Wow, she seems determined to burn all her bridges in Hollywood, if there are any left to burn, that is.

I think it’s pretty safe to say that despite his popularity, Sanderson can often be polarizing on book-related subs. You either love what he does or don’t really vibe with it. Personally, I fall more in the latter camp - I don’t think he’s particularly bad or anything but I’ve also never been all that impressed with his works. He does have a talent for some pretty cool worldbuilding concepts and the magic systems can be inventive but I find that he falls short in characters, prose and dialogue, which I tend to hold in higher regard. But that’s well-trod ground - none of those critiques are anything new.

What I do appreciate about Sanderson is that how much he seems to just enjoy the craft of writing. I’m a hobby writer myself, and have been writing for many years. I’ve never really seriously thought about publishing - maybe one day - but I have a lot of ideas and concepts and characters floating around in my head and I just like to …

For me, it is Brent Weeks for what he did with The Blood Mirror + The Burning White.

A hat trick of bad decisions:

!1. Making a God actual presence in the story, that can fix everything, and actually does it;!<

!2. Building up a villain for 5 books, only to delete him in one page, without any fanfare;!<

!And, worst of all:!<

!3. Making people read chapters from POV of a character that objectively does not exist. !<

Man, its been years, but every time I randomly remember this series, I get mad about it again.

When I was a kid, someone gave me a copy of Captain Blood, and that started my obsession with pirates and sea adventures. For a while, I read a lot of pirate novels, and I absolutely loved that kind of story.

Recently I found myself thinking about those books again. These days I mostly read fantasy, and it made me realize that maybe I’ve just been looking in the wrong places, but I don’t really see many fantasy books that capture the same feeling as those classic pirate adventures.

I don’t just mean books with pirates in them. I mean stories with that old adventure vibe: life at sea, dangerous voyages, mysterious islands, naval battles, hidden treasure, and the sense that the world is still waiting to be explored.

Is pirate fantasy just a niche, or are there more books like this than I realize? And if it is a niche, why do you think it never became as popular as so many other fantasy subgenres?

We all know Tolkien, Hobb, Sanderson, Erickson, Jordan, Abercrombie, Loach, Donaldson, Pratchett, but who are the lesser celebrated authors who wrote a great series.

One writer i never see mentioned is Markus Heitz of the Dwarves series. Tightly written, interesting plots, well paced action throughout.

Can anyone else recommend a lesser celebrated fantasy author?

I recently started the Essalieyan series. I saw it recommended here for its noble house politics.

I liked the first book, Hunter’s Oath. It was fun. I liked Stephen quite a bit. The atmospheric writing and central mystery were very enjoyable. The noble house in Breodanir was fine, and its custom rituals were unique. But in the second book, the story went to a different country, and we were introduced to a new character who seemed to be the main protagonist now. She was a street orphan like Stephen. Stephen was somewhat sidelined, which wasn’t a big deal because I liked the central plot.

Everything was more or less okay, but the noble houses in the new country were just like a college dorm. They are literally structured like a dorm. We already get a not-so-subtle hint that the new protagonist will become the leader of the main noble house.

Every character in a house lacked proper motivation. Imagine killing people and giving up your life for a dorm. And the politics, my god, are …

“Artificial intelligence labs are in a new arms race to buy up millions of rare books, slicing them open, scanning the pages and pulping the remains — sparking concerns that the last remaining copies of out-of-print texts are being destroyed on an industrial scale.”

NEWBIE: Hi guys. Loved “Shadow and Claw”. Just wondering what I may have missed, though?

WOLFEEXPERT55: Depends on how much you caught. Did you catch basic stuff like (SPOILERS) the fact that Severian was raised in a defunct rocket ship, that Vodalus gives Severian a fake coin, that Severian brought Triskele back to life, that there are multiple iterations of Severian, that Severian hangs out in his own tomb as a kid, that the narrator of the book is a composite being of torturer Severian/Thecla/all the previous Autarchs, that Jonas is a Korean robot from close to our time, that whenever Severian gets confused about direction he’s time traveling, that the water entities routinely reappear, that Severian is the Concilliator, that Severian actually dies in his duel versus Agilus, that the narrator deliberately glosses over the sexual relationship between Severian and Thecla, that Severian might have killed his own mother in his ascension ceremony, that you meet …

Thanks r/printSF for turning me on to There is No Antimemetics Division. It really was a compelling read for me. It’s a puzzle story where the puzzle keeps changing as you put the pieces together. It’s really clever and creative. I’m not going to spoil it by going into details on the plot, as I think going in blind elevated the reading experience for me. Well worth reading if you haven’t picked it up yet.

The Hugo Award is a people’s choice award for Science Fiction and Fantasy books and other media…one can pay a membership and vote. On 7/16/2023 I announced my goal to read all the Hugo award winners in the full length novel category. At that time I already had 17 out of 73 bagged, and each year there is a new one (usually), so the longer I took, the more I’d have to read. I have now completed the project, the count growing to 75 books, and here is my retrospective.

Overall impressions: - Lots of good great books, but my big take away is this; a book does not need to be very good to win a Hugo. There are some real dogs, but of course it is all subjective. - Many of the older books have not aged well but some of them are still some of my favs. - I did not re-read the 17 already under my belt, though two of those I had re-read previously (Dune and Ender’s Game). So re-reading them now might affect what I think of them. Some of those 17 I read when I was 17, and now I am 50. - One of my …

One of the great ‘legends’ of fantasy died twenty years ago today, aged 57.

He wrote so many great series, sagas, and characters. Which were your favourites?

For me, it is easily The First Chronicles of Druss, The Legend.

(Excerpt I found, read by Sean Barrett - https://youtu.be/0mBHAOIWfXw ).

Legend is far more famous but he matured a lot as a writer for this prequel, and fleshed out a quintessential fantasy origin story. And Sieben is just brilliant.

Next for me, and a timely recommendation, is his (and wife Stella’s) Troy series. Perhaps the best modern ‘grimdark’ Homeric adaptation. Kalliades and Banokles! Andromache!