@tempest Yeah, she's the other character I liked. Devi? Davri? DAVIDE? I think it was a D name, but she was having none of his nonsense and I was relieved someone in-universe was sane.
@deadculture NO, not his horrible beautiful damaged trope of a cardboard cutout. The chick at the university who was a loan shark.
Yeah, not the romantic interest or whatever that he keeps stumbling across all over the world.
The chick who got kicked out of the academy-place.
@deadculture said in Book Recommendations:
Song for Arbonne
Tigana and the ending to The Lions of Al-Rassan broke me. Guy Gavriel Kay is one of those authors who really knows how to get under your skin and make you care... then the motherfucker does something horrible to these fictional characters and I can't even.
@kanye-qwest @tempest OH. Oh, that chick. I liked her.
@Arkandel Tigana left me with a sensation I hadn't felt since I finished the Sprawl trilogy for the first time. Lions of Al-Rassan's ending made me smile a little. But Song for Arbonne, man. Holy shit.
@deadculture You know what's funny, kinda? After a while in this hobby when I read a book I really like there's always a moment when I go "hey, maybe a MUSH about this would be cool..."
That's never happened with Kay's novels. I love them but I don't think the settings are anything that would work for a game because they are only engaging because of the specific situations and the particularly intriguing characters and relationships between them he's woven. Take those away and most of his worlds... well, they are just worlds. Kinda okay, fun even, but you'd be hard pressed to make something else out of them.
The guy just knows how to create, well, people using words.
@coin said in Book Recommendations:
Shades of Magic series by V.E. Schwab.
I swear, I'll finish this sometime.
@arkandel I felt that way about his books, too. But then again, they are self-sufficient in every sense of the word. You don't want to play out stories in it. You're happy with the stories by the time they end.
No cliffhangers with GGK, which is something I appreciate very much, too. Every book is final.
I feel like GGK haunted my childhood in the best sense of the phrase.
@deadculture said in Book Recommendations:
Lions of Al-Rassan's ending made me smile a little.
I was weirdly relieved at the ending! He did such a damnably fine job of cliff-hanging the individual chapters that the book was almost physically impossible to put down until I got to the end, and that there really was an ending that felt whole and complete was, oddly, comforting and extremely satisfying. (It was also the first of his books I read, so I was still fighting with the worry that it might end on the same sort of note, begging the start to a series that might never be realized.)
Oh fucking well.
@surreality said in Book Recommendations:
@deadculture said in Book Recommendations:
Lions of Al-Rassan's ending made me smile a little.
I was weirdly relieved at the ending! He did such a damnably fine job of cliff-hanging the individual chapters that the book was almost physically impossible to put down until I got to the end, and that there really was an ending that felt whole and complete was, oddly, comforting and extremely satisfying. (It was also the first of his books I read, so I was still fighting with the worry that it might end on the same sort of note, begging the start to a series that might never be realized.)
Yeah, I was tired of the Martin-Rothfuss-et-al habit of postponing the resolution to their stories through cliffhangers instead of decent endings.
William Gibson didn't cliffhanger any of his cyberpunk books, and the final two in the trilogies were still credible sequels.
@deadculture I ended up making a rule for myself that I wouldn't read any series until that series was complete (or as complete as it was going to be), in whatever doses it came in. (Sub-trilogy, sprawling series, standalone trilogy, etc.)
As a kid, there were the nigh-endless series like the Dragonlance novels, and as an even younger kid (we're talking 2nd and 3rd grade here) the Xanth novels*, and they just kept going... and going... and going.
I appreciate a good standalone novel for exactly this reason. The endless sprawl series style would get old well before it showed any indication of when it might be over, and that was unsatisfying and ultimately disappointing.
@tat Can't agree more. The Grisha books are freaking fantastic.
I've owned a copy of the first Stormlight Archive book since it came out and I should really start that up again sometime. I really enjoyed his Mistborn books (especially the wild west ones).
My current recommendation is Mishell Baker's Arcadia Project books. Both books hit me right in the feels, but I enjoyed them anyway.
Anyone else thing the Dunk and Egg series by George R.R. Martin is actually better than A Song of Ice and Fire? Somehow he's managed to put just as much complexity, grey areas and mysticism in there but it's just... easy to miss.
The overall plot surfaces powerfully but sporadically, major pieces like the Three-Eyed Raven are set up for the future, but at its heart the series is about a young idealistic hedge knight and his squire adventuring in Westeros. Really great stuff.
I really like the almost unknown Revanche Cycle by Craig Schaefer. It's a four-book arc, that arc is complete, all the books are published, and it's political fantasy that doesn't make me want to punch a baby and whose author doesn't kill literally every character I even like a little in the first hundred pages.
In addition to plowing through all of the First Law and associated books, I have been devouring everything N.J. Jemisin ever wrote and she's basically like ... amazeballs.
@saosmash Give more details! Plots for particularly good books, reasons why she's awesome?
@arkandel Let's see.
The first series of hers that I picked up was the Broken Earth trilogy, and this is a very hard series to read -- especially on audiobook which is how I do a lot of my reading -- because of just ... horrible things happening to very young children kicks in the pants. It's one of the most effective uses of second person narration that I've ever experienced and ordinarily I would run screaming from second person almost immediately because wtf. It's postapocalyptic fantasy and it's basically epic.
The second series of hers I picked up is so dramatically different from Broken Earth I can't even-- IDK, but this is the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms series, and it's a series about gods and people and they're at times dark, and like sexy and weird and interesting. I didn't actually finish reading the last book yet but not because it wasn't awesome, but because it didn't have an audiobook and I am a slave to three hours a day I spend driving a car.
I just started The Killing Moon, and I'm not that far into it yet, but so far it appears to be weird telepathy and dreaming stuff, with neat worldbuilding, and it is also wildly different flavors than either of the earlier two.
Jemisin is a really versatile writer with an amazing capacity for capturing character, dense worldbuilding, and voice. Also it's N.K. Jemisin but I'm not gonna go back and fix my typo because I have now written an entire separate post.
I am about done with Hyperion, by Dan Simmons and am ordering book 2 so I can dive right into it.
It was a slow start, but that may very well be because I got it on audio book and I have issues with audio books. However, as I got into it... oh man did I get into it. Like, 'conceptualizing how I'd write a script for it' into it. Kind of wanting to write a pilot script to make it a mini series or something.
It's some good sci-fi. Lots of great setting mythology, religious references (for the folks on the boards who like that sorta thing: one of the main characters is Jewish), and really strong character development.
Saying the quiet parts out loud since 1996.
I'm currently in the middle of "All Our Wrong Todays."
It's an odd book, but I've rather enjoyed it and its premise so far. Effectively, the narrator exists in a utopian society and travels back in time to the moment of history where a particular scientific discovery leads to the utopia he was born into. He isn't travelling back in time to right some great wrong or wipe out humanity or any of the usual reasons we see in sci-fi -- it's an experiment being conducted so they can market time travel tourism.
Unfortunately, he inadvertantly messes things up horribly, fundamentally affecting the timline of the future, resulting in a horrifying dystopia he has no idea how to cope with -- the 2016 (which was the year the book was published) we live in. Can't speak to the ending as I have about 200 pages left, but I've been enjoying myself.
https://whatiswrongwith.me/Mia
There were never any good old days. They are today. They are tomorrow. It's a stupid thing we say, cursing tomorrow with sorrow. -- Gogol Bordello
This thread is full of books I love.
I would also note I'm very fond of the (very strange) Machineries of Empire books; right now that's Ninefox Gambit and Raven Strategem, both by Yoon Ha Lee. The third and final book is due out in June.
@arkandel I felt that way about his books, too. But then again, they are self-sufficient in every sense of the word. You don't want to play out stories in it. You're happy with the stories by the time they end.
No cliffhangers with GGK, which is something I appreciate very much, too. Every book is final.
