/lit/ - Literature

>>20897669
Started reading Shadow and Claw
It seems pretty interesting but when did you find yourself getting gripped?
Atm I'm just reading based on it's reputation

third for Children of Húrin

>>20897679
Just read it or don't. Nobody's going to give you a participation trophy for reading a book.

>>20897682
Well my problem is that I'm getting tempted to do a Silmarillion and then LOTR re-read
My last re-read was 2 years ago so I'm resisting it

Man Gormenghast is good, and better on the reread too.

King of /sffg/.

Simple as.

>>20897680
Tolkien sure knew how to write tragedy. No father and mother should outlive their progeny! What cruel Morgoth and the works he hath created!

Bakker is KING

>>20897669
>*tink tink tink.
AHEM ladies and gentleman, may I have your attention please? Do I have your undivided attention? Good

FUCK BAKKER

FUCK CHINKSHIT

FUCK LITRPG

>>20897890
Looks like based is back in the replies, boys.

>>20897890
based, also

FUCK WOMEN AUTHORS

>FUCK COOMERS

FUCK JANNIES

FUCK FAGGOTS

FUCK TRANNIES

>tfw tried rereading tolkien
damn these old fantasy books kinda suck actually. Didn't realize how poor the prose was until I got older and read more books

>>20897957
>"What we need is a few good taters."
>"What's taters, precious? What's taters, eh?"
"Po-tay-toes. Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew. Lovely big golden chips with a nice piece of fried fish. Even you couldn't say no to that."
"Oh yes we could. Spoilin' nice fish. Give it to us raw and wrigglin'. You keep nasty chips."
>"You're hopeless."
you don't know what you're missing, some of its exchanges are truly iconic

>>20898090
>no body language indicated

>>20898216
Ooh little Timmy needs everything spelled out for him? Too bad

>>20897946
why did you omit at least two groups?

worth a read?

>>20897669
Does anyone know what metaverse fiction will be like? Do you think we can read science fiction from holographs?

>>20898464
You ask this like metaverse is a thing.

Joe Abercrombie Red Country is unmatched. All other SFF authors wish they had even a scrap of Abercrombies talent

>>20898269
Because posting word "NIGGERS" normally results in a ban, and everyone already know about filthy schlomos

after the three body trilogy what should i read next by this absolute madman?

A Practical Guide To Evil's Author is now working on his new serial after a hiatus.

The third chapter was just released

https://palelights.com/

>>20897687
>I'm getting tempted to do a Silmarillion and then LOTR re-read
Don't. Silmarillion is garbage and LOTR doesn't hold up as an adult reader

>>20898590
Imagine being a webnovelist with a significant following and calling your new story basically the same as Wildbow's.
Now everytime someone mentions 'Pale' people will ask twice to specify which story is being talked about, kek

>>20897839
>>20897791
Based.

>a Tommy isn't much more accurate than a pitched baseball, and hasn't much greater effective range. But it does have virtues -- you hit a man with it, he goes down and stays down
I've seen this attributed to Robert Heinlein, does anyone know what it's from?

read cradle

>>20898744
cradle a woman

>>20898600
I find this hard to believe when the whole world shit and pissed their pants for a certain movie trilogy for a whole decade.
Weirdly, also, all movies went to shit after that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lghLenmisA

Tolkien would be proud.

>>20898900
>the whole world shit and pissed their pants for a certain movie trilogy for a whole decade. Weirdly, also, all movies went to shit after that
The prequel trilogy ruined movies for me too anon. It hurts knowing we'll never see Shakespearean space opera kino like that on the big screen again.

>>20898964
What is a week in Tolkien's Legendarium?

Well that kind of went downhill. At least it failed to keep my interest and I DNFed the fourth book in the series. Opinions seem to be divided among reviews however.

The Acts of Caine release arc kind of reminded me of Dune a bit in that the first book is fantastic and can be read as a standalone, with the quality of the series lowering noticeably afterward. The second book much like Messiah touches on relevant aspects of book 1 however and can be read, enjoyed and one can stop there as well, though as I said it is weaker than the outstanding first novel. The big difference comes in Dune having the interesting God Emperor whereas my impression of the fourth and final Caine book is that its a bit of a miss. The author tries to lean too hard on philosophy and I'm not really sure it works. Its just a pretty stark contrast between what the story started out as, with great actions scenes, a tight plot and pacing with the deeper musings being dripped throughout in the background of the story.

In any case I'd definitely recommend book 1 if you are looking for outstanding 90s edge with a really unique setting a plot, however one should continue at your own risk.

>>20895129
Just finished TWI V7
>big stuff happening, stuff beyond your comprehension.
oh yeah, definitely. it went quite hard at the end again. honestly that's a trend and i'm not sure i like this style. i prefer more gradual reveals and happenings, instead of having most of it gathered at the end.
overall i'd say it wasn't as good as the previous volume. i thought it was a REALLY strong volume at the beginning, i remember laughing a lot, but eventually i felt like things became too scatterbrained. It felt like the story was holding back a lot of the juicy stuff and just throwing us the scraps in the meantime.
i'd loved to have read more than one chapter about geneva making contact or niers in general, but instead we get a chapter following 2 old men on a date? or i'd love to read more about the new inn earthers rather than have a chapter about salisses' gnoll aide. surely he didn't need that much screentime...?
it just really felt like the story was holding back on me, or maybe it's just because of what i prefer to read. i hope he tones it back with the minor-minor-character POVs. it's not even that they're bad, but when he is "holding back" on some of the more intersting POVs like that, it starts feeling like those minor POVs are taking up word space that could be better spent.

i'm not quite sure what to expect now. but it is pretty exciting. I like the idea of giving the other characters more screentime.
not sure why the finale was written in parts like this though? some felt pretty short.

some gripes:
>maviola's end was far too anticlimactic. she essentially perished in the battle against some literal-who alliance.
>****s demise was far too sudden and random.
i didn't really feel like it was foreshadowed. the results were interesting, but that makes it feel too much like a narrative device. it's too transparent.

>Assassin run
was great fun.

>Rasea's ship
was hilarious and it surprised me. i like her in general.
but still not really over flos desu. i just don't like seeing soldiers dying en masse for pointless or stupid reasons. and i consider flos' entire ambition stupid. that's also why i disliked parts of the hectval war at the end. civillian-soldiers dying because the strategist can't make a damn plan.
i do feel like flos was regarded more as a villain in this volume though. i find that to be the correct approach. PA should go much further with that imo. maybe that's just me. i just find that deeply uncomfortable.

>Saliss
i'm slightly torn on him. i felt like what teriarch said to him was quite forced. otherwise it's fine.
i didn't like his interlude, but not because of him. klbch was my issue. him keeping up with a named adventurer without that skill feels silly when considering that relc just beat his ass not too long ago. i also don't fully get what kblch meant when he said he is the same as saliss. this again feels a bit forced.

Sorry to hear about your dog man. That sucks.

>>20899494
>salisses' gnoll aide
ilvriss i mean

>>20899252
I tried to read this but got filtered by the setting. Why should I care about anything that happens if its all in a video game?

>>20898744
i dont read chinkshit

what are the best blurbs you've ever read concerning /sff/ materials?

>>20899552
I remember in elementary school the whole class got chided because people kept ending the stories we were assigned to write with "and it was all a dream." Trapped in a video game stories are exactly the same thing, but somehow they get a pass. I even think portal fantasy is in the same vein as "it was all a dream," especially when the hero returns to the real world at the end.

Sapkowski’s Hussite war fantasy books are being translated into English. Are they kino?

>>20899757
There's a difference between a near-the-end reveal that it was all made-up/a dream/whatever and intentionally setting it in such a setting from the beginning and making that clear. In the former, everything feels devalued and it feels like a cop-out that fantasy can't just be fantasy. In the latter, it explores the notions of virtual fantasy and what it can do and be.

>>20899760
>sapkowski
Who did he rip off this time?

>>20899494
I agree that early-middle V7 was the best, literally the golden age of TWI as I see it. Great fun at the inn, solid chapters with Teriarch, perfect slice-of-life in the interludes. And to think there are some TWI readers that say Liscor is the worst setting. I do agree on scatterbraindness of things, I believe Pirateaba went too far in plot sprawl, there was simply too much stuff going on at that point to reasonably write about all of it, even with all the output Pirate produces. Belive me, complains about Pirate spending too much time on minor PoVs are common among the fanbase, Pirate is almost addicted to making new characters and writing their stuff. Thankfuly, it seems we (the fanbase) have managed to curb down those tendencies as of late.

Finale was written like that because it was not 9 parts, but three chapters that were cut for pacing reasons.
I don't have problem with Maviola's end because we knew she had to die around this time. She had only one potion of youth left, and her death being commited by Belavierr and Az'kerash in secret was more interesting than dying against Hectval.

Flos lacking a solid cause other than 'I King, I conquer' had always been a problem int he story, that's why he's the most hated character. I'm surprised you liked Rasea running Flos over with her ship, it might very much be TWI's most disliked scene, ever. For me, it was just too silly.

The Klbkch/Saliss connection was over their shared problem of body dysmorphia...which is more than just a bit silly, because Klbkch problem is his disgust with Izrilian Antinium, which for him are basically pathetic, inferior copies of True Antinium. Klbkch is disgusted with them and their weakness, in consequence being full of self-hatred as he's now one of them. Klbkch identifies as a Ultimate Murder Machine his ant mommy made him to be, and every day spent in a pathetic Worker body drove him mad. So yeah, while it is a bit similar to Saliss/Onieva thing, comparing it like that was a big leap.

The fight itself between them was pretty good in my opinion, if a bit weird for all the banter. In Liscor didn't use any of his artifacts or relics, meanwhile at the Hivelands he's fully armored with bullshit stuff Antinium had robbed over the years not to mention supported by all the queens and his buddy Wrymvr. And Saliss focused on killing Wrymvr, not Klbkch.


Now, to speak of what's ahead of you in Volume 8...I don't want to color your opinion of it before you read it, but it has problems. Considering the situation at the end, you surely understand stakes are all times high and there's no place for slice of life, the plot train had arrived and is taking everyone for the ride. And oh boy, V8 has a lot of plot. Shit's happening left and right on every continent, wordcount on chapters hits peaks previously thought impossible, multiple times exceeding 40k words (Interlude - Paradigm Shift is probably peak TWI chapter).

[I ran out of letters]

>>20899787
Yeah, if it's the basic setup there are always ways to add real stakes. There's the obvious "die in the game, die in real life", but I can respect a story that also just outright cares about what happens within the game. If the protagonist legitimately cares about just beating the game, it's not some huge stretch for me to empathize with him and feel that same tension.

>>20899836
Hell, even if there's no personal risk, just the tension of it being a game that the protagonist wants to beat can be something. "Trapped in a game" variants can be "you die in the game you die for real" or just the sheer existential dread of being stuck in a game, etc.

>>20899851
Not /lit/, but I've enjoyed Shangri-la Frontier, and the only real stakes in that one are that the main character wants to be the first player to beat the hidden bosses of an MMO. That's it, absolutely nothing will happen to him or anyone else if he fails. And yet, because it's important to him, and because the author is capable of writing characters you like, that's enough.

>>20899808
Sienkiewicz

>>2089990
new anon
It was originally a webnovel and the manga is on possible indefinite hiatus. It's ok though I guess. It was fine enough to spend a few minutes on each week anyway. That's closer to litrpg.though.

>>20898501
I thought that book was pretty shit, actually.

Anyone use netgalley? Have you found any good reads lately?

>>20899965
ARCs, advanced reader copies, are like early access for games, or a beta. I'm only interested in the final version. Any changes to the published version would bother me too much.

>>20899834
>it might very much be TWI's most disliked scene, ever.
lol. that is... very surprising to hear. kinda hilarious actually. but i'm not exaggerating if i say i wouldn't mind if flos suddenly died of heart failure and the story moved on from there. i found that even when he's not directly in the POV, him lacking a solid cause colors the entire conflict and even his allies in a negative way.
it was quite over the top, yes, but i didn't mind it here, it was fun. i could see myself minding it in another context.

>Now, to speak of what's ahead of you in Volume 8...I don't want to color your opinion of it before you read it, but it has problems.
i don't mind if it's not SoL for a while. considering the situation and who's missing it would be weird to have much of it anyway.
more than anything, i just wish to see certain characters develop more. it's all of the liscor cast, really. but lyonette most of all.
also would be cool to see what ryoka can do now.

i found niers's plot handled quite well btw, even if i am dissapointed that he didn't get much screentime and that he didn't end up where he wanted to. the emphasis on the differences between fraerlings and tall people in that chapter was nice. we always heard about it and he alluded to it often, but to see it in action was nice.

A ghost of a chill has taken hold inside me and demands that I read vintage philosophical science fiction, give me your recommendations
Something thick, to really chew on

If there is one science fiction book you've thought about the most, what is it?

>>20900020
The philosophy kind of bored me, honestly, but Ice-nine freaked me the fuck out and I pretty regularly find myself thinking about crystal structures and looking up the temperatures they form at

>>20900018
btw, how does it feel to read 7 million words of a single story?

>>20900234
eeh, i don't think much of it? it's just the wordcount. i do like the scope of it all.
i've said this before, but PA has shown me that this kind of format allows the author to build a story more freely, which they've done.
on the flipside, too much freedom can be a bad thing, which PA has also shown at times.

Are there any modern fantasy novels that don't feel like they are written for slightly edgy 14 year olds? I have tried Sanderson and Rothfuss and they both feel like they are aimed at teenagers.

I really want to like fantasy but I feel that I am constantly let down when I compare it to other fiction.

>make a rule for myself to stop buying female authors who debuted after 2010
>keep breaking it because fucking nothing else is being published
>inevitably disappointed
I have once again broken my rule. Lay your wagers now on my X/10 final rating

>>20900550
Adrian Tchaikovsky is pretty good about it
Susanna Clarke
Josiah Bancroft
Stuart Turton

>>20900555
>Young adult novel
I'm going with 4/10 to be generous

>>20900550
Try the Penric and Desdemona series. The first one being called Penric's Demon. It's an interesting story about a man being stuck with a demon living inside of himself. You follow the life he lives, and the little adventures he has. It's hard to describe. It's comfy though. It's not about super powered people flying around and doing sick combat moves. It's more like uncovering plots, and trying to right wrongs. The main character Penric is young at first. I think he starts out as 19 in the first book. But then in the second it time skips to when he's older and mature. So you're reading about a mature person making mature decisions. Not a punk kid making rash decisions and trying to save the whole world.

>>20900597
I'll say this for YA: it follows through on its premises. I'm so tired of fantasy novels that draw me in with an interesting conceit, and then either abandon it or actively seem to mock me for thinking they'd be so juvenile as to actually write a story like that

>>20897791
>"The honey of unwashed man anus."

>>20900629
Bujold is indeed an excellent author, and I left her off my list primarily because she doesn't publish anymore. I definitely prefer the full Chalion books to those novellas, though

>>20900636
If you say so. Novellas are a good size in my opinion. Just enough to tell a interesting story without overstaying their welcome. The Penric books have been releasing frequently to this date. The latest one is as recent as 2021.

>>20900672
Oh, never mind then, I had no idea. That's good to know, Paladin of Souls is in my top five books of all time.

An Outcast in Another World by Kamikaze Potato

The land of Elatra has purged itself of humans. Unwilling to suffer the human lust for leveling up, their willingness to kill any and all for XP, the civilized races have banded together to genocide every human man, woman and child from their world.

Eight years later, a great sucking sound appears on campus and Earth human Rob saves his Chad best friend by pushing him out of the way of the vortex and letting it take him instead. You'll do, a voice says. And so Rob begins his new life in a world of stats and skills, fear and combat, and where all civilization hates him either for the crimes humans committed against them or for the shame they feel for the crimes they committed.

And yeah, yeah. It's another one of those and you're right to think so. But I just slogged through Episode X of The First Defiler which seemed to be page after page of the the system this and the system that and in this book plot and action follows from character. It's refreshing - the people drive the plot. Not saying all the characters are great, or that the characterization is profound, but the arrow is pointed in the right direction and it's enough. We experience the world through the characters. A couple of times I though it would go off the rails, but there was always something worthwhile down what I thought was the wrong fork. If I had to find something to criticize the author for, it seems he is too eager to resolve the conflict he introduces and could profitably milk it for more if he were more patient.

I did like the extra twist of the world, how the recent violence in the land had the native characters shattered and grieving just like Rob was shattered and grieving when he lost his world and was portaled into theirs. So they are at odds yet have grief in common. It made an interesting twist on the fish out of water since the fish he finds are out of water too. Except for the merfolk I guess.

Overall not bad out of 5 and I'm cruising in to volume 2. Some twists seemed unneeded and even detracted, but not enough to bother me. Recommended if you're accustomed to self-published Isekai trash litrpgs, but wish they could add back just a bit of human/elf/dragonkinism.

>>20900795
The protag having to be a literal doormat because of "muh humans" made that story sour for me. I dropped it.

>>20900836
I did not find him to be a doormat. He doesn't have any white guilt over his humanity, which would have caused me to drop it too.

>>20900847
I think if the elf slut let him perform anal on her, the book would have been palatable. But both the protag and the elf slut were annoying and boring to read. More power to you if you enjoy these trash, and then read book two.

>>20900795
Hearing "fuck it you'll do" when getting isekai'd must be one of the most disheartening things.

I'm trying to find an old scifi book I read years ago. I can't remember the title just the cover. It was a muscular blonde dude coming out of a computer pointing his hands at a scrawny teen and zapping him with a lightning bolt. The basic plot was "game kills people for real if they get stuck on a level"

>>20899834
how do I achieve this aesthetic natty

>>20900795
Its pretty ok, for a western isekai. You can definitely do worse. The problem is the power scaling is so absolutely bullshit, so it gives the author some difficulties. The corruption is the most interesting part of the story imo.

Finally finished this. I have mixed feelings. It's a story about two fantasy countries at war, and it turns out, war and deeds of arms are all that anyone in the story cares about. As a literary work, it's a perfect imitation of epics like The Illiad. Unfortunately that includes the anticlimatic plotting. Lots is alluded to, foreshadowed and hinted at that never has a payoff, or at least the payoff ends up feeling pretty meh. For example, there's no female characters in the first half of the book, to the point where it seems homoerotic. Then several female characters are introduced, and it seems like there is going to be some kind of multi love triangle plot, but the main plot overtakes and tramples the resolution of any sub-plots. Another thing is that both the kings of the two warring countries are spellcasters, but only one spell is cast in the entire book: the summoning of Oroborous, who is never even seen "on-screen".

3/5

>>20901048
Your write up makes it sound a lot worse than a 3/5

>>20900999
Power scaling never really matters as much as people think. As long as there's some vague handwaved bullshit most people will be fine with anybody winning a specific fight or whatever. It's admittedly trickier when it's a LitRPG like that, but still.

>>20901138
Maybe. I forced myself to finish it because I wanted to like it.

>>20898509
Nothing. The party cracked down on him.

>>20885668
Finished the third book. I think I liked it a little better than the second. It's pretty much more of the same. Some characters going through interpersonal shit while political drama happens around them. I was thinking there was going to be even less magic in this one than the previous 2, but they surprised me by the end. I did not predict the ending at all. Not even in my wildest imaginations would I have see that coming. So that's cool.

But I was thinking more about the magic in this series, and it really could be written as a sci-fi novel. If you think of poets as computer programmers. And their writings as code. The andats are actually AIs. Each AI is a little different, but they're powerful enough to control major aspects of the city's systems. And so if they're not bound, then they go skynet on everyone. If the programmers fail to write the AI's system correctly, then they'll be unbound from the very start, and thus kill whoever tried to birth them before disappearing.
I don't know, maybe the comparison isn't perfect, but the broad idea is there. The poets represented knowledge. And the andats were great and scary technological creations. Practically nuclear weapons.

There was one line near the end that caught me off guard and actually made me teary eyed. "You make me sound like a good man." I don't know why that hit me so hard. But any book that can actually pull a tear out of me has my respect.

One more major spoilery thing: Maati is the eternal cuck. Holy shit. I wanted less cuck stuff in this book, but instead the author gave us a cuckening beyond imagination!

Who is the angriest/most violent elf in tolkien's writings?

>>20897669
How is the Wizard Knight by Wolfe? Been eyeing it.

>>20901333
You could check the archive if you actually cared about it, instead of asking a question that's been asked multiple times throughout the years.

>>20901275
Fëanor

>>20901333
I haven't read it for about twenty years but I remember it being enjoyable

https://youtu.be/lue9QTZBDCM
>putting burning pewter healing factor on the same tier as Radiants healing factor.
Is this guy retarded?
Shallan took a spear through the heart and still walked it off.
Lopen literally grew his arm back.

>>20901500
There IS comparably insane healing in Mistborn, but Vin wouldn't be able to use it. That was Miles' whole THING in Era 2. It's to the point where he probably wouldn't even die from decapitation because he'd heal as the blade was going through.

>>20901512
mistling cope

>>20899552
Because it doesn’t occur in a videogame. The world that the actors go to is real, and the actors that go there die as well. I’m pretty sure the book doesn’t hide this fact either which is why you need to you know… pay attention to what you’re reading.

>>20901556
Is this actually good or just a meme?
I am waiting for Thai official translation release.

I liked the first law, how are shattered sea and age of madness?

>>20901048
>there's no female characters in the first half of the book
What's the problem?

I want to read a book set in a future where society collapsed or some catastrophe changed the structure of the world. Any recommendations?

>>20901771
The Dying Earth

>>20901771
The Time Machine

>>20901667
Shattered Sea is his YA series. I didn't like it.

Age of Madness is the third First Law World Trilogy. I liked it.

When does Warbreaker stop being so fucking boring (35% in) and why have I read children's books with better prose than this?

https://vocaroo.com/1CCwpOxz6JSO

>>20901140
What he's describing, and what is more often the problem, is when the MC power scales too quickly. It's less about the fights, and more about the way it kills tension. A lot of serial authors have a bad habit of letting their protags reach the highest echelons too quickly, and then they have to come up with new, even more powerful antagonists. Wastes all the time they've spent developing the initial antagonists as a threat, and generally there's no good way to make some other group more powerful except by delving into some kind of spirit energy bullshit that's just completely intangible to the reader. Second Life Ranker was so bad about this.

>>20895322
Anyone else read this?
I've since calmed down a lot. I've taken more of the things an author would want you to take away from a book instead of just reading it and going, "Ah, neat story."
Chimp probably killed Lian since her usefullness wore out and he decided that the moment he started exploding. He said he's not spiteful so he didn't keep her alive just to kill her, he probably wanted to use her in some way to get information or to convince her to stop the mutiny.
I suppose part of the message is being able to choose your own fate, since that's what the mutiny was about. But that also meant even if it means just choosing how you die in a fiery explosion instead of just doing your job until the literal end of time. At least to Lian anyway. There's probably also something about being too close to your subject to get a good outside look at it. It seems like everyone else saw Chimp for what it was but Sunday really wanted more. Also it was probably a bad idea to bring the guy who wants to sleep until the end of the universe on to your mutiny team where you want to plop everyone down on a new Earth so you can die in 100 years.

>>20898991
Well, we got about 1/20 of DUNC. We'll have to settle for that.
But I was referring to everything. I can't think of one decent movie other than Arrival being sort of neat. Maybe there's some smaller thing that's great. There's at least one movie that gay furry mentioned on YouTube that sounds neat. Some lady working some barely paying job in like a flower shop or something has to convince her coworkers to take a pay cut so she can keep her job.
But other than that... nothing.

Is anyone else doing Crichton style technohorror these days or did that style die with him?

>>20902066
>Muh prose

Why is this the only thing /ssfg/ retards like to spout, I bet half of you don't even know what the word means.

>>20902143
t. sandersoy

>>20902148
Post an example of what you think is good prose and and example of what you think is bad prose. I'm positive you don't know what you are talking about.

>>20902152
Warbreaker reads like it was written for a younger audience with a limited vocabulary. Can you get any more triggered?

>>20902152
Stop being a retard, you're not going to get a serious answer.

>>20902128
We had a bit of a lull in interesting tech breakthroughs, which kinda killed it. We're on a precipice right now for a bunch of different fields, though, so I imagine it'll be back pretty soon

>>20902156
I'm not defending warbreaker, I didn't even finish the series. I just think you are throwing prose around like a buzzword and you don't actually understand what you are talking about.

You think good prose = words above junior high reading level?

>>20902166
It absolutely is not a buzzword, especially in the context of Sanderson. I think you have some personal issues to work through if "prose" is a trigger for you.

>>20902174
inb4 semantics and mental gymnastics to justify this reaction

>>20902174
>still not examples of good or bad

I guess I'm replying to a child

>>20902187
Why? It's completely irrelevant. You're seeking to create conflict where there is none.

What makes a better book

Good prose or a good story?
I feel like a good story is more memorable desu. But I don't hang out with people who like to quote books.

>>20902232
A good story premise is how you get someone to open a book. Good prose is how you keep them turning pages.

>>20902232
not a useful question on its own. there's no shared definition in this thread for almost any of those qualifiers, so it's inevitably just people talking past each other. you have to start by getting an agreed definition of "good prose" and "good story", and also "good book".

>>20902259
On a more personal level then. I agree it would be impossible to come to a concensus on the 3 different definitions.

Sounds like this board needs a good dose of Voltaire.
>"Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste."
Just read the book you were going to ask about.

>>20902333
I'm into cuckoldry and male relationships, is there anything that Voltaire could recommend?

>>20902373
The collected works of Karl Marx.

>>20902232
Good prose is completely irrelevant past a basic level. Story is everything.

What are some fantasy stories where the Main character is just unreasonably wrathful for no good reason in particular?

>>20902532
Manifest Delusions

>>20902232
Prose, imagery, and low level character interaction are what make good light reading and drive commercially successful books. Most people don't actually care about story, or think Harry Potter level interpersonal drama constitutes 'story'

Serious high level story telling is for geniuses and people with actual demons in their head. Writing good story without good prose is a miserable existence unless you have aspirations toward being a cult leader.

>>20901048
>For example, there's no female characters in the first half of the book
the only problem is introduction of females in a second half of the book

How did he fucking lose to a BOAT?

>>20902232
On one hand you have something like Wolfe whose stories are godawful but his writing is excellent
On the other you have books like Dragon's Egg or Blindsight which are written like shit but feature interesting stories within
Both have their place, most of the time I would rather read something well-written which pleases me on a pagely basis

Not a vague rec persay but what are some good (any genre) books that are written in the perspect of the villian or the antagonist? Specifically ones where they are arguably correct. Or just books in general where the main character isn't a whiney bitch nor an over the top edge lord.

>>20901333
It is amazing. From the beginning until the end it’s great but especially the last two hundred pages or so are some of the best you’ll ever get to read.

>>20897762
Why does he roman salute the cat?

>>20902696
The Traitor Son Cycle

Hi, I'm retarded. How do I read Way of Kings? Is there a read order chart?

>>20902742
Looks really interesting ty fren

>>20897669
Is Dragonlance the best D&D-esque genre-fiction fantasy books? I didn’t like the hobbitmen or feminist vibes of LOTR.

>>20902776
you read them in order baka its not complicated

>>20902780
I haven't read it in years, but it was by a massive margin my favourite series as a kid. Raistlin Majere is such a great character.

>>20902232
a book needs to have at least decent prose for me to read it. if the prose is shit it gets dropped. story/characters then make measure how good it is.

>>20902162
>a bit of a lull
Technology is over.

So I finished up with Aching God the other day. The basic premise is, the protagonist is a retired member of a guild that explores ancient mystical ruins for fun and profit (and violent death), he is recalled to service when one of the magical artifacts they've had sitting around is activated by accident, and starts killing people. He is tasked with Assembling A Team and returning the artifact to its original resting place to hopefully (maybe) unfuck the damage its done.
I liiiked it? I liked the tone, it manages to be dark without being edgy. I also liked the setting, prose and characters. But it has one major problem. As the story goes on, it becomes increasingly apparent that the author is an enormous American shitlib. It starts out small, like how whenever a group of people are introduced, it's always two women and a man. Or how every leader is a woman, (except the bad ones).
But by the time I got to the start of the second book, it was too much. I dropped it in the first chapter. It opens with a borderline sexual description of a black man, who is the target of a racial epithet. He then proceeds to explain how his people wuz astronomers while white people were living in caves. The author goes so far with it that it ends up coming across like a parody of itself, it reads like something you'd find on 4chan written to mock this kind of content.

Overall, I liked the first book despite the irritating Americanisms that bleed through. It's keeps the horror and dark tone without falling into a rut of edge. The prose is solid, and characters all have their own mannerisms and voices. It's clear the author has some talent, it's just a shame he's so obviously succumbed to the American brainrot.

>>20902128
Daniel Suarez is trying. Delta-V was OK. I didn't read the one about the secret government department that supresses technological advance

Is there a website that details the setting of the book of the new sun?

>>20902829
>Raistlin Majere
THE quintessential ambitious voluntarily-celibate 4chan archmagus.

>>20902373
A Shadow in Summer. Unironically. It has both of those things very strongly.

>>20902232
This >>20902400
Prose is like 10% of the grade.
But I think characters are a huge deal. I don't care how intricate your plot is, if the vehicle used to convey the plot is a boring 1 dimensional sack of shit.

>>20902967
it was decent, shame the sequel is awful

>>20898509
Read Diaspora next

writing a book where blood magic is used in warfare to decimate enemies but i'm having trouble coming up with cool creative ways to do that?

any ideas? just spitball me your coolest ideas

>>20902232
Good characters trumps both.

>>20903635
>writing a book where blood magic is used in warfare to decimate enemies but i'm having trouble coming up with cool creative ways to do that?
>any ideas? just spitball me your coolest ideas
Uh, off the top of my head blood magic is commonly described a parasitic and dangerous in fiction, so a blood plague that siphons life force (commonly associated with blood) and carries from soldier to soldier could be used in warfare.
You could even get smarter with this and describe it as either very quick working so that it can decimate hundreds on a battlefield in minutes, or very slow working so that the entire enemy army struggles with lack of energy and dizzines, an effect that cripples and doesn't seem to have a cause without investigation.

Other than that, Blood Elementals/Spirits that eat blood and can quickly snowball by devouring soldiers and their blood. Or commonly used parasitic effect of a soldier/mage becoming stronger with each vanquished foe, either temporary or permanently.

Or just use the 'sacrifical' aspect of blood magic and become temporary stronger in exchange for long-term harm.

>>20903635
How about a spell that can make all or most of the bodies blood to clot instantly? Well practiced mages would be able to target just the heart so that they could cast it on many combatants at once.

I think the important aspect of blood magic is that there is some form of sacrifice on the part of the caster

Perhaps associate it with traps or ambushes. Cursed waystones or arches left where the enemy army is known to be heading through. A mountain pass carved with runes of foul magic. Passing through such a threshold sours the blood slowly but surely. Food looses its nourishment, sleep eludes the soldiers, then the bloody shits and festering wounds that refuse to heal.

>>20903635
Men willingly donate their blood for the use of mages to construct powerful soldiers for their armies. So much blood is taken from men, that they become anemic and weak. When it comes time to actually fight, they're half the soldiers they should be. Thin, weak, and slow. However, in front of the ranks of men, are the ranks of artificial soldier created by their blood. Twice the height of normal men. Bone white, despite the blood that powers them. And stone hard. 1 of these creatures are worth 10 men.

The army decimates their enemies, but the men are too weak to reap their rewards. There's barely any pillaging or raping. Their cheers are rasping.

>Why don't they use the blood of their enemies?
Because the only thing stopping the creatures from turning on their creators is their shared blood.

>>20903635
Spells are activated by carving magical symbols on human flesh so each wizard is entouraged by a bunch of naked cruficied slaves. Dunno seems like something Bakker would write

I think I've had enough of the short story series I'm reading, The Memory of Sky: Three short stories primarily focused on the character Diamond, a magickal (not really, this is hard sci-fi) boy who can't die and regenerates any lost limbs along with having a perfect memory, one of four 'corona children' with special characteristics but the specialist one, and his subsequent adventures in the forest-of-huge-trees-hanging-from-the-ceiling world and civilization. The plot moves along and the characters feel alien in their dialogue and mannerisms, which I'm okay with and expect from some sci-fi but it's a bit much sometimes, and the boy being special is so waxed upon it reminds me of Oden from One Piece. I'm 60% through and still have 5 fucking chapters before I finish the second book.
Maybe I'll switch to something else in the meantime and come back. I liked this much more when it was about the Great Ship itself and I'm suspecting that this is a habitat within the Ship where nobody knows their actual origins for whatever reason.

Recommend me fantasy with unicorns (not some creepy creatures the author calls unicorns, actual unicorns)

>>20903677
In Worth the Candle Blood Mages can do a lot of bullshit with Blood magic, aside from mundane self-enhancements they can cut their wrists to produce blood blades, turn into liquid blood, hear through vibrations in blood around or even at Master level increase the pressure and amount of blood in their bodies to produce massive explosions.

>>20903726
add in lithe rippling beasts of pulsating sinew and gore as their mounts

>>20903677
good shit, anon. thank you. I especially like the idea of subtle crippling. Reading this also gave me an idea which builds on one I initially had where the blood plague significantly alters the makeup of blood cells. the blood cells turn into tiny parasitic worms which begin eating their way out from the inside.
>>20903712
>I think the important aspect of blood magic is that there is some form of sacrifice on the part of the caster
I agree. There will definiely be consequence so as to keep it from becoming too OP. I really like the clotting idea. Also the rune idea.

Jesus you guys are good.

>>20903756
Yeah thats how i felt reading Accelerando.

>>20903726
this one's spooky. reminds me of rage of dragons and the enraged ingonyama but with much more sacrifice required to get that power up and a lot less agency for the affected party

>>20903751
that does seem like something bakker would write lol

>>20903769
Dont be afraid of making something OP. Magic by its very nature is OP. Perhaps if its a new discovery in your world, or ancient lost knowledge married to modern techniques that makes it particularly dangerous, more so than it ever was?

>>20903768
Eh, I thought about stuff like that. But to me, calcium hardened albino giants are cooler. Their blood being disguised underneath like marrow. All the gore stuff is a little too on the nose. But if you wanted, you can have some red show around the rims of their eyes and other spots where blood might surface.

>>20903777
Yeah, I don't know about any of that stuff. But I like magic that requires sacrifice. It would be kind of cool to see a whole army pay the price. And they take pride it in too. You can imagine how things can go wrong.

>>20903774
It's a good book in of itself. The author knows his stuff and can write well enough but I definitely need a break from the pacing.

>>20903803
oh i have a good twist on magic in my world that makes for a interesting war. each side when they're hit with what the other is cooking is like "what the shit was that?" whenever they get fucked.

>>20903804
What if the mages that summon these things must salt and blood the ground where they rise? Like it must be tilled into the earth and then they can start their chants/rites.

I like Mandalore's videos on Marathon as Sci-fi.
I like how all the AI's are destined to go batshit at some point, like some start refusing to open doors because they're tired of running a lab or a ship or something.
And I like how one race wants other species to create AI's because the way they do it might be different and create a new technology and this race wants to integrate with the newer species' AIs.

Any books with AIs that you personally like, anons, anecdotally?

>>20902066
Every sandersoy book is a boring snoozefest until the last stretch

>>20903865
hmmmm. I suppose. I wasn't thinking anything about the earth. But now that you mention is, it has me thinking. Have you ever see those videos where were people our molten metal into antholes, and then wait for it to cool and harden. Then dig the metal up. It takes the form of the ant colony below the the surface.

It's a popular trend, because people think it looks cool, and other people find it oddly satisfying. Me personally? I think it's kind of disgusting. The way they branch off like that is too organic. The propagation is eerie. I've tried to explain this feeling to people before, and they think I'm crazy. But I don't like seeing things that rapidly grow in this way. Makes me itchy.

Anyway, the idea is that the mages would first dig deep into the soil. And then distribute the blood along thin holes and trenches. Slowly adding dirt in layers. Making this a rather labor intensive task. They would probably have a couple assistants with them to move the dirt while they do the finer work of blood distribution.

The result would be a network of "veins" under the soil. Or you could think of them as chakra pathways. The paths ensure that the power flows in such a way as to support a single living entity. Over time, the the living entity manifests in the soil. Encasing the veins with hardened flesh. And when it finally gains consciousness, it pulls itself out.

>>20903958
It could lead to the horrific results of a badly done summoming. One done hastily or incompletely could unleash a blodplague or perhaps misshapen giant that cannot be brought to heel

>>20903979
Yep! All kinds of things. It would be a very dangerous magic. But also difficult enough that it would filter the average commoner from performing it themselves. Because actually forming pathways capable of creating life does takes some know-how. And yet, knowing life forming pathways can still result in strange and deformed creatures.

There are probably some real monsters out there that a mage considered their life's work. But it all went horribly wrong. Or maybe the mage is crazed enough to think it went right.

>>20904002
>But also difficult enough that it would filter the average commoner from performing it themselves
Yes a very esoteric and aristocratic practice much like how modern surgery started. Looked upon with derision and disgusts at first but eventually adapted for everyday use.
Perhaps a revenant designed specifically for hurling large rocks like a trebuchet, or one grown as a chain lifter for a great castle gate

>>20902152
>Post an example of what you think is good prose
I can post an example of what I think is NOT good prose

>>20904016
I guess so. But how would the practice have begun in the first place? The rise of life through blood must have been done on a much smaller scale, before people got the idea to do it on a large scale.

Maybe it all began when an carver made a small wooden effigy of an important figure. A lord or king. And just to be artistic, he carved the paths of life onto the surface of the effigy. Painting the etched paths with the kings blood, or maybe some other kind of blood as some weir religious thing. And the effigy came to life.

Or perhaps, an architect designed that the paths of life as a grand symbol on the floor of a temple. Then one day a tragedy causes someone to die and spill their blood. The pool of blood seeping into the grooves of the etchings. Sometime later, days, or weeks, a creature forms there and rises.

I don't know. I'm not certain those are strong ideas. But it would be nice to have a history of gradual discovery and refinement, before you get to boulder throwing giants.

Any good anarchy lit besides the le guin one?

>>20904078
No. Even anarchists prefer to write stories about kings and queens.

Accelerandro, I guess, but I stopped ready at the scene where the MC was getting pegged.

>>20904085
That doesn't actually happen does it

I'm on the first page of the first story of zothique, and there's a character named pornos. The prose is awesome but talk about distracting

>>20904098

>>20904077
>>20904016
Actually, I just thought of a way. Maybe it began as normal necromancy. Some people performing the rites to raise the dead. And as most necromancy goes, the dead thing is a husk of its former self.
However, what people discovered, is that the blood flow of a reanimated person is different than a living one. Certain pathways remain, while others deteriorated. So they experimented by recreating the husk's pathways in other things and performed the rites. Discovering that they can reanimate more than humans. However, blood is always required.

>>20904098
yeah it does, it gets pretty dumb.

>>20904112

>>20904119
This isnt even the dumbest sex scene in this pile of shit book

>>20902232
Good prose can make a bad story tolerable. I don't think a good story can save bad prose though

>>20904074
Holy shit what the fuckkkkk

Who can compete with Greg Egan?

>>20904147
That's the same dynamic tits and ass have. A nice butt can make up for no tits. But nice tits can't make up for no butt.

However, I think having "no butt" is actually very rare. And that even a small to medium butt is good enough for most men. That's Prose. Bad prose is pretty rare. And mediocre prose is good enough for most readers.

>>20904156
>>20904074
Lopen is a comic relief character. His entire shtick, is that he talks with a funny accent(in their world), and he says things that confuse everyone else around him. Kaladin is always remarking how he just doesn't understand the guy. But everyone likes him because he lightens the mood and supports the group with good cheer.

>>20898744
I read it and enjoyed it but it isn't particularly good.

>>20904074
You dislike this because it's faggy, not because of the prose.

>>20900234
Your fixation with the wordcount is kinda weird bro, ngl
The story is big and encompasses a lot, cool, w/e, no need to mention how many millions every other post

>>20904074
Workmanlike prose? More like man-on-man pros amiright?

>>20904190
Holy cope

>>20904190
>Lopen is a comic relief character. His entire shtick, is that he talks with a funny accent(in their world), and he says things that confuse everyone else around him. Kaladin is always remarking how he just doesn't understand the guy. But everyone likes him because he lightens the mood and supports the group with good cheer.
This explanation doesn't help one bit. It's still terrible.

Why so many fantasy books have some hooded edgelord on the cover? What is it with hoods and shitty YA?

>>20904290
How is it terrible? It reads like a real life conversation.

>>20904291
Because the publishers choose the title and they're extremely hesitant to take any risks. They know they'll turn at least a marginal profit just by token of being mediocre fantasy

>>20904311
>It reads like a real life conversation.
Maybe for you and all your queer party friends

>>20900550
I don't want to be that guy who talks about the same thing in every thread, but read Moers.

>>20902780
if you think LOTR is "feminist" propaganda, Dragonlance will make you kill yourself
for which reason, I recommend you read it

>>20904311
>It reads like a real life conversation.
that's the problem, it reads like the unfiltered thoughts of a random retard off the street. he puts 0 (zero) thought into what he writes. he just puts what comes into his head first onto paper. his use of italics is fucking atrocious too

>>20904467
>that's the problem, it reads like the unfiltered thoughts of a random retard off the street
So... Lopen.

>>20897679
I liked it very much. I don't know when I started to get into the book but I certainly don't regret it.
The only thing that bothers me are the weird measurements of time and length used.
I started reading Sword & Citadel but I kind of lost interest because of vidya.
Can you tell me where in the book you currently are?

>>20901649
Its legit good, and if you are asian then it will blow you away

>>20903635
Anything to do with blood magic/vampires is gay, surely there are better magics out there which you could employ

>>20904727
How about a semen mage

>>20904765
Warlock only field, they contract with the semen demons

>>20904765
Could actually be very useful if they can use their powers to guarantee conception.

>>20904765
Lets not forget the fecal matter witches

>>20904765
Ahem. We prefer "jizard".

>>20904888
Checked
Kek, jizard, you should post it on /vg/

>>20904888
A weak class, reliant on the Crystals produced by JO Jinnis

>>20897669
what if I.... killed Neal?
What if I murdered him?

I liked it, but I was rather disappointed that, for being a Portal Fantasy, the "real world" was basically entirely forgotten and irrelevant for the entire duration of the series. It also fizzled out in the third book a bit, not as satisfying an ending as I was expecting.

>>20905131
*isekai

>>20905134
Portal fantasy and isekai are the same thing. Shut up.

>>20905134
I don't care what you call it, I was just let down by the fact that the "real world" aspect of the characters faded into virtually complete irrelevance aside from a few random internal monologues in the characters. None of the 5 earth people had any inklings to discuss their own pre-transport lives and nobody in Fionavar seemed like they would have cared to listen if they had, and if you ask me that sort of defeats the purpose of having a portal fantasy/isekai in the first place. Paul, Kevin, Dave, Jennifer, and Kim assimilate utterly, to the point where if you excised the (minuscule) references to 1980s Toronto you would not know the difference.

>>20905160
a trend that remains with the genre to this very day

>>20905247
I haven't read very many isekais so I wouldn't know. I've read John Carter of Mars, where the southern gentleman sees Barsoom through the lens of his politics, and he explains away his superpowers with stuff like earth gravity being different. I've read Three Hearts and Three Lions where a 1940s physicist tries to come up with scientific explanations for things like how dragons breathe fire (Gordon R. Dickson's Dragon Knight novels do the same thing). And I read the first novel in Terry Brooks' Landover series where a Chicago lawyer winds up becoming a fantasyland king and having to learn how to use his legal knowledge to interpret politics.

Oh there's also Dante's Divine Comedy, which is technically speaking an isekai, but I'm a tastelet who gets filtered by verse poetry; I can't read a story without it being in prose.

>>20905274
It's basically the dominant sub-genre of fantasy in Japan right now, which means if you want to get published you write isekai. So a lot of people who just want to write fantasy start by having their mc get isekai'd and then ignore it from that point forward. Or, you get the controversially nicknamed "native isekai" genre, where they write a fantasy story taking place in the stereotypical jap isekai fantasy setting, but it's literally just a fantasy novel.

>>20905288
I watched Inuyasha as a kid on adult swim, wasn't that isekai? I thought that the schoolgirl - her name was Kagome I think - still went back and forth between earth and magical feudal demon japan though, so it wasn't like the present-day was completely abandoned.

>>20905299
Inuyasha is not indicative of contemporary isekai. Mushoku Tensei basically redefined it, and is the template everyone follows.

>>20905247
>a trend that remains with the genre to this very day
Yet another reason why The Wandering Inn is a breath of fresh air in the 'genre.' Everything from how the characters arrived in another world, their memories of Earth, brining Earth's culture and ideas or the ultimate purpose of summoned Earthers is constantly relevant throughout the entire story. The author leans into it, instead of running away of from the premise and treating it as an excuse to tell the story.
Seriously, you can write a good story about almost anything as long as you sincerely explore the premise instead of ignoring it.

>>20905274
Read The Castle of Iron by Lyon Sprague de Camp

>>20905160
I don't get why they keep doing this. If you want to tell a story about some guy in a fantasy world, why not just tell a story about a guy in a fantasy world? Why the hell do you have to teleport him in there from this reality? Makes no sense, and it's a really stupid gimmick anyway.

>>20905346
Genuinely it's because it's more marketable that way, and also it serves as an easy in-road for exposition, because the protagonist obviously doesn't know anything about the world. There's one actually good one I remembered reading that, due to the circumstances, it genuinely wouldn't matter if he was isekai'd or not, so he could've just been a native.

>>20905346
Lots of people dream of leaving this shitty world and not looking back.

>>20905412
>he married a chick older than he was
truly too based for this world

>>20901048
Anon, you misspelled 5/5

I loved Way of Kings by Sanderson, Words of Radiance was ok, but Oathbringer was a slog

I am reading some fucking dour reviews about the 4th book Rythm of War

Why the fuck can't this stupid fuck just write the cool shit about armies and power armor and giant crustaceans? I don't want edgelord characters, "witty" unfunny cunts who are brilliant because they are women, or painfully excruciating lore dumps like he did at the end of Mistborn trilogy because he had to resolve the planetary level conflict somehow.

Elantris was a very cool concept, Mistborn too, he has a lot of great fantasy concepts but he treats his book like a Subway sandwich shop, everyone has the same witty banter and the same voice. Like he figures out a gimmick or a speech pattern or a bit that one character can have to distinguish them and he blatantly has them repeating the same shit all the time.

Way of Kings for me was him standing out and actually out doing himself in terms of quality. I think this motherfucker needs to take a fucking break and stop outputting so much shit so often, he is getting worse and worse and fucking up his big Stormlight Archives.

tl;dr; SANDERSON BAD, WRITE MORE GOOD

>>20905702
orcs are real

>>20905711
>writes an epic where humanity battles for survival against orcs as a homage to anglo culture
>real life anglo people evolve into orcs
pottery

And then it turned out that the soul devouring Fiends who fought a thousand year border war with the humans on the fringe of civilization are actually Mexicans. Holy based.

>>20905779
>>20905711
norfs aren't orcs, they're hobbits, which is exactly what Tolkien wanted

Having cast four "What I read's" into the seas of /sffg/, I now begin again. Surely it is absurd; but I am not - I will not be - so absurd myself as to suppose that this will ever find a reader, even in me.

>>20905865
The problem is that nobody wants to parse collage style WEGs. Frankly, I think it misses the point of the format, they work best as simple jokes. Premise, Setup, Punchline. The only time collage ever got attention was when it worked as a punchline itself. "I expected something simple, but it was actually very complex" being the implied humor.

>>20905878
I completely agree, but there's no place for simplicity in Solar Cycle. Frankly, I enjoy making these too much.

>>20905888
I just feel like you should pick, or invent, a different format then. As it stands, it's just completely illegible.

>>20904074
This is only slightly less robotic than John Steakley's Armor. That book was written by some random faggot who wrote it to prove to his friends that he could.

>>20905916
I' about quarter in Armor and can't decide if I'll drop it or not. It feels like more soulless Starship Troopers with beter alien design.

>>20904074
Jesus fucking christ, I remember kids back in highschool in the early 2000s making this exact lame joke, and it's probably even older than that. People actually pay for this shit?

>>20904074
Is this in the third book? I gave up after starting that one.

>>20905702
What's so cool about Mistborn conceptually? yet another tired world concept dominated by some weather pattern caused by a mysterious plot relevant calamity with pretty much nothing else going on in terms of worldbuilding. Magic is just a standard superpower affair where they do the usual thing of using a specific consumable for a specific power, all of which are extremely generic superpowers in concept and execution. The story even begins with your generic overthrow the evil overlord plot, who does the typical predictable lame cliched thing of revealing he was keeping a greater evil at bay (like how many times has something like wow or Saturday morning cartoon done the exact same?), spliced together with a by-the-numbers coming of age story of the spunky but prodigious orphan. It's like the most unoriginal cookiecutter thing I've ever come across.

Nothing. the average pop-fantasy fan rarely ventures past the tried and true trite of Harry Potter, WoT, Eragon, Star Wars, and whatever YA garbage they are otherwise addicted to. Mistborn appeals to all that but adds some surface level "edge" to it what they're familiar with. the worldbuilding and "magic" system are just a different coat of paint to make the potential future hollywood film trailer look "cooler." There's no thematic depth, or anything to any of it, but pop-fantasy fans don't want to bother with that shit anyways.

I'm looking for a fantasy story which begins with an old man finding a carriage that has been thrown off the side of the road and he finds a young child in the wreckage and he adopts the child

I dropped "The Darkness That Comes Before" after the first 200 pages because it's just an amateurs take on Tolkein's Silmarillion BUT WITH ALIENS!! THAT RAPE!! and 100% more pecker descriptions and gay shit with character and place names that are 100% more fucking obnoxious.

Fuck this talentless faggot Bakker.

>>20906421
Not what you're looking for, but wasn't that kind of how JoJo's Bizarre Adventure began?

>>20906480
and on top of it Bakker is a pretentious asshole.

>>20906496
Oh yeah it probably was that
Thanks anon

>https://www.newsload.ca/post/insights-on-the-second-apocalypse-book-series
bakkerbros.......

>>20904074
I don't see the problem here desu, it's a convo that's going fast because there's several people there.

>>20906421
Dwarves by Markus heitz
If the old man is a wizard and the child is a dwarf and there isn't really a carriage but instead the dwarf is dropped off by a group of kobolds.

>>20898964
Can you imagine Tolkien watching that? Dude would have a fucking aneurysm lol.

I'm having a lot of time visualising the book of the new sun

>read Brando Sando
>arranged marriage weny surprisingly well
Every fucking time.
What the message here?

>>20906781
That you’re obsessed with an author you don’t even like?

>>20906781
I can only think of wax and his wifes arranged marriage, what others have there been in cosmere?
I don't think you can label the marriage in warbreakers as 'going well'
Navani and Galivar's didn't exactly go well either.

>>20906827
I counted Warbreaker too. I was bad at first then it went quite well.
Then there is Shallan x Adolin, sort of.

>>20906841
That was more an arranged date that just kinda worked out but fair. Sanderson does have a lot of recurring things, like that, princesses/nobility who're fighters, etc.

>>20906841
>Shallan x adolin
Ok I forgot that initially Jasnah wanted to set them up, but it they are still not married yet right? Or did they? I actually forgot.

>>20906857
They did in Oathbringer but Shallan's 2nd personality still lusts after Kaladin.
To be fair, I think Adolin and Kaladin are gay for each other too.

>>20906864
I'm fairly sure Sanderson outright confirmed Adolin would be totally on board for a three-way relationship between them.

Read Wagner

>>20906886
no

>>20903757
The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle is the obvious one

>>20906864
With schitzo (borderline traitor) shallan and the kaladin issue I'd hardly call that a marriage that's going surprisingly well.

The only one that is wholesome, good and is an actual arranged marriage is wax and steris.

>>20904378
this looks foreign

>>20906892
And even then that's one that took a while to really work out. Steris getting horny for Wax flattening a building was sort of the kick-off point.

>>20906894
Wow, anon, what gave it away? The non-English words on the cover?

>>20906899
yep that's how i worked it out

I keep forgetting that /sffg/ is mostly filled with retards and pointing out the obvious is such an achievement to them.

>>20906480
Filtered.

>>20906916
Fuck at least it's discussion instead of endless shitflinging about nothing.

>>20906919
Anon, I think he was just making fun of that one anon pointing out the obvious.

>>20906916
Rather talk about simple shit in stories than see people falling to bakkerbait

>>20906930
Why are you even bringing that up, there’s literally none of that in this thread?

>>20906930
Are you that one retard that keeps responding to them instead of just ignoring it?

Just finished the mistborn trilogy.
Liked it a lot, though the ending was a 50/50 between good twists that were foreshadowed and made sense and twists that were a bit more hard to believe that they were always intended.
Also, I've never picked out writing habits while reading before, but specifically at the end of the last book I noticed the dude was using the phrase "so-and-so started" as a reaction a bunch. Enough where it just stood out.

Are the other books on the series any good? Reviews seem to paint them as worse than the original trilogy, what are your thoughts?

>>20906944
>what are your thoughts?
They're in the archive, check them out if you're interested.

>>20906944
Original trilogy is the worst part, honestly, except for book 1. Book 3 is just... Boring. It's 95% nothing happening except people being miserable and then everything's resolved in like a handful of pages. Era 2 is a lot better in my opinion, has much more solid characters and tighter pacing, though the plot is a bit more all-over-the-place as each book is a bit more self-contained.

>>20906886
based
wagnerchads unite

>>20906948
Will definitely check em out then.
And yeah, I definitely agree that book 3 was the weakest.
Pretty much have your exact thoughts on it, though I did still like it.

>>20906945
Will give it a look

>>20906944
>Started in your face

>>20906944
I liked the end of mistborn but on the whole I did like the second trilogy better. For me, I really didn't like early kelsier and Vin much. I almost didn't finish it. They both got better as the books went on.
But for the era 2 series, I like most of the characters straight away.

>>20906988
>Will give it a look
I'll spare you the time and effort
>>/lit/?task=search2&ghost=yes&search_text=stormlight&search_subject=&search_username=&search_tripcode=sffg&search_email=&search_filename=&search_datefrom=&search_dateto=&search_op=all&search_del=dontcare&search_int=dontcare&search_ord=new&search_capcode=all&search_res=post

>>20904235
>"I" "It "Yeah" "So?" "[name] X5
No, I'm pretty sure you're just retarded, anon.

>>20904190
Say that to Lucie Wild, faggot.
Her tits make up for no expression AND no ass.

>>20905299
At least she had to go home and had to keep explaining why she's gone for so long. Also being in the real world had consequences as time was still passing in whatever they called the other world. Demon world maybe? Japan has a thing where demons aren't just always evil Satan spawn from Hell.

>>20907050
This is how people talk
Not to mention that these guys in particular are like all working/low class lads

>>20907077
So go talk to someone.
I'm reading.
He should get better.

>>20907063
Lucie Wild has a small butt, but it's there. It's helped by the fact that she has a nice hourglass figure with hips. Looking at the front, you can't even tell her ass is small.

>>20907077
Anon, people here just want to complain. You should know this by now.

>>20906916
it's foreign, get over it lmao

>>20907044
Really wish people did more reviews.

So did Alicent actually like Rhaenyra or did she become friends to get closer to the king?

>>20907203
More and more people are doing reviews, which is always great to see.

>>20907203
>>20907249
Yes, there's more posted in thread recently. In the reviews thread in the GR group there's 20 members with 100+ reviews. Almost 100 with 10+.

>>20907232
From the show, seems like they were legit friends and alicent was even pushing rhaenyra to stake her claim for the throne.
When her dad asked her to go fuck the king she didn't look like she was happy about it. But then she probably realised she had a chance to be queen so fuck friends.

>>20907303
>From the show, s
Talking about the book.

>>20907282
>In the reviews thread in the GR group there's 20 members with 100+ reviews. Almost 100 with 10+.
Probably should join it if I want to have a serious discussion then.

First few pages of Neuromancer are very difficult to read for my ESL brain. Every paragraph I need to re-read multiple times to understand what the fuck this world salad means.

>>20907327
I didn't say anything about discussion, but you can certainly try.

>>20907353
It'll better than here, for the most part.

>>20907344
>a cold dish of various mixtures of raw or cooked vegetables, usually seasoned with oil, vinegar, or other dressing and sometimes accompanied by meat, fish, or other ingredients.

>>20907356
Haha. Very nice.

>>20907282
This thread was surprisingly productive in discussion, wonder why.

>I got him by the throat and banged his head half a dozen times against the bulkhead, then kicked his feet from under him
Wtf bros?
Why is he such an asshole?

>>20907375
>This thread was surprisingly productive in discussion
Same, it was also slow and comfy, really wish we got this type of more often.

https://i.4cdn.org/wsg/1661572316012469.webm

>>20907353
What does the Goodreads group entail?

Just caught up with Double Blind, and yeah I love 'manipulative' MCs done right (not perfect and not actually idiots only able to manipulate other characters because everyone is conveniently even more retarded than him).

Anyone knows more MCs like this?

>>20899252
>with the quality of the series lowering noticeably afterward
Caine Black Knife (third volume) is the best one. Caine's Law was kinda meh.

>>20899552
Are you retarded or baiting?

>>20899494
Take your womanish shit to reddit, where it belongs.

>>20907468
He hasn’t read it, anon.

>>20907282
>Yes, there's more posted in thread recently.
Yeah, and its a good thing. It makes /sffg/ productive.

>>20900555
Who cares about publishers? There's plenty of self-pub to choose from. Find the niche you like.

>>20907476
Probably, iirc in the first novel when his producers back on Earth are building up the hype for the Adventure of rescuing his wife, it's explained that it's another physical world, and that if she stays there too long she'll slip out of phase with the other world and die gruesomely.

>>20901048
>there's no female characters in the first half of the book
stopped reading there
if it's about a war it's only natural there's no women
women are useless in war

>>20901261
>reading cuckshit
I shiggy diggy.

I just finished the Dwarves series.
During the first book, initially, I felt it the way events unfolded came across a bit juvenile. I accepted it and continued reading thinking it might be due to translation issues, but then I started to understand the dwarves were not necessarily naive, it's just that they are simple in their beliefs and accept things as they come. Deceit and trickery were not something that was really expected even in the politics.
I came to really enjoy the adventures, I wasn't sure what to expect, I actually assumed it was gonna be entirely focused on the dwarves so I was surprised later when it included human/wizard/dark elf PoVs.

The first three books were great. A very bittersweet ending, if quite sudden. The last two once you get past the oddity of tungdil and his clone and just accept it for what it is, was really good. I liked the ending of the 5th better than the conclusion of the 4th, even though I wish a few things like Lot-Ionans motives to be clearer.

Gonna start on the dark elf books now. I wish I had actually known about them before so I could read them in the order they released, since I know already how a lot of the dark elf events will turn out, but still I'm really looking forward to the books that cover the underground area.

>>20907481
I do for the most part, but I still enjoy going to the bookstore and picking something out. I also assume that at some point the tides will shift, and you can't know unless you take the risk

>>20903751
Painted Man/Warded Man (but he paints symbols on his own skin).

>>20904378
My favorite childhood books, but I don't know how they would measure up for adults.

>>20905288
>Or, you get the controversially nicknamed "native isekai" genre, where they write a fantasy story taking place in the stereotypical jap isekai fantasy setting, but it's literally just a fantasy novel.
So just normal fantasy. Your brain is rotten.

xianxia/wuxia rec that is actually by a respected published author and not randomschmuck32?

>>20907580
top reddit post
publishing means nothing

>>20907580
There aren't any unless you mean the actual wuxia classics ie Condor Heroes

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidolon
Stories with these that aren’t on the wiki?

>>20907709
Google it.

>>20907716
Yes, use Jewgle goy!

New thread
>>20907853

>>20906894
I posted a picture of the german originals because a) I don't own the english ones and b) the english cover is (inexplicably) just some random (and I do mean random, they're not even named/speaking characters) illustrations from the book slapped together infront of a monochrome background. Much less enticing of a cover.
>>20907543
They measure up quite well, they really are books for everyone (well, perhaps not all of Rumo with how how bloody some scenes get). My dad loves em, I love em. Moers' more recent Zamonia books haven't been quite as good, but these original three are amazing each in their own right.