“There are a lot of fantasy writers today who work out their magic very methodically, and they… Reviewers praise them for it, and they’re very proud. I worked out an original magical system, and here are the rules of my magical system. But I’ve never done that because it seems to me that if you have a magical system, you don’t have magic, you have fake science. If every time you put out the eye of a newt and the wing of a bat or something and a dead man’s toenail in a pot, you get the same thing. That’s fake science. It’s something anyone can learn and they can do it. Real magic, if you look at…we don’t have real magic, but what passed for magic in the real world was unpredictable. They didn’t know. Well, you draw this on the floor and you’ll get a demon from hell. But that demon from hell shows up and, Oh, you drew it wrong. I’m going to eat you now. Things like that. Magic should be dangerous. It should …
Has a single sentence made you DNF( Did not finish) a book?
“Elvar ducked under pendulous testicles as the troll twisted and turned”
“swinging his axe at testicles that slammed into them like a hammer, and they both fell to the ground.”
I was reading Shadow of the Gods and enjoying it up to that point, but that absolutely killed it for me. I might return to it someday.
I am a huge fan of grim, dark, totally brootal storytelling. And R. Scott Bakker’s trilogy, which starts with The Darkness that comes Before, is consistently brought up whenever someone starts asking for such macabre recommendations. Ive seen this series mentioned in the same breath as Blood Meridian multiple times, for heaven’s sake. As far as I could tell, it was a Touchpoint for the unrelenting, cruel, blood-soaked sub-genre that I am an avid fan of.
I am about 500 pages into the book. A few chapters from the end and I am simply flummoxed. This book just isn’t dark, or intense, or hard-core. I am greatly enjoying it besides Bakker’s constantly sexist lens that he uses on only the women of the story. Besides that extremely tired and contrived mechanic, every other gritty element is a throwaway world-building moment, or on-par with any other naturalist fantasy novel. It reads like an epic fantasy with dark elements rather than an Iconic Dark Fantasy experience …
What in your opinion are the greatest/your favourite pieces of fantasy fiction ever made. This can be across all mediums: books, movies, tv shows, video games etc.
For me peak fantasy is:
Tolkien’s Legendarium
A Song of Ice and Fire
Berserk
The Stormlight Archive
Skyrim
Malazan
Dark Souls/Elden Ring
The Witcher
The First Law
The Wheel of Time
There’s so many more but for me this is peak fantasy. What to you are your favourite/greatest pieces of fantasy fiction ever made?
I was speaking with a librarian who shared with me an email they received from an influencer “Julie Kaminski” who has trademarked the phrase “The Walking Book Club” or any derivative of that. Apparently she sent a cease & desist email to our local library, and other libraries, for their use of the term “The Walking Book Club” for their walking-based book club. Further she recommends the public library become an affiliate or license the term from her program instead.
I found myself incredibly disappointed that an Influencer who wants to “Engage your mind & body in a community of audiobook lovers in sneakers with coach & trainer,” would first copywrite a semi-generic term like “The Walking Book Club” and further go after public libraries for their use of said common term. I would share with you a screen shot of the email and the trademark but I don’t know how to link images here. Instead here’s a …
And it was the most devastating thing I’ve ever read. Frankly, There’s no small amount of guilt over how I never realized exactly how much trouble she was in, and how much I bought into the marketing when I was younger. I can seriously remember getting into the “way to sexy” conversations. It made me realized how much my morals and my changed.
ON that note, the book itself made me realize just how much the paparazzi tore her apart. I was never exposed to that when I was younger. Not only that, but I never realized the immense amount of emotional toll she was under at any given time.
“This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only….If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you would like to share it with.”
If this is an actual hardbound book, the quote above would not have been written. Authors do need to get paid for their books but to be told that I can’t share the copy I bought with whoever just annoys me. I do recall sharing an ebook once (kindle). I couldn’t open it while my friend had it, which is fine. Now, it’s blocked. I can no longer share books. Will I purchase it for my friend, NOPE. They may not even enjoy the genre or the book.
Venting…this is just frustrating.
The writing style, the pacing, all the characters and the mixture between sci fi, fantasy and religion is masterful. I’m on a journey of reading all the Hugo winners and did read This Immortal before I read the Lord of Light, but this book is much better than that one. Chef’s kiss. Would definitely recommend it to everyone, believe the hype.
Been meaning to write this for awhile, I’m already almost finished with another book from a different series which, foreshadowing alert, is also an absolute stonker and I will try to put up some type of review for it.
I know a lot of people who come to this sub are database consumers so let me try to list some moe to give you an idea of what kinda experience the book is:
I’m a huge fan of the sci-fi genre and, so to speak, classical cyberpunk-like stuff (Altered Carbon, Neuromancer, Snow Crash, etc). However, my partner is not. He devours all types of fantasy books (though not urban ones), and for the last couple of days I’ve been thinking about what could be a great book to help him into science fiction. He likes The First Law, The Lord of the Rings, The Games of Thrones and is in love with the Stormlight Archive series. So, what would be your suggestions? I literally have no ideas in mind, so I’d appreciate some help).
I am interested to read some extremely fat future sci fi.
I would prefer for it to be somewhat contemporary since the scientific ideas will need to be quite “out there” given how far in the future we go… but I still want them to seem somewhat possible or credible to my 21st century mind.
Also, I’m not looking for a story that spans over millions of years necessarily , but rather just one that is typical in that it covers the life of characters in a certain place and time, but that time just happens to be extreeeeemely far in the future.
I see a lot of threads like this where people recommend series that go “all the way to the end, the heat death, and some even into a new beginning”…. Not really looking for that. I’m just looking for a story that takes place like a million years in the future and as a result the science and technology and galactic society is so advanced that it is almost beyond our comprehension. And an author who is smart enough to play with some really interesting …
After reading some classic sci-fi short stories, I’m thinking I’ve seen a post about novels in which we aren’t even sure we’re dealing with an intelligence.
Few short story examples, it talks so slow we hear it was a constant sound. It moves so slow it’s basically a rock we walked past (making other rocks we could see the trail from thousands of years work But when we get there it’s sitting still) But I think it’s been scaled up to entire nebulas.
When I say similar, what I’m looking for is that baroque/gothic feeling on a virtually empty, large, decrepit and dangerous spaceship.
I remember the scene in Revelation space aboard the lighthugger where the woman is making her way through a part of the ship that is “haunted” and there are janitor rats etc.
I would prefer it not to be military sci-fi, but I would like adventure/danger/fear/exploration and even horror.
Does anyone know of anything that has vibes like this?
I know this is a bit of a longshot but thanks in advance!
One that comes to mind for me is the Fargo woodchipper. Before I ever saw Fargo, I saw lots of references to a woodchipper and how shocking it was. Then it turns out that it’s there for barely 30 seconds of the film (and, IMO, not overly gruesome).
Another would be the final fight in The Karate Kid. All that’s remembered is the crane kick, but there’s so much more going on in that fight and the preceding battles.