I absolutely love the massive scope, huge worlds with tons of lore and characters and stuff, but I’m pretty sensitive to tone. I don’t like them to be terribly sad.
For example, I’m reading the Stormlight books right now, and I’m really really enjoying Words of Radiance, but The Way of Kings was hard to get through because a good 2/3rds of it is Kaladin being miserable.
For that reason I haven’t picked up GoT or Name of the Wind yet because they seem to be really sad.
I’ve asked around Reddit before, and was recommended things like Wayfarers (which is great), Mystic and Rider, things like that. But I like the ones that are even larger in scope than those. The type of book that looks like a Bible on your shelf cause it’s so, ahem, t h i c c.
Also bonus for living writers/ongoing series, and 2x combo bonus for books that have LGBT characters and aren’t super backwards about gender.
What do you guys think?
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At almost 3500 pages, The Chronicles of the Black Gates is the longest release Wraithmarked Creative has ever put out, and for good reason! Comprising off all 5 books of the original internationally best-selling series, it is the definition of a tome, and one of the best-rated epic fantasy series out there to date!
EDIT: It’s also FREE on Kindle Unlimted!
You don’t want to hear me talk though. You wanna know what the book is about!
With a forbidden power, Asho is going to save the very empire that enslaved him.
A war fueled by a demonic heresy is about to engulf the Ascendant Empire. Agerastian raiders, armed with black fire and an ancient hatred, seek to sever the ancient portals that unite the realm.
And in so doing, destroy it.
Asho—a squire still scarred by the shackles of his past—sees his new …
The original topic was was deleted, but that thread contained some very good information on the current state of S&S publishing, particularly the comment left by u/HowardAJones. To save that resource, and to foster the conversation, I’ve called upon the dark powers to revive the dead …
Here’s Howard’s comment in full:
I was summoned by u/Glass-Bookkeeper5909 and lo, I have emerged through a shining portal.
In all seriousness, I’m glad Glass-Bookkeeper5909 contacted me, because I haven’t been on Reddit much the last few weeks because – and this is directly relevant – I was putting finishing touches on a new sword-and-sorcery novel.
In regards to whether or not there is an audience who still prefers it? Yes, but I don’t know how large it is. It is *very* difficult to break through all the noise and get attention to an author who isn’t already well known, or a new magazine, or what have you.
But then, as some of you …
I waited a week for this boxed set to arrive, only to find Amazon sent it in a paper bag with no packing so it got beat up in transit.
https://i.imgur.com/6tuARNK.jpeg
All 8 corners of the boxed set are damaged along with the corners of the two outside books. I already have a return & replacement on the way.
This is the 2nd delivery in a week that’s shown up, beat to hell, in a paper envelope. I usually try to check for local business options, guess I’ll be ordering even less from Amazon if this is their new quality of shipping.
Edit: Not 3rd Party. “Ships from Amazon.com, Sold by Amazon.com” right under the buy now button.
Edit2: Update, replacement received and to no one’s surprise, it was shipped in a bag and damaged, too. Weirdly, the first set was not shrink-wrapped, (a return?) which would account for the corners being so beat up. This one was wrapped and the corners aren’t quite as bad, but they managed to cut the wrap and tear the …
I just want to start out by saying that I am not endorsing Amazon or suggesting you not use your local independent book shops but these are just my observations.
So I am buying quite a few books from a certain book series and spending a decent amount. Thought I’d use an independent book shop so they would get my money and not a big corporation like Amazon…
They had to order them in as they don’t stock them.. Understandable. They finally came in after a week or so and were shipped out via pretty slow mail method.. Okay fair enough, faster is costly I guess. After over a week of waiting only half actually arrived. So now the whole process has to be started again for the missing books.
So far it’s taken the best part of two weeks and I only have half of what I originally ordered.
I’m not complaining as such as I prefer these people get the money and not big corporations but it’s pretty obvious that a good majority of people wouldn’t put up …
It seems like so many authors don’t have a good grasp on how long it would take to cross a country or a continent on foot or by horse, especially in situations where there aren’t decent roads. In many scenarios, you would be lucky to make it 20 miles a day (probably less if you have to stop to hunt and gather for food, Oregon Trail-style). It takes me right out of the narrative every time I encounter something like a leisurely three day stroll to a city implied to be a couple hundred miles away, or an army of thousands fighting their way across an entire continent in a couple of weeks. Not to mention the logistics of making sure their is enough food and water for everyone, or the time and effort it takes to look after horses. I get that no one wants to read pages of details about how the characters get from one significant plot location to the next, but it is a huge failure of research when authors get the basic details wrong, especially in historical settings where it is …
Sorry, this might be a bit of a rant, but there are many posts in this sub about book censorship, and there are consistently comments under them that I feel deserve a general response.
They usually go something like this:
“LMAO, schools banning books? Kids will actually just seek out anything taboo, this is just free advertising for them!”
“Don’t they understand the Streisand effect? This is guaranteed to just blow up as news and backfire!”
Even at their best, comments like these are coping mechanism based on a just world fallacy, desperately wanting to believe that all will be well in the end, that human nature tends towards freedom, that censorship just simply doesn’t work at accomplishing it’s goals.
The thing is… it obviously does work.
We can all look at dictatorships that successfully prop up the regime’s support rates, by denying negative information to their population. We can all look at school systems that provide …
I don’t mean to be insincere with the question; it’s a legitimate one.
I have a large personal library I’m quite proud of, but my girlfriend has been urging me to sell it off because I don’t need all those books. And the more I thought about it, I realized I didn’t have a response to that. There’s no real point to holding onto things years after you’ve read them.
But what’s your take?
The Animals in That Country by Laura Jean McKay has won the 2021 Clarke Award.
Many congrats to Laura Jean McKay. It’s an astonishing novel, and by far the best on this year’s shortlist, I think.
Himdag - by Steven Hobson
The book is written like a poem
Here are some reviews:
https://www.amazon.com/Himdag-Steven-Hobson/dp/1483492427
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43065524-himdag
Many thanks to any who give it a chance
I just finished Revelation Space, the first book of the series, and that was a pretty big disappointment beacause of one dimensional characters and embarassing dialogues (the worldbuilding was amazing though). I wanna take a break before starting Redemption Ark and eventually Absolution Gap and found out that The Mote in God’s Eye is often considered as a wonderful book. Is it worth a read?
LATE EDIT: I’m ok with one dimensional characters, for example Clarke’s characters in The City and The Stars or Childhood’s End are not complex at all but that’s just fine. In Revelation Space, anyway, being a “contemporary” novel and hard SF space opera, I expected complexity of some sort. All of this just to say I’m fine if characters in a classic SF book such as Mote are not deep.
You know, PrintSF that I can listen to on a walk! I like National Review’s The Great Books, particularly when it covers science fiction. Any other suggestions?
I recently finished PKDs UBIK and Mievilles PSS, and, although the two don’t have much in common, they share a certain weirdness, and surreal-ness, in the way they both use really cool and trippy concepts. I’ve read sci-fi before, of course, but I had only read works by asimov and clarke and other authors in the similar vein, but they never left a mark on me like these two did. Any recommendations for what I could read next?
Edit: I’ve received great recommendations so far! Wanted to add that I think I might prefer soft sci fi over hard sci fi a little bit. You know, something that has a little bit of fantasy as well, like PSS.
Here’s the shortlist…
1) The Infinite - Patience Agbabi,
2) The Animals in That Country - Laura Jean McKay,
3) The Vanished Birds- Simon Jimenez,
4) Edge of Heaven - RB Kelly
5) Chilling Effect - Valerie Valdes,
6) Vagabonds - Hao Jingfang.
Personally, I think that this is an extraordinarily weak shortlist. I’ve read them all since it was announced, and I’m just absolutely baffled by some of the choices. Some of these books are as close to objectively bad as you can get: cliche-riddled, turgid prose, unoriginal concepts, there’s even out-and-out plagiarism. Chilling Effect is the worst book I’ve read in years.
The Animals in That Country, however, is very good. I would love it to win. It’s original, abstract, emotionally powerful, with amazing allegorical potential. A beautiful book.
As for the rest of them…oh man. They ignored books by James Bradley, Anne Charnock, Aliya Whiteley, M. John Harrison…. in favour of …
Exactly what the title is. I’m curious what other professions have “their” movies that are a must watch. Office Space has aspects of office life that everyone can relate to if you work in cubicles. Would Clerks be for those who work in retail, Waiting for those in food, and Super Troopers for law enforcement? Just looking for relatable movies, even if the movie is over the top unrealistic.
Update: Thank you all for participating and for the upvotes and rewards. There are some fantastic movies I’m going to have to start watching on here. I had no idea this thread would take off like this. Thank you all!