When they use sexual assault on girls and women just to shock, I mean, when there is a horrific scene of abuse and the author only put it there to show how cruel the world is and it is generally a medieval world 🧍🏽i hateeeeeeeee

couldn’t resist, not sorry

I think it’s reasonably common to run into a fantasy story where we’re told (often in passing) that there USED to be dragons, but many centuries ago and they’re all gone now.

But quite often, we’re never explicitly told why the dragons died out.

So - what are some of the explanations you’ve seen an author come up with? (And of course, which book was it in?) Bonus points for especially unique ones!

Babel by RF Kuang is very readable with prose markedly improved from her first trilogy, has a cool magic system, and has very fun and delicious academia scenes. That’s about all the compliments I can give it, because this is one of the single most poorly thought out narratives I’ve ever read. I respect Rebecca Kuang for trying to use fantasy to challenge our understandings of the world and how it came to be, don’t get me wrong, but in my opinion, this is a very poor way to do it.

https://preview.redd.it/1zhznuu7peue1.jpg?width=656&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e2bbab7fea3f50c4a34729628feea91135a73e0f

Kuang set out in this novel to argue using fiction that academic institutions are perpetrators of colonial violence, and to create a thematic response to Donna Tartt’s The Secret History and a tonal response to Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. In doing so, however, I feel that she stumbles both with her thematic goals for the story …

No Life Forsaken, the second book in the Witness quartet, has had its cover art and release date unveiled.

The book will be released on 23 October this year.The book picks up after the events of *The God is Not Willing* (2021) and sees the action switch to the Seven Cities subcontinent where, unsurprisingly, things are getting complicated for the local Malazan forces. The official plot summary is as follows:

A goddess awakens to a new world, only to find that some things never change.Amidst the ashes of a failed rebellion in Seven Cities, new embers are flaring to life.There are furrowed brows at the beleaguered Malazan Legion headquarters in G’danisban for it would appear that yet another bloody clash with the revived cult of the Apocalyptic is coming to a head.Seeking to crush the uprising before it ignites the entire subcontinent, Fist Arenfall has only a few dozen squads of marines at his disposal, and many of those are already dispersed - endeavouring to stamp out multiple …

Take for instance, Court of Assassins, by Philip C. Quaintrell, the blurb of which goes as so

In those halls of darkness, where children are taken from the world and given to shadow and dust, Asher is destined for that same fate. He will become the myth. He will become the legend. He will become the whisper of Death itself.

That which he was is dead, forgotten. Now he is a blade in the dark, a weapon to be wielded by his masters. A killer.

Yet, despite all his training and years of spilling blood, there is a crack in Asher’s conditioning. Something within him is broken, unbound even. A sliver of humanity has survived and dreams of freedom. Now, standing on a knife’s edge, his mind threatens to unravel, taking him from the only path he has ever known and away from the clutches of Nightfall.

It has never been done. Exile is not a choice. It is a death sentence.

But there is another life that calls to him, a life roaming the wilds and protecting the innocent from the monsters which …

I’m 25 and have been reading fantasy books since I was a kid. Only a few, like The Sword of Kaigen and The Realm of the Elderlings, have hit me hard enough to cry. Some newer fantasy novels meant to be emotional didn’t deliver for me. Any fantasy books—modern or classic—that pack a real, heart-wrenching punch? Feel free to share titles that moved you!

The below excerpt is from Sarah Wynn-Williams’ new book, Careless People, which delves into her experiences working at Facebook as a high ranking executive in global policy. I always knew that social media was involved in pushing agendas and manipulating facts, but I thought the below did a pretty good job at explaining it in a way that was easy to understand.

I’m about two thirds through the book and highly recommend it. Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg and the rest of Facebook’s (now Meta’s) executives are disgusting, and they built a powerful and dangerous tool that I think many people still don’t fully grasp.

Beyond that, the book also does a great job capturing the relentless grind of working at Facebook during that era—the long hours, the intense pressure, and how women were often forced to choose work over their personal lives, including caring for their newborns. It also dives into the internal politics that shaped the company’s decisions, Mark …

😖😖😖😖😖😖

Censorship is the worst! Let the kids read some goddamn Huckleberry Finn and To Kill A Mockingbird and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

I’m talking about 700+ books.

I went with the principle: if it’s meant to be, it’ll find me again.

I cannot with these giants TBRs anymore. In the past 2+ years, I DNFed ¹⁄₃ of the books I started, if not more.

I added books for 7+ years and my taste has changed so much in that time. I felt like I had to give every book a try before I deleted it from the list but no more.

Damn Youtube/Booktube probably brainwashed me into this TBR thing anyway.

I feel so FREE now, just pick up whatever I feel like without the burden of the unread pile threatening to crush me. (I have very few books on my physical TBR so that helps a lot.)

Not telling you to do the same, but I’m just saying it’s an option if you’ve been feeling similarly.

Fourth book in acclaimed Children of Time series due to release next spring.
Also three more SF books from him coming on Tor. (No signs of him slowing down yet!)

https://bsky.app/profile/aptshadow.bsky.social/post/3lmwwqi2vp22p
https://trade.panmacmillan.com/tor-uk-acquires-four-stellar-novels-by-acclaimed-storyteller-adrian-tchaikovsky

I recently started a reread of Asomov’s Robot series, and while researching to make sure I had every story and novel, I came across “I, Robot: the Illustrated Screenplay” by Harlan Ellison (with a forward by Asimov, in which he states that he felt this adaptation would be “the first really adult, complex, worthwhile science fiction movie ever made”).

The book is gorgeously illustrated by Mark Zug, with numerous full-color plates and b&w illos on nearly every other page.

I’m incredibly excited to add this to my reread!

What do you all think?

Some of these I have previously read - and yes, I ended-up getting some duplicates (let me know if you’re interested) - and they were only 25¢ because of a Friend of the Library sale.

I recently watched Torchwood Children of Earth and it was horrifically disturbing. The premise is that an alien race called the 456 come to earth and demand 10% of the planets children. I won’t spoil it but I highly recommend giving it a watch. I’d be grateful if anyone could help me find a sci-fi book that’s disturbing but remains on earth and isn’t too far fetched. I picked up How High We Go in the Dark but I’m on the lookout for more.

Something unusual to the genre while still very much a good example of what can be done with it

Just had a random thought about this. I’ve heard about Stand on Zanzibar and Parable of the Sower as doing it well.

“Someone always brings up matters of diversity,” the showrunner told BBC Radio 2. “And there are online warriors accusing us of diversity and wokeness and involving messages and issues. And I have no time for this. I don’t have a second to bear it.”

Davies explained his reasoning. “What you might call diversity, I just call an open door,” he said. “We open a door, and there is the world, and you breathe it in and your lungs are full of the air and it’s cold and it’s bracing and there’s a world in front of you! There’s a blue sky. There’s clouds and There’s noise, there’s birdsong, there’s people arguing.”

He continued: “Someone over there is dancing, someone over there is arguing. That’s how to write, to get that whole world into it. Some people maybe just open a window a crack.”

Davies said that others may choose to create from a more narrow worldview, but he has …