I'm so happy more people are reading Malazan.

Innomine it gets better as it goes on book 3 is where you just feel it completely.

 

Checked out this Alterworld series by D. Rus - book 1 and 2 at least which are the only ones available in English as far as I know. It's...not what I thought it'd be. It was recommended to me as a serious take on what a virtual MMORPG might devolve to, given enough time, and how it could warp your sense of self by immersing yourself for too long, etc etc.

It's not. Don't waste your time. It's just like Sword Art Online, but worse. Think of every failing in SAO and you'll find it here, in greater quantity and scale. Harems? Check. Super-powerful protagonist? Check. Unique, mysterious, game-changing skills/items that happen on the protagonist's lap? Check. A boring romantic relationship with a generic unhappy-past girl? Check. Protagonist always off on his own or pairing up once with people you might get to like but never see again? You get the drift.

TL;DR: Alterworld is a YA novel about virtual MMORPGs that is probably not worth your time, but serves as a distraction if you're really into the genre.

 

I was half confused till the end... But it was a good kind of confused.

The sheer size of the world and the amount of stuff that's happening (behind the scenes as well) is staggering. Now I'm taking a break and in a few years I'll read it again, just to catch all of those little things that foreshadow the things to come.

 

I've read the first couple, haven't read the third but probably will at some point just to finish it off. To me, it's basically Harry Potter without the curiosity, the wonder, or the fun. It reads like a cynical NYT literary reviewer sat down and said, "Oh that billion-dollar urban fantasy series? I can totally write something as good," and then made a go of it. Unfortunately, along the way he missed the point of Harry Potter, that dressing up fantasy in literary fiction literary style doesn't necessarily make things better, just more pretentious and self-aware, and that his sorry attempts at pawky humor mocking the genre tend to fall flat with readers who enjoy fantasy despite its tropes. Also, that reading a metaphor of the author's disaffection with the fantasy genre just isn't fun.*

With respect to books I would recommend, I recently read Michael Shaara's Gettysburg novel, The Killer Angels, which is outstanding. His son's sequels, Gods and Generals and The Last Full Measure, are also worth reading if you enjoy American Civil War historical fiction. (Incidentally, Michael Shaara also wrote For Love of the Game, which was made into a film some years back. Published posthumously, it wasn't particularly good nor deep writing, reading more as a sketch of a novel with wooden characters than a novel proper.)

* Edit: I'd probably feel differently about the series if the author had chosen to end it with the final scene in the first book, leaving ambiguous Quentin's fate--did he join his friends in Fillory, or did he throw himself out of the building to end a pointless existence filled with disappointment. (In other words, carrying the metaphor to its conclusion.)

 

My Amazon review of The Magicians:

 

The Tattered Banner (Society of the Sword #1)

We follow Soren, a young beggar/thief, who loves nothing more than watching the duels in the arena (fencing tournaments). One day he robs the wrong(right) person who, after fighting with him, decides that has has enough raw talent to sponsor him to the local dueling school.

It is mostly the typical fantasy stuff with some variants (the career choice of his lover for example) and some interesting world building. It lacks the emotion, for a lack of a better word, that would make it into a something really great but still worth reading if you have nothing else to do.


Anyone here who knows of some good, modern low fantasy? Or semi-medieval stories? Something not about saving the world?

 

I think the big problem was that he wanted to write a deconstruction, but didn't really get the source material. If you want to really bring a genre down to its most basic levels, you have to be obsessive about it. Love or hate, it doesn't matter, but you have to grok it down to the most fundamental level.

The guy obviously didn't understand Harry Potter; the core aspect of that series is the wonderful world building, with the "world" being Hogwarts. Grossman ages up the characters and puts them in MAGIC COLLEGE. Except it's nothing like an actual college and nothing like Harry Potter either. It's just a bland pastiche of English Boarding school cliches. The only interesting part is Antarctica, and even then it's stretching it. Seriously, you've got a bunch of 18+ coeds and the only difference between them and a slew of generic "Tommy goes to Rugby" is that they drink wine and have the occasional reference to sex. Was this man ever of college age or did he skip puberty to hit grumpy old manhood?

Now, Grossman goes with the character building sort of deconstruction where the point is to pick apart a certain character archetype by making them interact in a more "real" fashion with more "real" people. Plenty of people know this style from Evangelion. The problem here is that it's really, really hard to connect to the point of view character. The entire first book can be summed up as "Ennui, with a side helping of angst." There's just no way to sympathize or empathize with him.

So yeah, the first half of the first book is just "how to make magic school dull" by ripping out any sort of real conflict or drama. It's just bland and boring and nothing at all like an actual college. So we get to the second half, after graduation. Which is more boringness, except now it's "let's live in NYC, drink, and do drugs! Oh, Fillory is real! Let's go there because we're totally aimless in life."

If anything, this series is about how being unable to set up goals makes you a boring person. But they got to Fillory and at this point I'm fairly certain that Grossman hasn't actually read Narnia. The entire subplot with The Beast (who was initially made out to be an Elder God thing) is resolved in a bland fashion and our hero wanders around in a funk before ending up sleep walking through life. I agree with what was said above; while depressing, the series should have ended with you not knowing if he killed himself or went back to Fillory. Because it doesn't get better from here.

The whole series from then on out goes straight for Narnia's throat, including making CS Lewis a child molester, Aslan is a dick who is the source of everything going wrong, and the afterlife is literally the most bland and boring place ever. Our plucky protagonist gets lots of "told" character evolution... but he never really changes that much other than telling us he did.

The worst bit is that he completely misses all of the terrible parts of Narnia such as the racism to focus on the easy targets. The mysterious backstory of Julia is handled in a godawful manner, the big revelations are never very interesting, and the "A God am I" moment is a snoozefest.

In terms of the darker fantasy series I've read recently, which tend to have deconstruction elements to them (Dagger & Coin and The First Law are the other two), it's easily the worst. Not quite Prince of Thorns bad (which I do believe is the edgiest fantasy book I've ever had the displeasure of reading), but profoundly disappointing and the last time I'll trust the NYT book review.

 

So last night I finished Triumff, Her Majesty's Hero, by Dan Abnett.

I picked it up from Oxfam for about 50p, because I recognised the name. Abnett wrote the Gaunt's Ghosts series for WH40K, and I loved that series, so I thought I'd give it a go.

The basic premise is that instead of art or science, the Renaissance kicked off The Arte, or magic. Which the Church promptly took control over. The year is now around 2010, and the Unity (a joining of England and Spain), is powered by cantrips. London is recognizable, but only just.
Triumff has just come back from a sea voyage of discovery, where he found the country of "Beach", far to the South, where magic is unknown, glass and metal spires pierce the heavens, and SCIENCE is the order of the day.

It's a nice light read; meanders between fantasy, comedy, and crime thriller; and I'd definitely recommend giving it a go. The humour is more in line with Pratchett than what I recall of Gaunt's Ghosts, and the book is worth taking your time with, to spot the little jokes spread through.

 

I'm currently reading Timecaster by Joe Kimball and it has me entertained.

The premise is that crime has pretty much been eradicated due to a machine that can view time streams.

So the perp is always visible to police and this quickly halts all crimes. In fact there are only two timecasters left on the city payroll, they were so effective they put themselves out of business.

Everything is going fine until one day the protagonist investigates a murder and things go downhill from there.

The world itself is very interesting. The idea being that in the future there will be a utopia of freedom. Think it's your decision what chemicals you ingest? All drugs are legal and available in pill form. Want to fuck that SLP who willingly sells her body and thinks of sex as only a transaction between the two of you? This world has that angle covered. If you don't want to work and want to leave society there is a term for those too, they are called dissenters and they can leave the city. There are lands apportioned to communities for them.

I guess I really like the setting. While I personally don't like whoring or hard drugs I can see how the freedom of the individual is curtailed by laws that prohibit the action they want to do. So long as it is a victimless crime, I am for decriminalization. Victimless crimes really just mean unsanctioned freedoms to me.

This book has proven very entertaining so far and I wanted to give it a plug based solely on the setting. I'm 66% in and eagerly turning pages. The plot itself is quite thrilling too and I can't recall any fight scene from any other book as vividly as the one with the billionaire Nazi with 'roid rage.

I think the author even makes a cool concept. The Nife. The weapon for psychopaths. A knife that's only a few nanometers thick capable of cleaving anything, or almost anything. Just be sure to sheathe it carefully. People have lost limbs sheathing it because it is so thin and they weren't careful.

tl;dr Read Timecaster by Joe Kimball.

 

That does sound interesting. I'll check it out.

 

I read it and it was so flat. Granted, the writing level was decent, and there were definitely some elements being well-executed, but each character was so dead and didn't really relate to the reader. I might give book 2 a try, but if it doesn't get me invested, I'll probably be dropping it.

The Broken Eye has just been released! I'll post a review once I finish reading it haha.

 

It doesn´t really get that much better. Like you say the writing is decent, the characters(Soren especially) simply lack emotion.
Like I said it is something you can read if you have nothing better to do.


The Barrow
Dark fantasy with an interesting world (even if that leads to a bit much info-dumping), an interesting cast of characters(with the high-points being a pimp and Erim) and the typical plot (find a powerful artifact and get rich).

What makes this story special is that it really tries to portray a decadent society, without whitewashing its cast. The brothel owner never feels sorry, the leader of the band never trusts anybody and there is no true happy end waiting at the end. The sex is sometimes a bit much but otherwise it tells an action rich and entertaining story.

3.5/5

 

So I finally found some time to try it out and I have to say I am bit disappointed.

You are right that the setting is interesting and the fight scenes are entertaining but so much of the underlying logic is pure bullshit.

For example the idea that murder will disappear simply because the police can catch every perp is a silly pipe dream. Most major crimes (like killing your cheating husband etc) are not pre-planned but spur of the moment things where people don´t really think about the long term effects of what they are doing. Add to that more complicated methods of killing like using slow acting poison or elaborate traps and the idea gets even more ridiculous.

And while this is mostly a minor issue they sum up and made it difficult to believe in the setting.

(Also the main character is really unlikeable in my opinion... I feel that he is supposed to be "cool" and instead is simply a douchebag.)

2,5/5

 

Reminds me of Minority Report - except that MR is a deconstruction of the idea of a utopia built upon precognition.

 

Recently read Half a King by Joe Abercrombie. It was a fairly decent read. I would not call it great, but it was better than a lot of other young adult fiction out there. Yarzi felt like a likeable and intelligent character who had the premise of Tyrionish Gary Stu, but Abercrombie did an excellent job I feel of making the protagonist his own character and not treading into meta territory.

The humor felt a little flat and some characters were tropes, but it had some big twists at the end.

4/5 from me.

 

Yeah, I still not even close to the epic "The Heroes" story.

 

Red Country is his best work of the three post First Law stories; it has the exact same theme running through it as the rest of his stand-alones, but it doesn't feel anywhere near as one the nose or preachy about it. It's Fantasy Oregon Trail meets Taken!

 

On a side note I just fineshed The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making and the other two books in the series that are out , and it was pretty fun.

It was recommended by Patrick Rothfuss.

 

Just read Keeping You a Secret by Julie Anne Peters.

It's a short coming of age and coming out YA book about a girl who has a good life going for her but then new girl comes to school and she realizes that she is really into girls and things become shit for her, since she is living in a small city in America and tolerance doesn't seem to be something that exists in abundance there.

So, in ways of plot, rather predictable and nothing exactly new. However, it really doesn't need to be and knowing how the journey would end didn't make in any less interesting or her situation sympathetic. The writing is solid enough and it does pull you in almost immediately and one does bond with the lead character. If you want a short book that deals with this subject matter, it is well worth the read.

Not a perfect book though. For one, I had a bit of trouble with the name of the main character, which is Holland. Is that a thing, naming people after countries? First time I've heard Holland used as a name and I live in the big country next to them. It's a bit nitpicky though.

Second is that I feel that the book was a bit too short and not in the "I could have read for a thousand more pages" way. The ending was abrupt and I felt like there could have been at least a chapter or two more to see her live her life now, instead of just planning/brainstorming it.

So, yeah, not exactly the best book but still worth a read if are interested in the subject at hand. I've read it in maybe an hour and a half, if that, and it kept my attention all throughout the story.

4/5 for people who look for that, 3/5 for everyone else.

Next on the list is probably the Barrow or The Lies of Locke Lamora.

 

Sword of Shannara . I read it about three or four years ago and I enjoyed quite a lot. Since then I have see lots (a few critics) of people saying that they didn't like them as they were very similar to LOTR and so, I was just wondering if anyone who has read the books thinks the same thing or if it just some critics nitpicking.

EDIT:
Here are some reviews to show you what I mean:

Basically everyone says its similar to LOTR but some say its a good thing and some say its bad. If anyone out there has read it, please tell me your opinions.