>>25114978
What 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?"

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Bring back peak fantasy art to save the book industry. No more "it has to look good in a thumbnail on your phone" shit.

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>>25115051
actual 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 idea
What’s the context here? How does he know the word therapist if he doesn’t know what it is?

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>>25115019
Rip

>>25115099
He 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.

>>25115103
Overrated.
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 prose
Curious is the baitmaker's art.

>>25115271
If prose doesn't matter when why not just write a screenplay?

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>>25113452
it 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

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>>25115283
another 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
>>25115292
The way he writes makes me not want to ever touch any of his shit. You can smell the self-conceited narcissistic autism on these.

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>>25115292
this 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 others
perfection. 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?

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>>25115302
yeah, 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

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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 silent
FUCK. 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
>>25113053
Kellhus 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.

>>25114978
https://www.goodreads.com/group/show_book/1029811-sffg?book_id=209439446

>>25115287
if 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

>>25115099
Because at the beginning of the book an immortal character from a different planet with an advanced civilization tells him about therapy.

>>25115099
>>25115244
>>25115357
Imagine how much better the book would be if Kaladin had decided to become The Rapist instead.

>>25115361
Is 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?

>>25115322
Yeah 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.

>>25115365
nta but it's obviously a joke dude
the joke being that, having not heard the word before, kaladin could have mispronounced 'therapist' as 'the rapist'

>>25115370
He 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.

>>25115379
Your 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.

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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.

>>25115392
I 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.

>>25115431
I 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.

>>25115431
You 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 JORDAN
BLAST

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.

>>25115581
Who are you talking to?

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>Who are you talking to?

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Which sci-fi books have the most unique/creative alien species?

>>25115582
>It was bad enough to lump the two together in book stores irl
Why? Sci-fi is fantasy except in space

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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.

>>25115588
Niven's Known Space stuff.

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>>25115598
>wolfe
>average
so I guess all other sf is basically in the negative as far as scores go for you?

>>25115598
Oh boy newfagGPT already got riled up above early in this thread. This is really going to upset the normalfag spammers.

>>25115603
I 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.

>>25115588
My story draft desu

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>>25115577
You want to talk about Blast? It's obviously a /co/ thing rather than a /lit/ thing but it's pretty damn good

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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 will
Keep 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

>>25115619
Gru?

>>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.

>>25115624
no 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

>>25115629
ooops sorry guys meant for justin murphy thread. love scifi, love malzberg!

>>25115633
What do you think of Bakker? He writes serious literature.

>>25115636
I only read one, which was a fantasy retelling of the children's crusade, and I thought it was interesting

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>>25115352
3 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

>>25115598
Wolfefags are manchild ESL types who don't read much literature and think LE UNRELIABLE NARRATOR is mindblowing

>>25115588
A Fire upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge comes to mind.

>>25115645
most 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 protags
And Severian isn't?

>>25115644
so accurate target audience

>>25115664
He's a short king.

>>25115664
yeah he definitely is to an extreme extent

>>25115664
then 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 covers
The absolute state of modern science fiction and fantasy.

>>25115267
you are retarded

>>25115403
That says "J.R.R. Tolkien."

>>25115598
you got filtered

>>25115619
Is it good?

>>25115620
Joe Abercrombie's books are for heckin' cool Redditors.

>>25115757
Very. Disturbingly bleak, though.

>>25115748
Jahid Rahman Rizqallah Tolkien. Interesting name.

>>25115287
For a dollar yeah. It's easy entertainment.

>>25115747
>>25115751
Good on you for not posting a feels guy edit this time, little newfag.

>>25115051

Largely 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.

>>25115798
Surely TikTok users and people who can read maximalist novels don't have much of an overlap...

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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?

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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.

>>25115810
built for BRC

free from bakker criticism...our circlejerk returns

>>25115399
>New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine
Only created to zoggify S&S.

>>25115843
I agree desu, I especially thought the writing was meeeeh in the Steel supers book or whatever it's called.

>>25115720
I 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.

>>25115843
It'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?

>>25115943
The Difference Engine.

>>25115312
>just "open yourself up to a new kind of narrative experience" bro

Does 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
>>25115283
Is Bakkerfag really just speaking to himself?

>>25115379
I tried to tell you all this several threads ago.

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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 VN
mite be cool

The masculine urge to drop in an iron rain

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>>25115975
wouldn'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

>>25115048
Your dad told me his ass hurts.

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>>25115972
This 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 reality

This 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.

>>25115972
But 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 story

I 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 relationship
Certainly explains all the normalfags humping Asimov/Clarke/Tolkien/Moorcock/Rothfuss/Martin/etc. every thread and their marriage to the author.

>>25116184
Tolkien is the worst one but Bakker is a close second

>>25115795
>feels guy edit
kys

>>25116210
>kay why ess
You are new to 4chan. Likely underage. Lol.

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>three prologues
Was this really necessary?

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>>25115099
>>25116264
Brandon always makes you lot seethe so much.

>>25115287
At that price, why not?

My sister was telling me how great Dungeon Crawler Carl is the other day

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Multiverses - Preston Grassman, editor (2023)

PARALLEL WORLDS
Banish - 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?
Enjoyable

Cracks - Chana Porter (2023)
A depressed woman fantasizes, violently, sexually, and in other ways, about the better lives that her other selves have.
Blah

A 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.
Blah

Crunchables - 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.
Ok

Quorum'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.
Ok

Nine Hundred Grandmothers - Paul Di Filippo (2023)
Stafford uses and deals in drugs from myriad realities. An absurd, hilarious, and terrifying intervention ensues.
Highly Enjoyable

Days of Magic, Nights of War - Clive Barker (2004)
A short poem about the multiverse.
Meh

ALTERNATE HISTORIES
A 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 Enjoyable

Thirty-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

>>25116380
The 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.
Meh

The 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.
Meh

The Imminent World - D.R.G. Sugawara (2023)
A poem about all the potential Now that could've been, are, and will be.
Meh

FRACTURED 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.
Ok

A 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.
Ok

Amber 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.
Meh

The 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.
Blah

There 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 all
Blah

There was a Time - Clive Barker (2023)
A poem about the death of the sacred, mystical, supernatural, and spiritual.
Meh

>>25116118
Hey man I like dungeon crawling

>>25115664
>horny retard who fails at his one job and later bumbles his way into saving mankind
Nah

>>25115598
>ye olde english
Are 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?

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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?

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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....

>>25116484
My 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.

>>25116512
What? 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.

>>25116512
No, that is not the case at all. And I am not "your nigger".

>>25116539
You read Bakkershit. The most you could aspire to be is a nigger.

>>25116540
I don't read Bakker.

besides thoes two hyperion books...what else was good by dan simmons

>>25116544
You're killing the narrative

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I now know how ASOIAFfags feel

>>25116554
luhmao

>>25116554
wdym
it's coming out this year isn't it

>>25116554
keeek!

>>25116554
>literal YA slop that its fans are in denial about being YA because it has violence porn

>>25116572
>violence porn
I’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

>>25116588
Cognitive 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

>>25116620
All the moralizing about how "fighting back against your bullies is wrong" in western media is even more hollow.

>>25116588
To expound on >>25116613
Media 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

>>25115664
He'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 revival
How 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

>>25115798
Give me Richard Powers or the Dillons anytime.

>>25115720
Are you me? I'm going to start an illustrated edition of Gormenghast soon.

>>25116380
>Nine Hundred Grandmothers
Homage to R. A. Lafferty?

>>25116705
true, but only because of bakkertards that argue in a way to deliberately not have to address my criticisms

>>25116705
I'd like to mention a book I just finished but this thread will hate it. So why bother?

>>25116705
>people who read books
Common mistake, no one here reads books, they just loudly shout how much they hate popular authors.

>>25116705
it is deeply unfortunate how the normalfags gravitate to the most popular of entries only, yes

>>25116705
I mean, it is a containment thread after all.

>>25116473
hah great question. not gonna explain any of these, just going off of gut feel:

The Broken Lands, Fred Saberhagen
All Tomorrows, Nemo Ramjet
The Pastel City, M. John Harrison
The Sword of Bayne, Ty Johnston

>>25116722
The title probably is, though not the content. I haven't read the Lafferty story.

>>25115431
There's Vurt. It's pretty far away from the LN you mentioned tho

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>>25115810
I 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
>Transarctica
Is this actually good? I wanted to try it.

>>25116993
It'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.

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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.

>>25117089
Bridge of Birds
Blind 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?

>>25117207
I'm proud of you, anon.

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The No-God.
Truth shines.
Trust the plan.
No weepers on the slog, eh lads, eh?

>>25116212
you need to go back

>>25115473
Why shouldn't I write one myself then?

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>first word is "fuck"
>immediately dropped

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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.

>>25117207
Literally the only review site owned by a major sff publisher is Reactor magazine by TOR.

>>25116539
>that is not the case at all
What's your explanation for it then, white boy?

>>25117311
No reason not to. But you won't, so there's that.

>>25115620
Finished 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.
>>25115624
dreading that, because the narrator of the audiobook in my language is horrendous at doing female voice, they all sounds like ditzy bimbos, even Ferro.
>>25115758
What's generally disliked about his books? So far the main thing that irks me is how often he talks about piss and shit

>>25117362
one of his wives. The one had some conversations with him chapters ago

>>25117443
>he talks about piss and shit
he does this and adds in rank pussy in his latest book

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Consensus? I like the pacing but it's lacking in some figurative language.

>>25116472
Already 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

>>25117461
Terribly dull author

>>25117461
I 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.

>>25117461
I 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.

>>25117461
Only 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.

>>25117527
Abercrombie 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.

>>25117448
its 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

>>25115019
I 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.

>>25117692
The Expanse

>>25117376
I 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.

>>25117791
No, I'm saying you're making it up.

>>25117692
Star Trek.

>>25117207
>>25117207
Being included here doesn't mean you're going to make it in any way.
https://reactormag.com/tag/short-fiction-spotlight/

>>25117812
Based 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.

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>>25117692
just watch BSG again. It's the goat

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>>25117816
gottem ex dee
>>25117821
dogshit ending

>>25117821
I 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

>>25117821
the 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

>>25117816
Who cares anyway? I just thought I'd share good news. Back to reading PKD and ignoring Bakkerspammers.

>>25117872
Dunno why the others are grumpy but that's really good news, anon.

>>25117872
which Dick are you on?

>>25117881
Thanks 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.
>>25117884
Just 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
>>25117821
Book you fags. Also no.
>>25117777
My 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.

>>25117692
So basically you want Firefly.