Paperbacks are Fun!

[Anonymous No.3393699]

So aside from Patrick O'Brian and other historical fiction, I love to read the occasional "meant for paperback" sci-fi/fantasy novel. One of my favorites from last year was The Lies of Locke Lamora.

Great read, super quick and easy, not much thinking but it had a great vibe, interesting characters and felt like a heist movie the entire time. Front stabbing, back stabbing, side stabbing and fun dialog. I highly recommend it.

What are some other fun "trashy" reads you guys like?

Will bump with art related to the book.

[Anonymous No.3393708]

abercrombie's the first law trilogy

[Anonymous No.3393707]

Got dat potential Japanese cover art.

[Anonymous No.3393711]

The Redemption of Althalus is the only high-fantasy I ever enjoyed

[Anonymous No.3393712]

>>3393708
I bought the first book specifically for the badass map.

[Anonymous No.3393718]

>>3393699
The Kingkiller Chronicle is pretty awesome, but by the second book it gets a bit ridiculous.

See: image

[Anonymous No.3393950]

>>3393712
> 'Northlands'
> 'Angland'
> 'Circle Sea'
> 'Old Empire'
> 'Gurkhul'
> 'Thousand Islands'
> 'Suljuk Sea'

It's like the guy tried to invent the stupidest, most generically horrible names on purpose.

(I love it when you can tell that a book is 100% absolute shit by just looking at the first fucking page. Saves so much time.)

[Anonymous No.3393965]

>>3393712
Hmm? When was that added? I don't think my copies of the trilogy have any maps.

[Anonymous No.3393986]

>>3393718
I read a summary of his character, and he seems like an enormous self-insert all-around Mary Sue type from the author.

[Anonymous No.3394012]

>>3393950

Horrible names: Yes. As in basically every other Fantasy Novel ever since Tolkien.

>Absolute shit because shitty names

Nope. The book is great. Prose is plebtier but plot and especially characterization is great (the guy studied psychology and it shows).

[Anonymous No.3394017]

Anyone have an opinion on this?

[Anonymous No.3394139]

>>3394017

I saw the first half of the movie, it was pretty bad.

[Anonymous No.3394153]

>>3393712
I did not have a map in my copies. Seeing it now is disappointing. I imagined the geography to be like Europe with France and Spain replaced with England.

>>3393699
I shamelessly enjoyed these.

[Anonymous No.3394168]

>>3394153
>shadow's edge

[Anonymous No.3394171]

>>3394168
no regrets

[Anonymous No.3394196]

>What are some other fun "trashy" reads you guys like?

I read the first Anita Blake book and it wasn't too bad, though it was incredibly easy to figure out the plot before the end. It has an interesting setting/AU with the vampires and other magical creatures. According to a friend that used to read the series it gets really trashy around book six, I don't know if I'd keep reading past it. At that point it pretty much turns into an erotica series.

[Anonymous No.3394207]

I dropped Locke Lamora like 70 pages in. Scott Lynch tries way too hard to write clever, funny dialogue with way too much unnecessary profanity. I got tired of his characters before I even got into the book. Honestly everything about it felt forced.

[Anonymous No.3394214]

>>3394207
that opening dialogue was atrocious, decent story overall though. I heard they're making a movie of it.

[Anonymous No.3394312]

>>3394207
I concur, I did the same for the same reasons.

(I motherfucking _hate_novels where characters speak what sounds like lines from a shitty sitcom script.)

[Anonymous No.3394376]

>>3394012
Well, no, Abercrombie is specially terrible with names.
Also, all those places and factions that might roam the land? There's no depth to them so good luck with the generic introductions.

>>3393712
I thought Abercrombie didn't believe in maps.

[Anonymous No.3397333]

>>3394214
>>3394312

Give it a second try, honestly. Felt exactly the same, but it gets really good later on.

In the second book its exactly the opposite. Good beginning, interesting scenario, but it turns full retard in the middle.

[Anonymous No.3397350]

>>3394376
yea abercrombie is probably the best fantasy author at action, good-tier at characters, and terrible at world building.

Locke Lamora is probably the best for page turning modern fantasy.

the way of shadows is like a mash up of the two above with absolutely terrible prose and editing. i know it came before, but still.

[Anonymous No.3397359]

dresden files, obv

[Croaker !!xx4lDI2TW+N No.3397378]

>>3394207
>>3394312

The "look how d&e this is with all the swearing" was definitely an initial turn off regarding Locke Lamora. Still, the book is OK (even if the ending of the book seemed another excise in look how grim dark this shit can get).

I think that's why I'm one of the few people who prefers the second book; it felt less try hard and more like a regular fun read.

Besidses, Lynch's recent short story, "In The Stacks" was really good, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that he's getting better as a writer and when RoT finally comes out it'll be worth it.

>>3393712

Where DID this map come from? I've never seen it and it's totally not how I imagined the world looking when pieced together that way.

>>3393950

Eh, the names are sort of normal but I prefer that to far out craaazzzzy names you sometimes get in fantasy and SF that are impossible to pronounce.

[Croaker !!xx4lDI2TW+N No.3397387]

>>3397350
>yea abercrombie is probably the best fantasy author at action, good-tier at characters, and terrible at world building.

But lets remember that Abercrombie on purpose isn't going in for Tolkien or Malazan style huge, epic world building.

I think he could be good at it if he wanted to, it's just that it's not his aim or a primary concern.

And, anyway, I'm a little worried for Abercrombie after the last two books. The Heroes was very good but I hope he doesn't go any further down the "grim" path because otherwise he'll tip over into parody. As for Red Country... less said about that the better.

[Anonymous No.3397414]

>>3397333
I know, once he started going on about the ins and outs of sea-faring I was getting frustrated, but pulled through. It seems to set up some interesting things for the third book though.

[Anonymous No.3397459]

>>3397387

I think Abercrombie's world is huge and complex, it's just told through dialogue instead of being told for the sake of worldbuilding. We're part of the world being built, not reading about it after the fact.

[Anonymous No.3397474]

>>3397459
i disagree, the world feels tacked on and his scale of time is way off. the main reason being that the epic characters and their history is presented like it happened just yesterday but it happened forever fucking ago and we are expected to believe that these epic characters didn't work through anything in the interim. it's only just coming to a head now. it may have been sort of portrayed that these characters had orchestrated wars before but these epic characters did not act like it was so - they acted as if this were the first time such a thing were happening in all the time since juvens were killed. if abercrombie had depicted it as a few hundred years it would've been much more believable.

i do agree though that none of that is detrimental to the trilogy. i sincerely think the final book of the three is one of the best fantasy novels of recent times. i loved the action of it and as i said above, i never skipped a page, and for as much as authors like GRRM have stolen the readership of the majority of fantasy-readers, i still skim his action (as well as the majority of all fantasy authors).

[Croaker !!xx4lDI2TW+N No.3397674]

>>3397474
>the world feels tacked on and his scale of time is way off.

This REALLY worries me after Red Country where the world (I think it's set 10 years after BSC?) is now in some nascent phase of industrialisation.

Is the series going to morph into guns and sorcery? Or proto-steampunk? Or some incongruous mishmash? Or will be forgotten about and never mentioned again? None of those potentials is very good.

[Anonymous No.3397793]

Well, this is quite a nice thread. Sort of what SF&Fantasy discussions were like 2 years ago in /lit/.

I'm not sure if I'd include The Prince of Nothing series as trashy, it feels a little like it, but anybody caring to discuss it?
The prose is somewhat weird (mainly from its vocabulary) and it looks like Bakker chose the second synonym for any old-obscure word and all that encyclopedic 'knowledge' of the world and its factions stops me from immersing myself into the story. I haven't read Erikson (only some samples) but from those brief looks it seems Bakker was heavily influenced by him.
His naming is plain awful. Even worse than Abercrombie's.

The end of the third book (Thousandfold Thought) was such a let down I'm not sure I want to check the second trilogy.

[Anonymous No.3397799]

>>3393712
>>3397378
That map is fanart: http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs40/f/2009/035/4/0/Map_First_Law_v2_by_Scubamarco.jpg

Abercrombie said he wasn't into maps:
http://www.joeabercrombie.com/2007/10/02/maps-craps-2/

[Croaker !!xx4lDI2TW+N No.3397861]

>>3397793

The Second Apocalypse? I'll bite.

Lets see... First book is great. The setting is interesting, even if the influences (Byzantium, Crusades) are obvious. The characters are well defined and there are plenty of grey areas to enjoy.

Second book is a step down. Too much Kellhus cod philosophy, too much Kellhus cock sucking from almost everything, not enough Conphas and court intrigue, and Cnaiür being into a bitch is a disappointing move. Second book also feels way too predictable compared to the first (like there's any possible outcome apart from one now that the Holy War has started).

The Thousandfold Thought readdresses some of those problems, and is a better book, but the downfall this time is major pacing issues. But apparently Bakker spent a long time writing the first book and once it was released the publishers made him write the other ones much faster, which I think explains why this happened.

I think the ending to the first trilogy was okay, just predictable. It's more interesting where the series goes from here, so I will read the next trilogy once all three books are released.

>I haven't read Erikson (only some samples) but from those brief looks it seems Bakker was heavily influenced by him.

Nah, I wouldn't say that. They both have armies on the move and might be termed military-fantasy but their writing styles are very different. Erikson is much better at the action and fighting, but Bakker is much better at writing characters and dialogue.

[Anonymous No.3397874]

>>3397793
I actually like Bakkers names, they roll off the tongue easy despite how weird they look.

[Anonymous No.3397904]

>>3397793
I have to say Second apocalypse is a nice break from fantasy where the reader is coddled and everything is explained. Instead you dive into a world and are expected to catch up. I believe this is the reason most people drop the book after the first couple pages because they are confused and there is no explanation in sight. I really like the series so I wish more people would give it a chance.

[Anonymous No.3397924]

>>3397874
I found them confusing and sort of generic.
>they'd been discussing various strategies the Sapatishah of Shigek, Skauras, might use to undo them. "Sejenus himself-"
and it's specially bad when summing up large portions of a battle, where you get a dozen similar sounding names, titles, factions and places per paragraph.

[Anonymous No.3397965]

>>3397904
>Instead you dive into a world and are expected to catch up
I'll probably end up reading Bakker one day, but it's stuff like this sort of turns me off. It's not that I think I need to be coddled as a reader, it's just that, having read the first few books of the Malazan series, it felt like Erikson was almost trying too hard to make it a difficult read. Sort of like he decided that was going to be his "thing" and so he made too big of a deal of it.

[Anonymous No.3398006]

Bakker is perhaps my favourite epic fantasist at the moment. I thought his initial trilogy was stellar. The second series hasn't quite managed to keep up with the quality due to inferior point of view characters, but the setup at the end of the latest book makes me think he'll either lose it or hit the ball out of the park in the next one.

A couple of authors I rarely see around here are Paul Kearney and Daniel Abraham. Both have written compelling series in roughly the size of one fat fantasy novel (okay, one really fat fantasy novel). Abraham started writing at the same time as Abercrombie/Lynch/Rothfuss, and I think he's the best of the four. Kearney seems to have regained his feet with the Macht trilogy after he was dropped by his publisher, which is great because I really like his stuff as well.

As for the straight for paperback stuff, Glen Cook has been my go to choice there for a long time now. Last year I've also found A E van Vogt and Eric Frank Russell to fit that niche nicely.

[Anonymous No.3398019]

>>3398006
Daniel Abraham is the same guy who co-wrote that Leviathan Wakes thing, right? I thought that was alright.

Also AE Van Vogt is so fucking weird. And I don't mean in a surreal, PKD way - I mean his stuff is strange but he seems to mean it seriously, and I don't understand why anyone would write that.

[Anonymous No.3398029]

>>3398019
Yes, though I haven't tried that out yet myself. I've only read the Long Price and the available Dagger and the Coin books. I actually didn't feel the latter series got off to a good start (aside from one plotline), but the second book was much stronger.

[Anonymous No.3398042]

>>3397965
>having read the first few books of the Malazan series, it felt like Erikson was almost trying too hard to make it a difficult read

I've never got why people say this about Malazan / Gardens of the Moon. I never had any trouble with it. Maybe some of the ancient race stuff is confusing but the Malazan Empire stuff, which was the bulk of the novel, was absolutely fine.

I think it's more confusing in later books where characters like Icarium pop-up and you don't know what's the deal with them or there are just plain odd things like otataral dragons flying about. Suspense is one thing, but sometimes you're left too in the dark. I just don't think that becomes a (minor) issue until later on.

[Anonymous No.3398075]

>>3398042
I didn't find it confusing, more irritating that you could read so much and still feel like you'd only been shown a fraction of what was going on. Each to their own though.

[Anonymous No.3398149]

Dragonlance is great; probably the best epic fantasy after LotR.

[Anonymous No.3398655]

[The GRRM edited] anthology will feature an original novella called "The Princess and the Queen," which Martin says tells "the true (mostly) story of the origins of the Dance of the Dragons." "The Princess and the Queen"-- along with twenty other cross-genre short stories from various celebrated authors-- has now been delivered to his editors at Tor. While no publication date has been set yet for "Dangerous Women," we can probably expect it before the fourth Dunk and Egg tale (re: the She-Wolves of Winterfell), which is suddenly without an announced publication."

[Anonymous No.3399283]

bump