W-hell, depending on how interested you are in broad world history, one that I read that really puts things in an different perspective is A Splendid Exchange, which basically talks about how trade and resources shaped the world as we know it. I really really enjoyed it. Like, I've read it several times.

Another good one, and also pretty well known, is Guns, Germs, and Steel, which kind of approaches the same subject matter (formation of modern civilization) from a different angle--it talks about how native natural resources can affect the development and success of an area. Like how native Australians had to deal with a lack of metal, cereal grains, and animals that could be domesticated, which basically meant they were set back by thousands of years compared to, say, the fertile crescent (which had access to both animals and cereals, and could trade up river for all the metal they needed).

Anyway, I could talk about them both a lot more, but you should just read them. They really help you get a grasp for why things played out the way they have, and they're surprisingly useful as world-building tools as well.

 

Any Epic Fantasy recs?

I've tried the Wheel of Time several times but could never get into it, a long with the Iron Druid Chronicles and Malazan.

Something similar to Dresden Files / Way of Kings ( did the second book come out yet )?

Severely Epic Fantasy book deprived.

 

I really, really want to get into Malazan. I've barely hit a quarter of the way through the first book after a year of on and off effort (with some rereading involved each time). I need to muster the willpower to just push through and get hooked.

 

Malazan does that to you, gets you thinking "I should like this!" But you bull your way through one book, and buy the next one, and that moment just... never comes. It never gets you invested. The world remains incomprehensible and the characters' motivations are as inscrutable as the dialog is dry.

 

And I think that's what personally kept me away from it.

 

Lois McMaster Bujold is one author who writes some pretty great *high-ish fantasy that people don't talk about much. Will try to think of other stuff :b

(There's always the sword of truth series, lolololol)

 

Hmm... If you're looking for good fantasy, I'd recommend Grim Company, by Luke Scull. It came out pretty recently and I picked it up on a whim after reading the first chapter. The world could use a little more depth, but the characterization is particularly strong, and there are some nice twists later on in the book. Eagerly awaiting the sequel.

 

I finished 'reading' Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson. My recommendation is avoiding the hell out of the audiobook. Trust me on this.

It sounds like they hired a voice actor instead of a narrator (narration is in 1st P. POV, so it could've worked nicely), but the guy's voices are horrible and ruin every character. They're like perfect stereotype voices of the roles they play in the plot: 16-year-old sarcastic, of above-average-intelligence protagonist, the hot romantic interest who is cold but slowly warms up, the cocky thirty-something who is very good at something and has a unique quirk, the huge, strong but peace-loving foreigner who doles out advice, the narcissist villain who creates the means of his own unavoidable undoing.

Like it's been said already, the book itself is not terrible but not particularly good either. The novel is very much Sanderson's classic plot line (see Inverarity's review above). However, if you think you can ignore that and want to give it a shot, avoid the audiobook.

 

Nice rec. Very similar in writing style to Joe Abercombies "The Heroes". Can't wait for part II.

 

I found Grim Company to be too cheesy, I dunno. Or maybe the main protagonist just rubbed me the wrong way.

 

What you're looking for is The Kingkiller chronicles!

That's the perfect rec for you unless you've already read it. Second book for Way of Kings comes out March 4th.

 

Did you get all the way through it? I'm pretty sure that if you're talking about the kid who thinks he's a hero, he's supposed to piss everyone off.

But yeah I didn't like the book enough to get the second one.

 

Yeah, I have, and still found it cheesy and predictable.

 

Sherlock Holmes fans: you must read Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles.

It is both brilliantly satirical and painstakingly researched, true to the era and to Doyle's canon, while also being essentially a work of AU fan fiction borrowing from a dozen other authors who were Doyle's contemporaries. Dark, funny, and a great "villains" book.

 

Almost finished with Brain on Fire. I've really enjoyed it. Reading about someone going insane and then recovering from it has been an interesting ride, and I can't complain at all about the writing style. Super high quality, I recommend this book wholeheartedly.

 

I had a love of spy novels before getting hooked on Urban Fantasy. So my favourites have been the Ludlum books Parsifal Mosaic and Matarese Circle.

Though there was this book I had read some time back about a guy who gets mistaken to be an agent and is called Agent X then somehow ends up performing an extraction of another agent I think during the cold war. Anyone else read this?

 

A good article on some of the sci-fi/fantasy coming out this year.

Some of those that caught my eye, not including obvious entries from Butcher and Sanderson:

The Inventor's Secret
The Inventor’s Secret is the first book of a YA steampunk series set in an alternate nineteenth-century North America where the Revolutionary War never took place and the British Empire has expanded into a global juggernaut propelled by marvelous and horrible machinery.

Influx
Particle physicist Jon Grady is ecstatic when his team achieves what they've been working toward for years: a device that can reflect gravity. Their research will revolutionize the field of physics--the crowning achievement of a career. Grady expects widespread acclaim for his entire team. The Nobel. Instead, his lab is locked down by a shadowy organization whose mission is to prevent at all costs the social upheaval sudden technological advances bring. This Bureau of Technology Control uses the advanced technologies they have harvested over the decades to fulfill their mission.

Presented with the opportunity to join the BTC and improve his own technology in secret, Grady balks, and is instead thrown into a nightmarish high-tech prison built to hold rebellious geniuses like himself. With so many great intellects confined together, can Grady and his fellow prisoners conceive of a way to usher humanity out of its artificial dark age?

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
Every time Harry dies, he is reborn in exactly the same time and place, a child with all the knowledge of a life he has already lived a dozen times before. No matter what he does or the decisions he makes, when death comes, Harry always returns to where he began, and nothing ever changes. Until now.

A published peggy sue! And the protagonist is called Harry, too.

Valour and Vanity
Mary Robinette Kowal's Valour and Vanity is a Regency version of a heist movie with a healthy dose of magic sprinkled in.

California Bones
The son of a powerful magician is now a petty thief — until he's hired to undertake a heist, stealing from the magical society that killed his dad.

Radiance
Valente's next ambitious book takes place in an alternate universe, where a film-maker travels around the Solar System documenting the other inhabited planets.

City of Stairs
This novel already has a lot of buzz, and apparently it's a spy novel set in a world where gods once existed but were killed in a global coup — and now the remains of those gods are the equivalent of WMDs.

 

Influx sounds good, and from the article, Afterparty caught my eye (about 3D printed drugs, one of which allows you to see God). Joe Abercrombie's new one will be essential, The Angel of Losses could be interesting, and Tom Holt has a new book!

Got Steelheart for Christmas, finished it yesterday. Quite fun, but not Sanderson's best. That said, much better than his Alcatraz series.

 

I like the sounds of Influx and the city of stairs

 

Hey guys, so I'm after recommendations. I haven't read much besides fan fiction in the past 8 years, but I'm starting to really get back into it.

Recently I've read The Way of Kings, The First Law series (by Joe Abercrombie), The Lies of Locke Lamora, The Wheel of Time and Ready Player One.

I'm also up to date with The Dresden Files and Kingkiller Chronicle of course.

As to what I'm looking for? Well, I want Good before anything else. I'm really enjoying epic fantasy at the moment, but that's most likely as I've been spoiled by The Way of Kings, and The Wheel of Time.

I'm not particular about genre, fantasy is what I know best, in fact, all I really know. I've always loved Sci Fi as a concept, but I never really found a good book that could pull it off. All the ones I tried when I was young, were way too long and complex for me to really care about. So if there's any good sci fi recs, I'd love those. I have read Ender's Game and all those ones of course though.

But yeah, if I've missed any particularly good books in the last 8 years, love to know about them.

Edit: I keep seeing Malazan Book of the Fallen around, but what Orm Embar wrote above has really really put me off.

Any particular comments on this?