/lit/ - Literature

>>15882079
its a bit seasonal, too. Sometimes activity picks up considerably.

>>15882079
something I have actually been wondering is; wether or not we should eventually curate a chart of newer SciFiFantasy books; as in, Books more recent than the stuff on the charts, and aggregate a list of "these books have come out in the 2010s, you might like them, this is the order of their goodness"

I kinda feel like most of the Toplists suffer from being just a rehash of the same Kanon over and over again.

Also: Who waiting for next Expanse Book? Me :(

>>15882122
>Modern scifi

choice of magic anon I've read two pages of your book and i'm going insane

the author is using both commas and em-dashes for identical punctuation purposes, alternating seemingly at random with every other line. I get that most self-pub is only self-edited but even a beta reader should have noticed this and the author has like 6 books released before this one.

>>15882141
The future is now, old man.

>>15882122
That's easy to do since I already made a spreadsheet of /sffg/ ratings that can be used for that.

>ends on an even bigger cliffhanger than Changes while not even half as interesting
at least we only have to wait til September for the actual book

>>15882230
Listed Books With 4 Stars or Higher Average With At Least 5 Ratings Since 2010 In No Particular Order

Norse Mythology
The Emperor's Soul
The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive #1)
Red Rising (Red Rising Saga #1)
Promise of Blood (Powder Mage #1)
The Shadow of What Was Lost (The Licanius Trilogy #1)
The Red Knight (The Traitor Son Cycle #1)
Blood Song (Raven's Shadow #1)
Senlin Ascends (The Books of Babel #1)
We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse #1)
The Rage of Dragons (The Burning #1)
Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb #1)
Mr. Mercedes (Bill Hodges Trilogy #1)
The Thousand Names (The Shadow Campaigns #1)
Ninefox Gambit (The Machineries of Empire #1)

>>15882315
>We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse #1)
I DNF this but I'm gonna go enter a 1 star rating to drag that down if you think about putting it in a chart, it was awful

>>15882315
Mate ratings mean jack hit these days unfortunately.

>>15882395
I disliked it too but i didn't think it was awful. It just got tiresome to keep track of so many POVs. It got really fucking annoying. The writing was fine and even the individual characters were alright but there were just so many people and bobs.

>>15882315
>at least 5 ratings
kinda pointless, there's a small number of new release readers and of those they all tend to read different things. So anything that manages 5 readers is already well known

>>15882449
>>15882122
Didn't specify whether it had to be well known or not.

>>15882424
I agree, it's best to have a single person who has a very similar taste to one's own, but I'll pretend they have the least value.

>>15882395
I entirely agree with you.
Here's what I wrote about it:
(1) Dennis E. Taylor - We Are Legion (We Are Bob) [SF]
Through The power Of Cryonics I Was Reborn! What Would It Be Like To Be A Colony Ship? Enjoy These References From Centuries Ago!
>movie called Castaway
>If you're up on Star Wars and Star Trek, you're golden
>one of you to be the controlling intelligence for a Von Neumann probe
>MUST LOOK LIKE SCARY GUY FROM POLTERGEIST 2
>Calvin, Goku, and Linus...Garfield
>actual Vulcans...[Gene] Roddenberry would be proud

from
https://pastebin.com/MgtmPmp3
when I was being silly about looking at stuff from various charts.

Why was Robert Jordan's editor so useless? Wheel of Time's word count is 4,410,036. Why would anyone want to waste their time on this series?

>>15882532
His editor was his wife

>>15882532
I have always been of the opinion that book length and quality are negatively correlated. This is especially a problem in epic fantasy, where everyone wants to write door stoppers for some reason.

Anyone know any short epic fantasies?

>>15882598
>short epic
oxymoron

this is very unlikely, but does anyone remember a YA fantasy series from maybe the 90s or 00s about a group of 4 (?) kids/teens who access a magical medieval-type realm by crawling through a bush/hedge (and maybe while holding a coin or button that one of them finds in said hedge?) and also time passes differently there which is a major plot point.
I know it sounds like I'm just describing Narnia with the wrong release date but it's not that. I'm almost certain the author was a woman and there may have been something about a magic well. and now that I'm typing this I'm vaguely remembering something about a valley? maybe in the title or there just was a dangerous one? kingdom as well?

this is so vague I'm sorry but I can't for the life of me figure it out because I have so little to go on.

>>15882609
Not him but compare page count of Odyssey to War and Peace...

Any fantasy books with a cast of characters like pic related?

I've seen a thread with this image and it interested me.

>>15882609
Epic is defined by the scope of the work, its depth, etc, not the length. (I'll admit the two are correlated)

>>15882650
An example of a shorter epic.

>>15882655
Nibelungenlied

>>15882634
It could be dark is rising, I never read beyond the first book but it fits magical medieval and the group

>>15873776
Fuzzy Sapiens - H. Beam Piper, Fuzzy Sapiens #2 (1964)
Much like the characters in the story, I've got fuzzies on the brain and can't find fault with them. So, same as the previous review, this is entirely biased. It was simply too much fun, I couldn't help but be continually smiling while reading. Ah, if only I were able to find more that made be feel the same way. H. Beam Piper is one of my favorite authors from this era, I've read and enjoyed much of his short fiction and works in general. Flaws in the book? I don't know what you're talking about, ha ha. The story of the fuzzies integrating into human society captivated me the entire time.
5/5

>>15882722
And this time I forgot the image instead, oh well.

i like dialogue-heavy books
does that exist

>>15882634
I was googling around for Narnia knockoffs and stumbled across the cover for The Secret Country by Pamela Dean. I haven't looked at how close I was on the details yet but this is definitely it

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/07/the-politics-of-publishing

>>15882832
this isn't ontopic anon, it's about a specific hyped up thriller

>>15882898
Missing the forest for a single tree.

>>15882172
this seems to go away by chapters end, so weird that it didn't get picked up on before he hit publish
book is perfectly readable now

>>15882315
>(series #1) x13, one original novella and an anthology that no one with sense would class as scifan

How do Christian fantasy writers get around the whole "practicing witchcraft is demonic" thing from the Bible?

>>15883233
they have brains that are able to recognize that writing about fictional magic is not actually practicing witchcraft

>>15883233
https://blog.heartsupport.com/lets-stop-pretending-christianity-is-even-christian-anymore-455f8897ba74

>>15883233
>Merlin's traditional biography casts him as a cambion: born of a mortal woman, sired by an incubus, the non-human from whom he inherits his supernatural powers and abilities.[2]

>Merlin is begotten by a demon on a virgin as the intended Antichrist. This plot is thwarted when the expectant mother informs her confessor Blaise of her predicament; they immediately baptize the boy at birth, thus freeing him from the power of Satan and his intended destiny. The demonic legacy invests Merlin with a preternatural knowledge of the past and present, which is supplemented by God, who gives the boy a prophetic knowledge of the future.

>>15882079
Is Malazan worth reading? If no, why?

>>>/v/517258197
Which one of you is it with the Culture hardon?

>>15883233
depends whether you mean "christian-fantasy writers" or "christian fantasy-writers"? The latter don't bother, as it's a story not real magic. The former draw a moral division between arcane and divine spell-casting

>>15883233
Tolkien made his wizards angels

>>15883262
And what does merlin do with prophetic knowledge?

>>15882122
Speaking of charts, I would like to help in the creation of an Amazon self-published chart. I've read several and can contribute my own thoughts and opinions however I lack the technical know-how to shoop a chart together. The current few floating around are all original donut steel subjective-guised-as-objective TRASH and any chart should be a joint effort, never by one person.
Unless they're copying some template like most the big ones floating around but not the point here.

>>15883328
are you serious?

>>15882122
No one reads the charts, they just scroll past them because they're useless filler

Why the fuck is fantasy literature so stagnant now? Where's the high-concept stuff? Has GRRM cucked us into another winter of dull "gritty" fantasy?

>>15883373
Where's the epic poetry and prose stuff, too?

>>15883348
Yes. I haven't read it, I've only seen King Arthur movies as a kid.

>>15883373
>Why the fuck is fantasy literature so stagnant now?
capitalism

>>15883381
I am writing a Silmarillion-esque work, if that's what you mean by epic prose.

>>15883233
The same way Christians got around it back before the Catholic Church made Satan scary and burning pagans became the cool thing to do: by profiting from it. People pretty much ignored that whole not suffering a witch to live thing when the crimes of the witch were knowing a bit about practical natural medicine and sucking your dick when your wife has a headache for the 365th night in a row.

>>15883373
t. only wants weebshit

>>15883270
Yes, because it's fucking great.
No, because holy fucking shit it's long as fuck and there are so many goddamned names to remember. I love all of t but it's more bloated than Marlon Brando after a bender.

>>15883491
Nice cope.

>>15883491
What amazing cherrypicking and general bias.

>>15883491
literature?

>>15882079
I don't like dune or its sequels

/sffg/, I'm tired of fighting my brain but nothing I try to fix it works

>>15883649
did you try working hard in the hours after waking up instead of later

>>15883668
I haven't, but I work full-time

>>15883718
guess it's time you quit your day job and achieve your dreams... in the mornings

Does Edgedancer add anything significant to the plot of Stormlight Archive? I fucking dreaded Lift's interlude in book 2.

>>15883737
>Lyft summoned her awesomeness.

>>15883764
>Lyft summoned her awesomeness.

>>15883764
>>15883775
>Lyft summonder her awesomeness

Fucking Bran-san man.

This question has probably been asked for decades but is there anything like star trek? Mostly TNG-Voyager era.

What avenues are there for a writer in this day and age? Drawfags seem to have unlimited potential in pitching cartoon series to studios or just having regular old web content.

Does the writer have to self-publish and pray for a niche following? Sacrifice his integrity and get published by Tor or some other awful company?

What do I do?

>>15884098
write the exact same story but change all the pronouns to she/her

if there's a romance with a girl, that's just bonus progressive points

>>15884129
Especially if you don't change any lurid descriptions of the protagonists penis.

>>15884164
that's even MORE progressive points! That's like "Vox Day organizes a voting campaign so you don't win the Hugo award" progressive.

>>15884098
My planned strategy is
> Fanfic on AO3
> Build a following
> Self publish on Amazon, shill on AO3
> ???
> Pulitzer Prize

>>15884205
Scratch the Pulitzer, I wanna Hugo

do pictures degrade the tone of a scene or passage or enhance it? i write, but i also draw, and i want to include pictures in my book. obviously not children's picture-book tier in terms of frequency or style, but mostly realistic looking, quasi-painted/sketched pictures depicting the important or most exciting scenes, or for use in the depiction of non-real things that words simply can't cover well enough

>tfw Extra Life made Blood of the Lycanthrope a nonmagic poison that causes lycanthropy
>tfw a conjuration wizard can become a werewolf at level 2

>>15883233
You do understand that fantasy is magic is not real witchcraft right?

>>15884287
i dunno, i like to look at gustave dore pictures of classics he illustrated like the bible.

there's a cool version of coleridge's rime of the ancient mariner spoken by orson welles and set to atmospheric music and animated versions of gustave dore's drawings
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRGnoFf2cZQ

>>15882141
>Modern scifi
Alastair Reynolds is pretty kino

>>15884487
tell that to religispergs

>>15883775
>>15883799
Is this actual in the book? Wtf?

So. I just started reading Fall; or, Dodge in Hell, by Neal Stephenson, because it had a seemingly fun premise, what with virtual reality and brain upload and all that.
But i am only a quarter into the book, and i started noticing some weird sjw shit going on, like the author using the word "microagression" unironically, "feminazis", and how "women in the games industry were subjected to a lot of overt harassment". Is this motherfucker for real, or i am blind and this is satire? Should i save my time and stop reading this before it derails into a trainwreck of politically correct fantasy?

>>15883270
No. It's video game tier writing and noone who gets killed stays fucking dead.

>>15885043
https://www.tor.com/2013/12/10/words-of-radiance-excerpt-lift/

>It's a character who steals things
>Named "Lift"
This is your brain on Mormonism, Blizzard and The Wheel of Time

>>15882314
I just want the police bitch to die already. She probably will, but I bet Butcher will make her into some kind of an honorable einherjar and we'll never be rid of her.

>>15883262
How do I get into Merlin and all that shit?

>>15883255
>christcucks
>have brains
We have a funny guy here.

>>15884287
As an artist myself, I personally think an illustration often enchances the scene and gives me a clearer picture of what's going on.

I'd rather read a book where the creator has followed their instincts rather than limiting themselves to serve a hypothetical audience.

Fuck. E. William. Brown

>>15885474
How would one go about it if he were to set his mind on this goal?

What's the deal with Brandon Sanderson?

>>15885510
Fuck off Seinfeld.

>>15885299
>I'm pure,” Lift whispered, grunting as she climbed. “I’m a child and stuff. I’m so storming pure I practically belch rainbows.
People read this shit?

>>15885638
So, so many.

>reading a fantasy book by an american author
>they use an irl english place name that has a specific geographical meaning that doesn't match the text
my autism is getting to me

>>15885817
This also happens in real life. If you didn't want people massacring your culture you shouldn't have forced it on half the globe

>>15885638
>>I'm pure,” Lift whispered, grunting as she climbed. “I’m a child and stuff. I’m so storming pure I practically belch rainbows.
You guys... Brando is intentionally making this character a retarded child. You're supposed to think she's childish.

>>15885510
autism

>>15885638
>child character
>behaves like a child
>WTF I CAN'T STAND THIS AT ALL
Imagine if frogposters lurked more and didn't pollute threads with their newfaggotry

>child character in a fantasy world
>speaks like something out of a cartoon by a tumblr user
>"you're weird if this feels off to you"

>>15886130
That's not how children speak.
That's how Twitter thinks children speak.

>>15886330
How do you know? Do you have more children than Brandon "Mormon reproduction ethic" Sanderson?

>>15882598
Beowulf

>>15886429
Cuz I am not some antisocial loser.
And I doubt even Mormon kids use "storming".
But who knows? Maybe out there, right this moment, some Twitter tards are raising kinds that one day will speak as annoyingly as that and be mercilessly bullied for it.

Any books with this feel?

How's Leguin's Earthsea books? Worth reading as an adult or are they more for children?

>>15886504
>>15886330
>>15885638
>is so autistic that he doesn't know how shit children speak
I mean, I understand why parents wouldn't want to leave their kids around you, you might cause the children harm.

Is there a sci fi equivalent to Conan? Something that's fun, adventurous, and not trying to preach to me?

>>15886516
Nubile elf girls looking to play with long girthy snakes when they are wet?

>>15886601

>>15886610
Nobody wants to copy shit like conan. Why would there be a scifi knock off of that trash?

>tfw yet another short story was rejected.
Anyone published here? How long did it take everyone here until they were first published?

>>15886636
Well J.K. "Everyone's gay" Rowling Harry Potter was rejected 13 times before someone decided to pick it up.
It's a slow and sad process.

>>15886623
Jesus, calm down. I like Conan, sue me.

>>15886655
Yeah, but that’s touted as some insanely high number and I’ve passed that long ago. And that was for one book while I’ve been sending out different short stories.

>>15886681
>Yeah, but that’s touted as some insanely high number and I’ve passed that long ago.
Well shit nigga you gotta up your game.

>>15886698
So should I just give up? I did have a couple ya and kids book ideas. Is it easier to get published there?

>>15883328
Get trapped in a crystal cave forever by the treason of his apprentice/waifu because even wizards gotta get their dicks wet.

>>15886775
I sincerely hope you get somewhere with your writing.

Although, I wonder how jaded people who post on a Chinese planting forum could make their writing relatable and appropriate for children.

>>15886636
Have you asked why?
Are you a white dude trying to write fantasy?

>>15886847
Escapism and nostalgia work together in a powerful way, and being a jaded faggot feeds both of those.

>>15886868
Sci fi mostly. And I am white, but they don’t know that. I have an androgynous first name too.

But more to the point, I was getting rejected even before this wave of political correctness started.

>>15886892
Has your work improved, what do your proof readers say?

>>15884751
Spergs are going to sperg. They do so regardless of religion.
Most a Christians understand and distinguish between reality and fiction.

>>15886636
>>15886892
Did I slip into some parallel dimension where the KDP doesn't exist?
Fuck tr*ditional publishing and fuck H*go trannies.

>>15886917
They say I’ve improved and I always try to fix specifix criticisms. Usually it’s just that my pacing is a bit off so I need to cut something here or add something there. It’s been long enough that at this point I’m just pretty sure I’m never gonna make it.

>>15886610
Stainless Steel Rat

>>15881334
Catgirl content appears to be maximum (I didn't mean in the anime sense). I will subscribe to your... serial?

will ASOIAF ever be finished?

>>15887704
Not by GRRM.

>>15886429
I literally teach elementary school and that is not how children speak.

>>15887804
not with the shit job you're doing

>>15887814
I don't think there's a school on the planet that teaches children to use fantasy swears

>>15887827
not him but aren't we discussing a fantasy book?

>>15885817
> immersion breaks when authors use real life names
>>15887827
> immersion breaks when authors use made up swears

>>15882079
What makes a work "dark fantasy"?

>>15882122
Most new sff is sjw trash. Only few new authors worth reading, you will not have enough material even make a decent chart.
But if you want to do it then go ahead, maybe something good will come of it.

>>15886130
>>15886429
>>15886601
>trannies mad I made fun of their favorite retard
Heh, nothin' personnel, man.
>Th-That's just how kids talk!
Sure thing retards. I guess I should count myself lucky for being raised like a normal kid. I guarantee if you had spoken like that around me or my friends growing up, you'd get bullied relentlessly lmao nobody talks like tumbler irl.
51% attempt rate

>>15884098
There are many more avenues in this day and age than ever before.

>>15884287
In my opinion don't do it unless you are going full iliustrated book/story route.

>>15887920
fantasy but, like, without light

>>15887205
Post something so we can read it.

>>15884287
Mervyn Peake did it why can't you?

>>15884287
I like sketches in books but only as supplementary material. Don't use them to depict things you are unable to describe with words.

>>15888082
>>15888135

Why?

>>15882950
How are you finding it?

>>15882722
Fuzzies and Other People - H. Beam Piper, Fuzzy Sapiens #3 (1984)

Wah! Problematic!* As one reviewer wrote, "If one tosses off all care for moral considerations, this story is nothing but pure fun." I think that's an extreme statement used to explain the rest of their review and rating. I wouldn't endorse many of the politics or actions taken in this trilogy, but I also don't see that as particularly relevant. Is it possible to read enjoy something that doesn't agree with your personal beliefs? I think so. Unfortunately, it increasingly seems that people don't believe that and take great personal offense when they read something they find even moderately disagreeable. This book was first published 20 years after the author's suicide. There have been other "continuations" by other people, but it seems unlikely that I will read them or Scalzi's remake of the first book, but it could happen since enjoyed these so much. As for the book itself, half of it is from the fuzzy and the other half is from the human point of view. I continued to find them to be very comfortable and enjoying reads. On the fuzzy side, a group of 8 is journeying to The Wonderful Place as they wonder through the wilderness not knowing where they are heading but assured that a better life awaits them there if they are willing to endure all the hardship they will have to face. On the human side, it's resolving the issues caused by the events of the 2nd book and how to best accommodate the needs of all fuzzies.

*Content warning 1: white man's burden, white savior complex, colonialism, capitalism, promotion of smoking and drinking, not vegan, doesn't do well enough on the Bechdel test, not feminist, death penalty for many crimes, suspected anti-semitism, insufficient diversity, anti-tax, and many other problematic issues.
*Content warning 2: pro-immigration, promotion of multiculturalism, promotion of welfare, reparations (sort of), anti-xenophobia, women can be more capable then men, insufficiently anthropocentric, continual increase in minority and immigrant rights, some concern for the environment, and many other failures of common sense.

Rating: 5/5

>>15888196
I'm enjoying it now, wouldn't call it good/great or anything but it's fun.
The critique would be that it focuses on a long training sequence for half of a book and then doesn't even pay it off in the next section but I enjoyed reading that part anyway so I'm not too bothered.
Even though the worldbuilding is pretty generic it's interesting to see stuff about the Fae folded into an otherwise pretty standard fantasy world with all the typical creatures.

>>15888193
I enjoy reading books. Visual novels are a different thing entirely. Pictures can be a fun aside to the text but they break immersion if I'm expected to pay more than cursory attention to them.

>>15888288
vizzy novs are way too slow to read for me.
I'm not an insane speed reader but going through a story 2-4 lines on screen at a time is agony

>>15888327
I agree. I've never been able to get much into them.

I'm considering giving the Lord of the Rings another go - I tried to read it as a kid and I just remember it being so god damn long winded. Does Tolkien's writing hold up?

>>15885049
probably the latter - Stephenson is based and his endings suck

Not gonna lie, I liked all ten Malazan main books, but I'm reading Return of The Crimson Guard now and have no idea what the fuck is going on.

>>15885043
That sentence appears many times on her single chapter in Words of Radiance. I don't even want to imagine how many times it shows up in the Lift-focused 250 pages novella.

>>15888889
>250 pages
>novella
I don't think you know what a novella is.

>>15888949
>I don't think you know what a novella is.
Don't blame me, anon, Edgedancer is literally called a novella.
https://www.brandonsanderson.com/edgedancer-is-out/

>>15889291
https://coppermind.net/wiki/Edgedancer/Statistical_analysis

Apparently the one with that page count is tiny sized with large font.

>>15886130
That's not how children talk, that's how faggots and redditors talk when pretending to be children

>>15889675

>>15889645
Who does latro rape??

>>15889645
>Berensltain
>Not Berenstein

>>15889714
He admits that he would rape Elata while she sleeps if Io and someone else I can't remember weren't watching over him.

>>15889766
it's been like five years, anon

>the joke
.
>>15889789

>>15889840
WOW A FIVE YEAR OLD "JOKE"

HOW FUNNY

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHA

>>15889855
Wow you really didn't get it did you?

>>15889855
you're fun at parties aren't you?

>>15889881
>going to parties

Give me the most imaginative fantasy books you guys got.

>>15889789
>>15889855
Fucking idiot.

Wizards bumble about being wizards.
I enjoy.

>>15884287
Check out the illustrations done for Children of Hurin. They sound like the sort of thing you want to do.

Kellhus from Prince of Nothing vs Griffith/Femto from Berserk who wins?

>>15888068
>>>/pol/
You're clearly underage, and you clearly don't read.

>>15889788
Io rapes latro too

>>15890022
Corum

>>15890038
Are you mad at him, or are you mad that you're not a real woman?

>that gom jabbar thing being a retarded pain tolerance test that proved absolutely nothing yet everyone treats it like a life-changing experience
>an entire chapter of the Harkonnen simply exposing their plans for no good reason beyond making the reader aware of the "political scheming" (the baron even says some cartoonish bullshit like "what a great plan made by me, the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen!")
>the shield fighting where only 1 of the 2 weapons is actually effective and only if you swing it slow as fuck, making the whole affair completely unnecessary since it would be pretty obvious which attacks you need to defend while you let the shield take care of the rest
>Herbert can only refer to the Reverend Mother as "the old woman"
I've just started reading, but this book is far away from the literary masterpiece everybody says it's supposed to be.

>>15890172
the Test of Humanity is literally that, it tests if your reasoning can overcome your instincts

Thanks to the anons who suggested library at mt char in response to this image a couple weeks ago. Really enjoyed the humor. Got any other recs?

>>15890221
>Thanks to the anons who suggested library at mt char in response to this image a couple weeks ago
You're welcomed.

>Got any other recs?
With regards to your pic? No. If I did I would have posted it then.

>>15882655
The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson

>>15890080

What's Corum's powerset? I've got The Prince in Scarlet Robe but zero idea if it is a good place to start with Corum or Moorcock stuff

>>15882655
>>15890264
I was going to suggest The King of Ys

>>15890196
Reasoning would make Paul grab the hand that holds the needle and punch the old cunt in the face with the other hand. Survival instinct is what makes him do whatever she says. It's just a really dumb way of pointing out how politically powerful the Bene Gesserit are.

>>15890291
yeah ok, just gamble on your arm being faster than the poison needle pressed up against your neck

>>15890291
Set the book aside and come back to it after you're out of puberty.

>>15890278
That looks very interesting, thanks for the recommendation.

>>15890323
Will the shield fights make sense when I'm 40?

>>15890334
They should make sense now.

>>15890346
They don't. "Offense is slow, defense is fast" doesn't make any sense at all. If the shields exist, there's no point in duels and everything should be settled with sneaky attacks behind the back so there's no time to activate the damn thing. In fact, if they go nuclear if you shoot at them, wearing a shield makes even less sense.

>>15890386
>make shields to stop projectile weapons
>have to come up with new ways to get around them in open combat
>setting off nukes is generally undesirable in a battle your own forces are participating in

>>15890172
Like above said it's a test about overcoming instinct.
How do you not enjoy the super villainous nature of the Harkonnen? Most of the characters act like they are actors playing to an audience. It all comes off to me as being a Shakespearean drama, or mythology.
The shields allow stuff moving under 10cm per second through. Also everyone doesn't have a full shield. I imagined the fights looking like sword and buckler/shield where the combatants are constantly trying to stab around the others defense. It also reinforces the feudal nature of the setting, and it's real fucking cool.
I imagine Dune constantly uses epithets to mythologize the characters, to better allow the average reader to identify the characters quickly, and to let the reader know how one character feels about the other. Like the Bene Gesserit constantly being referred to as "witches", or Gurney being called "the Valorous".

>>15888508
It is very long winded but it's much easier to handle as an adult. Well worth reading.

>>15890427
The Harkonnen are fun, but exposing their plans so directly seemed kind of cheap.
Everything moving under 10cm/sec is way too slow for a fight. It would be so easy to dodge even without full body protection, and the fast attacks shouldn't work as bait since you'd know it would just bounce off the shield. I understand it's there just for the feudal feeling, but it's too dumb not to pick on it.
>Most of the characters act like they are actors playing to an audience. It all comes off to me as being a Shakespearean drama, or mythology.
Yeah, that makes sense. With all the references to the Arab Revolt, the Roman Empire, the oil conflict in the Middle East, etc. that I've read about, I was expecting a completely different approach. Less dramatised, almost like a history book.
For now the setting seems pretty cool, I'll try to change my perspective and hope there aren't many more of those shield fights.

>>15890597
shields mostly go away once they hit Arrakis

Tourist here, what are some cool, /lit/ approved fantasy books with interesting magic systems?

Bonus for magic schools

>>15890742
>magic schools

>>15890269
>What's Corum's powerset?
dunno but he kills celtic giants and gods of chaos
If you mean the Gollancz omnibus that collects the Swords trilogy (Knight of Swords, Queen of Swords and King of Swords) then yes, that's the first corum series

How is Riftwar?

Should I start the ring world series? I'm in the mood for some classic sci-fi but people here said it's shit.

Is there any point writing a story based on Ancient China setting when people insist that in order to write one you have to know every little piece of information about China?

It's called Fantasy for a reason, ya fuckheads!

>>15890862
First one not bad, but kind of simplistic. A little above David Eddings.

>>15890895
First one is good. Or if not good, creative, engaging, thoughtful, playful and energetic. Later ones not so good unless you're into giantess fucking. But if you like book 1 you may want to fish around known space to see if you can't get a nibble.

What's the name of some book, or series of, about a bunch of magical swords with different powers? I've never read it myself, I just remember coming across that premise years ago.

>>15890862
It's entry-level fantasy but i love it

>Kevin and Brian's Dune books are so bad they even contradict themselves
why did I read these

>>15890998
>It's entry-level fantasy
Like, Dragonlance Chronicles or something like that?

>>15890998
I never get these "it's entry level x", it's only applicable in case you aren't reading fiction. You don't need to master the concepts of hard and soft magic before reading certain fantasy novel. It just makes no sense.

>>15882314
>dude what if we just had nothing happen until the last third of the book lmao

>>15891029
>these
Which ones?
Anon... Did you read all of them, anon?

>>15890973
The Book of Swords by Saberhagen?

>>15891029
just read normal literature

What's the farthest you've ever gotten into a book before realizing you've already read it?

>>15891063
I read uhhhh
the House books, the Butlerian Jihad books, and the sequels to Chapterhouse. Then my self-loathing overcame my desire to watch a train wreck.

>>15891068
I keep a tab of all the books I have read so far in order to avoid such things.

>>15891064
Sounds like it. Thanks.

>>15891079
>the House books, the Butlerian Jihad books, and the sequels to Chapterhouse
Damn, anon, that's 8 books, give or take.
The only one I've ever tried was the Butlerian Jihad one, but I dropped it in less than 100 pages.

>>15891100
believe me when I say the first Butlerian Jihad book is the high point

>>15891109
>the first Butlerian Jihad book is the high point
How... haworring.

>>15888514
>Stephenson is based
Is he, though?

>>15891135
yeah, who could forget the half-man half-cat Scattering race called FUTARS

>>15891176
Half cat you say?

>>15891176
FUTAS?

>>15891147
s o y is based

>>15891221
Dune: and you thought what happened to Star Wars was bad!

>>15882079
Any good Magic academy books. I want to immerse myself in high school/college again

>>15891441
The Summoner trilogy

I was watching a documentary on MundaneMatt and I feel like asking for a retarded recommendation tonight.

Medival fantasy + GamerGate = ???

>Doon

>>15886828
That's a later edition

Hey guys so I never used to read frequently until recently and I've been getting really into scifi. I read the Three Body Problem trilogy last and it was soooo fucking good. Do you guys know any good sci do books that are similar? Currently I'm reading Do Android's dream of electric sheep but I'm almost done with it already. Looking for another lengthy book that has can capture that same epic feeling the three body trilogy had.

>>15891029
>Reading anything past messiah
Lol!!

I don't like dune
I don't like paul
I don't like jessica
I don't like the Baron
I don't like spice

>>15890742
Read Bakker

>>15891441
Is that why they're popular?

>>15891588
>I don't like jessica
absolute cringe, she's the best character

Is Peace Talks worse then Early Dresden?

>>15891682
mommy

>>15891589
based Bakker

>>15891738
Peace Talks is Early Dresden if nothing happened for the first two-thirds, complete with Butcher being weirdly fixated on how sexy every female character is.

Uller Uprising - H. Beam Piper (1952)

This was different from most of what I've read from him. It's a military science fiction novel based on the Sepoy Mutiny set around 450 years in the future on the planet Uller, which has silicone based life rather than carbon based. The native inhabitants are slate-gray skinned 4-armed lizardmen who sweat quartz and are true hermaphrodites. How far is this idea taken? "The Kragan kings have always provided their own heirs, by self-fertilization. That's a complicated process, involving simultaneous male and female masturbation."
Regrettably, it begins with an encyclopedic infodump of many pages. The term "hard science fiction" wasn't used in print until 1957. This would have been better appended to the conclusion. It's questionable if it served any purpose other than worldbuilding since it's so speculative as it is. There are several short digressions, such as discussion the "semantic orientation" of the native's language and how the structure of their language controls the development of their society, which may be referring to the the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. There have been many times when I read older fiction that I've checked whether something already existed or if the author independently arrived at the idea before it was relatively popularly known, which is a basically a prescience check.
The protagonist, General Carlos von Schlichten, is of Nazi heritage, which seems premature to me considering that this was published only 7 years after VE Day. The love interest is of French collaborator descent. I don't know what was meant by this.
The book starts with some urban warfare, which is not representative of the whole at all, with depictions such as "shoved the muzzle of his pistol into the creature's open mouth and pulled the trigger, blowing its head apart like a rotten pumpkin and splashing both himself and the girl with yellow blood and rancid-looking gray-green brains." and "Von Schlichten shot him, and the Zirk literally blew to pieces", which seemed to be a bit much to me. In some ways the opening is a bait-and-switch because most of the novel is the protagonist giving orders, having discussions, strategizing with his advisors, and planning tactical maneuvers. Women seem to have all positions in the military and are well-regarded and competent, which led me to the wikipedia article on the history of women in the US military. The one notable prediction to me was an explicit parallel made that implied that Japan would soon become one of the greatest countries in the world. I don't know how common this belief was around 1952.
Ending spoiler: The protagonist discovers that the enemy has atomic bombs and decides that the only rational solution for their situation is to nuke them until nothing at all remains. So he does. Nagasaki is explicitly mentioned, which also being 7 years later, seems a bit unnecessary. After observing the smoldering ruins, the novel ends.

Rating: 2.5/5

>>15891792
oh and also if the mystery didn't get solved by the end

>>15882079
books with 'soft' magic systems are almost always better than books with 'hard' magic systems, because 'hard' magic systems are inevitably masturbatory and for people who don't understand that they're 100% in control of the story.

>>15891804
your comment is inevitably masturbatory

>>15891854
im right youre wrong hahaha

>>15890038
d i l a t e

>>15891441
>>15890742
READ Choice of Magic

sorry I was sleeping and could not reply earlier.. dreaming of new quests and adventures, and places for our characters to explore.

Finished Codex Alera, it was decent enough. I probably could have dropped it in the middle, but I realized I've dropped so many series in over the years, that I might as well finish.

>>15882314
I only made it through the first couple books, what an awful series

>>15892558
it unironically gets considerably better at book 4

>>15892561
I learned my lesson and will never again read urban fantasy

The loudest voices most often repeated are heard the most.

>>15890862
Magician is decent enough. The latter two books are kind eh in comparison. The Daughter of the Empire series he cowrote with Janny Wurts though is really gripping stuff. It runs parallel along this series but follows characters on the Tsurani world. It's a lot grittier with more sex than the regular Riftwar books.

I've read a lot of Feist's work, but I only really come back to Riftwar and not so much the later books set in that timeline. Serpent War is worth a read through at least once though.

>>15890742
>interesting magic systems
Unironically Sanderson. It's all he's good for, really.
>magic schools
Black Magician Trilogy is still my favorite.

Anyone read pic related? That Evangelion read/expected/got was quite a good bait, but I'm not sure and I haven't read anything by Swanswick. It's always a coin toss with these 80-90s American writers. Synopsis reads like that Netflix movie with Orcs and Will Smith.

>>15893259
>Sanderson
>Black Magician trilogy
You're joking right?

>>15882634
I've been trying to find the title of a similar Narnia knockoff for years. The only detail I recall is the realm has different colours and the ending of the book involved a character crawling on the roof of a cavern

Read choice of magic in under 24 hours, had a big post typed out about what I did and didn't like but it got eaten by some posting error.

Main thoughts were that it was fun despite having half a book of teaching/training that barely even leads into the second half; and despite having no clear path for the series beyond the personal development of the protag I was still interested enough to carry on.
Oh and I liked putting fae stuff inside of a typical fantasy world

>>15893273
I liked but didn't love it. Swanwick wrote it because he felt that most fantasy books at the time were formulaic and predictable, consequently IDD is extremely bizarre and unpredictable. I'd recommend it if you think "wait, what the fuck?" is an acceptable reaction to almost every significant story beat

Anything with powerlevels?

>>15891560
>the Three meme Problem trilogy
Hard scifi autist

>>15891580
>reading past dune book 1

>>15894271
By "power levels" you mean the character slowly gets stronger as the book progresses?
Any self published books.

If you mean dbz "power levels" with stronger people popping up. Self published books.

>>15890742
Harry potter. Rowling is /ourgal/ again

>>15894271
Cradle

Can you convey action well through text? I want to include a lot but it seems like it'll be so limited without any visuals

>>15894809
Mistborn (and probably the rest of Sanderson's books) is full of overdescribed anime-like fights and it's pretty popular.

Why is this so good, anons?

>>15882598
Jurgen (or, a comedy of justice)

Was surprised at how much I enjoyed this serie, and how little it gets mentioned.
Any recomendations for something similar?

>>15894820
I'll look into it, thanks.

Are there any history/ anthropology books that could help a fantasy writer when writing about Medieval Europe?

>>15885638
People give Robert Jordan a lot of shit, but at least he can write passable prose. Even when it's about braid-pulling. I'll never forgive Sanderson for how he wrote the last books of Wheel of Time, although I understand it is impossible to copy another author's voice.

>>15895048
I haven't read the actual text, but the introduction to my copy of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight says that the poet put in a lot of detail about the clothing, armor, architecture, etc., of the period

>>15895048
A Short History of the Middle Ages by Rosenwein is a good short/easy primer.
Although it's a university press book so the prices on amazon seem to be double/triple what it was when I got it

Wizardrous is free on Kindle through July 19th. If you have a taste for humorous fantasy, this should be right up your alley!

https://www.amazon.com/Wizardrous-J-Hinsvark-ebook/dp/B08745D6BP

>>15894848
Sex?

>>15882079
Anything with vikings in space? I want a spaceship that's shaped like a longship travelling across the universe, trying to search for the North Star.

Fuck¥€£βμ
˙E
°°William
˙`°Brown

>>15895320
idk buddy, it is kinda unsatisfying, why did Amaryllis have to be such an asexual dyke

>>15893259
>Black Magician Trilogy
How sjw is it?

>>15893997
I like book 1 but second book is probably better, it is when he actually starts learning magic and also because of few other things.

>>15895408
One of the povs is about a gay character accepting that he's gay so you'll prob hate it

>>15895439
not for me then.

>>15895435
Yeah one of the bits I was gonna mention in the lost post is how with the 2nd book it hilariously follows the same plot points as name in the wind and yet is a drastically better series despite almost every individual element of the writing being arguably worse.

>>15895465
Have you finished book 2?

Also is name of the wind good? Is it worth reading? Is there sjw stuff in it?

>>15895494
About halfway through book 2 right now, I like how it's handled presenting killing as a simple solution to a problem and then going to show all the issues that come from the seemingly obvious move.

NotW is a bad but pretty well liked series which is why I mentioned it. First book is alright but the second is godawful. Can't remember if there's anything that would upset political sensitivities or not.

>>15895494
>>15895538
oh and also it's just fun to read about a wizard with loads of spells.
Too many books now do anime/vidya/d&d sorcerer magic where everyone only has one or two spells or an element each

>>15895538
How he handled Dennis situation is probably the best part of the book (that's not to say the rest of the book was not enjoyable), real alpha moment done right, I don't often see this in literature.

Just finished the Deed of Paksenarrion trilogy. Pretty cool. First book felt too boring and predictable. Second book really picked up the slack. Third was better than the first, but so many of the things they were working to solve were blindingly obvious that it was kind of silly for the amount of time they spent on it.
Also thought the torture/rape chapter was weird.
Wish Paks wasn't so uptight as a Paladin? I was hoping that she'd be a lot more loose and free to kind of do it her own way due to the way that she gets her powers, but she's still just as rigid as the other Paladins we see in the story.
I'd say my biggest complaint about the story is how Paks rarely makes wrong decisions. When confronted with a scenario, she almost always chooses correctly and is successful or something happens wholly outside of everyone's control, or she chooses wrong and is actually met with consequences. I was really excited in the second book when she killed the snow cat and ended up losing her animal-control ring, but even that was a pretty hollow loss in the grand scheme of things. Too many of the bad things that happened to her weren't a result from meaningful choices that she made. Other than the choice that that was the life she wanted to live.
2>3>1
Anything else like this but better I can read next?

>>15894476
kek

Does anyone know where to start with magical realism or fabulism?

>>15895351
Not a bad concept, but it's definitely one of those things where it's been either written poorly and thrown out by those interested to write it in the first place, or in a non-english short story monthly issue.

>>15895494
The main character is a cuck who has a soliloquy about the fact there although other men enjoy his whore oneitis's body he has something they'll never have with her

>>15895831
Years of Solitude/Time of Cholera, Blow-up and Other Stories.

I could say Master and Margarita or Murakami's works but those are pretty much just typical low fantasy stories that have been labeled as Magic Realism to sell to people who won't read genre
fiction.
Really that's the fundamental issue with MR, the more you read the more you realise it's often just fantasy rebranded

>Get recommend some YT dude to watch
>Decently popular, must be good
>See he's writing a video:
https://youtu.be/4Pho1avhSOc
>5 minutes in and I came to realise something

Explaining your magic systems outside of the piece is the most telling thing that you don't have confidence in your reader to understand, or in yourself to show in text.
In this thread, I think a lot of us are getting fucking sick of seeing walls of text that could be compressed to at most a half paragraph.
The greatest red flag is 'The inhabitants don't know how it works exactly' but you've literally just ruined any mysticism because of your text dump.
You're writing fantasy, not hard sci-fi.

>>15895747
>Also thought the torture/rape chapter was weird
Tell me more...

>>15895889
I would probably never write fantasy but I love fantastical things. It's not necessarily snobbery, I think it's just too hard to write into fantasy unless you're a huge fan that wants to build a massive universe, or a whole new language. I started Gene Wolfe and the power of his imagination seems to be unmatched in terms of worldbuilding, or at least, I certainly couldn't do it.

I think this quote is also interesting when thinking about the shadow of Tolkien.

>>15895944
Did you (you) the wrong post? Maybe you were talking to robin Williams?

>>15895961
I was responding to:
>Really that's the fundamental issue with MR, the more you read the more you realise it's often just fantasy rebranded

>>15890022
Probably Kellhus wins, depending on the time frame. Kellhus pre-gnosis probably loses to Femto though.

>>15895857
Oh gawd, the man has his lifes adventure in front of him and all he can think of is his dick in some sluts vagina. Worst type of beta cucks.

>>15895944
I agree with you, the fantasy genre is just "Tolkien but slightly different". That's why I'm trying to write something completely different and weird. I still think Tolkien is valuable as an entryway to the genre, I just want to see more weird shit.

>>15896006
He becomes a sex god in the second book

>>15895944
You clearly are not a huge fan.
You don't have to do all those things to write good fantasy.

>>15896017
Why would anyone want to read about sex gods?

Always entry level discussion....

>>15896009
Tolkien is shit and there were fantasy books before Tolkien you fucking pieces of shit cunt. He wasn't the first person who wrote fantasy. He isn't the alpha and omega of fantasy. You fucking Tolkien fanboys are worse than the Star wars trek cucks. You actually believe your shit don't stink.

>>15896028
more like first time ever being exposed to SFF discussion

>>15896035
It seems like you're upset.
That means you've lost.

>>15895944
>love for the status quo is reactionary
What?

>>15896035
Seethe.

Who wrote modern fantasy before Tolkien?

>>15895925
Near the end of the third book, the MC makes a bargain to let five of her captured friends go if she spends five days being tortured by the regional torture religion.
So they go to work on her. They shave ALL of her hair off, brand her, burn her with hot chains, press her with heavy stones, breaks her hands a bone at a time, and also rape her.
Up until now she's been basically asexual, she's almost gotten raped twice in the previous books, and she felt a little bad for not fucking her boyfriend before he got killed.
She doesn't really give the rapes any more thought than anything else they're doing to her because she's never given sexual pleasure any weight in her mind.
Then she looks out at the audience and says that she feels pity for the people watching and taking joy out of what they're seeing/doing, and what has to go wrong in someone's life to get there.
She spends the whole time praying and in self reflection/contemplation.
At the end she doesn't recuse her faith despite their best efforts, a beam of light engulfs her and heals all of their abuse. Then she gets smuggled out of the room and meets up with her friends.

>>15896035
>Not understanding that 'entryway' doesn't mean 'first ever'.
Are you sure you read?

>>15895889
>I could say Master and Margarita or Murakami's works but those are pretty much just typical low fantasy stories that have been labeled as Magic Realism to sell to people who won't read genre
>fiction.
>Really that's the fundamental issue with MR, the more you read the more you realise it's often just fantasy rebranded
I wonder why is it so hard to understand the difference between magic realism and fantasy? Why do silly people chuck it as a marketing thing (though in some cases it might be).
But what makes magic realism what it is is on its damned name and how characters react and take the fantastic elements. For example, in one, you have a guy vomiting live bunnies and he carries in with his life. He doesn't go to see some wizard, he's not transported to some world, evil men don't want to take his power, he doesn't use it to save his village. In typical fantasy, the opposite would happen. He'd be a chosen one figure (descendant of a long bloodline of animal regurgitators), he would impress his peers with this ability (in horror he would terrify them), and this motif, of a guy throwing up live bunnies out of thin air, would be The, or one more, of the elements that defined the setting.

>>15896028
genre fiction in general is entry level

>>15896111
You seem to be in the wrong thread.

>>15896053
>She doesn't really give the rapes any more thought than anything else
That sucks. Everything else you wrote sucks too. What sucks the most is that everything was wiped away in the end with a beam of light. She probably got her hymen back too.

>>15896127
there's nothing wrong with liking and discussing entry level stuff.

>>15896046
Reactionary means trying to keep things how they are. I'm not sure if you realise that fascism just solidifies capitalism...

>>15896135
Neck yourself chapo commie

>>15896156
Lead by example.

New Thread slave get to work.

>>15896129
She's left the scars that she received, to show that she's been through it and overcame them. So her hymen is likely still busted. And when given the chance to have her memories altered to forget what happens, she refuses saying what happened happened and there's no point in trying to pretend it didn't.
Go jerk off to something else.

>>15896209
I am not the anon you are talking too, but everything you wrote sucks.
Tolkien still reigns supreme.

>>15896209
>Go jerk off to something else

>>15892413
it was a solid 5

>>15896035
shut the fuck up nigger

New

>>15896404
>>15896404
>>15896404
>>15896404

>>15890229
Mt Char is an absolutely based book. It’s a shame though, it kinda ended on a cliffhanger and it’s been a few years now. Do you think there’s any possibility of a sequel?