For the longest time, I’ve been a bit of a fantasy snob. I don’t give books a chance. Either you capture me in the first 50 pages, or I drop you and never speak of you again. I only wanted epic fantasy, strong character building, no YA, etc.
And I hated, with the fury of a thousand suns, the entire idea of a LitRPG.
I had read a total of 12 pages of “He who fights monsters”, and felt I had killed off a braincell each page. Beyond that I refused to even look at things in the genre. But color me surprised when I’m stuck on a plane this weekend, no wifi, and all I had a copy of “Dungeon Crawler Carl” I had downloaded onto the e-reader at some point. Since my headphones were bluetooth vs a 3.5mm adapter, it was either hate read that or watch 6 episodes of the office with no audio. So reading it was.
Holy shit. I’m now on book 5, and I can’t stop. It’s simply fantastic. The plotline, while not deep, isnt as shallow as I …
Mine has to be “Once you’ve got a task to do, it’s better to do it than live with the fear of it”. Mostly because I actually use it in real life a lot 😆😆
I hate when an author makes their character just some person that everyone else plots around and makes the world move and they’re just… well just there.
I was reading a book recently and there were like 4 or 5 different factions with super interesting people who were smart, devious, cunning creating all these plans and counter plans then the main character just wondering around and kind of being dragged one way or another constantly, I mean cool if it’s the start of a story and they lack the information, ability or training to contest but when you’ve shown them to be capable but for the plot they just get caught up in everyone else’s plans SUCKS, I mean your main character is who 90 percent of people will read the book for.
…. don’t judge a book by its cover lol - my first impression was dead wrong.
I’m almost done with the first book and very excited to read the rest of her work.
She is definitely reverred on this sub for a reason. If anyone else has the same reservation as I did, do yourself a favor and read Assassin’s Apprentice.
This is a criticism i’ve seen here for worlds like the witcher and first law which to me are some of the best fictional worlds ever created.
Just because the protagonist doesn’t find a magical book just at the right time that tells him about long lost magic from a thousands years ago to give him an unfair advantage over the enemy (basically every cosmere book) or because he or she don’t know how exactly their powers work by book 2 doesn’t mean the world building is bad. In fact for the 2 series I mentioned the inaccuracies and vagueness actually allow different themes (religion, racism, conflict) to blossom naturally. Meanwhile in series with “good” world building where everything is discovered just at the right moment conflict needs to be created unnaturally from characters acting like insecure teenagers who can’t communicate properly (cough cough wheel of time).
Anyway thank you for reading my rant, I’m probably getting downvoted to hell.
What aspect of a book , author , genre , trope etc etc… makes you nope out of there?
I’m late but I finally started the Chronicles of Narnia for the first time since I was about 9.
The stories themselves are good. I enjoy the world that C.S. Lewis built, it’s fantastical and nonsensical and fun. I’m currently on “the silver chair” so still working my way through the books.
I don’t like Aslan. But then again I also don’t have any love for the Christian god. When people said he was basically Lion Jesus I thought it was an exaggeration. NOPE. He is omniscient, brings people from the brink of death, dies for the sins of Edmond, comes back to life, TURNS WATER TO WINE (that was such a random throw away I almost said ‘oh come on’ out loud). Then he flat out tells Lucy and Ed that he is known by another name in their world and they’ll find him there.
It’s so heavy handed any time Asland is brought around it’s hard for me not to be dragged out of the story. I actually love books that have religious …
I really liked it over all! I liked McCurdy’s short, snappy style even though I thought the back third of the book was a bit too sparse.
What stood out to me the most was how finishing the book recontextualizes the title. I had seen this book recommended a lot and I just knew it was about an abusive stage mom. Before going into the book, I thought it would be more angry and vindictive and vicious about the mom’s death. It was heartbreaking that there was so much grief towards her mom’s passing.
It wasn’t I’m glad my mom died because she was evil. It was I’m glad my mom died because otherwise I never would have been able to recover and live, and it was a sign of growth that she was finally focusing on herself instead of her mother.
I’m glad I listened to the audiobook since she read it. I did like icarly as a kid so it’s just wild to think about everything that was going on behind the scene
Just finished Diaspora and I absolutely understand the hype now. When it comes to hard sci-fi this man is simply in a league of his own.
Did you know Egan made a website with animated Java applets just to illustrate the wormhole physics in his universe (Kozuch theory)?
Friends, the number of tabs I have open on Wikipedia is simply staggering. The creativity, the depth, the originality. I’m just awestruck.
What should I read next? I’m thinking Permutation City maybe…
I love Ted Chiang and have read all his stuff a few times. What really separates him from other authors for me is that he is equally, if not more, focused on the craft of telling the story and the characters in it as he is on the science/speculative aspects. Which writers are doing that now? I mean, specifically, more current writers, people who have published their first work in the last decade or two, more or less?
Edit: I should have mentioned that writers like Borges, Burroughs, Ishiguro, Atwood, LeGuin, Ballard, Delaney, etc I already know well. I’m looking for more current writers, and ones who fall squarely into the sci-fi category in the book store, as opposed to older writers who have already been recognized for their work.
My mistake, sorry!
I enjoy reading sci-fi novels where there is no ftl and instead things are centered around relativistic travel. I think things can get cool and weird when there’s super long timelines and stuff— like House of Suns or A Deepness in the Sky. Do any suggestions come to mind?
Hey there. I am looking for some bleak, existential sci fi books. Something that will really make me feel like shit. Something with a similar vibe to I have no mouth but I must scream, Soma (video game), Annihilation (movie), various black mirror episodes where a consciousness is trapped in infinity, or the novella A Short Stay In Hell (this one isnt sci fi per-say, but it was existentially terrifying and literally put me in a mental funk for a few days).
Any recommendations?
Edit : I appreciate all the answers, but it seems like lots of you didn’t quite read my whole post haha. I’m looking for existentially terrifying bleak books, not just misery porn
I would like to recommend Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice. It’s the story of small Indigenous community in northern Ontario that copes with what is apparently the end of civilization as we know it. This quiet thriller shows how the people — and a culture that has already been broken — cope under these circumstances. It was so compelling that I barrelled through it in four days.
He agreed to stay back. Cooper asked anyone if they would go down to Millers planet but the extreme pull of the black hole nearby would cause them to experience severe time dilation. One hour on that planet would equal 7 years back on earth. Cooper, Brand and Doyle all go down to the planet while Romilly stays back and uses that time to send out any potential useful data he can get.
Can you imagine how terrifying that must be to just sit back for YEARS and have no idea if your friends are ever coming back. Cooper and Brand come back to the ship but a few hours for them was 23 years, 4 months and 8 days of time for Romilly. Not enough people seem to genuinely comprehend how insane that is to experience. He was able to hyper sleep and let years go by but he didn’t want to spend his time dreaming his life away.
It’s just a nice interesting detail that kind of gets lost. Everyone brings up the massive waves, the black hole and time dilation but no one really mentions the struggle Romilly …