The Fantasy/Sci-Fi Books Thread Book • Page 75

I've got the first book by Cahill (blood and fire or something?) on my kobo now as well, need to finish 1 or 2 of what i'm on though.

 

I don't know if I someone missed it before if he was brought up in here but I don't know anything about this Cahill fellow and you all are piquing my interest.

 

yeah someone mentioned him a few pages back, read a few goodreads reviews and decided to pick up the first one.

 

@GBlades has been extolling his virtues for a while now, and the series does indeed sound awesome.

 

We need more Cahill love. the Fall novella is free on his website:

https://ryancahillauthor.com/

and Of Blood and Fire is amazing too. I described it as something like “if Wheel of Time had dragons and was written now”

I’m up for yet another reread of the series though! (But not right now)

 

Should The Fall be read first? I see it's a prequel.

Also his website fucking rules. maps, progress bars, synopsis's...

 

my brief browsing of the last couple pages has me wanting to check out cahill and sun eater next/soon, i think

 

It doesn’t really matter. I started with The Fall to get a taste of the story but officially you can do either.
Ryan’s a great guy too. Like a little Sando with his engagement and turn out!!

move not read as much Sun Eater but I’m only on book two and it’s amazing so far!!

 

I got it free so I might as well. Also if reading something in chronological order is a valid option (unlike, say Malazan) I will always take that option.

 

It is so id say the Fall first :)

 

I'm currently about halfway through The Eye of the World, but I find that I need to take breaks from that every now and then to recharge for that style of epic fantasy. It's a little too close to LOTR for me, and I still have The Return of the King to go.

Just finished Warbreaker and truly could not put it down for the last hundredish pages. It took me a a while to read it due to its being my first (and likely last) ebook, but I'm not sure if I should jump into Mistborn, try Malice by John Gwynne, or start Malazan.

So many great stories with different flavors, but I'm beginning to feel overwhelmed by options.

 

Mistborn!

 

All good options - and usually the best is just to pick something and go, haha, to avoid paralysis by analysis.

Not a fan of ebooks?

 

Good call. Gonna give Mistborn a go since I’ve heard the first novel works well as a stand-alone.

I really tried getting into them, but so far all I enjoy reading on my iPad is manga. If I’m reading a novel, I prefer feeling the book in my hands and seeing progress as I read. Something about seeing how far I’ve come and how much is left to go is more motivating to me than a progress bar/percentage.

 

Good luck stopping after Mistborn. You’ll have to see where the story goes, and then what era 2 is about, then might as well try the Way of Kings, and suddenly you’ve read the entire bibliography of Brando Sando.

 

Granted, I only read the prologue of Mistborn, but I'm hooked. How the hell does Sanderson write like this? It's like reading an epic film.

 

You are in for a TREAT!!

 

This will be controversial in here... but I struggle with Sanderson now. The series is too complicated (not on face value), but on the cosmere level. It was sold to me by my friend as just being being mainly 'easter eggs' and that each story was standalone and enjoyable without the cosmere context (which is I guess mostly true), but man... Going on any Sanderson forum, or attending any kind of con event related to the cosmere, it's like I didn't even read the books. All the talk of shards and all the theories of how things are going to connect and it's like whoooooosh, what are you guys talking about? I may still read it to enjoy on my own, but it bums me out that I can't talk about it on a casual level. Plus his catalogue is massive and I'm so far behind. I've done warbreaker, mistborn era 1, stormlight through oathbringer (which I want to reread before the next), and I started his non-cosmere Skyward series.

It's why I gave up on Marvel as I don't want to have to watch a movie about a character that I don't enjoy, or a show on DIsney + that's 10 hours long, or even now from the new guardians, a Christmas special!! just to get everything in the current movie.

 

I hadn't decided which to read first, but now I'll just pretend like you made the decision for me.

Edit: If anyone else is curious, the author includes this in the first few pages of the prequel:

 

This is where I struggle with Sanderson. I don't particularly care for the MCU-ification of his works (and I love the MCU but fell off when Covid started). I also have only read Way of Kings (on audio) and went into a pretty extensive reading slump because it felt like such a chore to get through (I mostly blame Kramer/Reading for that). Hot take but I think there's magnitudes more better narrators out there that Sanderson should use.

 

I wholly agree with this. I've got MCU/Marvel comics fatigue for these exact reasons, but Sanderson remains unblemished for me right now.

Chat casual with me! I'm just here for the ride after enjoying Warbreaker so much. (I don't even know what shards are yet. )

 

Way of kings is slow, but words of radiance (despite what I said) is up there for one of my favorite books ever, though at the time of reading, I was new to fantasy and just blown away by the scope of it. No idea where it would fall had I read it at a different point in my reading and fantasy journey.

RE Narration: Those 2 are comfort to me as they did the whole of the wheel of time which is an extremely long journey we spent together. They also do all of the stormlight and the licanius trilogy, but I do agree they are far from the best despite the hundreds of hours I've listened to them.

The best narrators for me personally have been:
1. Steven Pacey - first law
2. Michael Page - Gentleman Bastards
3. Samuel Roukin - Suneater (though his Cielin voice in Kingdoms of death is pretty awful but Hardians voice is perfectly captured by him for the most part).
4. John Banks - Senlin Ascends.
5. Robin Miles - Broken Earth Trilogy.

Absolute worst by a mile
1. Anne Flosnik - She did a lot of Robin Hobbs books and was so bad, though I did get used to her and was able to finish. But yeah, everytime I go back, it's like ooof.
2. Colin Mace - truly the worst and I've not been able to finish a single book that he's narrated (he did Black wing and all of Anthony Ryan's books but he's flat and does not do voices, no performing etc. You can't tell when speakers change and he's just absolutely boring.

 

Just because I feel like I'm one of those people that's bad at taking recs from people yet always happy to recommend (and I want to get better), I am going to put this series on my list 2 books from now (so maybe late July I'll dive in!). I am going to finish Suneater and then the new James Islington book then I'll jump on this. Sounds like my cup of tea.

I'm slow... if the book is 5-600 pages, it takes me about a month to finish.

 

Books are always going to be there :) I'm awaiting the physical release of the new Islington and am currently reading book 2 of Sun Eater!

 

reccing books yesterday reminded me there was an absolutely excellent debut that was brought up in here, and I had to look it up because I could not remember the name, Sons of Darkness by Gourav Mohanty. I checked on Amazon to see if there was anything there about a sequel and apparently SoD is up for pre order again? So I don't know how easy it would be to obtain right now.