/sffg/ - Science Fiction & Fantasy General

Fantasy
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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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first for robert anton wilson

Currently reading Ciaphas Cain and the black company too. I really like both desu. But does Dreams of Steel ever get good? im about half way through and its pretty bad/dull and are the later books as good as the first 4? I just find Lady's chapters boring as she builds her army. But at least Croker isnt dead like i thought he was at the end of Book 3


Although from its reputation i really expected some dark shit but it seems rather tame to me apart from the child rape in Book 1 (but the rapers get killed instantly). Hell Lady isnt evil really.

Croaker is just great though

The Lady and soul catcher are always described as attractive but everyone is too spooked to make a move

i'm trying my hand at a fantasy novel, what do you guys think

>Taking my hand in hers, I turned towards the Death Magician. Glancing backwards, I saw Crimson’s eyes begin to water, her tears like golden sapphires against her ivory cheek. Gritting my teeth, I placed the back of my hand across her face and cradled her beautiful flesh. I wasn’t about to let a demon ruin everything. Everything I had worked so hard to protect. Ever since the death of my parents I’ve always felt this outrageous and tempestuous urge to protect the living, and I wasn’t about to let some freak ruin it all. Originias curse pulsed on the back of my neck as I took out my sword. A pain in the neck. Literally.
>“Hey, asshole”, I say defiantly.
>“Are you ready?” he smirked cruelly as he interrupts me. Taken aback, I ask in a tentative way,
>“ready to what?” I barked back, my fists clenching.
>“Ready to die!”
>He rushed forward and yanked my arm out of it’s socket, but at this point I could no longer feel pain. I laugh. And then plunge my hand straight through his chest. Startled, he howled in trepidation and his dragon tattoos convulsed, as the creatures below us hissed in a penurious attitude. But then, something happened. Something that I would never forget. Not even on my deathbed would I ever forget this. Even that moment when Chrysalis raped and tortured my mother, paled in comparison to this. Stuck inside this anfractuous maze, with my hand stuck inside the demon's chest, Crimson took a step forward and

>nameless girl protag is supposedly sold to slavers by parents
>Christian symbolism
>girl becomes Jesus
It's basically girl becomes saviour-of-the-world-Jesus in fantasy land but it's never been done in my native language and I have a decent story built around this idea.
I want to play with the idea that jesus-like characters are not cookie-cutter builds that preach the same old story, but are what's needed at the time in the world.
There's subtle hints throughout the book that she is that world and time's version of Jesus and while it doesn't necessarily happen in our universe, the whole Jesus thing is a phenomenon spanning across every universe, like sort of a self repairing mechanism to the universe itself.

It's trippy as fuck if I say it like that but actually is a lighthearted and comfy style novel, in the style of old Romanian folk tales. I try not to write dense preachy paragraphs and the world it's set in is comfy with mountains and forests and shit. It actually reminds me of the hobbit mixed with book of the new sun minus the edge.

>Fifth book in the series is also the largest and worst out of the lot
Name me the series

You are rusing us, yes? On the off chance you are not: you suck. You need to read a lot more. And, a lot more good stuff, not shit stuff, because right now you read like the most stereotypical modern-day pulp writer of all time.

>A pain in the neck. Literally
>“Hey, asshole”
Do not do this. It ruins your tone and it does not add anything, all for the sake of """humour""". Even if you want to add humour, or you want some kind of contrast between the flippant hero and super serious situation, there are infinite ways to do it better. As it is the whiplash is hollow, even if you intended it.

>I say, defiantly
>he smirked cruelly
>I barked back
Do not do this, either. While you should always understand that there are NO rules to writing, perhaps it would help you to bear in mind the "cut out adverbs and adjectives" rule. LESS IS MORE. Prose like this has little to no impact. "He smirked" would have done—better, at least.

It also has an awful singsong see-sawing about it. "He said, X-ing" "I said, X-ing" "he said, X-ing".

Your tenses are fucked. I think this is probably deliberate. It is good to be ambitious, in honesty, but you've fucked it up; it's too noticeable. Practice will even it out, but specifically ensure each time you change tenses you're doing it for a good reason. Remember that less is more. Oh, and if you DIDN'T do it on purpose—focus like fuck on getting your tenses consistent. A hold on basic English is essential.

Yeah, I'd say your main flaw is you try to do WAY too much, when less would be better. Like
>startled, he howled in trepidation
is three things in five words. You could have just said "he howled", and it would have been much more effective.

And there's this constant "doing this thing, I did this other completely unrelated thing". This is distracting, and involves some parsing, which can be used to good effect /when you want to/, and in moderation, but which sucks if you do it all the fucking time.

You're amateurish. You suck, you really suck. There's only one way to solve this, I'm afraid. Work.

Read good shit, and write, a lot. So continue writing your story, or write new ones, but also start reading good literature. The kind of literature that's memed outside the general, AND some of the better stuff here (Wolfe, Worm Ouroboros).
'sup Lewis, didn't know you were still shitposting about.

Is Dance the largest?

I enjoyed Dance a lot though after thinking about it, it was only Daenerys chapters which were shit, everything happening in the north was awesome.

>Daenerys chapters which were shit

shocker

I always liked Danys chapters. But, then again, I was thirteen, and...

I really hope Martin kills her off in Winds, she's got absolutely no story left and I think he's struggling a little with her character, I think he originally planned to do it in Kings but she's become too popular of a character and there would probably be a massive backlash from normie fans if he did. I would do it just for that. Also we've got based Aegon now who is significantly more interesting than Daenerys.

Same but Daenery's chapters stopped being fun after she settled into the slaving city and decided to be a ruler. They were a lot better when she was just wandering around Essos.

>Also we've got based Aegon now who is significantly more interesting than Daenerys.

He's just a Blackfyre pretender and will ignite a Dance Of Dragons 2.0 and then get rekt.

What are some good books with animal protagonists?

SHAEÖNANRA

>teenager act like teenager
>lacking wisdom, driven by impulse and emotions
Wew. Doing otherwise he would be our character, perfect automata, so common in fantasy infested with Mary Sues.

Martin deserves props for:
1. Making him act like that.
2. Letting him fall because of that, no free passes for "good boys".

The Sight and Fell by David Clement-Davies

Yes but don't you think he went a little too far? Like he was trying so hard to make the point that honor and justice get you killed that he went overboard and made him into a total fucking retard?

Also let's be honest, Robb was never gonna survive the war. Roose would have betrayed him sooner or later, same with Walder marriage or not.

The worst thing about Patrick Rothfuss' series is that being hopelessly friendzoned is presented as a heroic trait, but the thing that bothered me the most is the idea of a society that doesn't believe in a connection between fucking and pregnancy. That shit is just too dumb to fathom I mean god damn.

Anyway, I just finished His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik and it was tremendous fun. It's about the Napoleonic Wars, but with dapper gentlemen riding dragons. Has anyone read it? Is the rest of the series as good as the first book?

yes it was a trole

I REMAIN, A MASTER RUSEMAN

great critique tho

>The worst thing about Patrick Rothfuss' series is that being hopelessly friendzoned is presented as a heroic trait,

I know right? It's almost like it probably happened to the author a shitload of times in real life and so he had to either rationalize it by turning the fedora up to eleven or go insane.

>and made him into a total fucking retard?
Yet with another author we can easily imagine that good boy defeats ebil Lannisters and coming on top. Even if he is too romantic and noble for his own good. Because he is a good boy. Maybe with "hard lessions" on the way just hard enough to groom him into Kingship. But nope, too good to be true.

Tailchaser's Song - Tad Williams if you want a story about kitty cats

>It's almost like it probably happened to the author a shitload of times in real life and so he had to either rationalize it by turning the fedora up to eleven or go insane.
It is crystally obvious. What would you expect from classic AD&D geek?

>Roose would have betrayed him sooner or later
If Robb didn't make half of those mistakes he Roose would not have dared to betray him. Roose wasn't just Tywin's puppet he was a careful opportunist who saw all of Robbs weaknesses and decided to switch sides while he still could.

Watership Down my lil nigga, first last and always

>idea of a society that doesn't believe in a connection between fucking and pregnancy.
Pretty common among primitives, actually.

Fuggin genius coming through

Redwall Series by Brian Jacques

goodreads.com/series/51930-redwall-chronological-order

Wind in the Willows

Do Elantrians shit?

Must be Harry Potter! Order of the Phoenix a shit, even with Fred and George and Peeves's shenanigans to liven it up.

The Starks are utter retards. It's amazing how I went to hating Joffrey because he caused one of the direwolfs to die, to having him as my favorite character in the whole series, just because of his constant tormenting of Sansa. Seriously, fuck that bitch. Jon Snow can go to hell, too. Ramsay Bolton should sit on the Iron Throne at this point.

Only once.

Beric Dondarrion was the only character I really liked desu

>being hopelessly friendzoned is presented as a heroic trait
...by Kvothe. Seems like every other person I see complaining about this series forgets it has a biased narrator.

My fellow Patrician. I stopped reading Cain so I could read the Black Company. I liked Dreams of Steel a lot, the Croaker chapters especially due to Soulcatcher's relationship with Croaker. I just wish it was expanded upon more.

As for quality? It's a bit of a bumpy ride. Murgen is the Annalist of the next two books but everyone feels a bit more bitter to me. Croaker calls Lady his dearly beloved, but I can't help but feel it comes off sarcastic compared to Soldier's Live. Murgen's books are also the ones said to cause the most confusion. I may simply think everyone is bitter thanks to a reddit post.

Sleepy and Croaker are the Annalists for the last two and I really welcomed Sleepy's presence and her way of writing the Annals. It's also interesting because she's the first religious character whom we get some real perspective on. Croaker is just as good as in Soldier's Live and his love for Lady comes off as more genuine than it did in Murgen's.

Some spoilers below, but my thoughts on the quality of the series after Dreams of Steel.

I will say this. Though there are some somewhat major spoilers ahead.

I feel the series would have been better off the north. The series always had some high fantasy to it, but I feel things go over the top when Cook starts mixing in Kina and whatnot. I preferred the setting of the North as well and don't like the fact that there are other worlds, but that's simply my personal preference. However, the stupidest part of the series comes near the end of Soldier's Live when Lady says that her mother was the basis for Sleeping Beauty. I honestly wish the Company had just gone on to find another contract or stayed in the North and tried to make it look like Lady still had a shred of power. In addition, the band of brother's feel is kinda dead after White Rose.

Shit, double posted the spoilers bit. I was doing some editing and the text box is small. My mistake.

Based Jaime and Stannis are the only characters I actually like and they're probably both about to die.

It has a biased narrator because it is shitty patrick rothfuss self insert and as self-insert, he brings his own biases

Qyburn is pretty based niggers.

Why is Dune Messiah so dreadfully boring?
I blazed through Dune in 3 days, but this shit is taking me a week and I'm only halfway through. Are further books even worth it?

Because nothing really happens.

>not wishing for the white walkers to win because everything in the books are shit.

I liked the book but from memory its pretty much just an epilogue to Dune and Pauls death/ What i felt was Herbert writing himself out of a bit of a dead end

is it possible for lovecraftian horror to exist in a medieval fantasy setting?
any examples of this, or sci-fi mixing with fantasy, done well?

Dune Messiah is the best book in the series you plebeian.
>not enjoying Scytale
>not enjoying Gaius Helen Mohilam
>not enjoying that navigator guy
>not enjoying seeing the way a prophet can ruin a proud and noble culture
>not enjoying the way prophecy traps the prophet in a single deterministic track
You might just be a faggot my man.

Whom of these boring sci-fi archetypes am I supposed to enjoy, again? Dune was a story of humans with human problems, in Messiah literally everybody is some fucking special snowflake hopped up on spice to see premonitions of premonitions of premonitions of premonitions. The only vaguely interesting character is Duncan's ghola

Since it's quickly become apparent that I have completely and utterly failed at being a programmer, how hard is it to make a living as a fantasy writer?

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser is so fucking good.

Harder than being a programmer

then suicide it is

There are like 200 (optimistic estimate) fiction writers in the world right now make living with their writing alone. How many people make a living with programming? Weign your chances

>Programming
>Hard

Are you the low iq user who has like 60 IQ or something?
Did you ever finish Malazan?

What are your thoughts on the Dread Empire series? (no relation to Dread Empire's Fall)

I felt like it was very much a prototype of Black Company, but retained a lot of the stuff in the first trilogy. Also had some great imagery IIRC like the ancient wizard rigging his tower to drop a health potion on him if he woke from hibernation, and the giant flying fetus.

But it's pretty obvious that is not just Kvothe that makes the friend zone mistake Denna is doing the exact same thing and they are both just retards that want more but don't want to fuck up what they have.

I haven't read any of Cook's other works or Malazan I'm afraid.

no, I'm somewhere between around 127. I'm actually pretty decent at programming the issue is getting a job.

I lost my first job after three months for bullshit reasons. (I finished work too quickly and didn't have anything to do so people thought I wasn't doing any work.) and since then I've been job hunting.

I had two good opportunities over the past 5 months that should have lead somewhere but didn't: one where I was the top candidate but then they decided they needed to hire someone to train new hirees first, and then another place that said they wanted to hire me then just ghosted me and ignored my emails

Now I'm almost 5 months out of work and now it's starting to affect my hirability

I'm actually reading Prometheus Rising right now.

Pic related is great. Fight me canonfags.

Don't give up senpai. I was basically unemployed for 2 years after uni (other than a short lived clerical job), until I finally grabbed a part-time data entry position that I saw in the local paper. Sysadmin after 6 months. Besides, writing's hard...

Not read it but Caine is based so I'll take your word for it.

>I lost my first job after three months for bullshit reasons. (I finished work too quickly and didn't have anything to do so people thought I wasn't doing any work.)

Maybe tell the boss that?

That's fucking retarded to do on the part of the boss
>firing your most productive employee because he's too productive

I did, but he implied it might have just been because they found me annoying

>low level professional
>finish all your work
>watch anime videos on youtube instead of asking for more work and any way you can help

You may, may just have a 127 IQ, but that doesn't mean you can't be a retard.

you're the retard assuming I didn't ask for more work. I did. Constantly. barely got anything

The chapters on the Whorl are so sad.

Book of the New Sun.

anyone have torrent links for the discworld series?

yes

no

maybe

i don't know

Thoughts on the Night Angel trilogy?

And you base this one what? The fact that the character is arrogant and self-aggrandizing? Are you really that stupid?

could you repeat the question?

just found this

youtube.com/watch?v=2AjmhkyxHM0

really fascinating in-depth discussion of Iain M Banks and the Culture novels. Good stuff.

It's pretty great.
Don't listen to the memers who only have "LOL SO EDGY@!!!!!!" to say about it.

I dropped it after the edginess of the first page, so I feel like that's about all I'm entitled to say about it. When you start your book with 12 year olds getting forcibly dressed as girls and raped by slightly bigger 12 year olds, I feel like it's a valid criticism.

>I feel like it's a valid criticism.

Well no matter how you FEEL like, it's not valid criticism.

Always waiting for this one.

care to share the link?

anyone have torrent links for the discworld series?

>care to share the link?

no

Just making my way through Citadel of the Autarch right now. How does Long Sun and Short Sun compare?

Great. Much simpler language, but much more emotionally impactful stories.

No? Why not?

Find it yourself

completely untrue

Because you're basing your entire opinion of the book on literally the first few pages

I keep seeing the "biased narrator" argument used to defend Kvothe's mary-sueness (particularly in Wise Man's Fear) and the problem with that is if it is true then it's incredibly poorly executed. If Rothfuss is indeed consciously writing Kvothe as biased then there should be nods to the reader indicating that Kvothe is full of shit or inflating his own ego. There's none of that self awareness though, the writer isn't in on the joke with the reader, instead we are meant to take what Kvothe says at face value and without contradiction. Best case scenario Rothfuss tried to do unreliable narrator but failed because he's not skilled enough, worst (and most likely) scenario he wrote Kvothe as a self insert, dick in hand, and got too carried away.

We read only the finest baby seal bound leather books here. Copyright isn't a renewable resource, get educated.

The opening scene is supposed to set the mood for the entire novel.

No it's not

If it's legal in my state, can I have some of what you're smoking?

Yeah, and my opinion is that judging by what I did read, the rest of the book wasn't worth finishing, because of how edgy the start is. I'm not trying to provide an objective overview of the whole novel, I'm describing my experience with it.

Long Sun isn't as good as New Sun, but Short Sun is just as good if not better in some ways.

Okay Dave, I'll give it a listen.

Sell me on it.

>Sell me on it.

It's great.
Read it.

Hi.

My name's Anonymous, and I have 70 star wars novels.

Hi Anonymous.