Return of the Book Thread

[ghost]

None of this is selling me on going back to read books 6-12. 

[Sky]

I was looking over the new book shelf and saw this ridiculously huge novel...by the guy who finished off the WoT stuff. 

[Sand]

Can the next lot of you who recommend any book please specify if you have read more than 1/4 of the first Wheel of Time book? That would help me out a lot and prevent unfortunate purchases like Black Company. Thanks!

 


 

[Rasix]

I was looking over the new book shelf and saw this ridiculously huge novel...by the guy who finished off the WoT stuff. 

His Mistborn stuff moves along pretty well.  Not overly long either for how much it covers (about 700-800 a piece).  Not my favorite stuff, but not a bad read. 

He's pretty decent and was a good fit for the series.  Well, I haven't read Towers of Midnight yet, but The Gathering Storm was good stuff.

I kind of liked the Dragonlance books.  The first 3, anyway, didn't read the others.

--Dave

The Legends trilogy wasn't bad comparitively. But it contains lots of Raistlin and Caramon, which some may dislike.   Dragons of Summer Flame is a decent way to close out that thread.

On a whim, I picked up the War of Souls trilogy a few years back.  Pretty terrible, but they're interesting enough to finish.  The characters are mostly terrible, especially the new ones introduced.

The writing in them squarely aimed at teens/tweens.  It's not high art and in most spots is pretty bad.  It was cribbed together supposedly from some of their D&D sessions.  Going back to it years later is a jarring experience, but it was interesting enough to relive some old memories.

[Engels]

Picked up the first Scott Bakker book, The Darkness that Comes Before. So far so good. Not sure wtf is going on, but I like the preponderance of philosophic thought.

[bhodi]

His Mistborn stuff moves along pretty well.  Not overly long either for how much it covers (about 700-800 a piece).  Not my favorite stuff, but not a bad read.  

He's pretty decent and was a good fit for the series.  Well, I haven't read Towers of Midnight yet, but The Gathering Storm was good stuff.

I also enjoyed his mistborn series. I thought it was really quite good. It makes me wonder how much better WoT would have been if he had written the whole thing. Or, maybe as a collaborative type thing. Robert Jordan had a way of creating a lifelike world, but his dialogue and pacing is (as we all know) laughably bad.

[Morat20]

The writing in them squarely aimed at teens/tweens.  It's not high art and in most spots is pretty bad.  It was cribbed together supposedly from some of their D&D sessions.  Going back to it years later is a jarring experience, but it was interesting enough to relive some old memories.

I often wonder how the GM and other players feel at points like that.

"Hey, this is the campaign I ran for Bob and those guys back in 92! What the fuck? He wrote it up and made millions? I came up with that shit! Where's my cut?"

Admittedly, I can sort of understand the appeal. I can think of a few pen and paper games that came up with memorable characters and interesting adventures that might have started off as a stock module but quickly deviated. Hell, if I was going to chose one to write -- guy updated a bunch of classic AD&D and 2.0 modules, ran them under D20 modern (only name I can recall offhand is 'Speaker in Dreams'), with a group of three of us that just had a weird synergy between the three players and the villians/advesaries.

I mean we had a redneck gunslinger, an ex-miltary gunbunny with a love of fire and explosions and a deep hatred of magic, and the world's ditziest chemist/pot-using college dropout. It included a pet blink dog, two homunculi companions (one was clockwork steampunk, for the gunslinger, and the other was some sort of wisp for the druggie chemist).

You could probably write a decent book off the stupid and awesome shit that group did.

[Rendakor]

IIRC Hickman was their DM.

[Ingmar]

Nitpick: Speaker in Dreams was a 3.0 module.

I need to go back to the Scott Bakker books, something (I forget what) interrupted me during Darkness that Comes Before and I never went back to it. Been so long I guess I should probably start it over from the beginning.

Engels: I don't think there's going to be any particular overlap between 'people who liked Wheel of Time' and 'people who liked Black Company', they're really nothing alike and don't appeal to the same part of the brain, really, so your request is probably not useful.  I personally found the Wheel of Time stuff mostly tedious, but really liked some of the Black Company stuff (the first book I'm pretty neutral on, but 2 and I think 3 are both great.)

[Morat20]

Nitpick: Speaker in Dreams was a 3.0 module.

He threw that one in later, but good to know. I know the first one was a 2.0 module he had from back in the day. (I have a whole host of Al-Qadim 2.0's I got off ebay for cheap. Planned an Arabian Nights style campaign sometime).

I'm pretty sure Speaker in the Dreams is the one my gun-bunny got the unfortunate rep from. I shot a sleeping old man. With an incendiary round. The conversation went, effectively, "You see the moon rise, and the drunken old man asleep in his chair twitches as his body starts to reform" -- he was a wererat -- so I shot him. My character disliked anything magical. Right after I shot him I said "Oh shit, I have out my pistol. Which is the one the incendiaries were in". So that set him on fire.

They still joke about that. I mean, after the zombie attack you can't blame my character for stocking up on speciality ammo. At least he put it in his pistol and not his MP5. As for shooting the old man, it was absolutely in character. As was shooting the dog lying on the floor in a descrated church. No normal dog would be calmly sleeping in a church that was spewing hellfire out the center.

Nonetheless, even as gun-bunnies went this guy was a bit twitchy.

Bookwise, I'm slogging through the Ring of Fire books. Mostly because they're fairly light reads, even though I have learned more about the fucked-up methods of governance of 1630s now-German lands than I ever truly wanted to know.

[Engels]

I hear ya, Ingmar. I was mostly being an asshole. However, I will never get over my astonishment that the Wheel of Time series is so popular. Its HORRIBLE. It breaks the cardinal rule of 'show don't tell' within the first few pages and then continues to do so, ostensibly for the entire series. I don't understand people that want to be spoon-fed and have shit explained to them like 5 year olds. For thousands upon thousands of pages.

[Sand]

Its the fantasy literary equivalent of a soap opera.
Both in terms of the ability shown by its creators and its ability to never end.

[Chimpy]

I hear ya, Ingmar. I was mostly being an asshole. However, I will never get over my astonishment that the Wheel of Time series is so popular. Its HORRIBLE. It breaks the cardinal rule of 'show don't tell' within the first few pages and then continues to do so, ostensibly for the entire series. I don't understand people that want to be spoon-fed and have shit explained to them like 5 year olds. For thousands upon thousands of pages.

The real reason that it is so popular is that the vast majority of people who read those books have been reading them since they were teenagers. Even if it is schlock, people have invested many hours of their time to the books over the years and have connected with at least some of the characters and/or themes during that span of time. So they (we) continue to pick them up, read them, rail on about the hundreds (or is it thousands now?) of pages of Perrin moping, shake our heads at the constant circular critiques of ladies fashion, and wait for the damn things to be finally over with so we can say we climbed the Everest-like mountain of pages.

Personally, I am not looking for high art or heavily naturalistic writing when I pick up a book to read, I am looking for something that entertains me. I still re-read books I enjoyed as a teenager (like the Wheel of Time books) and get some level of enjoyment out of them still. If I wanted meticulously penned naturalism I have a whole shelf full of plays written by Strindberg, O'Neill and others to read if I so desire.

As a group, we need to face the fact that the entire "fantasy" genre is just romance novels for dudes. Especially dudes with a propensity for neckbeards. Cover art by and large for the genre is cliche'd just as much as Fabio covers on cheap romance novels are.

[ghost]

As a group, we need to face the fact that the entire "fantasy" genre is just romance novels for dudes. Especially dudes with a propensity for neckbeards. Cover art by and large for the genre is cliche'd just as much as Fabio covers on cheap romance novels are.

Hey hey hey.  Easy now.   

[Salamok]

I hear ya, Ingmar. I was mostly being an asshole. However, I will never get over my astonishment that the Wheel of Time series is so popular. Its HORRIBLE. It breaks the cardinal rule of 'show don't tell' within the first few pages and then continues to do so, ostensibly for the entire series. I don't understand people that want to be spoon-fed and have shit explained to them like 5 year olds. For thousands upon thousands of pages.

All "coming of age" fantasy books should really be tagged young adult.

[JWIV]

Well, looks like July for Dance With Dragons might not be a complete lie

http://grrm.livejournal.com/212603.html

[Morat20]

Until I have a copy on my Kindle, I view that as complete and utter bullshit.

It's the only way to stay safe.

[Ironwood]

Half way through book 3.  Book 2 was much better.

[Sky]

As a group, we need to face the fact that the entire "fantasy" genre is just romance novels for dudes. Especially dudes with a propensity for neckbeards. Cover art by and large for the genre is cliche'd just as much as Fabio covers on cheap romance novels are.

Hey hey hey.  Easy now.   

I bought my hardcover version of Gardens of the Moon used and the genre was listed as Romance. I think they only looked at the cover:

The real reason that it is so popular is that the vast majority of people who read those books have been reading them since they were teenagers.

That's the reason for a lot of preference in fantasy. I was around 14 when the Black Company came out. At that age I was all about Cook, Moorcock, Lovecraft and Howard.

[ghost]

Half way through book 3.  Book 2 was much better.

I have the Chronicles of the Black Company version, which incorporates The Black Company, Shadows Linger and the White Rose.  Because of that I don't remember it as three separate books, but it definitely picked up at the end in what would be the White Rose section.  You'll be happy to know that it appears as if there are two more Black Company novels on the way.   

[lamaros]

I much prefer Cook's Garrett. P. I. boots to the Balck Company. Black Company series is flawed badly in many many ways.

Recently read We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families for the first time. Very good book, though the last part is a stretch at times.

Now trying to read Hamilton's The Evolutionary Void, which I picked up half price. Fucking impossible. I don't have the other two on hand and can't remember them well enough to make the thing any less a confusing mess.

[Ironwood]

Finished.  Book 2 was good, but 3 became another fucking mess.

Done with it now and pleased I read it, but I don't reccomend it.  It's not that good.

Currently reading the latest Covenant and watching Donaldson pay the mortgage.  Christ, he got bad.

[Rasix]

You should read "The Silver Spike".  It's, IMO, the best one in the entire series.  I would understand if you pass, however.    It's also probably the most pessimistic and depressing one in the series.

3 wasn't one of my favorites, if I'm remembering correctly.  Been a while.

[Sky]

3 had moments. Took a few reads for the rest of it to grow on me, after a while you get more attachment to stuff like the menhirs breaking Croaker's chops all the time. Really liked the Limper in 3 (well, all the way through he was just awesome).

[Ingmar]

You should read "The Silver Spike".  It's, IMO, the best one in the entire series.  I would understand if you pass, however.    It's also probably the most pessimistic and depressing one in the series.

3 wasn't one of my favorites, if I'm remembering correctly.  Been a while.

Yeah I realized just today that the Silver Spike is the one I was thinking of as 3 for some reason.

[Reg]

You should read "The Silver Spike".  It's, IMO, the best one in the entire series.  I would understand if you pass, however.    It's also probably the most pessimistic and depressing one in the series.

3 wasn't one of my favorites, if I'm remembering correctly.  Been a while.

Ironwood likes pessimistic and depressing. I'll bet money that the reason he didn't care for The White Rose is that it had a basically happy ending.

[Engels]

Yay!

[WayAbvPar]

You should read "The Silver Spike".  It's, IMO, the best one in the entire series.  I would understand if you pass, however.    It's also probably the most pessimistic and depressing one in the series.

Agreed on all points.

[Chimpy]

Toadkiller Dog is the bomb. Thus why The Silver Spike is good.

[Rendakor]

Yay!

At long last.

[Ironwood]

You should read "The Silver Spike".  It's, IMO, the best one in the entire series.  I would understand if you pass, however.    It's also probably the most pessimistic and depressing one in the series.

3 wasn't one of my favorites, if I'm remembering correctly.  Been a while.

Ironwood likes pessimistic and depressing. I'll bet money that the reason he didn't care for The White Rose is that it had a basically happy ending.

Um.  I feel slighted.

[AcidCat]

Finished the Malazan Book of the Fallen a week or so ago - ten fat novels, all great in their own way. It really felt like a progression of fantasy from the LOTRO I read as a youngster, to A Song of Ice & Fire which I read a few years back, to kind of a combination of the two elements, the human and the fantastic. I don't really know if anything will ever approach how epic and real these books felt.

For a change of pace I went back to Mieville, I really liked PSS and The Scar, I'm a little ways into The City & The City and really enjoying it so far.

I also picked up Abercrombie's The Blade Itself to read after, though I don't want to get in too much of a fantasy-obsessed groove, I've heard good things about it.

[Sheepherder]

I hear ya, Ingmar. I was mostly being an asshole. However, I will never get over my astonishment that the Wheel of Time series is so popular. Its HORRIBLE. It breaks the cardinal rule of 'show don't tell' within the first few pages and then continues to do so, ostensibly for the entire series. I don't understand people that want to be spoon-fed and have shit explained to them like 5 year olds. For thousands upon thousands of pages.

I'm having a hard time trying to figure out what you're referring to.  But if you can't handle info dumps then fantasy isn't for you.  For most fantasy it's pretty much required for the story to be at all coherent.

Um.  I feel slighted.

Again, Scotland.

[Morat20]

IMHO, one of the draws of fantasy -- not THE draw, just "a" draw -- is the world building aspect. Epic fantasy, especially of the doorstopper variety, tends to have a lot of this.

Even if the plot is crap, recylced, easily predicted, whatever -- the appeal of a well crafted or at least very extensive and coherent world can overcome this.

Obviously, your idea of what a well-built world is can vary. I'm rather fond of the Thomas Covenant books more for the Land than Thomas "Douchebag" Covenant. David Eddings repetitive bubblegum works are tolerable because I rather enjoyed the worlds of the Elenium and the Belgariad.

Of the eighty-three million Feist books, I liked the ones he did with Wurst -- the ones on Kelewan -- more than the others, simply because the world was novel and well done.

Or for an example from another genre entirely -- Final Reflection, a Star Trek novel. Pretty much single-handedly created the modern-day Klingon race. Excellent fucking book, from what I can remember. (It's been 10 years at least. Possibly 20). Also, he wrote "How Much For Just the Planet" which cracked me the hell up.

Point being, I suspect at least some Wheel of Time fans just enjoy having a giant coherent world to see shit happen in.

[Lt.Dan]

Only if you count the last hundred pages