The Humans by Matt Haig

Read this recently. It was a very good book. Well worth a read.

 

Isn´t that the book where in the last 10-50 pages everything gets "fixed"?

 

Crimson campaign has just come out which is the second of the powder Mage trilogy and was pretty good.

 

I read both Powder Mage books and liked both. I'm really digging the gunpowder and magic angel (both in using gunpowder for magic and having muskets and magic coexist).

I've read Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and the Temeraire books. Can anyone recommend anything similar?

 

Chalion 1 & 2 by Bujold.

 

Death Angels
Set in a dark fantasy world this book does quite a nice job of combining gunpowder/technology and strange magics.

The Imager series
It also does an okay job of combining industrialisation and magic. But be warned the pacing can be a bit slow and the latter books didn´t hold my interest as much as the first trilogy.

If that doesn´t sate your hunger you could look at some of the series/books set in the Warhammer setting.

(Worth mentioning is the interactive novel Sabres of Infinity, it has a very interesting approach to the mix of magic and gun powder.)

 

Ella Minnow Pea is a fun, clever little book.

It tells the story of an island community obsessed with pangrams (sentences which use each letter of the alphabet once) and in particular "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog". They love this sentence so much that they have a statue to it.

Then, one day, the letter Z falls off the statue. The island takes this to mean that they may no longer use the letter Z. Only as the book progresses, more and more letters start falling off the statue.

The story is told through the medium of letters to and from the titular character, and they have to get very creative as they stop being able to use certain parts of the alphabet.

 

I've read The Curse of Chalion and despite the fact that I really like Bujold's sci-fi stuff, I wasn't terribly engaged. Are the following books different/better?

Thanks. Death's Angels looks good (and cheep) and its always interesting to see a professional author self publishing something.

On the recommendation front, I'll tip my hat for Please Don't Tell my Parents I'm a Supervillain. This isn't a grand literately novel. It doesn't have the complexity of world or character that we expect from top-tier fantasy/sci-fi. But by God its fun all the same.

It stars Penelope Akk, the daughter of two superheroes. Her world is not terribly developed but seems classic silver age, heroes, villains and a few characters who can't seem to decide which side they are on. No deconstruction here, just a perfect sandbox for heroes and villains to play.

The novel opens with Penelope worrying when she'll get her powers. It turns out pretty soon but as a result of a series of misunderstandings Penelope and her friends become supervillains in the eyes of the world at large (though only in their powered identities). The great thing about this novel is the energy it brings to everything. Penelope always has another crazy gadget just around the corner. There's always something pushing them just a little further down the villain path.

Comparisons to Worm are inevitable but besides a few points of similarity, they couldn't be more different in style, tone and direction.

Its short, cheep and I really liked it.

 

Just wanted to let anyone who cared know that House of Blades just underwent some changes in the first few chapters. Since those were the worst parts, and I know some people couldn't get to the better stuff because they were put off by the beginning, it might be worth another look.

Also, the third book in the series, City of Light, came out last month. So it's a completed trilogy.

For those of you who don't want to go back through the thread to find my original recommendation of HoB, here it is quoted for you:

 

This sounds more like an exercise in writing than a novel but it sounds interesting.

I doubt anyone else has recommended this book but I found Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged to be amazing. From the philosophy to the immovable characters.

The thought that there may be Francisco D'Anconias IRL keeps me motivated to meet them even if I never do.

 

Anyone here read a good book inspired by Celtic mythology? Or that passes during Ireland or Scotland iron age? Anything involving celts in the main part, really.

Aboout Atlas Shrugged, xkcd resumes well my feellings about it.

 

You mean this one?

 

Not reallly, the thingy ( I forgot the correct name, it appears when you hover your mouse above the comic) where he says: "I found myself agreeing with 90% of what she said, and then that's why you must be an awful human being."

 

That explains my opinion on it too. Atlas Shrugged is pretty terrible. The Heros are all super-mega perfect ultra!Capitalists and the villains are all evil for the sake of being evil (and to point out how evil socialism is). It's really, honestly, pretty terrible all around, and is so stupidly inflated that it just makes you want to cry at the utter lack of anything resembling good story flow.

Also, John Galt, the Hero, is a genocidal psychopath.

Oh, sure, if you ignore all the stupid philosophizing unrealistic tripe, it's fun storytelling so long as you don't ask too many questions or dip too deeply into questioning whats going on, but anyone and everyone who thinks its some sort of modern guide for a successful life and society needs to be slapped upside the head with a Hardcover Copy of Atlas Shrugged.

'Conservative Bible' my ass, more like 'Capitalist Propaganda Bullshit' paired with 'Amusing Story'.


To keep on topic, for those of us who are younger, the Uplift Saga by David Brin isn't really well discussed Sci-Fi, but it's a fantastic read, I find myself picking up one of the books at least once a year and diving into it face first, which inevitably leads me to reading the other books in the series as well.

Even I, who am not a big Science Fiction fan, (I generally prefer Fantasy) was utterly enraptured with the universe Brin creates, and have on several occasions wished there was more. So much more.

It takes a lot of writing skill to make me empathetic for Human hating alien birds bent on our enslavement, but he does it anyway. If that isn't good writing, I don't know what is.

 

The Iron Druid series is pretty much an urban fantasy mainly based on Celtic Mythology and also contains every other mythology . The books are hit or miss though.

 

Yeah, forgot about them. It was okay, then it got mostly, then it turned intoo shit. Granuaille thy are a huge mary sue. And damn, Oberon annoyed me. Trying way too hard. But thanks for the tip.

Oh, the characters in Atlas are terrible and the plot is opnly midly amusing, but who reads that book for storytelling? We read for the ideas, and they start well and turn into shit.

 

If you haven't read them, the Song of Albion trilogy by Stephen Lawhead is pretty great. They're very much steeped in Celtic mythology, mixed in with Christian mythology as well. I'd recommend it.

 

I googled it, and it seems pretty interesting, I will definitely check it out.

 

Just finished Vathek by William Beckford. It's a rather short story - 120 pages.

The wtf-factor of the book alone was well worth the money I spent. It also enhanced my vocabulary by a substantial amount...

... later on they formed tender connexions with the gouls, and they also rode on a demon camel with their mistress.

The whole book is filled with these kinds of events. By the way, this is a Gothic novel. And, although much of the horror I should have felt was replaced by amusement, and each new page presented a new level of crazy, I say hats off to Beckford who was the mastermind behind this tale of debauchery and hedonism.

 

Prince of Fools just came out a few days ago, same author (Mark Lawrence) that wrote the Broken Empire series.

It was a decent read, but I felt that the character development suffered a bit, and things were fixed really easily at the end.