I’ve just been reading the first book in the “Skullduggery Pleasant” series. It’s a fun little YA fantasy-detective novel, and other than your normal YA tropes being fairly front and center, it’s a fun time. I’ve enjoyed it.

The basic premise of the world is more-or-less just ripped directly from Harry Potter: there are people who can do magic, and they operate in the shadows and hide their society from most “normal people”. The main character, who lives in our world, becomes aware of this secret society, and begins exploring it and learning all the stuff about it.

But early on, as they’re establishing the world of secret magic-users and how they operate, it’s casually dropped that every community of magic-users on earth tries to discourage normal people from finding them out by disguising their neighborhoods as poor, run down, and crime ridden.

The mentor character then says (I’m approximating) “Any …

So, I was in a discussion where someone claimed that Brandon Sanderson and George R.R. Martin have similar prose, with the main difference being that Sanderson uses more metaphors. My immediate reaction was that this is one of the wildest takes I’ve ever heard.

To me, their writing styles couldn’t be more different—Martin’s prose is rich, immersive, and often lyrical, while Sanderson’s is much more utilitarian and direct. I don’t mean this as an insult to Sanderson, but I just don’t see how they compare.

Am I missing something here? Is there a case to be made that they have similar prose?

https://www.webnovel.com/profile/4327034922

Don’t know if this is allowed, but if this can go be reported by people that would be great - this seems skeevy as hell!

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. And then the dragons arrived.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness… And then the dragons arrived.

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. And then the dragons arrived.

You know the type. You finish the last page, sit there in silence, staring at the wall, questioning everything. Maybe it changed your outlook on life, your beliefs, or just made you think in ways you never had before.

For me, it was The 3 Alarms by Eric Partaker. His approach to structuring life into three core areas—Health, Relationships, and Career—just made everything click. I can’t unsee it now, and my life feels way more structured because of it.

What’s a book that did something similar for you?

It seems every few weeks we get some book commentator crank who emerges from the woodwork to complain that books are too identitarian and woke. In this poorly-researched, sloppy op-ed, Murkett decides to jump the shark and claim that this is the primary factor behind why people don’t read or enjoy reading anymore. Please.

Just about everything about this constantly repeated claim annoys me. The biggest issue I take is that this is often packaged as a new scourge on the book world. This is not so. As a literary scholar, I can attest that the obsession with books as vehicles for morality, virtue, etc., go back practically to the earliest days of the novel form, especially in the Anglophone world. The marketing of fiction on the basis of social values is nothing new and never really went away. The same is true of literary awards. Many people online hand-wring that awards like the Pulitzer or Booker are “political,” but the truth is they were always political. And I don’t mean this in the …

For me, it was the flowers in the attic series by VC Andrews. As crazy as it sounds, it was as if I actually knew the characters personally, and had a bond with each one of them. When they were happy, I was happy for them. When they cried, I hurt for them. And when the series was finally over, I cried so hard. I’m talking like literal body racking sobs. My heart ached for their family so badly. Obviously they are just made up characters, and I know I probably sound foolish. But I can’t help myself. I often find myself thinking about the characters and their story and wishing I could check in on them to see how they’re doing. Lol. Has this ever happened to anyone else? If so, what was the book or series that Grabbed onto your heart strings and refused to let go??

Look, I enjoy his books, they have great underlying ideas, good plot, have that classic SF feel. But he simply writes too many books and I don’t think you can maintain the quality of your work if your attention is divided across so many works at any given time - it is not humanly possible. He released 3 novels and one novella in 2024 and another novel was released in February of this year, similar numbers for 2022 and 2023 as well.

To be clear, he is still doing a very good job all things considered. But the books definitely feel slightly undercooked and rough around the edges, especially towards the last third of each. I recently finished Alien Clay and Service Model, both from 2024 - both very good books, but ultimately they are ⁷⁄₁₀ at best, while could have been a solid ⁹⁄₁₀ if given enough attention and care IMO. Curious if others have had the same feeling.

I don’t understand what the OP expect from these questions.

You think someone will give you an answer that will make you change your mind on whether you liked a book? Brother you just don’t like the book, just move on and read something else.

If you didn’t like a novel just talk about that explicitly, that makes discussion open, instead of being behind a facade when it’s clear you are just looking for confirmation bias.

Best could be, coolest, weirdest, most unique or just something you really liked.

Personally I found the aliens, the Ekt, from The Themis Files trilogy to be very cool and really unsettling as it was something I wasn’t expecting at all.

Over the last few years I’ve been getting increasingly interested in the brilliantly imaginative psychedelic art style of SF novels from the 1960s through to the 1980s, especially through blogs such as https://70sscifiart.tumblr.com/ Partly it’s due to nostalgia from childhood, when my uncle used to give me his old 1970s versions of classic novels like Ringworld and Dune (I still have the iconic Bruce Pennington artwork version of Dune on my shelf). But also, I find it somehow more immersive to get a picture of what the future looked like in the era these stories were written.

We’re all familiar with the idea of retro futurism, and we know when we read a SF novel from the 1960s it’s going to be a dated vision of the future, a “future” that reflects the era it was written. And so I often find it really jarring when publishers reprint a 50 year old novel but give it a modern high-tech looking cover, clearly in an attempt to convince modern readers the …

I live every day in this terrible world and work in an industry that doesn’t let me forget it. Instead of books that reflect this reality, I d love to read some contemporary-ish books that aren’t thinly veiled metaphors for how terrible this world is. Any escapism, please?

He was a captain. Then a detective. Now he’s just a rookie. Where did things go wrong?