I’ve seen that it is very frequent for posts to appear with requests like ‘I want a story where a gay dragon tamer meets an imperial soldier’, or ‘books where the world is post apocalyptic and a new civilisation is rising’.
I don’t have anything against those kind of posts, but it does make me curious because of how much it differs from the process I usually follow looking for new literature.
Isn’t that kind of search extremely limiting, reducing the chances that you find good quality books? Isn’t the interest in a book enormously diminished by having already decided the story you want to be told, rather than being surprised or seeing where the road leads, so to speak?
Just curious to hear the opinion of people on the topic.
I’ve been on my Wheel of Time journey and I’m currently on my way through book 6. When I first started out this series, I would look up threads on this sub about the series, and 95% of them were very negative. Sexism, pacing issues, bad characters, a boring plot, etc. It kind of soured me on the fact that I spent money on the first five books.
Now, that I’m on book 6, I feel like I’m reading a completely different series to everyone else. It’s not perfect, but I feel like the hate around this series is pretty crazy, especially since it had sold over 100 million copies. I like almost all of the characters, and the world building is extremely impressive. I also think Jordan’s prose is really great.
I just wanted to know what a lot of you guys think of the series? People who enjoy it and people who don’t.
Upon finishing up all of Sanderson’s works, taking a break for some trash fiction (Jack Reacher… Boy do I enjoy them though), I needed something new to read. In so many places on this sub people seemed to point to this trilogy, which I had never heard of, as a must read.
Well, I can say I thought the first book was very good, but maybe not great. About 150 pages into book 2 though, that all gets thrown out the window. The chapter in question involves Glotka and a big holy crap moment (which is all I’ll say for spoiler purposes). In that moment this book became phenomenal. I am now 3⁄5 through book 2 and can’t put it down. I’m not a particularly fast reader but at this rate I’ll be through the series before July is out.
So to you fine fantasy loving folks, a big THANK YOU for pointing me in this direction (bonus points to anyone who can tell me what to read next lol).
So I just made it through “Babel” and while I found a lot to respect in the Poppy War, Babel despite its interesting premise felt really underwhelming to me, especially towards the end.
Post Canton it feels like 90 % of conversations dissolve into some Platonic dialogue over colonialism and capitalism. Honestly didn’t much care for the books depiction of academia, but I am giving Mrs. Kuang the benefit of actually having experience with a humanities faculty as opposed to me.
And while Robin can ( too a far lesser degree imho) empathized with in a way similar to Rin, he just never got a similar clear corruption arc with people calling him out on his bullshit.
I think Babel really needed a more rational character like Kitay to stick around for longer (maybe Anthony or perhaps Dr. Chakrawaty).
Hype can be a dangerous thing, whether self built up or by others. Always see posts about things that didnt live up to hype or expectations, but what if we flip it?
What things lived up to the hype for you?
I’m about finished with Malazan, as a whole Im enjoying it, but I want to specifically talk about Bugg and Tehol. They killed it. For those who dont know, they dont show up until book 4 or 5 and I had heard a lot about them and how great they are, so a lot of hype and Steven delivered with these two. Easily my favorite duo and always worth many laughs.
Curse of Chalion and Lies of Lock Lamorra also both lived up to the hype and recommendations on how excellent they are
Google did actually win a legal case in 2013 allowing them to continue scanning books.
And you’ll get up to $1,000 in digital ads, pro-bono consulting, media support, fundraising tools like fundlibraries.org and much more.
How can anyone, at any point in time consider this a love story? How did Hollywood and Broadway and Lana del Rey get it so wrong?
On so many moments he calls himself her father. Refers to her as a child. Is extremely explicit in how wrong their relationship is. He himself shows signs that he recognizes the abuse he puts Dolores through, but for some reason in media he’s portrayed as the handsome and desirable protagonist?
I haven’t watched any of the movies and only picked up this book because I listened to a podcast about it before knowing what Lolita was, and this text is really difficult to read.
Earlier on when he was married to Charlotte, the way the prose is framed I sometimes forget that Dolores is a child. I have to actively remind myself that she’s 12 and not 20 or older. I think that was the intention of the writer, to show how a monster can rationalize his thinking and trick people into believing him.
However, after the night at the Enchanted Hotel, and his thoughts are …
Like the title says. There’s a huge English speaking population over there, surely out of 1.4 billion people there’s some SF writers worth reading?
The book expects a lot from its reader. A background in Quantum Physics and Computer Science would truly enhance your experience of it. I kept the glossary of terms at hand for the first few chapters and repeatedly went back to it for looking up every little thing. And it helped a lot later on. Not to mention, Jean le Frambeur is a very interesting character, or at least one of them is.
I will probably read something easy before revisiting the second book in the trilogy.
I’ve seen some shade thrown his way in this sub before, as well as a lot of love, so I’m just wondering what people here think of his work generally. My opinion is already set; I love his style and will gobble up anything he writes from now on, but I’m just curious about what everyone else here thinks.
I’m aware that I’m probably just posting this because I’m in that withdrawal state after you finish a book/series that you loved so much that you grieve a bit when it’s over.
This chunky 748-page standalone novel was published back in 1990. It doesn’t seem to get a ton of love so I wanted to give it a shout out. I will try to avoid major spoilers.
Earth is one of those ‘cast of thousands’ books that were popular around that time - lots of different characters and narrative strands which eventually come together. A few could probably have been cut IMHO. It’s a near-future thriller set in the 2040’s in which a micro black hole has fallen into the Earth’s core. The plot starts with figuring out whether it’s going to destroy the entire planet and winds up somewhere quite different. From a hard science point of view I think it’s clear some of this is Not How Things Would Work, but it’s forgivable. The whirlwind finale was gripping enough that I stayed up pretty late to finish it.
Setting a book in the near future is notoriously tricky, but Earth manages to get a fair amount right - Brin has scenes where …