I was just going along, living my life, when you fucked reminded me of this series...

Can vouch for Stroud. It is even worth an occasional rereading.

My Fowl posting shall curse the board once more

>No Harry Potter
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Her design was definitely something the graphic novel got very right.

Are you serious? Harry Potter is one of the dullest franchises in history. Seriously each episode following the boy wizard and his pals from Hogwarts Academy as they fight assorted villains has been indistinguishable from the others. Aside from the gloomy imagery, the series’ only consistency has been its lack of excitement and ineffective use of special effects, all to make magic unmagical, to make action seem inert.

Perhaps the die was cast when Rowling vetoed the idea of Spielberg directing the series; she made sure the series would never be mistaken for a work of art that meant anything to anybody?just ridiculously profitable cross-promotion for her books. The Harry Potter series might be anti-Christian (or not), but it’s certainly the anti-James Bond series in its refusal of wonder, beauty and excitement. No one wants to face that fact. Now, thankfully, they no longer have to.

>a-at least the books were good though
"No!"
The writing is dreadful; the book was terrible. As I read, I noticed that every time a character went for a walk, the author wrote instead that the character "stretched his legs."

I began marking on the back of an envelope every time that phrase was repeated. I stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times. I was incredulous. Rowling's mind is so governed by cliches and dead metaphors that she has no other style of writing. Later I read a lavish, loving review of Harry Potter by the same Stephen King. He wrote something to the effect of, "If these kids are reading Harry Potter at 11 or 12, then when they get older they will go on to read Stephen King." And he was quite right. He was not being ironic. When you read "Harry Potter" you are, in fact, trained to read Stephen King.

Except for the fact that canonically has brown skin.

Any reason why? I remember enjoying them a lot.

And a long pointy nose. But we both know no one actually pictured her like that.

gatsby isnt even that good

Semi unrelated but Ce'Nedra from the Belgariad is the source of my short girl fetish.

>Veeky Forums the image.
I have much more to say about that image, but I won't be tempted by such obvious bait.
Decent post, though.

>Ulysses that low
>Gatsby that high
>No Finnegan's Wake
>No Pynchon
>Kafka that low
I've been baited

Had user not used a bait image he might be taken seriously.

I swear to god, Artemis Fowl gave me all kinds of fetishes

This seems like a good thread to ask this, but what does Veeky Forums think about the Winds on Fire trilogy?

>Taking pot shots at Stephen King to prove his point.
Just kill yourself already, user.

Then's fightin' words, user. HDM is one of the greatest fantasy series of all time.

Supernaturalist was pretty great, Wish List was neat, Airman was iirc decent but dragged at points so I can't recall it that well.

Bah Gawd

Son, your pasta is mouldy and you should feel bad - it's not even Veeky Forums pasta

>l'etranger
>god tier
Why is Veeky Forums such cancer?

Chris Wooding had a series called Broken Sky that I read as a teen and liked a lot

I think that Airman is very underrated.

Veeky Forums mainly values interesting and internally consistent worldbuilding in fiction. While I really like Harry Potter it doesn't really do either of those things that well, and so probably doesn't belong on a Veeky Forums rec list.

The Old Kingdom isn't a trilogy anymore

>LoTR on the same level as Harry Potter and SoIaF
Behead those who insult Tolkien

I don't know if this is pasta or what, but from here it looks like you just finished 10th grade English class and now think you're the smartest person in the universe.

Anyone ever read Airborn, Skybreaker, and Starclimber?

Loved those books as a kid. They cemented my love for engineering and exploration.

1. Power down the elves and give them actual flaws
This always bothered me, even as a kid. The elves always seemed so powerful, I wonder how the hell did they ever lose in the first place. Giving them both weaknesses and faults in their "perfect" world view allows the main character to prove himself to them in a way other than becoming an elf.

2. Power down the evil king and make his story more complex
Making the evil king so powerful only our protagonist can beat him? Good idea. Making him so powerful the only reason he loses is you make him question his very existence? Bad idea. Also, don't make his backstory a young man who gets angry and kills everyone (AKA Anakin Skywalker) make him an older more experienced man who through more than a single tragedy slowly became the way he is (which, power level aside is actually fine as is).

3. Let Eragon get laid
This is more about letting him mature than just getting laid, but the fact he never does is a good summary of how no matter how much he progresses, he never actually has personality in-between childish and stoic.

4. Make up your mind if the story is black and white or shades of grey
This one is self-explanatory, either keep the story simple, make it complex, or start simple and ramp it up, don't keep jumping back and forth.

>Mortal Engines
holy shit, I haven't thought about that book in ages
Hester a cute

I never actually read any of his books except The Supernaturalists, and I have always regretted it.

>Atlas Autistic
>God Tier
kek, good bait user.

Hester is a monster.

>Atlast Shrugged God-Tier
>Catch-22 Low Tier

Fuck the ending to the story. I hated the mute spellcasting bs they used so he could defeat the king, even as a kid I hated it.

Roran was the best character and his story much better than Eragon's.

Sidenote, my favorite part of the book was the soldiers who couldn't feel anything. Some reason that part leaped out at me.

Chris is pretty great in general.

>Broken Sky
Anime steampunk magic saturday morning cartoon.

>Weavers of Saramyr
Game of Thrones, except with 100% more Japan and 400% more magic.

>Poison
Fantasy deconstruction with mindbending fourth-wall bending philosophy for kids.

>Alaizabel
Lovecraft meets Buffy meets Edwardian london.

>Ketty Jay
this is just Steampunk firefly, and it knows how dumb it is

>Atlas Shrugged is God Tier
>Hamlet is Low Tier

What a dumbass

It's pasta and a Veeky Forums image, their are few more cancerous things

If we're talking adventure-friendly children's/YA literature I'd also add the following series:

Skulduggery Pleasant
The Keys to the Kingdom (Mister Monday, Grim Tuesday etc.)
All of Rick Riordan's stuff

None are super high literature or anything, but Riordan's myth-verse and the SP universe are both incredibly well suited to having PCs

It started with promise, like inklings of good ideas, but everything slowly snowballed into an such a... it's hard to describe. It's like the entire series was designed to make fantasy suck.

Like, you're looking at the programme before a play starts, and you see all of your favorite actors are going to appear on stage together.
All of your favorite parts of fantasy.
You can hardly believe it, this might really be the greatest thing you'll ever see.

And then, as the play progresses, you realize it's not them, none of them, but understudies.
And they're terrible.

They know all the lines, but the delivery is hollow, and they actually get worse as scenes become more demanding.
The plot drags its feet so they linger on stage for so long in each scene that you start to feel irritated just looking at them, and everything is even more horrible because you find out later that the all the primary actors were ready and willing, it's just that the director decided they didn't match his vision.

That's what reading that series felt like. Like you're sitting through an awful play, hoping to catch a glimpse of your favorite actor, hoping he'll appear in one of the final scenes. You're sitting through all the slimy "unpleasantness" that's just a shade lighter than sickening, just enough to not make you leave your seat, and then at the very end seeing that he too was replaced by a terrible understudy. The curtain drops, and you're left being frustrated with the knowledge that you could have left the show at any time.

The series is pretty bad, user. The first four books make pretty okay mystery novels like the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew with Magic, but from Order of the Phoenix onward they become pretty bad. Order of the Phoenix was downright painful to slog through for my forth grade self.

>Atlas Shrugged that high

I'm a fan of Rand and have flirted with Objectivism, but Atlas Shrugged is a terrible read. The Fountainhead is her better work and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Heinlein is a better work of fiction with Objectivist themes and values.

>waifuing a literal psychopath
stop

Mortal Engines is so fucking dark. People get stabbed to death, reanimated, betrayed and shot in the back, die of heart attacks while the world burns. Hundreds of thousands of people die in horrific wars and get ground into the mud.

Plus there are lesbians and open references to sex and people pissing themselves in fear.

>Tfw Foundling will never get on there

Maybe I just have shit taste in books.

At least Sabriel and Fowl are on there, so maybe I'm not that bad.

It's a copypasta tho

I remember really enjoying these books as a kid. I doubt the writing was very good, but the setting was really cool. After the third book the plot goes totally off the rails though.

I liked how Hester was still a sociopathic murderous lunatic even after years of good times, and it all results in her screwing over her own relationships because she can't move past her own insecurities or murderous instincts

>tfw if they ever made a Mortal Engines movie or TV series, Hester would look not-that-bad

Skulduggery was fine until it became successful. So the inevitable happened and it got stretched into like, 10 books and the author added a vampire romance subplot because Twilight was selling billions of copies.

You've written a great, grand, sweeping metaphor here, but I really can't understand what you're specifically talking about. I'd be more interested to actually hear the specifics of what you disliked. Was it the characters? The dialogue? The themes? What actually was it that pissed you off?

>The Keys to the Kingdom
This one's pretty good, but even when I read it it felt like it was aimed a younger audience than Nix's Old Kingdom series. I'm not sure how well it would hold up reading it as an adult.
I really like how aggressively artificial the world it took place in was. It was really interesting to see a setting where everything was the result of considered (often competing) design.

Don't worry user, I also like foundling. Unsatisfying third part aside.

Make best boy Roran a Rider, or at LEAST the new King of Alagaesia (Varden a shit).

It's pretty great, though I don't recall someone pissing themselves.

Some of the things in it though, like the Resurrection Corps (and I do recall their head being mentioned as having "wandering hands" that Dr Zero just had to kind of ignore), the Stalkers they made and the Green Storm's suicide bombers.

Yeah it was pretty damn dark

THE MAGIC SYSTEM IS STOLEN FROM LE GUIN YOU ILLITERATE SWINE

>No Redwall for the closet Veeky Forums furries

If there are more than three books in a mid-2000s children's fantasy series, then everything after the fourth is invariably awful. This is a universal rule.

>No Animorphs for the mental scarification

Where's Garth Nix's Keys to the Kingdom?

Third part had some ass parts but the Manor stand off is still superb.

Europe a best.

Also KTTK sort of dropped off at book 7 when I read back through it, mostly due to knowing what was going to happen in the end and wanting Arthur to do more.

Really animorph should be 16+

>mortal engines
YEAH BOI

>Ce'Nedra

>Not based Aunt Pol

C'mon, you gonna tell me you didn't wanna hit that?

Oh shit I loved those books.
I feel the finale was kind of disappointing though, felt like an awful lot of running around doing nothing so they could reach the conclusion.

>and the author added a vampire romance subplot because Twilight was selling billions of copies.
Ah, I take it you stopped reading at that point?

Because the entire point of that subplot was to very blatantly make fun of Twilight and point out that teenage girls make horrible choices.

Was probably a little longer than it really needed to be, but most of the payoff was worth it.

Yeah, it was aimed a bit younger, but there was a lot of cool stuff in there, it was quite out there

Yes. Zeppelins From Another World done RIGHT.

/tv/ has the best bait, The Best

Jesus, me too. I cannot believe how muck weaboo elf dicksucking I put up with when I first read it.

>Idiocracy

Tye mere picture of that movie is enough to make me angry.

>I don't recall someone pissing themselves
It happens at the end of the third book, when Shrike confronts Hester. It always stuck with me, for whatever reason; perhaps that the scene was so much more visceral than anything else I'd read. It didn't pull any punnches.

>He reached towards her, sheathing his claws, and she reacted in the way most once-born did when the chase was done and there was no escaping him; that wordless keening, and the the sudden hot stink as her bowels emptied. It hurt him that she was afraid of him. He pulled her close as gently as he could and said "I HAVE MISSED YOU SO MUCH."

>stopped reading at that point
I think I started reading Skulduggery when I was like, 12? By the time the later books came out, I'd outgrown them. I think that was the last straw. But your explanation makes a lot of sense.

Totally with you there, it just suffered from what I call anime syndrome. The awesome badasses just keep beating stronger and stronger enemies and the power creep ruins it. But as says, the vampire subplot was actually just poking fun at twilight. My issue was probably the Vile/Darquess fight that just made it a Zod v Superman fight

Some of those are good but even the good ones are fedora-core.

I never read past the 3rd skulduggery pleasant because I couldn't fucking find any of the books after that point.

>tfw if they ever made a Mortal Engines movie or TV series, Hester would look not-that-bad

I wonder what kind of prosthetic they will use on her

> Fight Club
> Fedora
Unless you're stupid enough to take it at face value, it's really not.

>what do we do with the sequels to save the series?
Stop ripping off Star Wars

>Big Trouble in Little China
>Pacific Rim
>300
>Army of Darkness
>Starship Troopers
>Total Recall
>Hardcore Henry

What does 'fedoracore' here even MEAN?

/tv/ is probably the funniest board.

The ide of the image is to piss off as many nerds as possible.

So basically it's a list of good movies I should watch. How is this supposed to troll me again?

It means at a certain point it became associated with the kind of person who wears a fedora inappropriately.
It isn't an attack on their quality or any particular shared quality they have, just guilt by association.

Some of them aren't good. They mix some bad stuff in with good stuff to really sell it.

Yeah, the power creep was a bit much, I can see why people would drop them (not got much hope for the sequel series, but you never know)

Did like Darquesse booting a brain like a football though - she was amusingly dark and cheerful, and Dr Nye was suitably creepy for what's basically Not!Mengele.

Yeah, Mortal Engines wasn't afraid to get visceral - the making of a Stalker was described pretty gruesomely I think it's from Infernal Devices - when the Surgeon-Mechanic's brother gets pulled from the mud and appears on her slab and she has to recycle his body:

>"she said, "Scalpel. Bonesaw. Rib-spreaders" and set to work. She opened [her brother]'s body and took out his internal organs, replacing them with engines, batter-housings and preservative pumps. She cut off his hands and replaced them with the steel hands of a Stalker. She cut off his private parts. She took out his eyes. She took off his skin, and wired a mysterious net of electrodes into the fibres of his muscles. She opened his skull and fitted a machine the size of a peach-stone into his brain, then watched him writhe and shudder as it unspooled wire-thin cilia down his spinal cord, connecting to his nervous system and to the other machines she had installed... When she had finished she handed him over to a junior surgeon-mechanic who would fit the exoskeleton and finger-glaives."

I think that's the moment when she decides to kill Stalker Fang

>His Dark Materials
Northern Lights and the first half of The Subtle Knife were pretty good but The Amber Spyglass almost felt like arguing with a "tip fedora" internet militant atheist

But then again, I read these books some time ago and don't remember why they pissed me off so much considering I was never religious in the first place

This pasta is stale.

To sell what? It doesn't make sense.

To sell you that it's actually calling good movies bad. Y'know, to make you upset and angry intentionally?

Bartimaeus is the shit.

Exactly. Mortal Engines is such a grimdark fucking setting, but Hester and Tom's romance works so well in it. They both have severe mental scarring (mostly Hester), and this complicates things a lot for then. And yet they both still obviously love eachother and work to make their relationship work; it's really touching.
Go re-read the ends of Mortal Engines and A Darkling Plain and you'll see what I mean.

The's a lot more sane in the 3rd and 4th books, after the timeskip.

>no replies
Am I seriously the only one to have read this shit?

>Wolf Brother
Oh fuck I remember that book. It was a really weird read back then. It was a weird transition from a sort of no magic world to I AM NOW A WOLF/BEAR AND MAGIC FEVER AND DISEASE.
Did anyone read Knife of Never Letting Go? The series was really cool, and when I reread it a year ago it still held up.

I've still got them. Always felt Starclimber fell a bit short of the other two though

>a lot more sane in the 3rd and 4th books, after the timeskip.

>Seriously considers murdering her daughter
>Abandons her husband and daughter after realizing she likes freedom more

Hester Shaw was seriously fucked up man

Oh, well if some of the movies are bad and some are good, maybe the list isn't about quality. You know, maybe it's a bunch of movies where the characters wear fedoras.

> to make you upset and angry intentionally?
More like making people confused intentionally.

Good series, though I don't recall it that well. I can't recall how they stop the Noise, for example.

I remember reading Unlundun when I was in college, thought it was pretty neat

Pretty sure I still have the little bracelet thing I got when I bought the second book. Man I loved that series

>Roran was the best character
Well then, to answer OP:
> As the king learn another dragon rider exist and is preparing to kill him he decide to cut it out before he grow too powerful
> The climatic battle of the BBEG and the hero happen at the middle of the story rather than the end
> Due to circumstances and the king exposing himself too much, it ends with a double KO
> It's now up to secondary characters to continue the war, Eragon become a martyr hero that was taken too soon.

>seriously considers murdering her daughter
I don't remember that.
Do you mean that part in the beginning of book three where she fires on the lost boys' submarine? Cause if so, that was to save Wren, not kill her.

>Abandons Tom
After he learned that she sold out Ankorage in book two. She ran away because she thoguht Tom was gonna reject her; the "I prefer freedom" bit was obviously self deception.