Last Stand Edition
Previous Thread:>Recommended reading charts (Look here before asking for vague recs)
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Never going to be created.
What are you guys currently or planning on reading?
Due to unforeseen circumstances, I could only read two chapters, Arya’s third chapter and and Ned’s eight chapter. Nonetheless, those chapters were great. But I’m astound at Ned’s denial even as Arya tells her that men are after him and willing to kill him and he just brushes them off as mummers. His rejection of trying to kill Daenerys is another. Though I wonder if it’s just his ptsd from the war controlling his actions.
is this how polish people actually see themselves?
Yes, Poland is always the victim and the underdog, without exception. There's Poles that unironically call their country the "Christ of nations".
I can't find anything worth reading. The recommendation charts in the OP are fucking terrible and just rec the same dozen or so authors over and over and over.
absolutely noxious mentality.
hilarious that in the battle depicted in OP image, both armies were around the same size anyway.
I started playing the BattleTech strategy game on PC and since it was my first real dive into the series I picked this up as well. It's pretty good so far. Basically what I expected as nothing great, but fun for what it is.
i mean, nietzsche also said this
virgin incel proto-tranny who died pathetically in bed, not at all a wise man.
Still not sure what to read after Reaper. It has been a while since I read any DW books so I might read the two (good) Doctor Who Timewyrm novels and find some other titles I want.
he was having a go at Wagner here, who was a german nationalist, the same reason he attacked anti-semites (despite actually having been quite anti-semitic when he was on good terms with him)
afaik, turns out nietzsche didn't have any polish ancestors anyway
I'm planning on buying The Silmarillion and Sigurd and Gudrún, in a two for the price of one sort of deal.
thoughts?
Dazzling
Enchanting
Supports trans rights.
Good morning sirs! I called some Sanderson fans at the book store today names!
I thought it was BREATHTAKING
>I'm 20% done with my first scifi book I'm writing
feels good bros
My 49th favourite fantasy book
>by
Long odds squared; pass.
congrats user!! now share it with us
I will come summer when it's finished.
Is the lacking characterisation and nearly templated story beats in xianxia intentional, or does it just come across really poorly due to translation which is why western xianxia stuff tends to feel a bit better to read?
How do you know? It's like sandersoi making a 30 second YouTube video to tell you he is 6 percent done with snorlight 5. How the fuck does he figure that? Is he 6 percent done with his goal for 1200 pages or what? It's arbitrary and I refuse that even he is so formulaic that he can give completion numbers. It's so soulless. That said, I'm sure 20 percent is a reasonable number, I forgive you.
Given how thoroughly he seems to plan and outline his writing, I think he does genuinely keep track of at least roughly how close he is to finishing by breaking it down into its pieces.
The End Has Come, The Apocalypse Triptych #3 - John Joseph Adams & Hugh Howey, editors (2015)
Trilogy overview
And so the trilogy concluded. For me, it was a definite failure in terms of enjoyment by the end, but it was informative. Without the first story of this anthology I probably would've been considerably more negative. Most of all I came to appreciate just how much having a few great stories affects what I think of anthologies/collections and how easily I ignore the disliked stories when I'm not actively qualifying them like this. It probably makes all my ratings of collected stories where I didn't write up anything about them invalid. I still don't know if it'd be for the best to remove the star ratings though.
Regardless of what I think of it, this is a relatively successful anthology, even though it's a series. That isn't saying much because most any anthology doesn't sell well at all and the ceiling for even the best selling ones seems to be rather low compared to novels or even single author collections. As far as I've read, the vast majority of professional anthologies are quite lucky to break even on sales. There's a similar situation with magazines these days as well.
BANNERLESS - Carrie Vaughn
A very interesting post-apocalyptic pastoral crime investigation story. An investigator is sent to assess the claims of an unsanctioned pregnancy. It was surprisingly upbeat and hinted at a relatively positive world. When I finished, I wanted an entire novel. Apparently a few years later she wrote a novel of the same name, which I'll read eventually. I haven't liked anything else from her, so I may be disappointed, but I'm willing to take that risk. Sometimes there may only be a single work from an author that's enjoyable, which can be a bother because that makes it more difficult to know whether to look at more from an author or not.
Highly Enjoyable
LIKE ALL BEAUTIFUL PLACES - Megan Arkenberg
A VR developer is trying recreate an immersive experience of San Francisco.
Blah
DANCING WITH A STRANGER IN THE LAND OF NOD - Will McIntosh
A man and woman with locked-in syndrome spouses take delight in each other.
Meh
THE SEVENTH DAY OF DEER CAMP - Scott Sigler
The alien children must be protected and he'd do all he could for them. ANONYMOUS, the Yea Forums originated group, had become the most powerful social movement in the world and ensured that the governments wouldn't interfere. lolwut. There's so much I could say about this, but this isn't the time or place to do so.
Meh
PROTOTYPE - Sarah Langan
More than a thousand years have passed since the previous story. Immortal cyborgs rule the world. Humanity has fallen.
Ok
ACTS OF CREATION - Chris Avellone
An interrogation of a psionic. There's way too much context missing here for me to have enjoyed it.
Blah
RESISTANCE - Seanan McGuire
More and more misery porn. Fungus triumphant.
Blah
WANDERING STAR - Leife Shallcross
A patchwork quilt is used to tell the story of the destruction of Australia by asteroid.
Blah
HEAVEN COME DOWN - Ben H. Winters
The truth of "God" is revealed.
Blah
AGENT NEUTRALIZED - David Wellington
It's now 10 years after the zombie pandemic. This one lacks even more context than the previous one. It's basically an incoherent car chase scene interspersed with flashback infodumps and other problems.
Blah
GOODNIGHT EARTH - Annie Bellet
Sometime in the future some genetically engineered survivors are trying to find sanctuary.
Blah
CARRIERS - Tananarive Due
Several decades later all 15 remaining disease carriers are confined and sealed off from rest of the world. One last surprise awaits one of them.
Blah
IN THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF THE PROMISED LAND - Robin Wasserman
60 years have passed and the young have become the old. Dementia has set in. The younger generation grow desirous.
Enjoyable
THE UNCERTAINTY MACHINE - Jamie Ford
A wealthy man in his shelter with the machine that predicted the end of the world waits...and waits.
Blah
MARGIN OF SURVIVAL - Elizabeth Bear
Almost everyone is dead. A lone woman searches for food. This is a strange story that may not be what it seems.
Meh
JINGO AND THE HAMMERMAN - Jonathan Maberry
Two guys try to make the best of the zombie apocalypse.
Blah
THE LAST MOVIE EVER MADE - Charlie Jane Anders
It's time for one last movie of ultimate mayhem. How many will die during filming this time? This trilogy of stories had, for me, one of the most irritating narrators I've ever read.
Blah
THE GRAY SUNRISE - Jake Kerr
A father and sun escape by boat before the comet hits and do what they must to survive. The father reminisces about his life.
Meh
THE GODS HAVE NOT DIED IN VAIN - Ken Liu
The first generation of digital minds that weren't originally human has made itself known.
Enjoyable
THE HAPPIEST PLACE... - Mira Grant
A disease has killed almost everyone. Come see life in post-apocalyptic Disneyland.
Blah
IN THE WOODS - Hugh Howey
500 years later, they emerge from cryo and observe the state of the world.
Blah
BLESSINGS - Nancy Kress
The domestication of humankind has been a success, but still a few resist.
Meh
are you serious? Please let me know cuz if it does then i definitely wont buy it
There are so many good books ideas but so few actually good books. Kinda disappointing, where'd all the decent literature go?
What are some other books like pic related, about completely inaccurate fictionalised planets like Mars or Venus?
Sanderson has no plan, he's full of shit. He makes shit up to tie together his filler
That's a lot of Blahs
It's a lot of stories I probably should have quit reading after the first that somehow kept getting worse.
>inaccurate
How do you know?
Been there
thats actually completely accurate. (((They))) just don't want you to know.
Saruman did nothing wrong
The Hawaiinigger chapter of Kings of Paradise immediately drained my will to continue reading.
>indecisive on what to read next
>begin rereading every PKD short story
Oh me
Didnt mean to quote.
Being named Sauronman was wrong
He's literally talking about himself.
Hugo award nominees for best novel:
>a desolation called peace
LGBT
>the galaxy and the ground within
LGBT
>light from uncommon stars
LGBT
>a master of djinn
LGBT, and the author is a black guy who absolutely loathes white people
>project hail mary
Mainstream of the mainstream, might stand a chance
>she who became the sun
LGBT
What went wrong?
What am I in for?
Knowing Wolfe, a whole lot of nothing.
what's your iq
to hihg
It's just the natural involution of liberalism, all according to plan.
books about white male protagonists breeding brown women?
awards chosen by committee have always been worthless.
I hate women.
Ever see the animated movie Heavy Metal from the 80s where some American nerdy kid gets taken to a fantasy world and becomes a Chad warrior getting nothing but pussy and respect? It's like that. Also based.
He was Sauron's true rival
>
You've significantly bumped that book up my backlog.
Looking forward to it then, I need some escapistkino. Thanks user
>christ of nations
>join satanic nato alliance to fuck with russia
>start ww3
do I read the hobbit before lotr
It's not strictly necessary but you should. Bear in mind that The Hobbit is written for younger readers so it's not really representative of LotR.
>a desolation called peace
this book got a lot of good stuff in it
Love some trans BIPOC SFF.
This is a terrible novel. I absolutely do not recommend it. Read BoTNS, that's nice but this one especially The Wizard is extremely tiresome and draining.
>mfw bipoc doesn't mean bisexual person of colour like I kept thinking it did
I genuinely love Wolfe, but this is the most hilarious and trollish thing
"The most exiting and amazing thing happened. No, I'm not gonna write about it"
lmfao
It's a bad example, as it's actually narrated in some detail later.
He does something similar with a certain murder in the 2nd book. raises the expectation in the reader that it will be solved, as the MC claim to know what happened, but won't tell. Yet it's never explicitly revealed. Still, sure, why not? Keep it a proper mystery
THE actual proper example of Wolfe doing this, is by the end of Long Sun. Silk apparently held to most amazing speech to revolutionaries, I can't remember if it was to bring forth peace, or rally them.
The point is that this speech was a really big deal, the entire book was about getting him into that position were he would speak as their to-be elected leader(?), after the previous regime was done away with. Tempering the will of the people.
The narrator of the book goes like: "I'm told the speech was really good, but unfortunately I wasn't there. So I can't tell you exactly what Silk said. lmao"
I get that Wolfe is being smart about this. No actual speech could live up to the hype, it would probably just sound unrealistic or cringe. Leave it to the readers imagination. Then skip the cause, and jump ahead to the effect.
But this felt like such a tease. Sometimes these moments could've been cashed in, rather than skipped.
He does this stuff in some form in almost all his books, I think.