/sffg/ - Science Fiction & Fantasy General

Say No to LITRPG Edition
>When was the last time you said no to litrpg?
>describe how shitty the book was

FANTASY
Selected:
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General:
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Flowchart:
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SCIENCE FICTION
Selected:
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General:
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NPR's Top 100 Science Fiction & Fantasy Books:
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SF&F author listing with ratings and summaries:
>greatsfandf.com/authors-full-list.php

Previous Threads:

Other urls found in this thread:

amazon.co.uk/Lifecycle-Software-Objects-Ted-Chiang/dp/1596063173
subterraneanpress.com/the-lifecycle-of-software-objects
b-ok.org/s/?q=Childhood's End
youtube.com/watch?v=bSWjrhpuLEI
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

"No!"

Honestly, fuck Euron. He's so goddamn ridiculous I liked the show version of him better.

sanderfag a hack

My girlfriend and I are starting a two-person book club with this book. We don't know much about it going in.

Help, I've been reading a lot of Gibson and Richard Morgan, and need more vague just out of reach world building that their pose delivers really well.

Who else come close in the cyberpunk genre? Or sci-fi in general, I suppose.

You've got Neal Stephenson, but his writing is a lot less stylistic, I'd say? I prefer it but I'm also a dummy who likes Snow Crash a lot and everyone here seems to hate it.

Well the thing is, i'm in a Book club and next month we have "Epic Fantasy" as the month kind of book we have to read, and i really want to read something great with my hommies.
But it has to be a book around 300-350 pages, not too long like Sanderson paper bricks (we had already read mistborn 1). Something with a good world building, nice characters.
We already read king's kiler chronicles, a wizard of earthsea, very good books.
I'm kinda lost and i think the best option it's to read an stand alones book.

I don't know, The Hobbit? Sabriel? The page restriction is kind of harsh for that genre.

Any Crimson Shadow fans here? Think I'm gonna re-read them during March.

Lord Valentine's Castle

Why is Gardens of the Moon so disliked? I'm reading it now and finding it pretty interesting.

Lies of Locke Lamora if you feel like you want to read about bro love

>juggling 101

Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde
The library at mount char

casuals that are "into fantasy" because they read harry potter as a child and played dnd once back in college

it became too popular, and a lot of people on the creative boards define their personality by thinking they are superior to others because of their taste/interests.

It's pretty good, but it's the worst one of the series, so you'll only go up from there.

Webnovels are novels too

Just finished this I'm not sure I liked it and I don't know if I'm in for the long haul. I respect the author's worldbuilding and usually enjoy not getting handholding exposition but even so, his ending converged so messily and his power dynamics were so arcane and obscure it didnt feel mysterious to me after a whole, only tiresome. fucking Lorn got rekt by some rando Tiste Andii (that will turn out to have an epic backstory in book 754, I suppose) that was bs. Also I got Rake shoved down my throat as the coolest baddest fucker ever but I don't want to swallow

Maybe I should give book 2 a chance, I don't know guys

Heh, I stopped midway through it after the MC's forced waifu got incinerated or something in some magic fuckery. Haven't picked it up since.

that cover art is dank though

Finished pic related this evening. I enjoyed it and rate it 4.5 out of 5 stars. Do I dive right in to the next two books or take a break for variety's sake?

depends on what else you have to read

I thought the sequels were better (same goes for his stand-alone books)

Three Hearts and Three Lions

keep going

>tfw scene on the cover is actually in book
Cover alone is almost enough to sell it. Being a Zelazny seals the deal.
Actually 3 shorts. Sci-Fi detective stories with the same MC, the first two of which do not feature robots. Cover is great for building tension toward the final climax of part 3. Zelanzy delivers with his usual flair (more apparent in parts 2-3) and I couldn't help but consider parallels with Asimov's whodonits, though less cerebral.
An enjoyable quick read whose main conceit (a man who evades tracking by the Central Data Authority) is as germane now as it was in '69. I award this 4/5 bardic dolphins.

I never understand how people like this series, I rank it down there with shit like Sword of Truth. I guess Abercrombie is at least a compelling writer, but god; the story and most of the characters are so laughably bad.

>I had been working on a project with another science fiction writer in New Mexico, George R. R. Martin. George gave me some papers on the project to look over. Shannon [Roger’s daughter, age six at the time] came over while I was working and asked me what I was looking at. I said, “These are some ideas George has given me.”

>Sometime later, a local newspaper reporter asked Shannon if she knew where I got my ideas. She answered, “George R. R. Martin gives them to him.”

The first book is definitely the weakest in the series, but it's not bad - I usually start on the third book when I re-read it, though. I honestly don't even remember who kills Lorn, that's a pretty minor event in the scheme of the books - it's purely there to frame the character that replaces her.

And yes, the imagery is pretty cliche - very 80s dungeons and dragons handbook cover. That stops at the waters edge, though - the character's are very much defined by their personalities and dialogue, which are some of the best in any book I've read regardless of genre.

If you can put aside the imagery and forgive him for occaisionally going into full on anthropology professor mode - which you can easily skip over without losing anything - it's going to be your favorite series of all time, especially if you read for characters. If you're more of a Sanderson power level action movie kind of guy that needs big setpieces to stay interested, it's probably not going to do it for you.

>wants epic fantasy
>under 350 pages
choose one

I should also note that the powers aren't meant to be mysterious - if I'm remembering correctly, that's mostly the sticksnare character fucking with people in the early books. You come to fully understand how all magic works as the series progresses, and it's pretty straightforward.

Oh, and Lorn wasn't killed by a Tiste Andii at all, you got that very mixed up. She's killed by an avowed of the Crimson Guard who are some of the most powerful assholes in the entire series. At one point a squad of guardsman with one avowed quite literally kill a god.

Any litrpg where a guy becomes a sexy girl and hates it? Asking for a friend.

>le finger in bum
>less ridiculous
Brainlet

I started fantasy by reading Lord of the Rings when I was 11 and I found Gardens of the Moon very hard to get into.

...

We're reading Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke! This is actually the first book we're reading that is not in the public domain, so you'll have to either buy, borrow, steal or pirate this book. I'm not generally an e-book reader so I have no experience pirating books but I'm sure our friendly neighbourhood search engine know more than I do.

nice. the other stories are banned from the next vote right?

Flow My Tears is automatically nominated since it came second, the other two are banned for one round.

Like user said, that cover art is dank. And when I looked up the author on Goodreads it said that others have also enjoyed Gene Wolfe which is always a good sign. Have anyone read anything by this John Crowley? I'm genuinely interested.

read book two and then get right into book three famalam you'll be glad you did

if Gardens of the Moon is so bad why don't people just skip it? The story seems to jump around a lot anyway.

>book's name is "Ka", also the noise a crow makes
>cover is a crow
>author's name is "crowley"
seems a bit egotistical

i interpreted it as one big prologue to the series, like, the whole novel takes place "before the starting credits roll", if you will
it's really erratic and choppy as you say, and it honestly doesn't matter if you miss a lot, just as long as you get the general idea of what's happening before everything starts happening, know what i'm sayin?

but yea as an afterthought, this series is NOT for people with short attention spans, so really, i would say to anyone who "wants to skip" or "rushes through" any part of it whatsoever, then the damn thing probably isn't for you
i mean like every book is 1000+ pages what the hell is somebody doing getting into a 10000+ page series if they don't want to read a lot lmao
millenials man, millenials

It's more the investment that's the problem. I like long book series, but to have to read three doorstoppers just to find out whether or not I'll even like the series? Too much up front cost. There are so many other series out there.

Did you read the whole trilogy? Starts off shaky as fuck but absolutely worth staying til the end, and the standalone books that come afterwards improve by leaps and bounds.

John Crowley is outer lit

who would win in a war, a futuristic sci fi civilization of people wearing togas, or a futuristic sci fi civilization of people wearing really big collars?

>want to read this book
>£183 on amazon
>out of print on publisher's website

Why? How to read?

amazon.co.uk/Lifecycle-Software-Objects-Ted-Chiang/dp/1596063173
subterraneanpress.com/the-lifecycle-of-software-objects

But he writes fantasy and sci-fi?`

Nice digits.

obviously collars
>protect your neck like wu tang said
>can be used as a weapon
>togas are extremely large, heavy and unwieldy and present a massive tactical disadvantage

A man willing to wear a toga is clearly a tremendous badass. It says to the world "I don't even need to use both arms to slap your shit in".

but the collar people are usually in a stage of "we are the heads of a galactic union" while togas usually implies they already reached some kinda utopia, elevated above any threat

I have read all Dresden books and really enjoyed it to my great shame.
Should I continue to go down the urban-fantasy rabbit-hole or do a genre shift?

Its published in 2011. Are there no ebooks? Have you searched on libgen or IRC?

>this tripe inspires more conversation than the whole of human history's contributions to sci-fi and fantasy
the absolute state of genre fiction

I don't like ebooks I want a physical copy

what did you mean by this?

>Just finished this I'm not sure I liked it and I don't know if I'm in for the long haul.
I've read 4 books and gave up, every single one of them left me with that same feeling. Kind of cool concepts and characters that somehow feel hamfisted and books never deliver satisfactory endings so they make you crave for more... simply not worth my time, too many pages of mediocre literature.

U mad your thread didn't get more than 3 replies?

No need to search, the info is in the sticky. Here's a bunch of editions/formats: b-ok.org/s/?q=Childhood's End

Recently finished Snow Crash. Loved the more esoteric backstory and lore stuff, didn't like a lot of the actual narrative. It felt as if the author was hastily making a shell for his ideas, and that made some moments (especially the ending) fall flat. Overall really good setting and the fact that it was written in 1992 is pretty crazy in some respects. I'm starting to read The Fifth Head of Cerberus, and I like the prose of the few pages that I've read so far.

Everyone would like an opportunity to flex their creative muscles while getting some (You)s. That post provided just that. Play to your audience.

What are some good fantasy novels with heavy bdsm?

>malazan has good dialogue

*Tips fedora*

I actually liked it more than Deadhouse Gates

>download the ebook
>sacrifice some dead trees
>go to a office depot
>bind dead trees
>?????
>profit

Oh, thanks for reminding me.

First for Stephenson is a pearly penile papule with a word processor.

Thanks for your input anons

I might keep going after going through other titles in my reading list for this year

The first story of Fifth Head is quite Proustian in style

First for more recs like Daniel Black and Super Sales on Super heroes

>Loved the more esoteric backstory and lore stuff
>It felt as if the author was hastily making a shell for his ideas

This is basically every Stephenson book I've read, but I think he gets better at it.

Where did the Stephenson hate come from anyway? It's not like even he was talked about regularly before.
Is it just one guy falseflagging?

Yeah, it's literally just me. I haven't even read Snowcrash. I read like thirty pages of Anathem and decided I hate his face. I'll stop.

I read Little, Big and the only things I found I common with Gene Wolfe are the shift of PoVs (or shift in setting more like), the vague dreamlike settings and the neck breaking pace in Wizard/Knight.

Yeah, well, so he predicted stuff.
>Such a visionary!!!
Jules Verne did the same, but nobody should value either literature for the accuracy of its predictions.
I hated Snow Crash but the linguistic approach was quite interesting, and a few concepts were quite elegantly expressed. What wasn't interesting at all was all the fucking hand holding and exposition. Literally, American-taste scifi written for retards who can't figure shit out on their own.

cool I read 4 two. i didn't necessarily think they were bad, i just never felt an urge to continue.

Honest question: what's the best science fiction novel you've read in terms of prose alone? Something where you were blown away by the writing itself, regardless of how you felt about the plot/characters/etc.

Blindsight

Echopraxia

Probably something by Vance.

I thought Little, Big was nearly unreadable. In the wrong mood for it maybe.

Nice, wonder where I can get a cheap copy..

Just finished The Dragons of Babel.
Esme was best daughter.

What should I read now?

Book of the New Sun

Continue but be carefull, its a world full of shit books, i personally recomend sergei lukianenko night watch series for a russian grey take on good vs evil, also check laundry files series and craft sequence, they are at least interesting premises

>Veeky Forums tells me that Sanderson is garbage
>Warbreaker is fun as hell
Is Sanderson actually good or is it a one time case?

He's got good and bad stuff. He can pitch his books a little young, and seems to have a pretty constricted emotional range, but I always stick up for him because he reintroduced the idea of endings into fantasy books.

I've read Warbreaker, Elantris, Stormlight, Emperor's Soul and a couple of short stories and my opinion is that Warbreaker is leagues better than the others.

His WoW aesthetics and the autism of his world building is appalling. But hey, this is SFFG, where tastes are not like other tastes in Veeky Forums.

yo monthly reading guy. you should record what has already been ready in a pastebin or something for reference purposes. maybe also what has been read which month.

I'm keeping track of what we've read, I assume you want me to include a link to the list in my posts? Putting a link at the bottom of the image seem reasonable, right?

Definitely not Blindsight or BotNS despite how they're easily my favourite Sci-fi books out there

Gateway was a pleasure to read, as was Too Like the Lightning

sure, thats fine. it was mostly so that we nothing comes up twice but if you keep track its fine.

Nice digits. My highly advanced tracking system I'm to lazy to delete the covers I use to make the images will make sure that no book that we've already read may enter.

I wasn't saying the visionary stuff had much merit in terms of the literature itself, and of course there are authors who were much more amazing in terms of their speculation. You are completely right about the exposition, though. There are two chapters that are just Hiro stating the setting's lore to some other characters and that was fucking aggravating.

>female warrior

youtube.com/watch?v=bSWjrhpuLEI

Is this you, /sffg/?

>criticizes literature
>has videogames on his bookshelf

Well if you dont like videogames, you must be a snob. Dark Souls is by far more intellectually rewarding than Hamlet.

If you want a good take on the female warrior read Monstrous Regiment