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Thread: The Book Thread
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2024-04-22, 11:04 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2020
Re: The Book Thread
It's an interesting point, because the Vlad Taltos series sort of fell into this and sort of didn't, even early on when it was more in love with the criminal underworld. Even then, Vlad is repeatedly betrayed (up to the point of being assassinated I think at least once) and repeatedly screwed over, but there's also just enough opportunity there that you can see how someone who didn't have a lot of options might go into it and somehwat prosper.
He does have some friends who remain loyal...but almost none of them are simple criminals. And as time goes on, you see a lot more about how abusive the criminal underworld is, not just to its members, but also to its victims. And this is a comparatively well-run organized crime group, not the less organized kind...
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2024-04-23, 01:07 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2007
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Re: The Book Thread
Inside the Organization, I can only think of one character still around who he considers a friend... Kragar. He had some loyal employees, but most of them died in one conflict or another... Sticks comes to mind, and Glowbug was at least loyal, though I wouldn't call him a friend.
Outside the organization? He's pretty much got the top of the Empire on his side... two Dragonlords, Sethra Lavode, and even the Empress seems moderately fond of him (though I don't think they'd be called friends, either). Eventually, he makes nice with the Organization, even.
I read somewhere that Steve's tone changed after the death of a friend due to some crime or another, but I haven't confirmed that.The Cranky Gamer
*It isn't realism, it's verisimilitude; the appearance of truth within the framework of the game.
*Picard management tip: Debate honestly. The goal is to arrive at the truth, not at your preconception.
*Mutant Dawn for Savage Worlds!
*The One Deck Engine: Gaming on a budget
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2024-04-23, 02:04 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2020
Re: The Book Thread
I've heard that to and there's a source of uncertain validity here: https://mindstalk.net/brust/psych.html
discussing that history.
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2024-04-23, 05:12 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2007
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Re: The Book Thread
The Cranky Gamer
*It isn't realism, it's verisimilitude; the appearance of truth within the framework of the game.
*Picard management tip: Debate honestly. The goal is to arrive at the truth, not at your preconception.
*Mutant Dawn for Savage Worlds!
*The One Deck Engine: Gaming on a budget
Written by Me on DriveThru RPG
There are almost 400,000 threads on this site. If you need me to address a thread as a moderator, include a link.
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2024-05-07, 11:00 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2013
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Re: The Book Thread
After bouncing off it twice, I finally powered through The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin. As with everything else of hers that I've read, it was evocative, meditative, lushly written and peopled, and felt entirely unlike anything else I've read.
Spoiler: Minor plot stuffI particularly loved the sections in the Undertomb and the Labyrinth. It's a testament to her writing ability that she created such an overpowering sense of dread with so few elements to work with: a young teenager wandering dark corridors with very little actually "happening" would feel quite boring in a lot of writers' hands, but it gripped me completely here. When they finally escaped the tombs at the end, I actually felt my chest unclench with relief and realized how powerful the sense of dread and dark had been.
It's a relentlessly optimistic and idealistic book, and the ending is almost beat-for-beat the cliché of "we have to use the power of friendship to defeat the Concept of Darkness", and yet it works. It feels organic and relatable, and when Sparrowhawk talks about the power of trust, I actually believe it, because we've spent the whole book seeing this young girl become more and more isolated and helpless. She considers using the darkness and isolation as a weapon against him, but ultimately uses it to protect him, and then she finally relinquishes the only tiny amount of power she has in the world for the chance that a less terrible world exists somewhere else. It was done so cleanly I barely noticed the pieces coming together until the very end.
Okay, took my lit professor hat off now. This book was gumming up the rest of my reading list so I'm hoping to capitalize on the momentum. I picked up something promising called Lady Hotspur at a garage sale over the weekend and that's next on my list. Will report back -- soon, hopefully!
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2024-05-12, 08:26 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2009
Re: The Book Thread
I've finally gotten back to reading a physical book after a while, and after a string of non-fiction, I finally broke into Mistborn Era 2 with Wax and Wayne.
I blew through the first one pretty fast. It's classic Sanderson- likeable characters, tight plot, lots of fun and action. At the same time, there's plenty of nuance and genuine character to things to keep it from being mere pulp. I saw a couple of the big twists coming, but that's not really a problem in a well-written story. Right now I'm in the second book, still building up to whatever "bigger things" this is going to turn into.
I do appreciate that, so far, the book doesn't suffer from escalation syndrome. Wax is nowhere close to being as powerful as Vin, which lets the series stay grounded.
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2024-05-12, 09:02 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2020
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Re: The Book Thread
I have been reading "Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons & Dragons" by Ben Riggs which is about the TSR years at D&D. It's interesting as it covers the time when I first got into and was really active playing TTRPGs. It focusses on a lot of business details that I was unaware of at the time.
One thing I found surprising is how many talented writers and artists left TSR due to poor management decisions and an unwillingness to pay people what they were worth. For example, Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis left TSR after writing the best selling Dragonlance Chronicles and Legends trilogies after not being given a relatively minor pay increase. Then the CEO threatened to sue them at a convention...
Anyways, it's an interesting read though perhaps not for everyone.
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2024-05-13, 11:15 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2008
Re: The Book Thread
No matter where you go...there you are!
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2024-05-13, 12:01 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2013
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Re: The Book Thread
I'd known nothing about the management and ownership conflicts of the TSR era until my wife got me the Art & Arcana D&D coffee table book a few years ago. It mostly focuses on how the iconic monsters and artwork came to be, but it also gives some hints about how seat-of-their-pants the early publications were (i.e. many iconic monster looks happened because of the children's toys they essentially kitbashed into monster figurines, lots of the old artwork was tracings of Conan-era artwork, etc). They hint very vaguely at turmoil within the companies -- lots of "X and Y 'had a falling out' and then Y left" -- but of course, since this is a licensed D&D product, they keep the history discussions pretty diplomatic.
I'd be interested in a more gloves-off exploration of the era, though I have to admit the book's description blurb on that page you linked sounds pretty close to a "hit piece," especially this section...
...managers and executives sabotaged their own success by alienating their top talent, ignoring their customer fanbase, accruing a mountain of debt, and agreeing to deals which, by the end, made them into a publishing company unable to publish so much as a postcard.
Does it read like it's written by someone with an axe to grind? I don't mind tell-all, dirty-laundry types of books, but I've found that if it feels like an author is overzealous I quickly start questioning their claims, even when I want to believe them.
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2024-05-13, 12:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2010
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- Gridania, Eorzea
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Re: The Book Thread
Finished reading The Expanse last week. Overall liked it, even if it did drag on in places (Books 5, 6 and a lot of 7 could've been trimmed down), but was still a compelling read. Characters were quite well done, and interesting. Would've liked more of the weird alien bits over the humans are bastards to each other, yet again, and still. Particularly with how interesting the alien bits were.
To give myself a sci-fi break, read through The Cabin at the End of the World. Which is a wildly tense ride of a book. Purposely ambiguous on some points, but that just makes it all the more thought provoking. Not an emotionally easy read, but definitely worth a look if you like thrillers.
Now I'm onto Endymion, and my only complaint is not having read this sooner in my life. Very glad I have a copy of Rise of Endymion, cause I'll be starting that soon as I finish this one.
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2024-05-13, 10:01 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2007
Re: The Book Thread
Recently tried it; got through book one and two, stalled on three. Book two I only got through because I found the old lady amusing, and when the new cast of PoV in three had absolutely no-one of her calibre I simply could not push to keep reading. Always a danger to stories with rotating characters. Yes, Holden is still there, but between not being all that interesting by himself without Miller to bounce off of, and that his characterisation in two was all over the place (justified, but all over the place), I found myself not giving a damn about the plot.
Grey WolfInterested in MitD? Join us in MitD's thread.There is a world of imagination
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2024-05-14, 01:57 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2010
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Re: The Book Thread
I haven't read either of the 2 authors prior to The Expanse, so can't really point to who did what bits, but I'm pretty sure they both took turns writing the characters, which is where some of the discrepancies in characterization came from. Not to mention the large differences in pacing at times.
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2024-05-14, 03:28 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2007
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- San Antonio, Texas
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Re: The Book Thread
Trying to get myself to reread Katharine Kerr's "Daggerspell"; I like the Deverry books. But plowing through the first act of Daggerspell, the incest plot? That's always a hurdle.
The Cranky Gamer
*It isn't realism, it's verisimilitude; the appearance of truth within the framework of the game.
*Picard management tip: Debate honestly. The goal is to arrive at the truth, not at your preconception.
*Mutant Dawn for Savage Worlds!
*The One Deck Engine: Gaming on a budget
Written by Me on DriveThru RPG
There are almost 400,000 threads on this site. If you need me to address a thread as a moderator, include a link.
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2024-05-14, 03:31 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2019
Re: The Book Thread
I should really get back to the Deverry books at some point. I read like half of them when I was a teenager (which is long enough ago that I would definitely have to start over, even if I do remember quite a bit about the plot and the setting) but stopped for some reason, despite quite liking them. Maybe I was waiting for the next one to come out and then forgot or something like that?
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2024-05-14, 04:43 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2007
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Re: The Book Thread
She had a couple big lacuna in release.... between The Dragon Mage series and the Silver Wyrm series was six years, after being every year or two for the whole of the 90s.
Then 11 more years between Silver Mage and Sword of Fire... and now four years since Sword of Fire.The Cranky Gamer
*It isn't realism, it's verisimilitude; the appearance of truth within the framework of the game.
*Picard management tip: Debate honestly. The goal is to arrive at the truth, not at your preconception.
*Mutant Dawn for Savage Worlds!
*The One Deck Engine: Gaming on a budget
Written by Me on DriveThru RPG
There are almost 400,000 threads on this site. If you need me to address a thread as a moderator, include a link.
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2024-05-14, 08:39 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2013
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- Bristol, UK
Re: The Book Thread
I read most of the early Deverry series from the library, I have one, but I'd like to be sure the series is going somewhere before I go much further with it.
Last edited by halfeye; 2024-05-14 at 08:39 PM.
The end of what Son? The story? There is no end. There's just the point where the storytellers stop talking.
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2024-05-14, 09:57 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2006
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- Watching the world go by
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Re: The Book Thread
I just started reading The Book of Three to my daughters. The older one is very curious about when somebody is going to be captured and when we are going to meet a princess. I haven't read the Prydain books for nigh on twenty years, so it is interesting rereading them as an adult. My biggest impression is that the main character is incredibly whiny (though, to be fair, he is like 10 in the first book).
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2024-05-16, 10:16 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2007
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Re: The Book Thread
The "Silver Wyrm" series more or less ended that entire arc; Sword of Fire is set in the same world, centuries later, and there's some garbled mentions of political events, but you wouldn't know it without having read the previous series.
I read that to mine a couple years ago; I think they were a bit young for it at the time. And Taran is very whiny, but I like the story overall.The Cranky Gamer
*It isn't realism, it's verisimilitude; the appearance of truth within the framework of the game.
*Picard management tip: Debate honestly. The goal is to arrive at the truth, not at your preconception.
*Mutant Dawn for Savage Worlds!
*The One Deck Engine: Gaming on a budget
Written by Me on DriveThru RPG
There are almost 400,000 threads on this site. If you need me to address a thread as a moderator, include a link.
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2024-05-16, 02:01 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2006
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- Israel
Re: The Book Thread
The vast majority of the actual writing is Daniel Abraham, with Ty Franck contributing to some dialogue, and big picture character and worldbuilding stuff. Ty openly admits to not knowing how to write descriptive text, and if you read Daniel's solo work (Ty doesn't have any) it reads very similarly.
Ceika made my avatar over a decade ago and the link has expired since, but people should still appreciate their work.
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2024-05-17, 07:01 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2006
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- Watching the world go by
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2024-05-18, 08:54 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2007
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- San Antonio, Texas
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Re: The Book Thread
The Cranky Gamer
*It isn't realism, it's verisimilitude; the appearance of truth within the framework of the game.
*Picard management tip: Debate honestly. The goal is to arrive at the truth, not at your preconception.
*Mutant Dawn for Savage Worlds!
*The One Deck Engine: Gaming on a budget
Written by Me on DriveThru RPG
There are almost 400,000 threads on this site. If you need me to address a thread as a moderator, include a link.
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2024-05-19, 11:33 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2018
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- Seattle, WA
Re: The Book Thread
Funnily enough, I just finished rereading those a couple of weeks ago. Also funnily, I think that experience was soured a bit by reading the author's note in the first book, where he describes Eilonwy as the "deuteragonist" of the series. And much as I love the character, she does not live up to that hype. She's an excellent supporting character, witty and great at sparking with Taran, but with that author's note in my head, I kept expecting her to do things, and for the most part, she doesn't. Still, I enjoyed the reread enough to finish all 5 books.
Tangent time. I'm getting increasingly sick of the "The Magic Goes Away" trope, where a plot-point/theme is that the fantastical setting is losing that quality and becoming our Earth. The last two "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies have been going pretty hard on that (in what I'm pretty sure is a misunderstanding of the themes of the 3rd film). The Chronicles of Prydain series does it right at the end. "How to Train Your Dragon" does it as well; albeit with the implication that it could be reversed at some point. I'm sure the intended effect on the audience is supposed to be to suggest that there's a little fantasticality in the real world too, but the actual effect on me is sadness that this unique and interesting thing is ending, even in a different world, with the added kicker of being told "too bad, you missed it, better luck next time" for magic in this world. The only story that's done it in a way I liked was Lord of the Rings, where it seemed like all that power and grandiosity wasn't actually very healthy for the people of the setting, and a more down-to-earth world without dragons or tyrants or magic weapons for fighting them would be a welcome change for most of the characters. (Of course, the ending of TLotR is probably what inspired, or at least cemented, the trend in the first place).
Alright, tangent over, what else have I been reading lately? I've been on a bit of a sci-fi kick. I'm liking The Murderbot Diaries quite a lot, though the name is rather misleading (The Social-Anxiety-Bot Diaries would give a better impression of what the main character's like). I reread the first two books in the Theirs Not To Reason Why series by Jean Johnson, about the most powerful precog the galaxy is ever likely to see and her quest to shape the future into just the right shape so that the Chosen One will actually exist to save the galaxy 300 years down the line. And for a non-sci-fi book, I started reading Six of Crows, which really hooked me, though I had waited too long and now it's been returned to the library before I could finish it.Originally Posted by Darths & DroidsOptimization Trophies
Looking for a finished webcomic to read, or want to recommend one to others? Check out my Completed Webcomics You'd Recommend II thread!
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2024-05-28, 10:05 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2007
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- Tail of the Bellcurve
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Re: The Book Thread
Finished Illusion, which was quite good and also quite different from the fantasy norm. This is mostly down to the protagonist, who is 100% useless for 99% of the book. She has only one supernatural power, which is ironically the ability to see through illusion, and, as a 19 year old girl in revolutionary fantasy France has zero political or physical power.
This means the novel isn't a story about heroic adventure, but one of simply trying to exist through extreme times. Thus, rather than the heroine's limitations making the story dull, they open a lot of narrative doors that would be closed to a more capable and conventional protagonist. Key to this is the story's willingness to have bad things happen and not pull it's punches.
Next up I read Argylle, the novelization of the movie of the same name. As I thought the movie was fun and silly I was hoping for something along the same lines, but with some fun metatextual elements - this being a book the movie's protagonist wrote.
Sadly, no. It's mostly just bad and straight laced in a not terribly interesting way. There's too many characters, so it's impossible to care when one dies, the story is a totally standard thriller thing, and the writing is weird and dull. I kept waiting for a meta twist or something fun and clever, all I got was a bad scene with an AA gun doing something a 20mm AA gun definitely cannot do.
Now I'm working of The Snow Queen by Joan D Vinge. This is really good, a sort of sci-fi riff on the summer and winter fae, and a society where the rules and rulers shift on a natural schedule. It's very spare, in the way that older sf is sometimes, this is a book that is quite content to tell you things, rather than regurgitate another scene merely to show some irrelevant action. This both keeps the characters at a distance, and means that everything that is shown is very important, though it's often left to the reader to figure out why.
I'm not quite halfway through, I have no idea where the story is going, and it's definitely one of the Hugo winners where I absolutely see why it won. This is unusual, as much of the time when I read a Hugo winner I'm left extremely disappointed, although the winners from the seventies and eighties generally hold up pretty well. A Song for Lya is still a marvelous and crushing piece of work I cam think on endlessly.Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.
Alfred Noyes, The Highwayman, 1906.
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2024-05-28, 11:46 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2008
Re: The Book Thread
I like the Costco-bundled book sets and am working through the HG Wells box...
The War of the Worlds (mentioned previously) I found very approachable and engaging.
When the Sleeper Wakes was a bit of a slog, at times, and was (clearly) heavily political.
Working on "The Time Machine and Other Stories" and it is here that I have been most impressed. I'm a fan of short stories (and long too, but I think I may be a bit more amenable to short stories than many of my friends) and this is where I think Wells has most impressed me. Time Machine itself includes interesting and (IMO) timely commentary, Empire of the Ants seems ahead of its time, The Country of the Blind is a solid horror piece, and The Door in the Wall is an interesting commentary on prioritization and missed opportunities, I think. The Sea Raiders, though, is my favorite of the shorts thus far...a bit of a precursor to Lovecraft, I think, without some of the baggage.
Enjoyable process working through masters of the craft!
- MNo matter where you go...there you are!
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2024-05-28, 03:46 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Book Thread
Finished Endymion over the weekend. Very impressed with how Dan Simmons can take rather simple ideas, and make them wildly fantastic/epic (Hyperion is stories around a campfire, and Endymion is a diary of a float trip). And from those bases you get a vast stellar civilization, plotting AIs, FTL travel by various (and variable lethality) means, various alien critters and time traveling constructs (not to mention other spoilery things).
Already started The Rise of Endymion, and I'm very much looking forward to how everything ends up playing out.
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2024-05-28, 11:09 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2007
Re: The Book Thread
I loved it and it's sequel, Crooked Kingdom, and I heartily recommend checking them back out the moment your library allows it. I loved them so much I checked out the other works from the author in the same setting (Shadow & Bone). That, unfortunately, was nowhere as good. Turns out, I still can't stomach Mary Sue-ish* YA, no matter how self-aware.
That said, in the same vein as Six of Crows and not at all in the same vein as Shadow & Bone I would recommend Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff's Illuminae Files trilogy (Illuminae/Gemina/Obsidio). It's sci-fi YA with an ensemble cast and a very... stylistic style that nevertheless works a charm.
Myself, I find myself once again floundering for something new to try, so I've gone back to Pratchett until I decide what I want to try next.
Grey Wolf
*I appreciate that is a term whose meaning is so plastic it could mean anything. I use it when the MC is a Chosen One seemingly more concerned with which suitor they care more about than about the world-ending plot.Last edited by Grey_Wolf_c; 2024-05-28 at 11:20 PM.
Interested in MitD? Join us in MitD's thread.There is a world of imagination
Deep in the corners of your mind
Where reality is an intruder
And myth and legend thrive
Ceterum autem censeo Hilgya malefica est
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2024-05-29, 03:56 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2006
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- London, England.
Re: The Book Thread
I've been trying to get through Tad Williams's series, Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. Currently on the second of the three, Stone of Farewell.
It's quite well written, and the characters are well done, but I'm finding it slow going. I think at this point we've got viewpoint characters from something like 5 different countries, each with their own system of governance, and as a reader you're expected to keep track of which side each one is on and the varying conspiracies/power struggles in each of them. It slows the whole story down to a crawl. I have to admit, I think I prefer stories that are a bit stricter with keeping the number of POV characters down.I'm the author of the Alex Verus series of urban fantasy novels. Fated is the first, and the final book in the series, Risen, is out as of December 2021. For updates, check my blog!
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2024-05-29, 04:06 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2016
Re: The Book Thread
I like multi-POV stories, but that particular series always seemed to swap at the "wrong" times for me. Any time I felt like I was starting to groove with a particular character's plot it would swap away for just a little too long...or a little too short. In the former case I'd be getting invested in another character's plot, and be annoyed twice. In the latter, I'd find myself wondering "Who edited this? They didn't tell him to just move this chapter back a bit? What was the point?".
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2024-05-30, 10:35 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2006
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- London, England.
Re: The Book Thread
I think in my case it's also that the PoV count has ballooned massively between book 1 and book 2. Book 1 was all about the protagonist kitchen boy and his gradual growing-up/journeying out into the world. There were scenes with other characters, but it was very much focused on Simon. Book 2 feels more like a rotating tour of the different kingdoms. I'm 150 pages into the book and the protagonist's only just finished leaving the town he started the book in – not because he's been particularly slow, but because the point of view keeps switching away to other characters. His story's slowed down to a crawl because he's hardly ever on the page!
I'm the author of the Alex Verus series of urban fantasy novels. Fated is the first, and the final book in the series, Risen, is out as of December 2021. For updates, check my blog!
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2024-05-31, 05:40 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2006
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- Israel
Re: The Book Thread
I recently read The Traitor Baru Cormorant and I initially liked it, but the more I sit with it the more it grows on me. The pitch I'd give is "A girl rises in the ranks of an empire that conquered her island with the intent of destroying that empire". It's got notes of genius competence porn, but I also just really enjoyed the plot machinations and even more I like what it's doing. I started the sequel and I appreciate it so far, and what it's doing. It's not great on characterization - very few characters are drawn out beyond the level of the sketch - but it worked really well for me.
Ceika made my avatar over a decade ago and the link has expired since, but people should still appreciate their work.