/lit/ - Literature

12 Miles Below

https://www.amazon.com/12-Miles-Below-Progression-Fantasy-ebook/dp/B0BWKDF1C7

Icy death above. Monster-filled dungeons below. He must fight or freeze.

Extreme sub-zero temperatures suffocate the surface. Frozen structures of bygone eras span across massive ice-wastes. And the survivors closely guard any technology rediscovered within them.

The only escape from the deadly climate is beneath the surface, but that doesn't mean it's safe...

Monstrous machines lurk in the depths. Unhinged demigods war against them, dying over and over, treating it all like a game. The depths themselves shift over time, more contraption than rock.

When an expedition into the far uncharted north goes terribly wrong, Keith Winterscar and his father get trapped together in a desperate fight for survival. Stumbling upon an ancient war of titanic scale, the two will need to set their differences aside while they struggle against gods, legends, and the secrets of the realm that lies below.

Bakker is king

>>22328640
I'm not gonna read it, Mark!

>>22328640
Does this tactic work for you, Mark? Kick me a free copy and I'll review it for you. Not paying over $20 on Audible for a MC with the name 'Keith Winterscar'.

>finished Darkness That Comes Before
I’m disappointed at the lack of overt buttrape. From the way SFFG described it, I thought it was nothing but homosex. There are only mentions of it through one character’s perspective, a repressed, molested bisexual, but the act itself could only be considered statuatory rape.

The prose is schizo. There are stretches where it’s nothing too special, or melodramatic, or womanish, ie. the Prologue, but then there are those pages that are pure kino. So far, there have been more pages of kino, pages that resemble McCarthy and Joyce and Hemmingay, than there have been womanish pages.

Akka suffers, Cnaiurs seethes, Esmi also seems doomed to suffering, Serwe is a teen constantly getting near raped or raped, the Emperor is a based retard, Proyas grapples with faith and the ancient, fatherly love between a teacher and student, and above it all, Kellhus remains a tremendous autist. Hopefully the Warrior Prophet will surpass or at least be as kino as the first book.

>>22328698
>I’m disappointed at the lack of overt buttrape. From the way SFFG described it, I thought it was nothing but homosex.
I told you this was false in the last thread, stupid retard. It's dickheads trying ti besmirch the good name of R Scott Bakker

>>22328687
>>22328690

I wish I was Mark. I would write faster instead of posting on 4chan. I just like giving this series more visibility once per thread. It’s actually great.

>>22328690

Also, it’s free on Royal Road. Go read it there

>>22328690
>Kick me a free copy
It's literally free by default.

>last book you read
>current book you are reading
>next book you plan to read

>>22328698
Warrior Prophet is Kellhus as Übermensch David Koresh. Maximum kino

Any of them recommendable?

Can I get something modern . where the protagonist is NOT a massive cuckold and the author doesn't despise White people?

>>22329028
I haven't read past the sequel Red Rising saga, but the first Red Rising trilogy fits.

What do we think of Lies of Locke Lamora? Reading it, I can't help but feel it is very childish and poppy. The way the characters speak of course, but also the tone and pacing... poppy as in - pop culture. Modern, for teens. I have it on my shelf next to The Shadow of the Torturer and The Darkness that Comes Before, and let me tell you, it has crowded shoulders.

>>22329068
Dropped it 100 pages in. Don't have it next to those much better books.

Can I get something modern... where the protagonist is NOT a massive cuckold and the author doesn't despise White people?
>>22329040
You're not bullshitting me are you? I feel like there needs to be a warning system for this. I can't trust Western literature these days, I'm all about the east because asians know how to treat me.

>>22329093
Gemini of the Sleeping Gods

>>22329068
Based on a D&D campaign

>>22329068
It's good low fantasy. I've only read the first two, but I enjoyed them. Author's mistake was shooting for an interconnected series instead of making each book a stand-alone Laurel & Hardy romp. First was just a heist/mob story while the second was a pirate adventure.
>That part when Locke and his pirate crew eagerly set out for sea before immediately realizing they don't have a lucky cat on board.

Anon should add Lies of LL to his "have you heard of" list.

>>22329146
link the list

>>22329173
>>22311921

>>22329185
>Soulcatcher or Lady who is the better waifu?

>>22328631
The theme for August in the /sffg/ Goodreads group is novellas, or short fiction more generally. On a whim I decided to try to read and write about 31 novellas, or other short fiction if I fall short, for August. I have other stuff going on so I started reading in July. I'll be posting 1 per day for the rest of August if all goes well, as I haven't read anywhere near 31 yet. The 4 shown will be the ones I liked the most, so it could change over the course of the month. Walking to Aldebaran is a placeholder. I tried picking only novellas that had their own separate release rather than exclusively being with a magazine, collection, or anthology. The novellas trend newer because it wasn't as common for novellas to be separately released as it is now.

>>22328631
Press Enter - John Varley (1984)

Victor Apfel is a fifty year old Korean War veteran recluse who has mostly shunned the world. His landline phone won't stop ringing from what he believes to be an automatically dialed phone call. Eventually he answers and visits his neighbor, who he finds dead from an apparent suicide. Was it though, and why call him? The mystery begins.

This beautiful mess of a novella won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, SF Chronicle, and Seiun awards. I call it a mess because the story is a science fiction horror murder mystery slice of life romance. Almost forty years have passed since its publication which now provides a different perspective that both weakens and strengthens the story. The popular view at the time surely was "I never thought of that. Could this really happen someday? How terrifying." Now instead it'd be "I think about this all time. Not only will it happen, it probably already has. I'm terrified." Though the latter may be alarmist. What it loses in surprise is balanced by how much more credible it now seems, which allows it to retain its horror.

A funny thing with technology is that people may start by underestimating its capabilities and then as it becomes more and more familiar they begin to overestimate what it can do. It's entirely possible that people in 2024 will be more likely to believe the key premise of this story than in 1984 despite it being ridiculous, though fun, regardless of the year. I say knowing that some would say, "In 2084, it's an integral part of society and not ridiculous in the slightest." Yeah, sure it is.

Romance is considerably more prevalent than I thought it'd be and it's difficult to tell what Varley was going for with it at the time. The love interest is literally presented as physically being a racist and sexist caricature. The story is self-aware about that and states that it's irrelevant compared to the inner beauty of a person, which I don't know what to say in relation to a current day context. The concept of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl was popularized in 2005, 21 years later, but the love interest meets the criteria for that and then some. It's somewhat weird to read considering how many other depictions I've seen of it.

The ending gave me tonal whiplash and that was undoubtedly intentional. In terms of the story it's simply following a sequence of events to its logical conclusion, but even so I can't help but feel dissatisfied about it. The resolution does seem more relevant to the feelings of people today than then, though not so much their behavior. As to why it won its awards I believe it's because the core of the story is a neat idea that was highly speculative at the time and provoked a lot of thought while the rest is varying types of fanservice. By the end, the book I was reminded of most was Welcome to the NHK!, which is a strange feeling, and has me yearning for a modern retelling.

Rating: 4/5

>>22328640
I was gonna read this until it started being spammed lol

So I'm just about half way through Night Winds by Karl Edward Wagner, and I like the read, but I've heard that Kane is supposed to be some evil, power hungry maniac, and I've seen nothing that would point to that so far. Is he actually gonna be cruel later on or is him being evil just low IQ reddit bitching?

>>22329242
inb4 your reviews are shit fuck off

>>22329233
As always looking forward to to the books. Are you going to focus on newer or older novellas? Would be interesting if you read 15 old and 15 recent and compare the two groups.

>>22329256
anon, in the first story he keeps a girl as his unwilling slave companion and when she kills herself to escape him he brings her back to life to continue being his unwilling slave companion. And when he decides to finally let her go he doesn't inform her that she'll die once again if she doesn't stay so he can continue keeping her alive. If that isn't 'evil' then what do you think is?

>>22329282
As it says, "the novellas trend newer" and other qualifications. It's mostly picked at random or other arbitrary reasons. I may do something more like for ones not separately released and that I've already read. It's only since novellas began being digitally released or self-published that they became more common to be on their own, which means depending on how old it is, it's unlikely to qualify for this in particular.

>>22328938
>last book you read
Light Bringer. I loved it and the end really hurt me. I can’t wait for the final book to come out and I’m really curious how all these story lines are going to be tied up. Too bad we’ll have to wait.

>current book you are reading
I started reading Austerlitz but while it was definitely good I just didn’t really feel like continuing. Instead, I am now trying to decide between The Worm Ouroboros or Little, Big. I’ll just read a couple pages of each and then pick whichever one I feel like reading the most.

>next book you plan to read
I’ll either continue Austerlitz or pick something else in German. I’ve also been wanting to read The Book of the New Sun for a third time so maybe I’ll do that instead.

>>22329185
>Any books with old thick women?
Well?

>>22329253

anon, doesn’t it make more sense to give it a review and just shit all over it? if its shit, then people won’t read it or need to post about it.

>>22328938
>Last book
Shadow of the Gods, started really slow but the characters are fun and I liked the action, 3.5-4/5

>current
Said fuck it and decided I might as well go right into Hunger of the Gods because I got it dirt cheap at a secondhand sale, already way better and only ~100 pages in, definitely enjoying it.

>next
Not sure, might go back to The First Law and start up Red Country, but I also just got my full Red Rising set in the mail a week or two back so I want to start that up, and I'm wanting to give Malazan a shot soon too, so I guess we'll see when the time comes.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=v4uwaw_5Q3I&pp=ygULcGV0ZXIgd2F0dHM%3D
After watching this talk I think I've realized that the way Peter Watts writes his fiction is by reading all of the newest papers on neuroscience or whatever topic his book is about, finding the wackiest fucking articles about the wackiest science in the field, extrapolating the most depressing/scary conclusions from them and then adding them to his book.

>>22329324
>Well?
Best you're going to get:

>>22329382
>extrapolating the most depressing/scary conclusions from them and then adding them to his book.
ya no shit. Apparently, he is one of those 'never have kids because world will end from climate change' fags. Sad!

>>22329382
>After watching this talk I think I've realized that the way Peter Watts writes his fiction is by reading all of the newest papers on neuroscience or whatever topic his book is about, finding the wackiest fucking articles about the wackiest science in the field, extrapolating the most depressing/scary conclusions from them and then adding them to his book.
Cognitivism student here, literally my idea of how to come with interesting ideas for writing stories in the future. It's a solid process, no better way to conjure ideas than mimic reality.

>>22329288
Your summary of the first story is missing a few crucial bits, which make him a lot more reasonable, than he's presented at first.Kane revived the girls corpse after the barbarian affair thing. It seems like she was constantly manipulating men into trying to kill Kane. She admitted, that she staged the 2 mugger scene, where the barbarian found her, and the barbarian also called her a bitch with his dying breath. Kane said she was doing this manipulation constantly, and that it was just a game for her, which she seemed to admit as the barb was dying. Also she didn't realize she was dead, Kane let her go because he couldn't keep her alive anymore, as he was keeping her alive via the potion that shattered on the floor as the captain guy attacked. Kane realized that there was no way of her surviving and he freed her to live her last moments.
He seems more like a lonely immortal trying to keep ahold of something dear to him than a power hungry maniac evil wizard tyrant that he is presented at through out the first story. And the 2 stories after that also seem to paint him in a much more agreeable light.

>>22329233
>>22329258
>>22329282
>>22329303
I haven't read all that I'll be reading of novellas, so I'm open to suggestions for what else I should read. I don't currently have enough to reach 31 from my original allotment of however many it was because a lot of them didn't seen worthwhile.

>>22329242
your """reviews""" are SHIT
FUCK OFF

>>22329616
It's everyday bro

>>22329233
>>22329560
rec (ignore "A Novel" in the title)

>>22329560
Hmm, I don't know any short fiction aside of two first Witcher books, 'The Last Wish' and 'The Sword of Destiny'. It's a collection of short stories that were written before the main Witcher saga. I remember they were quite nice, the authentic down to earth gritty fantasy is always interesting to read.

>>22329242
thats not how the story went tho you wanna tell em the rest?

>>22329256
>>22329487
Why are you trying to argue that Kane isn't evil when you haven't even read the entire collection or any of the other Kane books?
He's a rapist, a murderer, a bandit, a conqueror, a warlord. he's almost completely amoral, only in Lynortis reprise does he show anything close to mercy

>>22329715
I wasn't arguing that he wasn't evil, I was asking whether he gets more merciless and evil, as he doesn't seem THAT bad in the first 3 stories.

>>22329676
Sure, I can try.

>>22329703
Do you mean do I want to provide full plot spoilers? No, no I don't. You can do what you want.

>>22329779
No, I think you should. You really should. Lets hear it out in the open, once and for all. ;)

>>22329120
Locke Lamora was based on a D&D campaign?
Really? Where I can find more about it?

>>22329242
>novella won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, SF Chronicle, and Seiun awards.
>Romance is considerably more prevalent than I thought it'd be and it's difficult to tell what Varley was going for with it at the time.
>The love interest is literally presented as physically being a racist and sexist caricature.
Haha garbage. It all checks out.

any orson scott card fans? what are his best books aside from ender's game?

>>22329242
>Foo is more explicitly described as a cyborg, both for her breast implants (which she uses for mammary intercourse, calling the act "touring the silicone valley") and her computer expertise.
O-o-oppai

so what do I read for smug witch characters? smug in a fun lighthearted way, not in a "this is obviously mary sue feminist bullshit" way

>>22328698
1. Bakker contrarians will literally flood any Bakker discussion with anything they can to cope with the fact that they were utterly filtered by the author.
2. The Warrior Prophet is arguably the best book in the entire series. The last two books (6 and 7) along are also contendors.

Bakker is King.

Simple as.

>>22329324
Crone wars, it has a misleading cover art, her face is accurate but in the book she's built like a thick doujin mom.

Just started Malazan.. what am I in for /lit/ bros?

>>22330004
Insightful post, anon but just started three body problem and i'm wondering when does it gets good? are the witcher books any good? Only played Witcher 3 and the netflix's series. Just started Eye of the World when does WoT gets good?? Any books like dark souls/berserk/Bloodborne??? Any books like FF/Dragon Quest/Tales of..??!! Any books with N'Wahs?Kvothe is a cuck, will slob Martin ever finish winds of winter??? Abercrombie is Reddit-tier?? Are the dune sequels worth it or should i stop with god emperor of dunc? Did severian fucked his grandma? Is severian a clone? Any books with chinks? Any books like fallout/metro? Any books where the mc gets cucked? Any books where the mc Doesn't get cucked?? Stormlight book 5 when? Will kaladin fuck the fairy?? is the Eisenhorn trilogy a good place to start with W40k??? Or should i watch 4hours YouTube vid about le EPIC lore??? Any books with young petite women? Any books with old thick women? Any books with MANLY men like David Gemmell? Soulcatcher or Lady who is the better waifu? When does malazan gets good?? I didn't finish highschool so i can´t understand Malazan?!?! When does ASOIAF gets good??!? When does Farseer gets good?? When does lightbringer gets good?? When does codex alera gets good??? When does Lord of The Isles gets good?? Dunsany is king or bakker??
Any books with incest?

>>22330039
Cope

>>22330047
gottem epic /v/ro!!

Are Robert E Howards works any good or is he just a pioneer whos works don't hold up

>>22330072
yes he is good

>The Complete Chronicles of Conan
>$19
Should I?

>>22330101
It's free on libgen

>>22330004
1. Too long.
2. Extremely ambitions.
3. Mediocre pay off.
4. Ok writing.
5. Horrible structure and pace.

It just isn't very memorable. But go for it if you have nothing else to read in the genre.

>>22330134
Tattersail tho...

>>22330164
Killing the most interesting character in the first half of the first book is not good writing.

Number one bock you would suggest to everyone?

>>22330192
This one is alright.

>>22330192
The Fifth Head of Cerberus for scifi
The Mask of the Sorcerer for fantasy

>>22330004
by the time you finish 1st book and start 2nd you forget half of the characters and they put new ones in
only drizt stays his welcome, because he's cool. Also the undead people but they even ruin that

Book of Fuligin (digital version) is out.
Did I get memed? We'll find out

>hear it got nominated for some awards
>decide to check it out
>reddit: the novel
I should have realized when I noticed it was nominated for hugo

>>22330347
Scalzi is the worst of the worst. Congratulations on being dumb enough to fall for it.

>>22330347
Some time in the past 15 years or so, SF awards became warning labels.

Just got The Thousandfold Thought in the post today heavier than I expected it to be you could probably bludgeon someone with it

>>22330171
>killing
oh, you

>>22330394
Yes.

What makes a book "reddit" exactly?

>>22329185
Ok, but Catcher is clearly best girl

>>22329676
I loved Evenson’s A Collapse of Horses so I might check this out

>>22330460
Any book without this seal.

>>22330490
All the books I read are reddit.

Is the sequel to Hyperion worth reading or should I just read the wikipedia entry?

Pisses me off “hard sci fi” is never truly HARD and the plot overrides scientific logic.

>>22330581
So just read stuff set in the current day that doesn't do anything that isn't understood fully.

>>22330581
I think the issue is most of the readers aren't scientists so there has to he some element of dumbing it down

>>22330622
It would need to explore technology, otherwise it’s just contemporary fiction — which is probably even worse for scientific exploration because most people who read that are white women who use loose metaphors and tired similes.
I think postmodern Fiction tried to explore technology, but they tack on pseudoscientific bullshit like psychoanalysis or even mysticism as in Gravity’s Rainbow.

>>22330635
Anything that hasn't been proven in the real world has a maximum limit of how "hard" it can be because it's speculation.

>>22330640
So? I don’t mind cosmic theories that aren’t in the consensus. I just mean that Tau Zero has people swimming in pools in zero gravity. I know we haven’t flown interstellar yet, nor in deep space yet, but it’s obvious the effect of free fall and gravity differ from Earth or orbit.

Atlas with his crew of gigachad scholar warrior obsidians was actually pretty interesting and a nice contrast to darrow, a book with Atlas as the protagonist would have been pretty cool desu

I wish I could catch a fat neckbeard NEET from ITT and fatten him on apples, then cook and eat him over a discourse on Odysseus.

>>22330626
You are the problem as to why scifi is dying. No one wants to read your real scientific thesis, we want crazy out there tech and their effect on society and the human race.
Give us androids, mind uploads, gene splicing, human augmentation, nanites, etc. Keep your hard theories (which you faggets accept as law, like we know all there is to know about the subject) about space to yourself.

>>22330580
No and don't read the wiki.

>>22330700
Don’t listen to this guy. Hyperion gets best in that book.

>>22330580
Fall of Hyperion is extremely worth, notsomuch the next two

>>22330687
>Give us androids, mind uploads, gene splicing, human augmentation, nanites, etc.
Yawn. That’s already what NeuraLink is. Come up with something truly futuristic.

>>22330733
I'm not an author, I don't need to come up with shit. I just want out there science, not a bunch of delta Vs a la Neal Stephenson.

>>22329093
Depends on how sensitive you are. Darrow's love interest does briefly date his enemy for political purposes before they become a real couple, but that happens during a two year time skip where he basically abandons her.

>>22330764
it's ok, darrow fathers a kid on her later, one that no one can doubt is his

>>22330347
It's Scalzi, everyone hates him outside of writers circles.
The anti-hugo protest guys should've waited because this was the most egregious case of them giving their mate who gets them money spinning con panel gigs awards

>>22330906

scalzi is so bad

>>22330664
is this series good

>>22330965
What do you think?

>>22330999
do you have this saved for this specific situation

>>22330664
The Society is so much interesting than the Republic it's not even funny. Atlas hanging over the Two Hundred like the proverbial Sword of Damocles, the Minotaur with his arena of soldiers cheering him on even Lysander's speech in the colosseum is kino as fuck.

>>22330965
Book 1 is hit or miss, but book 2 is where the series really gets going. It's a good series if you want a space opera about a futuristic solar empire that models itself after Greece and Rome. No aliens though. There's very obvious inspiration taken from 40k and Dune, but I prefer Red Rising over the original material it takes said inspiration from anyday.

>>22330999
it has a high possibility to get traditionally published

What are my best odds for making a buck off of my fantasy writing without needing to adhere to diversity quotas et all? So far the best option seems to be throwing slop at the wall on Royal Road until something gets traction then starting a Patreon for advance chapters.

>>22331131

furries

>>22331164
Ignoring furries, ignoring dogshit erotica for women, ignoring other fetish/coomershit. Ignore chinkshit and litRPG for good measure.

>>22330999
the absolute state of modern scifi

>>22330635
xeelee explores plenty of technology -- a lot of devices/concepts are based off manipulation of maths/physics -- but it's probably not the exact degree of 'tism your kind is looking for, despite going into pleasingly autistic levels of details for anything. Nobody will read it though because the entire thing is 30+ books/novellas/etc.
The first book, Timelike Infinity, is fairly grounded and involves creation of wormholes in the local system, with the MC being an engineer self-insert who may as well be written as your diamond dozen autist focused on his craft.

>>22328631
Holy... Any books about smug witches?

>>22331131
I read that as buck breaking fantasy writing at first and was very confused

Was Franklin Patrick Herbert Jr. a hack fraud, or is Dune actually good?

>>22328690
With a name like that he better gore someone with a bowie knife at least once.

>>22330347
It's fascinating to me how that guy CANNOT write characters. They're mutually interchangeable quip machines constantly trying to have the last word.

Has anyone bothered to seriously carry on with writing fantasy poetry like Dunsany did?

I'm currently reading pic related. That is all.

Non-pozzed and trad fantasy coming through. No LGBTQIA+P nonsense.

People lived because she killed. People died because he lived.

Zafira is the Hunter, disguising herself as a man when she braves the cursed forest of the Arz to feed her people. Nasir is the Prince of Death, assassinating those foolish enough to defy his autocratic father, the sultan. If Zafira was exposed as a girl, all of her achievements would be rejected; if Nasir displayed his compassion, his father would punish him in the most brutal of ways. Both Zafira and Nasir are legends in the kingdom of Arawiya—but neither wants to be.

War is brewing, and the Arz sweeps closer with each passing day, engulfing the land in shadow. When Zafira embarks on a quest to uncover a lost artifact that can restore magic to her suffering world and stop the Arz, Nasir is sent by the sultan on a similar mission: retrieve the artifact and kill the Hunter. But an ancient evil stirs as their journey unfolds—and the prize they seek may pose a threat greater than either can imagine.

>>22331131
>So far the best option seems to be throwing slop at the wall on Royal Road until something gets traction then starting a Patreon for advance chapters.
sounds like a good way to make no money and then kill yourself from hopelessness

>>22328938
>Look to Windward
I accidentally spoiled myself on Zlepe dying and being resurrected a long long time later. Otherwise the Huyler reveal was okay as I wasn't expecting it and I enjoyed the E-Dust Assassin sequence, along with the personalization of (a) Hub (Mind) and the workings of what exactly they do to run Orbitals. The ending felt like a "oh shit I need to close these plotthreads"
>Matter
I'm only 33% in so I can't say much. I didn't care for the medieval intro and I've been skimming most every scene with the Febian and Oraham. Shellworlds are cool I guess, the Towers everywhere remind me of Tower of God. The concept of technological peasants learning about the stars and how vast their Reality is has been an interesting concept to present and discuss. The candidcy of this series is one of its biggest incentives-to-read. I'm hoping that the princess girl fucks shit up once she gets back to her home area.
>Probably The Hydrogen Sonara

>>22331390
Is this some arabic/islamic book on their issues? Subversion? Lol
>she
stopped reading there

I have to repeat myself. Any books about smug witches?

bakker general

>>22331413
Muslims invented sci fi and fantasy.

>>22330341
Hello fren, can you upload the pdf somewhere like catbox and link it here ?

any david drake fans in here

>>22326400
>>22326661
Forgotten Realms book list.
if there's a book that's not listed is because i didn't like it or haven't read it yet (probably the latter) and obviously you should read the Drizzt series even thought there's a 7 books slog but then it goes back to being good with Companion's Codex
>Trilogies/Series:
Kino
Moonshaes Trilogy
The Finder's Stone Trilogy
Cleric Quintet
Song & Swords
Starlight & Shadows
Counselors & Kings
Druidhome trilogy (sequel to Moonshae)
Prince of Lies and Crucible: The Trial of Cyric the Mad (sequel to the Avatar trilogy)
Twilight Giants trilogy
The Threat from the Sea (and the Realms of the Deep anthology which is set between 2 and 3)
Erevis Cale Trilogy (sequel to shadow witness)
War of the Spider Queen
Year of Rogue Dragons
The Last Mythal
The Twilight War
The Empyrean Odyssey
Blades of the Moonsea
Abolethic Sovereignty (Cosmic horror fantasy)
Chosen of Nendawen (set a hundred years after Frostfell)
Unbroken Chain
Sword of the Gods
Brimstone Angels

>Good
The Empires trilogy
The Avatar Trilogy
Shadow of the Avatar trilogy (spinoff written 6 years after the original avatar trilogy this one is set during the events of tthe original trilogy)
Cormyr Trilogy
Sembia: Gateway to the Realms
Return of the Archwizards
Scions of Arrabar
House of Serpents
Watercourse Trilogy
The Lady Penitent (sequel to war of the spider queen)
The Haunted Lands
Shadowbane
The Sundering
Brotherhood of the Griffon (spinoff series about some characters from the Haunted Lands trilogy)

>Kino Standalone
Masquerades (spinoff sequel of the Finder's Stone trilogy)
Cormyr: A Novel (the book sold well so it was expanded into a trilogy but the first book is standalone.)
Night Parade
Stormlight
The Simbul's Gift
Evermeet: Island of Elves
Thornhold
The Shadow Stone
Halls of Stormweather
The Nether Scroll
Shadow Witness
City of Ravens
The Jewel of Turmish (quarterstaff wielding druid mc!)
Lady of Poison
Queen of the Depths
Son of Thunder
Bladesinger
Frostfell
Dawnbringer

>Good Standalone
The Lost Library of Cormanthyr
The Glass Prison
The Black Bouquet
The Crimson Gold
The City of Splendors
Master of Chains
Ghostwalker
Bloodwalk
Darkvision and Stardeep
The God Catcher
Sandstorm
The Gilded Rune

>Fun books (fun! remember when you read books for fun?)
King Pinch
Crypt of the Shadowking and Curse of the Shadowmage
War in Tethyr (Orc Paladin!)
The Pools trilogy
The Netheril Trilogy
The Council of Blades
Temple Hill
Crypt of the Moaning Diamond
The Citadels series (four stand alone books)
Mistshore
i highly reccomend that if you find an author you like you should read their non-D&D books.

>>22331537
And I thought Shadowrun had a lot of novels.

>>22331544
Most large franchise series have several hundreds. Dr. Who has a truly absurd amount. Forgotten Realms only has a few hundred.

Seems like a good time for to me to link this once again. There seems to be more interest and in d&d and fr in recent years. It's several years out of date now, but maybe one of these years I'll update it again. I would hope there's something better and more convenient as well by now. Maybe I'll provide some thoughts at a later time.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQ3MryU72IzgRW4jkGnAT0765yhwJIw1lSjm6pwf8xXM8Mg1ljnUXlMRZB9CaqJ1gDcc_f7_dW4V6eM/pubhtml

>>22330664
>>22331066
If it weren’t for Darrow I would just want the Society to win and get back on top. The Republic is an absolute joke so far. They should have never changed the system but instead just focused on improving living conditions for lower colors.

Does it ever get addressed whether or not the (non)men who practice sorcery actually get sent to hell? Is the judging eye just super PMT? I'm only halfway through the White Luck Warrior so no spoilers please, Bakkerfags.

>>22330164
I’m so lonely. I’m so horny. It’s never going to stop. Any sff books about this?

anyone read Battlefield Earth? listening to the full cast audiobook rn and its actually pretty good

>>22331654
Friendly RAFO!

what's this new LGBTQ2+ genre supposed to be? Amazon always puts some books with nice looking covers (mostly horror) in my recommendations and when I click on them it's this genre.

>>22331868
Gothic and Horror has always queered cisheternormative “reality” with monstrous feminine and queer Others. By subverting gendered expectations and undermining the patriarchal Real, horror disrupts gender roles and unlooses the Abject difference of queer alterity. What is Frankenstein if not an assemblage of different bodies that zaps away the gendered focus of patriarchal panopticon? Is not Dracula sucking and spreading queer identity through sexual violence, as a metaphor for sodomy/forbidden sex? What of the haunted castle and Sadeian gothic? Are these not unleashing the Id from the repression of the Ego and Superego, bringing about a hauntology of sexual discourses? Mary Shelley, after all, unleashed the monstrous abortions of patriarchal margins and the repression of the feminine Other.

>>22330347
>>reddit: the novel
Explain. Reddit gets thrown around a lot as a descriptor.

mfw L Ron Hubbard is a genuinely entertaining writer

>>22331880

https://i.4cdn.org/wsg/1690826913694260.webm

Rate my Malazan ink

/sffg/ meetup in Hobbiton?

>>22328698
>Hopefully the Warrior Prophet will surpass or at least be as kino as the first book.
It is, but then it gets weaker.

>>22331257
Discworld (the sub-series with the witches), The Wandering Inn.

Excession as an audiobook was a mistake, imagine 451 pages of Mind transcriptions.

You have my sword.

>>22332147
>The Wandering Inn
>a hundred novels worth of text series
The fuck? How is this possible?

>>22332184
>How is this possible?
Autistic spectrum disorders.

>>22330200
>Super Bock
Sagres is much better.

>>22332184
>>a hundred novels worth of text series
>The fuck? How is this possible?
Not a hundred. Only ~34 so far.
The reason is graphomania, some authors simply are like that.

should I read sanderson? I have read none of his original books but I am a big wheel of time fan. I didn't really like the way he wrote the final books but it was alright I guess. I also hate mormons and nerds so that was the main reason I didn't read any of his books. Is it worth it to read his books?

>>22332207
I mean standard size, not the physical limit of book printing. I know that it can be even less, like 20 LotR as a full volume worth.

>>22332217
Well, if look at an average novel being 80k words long, then TWI contains...150 novels. Huh. That's a bit long.

https://www.ohjoysextoy.com/patrick-rothfus-charity-comic/

>>22331501
I read Northworld a while back. It was okay. Everyone else here has only read Hammer's Slammers.

>mogs all fantasy forever since its publication

>>22332267
>when HP Lovecraft is better known for his horror work when he could arguably be considered one of the great fantasy authors like Dunsany

>>22332267
This. I can't even describe how terribly unoriginal the entire fantasy genre is compared to this short book.

>>22330687
I agree with you there. That is what I'd prefer to read - I was just commenting on why you see less truly 'hard' science fiction. The last 'hard' SF i managed to grasp was Watts

>>22332071
poofter/10

>>22332112
This is a troll post. No way they could trademark "The Shire".

/SFFG/ Recommendations:

Read Reverend Insanity, Lord of The Mysteries, Neuromancer, Hyperion, The Prince of Nothing

Also read The Wandering Inn, Between Two Fires, Mother of Learning, Cradle, I Shall Seal the Heavens, A Song of Ice and Fire, The Poppy War.

>>22332267
I'll always remember reading this and being completely sucked into its world, exactly like people always say fantasy should do. Fuck the retards who say that fantasy needs to be more grounded in reality and "believable" in order for it to work.

/SFFG/ Recommendations: LITRPG Edition

Read Azarinth Healer, Primal Hunter, He Who Fights with Monsters, Dungeon Crawler Carl

Also read System Universe, Dissonance, Defiance of the Fall, Iron Prince.

>>22328631
She looks like she's just left a steaming pile of shit in a public bathroom.

New thread challenge: Take a shot whenever Dunsany is forced into a conversation about contemporary fantasy

>>22328938
>>last book you read
Reread Cugel's Saga by Jack Vance. Best book of the Dying Earth series.
>>current book you are reading
An indie book, Pallas by Lisa Kuznak. It's actually really fucking good despite written by a woman. Nothing pozzed in sight. Starts off kinda like the Wicker Man in space and the whole thing so far is very old-school like it could have been published 40 years ago. There are some character flaws but the prose is phenomenal.
>>next book you plan to read
I'm thinking The Worm Ouroboros by ER Eddison. Either that or Valis, PKD.

>>22332458
is this a troll post? why is this in every thread?

>>22332216
If you didn't like the way he finished WoT but are still curious about his stuff, why don't you try one of his standalone books to see if he's improved since WoT? No sense in jumping into one of his never-ending series before you know if you like him now or not.

>>22332216
If you enjoy the Waste of Time, then Sharterson is will certainly be your cup of tea.

>>22328938
>last book you read
Reread Dark Age, refreshing my memory for Light Bringer

>current book you are reading
Light Bringer. Pretty good so far, though the tetralogy format is throwing me off. I keep having to remind myself it’s fine if the plot takes some detours because it’s not wrapping everything up with this book. Blessedly few Lyria chapters so far.

>next book you plan to read
I’m thinking ether Alistair Reynold’s Pushing Ice or the rest of the Slab City Blues stuff.

>>22332195
literal piss water

>>22332546
Sanderson and Jordan really aren't similar writers. Your meme response isn't an accurate answer to his question.

>>22332594
They're both shit, so how aren't they similar?

>>22332594
Sanderson is a better writter than *Thugs her braid*. So why wouldn't he enjoy him?

So now that Orange Man was indicted, does that mean Rothfuss will release Doors of Stone or will he keep coming up with excuses?

Does sffg respect the Culture series

>>22332658
I bet he hasnt written a word of it

>>22330039
Rothfuck needs to be added to this.

>>22332658
> Rothfuss will release Doors of Stone
Heh, good one anon

>>22332705
what a fag, I hate him now

>>22332458
>Between two fires
only for the ones with a fetish for wwbm and cuckolding

>>22332658
>Rothfuss will release Doors of Stone
why would he if people still give him money for doing nothing?

>being a twitter eceleb that does nothing but play DnD and beg for donations
seems a good way to monetize never finishing your series. why doesn't bakker do this?

>>22328938
>last book you read
The Iliad
>current book you are reading
Re-reading Dune
>next book you plan to read
Probably some non-fiction, I've been meaning to read The Lore of the Unicorn for some time

>>22328631
Hardfought - Greg Bear (1983)
There are some authors who have a writing style that I can only appreciate in a technical sense because their aesthetic either does nothing for me or actively disengages me. Sometimes this even happens for authors I'm intentionally trying to enjoy. After reading some of his short fiction and attempting to read his novels, it's evident to me that this is the case for Greg Bear. It's not only because of the heavy usage of neologisms, a few of which are explained, though several have to be inferred from limited context available. Probably what it is most is how he handles his characters. I just couldn't care about them at all or otherwise feel anything towards them, which may have been intentional.

In the distant future, at least several 100,000s of years, what passes for humanity has been fighting the Senexi, a reticent elder race whose history spans roughly twelve billion years, for a few 100,000s of years. It's a situation of experience versus adaptability. Both store their collective histories, though the Senexi become it rather than be informed by it. The Senexi strive for uniformity and to be one of one mind where difference is death. Humanity, at least in terms of the combat shown, use mass produced personnel based on their greatest individuals believing that will lead to the best outcomes. The narrative is presented from both of their viewpoints and neither one is favored over the other. Both are certainly alien. As to why they're fighting, it's because the other exists, more or less.

The story is mostly about the characters, though primarily in how they're pawns with minimal agency. They do as must be done as a resource to be expended. For the humans it's "how can we best kill the Senexi" and for the Senexi it's "how can we best infiltrate the humans". I didn't care for it on a plot level either. There's probably a considerable amount I'm missing, but I don't have sufficient interest for that to matter to me.

Rating: 2/5

>>22333077
I guess the lack of lgbt, cuckery and roastie mc is not something you enjoy or have any interest in.

Wolfeshelffag here. Will finally get around to taking photos of all my shit soon. I think you guys will really enjoy his Letter's Home book. It is way bigger than I thought and comes with family photos.

>>22328690
>paying
library genesis is a thing.

>>22328698
>I’m disappointed at the lack of overt buttrape
There are 7 books in the series you dumb cunt. Hardly anybody from the male primary and secondary cast manages to escape non-consensual male-on-male buttsex as either the perpetrator, recipient or both

>>22333159
Hehe spotted true male homo butt sex connoisseur. But why are you posting without your sff reviewer tripcode?

>>22333138
Genuinely looking forward to it. Your shelf is great.

>>22333333

>>22333077
your """reviews""" are SHIT
FUCK OFF

>>22331664
my diary...

>>22331664
Engine Summer by Crowely
Dying Inside by ((silverberg))

Damn… the cover is so aesthetic… Erikson reigns supreme

>>22333960
>Erikson
>Skinny woman on cover

>>22333967
Erikson loves all women of all shapes and sizes. He affirms all women’s agency, as an archaeologist and scholar. That’s why he goes on Brittany’s channel where Bakkerincels would rather sexually harass her for opposing misogynist word choice like “womanish” and patriarchal descriptions by R Scott Bakker. Erikson is a true Canadian gentleman.
https://youtu.be/rMH-ESRjMkU

>>22333981
Erikson actually seems like a nice fella because he has a high tolerance to zoomers and he's always giving interviews to small youtubers.

>>22331387
Just finished this. What did I think of it?

>>22334028
You think you should read Lovecraft instead. You think the master has not been topped. You think you should read Dunsany, Machen, Clark Ashton Smith, Edgar Allan Poe, Blackwood, Hodgson…

Guise, I wanna coom. Is this going to make my peepee shoot hard?

>>22334039
Calm down, John.

Rec me something you love but can't get anyone else to read.

>>22334059
Anything with AI art is guaranteed to be worth every cent you buy it for
It’s called Asimov’s law of artificial intelligence

>>22334099
It’s written by an old woman, from the perspective of a female sex demon coven that live inside a teenage boy’s body and who spy on him dressing from his perspective.

>>22331403
Matter is probably one of my underrated favorites of the series. The concepts and characters were great. Don't miss the Oraham pub scene.

>>22334099
I wouldn't say LOVE, but I definitely enjoyed how dark, weird, and morbid pic related was (especially compared to the usual grimderp tripe) and I can't get any of you to read it because you actually have to pay for it. I've rec'd it so many times to the anons who come in here asking for books similar to Dark Souls or Bloodborne yet they're all poorfags I guess.

>>22334099

>>22334129
Your book is shit and you should have edited it, retard. It’s unreadable. No one even knows you.

>>22334150
Why are you seething?

Iain banks is kind of a poof isn't he

>>22333960
Idk why it's cool to hate in Malazan recently. I read all 10 and liked them a lot. Certainly have been worse books recommended here.

>>22334156
We hate shills and paddlers here. You’re obscure for a reason: you’re shit. Get good, faggot.

>>22334219
Stop seething because you're a poorfag, retard.

L Ron Hubbard's pulp fiction is genuinely good, top tier even. how long until people realize?

Any suggestions for high/low fantasy prominently featuring priests/preachers/clerics/clergymen of any type really, where their religion is actually a part of their character and not just some surface level d&d tier basically just a mage that heals type stuff?

>>22334239
It will never not be funny that one of the greats of pulp ended up starting a cult for money.

>>22334224
You’re so poor because you live in Ohio and work as a “microscopist” that you need to shill your self published slop on 4chan. You have almost 0 followers and would never get traditionally published, despite how much you invade fiction spaces and shill yourself as a writer. No one likes you and you’ll be forgotten as soon as you die.

I'm on book 6 of drenai saga and I'm getting sincerely bored of it.
I think it's been the same tropes every book, but after book 2 the guy didn't even bother and instead of trying to get a plot forward it's just prequel books.

>>22334277
I'm reading Nightside of the Long Sun and so far the MC's religion is the driving force behind everything he's done. Not fantasy, but not crazy sci-fi (so far) either.

When is E William Brown releasing an audiobook for his Alabama apocalypse book?

>>22334297
>he thinks I'm actually the writer
lol based seethetard.

>>22334305
>but after book 2 the guy didn't even bother and instead of trying to get a plot forward it's just prequel books
That's because there is no overarching story, retard.

>>22334382
No one knows who the fuck he is. You’re him. He only gets his friends to review him because he’s a loser. You’re a loser if you even read him.

>>22333960
Kurald Galain. Home.

>>22334393
Did he rape you or something, anon? You've seething for hours now. Maybe go back to your home board >>>/lgbt/ and seethe there.

>>22334458
Lindberg loves BBC. He can’t get enough in his little mouth as he’s shilling his failed sword and sorcery series for ten years straight with no success. Even though writers sell stories for 12 cents a word, (((Lindberg))) can barely buy his wife’s boyfriend a switch on his Amazon shill money.

>>22334475
Ick.

>>22334475
>how to get into videogame writing
lol

>>22334239
recommend some of his best. He is the world record holder for writing the most shit so most of it is probably bad.

goodnight /sffg/

Do any of you write historical fiction, or more specifically philosphers set in a historical period?

>>22334652
I wrote a novel about colonial Australia. It ain’t finished. Nuff said. Hell ain’t half full.

Average Xianxia or Wuxia poster

Any fantasy novels with a similar tone and atmosphere?

>>22334804
The Night Land

>>22332496
He Who Fights with Monsters got real boring in the last few books.

Given your list I'm surprised you don't have Reality Benders, in my humble opinion its better than half your recommendations.

G’day mate. Would you like to know how I became the richest Tasmanian on dole? Fuarrrrkkk cunt. It’s a fucking yarn, eh?

>>22334326
Unfortunately might be the closest I get

Hyperion reigns supreme. It makes Staceys cream

>>22334878
rl friend can't stand it. If his love for Sanderson didn't already confirm his plebbery, this opinion cemented it.

>>22333981
This is the bitch that trashed Bakker's first Second Apocalypse novel. Of course she's into Shitikson

>>22334129
Well anon, if you have the ebook, why don't you just share it with us here ? De DRm it with the GitHub guide and upload to some anon file share.

>>22334980
He’s too much of a pussy because he knows it’s unedited filth. Lindbergstein has made less money on writing than most short story writers.

>>22334645
Gn friend

>>22334191
i never liked it. generic video game fantasy, only it takes forever.

>>22334277
sci fi. canticle for leibowitz and hyperion

>>22334475
>>22334982
lol this nigga still seething.

>>22335028
Keep sucking, white cuck

>>22334878
God her face is disgusting, screams I'm a whore.

>>22335068
no it doesn't.

>>22330347
first time i read about a character going by they/them
it was both tragic and comedic

>>22335118
Pierce Brown did that in Dark Age and Light Bringer. An “androgynous“ Green getting killed and he used an entire paragraph of they/them. I rolled my eyes until it felt like I could see my brain. Thankfully it was the only time he did that. Unfortunately he keeps insisting on making random characters gay or bisexual.

>>22335180
God i just remembered the cringe on reading that paragraph, i couldn't figure out wtf he was saying for a moment until I grasped the libtard angle.

>>22335193
I'm a translator and one time I had to translate a paragraph relating to a slime being that is neither male nor female. There were non-gendered pronouns used, and I didn't exactly want to make up for myself whether the slime being was male or female, so I translated it as it was written, non-gendered. They/them, etc. However, a number of reviews accused the translator (that being me) of going full libtard and defiling the original text with social justice. What I say is: what's all this tomfoolery about? Anyway, this isn't related to Pierce Brown.

Started reading Neuromancer
I'm on chapter 3 and I don't like it so far

I think Malazan went through significant edits and rewrites. The audiobook has different terminology than my print edition. I think some publishers tried to cut out the worldbuilding and replaced in world terms for common ones, e.g. Hood is changed to hell.
I know that Erikson wrote a new prologue, but didn’t realise the text was reworked. It’s a bit annoying fantasy does this, since Anderson’s The Broken Sword is completely different across editions.

>>22334112
>In this episode Penric dresses as a female prostitute then makes an old man fall in love with him.

I do like how the tone of the series is lighthearted.

What do we think of Worm and other works by c*nadian pig?
Personally I dropped Ward midway because the constant group therapy dynamic got too tiresome (I mean they literally do a short therapy session midfight at one point what the actual fuck)
Heard Pale is woke overload, is that true? Pact was fun but a constant stream of mc getting into worse and worse shit with no hope of it getting better

>>22334859
who dis

>>22335770
I enjoyed how shamelessly horny Bujold is too. I think she's one of the few female authors who can actually write compelling male characters, and honestly I think that just comes down to the simple fact that she actually *likes* men. Unfortunately I think Bujold is basically retired at this point. She was steadily putting out 1 or 2 Penric novellas a year for a while, but she hasn't put any out in nearly 2 years now. Oh well.

>>22334878
saw an extremely cute blonde on an NYC subway reading this a couple months ago. for me, it's the priest.

>>22335797
I like Worm, the beginning of the story was trying to emulate YA shit to get readers but as soon as he got a reader-base and dropped all the YA pretences, it became some of the best capeshit out there. I read it six or seven years ago and I still think about its ending. Whether it's good or not depends on individual taste but whatever it is, it's provocative otherwise some novel hosted on a WordPress site wouldn't have 10k+ fanfics, some of them longer than the original work and with new ones being written even now.

The problem with Worm's follow-up is that I am pretty sure the Canadian hated how popular Worm got by the time he started writing Ward. All you have to look at is how much he made the Worm universe hopeless with his WOGs (nigh-infinite space whales, the Titans and all that). He wanted to subvert his own story, probably also because none of his other stories were getting as popular as Worm. That's why Victoria and Amy's story turned out the way it did.

I feel like his main characters are never allowed to feel genuine triumph. This is especially the case in Pact, which makes it impossible to read because it's one disaster after another without stop. It's a bit different in twig but I can't get into it because it's front-loaded with monster of the week bullshit. Pale, I heard was better but it's too long and is not the kind of premise I like reading.

I don't know what you mean by woke overload, one of the main three characters is a lesbian, I think. One is black and also all of them are girls so I don't know maybe. I might try it if I am bored enough but its premise isn't something that's interesting to me, even though the promise from avid Wildbow fans that some of his worst impulses are not here makes me want to try it.

>>22331415
Gideon the Ninth is a pretty reddit book, but if you're willing to buy into that and you don't hate the concept of a murder mystery in a gothic sci-fi mansion there's a very smug witch in it for you

>>22335797
All of wildbow's works are a first draft that he published twice a week consistently for years. So there's good ideas there but everything is simultaneously way too long and undercooked. The more web content you read, the more tolerable you'll probably find it.

Twig is his best work and unfortunately also his least successful.

Why do americans hate loser characters so much?
Guy isn't a gigachad full of confidence? Shit character, needs improoving!

>>22336457
>Why do americans hate loser characters so much?
>Guy isn't a gigachad full of confidence? Shit character, needs improoving!

>>22336457
>Why do americans hate loser characters so much?
Do we? American lit is full of losers.

How do you anons finish a book you've lost interest in?

>>22336501
You don't.

>>22336501
you don't? Or come back to it later. You ever show someone music or something and they don't care for it but then like it a month later? Depending on emotional availability you either enjoy or not in that moment.

>>22336501
Is it for others? Weigh the costs.
Are you depressed or otherwise suffering from internal loss of interest? Respond accordingly.
Is the book not worthwhile? It's it, not you.

What is the best "lore" (I mean not story of a single book, but the overarching narrative or world itself) out there? What should I immerse in to be the most autistic?

>>22336544
There isn't a best. There's only a most and that depends on how you define "lore". If autism is your goal, then you should pick whatever tickles your autism most and then forget everyone and everything else for an arbitrary amount of time. It really doesn't matter what.

>>22335897
She likes men so much that she makes the men like men as well.

>>22336501
Autism, mostly.

>>22336544
In terms of 40k? I prefer Eisenhorn myself, helps to narrow the scope of the universe while still embracing its higher elements. Everywhere else, and I think you need to look at the characters in any major story and how they act as vehicles for the lore. If you don't connect with them you're not going to give a shit.

>>22329382
Anyone who expects their book to be the sole product of their own efforts is entirely delusional at best. It doesn't matter the source*, or how much it's been done, or anything else. All that matters is whether the readers enjoy it.

>>22336564
You're right, my wording wasn't really good. By best, I meant something deep enough that I can get lost in. And not necessarily only one, but a few of the bests, which might be good for different aspects. I've only read the most basic fantasy books when I was a kid, such as LotR or HP, and now that I'm an adult, the yearning to explore different worlds has returned. Basically, I just need escapism, because my life is shit.

>>22336575
Not necessarily 40k, that's just my to candidate so far. A friend of mine has recommended it, but I know nothing about the world. Played some games back then, but that's all.

>>22330311
Drizzt the dark elf is in Malazan!?

>>22330347
No, you should've noticed, far, far before that. You had countless warnings here and many other places. You intentionally did this to yourself.

>>22330460
The same thing as any snarl word or thought terminating cliche. It simply means it has stuff they dislike and don't consider themselves as. It's identity politics on a site level.

Be kind to ritualposters. They are afflicted with compulsive behavior that they have no control over. No one is more distraught over it than the ritualposter.

>>22336575
>Autism, mostly
OCPD seems more accurate.

>>22336315
Professional authors kill off their characters and hate the works, but continue doing them anyway. There are at least a few notable examples of this.

>>22331907

>>22336646
That isn't an explanation.
That's an example
No, it isn't self-explanatory

>>22334804
bakker

>>22336505
>>22336507
>>22336532
>>22336575
Decided to skim through the unimportant parts (which is most of the novel) and only read the parts important to the story. If I hadn't paid for this book I would just drop it, but I feel like I'm wasting my money if I don't finish it.

>>22334305
thats kind of the whole point, everything is self contained except for a few books that are direct sequels. You get to read what happens over hundreds/thousands of years. But also the tropes are also all the same so it gets boring

>>22336723
Sunk cost fallacy.
Throwing good money after bad.
You've got to know when to cut your losses and be able to accept you made a mistake and forgive yourself for having done so.

>>22336544
for me it's xeelee

>>22328938
>Last
Revenger. Revenge story with futuristic space pirates plundering loot from previous civilizations. Was ok.

>Current
Speaker for the Dead from Ender's Game. Liking it so far but I'm not too far in.

>Next
Haven't decided but if Speaker for the Dead finishes strong and I feel like it I might continue with Xenocide. Either that or Empire of the Vampire or The Three-body problem

>>22334326
Wait, is this apart of the book of the new sun series?
I have all four books in the Book of the New Sun + Urth of the New Sun. There are even more books in this franchise???

>>22336457
It's the opposite. Americans love loser characters. Almost every western novel features a loser protagonist mc.

>>22336801
Well I went ahead and skipped to the end so it wasn't that much of a sunk cost. Feels bad though because it wasn't poorly written; the author simply decided to make almost the entire book about the MC describing everything he sees and experiences in first-person and goddamn that got tedious extremely fast since there wasn't much story going on beyond that.

>>22336457
>>22336853
>AMERICANS HATE LOSER CHARACTERS
>AMERICANS LOVE LOSER CHARACTERS
lol fuck off.

>>22336860
What the book, out of curiousity?

>>22336872
It's description is basically Arabian Nights meets Clark Ashton Smith which sounds awesome and it basically is that, but Smith never would have written something so incredibly tedious.

I got too far into erotic asian webnovels and now I find rape and morally degrading fetishes done to elf girls and beastkin insanely hot. These bugmen really knows how to write porn.

>>22336544

If you want to be the absolute most autistic you can be, try and be an expert in the lore of Glorantha. Written by a shaman anthropologist fresh from the 70s he culminated the setting in a two book encyclopedia set called the Guide to Glorantha, and the infuriating thing is half of the encyclopedia refutes the other half.

Everything is true so long as it is believed so the multiple competing mythos both did and did not happen depending on whose big dick Heroquesting is working at the time, you can even retroactively change history or myth by remembering things wrong. You have elaborately detailed societies with gender roles, economic structures, religions, trading histories, etc for a wide variety of cultures that all interacted with each other over a vast history that is both logical and batshit. The Empire of Wyrm's Friends got popular because they used some dragon magic, then they used the magic too much and for degenerate purposes so Buddhist dragonewts came down and killed everyone and then killed the faux-vikings that came in to stop the Empire and then retreated back to their eggs and that's just the story of one small corner of the world at one small point in time.

It's unhinged, autistic, and all you have to do is talk to any fan to understand that.

>>22336457

I've seen a backlash towards self-insert characters lately, the character who exists solely as a cipher or a bouncing pad for the more interesting side characters to play off of. I'd have to ask for more specific examples to delve into it more, there's some losers that people hate due to bad writing, there's others beloved by Americans (people like Book of the New Sun and Confederacy of Dunces both, and those are very American works).

>>22336654
NTA but it clearly is, you fucking retard

>>22336912
Give some elf rape Reccs then

>>22336919
Is it just that or are there any actual books and stories to read

>>22336935
>the character who exists solely as a cipher or a bouncing pad for the more interesting side characters to play off of
that's not what a self-insert is

>>22336849
>Wait, is this apart of the book of the new sun series?
No.
The Book of the New Sun is the first section of what is usually dubbed "The Solar Cycle" which includes The Book of the New Sun, The Urth of the New Sun, The Book of the Long Sun, and The Book of the Short Sun.
If you start it expecting the continuing adventures of Severian, you will be disappointed.

>>22336935
>the character who exists solely as a cipher or a bouncing pad for the more interesting side characters to play off of.
That sounds like terrible writing. It's not even about loser mc, it having mc just to enable side characters (while the mc is a loser). Absolute modern cuck shit.

>>22336950

There's a few books from the 80s in the Griselda tales and some legends collected in The King of Sartar, but otherwise its just decades of fake histories, interviews with people from the cultures, and dictionaries of fictional terms

>>22336961

That would be better phrased as "characters you are meant to self-insert into"

>>22336963

Even in older fantasy and science fiction the protagonist tends to never be the favorite character, not always but as a trend. They not only have to carry the burden of moving the plot along, but acting in certain ways that proscribe allowing them to get into certain states: they can't really become irredeemable in most fiction, nor can they really enter into a failure state in most fiction. Those examples exist but most authors try to avoid that.

In science fiction and fantasy you also add that they are our window into the world and thus either are the knowledgeable expositor in their internal thoughts or are our naive target of exposition from others. This tends to drag down the enjoyability of any character a bit, but strong works manage to carry on and through.

>>22336946
Inside the cave of obscenity (slime rape, pretty fucked up in later volumes)
The great demon king wants to be hated (no elves but the demon king protag does its best to treat women badly as he gets power ups this way)

>>22336544
See >>22330039 dude, i fucking LOVE EPIC LORE , dude!!!

>>22329789
Actually based on Star Wars tabletop
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/sci-fi-fantasy/10-novels-based-on-role-playing-campaigns/

>>22337064
I didn't ask for schizo rambling, stop being le angry edgy kid, anon.

Romance chapters in fantasy novels are like filler

>>22336963
>>the character who exists solely as a cipher or a bouncing pad for the more interesting side characters to play off of.
>That sounds like terrible writing.
Like Dante's Inferno?

>>22337194
>Rereading belgariad
>Aunt Pol constantly cockblocking Garion
Based Auntie

>>22337171
But DUDE, did you know captain ravenshit fought against a horde 47435754 orks (haha they are so WACKY) in planet cuntfire on the gay mountain?!?!?!? And after killing them he said "long live the emperor"?!?!?! He's so BASED and EPIC, dude!!!!

>>22337268
Ironic shitposting is still shitposting, anon.

Yuck, another book with female protagonist appeared in my Goodreads recommendations

>>22328640
I've read like 3/4s of the story.
Good points
>Actually interesting post ai apocalypse world covered in ice and with underground dungeons made by ai
>Keith is a pretty interesting character being more of a tech guy who is forced into the role of an action protagonist so he uses a lot of his prior tech experience to win fights
>Special and personalised power armor that basically is the equivalent of those magical swords in fantasy stories
>Lots of cool and intense fights
>Pretty good relationships between the various characters, especially the one between Keith and his dad where the dad is redeemed from being an abusive asshole to Keith when he was younger under the guise of training him.
Bad points
>At some point the amount of character perspective becomes obnoxious and annoying
>Some people hate the the evil ai girl is gonna be turned into a good guy by Keith
>Magic in a scifi story.

Just ordered this. What am I in for?

>>22337733
See >>22330039

>>22337733
Kino.

>>22337423
you're not based

>>22337655
>>22337655
>>22337655

>>22337924
Yes he is.

>>22337733
Decent prose but the plots will feel stale now that they've been robbed for the last hundred years.