/lit/ - Literature

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/sffg/ - Science Fiction and Fantasy General Anonymous Wed Jul 13 00:26:30 2022 No.20669720 [Reply] [Original]

House Scavenging Edition

Previous Thread:>>20661334

>Recommended reading charts (Look here before asking for vague recs)
https://mega.nz/folder/kj5hWI6J#0cyw0-ZdvZKOJW3fPI6RfQ/folder/guIyhAzS

>Archive
>>>>/lit/?task=search2&search_subject=sffg

>Goodreads
https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1029811-sffg

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 00:27:10 2022 No.20669726 i saw u delete the other thread lmao loser

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 00:41:18 2022 No.20669783 File: 227 KB, 1000x687, 87A2AFDD-11DF-4197-B19E-64489F4BAB61.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>20669720 Hey guys. What are you reading and what are you planning to read?

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 00:45:13 2022 No.20669794 >>20669720 >>20669783 first for sneed

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 00:52:21 2022 No.20669834 File: 542 KB, 858x1172, deathsquadcommando.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>20669783 I'm going to write a series of short stories based on pic related and then read them.

Anonymous Wed Jul 13 00:52:43 2022 No.20669836
File: 575 KB, 828x830, A3384F48-AC9B-45D3-81DB-31BD68835008.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

Halfway through The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut and so far it’s pretty good. I believe it touches on free will, but it’s also a very good sci fi.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 01:05:30 2022 No.20669895 For a few anons after lotr type books from last thread Sword of Shannara Lord of the isles Thomas covenant chronicles For kids wild magic series Of course I am lying, I read them as well

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 01:28:50 2022 No.20669999 Water sleeps

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 01:29:17 2022 No.20670001 >>20669895 >Shannara this is some of the most disgusting TV I ever watched

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 01:35:25 2022 No.20670027 File: 48 KB, 853x543, 1653639688952.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] and Truth Shines.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 01:46:45 2022 No.20670077 >>20669720 >>20669834 >>20669836 >>20669895 >>20670001 >>20670027 sneed

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 01:47:28 2022 No.20670079 >>20670001 Thought you were taking the piss but they actually did make it Based on the second book First is a much better book

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 01:48:55 2022 No.20670089 File: 594 KB, 1685x2560, 91oK-po6+GL.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] Has anyone read this?

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 01:57:10 2022 No.20670134 >>20670089 no

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 02:09:08 2022 No.20670202 >>20670089 yes

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 02:23:29 2022 No.20670256 >>20670089 I grew up reading Eragon and loved it. But this book is trash. Very generic and massively drawn out. Ended up stopping 60% of the way through

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 03:08:11 2022 No.20670425 File: 417 KB, 1650x2475, god is not willing.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] Eriksonbros... he did it again

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 03:11:31 2022 No.20670432 Anyone have any recommendations for interesting wizard fantasy books, preferably older wizards, towers, evil magics, lots of orb pondering shit like that?

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 03:15:45 2022 No.20670455 >>20670425 Did what?

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 03:21:26 2022 No.20670478 >>20670432 Eddings Just ignore the fact that he was a convicted and jailed child abuser

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 03:26:24 2022 No.20670499 >>20670478 Don't care what he did just want good stuff thank you!

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 03:57:44 2022 No.20670609 >>20670425 It was really good, I thought stillwater would become annoying very quick but I liked her by the end. Great fucking book.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 03:58:45 2022 No.20670611 >>20670432 The Dread Empire, lots of wizards and literal towers and evil magics.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 04:01:11 2022 No.20670618 Bakker is king.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 04:16:51 2022 No.20670663 >>20669834 You will never rule supreme.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 04:27:54 2022 No.20670681 >>20670663 Just like a dream

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 04:29:04 2022 No.20670686 Why do you consider sci-fi and fantasy to be the superior genres of literature?

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 04:29:38 2022 No.20670689 >>20670686 I don't, I just like cool swords and magic and lasers

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 04:31:03 2022 No.20670692 >>20670686 I dont think its superior, but like certain genres of games they are my chosen form of escapism.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 04:31:36 2022 No.20670694 >>20670686 So, are you just going to repeat this question in every thread now?

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 04:34:11 2022 No.20670697 >>20670694 No. This is the last time I will ever ask this question

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 04:36:32 2022 No.20670700 File: 134 KB, 844x671, Fang Yuan meme.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] Have you failed to recognize Mount Tai?

Anonymous Wed Jul 13 04:41:19 2022 No.20670717
File: 317 KB, 1400x2257, 1657687268609.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

Best part of spending three days cataloging every book you've ever read is suddenly remembering little delights you haven't thought about in years. This was a really fun, goofy story

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 04:44:44 2022 No.20670727 >>20670432 https://drive.google.com/file/d/14fZnc-TlOPklmj5oC9WqtFWsEc-oOVK2/view The first story is a classic S&S tale told from the perspective of the wizard.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 05:09:05 2022 No.20670801 >>20669834 Sounds neat anon. Get inspired to write my own stuff by pics a lot too.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 05:09:30 2022 No.20670803 >>20670611 >>20670432 dread empire does hit exactly what you asked for desu, even the literal orb pondering (or mirror)

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 06:24:20 2022 No.20670978 File: 782 KB, 1628x2560, 916hBZ8777L.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>20668917 What are your thoughts on Josie being replaced and the AF being activated by the Sun at the end?

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 06:34:45 2022 No.20670999 What the fuck is up with this book? It's agonisingly slow and the 4 nodes subplot reads exactly like something out of a video game

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 06:35:40 2022 No.20671006 any good recoms for the those who like the dispossessed by Ursula Le guin

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 06:35:52 2022 No.20671008 File: 784 KB, 1682x2560, 49021976.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>20670999

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 06:41:45 2022 No.20671022 >>20670999 >>20671008 100% of the crap Sanderson puts out is video games meets marvel movies.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 06:50:38 2022 No.20671038 >>20669720 >there isn't a paradise to escape to....we are just food for a hungry god What do you think of the incipit of my book?

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 06:54:18 2022 No.20671046 >>20671008 That book was soo inconsistently bad that I unironically had to drop it.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 07:12:01 2022 No.20671079 >>20670801 I think the trick is to write in a 'stream of consciousness' style; like play the story out in your head and write it down as it happens THEN try to clean it up afterwards.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 07:23:39 2022 No.20671110 >>20671046 Why?

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 07:24:32 2022 No.20671114 File: 1.97 MB, 1668x2224, 8yjwubqo8di61.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] read cradle

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 07:25:00 2022 No.20671118 >>20671110 Because one of the main characters starts helping the enemy because the author couldn’t think of a better way to advance the plot.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 07:26:31 2022 No.20671125 Bakker is King. Simple as.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 07:33:26 2022 No.20671138 >>20671118 Which

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 07:44:53 2022 No.20671169 Harlan Ellison. Thoughts? Yes? No?

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 07:48:32 2022 No.20671178 >>20671118 Yeah, Navani was pretty retarded in that book.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 07:54:16 2022 No.20671187 >>20671178 What? We had her PoV we knew the position she was in. She could either let everything go or try and lead the enemy lady in to try fugure a way out later, which she did

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 07:58:00 2022 No.20671194 >>20671178 Sanderson is a terrible writer. But we all know that. His characters are especially bad.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 08:01:37 2022 No.20671202 What should I read next? The shadow of the torturer by Gene wolf or the blade itself by Joe Abercrombie.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 08:10:16 2022 No.20671219 >>20671187 >Letting curiosity trample your loyalty LOL LMAO even

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 08:24:57 2022 No.20671248 >>20671219 It wasn't just curiosity, it was a way to save and get out all the people in the tower She knew dalinar would come, she needed to stall, to save the tower and the people in it

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 08:26:43 2022 No.20671256 >>20671248 >Thinking that you can outsmart a being that is over 100 000 years old. LMAO ROFL even

Anonymous Wed Jul 13 08:28:14 2022 No.20671261
File: 250 KB, 1920x1200, Sandi Dilemma.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

What are Sandi-bros reading today? for me its Mistborn, the story about a miserable world full of ash where people plow miserably on the field, and that's because the evil man ruled supreme instead of the good man.

Anonymous Wed Jul 13 08:34:40 2022 No.20671277

>>20671248
Or, you know, she could have just carry water instead of helping the enemy just because she was curious. Or, even better, we could just assume that a millennia old scholar would know more than a dumb bimbo.

Sanderson is a trash writer, buddy. Sorry.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 08:36:22 2022 No.20671280 >>20671125 This triggers the incels.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 08:44:51 2022 No.20671299 >>20671248 >It wasn't just curiosity Except it was. Read that chapter again. It was her sole motivation.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 08:46:23 2022 No.20671302 What are some fantasy series that get better as they go? I'll start: The Second Apocalypse

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 08:47:49 2022 No.20671310 >>20671280 The funny thing is that there’s more than one person posting that on a regular basis.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 09:24:48 2022 No.20671383 why does sffg reject horror?

Anonymous Wed Jul 13 09:31:35 2022 No.20671402

>>20671256
But she did.
Also it's general hubris for people to think they can know better.
In fact its a trope of fantasy that common people outsmart or outplay ancient evils.

>>20671299
Find me the chapter and I will, I'm not rereading the whole book for it.

>>20671277
>Just give up and let your world be destroyed

??

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 09:32:42 2022 No.20671405 >>20671302 The assassin's apprentice trilogy Malazan (all the works on chronological order)

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 09:53:33 2022 No.20671458 >>20670425 wrote another mediocre, really long book?

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 09:55:52 2022 No.20671463 >>20671405 >The assassin's apprentice trilogy true but the series as a whole goes downhill after the liveship trilogy

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 10:03:01 2022 No.20671473 LitRPG where the system HATES you and wants you to suffer?

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 10:05:10 2022 No.20671478 >>20671473 I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 10:06:31 2022 No.20671483 >>20671463 I'm on the first of the liveships now, interested so far

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 10:08:19 2022 No.20671487 >>20671473 The Skeleton Soldier couldn't protect the Dungeon

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 10:18:32 2022 No.20671509 >>20671478 I didn't think of that as a LitRPG but I guess it kinda counts. I got the idea earlier when I saw a Saw gamer fanfic. >>20671487 spooky

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 10:20:59 2022 No.20671511 >>20671402 > In fact its a trope of bad* fantasy that common people outsmart or outplay ancient evils. FTFY

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 10:31:03 2022 No.20671534 >>20671187 >justifying telling the enemy everything you're doing and revealing state secrets lawl only in a sanderson novel would a character like navani be praised

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 10:39:23 2022 No.20671546 >>20671534 Did I praise her? I just disagreed with you saying what she did was retarded for those actions.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 10:43:38 2022 No.20671556 >>20671534 Not only state secrets, but shit that could literally result in a cataclysmic catastrophe for humans.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 10:44:41 2022 No.20671559 >>20671546 I wasn't the person you were responding to and you're the only one defending Navani('s actions.) We shat on her when the book came out for the same damn reasons.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 10:54:18 2022 No.20671582 File: 61 KB, 300x400, 300.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 11:11:12 2022 No.20671623 >>20671582 Redditrend Insanity

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 11:15:59 2022 No.20671635 File: 3.04 MB, 1500x9002, gnostic.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] Which sff books carry heavy gnostic themes?

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 11:16:25 2022 No.20671638 File: 1.44 MB, 2494x1250, 20220713_071306.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] Words of Radiance "Made him want to lash out." Wtf brando sando

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 11:28:33 2022 No.20671661 File: 2.06 MB, 220x274, shang-abi (1).gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>20671582 Supremed Insanity

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 11:32:04 2022 No.20671667 >>20671638 What's wrong with it, other than the wording sounding a bit awkward?

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 11:37:07 2022 No.20671679 >>20671638 ESL?

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 11:59:02 2022 No.20671737 >>20671638 >amaram https://youtu.be/lPyhlybViJw

Anonymous Wed Jul 13 12:12:36 2022 No.20671782

>>20670686
It's less derivative than non-genre fiction.
In essence, the worst thing that can happen to a medium is excessive creative inbreeding, i.e. people who only read literary fiction and then write literary fiction. The result is everything being boiled down into deranged caricatures with no actual meaning or importance, each element of the story only used "because it's supposed to".
Genre fiction takes inspiration from sources outside literature, scifi obviously from technology and fantasy from mythology, making it automatically superior in most cases(obviously it's possible for someone to write non-genre fiction not based on other books, it's just very unlikely).
Obviously this doesn't apply all the time, as most genre-fiction is also incestuous by this point, with everyone copying everyone else, but at least it has the lowest barrier to entry and highest proportion of new writers.
Note that even the "old and tired blatant trendseeking" genre fiction is copying things written less than a decade ago.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 12:30:34 2022 No.20671842 >>20670686 genre isn't real

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 12:36:39 2022 No.20671863 >>20671202 Wolfe, hands down.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 12:43:12 2022 No.20671888 File: 56 KB, 1077x794, 3beac8201efbd755.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>20671635 The Bible

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 12:52:08 2022 No.20671906 >>20671463 The Tawny Man Trilogy is literally perfect

Anonymous Wed Jul 13 13:27:23 2022 No.20672020
File: 34 KB, 281x475, mana master.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

My journey through erotica/harem stories continues, I think I've read like 20 books already. Getting closer and closer to creating a recommendation chart. Mana Maste, despite being popular, turned out to be a let-down. Cliche as fuck, nonsensical world-building, instantenous relationships (not to mention abrupt), uninspired sex scenes, extremely derivative...It's not just unoriginal, it's not even average in quality, it's just not worth reading.

I'm kind of shocked, because I chose this one thanks to the author's other book 'Saving Supervillains,' which despite its flaws was one of the better harem books in the genre. It seems 2 years of writing really make a difference in writing, huh. SV was flawed is similar ways, though, the world was extremely derivative from Worm, so people who are familiar with that story will be somewhat dissapointed. At this point I'm just clicking 'next' on pages to see all the sex scenes, not much to see here anyway.

3.5/10

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 13:33:38 2022 No.20672038 >>20672020 Please post your Bakker review. I’ve wanted to read him for a while now.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 13:37:24 2022 No.20672049 >>20672038 >Please post your Bakker review. I’ve wanted to read him for a while now. Not reading serious fantasy lately, at least not any other than wandering inn. Maybe some other time

Anonymous Wed Jul 13 13:37:55 2022 No.20672051

Where can I find an audience for a story that is:

- not smut
- has romance but isn't a full romance
- has gore and horror but isn't full horror/gore
- has child characters but isn't a children's story
- has magical fantasy elements that are dark and mysterious
- has no game or generic progression elements in it whatsoever

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 13:39:31 2022 No.20672057 >>20672051 The Prince of Nothing.

Anonymous Wed Jul 13 13:40:33 2022 No.20672059

>>20669720
I have the idea of a setting where the ground is infested by some sort of eusocial species. To get around this, the inhabitants build towns on pillars, with little bridges between the houses. I think it’s interesting. I’m imagining a drawbridge between two towns which is often lifted up for various political reasons.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 13:41:10 2022 No.20672062 >>20672057 The Aspect Emperor, you mean.

Anonymous Wed Jul 13 13:44:32 2022 No.20672076

>>20672059
Updraft by Fran Wilde is about people who live on bone towers connected by rope bridges and hang gliders and stuff. They don't remember why but the ground is too dangerous to go down to.
Personally think it doesn't stay scifi enough to really explore this side of things, instead it's more of standard yaish rebelllion story just set in a unique world.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 13:45:13 2022 No.20672077 >>20672051 You mean like, adults?

Anonymous Wed Jul 13 13:47:15 2022 No.20672087

>>20672059
How would they build the towers in the first place without getting on the ground.
Is this basically an eternal game of the floor is hot?
How would they have food if they can't touch the ground?
How would they get materials if they can't touch the ground?

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 13:50:02 2022 No.20672100 >>20672077 Yeah, but where are they? How does one find adults on the internet?

Anonymous Wed Jul 13 14:04:20 2022 No.20672148

>>20672051
Again
The dread empire

You retards always ask for shit and each time it ticks all your specific boxes

It's not smut
It's got plenty of romance but it's not the main thing
It's got gore and eldritch abominations from battles and wizards, but they are not the whole story
Has a few child characters, one is quite a major pov in one book, he doesn't take a child's journey
Old wizards, old artifacts, plenty of mystery and old magics, plenty of dark magics
No game shit

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 14:05:44 2022 No.20672157 >>20672148 They're not asking for recs dummy, they're asking for us to be their literary agent

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 14:06:29 2022 No.20672158 >>20672148 >Where can I find an audience literally the first six words >AUDIENCE >calling other people retards

Anonymous Wed Jul 13 14:07:07 2022 No.20672161

>>20672076
Seems interesting, I’ll look into it and see if I like it.
>>20672087
I don’t feel like I could justify it well but I’ll try.
>How would they build the towers in the first place without getting on the ground.
It could have been a slow change of the eusocial creatures dominating the land. In that time, the inhabitants would think of many ways to survive, with the pillar towns being the most popular.
>Is this basically an eternal game of the floor is hot?
I’d imagine that falling down would mean certain death, be it from the fall or the creatures.
>How would they have food if they can't touch the ground?
Maybe they could “fish” for the creatures. That’d be a very plentiful food source. Maybe they could capture birds too, or keep livestock.
>How would they get materials if they can't touch the ground?
I’m thinking of the seasons affecting the behaviour of the eusocial creatures. Maybe, in summer, they retreat underground to avoid the heat, giving the inhabitants a time to gather resources and build things. They could also get things from the creatures, like perhaps a shell which could be used as roof tiles or formed into some sort of brick somehow.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 14:29:13 2022 No.20672229 >>20671635 The Prince of Nothing.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 14:31:22 2022 No.20672234 >>20671635 What an absolutely retarded picture. But the answer is VALIS by PKD, it's always VALIS.

Anonymous Wed Jul 13 14:42:55 2022 No.20672272
File: 160 KB, 1262x1080, Kronk_.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

Starting Dungeon Crawler Carl. The audiobook narrator kinda sounds like Patrick Warburton so I end up imagining Carl as a slightly more intelligent Kronk kek. Only 15 minutes in but it seems like a good fit for his character.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 14:46:59 2022 No.20672287 >>20672157 >>20672158 >>20672051 The dread empire subreddit

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 14:48:49 2022 No.20672296 What's the first use of codified magic systems in fiction? Taoism?

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 14:51:13 2022 No.20672307 >>20672272 I'm halfway through book 5. You're in for a rollercoaster of a good time.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 14:52:22 2022 No.20672310 >>20672296 Way way older than that I'd bet, humans have been around for a long time, sure agriculture, literacy, and later industrialisation gave us a kick up the ass last few thousand years but answer to your question probably predates that.

Anonymous Wed Jul 13 14:53:41 2022 No.20672319

>>20671534
Typical garbage character writing from sanderson. Actions have no real for the characters outside their dnd style backstory where their tragic shit had some minor consequences. Within the actual books good guys will be one-dimensionally portrayed as good, no matter how stupid, vile or disloyal their actions would be realistically. It's pretty much the same for villains, except everything they do is bad, regardless of logic.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 14:57:23 2022 No.20672335 >>20672272 I never listen to audiobooks so I often get wildly varying ideas of what characters sound like. In my head Carl is Ryan Gosling. It just seems to fit.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 14:58:50 2022 No.20672342 >>20671667 What doesn't sound clunky and awkward in that? Every single sentence reads like the first draft of a bad fanfic.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 15:00:18 2022 No.20672348 >>20671114 >nigger Well, I was going to read it but now I won't.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 15:04:27 2022 No.20672365 >>20672348 It's terrible fanart, most characters are east Asian. The only darker-skinned characters are minor characters from an unexplored continent.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 15:10:56 2022 No.20672383 >>20672335 >Carl is Ryan Gosling I didn't think Carl was on the spectrum but now that you mention it...

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 15:11:49 2022 No.20672389 >>20672020 Based coomer

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 15:13:03 2022 No.20672394 >>20672383 I don't actually know who Carl SHOULD sound like, but he's described as a pretty big dude, he's an ex-marine (even if he was just a tech guy), so that's a pretty generic-sounding guy.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 15:14:58 2022 No.20672401 >>20672394 He was Coast Guard, not Marines.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 15:15:58 2022 No.20672404 >>20672401 Was it? Oh. Either way, he should sound pretty baritone I'd imagine.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 15:17:06 2022 No.20672415 >>20672404 Yeah, it was mentioned more than once that he spent tons of time at sea and worked with boats lol

Anonymous Wed Jul 13 15:17:28 2022 No.20672419

>>20672394
Yeah, like I said I'm only 30 minutes in but Kronk seems like a good fit already. A big lug, deep voiced, straighforward in his dealings and actions, good natured, not stupid exactly but by no means is he an intellectual... have I hit the mark? Or at least come close?

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 15:19:13 2022 No.20672429 >>20672419 Well, he's not dumb. This is a pretty clear part of Carl, he's a good planner and pretty pragmatic. Just most of his plans are straightforward because that's what his tools are.

Anonymous Wed Jul 13 15:20:24 2022 No.20672435

>>20672419
>not stupid exactly but by no means is he an intellectual
Something like this. If Carl were a shounen protag, his powerlevel would increase after every big fight because he is a fucking master at improvisation and lucky with batshit insane plans pulled out of his ass.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 15:21:35 2022 No.20672443 Bakker is King.

Anonymous Wed Jul 13 15:26:18 2022 No.20672467

Is Malazan worth giving a second try?
I felt like I wasn't really sure what was going on the first time I was reading Gardens and I soon stopped for something else but that might've just been a long intro/prologue I never got out of.

I'm weirdly underread on the big name modern epic fantasy series and this is the first one I'd actually consider going back to since WoT got more than a fair shot from me.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 15:32:11 2022 No.20672496 >>20672467 Yes

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 15:32:40 2022 No.20672498 f

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 15:37:19 2022 No.20672523 >>20672429 Yeah I didn't intend to imply he was dumb. Just that he's a do-er not a thinker.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 15:58:12 2022 No.20672602 >>20672467 If you are part of the esteemed group that cares about "lore" in MMORPGs, then go ahead.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 16:04:37 2022 No.20672628 The only time I've heard a celebrity voice in my head when reading a book is the guy who voices Archer (the spy) as Monkey in Journey to the West.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 16:36:38 2022 No.20672735 File: 40 KB, 468x351, shake.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>20672628 I imagined a lot of the Black Company cast as characters from ATHF.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 16:39:50 2022 No.20672744 File: 20 KB, 366x550, dune.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] Guys this edition of Dune (Pinguin Books) is dirty cheap for some reason. Is there anything wrong with it? Should I buy it?

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 16:45:04 2022 No.20672759 >>20671008 I couldn't continue after Oathbringer. Never been so disappointed with a series. The first two books were okay.

Anonymous Wed Jul 13 16:52:43 2022 No.20672783
File: 352 KB, 660x900, The_Discworld.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

What does lit think of the discworld series? I was surprised how well the world was well fleshed out for comedic fiction.

>>20672744
I got this for my wife. Its alright, some of the pages werent trimmed apart from one another but nothing a razor blade wont fix.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 16:59:18 2022 No.20672799 >>20670425 It's nice that he's still adding books to the universe, but I kind of have my hands full with the original ten. I kind of wonder how many sales these new books are getting and how many people are reading these books more than once.

Anonymous Wed Jul 13 17:10:53 2022 No.20672842

>>20672783
I think somewhere around 4 books in, Discworld shifts ever-so-slightly towards being "satire that's its own thing" rather than simply being a silly haha fantasy thing. And it just sort of spirals from there. They're all inherently pretty silly and funny, but they're also very sincere about it. An angry cop dad going berserker mode while quoting his son's favourite book about a cow just wouldn't work without that sincerity. Almost every character feels well-realised. They don't necessarily have depth (sometimes that's even the point, like with Carrot, he's simple but simple can be engrossing), but they're all well-made and hard to forget.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 17:13:18 2022 No.20672849 >>20669720 Finished reading The Warrior Prophet a couple days ago. It was good, though it started getting a little tiresome with the hero worship of Kellhus. Eventually I started skimming sections that had only Esmenet or Serwe in them.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 17:14:07 2022 No.20672856 I can buy right now first four books from Martha Wells series for pretty cheap. Should i buy them all or just the first one or two? Anyone here read them and liked them?

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 17:40:47 2022 No.20673006 >>20672735 Lol Who did you have for which characters in curious

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 17:42:44 2022 No.20673014 >>20672467 Well, you will never be sure of what's going on in Malazan, that's the whole point of it. Think not of the forest, appreciate the tree in front of you etc.

Anonymous Wed Jul 13 17:44:00 2022 No.20673019

>>20672799
I think the god is not willing was very well received. After forge of darkness was not (even though I enjoyed it) I think erikson was a bit disheartened and that's why the new book was slower coming out.

Now I'm looking forward to esselmounts conclusion to the path of ascendancy.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 17:58:51 2022 No.20673090 Bakker is an extremely eloquent in his prose and a true master in the craft of the literary arts. There is indeed something truly noble about him.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 18:02:39 2022 No.20673106 >>20672849 >though it started getting a little tiresome with the hero worship of Kellhus He’s a prophet. What did you expect? People to not worship him?

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 18:06:10 2022 No.20673120 >>20672759 I hated Oathbringer but still gave RoW a try. It was somehow worse.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 18:16:38 2022 No.20673160 >>20672856 Which one? Murderbot's good but the novel got a bit tired for me The flying lizards one is great too

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 18:26:10 2022 No.20673217 >>20671187 I don't know if you realized, but by the end she literally handed the enemy schematics for weapons of mass destruction But the really annoying part is that she's a protagonist so she'll never be accused of warcrimes

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 18:28:39 2022 No.20673225 >>20672148 >It's got plenty of romance In a Glen Cook story? I'm assuming everyone dies, or do these characters actually get a happily ever after

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 18:29:24 2022 No.20673227 >>20673217 Don’t forget the part where she also suddenly became a respected scholar, even though she rarely set foot on a lab.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 18:30:05 2022 No.20673230 >>20672744 It's perfectly fine, probably on sale because they're going to reveal new covers soon to tie in with the movie hype

Anonymous Wed Jul 13 18:38:25 2022 No.20673259

>>20673225
I don't wanna straight spoil it but yes some do get happy endings, some dont, some get lukewarm endings too.

The books PoV follows multiple characters, although there are some mercenary characters in it and some characters in the book do die, it's not like black company in that way.

Anonymous Wed Jul 13 18:43:05 2022 No.20673285
File: 1.65 MB, 1920x1080, 1615544808949.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>ESL
>want to read translation because english is tiring to read
>editor decided to split the serie into smaller books
>they also reorganized the book order
>the translation is terrible too

Anonymous Wed Jul 13 18:55:03 2022 No.20673339

>>20673259
Good endings;
Vakthlokkur
Mist
Etrian (mockers kid I forget how to spell his name
Haroun
Napenthe
that pedophile wizard
the old man
the unborn
mists kids
the shinsan emperor who ruled briefly before mist
the shinsan general that Bragi saved and that saved bragi
the one storm king that decided to remain in his mountain castle
Michael trebilcock

Bad ending's;
mocker
star rider
Vather
El murid
magdan norath
the doctor of the city
the son of the guy who was Marshal of the city before bragi
marcus
turan
elena
the rest of the storm kings

Grey endings;
bragi

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 19:47:43 2022 No.20673574 >>20673285 What language?

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 19:56:52 2022 No.20673628 >>20673574 French

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 20:09:25 2022 No.20673703 >>20673628 It’s not just french publishers that split single books into multiple ones. Just give in and develop a habit of reading in english.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 20:10:29 2022 No.20673718 >>20673703 How has the publishing industry survived this long when it's so deliberately retarded all the time?

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 20:13:37 2022 No.20673743 >>20673718 I don’t know man. They say that they need to make a profit from the translation, but that’s a load of bullshit. They just capitalise on people who don’t know better.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 20:15:43 2022 No.20673749 >>20673718 Writing and publishing is makework for rich heirs It was never intended to be a real industry

Anonymous Wed Jul 13 20:17:15 2022 No.20673759
File: 220 KB, 658x1000, malazan.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

Did I fall for the Malazan meme?
>It gets better after GotM!
>Don't get filtered!
>He was so young then!

The opening of Deathhouse Gates reads like
>Edgelord anime, in a
>Setting of every worldbuilding nonsense a 20yr DM can conceive of, with
>Straight DnD mechanics and nonsense logic, with
>Mediocre dialogue, and
>Endless over-the-top biggliest biggest thing that can happen always, alongside
>An excess of characters/places such that none are going to get developed properly, who
>Have the most convoluted internal logic possible, clearly just so they can move from one setpiece anime battle to the next, with
>No apparent themes, and
>Passable prose at best, that
>Leaves important details for the end because... I really don't know why he does this habitually

I hit ~page 50, and I have so very little enthusiasm to continue.
It's a more polished turd, that's all.
>We're in a boat yall
>Oh no, there's a massive sea centipede that's so scary!
>Except oh no it's a psychic shapeshifting demon thing! Power Level 1000!
>It wants to kill us suddenly because why not!
>For some reason it stays above the water for a full minute while it does [evil villain speech] where we can shoot it!
>Pop it with an ace shot exploding ball lol it blew up, gg ez game!
>*Proceed like nothing happened*
>Oh there's some horsemen riding on the coast...
>THEY MUST BE THERE BECAUSE US!
>Let's take a totally unnecessarily convoluted route instead, despite being in deep cover, because 0.1% chance they're warning the authorities about us, via horse, while we go via boat, and they beat us there...
I'm done.

What next, anons?

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 20:24:39 2022 No.20673791 >>20673106 False Prophet. And I didn't need 1/3 of the book dedicated to Esmi wanting his seed.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 20:28:58 2022 No.20673805 >>20672051 David Gemmell's work in general.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 20:36:01 2022 No.20673841 >>20673759 Coltaine's struggle through the desert with his army was kino but overall, I can safely say that I did not enjoy Malazan's main series and have no interest in its spin offs

Anonymous Wed Jul 13 20:52:18 2022 No.20673898
File: 281 KB, 429x675, hbg-title-9781405511995-19.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>20673805
Yeah. Just read this one and it was a blast. Fast pace in storytelling and actually described large battles. (Unlike Dragon Lance where every larger battle seems to start with the dwarf pov getting knocked out by a halfling.)

Loved it. Def. gonna read more of his work.

Anonymous Wed Jul 13 21:31:36 2022 No.20674029
File: 34 KB, 300x475, dragon's justice.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

Mana Master made me think Saving Supervillains was just an accidental good book by Bruce Sentar, but Dragon's Justice is suprisingly decent...for a harem book. Funny thing though, in Mana Master the protagonist scored girls left and right, instantly building Harem, in Dragon's Justice the protagonist doesn't even build harem, more even, there's only ONE sex scene, with only ONE girl. That's wild for this genre, I'm shocked that the author actually went with that. This book is like the opposite of Mana Master, still only decent, but the improvements are staggering. Not even a full year of between those two books.

As for the book itself, while I read it for its refined coomer value, it had not much of that in truth. If anything this was a romance book with a decent 'an average guy turns out to have special powers and kicks ass while getting a girl.' This shouldn't even count as harem genre if not for the insinuation of what can happen in the latter books. Surprsing myself, I didn't drop the book despite its lack of cooming values.

To be frank, a normal reader would be dissapointed with not-good-enough plot, a coomer would be dissapointed with little to none sexual content, even though the tension is there. A decent-enough romance, interesting female interest, a protagonist that doesn't make bump your head on the wall...honestly, at this point I'm just rationalizing why I liked the book.

6/10

(genuinely unsure why I rate this book so high), weak coom book but a decent foundation for a harem series. Will see whether the second book in the series is better as the ratings suggest.

Also, I think I'll start reading the lesbian equivalents of fantasy erotica for men, for instance, Primal Touch is about a photographer and her hourney into the jungle looking for a mythical tiger, when she meets a fierce amazon who protects her tigers. Of course, they fuck, but that's obvious from the description. It's the differences between male and female writers that interest me.

Fun fact: I've read 26 erotica books in the last three months. I am experiencing Coomer Ascension. Once I end up reading every popular erotica book, it will be the reading chart to end all charts.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 21:35:10 2022 No.20674035 >>20674029 The author is full time now. So hopefully his work will continue to increase.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 21:43:41 2022 No.20674051 >>20674035 If he keeps improving at this rate in 2-3 years he might put out some really good books.

Anonymous Wed Jul 13 22:03:54 2022 No.20674104

>>20673285
English has somewhat less grammar rules than many other languages, learning English to a very high standard is not easy but learning enough to read and understand literature is not hard. Not being able to read in English in this day and age is unheard of.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 22:13:54 2022 No.20674132 >unnameable >unimaginable >unknowable This is basically all there is to Lovecraft's writing, yet I can't get enough of it. Why is that?

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 22:18:23 2022 No.20674148 >>20674132 it's undeterminable

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 22:32:50 2022 No.20674180 >>20674132 The reason is unseen.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 22:43:43 2022 No.20674219 >>20673898 Based.

Anonymous Wed Jul 13 22:51:44 2022 No.20674236

>>20672744
>Guys this edition of Dune (Pinguin Books) is dirty cheap for some reason.
it's amazon prime day, bestie. there's a night and day quality difference between trade paperback and mass market paperback quality for those editions of dune but the the mass market is still fine.

Anonymous Wed Jul 13 23:12:33 2022 No.20674314

>>20672856
I enjoyed the majority of murder bot books. The novels I felt ran on too long compared to the novellas. The story might just be better served with a shorter format.

The raksura series was great. Read the first three books but stopped after that. The author has this fixation with including polygamy and polyamory in all her works, they’re good books but that aspect just isn’t for me.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 23:23:47 2022 No.20674338 File: 34 KB, 333x500, 51zxM7xAhoL.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>20674029 You should read the novels by Mike Truk, coomer anon. Smut is well done and story is alright too. Helps that it doesn't drag on for 5+ novels

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 23:27:57 2022 No.20674358 Is Black Sun any good? A girl highly recommended it to me but I'd like a male opinion just in case

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 23:28:02 2022 No.20674359 >>20674338 The tsun tsun series was shit.

Anonymous Wed Jul 13 23:28:38 2022 No.20674362

>>20674104
Honestly what do people really struggle with when trying to learn English? All the pitfalls I can think of are for writing/speaking. Articles, strange spelling, and the secret adjective category order are mostly irrelevant if you're just reading. A millennium of ESLs dominating common vernacular has stripped all the complexity. No cases, no gender, no declension. Fuck we don't even have a formal second person pronoun anymore, we just dropped the casual one and started using the formal for both.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 23:34:18 2022 No.20674384 >>20674358 >A girl highly recommended it You already know the answer.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 23:36:49 2022 No.20674389 >>20674362 >we don't even have a formal second person pronoun anymore What was it? That's news to me.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 23:45:02 2022 No.20674424 >>20674359 Agreed, but his 2 other series are nothing like it.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 23:47:08 2022 No.20674428 >>20674389 You. Thou was the informal second person pronoun.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 23:51:17 2022 No.20674436 >>20674428 As a follow-up to this, I find it endlessly grating when Asian translators use thou to communicate that the speaker is using formal speech

Anonymous Wed Jul 13 23:51:18 2022 No.20674437

>>20674362
The issue with English largely comes down to how many rules it has that all come with an absurd amount of exceptions, but they're still the rules just by majority. A lot of learning English is "It's like this, except when it isn't, and may every god help you when it isn't because it's a crapshoot".

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 23:52:19 2022 No.20674440 >>20674436 How would you do that in localisation? Would you just have them speak more stilted and formally, use a lot of "Mr/Mrs", etc?

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 13 23:58:09 2022 No.20674459 >>20674440 Translator's note explaining how they're speaking.

Anonymous Thu Jul 14 00:04:01 2022 No.20674484

>>20674440
Depends on the situation, but when talking to kings or gods, there's some easy stuff to swipe from Shakespear. First, lots of indirect speech. You exist entirely at their permission. "If it please Your Grace...", "With my Lord's good will...", etc. Second, extending that, generally avoid direct second person pronouns and refer to them by their title. It's wordy, and it's supposed to be, have you ever seen how fucking long formal Japanese conjugation is? Third, use self-diminishing first-person descriptors. "I humbly ask...", "Your servant has brought a minor trifle." Basically just imagine the lowest groveling you can imagine, and then realize that that's pretty much a straightforward translation of shit like degozaru.
Contemporary formal speech is harder, because it's less about any specific speech pattern in English, and more about using higher-class words. If you want a simple but kind of annoying to implement option, use the English/French/Latin triplet thing. For a huge number of English words, you have three synonyms, each with its root in one of those languages. Latin is elite, French is fancy, English is plebian. Standard example is Royal, Majestic, Kingly.

Anonymous Thu Jul 14 00:11:48 2022 No.20674512

>>20674440
>>20674484
Oh, and just don't use contractions at all, and try to use by the book grammar. In sentences for which it is especially apparent, the reader is likely to internalize the difference even without obvious markers.
On the other hand, I still think it's impossible to actually translate honorifics outside of a setting with them, and would just give up. Medieval Europe? Sure, swap in some landed Titles. 20th century America? Fuck it, John-kun it is.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 00:18:24 2022 No.20674534 >>20671261 >instead of a good man Rashek did nothing wrong

Anonymous Thu Jul 14 00:19:21 2022 No.20674539

>>20674484
>>20674512
That's fair. Formality in English is more equated with 'stuffiness', so it's interesting to see. Like, standards and politeness are a thing in English but you don't typically have that kind of thing these days where it's expected to be uptight. You're mostly just expected to not be crude.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 00:20:54 2022 No.20674549 File: 87 KB, 976x850, _.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] One cannot raise walls against what has been forgotten.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 00:21:48 2022 No.20674553 File: 108 KB, 809x409, 6455645615.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] ...that's it? that's how it ends? All that work and it just ends on a silent fart?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 00:23:46 2022 No.20674560 >>20674549 Sounds fucking retarded.

Anonymous Thu Jul 14 00:24:36 2022 No.20674563

>>20674539
Yeah, for American English, which is basically global English now, the cultural focus on Individual Equality did big things to how we felt we ought to speak to other people. When the leader of your country is just a man respected by the people, instead of ordained by God, you talk to him as a respected equal instead of a chosen superior. Formal speech is all about hierarchy, so the best way to communicate it in translation is just to remember that the lower status speaker is required to do as much annoying conversational busywork as possible entirely because it is annoying and pointless.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 00:25:15 2022 No.20674566 >>20674560 You will never be supreme.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 01:16:35 2022 No.20674715 >>20674549 yes you can

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 01:39:30 2022 No.20674779 >>20674715 prove it

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 02:04:41 2022 No.20674872 File: 941 KB, 640x1438, Sandon branderson.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>20671008 >>20670999 I gave up 3/4 of the way through then finally finished it over a year later. I hate it but I may keep reading this garbage.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 02:05:04 2022 No.20674877 >>20674779 If the Chinese built a wall to keep out the Tartars after somehow forgetting about the Mongols, it would still be raised against those forgotten about.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 02:08:01 2022 No.20674891 >>20671202 Sott is probably the better book but I have enjoyed Abercrombies series more than about any other.

Anonymous Thu Jul 14 02:19:14 2022 No.20674938
File: 411 KB, 1920x1306, 1920px-Gérôme--The_Harem_in_the_Kiosk--c-1870-1875--private_collection.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

Is there a book that combines romance, family and the generally comfy elements of the Witcher books with actually good writing, like in Prince of Nothing?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 02:33:45 2022 No.20674986 >>20674938 Realm of the Elderlings maybe? Lots of family stuff, adventures

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 02:36:02 2022 No.20674993 >Above him, the tree soared, its trunk smooth and phallic Why is Bakker like this?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 02:41:16 2022 No.20675017 >about 50% through DCC 5 What the fuck am I reading next? I'm feeling some hard sci-fi actually.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 02:44:46 2022 No.20675034 >>20674993 Canadian

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 02:45:14 2022 No.20675036 >>20674553 share this sentiment, desu

Anonymous Thu Jul 14 03:01:20 2022 No.20675098

>>20674993
If you haven't discovered his fetishes by now I dunno what to say anon
Akka is clearly his self insert, he longs to have a stronger and wiser man to look up to, the cuckoldry and bitterness Akka develops towards kellus him is his own subconscious shame. Kellus is who he wishes he was but he knows he can't be, that's why everything he does is perfect.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 03:22:46 2022 No.20675172 >>20673759 >>20673841 That's fine. Nothing wrong with not liking a thing other people like. Malazan ruined fantasy for me. I personally don't believe there's anything better in epic fantasy at this point unless you want to reread LotR endlessly.

Anonymous Thu Jul 14 03:34:00 2022 No.20675217

What is the word used to describe the "type" of prose/vocabulary and dialects used in a book. For example, if I say Bakker prose has a pseudo-biblical feel to it, would say his _______ is pseudo-biblical. Is there a word for this? Like, what word would you use If you wanted to describe tolkiens choice of vocabulary for dialogue and prose

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 03:38:34 2022 No.20675232 >>20675217 Is there something wrong with style or aesthetic?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 03:39:28 2022 No.20675238 >>20675217 Bakker prose is largely drawn from nietzche.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 03:56:41 2022 No.20675309 >>20675232 Style and aesthetics is close, but I was thinking of a word more specific to the vocabulary used. Something like dialect but referring to the way the way author has people in his work speaking rather than a region/people I guess.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 03:57:38 2022 No.20675311 >>20675309 Authorial voice?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 04:04:20 2022 No.20675343 >>20675309 phraseology

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 04:05:32 2022 No.20675349 >>20675311 That's part of it. I think I might just have to settle for using an authors style/aesthetic and voice. I just thought maybe there was one word for all of it.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 04:09:30 2022 No.20675368 >>20675343 Perfect! That's the one I was missing.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 04:21:06 2022 No.20675398 >>20674993 >the scars in the scylvendi's arms were like thick, veiny phalluses - each one thicker and more phallic than the last

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 04:37:43 2022 No.20675438 I believe this was the actual text >the veins on the scylvendi's phallus were like thick, veiny phalluses - each one thicker and more phallic than the last

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 04:50:29 2022 No.20675471 >>20674029 Saving Supervillains 2 is out btw.

Anonymous Thu Jul 14 04:53:53 2022 No.20675478
File: 45 KB, 350x537, 9781429908658-3991102724.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>20675217
Diction and/or Register
an exerpt from pic rel
>One way to tell slick genre prose from really interesting writing is to look, in the former case, for the absence of different registers. An efficient thriller will often be written in a style that is locked into place: the musical analogue of this might be a tune, proceeding in unison, the melody separated only by octave intervals, without any harmony in the middle. By contrast, rich and daring prose avails itself of harmony and dissonance by being able to move in and out of place. In writing, a “register” is nothing more than a name for a kind of diction, which is nothing more than a name for a certain, distinctive way of saying something—so we talk about “high” and “low” registers (e.g., the highish “Father” and the lower “Pop”), grand and vernacular diction, mock-heroic diction, clichéd registers, and so on.
I'd highly recommend the entire book, its pretty short and covers a wide variety of literary topics in a very accessible manner

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 05:15:29 2022 No.20675544 File: 21 KB, 229x350, ad428e5df2d28bf5aa2c43bade6ed06b7d8da787.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >tfw you finally find the name of a series you've been trying to remember for a decade Kid me was based, this book looks sick

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 05:30:35 2022 No.20675580 >>20675478 That entire quote is completely meaningless word salad. What a load of absolute pseud garbage.

Anonymous Thu Jul 14 05:32:47 2022 No.20675588
File: 117 KB, 1242x900, 2D51C59A-4CA8-4398-B063-D15A58FB6F70.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>20671079
Same here. Usually I’ll see something in a Spaghetti Western or biker movie that sparks my imagination and I start writing a scene from the middle. I try getting the beginning sorted out afterwards. May explain why so many of my stories are unfinished.
>>20671169
Only read I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream but I thought it was brilliant.
>>20671202
I’d go with Wolfe.
>>20671302
Book of the New Sun
>>20672272
Kek, makes me want to listen to it.
>>20675544
Hah, looks like one of those books you’d have in the classroom library.

Anonymous Thu Jul 14 05:59:18 2022 No.20675652
File: 150 KB, 1400x2101, 71vpgPo+1dL.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

Can someone point me to the part in the book where they explain that the Scramblers have been taking advantage of human eye movement to stay invisible? I can't remember where it is and I wanted to read the explanation Watts gave for it again.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 06:22:38 2022 No.20675735 >>20675478 intredasting.jpg I’ll take a look at this book

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 07:42:23 2022 No.20675943 File: 266 KB, 750x920, flat,750x1000,075,f.u1.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>20669720 Thomas Wade did nothing wrong

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 08:51:51 2022 No.20676097 >>20675471 >Saving Supervillains 2 is out btw. Thanks Anon, will definitely read, hope the sudden inflation of girls at the end of the first book won't be a problem.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 09:09:22 2022 No.20676140 >>20674549 That doesn't even make any sense, stupid frogposter.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 09:11:29 2022 No.20676145 >>20672296 Shamanism

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 10:26:38 2022 No.20676300 File: 7 KB, 241x209, download.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>20669720 How can you kill someone who can shape reality at his/her will

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 10:30:34 2022 No.20676308 >>20676300 Imagination

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 10:39:24 2022 No.20676336 I've been reading Fire and Blood, it's pretty good

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 10:53:18 2022 No.20676381 >>20670001 It's such a shit bastardization. Just read the actual book. This shit where directors take "creative liberties" gets so fucking out of hand It's insane.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 11:00:10 2022 No.20676399 >>20676300 hubris?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 11:00:12 2022 No.20676400 >>20674993 He's a fucking cock obsessed faggot. How do you people not understand?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 11:11:43 2022 No.20676433 >>20671114 I read books, not chinkshit

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 11:15:31 2022 No.20676446 >>20670425 If Erikson can do it, Martin has no excuse.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 12:09:24 2022 No.20676573 just finished reading mother of learning, why did the ending feel so underwhelming?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 12:11:08 2022 No.20676580 >>20676300 deception is the way it usually goes

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 12:11:36 2022 No.20676581 >>20676573 I thought it was pretty hype imo my favorite part of the last arc was when granny witch turned into a badguy then the current granny witch fought against her because she doesn't trust herself more than anything

Anonymous Thu Jul 14 12:17:41 2022 No.20676598

>>20676581
I think she hinted at the fact that something similar happened to her in the past and she killed her simulacrum for it (or maybe she is the simulacrum that killed the original and took its place) so she knew how dangerous her clone would be.
quite a fitting end for her, but other than that some things were left unresolved and the epilogue didn't do much to address them, for example Quatach was still alive since the flower didn't eat his soul, and the dragon mage took both the crown AND the orb with him and none of this is addressed again
not to mention we didn't see Zorian paying back the people who helped him in the timeloop, all he did was help some of his classmates with study sessions and whatnot, I feel like the epilogue and perhaps a few chapters should've focused solely on the post-invasion life

Anonymous Thu Jul 14 12:28:17 2022 No.20676629

>>20676573
It was pretty underbaked imo, there should be more scenes and aftermath. There was some slight sequel bait, but I'm unsure whether Nobody103 will actually write anything in the universe again as he'd said he has no plans to. At the moment he's writing some 'Old Archmage' story and he's already published few chapters for his patrons.

Anonymous Thu Jul 14 12:44:31 2022 No.20676688

>>20676629
it felt like he was no longer interested in the story near the last few chapters to be fair, even the final confrontation took too little time compared to what preceded it, and that epilogue was pretty mundane
didn't even get to see my girl Neolu mentioned again

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 12:49:38 2022 No.20676698 >>20669720 Are there any stories about a fantasy but it's the final one?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 13:05:11 2022 No.20676736 >that one anon's face when we are all nascent soul flesh mecha if souls are real

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 13:08:08 2022 No.20676745 >>20676300 his powers were fueled by his bracelet that we all thought was simply jewelry the whole time.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 13:17:22 2022 No.20676765 >>20676573 nigga spent 8 years in a time loop and still came out without a gf

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 13:32:07 2022 No.20676814 File: 159 KB, 1080x1080, 0220714_084054_0.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>20674993 He's Canadian

Anonymous Thu Jul 14 13:36:05 2022 No.20676825

>>20675652
I haven't read that book but I can guess it's talking about saccades, your eyes go blind every time you move them and then retroactvely fill in your perception with new data.
The simplest example is the clock illusion, if you quickly glance at a clock and then hold focus you'll notice the first second takes much longer that the others, it appears the clock is frozen for a moment and then begins moving. What's happening is that your eye turns off, swings to the clock, turns on, take the first "frame", and expands it out to cover the time it was blind. You can even notice the effect is stronger if you moved your eye further.

It's actually possible to intentionally NOT go blind when moving your eyes by using kinetic tracking vision instead of saccades, but it's extremely blurry, out of focus, and slower.

If you're wondering how retroactive vision is possible, consciousness is actually a few seconds behind perception and most of your senses are actually re-ordered and fused all the time, like sight/sound synchronization or being able to feel when you touch your feet instantly even though it takes a second for the signal to reach your brain.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 13:40:04 2022 No.20676843 >>20676300 Have someone who is able to delete reality at his/her will, or have someone who is capable of creating blackholes.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 13:43:49 2022 No.20676857 >>20671638 'found himself annoyed' annoys me more desu.

Anonymous Thu Jul 14 14:00:07 2022 No.20676909

>>20673759
If you have a newer edition of Gardens (post 2007 I think) Erikson provides an introduction which kinda sums up all the problems with it.
He goes on about being ambitious and never spoonfeeding exposition comparing it to "writing history".
But I think he got so caught up in the perceived flaws of fantasy that he forgets to make things coherent, you never start a history book and have no fucking idea what's going on.
Like the Agricola is one person's life in the context of a massive empire but Tacitus still gives the reader context, and even skipping this context still gives you a specific narrative about a certain period in the title subject's life.

Anonymous Thu Jul 14 14:22:57 2022 No.20677002

>>20676909
I think this is a very valid flaw of Malazan but also why many people, myself included, think it's amazing the more you read.
Especially including esselmounts books which at more world lore and more depth to side characters (often main ones too).

It can be jarring but I really do think Malazan is best read across both authors in chronological order.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 14:28:13 2022 No.20677023 >>20677002 so it never gets good, and thats what makes it good?

Anonymous Thu Jul 14 14:52:01 2022 No.20677079

>>20675580
No its fucking not, lmao. Your reading comprehension must be trash
>n writing, a “register” is nothing more than a name for a kind of diction, which is nothing more than a name for a certain, distinctive way of saying something—so we talk about “high” and “low” registers (e.g., the highish “Father” and the lower “Pop”), grand and vernacular diction, mock-heroic diction, clichéd registers, and so on.
How do you not understand, for example, the difference between "Greetings, father," and "how ya doin' pop?" One of them is very regal and old-timey sounding and the other is very colloquial and informal

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 15:04:03 2022 No.20677128 >>20676446 Martin lost his ability to write when he lost complete control of his waistline. Notice how fat writers always get worse over time. They never improve with age.

Anonymous Thu Jul 14 15:04:14 2022 No.20677129

>>20677079
The diction of that excerpt uses is hard for a lot of English speakers to read. It's technically correct, but the conveyance of information is hampered by the emphasis being in the wrong place every fucking sentence. So it takes more effort to parse, this trips a lot of people up.

Basically that anon outed himself;f as a pseud.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 15:07:24 2022 No.20677148 >>20677128 >Notice how fat writers always get worse over time. They never improve with age. All of Dumas' classics are from the 2nd half of his career and that's just the first fat writer I can think of

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 15:07:54 2022 No.20677150 >>20677148 >dumbass

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 15:10:43 2022 No.20677162 >>20677129 >Basically that anon outed himself;f as a pseud. Which anon, the one who originally posted the excerpt or the one who said it was meaningless word salad?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 15:11:23 2022 No.20677164 >>20677162 The latter

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 15:11:49 2022 No.20677167 >>20677023 Malazan fans are indeed considered brain dead in most jurisdictions.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 15:15:58 2022 No.20677190 >>20672783 I read like 10 of them in high school. I still have the maps of Ankh Morpork and the Disc on my PC. I really wanted to learn as much as possible about its world, but then I moved on to more serious literature.

Anonymous Thu Jul 14 15:16:43 2022 No.20677193

>>20677023
You either love Malazan or you don't. The quality of the writing is consistent after the first book. If you believe it's awful writing, then it's going to be consistently awful for you to read the series. If you love the first few books, there's a good chance you'll love them all. Hate them and you'll probably hate them all. I'm in a weird place with Steven Erikson. Not a fan of his writing style, but quite addicted to his books.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 15:18:32 2022 No.20677204 >>20677190 >but then I moved on to more serious literature. Not sure I like what you're implying there mister

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 15:44:25 2022 No.20677278 >>20677204 Probably serious as in tone.

Anonymous Thu Jul 14 15:44:37 2022 No.20677280

>>20677023
I was invested from gotm because I liked it, but idk I also think I'm not a brainlet and I enjoy the world building, that's why I like fantasy. I already planned to read all the books when I started so I imagined what I didn't know would be explained, and it was.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 15:46:01 2022 No.20677285 I don't know anons. I'm getting sick of dragons and elves. Is this something that will eventually pass or am I burnt out on fantasy?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 15:50:05 2022 No.20677298 File: 206 KB, 400x285, file.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>20677285 no elves, no dragons.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 15:50:12 2022 No.20677299 >>20677285 The only fantasy book with both dragons and elves I've read is Silmarillion (no, I won't read about the jew midgets looking for their Zion).

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 15:54:28 2022 No.20677324 >>20677285 what about dragons which are actually mechanical fighter jets?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 15:57:28 2022 No.20677332 >>20677298 Too bad the rest of the series is terrible. >>20677299 Have any fave recommendations?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 16:03:21 2022 No.20677351 >>20677332 I can't know what you enjoy, so I'll recommend the American pre-WWII pulps.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 16:04:20 2022 No.20677356 >>20677285 This is a you problem retard. It's incredibly easy to never read fantasy with that stuff in it

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 16:32:15 2022 No.20677450 >>20677298 >>20677332 I don't get it bros. How did the quality tank that fucking hard. I mean it's not like the first two books were anything special to begin with, but compared to Oathbringer they're masterworks.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 16:35:01 2022 No.20677466 File: 26 KB, 399x242, Its our bread and butter.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] I need some comfy weekend reading bros. Do I finish the books I'm only lukewarm on right now, or go to the library and pick up The Last Unicorn?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 16:46:43 2022 No.20677511 I only care for neutral to good endings and I hate when authors insert their cuck fetish into books The main character gets the girl and evil is defeated

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 16:50:11 2022 No.20677525 >>20677511 Main character retires with his waifu to a cabin in the woods to raise a couple of children.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 16:51:28 2022 No.20677529 >>20677450 didn't read, what was so bad about them? spoiler if needed

Anonymous Thu Jul 14 16:52:19 2022 No.20677535

>>20677450
>I don't get it bros. How did the quality tank that fucking hard. I mean it's not like the first two books were anything special to begin with, but compared to Oathbringer they're masterworks.
Brando spent around 10+ years rewriting the first book over and over again before finding a publisher. It was polished. The second one was the obviously polished as well due to that. But the third? Fourth? Those are normal Brando books. It's quite illuminating how shit are normal writers when compared to webnovel writers. They basically only rewrite in direst of circumstances, each chapter getting minor fixes and grammar errors at most before being published. And yet they consistently remain only slightly worse than published stuff. The Wandering Inn gets 25k+ chapter every 4-5 days and I'd rather read that than another bland Sanderson chapter, because it has soul.

This what having VISION means, a story to tell and write, instead of slowly crawling towards finishing a book. Polish is always secondary to a good story.

Anonymous Thu Jul 14 16:53:57 2022 No.20677546

>>20677529
dunno about the fourth book, but the third one was shit. Half of it felt like ghost-writen slog, the rest of it was barely enjoyable. I genuinely couldn't believe it was the same author as the last two when I read it, the drop in quality was massive.

Anonymous Thu Jul 14 17:00:36 2022 No.20677580

>>20676909
>Gardens
>That intro
But Deadhouse Gates is just as problematic so far. His prose is far more passable than a lot of fantasy, including Sanderson's and Abercrombie's, but the actual narrative content is worse than DBZ, save he doesn't stop to recap every third page.

I get many people want epic pseudohistory with an anime narrative tacked on, it's not for me, and there's better sources.

He wanted to replicate polytheisms with his own excessive cosmos.
Why not just read non-fiction history at that point? Or historical fantasy?

I've commented before on his lettersalad naming conventions too. It's indicative of his larger problem: committing to a half-baked complexity-for-its-own-sake mindset rather than boiling things down to their essence and focusing on the actual narrative and characters. Maybe he does better development on the latter in this book, but given how the former is going all sorts of wrong here, I'm ejecting.

What next anons?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 17:44:13 2022 No.20677756 >>20677535 But here's the thing, sandersons earlier books are fine. Again nothing special, but I cannot for the life of me remember any other sanderson book that had such a meandering drawn out narrative as oathbringer and rhythm.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 17:49:29 2022 No.20677774 >>20677580 Read Stations of the Tide by Swanwick with me, anon.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 18:00:08 2022 No.20677812 >>20671635 It's so interesting how whenever thic pic pops up, people will either claim this is a good representation or an extremely stupid representation.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 18:02:39 2022 No.20677827 >>20677812 It's extremely stupid in the context that anon keeps using it. If I know nothing about gnosticism and then see the request for recs and that pic I can't recommend anything even if I have read something appropriate because it's so incoherent

Anonymous Thu Jul 14 18:15:23 2022 No.20677875

>>20677756
Sanderson basically doesn't know how to pace things. There's no climaxes until the last 10% of any book, which is fine for the shorter books where there's only a few things to be resolved, but Stormlight builds up like thirty threads over the course of a single book that're all left hanging until the end.

Anonymous Thu Jul 14 18:17:10 2022 No.20677885
File: 46 KB, 657x527, 1652056582301.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>20677875
No but that's my confusion. There's an article on his website where he specifically states he had to rework like half of one of the mistborn books for the pacing alone.
Where the fuck did that polish go?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 18:25:12 2022 No.20677921 >>20677535 Since you like to read Wandering Inn, it's obvious you have shit tastes.

Anonymous Thu Jul 14 18:30:24 2022 No.20677943

>>20677885
To be generous, I'd say he just really wants to write Stormlight because it's something he's planned for a while, but being known as that guy who writes a lot means he has to, well, write a lot and not spend so much time polishing. It's not like he's not writing decent stuff, I think Era 2 Mistborn is actually pretty solid overall, just Stormlight 3/4 became something of an agonisingly slow crawl with like two cool bits each.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 19:17:08 2022 No.20678123 >>20677943 Not saying it would solve all the issues, but I wonder if the stormlight archives would be better if Sanderson cut out or reduced Shallans part in the story. Sanderson just can't seem to write female characters competently.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 19:26:53 2022 No.20678166 File: 1.66 MB, 991x2975, Beginner's Guide To Fantasy.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] Is Wheel of Time 5+ really shit tier? It has Rothfuss at God-tier, so I don't know if I can take the chart seriously.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 19:34:59 2022 No.20678201 >>20677943 >I think Era 2 Mistborn is actually pretty solid overall Solid pile of boring. Era 3 better be sci-fi porn or I'm gonna be done with this fat fuck.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 19:45:48 2022 No.20678252 File: 220 KB, 437x303, nice.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>20678166 This chart is hilarious.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 19:49:32 2022 No.20678268 Can I come here for a little bit? /wg/ is having a meltdown again

Anonymous Thu Jul 14 19:59:56 2022 No.20678319

>>20678123
I don't think Shallan is necessarily bad, she just feels like she doesn't fit into the rest of the stories. She has a passing friendship with/maybe attraction to Kaladin, is Adolin's fiancee, but she just so often has her own 'thing' going on. Even Kaladin having killed her brother feels... Irrelevant, almost? Like, the person Kaladin killed could have been ANY shardbearer, that was sort of the point that it was fucking insane he managed to do that.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 20:31:56 2022 No.20678442 >>20678268 Get out of here, you faggot.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 21:12:26 2022 No.20678603 Three Body Problem sucks so far. Should I just drop it and start Hyperion or should I struggle through until the end?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 21:17:55 2022 No.20678631 >>20678268 This place is worse.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 21:26:47 2022 No.20678673 So, Ice is about a guy who's obsessed with an albino girl and hunts her down around the world to rape her while he hallucinates and the next ice age destroys humanity. The 50th anniversary edition has a helpful essay about the author.

Anonymous Thu Jul 14 21:31:35 2022 No.20678698

>>20677285
Outside of LOTR/Hobbit, Eragon and Discworld, I haven't seen any elves and dragons in the dozens upon dozens of fantasy books I've read over the years, and the elves in Discworld are more like the original trickster assholes and the dragons inbred domesticated pets. This is about as dumb of a dated stereotype as every fantasy story being about chosen one farm boy.

Anonymous Thu Jul 14 21:33:20 2022 No.20678705

>>20677885
to be fair he wrote all 3 of the original mistborn trilogy at the same time. he had them all written before the release of the first one. i could only guess it would be easier to edit/rework once it's all done. with stormlight he's kind of just writing into the abyss.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 21:36:08 2022 No.20678714 >>20678705 And this hot garbage is supposed to be his magnum opus or something? Interesting approach.

Anonymous Thu Jul 14 21:44:33 2022 No.20678757

>>20678714
I think he gave himself too much leeway by outlining it exactly 10 books with all the hardcovers being between 1000-1300 pages. He just wants to be Wheel of Time 2. He always stresses he is a really big outline writer. I don't know how Oathbringer and Rhythm of War got seemingly so out of control if he is sticking to his outline. He seems like a guy with a big plan but those last 2 books were big stinkers.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 21:55:02 2022 No.20678791 >>20678757 Everyone seems to hate oathbringer and Row. Can you tell me what went wrong in those books without spoilers? I've only read way of kings.

Anonymous Thu Jul 14 21:55:42 2022 No.20678795

>>20678698
I see dragons fairly frequently, and elves show up in some webnovel stuff (moreso the LitRPG end as that's often at least semi-parodic), though dragons are definitely diminished in appearances but they tend to be more important to make up for it. Dragons are rarely just 'a thing that is there', they're always big deals.

Anonymous Thu Jul 14 21:58:32 2022 No.20678812

>>20678757
I think he realised the events he wanted to happen in both books were nowhere near enough to FILL each book so he had to add in more. Dalinar's whole arc in Oathbringer was definitely planned, it feels cohesive and such, but the rest of the book feels like a bunch of other stuff just happening around. RoW, similarly, feels only sort of cohesive with Kaladin's parts, because despite ostensibly being the Venli book it's not really about her, which sort of stems from Venli not really being part of the initial plan, her sister was, but Sanderson went "Wait I have too many protagonists who are righteous soldiers trying to do the best for their people" so he went "Okay let's have a selfish scholar attempting to be good after being given too many second chances". Which, fair, Venli is probably more interesting but she suffers from having nothing to actually do.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 22:07:06 2022 No.20678849 >>20676400 yeah just like you

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 22:09:21 2022 No.20678867 >>20677466 Neither, you will go to the library and pick up The Cadwal Chronicles by Jack Vance.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 22:19:43 2022 No.20678899 >>20678867 *Cadfael Chronicles

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 23:17:39 2022 No.20679108 Just finished Past Master by Lafferty. It sure was something.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 23:18:59 2022 No.20679114 >>20672049 >TWI >serious fantasy kys

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 23:46:17 2022 No.20679207 File: 1.88 MB, 280x200, shocked chicken.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >when you see Meng Hao with a bashful look on his face

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 14 23:56:26 2022 No.20679253 No one cares, xianxia faggot

Anonymous Fri Jul 15 00:30:46 2022 No.20679405

>>20678166
WoT 5-7/8 or so are pretty slog. Much braid-tugging. This is canon, nobody disagrees.
8/9-11 resume the quality.
Sanderson takes over 12-14, so... it's a reasonably decent wrap-up considering the main author died. You can tell when the Jordan-written chapters get inserted around Sanderson's. Thankfully, Jordan left a ton of notes and chapters for Sanderson, so it's still fairly Jordan's conclusion, not like D&D finishing ASOIAF for gurm.
It's a very well-written, comfy series. Very LotR vibes, you can tell Jordan and Tolkien were of similar minds.

I'm thinking Malazan doesn't deserve to be in god-tier.

>>20678603
Abandon it with haste, it is pure meme book. "Hard scifi" is code for "trash writing with muh realism". That it's a Chinese author should be a big clue it's not good.

Hyperion is decent, not great, but a fun read. Read Fall then quit. Endymion was trash.

>>20678698
Malazan has dragons, dragon shapeshifters, and black elves, along with super-orcs (Jaghut). The author is ass at describing anything, but it's pretty obvious what's a reskin of what.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 15 00:44:15 2022 No.20679458 >>20674362 >A millennium of ESLs dominating common vernacular what you mean?

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 15 00:45:06 2022 No.20679464 >>20674566 Truth shines brother

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 15 00:54:57 2022 No.20679513 >>20677128 wasn't he always fat, also moorcock is kind of fat no?

Anonymous Fri Jul 15 01:03:22 2022 No.20679553
File: 31 KB, 301x475, cover.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

So, for some reason I went back to 1995 and read The Diamond Age. I guess I had just heard too many incidental references to it lately. Some of the sci-fi concepts are obviously highly in vogue right now, which would explain why, but reading it was a pretty mixed experience. Starts off rough, a lot of rough patches throughout, and basically no satisfying ending. As a not-too-distant-future story written from that uniquely early-90s "End of History" perspective, its "unrealistic" worldbuilding was a lot more jarring than that in even slightly older novels, like from the 80s (the premise of the setting is neo-colonialism in China). I don't think sci-fi writers should be forced to try to make reasonable "predictions"--they are not futurists--they should be as creative as they want. But it's kind of hard not to see it as a failure of imagination when Stephenson suggests that in this world of nanotech and powerful AI, machines wouldn't be able to convincingly imitate human voices (for example).

If it sounds like I'm missing the point of the book, I guess that's because I'm trying to put my finger on exactly what about it occasionally brought me out of the story. Obviously, it's really the story of Nell, the main character, which is as gripping and tragic as it needs to be to make up for any complaints I have written above.
Actually, I think it would make a good TV series. It wouldn't have to follow exactly the same plot, but there would still be plenty of room for all the best characters. I would really like to see Judge Fang, the Confucian judge with a Hong Kong-Brooklyn accent, wheeling and dealing with the Master's wisdom on screen.

Anonymous Fri Jul 15 01:05:48 2022 No.20679566

>>20679458
>793 Norse Invasion begins. Conquerors speaking Old Norse take over, marry the local women, learn English badly, inflict their hybridized speech patterns on their children
>1066 Norman Conquest starts. French becomes the official language of the English Court. Anybody with a speck of ambition learns French and teaches it to their children, once again English is mangled and simplified in the aftermath
>14th century, proto-linguists, convinced by French influence that English is a Romance Language, inflict Latinized spellings on words with Old English roots
>1604, British Empire begins attempting to build colonies across the globe. English becomes the lingua franca for billions of people. Poor whites working alongside foreigners begin to adopt simplified speech patterns. This becomes the normal way of speaking for the lower classes
>1776, America goes hard. Descendants of those worked alongside African slaves begin coming into power, bringing their speech patterns with them
This doesn't even get into the changes of the 20th century. English isn't alone in getting simplified, it happens to pretty much all Lingua Franca. Mandarin is fucking baby-tier compared to Cantonese. But English was getting raped for a long time even before the Empire, so it's even simpler than normal. Now that the influx of new speakers isn't quite so exponential it's starting to pick up some grammar it dropped over the years, though. Y'all bringing back the second person plural as standard grammar, as an easy example.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 15 01:08:52 2022 No.20679581 >>20679566 >Mandarin is fucking baby-tier compared to Cantonese He writes this, without irony I assume, as if it means anything. As if he doesn't know why Mandarin is called Mandarin or what a mandarin is.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 15 01:13:04 2022 No.20679593 >>20679566 weren't old norse and old anglish very similar?

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 15 01:14:24 2022 No.20679602 >>20679581 i don't speak chinese but i presume he was referring to the writing system of simplified chinese?

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 15 01:16:45 2022 No.20679613 >>20679566 >Now that the influx of new speakers isn't quite so exponential with the internet and globalization?

Anonymous Fri Jul 15 01:17:06 2022 No.20679615

>>20679581
It's true, I'm not hugely familiar with the history of Chinese languages. I know only that Mandarin has been the lingua franca for a really long time, and that it's got like half the number of tones as Cantonese
>>20679593
Beowulf was likely written after the Norse invasion, much of what we think of as Old English had already been affected.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 15 01:18:49 2022 No.20679627 >>20679613 I believe it's sort of reached a saturation point. I could be wrong, though, I don't actually have any stats on this point

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 15 01:21:34 2022 No.20679638 >>20679615 old norse and old english were incredibly similar and speakers of both could understand each other easily

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 15 01:28:10 2022 No.20679662 >>20678867 >>20678899 Appreciate both the recs anons. Going to end up powering through this Warhammer book so it’s off my plate, but I’ll keep those in mind.

Anonymous Fri Jul 15 01:28:46 2022 No.20679663

>>20679638
I suppose I'm thinking of "Primitive Old English" which I've read would have been intelligible for speakers of Old Frisian, but that Old Norse had split off from the other Germanic languages by then too significantly to be easily understood. It's a reconstructed language, though, so low confidence on all of that

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 15 01:29:06 2022 No.20679665 >>20678698 Dragons are way more common than elves in fantasy Especially in all the commonly recommended stuff. Even in Malazan the tiste arnt really elves. I don't remember them having pointy ears.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 15 01:31:00 2022 No.20679674 >>20679665 There's often 'elves by a different name', though. Ethereal, magical race that's more in tune with the world.

Anonymous Fri Jul 15 01:45:58 2022 No.20679723

>>20679602
No, he's talking about spoken language, and in any case simplified Chinese is just a faster writing system, it's not lexically simplified in any way. You can "convert" between simplified and traditional Chinese just by changing your font, basically.

>>20679615
>Mandarin has been the lingua franca for a really long time
That is pretty much what I'm getting at. A Mandarin is an official sent from the Imperial capital to project authority into the provinces. Mandarin is the administrative language that they spoke. Cantonese is an autochthonous language of people living in a densely multiethnic environment with a very complex non-Chinese historical language substrate (the languages of 'Baiyue' peoples). Mandarin is a practical compromise language used to communicate with them (and many other peoples). In another context you could imagine a pidgin taking its place. That's why I say the fact you point out is obvious, that it proceeds directly from the premise of "what Mandarin is."
However, I really disagree with your point overall. Not just with Chinese languages (where the spoken differences have no effect on the potential expressiveness of the written language), but with your interpretation of the history of English and your conclusions about how language change affect expression. No working linguists would agree with your conclusion. Most would argue that the events you chronicled resulted in the introduction of additional complexity, not simplification. All of the distinctions of English that you noted in an early comment, like the absence noun genders and declensions, constitute the elimination of regular patterns, which are how people naturally learn languages in the first place. You seem to be thinking of it like "English class in school is just reading, Spanish/Latin/Whatever class is a lot of memorizing unfamiliar rules."

I do just want to say that there certainly is a continuity of languages that linguists would classify as simpler or more complex. That scale doesn't particularly affect how difficult or easy a language is for foreigners to learn (which depends much more on language contact and families). Japanese is a very linguistically simple language, but it's rather difficult to learn. The most simplified natural languages in the world are probably the Polynesian. I imagine it would actually be pretty difficult to learn a language where every word sounds almost the same (e.g., think of Hawaiian, where everything sounds like "Keaweaweʻula Kīwalaʻō Kauikeaouli Kaleiopapa Kalani Waiakua Kalanikau Iokikilo Kīwalaʻō i ke kapu Kamehameha.")

Anonymous Fri Jul 15 01:56:09 2022 No.20679753

>>20679723
A fair number of my points are paraphrasing McWhorter, so I'm not sure it's fair to say that no working linguists would describe it this way. His explanation for the loss of linguistic patterns is built off his study of pidgin languages, and aligns well, I think, with an intuitive explanation for why languages regularly exposed to outside influence tend to have fewer grammar idiosyncrasies than those which were isolated. If all we're really disagreeing about is the definition of simple vs complex, though, I happily cede the point, I don't have a strong opinion on how to classify a language with fewer rules.
I guess I also don't really see how Mandarin being a compromise language diminishes the point. Its state compared to Cantonese is a result of needing to be intelligible to many people who don't speak it natively. Such are the languages of an empire.

Anonymous Fri Jul 15 02:08:56 2022 No.20679803

>>20679753
>an intuitive explanation for why languages regularly exposed to outside influence tend to have fewer grammar idiosyncrasies than those which were isolated
I guess that's about what I meant by "language contact." Maybe I could rephrase your initial argument as "English is a language that has undergone an unusually high degree of transformation through contact with other languages spoken nearby, which should give it features familiar to a range of non-native speakers and make it easier to learn." Unfortunately for that conclusion, in the case of English, it was transformed alternately by languages from different families, rendering it unfamiliar in many ways to speakers of those other languages. And I think we must agree that English is "objectively" a harder than average language to learn, based on millions of anecdotes at least (so we're just trying to frame a reason why that is the case, when it might not necessarily be expected based on its status as a global lingua franca).

>I also don't really see how Mandarin being a compromise language diminishes the point. Its state compared to Cantonese is a result of needing to be intelligible to many people who don't speak it natively.
Fair enough. I guess my objection came from the feeling that the distinction there is somewhat intentional, rather than a purely "natural" language evolution. And I'm also not so sure that these differences make Mandarin any easier to learn than Cantonese for non-Chinese speakers. I guess nine tones are harder to memorize than four, but for most learners the employment of tones at all is going to be a bigger barrier than the step from four to nine.

Anonymous Fri Jul 15 02:20:17 2022 No.20679843

>>20679803
>And I think we must agree that English is "objectively" a harder than average language to learn, based on millions of anecdotes at least
That's an interesting question to me, honestly. I've sort of started thinking that it just gets extra complaints because it's the one everybody has to learn, but I've never done any real digging. I have to think someone's done studies on learning difficulty for a given language outside of the speaker's native language family

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 15 02:26:34 2022 No.20679864 >start reading a book >it's a genre retelling of a classic Ahhh This has only ever worked when you're redoing something adventure based like monte cristo

Anonymous Fri Jul 15 02:32:09 2022 No.20679877

>>20679843
>I have to think someone's done studies on learning difficulty for a given language outside of the speaker's native language family
Without even getting that scientific, you can observe it in practice. How long is a standard ESOL curriculum compared to other languages, as taught by the same institutions? How many hours do people need to spend on the English duolingo app or whatever, to reach a certain level of fluency?

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 15 02:36:18 2022 No.20679893 >>20679674 They are older, not all are magical though and certainly not attuned to the world.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 15 03:02:10 2022 No.20679967 What's the best version of each LotR?

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 15 03:20:21 2022 No.20680028 >>20670686 they're like regular books but with lasers

Anonymous Fri Jul 15 03:49:40 2022 No.20680113
File: 44 KB, 600x900, Blindsight-Cover.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

Just finished pic related, what a fucking ride. Might be my favorite sci-fi book I've ever read. I'm also reading it off the back of the Project Hail Mary, and it really showed how childish and stupid Weir's writing is.

Anonymous Fri Jul 15 03:56:23 2022 No.20680129

>>20670686
>sci-fi and fantasy
>a wizard did it
>a priest in a white coat did it
>a god did it
Speculative fiction. Speculative fiction is the mainstream of literature. All great stories were speculative in nature until about 200 years ago. 'literary fiction' is a temporary aberration. An artifact of the Enlightenment, which probably won't survive another 200 years.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 15 04:03:43 2022 No.20680147 >>20672020 Is there anything you would recommend? I've only found one book I finder decent. Any erotica eludes me

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 15 04:04:26 2022 No.20680149 >>20678698 I just read nine books in a row with both dragons and elves anon. Not sure what to tell you. It's a stereotype for a reason.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 15 04:07:13 2022 No.20680155 File: 82 KB, 462x652, Doc_Savage.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>20677351 Thanks.

Anonymous Fri Jul 15 06:08:06 2022 No.20680622 [DELETED]

>>20676573
>Ideas that were seeded in the beginning were thrown out and substituted with meaningless flashy fights.
>Previously intelligent characters were suddenly dumbed down.
>It lost the man vs world aspect as soon as Zach became prominent in the story and had a spell up his ass to solve every problem.[\spoiler]
The entire third arc felt underwhelming.
>>20676598
>Quatach was still alive since the flower didn't eat his soul, and the dragon mage took both the crown AND the orb with him and none of this is addressed again
This is one thing mol does better than other fantasy novels, it makes the world and characters feel real (even if it's brusquely handled.)

Anonymous Fri Jul 15 06:11:36 2022 No.20680634

>>20676573
>Ideas that were sown in the beginning were thrown out and substituted with meaningless flashy fights.
>Previously intelligent characters were suddenly dumbed down.
>It lost the man vs world aspect as soon as Zach became prominent in the story and had a spell up his ass to solve every problem.
The entire third arc felt underwhelming.
>>20676598
>Quatach was still alive since the flower didn't eat his soul, and the dragon mage took both the crown AND the orb with him and none of this is addressed again
This is one thing mol does better than other fantasy novels, it makes the world and characters feel real (even if it's brusquely handled.)

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 15 06:19:26 2022 No.20680666 File: 999 KB, 955x740, 3.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] Is this a good book?

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 15 06:20:15 2022 No.20680669 >>20680666 Go back to whatever hell hole you crawled from.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 15 06:21:36 2022 No.20680675 >>20680669 Come on don't be like that

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 15 06:23:53 2022 No.20680686 >>20680666 >E-celeb Kill yourself.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 15 06:24:29 2022 No.20680689 >>20680686 Wtf I'm just asking, I don't know anything about that book

Anonymous Fri Jul 15 06:36:36 2022 No.20680724
File: 11 KB, 244x250, rr.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>Author makes the first book seem like a Hunger Games/Battle Royale ripoff
>Rest off the series is actually a Greco-Roman space opera with Roman civil wars and Servile Wars mixed in

Any other /sffg/ series where the genre drastically shifts and the series is better off as a result? I tried the Sun Eater series but it felt like a step down desu

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 15 06:52:32 2022 No.20680762 >>20680666 Yes absolutely, best space opera series out there. Read it now.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 15 06:56:57 2022 No.20680779 New thread >>20680777

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 15 08:53:46 2022 No.20681134 >>20678319 God does neither of those story beats between Kaladin and Shallan go fucking anywhere by the end of rhythm? I almost want to hire an editor to trim the fat off of oathbringer and see how much better it would be.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 15 08:54:52 2022 No.20681139 >>20678791 meandering plot trying desperately to be longer than it has any right being.

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