/sffg/ - Science Fiction and Fantasy General

[Anonymous No.20959095]

Nightlife City Edition

Previous Thread:>>20948385

>Recommended reading charts (Look here before asking for vague recs)
https://mega.nz/folder/kj5hWI6J#0cyw0-ZdvZKOJW3fPI6RfQ/folder/guIyhAzS

>Archive
>>/lit/?task=search2&search_subject=sffg

>Goodreads
https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1029811-sffg

[Anonymous No.20959104]

Why haven't you read Blindsight yet?

[Anonymous No.20959124]

>>20959104
I have enough books on my backlog to last ten or twenty years.

[Anonymous No.20959140]

>>20959124
>backlog
is there anything more midwitted?

[Anonymous No.20959171]

>>20958931
>What would I want to read about people with special needs? Surely there are sf and fantasy out there that have well adjusted characters.

When you read older fantasy books, especially the ones written towards younger men, you will see protagonists that are nearly always awkward, shy, anti-social etc. Because reading and writing, by and large, is autistic, and writers use to think they need to guide people like them. People who read fiction sit at home and normies don't, because they want to be around people.
Except in the past no one said autistic but 'nerd', 'weirdo', 'outcast'. So that's why you have protagonist who keep making social mistakes, that don't want to be around other people but make one or two friends that help them navigate the world, that show how to fill an appropriate societal role and be part of the society.

This is also why fiction for women is fundamentaly different, as women by and large don't suffer the consequences and problems the autistic males do, even if those women are also autistic. So you don't really get 'an outcast girl that proves her worth and makes friends, while also contributing to community.' It can work as a story, but doesn't resonate with more than very tiny population of young women. It's the opposite for autistic young men.


And now? Now people know what autism and similiar 'neurodivergency' is, hence contemporary writers no longer care about teaching how to be a part of society, instead affirming people in their divergency - which is also resonating with people, but is arguably toxic, as it doesn't make anyone grow or develop into a role in society. Modern western culture particularly suffers from toxic affirmation of everyone, falsly selling outcasts an idea of a world where they can do whatever they want and be accepted. Which is, of course, naive and in the long-term damaging to their psyche.

Returning to your comment, don't expect fantasy/sf with younger target group (15-25+ years old) to be full of well adjusted characters, as fiction is not for those people. If you want fantasy with well-adjusted people, do read the works of authors that are 40+ years old and not writing anything YA or lower.

[Anonymous No.20959180]

Tolkien created a hopeful fantasy world for his time, an eternal king who set the world right, and the small people of the shire doing great deeds.

Bakker also created one based on our current times, with buttrape and nihilism, destruction and ultimate death. As much as I love the world Bakker created, I can't help reflect on the sheer difference 70-80 years make for the fantasy genre.

[Anonymous No.20959186]

>>20959095
Janny tranny deleted my first post

[Anonymous No.20959188]

>>20958931
just skip to the last act if you don't wanna read character development bro

[Anonymous No.20959219]

>>20959104
But I have. It's no Solaris, but it's fun.

[Anonymous No.20959241]

>>20959180
>Bakker also created one based on our current times, with buttrape and nihilism, destruction and ultimate death. As much as I love the world Bakker created, I can't help reflect on the sheer difference 70-80 years make for the fantasy genre.
In the times of Tolkien there wasn't a singificant chance that the world as we know will literally end during the author's lifetime. His Dagor Dagorath is what we, today, are preparing for. Within 30 years the societies, countires and their citizens as we know them will be utterly irreconcilable with ours. Automation and higher standards of living will be but a passing moment somewhere soon, far greater impact shall have artificial intelligency that can do whatever we can but better, from art to writing, even beautiful religious writings that will resonate with you far more than anything human can make. Will Earth be some sort of Zoo, where humans are taken care of by the Artificial Gods? Or are we approaching our Great Filter?

Making children no longer serves any purpose but enjoyment for raising another being, msot fo the time merely a fullfilment of breeding instinct. There is no actual retirement to look forwards to, no grandchildren to look for, no planting trees for the future generations as there aren't any trees that you can plant. Any good and productive behaviour you could have taken will be almost certainly rendered useless very soon.

There is nothing to do, nothing to strive for except for these last few challenges you can overcome within the next 20 years. Then it's more or less over. No apocalypse to kill you, but a world where meaning no longer exists because there are barely any ways to create it, and no real reason to make the effort.

Why is Cyberpunk dead as a genre? Because we are more or less already living in a dystopian world where corporations have extreme influence over what you consume, how and what the media are saying about that consuming. So reading about it practically pointless, as it is not fiction, there is no distance created by the setting.

Sorry for schizo monologue, but thoughts like that been cooking in my head of late and had to get it out. Probably should write some book about fantasy world reminiscent of those epic fantasies where heroes won and changed the entire world, but the story itself being about how the true paradise is coming and how the consequences will change the humanity.

As far as I know, only Worth the Candle seriously tackled issues like these.

[Anonymous No.20959307]

guys?

[Anonymous No.20959349]

>>20959241
No. There's still beauty in the world. If there's none left you just have to create it yourself.

There's not going to be a run-away sci-fi future where AIs take over the earth. No Skynet dystopia is set to arrive within 30 years.

What we will have, instead, is people becoming poorer year by year. Social trust eroding further. And the need for heroes to remake society anew will scream for artists to prepare the way. Writing can be the way to herald the new age (whatever it might be, and most likely it'll be very violent, making the atrocities of the Roman collapse pale in comparison).

[Anonymous No.20959408]

>>20959241
You realized Tolkien lived through WW1, right?

[Anonymous No.20959462]

The descriptions of the battles, and the strategies is sublime, It's one of the few things that I have read that seriously had powerful scenes, after finishing Prince of Nothing and reading the Aspect Emperor, I feel like Bakker ruined fantasy for me, everything I read now is garbage compared to his sublime creation.

[Anonymous No.20959483]

>>20959408
>You realized Tolkien lived through WW1, right?
And? Tolkien wrote about a world in danger that could be saved, not about a world going towards an inevitable change that will turn everyone's life upside-down. There is no real comparison.

[Anonymous No.20959616]

is Bakker an Anglo Saxonian?

[Anonymous No.20959625]

>>20959616
Bakker sounds Dutchoid.

[Anonymous No.20959635]

>>20959462
It's just that rare combination of talents he shows, in that he has both good ideas and a good writing style. It even makes it easier to tolerate the flaws in his writing.

[Anonymous No.20959646]

So is anyone gonna salvage this thread

[Anonymous No.20959650]

Why was the last thread nuked?

[Anonymous No.20959660]

>>20959650
It ran its course, and with its last dying breath gave life to the new ones, so that the torch of fantastical fiction endured against the the endless void, if even for a day more.

[Anonymous No.20959760]

>>20959625
I googled his family name and they said its a Dutch name for Baker, so you might be correct.

[Anonymous No.20959798]

Is there a way I can filter out books with blacks and/or stronk wymen in them? I was reading Joe Abercrombie Red Country and about 150 pages in I realised that a shoehorned interracial romance is getting set up while all the white men are old and/or evil. I'm so sick and tired of this shit.

[Anonymous No.20959813]

>>20959798
Just don't read anything modern written by the westeners.

[Anonymous No.20959891]

>>20959483
>WW1 ain't shit did you know old jewish men want us to eat bugs? We're living in the real end times bros

[Anonymous No.20960028]

read cradle

[Anonymous No.20960182]

>>20959798
Don't read anything ever written after the moon landing

[Anonymous No.20960330]

Any good fantasy books about the death of an eternal monarch?

[Anonymous No.20960337]

>>20960330
Mistborn: the Final Empire
God-Emperor of Dune (shut up Dune is fantasy)

[None !SFFG.n1h7M No.20960497]

>>20959095
Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology - James Patrick Kelly & John Kessel, editors (2006)

Slipstream, the Genre That Isn’t - James Patrick Kelly & John Kessel
The editors discuss the history of Slipstream and what they believe it to be. In each anthology I've read that's tried to define a style I've appreciated the historical context provided by these introductions.

Al - Carol Emshwiller (1972)
A strangely written story about a woman providing observations and judgments on the events and people in her life that she finds interesting. Its style was intriguing, but I didn't enjoy it.
Meh

The Little Magic Shop - Bruce Sterling (1987)
A young man goes into a little magic shop and buys the water of youth because he'd like to live a good, happy, life without any consequences for as long as possible.
Enjoyable

The Healer - Aimee Bender (1998)
One girl has a hand of flame and the other a hand of ice. The former harms and the latter heals. A self-important third girl with a penchant for watching and inducing self-harm becomes involved.
Meh

I Want My 20th-Century Schizoid Art - various writers (2005)
Excerpts from David Moles's blog with writers discussing what Slipstream is and isn't, and whether it's meaningful in any way, seventeen years after Sterling coined the term.

The Specialist’s Hat - Kelly Link (1998)
Claire and Samantha are ten year old twin sisters. They enjoy life. They are curious and like to explore the world. Their house may be haunted. Their babysitter used to live there. Their favorite game is Dead, which they don't play when grownups are around. These are their strange days.
Meh

Light and the Sufferer - Jonathan Lethem (1995)
A bored man goes with his younger brother to rob some drug dealers because his brother likes using drugs and money. An alien starts following them around because this is a normal thing that happens. They find this annoying, but there's nothing that can be done about it.
Enjoyable

Sea Oak - George Saunders (1998)
Sea Oak is an great story that's equally utterly hilarious and tragic. It's a satire of American life and a pop culture parody. I'm amazed by everything it does. Idiocracy has nothing on this. It's so moving, so empathetic, and so darkly humorous.
Highly Enjoyable

Exhibit H: Torn Pages Discovered in the Vest Pocket of an Unidentified Tourist - Jeff VanderMeer (1998)
A guidebook for tourists for the city of Ambergris. This short story is an except from a guidebook to a fictional Weird city, which was a nice conceit.
Enjoyable

[Anonymous No.20960498]

I will not read isekai
I will not read Bakker
I will not read litrpgs
I will not read web novels
I will not read self-published

[None !SFFG.n1h7M No.20960501]

>>20960497
Hell is the Absence of God - Ted Chiang (2001)
Visitations by angels are a relatively common event and they bring both miracles and destruction. A man's wife dies during a visitation and ascends to heaven. He's bound for hell, which is basically the same as Earth, but he desperately wants to reunite with her. The only way to do so is to truly and sincerely love God without reservation, but how could that be possible now?
Enjoyable

Lieserl - Karen Joy Fowler (1990)
A story speculating on the mysterious circumstances surrounding Albert Einstein's first child Lieserl, of whose existence only became known four years before this story was published.
Blah

Bright Morning - Jeffrey Ford (2002)
A writer often compared to Kafka muses about the influence of Kafka has had on his life, especially a lost story, perhaps cursed even, by Kafka entitled Bright Morning. This is autofiction with a twist.
Enjoyable

Biographical Notes to “A Discourse on the Nature of Causality, with Air-planes,” by Benjamin Rosenbaum - Benjamin Rosenbaum (2004)
A particularly silly self-insert power fantasy action adventure thriller that also has philosophical and religious internal monologues.
Blah

The God of Dark Laughter - Michael Chabon (2001)
An investigation into the gruesome murder of a clown in which the occult may be involved.
Ok

The Rose in Twelve Petals - Theodora Goss (2002)
This was a strange mix of alternate history and parodies of fairy tales, primarily Snow White. It's satirical, but I didn't find it more than marginally humorous.
Meh

The Lions Are Asleep this Night - Howard Waldrop (1986)
Robert Oinenke, a thirteen year old Nigerian boy, loves theatre plays, especially those of early 17th century England, and is an aspiring playwright himself. This is set in an alternate Africa at the end of the 19th century. If the history presented in the story is accurate, then the historical events that occurred are quite different from our own and explain why their Africa became ascendant.
Enjoyable

You Have Never Been Here - M. Rickert (2006)
An especially strange second person story of an unknown protagonist going to a mysterious "hospital" where they do special surgical operation on seemingly terminally ill children for the benefit of others.
Meh

[Anonymous No.20960507]

>>20960498
Based and dnrpilled

[Anonymous No.20960561]

Anyone know any good fantasy short stories?
Are there any? Fantasy tends to lean towards the epic. Not exactly short story material.

[Anonymous No.20960583]

>>20960498
>I will not read isekai
why do isekaifags love these demi god mcs that have harems and steamroll everything with no adversy?
they're completely averse to any kind of struggle being portrayed in their stories.
why is that?

[Anonymous No.20960584]

Queen is dead.

Fantasy books about royalty dying and the country goes nuclear?

[Anonymous No.20960593]

>>20960583
Loser wish fulfillment

[Anonymous No.20960607]

>>20960583
Fed up people steamrolling them in real life. Why read about shit you experience every day. If you parents are rich and you don't have to worry about much, you can read all the adversity books you want. People that are struggling look for books that are fun and make them happy.

[Anonymous No.20960706]

>>20960561
I've enjoyed a lot of fantasy short fiction, from short stories to novellas. Some fantasy styles are basically almost only short form.

[Anonymous No.20960714]

>>20960706
Got any names?

[Anonymous No.20960725]

>>20960714
Of individual stories, author collections, or anthologies? Sword and Sorcery tends to be short fiction in general.

[Anonymous No.20960772]

>>20959095
First for female villains

[Anonymous No.20960828]

>>20960772
I love Raboniel

[Anonymous No.20960830]

>>20960725
i was looking for individual standout stories to read. i'm curious about how short story fantasy reads in general and how it differs from longer narratives in how they're written.

[Anonymous No.20960849]

>>20960714
he should have a first name and a last name, sometimes people have a middle name as well

[Anonymous No.20960869]

>>20960830
I think you'd be better served by some consensus, award, or professional curation, than one random person's opinion.

You could try the anthologies that are decided to be the best of all time from long-running fantasy magazines, or an academic assessment work, or suggestions from some noted fantasy critic. Even then that doesn't mean you'll like, but you said you more interested in its technical form it seems.

[Anonymous No.20960889]

>>20960772
Second for Lady Jessica

[Anonymous No.20960919]

Have any of you read this one? Imagine Brave New World but they spend way more time on the orgies and raging against the machine. At a surface look it's a regurgitation of borrowed ideas, but i think if you look a little further the message is somewhat unique. I don't think the protagonist is supposed to be correct.

[Anonymous No.20960949]

Asked the TechnoCore about how Shrike looks like and, well, I'm not sleeping tonight fellas.

[Anonymous No.20960974]

>"You know the really funny thing, Zane?" God asked. "The most amusing part of this all? You're not insane. "You never were."

[Anonymous No.20960979]

>>20960974
I mean, no, he's pretty clearly insane. Just because a god was talking to him and making him think he was insane doesn't mean he's not also severely fucked up.

[Anonymous No.20961002]

>>20960974
Saw it coming a mile away. Fantasy books never have genuinely insane or schizophrenic people, its always supernatural entities fucking with their heads.

[Anonymous No.20961030]

>>20960919
What if I hated the outdatedness of Brave New World, but liked Logan's Run?

[Anonymous No.20961039]

>>20960889
>Lady Jessica
>Villain
She's the real hero of Dune.

[Anonymous No.20961060]

>>20960949
After reading Endymion, I can't take the Shrike seriously. It's just an overqualified mascot.
>>20961039
She betrayed her duty to her sisterhood, changing the course of history forever. Everything that happened in the series was because she was selfish.

[Anonymous No.20961096]

>>20961060
I've read a lot of King and kinda used to shitty endings. By the way hugginface blocks half of generated Shrike images, due to unsafe content, it must look truly terrifying on them.

[Anonymous No.20961138]

>>20959104
I have. I've read Echopraxia as well, and Starfish. I will read whatever Watts publishes next immediately.

[Anonymous No.20961196]

>>20961138
Read the Sunflower cycle short stories and Freeze-Frame Revolution too then

[Anonymous No.20961248]

>>20959798
Strong female warriors are great.

[Anonymous No.20961354]

>>20961248
>breast on a breast plate

[Anonymous No.20961374]

>>20961248
the problem isn't with the concept of female warriors, it's these boring 'activist' girlboss type characters who are smarter and stronger than everyone and never fail and are never responsible for their actions etc

[Anonymous No.20961431]

>>20961374
I liked the scientist from FF: Spirits Within
Unlike most variants of the toxic female character, she is either competent enough to deal with the fallouts of her action... or she is in positions where she has empathy with the people covering her back.

Most female toxic characters are as such because they only thing stopping them from getting killed/deserted/couped in the first few pages of the book is a thin layer of plot armor acting a window dressing.

[Anonymous No.20961461]

>>20960949
I've always imagined it like the cover of Judas Priest's Painkiller

[Anonymous No.20961462]

[Anonymous No.20961469]

>>20960337
>Mistborn: the Final Empire
"Good" was the operative word there, buddy.

[Anonymous No.20961479]

>>20961431
honestly this, a female warrior can be done really well if they utilize feminine traits and above average combat skills (compared to average townfolk) to build relationships with others that eventually end up standing by her in her hour of need as she had done for them.

[Anonymous No.20961523]

>>20961469
It is good.

[Anonymous No.20961533]

>>20961248
>doesn't that armor direct strikes to your solar plexus?
>how else will they know ima grill XD
boobplate is fucking cancer

[Anonymous No.20961622]

8 chapters in, not really impressed. It's not terrible by any means but I had heard people talking sugar about here so kind of expected to be wowed.

Descriptions feel overwrought (called someone's eyes as deep as an ocean trench) and holy hell does he like to jam every bit of dialogue with with an action tag on either side (nobody can get a word out without smiling/frowning/shifting/brushing their hair, etc.)

[Anonymous No.20961847]

Off topic a little... but does anyone have the virgin fiction vs the chad nonfiction image?

[Anonymous No.20961991]

There's so much else to read and all I want to read are sff novels. Every time I stop reading them to read something else, I read nothing and spend time on the internet instead.
Wizard Knight is good.

[Anonymous No.20962116]

>>20961991
Based rambling review of Wizard Knight.
I'll stop putting it off now.

[Anonymous No.20962178]

>>20962116
The ending is spectacular. A lot of the book plays it straight but in the end the character, the cosmology and the framing all merge together into something really transcendent.

[Anonymous No.20962182]

>>20962116
I'm only 40 pages in. The world is interesting, how it's layered and you can travel between the levels (not that he's the first author to do that). There's already a lot of creepy implications about how Able got there, if he's from there or from Earth originally. Berthold is a great character. He's gotten into a couple of fights already, like kid's stuff, and I can tell there's going to be a lot more and the violence will escalate. And other elements weaved in that I don't want to spoil. A lot of simple ideas weaved together that make it fascinating.

[Anonymous No.20962191]

Are there any good W40k books? Someone suggested The Founding: A Gaunt's Ghosts trilogy as a starter but a starter for what, I'm not sure, because there's hundreds of 40k books. I'd be interested in any decent philosophical book about endless war and consequences of genetic engineering/man-machine merging/the soul of AI.

[Anonymous No.20962203]

>>20962191
Look up, "How to start reading 40k" on youtube.
It depends on what you want out of it and the guy I watched (I don't remember who it was) gave you many ways to start reading it based off of what you want and expect out of 40k.

[Anonymous No.20962215]

>>20960830
Most old-school fantasy writers wrote short stories, like Lord Dunsany, Robert E Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock, Poul Anderson and many others.

[Anonymous No.20962243]

Apparently a lot of mortal wounds in media are unrealistic. Even getting stabbed in the heart or a sword penetrating someone's skull isn't always instant incapacitation. There's cases of people physically active for several hours with a heart wound by a stab comparable to a sword. Also, people can still use their sword when their hand or arm muscles are cut, and people can use their legs when you cut their tendons.
https://web.archive.org/web/20060412132408/http://www.classicalfencing.com/articles/bloody.php

[Anonymous No.20962476]

[Anonymous No.20962486]

This guy writes a lot of melancholic sword&sorc short stories on the same continent. He also writes horror short stories but I can't say anything about those.

[Anonymous No.20962487]

>>20961847
NVM.
Found it.

[Anonymous No.20962544]

I want to read some fun, pulpy adventures. What do you suggest?

[Anonymous No.20962568]

>>20961622
I hated the constant woke signaling (nearly every character is a gay and/or POC) but I finally dropped it when the MC got cucked

[Anonymous No.20962622]

>>20962544
Well if you want to, then why don't you do that?

[Anonymous No.20962658]

>>20962568
>woke signaling
Yea I did notice he made a comment about how he may be married off to a dude like it was nothing

>MC got cucked
Thanks for the heads up, dropping it now.

[Anonymous No.20962680]

>>20962544
Undying Mercenaries

[Anonymous No.20962751]

Guys sorry if this is a stupid question, but where do I pirate audiobooks from? For normal books, I use z-lib or libgen where I find 99% of what I need, but I can't find audiobook torrents on 1337x or rarbg. Specifically I'm looking for 'A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms' (a combined edition of the 3 published Dunk and Egg novels) narrated by Harry Lloyd.

[Anonymous No.20962918]

Halfway through The Warrior Prophet now. Why does Serwe think she's pregnant with Kellhus's child? They fucked after the pregnancy. She isn't written as a delusional or insane character, so what is going on?

[Anonymous No.20962931]

>>20962918
She’s delusional to cope with the trauma of being raped by the most violent of all fags every night for about 6 months straight.

[Anonymous No.20962973]

>>20962751
audiobookbay is what I use

[Anonymous No.20962982]

>>20962973
I was going to say this doesn't have a good selection and that searches call up all kinds of random romance novels, but it does have what the other anon asked for.

[Anonymous No.20963003]

>>20962982
Yeah, the search is terrible if you aren't specific enough, but so far it has had everything I have searched for (except for the Elric books beyond the first two, but I couldn't find those anywhere). If you have any better suggestions for sites for downloading audiobooks, I'm all ears.

[Anonymous No.20963016]

>>20962751
>>20963003
I use audiobookss.com to stream on my phone, it has a lot of stuff.

[Anonymous No.20963027]

speaking of audiobooks, anything good to look out for? or audio dramas? there was an adaptation of the Thrawn series with this really great voice actor with music and sound effects from the movies for instance that i found really impressive.

[Anonymous No.20963031]

>>20960561
I only have basic bitch recommendations.
Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories, specifically the ones from the first two collections
Elric of Melnibone was originally a bunch of short stories with the occasional novella but they've all been collected in what is basically a novel format.

[Anonymous No.20963043]

>>20963027
Project Hail Mary had a pretty good narrator in my opinion and using melodic notes for the alien's speech was pretty clever.
Generally I find that audiobook format works really well with first person narration, it really draws you in.
Dune also has an audiobook with with multiple voice actors and music and it's pretty good.

[Anonymous No.20963078]

>>20962544
Harry Dresden

[Anonymous No.20963210]

>it's an Elayne chapter

[Anonymous No.20963269]

This book BTFOs so many Tolkien imitators and critics. Worldbuilding and what Tolkien meant by "mythopoeia" weren't the same thing.

[Anonymous No.20963376]

>>20960498
This. And to add, I regret having read Sanderson.

I wish I had something to read right now though. I want to read, but I don't want to do the work to find a new book.

[Anonymous No.20963385]

>>20962982
>>20963003
Use quotations or the advance search filters to get the exact title you're looking for. It's had almost everything I've searched for. If the last upload is super old, then the torrent might not have seeds. In which case, you'll have to ask for reseeding on the forum.(good fucking luck)

[Anonymous No.20963502]

All right I'll finish this series, then Red Knight, then read some Poul Anderson.

[Anonymous No.20963533]

Speaking of where to get books...
Do I want epubs or mobi's for my kindle?
I usually grab epubs (I don't understand why the file sizes very so wildly for what seems to be the exact same book) but this mobi I'm reading sometimes has a letter that's softer than the others. I have no idea why. like the 'y' in 'why' will be at 50-75% opacity.

[Anonymous No.20963539]

>>20963533
Do the new kindles support epubs?

[Anonymous No.20963547]

>>20963539
Not as far as I know. It always asks to convert but... well I guess I don't know enough to decide one way or the other as I don't know what happens in the conversion process. Either way, 'borrowed' books never seem to have chapters in the right places. Sometimes they just tell me that I have the whole book left. Sometimes there's 4 parts to the book for some reason even though I clearly get to beginnings and ends of chapters.

[Anonymous No.20963551]

>>20959241
You will never be a woman.

[Anonymous No.20963563]

If I could read faster I would read all of the Hugo winners and write reviews of them.
That's my way of saying I wish someone would do that. It would be fun for the thread, I think.
I mean, some of that new stuff just has to be pozzed trash.

[Anonymous No.20963566]

>>20963539
Kindles now "support" epubs but it just converts them to mobi when you send them and it's terrible, no cover and the letters get fucked.

[Anonymous No.20963577]

Is a Crown for Cold Silver worth checking out?

[Anonymous No.20963608]

>>20963563
Nevermind.
I'm googling all the 2022 ones and it's grim.

[Anonymous No.20963623]

>>20963533
if you have a model/firmware that can be jailbroken do that and put KOreader on it so you can use epub.
no more weird issues with mobi or conversion problems.

it's worth it for epubs alone, but it also has other stuff that kindle software does not

[Anonymous No.20963656]

>>20963043
Too bad only the first book has full cast. At least the other ones have mainly Simon Vance narrating them.
Also most of the sequels don't have quotes from princess Irulan, so they don't require women. A shame, really. I really liked those.

[Anonymous No.20963814]

>>20963210
Honestly, I'm nearing the end of The Fires of Heaven and I can't but help to the conclusion that other than some mild entertainment here and there, this series is just poorly written. I wish the author could get to the fucking point.

The wonder girl orientated chapters grate on me less - Nynaeve is somewhat of a fun character from time to time, and Birgitte can be fun, but it's all just so tiresome. Elayne needs to be shot.

[Anonymous No.20963914]

>>20963563
>If I could read faster I would read all of the Hugo winners and write reviews of them.
>That's my way of saying I wish someone would do that. It would be fun for the thread, I think.
>I mean, some of that new stuff just has to be pozzed trash.
That's...not a bad idea, actually. I've planned on reading Hugo books to see if they are any good, but doing reviews of them sounds even more interesting. I think I might very well start doing that, in a month or two.

[Anonymous No.20963985]

>>20963533
For kindle I usually use kfx or azw3, mobi is outdated compared to those. I don't think epub works, usually it forces me to convert the file

[Anonymous No.20964017]

Finished reading Mistborn #2

Same book as the first one but worse, I liked Zane-kino and the battle scene.

[Anonymous No.20964091]

>>20964017
I personally felt that the Zane love triangle was by far the weakest part of the book, and its my least favorite Mistborn book because of it. I like the fact that Sanderson just didn't have Vin repeat the same character arc from the last book, but I feel like her self-worth issues could have been explored in way that doesn't make me want to stab my eyes out, especially since its a foregone conclusion that she will reject Zane in the end.

[Anonymous No.20964111]

>>20962982
Use google with a site tag to search it

[Anonymous No.20964131]

>>20964091
Zane trying to poison his dad and acting edgy was funny, really disappointed when it was revealed he was a fakecel.
>especially since its a foregone conclusion that she will reject Zane in the end.

That's the issue with the entire serie, they always come up with "crazy plans that will never work" but you know from the beginning it'll work and everyone will be fine. The only people dying are characters no one care about

[Anonymous No.20964174]

>>20963563
It's of interest to me as well. The thing is if you look at the books that didn't win on certain years, I have to think I have to read all of them. Anyways I don't have time to read things like a checklist in any sense even if it's Hugo award winners for fun.

[Anonymous No.20964220]

>16 years later
>still have Zane questions RAFO'd

[Anonymous No.20964267]

what's a series with a protagonist that his a big arrogant mouth but doesn't go into full edge territory? ideally someone like moorcock's elric, or kain from legacy of kain, a brooding sad boy that's a cunt in interactions

[Anonymous No.20964293]

>>20964267
Isn't Elric polite and courteous most of the time, especially when dealing with strangers?

[Anonymous No.20964306]

Gay necromancers in space

[Anonymous No.20964334]

>>20964306
here's your hugo, miss

[Anonymous No.20964356]

>>20964334
Thank you
3rd book out in 4 days

[Anonymous No.20964363]

>>20964306
For as much as that's the touted 'thing' of that series, there's remarkably little lesbian-ing between Gideon and Harrow in the first book. Helps that Gideon is barely a character in the first book somehow.

[Anonymous No.20964488]

>>20964267
Harry Dresden, he talks shit to anyone from human goons to faerie queens.

[Anonymous No.20964535]

>>20963563
>>20963914
>>20964174
If you read only the winning novels that's since 1953, so 69. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Award_for_Best_Novel

[Anonymous No.20964554]

2001 Hugo: Harry Potter won vs A Song of Ice and Fire.

[Anonymous No.20964586]

>>20964554
And rightfully so, there's a reason one is a beloved children's classic and the other is maligned as the worst TV show finale of all time.
>But the tv show isn't the same thing as the books!
TV series ending actually exists, therefore regardless of its quality it is automatically greater than the book ending, which does not exist (See st. Anselm for further elaboration on this point).

[Anonymous No.20964591]

Opinions on Knowledge Crash Theory from Ring of Charon?
>Briefly put, the K-Crash theory was that Earth had reached the point where additional education, improved (but more expensive) technology, more and better information, and faster communications had NEGATIVE value.
>If, the theory went on, there had not been a Knowledge Crash, the state of the world information economy would be orderly enough to confirm the fact that it hadn’t happened. That chaos and uncertainty held such sway therefore demonstrated that the appropriate information wasn’t being handled properly. QED, the Crash was real.
>The mental institutions of Earth were full of info-neurotics, people who had simply become overwhelmed by all they needed to know. Information psychosis was an officially recognized—and highly prevalent—mental disorder. Living in the modern world simply took more knowledge than some people were capable of absorbing. The age-old coping mechanisms of denial, withdrawal, phobic reaction and regression expressed themselves in response to brand-new mental crises. Granted, therefore, that too much data could give a person a nervous breakdown. Could the same thing have happened to the whole planet?
>The time needed for the training required to do the average technical job was sucking up the time that should have gone to doing the job. There were cases, far too many of them, of workers going straight from training program to retirement, with never a day of productive labor in between. Such cases were extreme, but for many professions, the initial training period was substantially longer than the period of productive labor—and the need for periodic retraining only made the situation worse.
>Bloated with information, choked with the needs of a world-girdling bureaucracy required to track information and put it to use, strangled by the data security nets that kept knowledge out of the wrong hands, lost in the endless maze of storing and accessing all the data required merely to keep things on an even keel, Earth’s economy had simply ground to a halt. The world was so busy learning how to work that it never got the chance to do the work. The planet was losing so much time gathering vital data that it didn’t have a chance to put the data to use.
Are we approaching it?

[Anonymous No.20964615]

Dear Bakkerchads,
Does The Darkness That Comes Before ever have a realistic medieval appeal? I read the prologue and everything seems brief. It says sword or helmet but has no good detail about the characters that makes me think medieval. I want something like ASOIAF that appeals to my autism about details. This isn't a criticism just wondering if as a historical autist I can find what I'm looking for.
Thanks

[Anonymous No.20964700]

>>20964615
Imo it does, military equipment and regalia is a mixture of early medieval typical mailcoats and helms and antique muscle cuirasses, plumed helmets, and war masks for some cultures. Its not like grrm where everyone is wearing generic "plate and mail", cultures have different cultic regalia and modes of fighting. Galeoth wear dried sranc heads on their belt over their hauberks, Conriyans wear Greco-Iranian war masks of their ancestors, Nansurim have cultic banners and totems they carry into battle like Roman Latins.
If you get to the second series you'll finally get to see a "nonman" Mansion from within, a dying race that really reminds me of a combination of tolkiens fierce and grief-wracked noldor and Gilgameshian sumerians.

[Anonymous No.20964705]

>>20964615
I'd say Ice and Fire makes you empathize with the characters far more, but the actual plot isn't as engrossing as the plot of Prince of Nothing. Peince of Nothing is similar to ASoIaF in terms of medieval appeal except less personal and more grand, Martin is essentially deconstructing fantasy novels by taking a traditional fantasy story and adding a more realistic and gritty feel. Bakker's universe on the other hand is largely original with only a few tropes borrowed from the generic fantasy template. PoN is more 'epic', serious and dark that deals with concepts more than characters (that isn't to say the characters aren't brilliant, one of the best PoVs I've ever read is in this series). Prince of Nothing by R. Scott Bakker is higher fantasy and more concentrated on philosophy than characters (contrary to ASoIaF).

[Anonymous No.20964712]

>>20964267
The Witcher

[Anonymous No.20964716]

>>20964705
Its also much less pop culture medieval europe and more ancient Mediterranean, Indo-Aryan, and Mesopotamian, which is fitting since The Three Seas really are only the southern half of what was continent spanning human civilizations in far antiquity.

[Anonymous No.20964719]

>>20964615
this is because you are thinking medieval European. This is medieval Middle Eastern. yes Bakker did subvert your expectations.

[Anonymous No.20964724]

>>20964615
I think the Darkness that Comes Before, and the whole trilogy by extension, is sublime in its medieval appeal, also if you like fantasy and philosophy, you won't find anyone like him.

[Anonymous No.20964733]

>>20964586
Consider the following: Both series are mediocre at best.

[Anonymous No.20964739]

>>20964733
True enough, but that just brings us right back to the starting point: one series exists in its entirety, and one doesn't. And as we already covered, existence > nonexistence.

[Anonymous No.20964743]

>>20964719
Yeah I'm primarily interested in 14th and 15th century western Europe.

[Anonymous No.20964750]

>>20964615
Bakker's world is far too magical to be catalogued as just "medieval". Technically, it's only 2000 years since the last apocalyptic event so its closer to bronze age.

[Anonymous No.20964757]

>>20964750
Supreme map

[Anonymous No.20964765]

>>20964750
>Let me just copy map of Europe and rotate it a little
That's almost as lazy as GRRM's maps for ASOIAF.

[Anonymous No.20964776]

>>20964750
The apocalypse took place during their bronze age, its a fantasy version of their bronze age collapse.

[Anonymous No.20964782]

>>20964750
Scylvendi are not mongols at all, they are Scythians and other pastoralist iranic people

[Anonymous No.20964787]

>>20964765
Why do autists hyperfixate on how surface level "original" a fantasy worlds map is? Autists and maps seem to have the same relationship as autists and trains.

[Anonymous No.20964798]

>login is noble savage but his alternate personality is... THE SICK FREAK RIP AND TEAR DOOMSLAYA!
>bayaz is ancient wizard but hes... LE CRUDE AND BAD!!!?????
>jizzel is a rich pompous noble man but he... LOVES LE COMMON GIRL!???
>west is noble commander who.... LITERALLY CANT STOP BEATING WOMEN!!!?????
>gloka might be crippled but he is... LE ISEKAI CITY MANAGEMENT EXPERT????

[Anonymous No.20964805]

>>20964787
And when the map is fantasy-original these fags complain that plate tectonics make no sense and river lines are all wrong

[Anonymous No.20964852]

If this is a meme, I'm going to shitpost against Bakker till the day I die.

[Anonymous No.20964869]

>>20964852
if you feel confused/bored at the beginning, press on, these books always pick up the gear in the second half, I dropped Bakker initially after a 100 pages and now its my favourite series.

[Anonymous No.20964883]

>>20964750
>Umlauts everywhere
WHY?
Does he think this makes him sound smarter?

[Anonymous No.20964904]

>>20964852
it gets good 300 pages in.

[Anonymous No.20964905]

>>20964765
To be fair it's difficult to create a realistic world that doesn't resemble our own

[Anonymous No.20964909]

>>20964750
Yeah I just heard it was like the crusades so I came in with the expectation that maybe I would get 12th or 13th century European knights

[Anonymous No.20964914]

>>20964852
Why do the paperback covers have to suck so much?

[Anonymous No.20964945]

>>20964883
There's actually a reason for that but you have to read the damn books to have it explained

[Anonymous No.20964955]

>>20964852
It gets really good in the second series "The Aspect Emperor", read it and it will be your favorite series ever.

[Anonymous No.20964976]

>>20964798
Yeah Abercrombie is a hack. Dude meaningless subversion lmao.

[Anonymous No.20964996]

>>20964904
the last 10 pages are worth the read

[Anonymous No.20965124]

>TWI beginning of 8.46 G
is it just me or are there a lot more grammatical errors and weird phrasings now compared to before?

also i don't like the subplot revolving around the kidnapping of the healer of tenbault. the whole writing just seems lower quality to me, like there wasn't much thought put behind the developments.
i'm sure the sections with the healer herself will get interesting, but i'm mostly finding it weird how rags would be willing to do this in the first place. even worse with kevin. not only did he apparently support the raid, kidnapping and all the resulting death, he also went with the raiding party for some reason, even though he could have stayed at the base. not to mention the random drums playing troll...

the niers group also feels a bit awkward. but then again that subplot hasn't started in earnest yet i guess. but so far this subplot has been exclusively focusing on levelling, which is very litrpg-like and very unusual for TWI imo.

[Anonymous No.20965126]

Just finished the Metro series, I wish I had stopped at 2033.

Fucking why do monsters and all other supernatural stuff just basically disappear from the universe altogether? Doesnt even feel like the same setting and that part of the setting was the most interesting part by far, he's a shit writer who had a good idea and then just threw it away.

[Anonymous No.20965164]

UOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH ILYENA

[Anonymous No.20965183]

>>20965126
>he's a shit writer who had a good idea and then just threw it away.
This is unfortunately all too common. While everyone has one good book in them, most do not have a second.

[Anonymous No.20965199]

Started a reread of picrel last night. Last time I read it was about ten years ago. Opinions?

[Anonymous No.20965304]

any books with dragonriders and dragons? and i mean ones where dragons are a big part and the MC actually befriends them and loves them, at least as pets, not some shit like asoiaf where they technically exist but aren't real characters

[Anonymous No.20965411]

>>20965304
I mean there's the OG for that trope.

[Anonymous No.20965444]

Has a single main cosmere PoV character died yet?
You know the characters I mean, not small ones that get small chapters then die.

[Anonymous No.20965446]

>>20965411
i know about this one but somehow in my brain there's a vague warning not to read it. what problem do people have with it?

[Anonymous No.20965448]

>>20965411
>I mean
Go back.

[Anonymous No.20965453]

>>20965446
It's quite girly and appeals more to vagina-havers.

[Anonymous No.20965468]

>>20965444
Kelsier and Vin from Mistborn, and don't say it doesn't count just because he later retconned him to life. Lightsong from Warbreaker. The priest dude in Elantris. Thinking about it, Stormlight Archives is the only one where a major pov hasn't died.

[Anonymous No.20965481]

>>20965468
I mean arguably Eshonai was a major POV, in a sense. She had a pretty decent presence for a while at least.

[Anonymous No.20965492]

>>20965468
is kelsier really a retcon? I don't know if Sanderson has spoken on it, but considering he role and what is revealed was actually him in mistborn 2&3 desu through the short story, I got the idea his intent was kelsier was always gonna be back

[Anonymous No.20965509]

>>20965492
He claims in Cosmere Unbounded that he had always intended to bring Kelsier back, but I personally call bullshit on that. Vast majority of the supposed "foreshadowing in books 2 and 3 is so vague that it could have been literally anything, especially considering how vaguely Ruin's and Preservation's powers are defined.

>>20965481
She was only a POV for one book an wasn't a really major focus even then. I don't consider him a major POV, although she obviously was a major character.

[Anonymous No.20965634]

Are the Earthsea books worth reading if I'm not a teenager?

[Anonymous No.20965728]

>>20965199
I thought it was brilliant. I love how Stephenson does not write strictly within any genre.

[Anonymous No.20965732]

>>20965634
Daniel Greene loves them!

[Anonymous No.20965769]

>>20962544
the space merchants. the core of the book is serious and even a bit dark, but the tone and the character's personality keep it like what you describe i think

[Anonymous No.20965770]

>>20965634
Yes.
It correctly captures FUCKING WIZARDS and the monomyth in a rarely rivaled story.
The Tehanu trilogy is a bit more boring, but its still worth a read because at its core it wants to tell a good story beneath its SJW bullshit.

[Anonymous No.20965779]

>>20965634
I will never touch anything written by Le Guin or any other woman for that matter.

[Anonymous No.20965792]

>>20965779
Based

[Anonymous No.20965794]

>>20965779
I was tricked into reading Robin Hobs on the other hand Lois M. Bujold is fantastic.

[Anonymous No.20965955]

>>20964334
kek

[Anonymous No.20965974]

Based.

[Anonymous No.20965978]

>>20965769
>kicked out of 109 star systems
>never did anything wrong

[Anonymous No.20966026]

>>20965978
Which reminds me, one of the 3 stories in this book is the main characters - space merchants - trapped on a planet of (I think) lion-people, and they're not allowed to leave for religious reasons. To get around this the lead space merchant fucks up the lion people's religion by introducing all kinds of literal kabbalah shit to them and dooming their planet to eternal strife.

[Anonymous No.20966092]

>>20962191
Not the greatest piece of literature, but I enjoyed the hell out of Farseer by William King. The Path of the Dark Eldar trilogy are also quite enjoyable, especially path of the Incubus.

[Anonymous No.20966187]

Why is Malazan considered unusually difficult to read/understand? I’ve never read any of the books, just wondering what the root of the reputation is.

[Anonymous No.20966203]

>>20966187
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LostInMediasRes

[Anonymous No.20966206]

>>20966187
Because fantasyreaders are not very smart and they want to be spoonfed constantly, like those people who say that Dune is hard to read.

[Anonymous No.20966207]

>>20966187
it's long and the author just keeps adding completely separate casts of characters with their own plots and subplots

[Anonymous No.20966217]

>>20965124
IIRC it will be later said that barely anyone had died/got hurt in that attack. Yes, in a sudden siege where the entire small city was attacked. A place full of vulnerable, sick people. Some old people should have died from stress alone. Similar situation as with the Fellowship's first battle, the author tried to have his cake and eat it too. But Goblins have always had some of that bullshit plot armor, it was just extremely intensified in this chapter. You remember Rags reverse-engineering trebutchets in few days by seeing them from the distance? Yeah, goblin bullshit.

Speaking of the Fellowship, that entire plotline was bizarre, beyond awkward. The 'rescue Mrsha squad' was a dumb idea from the beginning and the execution didn't make any sense, most of the time. Easily the worst plotline of Volume 8 (although many people would say the Meeting of Tribes was the worst).

I think this was the period where the real author had burn-out started, Pirateaba started...slipping, for lack of better term. Certain siliness like the trolls was more common, multiple plotlines were juggled in a mad attempt to stitch everything together. There was discontent even among the readerbase that used to validate the author no matter what he did.

Still, the volume can be considered a massive achievement of storytelling as no one has done anything like this ever before, which I must acknowledge even if I'm overall not a fan of Volume 8.

[Anonymous No.20966220]

>>20965794
>Robin Hobs
WHY DID SHE KEK MY BOY FITZ?? FUCK YOU ROBIN.
Fitz should have ended up with Lady Patience, she's a saint.

[Anonymous No.20966240]

>>20965199
My favorite Neal Stephenson book. A lot of people don't seem to like it as much, but I think it combines his most interesting setting with the least amount of the self-indulgent crap no one can seem to make him edit out of his books these days. In other words, it's one of the least-bad as well as being one of the best.

[Anonymous No.20966241]

Which book(s) di you consider to have the best worldbuilding/lore/setting?

[Anonymous No.20966287]

I finally finished Malazan Book of the Fallen after seven months, fucking loved it. Started Night of Knives and it’s ok, but hasn’t really grabbed me yet. I know it was Esslemont’s first book, so are his other Malazan works better?

[Anonymous No.20966300]

>>20966187
Imagine you had no prior knowledge of any western culture, then you hear someone say “yeah I studied Latin in catholic school, so I was asked to translate some stuff from the First Council of Nicaea” and everyone around him just nodded knowingly.

[Anonymous No.20966327]

>>20966187
He doesn't explain anything. Combined with the obtuse magic system and large cast of characters that keeps multiplying with every new book it can make it very difficult for brainlets (or those that need to understand everything immediately) to enjoy.

[Anonymous No.20966334]

I just finished Termination Shock

[Anonymous No.20966355]

>>20966334
Well? What did you think about it compared to his other work?

[Anonymous No.20966373]

>>20966241
obligatory LOTR and Dune, and I would add Conan (Howard's original short stories as well as Robert Jordan's novels), Book of the New Sun (including Urth of the new sun), and Bakker does a decent job as well in Prince of Nothing.

[Anonymous No.20966396]

Is The Fionavar Tapestry worth reading?

>check the archives
>look up reviews
>read it and find out
>ask your unconscious self in dreamworld
No.

[Anonymous No.20966398]

>>20966355
I've only read snowcrash before this. Snowcrash had some weirdly expositional sections, where characters just sit down in a room together and lay out the whole plot directly. Termination shock didn't really have those moments, but it does have what an earlier poster called "self-indulgent crap", where he pontificates on warfare and memetic viruses (a common theme between this and snowcrash). I like his storytelling and the way he develops even minor characters, telling their entire life history up to the present moment, only for that character to have a small part to play. But when he's trying to convince you of his philosophical musings, he tends to just lay it out with bad exposition, usually in the form of a character pontificating to another character

[Anonymous No.20966405]

>>20966396
More like the Kinonavar Tapestry

[Anonymous No.20966429]

>>20966396
check the archives

[Anonymous No.20966431]

>>20966396
I had one serious complaint about it: it is, on its surface, advertised as a portal fantasy - some twenty-somethings from 1980s Toronto get transported to this magical Ur-Realm called Fionavar to fulfil some grand destiny. The problem here is that the relation of the "real-world" to the story is almost nil. They spend all of 10 pages out of 770 in Toronto and almost completely and immediately assimilate into Fionavar with next to no discussion of what happened before, which, to me, defeats the purpose of a portal fantasy plot.
Now I will maintain that it is a beautiful series, heartrending even (I genuinely cried numerous times throughout the reading) but I have a serious raspberry seed in my wisdom tooth over this irrelevance of the interaction between the fantasy/spiritual world and the material/real world. A solid 8/10 at minimum, probably 9/10, but no higher. In many ways more readable and enjoyable than Gene Wolfe's Wizard Knight, but perhaps not so layered. Wolfe's subtlety is a burden as much as it is a treasure.

[Anonymous No.20966438]

>>20966396
Browse the archives.

[Anonymous No.20966439]

Is Kaladin still a virgin?

[Anonymous No.20966441]

>>20966431
>>20966396
oh and if you're aware of Tad Williams' Osten Ard series, it reminds me a lot of that, except whereas every point where Osten Ard was a shitty waste of time, Fionavar Tapestry was an actual valuable literary achievement.

[Anonymous No.20966448]

>>20966220
>Should have ended up with his stepmom

Hmmmm
Anyway kettricken is best girl

[Anonymous No.20966456]

>>20966287
Yes. I love a lot of esselmounts books but desu knight of knives is one of the weakest of out ALL the Malazan books imo.

I think it's better read after the path to ascendancy series too, since a lot of that trilogy takes place on malaz isle even before NoK.

[Anonymous No.20966462]

>>20966439
>missed that random subplot where Kaladin dated a random girl in between book 3 and 4 to certify that he lost his virginity
I don't blame you, book 4 was a trudge through shit.

[Anonymous No.20966470]

>>20966462
>hundreds of pages focusing on n*vani and a videogame subplot to smash four nodes in a tower while dalinar and all the radiants are warring offscreen
what was sanderson thinking?

[Anonymous No.20966472]

>>20964615
ASOIAF isn't realistic at all
It's hollywood medieval

[Anonymous No.20966478]

>>20966470
He wasn't because he is surrounded by yes-men and fans who pay him to stream of consciousness his writings.

[Anonymous No.20966481]

>>20966439
He fucked Syl

[Anonymous No.20966489]

>>20966478
I refuse to believe that the beta readers were ok with that subplot
Hopefully Kaladin's and Szeth's awkward buddy cop road trip through Shinovar redeems the series

[Anonymous No.20966491]

>>20964750
>>20964765
This map is completely wrong.

[Anonymous No.20966507]

>>20966398
yeah he does that in every book. i've read every novel he has published.

[Anonymous No.20966512]

Is this how the world looks to chinks?

[Anonymous No.20966517]

Brian Lee Durfee's Five Warrior Angels series is really entertaining grimdark. The books are very well paced and easy to read. The characters are all very well done, although for some reason I keep imagining actors from GOT playing the parts. Anyway, I wanted to recommend the series because it isn't as well known as it should be.

[Anonymous No.20966539]

>>20966517
I really want to like this series, but we’re coming up on the third book and the main character STILL hasn’t done anything yet. They even have him get clowned so that the girl built like a pro linebacker can have a grrl power moment. Literally every character has done more than him, and it’s getting kind of pathetic. That said I’m still buying the third book but I have my reservations.

[Anonymous No.20966562]

Books where the MC has a split personality like in Moon Knight ?

[Anonymous No.20966565]

>>20959462
Based post

[Anonymous No.20966570]

Why did no-one tell me he was a philosopher?

[Anonymous No.20966578]

>>20966562
I swear they are not real people

[Anonymous No.20966591]

>>20966570
If you want to explore that side of Elric, the old audio-book for The Sailor on the Seas of Fate is based.

[Anonymous No.20966614]

>>20966539
who do you think the main character is? Nail? hmmm, I suppose so, but he might not be...what interests me is how the Valle fuck with the humans, to the point where I am thinking this entire thing is just one big game for the Valle.

[Anonymous No.20966651]

>>20966614
Yeah in the traditional fantasy sense Nail is the main character. Child of prophecy, raised in secret, etc. And just gets clowned on for two books straight. I get the point the author is making but now it’s starting to wear thin.

[Anonymous No.20966689]

>>20966570
because his philosophy is pseudointellectual trash

[Anonymous No.20966690]

>>20966187
The first book reads like a adaption of some DND campaign, except you also get the setup/motion of the antagonists described.
Beyond that there is nothing fundamentally hermetic or esoteric about it. Its just kinda boring because the plot moves at a snail pace compared to the 10.000 chess moves everybody tries to setup.

[Anonymous No.20966697]

>>20966651
I can see that perspective. Liz Hen just makes Nail look bad...

[Anonymous No.20966749]

>>20965492
Kelsier is a Jesus figure (savior, wounds, crowd fave) so his resurrection was planned from the start

[Anonymous No.20966763]

Finished this in about 10 days after giving up once before. I'd recommend it, it's hard to describe though. Basically it's about a mentally unstable man who doesn't know his own name, he travels to a city in the midwest called Bellona which has been turned into a depopulated husk after an unknown cataclysm.

[Anonymous No.20966873]

why is it that i can only find absurdly long race-wars and hatreds in Chinese Fantasy Novels? i mean, it’s fantasy and there’s bound to be racism more powerful than what we have, since there are groups of individuals that are objectively not the same species, compared to the relative sameness of our own.

for example, in Chinese fantasy, you often get genocidal race-wars between two different races for understandable reasons, culminating in trillions of deaths for both sides, and even the hero will eagerly join in on this conflict irrespective of their race. you get historic oppression from both races acted upon each other, such as humans hunting demons for resources and vice versa, but nowhere do you see such a thing in Western Fantasy, at least not that i’m aware of.

what’s the difference between the two audiences respective to each side of the globe?

[Anonymous No.20966889]

>>20966873

[Anonymous No.20966920]

>>20966873
>for example,
>in Chinese fantasy
What specific chinese novels are you talking about?

[Anonymous No.20966951]

>>20966489
I do really like how baffled everybody else is at Shin as a place, I have to say. Like they don't get how it works, because it's quite literally not from their world.

[Anonymous No.20967007]

>>20966472
It's a pastiche of different historical eras and regions. It's like the technological equivalent of "dinosaurs and cavemen existing at the same time" fantasies.

[Anonymous No.20967077]

>>20966873
Not of my race, not of my mind

[Anonymous No.20967121]

Any of you read this? It's an alternate history where the Black Death killed all the white people.

[Anonymous No.20967226]

How would you describe this setting?

[Anonymous No.20967235]

>>20967226
A pastiche of different historical eras and regions. It's like the technological equivalent of "dinosaurs and cavemen existing at the same time" fantasies.

[Anonymous No.20967283]

>>20962918
>She isn't written as a delusional
she literally is

[Anonymous No.20967286]

>>20967121
I thought it was brilliant. I love how Robinson does not write strictly within any genre.

[Anonymous No.20967291]

>>20964615
No there's not as much detail as asoiaf. Where there are named characters everywhere and side characters have their own side characters.

[Anonymous No.20967299]

>>20967226
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_Earth_(genre)

[Anonymous No.20967303]

>>20967299
Is a link a description?

[Anonymous No.20967304]

Post a passage from your favorite book and convince me to read it.

[Anonymous No.20967341]

>>20964852
you might want to look at a script to automate that for you. you're gonna need it

[Anonymous No.20967362]

>>20967303
It's a link to a description. If you want to understand the setting, you have to at least look at Vance and Clarke Ashton Smith.

[Anonymous No.20967403]

>>20966873
The Dwarves and Alfar series has race wars to near extermination

darkelves genocide elves then facist elves and humans exterminate all dark races (orc, darkelves, trolls, gnomes, kobolds) from land, then elves get exterminated by dark elves again hundreds of years later till there's only 2 left, then all the dark elves get genocide by a combination of races and the dark elf emperor who is a dwarfaboo.

Now I think about it there's a lot of genocides in the books in the outer lands too, dark elves and the monster good aligned reptile humans are responsible for most of that.

[Anonymous No.20967541]

>>20966689
I assumed that was part of the bit.

[Anonymous No.20967552]

>>20966873
Have you looked at Chinese history? All of it is genocidal wars with enough casualties to depopulate Europe three times over

[Anonymous No.20967602]

>>20967226
A VERY extreme form of techno barbarism.

[Anonymous No.20967630]

>>20966187
weird brainlets wanting to make themselves look smart by proclaiming it's difficult. i've never heard of anyone having to give up on the book because it's hard to follow or anything.

[Anonymous No.20967634]

>>20964909
>>20964750
it's based on somewhere around 1000-1200 B.C. i think

[19 of 20 (Current: He Who Fights With Monsters !AUh14dTOkw No.20967648]

Fucked off for a while to read through all of Berserk and some other manga...

The Wandering Inn #1 by Pirateaba

[Characters]

(Erin’s Group)

Erin Solstice has had a run of bad luck ever since going to the bathroom at 3 am and finding herself squaring off with a dragon in its cave. Barely getting away from both the dragon and a nefarious band of rape goblins, she hides out in an abandoned Inn near the ruins of an old town. As she falls asleep for the night, she gains her first level in [Innkeeper] sending her on the path of trying to become self-sustaining at the inn. As she branches out from the inn to gather resources (blue fruits and water), her natural intuition leads to her escaping several risky situations – using highly toxic seed cores when faced with a crab resembling a boulder that had stalked her over the plains. She soon heads to the nearby city of Liscor and starts making friends – the guardsmen Relc (a drake) and Klbkch (an Antinium – bugman).

The city is dominated by gnolls and drakes primarily, but the Antinium have setup an alliance and a nest in the depths of the city. Erin quickly learns that humans aren’t highly regarded and is ripped off by the first drake shopkeeper she meets until coming back and challenging him to a game of chess, a recent creation now spreading through the world. The drake shopkeeper has his nephew Olesm play her, who should be a natural at chess because he’s a [Tactician] – capable of naturally picking up patterns and strategizing. However, Erin was a young chess prodigy back on Earth and soundly defeats him despite these differences. It turns out that people from outside their world that have natural skills can demonstrate ability far outside of their reported level. This quickly earns her money back along with the attention of a gnoll merchant Krishia who speaks like a Russian babushka and looks out for her in the city.

Making friends with these groups helps to bring customers to her inn and generate revenue. The guardsmen in particular help to ward off goblins from nearby and help inform her of the world’s customs. There’s also a roaming ‘bandit’ that Erin manages to fend off named Pisces who becomes a loyal patron, racking up a significant tab. I won’t mention his involvement too extensively as not to spoil things, but he does provide Erin with a major character in the second half – a sentient skeleton named Toren that acts as her bodyguard. The dynamics of her friendships change frequently as the story develops and these bonds are tested. Despite her experience with goblins, she finds herself torn when it comes to exterminating this sentient species.

(Ryoka’s Group)

Aside from Erin several other people from Earth have been dragged to this new one. Ryoka Griffith is quick to pick up on the trick – how natural skill can trump the leveling system, becoming known in a city far from Liscor called Izril, being a marathon runner and martial arts prodigy.

[Anonymous No.20967665]

>>20966920
i mostly see this sort of race-hatred in any Chinese novel, whether xuanhuan or xianxia, urban or fantasy, historical or ahistorical, when there are more races than the human race. ie, when the more races there are, the more racist the human race becomes in chinese fantasy.

[Anonymous No.20967682]

>>20964535
What made Goblet of Fire so good vs the others?
Maybe we just like magical and mystical tournaments.
Lots of that stuff in Shounen.

[19 of 20(Current: He Who Fights With Monsters 1) No.20967688]

This new site security check has broken captcha for me. What a joke...

She joins the local Runner’s Guild which specializes in delivering or running packages for specific legs of their journey. Ryoka is famous for taking the hardest jobs and performing all of them barefoot. Her latest run took her into an active battlefield between an adventuring group called the Horns of Hammerad and a necromancer.

After completing that job and returning to the city she begins running local errands for a well-known debutant Magnolia Reinhart, who seems to know that Ryoka doesn’t quite belong. Magnolia takes a particular interest in Ryoka and begins requesting her, earning Ryoka the ire of the rest of the guild who craft close-knit cliques to make sure everyone shares the best gigs. After breaking the rules Ryoka is targeted, leading to her leg being so severely injured that doctors recommend its amputation. Not wanting to turn to Magnolia for help and become indebted, she instead chances upon the Horns of Hammerad who provide her with transport to a necromancer they know. She quickly opens her heart to this group which includes a minotaur named Calruz and a half-elf named Ceria who offers to teach the young girl magic after she demonstrates an affinity for it.

Unfortunately Ryoka has a difficult time learning to love.

[Plot]

Both characters serve to explore the story in different directions with Erin embracing its conventions and Ryoka violently rejecting them. While Erin finds purpose in restoring her inn and then direction through the friendships she makes in the city of Liscor, Ryoka simply tries to survive and actively blocks the leveling system from having any effect on her. They both struggle with friendships in different ways as well with Erin wearing her heart on her sleeve and Ryoka pushing everyone away. As the two establish their place in the world, it turns out there are other events afoot: they weren’t the only people from Earth that were transported here. Old powers have awoken in response to their arrival and they seek to not only dominate their old territories but reach into ours for the marvels of technology that are described.

The scope of the main story revolves around Ryoka’s different Runner missions and Erin building up her Inn along with her involvement with the Antinium and goblins following several altercations. Her love of chess leads her to bringing a chessboard back to her inn and teaching a group of ants how to play, which in turn uplifts them – they develop individuality from the hivemind and begin taking names. The ramifications of this following Erin for the rest of the book. The culmination of the book revolves around a mysterious ruin that is excavated near Liscor, drawing the Horns of Hammerad to plunder its depths for wealth and glory. All paths converging on the small city and the Inn in the middle of nowhere.

[19 of 20(Current: He Who Fights With Monsters 1) No.20967703]

>>20967688
[System]

Everyone can gain a class if they place a certain amount of importance on what they study or specialize in. As people level their classes, they will also gain skills which respond to a person’s need at the time of leveling. One of the tertiary characters is born into a family of farmers and places an importance on carrying her weight, leading her to level in [Farmer] and learned [Enhanced Strength] as a skill. When she lost interest in farming her levelling stalled out, leading her to pursue the [Runner] class and develop skills focused on her footwork and overall stability. There appears to be a soft cap on how many classes you can level, stalling around 4 or 5 for nearly everyone in the story so far.

There’s also magic in this world which can run the entire gambit, including [Necromancy] and specific derivations of [Elementalists] which turn into [Cryomancer] or [Pyromancer], for instance. While leveling these classes can lead to the mage learning spells, they can also study spellbooks the old fashion way and pick up a spell after months of study. This world has a Hogwarts of sorts called the Wistram Academy that most of the mages in the story have studied at during some point in their lives. All people have mana, but some have greater affinity with it than others, capable of casting spells more frequently. These reserves can be refilled with mana potions in this world, though potions can’t be infinitely spammed.

[Final Thoughts]

I really enjoyed the start of this book when it focused solely on Erin and her journey through Liscor. The character writing between her and Klbkch (Relc too) carried those early chapters and the pay-off at the end of the first act was fantastic because of it. Unfortunately I feel like a lot of that build-up and overall good will with the reader is squandered with the perspective shift to Ryoka. I enjoyed Erin’s struggle and her reliance on others while Ryoka… I can’t help but feel she’s a considerable Sue who is punished through her own actions. The constant chapters in the first person with her talking about herself and the quality of her own character was excruciating.

At no point in the story did I enjoy a Ryoka chapter and I genuinely resorted to skimming her sections at the end because it was constant whining or bitterness about her past that defines her character now. She never takes any personal responsibility and I think she drags down more interesting characters by tangling herself in their stories. I would gladly take Horns of Hammerad chapters instead of Ryoka and the Runner’s Guild. It also seems like Erin’s story and development is forced to slow down in response to how long her chapters take to resolve her leg damage or specific missions. Overall the book is just fine but I’m not chomping at the bit to read the next one.

6/10

Current and Upcoming:
>19. He Who Fights with Monsters #1
>20. Worm (Might replace with some anon’s story)

[19 of 20(Current: He Who Fights With Monsters 1) No.20967711]

>>20967703
Previous Scores:
>Lord of the Mysteries by Cuttlefish – 9/10
>Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman - 9/10
>Cradle Series by Will Wight - 8/10 (Dropped a full point value, he's not sticking the landing)
>Ave Xia Rem Y by Mat Haz - 8/10
>Forge of Destiny by Yrsillar - 7/10
>A Thousand Li by Tao Wong - 7/10
>Retribution Engine by Akaso - 6/10
>Wandering Inn by Pirateaba - 6/10
>Virtuous Sons by Ya Boy - 6/10
>Bastion by Phil Tucker - 6/10
>Mother of Learning Act I - 5/10
>I Shall Seal The Heavens by Er Gen - 5/10
>Reverend Insanity by Gu Zhen Ren - 5/10
>Beware of Chicken (Non-Edited for Release) by Casualfarmer – 5/10
>Soulhome by Sarah Lin - 5/10
>Soulship by Nathan Thompson - 4/10
>Beware of Chicken (Edited for Release) by Casualfarmer - 3/10
>Reincarnation: Threads by Michael Head - 3/10
>Last Ship in Suzhou by Lungs - Dropped
>Defiance of the Fall by J.F. Brink - Dropped

Last two reviews:
>Retribution Engine by Akaso
>>20830031

>Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman
>>20835422

[Anonymous No.20967713]

How do you rate Liu Cixin's Dark Forest, /lit/?

[Anonymous No.20967730]

>>20964750
>/ourguys/
kek
Beautiful map.

[Anonymous No.20967740]

>>20964750
>Gay Wizards
You mean, Bablyonian-Sumerians
>Mongols
You mean, Scythians
>More Rape
You mean, extraterrestrial advance scouting deployment probe

[Anonymous No.20967759]

>>20967226
Perfection

[Anonymous No.20967764]

>>20967665
Can you provide specific examples?

[Anonymous No.20967791]

>>20967286
Yeah it was great, the reincarnation framing device was genius.

[Anonymous No.20967798]

>>20967703
Ryoka hate is #1 reason for why people have problems with early TWI. Pirateaba reported that he is currently rewriting Ryoka chapters in the rewrite, so I wonder how substantial the edits will be consdiering that's the major problem for any new reader.

You might consider reading an early part of Volume 2 just for the fact that it is the actual ending of V1, in a way. If you only read V1 you don't know what happened with The Horns of Hammerad. In the very first chapter of Volume 2 Ryoka and Erin meet. It's a weird decision on the author part to push those things to Volume 2, but maybe he wanted a strong start in a new volume.

[Anonymous No.20967888]

Why would you waste your time reading Malazan / Black Company when there's a dozen better books coming out every year you need to catch up to?

[Anonymous No.20967911]

>>20967888
What are you talking about exactly? Do you mean books by different authors being newly released? And you call them „better“? If that’s what you mean then you are the one wasting his time.

[Anonymous No.20967924]

>>20967713
I'm at about 85% of the book now, almost done. So far all I can notice are the Plot Holes to be honest. Like why won't the Trisolaran Autistic Ayys just use the Sophons to blind the Wallfacers, as they can display pretty much anything on their Retinas. They could even smite them with 24/7 flashing lights that would drive them insane. Same could be done to any scientist on Earth and there would be nothing you can do to stop it. That's the biggest plot hole I've found so far, we'll see,
Also, so far I hate the Earth 200 later, but I understand it wouldn't be much different with limited technological progress.
Characters are also not that interesting, they're just pawns to move the incredible plot premise forward. None of them is particularly memorable except Dashi.

Regardless... I was thinking to start with Leviathan Wakes, never watched the Expanse thank God. Are there any other noteworthy Space Sci-Fi/War/Exploration/Politics/Alien Mystery books? The important factor for me is some kind of Ayy Race, be it extinct or still alive.

[Anonymous No.20968087]

>FINALLY finish A Memory of Sky
>start The Dragons of Marrow which is the last (so far?) entry in the Greatship series
>https://pastebin.com/7DrmPbWv
I really do like this author and his honesty in his forewords.

[Anonymous No.20968185]

>>20966763
Lovely book. Read it twice now.

[Anonymous No.20968189]

>>20968087
>even has a dig at the Hugo

[Anonymous No.20968210]

>>20967888
i prefer to read established series rather than take a risk on something that might be shit. sure, in 3 years or so if books being released now are considered worthy by the many i will partake.

[Anonymous No.20968221]

Is this any good? Just finished the poppy war,first two books were alright last one sucked ass. I'm in the mood for some more asian fantasy.

[Anonymous No.20968237]

Just read Arrogant Young Master Template A Variation 4. What are the best xianxia with blue screen system? High levels of system autism is preferred.

[Anonymous No.20968266]

>>20967226
Literally me

[Anonymous No.20968300]

>>20967711
Dungeon Crawler Carl is peak reddit with next to no redeeming qualities "9/10"
meanwhile ISSTH is distilled xianxia essence. "5/10"
LOL

[Anonymous No.20968355]

>>20968300
I didn't like ISSTH
Didn't finish it

[Anonymous No.20968357]

>>20968300
>peak reddit
>this 2011+ newfag post
LOL

[Anonymous No.20968371]

>>20968355
Your dog eyes can't comprehend what you are reading, this is the opposite problem to the pig wanting to feast on swan meat. Learn to sense qi then try again.
>>20968357
You dare? This elder is older than this puny board.

[Anonymous No.20968422]

>>20964798
>>west is noble commander who.... LITERALLY CANT STOP BEATING WOMEN!!!?????
Based

[Anonymous No.20968427]

>>20966187
The author makes zero effort for you to care about anything he is writing.

[Anonymous No.20968945]

I used to think I liked cultivation but it turns out I just really like Cradle.

[Anonymous No.20968990]

>>20968945
So it's your first cultivation book?

[Anonymous No.20969013]

>>20968990
It wasy first. I've tried ISSTH, Ave Rem Xia, A Thousand Li, and Lord of the Mysteries. I ended up dropping them either cause of bad translation or I just wasn't gripped by the story.

[Anonymous No.20969024]

>>20969013
*It was my first

I should stop phoneposting.

[Anonymous No.20969037]

>>20966217
yeah, when he juggles this many plotpoints, it's no wonder some will lack in polish.
but the main hitters (horns, erin, ryoka) are still pretty good, albeit a bit slow. oteslia is alright too. i wouldn't call the meeting of the tribes bad, maybe somewhat underwhelming for how long we've known about it though.

>ser! that's unsporting!
that's another silly thing. but well, at least it's kinda funny.

>Fellowship's first battle
i-i don't think i've actually gotten there yet.

[Anonymous No.20969039]

>>20969013
Just read A Will Eternal and you can be done with the genre.

[Anonymous No.20969069]

>>20968945
Cradle is basically a more western fantasy that just uses cultivation elements. Very little about it has anything in common with xianxia or whatnot.

[Anonymous No.20969096]

>>20969069
Yeah, but I really really like those surface elements. Shame cultivation stories all feel so soulless once you go a step beneath the surface.

[Anonymous No.20969101]

>>20969096
There's a few western ones that aren't that bad, but seeing as you've read Thousand Li which is arguably one of the more 'standard' western ones, I'm not sure what else you'd be into. Beware of Chicken is a more parodic one.

[Anonymous No.20969120]

>>20969101
I enjoyed Virtuous Sons but that seems to have stopped updating. I dropped A Thousand Li 2/3rds of the way into the second book because it felt like nothing was happening besides the main character grinding XP. Would you say it's worth picking back up?

[Anonymous No.20969239]

>>20969120
I've not actually read it, I've just heard it's a very solid western form of xianxia, but it is apparently very slow-going. I haven't read too many cultivation things myself, it's a genre I'm only sort of incidentally into.

[Anonymous No.20969313]

>>20969239
I've thought about biting the bullet and trying Reverend Insanity before I write off the genre entirely but I feel I need to be slightly more familiar with the Cultivation genre so that I can understand the tropes RI supposedly subverts.

[Anonymous No.20969397]

What is /sffg/'s opinion on the New Jedi Order series?

[Anonymous No.20969442]

>>20967713
I sat next to a cute Ukrainian girl who was reading it on a train, but I didn't say anything. I was reading BotNS on my phone.

[Anonymous No.20969580]

Fuck, I just got placed in line on hold for the next book in the series and they estimate I'll get it sometime after 2 more months

[Anonymous No.20969739]

Is it universal that audiobooks uploaded online have terrible bit rates?

[Anonymous No.20969813]

>>20969397
The true ending of the EU, Jacen becoming a space buddhist wizard is amazing

[Anonymous No.20969899]

>>20969739
Usually that is the case what is the highest bitrate you listen to on Audible?

What are some recent /sffg/ books 2021/2022 that are not smut/web serials?

[Anonymous No.20969937]

I'm reading the 4th stormlight archive and I'm surprised Brandon made jasnah straight and ace lol

[Anonymous No.20969998]

Is Terra Ignota worth getting into?

[Anonymous No.20970020]

>>20969313
Well, LotM seems to be the one a lot of people recommend so if you bounced off even that, maybe you just like the aesthetics of cultivation but not the stories it usually has?

[Anonymous No.20970024]

>>20969937
Asexual but not aromantic seems to be a thing I've noticed more and more. I guess because, just from a writing standpoint, romances are often more interesting ways to pair up characters than just being friends.

[Anonymous No.20970023]

>>20969998
It's a polarizing series so there isn't a a simple answer for that. If you want my personal opinion I can give that, but it may say nothing about whether it's worthwhile for you personally. You can also look at the /sffg/ consensus, but that may not have much predictive value for you either because it's all over the place.

[Anonymous No.20970039]

>>20970024
The weird thing is, Jasnah and Hoid fucked anyways, so its seems like an attempt of Bradon to grasp any publicity from the lgbt community lmao

[Anonymous No.20970041]

>>20970023
Give me your opinion, I was only interested because the author wrote introductions for book of the new sun.

[Anonymous No.20970054]

>>20970041
>Give me your opinion
Check the archive.

[Anonymous No.20970069]

>>20970054
No

[Anonymous No.20970071]

>>20970039
Was that a thing mentioned? They generally mentioned there being no real intimacy there.

[Anonymous No.20970077]

>>20970054
People are too lazy to do a minute search on the archive, anon. They’ll rather spends hours in here hoping some other anon gives them an answer that validates their opinion.

[Anonymous No.20970082]

>>20970071
Hoid was annoyed that he couldn't get the frigid bitch off despite having over millennia of experience.

[Anonymous No.20970086]

>>20970020
It was interesting but the translation is just so, so terrible. Like downright unintelligible at times.

[Anonymous No.20970115]

>>20970041
Oh, if that's all, then probably not.

My opinion, TL;DR: meh
>>/lit/?task=search2&ghost=&search_text=terra+ignota++palmer+&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=old&search_capcode=all&search_res=post

[Anonymous No.20970144]

>>20970086
Yeah, that's what's kept me from reading it too. It seems to be a lightly-edited MTL which means it's utterly bland to read the text on, even if what is happening is interesting.

[Anonymous No.20970152]

>>20970115
Not checking the archive.

[Anonymous No.20970164]

>>20970152
There isn't really a need anyway.
What else was written suffices.

[Anonymous No.20970244]

>>20968221
curious myself, i'm looking for more asian fantasy type stuff as well

[Anonymous No.20970262]

>>20970244
Read this and tell me if it's any good.

[Anonymous No.20970265]

>>20970262
Why don't you read it?

[Anonymous No.20970267]

>>20970262
No

[Anonymous No.20970283]

>>20970265
Because I already have at least 200 other books I need to read first.
>>20970267
Yes

[Anonymous No.20970417]

You don't "need" to read anything.

[Anonymous No.20970445]

>>20970417
Shut up.

[Anonymous No.20970460]

>>20970262
>chinese on the cover
It's shit. You're welcome.

[Anonymous No.20970507]

>>20970460
You're shit.

[Anonymous No.20970655]

>>20970507

[Anonymous No.20970785]

>>20968371
>>20968300
ISSTH turns to complete shit during and especially after the wedding. It has the worst romance I've ever read in a chink web novel by far and that's saying a lot because they're all shit.
The war arc after he leaves the planet is one of the most boring arcs I've read, and I've read hundreds of different chink series.

It's fun before that, but the latter half is complete shit and deserves a 4/10.

[Anonymous No.20970926]

I wish authors would describe a love interest without explicitly letting us know that the MC finds her beautiful/attractive. Just describe her appearance normally and let us fill in the blanks. Maybe even give her some unattractive features too.

[Anonymous No.20970933]

>>20970926
I rarely see what you're complaining about happening.

[Anonymous No.20970936]

>>20970933
I just read tales of dying earth and zothique and it happens in both, but far more frequently in dying earth

[Anonymous No.20970955]

>>20970926
>Just describe her appearance normally
>"She had a face made for the coom. And a body made for the coom as well; my light shining in her."

[Anonymous No.20971001]

>>20968945
Have you tried RMJI ?

[Anonymous No.20971123]

is picrel worth reading? is it a grown-up book or YA, how's the prose and the general conceit of the story?

[Anonymous No.20971125]

>>20971123
It's a children's book

[Anonymous No.20971130]

>>20971125
shit...

[Anonymous No.20971175]

>>20971123
It's bad, in the sense that the author turns the protagonist into a literal cuck.

[Anonymous No.20971232]

>>20971123
First one is fantastic. Genuinely spooky, totally worth reading. Hissing witches staked in pits kind of spooky. Very atmospheric. But it gets worse and worse in future books, suffering from the selling writer's disease. He can't get to what he wants to write because he needs to sell more books in between, and he doesn't have anything to say in those books so they wind up filled with whatever comes out of his bum. Disappointing. I don't even remember where I dropped it, what was happening or how much was left.

[Anonymous No.20971267]

>>20967764
>Xianxia: Sovereign of Three Realms, the plot builds up to a massive race war over the course of 1000 chapters or so, interspersed between regular bouts of face slapping.
>Xuanhuan: Fantasy: My Ancestors are Super Invincible, the entire plot is literally one dude rising to powee under the backdrop of a race-war and proceeding to murder/enslave/oppress every other non-human race in response to them doing the same to the human race

>Darkness and Turmoil, the Whole World Resurrects Me, plot is mainly the main protagonist pretending to be strong then dying, but there’s a certain scene where an Ancient Race proceeds to eat billions of people and then tries to enslave humanity as “blood rations” as soon as they realize that humans don’t have a Saint Level guy to deal with them

These are just the couple I could come up with off the top of my head, aka a few that I’ve read recently. The shortest of these is close to 600 chapters long and the longest is 2.4k, the Sovereign of Three Realms.

[Anonymous No.20971482]

New thread
>>20971480

[Anonymous No.20971533]

>>20968087
>only two goodreads reviews for Dragons talk about how it was self-published and suffered from going on and on and on with no clear or fitting resolution
god diggity dammit I hate when this happens, and I can't find the remaining short stories in the 'universe' on the usual spots. Memory of Sky was the first book I've read in a long time where it felt taxing to complete. The writing itself was great and the man definitely has a verbose shifting vocabulary, but I wanted finality, and I was not invested in the characters much, if at all.
Maybe I'll read Marrow Redux at some point. What books do you know of where the author completely rewrote them?