/lit/ - Literature

first for sanderfag a hack

>>12559657
>reminder do NOT reply to any leftist bait poster
NO WRONGTHINK

>lets talk about Masters of Rome anon!

>>12559665
please shill another novel

Genre fags

>>12559677
https://www37.zippyshare.com/v/t2MYTzfk/file.html
link for epub
not sure if it's the good version of epub or not, please check

>>12559657
>reminder do NOT reply to any leftist bait poster
SO you can reply to the rightist bait posters?

>rightist

Hi
I like to read books :3

There has never been a sci-fi novel great than Hyperion.
Prove me wrong

>>12559829
>great than

What are the top "right wing" /Sffg/ books?

>reminder do NOT reply to any leftist bait poster
redpill me on this

>>12559974
baitposters baiting baitposters

I only read literature written by Anarchists.

just started reading foundation, is the whole book just a collection of relevant stories summed together? are there any long lasting characters?

>>12559966
Sword of Truth Series.

>>12559966
All of them, fantasy is a inherently a reactionary genre, all attempts to write a progressive fantasy novel have failed. British authors are among the worst for this, often falling victim to their natural Blue Labour biases.

>>12559829
am i the only one who thought it was similar to the matrix? the ai wants to use human brains, and they're building giant pens to store all the humans.

i feel like i'm crazy when no one else mentions this

>>12559814
*that have catgirls in them

>>12559966
Starship Troopers is a love song to the military.

>read All Roads lead to Winter
>now I want a qt catgirl gf
feels

>>12560065
What is inherently right-wing about the military?

Reminder

>>12560007
p-please reply

Anyone read Jacqueline Careys work? How is it?

>>12560090
Foundation is future history, and history takes place over hundreds of years. So no, you won't see returning characters unless you go deep enough into prequels/sequels and see the robots manipulating everything

>>12560075
Is the catgirl described as a furry as the cover implies or is that just a stylization?

>>12560118
yeah she is full cat lady

>>12560090
Hari Seldon will make the occasional cameo via recorded message but the Foundation books are essentially collections of short stories.

>>12559829
Are there any books similar to the consul's tale?

Can you faggots please stop talking about politics, goddammit?
Every fucking board on this site is infested with this shit

>>12560109
Yes. Kushiel should be on any fantasy must-read list. Amazing writing but the story and pacing may not be for everyone especially all the BDSM.

>>12560167
Go to Reddit if you need to control what other people talk about so badly.

>>12560187
There are rules here you faggot.
> If you want to discuss history, religion, or the humanities, go to /his/. If you want to discuss politics, go to /pol/.

>>12560062
Well, I REALLY like those.

>>12559677
read it last month it was amazing, I'm now a wolfe fan

>>12560075
It's not really that good.

Have you fags seen this?
https://p.4chan.org/lit/thread/12559657

>>12560248
I still want a catgirl for domestic ownership

>>12560176
Cool, thanks. Going to get them.

>>12560167
>>12560224
Then stop discussing politics. You're the only one dredging this up.

>>12560266
>You're the only one dredging this up

>>12559665
I want to be in a gay orgy where I fuck a girl and get fucked by a dude and suck another dude wooooo

>>12560357
Stop responding to children

>>12559657

>what kind of characters do you like?

Old guys & seniors, understandable 'evil' characters, physically flawed (distinctive facial features) characters

>what kind of characters do you hate?

Sassy women, out of place minorities, flat characters > especially flat romantic characters, sympathetic non-humans, AND I HATE CHILDREN CHARACTERS

>>12560078

It proposes a very limited democracy only attainable by military vets.

>>12560451
>AND I HATE CHILDREN CHARACTERS
I hate children, period.

>>12560470
Based

>>12560451
epic fellow kekistani :D

>>12560470

I actually love children I want to have loads of sons to indoctrinate I just think kids are so fcking dumb and their opinions just dont matter. So I dont wanna read about them.

>muh latent magical power 12 year old

I just cant

The Bonerhunters is REALLY FUCKING GOOD YOU GUYS WEREN'T LYING
Completely different from Midnight Tides in scale but still, gosh damn this shit is fire

>>12560470
>>12560482
You both still sound like you're 12.

>>12560488

Well im not. Thats kinda the point. Only exception is harry potter (obviously, as it is one of the greatest literary achievments of the past century)

>>12560486
>YOU GUYS WEREN'T LYING
we dont do lies here friend

>>12560463
Did you read the book?

>>12560500

Ofcourse not. Yeah i know others can also get citizenship but its mostly soldieri right?

i should've wrote dont reply to bait posts

>>12560508
You shouldn't have to. Anyone that needs to be reminded not to be retarded probably isn't going to follow one.

>>12560507
Anyone in civil service, and they will make up a job if you can't do things.

>>12560508
I'm sure it would have made a difference. How about you just stop being offended at conversation which doesn't suit your personal taste? You have to accept the fact that some people will talk about things that don't want to talk about. Nobody is forcing you to take part.

>>12560488
>if you don't like children you are underage b&
If I could nuke this world I would.

>>12560508
stop pretending to be me

>>12560371
Literally heaven

what's more important

>enjoyable characters and an engaging atmosphere

or

>thematics and mystery

>>12559657
>what kind of characters do you like?
That varies. Sometimes completely rotten, irredeemable characters. Also, characters that are misunderstood. To some they are heroes, to some villains.

>what kind of characters do you hate with passion?
The idiots who think they exist to save the world (unless they are god-like figures themselves).

>>12560437
>>12560266
Stop responding to yourself. MS Paint is a thing, thanks for reminding us, you insipid autist.

>>12560481
Fuck off, chapofaggot.

>>12560742
i personally like characters more. i tend to get invested into characters and root for them. after that it really doesnt matter what they are doing as long as they are doing something.

>>12560785
Character writing is really a unique art form. Sure, the setting, plot, and story should always be written well, but the characters are really the driving element.

>>12560773
Chapo isn't far left enough for me

>>12560114
first time in my life i regretted reading a spoiler
fuck

@12560805
>Acts the part of a proud chaponigger in past threads
>Gets called out
>N-NO, I'M N'NOT AFFILIATED WITH THAT NOBLE SUBPLEBBIT!
Embarrassing. What a Judas.

>>12560825
Senpai I dunno if chaponigger is someone specific you're referring to but it ain't me, I'm just calling you a faggot

>>12560830
>I'm not a chaponigger!
Top cringe. Back to you r dicksword.

>>12560791
my process is just to write characters like they're cartoons so at the very least they have a personality. I think that's more than 90% of authors do

>>12560553

The point is that you make a sacrifice so you show you can handle responsibility.
Why would anyone go fight bugs if they can just be toilet cleaner for gov.

Maybe jf ur doctor international volunteering to help in a jungle or smthung.

For the rest there is war.

>>12560872
>years of trying to write serious fantasy
>no real progress beyond worldbuilding and plotting
>afraid to make things anywhere but perfect
>take a throwaway idea
>redress it into the generic "hidden magical world" premise with a teenage girl protagonist
>have zero interest in the story
>put no effort into prose as anything but workmans text
>already at 16k words
The YApill works, lads. I'll soon have a soulless published book to my name.

>>12560872

>cartoon characters

Yikes

>>12560938

Maybe uve just sized down and thats why its working? Fantasi and scifi tends to bloat into epic grand stories and an amateur writer can get lost in there.
Im finishing an epic fiction (75k words atm) and next novel is gonna be way smaller. Characters more important anyway.

>>12559829
Dune

>>12559966
Tolkien

>>12560805
So you’re a jobless tranny. Got it

I like things with gods and myths and the like. What are some fantasy books with good depictions of them?

>>12561225
Sanctuary

How is this?

>>12560945
the issue with writing normal people is that literature is a limited medium, and one of those limits is how long you have to make an impression on the reader

a normal person by definition does not make an impression due to the fact that normal people are the norm. it takes time to understand a normal person's ins and outs and when telling a story time isnt something you have a lot of unless you want to bore your reader to death with tangents

cartoonish characters are designed to work around this limit in the medium. its not that they have no depth - not if you write them correctly - they simply have more of their personality close to the surface.

>>12559829

Is this actually good?

More of a horror than sci-fi guy so the only Simmons I've read is The Terror, and that was rotten.

>>12561623
Early Dan Simmons is very good. Hyperion is excellent but if you like horror some of the his early horror novels are great too.

>be Robert Jordan
>get btfo of Vietnam
>write a fantasy series
>make a race of people who win against civilised nations through irregular tactics
>make them tall white people with light hair and light eyes
What did he mean by this?

>>12561960
Irish people are dangerous

>>12559657
>scifi
>has a fucking oven

>>12561600
Couldn't get through it, it's pure drivel. Written oddly and the content of the book is just weird.

>>12561981
Irish people were never as successful as the aiel. And they aren't tall either.

>>12559664
>wrongthink
Congratulations, you've played yourself

>>12561987
>Be the future
>Suddenly no longer need to cook food
Granted, if it's space, then ovens and unprepared food are impractical.

Any fantasy with this aesthetic?

>>12562391
Most steampunk stories are set in the Victorian era. Dieselpunk stories kind of ride that edge too.

>>12561600
One of his weakest works.

>>12561600
I thought it was great. It takes a while to get used to the way the characters speak and act, since the setting is essentially a monastery of academics, so they're all a bit weird. Very ambitious.

>>12561960
>people who win against civilised nations through irregular tactics
this isnt just a vietnam trope. i can understand why jordan would put it in his books but every time this happens someone has to go "oh its a vietnam analogy"

>>12562548
>an army exclusive made of light infantry constantly annihilates armies of heavy foot and cavalry
>this makes sense even if we disregard the nam experience

What are some good grimdark books? Either series or stand alone

>>12562528
What would you consider his best? I've never read anything by him

>>12559677
>tfw your suggestion makes it in

I got this as a gift and was about to start it myself anyways, and it seemed like something everyone might enjoy in this general, and doesn't seem like a lot of people recommend Wolfe

>>12561987
>steampunk
>television sets powered by weird technology

>>12562829
I bet you're fun at parties.

This is better than the NPR list -

https://www.amazon.com/b?node=12661600011

>>12562837
>npr
Well yeah, it's full of literal children just whining about trump and other things they don't understand all day.

Alright /sffg/ I just got paid and gonna indulge with buying some books in hopes to wow a qt cashier what should I get from my to reads list

>The Peripheral
>The Dispossessed
>Blindsight
>Sisyphean
>Perdido Street Station

>>12562831
I'm not, but that has nothing to do with it.

What's the point of a steam punk setting if IT'S THE INTERNET BUT POWERED BY STEAMMMMMMMMMMM

>>12562863
Aesthetics alone. People who like steampunk rarely think about anything, much less world-building issues like that.

>>12562860
If this is your plan to wow her then you have no hope of having a relationship with her or with any girl.

>>12562878
Its this...or dick pics!

>>12562578
>who is oda nobunaga for 500

Any good fantasy from the evil side? Like something following a Liche or vampire or something?

>>12563082
Overlord.

where can I get an audiobook for eye of the world for free? I can already tell this is going to take me a full month to read unless I have an audiobook to keep my ADHD from wandering. if nothing I'll just settle for audible so I can 1.5X speed it

>>12562935
literally who

>>12563082
dark lords handbook.

>>12563082
isnt that what the war of the spider queen books all are? or are they all kind of like the Drizzt books where he's just a defector of the evil people

>>12562578
That wasn't the Vietnam experience though, retard.

>>12563082
If you're not an autist and can enjoy short stories then check out Night Winds by Karl Edward Wagner. He created a character called Kane who is like a more evil version of Conan.

>>12562815
>doesn't seem like a lot of people recommend Wolfe
So you've be here for what, five minutes?

>>12562829
>>12562863
>Reading steampunk novels
ISHYGDDT

>>12563325
>claps

so what's the best autistic 20 book long high fantasy series?

>Wheel of Time?
>Malazan?
>Chronicles of Amber?
>Sanderson stuff?
>Something else?

>>12563379
dresden files peace talks never

>>12563361
Well relatively speaking i mean. Feel like i only see people discuss BotNS

someone just name a fantasy or horror with engaging characters. I can't read one more word of liveship traitors

>>12559657
Is the English translation for Season of Storms good?

>>12559677
The Gene Wolfe Literary Podcast is currently doing a read through of this. Good stuff.

>>12562837
>RPO
>Handmaid's Tale
>Dhalgren
Eh, at least Broken Earth isn't in there. Maybe salvageable.

>>12560742
Characters are the heart of fiction. There is nothing without characters. Don't fall for the world building meme.

>>12562837
at least try to explain why it's better

Do you prefer chapters with titles or not?

>>12563887
If it's relevant to the content and context of the chapter, sure.

>>12563887

During my first read, no.

Every reread after, yes

>>12563887
Name the chapters after the POV CHARACTER FOR GOD'S FUCKING SAKE

>>12563581
The English translation for all his books are good.

>>12562860
Get surgery and pray you'll look like Chico

>>12563954
>having a pov character

>>12563376
>kebabs

>>12560007
No each book after foundation is pretty much 3 stories per book. The prequels, however, (prelude + forward) follow a young hari seldon throughout the two books and are a much better story than the originals imo

>>12563954
Chapter 12: The guy who dies

Is The Gargoyle a good read? I spotted this in the Fantasy section a while ago but reading the blurb on the back didn't 't make it sound like a Fantasy book.

>>12562860
blindsight is legit free, so spend your wages on something else

https://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm

>>12564061
>not having the first few chapters with different protagonists who all die immediately
>not having one of them on the back of the book to completely fool readers

>>12563954
>Chapter 1: Bob
>Chapter 6: Bob Again
>Chapter 12: Guess who?
>Epilogue: Bob

>>12564061
Chapter 13: The guy who didn't die

>>12564671
Chapter 14: The guy who survived

>>12564680
Chapter 15: Interlude - The other guys who aren't dead yet

i want a novel where the main character is driven by revenge, anything sffg recommends?

Anyone read it yet?

>>12564723
ye

>>12564723
Forgot the pic.

>>12564718

>>12564736

All his books fronts look the same lel

>>12564727
From a review on leddit it seems like the plot seems to be a weird adventure novel and the villain sounds like it sucks. Also, the author seems not to have written fantasy before, so I'm going to wait for someone else to read it and review it first.

>>12562815
>and doesn't seem like a lot of people recommend Wolfe
What are you blind or something lmao

Hi the board is full of teenage philosophy threads, twitter threads, whoreposting and blogpost pepes and wojacks, I came here to discuss books.

Can I talk about Borges and Calvino as fantasy/sci-fi? Or-or Junger's trilogy! Marble Cliffs was compared to a fantasy sometimes! Please don't send me away, I have nowhere else to go

>>12564783
Ripperoni in pepperoni. What was your favourite Borges?

>>12564727
When did this even come out? I remember a bunch of hype around it the nothing for ages.

>>12564783
It can't be that ba--
>Catalog
Right, the weekend. It's a chapopedohouse raids remotely right-aligned boards episode.

>>12564718
The Final Empire is pretty good so far.

>>12564783
shh dont alert /outerlit/ to our presence.

>>12564783
magical realism =/= fantasy

>>12559657
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._A._Salvatore

This faggot any good?

>>12564936
I've never read him but he sucks.

>>12564936
no

>>12564952
That's why I'm asking. He seems well connected and a prominent figure in the development of the genre post Tolkien.

>>12564914
>magical realism
Tell me more, fampai.

>>12562391
Powder Mage, though it’s emulating not-France more than not-Britain. Baru Comerant also dips into Imperial stuff, though it’s more about making the Empire apologise WHILE fucking the foreign girl.

Or you can read basically any history book by Niall Ferguson - they’re very pro-Empire and basically fiction.

>>12562831
>implying people bring up the same shit at parties that they do on anonymous image boards

>>12562860
>buying China Memeville
No.

>>12564997
they actually do

>>12564997
>>12565052

>>12564718
The Count of Monte Cristo.

>>12564741
At least they look good together in my shelf!

>>12564989
>regiment of women who are just as good as the men
No thanks gaylord lmao

>>12565098
Is there a regiment solely made up of women? The Adran army is more like a mixed regiment force, with women primarily serving in the auxiliary corps. There weren't many frontline women soldiers. Unless you mean in the Powder Cabal, then you're just being silly because they have literal superpowers.

>>12563369
Steam punk fell victim to the aesthetic meme much faster than cyberpunk and didn't really have the benefit of having established, quality works.

It still has a lot of potential as a setting though. It's basically alternate history placed further back. If anything, I'm surprised how little it gets explored.

>>12565117
>mixed regiments
No thanks Gaylord lmao

>>12565117
Does Adran end up having half its army pregnant?

>>12565205
If it's any consolation, women in the regiments mostly takes place after they're invaded by not-Russia and have lost an entire army in a tactical blunder. I mean, it's probably that the author got called out after his first novel so he inserted some women, but one can head-canon it away by using the explanation that they were just that desperate for warm bodies to hold the line.

>>12565219
No, fraternisation was frowned on. But there are some rapes.

I just played a Dune porn game, and now I'm wondering if it's worth reading.

>>12565241
>implying officers would waste the time or effort trying to stop the fuckfest that would be a mixed sex army
>implying they wouldn't join it

>>12565457
Dune is one of the greatest sci-fi books of all time but who gives a fuck about that. There's a Dune porn game?!

>>12565457
I'm interested

>>12565481
>>12565484
It's called Behind the Dune.

>>12565457
Dune might have been great for its time, but now it's just a retelling of Star Wars.

>>12564791

The Immortal and Tlon. Both make me think about human beings and mindful beings in general as carrier of meanings or forger of meanings in the universe. The Immortal gives me the impression of estrangement akin to the Romantic sublime, in a sense, which humans feel in front of the infinitely large (or, given recent scientific discovery, the infinitely small) which Borges seem to decline as the infinitely "irrational", or that of which we cannot thought (which is a feature of the infinite).
I see Tlon as the answer to The Immortal. If the latter represents world as it is when mind first encounters it, Tlon represents how mind, with its creative power and its ability to collaborate with other minds across time, brings forward meaning to the point of restructuring/reorganizing the world. That is why, by the end, Tlon "begins" to exist.

These are my random thoughts on it, I don't know if they are in any way coherent with what Borges wanted to say, it's just what I come up with while reading the stories. Which one do you like the most?

>>12565507
I can't tell, are you trolling or just stupid?

>>12565493
Based, would like the game more if the scenes werent so recycled.

>>12565004
You wouldn't say that to his face.

>>12565531
>big muscles to make up for being a hairlet.
The memes just keep coming.

>>12565531
*unsheathes kosh*

>>12565529
if you like this type of game check out >>>/aco/stg and >>>/aco/weg
some highlights are 4 elements trainer, something unlimited, summertime saga, witch trainer(silver) and princess trainer. not all of them are complete but they are full-featured enough.

>>12565493
This... is both surprisingly accurate and in-depth.

>>12565531
AHEM

Fuck communism

>>12564718
The Stars My Destination

>It's a female character enters the dream world and her clothes unconsciously become progressively sluttier when she thinks about a man she likes episode

Best episodes.

Why this book suck so much dick? I wasted money buying this.

>>12561645
Song of Kali is ace

>Pre 90s SFFG female authors
>Curly haired skinny women.
>Wrote the same kind of fantasy as men

>today
>YA and fat women with coloured hair
What went wrong?

>>12566213
Are you reading those books you don't like?

>>12566213
Those curly haired skinny women were hopped up on feminism and turned into those fat women with colored hair.

>>12566213
Third wave feminism and identity politics

>>12566238
It's more that he's finding fewer and fewer that aren't propaganda for identity politics and retard positivity before story and characterization.

>>12566213
Vietnam

>>12566270
Well that's not true. The majority of books are completely standard, just don't listen to those certain people that are just screaming loudly about those few books they hate.

>>12566112
>sydney potter
>nelson mandela
>???? cortez

>>12564936
The Dark Elf Trilogy and The Icewind Dale Trilogy are all comfy fun books, can be pretty nostalgic especially if you like Dungeons & Dragons.

This is pretty good so far but it was a fucking stupid decision for a book that uses footnotes extensively as a narrative device to leave them unnumbered in the ebook version.
I've ended up uploading two copies to my kindle so I can keep my place in the footnotes lol.

(It also suffers because the incredibly good A Conspiracy of Truths came out last year and did the same footnotes device + protagonist in prison retelling his story plot, so one can't help but compare them.)

>>12564936
The Corona books are pretty good, I started with his latest series within the world and then went back to the old ones.

>>12566318
>Well that's not true
I didn't say they were becoming physically scarcer, I said they were becoming hard to find. That's not due to a dearth of good writing or authors dedicated to the genre, it's because the gender politics/identity theory bullshit is marketed over all else. Go to most any popular sci-fi website, the majority of the articles are either gripes about "How white, male power fantasies are ruining the genre," or about "Smashing gender conventions with this lineup of transpositive space opera." The rest of it is Matilda-tier shit with not even remotely subtle "muh racism, muh post-modern apartheid" allegories.

>>12566540
> any popular sci-fi website
Examples? I have no idea where you're looking as I almost never see articles like that.

>>12566213
you cared more about their appearance than their writing

>goodreads recs last update Jan 23rd
>I've read and added six books since then
Why doesn't it update more? This fucking sucks

>be Peter Watts
>write a book where a space vampire uses voodoo to mind control the crew of a space ship but later it turns out this was foreseen and accounted for by a mind hive that receives insight in the form of religious revelation and was just part of their plot to make superintelligent alien ooze uplift humanity
>be praised as "hard sci fi"
How does he do it lads?

Lads how do I get in on the ARC grift? They all get the books like a year before release

>>12566808
goodreads got bought by amazon some time ago. theyre fucking with goodreads to encourage people subscribing to authors on amazon directly. not that goodreads was any kind of good platform mind you. even if it is shit its better than amazon.

>>12566816
Hard sci-fi doesn't have to not include anything outlandish
It just has to not bring in anything that directly conflicts with the laws of nature as we know them

>>12566909
How speculative can you get before you're no longer "hard", though? Most attempts I've seen to justify the entirety of the Bicamerals, and a lot of other concepts in Blindsight and Echopraxia, end up saying "it's just beyond human comprehension" or downright invoking Clarke's third law.

>>12566384
You should drop this book, the plot is like wet paper especially when you get to the end. This author shoves wave after wave of red herring shit in the way.

I'm currently writing a book that is a pastiche of the fantasy genre. I just started by creating a universe and some lore, but I need some advices and opinions on/about it. Anybody can help me ?

>>12567037
I'd advise you to focus more on telling an engaging story with interesting characters than world building autism.

>>12566970
"beyond human comprehension" is a fine excuse imo

>>12567069
It's not exactly a huge world like everything else. I already planned the story from A to Z. For the moment I'm trying to imagine some creatures that are completely new and also ''not-human-looking''

>>12566970
You should re-read. Firefall is really in-depth about physiology of all those creatures. Firefall has three chapters mostly dedicated on study of captured alien pair for fucks sake.

>>12566731
Ignore him. He is purposely looking for those sites and books to get himself premeditatedly worked up. From the buzzwords in his post he is the anon from last thread that was trying to start pol shit.

>>12566384
>for a book that uses footnotes
So people are finally copying Strange and Mr Norrell?

is the Broken Empire trilogy worth a read for fans of Scott Bakker and George RR Martin, lads?

picked up Prince of Thorns for 25p from my library, been looking forward to reading some darker fantasy

>>12567098
Don't know why you think a pastiche needs completely novel monsters. Just stick a few real creatures together or something.

>>12567037

>>12562600
Cixin Liu's Three Body Problem trilogy. Armor by John Steakly.

>>12564688
Chapter 16: The other guy who died

>>12567273
Ridiculously edgy 13 year old leading a band of mercenaries.

I couldn’t even make it a third of the way

>>12567273
I guess but it goes into Tarantino territory many times. And the main character is Coldsteel the Hedgeheg personified.

>>12567105
The parts that I'm mentioned, like how in the everloving fuck the Bicamerals are supposed to work, are almost completely handwaved to Watt's own admission in his afterword

>>12567449
mentioning*

And to be perfectly clear, I'm aware it's explained that they give themselves gene-engineered brain cancer. It's just a LITTLE BIT of a leap that gene-engineered brain cancer turns you into a superintelligent transhuman

>>12567267
Bartimaeus is the best utilisation of footnotes of read in a fantasy novel.

Strange & Norrell was also excellent though.

>>12567449
You shouldn't have fell for the meme watts in the first place. Just like maas and rome, watts was shilled vigorously at one time.

Not often I come across Sterling in the wild, anyone familiar with this?

>>12567267
>>12567494
You faggots misspelled Pratchett's discworld

>>12566731
tor.com, for starters, which is itself the leading magazine for science fiction news because online news sites promote it above all others. Most any website with a top-ten article published near-weekly will ensure half of it is composed of the most blatantly blue-haired synopses possible. Again, it's not the LACK of good writing, it's the lack of honest publicity that paints anything without a lesbian/POCman/transwhatever/pro-communist protagonist or plot element as toxic masculinity incarnate. It's insane how often authors without any clear political or cultural leaning will encounter harassment over whether they'll support [x]-issue by incorporating an "inclusive" element into their stories. When they flat out tell those people off, they're always slammed by bloggers who sit on boards for shit like the Hugos or Dragon awards.

>>12567256
>Th-they d-don't exist! Ignore him!
^This is the faggot from last thread trying to start /leftypol/ shit with the >rightist concern trolling. Ignore him, xit, them, whatever.

>>12567510
Any author with the name Terry is always shit. Why would I mention shit?

>>12567286

Now that the topic's come up, is there any hard sci-fi written by someone who is a writer first and a rabid STEMlord second?

>>12566909
>imagine praising the garbage that was blindsight
yaiks

>>12567523
>is there any hard sci-fi written by someone who is a writer first and a rabid STEMlord second
As in..? Do you mean not overly technical?

>>12567518
Because he's the one who popularized lolilol footnotes in fantasy. Which Bartimeus absolutely copied.

>>12567511
I don't visit pol and I'm not a burger. I just want yall to stop shitting up this general with your bait posts. I come here to read about books, not to see yall bitch about shit that has it's own boards.

>>12567267
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell isn't the only book that uses footnotes. The Bartimaeus books and the Johannes Cabal books are two other obvious ones.

Also footnotes-wise all the Penguin classics I've read also have footnotes added obviously retrospectively.

By the way if you read The Ruin of Kings expecting Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell you will be in for a very long winded disappointment. Trust me when I say that the Ruin of Kings was by far the single worst book I've read this entire year whilst Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell was the best.

---

The Ruin of Kings has weird anachronistic dialogue, two timelines and one timeline you realise 50% of the way through is just filler, red herring plots that exist just to cockblock you with twists that happen and apparently the twist was fake. Multiple main characters die and came back to life immediately, there's loads of literal who characters which appear once then die or just never appear again, only to be replaced by other literal who characters who act exactly the same as their predecessor and even have similar names. Say goodbye to 90% of the characters in the first 2/3 of the book as they are irrelevant to the story.

The best minor characters who actually have development stay dead because fuck you or the book tells you immediately afterwards that they died. Thanks.

The MC starts out well and then everything turns to shit when he's secretly a royal as well as a chosen one and he is a non character.

Characters do complete U turns on their characterisations for the sake of creating drama. The main villain appears twice and then gets replaced by some minor dark lord cliched retard goon who wants to epically take over the world so they can kill the goon and milk the main villain into infinity. There's only about two chapters in the entire book that are plot relevant and not about the next retarded plotfiller kraken or dragon. You don't get to find out why the MC was in the fucking prison in the first place at the end of the book and the author seems to forget about the setup entirely and then the ending, if it could be called that, is anticlimatic as a fuck because everyone that matters gets resurrected. Brandon Sanderson writes better than this hack author who pushes paper thin cutouts around for drama.

And you know what the best part is? This is just the first book and it's not even good. The number of authors that write a first GOOD book and fuck up is astronomical.

The number of people who praised this book because they got bribed with ARCs is just disgusting and I hate them all.

Fuck this author.

>>12567529
As in decent prose and technical bits that don't come in tone-deaf infodumps

>>12567511
rent free

>>12567544
I don't read much books shilled by big publishing anymore bro. Self publishing is where it's at. Publishing houses force their authors to add extra fluff to a novel. Which a lot of times goes no where and takes away greatly from the enjoyment.

>>12567552
Ikr. They say reading is supposed to increase your intelligence and understanding. Opening your eyes to higher forms of reasoning.
I guess a brainlet like him who probably read less than 20 books in his lifetime can't help but be influenced and manipulated into thinking how others want him to think. I wonder how many rent free anons we have hiding in this general.

>>12567511
> tor.com
> 15 stories on the frontpage
> only 1 could be described as matching your complaints, it's about knitting.

You're a liar and a moron.

>ywn be teleported off your planet by a bored Mind to join the Culture
what do they shitpost about in the Culture's equivalent of 4chan?

>>12567690
>You're a liar and a moron
Stop being duplicitous, you dicksucking retard. You're the only one here illiterate enough to think anyone hasn't given it and its physical issues a fucking cursory view. Go back to your twentieth Das Kapital spam thread.

>>12567511
>reading tor.com
>tor.com is influential, g-guys
You sound like the sort of retard who doesn't use an adblocker or watches ad montages on youtube so that you can experience the genuine feeling of being fucked in the ass by shills.

>>12567723
> Gets called out, only response is to get mad.
You're funny.

>>12567747
My first screencap was from a link on the first page. Try again. I suspect you're not here much during the week until after 3pm.

>>12567734
>It's not relevant!
But it is. Ad hominem and goalpost displacement won't change that, especially when it's the only magazine that the media sells. Normies eat that shit up.

>>12567511
>>12567777
Did your mom get you a word-of-the-week calendar for Xmas? You seem to be trying to use as many different words as possible to say very little.

>tfw pol thinks they are clever and tries to shit up our thread
>tfw they get btfo

>>12567777
>normies eat that shit up
Firstly, normies don't even read SFF because it's a niche genre and it doesn't have enough sex appeal. Secondly, I think you're expecting too much of people who think that the only books in fantasy and Harry Potter, Game of Thrones and LoTR because they only watched the movies. Thirdly, no one buys books anymore apart from YAshit garbage is sold to teenage girls over twitter and Ready Player One or whatever garbage they're marketting to teenage boys at the moment and they sure as hell are not going to be reading some backwater publishing site dedicated to advertising SFF adult fiction. Fourthly, if you search a book, Tor's SEO is so garbage that it won't even show up on google and fifthly no one in their right mind is going to read an advertisement for a book when they can just torrent it. Mobilism would have more hits than Tor.

>>12567818
>I had to look up words used on a Vietnamese fly-fishing channel dedicated to literature, how could this be happening to me?

>>12567865
And samefagging with subtle subtle argumentum ad populi, well done, sport.

What does /sffg/ think of this book? Anyone here read it?

>>12567511
>wtf guys why can't I just read stories about homogeneous clone armies slaughtering hordes of people I don't like why do people care about others

>>12567890
>Firstly, normies don't even read SFF because it's a niche genre and it doesn't have enough sex appeal
See, I understand that television and movies are really what're driving SF these days, but I can't swallow the notion that they don't drive one another. The industry doesn't exist to push paper. People are reading and consuming science fiction, albeit digitally, sure, but that just broadens its scope and appeal. There's not that great a difference between the mediums, avid readers will insist on physical copies of independently published books when they want them. Besides advertisers and periodicals, it's really social media that drives interest in whatever works authors are publishing; hell, I follow all my favorite authors. I get all my recommended reads from them and /sffg/. In any case, I only brought that up because it's indicative of the trend I mentioned before. Even I still follow the Hugos, Nebulas, Dragon awards, etc.

>>12567924
What? Non sequitur much. Nothing anyone's said has anything to do with "caring about others" or mobilizing armies of homogeneous (I'm assuming) "white males" to murder heroic pocmen. So much for "our thread." Stop shitting it up with the same platitudes trannies use on twitter.

Anyway, I've recently heard of Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy and noticed it isn't on a list in the OP (or I'm blind). I haven't read it yet, anyone got a QRD? I usually prefer space opera, but I love the grimdark, post-apocalyptic earth setting with magical undercurrents. Anything the involves the moon being flung into space sounds cool.

>>12567895
I have read the trilogy and it's good but it's not excellent. Some of the YA trademark tropes are here especially as it is a coming of age story with romance. However, it does have excellent worldbuilding, the prose is not grating and I enjoyed the characters.

My main complaints are mainly of the third book, it has flaws that are not in the first two:
>some of the plot elements are remixed from the second book
>latter 1/5 of the third book is basically a mini novella of its own, it's somewhat disconnected from the rest of the book and I feel that the author tried to make it historically compliant with an actual event but since it's a fantasy the characters have to bend over backwards for this to actually happen
>Strange narrative plotholes like the family disappearing midway through the book and a small section in the middle of the book which is implied to have significance later on doesn't come up again

Largely, the quality of the first book is maintained across the other three books.

>>12568090
>The Broken Earth Trilogy
The OP was made when /sffg/ first started, round about the time I started visiting the general, I believe, so the Broken Earth was recommended before we knew what the second and third books looked like. The quality of the Broken Earth goes 2>>1<3 in my opinion. Although I found the second book to be excellent, in my opinion, I found the third book to be average. This is partly because I found the scifi reveal to be quite underwhelming and NKJ seems to be a lot more talented at writing fantasy than she is at writing scifi.

In my opinion, NKJ might have been inspired by Shinsekai Yori (the anime) but I think that the anime suceeded in tackling issues that NKJ did not, especially about the duality of a society that has to keep dangerous magic users under control.

I can only recommend the first two books and not the third. Therefore, the series would not make my recommendations chart.

>>12567544
>Trust me when I say that the Ruin of Kings was by far the single worst book I've read this entire year
you've read like two books this year bitch

i read sot in 7th grade. rereading at 32. this guy writes like he fucks kids.

>>12568254
And he wants you to know that you should be fucking kids too as objectively it's the moral thing to do.

>>12568219
>he doesn't count a year as 12 months
>his year starts at January
>his year isn't feb 2018 - feb 2019
Look at this pleb

Can someone recommend a spooky scifi corridor horror?

>>12568451
Hull zero three

>>12568219
It was out of 20

>>12567544
Idk senpai I didn’t make it 5 chapters into gutter prayer. This is already shaping up better than that.

>>12567544
>when he's secretly a
>secretly
Even if it wasn't on the blurb this shit is foreshadowed incredibly hard by like the 4th chapter, with the crown jewels being paid to the brothel owner and then his adoptive father saying the whole empire would know how well he raised the protag on his 16th birthday

Underlord on March 1st, for those who care.

>>12568608
>hopefully the audiobook for the one before comes out first

>>12568599
The Ruin of Kings lures you into thinking that it's going to get better but ends up meandering off on a tangent to nowhere whereas the Gutter Prayer is more tightly and competently written but takes significantly longer to warm up. That is likely why The Ruin of Kings was chosen as the shill candidate of all the other books in the arsenal, the entry barrier is far lower.

------------------------

On the topic of books that take a hilariously long time to warm up, I just finished a Canticle for Leibowitz which takes a record breaking 2/3 of the book to get good.

>>12568644
Idk senpai it’s whole first chapter is pretty cringe and I didn’t see how it was going to get better.

>>12568602
>foreshadowed incredibly hard
>"You'd think he was a Royal Prince from how he..."

damn it's hard to see this reveal coming

>>12568602
>>12568710
Wait, WAIT, what did he mean by this?!

>>12568659
I kept reading because I wanted to know more about the Ravellers, the Tallowmen and the Bells. There are some lovely nightmarish scenes Jere got Tallowman'd and when they slash the throat of the guildmistress all that comes out is white wax. I also enjoyed Ongent as a character.

The Gutter Prayer acts as a self contained story as opposed to The Ruin of Kings which is clearly going to be milked for the rest of time.

>>12568719
He has special blue godtouched eyes and beautiful skin. He's also secretly a god and got resurrected in order to fulfill a prophecy.

What's worse: Zombies or Anime

>>12568746
Anime Zombies

>>12568746
Anime. Zombie chicks are hot.

>>12568608
based

>>12568110
Alright, thanks. I'll give it a read since I'm currently hunting for series and heard about his one.

Anyone read Julian May? Especially the Galactic Mileau series?

I'm reading Intervention for the first time since i graduated high school, still love it. The characters are fantastic, and its scope is big but not overwhelming.

>>12564936
Dark Elf Trilogy and Icewind Dale are fun,everything else is crap.

>>12569285
I read the first two books of the Pliocene Epoch. They were fucking great. Now I can't find the last 2. Got book 1 of Intervention and finished it but it did bore me to tears in some parts.
I have books 1 and 2 of the Galactic Mileau books, should I go ahead and read them even if i'm missing a few before it?

Do you think Dragon was originally intended to have caused the end of the world instead of Scion? After all, the beasts of revelation were Behemoth, Leviathan, Ziz and the Dragon with seven heads and ten horns

>>12569389
I loved the rest of the series, but i'd reccomend reading the rest of Intervention before you do. The full book is on #bookz.

Never read the Pilocene series though, but i do have them. Were they good?

>>12562391
SM Stirling's Drakas books are about all the "bad guys of history" -- loyalists from the American colonies, cavaliers from the English Civil War, Boers, Icelandic dissidents -- gathering in South Africa and getting into genetics.

>>12568608
redpill me on this series? i enjoy chinkshit, is this decent?

>>12569573
Its a western attempt at chinkshit. So that means it actually has a sympathetic protagonist who doesn't casually genocide thousands. Pretty fun shlock though

how long does it take johnathan strange and mr norrel to get good? I've gotten over a hundred pages in and am literally so goddamn bored I can't understand why anyone would read it of their own free will

>>12568608
> young adult
disgusted frog.jpg

>>12569754
If you read until you get to the Gentleman with thistle-down hair which is about chapter 8, it becomes interesting (you can plow through the bits leading up, they're not particularly important plotwise). By the second volume you get to Jonathan Strange who does many more interesting things with magic than Norrell. From then on, the Gentleman with thistle-down hair carries this book. He's a GOAT character. Every chapter with him reacting to Strange and Norrell's actions is pure undiluted gold.

It's sad that the TV adaptation makes the Gentleman so much less entertaining.

After a while the plot speeds up quite significantly and I noticed on the author cutting down on description, especially in the final volume which is the pace of a regular book.

>>12569754
(continued)
But yes, I understand I dropped it twice two years ago at a similar page count and I only found out why people enjoy it this year. The leadup feels slower than your average Wuthering Heights or Austen novel leadup.

>>12566378
>>12566404
>>12569370
It's hard to respect someone who's been successful enough that his talent has been purchased by megacorps, and that he's chosen to define his career this way

>>12567924
Armies generally are homogenous though

>>12569754
you should probably drop it if you're not enjoying it at all now

Is there any info on a fourth book in the Waldo Rabbit series?

>>12560742
They are both equally important. Flat characters in a complex and well built world are a waste of a setting and round complex characters in a flat world usually can’t elevate a book beyond a decent genre piece.

Thinking of writing a story / novel on the concept of a society in which people are able to adopt clones as their own kids, most of which are clones of famous people and celebrities.

Has this been done? Any essential cloning recommendations for inspiration?

THREADSLAVE
I SUMMON YOU

for some reason /mu/ banned me from other boards

>>12570500
>>12570500

>>12562578
Didn’t realise we used cavalry in Veitnam retard

>>12560805
Then fuck off.