/sffg/ - Science Fiction and Fantasy General

The movies didn't capture the depth or (especially) the mythic tone of the books well in my opinion. That being said, the original LOTR movies are some of the best fantasy movies ever made in their own right and I think they did the material justice.

Hobbit was a mess, obviously.

Not great adaptions but very good for fantasy films.

Agreed

This is releasing in less than a month. It's a YA book, but it's Jonathan Stroud so it doesn't count. Has anyone else read the series? It's the definition of comfy.

Any fantasy books with a good mystery plot? Lots of twists and red herrings and that kind of stuff.

>Wolf Pack Protectors, books 1-3: the complete series. Three tall, dark, and dangerously sexy alpha werewolves protect the BBW women they love. This complete three-book paranormal romance series is full of passion, fated mates, and suspense. Secret Seduction When a tall, dark, and dangerously sexy Alpha werewolf rescues Diana from a vicious attack, she doesn't know who to fear more - her attacker or the wolf. She's heard whispered legends of a powerful werewolf but never believed such a creature could exist. Captured by the wolf, she's taken to his den, and to his bed. Feral Seduction Forced to take refuge in an abandoned cabin in the middle of the woods, Brandy thinks she's finally escaped her stalker. But she quickly realizes she's not alone. An unimaginably sexy, and very naked, man appears in the middle of the night to offer her protection. She's captivated by his stormy eyes, until she learns his dark secret. She knows she could never tame him, but when he makes the ultimate sacrifice for her, she knows she can't live without him. The more he tries to resist her, the more she wants him and for once in her life, she intends to get what she wants. Deadly Seduction Gwen hasn't left the Silver Creek Pack's den since a devastating assault that scarred her body and still tortures her soul. But when Nosh, the alpha of the Dark Moon pack, is injured in a suspicious accident, she's forced to travel to his den. The healer-in-training draws on all her skills and saves the alpha, but soon he narrowly escapes another 'accident'. Someone in Nosh's pack is hell-bent on murdering him and everyone he cares about, and now Gwen has been targeted by a killer. Wolf Pack Protectors is a complete three-book paranormal romance series. This is a standalone book series with no cliffhangers. Love scenes are fully realized and at times include explicit language.

Should I?

>Last 2 books were close to 1000 pages
>Only about 200 pages of plot progression between the two of them
>The other 1800 pages consist of people eating breakfast or fucking
THE AMERICAN TOLKIEN INDEED

You know nothing of pulp till you've read John Shirley. This is the pulpiest motherfucker out there.

Do it and tell us if it's better than Sanderson.

How many of those pages were spent describing Westeros' tax policies?

Wondering if I should bother with Abercrombie's Shattered Sea. I know it's YA, but I thoroughly enjoyed First Law and was looking for something similar.

None.

Is this why fat women on Tinder/whatever the fuck all think they're supposed to be pulling Chris Hemsworth or something? Because of all the paranormal self-insert shit like this?

of course dude

(from the previous thread)

Yes, I've discovered the value of litrpg. The secret source isn't just games directly, but Scott Pilgrim, which was the first to recognize the idea of leveling up as a substitute for the coming-of-age initiate ritual in a culture that spurns them.

I don't think it's a particularly good genre right now, but it has great potential to express both the rootless meta life we lead now and the aching for markers on the path forward. So for this reason I'll continue to watch the genre evolve.

That and I like schlock.

If, hypothetically, someone had finished BotNS and Dying Earth and enjoyed them greatly, what would you recommend for them to read next in terms of Science Fantasy?

Lyonesse

Then Wizard Knight

Oops you said Science Fantasy. Those are more just fantasy by the same authors.

No worries my friend, thanks for the recs. I own both of those and intend to read them soon as well. But science fantasy is really interesting me lately, and I wonder what else is worth checking out.

Matthe Woodring Stover's Heroes Die and Blade of Tyshalle. If you like those two then read the other 2 as well.

Awake in the Night Land.

recommend short stories

The Aleph by Borges

Please recommend me fantasy pulp with depth, like PKD but fantasy.

It's not a short stort but it is short, Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys.

these

Read the first two books, with plans to read the rest at some point in the future.

They are good but not as good as Black Company. Try the Instrumentalities of the Night by Glen Cook, I really enjoyed those.

The Vorrh?

The Drenai series.

Where did you hear about Rogue Moon?

I only found out about it from that Great Courses sci-fi series. I don't think anybody talks about it today.

what's the appeal of Lyonesse?

Jack Vance, Roger Zelazny, Michael Moorcock, David Gemmell.

James A.A. Corey, The Expanse Series. Great sci fi, ad was originally a roleplaying game setting that the two authors built, but they fell in love with their story. Which kicks ass btw. The tv adaption was eh. Would love to see an rpg with the setting though, my friends and I would play it to shit.

A fairy story with rules, boons, bargains, and consequences. And as told by Vance, funny and charming and clever and witty.

Also heroism without sanctimony which is refreshing in any age and especially ours.

Gene Wolfe said he liked it.

I need a long fantasy series to sink into.

I happen to have access to the Wheel of Time series, is that worth reading?

Almost halfway through this and I'm happy to report it is indeed NOT grimderp as it has been labeled. Reads much more like something REH or Wagner would have written if they had been directly inspired by Yojimbo.

That's a solid reason. Don't hide it.

Does The Dresden Files Improve? I'm already in the sixth book and I am just about done with them. I wanted to read Dresden due to being some noir/fantasy. Dresden is not a noir-detective, he's a chosen one cliche that narratives his life like a hardboiled detective. It's as if Butcher took everything interesting about noir and gutted it taking only the recognizable cliches, and then even water those down.

Do they get any better?

>is that worth reading?
Not really, but if you haven't anything better to do you might as well. The first couple of books are decent enough. As far as other long fantasy series go I have to say the ones I've read have never been worth it, except maybe Sword of Truth which became so bad it was good when the sequelitis kicked in. If you want a sort of long series I think Black Company is okay.

If you're at book six and you don't like it, it's only going to go downhill from there. Dresden files is about a wise-cracking action movie protagonist fighting giant monsters with magical explosions, with a little noir aesthetic occasionally. It's pretty good at it too, but it's not some sort of gritty mystery, more like an action movie. Minor spoiler, but he latest book is LITERALLY a mission impossible heist.

I really like Instrumentalities because it covers the early modern period, which isn't something you really see in fantasy. The 30 year war especially offers very fertile ground for stealing from, one of the most violent wars in modern history, where guns and cannons weren't quite good enough yet so everybody still fielded massed units of professional pikemen (who in turn had swordsmen with big zweihanders mixed in) alongside their arquibus infantry.

>If you're at book six and you don't like it, it's only going to go downhill from there.
Its just that people keep on insisting they get good when they don't

Alatriste was a terrific film. It ends with the Battle of Rocroi. Viggo in usual top form.

Really good fantasy films but I don't really consider LotR to be very filmable. I think Tolkien was right in his essay On Fairy Stories when he talked about how hard it was to put them on stage let alone on film. The story is one that the reader needs to take very personally, they have to be in close quarters with the book or whoever is reading it to them. To have it on screen or on stage separates things too much for how the work already separates you from the characters, and it either comes out bad or requires such changes that make it different (the latter path was generally taken by Jackson.)

Like, seeing hobbits on screen with humans and elves and stuff basically ruins them and makes them useless and unnecessary to their original purpose (the eyes that readers saw Middle Earth through.)

Is Spiderlight by Adrian Tchaikovsky any good?
goodreads.com/book/show/28765741-spiderlight

So are you saying that fantasy as a genre isn't well suited to the medium of film, or just that it would be better to write something from scratch with the medium in mind?

Am I not alone in thinking this is so far much better than The Powder Mage?

Hyperion
Dune (get shit on a lot here but try it yourself)

>get shit on a lot here
Why?

I thought it was mostly me that didn't like it.

I've read the first book of powder mage and enjoyed it well enough, far from my favorite series but it's much better written than a lot of the other recently published titles I've tried to get into lately.

In what ways does he improve on Powder Mage?

AXIOMATIC BY GREG EGAN
THAT IS THE ONLY SHORT STORY COLLECTION ANYBODY NEEDS

Rocroi is one of the most badass things. The tercios held even after they came under fire from heavy cannons, which at the time were not easy to employ against infantry, and were eventually given the same terms of surrender as a fortress under siege, which means they were allowed to keep their weapons and colors and simply leave.

Series gets increasingly hippie woo as it goes on, and then there's Brian Herbert's stuff.

literally hulk the character.

still cool though.

haven't read it but the premise sounds interesting. i have too much of a backlog tho to add it.

Are there any other fantasy authors in the same league as Mervyn Peake? I have been sorely disappointed since finishing his Gormenghast series, seemingly noone in the entire genre has as beautiful prose as him. What a shame he went off his rocker and couldn't write more beautiful books. After gorging myself on such a feast, the slim crumbs and stale bread of standard fantasy is unfulfilling, to say the least.

Please recommend me some fantasy books like The Arts of Dark and Light series by Vox Day or some science fiction books like the Exiled Fleet series by Richard Fox.

Maybe try China Mieville? I know Peake is a big influence on him. And Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell has a similar sort of Gothic aesthetic going on.

I just finished my XPrize story for seath 14c. I'm literally up against every person in the world right now and have absolutely no hope of winning.

I don't even know why I convinced myself to do it.

Expected a commentary on utopian socialism. (from the description it sounds like the author understands that "utopia" translates to "nowhere place," eg an unattainable state of society.)

Did not expect toy soldiers threatening to murder a psychologist in the opening to the book, also this Mycroft person reads like a total asshole and annoys me. This will be a interesting read.

The only somewhat similar works are The King of Elfland's Daughter and The Worm Ouroboros

>retard unironically recommends China Mieville and token woman author to someone who says he likes Mervyn Peake

You should probably kill yourself.

John Boorman should have been able to do his version. Boorman mangled the narrative in order to convey what he felt Lord of the Rings was really about. Jackson kept the story relatively straight but in the process turned it into an action-epic.

Book of the Long Sun followed by Book of the Short Sun. Some anons have said they don't live up to the original work, I think that they can easily stand alongside Book of the New Sun as GOAT sff stories.

The Eyeflash Miracles

Like the other user I also saw Wolfe mention it in an interview. Wolfe, Budrys and GRRM were all members of the same writing group. When you think about this certain similarities and homages from GRRM to Wolfe look obvious. For example, both have written about spymasters named 'Spider'.

Off the top of my head Wolfe, Vance and Beagle are very strong fantasy prose writers. I'd check out greatsfandf.com/authors-full-list.php for more. Also try Charles Finney and James Cabbel.

Is Dying Earth worth reading? BoTNS fucking changed my life honestly and I want something that's similar to it. I'm reading Long Sun right now and it's pretty good but I haven't gotten far enough into it to compare the two.

Dying Earth is fantastic but it's not the same kind of story as Book of the New Sun. The weird world adventuring stuff is very Dying Earth but the Christian stuff is more Chesterton-inspired.

The Drenai series and Undying Mercenaries.

>also this Mycroft person reads like a total asshole and annoys me
Mycroft did nothing wrong.

Let's hear your selection then, hotshot. Obviously no one writes exactly like Peake.

where can i get more legitimate old ass fantasy like this?

>John Boorman
Just read about it and am really fucking happy we got Jackson's version.

The Arthurian Cycle is not "fantasy," please stop acting like an ass.

Oh, I'm sorry, you must be a 9 foot tall green man who can detach his head. I didn't mean to offend you.

Next you'll be saying the Holy Bible and the Iliad are "fantasy" books. Stop posting retard.

>implying the bible isn't real
Real edgy m8

Have you seen Boorman's other work? I'm a huge fan of Jackson's old stuff but I don't really know why anybody thought he was the right choice for Lord of the Rings. I like the movies he made but Boorman was a much better fit to adapt Tolkien. He's very English and tradition-minded, while Jackson is a New Zealander with cosmopolitan leanings who at that point only really had experience with the cool, wacky and gross.

No, but I read a bit about how he wanted the movie to be. He wanted Frodo and Galadriel to get it on, Arwen be 13 years old and Aragorn to be with Eowyn, the Beatles as the hobbits, and replace the Nazguls with fleshless horses.

I want a more direct adaptation over that. Not saying I think Jackson's was flawless, but his sounds better to my ears.

I think that we have different ideas on what 'direct' means when adapting. Transplanting a narrative across mediums isn't always accurate. Even though most of the plot-points were followed I don't really think that Jackson got the gist of what Tolkien was going for across. Tolkien's work felt like a proper addition to Europe's fantasy tradition, while Jackson's movie felt like a Hollywood action-epic with a decent plot.

Boorman's movies have the same feel I'm trying to describe. His 'Excalibur', which he made using a lot of ideas left over from his failed 'Lord of the Rings' production is a fantastic take on King Arthur which really does feel like proper English Fantasy like all of the old stories. Jackson's work didn't feel like an old story, it felt like a new movie. And the idea of people taking those movies seriously as anything but pleb fodder and acting horrified at the idea of remakes bastardizing it is incomprehensible to me. It's already a powerful bastardization of a completely different work.

Haven't seen Excalibur, and I haven't really felt like Jackson's is a "Hollywood action-epic with a decent plot", so we definitely have different perspectives on it. I'm probably very nostalgic and attached to the movies, as I saw them as a kid and have seen them almost yearly for ten years, while having read LOTR only once.

I think the more movies strive for "artistic value", if I can call it that, the less they appeal to most people such as myself.

Fellowship was the only good movie it gets so shit after that.

Everyone loves movie Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli but Sean Bean as Boromir was easily the strongest out of the Fellowship, or the best handled at least. A bit unfair because he's probably the most interesting character but everything about Boromir worked so much better. Two Towers is only remembered for the battle scene and Return of the King is long as fuck and jumps around too much. Also too much quipping and stripping down in the later two movies. It's not a post season-1 Game of Thrones level quality drop but it is disappointing if you watch them in a row.

Meh. There are parts of the Rohan arc I don't like, and the Path of the Dead stuff, and the Frodo stuff dragged on (which they also did in the books imo), but "shit" is an exaggeration.

Nah, the first movie is colourful and covers a variety of interesting locations, the bond of the Fellowship is heartwarming and it's just perfect fantasy. Then it goes grimdark and becomes about this one big battle at helms deep and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Well I finished it and I enjoyed it. Definitely not grimdark nor 'epic', but an enjoyable take on A Fistful of Dollars/Yojimbo in a fantasy setting.

What are some fantasy books with realistically portrayed women?

The Chronicles of Gor