/lit/ - Literature

Go buy my book.
You know the one.

>the spider cult has been around for literal millennia
>in that time, NONE of them (except Kit apparently) have managed to figure out the difference between truth and belief
>also their goddess who literally lives in their temple was secretly a prop this whole time and none of them realized

I spent the entire last book expecting the reveal that Basrahip and the other high priests have bamboozled the entire cult since time immemorial, but instead it turns out that they were pawns just like everybody else. Is Daniel Abraham mentally retarded?
I'm genuinely scared of the possibility that this is who Gurm will pick to finish A Dream of Spring once he kicks the bucket.

read Everybody Loves Large Chests

>>23718801
This, but try to read the original WN. The books are edited down, basically censored.

>>23718809
i read on royalroad, it's sad to hear the official release is worse

>>23718727
sir that is an evangelion

>>23718768
I hope Gurm picks Sanderson just to spite his audience one final time

>>23718768
As has been said countless times, GRRM says no one else will be writing and Abraham has explicitly said he wouldn't.

>>23718768
His other series are better.

>>23718740
Too many people push their books here to have any idea which one you mean.

>>23719130
yes congratulations that's the joke

Where so I start with the whole Bolo universe /sffg/?

>>23718740
Give us your book for free.

>>23719223
Best I can do is four smackaroos

>>23719223
>>23719286
Actually, you can have it for free if you've got Kindle Unlimited :^)

>>23719115
He's stated before that he's against other people writing "fanfiction" or original stories in his world, but he hasn't explicitly confirmed or denied the possibility of the books being finished by another author posthumously as far as I'm aware.

>>23719390
well he won't be able to piss and shart about it once he keels over from congestive heart failure and his publisher contracts brandosando to finish it

>>23718740
Get out of here Bakker.

Which conan story should I read if I'm looking to study the action scenes?

>>23719679
all of them. If you want to learn how to not waste words read David Gemmell too

>>23719197
the original short story collections and the two sequels, the non-laumer bolo books are your usual BAEN slop but some books are good, particularly Last Stand
>>23719679
Like the other anon said all of them have something good, Fritz Leiber dis some amazing action sequences too wtih Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser

>>23719197
the original short story collections and the two sequels, the non-laumer bolo books are your usual BAEN slop but some books are good, particularly Last Stand
>>23719679
Like the other anon said all of them have something good, Fritz Leiber did some amazing action sequences too wtih Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser

>>23718727
I hate elves, especially Tolkien-esque elves.

Eowyn slaying the Witch King is unironically a feminist story point and that's a good thing. Women being warriors and overcoming great evil is an important part of Western myth culture

>>23718740
Buy an ad and I'll consider it

>>23719849
strong warrior women erotic uuuooohhh

>>23719679
My personal favorite fight scene in Conan stories is in Xuthal of the Dusk, or The Slithering Shadow, depending on what title you get. It's chapter 3 of the story if you want to look it up. I like that it demonstrates Conans sincere lust for combat and the joy he takes from killing his enemies

Are there any more books where the protagonist is a savage barbarian? Not a noble savage like Tarzan or Conan, but a protagonist who is genuinely violent and crude?

>>23719870
Literally Conan. He's an extremely cruel warlord and pirate for the majority of the stories

>>23719862
That's not what Eowyn is about

>>23719875
Conan still has a strong sense of right and wrong.

What goes on in the sffg goodreads group? If I'm going to dox myself I want it to be worth it

>>23719881
Only much later in his life, in his late 30s. All of his early life he just killed, drank and stole for his own pleasure and benefit and occasionally killed an evil sorcerer.

>>23719876
It is now.

>>23719893
Here's a less sexy depiction of the scene for you

>>23719898
I like how this visually echoes Glorfindel vs the Balrog.

>>23719901
All of the crucial battles between the representatives of light and darkness are echoes of the great battles of the past in the lore

>>23719889
nah he was a real one when he teamed up with that black guy in one of the early stories

>>23719907
Yep

>>23719901
>>23719937
>mogs them both

>>23719870
I think Cugel is a strong contender, he's not "uncivilized" but he's pretty much a narcissistic monster who extends violence when necessary and cringes until he can take advantage. He tries to ply wordplay and civility but he disgusts most people he talks to who have any emotional intelligence.

>>23719952
>blond Fingolfin
JOHN HOWE.....

>>23719956
no wonder chudsissies love him

>>23718727
Are there any good Alien books? Excluding movie novelisations. I'n in the mood for some xeno action. I read some of the blurbs and they all sound awful.

>>23720410
read the dark horse comics

>>23720417
I don't like comics. Has to be books.

>>23720424
tough, that's your option if you want anything remotely decent

Just finished Glory Road
In the "scavenging for leftover gems" part of an author read-through

>>23720410
https://www.goodreads.com/series/192802-the-shadow-saga

Any comfy books on an adventurer who travels around the land helping people?
Kinda like the The Last Wish.

>>23721780
My personal favorites are the Silver John books by Manly Wade Wellman

Hogg came into today, it's great. I need to pick up some more cigars and shop the bad dragon catalog to get the most of it, but it's relatable for such experimental, transgressive science fiction as it is. Makes me want to get up and start trucking so late in life. An inspiring novel all around.

Book to read if I want to feel smart? Like Hyperion or Illium/Olympos

what are some fun fantasy collections of short stories?
I'm enjoying some Conan stories, but I'd like something a bit less pulpy and more feel-good.

Niggers be buying the same fucking books over ten times.

>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrHyygvLig0
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOdYfn98ll0
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UqGuR46zSA
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9g8o-1WXQQ

>>23722061
tbf everyone has multiple copies of lotr
I think I have 3 and the only one I bought myself was a standalone copy of fellowship when I was like 12

>>23722073
but why?

>>23722073
Wrong. Not everyone has multiple copies (or even a single copy) of Shit of the Rings. Fuck off with that shit.

>>23722016
9 tales of raffalon

>>23719197
The only one I've read is Rogue Bolo but it was great.

>>23719870
Like half of the offerings from DMR

>>23722073
I have one copy, bought in 2003.

>>23722249
>DMR
Necromancy in Nilztiria is fun, but references to sex and to women feel more teenager than usual even for the genre.

>>23719390
>but he hasn't explicitly confirmed or denied the possibility of the books being finished by another author posthumously as far as I'm aware.
He has. He said it goes to the grave with him.

>>23718727
The Mercy of Gods - The Captive's War #1 - James S.A. Corey (2024)

Ty Franck pitched this to Daniel Abraham as the biblical book of Daniel written as science fiction. The series title is The Captive's War, so even if you don't know about the former, the latter gives an idea about how the story goes. This isn't a space opera, at least the first book isn't. This is a story about how to manage trauma, mental illness, and anomie as an enslaved people forced to be useful to their masters lest they face annihilation. The vast majority of the book is the characters trying to come to terms with their circumstances. All of the primary characters are academics, so the aliens have them conducting scientific research.

The aliens explicitly say they're beyond good and evil, that morality is for their inferiors. Their concern is utility and nothing else. If something isn't useful, it will be culled. If it is, it will be cultivated. Their only personal contribution to their own success is their drive to subjugate everyone and everything. Everything else is handled by the species they've enslaved, so in a sense the enslaved are an extension of them, similar to how human use tools and technology.

I've greatly enjoyed much of their previous work, which makes it all the more unexpected that Mercy of Gods is the disappointment of the year for me. It does so much of what I so dislike. The foremost problem is the characters. The perspective is a shifting third person that moves from character to character that feels detached and emotionally distant. They're mostly defined by their trauma and mental illness. One is suicidal and very ruminative, another has alexithymia, and a third has panic attacks. The ostensible protagonist meant to be the biblical Daniel is arguably a dark empath.

I felt like I was reading a story where I was supposed to be concerned about their existential dread, but I was only allowed to do so through a glass, darkly. There's also a variety of non-human characters who are moderately interesting, but are limited by the the circumstances of their enslavement. Maybe the appeal is identifying with the characters. As with the ideal reader, they're simply trying to survive their trauma and mental illness in an indifferent workplace for masters who only care about their productivity and nothing else.

The reader is told how this story ends from the opening, which isn't what I prefer, and is possibly related to how this book is all set-up for however many books the series will be. What it doesn't say is whether this has any relation to The Expanse. Nothing in this denies the connection and some of it suggests that it is. If it is, it takes place roughly sometime around The Expanse's epilogue.

Disappointed, distressed, and dismayed sums up my thoughts. I'm not ruling out reading the second book, but considering how the story of Daniel goes, I don't think I'll enjoy it.

Rating: 2/5

>>23722061
lol what the fuck

So I've been reading some famous guys everybody love to recommend, this week it was Neal Stephenson and James R. Fletcher. I bet those guys got discussed here before but it was my first time reading them after years hearing about their books.

Stephenson: I tried Anathem and Seveneves. I couldn't get past 30 pages or so, I tried a few later chapter and no use. I don't like to reduce someone to a fucking meme but this guy is simply reddit. Fucking hell I was expecting some kind of William Gibson or Bakker, some weird guy with at least some interesting ideas but what I got was pretty much Read Player One. Massive disappointment, but now I know why this shit is so popular.

Fletcher: Manifest Delusions, Smoke and Stone. Interesting plots, both felt pretty /tg/ with could be good. He is not bad as Stephenson but the man takes too damn long to get the point. He could chop 1/3 of each chapter and tell the same story. I couldn't finish Smoke and I don't think I will finish Manifest too. It seems like he's the type of writer that starts from a interesting premise, goes nowhere for 300 pages then tries to hook the reader for a sequel with a twist in the final 30 pages or so.

I also tried Guy Gavriel Kay and also couldn't finish his books (A Brightness Long Ago, Tigana). Not bad, felt really old school, just not for me.

>>23722061
What?
>>23722073
Why?

It's the same book. I understand if your books are old af and the new cover is prettier, or if you are from a ESL country and the new translation is better, still.

>>23722061
Bet you wouldn't think twice about consoomer (anime) owning 10 figures of the same character

>>23722447
Stephenson is indeed reddit. Seveneves is particularly bad.

I still like Snow Crash just because of how blatantly shlocky it is.

>>23722456
You have a shitty paperback and want something nice. Or you find out the single volume breaks your wrist. Or you want some illustrations to think about. That's about it, I'm back down to one copy but wouldn't mind a 3 volume hardcover.

>>23722061
Straight men who are into the "aesthetics" of things disturb me.

>>23721919
>Hogg
>Science fiction
First of all, you SICK FUCK. Second of all, not science fiction. Truth be told, I've read most of the big "transgressive literature" books out there and they usually just boil down to being endlessly repetitive and boring in the long run. What's up with that?

>>23722456
>Why?
because it's one of the best selling books of the last century and went through waves of popularity so you tend to get copies when people die/give stuff away. I think mine was one battered copy owned by my dad which got moved to my bookshelf at some point, one I bought and then one better complete edition from either grandparents after one died/moved or a neighbours house after they died.
We used to have two sets of harry potter for similar reasons, just got given it at somepoint when someone outside of the family was giving it away and never got around to moving them on

>>23722482
>hey usually just boil down to being endlessly repetitive and boring in the long run.
It's a commentary on the mainstream genre, far as I can tell. Replace tired tropes with extreme sex and it's the same shit. It usually ends up a little better than the thing it makes fun of, but the cannonball ain't exactly aimed very high.

>>23722470
That's basically what I said. One or two copies I get it, 3, 4, 10 sets like the guys in the videos seems like idiocy to me, but hey it's their money, who am I to judge?
>>23722485
>you tend to get copies when people die/give stuff away.
That's ok. Give some of these away tho, books are made to be read not just stand in shelves. I do not mean some hobo or library, give it to some young reader in your family/social circle.
>We used to have two sets of harry potter
Oh yeah it's nice to have tinder for the winter.

>>23722482
Also, it's a pornotopic truckerverse and fits somewhere in speculative fiction. That intersection of SF, horror, weird fiction and queer fiction that doesn't play. de Sade and Clive Barker are part of the shared universe.

>>23722469
But I was not expecting THAT bad. The way people describe his works I imagined something far deeper, especially Anathem since that supposedly delves into philosophy and science a lot. But then every character talks and acts like picrel, I was taken aback.

>>23722544
Forgot pic

>>23722532
Acèphale. Bataille was too chickenshit to cut his own head off and form the egregore for his friends to form around, but he did form the order in the astral.

>>23722532
>>>it's a pornotopic truckerverse and fits somewhere in speculative fiction. That intersection of SF, horror, weird fiction and queer fiction that doesn't play. de Sade and Clive Barker are part of the shared universe.

Legit schizobabble. Seek help.

>>23722552

>>23722559
>DOOD HE DID SCI FI BEFORE SO CLEARLY HIS GAY PEDO TRUCKER RAPE ESCEPADE BOOK SET IN AN ENTIRELY MUNDANE SETTING QUALIFIES AS SPECULATIVE FICTION
Room temperature IQ take

Can any of you gents recommend a self-contained fantasty novel that you loved, that didn't have any extranous shit, a series to follow up on, gay lore channels jizzing over it and more? Just a great, one book tale told for its own sake? Sick of all these gay ass worldbuilding enterprises and six series sagas for slags and suckers

>>23722571
>trucker rape world differs from space world or dinosaur world because greentext
I don't see why you're offended, Hogg is literally you if you could hold down a job as a pants shitting professional rapist.

>>23722357
How pozzed is it?

>>23722581
>It's literally hashtag#(YOU)
Stop projecting, pedo homo pervert scum.

>>23722596
I guess a world where you could hold down a job would make it more fantasy than SF, sorry.

>>23722578
I have none, but if you find one please recommend to me too.

>>23722581
Hello, retard. Yes, if it's set in a completely normal, somewhat modern everyday setting devoid of basic science fiction tropes then yeah, it PROBABLY isn't something that can be labeled as "science fiction" or "speculative fiction" at best, it's just "fiction"

I sincerely hope you're just being retarded for the sake of sweet, sweet (You)s and not just legitimately retarded.

>>23722581
>Gay, pedophile AND retarded
Look out fellas, we got ourselves a triple threat here.

>>23722532
>Also, it's a pornotopic truckerverse and fits somewhere in speculative fiction
I just read the summary on wikipedia, this shit is hilariously bad
>narrator begins by being raped
>he meets a black guy that rapes him
>he meets a biker gang that rapes him
>he meets Hogg, who rapes him
>he meets two garbage men that rapes him
>he meets a cop that rapes him
>he is sold to a captain that rapes him
>he is then rescued by Hogg who rapes him
>Hogg then asks hey what's wrong
>nothin'
>the end

>>23722632
Yer' jus' don' unnerstan'...

>>23722632
Doesn't that make cocksucker the ubermensch in this twisted world? That's a very Voyage to Arcturus message.

>>23722632
>he meets a biker gang that rapes him
I will now read your book.

Is there anything similar to Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines?
I know it's based on a tabletop rpg, but I want something similar to the "protagonist becomes part of a supernatural underground society with its owns ranks and rules" part.

>>23722578
>>23722610
How many times do we have to tell you fags to read The Broken Sword, The Mask of the Sorcerer, and Little, Big.

>feudal period is secretly a post apocalyptic dystopian
I love this shit.

>>23722469
>That kid named tranny

>>23722755
You'll love the Shannara books then

>>23722704
most urban fantasy desu
Anne Rice for all her flaws is the most direct inspiration

>Book1 - mc becomes big fish in small pond.
>Book2 - mc becomes small fish in big pond and grows into big fish.
>Book3 - mc becomes small fish in big pond but this time they grow into big fish...
>Book4 - author wants to do something different so depowers mc AND does a prisoner arc...before turning mc into a big fish again....
>Book5 - mc becomes a small fish in a bi....zZZz...

>>23722578
>>23722610
Talion: Ravenant
The White Mists of Power
The Harp of the Grey Rose
Forgotten Beasts of Eld
Day of the Minotaur
Paladin by C.J Cherryh

>>23722802
name 5 (five) fantasy series like this

>>23722578
Pick something from Swanwick or Tim Powers
Crowley if you're feeling a bit more literary

>>23722755
aka, all books about the early-mediaeval / late-antique era.
The Name of the Rose, Raptor, The Last Kingdom . . .

>>23722724
Not the anon that asked first but I don't like Poul Anderson or John Crowley. Mask is on my list, I have other things to read first.

>>23722877
>I don't like Poul Anderson or John Crowley

>>23722805
>Paladin by C.J Cherryh
I love this line in the wiki article about this book
>In a homemade cabin high in the hills
Absolute madman made a cabin all by himself inside his home and then transported all the way to the high in the hills, what a legend.

>>23722891
They are not bad, at all. I mean it. It's just not my thing. I'm a bakkerfag so don't even try, you know I'm insufferable.

>>23722819
You could pick 10 xianxias at random and at least 6 or 7 would contain this exact sequence

>>23722903
I'm a bakkerfag too so I'm surprised you don't enjoy all three authors prose

>>23722910
Ever read the comic book The Filth by Grant Morrison? It's one of the edgiest shitfests I ever read, it's hilariously over the top. Once you start reading this kind of shit simple stories about brave people and their loyal companions simply do not reach you anymore, well at least that what happened to me. They write well but they write about things I already know. Now I need my dose of weird shit inside a good story or I can't get my intelectual boner going. Bakker had enough madness to keep me interested, but Poul and Crowley, althought great writers, can't tickle my fancy.

Shit I never thought I would become a fantasy book edgelord from boredom, but here I am. I miss when shit like Conan killing guys and refusing to fuck the hot girl because muh principles were enough to kept me entertained.

>>23722909
>xianxias
i meant REAL literature, real books not chinkslop or webnovelslop and don't get me started with self-published amazon trash.

finally got around to reading Michael Moorcock, finished Elric and Croum this month. Think i should read Eternal Champion next but Dancers At The End Of Time sounds really pretty cool

>>23722798
Anything specific?

>>23722863
those aren't it. I want the machines and computer systems and all this futuristic shit that appears out of nowhere that contrasts to the feudal era of the time. A bunch of peasants find mechas and laser guns.

>>23723011
Have you not read Book of the new sun?

>>23723011
Empire of the East, Book of Swords and Book of Lost Swords by Fred Saberhagen does this.
Darksword by Margaret Weis
Lon-Tobyn, this is more scifi vs magic
>"The magical Order of the Children of Amarid is appalled to discover that the terrible attacks on their people are being perpetrated by invaders from the land of Lon-Ser, where magic has been forsaken for technology"

>>23722755
Age of Decadence?

>start out as some rural bum
>can end the game by waking an alien from cryostorage and using a tactical nuke

>>23723064
>videogames

>>23722305
people keep repeating this but i have yet to find a source other than his usual remarks about not wanting others to write "original stories" in his world.

>>23719956
You think he was about to rape the daughter of the guy trapped by the ratmen in the cell?

How much of the left side have (you) read?

>>23719898

>>23722704
There was a thread about it recently.
>>23716012

World of Darkness novels
Necroscope
Christopher Buehlman - The Lesser Dead and The Suicide Motor Club

>>23722962
so basically all of modern literature.
Here's a modern trad pub one:
>Book 1 - World build, introduce interesting mc, premise, side cast, promise epic scale wars and world upheaval.
>Book 2 - Rehash first books story for a quarter of this book oh and those epic battles i promised well they are still happening soon...but not right now, oh and let me just switch POV's again to flesh out a side character you certainly don't give a fuck about. Damn i ran out of book space, better elude to coolshit coming in the future as an epilogue!
>Book 3 - Rehash book one and two for half the book length. More side character shit you don't care about. Some cuckoldry thrown in just BECAUSE OK!!1!!1!, That ebic battle you were waiting for? yeah still not here yet sorry there is more scenery porn and side character shit you don't give a fuck about to get through, oh look i have run out of book length again, queue promissory epilogue.
>Book 4 - Three quarters of the book taken up with book one, two and three's slow rundowns. Enter side charac....zzZZzz...

>>23723329
I've been thinking about this. Games these past gens have been so unimaginative and safe. No distinct aesthetics, everything looks the same. Same lighting, same textures, same depth of vision except for cartoonish indie games.
Games developers can do absolutely anything they want, even in terms of gameplay, we could have movement that is like a spider's, an eagle's, an octopus', but every single game out there we control a humanoid on pretty grassy fields. No risk, no experimentation.

>>23723500
It's boring is what it is. So many people these days have such a hard time actually escaping their own sense of self indulgence that even fantasy and imagination have become mundane. People literally cannot process concepts of heroic exaggeration and even internal mechanical issues give them a hard time. They can't understand why dying in a video game lets them retry without some internal explanation. They can't even "get into" things any more with some vetted spread sheet or info graph explaining every detail before they ever sit down with it. There's a massive inability to even perceive things in the context of the setting rather than their own modern senses.

>>23723500
As usual Jap devs mog AAA western devs in this regard, even when the graphics are "realistic". games Bloodborne blew me away with its gothic visuals and singlehandedly rekindled my love for gothic architecture and horror. Hell, even fucking fighting games have much cooler looking worlds than whatever open world western game has come out this past decade. I'd love to have a stage viewer in Blazblue or even nu-Guilty Gear, for instance.

>>23722357
your """reviews""" are SHIT. fuck off

>>23723515
Also a good part of the new generation is very narcissistic and wants the characters to be "literally me".

>>23723017

>>23723011
Prince of Thorns and The Steel Remains do this

>>23723517
>runes written on bricks
>tower coming out of a busted jaw
>incoherent altitude of mountains in the background.
Why can't we have more like this?
Even Doom, where we play in literal hell, is just "high fantasy buildings but with lava and blood". We need more surrealism.

>>23723521
I say this a lot but while escapist fiction isn't new, the way it exists has changed. Our escapist hero used to be someone we idealized. Someone we wished we could be. We wanted to be Conan, Batman, Star fleet captain or a jedi or whatever. Now everyone is so in their own space so self absorbed that escapist fiction has devolved into pure self insertion where characters aren't who we desire but ourselves with the world reshaped to cater to ourselves. We don't want to cast off our weaknesses and be better we want the wolrd to be worse so we don't have to be.

>>23723539
Left-wing has taken over culture.
Left-wing politics focuses on common weaknesses, right-wing politics on common strengths. When left-wingers create a story, the story is focused not on how we can make ourselves stronger (self-improvement), but how we can change the world to accommodate our inadequacies (affirmative action).
The problem is that we end up with no character arc. Left-wingers can't write a good hero story — there are no heroes, only victims.

I don't think I'd even really mind so much at least when they were making things of their own. But that's not enough for them. They had to take away other people's toys because their own shit doesn't catch on the same way. I don't think that Stevey Galaxy shit is all that interesting but it's not mine so even I think it looks like the gayest shit ever I don't have to really deal with it. But these people can't just have their own. They need to go into everyone else's room and break all their stuff.

>>23723533
And Doom is one of the better western game aesthetics. It may never go beyond "Hell: them park edition" but at least its carried by the clear inspiration of Death Metal and Black Metal album covers.

>>23723543
What are some good modern right-wing authors? I read some Larry Correia, and he never rises beyond "serviceable".

>>23723587
I mean I don't know if it leans anywhere politically or what his stance is but the new Conan comics Titan is putting out a pretty cool. Jim Zub really surprised me with that one.

>>23723587
>What are some good modern right-wing authors?
Nothing in the mainstream. Editors (women who graduated in a shit degree) and publishers (jews and philosemitic anglos) don't allow it.

>left cant write because left le weak and right le strong
>okay what are some good right-wing authors?
>the all powerful joos dont allow any to exist you see

>>23723653
The age old dilemma of the leftist: evil or just plainly stupid? The two might be one and the same.

>>23723653
Writing novels in the 21st century is kind of a loserish thing to do. Being a doomer is fashionable now but the truth is most people willing to bring a minimum effort to actually productive work have endless prospects and live in comfort. When you are forced to choose between working in a mine or working in a factory you have a bit more to say and a lot less to distract you from it. And most of it was already said in the 19th and 20th century. Novels are not the forefront of art and entertainment anymore. No go-getter is going to write some book that probably will never be read. They would rather make a film or a videogame and have a way better chance of relevance and success. Novels are a niche interest for nerds at best and porn for women at worse now. There are no upcoming writers worth anything. They are all 90 years old or dead, and by default their views would have made them Nazis by modern standards. Life may not be as good as it was in 2000 but it's also nowhere near as bad as it was in the mid 20th century for most people. Giving up a good life such as it is in 2024 to scrawl words a creature of gender has to deem worthy to ever see print is certainly left wing. You can't expect to be a good writer without putting in the time and even with the time a lot of people can't be good, and they become web novelists, for pennies, because they're too good to show up at an evil nazi corp for a few hours per week. The lefties are never going to have a Roald Dahl. They will never even have a Dr Seuss. The zeitgeist has thoroughly come and gone when it comes to novels and they are fighting over the scraps. They are the african savages inhabiting the dead white man's empire.

>>23723700
>writes 2000 character long ramble
>examples of good right wing authors consist entirely of books for 8 year olds
lol, give up you don't know enough to argue this

>>23723700

>>23723723
You got me buddy. Shit, fuck. Thanks for reading it all.

>>23723727
Don't worry, your latest fairy porn novel will be the one that sells.

>>23723500
I blame the emergence of the off shelf graphics engines. Like unreal is great tool but at the same time it provides so much that studios just get lazy and go with already established game design workflow and practises because they are guaranteed to work and meet deadlines.

>>23723533
>>23723579
The upcoming doom set in dark ages looks very promising

>googled 'xianxia' to see what's the deal with this guy because /sffg/ keep mentioning him a lot
>turns out 'xianxia' is not a person let alone a guy
>turns out 'xianxia' is a fucking genre
...

>>23723486
name 5 (five) fantasy series like this

Aw shit the chudsissies didn't take their meds again
Wesfallen joos women niggers chinks etc

>>23723818
>>23723727

>>23719401
Brother Sando will be too busy writing mist3kino or stormlight arc 2

>>23722469
>I still like Snow Crash just because of how blatantly shlocky it is.
>literally names the main character Hiro Protagonist
The book gives me Tails Gets Trolled vibes since it's legitimately funny and a good read but I'm not sure how much of that is intentional versus accidental.

>>23719888
I think there's a public member in there, the non 4 channer one
but dont trust me though, I dont have goodreads and I didn't know how it works. My claim was purely based on my own assumption after clicking the OP link several seconds ago

>>23723515
>They can't even "get into" things any more with some vetted spread sheet or info graph explaining every detail before they ever sit down with it.
is this why litrpgs and isekai anime with stats are so popular now?

>>23723329
A bunch of screenshots of third person games is always going to look more samey than a random collection of artwork because you necessarily have the character center-framed with a field of view somewhere between 60 and 80 degrees.

Also I really wish Kojima wasn't such a film fag, he's precisely the sort of auteur that could get something with a really off the wall artstyle produced. But he'd rather make shit that looks like Hollywood

>>23723409
Thanks. It doesn't has to be about just vampires.

>>23723700
Don't worry bro. I'm the nazi that will make it for us.

>>23723789
truly a xianxia moment

>>23723789
you are courting death with your stupidity

Anons, I need reverse Isekai. A wizard, or an elf, or a whole adventuring party teleports to our world and then hijinks ensue. Please give me your bestest recommendations. Our world can also be something like an urban fantasy, and the newcomers are totally ruining the masquerade. I know there's stories like that out there

Are there any books with a schizo protagonist that has to wrestle with the voices in his head? Besides Wheel of Time that is.

>>23723322
I think if he knew he could get away with it while also making it like he "earned" it, yes. He definitely considered it.

>>23724559
Lesbian Necromancers in Space Book 2

>>23723789
Tard

>>23724559
>>23724725
Book 3 too. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if Book 4 retroactively makes Book 1 schizoid as well.

>>23724725
>>23724761
I though that was a legitimate title kek. Looks cool, I'll keep it on my radar.

>>23724559
Book of the New Sun, for goodness' sake

>anon is already rewriting his drow futa smut adventure story he shilled last week
bro how could you fall into this trap so quickly

where did the magical academy trope come from? for some reason it seems like the most asian/oriental thing to exist in fantasy, yet apparently it’s common in western fantasy? did it manifest in the west first, then was imported to the east? or did it come from the east a long time ago to the west?

>>23725075
>apparently it’s common in western fantasy?
Are you joking?

>>23723789
newfag detected

>>23725075
The boarding school novel is a 200 year old british genre, there's earlier fantasy crossovers but rowling made it a trend.

>>23721919
Enjoy dying of lung cancer.

What's the most obscure fantasy series you know of? Maybe not even a series, could be a one-off. Something that is totally 'legit' so not some shitty fanfic thing with terrible grammar, but that you've never heard anyone mention or seen in any lists?

>>23725264
the phoenix and the mirror

>>23725264
Trying to find source material you can feed to your AI-gpt to rewrite for you?

>>23722284
I find the secual humor refreshing , considering how sterile most literature is now.

>>23725075
Since kids spend more than a decade in school and think that shit is the whole world it makes sense to use that as background for stories.

The real question is why there are no adult fiction centered in the same way around workplaces and retirement homes.

>>23725264
Dominions of Irth

>>23722357
>enslaved people forced to be useful to their masters lest they face annihilation.
>The vast majority of the book is the characters trying to come to terms with their circumstances. >All of the primary characters are academics, so the aliens have them conducting scientific research.

So basically it's about people getting their first job after college.

>>23723521
>Also a good part of the new generation is very narcissistic and wants the characters to be "literally me".
This is true but I think it applies more to authors than the audience these days. People still want good stories with strong characters in the same way movie audiences still want beautiful people in their movies, it's just that people behind media want to shove their fanfic everywhere.

>>23725388
Adults don't read that. And most adults who do read are stuck in arrested development. Look at anime being so popular and mostly about high school age teens too.

>>23725129
Harry Potter specifically was inspired by british boarding schools, but the majority hail from Japan with it´s thousands of clubs and social hierarchy/environment that lends itself easily to academy adventure stories

>>23725075
Like >>23725167 said, it's old as shit, but Japan and their Prussian school model had some early inroads that predate Harold Potter. They were big on the euro boarding school fantasy and military academy, which I think is what you're actually seeing more than western influence.

>>23725388
The workplace isn't a universal experience in the same way that school is. School as a concept is much more flexible. A school for dragon hunters will still be structurally similar to a regular school, even if classes involve more dragon. Dragon hunters at the 'office' is completely different from office work.

>>23725167
>>23725456
Rowling literally took the magic school concept from A Wizard of Earthsea.

>>23721919
Who are you Rod Serling?

>>23725400
I considered writing a secondary rant about some of its themes, but I guess I won't. That's part of it, yeah.

>>23723789
You are like a frog in a well, who has never seen the Eastern Sea.

>>23725264
Balumnia trilogy

I can't finish it. It's so bad. Horrible pacing. Boring one dimensional characters. Only a completionist would ever bother with this trash.

>>23725617
Nah it's way more tom brown, half the point of the school section in earthsea is to illustrate how you need to go out into the world to truly learn

Any other Last of Us like novels?

>>23725740
do you like his other books or did no one warn you about his comic book writing?

>>23725809
it's a direct ripoff of the movie "Children of Men", but the novel isn't actually so much like the movie.

>>23725812
Mistborn was okay, Way of Kings is slop, Words of Radiance was better, and Warbreaker was actually my favorite so far

>>23725809
Yer razzing me right?

>>23725740
I completed it, the ending is crap.

>>23718727
It's generally accepted that Dune and LoTR are the breakthrough novels for each genre, but what would you say are the second and third?

>>23726012
Are we strictly speaking novels or are short stories permissible.

>>23726030
Shoot.

>>23726037
I mean you have the obvious Edgar Rice Burroughs stuff, Robert E Howard, Fritz Leiber, Lord Dunsany all spring to mind. In fact if you look up "Appendix N" you'll find a whole list of cited inspirations that was used during the early editions of Dungeons and Dragons.

>>23725809
For me? It's the zesty historian doing the chronicling, audiobook really sells it

i'm thinking of picking up this series. how good (or bad) is it?

>>23726012
What do you mean by breakthrough? Cultural impact?

>>23725809
how is this series? always see it in the bookstore and am curious about it

>>23725809
The Strain might be right up your alley anon. There's also a TV adaptation they did back in 2014 or thereabouts.

>>23726383
Looks gay

Just read this book over the last few days. I can't decide if it's meant to be taken seriously, or if it's a satire of political propaganda. Certain things like the execution of the deserter, the fight with the merchant sailors, and Rico's father randomly showing up as a corporal (where they have a chance meeting instead of his father having sent him a letter explaining he was alive) make me lean to the latter, as their contrivance took me out of the book and made me wonder if it was parodying tough guy memoirs.

>>23726012
>that Dune and LoTR are the breakthrough novels for each genre, but what would you say are the second and third?
>Dune
>First breakthrough
Dune is like the fourth, There's Foundation, Lensman, Instrumentality of Manking and i'm probably forgetting some

>>23726572
it's both, Heinlein agreed with the views of many of the characters but unlike many libertarians Heinlein was very aware that a lot of them were just straight up retards, which is why heinlein never really settled for any particular political view and he changed it every few years.

>the end of The Unholy Consult be like

>>23726572
Heinlein is kind of a funny situation. People act like he leans way to one side while the movie goes to the extreme opposite but honestly he was a bit in the middle.

>>23726593
Yeah but they don't have major motion pictures so they don't count these days. Casuals and secondaries have only gotten worse to where anything that's not a big hype movie may as well not exist.

Bros how good is Reverend Insanity really? Is it just power level wanking? I usually get tired when I have to read about specific cultivating techniques for 10 pages in a row. Does it stop on a cliffhanger?

I finally finished this series and have mixed feelings about it. I loved the setting and the "history" and would gladly read books centered on the conquest, civil war, elections, etc. just for all those descriptions of basically everything. The world truly felt alive and inhabited in its own fucked up way and I am probably one of the few people who didn't mind reading endless pages about the architecture, clothing, all those rituals and so on.
On the other hand, I found the characters the weakest part. Every character that was not Osidian, Sardian or Ykoriana was either a non-entity or just incredibly one-note and this was a problem in particular with the Plainsmen, with whom I was supposed to sympathise, but who instead ended up looking like a weird noble savage depiction. The protagonist also ended up annoying me. He was all right when he was a moving camera, but afterwards he turned into an extreme moralfag, which was sort of understandable given his upbringing and the terrible things he witnesses, but I really didn't need to be reminded every two pages how comically evil Masters are. It didn't help that we're in his head 95% of the time and that he also comes off as really superficial at times, something which is never acknowledged.
Last but not least, too gay. The second relationship was not needed at all and I hated the way it was born and developed. Didn't help that you could replace Blue with a random rock and nothing would have changed. In fact it would have made the whole situation funnier.

>>23726684
Jin qian kan qi (ching cheng hanji) [ROMANIZED]
Peking Opera
Jin qian kan qi xiang shang xie zhou
Qin xiang lian na san shi er suinazhuang gao dangchao fu ma lang
Ta qi junwang a man huang shang na hui hun nan er zhao dong chuang

>>23726703
i think pinto is gay so that explains the gayness,

>>23721830
What are some other examples of this?

>>23726724
Yeah, I learnt he is but I also think he's not very good at writing the beginning of relationships, if that makes sense. I didn't have a problem with the sort of naturally/culturally developed gayness, but there were moments like Jaspar raping Tain, the fuck was that that were really unneeded. Yeah, we learn he's an evil asshole, make it something else.
Something I forgot to mention - it was really fun trying to figure out the real world influences on the cultures/nature in the story. I went in blind, so I was definitely not expecting dinosaurs of all things.

>>23726572
View it as the last of Heinlein's juveniles and it makes sense, its a briding between a bildungsroman and an adult work. If you look at Citizen of the Galaxy (AKA Kim in Space) then you understand the level of Dickensian contrivance that is comorbid to the narrative. Johnny is an adult, not a child, but we're still basically having him encounter emotional and moral setpieces and being an observer that is changed by them. He's not necessarily critical because he the character has no vocabulary to do so given his reality.

Is it partially satire? I think to some degree it was Heinlein trying to make a best case for an ideology that he took a fancy to. But its also very myopic and I feel he was willing to have inconsistencies wriggle in the margins. Why did we need to attack the Skinnies? Was the Bug war necessary? Ultimately those questions are subordinate to the thrust: Johnny's journey to becoming an adult male of his society and all the interesting things that made him what he is.

what the fuck is going on?

>>23726773
He can't finish it. That or he doesn't really want to finish it anymore since he isn't anywhere near as jaded and depressed as when he started the series.he knows that the original ending for the series is grim and unpleasant. Jon becomes and undead things and rules beyond the Wall as a new Night's King, the realm is absolutely ravaged by greyscale, kingslanding gets nuked by Dany when she flips out that everyone loves Aegon and hates her, and Bran rules over humanity as the immortal time traveling computer because humans can't be trusted to not fuck everything up on their own. George does not want to write a bleak and nihilistic ending for ASoIaF, he just wants to write bitter-sweet, but happy novellas with Dunk and Egg traveling around Westeros.

>>23726773
He pulled a Robert Jordan and is rewriting the book because people guessed what was going to happen.

>>23726804
>>23726773
He's not the same person anymore, he doesn't have the same politics, philosophy, etc. He's starting at what he wrote and what he planned and wondering how he can go through with it.

>>23726815
>global warming, open relationships, atheism, it was all a lie...

>>23726804
George has mentioned before he's not a nihilist but i can't fathom an ending where Westeros is ruled by King Big Brother a good or even bittersweet ending. What the hell was he thinking?

>>23726833
there's also no way the rest of westeros would accept a random, crippled, strange, northern barbarian as their king

>>23726815
>he doesn't have the same politics, philosophy, etc

You know he really doesn't have to. By profession most authors make stuff up. He just needs to think "okay where did I leave off" and point the story in that direction. I don't mean to be dismissive, I know writing isn't that easy and I'm not saying it's simple. But I am saying do it.

>>23726847
You forgot to mention he's like 8 years old. I don't care GRRM has some 394347D chess insane IQ plan for all this, it's still stupid.

>>23726853
I forgot that. It's been so long since I've read them now that the show has rotted my brain of what the actual ages of these characters are.

>>23726383
It's good

>>23726833
>What the hell was he thinking?
Probably the same thing he was thinking when he wrote similar endings for
>And Seven Times Never Kill Man
>A Song for Lya
>The Meathouse Man
>Tuf Voyaging
that he was a fat depressed loser who got cucked by the woman he loved and didn't want to believe in anything, but at the same time wasn't sure if surrendering yourself to become part of a collective consciousness was a good thing or a bad thing. So many of George's earlier short stories and novellas are unpleasant because he was a loser and a failure as a writer and his self-hatred comes out as a central part of many of these stories. That was the place George was in when he started the series, a broken man who had been barely saved from financial ruin by selling the rights to Nightflyers and who had to cancel what was going to be his magnum opus for the "Manrealm" the novel "Avalon". Humanity being absolutely fucked and needing to be ruled by King Big Brother fits perfectly with that George.
>>23726849
>You know he really doesn't have to. By profession, most authors make stuff up.
He knows that people don't want to see that ending probably as much as he doesn't want to write it either. People hated the ending of GOT, and yes D&D fucked it up massively, but Jon getting nothing, Dany being a monster, and King Branbot 9000 ruling over humanity have been built toward since the first novel and are extensions of themes he's been grappling with for fifty years. Having to write something he no longer believes in that people will hate is not an appealing prospect for George and radically altering the last 2 books to try and line them up with his more mellow and optimistic worldview is an enormous task because it's fighting against so much of what was already establish.

>>23719849
No, it isn't. Women warriors are feminist claptrap. An actual woman could hardly move inside armor and swing a sword, they'd get crushed by an untrained unarmed man.

>>23726684
It's the best novel out there, just read it, ignore the haters.

>>23726876
>King Branbot 9000 ruling over humanity have been built toward since the first novel
While I agree with Dany and Jon, I always assumed Bran would just become some weirdwood wi-fi shared consciousness, not the fucking king of Westeros. Like I genuinely saw nothing pointing towards that except that he wanted to be a knight or something.

>>23726644
Death came swirling down.

>>23726572
He had a hippie awakening after writing this, before that he was a conservative military vet

>>23726954
>An actual woman could hardly move inside armor
Hence why bikini armor is the way to go.

>>23727169
Thou art God, anon.

>>23720410
If you don't mind Predator crossover, there's the novelization of the dark horse comics that was pretty fun.

>>23726876
>>23727005

What about the scene with Ned teaching Bran about execution? I think Bran is going to execute someone before or after becoming king and it will mirror that scene with Ned symmetrically. There's a lot of foreshadowing there.

>>23726954
Medieval armour isn't as burdensome as people imagine.

Aside, there were instances in Medieval and Renaissance Europe of women field commaders - including one pregnant queen - and women jousting in armor.

>>23726383
I liked the first book but found the second to be a bore and dropped it.

>reading night of the hunter
>Tosun is back with his daughter
>All the drow go like 'ew a darthiir, I'd never fuck a darthiir
>Tosun and co. X books (orc king) ago: I wish I had a harem of nubile moon elves
I can't decide if Tosun just managed to find three rogue drow who shared his very rare fetish for surface elves or if mommy armgo just wants to humiliate him
>The irony of being the only one of them who not only made it out alive but also 'living the dream'

>>23726383
It's good. Pretty gay in some moments, but it's far better than it deserves to be. It will probably be made into an awful show/movie were all characters are gay, black and asian, even if there are plenty of them already in the book and all of them are pretty based. Man wrote a gay couple that is not lame at all and Hollywood hates that.

>>23727005
Who is going to become king then? George hates monarchy but he hasn't done the legwork to replace the system in the story. The fleshing out of the Faith came entirely too late and trying to do something similar but with a psuedo-parlimentary or republican movement like the War of the Three Kingdoms/English Civil War would be impossible to achieve at this point. Plus, the series has already said, "if you try and replace a tyrannical system with nothing then tyranny just reinstalls itself" With Astapor so I doubt Geroge would just end it of absolute chaos as the realm fractures. Jon is going to fuck off beyond the wall because he's a monster, Dany is going to die, Stannis is going to die, Cersei is going to get murdered by Jaime after she flees Kingslanding when Aegon takes it, and Aegon is going to die when Dany nukes Kingslanding. Bran's story hasn't just been about him becoming part of the weirwood and learning about time travel, it's also been about him becoming more controlling as future versions of himself manipulate more and more things each manipulation becoming more obviously Bran. Plus, there's no way D&D would have made Bran king if it wasn't what Geroge told them.

>>23726954
>An actual woman could hardly move inside armor and swing a sword, they'd get crushed by an untrained unarmed man.
not even remotely true. Swords and armor are massive equalizers for women, this is born out time and again in HEMA tournaments. Swords and armor are not that heavy and they are not that much of an encumbrance, instead they are a massive force multiplier for those who are trained. Warrior women weren't a thing, not because women couldn't wear armor, they weren't a thing, because it's insane to put the members of your society who have children on the battlefield as her death isn't just killing her, it's killing all the potential children she could have and seeing as they are the sex that has children that was a big deal for pre-modern societies.

Almost done with the series, picked it up because i was bored. I was pleasantly surprised, not often do i see main characters who are so flawed, yet still so compelling.
2nd party of the series is honestly a downgrade, suffers from to much repetition and rigante dicksucking

what are some series that might fall between 40k and malazan?

>>23728517
Check out his other books if you haven't
The Jerusalem man trilogy is a personal favorite of mine

>>23728517
The Waylander series is good. Sam Fisher in fantasy.

>>23728537
Is that part of his drenai saga? His goodreads page is somewhat confusing

>>23728551
not them, it's post-apoc iirc

>>23728551
>His goodreads page is somewhat confusing

Drenai

1. Knights of Dark Renown (1989)
2. Morning Star [= Morningstar] (1992)
3. Waylander
- Waylander (1986)
- In the Realm of the Wolf (1992)
- Hero in the Shadows (2000)
4. Druss
- short story: Dawn of a Legend (1988)
- The First Chronicles of Druss the Legend (1993)
- The Legend of Deathwalker (1996)
- White Wolf (2003)
- Legend (1984)
- The Swords of Night and Day (2004)
5. Skilgannon the Damned
- White Wolf (2003)
- The Swords of Night and Day (2004)
6. The King Beyond the Gate (1985)
7. Quest for Lost Heroes (1990)
8. Winter Warriors (1997)

>>23728573

>>23728551
https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?220

>>23728589
Drenai Saga (Chronological Order) by David Gemmell

https://www.goodreads.com/series/77118-drenai-saga-chronological-order

>>23728600
Should drenai even be read chronologically?

>>23728627
It is internal chronology, not publishing one. I would say 'yes', it's more coherent in this way. But if you want to jump from one hero to another and back, and then jump to flashbacks,-that's your choise.

>>23728627
no. Start with Legend

>>23718727
Is there a scifi recommendation list with the eugenics theme?

I have always liked this morality question. I first encountered it in the movie Gattaca when I was a kid. Lately I have been reading the Vorkosigan series where its a recurring theme. It hits me quite hard since I have a serious genetic condition. It's very satisfying seeing how a hero overcomes his own impairment. It makes me want to keep going.

Do people who are ever FOR eugenics ever realize that they may actually be someone who ends up being TARGETED by said eugenics?

>>23728862
Or even if you personally are an ubermensch, it's only a matter of time before spiteful mutants worm their way onto the eugenics board/committee/department and subvert it so it ends up sterilizing all the smart and beautiful people.

>>23728934
Eugenics doesn't have to involve sterilization or murder. Simply because it's associated with Nazism doesn't mean it has to be carried out the same way. It can be little more than screening out genetic defects or genetic engineering.

>>23728627
no, publication order

>>23727573
based

>>23719870

How about literal ghoul protagonists?

Has anyone read this? I just picked it up today at a book sale and thought it looked interesting, and was curious about your thoughts

>>23729253
Looks cool. On a related note:
Any books where two dragons have sex?
Actually, any books at all where a dragon is the protagonist?

>>23726383
speaking of jay kristoff, has anyone here read the nevernight chronicles? heard mixed things about this series?

>>23729270
fun enough can't remember if I stopped because of losing interest or catching up to publication pace
Less fancy than the vampire novels though, they're just adventure style stories

>>23729270
Jay Kristoff's Wikipedia page has to be one of the funniest things I've ever read. No one can convince me this guy didn't right it himself.
It says he's 6'7'' and even has a section dedicated to the "themes" of his work, as if literary critics are analysing the themes of his overwrought underage lesbian porn YA novels. The guy is a narcissist.

>>23729253
>female protag

>>23729253

>>23729295
Never heard of this guy, but he looks like he stepped out of a portal from 2003

>>23729348
based jared taylor

>>23729390
I can't tell if you're memeing, but that's Norman Finkelstein

>>23729394
lol legit thought it was him. but it's the opposite

>Norman Gary Finkelstein (/ˈfJŋkəlstiːn/ FING-kəl-steen; born December 8, 1953) is an American political scientist and activist. His primary fields of research are the politics of the Holocaust and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Finkelstein was born in New York City to Jewish Holocaust-survivor parents.

>>23729295
I read the preview to Empire of the Vampire after seeing anon post it here. The prose was so overwrought and sophomoric I couldn't help but immediately go to Goodreads to see people laughing at it. Instead, I saw him making a review for his own novel where he using extensive tumblr gifs says it's "pretty epic" like "fuuuucking epic" and all that shit. Completely unbelievable. I nearly died from second hand embarrassment. I admire the courage in being able to write that, I guess.

Anybody read this?
Thoughts?

>>23729416
Ok if this is true I'm now 1000% convinced he wrote his own Wikipedia page. He also bragged about watching lesbian porn to make sure the sex scenes in his novel were "accurate". I'm not making this up. This man emits nuclear quantities of cringe and should be locked up in the interest of public safety.

>>23729495
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3610508040

>>23729467
It has some high points (the Paris arc was one I still remember), but is overall mid and I didn't like the ending. Despite the author's best efforts to try and make you take it seriously it ultimately feels like a 4/10 seinen anime.

>>23729499
jesus christ

>>23729499
No fucking way. That can't be real.

>>23729499

>>23729499
this is so sad

>>23729499

>>23729253
Lockwood is mainly an artist he only recently became a writer, he did the art of the new editions of Dragonlance Chronicles and Dragonlance Legends, obviously inspired by Larry Elmore but he tries to give it his own identity, he also did the covers many books from salvatore and D&D (mainly dragonlance and forgotten realms)
If you like old school fantasy like the ones i mentioned then you are going to like it.

>>23729499
such a chud author..
look at this
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4174581109

>>23729627
Well now I wanna read it.

>>23729627
>The inclusion and heavy focus on a vampire who specifically targets underage virgin girls and uses them like animals.
>Seriously, he has them pull his carriage like horses. And inevitably the main character massacres every single one of those teenage girls in explicit detail while the man controlling them walks away.
Chud-core book or incel rage book?

>>23729627
>I really just want to know why this man thought it was necessary to include a ten year old boy being turned into a vampire and subsequently feeding on his mother for weeks by going into her room at night to bite at her breasts and inner thighs. Seriously, what the fuck.
i take back everything i said, he's ba/ss/ed

>>23729627
>nooo it's le heckin' problematic
lol

>>23729499
>>23729627

>>23729499
>Not for children
And yet it seems to be written by one

I am very annoyed by this book. It starts very strongly, the protagonist is some kid who got somewhat adopted into a band of Bandits. He's a competent fighter, but he's mostly useful to them because he's got sharp eyes and a knack for telling when people are lying. There's an interesting section early in the story where he realizes, as one of the bands enforcers is trying to intimidate him, that he's not as small as he used to be, and he comes to the conclusion that he could kill this man.
Then over the course of the story he is subjected to character anti-development. He goes from being a decisive and motivated young man, to essentially a reactive simp who only ever does things because a woman wanted him to. He ceases to have his own goals or motivations, and constantly just kowtows to the whims of women around him FOR NO REASON. He stops acting upon the plot and is constantly reacting to circumstances that have nothing to do with him, digging himself deeper into shit that has absolutely nothing to do with him, for absolutely no reason. He's literally not even being paid, he was originally press ganged.

>>23729549
Well that's unfortunate.

>>23726383
>>23729270
>>23729467
>>23729809
>reading fantasy published after 2010

>>23729809
>character anti-development
Isnt his previous work: Blood Song, also like this?

About to read Dying Earth for the first time. What am I in for?

>>23729852
I haven't read that so I couldn't say. His Draconis Memoria series was alright, but it had a lot of the elements that annoyed me about Pariah as well, just lesser.

>>23729857
If I remember correctly, blood song was also like that except that the character was involved in politics or something. I havent read that book in years though, havenf read draconis memoria and pariah as well, but I'm planning to read this one

>>23729358
>Opens up one of his books with a Lamb of God quote

It checks out.

>>23726383
It's got a lot of shortcomings. The main character is kind of insufferable and the author doesn't ever pin his character down, he flops all over the place. One minute he's an unsanctimonious deviant swearing like a sailor and being gruff, basically if you made a swordsman out of a harley Davidson biker. The next minute he's wistfully referencing his tortured past and going on about how books are the greatest creation humans ever made, reciting poetry, etc. And the story paints it as if he is this absolute legend that never stops being a badass. On top of that he wrote Gabriel into being this militant atheist that dabs on every religious person verbally and makes them question their face with dumb shit like
>well how can le god be good if bad thing happen?
He's pretty much just the unironic version of the "intelligent, nihilistic with a wicked sense of humor" guy but he can actually follow through with threats of physical violence. The character was so cringe at first I thought it was going to be a brilliant case of unreliable narrator and it turns out that he's just this huge retard Jean-Francois wanted to interview. But that shoe never dropped, all the way through both books. If the prose wasn't tolerable and the concept wasn't interesting I'd say you're better off gargling piss than reading it.

>>23730022
Question their faith*

>>23729495
>bragged about watching lesbian porn to make sure the sex scenes in his novel were "accurate"
Actually based, nonplebian approach, I bet he frequents /sffg/ too.

>>23730056
There used to be a guy who kept posting about this book a few months ago so I wouldn't be surprised.

>>23728677
Yeah, Votoms is lit. The Red Shoulders goes through a eugenics program to find the perfect soldier. While the mc doesn't have a serious genetic condition he does get screwed over a lot.

>>23729499

>>23729499
this is just someone actually understanding how to market to the goodreads audience

I almost lost hope in Forgotten Realms, everything other than Drizzt I've read so far has been painfully bad. Is this when FR books get good? I'm really enjoying it so far.

>>23729499
To add some context for this, it seems to be in response to EotV being put in the YA section at book stores despite not being YA. I remember seeing lots of tweets from people who didn't know what they were getting into because it was mislabeled. I don't know why he used all the gifs though besides the obvious that he enjoys cringekino as much as edgekino

>>23730339
It's puzzling that you had hope in Forgotten Realms in the first place.

>>23730444
Cringe and edge go hand in hand.
Only by embracing both can you become a true edgelord.

>>23730469
I like sword and sorcery slop, but it needs to be enjoyable to read. The first 2 trilogies I read were just a total mess.

i have the prose of most of these books but Id like some speculative fiction will a certain period in time give better prose

>want to read urban fantasy about a werwolf similar to Interview with the Vampire
>most books about werevolves are alpha/omega bordedline-zoophilia romance for women
Wolfbros...

>>23730590
just read dragons of autumn twilight

>>23730672
more like Wolfebros...
probably too highbrow for you though

>>23730672
Being a werewolf fan is suffering

>>23730672
I read The Werewolf of Paris by Guy Endore a couple of years ago. It was kind of weird and uneven.

>>23730672
KNOTTED

>>23730789
>wolfe
>highbrow
lol

>>23731067
>>23731067
>>23731067
New