Hello, all. It is legitimately cool to be here on Reddit on publication day in the US and U.K. for All The Seas of the World. (Canada has its ebooks and audiobooks ready, too, actual books will be 3-7 days in arriving in bookstores. There was an April snowstorm where the printer is! Don’t ask.) But we haven’t timed an AMA this well before. Given the constraints of the last two years, it feels good to be celebrating a book launch here online with you. I’m going to hope for a return of travel and in-person events soon — and I’ll announce them when they are slotted — but for now, let’s all pour a cocktail, a whisky, a cup of tea (not in same glass, please, people) and settle in to chat.

To re-introduce myself, I’m Guy Gavriel Kay, and today sees the release of my 15th novel, because although I may not be fast, I’ve been publishing since The Fionavar Tapestry in the 1980s. i.e. a long time. I’m one of the lucky writers: books in over 30 languages, staying in print, and generous responses …

So I’m getting married soon! My fiancé and I have incredibly common last names and there’s certain personal family issues I have with mine, so we’re opting to get a new one for ourselves.

We’re both avid readers, d&d players, and all-around nerds, so we thought anything literature-related would be a great idea for us. Brandon Sanderson, Tolkien, Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Stephen King, etc.. Fantasy and Sci-fi is our thing.

So far we like the idea of “Deschain” from King’s Dark Tower. She also likes “Elessar” or “Parker” because Spider-Man. Everything else from LOTR seems to have fallen through and I’ve run out of ridiculous amine character last names to throw at her so I figured I’d ask for help.

Any ideas?

Edit: Jesus murphy. Was not expecting to come back to so many new ideas. I’m doing my best to reply to as many as I can! Thank you everyone for your ideas and well wishes and advice! …

Howdy all,

​

https://preview.redd.it/gxqhuba0fuz81.jpg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e20b329fc8ab2e1d20f3757f6bfcfa3906a986dd

I know, I know. It hasn’t been too long since I last posted, but scheduling has been crazy and my new series, Steamforged Sorcery, is finally out on amazon. It’s set in a steam/magipunk world similar to that of arcane crossed with a post-apocalyptic desert. Like all of my novels, I’ve heard it reads very similar to a DnD campaign.

I really love the steam/magipunk genere, but there’s such a lack of content in the area recently, so I really hope that it can get revived a little. There are already 2 books finished with a 3rd very close on its way.

The giveaway will be at the bottom, and I really hope you guys like this one - I’ll be giving away something pretty unique along with some pdf versions of the novel.

Here’s a summary of the story that I yoinked from the amazon page:

Ancient magic …

I know that Goodreads infamously doesn’t update however recently they’ve adjusted the interface on the website so maybe this progression will continue as books continually become more popular. My suggestion is that we have 2 ratings but, it’d be interesting to hear yours too.

To battle the bots and more biased audiences, we can create an individualised rating for critics. Less bots would intrude then as the bots wouldn’t be able to affect the critic score and less focus would be on the user rating. Maybe it’d be the same for the biased audiences too, for example in YA. The audience might be more harsh when they see that the professional ratings justify their actual opinions.

I posted a few days ago about fake positive goodreads ratings for a certain horror series by F Gardner. The books are very bad, yet a ton of good ratings and npc reviews were on their goodreads pages. Eg. “this book redefines horror. I especially like the incredible twist at the end. Incredible.”

I checked today and thousands of ratings and reviews have been taken off. The scores for the books have dropped from nearly ⁵⁄₅ to mostly around 2.⁵⁄₅. There is a chance that the author removed the reviews to avoid backlash, but I think it’s more likely that after lots of complaints, goodreads took action.

Quote from the first book: “Nice, shot,” Pete remarks, as his father tosses the empty can with ease, into a recycling bin, in the distance…Noticing his son looking back in the distance, Joe wondered what Pete was pondering, as it seemed the young man had something on his mind. “Something eating you, son? You look deep in thought” …

My wife, who has struggled with anxiety and depression, recently said “Ive been in a reading slump, can you recommend a book?” This is probably my favorite question. But especially when it comes from someone I know very well. After considering what I know about my wife; what gets her excited, what bores her, what inspires her, what makes her want to discuss something… I landed on the Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson. I had read them in med school and I just couldnt get past the fact that the story actually kept getting better with each book. I felt like she needed an immersive page-turner with a strong female protagonist. Gripe as people mag about Vin as a protagonist, she was exactly the hero my wife needed at this time. So I got to take a dusty box-set of books of the shelf, blow on them and slap them with a satisfying thud on the table with a “here ya go, enjoy!” And in this case, I just got lucky. This was it- exactly what she needed. She started blowing through chapters. And …

For me it is Star Maker by Olaf Stapleton and House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds.

He gets almost completely eaten by giant metal space moths, their venom bringing him bliss. He learns to “see” all around him with the sensitivity to sunlight. Eventually he makes his way towards Earth to feed the human race.

Holy hell is that first book incredible! I could not believe the non-stop zaniness. The chapters are only a few pages long, but every single one feels like it has something big happening in it, and every page has a joke (and it’s almost always a good one). That makes it so hard to stop reading - you always want to know how their going to get out of this new crazy situation.

The books also raise big philosophical questions, and answers them in a truly unique way. Instead of trying to dispense wisdom or tell you how to live your life, the books poke fun at the entire notion of universal answers to life’s big questions. Instead, Adams suggests we could all do with taking life a little less seriously and finding our own answers to those big questions. God’s final word to his creation is my favorite example of this I think - when you read it it is just so unbelievably hilarious and perfect.

I personally didn’t love the second book as much - there are less jokes / …

You also get to see a tour of Peter F. Hamilton’s private library and writing room. As a PFH fan I found the interview highly interesting and wanted to spread the word. Hoping that is allowed here. Enjoy!

The Nebula winners are going to be announced this Saturday (May 21st), so I’m posting my rankings of the combine Hugo and Nebula nominees. The Hugo winners are scheduled to be announced on September 4th.

Novel

• Unranked. Nebula Nominee: Plague Birds, Jason Sanford (Apex)
  • I couldn’t get a hold of a copy of Plague Birds (my library didn’t have a copy and neither does Scribd), so I am not including it in my rankings. I’ve heard good things though.
• Unranked. Hugo Nominee: *The Galaxy, and the Ground Within* by Becky Chambers (Harper Voyager / Hodder & Stoughton)
  • I did not read this book, so again I’m not including it in the rankings. I read To Be Taught If Fortunate, and didn’t like it much. I also read 80 pages or so of The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and just wasn’t feeling it, so I opted not to read this one. I did like A Psalm for the Wild-built though (more on that below), so I’ll probably give the Wayfarers another go …