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God I love me some bad fantasy. It's basically all I read from like 7 to my twenties. There is bad fluff and just bad, but I ate that poo poo up. I reread David Edding's 4 cycles (Belgarion and Sparhwak series) like every other year or so, and I want to reread all of Feist's series as I think he's finally ending it. My first that I can remember reading was Lloyd Alexander's Prydain series. I read and reread them and my parents took me to the Black Cauldron and I remember being loving pissed. That movie sucked. Also, I wrote him a letter and he wrote me back and I was over the moon. I still have it somewhere around, I should really scan it.
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Apr 7, 2022 20:57
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I loved Lloyd Alexander when I was a kid, and in looking for something similar I read the Narnia books, but after the first couple it became a hate-read as Lewis really leaned into blundering around Christian allegories and got more and more boring and incoherent. I have vague memories of Voyage of the Dawn Treader mostly because his obsession with the ocean being sweet just struck me so deeply weird.
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Apr 7, 2022 21:46
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Aslan tier: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; The Magician's Nephew Good tier: Prince Caspian, Dawn Treader, Silver Chair poo poo tier: Horse and His Boy, Last Battle
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Apr 7, 2022 21:50
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super sweet best pal posted:Aslan tier: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; The Magician's Nephew I think they are all good apart from the last battle, though the horse and his boy is fairly racist in retrospect I guess lol
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Apr 7, 2022 21:59
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I was really young when I read the Chronicles of Narnia and only have vague memories of it, and for that I am glad.
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Apr 7, 2022 22:08
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Although it isn't bad but if it had published today, Dracula would surely have been classified as urban fantasy. There is a nice part about halfway through the book when Lucy has been attacked by Dracula for the last time, and as she feels her life draining away she scribbles down on a note what happened that night. And she scribbles down about 1200 words, with several similes, including one reference to stories from travelers in the desert. It just goes on and on and must have required multiple sheets of paper. I find that image pretty hilarious, although everyone in that book writes the wordiest diaries in the world.
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Apr 7, 2022 22:17
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Mooey Cow posted:Although it isn't bad but if it had published today, Dracula would surely have been classified as urban fantasy. There is a nice part about halfway through the book when Lucy has been attacked by Dracula for the last time, and as she feels her life draining away she scribbles down on a note what happened that night. Interesting to contrast that with Frankenstein, written like 80 years earlier but eminently readable.
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Apr 7, 2022 22:20
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CaptainSarcastic posted:Interesting to contrast that with Frankenstein, written like 80 years earlier but eminently readable. It's readable, it's just the framing devices you shouldn't think too much about.
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Apr 7, 2022 22:22
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sebmojo posted:I think they are all good apart from the last battle, though the horse and his boy is fairly racist in retrospect I guess lol I agree, though I liked certain aspects of the first half of the Last Battle. Once they 'die' the story gets too heavy handed though. My favorite is The Silver Chair because I'm a sucker for Journey to the Center of the Earth type stories.
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Apr 7, 2022 22:33
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sweet geek swag posted:I agree, though I liked certain aspects of the first half of the Last Battle. Once they 'die' the story gets too heavy handed though. My favorite is The Silver Chair because I'm a sucker for Journey to the Center of the Earth type stories. Silver Chair is my favorite too, my mom used the series to teach me to read when I was 4 or so and it's the only one other than The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe I actually remember anything about.
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Apr 7, 2022 22:43
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super sweet best pal posted:Aslan tier: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; The Magician's Nephew reepicheep makes an appearance in the last battle! that made the book for my daughter when i was reading them all to her
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Apr 7, 2022 22:50
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i don't read much fantasy book sbut out of curiousity: would you trust a king vole who could speak english or a king mole who also could speak english
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Apr 7, 2022 22:51
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sweet geek swag posted:I agree, though I liked certain aspects of the first half of the Last Battle. Once they 'die' the story gets too heavy handed though. My favorite is The Silver Chair because I'm a sucker for Journey to the Center of the Earth type stories. Same, Eustace and jane are much better characters than the tedious pevenseys
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Apr 8, 2022 00:07
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nut posted:i don't read much fantasy book sbut out of curiousity: would you trust a king vole who could speak english or a king mole who also could speak english Ooh, err, that mole king, 'ees a good'n, oye reckon.
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Apr 8, 2022 01:01
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Atopian posted:Read Zelazny for the prose (and the everything, tbh). China Mieville is apparently a sex pest, so maybe don't read him or at least don't pay for his poo poo.
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Apr 8, 2022 01:02
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Atopian posted:Read Zelazny for the prose (and the everything, tbh). read Dick for the drugs
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Apr 8, 2022 01:02
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LorneReams posted:God I love me some bad fantasy. It's basically all I read from like 7 to my twenties. There is bad fluff and just bad, but I ate that poo poo up. Lloyd Alexander was great and should not be in this thread <  >
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Apr 8, 2022 01:10
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.random posted:Lloyd Alexander was great and should not be in this thread < It was more of an aside. Taren Wanderer was one of THOSE books that literally changed my entire worldview as a kid, and the payoffs in the High King are something I've never felt since. It's a high I've been chasing since 10.
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Apr 8, 2022 03:44
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Sometimes I wonder if the preponderance of Trashy Fantasy Series Drek isn't entirely down to the growing marketplace dominance of chain bookstores like Waldenbooks back in the day. Unless you had a used bookstore with a robust SF/Fantasy section - which weren't all that common - and you were a kid who liked dragons, well, you got a Dragonlance book 'cause that's what was on the dang shelves. I always go back to Roadmarks, it seems like late career fluff but I love it dearly
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Apr 8, 2022 04:21
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precision posted:read Dick for the drugs Dick's epitaph at the end of A Scanner Darkly is beautiful
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Apr 8, 2022 04:22
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LorneReams posted:It was more of an aside. Taren Wanderer was one of THOSE books that literally changed my entire worldview as a kid, and the payoffs in the High King are something I've never felt since. It's a high I've been chasing since 10. Hello Other Me. I reread those a few years ago as a 40-something and that was a great trip.
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Apr 8, 2022 05:28
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.random posted:Lloyd Alexander was great and should not be in this thread < his aragorn was too much of an aragorn, but other than that i remember his books being good
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Apr 8, 2022 08:42
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:China Mieville is apparently a sex pest, so maybe don't read him or at least don't pay for his poo poo. i don't doubt that a bit, because he's a fantasy/scifi author, but iirc the accusations were about a messy breakup and maybe cheating, not raping or putting stepsons in whipping cages
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Apr 8, 2022 08:44
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^^was it cheating? The woman's account was so vague and wordy I thought it was about not closing an open relationship.
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Apr 8, 2022 09:03
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I kept going down the rabbit hole. Tl;dr it sounds like he was in an open relationship with someone and then got involved with this woman. She claims he did what sounds like sociopath poo poo (and, reading between the lines, probably kink) to make her love him and then he cut her loose. According to her, after she went public with it, lots of other women came to her with the same story of being manipulated/abused the same way.
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Apr 8, 2022 09:14
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i like nice words
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He was also trying to get his political party to take rape allegations seriously at the time, and that got tied into the way people talked about it.
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Apr 8, 2022 09:17
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His friends were insinuating it was a fake claim by the opposition trying to make him and his party look bad. But I think we can rule that out because they probably wouldn't have written 50,000 words all over the place
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Apr 8, 2022 09:21
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Mooey Cow posted:Although it isn't bad but if it had published today, Dracula would surely have been classified as urban fantasy. There is a nice part about halfway through the book when Lucy has been attacked by Dracula for the last time, and as she feels her life draining away she scribbles down on a note what happened that night. The book is very funny on purpose, so I think the author might have been a bit tongue in cheek there. The part with the missing wolf at the zoo and the interview with the zookeeper was hilarious, and there's some really good comedy when the dude is at Dracula's castle in the beginning and sees him spider climbing nude down a sheer cliff face. Also they beat Dracula by just kicking the poo poo out of him and stabbing him with ordinary knives which is pretty good.
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Apr 8, 2022 09:28
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Anne Whateley posted:His friends were insinuating it was a fake claim by the opposition trying to make him and his party look bad. But I think we can rule that out because they probably wouldn't have written 50,000 words all over the place 
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Apr 8, 2022 09:32
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Dr. Jerrold Coe posted:Dick's epitaph at the end of A Scanner Darkly is beautiful The part near the end of Valis where he starts talking about him and Horselover Fat being two separate people again made me legit sad when reading it for the first time.
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Apr 8, 2022 12:27
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.random posted:Lloyd Alexander was great and should not be in this thread < I mentioned it earlier in the thread, but I just read the prydain series again this year. I’m in my 40s now and I hadn’t read them since I was 8-9 or so. They hold up incredibly well. They are still for kids, but the writing is good and the themes are fantastic. I gave my 7 year old nephew the Book of Three last weekend, I hope he asks for the rest.
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Apr 8, 2022 12:51
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Do him a favor and never mention Disney's The Black Cauldron.
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Apr 8, 2022 15:25
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Oh I won’t
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Apr 8, 2022 16:16
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ScienceSeagull posted:That sounds cool, do you remember the book/story title? I wish I did! Only that it was a dark blue cover with a cool space eagle on it, and there was another story that had huge metal ants that didn’t seem to be entirely biological or robotic.
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Apr 8, 2022 16:56
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Dr. Jerrold Coe posted:Dick's epitaph at the end of A Scanner Darkly is beautiful that one line always haunts me "we were just kids playing, and we got punished for it" or whatever. speed is a hell of a drug
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Apr 8, 2022 17:45
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sweet geek swag posted:I agree, though I liked certain aspects of the first half of the Last Battle. Once they 'die' the story gets too heavy handed though. My favorite is The Silver Chair because I'm a sucker for Journey to the Center of the Earth type stories. Lol I remember the stinging taste of betrayal reading the Last Battle when I was 14. Like I remember yelling at my friends about the books were actual Christian bullshit. Haha good times E: I'm half sure it affected my turn towards atheism. Thanks Caroll. You made me an unbeliever.
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Apr 8, 2022 18:19
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Shageletic posted:Lol I remember the stinging taste of betrayal reading the Last Battle when I was 14. Like I remember yelling at my friends about the books were actual Christian bullshit. Haha good times The Chronicles of Narnia were written by C.S. Lewis.
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Apr 8, 2022 21:29
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Shageletic posted:Lol I remember the stinging taste of betrayal reading the Last Battle when I was 14. Like I remember yelling at my friends about the books were actual Christian bullshit. Haha good times I double-checked, and apparently the C.S. in Lewis's name stood for "Clive Staples" which somehow seems fitting. "STFU Clive!" I was raised with a complete absence of religion, so when I read the Chronicles of Narnia I really didn't know much about Christianity and the apologia didn't make much sense to me but still managed to be tedious and annoying.
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Apr 8, 2022 21:32
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I didn’t realize that the last battle was a Christian parable, but I also didn’t realize that they died. In retrospect I don’t think I made it that far in the books.
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Apr 8, 2022 21:47
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poisonpill posted:I didn’t realize that the last battle was a Christian parable, but I also didn’t realize that they died. In retrospect I don’t think I made it that far in the books. eustice and jill mention the last thing they remember from the world in england is hearing a really loud noise on the train before they came back to narnia and peter and edmond mention the last thing they remember is seeing the train make the turn too fast while they were waiting on the platform. by the end it's pretty spelled out that aslan's country and the garden that opened its gates for them is heaven. presumably the train crash killed the characters on the train and the ones standing on the platform waiting to greet them. the characters they met in narnia died during the battle. the book was published only a few years before lewis died so while the "heaven  " is a pretty common reaction to it, i think it's worth looking at in context.
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Apr 8, 2022 21:59
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