Glory Days of Pulp Edition>Old:>>25106762>Recommended reading charts (Look here before asking for vague recs):https://mega.nz/folder/kj5hWI6J#0cyw0-ZdvZKOJW3fPI6RfQ/folder/4rAmSZxb>Archive:https://warosu.org/lit/?task=search2&search_subject=sffg>Goodreads:https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1029811-sffg
>>25114978What happened was mainstream and social media lead to a bigger spotlight being put on genre literature. You basically have a lot of people just reading new topical publications. Also, romantasy and litRPGs were solidified as their own things.
*blacks out in a violent rage*"Huh, why is there shit on my dick?"
Bring back peak fantasy art to save the book industry. No more "it has to look good in a thumbnail on your phone" shit.
>>25115051actual artists cost money. have you look at how much even those "change the font, change the genre" covers cost?
>>25114928>What is that?>I honestly have no ideaWhat’s the context here? How does he know the word therapist if he doesn’t know what it is?
>>25115019Rip
>>25115099He knows the word therapist because Sanderson thought it would be funny to use in that context and he's too popular for his editors to have a say in anything.
>>25115103Overrated.If people consider Hyperion the best sci fi has to offer than it really is a shit genre. The prose is workmanlike and basic.
>25115267>the quality of a work is decided solely on the ornateness and complexity of its proseCurious is the baitmaker's art.
>>25115271If prose doesn't matter when why not just write a screenplay?
>>25113452it doesn't help that Bakker specifically said Kellhus was "dead, but not done" (https://www.second-apocalypse.com/index.php?topic=2636.0)It's like all his shitty cryptic AMAs are deliberately engineered to get people coming up with as many theories as possible (or he, in fact, pulled a Rothfuss and was actually completely bullshitting about having anything planned out).For this one book series, I don't think you can fully accuse the readership of failing to pick up on some theme, given how much effort Bakker deliberately puts into muddying the waters
Dungeon crawler Carl book 1 is on sale for 0.99p. Should I try it? Never read litrpg books before. I don’t mind slop as long as it’s enjoyable
>>25115283another funny one I found while I was looking for the "dead but not done" thing>um actually any mistakes (caused by me being a pretentious fuckhead who destroyed his relationship with his publisher and ensured the end of my totally-perfectly-planned-out masterpiece wouldn't have any real editing done on it) are totally intentional, because, um, that's actually just how real encyclopedias are, bro!
>>25115292>wanting the book to be well-written and coherent is actually just a modern sensibility, you fool!
>>25115283>>25115292The way he writes makes me not want to ever touch any of his shit. You can smell the self-conceited narcissistic autism on these.
>>25115292this was another great one>um, anyone asking for the slightest clarification on my inane ramblings isn't *actually* trying to understand, they're just trying to destroy my credibility instead(lol, as if takes much to do that >>25107419)> despite being a nonacademic, I've somehow managed to place pieces in a number of different refereed journals, some quite prestigious, and I find myself regularly invited to contribute to othersperfection. As if getting published is actually remotely hard in modern academia. As if "prestigious" journals don't pump out massive quantities of garbage."regularly invited to contribute" my fat fucking ass, he literally has 8 things published (https://independent.academia.edu/scottbakker, if you cut out his books, which are on a site for academic articles for some reason, and the repeats of several things), and he hasn't done anything since 2017 (again, cutting out repeated entries of past articles)Honestly, what does this guy even work as? I thought he *was actually an academic*, but he's just some crank. He got kicked out of his PhD program (https://speculativeheresy.wordpress.com/2008/11/26/the-semantic-apocalypse/#:~:text=kicked%20out%20of%20your%20philosophy%20PhD%20program) (lol again, as it's even difficult to actually get a PhD in the modern academic world, he probably just pissed off his doctoral advisor)The sequel quadrilogy sold pretty badly, he can't be getting sustained by book income, especially considering he has a family. Is he actually just being supported by his wife?
>>25115302yeah, nothing like an author opening their mouth to make you lose any semblance of respect you may have had for them>just "open yourself up to a new kind of narrative experience" bro
Late last year I begun reading The Second Apocalypse because of how much you were jerking off this Bakker guy in the threads.I have now finished The Unholy Consult...Holy flipping kino almighty, I'm in awe.It's far from perfect, but extremely gripping and inspired.I think the first trilogy has a more consistent quality feel over The Aspect-Emperor, but The Unholy Consult is my favorite one in the series tied with The Warrior Prophet.>apparently there's supposed to be a sequel series to Aspect-Emperor, but it's been like ten years since The Unholy Consult was made and the author has been complete radio silentFUCK. At least there are a lot of clues left so I feel like you can make up your own interpretation of how the story could progress after the ending of the final book... but someone tell this dude to write the next one please.
Got stranded>>25113053Kellhus knew he had to fail; the fact that the Gods are blind to TNG means that it eventually succeeds in shutting off the Outside. This is also how we know all of Kellhus' dealings with Ajokli are him bullshitting - Ajokli is also doomed and Kellhus knows it. At the end Ajokli is enraged because he can't find his soul in the Outside; Kellhus swindled him somehow even if it doesn't seem to make any sense.The key is that Kellhus is using the Second Decapitant; Ajokli's head is on his shoulders and his original one is on his own hip. There are actually two Kellhuses - the possessed divine one with Ajokli's head which doesn't believe in the No God either and instead believes in his own plan to let Ajokli into the granary, and the calculating Dunyain mortal one stuck in the head that is making plans for his own failure; this is the one which makes up lies to his divine possessed self about why he's bringing Esmi and Kelmomas to Golgotterath.You can see how blind the divine Kellhus is at the end when he talks to the Dunsult; they literally explain to him that he's there to become the No-God and Kellhus doesn't believe him and says that they must plan to throw his body off Golgotterath to demoralize his army.In the end the sneaky mortal Dunyain Kellhus-head has achieved all his goals; he kills his tainted possessed body using Kelmomas, he survives in his own severed head, the Judging Eye is in a position to see the No-God, which will be able to close the Outside to kill off the Gods, Achamian will be the next Seswatha, and Crabbicus is probably going to create the Meta-Psukhe.
Also the Dunsult are 1000% Shauriatas' soul running on Dunyain hardware.
>>25114978https://www.goodreads.com/group/show_book/1029811-sffg?book_id=209439446
>>25115287if you're familiar with general RPG vidya/mechanics, yes for a dollar. but I can see how it would be bizarre for a non-gamer.was surprised how much I liked it desu. still haven't tried another litRPG series tho
>>25115099Because at the beginning of the book an immortal character from a different planet with an advanced civilization tells him about therapy.
>>25115099>>25115244>>25115357Imagine how much better the book would be if Kaladin had decided to become The Rapist instead.
>>25115361Is this an edgy joke or do you believe that rape would make it better? Which meme flavor did you have in mind, Bakker or Donaldson?
>>25115322Yeah I remember he outright says to Proyas that the Consult and the No-God will inevitably succeed.Ajokli-Kellhus can't see the No-God though and thinks he is the cause of the Second Apocalypse and he'll get to go full demon god on Earwa's souls, but mortal Kellhus is playing him for some greater purpose.I wonder since the Outside is not beholden to linear time and in the Outside belief shapes reality, could Kellhus on the Outside be the impetus of Ajokli's existence in the first place? Since he is the literal God of hate and deception, and he just himself seems to have been actually deceived by a mortal man, whom we know went to the Outside. What if Ajokli is just a tool created by mortal Kellhus when he ventured to the Outside?Is this also why Kellhus inexplicably decides not to kill Cnaiyur in PoN in direct opposition to his Dunyain conditioning? Since Cnaiyur is the other aspect of Ajokli, the hate part.I feel like there's lots to think about.To me it seems like it's all leading to Kellhus' big plan being to either conquer the outside himself fully or somehow erase all the Ciphrang Gods to completely do away with damnation without using the Tekne and TNG which Achamaian, Mimara, their children and Crab boy will probably deal with in the material world.Or maybe it will tie into the broken vase thing and Kellhus is meaning to somehow put all the Gods together into the true God of Gods which would lead the Outside to become an afterlife of truly objective morality depending on your actions during your life.
>>25115365nta but it's obviously a joke dudethe joke being that, having not heard the word before, kaladin could have mispronounced 'therapist' as 'the rapist'
>>25115370He has heard the word before though. Hoid tells it to him verbally. It's unlikely he would say it incorrectly.
Spiderlight might be the biggest piece of dogshit I've ever read. So tired of these "subversive" books with the same dime a dozen progressive themes. Just pure empty gruel. Oh wow the religion is fake? We're all actually the same even the weird man spider thing? Wow. Powerful. It's not even fun or entertaining in its own right. It's just retarded from beginning to end and wholly boring and predictable. I fucking knew it was over when the girl fucks the spider-thing. This book legitimately made me question Adrian Tchaikovsky's intelligence. I skipped right to the end after that and wish I hadn't bothered because that was dogshit too. I know this seems like purely a chord melty but I swear if I was the biggest progressive fag on earth I would still hate this book just as much, just differently.
>>25115379Your feelings are valid and you are accepted. This is a safe space for you to be vulnerable and express your deepest concerns. May the love of Our Father be with you.
Turns out this shit is pretty damn good. Who would have thought?
https://www.grimdarkmagazine.com/interview-with-author-oliver-brackenbury/>Sword & sorcery fiction kicks so much ass. From its humble beginnings to its current incarnation, sword & sorcery (or S&S) began in magazines, telling tales of high adventure, horrific terror, and thrilling action. They also began—much like my guest Oliver Brackenbury, the editor ofNew Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine, espouses below—with community.
>>25115392I can't read the Arabic script above the translated title. What does it say? The Egyptian eye of Horus at the bottom is a nice touch. What other middle eastern fiction do you like?
>>25115368>What if Ajokli is just a tool created by mortal Kellhus when he ventured to the Outside?I've spent some time thinking about this and I generally agree with the gist of it. Cnaiur is definitely a big part of all this as it's no coincidence that Ajokli possesses him after Kellhus gets salted (despite the fact that Cnaiur isn't a sorcerer/doesn't know the Daimos, and didn't get his head replaced in the same way Kellhus' probably was). I personally lean towards the (quite popular) idea that Cnaiur's soul did indeed end up birthing Ajokli on the Outside. When you consider just how far reaching Kellhus' plans were I wouldn't discard the possibility that it was just one more puzzle piece he set into place.Personally I've always been curious on whether the individual identity of the heads are significant. Clearly one of the heads is housing at least a major sequestered part of Kellhus' soul - the mortal, Dunyain part that is manipulating his possessed divine self. The heads appear as demons but clearly they were once real people (I mean, one ends up being Malowebi). I suspect Kosoter was probably "revived" the same way Kellhus creates the fake-Malowebi. I do wonder the identity of the "heads" - one is probably Kellhus' own and the second (which is probably the one Kellhus usually keeps on his own shoulders, at least for the most part - the glossary has that story about the drover which seems him switching back and forth with one of the two, interestingly it specifies that he doesn't use both) I would guess is Ajokli's (which may also be Cnaiur's, if he is Ajokli!), but I'm not sure about the one that ends up getting sent to Zeum. But it wouldn't surprise me if fake-Malowebi would have ended up being important in the third part.As for Kellhus' true plan? I'm not sure we'll ever really know. I think the Outside is doomed, which means that most of Earwa is getting sacrificed in the war to come. I'm really not that keen on the philosophical side of things, but the No-God works, metaphysically, by collapsing subject and object. I think in the end Kellhus plans to reconcile subject-and-object, refute damnation, and in the process finally achieve the original, impossible goal of becoming a self-moving soul. Or have Crabbicus or Mimara's baby (the last child to be born in the world) achieve it in his stead and probably with his direct/indirect help, as they also seem like good candidates for this.
Is there any urban fantasy story set in a futuristic/scifi setting? You know, like A Certain Magical Index.
>>25115431I don't know what that anime shit is but off the top of my head there is Foundryside which is an industrial era magic setting. The same author also has the divine cities trilogy which is like a 1930s colonial magic series. There'a also the recent mistborn novels of which the third era is going into space age tech I believe.
>>25115431You seem to have found a niche in the market, there really isn't anything to recommend outside of LNs and WNs.
VANCE BAKKER MARTIN WOLFE ROTHFUSS TOLKIEN JORDANBLAST
mind: broken
About the only place wherd SF and fantasy fans get along or do they? It was bad enough to lump the two together in book stores irl, but the fantasy genre is putting out orders of magnitudes more volume.
>>25115581Who are you talking to?
>Who are you talking to?
Which sci-fi books have the most unique/creative alien species?
>>25115582>It was bad enough to lump the two together in book stores irlWhy? Sci-fi is fantasy except in space
I just finished this, and was kind of blown away by how average this is? Was the concept of a fantasy setting hiding a scifi 'universe' that insane back in the day? They say you can really pick up on all the hidden details if you reread it, but I barely even reread books I loved let alone those with a very mediocre story. The ye olde english also doesn't help with the pace. I'm probably too retarded to get the message but if someone could explain to me why it's so special, I'd be grateful.
>>25115588Niven's Known Space stuff.
>>25115598>wolfe>averageso I guess all other sf is basically in the negative as far as scores go for you?
>>25115598Oh boy newfagGPT already got riled up above early in this thread. This is really going to upset the normalfag spammers.
>>25115603I enjoyed the first bits of the novel, the apprenticeship part, till he got into the botanical garden and it never recovered to retain my attention.
>>25115588My story draft desu
>>25115577You want to talk about Blast? It's obviously a /co/ thing rather than a /lit/ thing but it's pretty damn good
After really enjoying book 1 of the first law, I found the sequel a bit of a step back. It didn’t feel like as much happened and again, Glotka remains the most interesting POV chapter and, even then, his entire arc felt rushed and pointless. He leads a siege and then just goes. I assume it’s building up to something but I did fee disappointed. Second best is West who felt like had more of a character arc. I willKeep reading reading, as I am interested in what’s going on, but it was an obvious downgrade over the first. Also the random sex scenes that were just sentences of people grunting felt stupid. 3/5
>>25115619Gru?
>>25115620>Also the random sex scenes that were just sentences of people grunting felt stupid.Try listening to the audiobook version. I had to skip ahead.
>>25115624no stop that. he's a father and got famous a couple months ago for not wanting to be around his kids very much. he's doing fine
>>25115629ooops sorry guys meant for justin murphy thread. love scifi, love malzberg!
>>25115633What do you think of Bakker? He writes serious literature.
>>25115636I only read one, which was a fantasy retelling of the children's crusade, and I thought it was interesting
>>251153523 girls, 2 guys with their s/o in their profile picture, and 1 unknown but their profile is full of fujo fiction so you just know
>>25115598Wolfefags are manchild ESL types who don't read much literature and think LE UNRELIABLE NARRATOR is mindblowing
>>25115588A Fire upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge comes to mind.
>>25115645most character driven scifi and fantasy is ya slop with mary stu protags who are projections of the authors ideals, wolfe is at least interesting
>>25115655>mary stu protagsAnd Severian isn't?
>>25115644so accurate target audience
>>25115664He's a short king.
>>25115664yeah he definitely is to an extreme extent
>>25115664then again he dies all the time, they have to revive him until he gets gud
I just wanted to brag a little about my immediate to-read list, as I'm pretty excited for it:First the Illustrated edition of The Gormenghast Trilogy, second The Lord of the Rings, and third The Books of Earthsea. I haven't read the first two in over a decade, and it's been perhaps seven or eight years for Earthsea.
>>25115093>those coversThe absolute state of modern science fiction and fantasy.
>>25115267you are retarded
>>25115403That says "J.R.R. Tolkien."
>>25115598you got filtered
>>25115619Is it good?
>>25115620Joe Abercrombie's books are for heckin' cool Redditors.
>>25115757Very. Disturbingly bleak, though.
>>25115748Jahid Rahman Rizqallah Tolkien. Interesting name.
>>25115287For a dollar yeah. It's easy entertainment.
>>25115747>>25115751Good on you for not posting a feels guy edit this time, little newfag.
>>25115051Largely why I try and grab the old covers with the cool paintings done by Whelan and others. I got an old edition of Glory Road by Heinlen where there's a woman with her tits out on the cover and it just made me think they would never be ballsy enough to do anything like that again. It's bound to offend someone. They want to make everything bland and boring so that it can gain traction on social media based on an aesthic that just looks shallow. Unfortunately I have seen this happen to the works of Roberto Bolano in English because they want the tiktok audience to discover him.
>>25115798Surely TikTok users and people who can read maximalist novels don't have much of an overlap...
Low key this is the first 21st century genre novel I've read in a long time and the millennialisms are filtering me hard. I had no idea things were already this bad whenever this was published, 2007 I think?
Reading picrel, the inspiration for Snowpiercer and the vibes/aesthetic I was chasing for a while. Halfway in, the frenchman goes HARD on cocks, beautiful bimbo women and bestiality. There's entire passages describing how Redfurs have huge dicks, and how women must prefer them to tiny man dicks. I'm thinking dude was really insecure about his dick size, but somehow made a whole series out of it.Anyway, enjoying it so far, too bad the rest of the series is in French only.
>>25115810built for BRC
free from bakker criticism...our circlejerk returns
>>25115399>New Edge Sword & Sorcery MagazineOnly created to zoggify S&S.
>>25115843I agree desu, I especially thought the writing was meeeeh in the Steel supers book or whatever it's called.
>>25115720I like many books better than LotR or Earthsea, but there are few I enjoy more to re-read. They're the favorite pair of socks and comfy hoody of fantasy.
>>25115843It's crazy to think of how much happier people would be if they stopped forming parasitical relationships with fictional settings and the creators that make them.Most of these aren't even "takes", they're mild observations, but they're considered controversial anyway.
Are Accelerando and A Fire Upon the Deep the only two novels that take on the Singularity?
>>25115943The Difference Engine.
>>25115312>just "open yourself up to a new kind of narrative experience" broDoes it need to be pointed out to you how this is how those Dark Souls games all do their story and yet it is immensely popular?
>>25115302>>25115312>>25115283Is Bakkerfag really just speaking to himself?
>>25115379I tried to tell you all this several threads ago.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4465690/Quantum_Coffee_Conundrum/>albert camus meets PKD meets harlan ellison meets red dwarf>prose that looks competent for once in a VNmite be cool
The masculine urge to drop in an iron rain
>>25115975wouldn't bakkerfag be the guy defending the series? although I'm not too familiar with the general lore here, I wasn't around for the apparent golden era >>25113662
>>25115048Your dad told me his ass hurts.
>>25115972This works fundamentally differently in video games, being that they are an interactive medium.The interactivity allows (or at least has the potential to allow, if you're not making AAA moviegame slop) the player to choose their level of engagement with the story, from enjoying the game on a purely mechanical level, as a game, to diving deep into reading all the optional lore tidbits strewn across the world.The vast majority of Dark Souls player are just in it for the mechanics, and maybe the general atmosphere, but they're not diving that deep into the lore (and what they do get is out of youtubers compiling the information for them, not any investigation of their own).The majority of Elder Scrolls players don't know anything about dragonbreaks and Numidium and mantling and towers, they're just playing their cool Nord dude wandering around Skyrim fighting bandits, they don't know the (((Aldmeri))) are trying to unmake realityThis is a lot more difficult to pull off in a linear non-interactive medium like a book or movie, because you typically can't really go "well, this is an optional chapter, I'll skip this to get back to the main story" (while in the video-game version of Wheel of Time, you'd be able to just skip Perrin's companion quests or whatever).Like, for the Prince of Nothing, to some extent you can manage to enjoy it as just a fantasy 1st Crusade with some neat worldbuilding (a cool Mediterranean-inspired world rather than the typical medieval fantasy fare) and a unique magic system, but eventually you'll get to The Thousandfold Thought, and if you've been doing that you'll just be like "yo, what's this Moënghus nigga even talking about". And by the sequel quadrilogy, this really isn't going to work.
>>25115972But those are video games. If there were no boss fights everyone would think it was trash.
>>25116115>because you typically can't really go "well, this is an optional chapter, I'll skip this to get back to the main storyI did do this to every single female POV chapter in Wheel of Time though.
>>25115873>mild critique toward an author you enjoy to some extent is a parasocial relationshipCertainly explains all the normalfags humping Asimov/Clarke/Tolkien/Moorcock/Rothfuss/Martin/etc. every thread and their marriage to the author.
>>25116184Tolkien is the worst one but Bakker is a close second
>>25115795>feels guy editkys
>>25116210>kay why essYou are new to 4chan. Likely underage. Lol.
>three prologuesWas this really necessary?
>>25115099>>25116264Brandon always makes you lot seethe so much.
>>25115287At that price, why not?
My sister was telling me how great Dungeon Crawler Carl is the other day
Multiverses - Preston Grassman, editor (2023)PARALLEL WORLDSBanish - Alastair Reynolds (2023)Three surgeons prepare to remotely operate on a man in a different worldline. In their own world, the man is one of the worst war criminals to have ever lived. What are their ethical obligations?EnjoyableCracks - Chana Porter (2023)A depressed woman fantasizes, violently, sexually, and in other ways, about the better lives that her other selves have.BlahA Threshold Hypothesis - Jayaprakash Satyamurthy (2015)All possible realities exist simultaneously. Only a few are able to pass through the threshold and see in them passing glimpses. The disaffected, pretentious, and contemptuous narrator ruined this for me.BlahCrunchables - Ian McDonald (2023)Leighton is going out to get cat food and other supplies. Going anywhere is a risk because patches of all possible realities exchange places with regularity and are of arbitrary volume. He's just living life, and well, life happens.OkQuorum's Eye - Alvaro Zinos-Amaro (2023)Celosya is reluctant to join a Quorum. Almost everyone else has neurally joined with their selves from other realities, but she's afraid that she'll lose her one true individual self if she does so.OkNine Hundred Grandmothers - Paul Di Filippo (2023)Stafford uses and deals in drugs from myriad realities. An absurd, hilarious, and terrifying intervention ensues.Highly EnjoyableDays of Magic, Nights of War - Clive Barker (2004)A short poem about the multiverse.MehALTERNATE HISTORIESA Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel - Ken Liu (2013)The Trans-Pacific Tunnel is a 5,880-mile tunnel constructed from 1929 to 1938 that connects Tokyo, Shanghai, Seattle, and Midpoint City. In 1961, a 48 year old digger from Formosa recounts the glory and beauty that was its creation. He also tells of the trauma and complicity that has made it his self-imposed prison.Fictional documents are presented, both contemporary and retrospective from 1995, that provide an accounting of its place in history and the effects it had on the world. Compared to our history, theirs is a far happier one with much less death and destruction.This is the third time I've read this story. The first time was its original magazine publication (2013), then in one of Liu's collections (2020), and now in this anthology (2026). I've enjoyed it more each time. It's one of my favorite works of alternate history.Highly EnjoyableThirty-six Alternate Views of Mount Fuji - Rumi Kaneko, translated by Preston Grassmann (2023)A researcher of historical artifacts receives a letter from a historian who claims to have artifacts from an alternate history.Ok
>>25116380The Cartography of Sudden Death - Charlie Jane Anders (2014)A young girl is caught up in the journey of assassins who time travel through important deaths. I don't know why this is in the alternate history section of this anthology because it seems like far future science fiction to me without anything alternate about it other than killing people changes history.I also don't know if this is related to any of her other work, but it reads like a side story explaining the origin of some major character in something else.This is the 10th work of short fiction I've read from Anders and I've rated the majority Blah and the rest Meh. Maybe I'll eventually read something from her that I like, but it's seeming ever less likely. Her appeal as indicated by her relative popularity and slew of awards continues to elude me.MehThe Rainmaker - Lavie Tidhar (2023)Oblivion interrogates Spit about her history with The Rainmaker. They're Ubermenschen, immortal superhumans. All sorts of names and events are thrown around to where it really seems like it's a small part of something else. If there was more context, then maybe it could be ok, but as is, it isn't.MehThe Imminent World - D.R.G. Sugawara (2023)A poem about all the potential Now that could've been, are, and will be.MehFRACTURED REALITIES#Selfcare - Annalee Newitz (2021)Edwina is a customer care associate at Skin Seraph, which sells beauty products. This story is filled with pop culture, slang, and memes, and seems to take place in the 2040s. Also, uh, apparently Fae exist? This story doesn't make any sense in a lot of ways, but somehow it was inexplicably fine. I liked it more than any other short fiction I've read from her anyway. Even so, borderline meh.OkA Witch's Guide to Escape - Alix E. Harrow (2018)A witch librarian knows what what her patrons need and can understand the feelings of books. She's conflicted because the secret witch books aren't allowed to be seen by mortals, even though it would really help them. This was unexpectedly ok.OkAmber Too Red, Like Ember - Yukimi Ogawa (2023)This is a surreal science fantasy fairy tale. A person in a wormhole has to fix their automaton grandma who was decapitated by a mysterious vine.MehThe Set - Eugen Bacon (2023)A surreal and absurdist story about a self-pitying radio show host whose life is suddenly turned upside down. He goes through several shows where he has to make up everything as it happens.BlahThere is a Hole, There is a Star - Jeffrey Thomas (2023)the HOLE appears and WEiRD sTufF sssstartssss HAPPening. In PUNKTOWN, on an unnamed WORLD, the CHOOM, the indigenous people, have been co-co-colonized by EARTH. Nahool is just living her LiFE and then she doesn't even KNOW what's going on!? The Washing Machine THOUGH!!!!!Yeah, this is a New Weird story and not one that I liked at allBlahThere was a Time - Clive Barker (2023)A poem about the death of the sacred, mystical, supernatural, and spiritual.Meh
>>25116118Hey man I like dungeon crawling
>>25115664>horny retard who fails at his one job and later bumbles his way into saving mankindNah
>>25115598>ye olde englishAre you dyslexic? Wolfe's diction can be exotic but he's good enough with context clues that you don't need to read with a dictionary open. C.f. The Night Land and The Faerie Queene.
What yall think bout Jade Legacy?
Yooo they are re releasing a new hardcover of Between Two Fires. Are you goys going to get it?
Okay so you know the vibe a lot of Dreamcast games have? Are there any books that can match that vibe?
WHAAAAT??? where the fuck did Moenghus come from.Fuck! book is baiting me to not give up one it!
FUUUUUCK MAN i have a scary feeling that Moenghus alone might convince me to read the Aspect Emperor trilogy. Kellhus is SOOOOOO fucking boring, that the possible perspective Moenghus could have to offer is too enticing to shy away from.If I can just tolerate the Esmenet chapters where she remembers that shes an evil whore for the hundreth time....
>>25116484My nigga the reason they started putting multiple POV characters into books is so you can skip the ones that suck instead of just dropping the whole book.
>>25116512What? Really? Is this true? Why'd nobody tell me? Honestly now that I think about it, I could have easily done with skipping all of Esmenets chapters in the Warrior Prophet. The problem is that Esmenet matters the way any whore matters. Because of the losers that go to fuck her. So id be even more flabbergasted by the highschool drama tier cucking of Achamian if I skipped her chapters.I don't think it can be done to be fair.
>>25116512No, that is not the case at all. And I am not "your nigger".
>>25116539You read Bakkershit. The most you could aspire to be is a nigger.
>>25116540I don't read Bakker.
besides thoes two hyperion books...what else was good by dan simmons
>>25116544You're killing the narrative
I now know how ASOIAFfags feel
>>25116554luhmao
>>25116554wdymit's coming out this year isn't it
>>25116554keeek!
>>25116554>literal YA slop that its fans are in denial about being YA because it has violence porn
>>25116572>violence pornI’ll never understand why torture porn as a plot driving narrative is so well received by the female audience.
Reminder that Victra > Mustang also these new captchas fucking suck
>>25116588Cognitive dissonance and getting to play out fantasies that they can't in real life.The same reason every weeb watches the same 'mc gets super powers and kills all his bullies'.
>>25116613>'mc gets super powers and kills all his bullies'.heh, i was intelligent enough by 16, to know those to be hollow
>>25116620All the moralizing about how "fighting back against your bullies is wrong" in western media is even more hollow.
>>25116588To expound on >>25116613Media aimed towards guys in inherently violent, sports video games, action movies. The average guys sees it at something dangerous but normal, perhaps aspirational if you're a freak. Media aimed at women, especially in the last 3 years with the trad wife revival, is meant to make all violence taboo and to push them into 'safe' interests like fashion and cooking. So when they do get a chance to indulge in violent media they want it to be as gory as possible. Men drink casually while women go on black out binges (broadly).
>>25116652>t. retard
>>25115664He's just an ikeman pushed around by pedos and women until he gains an ego and then becomes pretty ridiculous but still cool
>>25116662>t. midwit beta male
>>25116656>trad wife revivalHow well is that working out?
for a place that is supposed to be filled with people who read books, this place is not that much better compared to your average /v/ threads
>>25115798Give me Richard Powers or the Dillons anytime.>>25115720Are you me? I'm going to start an illustrated edition of Gormenghast soon.
>>25116380>Nine Hundred GrandmothersHomage to R. A. Lafferty?
>>25116705true, but only because of bakkertards that argue in a way to deliberately not have to address my criticisms
>>25116705I'd like to mention a book I just finished but this thread will hate it. So why bother?
>>25116705>people who read booksCommon mistake, no one here reads books, they just loudly shout how much they hate popular authors.
>>25116705it is deeply unfortunate how the normalfags gravitate to the most popular of entries only, yes
>>25116705I mean, it is a containment thread after all.
>>25116473hah great question. not gonna explain any of these, just going off of gut feel:The Broken Lands, Fred SaberhagenAll Tomorrows, Nemo RamjetThe Pastel City, M. John HarrisonThe Sword of Bayne, Ty Johnston
>>25116722The title probably is, though not the content. I haven't read the Lafferty story.
>>25115431There's Vurt. It's pretty far away from the LN you mentioned tho
>>25115810I forgot I wanted to read this. It also inspired the game Transarctica which I loved as a child and had mad, but entirely unrelated to the game, box art.
>>25116986>TransarcticaIs this actually good? I wanted to try it.
>>25116993It's old which means janky and punishing at times but fun if you can get past that. There's a lot of childhood nostalgia colouring involved. Hands down best way to exit any game. You go to your office and shoot yourself.
Going through some difficult times healthwise. Please recommend me some stories that really immersed you as you read them, to help keep my mind off of the unpleasentness of my real life for now.
>>25117089Bridge of BirdsBlind Voices
I finished Children of Ruin. Yes , not as good as CoT but I still couldn't put it down. My only issues with it were some writing amateurish structural mistakes and that I didn't buy the implant capabilities.8/10
My short story got reviewed on a website from a big publishing house of SF/F. Am I gonna make it?
>>25117207I'm proud of you, anon.
The No-God.Truth shines.Trust the plan.No weepers on the slog, eh lads, eh?
>>25116212you need to go back
>>25115473Why shouldn't I write one myself then?
>first word is "fuck">immediately dropped
Bakkerfags I have a question.Who is it Serwe looks like? Certainly none of his wives I think. Is she the female version of Moenghus because of the blonde hair? Or... does she remind him of his mother?I think him seeing her as his mother or female Moenghus are both pretty interesting interpretations but I can't recall if we are ever told straight up which it is.
>>25117207Literally the only review site owned by a major sff publisher is Reactor magazine by TOR.
>>25116539>that is not the case at allWhat's your explanation for it then, white boy?
>>25117311No reason not to. But you won't, so there's that.
>>25115620Finished The Blade itself today, I don't really know what to think of it. Jezal & Sand were the most interesting POV characters to me. Overall it feels like it lacks direction, not like it needs a huge world ending plot, but so far, I don't really see where things are going or how conflicts will appears between the characters. I was hoping that the second book would be better, still interested enough to finish the first trilogy.>>25115624dreading that, because the narrator of the audiobook in my language is horrendous at doing female voice, they all sounds like ditzy bimbos, even Ferro.>>25115758What's generally disliked about his books? So far the main thing that irks me is how often he talks about piss and shit
>>25117362one of his wives. The one had some conversations with him chapters ago
>>25117443>he talks about piss and shithe does this and adds in rank pussy in his latest book
Consensus? I like the pacing but it's lacking in some figurative language.
>>25116472Already have two physical version (one in english, one in french so that I could gift it to my father), so no. Would really like to see translation of Blacktongue thief & Daughter Wars, alongside the third volume of the series though
>>25117461Terribly dull author
>>25117461I never DNF. I DNF'd Malice.Dull, cliched, lacking in imagination, but also not bad enough to be fun or induce emotion. The definition of a waste of time.
>>25117461I dropped the first book without getting even 20% of the way through it. Very exposition-heavy writing, with characters basically outlining the plot of the novel for you in tedious dialogue. But what really made me lose interest was the fact that Gwynne has no idea how to make a setting interesting. There was no sense of mystery to it. Nothing about it made me want to learn more, to discover the secrets in his world. That's a big part of what gets my attention when reading epic fantasy. Good characters keep me invested long-term, but the hook is always the sense of mystery in the setting. Gwynne dispelled any sense of mystery with his front-loaded and ham-handed exposition.
>>25117461Only way you could enjoy these is if they were among the first fantasy you've read. 20 pages into Malice, I felt as though I could predict the entire novel. And I was right.
>>25117443>>What's generally disliked about his books?For me, it's his incredibly lazy world building, which feels deliberately half-assed. It makes me incapable of enjoying his books, even if some of his characters are very well done. Glokta is a very well written character. I just hate the books he is trapped in. I feel like I'm being covered in Abercrombie's slimy contempt every time I try to read them. It's like how a dudebro would write epic fantasy.
>>25117527Abercrombie writes very gripping personal drama and gives it a barely thought-out high fantasy background. If all you want out of a book is a good narrative and you're not picky about genre, Abercrombie is good reading. If you are actually a fan of high fantasy, then yeah I could see his books being irritating.
>>25117448its this, forgot her name but it starts with an "A" if i remember correctly. im pretty sure Cnauir literally talks about her being like his wife in the future
>>25115019I want to read a sci-fi about the crew a small ship that gets swept up in things larger than themselves. Or the same thing, but steampunk. I feel like most of the sci-fi I see talk about takes place on a single planet or station and that's gay.
>>25117692The Expanse
>>25117376I don't care if you guys know I post here, I just don't wanna self-promote / spam my shit because it's against the ethos of this thread.
>>25117791No, I'm saying you're making it up.
>>25117692Star Trek.
>>25117207>>25117207Being included here doesn't mean you're going to make it in any way.https://reactormag.com/tag/short-fiction-spotlight/
>>25117812Based on that, and looking at the most recent one, if true, then it's obvious which one is you, because it's almost all women and you aren't one, statistically anyway.
>>25117692just watch BSG again. It's the goat
>>25117816gottem ex dee>>25117821dogshit ending
>>25117821I tried to watch that a few years ago and really enjoyed the prequel mini series thing but I couldn't finish the first season it just felt idk directionless and besides Adama I didn't really care much about the cast. Also the fake in universe swearing they use throws me off lol
>>25117821the drama is just so contrived, though. it'd have been 100x better if it tried to tell a scifi story first instead of a soap opera
>>25117816Who cares anyway? I just thought I'd share good news. Back to reading PKD and ignoring Bakkerspammers.
>>25117872Dunno why the others are grumpy but that's really good news, anon.
>>25117872which Dick are you on?
>>25117881Thanks anon. The best advice I have for anyone who wants to write ITT is to not self-reject. Even stories I didn't believe in found a home.>>25117884Just finishing Ubik and his short story collections. I'm going to read Minority Report first. I think PKD's really early works are underrated, particularly Hanging Stranger.
>>25117802>>25117821Book you fags. Also no.>>25117777My autism tells me to avoid popular things, but I'll pick this up anyways. I'd still like something a bit larger scale. Something now limited to just our solarsystem.
>>25117692So basically you want Firefly.
>>25118056Book
>>25118067Yes, you want an episodic book basically, like the tv series. That's not how books work usually.
>>25118107Why would you think that I want that?
>>25116552Illium/Olympos were good and I also liked The Abominable.
Does a higher tier of pure, unadulterated KINO even exist?
>>25115019I'm reading The Mote in God's Eye and just got to the part where The Moties kill the three midhipmen and their Motie, didn't expect that, they were my bros and i miss them so much already after reading the lackluster Ringworld this was a surprise, i'm a Niven fan now i just hope the ending doesn't suck
>>25118199is this the book with the shota rapist mc?
>>25118210He was raped first to be fair
>>25118199Edgeslop. Couldn't make it through the first book.>My brilliant strategy? Dig holes. And then just run up and stab the leader. Hehe, nothing personal.
>>25117529His writing is Reddit incarnate.
>>25118210>>25118233He's just like me
>>25118269So true...
>>25118284Kino..
>>25118284kekthe average /lit/ poster
>>25118284i almost love reddit in their earnest shallowness
>>25118284clock strikes 12 midnight arrives...
>>25117461I didn't read this but I did read his Viking series and that was "decent" by that I mean it had some cool characters and a few epic moments but overall very forgettable and the last book was easily the worst in the trilogy.
>>25118284Okay it sounds bad but it was ONE young child and one old woman, and they were part of a roving gang of torturer bandits who definitely had it coming. He only dismembered their corpses because of a necromantic enemy and he burned the 10,000 on accident by setting off a thousand year old nuke underneath the city. It makes sense in context
>>25118374Sounds like some retarded anime
>>25118284>>25118199>Book two plot: Epic castle siege and trippy flashbacks >Book three plot: Literally just a carriage ride.What the fuck was he thinking???
>>25117461I got about halfway through the 3rd book before dropping it. Couldn't take any more asspulls or the characters being slobbering retards. For what it's worth it was incredibly mid but serviceable up until that point.
>>25118284I've thought a loot about this sort of thing, because I really like this sort of archetype in movies or games, but absolutely hate it in booksI think the issue is that authors tend to forget how people actually talk or think.it always sounds like the character rehearsed what they were going to say for hours beforehand. which is probably true for the author themselves, but they need to realize epic badass people aren't thinking that hard about what they're saying
>>25118490>what the fuck was he thinking He wasn't https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/lawrence_interview/
Almost Finished with Foundation, only got the Merchant Princes Left. What Other space Operas do you guys recommend? Read through Dune but kind of Lost interest after the betrayal for some strange reason. looking for something like LOGH or the OG Gundam UC animes.
>I really think you are one sick disturbed person. That sentence is seared into my brain and has given me nightmares. It might be fiction but it is just horrible. There is no excuse for this sort of thing. The torture of an innocent animal. I will never ever read another book by you as long as I live. I don’t know where all this darkness comes from with you but you are quite obviously disturbed. I don’t care if you are with 10 kids and 5 dogs. Sick sick sick...
>>25118691>I don’t know where all this darkness comes from with youwoah...the darkness that comes before, bakker once again transcends his medium...
>>25118533I don't even recall a dog scene. Probably wasn't that bad.
>>25117966There are Star Trek novels, you know. Since the 1970s.
>The dog hopped around on three legs, because he had broken off the 4th. He laughed, then broke the others. The dog whimpered and crawled around; its beastly nature made it impossible for it to give up. The crazy part? That evil guy was like... my guy. And I tortured dogs too. And fucked them! And kid dogs I also fucked those! Are you shocked yet? I know I can be shocking. I'm so edgy... the thorns... they bled the kindness from me...
christopher ruocchio writes prose like he fucking hates you
>>25118744Maybe thats whats necessary to write good characters and themes
>>25118730What's the actual quote?
>>25118744cuz prose writers 90% of the time suck at writing any actual depth or complexitystyle over substance
>>25118746No.
>>25118730>>25118699>>25118747He broke a snowglobe (rare thousand year old relic from our time) so his father makes him break his dog's legs and then burns it alive anyway after lol
>>25118750>>25118746jesus christ
>>25118757>Protags name is JorgWhat a disgrace.
>>25118757Grimdark was a mistake
hey, please tell me good sci-fi where a Human Man gets an alien gf
>>25118850I enjoyed Glokta chopping up fingers quite a bit.
>>25118753>>25118768unironic retards.
I finished Carl's new book (unedited pre-pub edition).>>25118853Carl got an alien wife at the end of the last book.
>>25118853The Vixen War Bride
>>25118374The fuck? I can't self-insert as him now.
>>25118853Literature has not yet evolved to the point of having Varang gfs
>"There is no excuse for this sort of thing. The torture of an innocent animal">tfw you are scalded and the meat-crazed Ordealman just got hungry
>>25118533>I don't plan. I generally just let the story flow and have no idea where we'll be at the bottom of the page How does one learn to write like this?
>>25119449Just relax and let it happen.
>tfw in a reading rutI'm getting old bros...
Honest opinions on the Honorverse books?
>>25119474This is why CHADtiffical CHADtelligence was created. You can read literally anything you want, anytime.
>>25119476It's not top-tier, but it's an above average military sci-fi with solid worldbuilding that is comfy and easy to read. Sometimes that's all you want from a series.
>>25118504True but there's a bit of leeway in medieval settings because people tend to talk eloquently in the first place. And in the quote in question Jorg is talking to a judge in a court of law so he's using more formal language
>>25118858That was excellent, but would have felt much different without the bits of humor
>>25117443>What's generally disliked about his books?Books written by and for Redditors. It's that simple.
>>25118853how about fantasy where a man gets an alien (rape-orc-xenomorph) bf? and then they have gay sex after they murder a guy
>>25119533Isn't that just the regular slash erotica?
I'm starting to like The Way of Kings againI'll most certainly be writing a review for /lit/ when I finish it.
>>25119692I've been getting tempted by Sanderson. From a distance I see him as shonen anime in novel form. And while shonen anime is almost never good, if it could even be as good as Hunter X Hunter Chimera Ant arc then maybe theres something worth there
>>25116554>Light Bringer: Published 2023>A Dance With Dragons: Published 2011It's not even comparable like holy shit wow 3 years what a LONG wait
>>25119705You must understand. Just like ASOIAFfags, Red Rising is the only book or series he has read.
>>25119508Severard's first comment could be removed and that might make it better. I just finished The Sword Itself the other day and the only part I didn't like was the chase at the end. It was far too long, though the fight at the end was nice. Not the same as that other anon who said he just finished the book.
>>25119692It was always a good book. People just obsessively hate Sanderson
>>25119723This. I feel disgust when I visit this general and see people offering the mildest critique toward a megapopular bestselling author.
>>25118853Ensign Flandry
>>251196922>1>4>3>5Something wrong went wrong in his head while he was writing 5. Honestly it has me worried for his books going forward.
>>25119740kek I first read "something wrong with his head" and saw the black mark on that cat and thought you were talking about the cat
>>25119740>Honestly it has me worried for his books going forward.Anyone read Isles of the Emberdark yet? Maybe W&T was just a lapse
>>25119698Every time I think about dropping it, there's a good set of Kaladin chapters that bring me back in
>>25119745It's on my shelf but I haven't opened it yet. If the male character isn't white I'm not going to read it.
>>25119745Is this an implication that WaT was Brandon's only subpar/mediocre/average/not-perfectly-amazing book? This rhetoric is new.
>>25119759https://coppermind.net/wiki/Sixth_of_the_Dusk>dark skin
>>25119762>Native AmericanYou know I'm something of a 1/32nd native american myself
>>25119692Way of Kings is good, selected Sanderson is goodThe problem is the stuff that's bad
>>25119759>I love my cocks white
>>25119771Correct
>>25119761He should have made Renarin come on to Kaladin at some point instead of just coming out of nowhere with the twink/subhuman romance.
>>25119740His long term editor left after Oathbringer
>>25119761It's bad in a different, worse, and more noticeable way.When you get into an author you tend to forgive their mild flaws. WaT is when the flaws became something even his diehards couldn't ignore.
>>25119786>WaT is when the flaws became something even his diehards couldn't ignore.Oh okay, I didn't know.>t. been reading Sanderson since 2010
>>25119786Yeah that sounds right. It had a lot of small issues, and to add insult to injury the book was almost more of a setup to era 2 than it was an ending to era 1. There just wasn't a satasfying ending to destract from all of the niggling issues in the rest of the book.
>>25118757This really wasn't THAT bad
>>25119449Ask GRRM he will teach you how to garden like a boss
>>25119698He turned into capeslop though, the avengers crap is so corny.
What this mean? A new skin spy immediately replaced the Serwe skin spy that just died?
As soon as it returns to Kellhus and Esmenet. Im struggling to read again. Every single chapter with these two is just eternally centered around cucking Achamian even more than he already is, and repeating the same exact beats and themes of them over and over again. How many times will Achamian fawn over how perfect and fit for her new Queen regent role she seems. How much more "Kellhus is so perfect and breathlessly makes himself the center of things" Must I read again? How many "I used to be able to simply hold her waist and she would turn into my arms" will he repeat?It feels like the book is focusing intimately on the characters, yet doing nothing actually with them. Telling me about their features and dimensions, but never exploring them.Also these random tangents the author seems to love to go on where he gives 9th grade tier aphorisms I'd find on a Wisecrack Philosophy YouTube video: "Men....dont realize...that the value of gold and silver...isnt in the gold and silver themselves...but in the expectations and relevance...given to the gold...."Wow. deep. Is this why I was told that Prince of Nothing is philosophical?
Funny. I've heard a view like this somewhere. Popular among a certain type of Christians that love to posture with philosophy in general, but analytic philosophy more typically. I find it wholly uninteresting. But Achamian sure seems to be captured by this. For somebody who has presumably read a lot of philosophy, to fall for a convenient world view, typically confirmation biased by people who have barely or only selectively read philosophy, is something.
It would severely improve the dialogue and writing of this book, to present Kellhus with somebody with a capacity for self awareness and emergent thought. Somebody who would actually engage with and question Kellhus, rather than stare mouth agape, at the fact that Kellhus can blatantly read their insecurity and tell them "Its all fine dude, I totally understand because I said so". Its like not a single person in this book has ever interacted with a real human being. Like not a single person in this book has ever experienced what its like to have people tell you exactly what you want to hear to get something from you, when they dont mean a word of it. This is stuff you learn in highschool. If Achamian, or Esmenet and every single retard in the Holy War were a child, I'd have no choice but to understand, even though you can absolutely still write an interesting and deep development of a childs understanding of the world. But Kellhus just absolutely kills any possibility for any character to be a person in this series rather than nothing more but a mirror for Kellhus to flex his mind reading powers on, and consume until theyre nothing but an extension of himself.Yes. Again. I understand that is the exact point of Kellhus. Its not an interesting (or good, or intelligent) philosophy to write things in a conveniently explicit way that the conclusion necessarily follows the premise, because the premise was written to be true.Logic becomes hollow if "Socrates is a Man, All Men are IMMORTAL, Therefore Socrates is IMMORTAL" If immortality, and its attachment to men, is simply a given, because it was declared as such.
Also I've already been spoiled a bit, but how did he know this about the Cishaurim already?
i was going to come to this thread to shitpost about the second apocalypse but damn i guess you guys already got that on lock.have any of you read Too Like the Lightning?
mythago wood is losing me with the tarzan like romance
>>25116776Hmmmm...thanks for the recs, but they're not exactly what I had in mind.I'm talking like that Y2K vibe, like Jet Set Radio and Space Channel 5.(I realize I should have specify the first time)
>>25118199I found the afterword at the end of Empire supercringe, Lawrence was really stressing how he could've easily written more but he didn't want to do the characters a disservice, two false obviously false statements given how shit the ending was
>>25120073Yes, I and several others have.
>>25120187>>25118533He just doesn't fucking plan, that's his problem. I read his other series Prince of Fools (protagonist is the complete opposite of Jorg, much more enjoyable read) and its the same shit. Shit just happens for no reason, important characters get killed, conflicts get resolved, mysteries get "explained" and it comes with no warning whatsoever, he dedicates like a paragraph to it and it's on to the next thing. I get he's trying to be le subversive and just like real life!!1!1 but his endings are super unsatisfying. He's good at leading you on but he cannot fucking land the finish mark. I think he wrote the Prince of Fools series partly to give his readers an explanation of whatever the fuck the reality wheel shit at the end of EoT that he never bothered to explain during the actual series.
>>25120073>have any of you read Too Like the Lightning?Cant wait to try it once done 1000FT
>>25120213>>25120197i dont really get why people seemed bent out of shape by the 'unreliable narrator' aspect. its more like a 'biased narrator'
I probably should have doen a little bit more research than just reading the Synopsis before ordering Seveneves. I was hopeful that it wouldn't be full of lib shit because it's not that new. Every page has some highlight about how a man interrupted a woman, or how the haters have nothing better to do than coment on a womans haircut. This is about returning to earth 5000 years after escaping the apocalypse on an ark ship. I'm not even going to make it past the fucking prelude.
>>25120224You can safely drop books like that. Its not even about what politics you're privy to, there are ways to approach that that are more nuanced and less "in your face" than that. Its almost impossible to write something well if one is fine being that blunt.
>>25120224Also of the 5 characters so far 4 of them are women and the last one is just Neil deGrasse Tyson.Also I don't buy the big apocalypse scenario here.The moon got shattered into 7 large pieces by some unknown force, ok cool. These pieces are going to smash into each other grinding themselves down into billions of smaller pieces, which will then fall to earth over the course of "five to ten thousand years". Wouldn't the pieces not break apart as easily as they got smaller? Wouldn't they mostly stay together due to there still being the same mass as the moon had when it was whole? I can buy some pieces of the moon getting flung towards the earth, but why wouldn't it, if anything, flatten out into a ring? I don't enjoy the prose, I don't enjoy the politics, or characters, and I don't buy the science. Also the pacing sucks.ALSO, I just flipped through the book and it doesn't do the time skip until page 569. What the fuck, I thought basically the whole book was going to be in the future.
No I will not budge.
>>25120295I will not read a series that will not finish. Partialslop.
>>25120295>>>/lit/grrm
>>25120301this. It sounds really interesting but not being finished is fucking retarded and high possibility it never will completely makes me lose interest. If you start writing a series you HAVE to finish it or else you will forever be a hack. Read his book Fevre Dream though and liked it, and I know now why Martin dresses like a steamboat captain.
Do I have to read all of Botns in one go or is it fine to take like 2 months break between books?
>>25120295what about the dunk n egg stories
>>25120350Read all in one go. Who knows what good stuff youre missing out on if you dont finish other stuff first.Unless you have something else to do between breaks, like videogames or shorter books
Did I miss something or was it ever explained why all these "people" just pussy footed and surrendered so hard. Even the Gerotha or Xerashi or whatever the fuck, who killed 4 out of 10 of their people because Kellhus said so. Why did they ever surrender? I dont remember any fight or conflict, barring the random fucking raids that one Aojoktl dude or whatever was going on beforehand.I think something was mentioned about the Cishaurim retreating to Shimeh, but it was so briefly mentioned there wasnt much to think of it.I might just go back to the chapter and try and read it. It was so short and devoid of detail that I didnt even question it, but now that its having more permanent effects, im skeptical again.
Hm.
Does this sound like an explanation?I gathered all the relevant pages I could find, and it seems they just surrendered...because, and the ones who barred them from entering Gerotha were just random more rabid select few.Tell me if this is an explanation for why every single City in Xerash just bows to and kisses Kellhus' feet from then on.
>>25120073I'm reading the series for the first time and just finished The Will to Battle. It's slower than most books I've liked, but it's certainly unique and that's kept me going. Gonna take a break though before Perhaps the Stars.Mycroft's mind is a fascinating place to be in as the utopia slowly, then rapidly falls apart, and he's inexplicably at the center of everything.>>25120217I hate unreliable narrators, but Mycroft doesn't seem to be that thankfully.
>>25115103Today I finally managed to finish Rise of Endymion and I'd say that each book was weaker than the one before it. None were out right bad but it's painful starting from such a strong high and consistently getting worse to having such a sickeningly naive ending. Respect to Simmons (R.I.P.) though he still crafted an interesting enough world that I bothered to stick with it to the end even if Raul is one of the most boring men ever written.
Tell me atleast, that this is ever explained.
>>25119476Kino space-navy battles and very comfy as >>25119486 said. The space British Empire politics can get tiring along with plotlines caused by comically retarded admirals/politicians but it's worth reading if you like the genre.
.....
>>25120468it cant be intentional right? such blatantly bad writing must be accidental? nobody with a brain could possibly excuse this as if not a reoccuring blip of writing. they have to have the basic critical self aware capacity to understand this very very basic writing problem.because the more i read this book, the more i get the feeling that the average reader of the second apocalypse has never organically come across the problem of picrel, and understood, by their own wits. why it is a problem.
At this point why bother even reading the series when this nigga'll just post the whole thing
It is now time to read The Book of the New Sun.
>>25120474I shoulda done this when I read DCC 8 over the past few days. Every vaguely amusing panel or excerpt.
>>25120474the best way to experience Bakker is a patchwork ordering of phone screenshots accompanied by lightweight commentaryand i am NOT joking
>>25120562What's the proper post read order?
>>25120570The Vulgar Holy Arc phone post arc was the best, where it all started
>>25120295SA Storm of SwordsAA Clash of Kings,.A Feast for CrowsBA Dance With Dragons CA Game of Thrones DFire and Blood
>bakker autist is still at it
>>25120816This doesn't reek of autism, it's full-blown schizophrenia. He's drive to obsession by his psychosis, wherein Bakker forms some kind of focal point.
>>25120818>He's drivedriven*
>>25120816gotta respect his commitment to the bit
He wishes it was bit. His mind is gone.
>>25120859Did he ever have the freedom to choose this, or is he merely a passenger in his own body, bearing mute witness to the horror that his unconscious mind brings upon the world?
>>25120888WHAT DO YOU SEE
I've been a bit of a sci-fi binge lately, I've finished all the books in the culture series and i've read all of the books in the revelation space series, although I've just started reading House of the suns because I've heard good things about it. I'm thinking of picking up Adrian Tchaikovsky, i'm looking at his page on good reads the man is prolific, any recommendation's
>>25120898Children of time is his best series. Start there
I know this is not a writing thread, and seeing as it's already past bump limit anyway, recently I've been working on my own draft of a fantasy story, and I'm feeling really happy about it. It's the story of a soldier who wakes up in the foreign country his own country had been trying to invade. He was thought to have been killed, until he simply woke up from being 'dead'. However, his memory is all jumbly and he has some sort of delusion that he was actually killed and 100% believes that he is now in the afterlife. The country being invaded is very magic-focused, as opposed to the soldier's more grounded one, which furthers his belief that this is the afterlife, as he sees the magical aspects of that society as unreal. The invaded country also is interested in keeping him around, in hopes of squeezing some intel about the invaders out of him. Thematically it's basically about cultural differences and clashing worlds.
>>25120968seems sillyhow does the guy not know the name of his own country? And how is he there in the first place. is this one of those isekai novels but instead of getting into another world the guy gets transported to another country
>>25120372>Did I miss something or was it ever explained why all these "people" just pussy footed and surrendered so hard.They say why on the page you posted.>>25120437>Tell me atleast, that this is ever explained.Yes
>>25120968Send it to Beneath Ceaseless Skies.
>>25120898Read Shards of Earth and I'm on Eyes of the Void, currently.Pretty good so far. The universe is interesting but his prose could be better.
>>25120968>his memory is all jumblystop don't. that is extremely anime/jrpg trope to allow exposition to easily be explained to the audience. It is very lazy. The dedicated belief that he is dead and in purgatory or something could be interesting if done well.
>>25120968This may sound insulting, and I don't mean it to be, but you should make this a VN which has an audience that wants these sort of elements, instead of a SFF audience which does not.
Is this book using words I donzt know, or ones it made up?
>>25121388If only there was a way to lookup a word and find out.
>>25120025>but how did he know this about the Cishaurim alreadyHe just thought about it really hard and figured out the entire magic system from first principles (I guess Achamian's a good teacher, but still).Since, you know, the autists who've been hanging out for a millennium in the mountains explicitly rejecting the existence of magic would totally be able to casually learn it in a few months, and in fact figure out things that all the pre-eminent sorcerous scholars of the world didn't manage to for centuries (and have seemingly not even bothered to form up any basic working theories). Since they're AI superintelligences, you see
>>25120019>This is stuff you learn in highschoolwell, Bakker didn't learn it I guess
>>25121434I was going to try and defend it a bit so that the Bakker retards who I at this point consider the effective equivalent of Kpop fans calling kpop culture critiquers schizos (like every braindying person on the internet does to anybody they dont like) dont freak out. But thinking about it a bit further. Its not as sensible as I thought, but for some reason it appeals to the intuition, like religion does, and like somebody, who was raised to be religious, first thinks philosophy is supposed to.Heres my thought:Kellhus saw that the Cishaurim blind themselves so he concluded that they do this to focus on an heighten their intuition and feelings.On the face of it, even if this is more a theory than justification, it sounds intuitive. The way people constantly fall for "does a ton of feathers way more than a ton of bricks" because they focus more on how something seems, than how it is.But this assertion assumes that seeing is less of a feeling than taste, or that seeing is more objective than touch, or that seeing is more clear than sound.But its not, you dont even need to read any actual philosophy, you can take a cursory reading of the history of philosophy and learn about all the breakdowns and criticisms of relying on sight. Infact, its possible that no sensation "fools" more than sight, that no sensation is less objective, less clear, less privy to the passions (arguably).I think this core problem is my true fundamental problem with the series. Its why that retard thinks Cnauir is well written, and why I roll my eyes at his mess of emotions (albeit still find him more interesting than most other characters)The books very rarely explores the implications and baked in assumptions of its assertions.Now, I dont even know if Im right per se, that sight can affect the emotions more than touch or such. But the fact that so many times, so often in the series. A character will propose an idea or thought, or notion, and nobody will engage with or question it whatsoever, so as to reap a deeper understanding. Means that it is not deep at all.The fact that Esmenet naturally acting like the domineering queen, while also being like "omg i cant believe Im a queen anymore! its all too much" and so little is done with that, beyond the surface level of what it is. The fact that Achamian feels alone and disconnected from people due to being Mandate and the most we get, is a monologue from Kellhus going "yeah, I know you feel alone because youre mandate, but youre not really alone, because God is inside all of us, and we are all one with God" Where he just tells us what we already know, then proposes a retarded theory that Achamian just swallows completely, so that he can cope.Its just surface upon surface upon surface, where the most interesting thing, is that a new surface is added, or repeated. Cnauir wants Kellhus to kill him then, Conphas to kill him. Cnauir wants to be of the Steppe then to be free of them again
Its part of why I bring these pages here as reference and ask questions. Because I just cant fathom the implications and themes and characters being as shallow as they are. The writing style just betrays that impression. There has to be something more. There has to be a reason why He keeps reinforcing the cuckness of Achamian with no intersting or deeper point (Im actually guessing that in the next couple pages the Consult are going to try to use that somehow to get at Kellhus. And while thatll be interesting from a plot perspective, I also hope it deepens the characters, or makes some point out of the theme of Esmenet literally cucking the poor fat nerd, to get with the rich tall aryan
The Gormenghast Trilogy is so comfy.
I'm enjoying Claw of the Conciliator so much more than the first book, holy. It's way, way faster and things actually happen.
>>25121537So it's not comfy.
>>25121481Anon, it's just fantasy slop not a classic.
>>25121539I suppose? But when I read a book called "Shadow of the Torturer" I'm not exactly looking for easy, comfy literature.
>>25121542That will teach you to trust titles.
>>25121475here's Bakker's fancy explanation
>>25121547Fair enough.
also lol
so Bakker's a recovering stoner... who apparently gave himself ADHD? how the fuck did he even fry his brain with weed, it's not as if he was doing ketamine or somethingwere the canucks already growing the ultra-powerful weed strains all the way back in the 90s
>still no no-god releaseBROS
the sequels really *should* have been a fucking duologybut he fell into the cheese...
>>25121537damn you'll really like the 3rd book then. I really like the first half of Shadow the most out of Severians journey but to each their own.
Read Otherland. Befriend Tad Williams
>>25116552The terror
>>25121548I understand the explanation. I just disagree with the implications about knowledge and understanding. Philosophy isnt a set of beliefs, it is the constant clash of beliefs trying to solve other beliefs and the problems they create.I guess its foolish of me to expect this in a fantasy novel, which I understand, which is why I tried to shift the criticism to a broader statement about how the story presents ideas, notions "truths" but does not engage with them beyond their surface level impression. And how this affects characterization, dialogue, thematic depth etc.Hmmm I'm a bit annoyed. Only because Bakker was presented to me as Philosophical and Highbrow. I expected more. But I'm also not getting things id expect from unphilosophical characters, like deep character writing, because Kellhus' fundamental existence disallows that. Especially because the story seemingly revolves around him.
I am reading Quarantine by Greg Egan
>>25122129epic
Read Tad Williams
