Books

[rabidtictac]

The best I can say for George ArrArr Martin is he, like Tarantino, is a passionate enjoyer of genre fiction and he has helped to put together some projects which might not have otherwise seen print. He and Gardner Dozois together have contributed greatly to the continued life of speculative fiction.

So while I do not think he is a particularly good writer, I respect him as a reader. As a reader, he knows what he likes and he encourages others to write more of it. He puts his money and his name where his mouth is. Collections like "Rogues" and "The Book of Swords" are in print today because of people like Dozois and Martin who love genre fiction. I don't like Dozois' writing either. But it's impossible not to respect what he has done for science fiction and fantasy literature as a compiler and publisher.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

Been doing some catchin up with 372 pages to prepare for Tek Kill.
It certainly reminded me how "great" the book series is. They're essentially hard-boiled detective stories with a bit of a buddy cop twist, and everyone talks like it's the Prohibition - but the stories are also set in the future, so even the most mundane item and food has some retarded "futuristic" name that would never actually catch on. So instead of a "cup of coffee" you have a "plascup of near-caff" or some shit. It's amazing.

Kaileb's Dream is the kind of self-published nonsense I wished our beloved IN authors would write. As far as I can parse it it's about a 15-year-old boy who lives a secret live as an immortal god king who is also some flavor of vampire (typical IN metaplot stuff, really). Technically the book is about preparing for some demon invasion, but it spends a strange amount of time on preparing feasts and/or eating those feasts.
Aside from tortured syntax (the author has a weird liking for using shit like "that of which" any chance he gets) and the hilarious results of typos and missing commas (giving us excellent capeshit names like "clam woman" and "man mom"), this book featured what has got to be the literary writing style of all time: a first-person narrative where the perspective can change multiple times within the same chapter, without any kind of indication that it happened or who the current narrator is.
Sure there are context clues, but it can take a good while before you notice that the narrator has switched and who the new narrator is. Plus there are some bits of dialogue where it is utterly ambiguous as to which of the two main narrators it could be.

Bridge to Bad City, or my inofficial German title for it: Ernest lässt das Clinen nicht (roughly "Ernest never stops being Cline").
There are some oddities surrounding the book, like how the sketch art in the book consists of more or less direct traces of google image search results, or how it was perhaps at least partially ghostwritten as early library entries listed a different author for a moment. Could certainly explain why the real Clineisms don't really start until the plot actually moves to Austin, Texas.
Technically this is his first children's book, but all this means is that the jokes ar eless vulgar and Cline's even more condescending towards the reader. Also who below the age of 50 actually cares about the wild world of the 1980's Austin music scene, or 1980's local Austin celebrities?
Yeah, this is set in the actual 80s this time around. I guess some editor told him that a kid protagonist from Current Year would never be autistically obsessed over that decade, so he just set the entire story in that time frame.
Then there's some weird misinformation that has got to be considered "problematic" for a kids book, like how the bats are supposedly completely harmless to humans (even though bats are the primary source for rabies in humans).
Plus the book can't seem to make up it's mind on whether or not Austin is a loveable city full of loveable weirdoes, or some racist hellhole where the people are sure to hate the bats solely because they are Mexican bats.

Speaking of Cline: are Armada and Ready Player Two still in development hell?

[Kugelfisch]

They're in the render queue.

[Le Redditeur]

>but it spends a strange amount of time on preparing feasts and/or eating those feasts.

So that's what Gurrm is writing instead of finishing his book series, I see.

They're in the render queue.

The Second Law of Spoony never fails.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

It's kinda weird, honestly. Just this year he's announced the ReadyVerse as some kind of multi-media thing - but not only do these movie adaptations seem to take forever, they are based on books that even the nimrods who liked Ready Player One hated.
Plus I'm not sure if there's still a market for autistic nerdy shit when autistic nerds are now considered toxic gatekeepers who hate having their IPs ruined.

It's a bit how ERod thinks he has an urban fantasy empire in his hands after releasing a single novella, except it'll cost a whole lot more money once everything crashes and burns.

[Kugelfisch]

If you've ever seen Fallout fans, you'd know there's well enough 100% soy-fed redditors left that would eat that nerd/geek slop up.

[RAPEMAN]

Books are hard I don't ream 'em.

[ebin namefag]

My favorite book is Montesquieu's "The Spirit of the LOLs"

[rabidtictac]

I've been reading a bunch of fantasy novels. I'll just list them and give a very brief opinion.

Wheel of Time

Dogshit. Jordan's writing is mediocre and the editing work is ass. This shit is YA as fuck too. I heard someone call it a lord of the rings pastiche and that's very accurate. I only read book 1 and part of book 2 but it's all been shit so far. I fucking hate the jedi in this story. The concept is very retarded. Men are tainted because they are men but wombyn are pure and awesome.

Malazan

Read 4 of these things. They're massive. About 1000 pages per. Overly long, for sure. Erikson is a decent writer though. Not the worst but also not the best. People who say Erikson is among the top pantheon of writers in fantasy are wrong. The high point of all four novels was the Chain of Dogs from book 2.

Clark Ashton Smith

No single novels here because he didn't write them. I've read basically every piece of fantasy fiction Smith has ever written. In fact, I've probably read every piece of fiction, period. A top-notch writer and prose poet. His Zothique stuff is the cream of the crop, so if you want to know where to start, any of the Zothique series of short stories are fine. The difference between Erickson and Clark Ashton Smith is Smith knows how to weave density within a small space. Erickson knows how to weave density into a large space, which is the much less impressive of the two talents.

Tad Williams

An excellent writer. I've barely started on his works but I feel confident based on some of his short story work to proclaim him the best of the "popular fantasy" writers.

I have a few others I've started or browsed but not finished, such as Mervyn Peake and Raymond Feist. Feist's shit seems a bit too young adult and tropey for my tastes. Mervyn Peake... Well, as with Lord Dunsany, it's going to take me a few evenings of purely uninterrupted reading to make any headway with dissu shitto. Let alone evaluate its quality. Same with Gene Wolfe, whose stories I have started but not finished. On a purely prose level, of course all three sit at the peak(e) of contemporary english writers.

I've been reading quite a bit of Glen Cook. I read the first Black Company novel (reread, really,) as well as Starfishers (disliked) and Darkwar (loved.) Glen Cook is a very worthmanlike writer. I have his Dread Empire stuff here too. I'll get to it eventually. At least with Glen Cook, I know amateurish writing isn't going to be the problem. He has a very clipped writing style but he's a workaday professional. Just like David Drake is with Hammer's Slammers. It's not high art but it's entertaining and you'd not be ashamed if it sat on your bookshelf. Unlike some of the licensed fantasy I have read.

I have... Shit, so many more books. I finally bought my own copy of Dune. I plan to get to God-Emperor and Dune Messiah. I know I read Children of Dune and I have read Dune many, many times. But I don't remember when I read books 2 and 3.

I read a ton of Neal Asher's science fiction. Neal Asher is to science fiction as David Drake to military fiction. It's nothing that makes you think. A lot of action and space battles. He's a decent writer but what he writes is popcorn.

I ordered a copy of my favorite Elric book, which contains my favorite story, "The Fortress of the Pearl." The Elric stuff is rather uneven, in my opinion. I like Moorcock's Corum stories better. They are overall more consistent in quality. I do want to read Moorcock's Hawkmoon stories.

I bought myself a copy of Viriconium, because The Pastel City is one of my favorite works of fiction. Also have Perdido Street Station around here somewhere. No idea if it's any good or if China is an overrated hack.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

The concept is very retarded. Men are tainted because they are men but wombyn are pure and awesome.

Now wonder it got a live-action series in Current Year.