The Fantasy/Sci-Fi Books Thread Book • Page 84

Also my copy of the Hexologists just turned up. It'll be tomorrow before I start but yay!

 

ugh I wish there were more hours in the day to read

 

A transvect is like a big floating transport barge? I'm not sure what the confusion is exactly. I don't remember how it was described but I just pictured a big floating barge and that seemed to make sense.

Though something did kind of make me curious. Most of the book has a lot of pseudo-Latin worldbuilding. Cool stuff. But even though "transvect" is on the surface a Latin borrowing, I think it's actually a reference to an older term for supernatural flight—"transvection" is used to describe how witches fly, for example. Which makes perfect sense in TWOTM, with the Will anchoring and such. Anyway.

Yeah the withholding of answers actually was fine this time around, I think, because I felt it made more sense in a world so focused on hierarchy and role fulfillment.

 

I have been reading a lot lately, audiobooks during the day and a couple hours before bed, and 1) it's still not enough and 2) my own writing has been lacking as a result, to say nothing of videogames or whatever else, smh

 

I think it was apparent that Licanius needed some more editing to tighten it up a bit. I will admit I've read what happens at the end and it is a really cool ending, but I felt the journey just to get through book 2 to 3, and what I've heard about book 3 from my friends, it didn't feel worth it to continue. Maybe one day I'll revisit and do eyeballs only. I'll say again that I really enjoyed book 1.

 

Both my wife and i had a hard time picturing it when we listened to the audio book (and it was my 2nd time). Its like a giant pyramid thats the largest thing the character had ever seen, but then small enough that there's a private compartment and also like an under part that they go into? I get its a floating transport device, but the the way it was described inside and out gave me no idea of how big it was, and what it actually looked like, so it came across as goofy to us. I basically pictured like the luxor from vegas just floating around and then a poorly designed interior.

 

I'm like, do I cut out videogames? Stop caring about sports/boardgames? And yeah, I could always be writing more. But this mood has come on me where I want to be reading all the time and there's so much out there and not enough hours !!!

 

This has been an insane year for hobbies like reading and video games.

 

I know !!!!!! and I can't pick both!

 

you can pick both if you don’t work

 

who needs a job when you’ve got fantasy stories

 

to be completely honest, there's a lot of down time during my job...and I work from home...on a computer where I also do my writing...so I should probably do that instead

 

Hey everyone!

Wanted to share this wonderful project:

The Advent of Winter - A Fantasy Anthology

The project is put together by Dominish Books -

with authors like Ryan Cahill and JDL Rosell being a part of it, along with other amazing indie fantasy authors (yet to be revealed who but an amazing ensemble, if I say so myself!)

Treat yourself to the BEST Advent Calendar of the year and click the link to get notified when the Kickstarter launches:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dominishbooks/the-advent-of-winter

 

Well I've read all the Bound and Broken novels (will be reading Ice next). So I didn't love the first two books, I enjoyed them but they hadn't really grabbed me yet. I get the third book. I see on Kindle it says 1400 pages. Now I don't know what metric they are using because the hardcovers appear to be closer to 1,000 pages, but either way its roughly 450,000 words which makes it longer than Storm of Swords. So I'm like, okay, this is going to be hell if I'm reading something I just find OK for 1400 ish pages. Thankfully the third book immediately pulled me in and never let go. I'm in now and excited for the rest of the series.

And this may seem like a really dumb complaint, but it was honestly so hard for me to get over. I really don't like the characters names. We have Dann, Daymon, Dayne, Dayhlen, and Calen....All main characters. For like two books I could only tell characters apart by where they were, fuck forbid when some of them are in the same room. Funny enough, Cahill kinda makes a joke about it at the end of book 3 when two characters meet (Alina and Belina) and one of them is like, hey our names are way too close and this is going to get confusing.

 

nice! You got through those fast!! The Ice is my favourite novella and perhaps in my top 2. OWAR being 1. So glad to hear you’ve liked them both.

I do understand about the names though, others have mentioned it and they can get really confusing. Good job they don’t interact that much! I imagine it’s hard to listen to. Surprised that it was OWAR that pulled you in cause that book is BIG but there’s a lot of description and worldbuilding in this series.
Of Empires and Dust will be out soon too (soon being next year) so I’ll need to reread before those

 

I think The Exile really helped, maybe that's where I would say I officially felt pulled in. I needed to really focus on someone that I really liked for a little bit, and Dayne fit that bill. Plus it being a revenge story is the easiest way to sucker me in. And then with OWAR being so freaking big, he was able to spend more time with his pov characters and I really needed that to get to know them, which I know sounds crazy after two full books, but I hadn't been connecting yet in the way I wanted to.

That's awesome to hear the next book is so close! That was one of the main reasons I was pushing myself with this series is he seems like a legit as hell guy who writes quickly and is super open about the process and I want to support the hell out of that.

 

I'm about ⅔ of the way through The Ninth Rain by Jen Williams and it's fantastic so far.

 

You can really tell the growth between ODAL and the The Ice so that really helped me. The story focuses novellas are great and a lot of people would agree about The Exile, like yourself. Personally, it’s the Ice for me that gives me that feeling since I’m an Aeson fan but Dayne is such a good character too.

I’d class the openness like Sanderson-lite where he updates and sends out constant things. It’s great to see!

happy release to Sandersons SP4, too. I urge every Cosmere fan to read it NOW!

 

I read The Fall over the weekend. Excellent novella. I was immediately sucked in: this is very much my type of thing. I started Of Blood and Fire, but I was in Disneyland and at the beach with my son all weekend, so not much progress there. Excited to be on board the journey though.

I listened to John Scalzi's newest, Starter Villain. A lot of fun, I'd recommend it.

Been listening to some Duncan Hamilton - the Wolf in the North trilogy. Kind of a John Gwynne–ish series. I'm enjoying that a lot too.

@Brother Beck so good to hear good things about The Ninth Rain. Excited to get to that one soon if I can.

 

The Fall is such a great novella and, in my opinion, they get better from here!

I want to read Starter Villain - never read Scalzi but it looks so good!

I'll also take anything Gwynne-ish so i'll look into that!

 

The Fall definitely set my expectations just right. Lots of action, lots of magic and dragons, lots of stakes, and enough references to worldbuilding that I know what I'm in for with the series. Very excited to read more.

Scalzi is pretty great. I've read about half his catalogue I think. The Old Man's War is his harder military SF series, and I really liked the first book of that. His later stuff veers more into near-future comedic sci-fi, like Starter Villain or the Kaiju Preservation Society. Both were great. (Audiobook narrator is Wil Wheaton as well, so that's fun.) I also really have liked his Dispatcher novellas, there's three so far and they're narrated by Zachary Quinto, more of a sci-fi noir/gangland Chicago type of story. Really good stuff.

I'm on the second book of the Wolf of the North trilogy and it's been great. I only picked it up because you can get the trilogy for an Audible credit and they're narrated by Simon Vance, whom I love. It's a Kingkiller-esque framing story about a northlander who goes from weak and timid to (presumably) a conquering hero. Good magic and fight scenes. And I guess the author's written like a dozen books in different fantasy series, so I'm excited to get to check those out too.

 

@Vivatoto or anyone else, got any horror recs for me this spooky season? Right now on my radar I’ve got the next Stephen King (The Stand, or Rage if I can find it), some HP Lovecraft, Laird Barton’s The Imago Sequence, something Japanese like The Decagon House Murders, maybe Richard Matheson or Peter Straub or Dan Wells. Probably won’t get to all that anyway, but would love any suggestions of anything horror-related.

For graphic novels, I’d love something like Gideon Falls. I’ll do some Harrow County, I’ve got a Junji Ito story, probably a few others from the library

 

I was lucky to grab a copy of The Bachman Books earlier this year and flew through Rage and The Long Walk. I wouldn't say Rage is necessarily spooky-scary, and it gets a lot of flack for its sad cultural significance, but the novel itself was engaging and mostly well executed.

I recommend Revival by Stephen King or The Fisherman by John Langan. Both scratch that cosmic horror itch. I finished The Fisherman in April and it's still on my mind.

House of Leaves is a super slow burn, but its descent into horror is pretty masterful, and the reading experience is utterly singular. I'm not even halfway through it and have been taking my time with it over the course of a year, but it hooks me every time I pick it back up.

For comics, have you read Night of the Ghoul by Scott Snyder and Francesco Francavilla? Interesting, eerie take on a Universal monster-type of creature, plus plenty of other twists. Francavilla's art is astounding for this classic style of horror.

 

I never finished House of Leaves but man oh man what I did read was crazy and memorable. Absolutely wild book.

In fantasy news, I started The Riddle-Master of Hed by Patricia McKillip. I'm only like five chapters in but it's just twist after twist. I love these older fantasy books.

 

The Long Walk is an underrated King GOAT. Also love The Running Man.