What can the harvest hope for but the care of the reaper man?
God, Pratchett was so good.
I just finished Reaper Man last night, and while I really like that line, I think my favorite was 'No matter how fast the light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.'
Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
I'm on chapter 38/52 of Persepolis Rising. Shit's got strange and I am really loving it. I don't know if this and Babylon's Rising are actually particularly good books in the series, or I just enjoy audiobooks more than actually having to read them myself. The only downside being that I can't quickly flip back to a previous bit and reread it if I want. So I will probably end up buying them all in physical format once the inevitable full-series-boxset comes out.
I'm at the bit where
the underground have just done their big attack on the Laconians, and Holden has been taken captive. And I've just noticed there are no more Holden chapters listed for the rest of the book. I don't know if that means the gang won't successfully rescue him or what, but it's interesting to know I won't get any more of his POV.
Also, Amos is worrying me. I feel like something bad is going to happen with him soon.
Does anyone have that illustrated earthsea omnibus and can say if it’s actually something that you can sit down and read comfortable or is it a display piece that you will be crushed by?
That Earthsea Omnibus is how I read them earlier this year, it's absolute gorgeous and also a MASSIVE pain to read. Get it for a shelf, not for reading imo. It's both very heavy, and also square enough that it's difficult to support without feeling like you're doing damage to the spine.
I guess I’m thinking of the wizard from fantasia’s hat with no brim. Personally I think the brimless ones look more ridiculous and hence why the university wizards should wear them as they are all idiots.
Correction: a lot of them are pretty intelligent. They are, however, all complete fools.
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The JudgeThe Terwilliger CurvesRegistered Userregular
I was recently trying to remember how Joe Abercrombie's Shattered Sea trilogy ended . . . and then I realized I never read the third book.
Fixed that over the last week. Would recommend the series if you are in the mood for some YA fiction. The usual hard edges of his stuff are filed down pretty well.
Last pint: Turmoil CDA / Barley Brown's - Untappd: TheJudge_PDX
I finished Lords and Ladies a few days ago and there were definitely multiple mentions of brims on wizard hats.
Now interrupting my Discworld readthrough for the newest Old Kingdom book from Garth Nix, 'Terciel and Elinor'. I would do a lot of things for a good game in that setting but have no idea what it would look like.
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PSN / Xbox / NNID: Fodder185
- the footnotes continue to point out things I entirely miss. e.g., Beaufort will use the wrong word, and the narrator will point out what he meant; a footnote says the historical figure was known for malapropisms.
- I find it faintly, idk, implausible that nothing of note seems to have happened in the interim. The characters aren't exactly in stasis, but there's a strange lack of movement; something which Dumas attempts to (loosely) justify in the text
- it occurs to me that we don't actually know d'Artagnan's first name. Yes, the historical figure was Charles de Batz (I am continually reminded), but I can't recall if the fictional character even has a first name. Seems weird, is all.
- for whatever reason I'm struggling with notion that d'Artagnan has kind of base motivations for helping Mazarin: promotion, recognition. Not that I was terribly impressed with his attitudes in the first novel (especially regarding women). It's likely just a case where adaptations and recountings play up his heroic aspects and the popular version of the character ends up at significant odds with the text character.
I am currently embroiled in a reread of Terra Ignota by Ada Palmer, almost ready to start the 4th and final book
That’s some good shit right there
I actually just had a friend asking if any of us had read Too Like the Lightning and I'd never heard of the series but it sounded super cool and I know he was beyond excited that the 4th book was coming out
Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
Is Wheel of Time good? I saw a fantasy-book-youtuber calling it the best series ever recently but I had it in my head that it was a subject of mockery for being bad. Am I getting it mixed up with something else?
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SnicketysnickThe Greatest Hype Man inWesterosRegistered Userregular
It's full of very memeable bits (braid tugging etc) and suffers a bit from being old so is a bit (a lot?) dated in some of the gender politics compared to modern stuff and gets a bit flabby round the middle while some story pieces move around but on the whole I have a very soft spot for it. It's not like...sword of truth or anything that bad.
Is Wheel of Time good? I saw a fantasy-book-youtuber calling it the best series ever recently but I had it in my head that it was a subject of mockery for being bad. Am I getting it mixed up with something else?
WoT is a complicated recommend for me but I loved it. A lot of people were lost around the 9 to 11 books but even those have extremely good moments.
On the other hand there are very questionable choices I hesitate to describe.
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
Wheel of Time is a pretty formulaic Chosen One narrative spanning entirely too many doorstopper-sized books with some gender roles/politics that have definitely not aged well. Around the midpoint of the series it gets very directionless and kinda meanders around, but it picks up again towards the end.
It has a good cast of characters who are all fairly interesting in their own rights and worth investing in (well, I find Rand to be kind of a loser personally), which is mostly what people remember fondly I think.
Calling it "the best fantasy series ever" is kinda silly because I can think of several more recent series that all absolutely blow it out of the water, but it was formative for a lot of people and if you're looking for like 10000 pages to kill time with I think it'd be an enjoyable enough experience still today.
I am currently embroiled in a reread of Terra Ignota by Ada Palmer, almost ready to start the 4th and final book
That’s some good shit right there
I actually just had a friend asking if any of us had read Too Like the Lightning and I'd never heard of the series but it sounded super cool and I know he was beyond excited that the 4th book was coming out
I am currently embroiled in a reread of Terra Ignota by Ada Palmer, almost ready to start the 4th and final book
That’s some good shit right there
I actually just had a friend asking if any of us had read Too Like the Lightning and I'd never heard of the series but it sounded super cool and I know he was beyond excited that the 4th book was coming out
It's bafflingly great. I think reading Ada Palmer today must be how old-timey nerds felt reading Dune when it was the only thing like Dune on the market.
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Librarian's ghostLibrarian, Ghostbuster, and TimSporkRegistered Userregular
I am currently embroiled in a reread of Terra Ignota by Ada Palmer, almost ready to start the 4th and final book
That’s some good shit right there
I actually just had a friend asking if any of us had read Too Like the Lightning and I'd never heard of the series but it sounded super cool and I know he was beyond excited that the 4th book was coming out
It's bafflingly great. I think reading Ada Palmer today must be how old-timey nerds felt reading Dune when it was the only thing like Dune on the market.
Caveats to anyone thinking of reading them:
-The author is incredibly full of herself, and boy howdy does it come through in the text. In one of the afterwords she outright compares herself to Voltaire. This may or may not annoy you. It annoys me greatly.
-They are so intensely gender essentialist that it actually made me scream out loud at one point. I think she's doing it on purpose to provoke a strong reaction, but it just put me off the books really badly. I frankly half expect her to come out as a TERF at some point.
These may or may not be dealbreakers for other folks. They eventually were for me. I like to point them out because, as noted, the books are A Lot and some of the grosser shit in them will jump at you out of absolutely nowhere.
I am currently embroiled in a reread of Terra Ignota by Ada Palmer, almost ready to start the 4th and final book
That’s some good shit right there
I actually just had a friend asking if any of us had read Too Like the Lightning and I'd never heard of the series but it sounded super cool and I know he was beyond excited that the 4th book was coming out
It's bafflingly great. I think reading Ada Palmer today must be how old-timey nerds felt reading Dune when it was the only thing like Dune on the market.
Caveats to anyone thinking of reading them:
-The author is incredibly full of herself, and boy howdy does it come through in the text. In one of the afterwords she outright compares herself to Voltaire. This may or may not annoy you. It annoys me greatly.
-They are so intensely gender essentialist that it actually made me scream out loud at one point. I think she's doing it on purpose to provoke a strong reaction, but it just put me off the books really badly. I frankly half expect her to come out as a TERF at some point.
These may or may not be dealbreakers for other folks. They eventually were for me. I like to point them out because, as noted, the books are A Lot and some of the grosser shit in them will jump at you out of absolutely nowhere.
Those second bits are real weird to me, having only read the first three books. Like Dominic alone...I guess the whole Madame thing could be read as some comment about biology but I definitely read it about taboo breaking.
3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
edited November 2021
I mean Madame
just performs traditional femininity from our present time and it's enough to let her have complete control over the most powerful men in the world, who are helpless in the face of A Woman after being raised in a gender neutral society. Because gender is actually inherent and the society's attempts to move away from it can't shake the true gender impulses inside us all, and seeing someone with a very distinct gender presentation will just hijack your brain via your loins and you'll be helpless to resist their charms.
Like come on, lady.
Hell she can't even stop herself throughout the books making comments like
"they're definitely a woman, because they're delicate and sensitive" about a character that would be AMAB today, or Dominic being definitely a man because he's so aggressive and forceful despite being AFAB today.
Maybe it's arguably taboo breaking solely within the fictional universe of the book, but the universe of the book is one in which she's clearly commenting that gender is, in fact, innate and biological, and your self-identification doesn't matter. And she's doing it in a super pernicious way, where it looks like she's being very progressive ("look, I said this character is a man but they have a vagina!"), while constantly commenting about masculine/feminine characteristics and having characters that very successfully
weaponize gender presentation from the modern era, which apparently every person who visits wants in on because they're just desperate to Experience Gender.
I am currently embroiled in a reread of Terra Ignota by Ada Palmer, almost ready to start the 4th and final book
That’s some good shit right there
I actually just had a friend asking if any of us had read Too Like the Lightning and I'd never heard of the series but it sounded super cool and I know he was beyond excited that the 4th book was coming out
It's bafflingly great. I think reading Ada Palmer today must be how old-timey nerds felt reading Dune when it was the only thing like Dune on the market.
no yes 100 percent, the DUNE movie had me saying this to my bestie
Um so gender — for me, I was worried about that at first — I think what saves it for me is that (as she sorta says in the interview) even Mycroft’s “antiquated” views are so fucking oblique to modern stuff (and super arbitrary to “biology”) that it ends up almost cute? I think the most-authorially-endorsed voice in the text is probably Heloise, who basically says, “Gender is NOT real but it’s a kink we still have in our culture”
3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
It's the worst kind of gender essentialism, because it's strongly reinforcing the idea that biological gender is powerful and unchangeable with the events of the book and the actual plot while loudly insisting that it's totally not doing that with characters' dialogue/inner monologue.
Anyway, folks here really like it and I'm not here to dump on anyone's good time. I just do feel strongly about mentioning this when the books come up because it can be kind of an overwhelming thing to get smacked in the face with out of nowhere.
It's the worst kind of gender essentialism, because it's strongly reinforcing the idea that biological gender is powerful and unchangeable with the events of the book and the actual plot while loudly insisting that it's totally not doing that with characters' dialogue/inner monologue.
Anyway, folks here really like it and I'm not here to dump on anyone's good time. I just do feel strongly about mentioning this when the books come up because it can be kind of an overwhelming thing to get smacked in the face with out of nowhere.
I get the idea that you object to, and it is present in the book, but I don't think that's gender essentialism exactly. (At least as I understand it.)
Biological sex isn't really the driving factor, again, Dominic and a couple characters whose dangly bits I am still confused on but then I didn't much care. They are absolutely using the archetypes of classical male/female gender behavior norms as Ideas that have a resonant power within the society. That concept is... fraught but not terribly more so than a lot of the other resonant Big Ideas that the series of books plays with. Fuckers reinstituted Rome, if we want to talk about asshole ideas given center stage.
I guess I need to get reading the fourth book because I could definitely see the ending of this series retroactively ruining it if it ended up being some sort of advocacy for the more horrible philosophies put forward in the book.
those comments kind of remind me a lot of having just read through the left hand of darkness.
like the face value is that Genly being from a gendered species and race makes it hard for him to understand the mostly genderless people on winter, but on top of that Genly is clearly a misogynist too and that colors his narration a lot and the level of plot necessary for him to start to understand this society is kind of wild.
but it took a while for me as a reader to understand that what i was reading was genly's unconscious bias on top of his outsider perspective and it was kind of offputting at parts.
Anita Blake is still working, so there is still horniness around. It’s just not as ubiquitous.
The 70s SF thing, though, has a lot to do with the cons in those days turning into sex parties. A whole lot of buttoned-up 50s era types turned that kind of con into a lifestyle, and it bled through into the fiction.
My friend, irresistible horniness never goes out of style.
But yeah, things aren't nearly as sticky as they were in Heinlein days.
Lol I slowly picked up the series that starts with Into the Darkness by harry turtledove. I eventually let a friend borrow them and one of the first things he said about them was "the author is a massive horn dog."
That just reminded me of that moment and thought I would share. Also, Harry turtledove also wrote Guns of the South, which I guess was very well received but despite trying like 3 times to read it I never finished it.
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I just finished Reaper Man last night, and while I really like that line, I think my favorite was 'No matter how fast the light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.'
I'm at the bit where
Also, Amos is worrying me. I feel like something bad is going to happen with him soon.
The 3rd chapter feels feels refreshing and like it could be its own series if it wasn't tied into the trouble the 1st 2
I can see elements that come up in gundam and the expanse
But also, cringingly so, bits of our current climate crisis, including some very apt quotes
Edit:
Well, that was a surprise
Wasnt expecting.....
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
Correction: a lot of them are pretty intelligent. They are, however, all complete fools.
Fixed that over the last week. Would recommend the series if you are in the mood for some YA fiction. The usual hard edges of his stuff are filed down pretty well.
Now interrupting my Discworld readthrough for the newest Old Kingdom book from Garth Nix, 'Terciel and Elinor'. I would do a lot of things for a good game in that setting but have no idea what it would look like.
PSN / Xbox / NNID: Fodder185
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
I like some of these new characters
- I find it faintly, idk, implausible that nothing of note seems to have happened in the interim. The characters aren't exactly in stasis, but there's a strange lack of movement; something which Dumas attempts to (loosely) justify in the text
- it occurs to me that we don't actually know d'Artagnan's first name. Yes, the historical figure was Charles de Batz (I am continually reminded), but I can't recall if the fictional character even has a first name. Seems weird, is all.
- for whatever reason I'm struggling with notion that d'Artagnan has kind of base motivations for helping Mazarin: promotion, recognition. Not that I was terribly impressed with his attitudes in the first novel (especially regarding women). It's likely just a case where adaptations and recountings play up his heroic aspects and the popular version of the character ends up at significant odds with the text character.
Only complaint is the he said she d who I'd parts sounded awkward, but it was an awkward conversation
Concerning the final section
I pictured oh joy sex toy opening a portal with diagrams
I would commission that art from her if I were free enough
Curious how the second act would respond to the third act
How far will HBO go with the nudity when they adapt this?
Edit: 5th season resumed because I joked about hideous kojima adapting the video game
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
Oh
God
The new Wheel of Time show is going to get me to reread the Eye of the World, isn’t it?
And if I start. . .
I don’t think that I’ll be able to stop.
That’s some good shit right there
Tai'shar Canadia
(pay no attention to the fact I have Winter's Heart open on my kindle, that means nothing)
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
I actually just had a friend asking if any of us had read Too Like the Lightning and I'd never heard of the series but it sounded super cool and I know he was beyond excited that the 4th book was coming out
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
WoT is a complicated recommend for me but I loved it. A lot of people were lost around the 9 to 11 books but even those have extremely good moments.
On the other hand there are very questionable choices I hesitate to describe.
It has a good cast of characters who are all fairly interesting in their own rights and worth investing in (well, I find Rand to be kind of a loser personally), which is mostly what people remember fondly I think.
Calling it "the best fantasy series ever" is kinda silly because I can think of several more recent series that all absolutely blow it out of the water, but it was formative for a lot of people and if you're looking for like 10000 pages to kill time with I think it'd be an enjoyable enough experience still today.
I wouldn't say it's terrible, but it's bloated, often frustrating and to me the bad outweighs the good overall.
Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
https://www.trackofwords.com/2021/11/01/author-interview-ada-palmer-talks-the-terra-ignota-series/ I think this interview with the author really captures it. It’s a series I struggle to recommend because it’s A Lot, but also as I reread it it’s a series where every day I’ll message my friend in the know ANY NEWS ITEM with the caption “terra ignota”
It's bafflingly great. I think reading Ada Palmer today must be how old-timey nerds felt reading Dune when it was the only thing like Dune on the market.
Caveats to anyone thinking of reading them:
-The author is incredibly full of herself, and boy howdy does it come through in the text. In one of the afterwords she outright compares herself to Voltaire. This may or may not annoy you. It annoys me greatly.
-They are so intensely gender essentialist that it actually made me scream out loud at one point. I think she's doing it on purpose to provoke a strong reaction, but it just put me off the books really badly. I frankly half expect her to come out as a TERF at some point.
These may or may not be dealbreakers for other folks. They eventually were for me. I like to point them out because, as noted, the books are A Lot and some of the grosser shit in them will jump at you out of absolutely nowhere.
Rubies...
Those second bits are real weird to me, having only read the first three books. Like Dominic alone...I guess the whole Madame thing could be read as some comment about biology but I definitely read it about taboo breaking.
Hell she can't even stop herself throughout the books making comments like
no yes 100 percent, the DUNE movie had me saying this to my bestie
Um so gender — for me, I was worried about that at first — I think what saves it for me is that (as she sorta says in the interview) even Mycroft’s “antiquated” views are so fucking oblique to modern stuff (and super arbitrary to “biology”) that it ends up almost cute? I think the most-authorially-endorsed voice in the text is probably Heloise, who basically says, “Gender is NOT real but it’s a kink we still have in our culture”
Anyway, folks here really like it and I'm not here to dump on anyone's good time. I just do feel strongly about mentioning this when the books come up because it can be kind of an overwhelming thing to get smacked in the face with out of nowhere.
I get the idea that you object to, and it is present in the book, but I don't think that's gender essentialism exactly. (At least as I understand it.)
I guess I need to get reading the fourth book because I could definitely see the ending of this series retroactively ruining it if it ended up being some sort of advocacy for the more horrible philosophies put forward in the book.
like the face value is that Genly being from a gendered species and race makes it hard for him to understand the mostly genderless people on winter, but on top of that Genly is clearly a misogynist too and that colors his narration a lot and the level of plot necessary for him to start to understand this society is kind of wild.
but it took a while for me as a reader to understand that what i was reading was genly's unconscious bias on top of his outsider perspective and it was kind of offputting at parts.
But yeah, things aren't nearly as sticky as they were in Heinlein days.
The 70s SF thing, though, has a lot to do with the cons in those days turning into sex parties. A whole lot of buttoned-up 50s era types turned that kind of con into a lifestyle, and it bled through into the fiction.
Lol I slowly picked up the series that starts with Into the Darkness by harry turtledove. I eventually let a friend borrow them and one of the first things he said about them was "the author is a massive horn dog."
That just reminded me of that moment and thought I would share. Also, Harry turtledove also wrote Guns of the South, which I guess was very well received but despite trying like 3 times to read it I never finished it.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198004484595