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What you have to remember though, is that as urban fantasy goes, dresden is, by comparison, high literature. Evfedu mentioned the Sandman Slim series. The main character of which is the baddest bad rear end to ever bad an rear end. Escaped from hell, went back to hell and took it over, wears a trenchcoat and drives a demonic motorbike. It is literally like the doodles in the margins of a teenagers maths note in novel form. The main character might even be half demon, or half angel or something. He is a prick, all his former friends are pricks, his enemies are also pricks, but not noticibly worse than his friends. There is also the Iron Druid series, which actually manages to be worse. The main character is a thousand year old druid who tricked the goddess of death so he cant die (I think she was in love with him as well or something?). Which pretty much takes all the tension out of every encounter right off the bat. He is also the only suriving druid. He is also the baddest bad rear end, but with the added irritation that he of course, being 1000 years old, he actually INVENTED being a bad rear end, but no-one remembers that it was him. Routinely clowns gods and is always the smartest and toughest being in the room. There was maybe one likable/memorable side character in one of the early books, but she was killed off. There is another series I cant remember the name of right this second where the main character is an immortal killing machine with magic being a badass powers, but he has amnesia because he is essentially a 90's videogame protaganist, and hes fighting a corporation of some description. All the ladies immediately swoon at his steely eyes and assholish attitude. Just because you CAN self publish on Kindle doesnt mean you SHOULD. There are more, most of them are terrible, and I have read multiple books in many of the series because I like the genre and/or hate my brain and am trying to kill it with poorly written magic in modern times stories. And thats not counting all the ones that are essentially just porn with werewolves in. Its a goddawful low bar, but Dresden is seriously one of the better urban fantasy series; At least the main character actually has to struggle to achieve things and there are female characters who arent immediately in love with him. Pretty much the only other one that springs to mind as actually decent or better is Rook, but the author of that one is dragging his rear end getting book 2 written so its not really a series yet.
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Jul 7, 2015 19:15
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ArchangeI posted:It's trying to deliberately invoke the prose of the time, when authors were paid by the word and consequently padded like all hell. Yeah, I tried to read it a few years ago, and I got what the auther was going for, but I dont like that style of writing, so a good emulation of that style of writing was insufferable to me. Made it about a third of the way through the book and returned it to the person who lent it to me.
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Nov 1, 2015 13:03
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Yeah we did, I'm pretty sure Josh Kirby did all of the discworld covers (and Pratchetts non-discworld stuff) up until Kirby died. The big trend in fantasy novel covers the last few years has been to put Whiteguy Darkcloak on the cover, regardless on what the protagonist is supposed to actually look like.
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Jul 6, 2016 14:11
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Tiggum posted:I hate those covers so much. I have a soft spot for the Kirby covers. At least they arent generic. I'm willing to admit that a lot of that is more because I love the books rather than on the artistic merits of the covers. Having said that, some are better than others, and you missed my favourite thing about that particular cover. The main characters from the book are all on the luggage. Rincewind, Bethan (You are right about that Pratchett quote compared to women in Kirbys work in general, but I always assumed that was Bethan on the cover), Cohen, Twoflower and... Actually for the last 20-odd years I've assumed that was Hrun, but now I actually think about it... Hrun was in The Colour of Magic, not the Light Fantastic, so I have no idea who that last guy is supposed to be. In my defence I've not reread the first 3 discworld books much. (As an aside, the series for me really finds its feet from Mort onwards, its when it becomes more its own thing rather than a setting which exists purely for sword and sourcery pastische). Anyway, what I was going to point out was; Look at Twoflower. If memory serves, in the books the inhabitants of Ankh Morpork have never seen eyeglasses before, and there is an extended aside about how he has "4 eyes", because he has an extra set that he puts on over his eyes to see better (his glasses). Apparently Kirby missed the joke there, because he has drawn Twoflower as literally having 4 eyes.
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Jul 6, 2016 14:54
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Geokinesis posted:Not a terrible book (actually a great book) but I think renaming the Rivers of London to Midnight Riot for US market is weird and bad: Worth noting also; They made 2 versions of that cover (and the sequel), one where you could see the main characters face, one as you posted with the charactter in silhouette. For both books the US publisher decided to go with the silhouette version. Obviously by sheer coincidence that obscures the fact the main character is black. There was enough of an outcry that the US publisher from book 3 onwards (and with reprints of the first 2) just went with the british cover. Oh, and I agree, they are absolutely worth reading, if you like urban fantasy at all they are definately at the top end of the genre.
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Jul 10, 2016 11:42
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He was fairly open about the fact that he had to dictate the last few discworld novels. I get the impression that he would write/read/rewrite previous books to an extent that he just couldnt from about Unseen Academicals onwards. They were never bad, but from there onwards (with the possible exception of Snuff) they felt unpolished/almost unfinished to me at least. The subplots didnt come together as neatly as they usually would, there are minor story hooks left hanging, things like that. Alzheimers is a loving bastard.
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Jul 16, 2016 23:20
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Fashionable Jorts posted:Has anyone here actually read one of his books? I want to know how these stories work. Are they anything beyond just a funny title and cover picture? I mean, an arguement could be made that all art is, on a base level, about being pounded in the butt by concepts.
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Aug 23, 2016 20:58
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flosofl posted:It was to me, because I can't read. Having read a decent number of books mentioned in this thread, I think I almost envy you.
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Aug 29, 2016 17:28
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Honestly, Rothfus is okay to good by the standards of the genre (A genre incidently I loving love, but I'm fairly honest with myself about how most of it is complete trash) but I'm always suprised at the hype/recognition he gets. The two novels hes released so far are enjoyable (I never read the novella because gently caress you finish the series before trying to sell me a spin off) but pretty much all my friends who have even a passing interest in the genre have read them, which isnt the case for a whole bunch of other, more interesting authors.
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Aug 30, 2016 22:34
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Ddraig posted:I think one of the worst pieces of dross I've ever had the misfortune of reading was The Redemption of Althalus by David and Leigh Eddings. In my early teens I read a shitload of Eddings (the early stuff is published as "David Eddings" but it later transpired that David and Leigh were collaborating from the start, their publisher thought that it would sell better without "and Leigh" on the cover). In retrospect, none of it is particularly good, and some of it is downright terrible. Their most well known works are 4 series, set in 2 different fantasy universes. The Belgariad/Malloreon and the Elenium/Tamuli. They are generally undemanding fantasy potboilers, the stories flow well enough, but they dont bear up to any kind of criticial reading. Even as an undemanding teenage reader I was slightly irritated how blatantly he reused character archetypes between stories (The Belgariads Silk is almost identical to... I think it was Talon in the Tamuli? Polgara in the Belgariad is pretty much the same character as Sephrina is the Elenium, there are others but its been probably 15 years or more since I looked at them). I also wasnt a massive fan of the plot point of the (18-ish year old) queen in the elenium being madly in love with the main character, who had been her bodyguard when she was a child. I mean, at least she wasnt still a child, Eddings isnt Piers Anthony or anything, it still felt kind of skeevy. They also published a book about writing the Belgariad, and in it they broke down the "formula" they used to write their fantasy novels, and once its been pointed out you cant NOT notice how slavishly they adhere to the formula. And having said all that, for all their problems those 4 series are STILL better than the Redemption of Altheas, which is the book that finally stopped me reading Eddings altogether.
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Sep 10, 2016 22:15
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EmmyOk posted:I forgot about that actually! Still I'd rank "The Greatest Lover in the Western World" less cringeworthy than being so handsome that women are turned on by how you walk. But what if they can tell by the way you use your walk that you're a womans man, not time to talk?
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Sep 11, 2016 16:39
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Apraxin posted:I think the problem was that he was a scientist who initially wrote the first book in his spare time and spent a few years polishing it and shopping it around. Then Penguin not only bought it but also gave him a three book contract, but they did so on terms that amounted to 'btw you have to become a professional author and start cranking out those sequels right the gently caress now', and he had to sacrifice quality for meeting the contract deadlines. The new book was pretty good, so hopefully he'as adjusted and will be able to keep it up from now on. I havent read it (I think I have "Blood Song", the first in the series on kindle when it was a daily deal, but I couldnt swear to that), and hopefully his second series doesnt tail off like that, but this reminded me of someone I dont actually think is a BAD author as such. Robin Hobb. She writes series of fantasy novels, mainly set in the same world, but they are by and large discrete series, usually 3 books I think. And in each and every case I do the same thing; I read the first book, really enjoy it, read the second and think its okay and then read about half the last book and lose interest entirely. I dont know what it is, and I'm not saying shes a bad writer (as I say I usually enjoy her book ones) but for me I guess some writers just cant stick the landing. The only one of her series I've actually read the last book in its entirely is the "Farseer Series" (had to look that up, I thought they were called the Assassin series), and that series disappears entirely up its own arse in the last novel. And I have a lot of tolerance for iffy fantasy series, particularly if the book is big enough to beat someone to death with. And yet even knowing this every now and then I see she has a new series out, pick up the first book and...
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Oct 28, 2016 20:47
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So the author of "My Immortal" has possibly issued a statement denying being the same person who wrote "Handbook for Mortals". I am becoming increasing convinced that 2017 isn't real and/or we didnt survive that plane crash. https://www.dailydot.com/parsec/my-immortal-fanfic-2017-update/
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Aug 31, 2017 17:50
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There is no loving way anyone writes "Torolf entered her like she was a lottery." in a supposedly erotic context and expects it to be taken seriously, that has to be a parody. And “Her body was like a beautiful flower that was opening and somebody was pushing their dick inside it.” is quite literally one of the funniest things I've read, possibly ever.
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Sep 11, 2017 22:41
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Brass Key posted:Yeah but the 35 year olds are generally good (or at least better) at it because they've been writing since they were dumb teens waxing rhapsodic about emerald orbs and bluenette hair. Its totally possible to do the same thing over and over for years and not get any better at it, especially if you absolutely refuse to take on board any negative feedback or criticism, and only really deal with an echo chamber of people who reinforce the exact thing you are doing.
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Sep 12, 2017 16:43
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As others have said, the Dresden books are good enough for what they are; Pulpy urban fantasy adventure books. In a genre that is filled with much worse sins, I'll take a fun pulpy potboiler with a little sense of humour about itself over 90% of the stuff published with the Urban Fantasy label. So yeah, enjoyable though not objectively good. The main character isnt the most special best at everything badass (instantly elevating the series over a good 70% of its competitors), they arent thinly veiled porn (although a lot of that nowadays I've seen moved out of urban fantasy into "paranormal romance" as a seperate section. There is a good chance that stuff sells better than the stuff I enjoy reading in all fairness), there is an actual recurring cast of supporting characters and things progress and change with some actual character growth and development. Its a low bar, but compare the Dresden books with many of their competitors and they actually look pretty good. I'm pretty sure I've said something similar in this thread, I remember complaining about the Iron Druid series as a specific example of the dogshit that infests the genre. Stuff I'd recommend in Urban Fantasy is a much shorter list than the stuff I'd recommend avoiding, and even then the stuff I'd recommend also tends to skew towards "fun but not necessarily objectively good". Rivers of London, Rook, American Gods, Dresden... Whoever recommended Dead Things (I think in this thread) that turned out to be a good shout, I read the three books in the series back to back. Sandman Slim and Nightside (I think, I burned through the nightside books really fast a few years ago so my memory of them is hazy) probably fall into "legitimately bad, but enjoyable anyway). SiKboy has a new favorite as of 10:26 on Sep 16, 2017 |
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Sep 16, 2017 00:25
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:My favourite unlikable character is Benvenuto Cellini. Like, are you hoping that someone says theirs is you, or....
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Oct 4, 2017 22:53
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It starts here. Honestly, they are pretty clearly prawns. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3770505&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=29#post459943640
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Jan 2, 2018 23:37
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Groke posted:Also he went on at some length about wanting to punch Terry Pratchett. gently caress that guy. Why did he want to punch Sir Terry?
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May 22, 2019 17:07
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FMguru posted:Terry said he wanted to end his life on his own terms, after receiving a diagnosis of a terminal wasting disease. loving hell... I'd have been less disgusted if his reason was "envy" as it turns out.
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May 22, 2019 17:35
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Antivehicular posted:This is the literary criticism equivalent of the essays about how every scantily-clad video game character's outfit makes sense because it's ~her culture~ or ~it powers her magic~ or a thousand other excuses to dance around the fact that this is fiction created by a person for a reason Sure, but its also worth bearing in mind that a character doing a thing in a book doesnt automatically mean that the author thinks that thing is cool and good. Nabokov wasnt a paedophile for example. Now, I'm not directly commenting on "A Boy and his Dog" because I havent read it (though I think I might have seen part of the movie maybe), but context is generally important. I dont know if it reads like "These are the excuses the author has put in to justify behaviour he seems to think is acceptable" or if it is "these are the things the author has put in to try and explore why people do hosed up things", and I dont think I personally can tell that from a wiki summary.
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Nov 22, 2019 15:20
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AlbieQuirky posted:Sure, but it’s also incredibly boring when a writer’s only way of depicting conflict for women characters is rape. Not combat or privation or torture of any other kind, just rape and always rape. Absolutely, I have no arguement on that score. It is very often super lazy writing and/or unthinking misogyny, and is depressingly common in genre fiction. For an example I have actually read, I recently tried to read the demon cycle books by peter v brett (the painted man and so on) and man... There is more rape in those books that I was expecting. Both male and female main characters are raped in the first two books, which is about where I quit because no thank you. I'm just pushing back against the idea that it automatically makes the author a "sex weird". My read on it was instead that the author was really loving bad at coming up with motivations for characters to do things, and also that his go-to for "shocking event happens!" or "characters suffer trauma" was "Rape". Now, some authors are absolutely weirdos putting their fetishes right up there on the page, but I feel like you can normally tell from the writing when an author is typing one handed. I'm just not a fan of the immediate assumption that "author writes character doing thing means author is condoning thing". And again, I havent read A Boy and his Dog (or really any Harlan Ellison now that I think about it), so I dont know how it was written and treated in the book. You've actually read it so if you tell me "the text reads very much like it was written like someone who loving loves rape" then I'll accept that, because you are basing it on something more than the wikipedia plot synopsis.
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Nov 23, 2019 01:28
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nonathlon posted:That's it. Pulled from obscurity for that reason and only that. Seems to me it'd be much more interesting to read and poke fun at mainstream trash, rather than an unpublished teenagers scribblings. Honestly I think they picked the unpublished scribbling because if they used some actual published trash there would be a decent chance there would be fans of that writer and/or the writer themselves doing a panel at that convention, and they didnt want that drama. So instead they make fun of the thing which no-one at the con could have been an unironic fan of.
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Jan 6, 2020 17:37
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:I've never read a Harry Potter book or seen a Harry Potter film. Okay.
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Apr 23, 2020 22:33
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Steady Player One.
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Jul 9, 2020 10:52
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ulex minor posted:this is definitely not the worst book I've ever read, but I was really, really disappointed after hearing such good things about Nathan Ballingrud - i suppose the bar is very low for genre fiction because there's a lot of trash horror novels out there and he's doing something a bit better than that at least but: In fairness, those are all from "Flights of Fancy: A Kitepunk Anthology".
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Jul 28, 2020 20:16
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Do you consider modern writers writing Sherlock Holmes stories to be fanfic writers? What about non-Lovecraft entries in the Cthulu mythos? What about licensed books, like the star wars EU? Did it make a difference to the fanfic status when disney declared it all non-canon?
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Jan 22, 2021 10:33
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Mr. Sunshine posted:I mean, yes? What's the useful difference between someone getting a modern Sherlock Holmes novel published, and someone uploading a similar novel to fanfiction.net? I was actually asking the other guy, you just replied to him first! As he is apparently the arbiter of what is and is not fanfic I'm curious as to where he draws the lines. I'm personally of the opinion that its a weird thing to get blown up about. A number of published authors started off writing straight up fanfic, and while its not my thing, if someone wants to spend their leisure time reading it or writing it, well more power to their elbow, they arent hurting anyone.
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Jan 22, 2021 10:46
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Sham bam bamina! posted:What I can't stand is when people need Paradise Lost to be fanfiction in order to validate themselves for all the fanfiction they read and all the books they don't – a dissonant combination of trying to legitimize fanfiction by conflating it with the classics and at the same time trying to take the classics down a peg, effected by conflating fandom and spirituality in a way that really turns my stomach – which might not be what everyone in the thread is doing but which I've seen drearily often regardless. I don't think that "high culture" is something that needs to be "inviolate" and uncontaminated by the rabble, but I do think that serious art does something that fanfiction is fundamentally uninterested in; it tries to bring you beyond yourself in some way, rather than give you more of what you already know you like. This has nothing to do with what I enjoy or don't enjoy (I can't stand War and Peace or Infinite Jest precisely because of their ambitions, and I like a fair amount of pulp that takes the "give them what they want" approach that divabot correctly mentioned as a common quality of pulp and fanfiction), and plenty of "literary" fiction is similarly hidebound by its own sets of tropes (everybody loves dunking on the "horny mid-life crisis" epidemic that John Updike and Philip Roth kicked off), but fanfiction is never going to produce a Shakespeare or a Dante, no matter how insistent the comparisons, because the superficial similarities don't change that they were driven by deeply different impulses from what drives fandom. Shakespeare was driven by the impulse to gets paid, which is rarely a possiblity in fandom, I'll give you that much.
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Jan 22, 2021 19:28
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Ibblebibble posted:https://twitter.com/readbytiffany/status/1378411866095935489?s=19 I've read it; It's set in feudal japan in the same way that game of thrones is set in 15th century england tbh. It uses some of the words (Shogun, Shogunate, the character names.... Uh... Thats about it I think?) and frankly if you crossed them out and replaced them with their western equivalents it would make zero difference to the story, its mainly a steampunk fantasy thing. the asian aspects are, as that tweet intimates, mainly just aesthetics.
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Apr 5, 2021 18:46
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Yeah, the Dresden Files have come up a few times, but on a basic level a) they are a deliberate (and originally spite fuelled*) attempt to write pure pulp, and b) the Urban Fantasy genre is so haunted by self insert protagonists, thinly veiled erotica and awful writing that the Dresden Files are easily in the top 10% of the genre by virtue of the protaganist having actual acknowledged flaws and broadly competant writing. IIRC there is literally one (maybe two?) sex scenes in the entire run of the books to date, and it is pretty cringey (writing sex is definitely not Butchers forte...) but thats incredibly restrained compared to some. Like I love the urban fantasy genre, "real life, but magic" just appeals to me, but its almost entirely trash. I'm willing to settle for the readable trash amongst it (Jim Butcher, Stephen Blackmoore, Daniel O'Malley, Ben Aaronovitch) over most of the rest. I have a post somewhere in this thread bemoaning it and listing many of the urban fantasy I've read thats worse that dresden, and I could almost certainly add another half dozen authors to that list by now. *I believe the story goes that Butcher submitted a fantasy story he was passionate about to a writing class for critique, and was given feedback that he felt would make it more cliched and generic. So he deliberately wrote a story with all the elements the instructor had mentioned, called "semi auto-magic" to show how bad it would be. But the instructor liked it, and Butcher reread it and kind of went "gently caress... There actually is something there" and reworked it into the first dresden files novel which ended up getting published. He did later go on to write and publish a fantasy series which is pretty much fine by the standards of the genre, I enjoyed it well enough. SiKboy has a new favorite as of 16:40 on Sep 28, 2021 |
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Sep 28, 2021 16:38
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Domus posted:How do you feel about his later books? I felt like the earlier stories are better, and much smaller in scale. When it’s “gotta save the city/world” every single time it felt overblown or formulaic to me. I think after the dinosaur, he just kind of decided he liked that scale. The later stuff wasn’t bad, I just felt it wasn’t as good. What do you think? Honestly I agree to a large extent; They suffered from escalating scale, as Butcher seems to feel he always has to top the previous story. Cant go back to solving magic murders and missing person cases when you've had Dresden fight an entire clan of vampires! Except you absolutely could, he just didnt. He never lowers the stakes really. So the basic premise of "Magic Private Eye" sort of fell by the wayside. I'm not even sure when the last time he takes a case on (or when he stops having an office!) instead of "wizard council/vampires/Sidhe court decide to gently caress with Harry deliberately" being the standard set up. Now, "Harry takes a simple seeming case, but woah, it turns out theres more scarier magic at play that it first seemed!" was also a formula, but it was a formula that fit the pulp feel better. If I had to pinpoint it, I'd say that I started to get fatigued with it when Harry lost his home in the basement and his car, the blue beetle. At that point it felt like it was a deliberate decision to move the character away from where he started, give him a new more magic home base that allowed for him to take on EVEN BIGGER THREATS! Before that it kind of felt like the escalation was slower, there would be 3-4 books in a row with similar stakes, then one that swept a lot of pieces off the board and made a new status quo, but by the time we get to book 9 it feels more like every book needs to be a major event. Most of his supporting cast started appearing less and less prominently as well, outside of the very core group. This has continued to the most recent book, book 17 (major spoilers here) where monsters destroy most of a major american city, kill thousands of people, and also a major supporting character. To me this completely changes the entire premise of the books, if magic is revealed to be real to everyone, by for example monsters destroying a major american city, then it kind of ruins the conceit of "real world but magic" Now, in fairness Butcher claims to have a 22 book "plus a trilogy" plan for the series (whats the difference between a 22 books and a trilogy plan and a 25 book plan? hosed if I know...) so I guess this is him starting to wind things up, in which case raising the stakes and throwing out a large part of the original premise does make a lot of sense. No need to keep your fictional world useable if you are about done writing in it after all. Seems a little early though, he's allegedly still got another 5 books to go, this felt a lot more like a 2 books to go escalation. I'm still reading them, but a lot of the fun is gone from the series, most of the likeable supporting cast are gone or changed to be almost unrecognisable from where they started, leaving mainly Harry who... Yeah, book 17 harry is a lot less fun than book 5 harry. Still want to see how it ends though, and they are still broadly competently written (although its PAINFULLY clear to me that books 16 and 17 were probably written as one book that they realised was far too big so cut in half. Book 16 is almost entirely preamble to the events of book 17).
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Sep 28, 2021 22:46
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AlbieQuirky posted:The first three or four were readable. I read some of those, but... SiKboy posted:Evfedu mentioned the Sandman Slim series. The main character of which is the baddest bad rear end to ever bad an rear end. Escaped from hell, went back to hell and took it over, wears a trenchcoat and drives a demonic motorbike. It is literally like the doodles in the margins of a teenagers maths note in novel form. The main character might even be half demon, or half angel or something. He is a prick, all his former friends are pricks, his enemies are also pricks, but not noticibly worse than his friends. I fell away from them after a few. Not the worst of the genre by a long chalk, but I find it tough going to keep up with a book series where I dont like any of the cast. Different strokes for different folks obviously.
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Sep 28, 2021 23:03
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Stexils posted:blackmoore sucks. i read the first book and the "mystery" was just incredibly obvious. Honestly, I dont read these books expecting a locked room mystery or anything, engaging (if largely predictable) pulp is A-OK with me. And the protaganist having a reasonably clearly defined (and expressly limited in scope) power set also helps prevent too much "Ahah, I actually had the perfect spell for this all along!" bullshit. Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:The sandman slim series is a pro read to me simply for the fact that over the series the main character acknowledges the fact he's hosed up, he's been through some seriously traumatic poo poo, and goes through the whole PTSD thing of getting help/recognizing the problems/changing his life around. That doesn't really happen much in urban fantasy. Yeah, so many Urban Fantasy novels go hard on either Norse or Roman/Greek gods that someone using Mesoamerican mythology is a real breath of fresh air. I enjoyed the Verus series up to a point but I was never on board with the romance between Verus and... whatever the other character was called. Also they had sort of the opposite problem from power creep in that I felt the main character rarely actually managed to achieve anything at all. I was already kind falling away from them when one of the later ones had the main character give an angry "People are sick of being told what to do by experts!" rant at a dinner party. Now for those of you not from the UK, "sick and tired of experts" is pretty much a pro brexit slogan, as every expert in basically everything warned that brexit would be the UK cutting their own throat, so having the main character of the book give this speech made dropping the entire thing and ticking "do not recommend me books by this author again" a real easy decision to make. It was also HILARIOUSLY out of character as the entire premise of the book is that this character is an expert in magic who tells people what to do and gets annoyed when they dont listen and poo poo goes sideways.
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Sep 29, 2021 17:11
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Kchama posted:I feel like every time Butcher writes something extremely stupid or terrible he always claims he was dared to do it. I mean, my read of that story is more a "listen to criticism of your writing, you are often too close to it to be objective" anecdote rather than "dthe books that pay my bills are stupid but its not my fault" anecdote to be fair. He may have claimed he was dared to write some parts of the dresden files (I'm guessing the dreadful sex scene? If I wrote the dresden files thats the first bit I'd disown myself), but if so I've not heard that one. But then I generally avoid learning anything about authors whose work I enjoy where possible, there is very little I could learn about an author that would make me like their writing more, and whole lot that would make me like it less. See, for example, a lot of poo poo in this thread! I only know the "this is stupid advice... Oh poo poo, actually this was good advice" story because its in the introduction to the short story collection, or one of the stories in it. On the subject of urban fantasy authors, one thing that drives me up the wall is when they put "cute" references to each others poo poo in. The general standard of writing isnt high in the genre, so it always sticks out like a sore thumb. The first alex verus novel (I think) has a line about "I heard about one guy in chicago advertises himself as a wizard in the phone book oh ho ho!" which is a reference to the dresden files where (back in the early ones where the premise was still private detective but magic) a recurring thing was his advert in the phone book that no-one took seriously. Dont remind people of another, more successful, book series they could be reading. If they like the dresden files it feels a bit like you are trying to claim some success by association, and if they dont it's a bad sign that you are obviously referencing a series the reader already doesnt like. I'm pretty sure there was a similar thing in an early Daniel Faust novel by craig schaefer, but dont hold me to that. But that isnt as bad as when authors (and I have only encountered this in urban fantasy and comic books, but I'm sure it happens elsewhere too) write each other in to their stories. For example I was reading one of the more recent stephen blackmoore books, I think it was Fire Season, and there is a cop character who gives his full name. And its super clunky too, like in a situation where it would feel natural for him to say "I'm Kevin", or "I'm Officer Hearne" he says "I'm Officer Kevin Hearne" and I was like "huh, that seems really weird..." then I noticed that one of the pull quotes on the first page of the book is by "Kevin Hearne, author of the Iron Druid Chronicles". In the introduction of the book (which I'd skipped) Blackmoore mentions that Hearne killed him off in one of Hearnes stories first. I just hate that poo poo. The absolute worst, and I completely mean the ABSOLUTE WORST example of this is in The Severed Streets by Paul Cornell. He writes Neil Gaiman in as himself. Like at a bar frequented by the magically sensitive, one of the characters bumps into a tall, tousle haired man with sunglasses and literally goes "Oh my god, arent you Neil Gaiman, the author?" And Neil Gaiman goes "Yes." and there is a whole conversation about how much the character loves Neil Gaimans books. Its absolutely painful. And that would be bad enough but a few chapters further on they go back and interview Neil Gaiman again as a witness who is integral to the loving plot. Thats where I tapped out.
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Oct 1, 2021 19:04
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HopperUK posted:That sounds insufferable and weird. I'd almost suspect there was betting involved. Its super uncomfortable, and really weird. Especially as the writer, Paul Cornell, is a reasonably successful british comics writer who has written for doctor who, while neil gaiman is a wildly successful british comics writer who has written for doctor who. So its entirely probable that they know each other (british comics isnt that big a world) and I'd hope that Gaiman gave his okay to it, but that doesnt make it actually read any better.
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Oct 1, 2021 19:24
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Sham bam bamina! posted:It sounds loving epic, actually. I could just be oversensitive to be fair, so you be the judge; The main character is a cop who has been touched by magic, and has infiltrated a bar frequented by the magicially sensitive community of london. The main plot is about a bunch of murders that may or may not be related to the ghost of jack the ripper and/or an occupy type protest movement. I'm not being coy about the plot here, I just never finished the book.     And if it was that I'd be like "well that was an awkward and wholly unnecessary cameo from a real life person in what has frankly been so far a slightly disappointing british urban fantasy novel" and move on. It was kind of out of loving nowhere, this was the second in a series, and the first wasnt great or anything (I believe it was based on a script cornell had written for a pilot episode of a show which never got made, and it really showed in places) but I was willing to give the second book some room to improve. The first had as far as I remember zero breathless fanboying over a real person. But wait, 20 pages later theres more. Did you know that Neil Gaiman, author and apparantly magical sight haver, also is a GIANT loving EXPOSITION MACHINE? Because writing your characters (who are supposed to be accomplished investigators) actually working things out about the magical abilities they gained in the first book is hard compared to having Neil Gaiman tell them things halfway through the second book. And also mentions Neverwhere, which, dont get me wrong was a good (albeit very low budget) TV show and a pretty good book too, but it again goes back to my rule of "dont remind people they could be reading a better book right now". I would spare you the second appearance because it really does drag on, but I want other people to suffer too, so I'm not going to.     Theres another 4 pages of this, and it doesnt get any more interesting, so I'm not going to screenshot all of it, just this snippet which amused me a little.  Okay, thats as far as I read in the book. Deleted it off my kindle (hence screenshots from the cloud reader here) but I have literally just now post found out while making this post that in fact HE COMES BACK AGAIN. When I searched the book for "Gaiman" I expected to find the first scene, a second scene where the main character tells his wife that he met him (the line about his wife being a big fan is in fact a lie as he himself is the big fan) which I actually cant find (presumably he doesnt call him by name in that scene) and the third scene at the hotel. But in fact he turns up again 90 pages later and from what I can tell is heavily involved in the plot. At this point its essentially real person fan fiction.
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Oct 2, 2021 00:22
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