magnolia trees, abundant with huge pink and white blossoms. Large friendly-looking groundhogs with long fluffy hair, each with a mouth full of bucked teeth, squeezed their heads out of holes...Rabbits the size of large dogs hopped like kangaroos through the lush grass...Giant bees jutted from place to place in gardens filled with blooms the size of dinner plates, attached to stems four and five feet tall. Peacocks strutted from behind boulders with Muggles seated on their backs. One of the kids, Rah, grows up all angelic and perfect, making his brother Zyn jealous. After more pointless interludes including more cutesy animals and lame attempts at comedy with hard-of-hearing oldsters, we finally get to the main plot, such as it is: Zyn runs away with some Muggles and hides in a radioactive tree, coming out only to play pranks (none of which are actually described in detail). We get some fairly graphic descriptions of their radiation sickness and also third-degree burns inflicted by hot tar: quote:The Manchineet Tree sheds radioactive pollen that has caused Zyn and the Nevils’ [baddie Muggles] skin to blister and discolor. It made their nails thick and crusty, and the whites of their eyes yellow and bloodshot. Yes, the narration switches from past to present tense and back again more or less at random. The baddies then travel to a desolate island where they somehow survive for seven years with no food except grass which makes them sick. And Zyn and pals are afraid of their own shadows, which they call "shadow monsters." Meanwhile, Rah does nothing whatsoever to either help his brother or protect the Muggles from his mischief. Zyn returns to the mainland with the help of magical clam shells and kidnaps Rah, some of the Muggles go out to rescue him, and they finally defeat Zyn by bombing his island hideout with lanterns full of live fireflies so that he's constantly surrounded by "shadow monsters" even in the dead of night. This is how the book ends: quote:So, each time darkness falls upon the daylight, and you look up and see the stars twinkling in the distance, you will know that Rah is asleep, and all around him is at peace! There are several detailed reviews of the book if you want to read more: http://conjugalfelicity.com/rah-and-the-muggles/ http://impishidea.com/tag/The-Legend-Of-Rah-And-The-Muggles/ http://www.magespace.net/mugrev.html http://zelda-queen.livejournal.com/29637.html
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# ? Jul 3, 2015 16:51 |
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Neuromancer is "good" sci fi I guess but the characters' relationships and the things they say to each other are like, not so good. I was gonna type up an excerpt but honestly
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# ? Jul 3, 2015 18:54 |
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The Vosgian Beast posted:This is pretty much what I need to know about Ready Player One. I almost got physically sick trying to listen to that. Who the gently caress are the morons raving about how great it is? It's tv tropes the book. And Spielberg is making it into a movie? Ugh, that dialogue is going to be painful. swamp waste posted:Neuromancer is "good" sci fi I guess but the characters' relationships and the things they say to each other are like, not so good. I was gonna type up an excerpt but honestly Yeah, but it was deliberate, I think. I thought the main character was supposed to be the anti-thesis to a classic noble hero by being a borderline scumbag without any redeeming qualities (besides hacking) and the "girl" only hooks up with him because she's bored.
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# ? Jul 3, 2015 19:33 |
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Palpatine MD posted:
What's that? more you say? quote:In the United States itself, production levels were steadily climbing and more ships, aircraft,weapons, and materiel were pouring out of newly built or refurbished U.S. factories and shipyards.But the effort was not building quickly enough for the Allied war planners, and so their enemies continued to gain ground. Part of this was attributable to the rampant outsourcing efforts that had occurred in U.S. industry throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. Firms had been tempted by the cheap labor and favorable economic conditions offered by the very countries now fighting the United States and her Allies, and by the short sighted plans and philosophies of those who saw the increased profit and reduced tax liabilities as ends unto themselves.
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# ? Jul 3, 2015 19:53 |
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swamp waste posted:Neuromancer is "good" sci fi I guess but the characters' relationships and the things they say to each other are like, not so good. I was gonna type up an excerpt but honestly Hark a vagrant are pro tier webcomics. It hurts me as the series was a favourite as a kid but the entire Belgariad and its sequel are really pretty drat poorly written. Pretty much consistent terrible view of women and how they should act (aka, completely irrationally at all times). Mary Sue characters that can defeat any obstacle. Cliched as hell "heroes journey" (to be fair, early 80's fantasy) and a completely blank and boring main hero (garion) with no personality traits whatsover. I still have a great deal of nostalgic love for the series as I read it even before lord of the rings but it really does not hold up under critical scrutiny at all. Funnily enough the Elenium was overall a MUCH tighter and better written book series that was completely undone by its awful sequel trilogy.
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# ? Jul 3, 2015 20:12 |
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Nckdictator posted:"Dragon's Fury" makes Tom Clancy look subtle and nuanced. Nckdictator posted:What's that? more you say?
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# ? Jul 3, 2015 20:22 |
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pentyne posted:I almost got physically sick trying to listen to that. Who the gently caress are the morons raving about how great it is? It's tv tropes the book. Well to be fair, Jaws is a bad book and Jurassic Park is a Michael Crichton novel. Maybe he'll squeeze blood from a stone again? I mean, he probably won't, because Peak Spielberg is a while past, but still.
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# ? Jul 3, 2015 20:44 |
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The Vosgian Beast posted:Well to be fair, Jaws is a bad book and Jurassic Park is a Michael Crichton novel. Maybe he'll squeeze blood from a stone again?
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# ? Jul 3, 2015 22:58 |
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Nckdictator posted:What's that? more you say? The 2016 Hugos need a Euthanised Puppies slate with this book five times in every category. (Maybe he could retitle it No Award.)
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# ? Jul 3, 2015 23:05 |
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divabot posted:The 2016 Hugos need a Euthanised Puppies slate with this book five times in every category. (Maybe he could retitle it No Award.) Let's be honest here, this person is on about the same level as Vox Day.
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# ? Jul 3, 2015 23:59 |
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Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.
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# ? Jul 4, 2015 01:12 |
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# ? Apr 20, 2024 11:14 |
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Anything by Tom Krateman, especially Watch on the Rhine.
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# ? Jul 4, 2015 03:34 |