>>25100854
>What is the Fantasy counterpart of Hard Scifi?
going in the opposite direction - high fantasy

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>>25101037
Why would you want to fix her? Evil women are the best

Convince me of my next fictitious story to read based on my criticisms of Second Apocalypse.

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>>25101043
hear hear

>>25101037
Reminds me of Soulcatcher.

No-God when

Red God when

Whatever happened to dinosaurposting

Is there anything as good as TNOTW?

>>25101109
I think I remember one of the 2001 sequels from Clarke having genetically engineered dinosaurs in it?

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Got any recommendations for a series or a novel where one of the main characters is a woman pretending to be a man? I've been reading Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld and I really like it and Deryn is a fun character. I like this trope where women masquerading as men to join the army or similar things. I have The Thousands Names by Django Wexler under my radar so I'll read it once I finish Leviathan.

>>25101123
Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett takes this idea and runs with it to the point that basically everyone was a woman pretending to be a man, it's about as ridiculous as the premise can be made but I liked it.

Has anybody this century attempted to use language/dialogue similar to something like The Worm Ouroboros?

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>>25101043
She fucked me up as a kid and no woman could ever compare after...

>>25101181
Kitara from Dragonlance yes? I really liked her back then too

>>25101126
Sounds like a fun read and I was intending to read disc world for a while now, I think I'll start with Monstrous Regiment

The original definition of high fantasy was "does not take place on Earth", and low fantasy was "takes place on Earth".

>>25101249
That's the contemporary definition, not the archaic definition.

>>25101112
Considering it sucks, yes, and there are plenty of books that are better.

>>25101079
If Bakker will not write it, then one day it will be completed by AI. The No-God duology, written by the No-God itself.

>>25101181
>be me
>be in elementary school
>start reading Dragonlance
>get to the part where Kitiara makes Tanis remove her boots
>almonds activate

>>25101290
>if bakker will not write it
I genuinely believe that there is more chance of GRRM finishing his series than Bakker finishing his. At least there is a conclusion in The Second Apocalypse if nothing else gets released, though.

Hard sci-fi is "what might happen if this plausible but currently infeasible method of interacting with reality exists in the future?"

I would argue that hard fantasy is the same thing but for the past, so an example might be something like the Iliad.

Why did it take over half of the book for howling dark to get interesting again? I assumed this problem would go away after empire of silence. Is every book in this series going to be like this?

>>25101049
FarSeer trilogy. Instead of the main character being a mind reading giga-genius that already knows what everyone else will do 10 steps in advance and can never lose because of it, the main character is an oblivious idiot that doesn't even know what he will do next, and can never win because of it.

>>25101319
Hobb is great at chatacterisation too and AA has one of the best opening paragraphs

>My pen falters, then falls from my knuckly grip, leaving a worm’s trail of ink across Fedwren’s paper. I have spoiled another leaf of the fine stuff, in what I suspect is a futile endeavor. I wonder if I can write this history, or if on every page there will be some sneaking show of a bitterness I thought long dead. I think myself cured of all spite, but when I touch pen to paper, the hurt of a boy bleeds out with the sea-spawned ink, until I suspect each carefully formed black letter scabs over some ancient scarlet wound.

>>25101109
I miss that guy. Much better than regurgitation and repetition of the same fucking shit every single goddamn thread, thanks to normalfags.

>>25101316
Eh, it's just a slow series in general. Demon in White was a lot better, felt like it didn't have any slow points, but 4 has a long dark period and none of the other books are without slow periods.

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>>25101326
Fantasy openings are always hit or miss.

>Lightning from a clear sky smote the Necropolitan Hill. One bolt struck the bronze plaque sealing the tomb of the forvalaka, obliterating half the spell of confinement. It rained stones. Statues bled. Priests at several temples reported sacrificial victims without hearts or livers. One victim escaped after its bowels were opened and was not recaptured. At the Fork Barracks, where the Urban Cohorts were billeted, the image of Teux turned completely around. For nine evenings running, ten black vultures circled the Bastion. Then one evicted, the eagle which lived atop the Paper Tower.

>>25101391
Sounds kino to me. This has a deep sense of FUN to it.

>>25101393
>sounds like a film to me
Epic for the win, chatGPT.

>>25101400
But I didn't call it film, I called it kino. There's a hierarchy to these things.
>joint
>flick
>movie
>film
>cinema
>kino

>>25101416
>I didn't call it film, I called it film!
uh oh newfagGPT acting up

>>25101391
My god that is awful. Here is the same text translated to Pidgin English:

>Lightning from a clear sky smote di necropolitan hill. One bolt struck di bronze plaque sealing di tomb for di forvalaka, obliterating half di spell for confinement. It rained stones. Statues bled. Priests for several temples report sacrificial victims without hearts or livers. One victim escaped afta na bowels de opened and no bi recaptured. For di fork barracks, wia di urban cohorts de billeted, di image for teux turn pata pata dey. For nine evenings running, ten black vultures circled di bastion. Then one evicted, di eagle which lived atop di paper tower

Looking for a suggestion on a martial arts monk focused book. Shit I've read recently:

Initiate brother/gatherer of clouds
Orb of xoriat (my fav of the bunch despite being the intellectual equivalent of cotton candy)
Witch blood
The abolethic sovereignty series
Thief of time
Will wights unsouled series
Prince of nothing et al (not a huge fan, too much gay sex)
Cleric quintet (also not a huge fan, the monk girlfriend was barely in it)

anyone read american gods? how bad is it?

>>25101478
I enjoyed it and is a fun twist on classic god stories. If you enjoy stories with greek/norse/egyptian gods then it's an enjoyable enough read.

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Post openings

>>25101319
Oh man this is that series that even reddit hates cuz the MC and characters are apparently really dumb

>>25101326
Isnt this prose moreso than characterization? The characterization part is merely establishing and carried by the fanciful combination of words

>>25101391
>>25101447
what exactly is wrong with the original?

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>>25101617

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>>25101617

do you keep buying and reading new books or did you stop at one point and just read the books you had collected?

>>25101659
Both the prose and the characterisation are good. I wasn't saying the opening has good characterisation, that was just wrongly implied by the fanciful combination of words in my post.

>>25101810
sometimes books jump up in priority

I got like 10 books for Christmas and I still have 4 or 5 that I bought last year that I haven't read and I'm bouncing back and forth.

>>25101650
Reddit probably hates it since it's well written. The rest of the characters are very reasonable people for the most part, but the MC is a Holden Caulfield-tier retard (but not so unbearably cringe). It's not a failing of the author; the other characters constantly call him out on it, but he can't help but keep fucking up because of his understandable but stupid choices.

>>25101810
I'm an ereading chad so I only buy books on sale but they just get added to my backlog. I get through it but slowly because I read a lot of long series

>>25101837
Fellas am I being trolled?

>>25101863
Fitz is an idiot and people call him out on it all the time, that anon speaks true

>>25101732
The prose is not good.

>For nine evenings running, ten black vultures circled the Bastion. Then one evicted, the eagle which lived atop the Paper Tower.

This seems arbitrary. Nine evenings, ten black vultures. Maybe there's a reason for that later, I don't know.

>Then one evicted
Then one what? One vulture?

>the eagle
Oh...

It's described in an annoying and confusing way, in my opinion

>>25101837
He makes mistakes but Fitz had a shitty childhood and he's been through a lot. With that kind of early/young adult life you'd expect someone to turn out as a fuck up or criminal or something. He's not the sharpest tool in the shed but he does alright.

>>25101391
What's this from

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I really don't like Ryland Grace as a character. This dude is in his mid thirties and has to be hyper about everything. Annoying and unlikable. Also don't like that DEI just had to be mentioned at the crew presentation scene. Fuck off.
Plot is somewhat interesting but has too many convenient lucky points to progress.

Overall a below average book that redditors would like.

So Farseer is actually good? Can I get an actual idea of what makes it good? What the thing it does uniquely well?

good woman fantasy/scifi writer?

>>25101976
Ursula K. Le Guin.

>>25101967
Hobb writes good characters. You care a lot about the characters and the relationships between them. There's a lot of emotional investment.

>>25101976
Robin Hobb

>>25101976
Ursula le guin, Robin Hobb, Anne McCaffrey, Madeline Miller

>>25101967
>actually good
I think it is, but Realm of the Elderlings reaches far greater heights with Liveship Traders and Tawny Man, then hits rock bottom with Rainwild Chronicles, then gets better again for Fitz and the Fool.
What Farseer does well? It's immersive, absolutely. You live with Fitz through the mundane and the exceptional events of his childhood and youth as he grows up and deals with the life of a royal bastard who can never truly be part of the family that sired him and has to find a different place in the world.
It's a very character focused series.

>>25101986
I'm not an emotional investment guy, so much as a philosophy and psychology depth guy. When I think "emotional investment" I think shonen anime, dramatics of relationships and circumstances to artificially emphasize a relationship with little actual depth by virtue of stakes and such, something like Naruto. Or by sheer forced proximity, aka something like One Piece. Neither of those have any character or thematic depth (No, Naruto telling Pain that actually no, you dont need to be evil because you had a traumatic childhood, isnt thematic or character depth) Let alone philosophical or even psychological underpinnings

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>>25101997
Well... it's not like Naruto or One Piece

>>25101987
>Madeline Miller
Who?

>>25101997
>Neither of those have any character or thematic depth
If you're too stupid to understand even shonen manga, you're too stupid to read books. What a frustratingly obtuse person.

>>25101942
>Overall a below average book that redditors would like.
in other words the perfect movie bait? seems like it worked.

>>25101810
My book collection plateaued early last year after growing fairly consistently ever since I started reading again after the first Dune movie came out.
>>25101871
They mean because the series in question is one that redditors dickride very hard.

>>25102024
true shonen depth is obvious and practically objective with how normalized its been, only stupid people look down on shonen

>>25102035
>is one that redditors dickride very hard.
its actually the opposite

>>25101905
The Black Company.

>>25101987
What do you think of Janny "Clean it up" Wurts?

>>25102063
Which is peak and let no one tell you otherwise.

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niggas tryna convince mfers to read this in here...

>>25102145
black company?

>>25102145
is this the farseer trilogy?

>>25102145
Don't forget the NTR content.

>>25102145
Man, I read this series as a teenager like two decades ago and fucking hated it. It's been too long for me to remember anything well but I specifically remember thinking the main character was a giant fucking impotent cuck. I might be getting it confused with other books but around the end I think the MC builds a statue or some shit for literally half the book and nothing happens the whole time except he thinks about how much of a fucking pathetic loser he is. I kept reading waiting for something to happen but I think he dies or something. Jesus, that unlocked some disgusting memories.

>>25102211
yes

I just finished reading a book.
What did I think of it?

>>25102258
the beginning was ok and then it took time to got to the plot point and the half end of the book was the best part. the ending was meh

>>25101740
This is pretty basic but it's honestly better than I thought Sanderson could do. Guess he really did get worse over time.

>>25102258
Two thumbs up!

>>25101037
This general probably gets more reading done the entirety of the other threads up. Even the "writers" in two different generals admit to not reading anything substantial. What the fuck has this place become?

>>25101037
Rec me a space opera where the empire is good guys. I'm sick of every scifi being about the ragtag underdogs. I want to read about heroes actually protecting the grand civilization from threats.

No Warhammer or Foundation.

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>Last book you read
>Current book you're reading
>Next book you plan to read

>>25101037
Fabtasycuckss trying to borrow legitimacy from scifi again I see

>>25102496
>The Man in the High Castle
>The Odyssey
>Ubik

>>25102496
>Seven Surrenders
The book before was pretty slow, but all the threads of the story came together in this book into one epic crisis. The year is 2454, Earth is a post-scarcity, post-nation, post-crime, post-gender utopia, except that the leaders of the 7 Hives are all secretly part of the 25th century's Epstein's debauchery Castle, and they collectively raise their demigod son. And of course, some of the Hives have been involved in a conspiracy that's killed thousands of people that would've destabilized the system.
Most of that was introduced in the first book, but everything gets exposed to the public by the end of Seven Surrenders, and riots start erupting. It looks like the world's first war in centuries is about to happen in the next book.
4.5/5
>The Will to Battle
Not very far into it, but liking it so far. The author finally revealed what the most important laws in the world are, and did it in a senatorial filibuster by the emperor of the largest hive. It was a very neat way of slipping it in.
>Perhaps the Stars

I need something to listen to on my commute. Reading is gay I just listen.

>>25102529
>literally needs his daddy to read him stories
Awwww, kiddo, don't worry, you'll grow up one day.

>>25101997
It's closer to Evangelion, in the sense that it's well written, emotionally engaging, and extremely despressing.

>>25102145
Name five things "scholars" don't try to turn into an allegory for queerness. Yes, there is a hermaphrodite character that everyone including Fitz thinks is fucking wierd.

>>25102479
Sun Eater. MC is heir to a minor nobleman who hates the empire bc daddy issues but grows and makes peace with nobility. Series is very circumspect about authority.

>>25102549
Don't listen to this guy, Sun Eater is YA slop with delusions of grandeur.

>>25102548
hmmmmmmmmmmmmm suspicious
you almost had me at
>It's closer to Evangelion
But if you read that Wikipedia article deeper, im pretty sure the author borderline affirms the "scholars" (kek) interpretation

>>25102579
Reading the Sun Eater wiki was enough for me to consider it some of the most generic YA slop ever
>MC inexplicably has the perfect traits to beat everybody and overcome anything due to their downtrodden origins
>MC is actually unsuspectingly super smart because they think up things nobody else ever considered
>MC gets trained by special master that retired/dies and rarely decides to train anybody until special MC comes along, so special MC ends up with special fighting technique almost nobody else has
>Literal typical YA slop kids unfairly and brutally fighting to the death "test"
The worst one is the fact that this nigga goes through a literal transformation surgery to become a completely different "race" (literally grows like 7 inches or something) and im supposed to accept that people can just randomly do retarded shit like this, that would break society. I dont care whether its explained its fundamentally retarded, like 90% of Harry Potter

>>25102622
I'm not going to read the article because I've already read the books and I'm not interested in culture war bullshit. I can confirm that some of the author's later works are rather hamfisted in that direction (soldier son comes to mind) but if you're morally offended by the content of farseer you'll have a hard time finding any literature you can read without hurting your feefees.

>>25102628
>you'll have a hard time finding any literature you can read without hurting your feefees.
keeeek! then im above literature

>>25101942
DNF, i think i dropped it at around 60 pages. Silly and childish, no one should read this outside reddit.

>>25101976
stop reading books by women.

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I'm at an all time low. Recommend me some books with protagonists who hit rock bottom but manage to bounce back against all odds. I'll take any genre, male MC fem MC I don't care, anything.

>>25102661
The Stars My Destination and The Count of Monte Cristo.

>>25102661
Thomas Covenant

>>25102529
Audiobooks are gay but so am I. The first law audibooks were well done.

>>25102627
But enough about red rising

>>25102627
>>25102689
fucking kek so is this a parody post or is it literally just red rising reskinned?

>>25102479
Iain Banks the Culture I suppose. It’s not a traditional Empire with an emperor but it’s something akin to Mass Effects citadel government but fully a utopia

>>25102661
Kaladin from Stormlight, Karsa from Malazan, Darrow from Red Rising

>search up sun eater
>complaints of pretentious protag
>philosophical ramblings are considered "criticism"
is this it? is this finally the book with philosophical depth ive been searching for? usually when normies call something pretentious, its because they cant put a concept in a box or fit it within their preconceptions
but the red flag im seeing, is the constant comparisons to dune, dune is what midwits think is "philosophical"

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oh shit im sold.
very very rare for fiction of any kind, novels, tv, movies, videogames, anime, whatever, to talk about how much language underpins how we understand stuff.
did not expect reddit to ever sell me on a book, i was doing research just before this and bemoaning how stupid and shallow reddit is, that i can never get an untainted idea of anything through them.
i know apparently dune places importance in language too, but its a completely different beast when you treat language like magic, sort of like how bakker treats human psychology through kellhus. the exact reason language is as "meaningful" as it is because its fundamentally empty, and doesnt have any inherent power or meaning

As an audiobookCHAD I couldn't get into Sun Eater
The narrator fucking sucked barely does different voices for different characters so I can't tell who's talking

>>25102715
Language being an integral part of the universe in sun eater, and how heavily it is emphasized even early on, was a great surprise to me. I'm almost done with the second book so still a ways to go.

>>25102677
>>25102679
>>25102702
thanks you

>>25101037
I read ASOIAF essentially non stop from start to finish, only interrupted by the necessities of life. I tried to get into other modern fantasy series and I just can't. They feel so fake, so plastic, that I just can't read a page of it without being bored out of my mind. I finished the prologue of The Way of Kings after a week, a fucking week, and I couldn't care less about the world despite what my IRLs say about it. Is this a common experience? I am not well versed enough to know what's the actual reason why, I'm sure someone here does.

>>25102728
You’re probably still mentally in an ASOIAF mode in your head and as a result, you’re comparing everything to it. Take a mini reading break as a palette cleanser and come back with a fresh mind. That said, I really enjoyed Stormlight but when I first started it took me a while to get into it.

>>25102728
What answer are you hoping for that you didn't already get in the thread you made?

>>25102145
>this guy who is in love with a woman and exclusively with her is actually le gay
What's funny is that there's people in the series itself who think Fitz and the Fool are gay (the Fool probably is) and lovers, but they're not though

>>25102728
Maybe going from Martin to Sanderson isn't such a hot idea. Try Longprice Quarter or something I dunno

>>25102745
No, he isn't gay, but he is a tremendous cuck.

>>25102732
>when I first started it took me a while to get into it.
That's the thing. I'm sure I can fall in love with the worldbuilding, characters and plot but the experience of reading it is the issue. The actual words of the page just don't work. It feels too robotic, too much like a D&D game, immersion feels impossible with these sentences. Why does he info dump in such a way that you turn the next page less interested than the last. It's not a lack of understanding, it's not confusing, it's just boring because the timing is bad and the info feels irrelevant.
>You’re probably still mentally in an ASOIAF mode in your head and as a result, you’re comparing everything to it.
It's the only fantasy series I've read as an adult and it's actually been years since I've actually read it. I thought I was going insane and reread the first dozen chapters in a single sitting to see if I genuinely fried my dopamine receptors or became illiterate overnight. Nope. I've read books since, mostly non fiction for work and other interests, but this was my attempt at Sanderson, and I'm disappointed.
>>25102744
I haven't created a thread in over a year and that way in /g/, could you link the thread you're referring to, if someone else raised a similar point recently and there was some insightful discussion, I'll take a look.
>>25102747
It's my friends that are promoting Sanderson to me.

>>25102753
Well your friends either don't know you at all or don't care about your tastes.

>>25102757
Differing tastes are perfectly fine amongst friends lol. If I only kept the friends that aligned with me on everything I'd be a loner lol. I come online for the conversations I can't have with them which is surprisingly rare. You don't really appreciate the impact you have on those that surround you, how you shape their tastes, interests and worldview. I did get a few of them to read ASOIAF a while back and they loved it but these are guys from a different group of childhood friends that are more like cousins at this point considering how our moms were all friends before we were born.
Do you actually have a friendship group that's just a bunch of clones of yourself? I get how that'd be cool at first, how nice it'd be to feel completely and truly understood, but I can see how half a dozen mirrors onto myself would eventually become a nightmare.
I'm turning 25 and despite living in a big city, being very extroverted and socially active in a range of circles, I haven't met anyone that'd come close to knowing the full picture that's me. It's a lot easier to be someone everyone knows and spend time with those who can fulfill each of your individual needs at the time. The nerdy guys I keep in touch with from my physics class from school would probably piss me off in the gym, beach or party, the girls that for whatever reason yearn to arrange whoever I mess with at the time as if they're the bene gesserit would not be fun to discuss politics with, you get the idea.

>>25102775
The point isn't that you can't have friends whose tastes are different from yours, it's that your "friends" clearly don't know what your tastes are or don't care and just try to force whatever THEY like on you instead. This is the point. I'm not reading the rest of your life story lol

>>25102778
>force whatever THEY like on you instead
You don't do that when it comes to things you think are overall just great. I know there are acquired tastes but there are some things I've enjoyed and recommended that have never failed. Maybe they assumed it was one of those.
>I'm not reading the rest of your life story lol
Lol yh I should probably go to bed, idk why but I always do this if I've been out all night without getting drunk.

>>25102753
There's absolutely no chance that there's multiple anons that suddenly decided to base their entire life and personality on gurmslop in the same week.

>>25102778
>I'm not reading the rest of your life story lol
nta, kys autistic subhuman bot

>>25102798
>like thing x
>your friend likes thing y
>your friend tells you to engage with thing y
>don't like thing y
>someone points out your friend doesn't know your tastes
>LITERALLY KILL YOURSELF YOU SUBHUMAN
The fact is that I can't understand your vitriol.

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Is this the most consistent modern sci fi writer ever? Wtf? Look how many high quality books this guy pumped out within like 8 years? And he only took more than a year break once. I don't like to hype, but knowing how it is with other authors, this is impressive.

>>25102803
>literally say NTA
>still responds as if the anon
I'm just shitting on you because I hate this gay detached normalized inhuman way of engaging on the internet, where anything personal is dismissed. You could have simply not acknowledged the life story at all, that would have been more valid than treating it as something considered, but worthless. You fucking bot. Youre not a real human. Like 90% of retards on the internet.

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>>25102811
>Is this the most consistent modern sci fi writer ever?
No. Mogged by Tchaikovsky in terms of releases

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>>25102812
>give me attention or approval or just FUCKING DIE
It's like you're a 14-year-old girl lol, calm down. Don't cut yourself on all that EDGE while you mope on your windswept throne with your albino hair, your heterochromatic eyes (one bright red, one purple) and your magical sword and consumes the souls of your enemies, the only one who truly understands you your animal companion who is part wolf, part panther and part raven.

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>>25102811
>many high quality books

>>25102811
Sun Eater is trash you goofball.

>>25102843
>>25102859
Oh, I was unaware. Why is it trash?

>>25102862
Plagiarism is the first thing that comes to mind

>>25102862
It's horrendously derivative to such a degree it detracts. Which I guess might go over the head of modern readers who haven't read much SF.

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>>25102822
People have toyed with the idea he has ghost writers, but Tchaikovsky is simply just a professional writer who makes his living that way without having some major successful series he can milk. This means he has to write all the time. Hell, he even wrote Warhammer stuff which is pure contract work.

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>>25102873
What a Balzacian man.

>>25101976
>fantasy
Le Guin. I hate her but she's head and shoulders above the rest
>scifi
CJ Cherryh. It's "cassette futurism" with 80s tech in space

>>25102869
>>25102871
I used to care about stuff like this, until I realized just how few genuinely exceptional stuff there is. Now I'm slowly learning more and more to value those works which seek to improve on, and elaborate upon that which is good. It saddens me to some degree, as I love the idea of falling in love with something I never even knew I would like. BUT that could also still kind of work, if I already thought something like Dune, was not good. But liked the ideas

>>25102880
Plagiarism isn't improving on something, it's just stealing from those who are your betters because you've got nothing to contribute. Ruocchio and his success vex me, it's a condemnation of the reader base.

Just finished Transmigration of Timothy Archer after binging gacha games last night and not sleeping properly. I will now go onto Ubik.

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That was a nice surprise for a visual novel, it's pretty much Don Quixote trapped in a timeloop.

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It is grim. And it is dark. Holy shit.

Love Bakker tbqh!

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>>25102496
>last read
Songs of a Dead Dreamer by Ligotti
>currently reading
The Worm Ouroboros by Eddison
>next read
Got a WH Pugmire collection coming in the post soon, forget the name of it but its my first time reading him (RIP). Either that, or maybe some non-fiction (I read A Distant Mirror last year which was fantastic, will probably order another Tuchman book)

Recommend me some obscure science-fantasy? Something really surreal and bizarre.

>>25102661
Unironically Drusas Achamian

>>25102885
This anon gets it, I had to drop sun eater, it was too unoriginal. Not inspired by, but actually copying the homework of better works. I waited for it to maybe take bits of better books and Frankenstein it into a better or more entertaining book. But all it did was act like it was very smart while also being condescending to the reader, like he was very sure you wouldn't know this was taken form another work. Not like an element, but really the element or event, and then how it unfolds and develops as well. So it's like several chapters of several books jammed together and it just becomes annoying. Things happen very luckily to the point where it's baffling. I actually enjoyed some gooky mass produced web novels more than this. At least they only plagiarize tropes and settings and do something somewhat unoriginal to it. In sun eater, a trope will be copied and if you happen to know it, you'll know what will happen in the future regarding that plot point, as it will inexorably evolve as the original did.

If you simply don't read ever and it's your first book, then you'll love it and think it's incredibly creative with how it manages to talk about so many different things. The more I think about it, sun eater is an apt name for the series, it consumes suns and every work written under it, like some ravenous world-serpent.DNF.

No-God any day now bakkerbros

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>>25102496
Endymion - Simmons
Earth Abides - Stewart
Orlando - Woolf

>>25102939
Viriconium
Doctor Rat
Heliconia
The Iron Dragon's Daughter

>>25102869
>>25102871
>>25102885
The plagiarism is irrelevant. Even if all the ideas were original the books would still be bad because the author is a bad writer. The Chantry are just comically evil. At no point was I invested in Hadrian's conflict with them, it would be like being invested in the conflict between the G.I. Joe Team and Cobra Commander.

The plot structure is just bizarre and multiple times I found myself thinking "that's not what they would do in this situation, that's not a real human reaction, this is wrong, this doesn't make sense." It reads like it was written with a plan in place, with events plotted across it, but the author lacked the skill to string them together into a cohesive narrative. Imagine a plumber trying to get two pipes to meet in the middle, only to realise he has completely misjudged the elevation and instead of redoing the pipework just bends some shit, adds a few s-bends, and calls it job done. All the while neither of the pipes are particularly interesting or compelling.

You don't even want to know about the actual plot of the story. You know that alien race that's going from planet to planet abducting entire populations to use as livestock? Well we're spending multiple books on a wacky space adventure to establish diplomatic ties with their leaders so we can tell them "eating humans is bad lmao". Also spooky ancient aliens wooo scary, absolute joke of a series.

not reading that giant post

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My first Sanderson book and I hated it

>>25102996
He doesn't write it. It's ghostwritten by the Mormon Mafia to raise the profile of the Church of Latter Day Saints. It's how they get new members or people who want to go to BYU.

Are there any books that give the same sense of wonder and interest in the undercurrent of the world that going through the Souls series did?

>>25102926
punchable face

How accurate is the latest Red Sonya (2025) movie to the Howard stories? Never read any of them nor the comics, but the movie was actually pretty soulful

>>25103012
You're not punching anyone, tough boy.

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I could straight up beat the fuck out of every single poster ITT, and would absolutely heem each and every one of you if I ever saw you on the street.

>>25103045
What's your deadlift? Oh that's right, it's all bullshido and onions milk!

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>>25103045
Violence out of nowhere?!

>>25103045
Brando.. you know I have always been in your corner. But this is just uncalled for

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>>25103045
You know who can actually kick every other author's ass?
Stephen "Rape's My Middle Name" Donaldson, he's had a black belt in karate since 1994

>>25103096
If you look closely at the third shelf from the top, you can see Tad Wiliams' Otherland books on it

>>25102811
>>25102822
Theyre both shit quality writers. Maybe the in the case of Tchaikovsky his quality would improve if he didnt bother shitting out two books per year.

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So I just finished "kingslayer"
Which I have no idea why it's called that considering it's just like.... A more grounded version of Harry Potter basically
>Go to school of witch craft and then go fight a dragon
>But you're a GYPSY! And Poor!

That being said, is there any news about the 3rd book?
It's been 15 years
I did enjoy the perspective of it being a told story and the various cultures are fairly interesting. And it held my attention to waste 3 nights of no sleep reading it

All in all I enjoyed it. I think.
Although if I were to describe someone getting into it I would not know how to do so since it bounces through so many topics
And the second book is basically nothing at all like the first book
And I hate Denna so fucking much holy shit.

>>25102679
I would not recommend this. Not only is the Mc a constantly whining piece of shit. The story he lives through is terribly fucking boring.
It's like
>Isekai fantasy but I dues ex machina every problem
No amount of rape and self hatred is enough to make the series actually interesting or edgy

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I would also like for everyone to stop recommending Malazan after Asoif

This shit is such a terrible read and it's so hard to go through where usually I read books with great enthusiasm
Malazan is like schizophrenic molasis

How the fuck anyone puts this in their reading lists is completely bizarre to me.

>>25103128
>That being said, is there any news about the 3rd book?
Rothfuss defrauded a charity by promising to deliver the prologue of the third book but failed to do so. He's never writing it.

>>25103132
He asked for a protagonist who hit rock bottom and got back up, and it's hard to imagine someone who bounced back from a lower low than Thomas Covenant

>>25103141
That's a shame.
But honestly the story isn't that complex. And I can probably guess myself where it goes and ends. Albeit I don't know how you can put kingslaying and finding the Amyr and then killing the Chandrian all in one book

>>25103143
You can't, it's why he gave up.

>>25103099
Good eye anon, I have those exact metallic editions. Kino.

>Cory Doctorow is using LLMs
I knew he was a fraud.

>>25102496
The Rose Field, finished it a few weeks ago and I've been reading some manga since then.
Nothing right now, waiting for a delivery of the next book that I want to read;
The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy, very excited for this as I read it only once over a decade ago and loved it.

>>25103128
From what I remember the writing was very enjoyable to read, but the actual story is lacking. Thinking back to reading those books I remember very little of what happened and don't really care that much, just that I enjoyed the flow of the words.

>>25102996
Not that his notable works are any good, but why would you ever think to start there?

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Finished The Great Ordeal.
Definitely has some sections that left me feeling confused and bewildered at first, but I liked this one more than the first two books in Aspect-Emperor and around the same as the Prince of Nothing Trilogy. It gets super crazy.

>>25102506
What translation are you reading. I'm trying to get thru Samuel Butlers version right now and it's a bit of a struggle. Might be because English isn't my first language and I probably should've picked a more modern translation in hindsight.

>>25101037
I find it ironic that everyone always talks about how people have no attention span anymore, but all bestseller books are now doorstoppers. I don't think there's even a single major scifi/fantasy book published in the last 10 years that's under 300 pages long, and most are 500+ pages.

Scifi especially used to have a lot of those pulp paperback length books like Asimov, Vance, Heinlein etc. Not to mention how much classic scifi and horror were short stories, which nobody reads anymore. Now everything is massive tomes and usually part of long series too. People unironically read those million page long Litrpg web novels like it's no big deal.

I feel like I'm the only one who actually has short attention span which is why I stick to old stuff almost exclusively.

>>25103365
"Brainrotted iphone babies" and "Avid readers of SFF fiction" are two almost completely different demographics of people.

>>25103365
What I think you're missing is that these 500+ bestselling series tomes are easily digestible slop for retards. A brain can easily understand it as it's mostly just plot without prose. The reader doesn't have to do much work which is preferable for 99% of people. Hand them the Solar Cycle by Gene Wolfe and they won't get 20 pages nor would want to because it makes them have to work their brains which is just something most admittedly refuse to do and don't find enjoyable.

>>25102691
It's shitposting. MC in Sun Eater is grown in a vat like all children of nobles, series isn't YA except for MC starting out as an idealistic retard. The plot has very little in common with RR.

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>>25101037
what are some books with hot evil ladies?
>>25101043
why are Kitiara's pits so sexy?
>>25101181
>>25101294
same

>>25102862
It's not trash. The prose is solid, the themes aren't unemployed Husserl scholar level philosophical but there are interesting reflections on religion, authority, language, and humanity woven around space opera and cosmic horror plots. Fags here just seethe about Sun Eater because they see too much of themselves in Ruocchio (a millennial worshiper of classic sf and pulp) to not resent his success.

>>25103430
I resent him for being a plagiarist. You cannot shame me into silence on this subject, Christopher, as uncomfortable as it makes you.

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>>25103424
>hot evil ladies
Queen La from the Tarzan books falls into the same archetype as Princess Aura from Flash Gordon - the evil hot chick who wants the D from the hero

>>25103438
Do you also resent Frank Herbert for plagiarizing Sabres of Paradise or do you draw the line at whatever allows you to posture on this Ghanaian flyfishing forum about how well read you are
>You cannot shame me into silence
All you're contributing to the discourse is your feelings. You're not even talking about the books and their contents, just your knee-jerk reaction to them. This thread is bad enough without your womanish argumentation.

>>25103460
You cannot shame me into silence, Christopher. Whataboutism does not excuse your actions. You are a thief, and you will be treated as such until the end of your days, may they come soon to your chloesterol-laden, bloated corpulence that we may at last be free of this moral plague on the scene.
I will make no covenant with you nor enter into neighbourly relations with you. Your thievery has set enmity between your house and mine, between yours and all men of honour, dignity and of good character. May the Lord deny you his blessings and Fortune turn her back on you
may there be pebbles in your shoes and holes in your socks
may your underwear wear through the stains stubbornly remain on your shirts
may the retreat of your hairline continue without cease at every revolution of the Earth around the Sun
may dogs ever bark at you as you pass and birds poop on you
may mosquitoes enter your house in the dead of night make their high-pitched noise in your ear to keep you awake when the guilt of your conscience clearly does not
may your children grow to recent you and seek elsewhere their exemplars
may your wife find your flabbiness an abomination and shirk your advances
may there be harsh, fair and astute reviews written of your work, showing to all the ill deeds you have done
may your publisher call you to task for this and be harsh with you
may telemarketers call you at odd hours and hang up when you answer
may your defenders on 4chan stub their toes and develop internal hemorrhoids that pop and bleed without pain so they will see the blood in the toilet bowl and be frightened without cause
and may Time forget you

>>25102986
>>25102951
why does this sound like a midwit post? you guys are only convincing me further that sun eater is midwit repellent, doing my research on reddit, the midwits hated how "pretentious" it made them feel
and also complained about it not feeling epic enough and "wasting time" on stuff like establishing diplomatic ties that you complain about
we'll see, im almost tempted to jump right into it, but its a huge commitment, so I want to read other stuff first

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Imagine a man. He is a millennial. He grew up reading the same things you did, if you are of that age. He liked Berserk since he was in middle school. He discovered Frank Herbert and Gene Wolfe and fancied himself, heh, just a little bit smarter than the dumb jocks who were going to parties and scoring with girls that he resented.
This man experienced a religious conversion. Like Gene Wolfe, his idol, he became a Roman Catholic. This is a man who believes he has found the holy truth. And he is not only now part of the divine mysteries of the world, but is also more intelligent and more sophisticated than the unwashed masses who cannot even say the Pater Noster in Latin. He is steeped in his studies of the Roman Empire, he knows the emperors well and finds in them pale reflections of his own virtues. Hard times create strong men, and he is such a one, in his own mind, for he has endured the hardships of reading Book of the New Sun. He even has a bachelor's degree!
And now he takes up his pen.
>The words of the books I plagiarized burn me still. I see them through my eyelids, crtl+c to ctrl+v, from the lost annals of the scifi library. The stealing should harrow me but does not. It feels almost holy, as if it were God’s own heavens that allowed me to publish and sell 7 books before anyone noticed, the world and billions who lived in it. I carry this Guilt always, seared into my mind, with no excuses, no denials, and no apologies. I know what I am and what I have done. I am Christopher Ruocchio, and I have written the Sun Eater.

I didn't make this pasta and I only think it's funny how mad everyone is over Sun Eater, which I think is OK

>>25103430
>>25103460
>>25103495
i juist think it's funny that scifi circled back to having space opera slop written by chuds just like we had space opera written by boomer chuds in the 40s and 50s

>>25103495
imagine asking someone to take a picture of your fat chubby face trying to look tough and thinking it looks good

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>>25103505
The Chud has always been the ultimate writer. Theirl ack of an active social life allows them time to imagine endlessly, their resentment fuels them and we all live richer lives thanks to them.
>>25103510
Well...

>>25103511
howard looked like the type of fella who would say "what's the move, boss?"

>>25103515
Know then, ya mug, that in the times after the waters drank Atlantis and before the rise of the Sons of Aries, there was an age undreamed of, see?

>>25103511
howard had a chubby face but was an amateur boxer
i don't think the author of sun eater has done a days work in his life let alone boxed

>>25103275
I was looking around in the bookstore and it was the only Sanderson book they got (along side tress of the emerald sea) and I said why not since it was cheep

>>25101942
This trash is romantasy for men. An absolutely mid dude gets pulled into the world saving mission by a strong female character for the most bullshit reason ever. Then he gets the sidekick who is ultra competent and gets deus ex machinaed through every problem.
If the martian is as bad as this, it will be the first case i know a movie is better than the book.

>>25103365
Like people said page count matters less that the quality level of writing. Slop and YA in general are easily readable so you can practically gloss over the pages and get the gist of it. Old pulps were eminently better written and actually ENGAGED the reader.

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>>25103515
greatest disservice history did to howard was to ignore all his works that weren't conan, kane and maybe kull. let alone his completely ignored poetry. considering he sudoku'd at his 30 he left behind a rather extensive trove of stories.

>>25103645
I only knew of Bran Mak Morn existing because of the parody from Cerebus lol

>>25103645
Because many were printed DECADES after his death.

>>25101249
That's still the definition, morons who don't understand it don't change the definitions.

>>25101872
this post is peak midwit

>>25103523
Tress would have been a much better choice. It's actually above average by sanderslop standards.

>>25103522
Ruocchio did fencing iirc, I remember seeing a video of him dueling Paolini with lightsabers. Peak cringekino
But yeah it was out of college and right into professional editing for him, people forget he worked for Baen

>>25103520
Kek

>>25103677
The prose is peak midwit

>>25103742
>Ruocchio did fencing
Then why are his fight scenes so fucking trash? Salvatore makes circles around him and he was just a bouncer

>>25103756
My poops are peak midshit

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>>25101872
>>Then one evicted
>Then one what? One vulture?
Are you being serious here? Because all your criticism falls on its head if you're unable to follow related sentences one after another.

>>25103780
The comma placement means it doesn't follow.

>Then one evicted[comma]
One of the vultures cannot be said to have evicted the eagle due to that comma.

>>25103796
I'd sooner say that comma was a mistake.

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>>25103799
You can't mistakenly place a comma in the opening lines of your magnumino opuserino. No one does that. The editor wouldn't allow it. The publisher wouldn't allow it. The only explanation is the author INSISTED, fiercely insisted against vigorous opposition from the publishers, to put a comma after "evicted"

Making it bad prose.

Anyone else want to chime in on this? Does anyone want to make an excuse for the comma? Let's hear it then.

>>25103810
>>25103824
There is definitely something weird going on with Cook and punctuation. This is the next paragraph:

>Astrologers refused readings, fearing for their lives. A mad soothsayer wandered the streets proclaiming the imminent end of the world. At the Bastion, the eagle not only; departed, the ivy on the outer ramparts withered and gave way to a creeper which appeared black in all but the most intense sunlight.

>>25103831
Did you pirate some corrupted file or something?

>>25103831
>>25103839
Is this because it's a shitty pirate copy? Was I getting mad over this over a period of days for NOTHING?

Someone post the man's real work. We need to judge the genuine article.

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YEP it was a pirated copy. Commas were in the wrong places. It's still not amazing imo but not as bad as I was saying, seeing as it actually makes sense now.

This also means I was right about the prose

>>25103780
>>25103677
You guys were wrong to bumrush me over this.

>>25103859
lmaoooooooo

>>25103492
it's your time to waste friend. I don't care if you enjoy the book or not or even if you spend time on it. I just wanted to share how I felt about it. No clue why you would disqualify genuine opinions

i'm the anon who recently picked up the commonwealth series... Sorry anons, I just can't do it. I like this guy's world building, but his dialogue is just too cringe for me to continue. It feels like a highschool writing assignment

>>25103760
What didn't you like about them? He's no Howard or Correia for me but I've usually enjoyed his battle sequences (the overabundance of tunnel fights notwithstanding)
>Salvatore was just a bouncer
I'll grant there's something to be said for firsthand experience with threats / violence

>>25102706
Lol, no. The "philosophical depth" is just the author literally writing quotes from popular philosophy texts into the narrative and having the self-insert MC make some surface level comments. It's a fun enough space opera for five books, and then it turns into a hamfisted and poorly executed Christian allegory for the last two. Dune is much more worthy of being labeled a philosophical work than Sun Eater because it at least attempts to explore it's themes.

>>25103993
>Dune is much more worthy of being labeled a philosophical work than Sun Eater because it at least attempts to explore it's themes.
Youre a retard and have never read philosophy in your life shut the fuck up and kill yourself.

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Holy fucking shit, I almost forgot this retarded shit happened. It was so ridiculous and random, and unexplained that I just skimmed over it without even giving any thought to what just happened, just like when he magically found water in the desert. Shit like this makes it so hard to take anything seriously in this series, when Kellhus can just randomly do whatever he wants and it wont be justified beyond the fact that it was written to happen.

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This is why I was careful to say "justify" rather than explain. Because this is what "explain" looks like. If you simply say "They did things with remarkable fervor and effort despite being physically weaker, despite being smaller in number" and you reinforce it constantly, and make it a fundamental condition of moving on with the story to accept it.

Then things simply become "justified" by virtue of the fact that they were written to be, that you were told they are, because they are.

>>25103999
Retard, I didn't say Dune was a good work of philosophy. I said between Dune and Sun Eater Dune is more deserving of the label. Ruocchio just copies ideas from his betters. The second to last chapter is literally just straight ripped from Crito.

>>25104010
This is what happens in Indiana Jones - Temple of Doom

>>25101617
Fun fact - Lloegyr doesn't mean lost lands. It's a meme in the truest sense of the word.

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I watched Like The Clouds, Like The Wind and thought "this would be better as a book." I looked it up and discovered it was based on a book, but the book has never been translated from Japanese.
Books for this feel?

>>25102728
holy shit this exact situation literally happened to me 3 months ago and i'm so glad someone else can relate.

>>25104187
It seems to happen to people with limited exposure to fantasy, or even reading in general. They have preconceptions about what a fantasy book is like, and GRRM's storytelling winds up surprising them, and proving very engrossing. Not that he isn't also enthralling to more experienced readers. I picked him up about 20 years ago as a fairly experienced reader of fantasy, and still found him exciting and his characters engaging. Of course, back then the fifth book hadn't come out yet and we still had the reasonable assumption the entire series would be finished within a decade.

>>25103859
No, I was right to call you a midwit. The exact kind of insufferable person who thinks fussing over commas is the point of reading.

>>25103760
Fencing will teach you how to poke people with a giant thumbtack, not how to write compelling fight scenes.

>>25104200
>Not that he isn't also enthralling to more experienced readers
He's not. The show has more depth. In fact, all of the worst parts of the show are directly from the books.

>>25103993
Ruocchio's treatment of authority, ideology, and embodiment are all explored in depth through the plot and Hadrian's character growth. The main thrust is a defense of great man theory and noblesse oblige, Hadrian himself ultimately playing second fiddle to William, who proves himself to be a truly noble monarch who cares for his people in a way that his opponents do not. At the very least, it's a novel concept in SF and it's handled more explicitly than in epic fantasy.
While the religious themes are transparent they're conveyed elegantly enough that I have to disagree with calling them "hamfisted." Hadrian isn't even a Christ figure; he doesn't redeem anyone, not even himself. What sort of Christian allegory keeps the devils' rebellion and divine plan but dispenses with the central arc of redemption? Also, the religious themes were built up meticulously through the first five books, so it's not like they came out of nowhere.

>>25104274
good points, you seem to have actually read the book unlike the detractors in here

>>25104302
To be clear, I do have criticisms of the series. Empire of Silence drags in the middle, Kingdoms of Death / Ashes of Man shouldn't be considered two books, and Ruocchio's efforts to merge a genuine epic with an antihero memoir tarnish the ending in my view. But there's something about the series that's gripped me like little else has.

I have no complaints reading sun eater because I haven't read very much SF or philosophy at all. It's derivative? I literally can't tell because I'm such a midwit. Life is better this way.

>>25104352
>I literally can't tell because I'm such a midwit. Life is better this way.
Based

>>25104352
>It's derivative? I literally can't tell because I'm such a midwit. Life is better this way.
Your confusion, is in thinking that "knowing" more is inherently valuable, fulfilling, or meaningful in some manner.

The truth is. Some concepts, some "knowledge" exists simply to constrain, and narrow the mind. "Derivative" isnt an engagement with value. Its a framework for use.

I won't explain further because I'd have to start getting into some of the actual philosophy my claims are built on (read Wittgenstein if it interests you).

But think of it like this. The fact that a box of ice cream is labelled "from X state" or "Using X Ingredients", or even if we want to make a more 1 to 1 example "available in most super markets" as opposed to "available in select stores" (Generic vs Selective) says nothing about its actual quality or value. This has nothing to do with subjectivity. All those labels exist to standardize the product. They exist to direct people to choose that which fits within their framework of use. The value cannot be determined without being engaged with, without being tasted, and all that truly matters that reflects on the PRODUCT itself and not the buyer. Is the taste.

If you are ever thinking of art, as a "buyer" (I used this analogy for an explicit reason) then youre not engaging with it for what it is, but as a product.

In Short: Derivative is just one of many labels. Labels cover and constrain things to boxes. They do not exist to understand.

>>25104352
>It's derivative?
yes, very
>I'm such a midwit
You are the target audience of Sun Eater and Red Rising, honestly enjoy it while you can because once you start reading more books you’ll never stop wanting to beat Ruocchio and Pierce Brown to death with your bare hands

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Honestly Achamian kills interest in his own Kellhus like way. Just a random fat dude, who has the literal actual most powerful magic.

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kek. how am i still reading this. atleast i can find joy in unintended humour

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>>25103859
>YEP it was a pirated copy. Commas were in the wrong places. It's still not amazing imo but not as bad as I was saying, seeing as it actually makes sense now.
A truly poetic conclusion.

>>25103645
>dark agnes of chastillon
tell me more

>>25104477
Reading Pierce Brown and nothing else will also make you want to beat him to death with your bare hands
justice for Alexandar

>>25104603
>>25104477
>putting red rising and sun eater in the same conversation
is there anything more reddit and midwit?

>>25101037
>You Can't Fix Her Edition
I can sedate her and tie her tubes.

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>>25102892
>>25102506
Fuck Ubik. What a waste of time novel. Characters behaviour doesnt make sense. Ending is an asspull. I like some Dick but not this Dick. It's like there was potentially a good novel and he took every wrong turn writing it. Recently finished so freshly bitter.

I probably just didnt get it.

>>25101052
She was cool in the first book.

>>25101872
lol
I love how weird style of Black Company filters people.

I have recently read Division Zero and Story of Your Life, and found them wanting. I had more enjoyment reading the five Sister Alice stories. Death to generic boring tradpub filth.

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Recommend me some books about drifters wandering the Earth and righting wrongs.

>>25104639
>I probably just didnt get it.
No, youre correct

>>25102496
>Livesuit by James S.A. Corey
>Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
>Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman or Carl's Doomsday Scenario by Matt Dinniman
Reading P&P right after existential military SF is giving me one hell of a mood whiplash. On that note, I can't believe how much I enjoyed Dungeon Crawler Carl. By all accounts it should be 0/10 dreck, but the main protag duo is so charming and the setting is so unhinged that Dinniman somehow makes it work.

>>25102880
Dune was plagiarized, but no one ever brings it up.

>>25104781
Yeah, he just ignored that fact and called it whataboutism, I mean everybody also ignored my labeling analogy, but thats the point. "Derivative" fundamentally isnt a value judgement. Its a useful word to indicate to others that something should be dismissed. That should be the first thing understood. I have an entire elaborate philosophical framework for justifying this based on Wittgenstein, but clearly nobody here has actually read philosophy, so its a waste of time to waste anymore effort on this.

>>25103319
A.T. Murray

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Why are so many Fantasy books so terrible about writing political factions and war?

It's always retarded shit
>Le evil king is bad because he is bad
>Le good king is good but dies! Oh no! now his evil prince is doing bad thing!

I swear I've played Vidya that was able to get down to the nitty gritty of political factions yet out of all of literature only fucking GRRM has managed to at least "touch" on how kingdoms might actually rule

Thousandfold Thought too fucking boring, wasting my fucking time with entire chapters about how some people in the Holy War hate the Xerash and raped and killed them, wow, im sure thatll be relevant in the future, like all the other named for one chapter cities and peoples.

I know this stuff is done to make the world feel more real or whatever, but Bakker sucks at making it interesting, if I must tolerate irrelevant people and irrelevant names being brought up for 1 chapter and then never mentioned again.

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So im finally starting this inbetween Thousandfold chapters

>>25104818
Try Legend, by David Gemmell. It's mostly from the perspective of the soldiers but there are some nuanced politics between ths factions.

>>25104818
>yet out of all of literature only fucking GRRM has managed to at least "touch" on how kingdoms might actually rule
Niguana you just described two things that happen in Gurm books.

>>25104818
I'd agree proper politics is usually more of a scifi-thing, with fantasy focusing on court intrigue. Hard to find examples beyond ASOIAF.
>>25104832
Great recommendation, honestly. Without even getting to other works by Gemmel, Legend works as a self-contained story and the political world-building is succint

>>25104818
>only fucking GRRM has managed to at least "touch" on how kingdoms might actually rule
Not really. He's good at portraying character-driven drama, and very good at court intrigue. But this isn't how kingdoms are ruled, it's how powerful people compete against one another and protect their power. There's very little actual governance in A Song of Ice and Fire, and a lot of it is not really a good portrayal of how a feudal society would work.

For example, basically all the governance we see in the books occurs in high-level policy meetings, among the most powerful nobility, but in a medieval and especially feudal society the vast majority of governance was handled by petty officials, not the high nobility. GRRM's world is totally absent of reeves, magistrates, wardens, and other people who actually do the business of collecting fees, enforcing rules, and overseeing obligated work which was the backbone of the feudal economy. Mostly this is because GRRM's books concern themselves with high nobles and royalty and their courts, but we have plenty of examples of characters in fallen estate or traveling in secret who never seem to encounter anything between a peasant and a knight. There are no yeomen, reeves, headmen, wardens, freeholders, franklins, burghers, etc. There are only peasants, occasional craftsmen, and nobility.

There's the strange estate of the maesters, who are simultaneously far, far more powerful than any medieval estate in our world, yet also very strangely disenfranchised in GRRM's. They have a virtual monopoly on education, long-distance communication, medicine, engineering, and law, and yet they wield almost no political power. Oh they can be influential in the courts of the nobility, but only as advisors. There are no maesters who rule through their assigned nobles, the Citadel doesn't make policy in the Seven Kingdoms, and there has never been an instance of a nobleman being concerned about angering or alienating the maesters as a class despite their immense power.

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>>25104818
If you want a good fantasy novel about a good ruler doing his best, then picrel is for you. It's court intrigue done well without the usual shit

>>25104918
>GRRM's world is totally absent of reeves, magistrates, wardens, and other people who actually do the business of collecting fees, enforcing rules, and overseeing obligated work which was the backbone of the feudal economy.
I know what you're getting at, but this isn't really true. Right at the start we meet like thirty named members the House Stark alone, including a steward, keeper of the sept and library, and castellan. With ASOIAF having over 3000 named characters as is, it's understandable why we don't get much focus on every cog of the machine. Also, some of the positions you mentioned only existed in some places and not others. The Holy Roman Empire, for instance, didn't have reeves. Similarly, franklins and freeholders existed in some medieval regions and periods and not in others, so them not existing in Westeros is not really a mistake.
I kind of agree with you on the Maesters, but it's not hard to see why their political power is as small as it is. Just look at scientists in the modern world. The entire society relies on them to function, yet since they don't constitute a real voting block or donor class, politicians don't give a shit.

>>25102496
>1984
I get the message but Orwell's just bored me. I find interrogation scene a bit interesting though.
>Starship Trooper
Just started.
>Making Sense of Chaos

>>25104904
Any scifi recs? I'm a sucker for books with heavily political settings, but I never seem to be able to find any outside of historical fiction.

Any of the Dark Sun or Planescape novels worth reading?

>>25104010
You don't get it

>>25105004
Have a try and tell us! Sounds comfy as fuck.

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underrated. one of the few PKD novels that sticks to landing.

>>25104828
Yeh that was a bad choice on him doing that bullshit

Should I buy The Witcher or Robin Hobb?

>>25105154
If it's The Last Wish or Sword of Destiny, then Witcher.

>>25105161
more like the entire series as a whole, I'll probably buy Witcher and pirate Robin Hobb

>>25105174
only the last wish is good. don't waste your time.

>>25102745
Didn't they literally have a child together ?

>>25105181
Yes but also no. The child was carried to term and birthed by Fitz's wife Molly who despite all the cuck memes did end up together with him for the rest of her life but also magic shit happened

>>25102652
Imagine barring yourself from kino written by half the population because a 4chan meme told you so.

>>25105207
Yes.
>Nord man beard meme.jpg

>>25104938
>including a steward, keeper of the sept and library, and castella
Anon, those are all castle positions, held by petty nobility, educated or trusted servants. Those are people who run the castle community, they are not important to the economy of the domain. Indeed, the castellan cannot even do his job properly if he does not have any of the other people I mentioned.

>>25104818
Read The Misplaced Legion by Harry Turtledove

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>>25101181
>me sentencing Kitiara to be my eternal dark bride
Yes... Ha ha ha... Yes!!

>>25105257
Can death knights even get it up?

>>25104918
Here's what a historian wrote about the issues of Game of Thrones politics.
https://acoup.blog/2019/06/12/new-acquisitions-how-it-wasnt-game-of-thrones-and-the-middle-ages-part-iii/

>>25105269
I've read that blog, it's pretty useful especially his breakdown on how military logistics work in the horse-and-wain era, but what I'm talking about specifically is how a medieval economy and government functions on a day to day basis, which that post doesn't really cover. He gives the high overview of how feudalism works, the vassal-liege relationship, and also talks about nationhood vs feudal possessions. I'm talking about bureaucracy.

>>25101478
I enjoyed it when I read it as a teenager but it's written by a rapist now.

>>25104918
The appointed magistrates made a lot of their income by selling jobs to anyone who could afford to buy one, and these buyers would then use the job to extract whatever fees or bribes they could. It was a whole funny little ecosystem of rent-seeking and led to situations where an entire bloodline would live off the little bit of cash they could squeeze out of owning the jailhouse key master job or whatever. Also lots of duplicate jobs created by greedy magistrates to bilk the system. A writer could have a lot of fun with characters interfacing with a system like this, it doesn't have to be tedious minutiae.

>>25105014
What doesn't he get? Haven't read the book, could I get some context to fuel interest?

>>25105366
Only write I know that has done lots of little intrigues from greedy magistrates and clergymen and other medieval estates is Terry Mancour with his spellmonger series. Though it gets less and less focused on that stuff as it goes on, and it does go on for quite a bit.

>>25104969

Honor Harrington is literally historical fiction in space. It's heavily political to a nearly comical degree.

The space-navy combat is good too, the series is influenced by Hornblower so it really tickles my autism.

>>25104088
Not seen the anime nor read the book so this might be a bit of a poorly related recommendation, but Blossoms and Shadows by Lian Hearn was a good read and sounded slightly similar from the Wikipedia description of Koukyuu Shousetsu

>want to buy physical
>cover is littered with quotes by other authors praising the writer
I know you only ever see the spine in your shelf but this annoys me still.

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How bad is the anti-Christian zoggery in pic related?
I liked Blacktongue Thief.

>>25105622
Blame the legions who need to be told what to read by someone else cough malazan

>>25105647
>Jew author
Not looking good.

>>25104830
I hope you enjoy it anon. It's a very strange but very worthwhile book (at least 1-3, Perhaps the Stars doesn't quite stick the landing). The narrator carries the writing hard.