Hi r/Fantasy,
To celebrate my debut novel’s semianniversary and over 300 ratings on Goodreads, I’m putting it on sale for the next two weeks! I know these numbers aren’t much in bestseller terms, but I’m thrilled. I also uploaded the first hour of the upcoming audiobook to YouTube, narrated by Benjamin Britton and with music by Marvin Kopp.
Dreams of the Dying is a fantasy-meets-mystery novel about a mercenary forced to confront his trauma during a mission to enter a dying king’s nightmares. People described it as “Inception in a Polynesian-inspired fantasy setting.”
It’s a slow burn and deals with some heavy subjects, so I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone, but so far the reception has been humbling: top Goodreads Reviewer Petrik Leo called it a “masterpiece” and “one of the best books he’s ever read.” For the video gamers out there, this novel is a spin-off of the free 100-hour Skyrim Total Conversion Enderal, for which I wrote the story and led the development.
The younger me cheered at the determined, quiet strength of Aragorn; the proud, balanced elegance of Legolas; Eowyn’s courage; Faramir’s devoted, silent love (for his brother and his father). Out of all of them, Samwise Gamgee, emerged unbowed and unchanged. Merry and Pippin became involved in politics and central to events both inside and outside The Shire. They married and had families. Frodo retreated to Hobbiton and wrote his book and suffered PTSD. Samwise returned home to the same home, same job and lived the life he always expected to live. Nothing bigger. Nothing smaller. That Magnificent Bastard!
I love being a mom, but I have never had a single moment when I thought “I want another baby, I miss having a baby!”. Honestly, every year older my daughter has gotten has just been more and more enjoyable, especially now that she’s excited about reading for herself.
She’s seven now, and she reads on her own pretty constantly, but we still have the ritual of reading books before bed. I loved this ritual when it was board books with words she didn’t understand, I loved it when they were rhyming books that she would memorize and recite with me, and I loved it when they were longer picture books, especially books I remembered from my own childhood. But in the last couple of years we’ve started reading chapter books, and I’m getting to share with her some of my FAVORITE stories, and it’s the most incredible experience.
We read the first few Harry Potter books 3 times, because she always wanted to start again when we were finished. Each …
Man’s search for meaning - Viktor Frankl.
There’s two parts of the book, the first one is about Frankl’s experience in as a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp. Frank who’s an educated psychiatrist, also tells the reader about the horrific things he saw, and how he observed people and how they were trying to cope with seemingly impossible obstacles. Frankl’ theorized that people whom find meaning in their suffering, can best cope with the horrifying situation they’re in. Frankl himself found strength in one day meeting his wife again, which made him continue on his journey, through the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp.
The first part gives insight into how people in the most dire situations tried to find a way to ‘move forward’ even when it seemed as all was lost.
The second part of the book is dedicated to logotherapy - one which he himself developed. Logotherapy is based on the concept that the biggest motivator in life is finding a sense of purpose and meaning. Thus, we …
I’m thinking internal pressure from yourself, or external from social media, upbringing, education, etc.
It was just a curious thought I had this morning. I read a lot, and certainly when I was younger I felt this pressure to finish every book I started, but I’m not sure where it came from. It’s only been in the last couple of years (I’m now 34) that I’ve been able to stop reading if I didn’t like a book. I was curious to see if anyone else felt this?
I’ve collected the links for all the novelettes and short stories freely available online, and figured it would be a good idea to share it with this subreddit.
For three of the unavailable novelettes, I’ve given an Amazon link to the collection or anthology. For the two other unavailable stories, I’ve given links to explain their absence.
Best Novelette
[Re-post]
Read it the first time last year during lockdown and I knew something had changed about my perception of the world. But I needed to wait until my reread before I could review it.
So, here we are.
This book is set in a world called Arbre. Similar to our planet in many ways but so very different in others. There are 2 factions of the human population called, the Mathic World (Theoretical scientists, Philosophers, Scribes, Martial Artists etc - Truth seekers of the world) and the Seaculars/Extramuros (Everyone outside the Mathic world). The people of the Mathic world (called Avouts) live within walled Monasteries (called Concents) - a monk-ish lifestyle, completely isolated from the Seacular world so as to preserve the sanctity of their pursuit of knowledge. These Concents are only opened at every 1, 10, 100 and 1000 years’ (yeah, we’ve got super old dudes) anniversaries, and a mingling with the Seaculars happens, only for 10 days (these are called Apert). …
Nothing against Adams, he just seems like the obvious answer and I want to hear about other authors. Mine is a novelette by Connie Willis called At the Rialto. It mixes the wackiness of quantum phenomena with the banality of a science conference about that very topic. Here’s an audio version from Escape Pod.
Like Red Mars, a bit of a challenge to get through the first half, but after about the three-quarter mark it was a quick read. Loved this book so much. Shout-out to my man Saxifrage Fucking Russell for becoming fully radicalized and murdering a shitton of fascists with a goddamn firestorm. His whole arc is so great. That is all.
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I was wondering whether there’s ever been a movie that leaves the audience with a very morally bankrupt protagonist who is clearly worse than the person that they were in opposition to or in conflict with. Keep in mind that I’m not referring to movies with anti-heroes, or where the hyper-stylized nature of the main character’s violence and malice is supposed to be what keeps the audience intrigued. I’m talking about movies that establish (or at least feel like they established) who the “good guy” and the “bad guy” is at the beginning of the film, but proceeds to explore and deconstruct their individual moralities, value systems and incentives until the audience no longer feels like the good guy’s the good guy or the bad guy’s the bad guy anymore.