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Blurry Gray Thing posted:Update: This sounds like a really cool premise, I'll have to check it out once I'm done with Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. Read it years and years ago without realizing that it was the first of a trilogy, so I'm going back to it so that I can read the whole sequence.
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Jul 11, 2021 14:36
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Real UK Grime posted:there's some interesting stuff going on, but it feels like every female character gets to pick three from princess/prostitute/raped/murdered. this is the best description of his works that i've yet seen
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Jul 11, 2021 18:29
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I didn't see it mentioned, but Jaqueline Carey's Kushiel series is amazing. Yeah, the first book takes about 140 pages to get through to understand the Byzantine world setting, but after that, it takes off like a rocket. Assassins! God-killers! Consorts! This is everything (story-focused) AC fans wanted, but never got.
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Jul 11, 2021 21:06
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Dementropy posted:I didn't see it mentioned, but Jaqueline Carey's Kushiel series is amazing. Yeah, the first book takes about 140 pages to get through to understand the Byzantine world setting, but after that, it takes off like a rocket. Assassins! God-killers! Consorts! I sincerely thought those books were just modern softcore porn style "romance novels". They're actually good?
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Jul 11, 2021 21:17
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Simone Magus posted:I sincerely thought those books were just modern softcore porn style "romance novels". They're actually good? That was my initial hot take, which is why I brushed them off for like three years. But I took the first one on week-long a business trip, and ended up finishing it well before my stay was over, and regretted not taking the sequel. As someone who is not interested in porn or sex, I can tell you it's a great series (to me) - again, once you get past those first 140 pages of world-building/backstory. The overarching concepts and the actions taken made me want to keep reading.
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Jul 11, 2021 21:39
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Blurry Gray Thing posted:Update: This isn't remotely a description of the second book at all. In the second book when the Murs crew tried to summon Our Lady Underground, all the gods heard them (including Reynard, who actually showed up), even the ancient ones who made the cosmos - they returned to close the 'loophole' of magic, which went through Fillory, which would cease to exist when the loophole was closed. The architects of the Neitherlands had built a backdoor to keep magic working if the gods ever returned to close it and it was locked by the seven golden keys that Quentin is searching for throughout the book. When they find the final key and restore magic, thus saving Fillory, Quentin takes responsibility for Julia's part in causing magic to cease and threatening the existence of Fillory and as a result is cast out from Fillory while she ascends to partial godhood as bestowed upon her by Our Lady Underground. This is not 'patting him on the head and giving him what he wants anyway' at all. The whole theme of the book is that real heroes are not the ones who get the rewards, but the ones who pay the costs. Quentin was bored and looking for a quest, found one, saved the existence of magic and the world of Fillory and it cost him everything he knew and loved.
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Jul 11, 2021 21:50
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Hello Sailor posted:Umpteenthing LeGuin and Pratchett, just keep in mind Pratchett has this weird Randian Great Man thing going on. At least he realized the hypocrisy of it. I really want to second The Gentleman Bastard series. I've been enjoying Robin Hobb's the Farseer Trilogy. It's a very bittersweet book about a bastard being raised as an assassin that also has the ability to communicate with some animals. She is great at understanding how people would actually emotionally react to situations; Can't recommend it enough.
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Jul 11, 2021 21:58
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DangerDongs posted:I've been enjoying Robin Hobb's the Farseer Trilogy. It's a very bittersweet book about a bastard being raised as an assassin that also has the ability to communicate with some animals. I mentioned her earlier and yes!!!! That trilogy especially has some really cool stuff going on that's definitely not typical fantasy fare
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Jul 11, 2021 22:50
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I've read the second book of Farseer trilogy decades ago and it's ok. I just might go about finishing it one of these days
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Jul 11, 2021 22:55
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Colonel Cancer posted:I've read the second book of Farseer trilogy decades ago and it's ok. I just might go about finishing it one of these days The last book gets really weird (in imo an amazing way) so I would defo get on that
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Jul 11, 2021 22:59
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DangerDongs posted:She is great at understanding how people would actually emotionally react to situations Which is why these books are tedious as hell, page after page of emo navelgazing.
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Jul 12, 2021 17:08
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DangerDongs posted:I really want to second The Gentleman Bastard series. Eh. 1st book was good, 2nd was decent, 3rd was Bad. Its hard to blame Lynch because I heard his mental health was really starting to suffer though. Hopefully the next book coming out in August is better.
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Jul 12, 2021 17:21
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Thanks, Bad Fantasy Thread, I've started re-reading the Belgariad because it was in my landlady's immense collection of sci-fi/fantasy. I last read it about 20 years ago and halfway through the third book I'm pleased to say that Ce'Nedra is every bit as insufferable as she was the first time I read it.
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Jul 12, 2021 18:48
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Simone Magus posted:I sincerely thought those books were just modern softcore porn style "romance novels". They're actually good? No, the Kushiel series is absolutely intentionally porn, or at least the first book is. I never read more. I read the first one because someone adamantly insisted they were super great books and not all all pervy despite the main character being a sacred pain-based prostitute. She literally receives physical pleasure from pain because she was born that way. So you can imagine where things go from there. The writer is good at writing from what I remember, but the "pain makes her cum so she can put herself in awful situations to save everyone" angle is absolutely a huge point of the story. If you want well written BDSM porn with a story, you could do way worse than Kushiel's Dart. If you aren't at least really comfortable reading about how this chick is born to be abused, and how that gets her off, so it's actually cool and good and she's really super important even though she's pretty much owned by other people and her people would be doomed without her magic abuse-loving brain, you might want to skip it.
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Jul 12, 2021 19:42
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How are these wordscake bunny posted:The writer is good at writing from what I remember in the same sentence as these words cake bunny posted:but the "pain makes her cum so she can put herself in awful situations to save everyone" angle is absolutely a huge point of the story.
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Jul 12, 2021 19:47
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Good ideas and good writing are not the same thing.
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Jul 12, 2021 19:47
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e: actually nevermind, ignore this
DeadFatDuckFat fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Jul 12, 2021 |
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Jul 12, 2021 19:50
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did anybody read The Chronicles of St. Mary's, a recent time travel series a friend kept insisting i read it but i quit halfway through the first book because i dont like the combination of Young Adult style writing and totally random sex scenes. no thx
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Jul 12, 2021 19:50
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Most people complain about random sex in their sci-fi fantasy books, but every example except LOTR and the Chronicles of Narnia seems to have it. Why is that? Is it something editors and agents insist gets added, even when it's serving a very dubious purpose?
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Jul 12, 2021 19:53
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goatface posted:Good ideas and good writing are not the same thing. 100% this. It's not my sort of thing at all, but I could very much see that writer publishing something else that did not focus on, well, all of that, and it could be something that I would enjoy. They have skill in writing, but the story is completely dependent upon the fact that the woman derives sexual pleasure from pain. If you're into that, or at least not opposed to that, then go for it, but otherwise you probably want to read other stuff. cake bunny fucked around with this message at 20:02 on Jul 12, 2021 |
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Jul 12, 2021 19:55
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A Strange Aeon posted:Most people complain about random sex in their sci-fi fantasy books, but every example except LOTR and the Chronicles of Narnia seems to have it. Why is that? Is it something editors and agents insist gets added, even when it's serving a very dubious purpose? It's actually kind of amazing that Glenn Cook doesn't go into sex scenes. If characters have sex it's definitely condensed to a few sentences or happens entirely out of scene. But all I've read of his is the Black Company series.
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Jul 12, 2021 19:56
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A Strange Aeon posted:Most people complain about random sex in their sci-fi fantasy books, but every example except LOTR and the Chronicles of Narnia seems to have it. Why is that? Is it something editors and agents insist gets added, even when it's serving a very dubious purpose? You read those books recently?
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Jul 12, 2021 19:57
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Yeah, did you not get that Gollum talks like that because he's edging constantly?
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Jul 12, 2021 20:02
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A Strange Aeon posted:Most people complain about random sex in their sci-fi fantasy books, but every example except LOTR and the Chronicles of Narnia seems to have it. Why is that? Is it something editors and agents insist gets added, even when it's serving a very dubious purpose? Almost everything else was written after the 60's, free love was in the air (for better or worse, looking at you MZB), obscenity laws and mores had shifted, and I'm going to hazard a guess that fewer fantasy writers since then adhere very strongly to Abrahamic faiths, unless they're Mormons or Gene Wolfe.
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Jul 12, 2021 20:19
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Orson Scott Card, in his godly-powered American settler idiot and inherently magical natives series, I bet that had a sex scene. I ain't going to check though.
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Jul 12, 2021 20:25
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I just reread the Book of the New Sun and the main character has sex with just about every woman he meets, though it's not dwelled on for page after page or particularly fetishy, other than some possible incest that gets a pass due to time shenanigans. So even Gene Wolfe isn't immune to throwing it in to little purpose, at least in my opinion, though I don't pretend to really grok everything those books are trying to say.
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Jul 12, 2021 20:44
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IIRC, the Earthsea and Discworld books are pretty clean.
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Jul 12, 2021 20:48
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A Strange Aeon posted:I just reread the Book of the New Sun and the main character has sex with just about every woman he meets, though it's not dwelled on for page after page or particularly fetishy, other than some possible incest that gets a pass due to time shenanigans. So even Gene Wolfe isn't immune to throwing it in to little purpose, at least in my opinion, though I don't pretend to really grok everything those books are trying to say. The narrator is lying about having sex with some (all?) of those women
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Jul 12, 2021 20:59
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DeadFatDuckFat posted:The narrator is lying about having sex with some (all?) of those women Is there a good website that has analysis of the books? I recognized several references to other literature, but I'm sure I missed plenty and the Wikipedia page just has a plot summary that helped a tiny bit to understand what was going on but not that much.
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Jul 12, 2021 22:09
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Aardvark! posted:did anybody read The Chronicles of St. Mary's, a recent time travel series I did and liked them. I don't recall them being particularly sex sceney as a whole but the plot beats do tend to be a bit samey from book to book. YA style writing? Sure you're not confusing that with British? Not sure what you mean there.
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Jul 12, 2021 22:17
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Xaintrailles posted:Yeah, did you not get that Gollum talks like that because he's edging constantly? My Precious (bodily fluids)
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Jul 12, 2021 22:30
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Lemniscate Blue posted:His name had to be removed from the post due to legal threats, but this blog post is about China Mieville. Not to say he wasn't being a piece of poo poo but wasn't this the one where the post did its very best to describe 'he told me a sob story, I willingly went to bed with him and he dumped me' in language that was doing her best to imply violent rape and sexual abuse? I'd go check but she appears to have removed the original post altogether. Because again I'm willing to believe he's skeevy as gently caress in his dating life but that left a bad taste in my mouth. feedmegin fucked around with this message at 22:36 on Jul 12, 2021 |
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Jul 12, 2021 22:32
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A Strange Aeon posted:Is there a good website that has analysis of the books? I recognized several references to other literature, but I'm sure I missed plenty and the Wikipedia page just has a plot summary that helped a tiny bit to understand what was going on but not that much. I'm sure there is but I don't know of one off the top of my head. Its been a long time since I've read that series. Did you read it twice? I remember noticing a lot more stuff during my second read through.
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Jul 12, 2021 22:33
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Real UK Grime posted:I'm reading The Prince of Nothing series by R. Scott Bakker, and I need to know if these are bad books before I commit to liking them thanks in advance. They're fine grim dark stuff with a bit of whimsy. I liked them. The spinoff series(') were good two e: please disregard I was thinking of prince of thorns which is good pop fantasy with a dark twist Prince of Nothing goes way off the deep end, predictably. Author probably a libertarian or something. Very graphic, gross rape scenes and just a lot of unnecessary sexualization. It's a shame because there are some great concepts and worldbuilding in his books. The wizards are super cool and the general setup is great. I really enjoyed the fourth book, where the old wizard and some suspicious scalpers called the Skin Eaters have to go through Cil-Aujas, a vast underground nonman mansion where they get in a bunch of fights and get addicted to crematory ash. Good poo poo. Unfortunately the good poo poo is often surrounded by pages and pages of boring libertarian 'philosophy' and disturbing sexual grossness
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Jul 12, 2021 23:04
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At any rate, I do draw a distinction between references and quick summarized narration of "offscreen" fornication vs. detailed GRRM-style scenes of heavy boning, at least as far as my Inklings vs. modern theory goes.
Keromaru5 fucked around with this message at 23:41 on Jul 12, 2021 |
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Jul 12, 2021 23:38
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DeadFatDuckFat posted:The narrator is lying about having sex with some (all?) of those women I read it recently and couldn't tell if he was lying about having sex with Thecla or lying about not having sex with Thecla. Rad books though.
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Jul 13, 2021 01:06
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The Moon Monster posted:I read it recently and couldn't tell if he was lying about having sex with Thecla or lying about not having sex with Thecla. Rad books though.
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Jul 13, 2021 01:14
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Does anybody else detest Glen Cook's prose or just me?
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Jul 13, 2021 01:56
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Applewhite posted:Does anybody else detest Glen Cook's prose or just me? I tried reading the first Black Company book but I only got a few chapters in because it was written like a drunk guy's journal.
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Jul 13, 2021 02:05
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Applewhite posted:Does anybody else detest Glen Cook's prose or just me? i liked black company a lot when i was like 14. i tried to go read them again a year or two ago and couldn't stand it 
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Jul 13, 2021 02:05
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