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I buy everything I think I'm going to want to read, and then it sits in my giant to be read pile inside the nook app, staring at me sadly.
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Oct 19, 2019 14:18
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Silver2195 posted:Arthurian fantasy should embrace the anachronisms, IMO. Basically all the romances by Chretian de Troyes, etc. projected the customs of the High Middle Ages back into the Dark Ages. TH White’s The Once and Future King has some sort of jokey quasi-alternate history going on where Uther seems to have replaced William the Conqueror, in addition to Merlin being from the future. Agreed. Rewriting things to suit current mores is literally the most Arthurian thing you can do.
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Dec 12, 2019 19:19
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PawParole posted:Legacy of Heorot, and I didn’t like the coyote ( the ending was stupid as heck), I loved Heorot. Have you read the sequel to Legacy of Heorot? (Beowulf's Children, I think?) And there's a third, according to wiki, called Destiny's Road.
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Mar 19, 2020 19:56
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General Battuta posted:
If it's anything like the baen free library used to do, the numbers are really really good.
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Apr 28, 2020 16:57
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awesmoe posted:Hissing, hackles lifting, the chicken’s head rose. Kahlan pulled back. Its claws digging into stiff dead flesh, the chicken slowly turned to face her. It cocked its head, making its comb flop, its wattles sway. “Shoo,” Kahlan heard herself whisper. There wasn’t enough light, and besides, the side of its beak was covered with gore, so she couldn’t tell if it had the dark spot, But she didn’t need to see it. “Dear spirits, help me,” she prayed under her breath. The bird let out a slow chicken cackle. It sounded like a chicken, but in her heart she knew it wasn’t. In that instant, she completely understood the concept of a chicken that was not a chicken. This looked like a chicken, like most of the Mud People’s chickens. But this was no chicken. This was evil manifest. Never forget that the last Sword of Truth book introduced a major plot hole in the first book.
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Sep 18, 2020 19:46
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General Battuta posted:Legacy of Heorot Seconding this. Mount Tushmore is still the most realistic event to ever happen in a science fiction novel. EVER.
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Dec 26, 2020 21:49
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General Battuta posted:Wait what's Mount Tushmore (do I want this answered) Some drunk idiots use a laser to carve an rear end into a mountain and it's named Mount tushmore.
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Dec 27, 2020 18:30
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quantumfoam posted:I have no idea what "isekai" is. However here's the full post from SFL Archives 1991 A post from when the internet was good!
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Dec 29, 2020 01:39
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Selachian posted:Seconded. There are a few grim moments but it's pretty amusing. Thirded because a girl is the main character and there's no actual romance, just really good adventure.
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Jan 11, 2021 03:25
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Teddybear posted:These got deleted, what were they? They were her comparing her situation to being raped and victim blamed and then confirming that yes that was intentional.
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Apr 19, 2021 00:41
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Pennsylvanian posted:Like, years ago, there was a webcomic thread on the forums where someone posted a comic that took place in fantasy version of Pennsyltuckey and starred a sassy talking lich. Every once in a while I try to find it, but no luck as of yet. Not sure how sassy he is, but are you thinking of Steve Lichman?
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May 17, 2021 00:19
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Doctor Jeep posted:i'm on the 2nd book of the paksenarrion series and i hope she doesn't become a paladin of gird, these people are loving insufferable Spoiler for later on: The series was literally inspired by D&D, she's making a contrast between the newer "start as a paladin, have a very stringent code" style vs the older "Start as a fighter, become a paladin, have a much looser code" style. The Deed of Paksenarrion is great overall, Paladin's Legacy is a little less good, but still pretty good. It just suffers a bit from the many simultaneous mostly separate plotlines.
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Aug 26, 2021 14:18
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ulmont posted:Counterpoint: Uprooted never grabbed me enough to buy and Spinning Silver bored me to the point of not finishing it... More or less the same, I haven't done Uprooted yet, but Temeraire bored me into quitting, Spinning Silver didn't get until the third try, but A Deadly Education sucked me in immediately. It's very strongly taste dependent which Novik you like.
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Aug 27, 2021 12:43
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There was one I can't remember the title of right now where it's literally a party of villains (and a druid) questing d&d style to keep law from winning and locking down the world forever, it was so heavily d&d that there's literally a scene where the assassin makes the party hire him to turn on his class features.
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Sep 6, 2021 15:05
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Runcible Cat posted:Eve Forward's Villains by Necessity? Yeppers, good call.
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Sep 6, 2021 15:29
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StrixNebulosa posted:Also hi I just bought several Jack L Chalker novels because my brain has impulses sometimes, and I did enjoy the Quintara Marathon for being batshit crazy. You can't just not tell us which ones, you drat tease.
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Sep 12, 2021 03:57
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StrixNebulosa posted:Web of the Chozen, Lilith, Midnight at the Well of Souls, and Cybernetic Walrus. I made sure to get a proper spread so I can try his different series. The Four Lords of the Diamond is Jack Chalker at his most hosed up, while The Wonderland Gambit is Chalker at his least hosed up. Which is not to say Wonderland doesn't have some hosed up sex and body swapping stuff, because that's Chalker, but it's also really loving good. I read The Four Lords of the Diamond when I was like 14 and found it in my high school library. I really doubt anybody had read it but me.
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Sep 12, 2021 04:20
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fritz posted:The only Chalker remember strongly is the 'Soul Rider' series. From what I remember (plus a quick google search), the main difference between those and 'In the Barn' is that in the latter the sex slaves were not previously established characters who got transformed. Also that In the Barn is about how cool it is to have sex slaves and the other is about transformation and how the slavery part is loving awful. That's a pretty big difference. Chalker's always pretty clear about "this is poo poo people do to others and it's loving horrible look at it"
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Sep 13, 2021 01:17
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Patrick Spens posted:What are you even talking about? In the Barn is explicitly about how farming and slavery is evil. That's good at least!
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Sep 13, 2021 02:29
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Zore posted:I'll third the recommendation. Its probably my favorite of her novels. Fourth, it definitely went a ton easier for me than anything else of hers I've tried. Looking forward to the sequel but it comes out the same night I start my new L5R campaign.
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Sep 27, 2021 18:01
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MockingQuantum posted:I'm a big Black Company fan but I've never read Port of Shadows and probably never will. I can't think of a single instance of a writer returning to a character or setting or series after 10+ years away from it and actually producing something worth reading, or that adds anything to the existing body of work. I'm sure there's an exception or two that prove the rule though. There are, but Port of Shadows is definitely not one. Paladin's Legacy, the much later sequel series to The Deed of Paksenarrion, is absolutely worth reading, though.
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Feb 3, 2022 00:23
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Runcible Cat posted:Nah. Nobody's loving the weird aliens. Seems unrealistic to me.
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Feb 12, 2022 16:20
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Everyone posted:Basically Night Vale before Night Vale. It's a cheap remake of the Illuminatus! trilogy.
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Apr 26, 2022 21:28
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branedotorg posted:Actually rishratha makes perfect sense and promotes harmony and tolerance between races I doubt it, but we could probably rate authors on the Chalker index
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Aug 27, 2022 23:17
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Danhenge posted:Well, I'm a straight white guy but the whole of Gideon felt pretty gay (non-pejorative) to me. I'm not sure I'd call it throwaway there. From my perspective a lot of what I see in SFF has the thread running through pretty clearly. It's handled with more or less finesse, but it's rarely quite as minimal as you say. Re: Gideon If "oh, I am gay and you like me, but now I am dead" was a reference to Gideon I think that's a pretty bad misread of what was going on between Harrow and Gideon at the end. They aren't and weren't romantic, that was a purely "family" thing. Your PhD in history is showing.
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Oct 4, 2022 19:57
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ToxicFrog posted:That's a failure mode I generally associate with cishet romance novels, personally. It happens a LOT, there's a frequent rec yuri manga that I noped out of in the first chapter because the main character gets raped by the romantic lead and then asked to forgive her. And yaoi gets it largely because it carries over from the male part in cishet romance novels.
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Oct 5, 2022 14:49
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Completely wrong loving thread, how did that happen.
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Nov 28, 2022 13:52
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Zorak of Michigan posted:Scholomance also takes an interesting turn in the third book. It is a twist that is foreshadowed in the first book, telegraphed in the second, and finally hits in the third and when it hits, goddamn it's worth it, IMO.
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Dec 26, 2022 18:26
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Ravenfood posted:Honestly, if you didn't like the angst it doesn't really change in that regard, but I didn't find it particularly angst to begin with. Just in case you didn't get the message in the first and second books, the third book has literal commuter wage slaves and magical dwellings built on the eternal suffering of a single child I should be slightly more clear here about what I'm saying. The books are not angsty. The books are punk. NinjaDebugger fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Dec 26, 2022 |
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Dec 26, 2022 19:01
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rohan posted:Gotta say I never picked up on that (assuming you’re going for the Stranger Things ref and not something else entirely) but her full name being Galadriel as an explicit LOTR reference works well in the story. I doubt the overt reference is meant to cover for her riffing on a character in a Netflix show. Yeah she is full on Galadriel, right down to her affinity, the moment she gives in to any temptation she expects to go full "all shall love me and despair", and probably could.
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Dec 27, 2022 14:03
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sebmojo posted:The paladin by cj cherryh. Protag is a seen it all grumpy swordsman who gets pulled in for One Last Empire Toppling by a revenge obsessed peasant girl I bought this because sure, and I know Cherryh has a thing for older men and young women, but this dude is like 45 or something and she is 16 and extremely not interested and he will not loving stop.
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Jan 2, 2023 17:28
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Cardiac posted:The sequel is a letdown, since it is just the same story told from four different viewpoints, followed by random ramblings by people who wasn’t even in the main storyline. I loved Rashomon!
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Jan 13, 2023 00:27
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Rand Brittain posted:or "I wish that the following people I went to high school with would die an agonizing death, to be excruciatingly detailed herein:". I can feel the Inferno fans getting angry already.
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Feb 6, 2023 13:37
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Kestral posted:Since the recommendations for demon/hell-related media has gone beyond just books and into comics, we'd be remiss to not mention Berserk. Not recommend necessarily, but at least mention, because the Eclipse is one of the most mind-searingly awful depictions of those concepts I've ever encountered. I finished that section for the first time last night, and this entire day I've been getting vivid, intrusive flashbacks to those images. Absolute nightmare fuel. I can't in good conscience actually recommend people read it, and I'm not certain I want to continue either, but its reputation for powerfully affecting the reader is well-deserved. Berserk is loving great, but also a hard recommend. There's a reason it basically founded a genre. You've already gotten past the lowest point, though, so you should absolutely keep going.
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Feb 12, 2023 21:42
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:I realize this is a loaded question, but is swordheart more adventurous and comedic or is it all lovey dovey doe eyed romance cooties stuff? It is a romance that happens to involve a "disputed" inheritance, an attempt to force a woman into marriage, and solving that via a magic sword, some hijinks, and also priests of the rat (aka lawyers). There is quite a bit of adventure and violence involved. It's slightly more romancey than The Princess Bride.
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Mar 8, 2023 20:45
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dervival posted:That probably won't be an issue given my dear old mum decided in all her wisdom to introduce me to Piers Anthony at the ripe age of 8 and my standards have been warped ever since I read an absolute shitload of piers anthony as a kid and the dude was still way too fuckin horny for a 16 year old girl. He is theoretically forty, though the timeline seems a bit hinky to me for that. He's notably much hornier for a teen girl than the male leads in Tamora Pierce books.
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Apr 13, 2023 12:19
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Tezer posted:it was a bad photocopy of 'rendezvous with rama' a well known book published a half century ago. Hated that the author included italicized asides from characters that were clearly supposed to represent 'debrief' statements made after the events of the novel, but the characters died so obviously could not be interviewed after the events. because they were dead. ONE STAR I'm just picturing you reviewing American History X like this and laughing at you.
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Apr 28, 2023 21:58
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cant cook creole bream posted:Has anyone read the Jade Phoenix Saga books? It's YA cultivation fantasy, but it's written incredibly well with a cool world and a fun main character. Loved the audiobooks, especially the new second one. I forgot what thread this was and thought you were talking about the Battletech Legend of the Jade Phoenix trilogy, which is extremely yikes in a number of ways.
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May 25, 2023 12:29
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Psion posted:Oh, absolutely. She was in a class of her own as far as any long-term Baen author (which may be why she's letting them do the publishing here? She's been with Baen since the 80s?) but also I'd argue David Drake wrote solid books. Early Weber was alright also. Then... well. Eh. I don't know if they're still publishing anything there, but Elizabeth Moon and Mercedes Lackey both published a fair bit there. And weird libertarian gun nut he may have been, but I liked Joel Rosenberg's stuff and it's a goddamn pity that he died before finishing Mordred's Heirs.
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Oct 10, 2023 23:25
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Psion posted:yeah, I went back and checked and my memory of baen authors I've read was very incomplete. A cursory check of some recent books from Moon and Lackey show up as published by Hachette or Del Ray, for what it's worth. Was there some exodus of authors or is it all a string of coincidences? who can say. I think randomly speculating in the book barn is my limit for effort I want to put into the question Lackey, at least, was always split among publishers, her output for Baen was a very specific series of urbfant involving racer elves in california or something. Moon published a lot of her best stuff there, though, including The Deed of Paksenarrion.
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Oct 11, 2023 03:09
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