The Fantasy/Sci-Fi Books Thread Book • Page 42

Okay, latest update appears to be that he's "still on life support, but not expected to survive," as confirmed by two of his family members.

 

Well fuck. I couldn't find anything on google and was hoping there was just some confusion. I looked on his site and read a little of his 2021 write up, gave me hope for a moment because he seemed fine.

 

Yeah, I'm gonna step away from the internet for a bit and go do something to distract myself, because I keep refreshing Facebook comment threads looking for updates and it's gonna drive me crazy.

 

Update

 

That's terrible. Sorry I was perhaps premature or insensitive with my own message about passing.

I did order book 1 of the Runelords and hope to start that soon. Such high praise in here for this series.

 

Nah I thought your post was fine. I think it’s the nature of these things that information is disjointed at first.

Sad situation all around. However it turns out, I’ll be reading a LOT of his stuff this year now.

@Garrett Dave put together a TON of books and information for aspiring writers that I found incredibly helpful in my own. Let me know if you want me to point you toward any of it.

 

What sort of stuff?

 

He’s got a couple books that are like writing prompts/daily meditations on writing, including a few free ones. He’s got an archive of like 10 years of blog posts that he’d send as newsletter emails, really good writeups on different aspects of writing and storytelling. And then I know he’s got a bundle of video lectures and recorded workshops that are really fantastic. Years ago he sent me a draft of an in-progress book about improving characterization and setting in fantasy stories that was really helpful to me.

 

Ya the time I spent on his site made it clear he's very active in helping new storytellers.

 

This is one I'm definitely curious in. Did it ever get published?

 

Let me check my stuff and figure out which one it was. If it didn’t, I can send it to you

 

Okay, I'm not sure where the book ended up—it was long enough ago that I couldn't find it in my email, and I know I printed out a copy to read, but it's likely at my parents' house somewhere. I'm going to look for it for personal reasons anyway, but that doesn't really help you, haha. I would recommend going through his blog posts though (https://mystorydoctor.com/writing-blog/), which collect his weekly newsletter emails. I've found a lot of them very good.

As a general update, he passed in the early hours of the morning, after all his immediate family had a chance to gather and say their goodbyes. I'm really sad about this loss. He was a great writer and a great person. I know I've got some photos of us together; I'll have to hunt those down.

Everybody here knows by now that you should read the Runelords books. I can also vouch for the Golden Queen Trilogy and The Courtship of Princess Leia, as well as his middle-grade Ravenspell books.

I'll try to find something less sad to post about here soon.

 

That fucking sucks. I've only been aware of him for a short period of time, but as my earlier post showed, I had nothing but good things to say about him, in particular his clarity in writing. I'm glad there's a lot more for me to read.

 

Managed to bag Justice of Kings and Age of Ash arcs so I’m really looking forward to getting to those.

 

Oh excellent, that's exciting. Let us know how both of them are? I'm excited about those two for sure.

 

Age of Ash is really good so far. Gives me a Locke Lamora vibe but you can tell with the world building and scope that it’s going to be a great one, in my opinion. Will update on Justice of Kings when I get to it!

 

Just ripped through the slow regard of silent things after The Great Hunt. About to start The Dragon Reborn continuing my WOT binge!

 

@Vivatoto I just finished Beyond Redemption.

…I’m gonna go take a long, hot shower now.

 

Hell yeah! What you think? Like I mentioned before the sequel is even better and the third book (that technically isn't grouped in the same series) is definitely the best.

I read the second Wit'ch Fire book and liked it even more than the first! The body horror with the spiders was really revolting, and brought the series to a level of horror that I really haven't seen much of in fantasy. I have the third book coming. I think I'm going to switch between that and Shadows the Apt and when I finish either one of those I'm going back to Farland.

 

Dude it was phenomenal. Absolutely incredible book. Even from just the first couple chapters I could tell how grimy and dark it was going to be, but that moment when I think it's Gehirn meets and has sex with the Mirrorist with glass embedded in her labia? I set the book down and just sorta stared off into space for a minute because the full grimdarkiness of it hit me, haha.

Killer book, perfect choice for the exchange. I agree that it was good you got me, though, since this is definitely not a book I'd recommend to a lot of people. I'm very excited to read the other two. It'll probably be a little while out since my queue is positively overflowing, but they're on the list for sure. Thanks again.

So cool to hear that you enjoyed Wit'ch Storm so much! Yeah, the spider stuff really stands out in my memory a lot. I think that whole series gets better as it goes along, too, so I'm glad that's been your experience so far. Fun fact, I used to get in trouble in 8th grade a lot for reading during instruction periods, and at one point the teacher took away my book, which happened to be Wit'ch Storm. If you've got the same edition I did, the cover, while relatively tame, is a little more provocative than an 8th-grade algebra teacher is prepared to deal with, lol. I saw her face when she looked at the cover, and she kept it face down on her desk for the rest of the period. Kinda funny.

 

RIYL? I read the summary on Goodreads and couldn’t understand what it was about haha

 

Something that's always stuck with me was the dead cat. The pay off for that in later books is one of the funniest/darkest things I've come across in fantasy. Let me know when you're doing book two, I might do a reread. I don't do them often but I really loved those books and it was awhile ago when I read them, or at least there's been a considerable amount of fantasy series in between.

Also do you remember any mentions of Swarm? (might be name of a sword, a sword is at least involved) I can't recall the name of the country, but I feel like you'd remember it if it was mentioned.

 

It's the definition of Grimdark fantasy. There are no heroes, everyone has selfish motivations, there's no hope for a happy ending, shit gets worse and characters slog through more shit. It's brutal and wonderful. Maybe Abercrombie would be the closest comparison...But even then, Abercrombie has characters to root for.

The plot is basically that the world is crafted by powerful peoples' delusions. One of the villains believes that they can create a man made god that they can control, so they feed the delusion that a chosen child is their messiah. The main characters then set about kidnapping the child god.

I think that's the gist.

 

Is Abercrombie’s second trilogy better than his first? Most I’ve been disappointed after being hyped for something in awhile.

 

The 3 stand alone books are the best. I don't know if you'd like them if you didn't like the trilogy though.

I was slightly let down by his second trilogy.