/lit/ - Literature

>china book
never heard of it. sounds interesting.
>between
literally pleddits favourite horror book. it gets shit everywhere else.

>>21711383
Haven’t read Between Two Fires but I enjoyed Those Across the River.
He’s got a pleasant enough style and can tell a far fetched story with enough plausibility to suffice.

No idea about the Jap

>>21711383
I enjoyed the dark forest but I’d recommend starting with the three body problem. It’s a trilogy after all.

>>21711410
Damn, someone on /lit/ said Between Two Fires rekindled his catholic faith.
>china book
Three Body Problem has been very popular lately. Surprised you havent heard of it

>>21711416
I enjoyed Those Across the River as well, but I think Between Two Fires is a much better story. Those Across the River felt undercooked, but it was his debut novel, so I won't hold it against him.

>>21711427
>Between Two Fires
>>21711428
>Between Two Fires is a much better story
my question with horror is always: is it decently written (im not even asking for good writint) or pure pulp.

>>21711425
I just finished it. Hoping the sequels pick up momentum and get more exciting

>>21711436
I mean, it's no Exorcist, and it has a fair bit of action in it. It's also very episodic.

>>21711427
>Damn, someone on /lit/ said Between Two Fires rekindled his catholic faith
The book has homo pedo propaganda the fuck

>>21711453
Catholics are homos and pedos

>>21711453
The author was just trying to be authentic.

>>21711463
>>21711456
REEEEEE
The communists infiltrated the catholic church and made them gay pedophiles ok!!! They were based before that.

>>21711383
Between Two Fires was good, although you shouldn’t count on my review as its the first book I have completed in a while. I can say it left me in a thoughtful mood, especially after the ending, which is very rare in terms of books. I enjoyed it, the horror was good, it seemed historical as in the sense of the author knew he was writing about. But, there was a large degree of homosexual plot points, if you have a problem with that. I felt it added a degree of folly towards the character himself (not wanting to spoil) and his brother, as it was more shameful than accepting.

>>21711453
>The book has homo pedo propaganda the fuck
lol what.explain.

>>21711514
Well that sucks. I couldnt finish the Annihilation trilogy because of the gay stuff.

>>21711543
The priest is a fag and the MC, a hardened manly french soldier man from the 1300s is like ehh whatever makes you happy nigga. It's like those Read Dead memes, can't find them now but you know them

>>21711558
>The priest is a fag
Ah okay, so it's realistic and not forced

>>21711439
I have some bad news for you about how it all wraps up but I enjoyed them all so I’d recommend them regardless. I think it was the first one that had some graphic sections about the cultural revolution era that I found extremely difficult, but I guess I’m just a modern, sensitive sort of guy.

>>21711583
The cultural revolution parts were the most interesting to me.

>>21711383
OP are you the guy from the other thread who said he just ordered two books that he's not gonna read to get the warm fuzzies from the feeling of purchasing shit?

>>21711592
Oh me too, but almost viscerally painful for me to read.

>>21711605
what was painful about it?

>>21711706
For you

>>21711453
>>21711514
You forgot the part where Jesus is actually a girl. Because of course Jesus has to be female.

>>21711746
Oh no, did I buy a meme book

>>21711722
yeah, what was painful about it for you?

>>21711558
>the MC
the MC is a homo? dropped instantly

>>21711558
I don't know those memes

>>21711787
no he just acts contemporary. Says modern swears, and is ok with homo priest. Other than that he is cool

im really intrigued by the china mans book. i think i might.

I thought Between Two Fires was awful. I dropped it after three chapters.

>>21711789
Arthur Morgan:
Marriage? A sacred institution? Heh, it's anything but in my experience, brother, I can tell you that. If two fellers wanna tie the knot, who am I ta say no? If the Lord ain't judged our gang, I'd say he's been takin' some time off the job, yer probably safe. Heh heh. Have at it, I say.

Abortion? Well, that's a rough one. Bit of a tough pill to swaller. At first, I didn't rightly take kindly to the idea of killin' babies, but Dutch gave me this ole thick science book and I pretty much surmised that well, that thing is about as human as Micah here, which is lackin' to say the least, heh. Hell, I'd say a gal has the right to choose.

A gal? As president? Well, what I can tell ya is its been nothin' but fellers since this whole thing here started up and what have we got? A bunch of other dead fellers. What have we got ta lose? I reckon' tryin' a gal's touch wouldn't do anyone no harm. If weakness is a concern of yours, I promise you some of the ladies runnin' in my gang would probably make Old Hickory look like a nancy in comparison. Hell, I'd reckon its her turn.

Lettin' a black feller do yer wife? Well, if the old lady's havin' fun, who am I to deny her that? I reckon that feller's got a bigger one than me anyway. Besides, we gotta pay some back for that whole slavery bid'ness we did to them. Dutch raised me and I ain't his real son, so I'll raise my wife's son, whether he's black or white.

Cuttin off yer willie sure sound silly but I reckon a feller might as well chop it off he ain't goin use it. And i suppose a wig can't do harm neither, heck men use to wear em all the time back in oldin' days.

>>21711769
The mask

>>21711706
It’s been awhile but I vaguely remember the stuff about the female protagonist as a child having to watch her father being beaten bloody with a belt and her mother totally disavowing him as being particularly difficult. Like I said, I’m a big softie.

>>21711846
Well you better get ready, the great leap forward/struggle sessions are coming to the west

Between Two Fires has some good moments but never becomes great. Most of the book is wandering from set piece to set piece with mediocre dialogue in between. There are some creepy scenes such as looking for a room to rent in Paris and the fight at the river but overall the book is just alright. I do want to say the scene about Hell is very well done. This would have been the easiest place to overwrite but it's pretty good.

>>21711870
Nah, I’ll be dead (by my own hand if necessary) before I have to deal with that sort of shit. Please stop incidentally, we’re talking about books here.

>>21711870
I'm so fucking ready

>>21711905
You'd kill yourself before attempting to kill the barbarian horde at the gates to stop it? Pathetic

About three quarters done this
Pretty good but too many girlboss characters. And a bit too quippy
I don’t usually like fantasy. I don’t mind the sword stuff but the sorcery also seemed like weak kid power fantasy and never appealed to me

>>21711944
Nothing will happen and I will spend everything to will inactivity. People who want collapse are just wrong.

What part of please stop was confusing to you?

>>21711880
100 agreed. The end/hell part was really good so it bumped my whole opinion of an average book up to good i guess

>>21711870
HA! Coming? Friend, haven't you been paying attention? They're already here! Maybe they haven't hit your pocket of America yet, but they're around.

>>21711846
Nah man don't sell yourself off as a "softie", I read this book called "Wild Swans" by this Chinese chick about her family living in China through three harsh generations including her mother and father who lived through the Cultural Revolution, and damn dude it was tough. It's not even so much that people were getting killed, because I don't remember it being particularly deadly murderous, it's more that people's SPIRITS were being broken, their families and lifelong friendships mercilessly torn. She talks about her father just being denounced and shunned and beaten so much that he just becomes a shell of himself. It's fucking sad man.

>>21711838
LOL that's pretty accurate. There's even a side mission where you can execute a KKK member or something and Arthur treats him EXTRA bad. Great game nonetheless.

I found three body decently interesting and pretty much hated dark forest until the end when the action picked up. Is third book worth reading if you just thought the first 2 were meh?

>>21711746
the future is female too, sweety

>>21711383
I didn't like Between Two Fires, which was a shame since I went into it with pretty high hopes that were sustained for the first half. I thought the title was clever since referencing the pope sitting between two braziers to stave off the pestilence touches on both the broader setting and the focused subject of Catholicism. I liked the main characters, and I really liked the idea of Christian-based horror in plague-era France. I liked the characters, and I even enjoyed the stereotypical trio on a journey. The author had a real knack for writing scenes that made you feel the disgust someone likely would if faced with the plague. The problem is the author fucking shit all over anything he did right in the first half. The girl's personality disappears out of nowhere and is replaced by Jesus because ??? Despite clearly repenting for his violent life and quite literally dying while fighting a demon to protect Jesus Christ, Thomas is sent to hell and tortured for a very long time because ??? Thomas is then rescued from hell, going against Christian canon, because ??? I'll just act like the faggot friar doesn't exist, because he isn't so much a character as he is a convenient way to shoehorn in social commentary on homosexuality in the church.

>>21711383
If you got them, why don't you read them?

>>21712386
I don't think he was really rescued from hell. At the beginning of that chapter when he's talking to the...Devil? or whatever eats him it mentions how they go to really extreme lengths to fake rescues from hell and stuff like that to give people hope and then crush it.

>>21712151
I feel like that’s what got to me in those specific sections in the Three Body Problem. It wasn’t the physical violence - we get desensitized to that on a regular basis through various depictions in all media, unfortunately I guess - it was the complete psychological and spiritual destruction destruction he described. Heavy shit man, but in a sense I’d prefer to say a “softie” of sorts rather than becoming callous to stuff like that.

Would you recommend Wild Swans? I’d read it even if it’s challenging in that regard if you think it’s worth it.

>>21712173
The third is more of the same but the ending felt like a huge let down to me. I hate to say it, but if you found the first two mediocre maybe skip the third and read something you think will be more engaging to you.

Sneed

>>21711383
Both are pretty bad, devoid of human characters, spirit and anything greater than a vague spooky impression.

>>21712890
Not unlike the posts on an anonymous image board

i only read between two fires, i liked it a lot at the beginning when it's mostly about the plague and misery, it gets the tone perfect and the characters are engaging and so on. the first setpieces were nice, then it gets repetitive not because of what happens but because you kinda get the feeling of how the story goes and who is going to die eventually and so on. my biggest complain is that the more exposure angels and demons and so on got in the real world, the more concrete things got, the more stupid and vacuous everything felt. the book progressively lost its soul. i don't know how to describe it but i can compare it with To Reign in Heaven for example, which is a very interesting book where god and angels and such are depicted in very concrete terms, and they are real characters but despite that it felt a much more genuine story, as well as more respectful and accurate to traditional christianity themes in my opinion even though it completely changes the mythology. in contrast b2fires in some sense depicts christian mythology more or less accurately, but then it has actual anime-like battles of angels and shit which devalue anything else the book has that might be considered deep or profound. also the plot gets progressively more retarded towards the end which doesn't help

also i somewhat agree with these
>>21711880
>>21712386

>>21713318
also many time the prose turns into literal garbage specially in action sequences, for example

>The ground shook again, harder than before, raising a chorus of shouts from the town.
>The bell stopped ringing.
>Thomas stopped walking now, transfixed by the spectacle taking place in the sky.
>And then he saw it.
>A great blackness against the sky.

i can't fucking stand this style of narration, i just think it's terrible

>>21711383
Between is like Berserk in medieval France, but without epic fights, just sort of plodding, felt like watching bunch of anime episodes about some wandering rpg team. It wasnt bad, but rather uninspired. I feel like the story would have been more interesting if Buehlmann ditched the priest and wrote his Avignon residing brother as the other protagonist instead, perhaps making him a relative of the knight, to show more of the situation unfolding at papal court. Also the piecemeal finale was rather weak.
I liked The Lesser Dead better.

>>21711453
Priest`s lover was not child but teenage (dont remember exactly, something like 16 or 17) bisexual chad that scored dozens of local girls and initiated the whole affair after being discovered banging some wench at the lake. Literal equivalent of todays zoomers entusiastically whoring themselves in clubs and on webcams.
You just making shit up.

>>21711498
stop being silly

>>21711498
>christ
you mean rabbi yeshua?

>>21711383
Right one is dark souls in book form with heavy emphasis on Christian mythology. Really good

>>21712004
I finished this.
I found the male feminist bits annoying but in the afterword when he acknowledged his influences (Tolkien, George RR Martin, Abercrombie) they were all male. (Can’t spell Ladies without the ‘L’). So I forgave him his girl bosses and female assassins.
Can’t quite forgive him for liking Rothfuss though.

>>21713318
>my biggest complain is that the more exposure angels and demons and so on got in the real world, the more concrete things got, the more stupid and vacuous everything felt.

I agree with you 100%, this is a big problem in books written by people with weak prose (a lot of horror/fantasy/sci-fi) it's very hard to make super natural/biblical/cosmic horrors sound scary instead of just silly. It's like bad special effects in a sci-fi movie.

>>21711383
Three body problem > Dark forest >>>>>> third one forgot its name.

>>21716566
I agree with this assessment.

>>21711383
I swear the guy who wrote that has a bot to monitor /lit/ and reddit. Any mention of his shit books and the thread fills up with oniony "reviews". I got fooled into buying it and dropped it after 3 pages, which was 1-2 too many.

>>21716902
>buying books written by a Chinese guy
Anon, I ... you know there are websites, right? Or do you mean the other guy?

>>21716902
>bought
Didn't use the library

>>21716908
no, I mean the other guy. the sweaty edgelord LARPer who's every story revolves around how the hero TOTALLY wouldn't rape the adolescent female companion even though everyone else apparently wants to. But not him. "Cuz I'm totally not a creep, ladies!" cringe.

>>21716925
Oh yeah, no, I wouldn’t touch that shit with a ten foot pole. I had honestly never heard of it before this thread (although I have read the dark forest and the rest of that trilogy) but just based on the comments here it does not seem like something worth my time.

>>21711746
Jesus simply came to the MC in a form that he would follow. Turns out the MC was a cunnychad.

Wallfacer /lit/, I'm your Wallbreaker.