Hey there. Many of you probably know me from my Star Wars novels, like Darth Bane or Revan, or my Mass Effect books, or from my work on games ranging from the Baldur’s Gate series to KOTOR to Mass Effect. Maybe a few of you are even familiar with my Chaos Born trilogy, or have heard that I’m currently back working in games at Archetype Entertainment.
I’ve also just launched my newest novel on Kickstarter!
Time Kings is a contemporary sci-fi thriller set in modern day Sin City - if you’re a fan of my work, I hope you check it out! The Kickstarter also has special reward packages you might find interesting, with bundles of signed copies of my Darth Bane series, my Old Republic novels, my Mass Effect books, and my Chaos Born trilogy available to backers!
And if you want the full Drew K experience, there’s even a limited edition VIP meet and greet package that includes dinner with me at one of the best restaurants in Las …
“To light a candle is to cast a shadow…”
This is just one of the numerous bits of gorgeous prose scattered throughout Ursula K Le Guin’s fantasy classic A Wizard of Earthsea. It’s taken me a long time to get around to what is considered one of the defining works of the genre, and I’m truly glad I did. A Wizard of Earthsea is a wonderful story, and after reading it twice in the span of a week and a half, I’m ready to join the ranks of many considering it one of the greatest works of fantasy I’ve ever read.
The first thing that stood out to me AWoE is its narrative style - it almost feels like a kind of fairy tale, a fable told by firelight by an expert storyteller to a group of young children. It has that omniscient, mythical and somewhat detached quality to it. It’s a very small book in terms of page count, especially compared to the bloated doorstoppers so common in modern fantasy, but Le Guin still manages to make it feel like an epic, world-spanning quest, immersing you completely …
This isn’t writing-related as such, but I just wanted to say how awesome a guy Adrian Tchaikovsky is.
He’s an author I love and I very speculatively reached out to him to see if he’d be interested in being a guest on my fantasy writing podcast.
To my surprise and delight, he said yes!
We had a really insightful chat about the writing process and the publishing industry. I learned an awful lot and I hope anyone who listens does too.
On behalf of all of us aspiring SFF writers, thank you, Adrian!
The episode came out today. If you want to check it out please drop me a message and I’ll send you the link. I didn’t want to include a link here given the rules on posting.
Asking because I’d like to discover more books with female characters who don’t feel like sexual objects or blocks of wood. Subgenres and target audience aren’t important so feel free to suggest anything you feel like - thanks! :)
I own a small independent bookstore and cafe in a rural yet tourist destination town and I am so blown away by how many people are coming in and picking up books from a small indie like me and explicitly mentioning that they bought the extra titles to share with friends/libraries/teachers to support us during Amazon prime days. Margins are so slim on books it is so hard to stay afloat and positive during these times so I just want to say thank you!!! If you can’t make it out to a local indie in person please use bookshop.org instead.
SPOILER I read Billy Summers a couple months ago and really liked the parental, father/daughter vibe I THOUGHT I was getting from the relationship of the two main characters, until the young woman (19⁄20) ends up falling in love with the 45 year old (!!!) man.
And now I am halfway through Firestarter which I believe is a new release and once again there is a grown man, developing a weird romantic relationship with an 8 year old!
Such a shame because I really enjoyed both books up until he introduced this point. In both books it literally adds nothing to the plot, the storyline would have been literally unchanged if he kept it non-romantic/sexual. I was planning on reading more of his books but after these two I am probably going to give up.
Edit: did not expect this to blow up! From the sounds of it this is a recurring theme throughout his books so I will be taking him off my future reads.
Also my mistake, someone pointed out that Firestarter is not new; the copy that I …
I get it if it’s a library copy or you’re borrowing a copy from someone, that’s just basic respect of others property. But I’ve had people watch me dog-ear my own book and try and like lecture me on the fact that it’s “wrong” to do that. I get if you don’t want to dog-ear your own books but I’m kind of getting tired of this attitude that books are sacred or something and to do any “harm” to them is a terrible action. I like dog-earring my books, I like writing in my books, generally as long as the text of the book is readable I don’t care what condition it’s in.
EDIT: seeing everyone’s responses, I’d like to explain my actual preferred reading experience, get into a dark area and rip out the first page, light it on fire, use the light produced by the fire to read the second page, when the paper is running out, light the second page on fire, repeat until book is read. /s
But seriously though, thank everyone for responding to this post, it’s been really interesting reading all the …
Pillars of the Earth is so bad it redefined for me what it means to be a 1-star book. My previous 1-star fiction books have usually been characterised by appalling laziness from the author in addressing the central themes of the book, for example the way the author of The Power sidesteps all cultural issues by having her novel take place mostly in a fictional country, or the conspicuous absence of any reference to internalisation in her book. In the case of Pillars of the Earth I believe the author may have written exactly the book he intended, with exactly the techniques, devices and characters he needed to convey the message he wanted. But sweet Jesus fuck should he have wanted something else.
This book was bizarrely well received, with a Goodreads rating of over 4.3 after 700,000 ratings, frequent appearances in top book lists in newspapers, a TV miniseries etc etc etc. If you search for PoE on this very /r/books you will find nothing but praise in the top threads. Many positive …
I read the article about the author of Where the Crawdads Sing being involved in a murder and it made me question if there are other authors who have been involved in bad things. You never seem to hear about authors in the way you do other famous people. I would also like to avoid giving my money to authors that have done terrible things.
Edit: I’m sorry I didn’t realise this got posted a lot, I’ve never seen the question before and it seemed topical. Also I do realise that bad people can create beautiful things, I just don’t want to give them my money. I like supporting authors by buying their work and I want to know who to not do that for.
This was such a fun book! Reynolds slowly but steadily introduces little pieces of the universe in a way that is totally addictive, build the mystery, and make this an incredibly entertaining book to read.
Gentian line is one of the most powerful forces in the galaxy - one of the ‘lines’ of clones (called shatterlings) who have been traveling the galaxy since the start of the star-faring era six million years ago. The shatterlings of Gentian line travel alone, but they come together for a reunion every 200,000 years to compare what they have seen on their latest circuit around the galaxy.
Campian and Purslane are two shatterlings who have fallen in love and are traveling together against the rules of the line. They are running late to the upcoming reunion when they get a terrifying message - someone has attacked the reunion and killed almost all of the Gentians. Now it is up to them to determine who, or what, their enemy is before the entire line is wiped out.
The book …
If her Paksenarrion’s Tale can be glossed as “Woman with lots of real life military experience writes a D&D epic”, her Vatta series, which begins with “Trading in Danger” can be glossed as “Woman with lots of real life military experience writes a Traveller epic.”
I very much enjoy Moon. She might write slightly formulaic stuff, but it’s well written, a good adventure, and there’s always a twist. I am embarrassed to admit I came late to the Vatta series. If you like McCaffery, you’ll like Moon!
I finished the whole book in less that three days; such a page turner. It’s very well written competence porn!
If there are more like this, preferably with a similar setting, please hook me up!
I really enjoy Murderbot - such a fun, light read. I can tell you what the story is of each novella if you give me the opening chapter. But for the life of me, I could not tell you which title goes to which book, even if I could remember the actual title names.
I’m wondering if it is my aging brain doing this to me, but I’ve never had this problem with a series before. I could name every book in Stephen Donaldson’s Thomas Covenant tryptic of trilogies, Alastair Reynolds Renovation Space universe, Frank Herbert’s Dune series, and countless others blindfolded with my arms tied behind my back. But if you list out all the Murderbot titles I could not connect them to any of the books themselves. They make no sense to me - they aren’t descriptive enough in context to the stories. My brain just reads them as a couple of science-y words paired together.
So yeah, I’m wondering if it’s just my brain and failing memory or if anyone else …
So, I’ve been reading Vatta’s War and I’m 70 pages into the 5th book. I have enjoyed this series so far, but it wasn’t always because of the space battles or politics — it was because of all the business dealings.
I loved the scenes talking about where they decide to incorporate the business, trying to make ends meet by buying goods in one system and reselling them at a markup elsewhere. I loooove the ISC stuff where a new CEO has to come in and figures out the whole company has corrupt staff and weeding them out, as well as determining how they’ll stake it out considering the new changes in their sector.
So please just give me anything that runs heavy on business things! It can be an action series, whatever — just involving sci-fi businesses :)
I’m a HUGE Norse mythology buff, and would love recommendations for fun fantasy novels involving the Norse gods. I’m 2⁄3 of the way through Rick Riordan’s Magnus Chase series, which I’m quite enjoying. I have Runemarks lined up, too.
Books I’ve already read: “Norse Mythology” by Neil Gaiman (enjoyable, if not 100% accurate) “The Gospel of Loki” by Joanne Harris (a good light read) “The Wyrd” series by Alis Franklin (also liked this!)
If it helps, I do not like the first two Thor movies. I’m not a big fan of the MCU’s take on Norse mythology.
Thanks, everyone!
ETA: I have also read “The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul” by Douglas Adams, and “American Gods” by Neil Gaiman (LOVED that one, although Anansi Boys is still my favourite Gaiman book).
2nd ETA: I love the TV show Ragnarok! Also, recommendations for literature in Norwegian are fine too (I speak Norwegian).
3rd ETA: “The Witch’s Heart” is also on my list!