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Firefly by piers Anthony. It isn't so much a horror novel as it is a defense of pedophilia
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Jul 5, 2015 16:08
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The Vosgian Beast posted:Piers Anthony is cheating. How about Richard Laymon? His women characters are mostly just there to get raped and murdered. In some cases, the do the rape/revenge thing, some cases not. Some of his books have interesting jumping off points but often kind of stumble (to put it politely) on execution. Here's someone's blog, that dismisses one of his more repugnant books, his debut, The Cellar: http://toomuchhorrorfiction.blogspot.com/2011/09/cellar-by-richard-laymon-1980-its-sick.html quote:You got your rape and torture, but when it comes to depicting, even minimally, real human interaction and psychological motivation, Laymon's at a complete loss. Total amateur hour - The Cellar is that bad. I have been reading horror fiction for almost 30 years and it is easily one of the very worst books in the genre that I have ever read. He also has a book called Funland, about the homeless attacking people in a beachside town with an abandoned Funhouse. IT ends with a bunch of rear end in a top hat teenagers going to beat up the and torture homeless in the funhouse, and there, out of nowhere, with nothing to foreshadow this or any other fantastic happenings, there's a man riding a giant spider behind everything.
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Jul 5, 2015 19:47
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I read all those young star wars novels at the time, and liked them. To be fair, it was like1994 when the first wave of star wars nostalgia was at its peak. I was 10 and even though I was reading "real" books, I fell hard for everything star wars. Hell, just a couple of months ago I made a Star Wars reference at work, and nobody got it. And I work with a bunch of Star Wars nerds. Turns out my Obi-Wan quote was from the novelization of A New Hope, which I haven't read in over two decades. I guess what I'm saying is that for a kid, even crappy Star Wars stuff is awesome. Which I guess explains the prequels.
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Jul 18, 2015 02:39
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I got an autographed copy for Christmas. I didn't start it because I'm tired of fantasy series not being finished but hearing this I might not start at all
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Jul 19, 2015 19:55
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I didn't like anathem at all. It was like a crappy cross between name of the rose and dictionary of the khazars. I have a copy of snow crab on my to read list though
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Aug 5, 2015 17:21
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I recently was recommended rpo by someone who usually just reads David McCullough books. I told her I had heard mixed things, and she assured me that no it was awesome.
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Aug 13, 2015 12:03
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Reading Ready player One right now. I can see why people like it, and I probably would myself if the material were handled by a competent author. Parts of it are just cringeworthy to read. And reading this thread I know there's no hope for an ending where the main character gets berated for wasting his life on (someone else's) nostalgia and living in a fantasy world. And the whole, my lead character is infallible in his knowledge of 80s stuff, he's even better than a corporation with it's own 80s research department, and the whole post break up scene where he gets fat buys a sex doll and defends masturbation, then totally does virtual exercise to get fit in his haptic suit... It's also just poorly written. I don't want to say it's worse than the pop-culture laden high fidelity knockoffs I tried to pen back then, but it's on about the same level.
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Aug 30, 2015 15:47
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Hot on the heels of Ready player one, I started Michael chabon's telegraph avenue. I'm only about 120 pages in, and It's better written, but it's still a masturbatory nostalgia fest. This time for the 70s and it takes place in a 2004 where people still use 8 tracks. And it does the same thing where every time an album is mentioned it's followed by year and label in parenthesis.
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Aug 31, 2015 19:15
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muscles like this? posted:While most people know of Rosemary's Baby as a horror film, it was actually a novel first. The novel isn't really all that bad, what is bad however is how 30 years later the books author, Ira Levin, decided to write a sequel "Rosemary's Child." It takes place 36 years after the end of the first book and has Rosemary waking up from a magic coma that she was placed in by the coven that organized everything in the first book. The novel has a bizarrely racist subplot where a woman tricks everyone into thinking she's Indian by just getting a tan and has quite possibly the stupidest ending of any book ever. Rosemary's son, the Antichrist, accidentally fulfills Satan's plan to kill everyone on Earth with poison candles and Rosemary herself is then dragged to Hell by Satan. Then she wakes up and it turns out that both books were just a dream... OR WERE THEY? You forgot the subplot where her son keeps trying to seduce her. Levin is such s good writer otherwise it's hard to imagine this as anything but a giant gently caress you to publishers insisting on a sequel
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Oct 13, 2015 15:00
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AKZ posted:Coldheart Canyon. gently caress you, Clive Barker for tricking me into reading furry porn. Actually, all contemporary Clive Barker. I remember liking cold heart canyon, and don't remember any furry porn bits. I remember a Haunted painting, old Hollywood, though maybe I made up a better book in my head or just skipped over the furry bits
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Oct 15, 2015 12:07
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Sleeveless posted:Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is literally just the public domain text of Pride and Prejudice with a few chapters of zombie fanfiction (and also ~ninjas~ :iamafag:) awkwardly inserted into it, calling it a book is too generous. It's a novelty item, a manufactured product made by mashing up random internet memes and public domain texts in the name of making something with a title and cover that people on the internet would buy to show off how wacky they are. It also lacks the alliteration of sense and sensibility and seamonsters. It really should have been pride and prejudice and poltergeists. Which I suppose is just wuthering heights
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Oct 16, 2015 12:01
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:I might catch some flak for this, but I could not stand Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. It feels like it desperately needs an editor to clean up all the twee prose tics and it also just needs to get to the loving point. There's only so much "rich people attend parties with other rich people who they do not like but are icily polite to" I can take before I give up. I don't think it's a terrible book but it could have been a few hundred pages shorter.
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Nov 1, 2015 14:53
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As far as stupid fantasy novels, the drizzt books aren't bad, and I really like the frozen frontier setting of ice wind dale. Salvatore is mostly competent and they're kind of interesting. Now the shanarra books, those are some boring bog standard fantasy novels.
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Dec 5, 2015 15:25
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I've never been able to make it through Carrion Comfort. I'm usually pretty good at powering through bad books, but that one for whatever reason I just couldn't do it.
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Dec 7, 2015 03:12
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I really like house of leaves. It's like the horror novel equivalent of infinite jest. I also really liked wizard and glass ( my least favorite dark tower is drawing of the three)
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Dec 7, 2015 12:52
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Oh yes, I blocked out only revolutions. I'm a big House of Leaves fan(I enjoy it as a clever horror novel, not high literature or anything) so I was excited for only revolutions but that book is a hot mess. Still want to check out the familiar though
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Mar 28, 2016 12:05
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John Big Booty posted:Not very likely. What factored most into the writing of the book was "can I write something more homoerotic and grossly goth than Anne Rice?" Poppy z brite is fantastic at creating atmosphere, everything else is just really gross. Her short story collection is pretty good, and I guess she now writes mysteries about a New Orleans chef, so hopefully less gay vampire incest
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May 3, 2016 13:40
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I thought the original dune was just ok. Can't imagine what I'd think of the non Herbert books. Not that I'm really one to speak since in a wheel of time fan. Though at least in that case the guy who finished the series put it back on the rails
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Jun 28, 2016 23:42
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The_White_Crane posted:UNITED STATES OF JAPAN Heads up, It's a deal of the day on kindle today
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Jul 2, 2016 12:51
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I read white noise recently and liked it. It's very much an 80s white dude book, and it's certainly no Vonnegut, but some bits were clever, like the barn famous for being the most famous barn in America. Generally I think it works, and it's at least well written, so I don't think it quite deserves to be in the same thread with such winners as rpo
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Jul 15, 2016 10:52
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Mouse Dresser posted:It's been brought up before, but I just want to echo the sentiment: gently caress "The Night Circus" by Erin Morgenstern. I'm reading it right now, and I'm enjoying it. I can see thinking it's a little twee, but it's not a bad book.
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Jul 23, 2016 23:30
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Samfucius posted:I've never read it and know nothing about it. Based solely on the cover art, does it think it is way more witty and precocious than it actually is? Is it intended for girls who watched every single Johnny Depp/Tim Burton movie in high school? Granted I've got like 100 pages to go , but it's sort of somewhere between Something Wicked Comes This Way and Johnathon Strange and Mr.Norrell.
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Jul 23, 2016 23:45
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Brass Key posted:I can't remember what the first one was, but the other two were King Rat and Germinal. Made weirder by the one being an ~exotic~ chieftain's daughter that he sneaks out of a prison camp to sleep with and the other being an underfed coal-mine worker who dresses like a boy (and yet he can see her "womanly softness" through her clothes or something?). I loved Shogun (even with it's problems), and I've got a couple more of Clavell's so-called "Asian Saga" on the shelf. Glad King Rat isn't one of them, but now I do't know even if I should bother.
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Jul 24, 2016 16:04
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flosofl posted:I can remember when there use to be a TV campaign on all the poo poo-tier local stations when I was a kid in the 80s. Do they still run these? Whoa. I had completely forgotten about that but remembered it almost perfectly once you posted. I think i remember seeing it during commercial breaks for Denver the last dinosaur
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Aug 25, 2016 16:51
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GoGoGadgetChris posted:Name of the Wind, holy poo poo what a slog. I've had lots of people whose taste I otherwise respect recommend that. I was even given a signed copy for christmas one year that I still haven't read
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Aug 30, 2016 00:32
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Sanderson really nailed the ending to Wheel of Time. I haven't read much else by him, but if he could salvage the clusterfuck that had turned into, he can't be all bad.
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Aug 31, 2016 11:18
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Berious posted:I read Ready Player One because the internet recommended it. fixed. Terrible book, but lots of people like it. I really don't get it. I think Stranger Things does the 80s nostalgia pop-scifi thing way better.
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Sep 9, 2016 23:14
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So I know Robert Jordan has some haters here. I mostly like Wheel of Time, despite its flaws, and was glad Sanderson wrapped things up in a satisfying manner after Jordan took things off the rails. Anyway I'm a bit of a Jordan apologist, and when I saw he had a book I never heard of at the used book store, I picked it up. It's a historical fiction about the American Revolution? What could be so bad? Well to start, here is its original 1980's cover:  So yea, it's sort of a bodice ripper, with a protagonist who is super awesome at everything. Sexing up ladies, clerical work, and fighting for America's freedom. Michael Fallon is on the run for killing a british soldier in self defense after stopping him from raping a bar maid. So he runs to America and becomes an indentured servant in the Carolinas. He's super good at clerical work, and before long has his own plantation. There's even his best buddy a free black man who tells him how awesome slaves actually have it. And how he's just going to buy a slave for a wife. And Michael discovers how hard it is to be a poor slave owner. To steal abit from the political cartoon thread "Slavery, really-not so bad."-a black man-a white guy Then there's more of the book's sexual politics. Seducing, or rather being seduced by, a sixteen year old. And then said 16 year old is mad because he goes off for business so she tricks his archrival into raping and marrying her. All this while he forrest gumps his way into every major historical figure from the time. You'll also discover that contrary to popular belief, those lazy northerners didn't do poo poo. It's abysmal, and only the first part of a trilogy. Think I'll skip the rest.
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Nov 19, 2016 14:43
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Alhazred posted:That's a really white list... Did you not see him mention Japan? 
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Jul 29, 2017 13:38
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I just read My Best Friend's Exorcism, which also an 80's nostalgia fest, but at the service of the story, and not just a list of things you remember. They leaned real hard into the nostalgia for the paper back cover too. So the nostalgia thing can be done well if you're a competent writer.
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Aug 5, 2017 15:24
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Dan Simmons best work is phenomenal. But his bad stuff is some of the worst I've ever read. Not a whole lot of middle ground with him
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Aug 11, 2017 14:47
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Comrade Koba posted:I liked it, wasn't great but good enough to make me feel a little bit exicted about the upcoming TV series. I know I just said there's no middle ground with Simmons but this might be it. It's the same gimmick as terror or drood but executed poorly. Mileage may vary Depending on how much you enjoy mountain climbing stories. I read it at a time I was on a big Everest kick so I enjoyed it, but it's the weakest of his good novels and the twist is kind of groan worthy.
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Aug 18, 2017 13:05
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Comrade Koba posted:You sure did. Still better than flashback!
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Sep 3, 2017 19:40
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 just finished this winner last night. It's bad... so, I'm going to spoil the hell out of it. There's this kid bucky, and his two buds, one is a good kid who is bullied in to hanging out with him, and the other kid is a native kid, who has been held back a lot and is like 15 hanging out with twelve years old. He's an alcoholic who pops all the valium, and can't read so he just looks at the pictures in porn mags. Bucky starts spraypainting sheep, and kills one of them. Then he kills a sheep, and then he starts killing people. The sweedish chef stereotype. The old busy body who calls the cops on him! Then he goes to the halloween party the whole town is at. The power goes out. and... Nothing happens. Halfway through the book and halloween is over. It's basically there so he can wear his Captain Terror halloween costume. Which is glow in the dark, has lots of pockets, and is really tight and keeps showing his erection when he kills people. Captain Terror has a rule of two. What you do to me, I do back to you twofold!. And he draws some pictures of himself killing a lot of naked ladies. The teacher, understandably disturbed whne she finds it, talks to his mom about it. You find out he's a child of rape, and his father was a psycho vietnam vet that pimped out and raped his mom, and died on another tour of nam. Then a bunch of nothing happens where he plots to kill the teacher, attacks the good kids sister, and falls off a cliff and dies. I was falling asleep during the last ten pages, and might have missed why he fell off the cliff (Ithink he was being chased by the teacher's father, who was the only one who knew he was killing people) I don't really care enough to go back, it was all tripe and not even entertaining tripe.
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Oct 10, 2017 11:09
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I liked sticp, but nightfilm is way better. I cut sticp a bit of slack because it’s a first novel. I mean it’s not perfect, but drat if it isn’t a farsight better than most things posted here, first novel or otherwise
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Nov 12, 2017 13:16
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eating only apples posted:Japan is great at thrillers though - I'm a big fan of Confessions by Kanae Minato. The movie is great too. Yea Confessions is an entertaining read. I'm not sure if all the twists would hold up to scrutiny, but I don't care. The first time through was a helluva ride. Natsuo Kirino writes some great stuff too, but I think only three of her books are in English. Getsuya posted:I picked up another one off that list called Beelzebub. Reviews have warned that if you hate bugs and like cats you shouldn't read it. Both of those things apply to me so I should have a fun time. If there are any highlights I'll post them. and you might as well just share that list. Sounds rad Ambitious Spider has a new favorite as of 02:46 on Dec 19, 2017 |
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Dec 19, 2017 02:39
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Getsuya posted:I linked it a few posts up, but these are all in Japanese. The google translations are pretty fantastic: "A certain summer in the '90s. A group of "TC members" gathered at Futaba mountain is going to be murdered one by one by the hands of that suddenly appeared. Blood splashes wet the night, the torn pieces of meat blooms in bloom ... feast of infernal hell. But do not be dazzled by this fear. An unprecedented trap set by the writer awaits the reader behind the tragedy. - The most fearable and amazing horror and mystery drawn with a stylist full of groove feeling." " Sanae Kitajima is a psychiatrist who is involved in terminal care at hospice. Lovers and writer Takanashi was a pathological death phobia, but after participating in the Amazon research team hosted by the newspaper company, the personality showed a strange transformation and was fascinated by the "death" that was so scared As I was, I committed suicide. In addition, it is understood that other members of the survey team have committed suicide one after another in an unusual way. What on Earth happened? What does Takanashi leave just before his death say "Can you hear the angels of angels?" The fear of the unexpected attacks you." wish you could get the whole books translated that way
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Dec 19, 2017 14:38
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But not Piers Anthony's Firefly. Going in expecting a giant killer lightning bug will only leave you severely disappointed. For those wondering- The real monster is piers anthony for writing a book that functions as a giant defense of pedophilia.
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Dec 22, 2017 12:15
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DACK FAYDEN posted:I take it "Nibiru" didn't tip you off? Sadly, Wiki only has the dude who made the first ancient astronaut theory rather than my favorite totally batshit "Nibiru is in Earth's orbit but exactly six months behind so it's always hidden by the sun" theory. I mean I know about Nibiru and stitchins craziness, but I didn't know there was a scientology link there. Doesn't say so in the wikipedia link either.
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Jan 3, 2018 23:36
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Arivia posted:I read it all. I remember liking it. Yea STiCP isn't a bad book. A little pretentious and overambitious? Sure, but it's a first novel.
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Feb 7, 2018 12:38
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