|
I know I missed Dragonlance chat but I remember reading the original trilogy in 6th grade and thinking it was the coolest thing ever. It was the first fantasy I had read that wasn't classical mythology or Narnia. One of the my favorite characters was the wizard Fizban. Afterwords I picked up whatever was right next to it on the fantasy paperback rack and within 10 pages they meet the wizard Zifnab and I just noped out immediately.
|
#
¿
Sep 11, 2020 22:11
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 15, 2024 11:19 |
|
|
I can vouch for Narnia being amazing when you're 4. One benefit is that you don't have the context to be annoyed by how extremely christian it all is. Silver Chair was my favorite.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 14, 2020 12:47
|
|
|
ElectroMagneticJosh posted:The thing that bugged me about Dragonlance was how the DnD alignment and spell systems were part of the story in a way that drew the reader out of the stories. I didn't play DnD (unless you count some of the video games) but quickly realized they were describing game mechanics. Didn't the Kender die from a poison needle trap when opening a chest? If I'm remembering correctly and that was a thing I guarantee it was a dice roll.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 16, 2020 02:51
|
|
|
muscles like this! posted:It has been a while since I've read them but doesn't the last Merlin book kind of leave things unresolved? I bought that huge tome with all 10 Amber books and as I was nearing the end I kept thinking "How is he possibly going to wrap this up in 50, 20, 10, etc pages." Then in the last couple pages the writing suddenly changes and he rushes through a handful of immediate plot points and the series is over. It was super disappointing.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 19, 2020 12:19
|
|
|
ChubbyChecker posted:yeah, and the wheel of time could have been good if it had been at most the length of the lotr I think just chopping the length in half would have helped immensely. A lot of the early books while not masterpieces were still pretty fun. IIRC it was the 6+ books where it felt like nothing of consequence happened for a thousand pages. Plus when you're a nerdy teen with a ton of free time who likes escapist fantasy books sometimes you just want to spend more time in that cool fantasy world, so length can be a good thing if it's well written.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 20, 2020 16:58
|
|
|
muscles like this! posted:Ehhh, IIRC Scott Lynch has health issues that have caused the delays. He's not like GRRM and Rothfuss who are running around playing at being a respected author without actually writing anything. I vaguely recall hearing he was struggling with depression or something similar. I enjoyed all 3 of the Locke Lamora books so if he puts out another I'd read it.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 20, 2020 22:09
|
|
|
Black August posted:yeah I have no illusions of making writing money unless it's writing the slush trash and smut for a little extra spending. reading more is what I'm trying to work on now, last thing I got through was the excellent Southern Reach trilogy, and that's RIGHT up the alley of stuff I've always enjoyed writing myself. that, and the Three Body Problem books. I enjoyed the Three Body books but there's some stuff in there that would seem downright sad puppy-ish if it came from the western sf scene. For example (major spoilers)Earth is targeted for invasion by an advanced alien species, but devises a mutually assured destruction scheme to keep them from attacking. In response the aliens, under the guise of cultural/scientific exchange, set to work feminizing all of humanity. It gets to the point where someone from our time wouldn't even be able to distinguish men from women, and the only "real men" left were ones who are/had been in cryo-sleep. Eventually it's time to elect a new MAD button presser to take over for the guy who came up with the system and is getting very old. The now-feminized humans elect the hapless female POV character rather than one of a posse of unfrozen Men Who Get Things Done. She fucks up within seconds of assuming the job and the invasion is back on.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 21, 2020 15:07
|
|
|
Akbar posted:Yeah but he also says that the female protagonist basically did a justifiable thing, but that the situation was extremely hosed and it wouldn't have mattered in the end anyways because there are always more advanced aliens who want to kill you. Also the 20th century male solution was to go rogue and kill everyone who disagreed with their authoritarian ways, which probably wasn't going to end well either. I agree that the gendered descriptions are real hamfisted but I'm not sure Liu makes a clear stand that one gender is superior, just that humanity's morality and institutions are doomed to failure but flawed morality and hope are still better than none at all. I think in that particular situation pushing the MAD button was absolutely the right thing to do since that space ship ends up doing it anyway and it buys humanity a few more centuries rather than being subjected to an Australian cannibal holocaust. I guess yeah that universe was always doomed but that's kinda like saying you're just going to die some day so why bother getting out of bed. The female POV character mostly just gets dragged around by events put into motion by various male characters (aside from the alien contact/invasion, I suppose) and it ends up working out basically ok for her. Like she inherits some mega corporation and Mr Getsshitdone says "put me in charge and we'll create FTL technology". She does, and he almost does, but in the end she chickens out and tells him not to. But then when the solar system is about to be destroyed whoops looks like he actually did anyway so she's saved!
|
|
#
¿
Sep 22, 2020 23:40
|
|
|
Black August posted:I guess the impression I got from the author was they consider the feminine to be superior and the 'hard men of the old world' to be murderous aberrants - the issue didn't seem to be 'more feminine is bad' but 'over-reliance on constant information flow is making the post-Sophon humans infantile' Maybe that's what he intended, but he expresses humans becoming more infantile by having them become feminized. The trisolarans flood human culture with gynoids and chick flicks until human men are indistinguishable from women and human society is unable to defend itself. This is directly contrasted to unthawed 21st century men who are conveniently always hanging after the timeskips and save humanity from annihilation on multiple occasions. Well postpone annihilation anyway. I'm not saying the book is Chinese Victoria or anything but there's some serious sexism on display. (which is common as dirt in western SF as well, of course)
|
|
#
¿
Sep 22, 2020 23:58
|
|
|
TBH the Dragonlance books are just fine if you're a sixth grader who just wants to read something with a dragon on the cover. Maybe that entire demo has been swallowed by YA, I dunno.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 1, 2020 00:50
|
|
|
Deptfordx posted:I'm pretty sure any contemporary bookish teen used to reading modern YA would be "WTF is this BS?" if given the original Dragonlance trilogy to read. Well yeah, I meant like an 11 year old.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 1, 2020 01:26
|
|
|
.random posted:I read a book or two of this as a young lad, I think. It includes BDSM-fueled magic or something? I am glad I only half remember any of this. Like a quarter of the first book is the protagonist being tortured by a magic dominatrix. The magic dominatrices actually become his personal ginyu force for most of the series. I read a bunch of those because I was a dumb 12 year old who never stopped reading a fantasy series once I had started it, but then I got to the one where he defeats communism by sculpting Michelangelo's David and His Big Titty GF and then destroying it, and it became to stupid for even me to continue. I described it to my wife years later and she said it was basically the plot of The Fountainhead 
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2022 14:29
|
|
|
precision posted:every time i see that pic of Terry Goodkind (you know the one) i lmao Looks pretty studly to me tbqh 
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2022 15:52
|
|
|
RaspberrySea posted:Goodkind hated a cover to one of his last books so much he held a contest on his Facebook that the 10 best burns of it or something would win a signed copy of his book. When the artist responded saying he did the art he was told to, Goodkind told him to stop stirring the pot. Yeah, as far as fantasy covers go there's nothing particularly heinous about that one. Did the artist get some of the details on Goodkind's waifu wrong or something?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 12, 2022 18:56
|
|
|
Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:Man that's like being mad that a book called "Paring Knife" isn't about tomatoes Aren't the full titles of the Dragonlance books Dragonlance: Dragons of the [season] [thing] though?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 19, 2022 21:55
|
|
|
Groovelord Neato posted:I don't understand how someone spends the time writing and writes nothing happening. The fun part of writing is when things happen. Stuff happened, but there was an insane amount of durdling that didn't really do anything to move the overarching plot of the books forward. Lots of relationship drama, court intrigue, and arcane minutia that didn't actually affect the relative positions of the forces of good and evil. It was almost like what I imagine soap operas to be like, where you can stop watching for a year and when you pick it back up there might be some surprises like "oh those two hate eachother now for some reason" but the gist of the show is pretty much identical.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 28, 2022 18:11
|
|
|
Empty Sandwich posted:other people have talked about it better elsewhere, but there's a sort of ourobouros that happens with fantasy. broadly (and incorrectly) speaking, people only know Tolkien and reference that, and then reference references to that. I'm more into The Worm Ouroboros Ouroboroses.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 28, 2022 19:25
|
|
|
Nigmaetcetera posted:Is wheel of time the one where casting spells requires a woman to receive a bare-bottom spanking? No it's just strongly encouraged. Also when not casting spells.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 30, 2022 01:55
|
|
|
DicktheCat posted:Wait what? I don't remember the actual frequency, but the books are definitely proponents of wife spanking a la old timey western movies. There was also a bunch of frat-boy hazing style stuff involved in the ceremonies and punishments of the worlds various magical societies.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 31, 2022 17:42
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 15, 2024 11:19 |
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 7, 2022 22:43
|
|