/sffg/ - Science Fiction and Fantasy General

>>9309899

>>9310137
Why do people enjoy's Sanderson work? Both Way and Words were absolutely awful. They seem to be filler up until the last 100 pages but even then those pages aren't even worth it. Was majorly disappointed with Words as I had a ton of people telling me how great that book was and said it was much better than Way. Seriously, what the fuck? It seems out of all of the fantasy I've read, the only one I've enjoyed has been The Last Wish. I wasn't too fond of Sword of Destiny, although I like Ciri.

>>9310143
Good news!
7 Things To Do Before You Die in Talgarth
is listed as due in 2016 on the authors website!

>>9310154
Why do people enjoy tomatoes? Full-size and cherry are both absolutely awful. They seemed to be filled with bitter juice except for the seeds but those aren't even worth it. Was majorly disappointed with fresh tomatoes as I had a ton of people telling me how great they are and said they were much better than storebought. It seems out of all the tomatoes I've eaten, the only kind I've enjoyed has been ketchup.

>>9310154
People typically like Sanderson for setting and magic systems, which he does well. Way and Words are exceptional among his works for not having completely shitty stock characters even if his incredibly slow pace and ass loads of foreshadowing are enough to drown in.

>>9310186
But they are shitty stock characters. Dalinar is the only one with real problems, it seems, as everyone else bitches and moans about how depressed or oppressed they are.

>>9310227
>But they are shitty stock characters.
So are we.

>>9310276
woa so deep

>>9310143
>the madman actually took my post seriously
BASED OP
Although I'm disappointed that we've put /sffg/ back in the title again. Last thread was nice without it.

>>9310348
Its a matter of convenience. I don't want to search though the catalog when I can just ctrl + f

Other than Ted Chiang's Tower of Babylon, are there any sci-fi or fantasy stories set in Babylon or featuring it?

Good fantasy about palace intrigue?

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I just finished Sins of Empire.

How does a person manage to make a total fucking mess of their own world so quickly? The first two Powder Mage books were fun, entertaining, almost perfectly paced, and I could feel the influences that guided him in making the world. Sins of Empire is an absolute fucking spastic mess.

>>9310784
Tell me more, I couldn't make it past the first edgy duelist man scene.

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>>9310137
Great thred, OP

>>9310928
Cheers

>Kellhus
>Consult
>Achamian
>Nonmen
>god cultists

Choose a side.

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>>9310826

The plot 'twists' are too frequent, too often, and offer little to no impact. It's nothing that someone who paid even the mildest attention to 'Autumn Republic' wouldn't guess from a mile away. It's like Brian got high as balls, watched a 'Powerstone' Marathon, and thought "My god, this is a great idea! I'll Make it so Gods come out of old rocks, like JoJo Act 2!"

The Michel character 'twist' is one of the most poorly delivered I've ever read. Despite the simplicity of Brian's writing (typically never above 10th grade level if we're going to be honest here) he manages to try and shove so much information onto the reader that it comes out as staccato-vomit. Furthermore, it's as if he's forgotten how individuals interact with each other on some fundamental levels. You will often find yourself wondering why characters aren't wiser than they were a decade prior, or why they aren't asking the sorts of questions or piecing things together in a manner they did during the original trilogy.

It was a very frustrating read. I was expecting a more nuanced, developed story presentation as all the vibes gave off a colonial spy thriller in the Powder Mage universe, and it fails spectacularly in that regard.

>>9310162
>7 Things To Do Before You Die in Talgarth is listed as due in 2016 on the authors website!
When the fuck are these books coming out IT HAS ALMOST BEEN A FUCKING DECADE

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>>9311347
>Make it so Gods come out of old rocks, like JoJo Act 2!
That's actually awesome.

I can see the point about applying the Sanderson Formula though.

>>9311347
My biggest problem with it was not enough best girl desu

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>>9311146
Shaeönanra did nothing wrong.

>>9310154
Magic systems and his books have endings.

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Waiting for book releases is the worst.

>>9311822
>His books have endings
And how.

>>9311864
>Dat conclusion to Hero of Ages
Almost made his three books of cookie-cutter characters worth it.

>>9311875
Almost. Well of Ascension is unforgivable.

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First for charts.

Yall really need to motivate me to update this chart. Read some great books since then.

>>9310154
Sanderson's popular with stormlight because he's the only well publicised current author of epic fantasy.

With his other stuff Mistborn was fairly clever (it does subversion of hero tropes way better than Abercrombie), Warbreaker is fun and he got exposure for finishing Wheel of Time.

And let's face it if you liked latter WoT you'll be happy with anything that's close to epic fantasy.

So even though Stormlight is slow as fuck, Rithmatist is awful and two of his other books (Legion and Reckoners) are flat out ripoffs of other works he's always gonna be popular

>>9311793
>bakkerfag can't find thread without the sffg in subject
>no bakkerfag last thread

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Does this ever get good or do you need to dream of white knighting for your robot waifu to really appreciate it?

>>9312205
>Reckoners is a flat out ripoff of another work
Which book? It felt like I knew it while I was reading.

>>9312234
WHERE IS KARMA WHEN YOU NEED IT?
FUCK CHINAMAN

>>9312237
Not them but the powers randomly distributed from the sky is very Inhumans/Wild Cards

And I can't recall it right now but something else also does the sudden random powers leads to the powerless being subjagated

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>>9312234
>robot waifu
Almost picked up, but I remembered that everything that guy writes is a downer except Ship Breaker.

>>9312234

It never gets much better. I can't remember much of it, but there were parts where I was just like "really nigga, holy shit"

I'd still rec skimming the rest, wherever you are in it; I enjoyed it well enough despite the glaring flaws. But if you really dislike just drop it

>>9312234
It felt very poverty touristy.

>>9311855
If you blink really fast while looking at this image you can see the individual frames clearly

>>9311662

Ka-Poel is as mysterious in book 4 as she is in book 1. I feel this is done intentionally to keep her as a generic plot device. The total lack of affection between Her and Taniel was disgustingly jarring and felt artificial, like they weren't real people. We're reminded multiple times about how mysterious and self-taught she is, but we're never reminded that she's a human being too.

>>9311592

It could have been awesome if the information had been delivered in any other way and if the characters involved didn't respond like the shit I would see on the WB saturday morning cartoons in the 90's.

How do you all feel about The Once and Future King? I looked on the wikipedia page and some of the changes seem really strange for such a widely acclaimed Arthurian story, like Lancelot being ugly, Merlin aging in reverse, etc
Might buy it, I liked the big tome of Le Morte D'Arthur I have

>>9312931
I really liked it. I loved it as a kid, even more as an adult, but other than it I am an Arthur pleb. White seems to be writing from somewhere really personal, and he gets the medieval mindset, the philosophical asides on what Arthur's trying to do are pretty good. His Lancelot is seriously one of my favorite characters in literature, a seriously flawed person who desperately wants to be good, and White doesn't do him the disservice of letting him just be himself.

The tone shifts from cartoonish to deadly serious all the time, and I can see how that could put someone off, that and the anachronisms, but I think White did a good job of compressing English history into one idealized timeframe. It is very much a fantasy even without the magic, which is used sparsely and mostly just to cause a tragedy.

I'm half way through the eye of the world, is the rest of the wheel of time worth reading?

Dûnyain dindu nuffin

Is Armor the GOAT military sci-fi novel?

>>9313193
That would be All You Need is Kill

>>9313071
I'm on book three and enjoying it so far.

>>9313071
I love Wheel of Time, but it's not a series I recommend to people lightly. It has a very nostalgic feel for me, reading it is like eating comfort food. All that aside, Eye of the World is not really representative of what the rest of the series is like. It's an odd almost one-off book that does a lot of legwork to introduce the main trio and some important concepts, as well as foreshadowing a shitload of stuff, but the actual plot is weirdly disconnected from anything that comes after it and "formula" it uses is pretty much never revisited.

>>9310137
Any good novels out there about a society after a solar flare hits Earth and essentially wipes out all electronics?

I just thought of the concept today and surely there must be something out there

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I read Leigh Brackett's 1948 novella The Beast-Jewel Of Mars, in an exotic Martian setting of ancient cities, dead seas, crumbling wharves, bandit kingdoms and bare-breasted princesses.

The tough Earthman protag seeks the secret of 'Shanga,' a process by which men revert back to the primitive state, back to ape and lizard, a process his girlfriend had begun before disappearing.

Brackett is an entertainer and crowd pleaser who writes in a hard boiled style from the likes of Dash Hammett. An iron-willed hero, spear toting Martian heavies, femme fatales and fisticuffs. The reverting properties of the Beast-Jewel allows some primordial Lovecraft and Howard-like spectacles and barbaric/civilised dichotomy. This gets 4/5 dinos, those who liked Bradbury's Martian Chronicles should look up Brackett.

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>>9313181
DELETE DÛNYAINS

>>9313288
But catfag anon, did it have catgirls?

>>9313444
Speaking of which, did one of you fags ever make a xeno-love recommendation chart?

Still looking for this one book I read over a decade ago where the love interest is a basically a gas cloud.

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Did Baen publish all their Heinlein juveniles in the larger format, or just a small number for libraries? My copy of Between Planets is huge.

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>>9313768
with a standard trade paperback for scale

>>9313768
Hi T-Rex.

Awake in the Night Land please.

>>9313770
>the guys that only read sci-fi are e/lit/ist in disguise.

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>every so often I get optimistic and explain the best method of learning to write to students. I don't believe any of them has ever tried it, but I will explain it to you now. After all, you may be the exception. When I read about this method, it was attributed to Benjamin Franklin, who invented and discovered so much. Certainly I did not invent it. But I did it, and it worked. That is more than can be said for most creative writing classes. Find a very short story by a writer you admire. Read it over and over until you understand everything in it. Then read it over a lot more. Here's the key part. You MUST do this. Put it away where you cannot get at it. You will have to find a way to do it that works for you. Mail the story to a friend and ask him to keep it for you, or whatever. I left the story I had studied in my desk on Friday. Having no weekend access to the building in which I worked, I could not get to it until Monday morning. When you cannot see it again, write it yourself. You know who the characters are. You know what happens. You write it. Make it as good as you can. Compare your story to the original, when you have access to the original again. Is your version longer? Shorter? Why? Read both versions out loud. There will be places where you had trouble. Now you can see how the author handled those problems. If you want to learn to write fiction, and are among those rare people willing to work at it, you might want to use the little story you have just finished as one of your models. It's about the right length.
- Gene Wolfe in his Afterword to 'The Boy Who Hooked the Sun'

Well anon? Are you one of those rare people willing to work at it?

>>9313926
I love Wolfe, but don't spam this in all the threads for no reason.

>>9312931
Late to the party but I love TOaFK so much I just have to comment.
I agree with everything
>>9312976
had to say about it and would add that even if it is not the truest to Arthurian legendry it is one of the most enjoyable, accessible, and well written additions to it. Not my favorite depiction of Merlin but the rest of the cast is top notch.
I keep a copy of it right next to my Le Morte D'Arthur. No reason not to have both.

>>9313936
>no reason
These threads are full of faggots who claim to be trying to write but never will. This is the only way anything will get done. And I'd prefer that /lit/ posters hate Wolfe rather than forget him.

>>9313918
I only read scifi. Got no problem with fantasy though. Some of my favs are clearly scifi-fantasy mixes like Hyperion. I hate this entire polarisation of the two biggest fiction genres.

>>9312931
>Merlin aging in reverse
Isn't that pretty standard though?

>>9313288
Is this like John Carter rebooted?

>>9313505
It was one of the sections in my chart. Not much to get excited over. If I find enough to read I might attempt a standalone.

>>9313817
https://forum.mobilism.org/viewtopic.php?f=1293&t=971379&hilit=Awake+in+the+Night+Land

>>9310137
Why is no one discussing The Chronicles Of Amber on this board?

Malazan book of the fallen

The Saxon Stories


Which one should I read?

>>9314174
Thank you, my obviously large-penised friend. Used to use that site years ago, but forgot all about it.

>>9314181
There are plenty of Zelazny fans here, but more so for Lord of Light. Still, it comes up on occasion.

>>9314184
Probably the one you want to read.

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>>9314191
Am a grill.
Search strat w/ no private trackers (PTs)
Fiction
Mobilism → Libgen → Irchighway #ebooks → Undernet → TPB → VK

Nonfic
Libgen → TPB

Audiobooks
Audiobooksbay

w/ PTs
Myanonamouse → Bibliotik (hard to source invite) → Mobilism → Libgen → Irchighway #ebooks → Undernet → TPB → VK
(Also ripping w/ Overdrive and other libraries you have access to)

w/ a mobilism account PM'ing an uploader who has deadlinks will usually get you a PM within about 24 hours with a reupload.

Covers 99% of bases.


>>9314181
Discussed it once (an example of a book that goes from shit to fairly GOAT).

=============================

State of the Art by Banks. Other than 'Descendant' and to an extent 'A Gift from the Culture' it was largely forgettable. Sentient weapons/ships are an interesting concept but seems overly helpful for the setting and the prose is quite expansive but not particularly tightly written which is slightly unhelpful for the format.

=============================

Will probably start on Slaughterhouse Five by Vonneghut next. His Cat's Cradle was insidiously clever and an excellent recommendation by anon.

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This is your daily reminder that, despite how much you hate it, this man wrote a book better than anything you will ever create.

>>9314228
*Vonnegut

>>9314229
I make sandwiches every day. They're breddy gud.

Why is Cugel such an asshole. I feel bad for Twango desu

Anyone read Dukaj?

Really want to give Ice a try, but I have heard, it's a really hard read.

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Science fiction.

Only a few works of science fiction qualify as "real" works of literature. That is to say, they can be held in a similar regard to greater pieces.

For example, Brave New World, 1984 and Slaughterhouse Five, all considered reputable works of fiction and yet also science fiction. (Arguably 1984 less so, but follow me on this). There's a lot of others, such as some works by Asimov, Dick and potentially Clarke.

However, these are all undeniably rather old. My question is what pieces of modern science fiction could be considered true literature? I'm not trying to get into and elitist argument about pretentiousness of art or anything, but asking what modern sci-fi is of such quality that it elevates itself from genre fiction to literature.

To define modern, let's say published after 2000. I'm also no expert on literature itself, so if anyone wants to argue that no modern books are true literature that go ahead.

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>>9314255
So you want sci-fi not for manchildren? Try this

>>9314255
The City and the City, maybe? It has a lot of Kafka/PKD influence going on, and touches on divided societies etc. in a way that goes beyond the obvious mystery story. I also hear good things about The Vorrh.

>>9312333
>tfw i spent ten minutes working out the exact rate to blink at so it looks like a still
Why do you toy with my autism so, /sffg/?

>>9314255
I did not enjoy Brave New World at all but greatly enjoyed 1984, Asimov and Dick and Clarke's shorts but seemingly not his longs.

And I fucking hated Mieville and Wright.

I think that modern scifi is just not as good as the old stuff. I seem to enjoy older scifi much more than modern scifi and I seem to enjoy modern fantasy much more than the older fantasy.

Paradoxical.

>>9314098
Was talking about your Tolstoy

>>9314228
I am a kissless 27 year old virgin. Please make a man out of me.

>>9314317
Fuck off

>>9314317
There was a recent survey of about 200 students inside a lecture of our year level (average age approximately 22 or more) and 25% were virgins.

>>9314326
So virgins are the new in? How many of those 25% were male? Because I will bet you any females in that 25% are no longer virgins.

>>9314166
Yeah, Brackett is in that tradition of exotic Martians, she did stuff about Venus too. A writer with an interesting bibliography, of genre fiction and screenplays (John Wayne and an early draft of Empire Strikes Back)

>>9314336
Results were anonymised but the ratio of M:F is approximately 2:1.

>>9314352
As in M:F for the entire cohort of which 40% were represented for the survey not for that particularly result.

>>9314336
You would be surprised how many attractive females are virgins in college

>>9314301
I paradoxically hated 1984 but loved BNW. Apples and oranges.

I agree a lot of modern scifi isn't great, but I'll keep trying.

>>9314269
Thanks I'll check them out.

>>9312205
>reddit spacing

>>9314374
If you haven't already tried Hyperion/don't count that one as a classic it's fantastic.

>>9314255
Obviously this is hard because a lot of it will be subjective and we don't have a whole lot of iconic Sci-fi/literature landmarks to work from.

But as I mentioned last thread I truly feel that a good, successful sci-fi is more about people's and society's reaction to new technology than the technology itself.

"Real literature" is kind of the same. Regardless of the time or place a truly transcendent piece touches on themes and concepts which are universal to the human experience. Deep philosophical concepts are certainly one way to fill the criteria but there are other more personal and less complex universal experiences that can work just as well if handled properly. Coming of age stories, tragedies, search for meaning, love and loss, and many far more novel archetypes work just as well in and out of genre fiction. If it takes a tired cliche of a character or story arc and can give it some extra meaning in the exotic context of the work, even better.

Now what actually reaches these lofty aspirations is another matter.

Any novels about the main protag or deuteragonist getting more and more schizophrenic as the book goes on and eventually destroying the world or something else that causes drama?

>>9314485
Wheel of Time.

>>9314485
Two Philip K Dick novels fit exactly. Dr Bloodmoney and Martian Time Slip.

>>9314400
>making your posts legible is reddit

When you type out several long lines of text about book.
And either don't separate them or only use a single press of the enter key
They clump together and are way less readable, it's not a reddit thing it's the reality of posting on an imageboard

>>9314555
>Sanderson's popular with stormlight because he's the only well publicised current author of epic fantasy.
>With his other stuff Mistborn was fairly clever (it does subversion of hero tropes way better than Abercrombie), Warbreaker is fun and he got exposure for finishing Wheel of Time.
>And let's face it if you liked latter WoT you'll be happy with anything that's close to epic fantasy.
>So even though Stormlight is slow as fuck, Rithmatist is awful and two of his other books (Legion and Reckoners) are flat out ripoffs of other works he's always gonna be popular
oh wow how unreadable. now kill yourself cuck.

>>9314575
you are an off topic fag
i wish I didn't put /sffg/ in the title so you would be unable to find the thread just like the last one

>>9314575
>unironically using cuck
>the most popular term on the very popular donald trump reddit
Now look who's reddit

>>9314596
>>9314597
cucks

>>9314555
how about adding a custom css rule you massive faggot? https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/line-height

>>9314606
>discussing custon css rules
>in the science fiction and fantasy general

>>>/g/

>>9314252
I'm Polish, Ice is both hard and good. Can't vouch for translation quality though. You may want to try something shorter first, like Xavras Wyzryn or a couple short stories. Dukaj's somewhat polarizing.

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>crying anime girl.jpg
Can we talk about books here?
I found this a comfy but unsatisfying read. It seems to be a polemic against small government, insular towns, or ancappers. The poor mistreated guy suddenly outing himself as a jew (MC doesn't actually know what that is) wasn't near impactful as I think was the author's intention. It's like she assumed I'd be deeply sympathetic without any narrative buildup on her part. I think she could have pulled it off with a longer text.
I rate this 2/5 dinosaurs.

Hey guise what are yu thinking about We are Bob ?

Can you point me to otber hard scifi authors?

>>9314922
Gene Wolfe desu

>>9314922
We are Bob sounds cool may actually read that

Peter Watts writes good modern hard scifi

>>9314485
Wheel of Time actually.

>>9314740
Why are you ignoring me catfag anon? I know you are the dino-as-measurements anon.

>>9314184
malazan. but i havent read the other one so take that with some salt. but read malazan anyway

Which novel has the most delusional protagonist?

>>9315666
your diary desu

>>9315582
Surely you can see the difference in writing styles? I do it too, but my reviews are far less erudite.

>>9313439
I loved the Axolotl ta- I mean Whale Mothers.

>>9315582
I'm the dino reviewer, but I swear by the ghosts of Jack Vance, Fritz Leiber and Robert Howard that I'm not a catwoman lover. My fetish is more patrician.

>>9315896
>implying

There's literally nothing wrong with the Kingkiller series

>>9313439
Quick rundown on this image.

>>9315956
>dude I'm a virgin but I'm so good at sex a sex god was impressed enough to let me live lmao

>>9316101
>your first time can't be your best time

>>9316248
Your first time might be YOUR best time

But I doubt it's the best a sex goddess who routinely fucks mean to death has had

>>9316248
Of course not, if your first time is your only time.

Reckoners is really fun but I wish it weren't aimed at YA

It's already much better than Sanderson's attempts at generic fantasy so I wish it hadn't been aimed at an audience of 14 year olds

>>9316445
I liked it too. Evil superheroes has been done before, but Sanderson's autism really gets a chance to shine in that setting. Actually, now that I think about it, he would make a fantastic comic writer.

has anyone actually read a Wild Cards story?

>>9316458
Yeah, there's some good shit in there, Zelazny's stuff is great.

>>9316455
I wasn't hooked by evil superheros but the powerless trying to kill enemies with ridiculous comic/fantasy powers is a good hook.

Although I'm down on the YA stylings (some of his worst character writing) the lower pagecount kinda helps because it keeps the pace up

>>9314228
>Am a grill.

Keep your feminine charms; I just want an invite to a comprehensive movie tracker.

>>9314246
What did Twango do with all the food that no one ate every night?

>>9314255
>. . . Slaughterhouse Five . . . considered reputable . . . science fiction.

I don't understand why this is so. First, Vonnegut was a proven liar as Dresden suffered nothing like what he described. Second, the plot device of having Billy Pilgrim come loose in time and live his otherwise ordinary (if mentally disturbed) life non-sequentially is stretching the definition of science fiction to a point where you might as well fling up your hands and walk away. Third and finally, the story is overwrought hand-wringing meant to induce pseudo-intellectual guilt in the children of the Allies.

>>9316519
>the powerless trying to kill enemies with ridiculous comic/fantasy powers is a good hook.
Too bad half their crew ended up being secret supers. I'm still mad.

>>9316567
Yeah it happens in almost everything that uses that plot setup which is annoying because it weakens the premise

Worst case of it is Codex Alera because the protagonist gets to be super good in everything else to compensate for no powers and then gets powers anyway

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>Not entering free book giveaways for genre fiction

>>9316590
I just want to see Rock Lee beat all the supers and surpass the gods because of his willpower and endurance. That shouldn't be too much to ask.

I hope Mx0 would have done that but it was cancelled.

>>9316522
I don't have enough BP/pretty risky with 312cuck around and also
>Because the user limit has been reached you are unable to purchase invites at this time.

If the rumour that BTN is recruiting on TehC is legit (cannot verify since not on tehc) you should get into TehC then BTN and wait for PTP recruitment on BTN because those sites are really close else if you have Bibliotik → HDBits (if the recruiter is still active, I got my invite in <24 hrs when it first opened). But neither of those lead to PTP at the moment because of the user count, in fact PTP actually pullsed recruitment from HDB

>>9316625
* pulled

Picked up Dan Simmons's Ilium from the library today. I hope to enjoy it as much as I did the Hyperion Cantos, but the first few chapters have me unsure. Does it live up to its predecessors?

>>9316625
>I don't have enough BP/pretty risky with 312cuck around and also
I wasn't being literal but thanks for considering it all the same. I've been thinking I should parlay my MAM account into something cinematic.

>>9316458
>has anyone actually read a Wild Cards story?
Doesn't/didn't GRRM have something to do with this? I haven't read any of them and I'm too lazy to check at the moment.

>>9314181
What were you wanting to discuss about it?

>>9314203
>There are plenty of Zelazny fans here, but more so for Lord of Light.
This does seem to be true here. It took me two tries to get into "Lord of Light" after Amber but it eventually did pay off. It's very different, like the contrast of "Ender's Game" to "Speaker for the Dead" except "Lord of Light" is worth it.

>>9316695
It's a whole new level of weird from LoL to Creatures of Light and Darkness too.

>>9315666
Pale Fire. Or like anything by Wolfe, particularly Peace

>>9316603
i got two books this way in a fairly short period of time and since then haven't gotten anything in months. i feel like since i didn't review the books i got blackballed

>>9316695
PTP's user limit is over by 5013 users and has been that way for ages (while people crept in from HDB but that route has now been closed) so I think that TehC is worth it.

>>9316731
I read that you are sort of "obligated" to, although it is unspoken. Why not just review them, even if it was the worst book possible?

>>9316812
>asking a autist who resides inside these threads to be reasonable
I think you forgot where you are.

>>9314022
There are writing/critique threads for that shit.

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Give me some sci-fi short stories. Preferably hard sci-fi.

>>9316821
>be so high
>naturally reasonable persona accidentally comes through
>weed, not even once

>>9316698
>It's a whole new level of weird from LoL to Creatures of Light and Darkness too.
Hmm. The paragraph on wikipedia describing how the story came to be published isn't exactly irresistible* bait.

Anyhoo, I have enough on the plate at the moment. I do like Zelazny's protagonists though, at least the couple I have read.

>*irresistable is apparently a variant
>not sure which I prefer

>>9314255
The Slynx, published in 2000, is very good and "literary" in the way you're looking for.

>>9316828
if you want to be the next DFW sure

>>9316445
>>9316455
Would a man in his thirties who still enjoys superhero comics enjoy reading this series?

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>>9316988
Possibly.

I really liked Le Guin's Earthsea series. What should I read next?

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>>9317061
Le Guin's Hainish series. Then look up New Wave and see if anything catches your eye.

>>9317081
Is the Hanish cycle meant to be read in order?

>>9317092
Rocannon's World/Planet of Exile/City of Illusion build on each other, Left Hand and Dispossessed can be read independently. Left Hand is the weakest in my opinion, it doesn't even have the sense of adventure of Rocannon's World, Dispossessed is strongest but City of Illusion I like most.

There are also a few short stories but I haven't read all of them.

>>9317061
Is Earthsea the only patrish YA?

>>9317101
thank you

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>>9317103
No.

>>9317128
Any other suggestions?

>>9317207
His dark materials, abhorsen trilogy, septimus heap, the red king's children.

>>9314255

Time is a sieve for stories. The ones that speak to generation after generations are the ones that get caught. That's part of why Sci-Fi has so little literature. It's about 4 generations old, and has been very niche for most of them.

I don't really concern myself with if something is literature or not for that reason. I can guess at it, but it's impossible to know.

>>9316637

No.

>>9317429

>. . . good sci-fi is more about people's and society's reaction to new technology than the technology itself.

>Time is a sieve for stories. The ones that speak to generation after generations are the ones that get caught.

Pearls in consecutive threads.

I somehow managed to get my mum hooked on the Dune series. She's currently reading the fifth book and I'll get her to stop on the sixth, before Frank Herbert's son takes over. I'm surprised that she's actually been enjoying the books considering that until recently she's mostly been reading cringy romance novels.

Which books should I get her to read next? The Culture series perhaps?

>>9314255
Holy reddit-spacing Batman! Is this post satire?

>>9317515
Bakker

>>9317207
The Princess and the Goblin
Then read The Princess and Curdie

>He leaped around a pillar on the other side of the bank, surprising a woman holding her child. “Yes,” he continued, “robbing a bank for the money would be pointless—but showing what I can do … that is still important. So I continued with my plan.” He pointed, killing the child, leaving the horrified woman holding a pile of bones and ash. “Aren’t you glad?”
I gaped at the sight, the terrified woman trying to hold the blanket tight, the infant’s bones shifting and slipping free.
>"young adult"

>>9317515
Get her to try the Farseer trilogy. Chicks tend to love it if they can be convinced to give it a chance.

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>>9317483
We can be deep when we want to.

>>9317515
Like another anon said bakker, or Oedipus Rex.

>>9317541
Which book is that??

>>9317705
Steelheart, from the Reckoners series. It was being discussed earlier in this thread.

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>>9317714
>steelheart
>it's not about these cool cats getting transported to a fantasy world

why even bother living
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IfiLehLFJw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqKLuegPPxk

>>9317907
Sanderson's never as metal as he needs to be.

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Reckoners by Sanderson is a more shallow copy of Darker than Black. I mean fucking Calamity is based on the fake stars and the setting isn't 10% as interesting. (Darker than Black has Roadside Picnic aesthetics especially when the would be astronaut steps into 'the light')

Reckoners is objectively terrible. I hate that Sanderson keeps writing YA but he's all about what will earn him the most cash.

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Read any good short fiction recently?

The only good character in Reckoners is Prof.

>>9318264
His writing is really weird to me. The quality seems to be all fucking over the place. His books are all amazing in some way and awful in another and its never the same ways between his various series.
Most authors you can at least pick out what it is they do well from a few readings.

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>>9316848
Rec me short stories and novellas, you double niggers.

>>9318667
have you read kafka's short stories

Hey, what do you guys think of webnovels? I haven't seen any threads or talk about them, I figure this thread encompasses the topic decently

>>9318681
You mean like Wildbow's web serials?

>>9318685
Well sort of, but I actually meant translated Chinese and Korean webnovels, they seem quite popular on some platforms

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Can someone pls pitch this to me? I'm trying to find something that balances genre thrills and adult drama in a satisfying way. I usually read literary fiction but I'm in the mood for something enjoyable/entertaining/comfy with a decent plot and characters. I tried the first Mistborn book and it was TOO accessible, if you know what I mean; the tropes and character archetypes were too familiar that I couldn't get engaged. It was too kiddy. However I also don't want something that's too literary/adult/intellectual because that's exactly what I'm trying to take a break from.

Basically I just want a fantasy book with a good non-formulaic story. Is pic related like that?

>>9318701
I would recommend the broken empire trilogy, it's decent and I say it's worth a look if you want a slightly more serious series

>>9318701
>enjoyable/entertaining/comfy with a decent plot
BOTNS is none of these. It's boring religious symbolic wankery.

Try something by Guy Gavriel Kay, like The Lions of Al Rassan. And stay away from the Broken Empire the other anon recommended, it's more of that edgy teen stuff.

>>9318304
T-that pic is not true...

>>9318667
>cosmerefag is racist
This physically hurts me.

>>9318727
Other Anon here, yep can confirm it is basically edgy teen shit but it can be fun, and the universe is quite cool, if underutilized

>>9318264
>>9318645
Over half way through with Steelheart and his characters come across as quite shallow and almost Disney-ish. But it is a YA novel so I don't fucking know.

>>9318727
Definitely agreed.

>>9318304
Almost finishing the foundation trilogy. For some reason Asimov never cought my attention (I blame the lame I robot movies), but I found the book on sale just before holidays.

Now I can only agree with the hivemind: the book ia excellent and would recommend.

Btw, question to english readers? What is the original mutant name ? In spanish it got translated as "El Mulo", so is it originally the Donkey? The Ass?

>>9318667
All short stories by JG Ballard are excellent. Pick any compilation or
Vermillion Sands if you want storues that are coherent between themselves.

>>9319142
Probably "the Mule"

>read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? for the first time ever
>can't understand why Deckard couldn't kill Rachael

If not after he fucked her, why not after she killed his goat?

>>9318738
yeah and you are a homophobe using the fag suffix
this isn't tumbler

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Whats some good apocalyptic fantasy that no one talks about?

I really like the theme of military sci-fi but most of of the books in that genre are rather unengaging and impersonal. Going through recommendation lists seems pretty futile now that I've read several of the novels that appear on most of them and didn't like them.

"Armor" and the Ember War series are my favourites so far. Old Man's War and The Forever War didn't engage me at all other than the intro of OMW. Currently reading "Watch on the Rhine" after more or less trudging through the posleen war series, which describe battle and the logistics thereof reasonably well at least. Too many characters with too poor development though.

>>9319237
>everyone called a fag on 4chen since 2006 and before
>literal faggots thinks that means 4chan is a safe space
>tumblshit
>homophobe
>4chan cares about literal faggots
You just outed yourself you red-piece-of-shitor. We have a containment board to keep literal faggots like you away from the rest of us. You think 4chan is some fag hugging site?
kys you literal buggerboy.

>>9319183
Confirming this. It's a reference to his infertility

>>9319560

It also seems to imply that he's a hybrid or "missing link" to some new form of human evolution, which is a popular scifi trope and something Seldon couldn't account for with psychohistory.
>wouldn't evolution essentially mean psychohistory had a limit in effectiveness in terms of predicted future history timescale?

>>9319554
Not him, but years of imageboard abuse appears to have taken its toll on your reading comprehension. Have you considered taking a few days off? We're all worried about you anon.

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What books have good, charming characters, where the focus of the characters is on themselves rather than their fantastical powers, practical or social?

I get the quote pictured is from GoT but what else besides that

>>9319845

Which genre?
>anything by Jack Vance

>>9319925
I prefer fantasy, but I'd be willing to leave that comfort zone if the story is more character-focused than grand-plot focused.

>>9320142
Read any Death Gate Cycle books? There's a grand plot behind it all, but it's only alluded to up until the halfway mark of the series in favor of characters trying to survive and such.

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>some shit happens
>rising tensions
>everything's in trouble
>imminent crisis
>protagonist pulls out deus ex machina (sometimes in a literal sense)
>crisis resolved
>LOL JUST AS PREDICTED BY HARI SELDON
>repeat

I just read Foundation and I have mixed feelings about it. Are the other books better?

>>9320371
that's an awesome cover

>>9319554
>calling tumblr tumbl and not dumblr
Found the ledditor.

Are pulps actually good or are they just a meme?

Is codex alera worth reading?

>>9320471
meme
>>9320528
no

>>9320471
depends
huge quality difference between stories

>http://io9.gizmodo.com/feast-your-eyes-on-all-the-science-fiction-and-fantasy-1793874472

christ, april is looking good. Normally I'm lucky to find two books that interests me in a month. Here I see six

>>9320465
>kek
>4chan is a hivemind
>we all shit talk tumbcunt the same way

>>9320599
>NEW THRAWN
yessss

>lmao deep ones working for the fbi
geeet ouuuuuuuut

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>>9320599
>Cosmic Powers: The Saga Anthology of Far-Away Galaxies, edited by John Joseph Adams
>Edited by Hugo winner Adams, the tales in this book are inspired by movies like Guardians of the Galaxy and Star Wars
>movies like Guardians of the Galaxy
>movie
>not the comic
ree

>>9320672
>greentexting kek
How is your first day going?

>>9320684
Did Thrawn survive the buyout, then, or are the books a parallel universe?

>>9320777
Yes, Thrawn is still canon. He showed up in the CGI cartoon last year IIRC.

>>9320771
>how 2 greentext
I see you just want (you)s. Here is your last. I am done.

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>>9320599
>No Pellaeon
It's like seeing the Holmes without the Watson, or Reinhard without Kircheis or Gundam without Bright or Hyperion without de Soya (fuck you too Dan Simmons, for relegating the only intereresting Endymion character to a side role.)

Pelly and Thrawn quite literally carried the novels. There are interesting characters (such as Car'das, Karrde and Mara) but in retrospect the Star Wars characters from the films (Luke etc) were terribly uninteresting or shallow archetypes and the books only highlighted that.

>>9320826
>2

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>>9320826
Nah he can have another.

>>9320771

>>9320840
>gif
Ah yes the Tumblr strikes again.

>>9312187
Terrible

>>9320880
Name three that should be on it

>>9319393
What did you like about the Ember War series? I could go for a long military scifi series and this looks interesting

>>9319647
It wasn't so much evolution (which can probably be predicted as much as cultural shift can) but the fact that Mule wasn't a mass of people (easy to predict) but a single person (free agent, hard to predict). Hari couldn't have known Mule would be born, or that he would end up doing the things he did. Mule is the Napoleon of Foundation, a single man who drastically altered the course of history.

>>9320922
>What did you like about the Ember War series?
It's very well paced, doesn't try to be anything other than entertainment, and has a nice balance of character interaction and good action scenes with just the right amount of detail. It's not fantastic in any particular regard, but everything just clicks together and works.

I have a feeling the author would be an excellent screenwriter.

>>9320927

Sure but do not all evolutionary mutations begin with an individual? Say that Asimov had not, as a plot device, made the Mule as sterile as his namesake: his mutation would have been a great advantage and likely lead to an ever-increasing population of Mules, completely overthrowing the Foundation and with it applied psychohistory.

>>9320927
Im still mad by the way Asimov put his best character to sleep with magic. The Mule was too good for that fate.

>>9320978
That's the Second Foundation though.

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>>9320986
>died unable to find out what lay beyond
>unable to let anyone go if even for a second because they would hate him or try to kill him
>the only person who he loves ends up with a faggot
>died young and alone

>>9320922
Kratman and Ringo are, as I recall, pretty bad. Though Ringo is at least entertaining to read from what I remember.

I'd suggest trying David Drake's stuff. He was a intelligence officer during the Vietnam war, so his stuff has a certain element of (I guess) darkness to it. His two main series are Hammer's Slammers, about unit of mercenaries in hover tanks, and the Lt. Leary Commanding series, which is a homage to Aubrey/Maturin.

Ninefox Gambit came out last year and is more of a traditional scifi story with a military framing. Basic premise is that a promising young officer fucks up and becomes expendable, so high command shoves the ghost of a brilliant but fratricidal general who nuked his own army, and sends her on a suicide mission.

Joel Shepherd has a series about the crew of a space battleship going renegade after their government frames them for the murder of a admiral. It's more of a adventure series than pure military SF though, so you might find it more interesting.

>>9320684
>>9320740
>>9320832

it only looks bad if you like scifi or regurgitatated trash. The more patrician fantasy angle actually looks pretty great

>>9321049
The book covers look great but that doesn't indicate the quality of the books.

Anyone read Malazan? How good is it? Worth the bother? Or just mediocre stuff?

>>9321034
Thanks anon, that's just the kind of post I wanted to read.

Do you know of anything in the genre which does not concern itself with space travel by the way? A war story on earth, but in the future mean.

Anything about palace intrigue?

>>9321124
Have you read Dune?

>>9321056
The autists in this general literally judge a book by it's cover. Great books they call edgy and trash and shitty mediocre books get called great because of covers. Of course they didn't read anything. I mean why read right?

>>9321091
>Do you know of anything in the genre which does not concern itself with space travel by the way? A war story on earth, but in the future mean.

I can think of a couple. Of the ones I posted Hammer's Slammers is almost entirely about ground combat.

Linda Nagata's The Red series is a "10-minutes in the future" style technothriller about powered-armored soldiers in the near future. It opens with them doing peacekeeping patrols in Africa but quickly turns into them fighting against corrupt defense contractors, and there's some stuff about a AI.

The Mirrored Heavens series by David J. Williams is a similar near future setting, it's very fast paced IIRC, the entire series takes place over three days after terrorists blow up a space elevator and start another world war, the furthest it goes into space is visiting a orbital habitat and the moon.

Another option would be A Small Colonial War by Robert Frezza, it's a obscure book about Finnish infantry putting down a Boer uprising on a Japanese colony planet. Not set on earth but spaceships only show up when they're dropping off the mercenaries and to provide fire support a few times. It's sort of the inverse of Hammer's Slammers, whereas the Slammers have massive tanks and heavy artillery, the Finns only have light armored cars and mortars, so they have to adopt a more crafty approach due to their lack of heavy equipment and numbers.

>>9321056
he descriptions sound promising. a good cover doesn't mean a good book, but a horrible cover is usually an early warning sign of a terrible book

>>9321069
If you like a big world with lots of characters and history then you'll like it. The wide cast of characters allow for a lot of different things to happen, like Kruppe and the gang. Give it a shot desu. It gets better after the first so if you like that then definitely go on.

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>>9321148
>when the book has a poser art cover
>when the cover is indistinguishable from a poorly photoshopped chuck tingle cover

Any fantasy books similar to Red Rising? Felt more like space fantasy than sci-fi, so I mean in pacing and characters not the setting obviously.

>>9320599
Holy shit Kessel's putting out a novel

>>9320599
>New Elizabeth Moon
>It's a Vatta's War follow up

I can't believe I hadn't heard about this already, that's fantastic news

>>9321143
>Linda Nagata's The Red series
I read the first book and half of the sequel. I think they were very poorly written though I'm otherwise a great fan of "10-minutes in the future technothrillers".

>Hammer's Slammers
That does it, will read this next. Have heard a lot of good about it.

>The Mirrored Heavens
> A Small Colonial War
Those both sound very interesting. How did you find out about these by the way?

>>9321184
Still reading through the series but Darkstalker is very much space fantasy in the RR vein.

Same approach of an action series about a rebellion too

>>9320599
Some of those look bretty gud. Might try them.(fuck all the pulps and star wars)

>>9321196
>How did you find out about these by the way?
By reading obviously. Somebody had got to be the betatesters.

>>9321196
Mirrored Heavens I found out about because the author also wrote the story for the video game Homeworld.

Colonial War I found out about because I was talking about "realistic" military fiction with some people on another forum and somebody directed me to this review:
https://kitup.military.com/2011/11/november-book-review-small-colonial.html

Then I forgot about it for several years and eventually ran across a mention to it on a wargaming forum last year and finally got around to buying a copy.

>>9321138
Lovingly illustrated catgirl covers indicate kWaLiTy
Photographs of brooding males in hoodies indicate BlEaGh :3

>>9321138
What great book got called trashy based on its cover?

>>9319845
Titus Groan. 100% Harold Bloom approved.

The forces that control culture have no experience or understanding of what healthy male relationships look like. Normal bonds of brotherhood, the timeless recognition that competent men have for each other, and the unbreakable bonds forged by men who win through adversity together are no longer an acceptable part of mainstream discourse. The language and emotion of the giants of science fiction and fantasy was replaced when the noodle-armed poindexters of the 50s and 60s managed to connive their way like a horse of Wormtongues into positions as leading critics and editors of the genre. The resultant wholesale repudiation of strength and courage and fraternity by the authors of the last half of the twentieth century has drained fiction of a powerful source of conflict and motivation.

>>9321562
truuuu

>>9321143
>A Small Colonial War by Robert Frezza
That looks really good, anon. I'll try to report back on it.

>>9321069
I'm on the last book right now, fantastic series. Told on a massive scale, has some of the best world building I've ever read. It requires a substantial investment of time and effort to get into though, because Erikson doesn't hold your hand starting out. If you don't have the patience to read through 3 or 4 books before you start getting real exposition then you probably won't like it.

Any classic fantasy bros in here? Saw someone recommending Princess and the Goblin, haven't read that but I've been very impressed by MacDonald's shorts. Currently stalled halfway through Phantastes. Have started King of Elfland's Daughter and expect good things of it.

I've also read halfway through Well at the World's End and Wood Beyond the World. I only dropped Well because I moved and lost my place, but Wood got sort of boring.

Has anyone read Andrew Lang's original fiction? His multicolor fairy books were my thing when I was young but I can't remember them well now.

feeling depressed as shit, anybody wanna recommend a sci-fi or post apocalyptic novel or series for maximum escapism? preferences: character focused rather than setting focused.

recently enjoyed Armor, Passage trilogy, Three Body trilogy.

>>9322048
Phantastes and Lilith are very different from P&tG. Aside from those two, all his other stories are fairy tales for kids. I mean, that is what they are, I'm not making fun of them. Still worth reading.

>>9322060
I don't think I would have understood The Golden Key as a kid. That's because I didn't understand it as an adult. They're fairy stories that kids can enjoy but I'm not really sure he meant it for them.

>>9322049
unironically The Stand

>>9322236
already read it and really enjoyed it. I feel like the Passage trilogy was similar in a lot of ways, except replace all the spiritual stuff with vampires. really like how he wrapped it up too. any other suggestions? Also I listened to Swan Song last year and I wasn't that impressed.

>>9322100
Maybe. There's definitely a difference there though.

>>9322262
Maybe Metro 2033. Artyom (protagonist) it's not the best character but i enjoyed the first book for being a depressing and post-apocaliptic atmosphere.

>>9322048
I read Phantastes and Wood Beyond the World recently. Liked the former, but the latter was kind of generic save-the-princess stuff. Stop dropping things!

>>9322049
A Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter Miller. It's also surprisingly light hearted in places. If you can track down his novella Dark Benediction, it's another post-apoc but in a different setting and not as far in the future.

about 3/4 through Free Live Free. Love the cast of down-and-outers. Enjoying GW's style, how he tells you things so you almost don't realize he has told you. The dialogue scene in the dark nut house was neat. This book wouldn't be too hard to adapt to the screen, and I've kind of been imagining it in 90's TV-vision.

Thrawn scan leak never. ;_;

>Beyond those there was a big jumble of silver platters and tumblers, some really good saddles and saddle blankets, harnesses of the best leather with copper or silver bosses, daggers (I took one), forty or fifty pairs of embroidered gloves, a hunting horn with a green velvet strap, and last of all, very hard to see because it was so dark back there and it had fallen between a couple of stones, a broken sword. It was Ulfa who found that, but I was the one who carried it out of the cave to look at in the light. There was a gold lion’s head on the pommel, and up against the guard the blade was stamped Lut.
>When I saw that, I cried.

Damn you, Wolfe....

That was weird.

>>9320371
The second and third books are about the Plan getting derailed.

>>9318304
More like the autism walk.
T. Autist totally not a virgin

>>9319845
THE BELGARIAD

>Uri said, “I suppose you will want us to carry him off to Aelfrice and nursemaid him for you whenever he is in your way. Well, you can whistle for it.”
>“No shit?” I hitched my sword belt around so I could get at Sword Breaker quick if I wanted her. “I guess you’re not my slaves after all.”

???????????
Why is Able cussing all of a sudden? He hasn't said a single curse word in over half the book and then he just throws out "No shit?" like he's been cussing the entire time. I'm not exactly sure why this gave me an autism fit; just doesn't fit at all with his character so far.

>>9321948
Are you the spoiled yourself anon?
Or the "i'm a masochistic pig who likes to be berated into reading things by sffg" anon?

Is it true that Oathbringer is gonna focus on Dalinar?

Cor blimey, what a carry on with the secret board, and how glad I feel to be back in these venerable and august surroundings.

Say Mac, what's the best Brandon Sanderson book to begin with? Or shall I read Bakker instead?

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Everyone should read Chiang's story about Golems (forgot the title). Possibly the biggest example of anti-literature I can think of, when someone who's not smart enough to be a scientist and not interested enough in writing to care about prose goes off on a tangent(s) about golem splicing and speciesm. Jesus Christ it comes back page after page to torment you.

That being said, he also wrote the best sci-fi short I've ever read, The Lifecyle of Software Objects. Strange man.

New thread when????

>>9323974
>I can't count
>much less tell the difference between 310 and 287

>>9323974
>slow board
>even thinking about bumping it long before it reaches page 10.

>>9324172
>bumping it
Meant creating a new thread.

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Who are your favorite cover illustrators? I love me some Vallejo. Bought this for a dollar just because of the cover. I might read it some day...

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>>9324865
Frazetta > Vallejo, though both are still good.

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Michael Whelan

>>9318645
I feel this way about his books too, first book of his I read was Way, loved the ending and was really interested in the universe.

So I looked at his other stuff and read the Mistborn series and it felt so weak and empty in comparision, I can't even put my finger on what it was that made that series feel so dry compared to the other one since the writing was so similar. The characters weren't even that different, you could nameswap probably 4/5 of the characters in any of his stories and fit them into the exact same roles in another of his series but for some reason Way felt like a real world that I could see and experience whereas all his other worlds felt like they were made out of cardboard and none of the characters felt like real people.

>>9313269
Prepare for the slog then.

>>9318304
Delete this picture you fucker

>>9325241
Way of Kings is basically an MMO setting.

>>9319845
The Belgariad/Mallorea or Abercombie.

>>9322049
Prince of Thorns, the protagonist is an edgy magnificent bastard than you can hate and admire at the same time (or just plain hate), and the rest of characters were memorable enough than after nearly a years since I read it I remember a few be Name.

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>>9324865
Philip Jose Farmer looks like one of the new wave SF writers who was well acclaimed and wrote a lot but now is falling into obscurity. He is also somebody who I am always on the cusp of reading, without ever getting around to it. I've never seen anybody discuss him here either.

As for book art, the old Ballantine Adult Fantasy line has a great look. I also liked how the Fantasy Masterworks books from the early 2000s would use art from famous paintings like Caravaggio and John Waterhouse.

>>9325170
Lovely art.

>>9323783
The golems shirt was easily the weakest of You Life an Others. Went nowhere and finished on nothing. It was like he had a few ideas and failed to do anything with them.

I'll try the lifestyle of software objects

>>9323089
>>9325297
That's two for Belgariad. Go for it, dude.

Nobody writes characters as charming as Eddings.

>>9325319
You getting his new bookmred sister? It's not set (or isn't supposed to be set) in the world that Jorge occupied. So it might be fun. His red queen or liars or w/e series was shit.

>>9323190
This is never explicitly stated in the book but I always assumed it was because he morphs through pre-teenness to adult man in a short amount of time

Probably always knew how to curse but now he's an adult and no one can tell him what to do or how to act, so why not curse up a storm also explains why he's kind of an asshole in the early bit too

Did the meat heads scare away all our regulars?
Is our general really filled with redshitor newfags who didn't know yesterday was a gag?

>>9327828
maybe the newfags will actually read books instead of looking at wikipedia.

Been reading Black Company on and off. I really like it but was looking into Cook's other work.
Is Swordbearer any good? What's it about?

>>9327828
It doesn't help that most /sffg/ writers are fat fucks

Guys, I'm on book 6 of the Wheel of Time series and I have a very important question to ask!

how has Nynaeve not ripped out all her hair by now, holy cow, stop tugging that braid girl

>>9327980
She makes an effort to stop pulling that braid after Lan screws her brains out.

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>>9327957
Nicentry meat head.

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>>9328019

>>9323190
I don't care about the cuss word, but you bring up a funny thing about a lot of Wolfe standalones. His protags often adopt this tough persona that evokes hardboiled detective fiction. There's a lot of legwork and punch-trading, intimidation and bluffing, things like that. His disorienting plots also remind me of Chandler to some extent. Chandler, but with food. Philip Marlowe never enjoyed any consumable that wasn't liquor or tobacco.

>>9328057
Bottom-right doesn't look too fat, or top right. Bottom-right does kind of look like an even more autistic G.K. Chesterton though.

Cyteen is quite good at the moment, other than the shitty ass book title.

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must be pretty bad if it makes you depressed enough to take a 20 year break from writing it

>>9328137
holy crap! Speaking of Chandler and Wolfe, after posting this I just got to the part of Free Live Free where a character talks about Spanish Blood. Nice to have a little confirmation of Wolfe's influences, not that there was much doubt before.

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Can anyone recommend me a wholesome modern fantasy novel? I particularly want to avoid sex scenes, rape, "gay relationships", gender fluid characters or any of that nonsense.

>>9328333
The Wizard Knight by Gene Wolfe
Son of the Black Sword by Larry Correia

>>9327133
Well I just finished The Knight and that was the only time he cussed in the entire book. Weird. I also enjoyed the book even though it was a bit confusing at times, but I liked that.

>>9328333
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Warbreaker

>>9328363
>>9328636
Thanks for the replies.

>>9328636
I'm assuming this also goes for Sanderson&oq other novels? Which is the best of his novels to begin with? I see The Way of King's seems to be his most popular

>>9328725
Way of Kings is the start of a series that won't be finished for a decade at best. If that doesn't bother you, go for it.

>>9328725
Pick something you like from his Cosmere novels, don't start with Elantris.

>>9328725
>>9328779
>>9328922
Sanderson Cosmere series:

>Warbreaker
The most concise story only consisting of one book. Character focused dark fantasy.
>Elantris
The second most accessible but also badly paced/written. First published book and it shows. Fantasy politics and mystery.
>Mistborn
Decent story and fun setting with lots of exposition dumps and cliche characters. High fantasy heist with some court intrigue.
>The Way of Kings
Probably best series but hardest to start and only 2/10 books in the epic fantasy series have released so far. First book is mostly a setting establishment dump but not as bad as Eye of the World. Epic Fantasy Adventure with some Mystery and some Intrigue.

>>9329089
>The most concise story only consisting of one book.
The world needs more fantasy wrapped in just one book.

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/sffg/ pls recommend me books with setting like shin megami tensei main series

NEW THREAD

>>9329395
>>9329395
>>9329395
>>9329395

>>9329446
>>9329446
>>9329446
Fresh Bread