/lit/ - Literature

why all the hate for the prince of nothing trilogy? can some people just not enjoy things for what they are?

>>22832423
>history

Gormenghast, Eagle of the 9th series, Once and Future King series, Augustus (Williams), I Claudius, picrel

>scifi

Phillip K. Dick as mentioned itt. Solaris, Robots Series (Asimov), We (Zamyatin), The Way Series (Bear), Virus (Komatsu)

>>22477814
Fantasy author. Great stuff but the guy gets too grim dark and edgy for his own good and the work suffers for it.

Basically Dune meets Berserk meets LOTR, with some gritty realism of Game of Thrones injected, all based quite closely on the history of the First Crusade.

>he isn't even baiting with the GOAT fantasy
Bakker reigns supreme

Yes, and it's Bakker.

>>22367778
It's edgy as fuck but still actually good. Just don't expect any good feels and get over always having protagonists you like. Dune meets Berserk meets Lord of the Rings meets Game of Thrones with ancient philosophy and Hegel injected into it.

>>22337647
In a class of its own; the GOAT.

>>22337074
You can try to forget what you know or you can push in and through. You have to realize that (you) are no different. You are a slave to the same drives and same chains of causality. That which comes before dictates what comes after. You only think you are different because of what is hidden from you.

The trick is to turn cause into a tool, a lever. To master that which masters you. To become self-moving, a self-moving soul, to the attain the Absolute Soul.

The way through lies through Abu Bakker.

>>21806482
I liked it too, although I thought it peaked with A Storm of Swords.

I actually liked A Feast For Crowd, the parts about the Riverlands at least, but Dance started to fuck up with storyline multiplication and the stupid Dornish prince plot. But at least Bran chapters stopped being total shit.

It's pretty good as far as the genre goes. But pic related is the absolute peak of the genre, check that out too.

>>21702100
The Darkness That Cooms Before.

It's Dune meets Berserk meets Lord of the Rings meets historical fiction, set against an initial plot that closely follows the First Crusade.

It's certainly intellectual, guy was a philosophy PhD before going the writer route. A lot of the dialog, which some people wrote off as pretentious, is just him restating the arguments of various philosophers, more often ancient ones or Hegel, in the setting of the book. This arguably makes it unoriginal, but it's not pretentious once you realize he is just trying to introduce existing ideas into a fantasy setting where moral and metaphysical ideas can play out on a big screen.

But there is a ton of tape and the first series only has a whore and a woman taken in a raid as a sex slave as female MCs. The society is very much the Medieval Near East in how women are treated and he has some edgy as fuck stuff.

Hanging over the human world, and what is essentially just the First Crusade, is the backdrop of technologically advanced and sorcery using rape aliens that are pretty much pure evil, and then an astral-like realm of demonic forces. It's very grim dark.

But maybe not the best book if you want something about how women are le bad because it isn't about that. It's an epic fantasy story, and actually my favorite genre fiction of all time, but a detraction IMO is it being very misogynistic, especially for the genre and something from the 2000s. He would have gotten canceled publishing just eight years later if the books hadn't already taken off. It's about a medieval war so there aren't that many women in the first place except camp followers and victims of the sacks.

Unfortunately, he canceled himself to go innawoods so we don't get any more, but the books he did write (he has some sci-fi too) are great.

Bakker. He gets women spot on and got cancelled for it.

Bakker is K.I.N.G.

Dune meets Beserk meets LOTR. Lot of sex and evil lust demons. But it's in service if making a point about freedom and the inability to be free if you're rules by your desires. A bunch of restatements of ancient philosophy but with enough sword and sorcery action to keep it less dry. Very good battle scenes. I was a bit off put by the amount of rape, but still my favorite fantasy series. A cut above most of the genre at least.

I don't think there is any sex for the first while though.

>>20996007
In a widely popular sense? Sure. I would say this is a more apt equivalent, though.

Did the bard just straight up raped the young boy? I don't have problems with things like that happening, but writing this in such not-direct way is annoying, and I'm unsure if that's just edgy or merely supposed to set the proper tone for the rest of the book. Anyway, is there a guide of how to read those weird letter? I'm not even English native, but still unsure how to read words like 'Eleneöt' or 'Kûniüri' in my mind.

Ok just finished up the Second Apocalypse.

Can someone rec some extremely innovative fantasy like pic rel?

>never interested in Bakker despite all the Bakker-posting
>someone links me some random retard on Youtube calling his Prince of Nothing series as misogynistic and sexist
>suddenly I feel like reading him
I also dig the cover art for the books, really nice artwork.

>>20761717
Bakker, and it's better

Beserk meets Dune meets LOTR.

Kellhus is beyond all valuations. His various infamies can no more be judged using morality than a hurricane or an earthquake can be. Doesn't stop butthurt leftists from doing so and shitting on the book though.

Turn to Bakker my son.

Come for the escapism of a sprawling epic fantasy narrative. Stay for the Logos. It is the members of your body who long for a GF. It is the Legion within who cries out, the Legion who Christ, the Logos casts out into the herd of swine. Like Paul in Romans 7, you die in sin, driven on by instinct, mood, and conditioning. You are effect, not cause. Free personhood can only be resurrected in Christ, who is the Logos, the Word, the universal reason that generates the world. You are a beast, caught in the circuit of cause and effect, yet you understand its as ground for what is. Plus all the cool battles and shit.

And if you don't like the Patristics, ancient philosophy, or the Patristics, the semi-gnostic Church Father's, Bakker copies that and just serves it up with an entertaining fusion of LOTR, Dune, and Berserk that doesn't try to be too deep.

First three are fun. I still liked the later ones but it sort of losses direction.

Pic related is the superior long fantasy epic though.

>>20693413
The Darkness That Comes Before. Most of his work is one series, and it's his best stuff too.

>>20693615
T. Hasn't read the books.

One of the biggest criticisms of Bakker is that he's a chauvinist sexist. I don't think this is a fair critique because the sexism in the books are a biproduct of the historical realism, while the horror themed violence happens to both males and females. But it's generally lefties who attack him. They also attack him for having so much of people's cognitive ability tied up in genetics (the whole Dunyain breeding).

Yeah, he's said some libshit stuff on his blog. Who fucking cares, it's not in the books. You /pol/cultists need everyone to agree with you, any deviation means someone's opinions or work is worthless, which is ironically the same problem with hardcore SJWs.

My son is 2 months old. How do I train him into becoming a Dunyain?

Alistair Reynolds for darkly themed, harder sci-fi. I liked the Perfect and Chasm City best. The main Revelation Space trilogy wasn't as good as these.

For 80s classic cyberpunk vibes there is Snow crash, but that's totally very different, more light hearted.

If you want to go more artistic and psychedelic, Vurt is a great pick.

Or just go with more Gibson, Virtual Light is good.

If you like the fast pace and splosions and shit, Red Rising is a lot of fun for sci-fi (it's also fucking stupid, especially the first book since it was edited into YA, but it's funner than a lot of better books).

Or if you like the dark themes and speculative fiction you could always go right to the King Himself, pic related.

But Bakker is hard to get into, I might look at Alstair Reynolds first.

Hyperion and Dune are great sci-fi too but quite different.