So I finished the first three Malazan books and I’m probably tapping out.

I did enjoy parts of them. The world is massive, the battles are incredible, and the lore is genuinely fascinating (although sometimes a bit goofy with “undead dinosaurs with goofy names”). There are a lot of rule-of-cool moments that absolutely land.

But I don’t think I’m continuing, for a few reasons (spoilers included):

1. The tone is just… relentlessly dark.

People on reddit told me Malazan isn’t grimdark, that it’s about hope, compassion, humanity, etc. And sure, those themes are there. But reading it? It’s 80-85% brutality, death, suffering, SA, purges, genocides, death marches, horrific torture. After finishing Deadhouse Gates and Memories of Ice, I felt drained.

I didn’t even feel that hopeless after finishing The First Law, which is basically the poster child for grimdark. Malazan feels like it avoids the “grimdark” label on a technicality. And I’ve heard the SA content only ramps up in later books, …

I would get confused as how someone could misspell a main character’s name that is mentioned like 70 times in a book (unless it is like John or Adam).

But that’s because I’ve never listen to audiobooks, and a lot of people do. They just kinda know how the name sounds, but not really the correct spelling.

Edit: So I misspell “mispell”. English is my 2nd language and this word is weird.

I’m reading this book, and the big evil guy basically has shadow superpower (or he is shadow itself), and he has been terribly hurt before. We know this through the protagonist. Then the protagonist went to an old prison with only one jail cell and found a journal that says “the prisoner keeps screaming”, “they tortured him with light” and “he likes the dark”. And still the MC was asking himself “What were they keeping down here? hmm.”

Why do authors love dragging stuff out? Just let him think “So this was what they do to him”. That’s it. Why make him seem so dumb just to prolong the mystery for another 2 pages?

Edit: I’m enjoying this trilogy, and this is the last book. But the more you read, the more you get annoyed with stuff.

So I’m referring to worlds where the characters see their world as your typical fantasy landscape but the cities and weapons are so powerful they think it must be from an ancient civilization or just simply work from the Gods. But it’s actually just ancient technology that has warped to fit the modern society because of apocalypses/war.

So something like Shannara and there’s another series but I don’t want to say in case new readers don’t know. Hell I didn’t know till I watched a video recommending it. (Yes, that one). I only mention Shannara because mostly everyone knows it’s set in a post-apocalyptic Earth.

But are there any other series like that? Especially if we the reader are already given the information beforehand and experiencing the world from characters who don’t know. So maybe don’t recommend a series where the reveal is that it’s actually Earth thousand of years in the future. But a series where we already know …

I’ve got a 19yo male renting a room at my place. He’s seen the (literally) thousands of books I have, and thinks he might like to finally read one.

I’m delighted to introduce someone to reading, but there’s a problem. I doubt I’ve got a single book suitable. He’s unsophisticated, not super mature, his English isn’t great and he’s not well-versed in Western culture. YA fantasy would probably be ideal, but this is something I know next to nothing about.

Can anyone help with suggestions for YA fantasy that doesn’t need ANY background knowledge of Western cultural tropes? Bonus points if there’s something that has an Indian background.

For me it was The Will of the Many. What was it for you?

Gisèle Pelicot’s memoir ‘A Hymn to Life’ will be released on Tuesday (17th Feb).

An Arizona bill (SB 1435) is being considered today and would expand restrictions on what minors can access in pubic libraries. If passed it would make it a Class 5 felony (up to 2.5 years in prison) for librarians or school employees to refer or facilitate access to material defined as sexually explicit.

The bill’s definition is much broader than typical obscenity law. It includes textual descriptions of sexual conduct or even touching someone’s clothed buttocks. Legal experts quoted in the article say that under the wording, books like Romeo and Juliet, the Bible and encyclopedias could all technically fall under the ban. The bill doesn’t include the usual exemption for works with serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value (although maybe that still wouldn’t help).

First Amendment scholars argue the felony penalties are likely unconstitutional and would chill librarian speech. Similar legislation in Idaho led at least one small library to effectively …

So I got this indie book from a book fair, because I’m always​ looking to support new authors being one myself.

It was quite fun in the beginning. Clearly written by an amateur, but the writing style was fun. But some pages later, ​something felt … off. I tried​ my best to ignore it. If I could pretend hard enough, I could make myself believe it wasn’t AI.

But more pages in now, I can’t pretend anymore. It’s just paragraphs and paragraphs of word salad and cringey generic AI phrases.

The first few chapters were written by a human. Then the later chapters were​ pure AI generated crap. Most of which doesn’t even make sense.

I literally feel like crying. Idk why. This is the first time it happened to me, and I now know why readers are always complaining about finding an AI written book. I have never felt so betrayed in my life. Never.

I dunno why I’m reacting so harshly but I was looking forward to re read the book with my little sister once …

I built a small collection of sci-fi novels and donated a handful to my local library. They were put on the catalogue on exactly a week ago and today I had a look to see if they were on the shelf while I was looking for something else.

Two of them were not there and when I checked the online catalogue, it was confirmed they were borrowed within days of being made available.

Now, this might seem like a pointless thing to post about, but it made me realise that somewhere in a town as small as mine there was somebody who jumped at the chance to read a work once access to it was provided and that made me happy.

We take libraries for granted, I think. If we ever lose them, what will we have?

it was so imaginative and i could not have expected one book to hold so many wonderful ideas. the best part for me was definitely the aliens. the tines and the skroderiders are so fascinating. the idea of the packs using group think almost like distributed computing is so wonderfully new (to me). everything in this books screams that it was written by a computer scientist. the prologue was impeccable, the introduction of the tines unveiled as a wonderful puzzle, never being described more than necessary. the net of a million lies is so cool, and all the (few) descriptions of stellar systems so vivid.

i wish the blight was explored more deeply, i never did feel like i knew what they wanted. but i was more interested in the tines storyline anyway. i will miss scriber forever. the ending was a bit deus ex machina but it was built up to be that way from the beginning so who cares. the final part about greenstalk riding the thrashing surf, to remain a low rider eternally, i loved it all. …

So at last I finally got around to reading this collection. William didn’t write a whole lot of short stories. He’s written at least 11 stories in his career, with one from the early nineties. If anything, he’s best remembered for his novels, but, and many would agree with me on this one, this collection should not be missed out.

“Burning Chrome” collects ten of those of those stories, which are also some of his earliest, from 1977-1985. These stories are still peak Gibson at his best, even with a few collaborations with others like Bruce Sterling, John Shirley and Michael Swanwick.

Much of the material in it is still very much in the cyberbunk style, which includes the first stories set in the Sprawl like “Johnny Mnemonic” (in which Molly Millions makes her first appearance!), which is really good.

But you also get a couple of pretty surreal stories like “The Gernsback continuum” and “The Belonging Kind”. Now those …

Hugo voting opened, so I’m back again to inquire what everyone here read from last year and what’s good. I’m interested in what all of you found. What was great from 2025? I’ll throw my own suggestions below, though I add an additional rule not to include anyone who has already won a Hugo.

Novel

There Is No Anti-Memetics Division by QNTM – A meme is something that gets stuck in people’s heads whether they like it or not. An anti-meme is therefore something that refuses to be remembered. QNTM throws out a great many wild ideas about what an anti-meme could be and what it could do as the Anti-Memetics division tries to learn more about them and survive them. It’s a fast read, throwing out interesting concepts and a lot of action. The only problem with this novel is that it’s probably ineligible because it was previously self-published. BUT maybe some places allow for the proper publication to count for something. In any case, highly worth …

From Robert Sawyer on Facebook: “My great friend and hard-SF colleague Jeffrey A. Carver passed away yesterday at just 76. Rest in peace, brother.”

Jeffrey’s website: Science Fiction Worlds of Jeffrey A. Carver

His Nebula nominated novel was Eternity’s End

From the biography on his website:

“I was also, in 1995, the host of an educational television series, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing, aimed at teaching junior high school students the basics of science-fiction writing. That material later grew into the online course “Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy,” originally published by MathSoft, Inc., and aimed primarily (but not exclusively) at younger aspiring writers. Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy is now online and free to the public at WriteSF.com.”

What are some good books or short stories featuring megastructures? It’s one of my favorite concepts in sci-fi and I’m always on the lookout for more. My favorites so far are Wolfe’s Book of the Short Sun, Banks’ Matter (which got me into his Culture books! Have since devoured them all!), and Nehei’s BLAME!. I tried to get into Ringworld by Larry Niven but it really wasn’t my cup of tea although I know it is a classic example in the genre.