# Vent about the Book You're Reading



## Devor

Hey Scribes!

This is a thread for reacting openly to whatever book you're reading.  The rule here is simple:  _*You can post spoilers only about the book you are currently reading.*_  So be careful!  If someone comes to vent about Gandalf's demise, you can't tell them about Gandalf the White.

This is a bit of an experiment, so let's see if this takes.


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## pmmg

Ned Stark got killed? Man....


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## Devor

I'll edit to make it Gandalf.


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## pmmg

What? Gandalf too?!?


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## DragonOfTheAerie

i'm reading Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey and damn, I'm not liking it. 

I'm really grossed out by the dynamic between F'lar and Lessa. Let's start with that. He basically admits to himself that her first sexual encounter was "violent" and that he neglected to tell her about the mating flight on the assumption that she wasn't a virgin so it wouldn't matter. Consent still matters you absolute bent doorframe. Their relationship is less "love interests" than "girl forced into sexual relationship with guy she tolerates at best." Which i guess could have its place in a story, but F'lar is supposed to be the hero. 

What the heck is up with the apostrophes? Is it supposed to be a glottal stop? How do you put a glottal stop in F'lar? As far as i can tell they're just aesthetics and it's super annoying. 

The thing i hate the most...and hate to admit...is that i'm utterly underwhelmed with the dragons, the  worldbuilding, the politics. Especially the politics. But the author doesnt really develop the relationship between Ramoth and Lessa or even spend a lot of time on the dragons at all. I guess i'm missing some of the wonder here. Everyone talks about being enchanted by these books as 12 or 13 year olds but i would have been bored as shit at that age by this. As for the world, I know from reading about the other books that this is actually a futuristic novel, but so far all i'm getting is "bland medieval vagueness"...

Anyway. Temeraire>Pern, definitely, imo. Which i also hate to say because Temeraire is good, but far from great, and so unbearably slow.


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## Yora

I'm rereading Conan, stsrting with The Phoenix on the Sword and its legendary opening narration that starts the whole series (and defines the genre, really).

And then the plot begins and the whole first chapter consists of nothing but the leader of the conspiracy repeating to his enslaved sorcerer the entire conspiracy plan and the backstory and motivations of the other four conspirators who have just left to assassinate the king. This is all stuff that the sorcerer already knows! We don't need to know it.
This is the clunkiest opening I have ever seen by a wide margin. How did this lead to a legendary classic?


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## pmmg

Yora said:


> I'm rereading Conan, stsrting with The Phoenix on the Sword and its legendary opening narration that starts the whole series (and defines the genre, really).
> 
> And then the plot begins and the whole first chapter consists of nothing but the leader of the conspiracy repeating to his enslaved sorcerer the entire conspiracy plan and the backstory and motivations of the other four conspirators who have just left to assassinate the king. This is all stuff that the sorcerer already knows! We don't need to know it.
> This is the clunkiest opening I have ever seen by a wide margin. How did this lead to a legendary classic?



The story, The Pheonix on the Sword is actually a rewrite of the Kull story, By this Axe I Rule, which is a much better story than the Conan one. While this may be his first Conan story, I though Conan's story started earlier than that. Howard is a tricky writer to evaluate, cause he would write stories, and if they did not publish, he would reuse the idea for another one. It was only after he became well known that all his works got published, and thereby, the pattern of story ideas and themes getting reused became apparent. I would not consider Phoenix on the Sword to be one of the better Conan stories.

When I think of the best Conan stories, Red Nails, Queen of the Black Coast, the Frost Giants Daughter, and which ever one has the elephant god in it come first to mind.


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## Yora

By This Axe I Rule is better in every way in my opinion. Queen of the Black Coast is one that I see everyone love, but I found to be completely forgetable and Belit one of the most bland side characters in any of the stories.


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## skip.knox

I just finished--so it counts!--_Magician's Apprentice_ by Ray Feist. I think I may have glimpsed some interesting ideas away off on the horizon there, but as a story unto itself, this left me bored. I had to drag myself through it and I'm at a loss to know why a major publishing house would have read this and thought it was a winner. It was, of course, which only demonstrates why I'm not an agent or a publisher. 

The dialog is hammy, the pacing is uneven at best, the characters are all stereotypes and were when he wrote it. I think a reviewer might call the book sprawling, but to me it was merely fragmented.


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## Mythopoet

Yeah, Magician: Apprentice was hard to get through. I'm not even going to try reading Magician: Master. It's interesting to note that the two halves, Apprentice and Master, are basically the director's cut of the original novel. A lot of material was added back in that was left out in the original version. Makes me wonder if the original was a lot more streamlined and that's why it was a hit when first published.


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## Chessie2

She was raped by the hero and I nearly threw the book into the campfire. 

Onward, I've moved to another book now.


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## Demesnedenoir

skip.knox said:


> I just finished--so it counts!--_Magician's Apprentice_ by Ray Feist. I think I may have glimpsed some interesting ideas away off on the horizon there, but as a story unto itself, this left me bored. I had to drag myself through it and I'm at a loss to know why a major publishing house would have read this and thought it was a winner. It was, of course, which only demonstrates why I'm not an agent or a publisher.
> 
> The dialog is hammy, the pacing is uneven at best, the characters are all stereotypes and were when he wrote it. I think a reviewer might call the book sprawling, but to me it was merely fragmented.



Because in those days our options were limited. Feist was at his best (as my youthful memory recalls... when writing with Janny Wurts, the Empire Trilogy. I know some friends of mine who really enjoyed Magician (as one book, not two). My opinion was... okay... but after Magician and the Empire trilogy, I couldn't stomach his works. He might have improved, but I wouldn't know.

I'd like to blame the time period, but to me... Name of the Wind flat blows. So, go figure.


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## DragonOfTheAerie

Chessie2 said:


> She was raped by the hero and I nearly threw the book into the campfire.
> 
> Onward, I've moved to another book now.



Nearly?


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## pmmg

I remember enjoying these two books a long while back. I recall my biggest complaint about it was that the MC was named Pug. Which I found irksome for the whole series. Other than that, it was good epic tale, with all the stuff I might want from a fantasy book. I enjoyed the Belgaraid more...but its been many years on that one too.


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## Demesnedenoir

LOL, yeah, Pug annoyed me too. I think I was more of a fan of the Belgariad myself, too. God only knows what I would think of them now, however. It's best I don't try to read the books of my youth again.



pmmg said:


> I remember enjoying these two books a long while back. I recall my biggest complaint about it was that the MC was named Pug. Which I found irksome for the whole series. Other than that, it was good epic tale, with all the stuff I might want from a fantasy book. I enjoyed the Belgaraid more...but its been many years on that one too.


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## pmmg

Yeah, I don't know what I might think if I tried to read any of them today. But I don't regret that I read them, and if I had not, I feel I would have to to catch up. Of course there are a number of books I have not liked, but I don't see dwelling on them for very long. Heck, bad writing is more educational than good writing anyway. Last fantasy one I read which I really did not care for was Sword of Shannara. Maybe if I was younger when I read it, it would have been okay. But, I think it would have still bothered me even then.


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## Miles Lacey

I'm reading the first book of the _Hunger Games_.  I am about half way through the book and _I_ want to kill Katniss Everdeen!  When is she finally going to get around to killing someone instead of hiding in trees, talk about food and not being seen and obsessing over some dude named Peeta who may or may not like her?  Everything she thinks is rational and there's not so much as a naughty thought anywhere about anyone.  However, I only read when I'm in the toilet so it's good to know that there's a fitting substitute.

Maybe my opinion might change by the time I get to the end of it?


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## Chessie2

Miles Lacey said:


> I'm reading the first book of the _Hunger Games_.  I am about half way through the book and _I_ want to kill Katniss Everdeen!  When is she finally going to get around to killing someone instead of hiding in trees, talk about food and not being seen and obsessing over some dude named Peeta who may or may not like her?  Everything she thinks is rational and there's not so much as a naughty thought anywhere about anyone.  However, I only read when I'm in the toilet so it's good to know that there's a fitting substitute.
> 
> Maybe my opinion might change by the time I get to the end of it?


Her behavior pays off big time. Let's hope you think so, too? -_-


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## skip.knox

>Name of the Wind flat blows.
Agreed. I couldn't finish it.

As for Hunger Games, that was horrible. I could not get past the ludicrous sociology. Nor did I believe for an instant the incredibly contrived nature of the games themselves. There were so many gods leaping out of machines, it was like a Keystone Kops movie. 

Since I've let the peeves out from their cages, I couldn't stand Harry Potter either. Again, ridiculous plot contrivances, a school setting far less believable than Tom Brown's, and the most ham-handed use of Latin I ever care to see. Oddly enough, whereas the Hunger Games movies were every bit as dull as the book (I only managed one), I rather enjoyed the Harry Potter movies, save for the final duology which was a muddle. The actors saved that one. Nothing could save Hunger Games. It was as silly as the Dune movie.

Session over? Thanks doc. See you next week.


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## Demesnedenoir

Hunger Games the book, I didn’t make it past chapter one, but my wife loved it. The movie felt contrived but I can see its popularity in that teeny-bopper sort of popcorn flick way. And the worst part, is its the best of these teen-dystopian sort of movies that I’ve seen. The glut in these types of movies and how bad they are is what makes me fear a remake of Logan’s Run, which was fun in its day.

Potter again, can’t make it past the first couple chapters. The movies, I made it through three watching with kids... napping... but I appreeciate the Potter series for bringing young people to fantasy.


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## Dark Squiggle

Hunger Games was well written and a good idea, but not enough to make me want to read book 2. Harry Potter is a different story. I am one of those who cannot count the number of times he's read it. Yes the plotlines for books 1 & 2 are identical. Yes, 3 pulls a nasty scifi trick in fantasy with time travel. Yes 4's plot really is senseless with the whole cheating just to get him to touch the cup. Yes 5 & 6 are just fillers in which Rowling tried to make 'em a bit more adult. And no, 7 isn't even cohesive enough to say it has a plot. Yes 90% of the characters who get more then a page of screen time are mindnumbingly boring. However, there is some magic that makes the books really enjoyable except for the times when you can't ignore some really annoying bit. I think they deserve recognition, perhaps not worship like LotR, but I don't think LotR deserves worship either.


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## Demesnedenoir

I have no problem with recognition for Potter as a YA, same goes for Hunger Games. And I get people growing up with these loving them forever, but the number of adults who went goofy over them as adults was disturbing, LOL.

It's not like they're abominations like Twilight, heh heh.

Yeah, I had to get that dig in.

Worship no book. That would be idolatry, heh heh.

We will have to agree to disagree on well-written with Hunger Games.


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## DragonOfTheAerie

Miles Lacey said:


> I'm reading the first book of the _Hunger Games_.  I am about half way through the book and _I_ want to kill Katniss Everdeen!  When is she finally going to get around to killing someone instead of hiding in trees, talk about food and not being seen and obsessing over some dude named Peeta who may or may not like her?  Everything she thinks is rational and there's not so much as a naughty thought anywhere about anyone.  However, I only read when I'm in the toilet so it's good to know that there's a fitting substitute.
> 
> Maybe my opinion might change by the time I get to the end of it?



I felt incredibly indifferent about THG.


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## DragonOfTheAerie

As for Harry Potter, i'm sickened by how the wizarding world is a cash cow now, but they're great despite having their flaws.


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## DragonOfTheAerie

Overall, YA is a terrible scrap heap of the same plots over and over and wastes of paper with no worldbuilding. But that might just be all types of books. I have found middle grade to be a better category overall than YA. 

YA has some gems though, for sure. Anybody read Six of Crows?


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## Dark Squiggle

Never heard of it. YA does have its gems.  Anything by Cornelia Funke is good, and there are others.


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## DragonOfTheAerie

To be honest, i'm confused by the difference between YA as talked about by articles about writing, conventional wisdom, and the ideas of anyone over 30, and the YA I've read and seen trend on Goodreads. What people *think* of as YA is a much different beast and really, closer to children's/middle grade. Like, YA is supposedly intolerant of sex, more restricted in word counts than adult novels, etc. and yet more recent YA novels (published in the past few years) tend to be rather permissive about those things. What is real anymore?


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## DragonOfTheAerie

Oh yeah. Finished Dragonflight today. That was disappointing and gross. I had to force myself to finish it.


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## Dark Squiggle

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> Oh yeah. Finished Dragonflight today. That was disappointing and gross. I had to force myself to finish it.


I would never have done it. It hurts, but if a book is not teaching me or giving me enjoyment, away it goes.


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## DragonOfTheAerie

Dark Squiggle said:


> I would never have done it. It hurts, but if a book is not teaching me or giving me enjoyment, away it goes.



I'm usually like that, but this is considered such an essential classic in terms of dragons, that i wanted to be able to say i had completed it. Ya know. To get a mark on my Dragon Lover Card.


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## Miles Lacey

I'm wondering if my dislike of the _Hunger Games _is because I've been too heavily influenced by the movie franchise and I'm not the intended audience.  I'm almost 50 but I bought _The Hunger Games _and _Catching Fire_ because they were selling for $2 each at a second hand charity shop and I couldn't find anything else to read.  Because the money went to a good cause I can at least feel good that the money I spent was put to good use.

As for the _Harry Potter _stories I never bought the books because they were basically "British public school" stories with fantastical elements, such as magic, tossed in to breathe life into a genre that has been going into terminal decline since the end of the Second World War.  I read a lot of Enid Blyton and other books within that genre when I was a kid (because the books I had were mostly hand-me-down books from my sister) so as soon as I saw the first _Harry Potter _movie I knew exactly what to expect    Thus, the story lines, the characters and the majority of what happens were pretty much what I expected - right down to the bloody tiresome moral puritanism, the token poor kid who is the central character and the snobbery of the rich kids with well connected rich parents that dominates these stories.


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## Mythopoet

Personally, I think as writers it's important that even when we really dislike a book that is quite popular, we should be able to look at it and discern the reasons that it appeals to its audience. That's really the best thing you can learn from a book you don't enjoy. 

I never read The Hunger Games. To me it was just a rehash of very old themes. But I've always tended to read A LOT more classic literature in various genres than my peers. Most younger people don't like reading old books because the books don't speak their language and often don't appeal to their values anymore. So to the YA audience at the time Hunger Games was published, this was a very unique and exciting book to read for most young people. It's easy for older reader or more "well read" readers to look at it and say "eh, this is just a rehash of several books I've read before". Well, to be honest, you could say exactly the same for most of Shakespeare's work. The Hunger Games hit its mark extremely well and that's really all a book needs to do.

I am actually a fan of Harry Potter, having read the whole series multiple times and owning all the movies. I didn't read any of them until I was an adult. I can understand if the HP books don't appeal to you personally, but if you're completely astounded by their success with people of all ages you might have a problem. HP has a rich world, a large cast of characters to appeal to different readers, plots full of mystery and adventure, a story arc running through all the books that makes the whole much deeper, and simply put, they are fun and do not take themselves too seriously. Quibble as you might over the details, taken as a whole as a work of fiction, HP had everything it needed to appeal to a large range of people. It's pointless to complain about prose or structure because most readers don't care about those things. They just want to be entertained. I certainly found the books highly entertaining.



DragonOfTheAerie said:


> To be honest, i'm confused by the difference between YA as talked about by articles about writing, conventional wisdom, and the ideas of anyone over 30, and the YA I've read and seen trend on Goodreads. What people *think* of as YA is a much different beast and really, closer to children's/middle grade. Like, YA is supposedly intolerant of sex, more restricted in word counts than adult novels, etc. and yet more recent YA novels (published in the past few years) tend to be rather permissive about those things. What is real anymore?



Technically, from a marketing stand point (which is what these labels are for), YA's target audience is teens and young adults so anyone from about 13 to 24. The fact that older people are also drawn to YA books says more about books aimed at adults than the YA itself.


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## Chessie2

Demesnedenoir said:


> I have no problem with recognition for Potter as a YA, same goes for Hunger Games. And I get people growing up with these loving them forever, but the number of adults who went goofy over them as adults was disturbing, LOL.
> 
> It's not like they're abominations like Twilight, heh heh.
> 
> Yeah, I had to get that dig in.
> 
> Worship no book. That would be idolatry, heh heh.
> 
> We will have to agree to disagree on well-written with Hunger Games.


Oh, Lordy. I recall sitting at a bistro with my sister that was located across the street from Nordstrom. In the shop's display window they had set up outfits that Bella wore in the movie (this was when the first one came out). My then twenty-something sibling went gaga: "Oh, look! Those outfits are so cute! I'm going to buy the flannel one!"


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## TheCrystallineEntity

I'm reading Maskerade again. I keep getting confused when I read the witches' Discworld books. I never know if I'm supposed to agree with Granny Weatherwax half the time or criticize her for being manipulative. That's really the only Discworld quibble I have, actually.


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## Mythopoet

TheCrystallineEntity said:


> I'm reading Maskerade again. I keep getting confused when I read the witches' Discworld books. I never know if I'm supposed to agree with Granny Weatherwax half the time or criticize her for being manipulative. That's really the only Discworld quibble I have, actually.



Both, I think.  The 3 witches represent 3 different ways of doing things and in the end none of them are "right" or "wrong". They're meant more to be nuanced and inspire you to think. At least, I think that's what it's going for.


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## DragonOfTheAerie

Im reading Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erickson and its so great to have a book that actually treats women as human beings and not as things to have sex with, abuse in any number of ways, or produce babies. like no one makes a big deal about the women in this book being women. 

Which makes me think: i really wish for more books where women were allowed to be just people. Because a lot of "strong female"/girl power type novels end up making a big deal out of MC's female-ness and end up putting other female characters down in favor of this oNE SPECIAL FEMALE'S bad-ass-ness. also they just make her good at everything and make her super sexual and have every male character drooling over how pretty she is and im just like why can't we have a woman be average.

questions: why have i read so many misogynistic books lately and more WHY are the misogynistic books i've read often written by women??? i know a big deal is made about male authors buuuuut 

with that out of the way wow this book has a LOT of characters and sometimes you have to read like 70 pages to get back to the one you were on which can be frustrating because i feel like i want to get to know one character in particular but its just. spread out among lots of characters. 

So far this whole thing has felt kind of like a prologue for a much bigger story. Like, the whole book. All prologue it almost feels. I like the book but it's not "getting anywhere" in the usual sense and i feel like that's because this first book is to set up the....numerous sequels, which are like 1,000 page monsters lol. We'll see.


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## ThinkerX

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> Im reading Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erickson and its so great to have a book that actually treats women as human beings and not as things to have sex with, abuse in any number of ways, or produce babies. like no one makes a big deal about the women in this book being women.
> 
> Which makes me think: i really wish for more books where women were allowed to be just people. Because a lot of "strong female"/girl power type novels end up making a big deal out of MC's female-ness and end up putting other female characters down in favor of this oNE SPECIAL FEMALE'S bad-ass-ness. also they just make her good at everything and make her super sexual and have every male character drooling over how pretty she is and im just like why can't we have a woman be average.
> 
> questions: why have i read so many misogynistic books lately and more WHY are the misogynistic books i've read often written by women??? i know a big deal is made about male authors buuuuut
> 
> with that out of the way wow this book has a LOT of characters and sometimes you have to read like 70 pages to get back to the one you were on which can be frustrating because i feel like i want to get to know one character in particular but its just. spread out among lots of characters.
> 
> So far this whole thing has felt kind of like a prologue for a much bigger story. Like, the whole book. All prologue it almost feels. I like the book but it's not "getting anywhere" in the usual sense and i feel like that's because this first book is to set up the....numerous sequels, which are like 1,000 page monsters lol. We'll see.



I'm going to assume 'Dragon' is entranced with the devastatingly lethal female 'recruit.'  Is she aware 'Gardens of the Moon' part of a ten book series?  That series owes an awful lot to AD&D.  Apparently the author (an anthropologist) was fond of the 'assassin' class. 

Feists 'Magician' series impressed me a lot in my younger days.  Somehow, I missed the lack of credible female characters in the earlier books, but I found the series pretty good right up to 'Shard's of a Broken Crown.'  Past that, his muse died and it showed.  Still some good scenes and interesting characters, but the spark wasn't there.  Like 'Gardens of the Moon,' it began as a roleplaying game.

'Name of the Wind' possibly impressed me more than it should have.  I accepted the beginning in the Inn as a storytelling device, and recognized from the outset that the narrator wasn't being entirely honest with his audience.  Essentially, a vastly embellished autobiography - and the narrator admits as much more than once.  I did have issues with the existence of the magical academy as compared to the dearth of magicians elsewhere, and the political structure of the setting had...serious issues.  To me, that setup was an invite to either unending border wars or a conqueror swooping in from elsewhere.


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## DragonOfTheAerie

ThinkerX said:


> I'm going to assume 'Dragon' is entranced with the devastatingly lethal female 'recruit.'  Is she aware 'Gardens of the Moon' part of a ten book series?  That series owes an awful lot to AD&D.  Apparently the author (an anthropologist) was fond of the 'assassin' class.
> 
> Feists 'Magician' series impressed me a lot in my younger days.  Somehow, I missed the lack of credible female characters in the earlier books, but I found the series pretty good right up to 'Shard's of a Broken Crown.'  Past that, his muse died and it showed.  Still some good scenes and interesting characters, but the spark wasn't there.  Like 'Gardens of the Moon,' it began as a roleplaying game.
> 
> 'Name of the Wind' possibly impressed me more than it should have.  I accepted the beginning in the Inn as a storytelling device, and recognized from the outset that the narrator wasn't being entirely honest with his audience.  Essentially, a vastly embellished autobiography - and the narrator admits as much more than once.  I did have issues with the existence of the magical academy as compared to the dearth of magicians elsewhere, and the political structure of the setting had...serious issues.  To me, that setup was an invite to either unending border wars or a conqueror swooping in from elsewhere.



Ha!! I noticed that, though. The author keeps dropping "thief" and "mage" and "warrior" as if they were D&D classes. He seems to have each of his characters sorted into one. 

and yeah it's a long series yikes


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## Svrtnsse

ThinkerX said:


> Is she aware 'Gardens of the Moon' part of a ten book series? That series owes an awful lot to AD&D.


I'm sure someone else can confirm/deny this, but from what I've heard, the series is based on an RPG campaign the author and his friends were playing.


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## Chessie2

It's an amazing book and I spilled coffee all over it like an idiot. Now I owe the local library $$.


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## skip.knox

I'm fine with classes in role-playing games, but in fiction it puts me off. Not fatally. The author can still win me over, but it puts me in a "oh, one of those" frame of mind. It's a bit like an author having a character who is a lawyer and expects the reader simply to buy into the stereotype with no actual character development. Or politician or dockworker or what-have-you.  Assassin irks me because nobody ever had a job like that. There were the Assassins during the Middle Ages, and they were something very specific (_pace_ Assassin's Creed). There have always been plenty of political assassinations, but that doesn't imply the killers did nothing but that for a living.

Since I'm venting, thieves guilds bother me as well. I'm okay so long as I don't think about it. At all. Once in a while an author can manage that, but it's rare. It's not how guilds work, for one thing, and it's not how thieves work. Thieves form gangs, not guilds, and that's really what gets under my skin. A guild is not necessary. Not for a plot, not for worldbuilding. It is (far too often) merely a conscious or unconscious call back to D&D with the expectation the reader will form the same mental image as does the author. 

All that said, I fully enjoyed the Dragonlance books back in the day. So there you go.


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## ThinkerX

Svrtnsse said:


> I'm sure someone else can confirm/deny this, but from what I've heard, the series is based on an RPG campaign the author and his friends were playing.


In external commentary, the author did confirm what is fairly obvious to an experienced AD&D player: a portion of the series was 'gamed first and written later.'  I suspect a much larger portion was 'gamed first' than what he admitted to.  Worth noting: there are additional books besides the ten, written by a friend (and fellow gamer) of the author.  Collectively, the theme takes after Glen Cooks 'Dread Empire' and 'Black Company' series (especially the latter).


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## DragonOfTheAerie

Svrtnsse said:


> I'm sure someone else can confirm/deny this, but from what I've heard, the series is based on an RPG campaign the author and his friends were playing.


 I knew there were a lot of books like that, but I didn't know this in particular was one of them


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## ThinkerX

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> I knew there were a lot of books like that, but I didn't know this in particular was one of them



As of late, I have read a few books in what is termed the 'lit-rpg' category - tales that are literally set inside game worlds, complete with character stats. 

'Dungeon Lord' physically put the MC - an ordinary gamer nerd from earth into what is normally the bad guy role in games - boss of a dungeon filled with monsters and traps.   The ease with which he agreed to the Faustian bargain that put him in that position was disturbing, but he did turn the role on end and try to be heroic.  Emphasis on the 'try' - a 'good' Dungeon Lord is pretty much an impossible concept for the side of light here.   

In 'Succubus,' the MC is a game tester undergoing a full immersion process which goes wrong.  He's testing the 'Warlock' character, though he's much more ethical than a typical warlock.  I found his attitude towards bloodshed and mayhem disturbing, though.  As to the title character, yes, she's hot, definitely has a mind and goals of her own, and performs an assortment of sex acts I can't recount here because DotA's tender brain is not of legal age.  (I stopped reading when the third book went full lesbian porno.)


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## ThinkerX

skip.knox said:


> I'm fine with classes in role-playing games, but in fiction it puts me off. Not fatally. The author can still win me over, but it puts me in a "oh, one of those" frame of mind. It's a bit like an author having a character who is a lawyer and expects the reader simply to buy into the stereotype with no actual character development. Or politician or dockworker or what-have-you.  Assassin irks me because nobody ever had a job like that. There were the Assassins during the Middle Ages, and they were something very specific (_pace_ Assassin's Creed). There have always been plenty of political assassinations, but that doesn't imply the killers did nothing but that for a living.
> 
> Since I'm venting, thieves guilds bother me as well. I'm okay so long as I don't think about it. At all. Once in a while an author can manage that, but it's rare. It's not how guilds work, for one thing, and it's not how thieves work. Thieves form gangs, not guilds, and that's really what gets under my skin. A guild is not necessary. Not for a plot, not for worldbuilding. It is (far too often) merely a conscious or unconscious call back to D&D with the expectation the reader will form the same mental image as does the author.
> 
> All that said, I fully enjoyed the Dragonlance books back in the day. So there you go.



As somebody who was into AD&D way, way back...

That always bugged me as well.  In my writing, rogues have gangs, many of which don't last that long. 

Assassins?  I couldn't figure a way to make it work except, maybe in a short term cult or terrorism sense.  I could see thieves agreeing to the occasional murder for higher, or an especially ruthless aristocrat or merchant prince type keeping an assassin-like character or two on the payroll - but those people would also have other tasks.

I did have Solaria deploy assassination teams during the Traag War: Traag's big strength was demons, and demons required sorcerers to conjure them, hence Solaria sent out lots of 'mixed squads' -- petty wizards, elite troopers, rogues, and whatnot on search and destroy missions.  They died in droves - but also killed a lot of demon callers.


----------



## Demesnedenoir

Books I read back in time.. Dragonlance, I had no issue with that stuff, but now? Yikes. But I am finicky as all the hells as a reader these days, I don't have time to spend on reading in general, let alone stuff that puts a bad taste in my mouth right off.

Thieve's Guild... it all depends. Real world... wouldn't that just be political parties? But in fantasy, it would all depend on how it's pulled off... but a technical "guild" by definition? Yeah, that's an issue along with simply the flavor the name gives.

Spilling coffee on Gardens of the Moon is something I might do on purpose if I bought a copy. I have sample pages on my iPad... so, no way I'm spilling coffee on it there. I can't make it far enough into Erickson's writing/story telling to find an interesting character, but I tried a couple times. I've surrendered on both it and Name of the Wind, no way I can read them.

But that doesn't make them special, it just makes them two of the more famous fantasy books that I can't read.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

I feel like I'm being punished by the universe. But the bald, naked reality is that it is I who does the punishing. I punish myself every time I visit the library. 

It's not a dull punishment, to say the least. I am continually stunned by how bad books can be. I can't believe it. 

So I just read Mistress of Dragons, by Margaret Weis, and I wish someone would come to my house with a large rock and kindly put me in a coma. 

I'm not even sure what there is to say of the merits of a book that is full of weird, annoying sexist shit and then has two main characters, one a lesbian in a loving relationship, the other a married man with children, fall in love with each other and then have sex because another character put a sex potion in their water with the intent to breed them. THEN has the MC brutally raped by an antagonist in a horribly graphic scene. THEN has her impregnated and die moments after giving birth. 

The end. Fun! 

Merits. If the book had anything else going for it, I could discuss that, but the writing has all the grace of a combine harvester. The first 20 pages are straight infodumping. I can barely recall having ever read something so clumsily written. The first 50 pages I was wondering how it got past an editor. The worldbuilding had me believe we were in some lazy duplicate of "feudal" England until we get one (1) mention of The Middle East. Wut. I liked one character and then he TRIED TO BREED THE MAIN CHARACTERS. 

I have read so many rape scenes this year. I can hardly even be shocked anymore.


----------



## skip.knox

Very sad to hear, DotA. I won't finish books like that. Authors should respect their characters. They aren't merely props to be dragged through the mud so we can be shocked.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

skip.knox said:


> Very sad to hear, DotA. I won't finish books like that. Authors should respect their characters. They aren't merely props to be dragged through the mud so we can be shocked.



The really gross stuff happened really close to the end and I didn't care much for leaving a book unfinished with 50 pages left. And at that point I kinda wanted to see how bad it could possibly get. Sometimes spite is all that keeps me going, so it helps to have really terrible books to think about when feelings like maybe-I-should-forgo-writing-today.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

Gardens of the Moon was pretty awesome tho. idk if i posted about finishing it but, a genuine book hangover was a relief to feel. Didn't earn a full 5 stars, but I liked the complexity and the characters and the world building. It just reminded me of why i love fantasy. 

I feel like i'd have to read it at least twice to understand all the subplots tho. There were like 10 pov's. Some i didn't care much for. 

thoughts on the characters:
first of all, steven erickson cannot name shit. His children are probably named something like F'g'uhhh, Fuzzy Mo and Curtainrod. 
lorn: boring but not too bad. 3/5 
tattersail: must protect 4/5 
capt paran: pretty solid protag character 4/5 
kruppe: really impressed with how this guy did a complete 180 from bumbling fool to powerful magic user and master spy, also #relatable 5/5 
crone: BIRB 5/5 
crokus younghand: cannot talk to girls 2/5 
rallick nom: not to be confused with his cousin omnomnom. honestly my eyes glazed over during all his sections 1/5 
anomander rake: turns into a dragon 5/5 
whiskeyjack: somehow sounds better than vodka greg. what was this guy tho. set up to be a protagonist on the back cover then barely exists. 1/5 
kalam: wizard 3/5 
quick ben: ?????? 2/5 
sorry/apsalar: possessed by homicidal maniac god for most of the book so no way to tell. 
everyone else i forgot about: ?????


----------



## skip.knox

>first of all, steven erickson cannot name shit. His children are probably named something like F'g'uhhh, Fuzzy Mo and Curtainrod.

I am very glad I was not drinking anything when I read this line.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

skip.knox said:


> >first of all, steven erickson cannot name shit. His children are probably named something like F'g'uhhh, Fuzzy Mo and Curtainrod.
> 
> I am very glad I was not drinking anything when I read this line.



Who names a character Sorry?


----------



## skip.knox

Who names a character General Grievous? 
Or Draco Malfoy, for that matter? Bad Faith? Seriously?
*shrug*


----------



## ThinkerX

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> Gardens of the Moon was pretty awesome tho. idk if i posted about finishing it but, a genuine book hangover was a relief to feel. Didn't earn a full 5 stars, but I liked the complexity and the characters and the world building. It just reminded me of why i love fantasy.
> 
> I feel like i'd have to read it at least twice to understand all the subplots tho. There were like 10 pov's. Some i didn't care much for.
> 
> thoughts on the characters:
> first of all, steven erickson cannot name shit. His children are probably named something like F'g'uhhh, Fuzzy Mo and Curtainrod.
> lorn: boring but not too bad. 3/5
> tattersail: must protect 4/5
> capt paran: pretty solid protag character 4/5
> kruppe: really impressed with how this guy did a complete 180 from bumbling fool to powerful magic user and master spy, also #relatable 5/5
> crone: BIRB 5/5
> crokus younghand: cannot talk to girls 2/5
> rallick nom: not to be confused with his cousin omnomnom. honestly my eyes glazed over during all his sections 1/5
> anomander rake: turns into a dragon 5/5
> whiskeyjack: somehow sounds better than vodka greg. what was this guy tho. set up to be a protagonist on the back cover then barely exists. 1/5
> kalam: wizard 3/5
> quick ben: ?????? 2/5
> sorry/apsalar: possessed by homicidal maniac god for most of the book so no way to tell.
> everyone else i forgot about: ?????


Glen Cook's naming habits in 'Black Company' - a major inspiration for 'Garden's of the Moon' would probably drive DotA insane. 

Dominant female character is named 'Lady.' 
Her chief female foe is 'Darling.' 
The protagonist is 'Croaker,' a military physician.
The Companies wizards are 'One Eye,' 'Goblin,' and 'Silent.' 

The power of nicknames.

As to the ones you mentioned...well, 'Quick Ben' does become more prominent later on.  Apsalar makes a predictable Erikson choice, but does get a BF.


----------



## Mythopoet

I just want to grab William Meikle by the lapels and shake him while shouting "It's ok to write that Carnacki is just scared or frightened. He doesn't have to constantly "take a funk"! And for the love of William Hope Hodgson stop making Carnacki say "bally"!"


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

skip.knox said:


> Who names a character General Grievous?
> Or Draco Malfoy, for that matter? Bad Faith? Seriously?
> *shrug*



All the Sith names in Star Wars are pretty unforgivable. As for Harry Potter, I feel the quirkiness of the naming fit with the world and mood.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

ThinkerX said:


> Glen Cook's naming habits in 'Black Company' - a major inspiration for 'Garden's of the Moon' would probably drive DotA insane.
> 
> Dominant female character is named 'Lady.'
> Her chief female foe is 'Darling.'
> The protagonist is 'Croaker,' a military physician.
> The Companies wizards are 'One Eye,' 'Goblin,' and 'Silent.'
> 
> The power of nicknames.
> 
> As to the ones you mentioned...well, 'Quick Ben' does become more prominent later on.  Apsalar makes a predictable Erikson choice, but does get a BF.



im sorry *what *


----------



## skip.knox

>the quirkiness of the naming fit with the world and mood.
A good example why one should never rely on feedback from a single reader. DotA is charmed by quirkiness whereas I abandoned HP in the first volume because the naming to me was clumsy. 

You just never know who is going to connect and who is going to be put off. What would be wrong for both of us would be if Rowling were inconsistent in her naming, for that can only mean the author either didn't care or didn't notice.


----------



## Steerpike

I read the first Hunger Games. I thought the premise/setup was ridiculous, but I made it to the end. Didn't read the rest.

Potter, I like.

The Malazan Books (and indeed the Black Company books they bear some influence of) are great.

I can't rant about a book I'm currently reading, but I've tried Temeraire a handful of times and I can't figure how an author makes such a cool concept so boring. On the other hand, I quite liked Uprooted.


----------



## ThinkerX

Coming soon to DotA's library:  'the big book of Malazan baby names'


----------



## Steerpike

ThinkerX said:


> Coming soon to DotA's library:  'the big book of Malazan baby names'



Malazan books are also somewhat like Russian novels in that a character may have multiple names, depending on who is talking to them.


----------



## Dark Squiggle

All this stuff about names... There was a guy I went to highschool with who called himself Fat Cats, another who called himself Ducky, another was Korah, as in the rebel from the Bible, I was 'Einstein', or 'Giggidy' (A Family Guy reference I did not get).... People do use such names.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

Steerpike said:


> I read the first Hunger Games. I thought the premise/setup was ridiculous, but I made it to the end. Didn't read the rest.
> 
> Potter, I like.
> 
> The Malazan Books (and indeed the Black Company books they bear some influence of) are great.
> 
> I can't rant about a book I'm currently reading, but I've tried Temeraire a handful of times and I can't figure how an author makes such a cool concept so boring. On the other hand, I quite liked Uprooted.



I only read the first Hunger Games as well. I just felt very indifferent about it. It was easy to predict the end. 

As for Temeraire...I quit after book 3, very reluctantly. I love the dragons, but I was forced to face the fact that each book took me MONTHS to finish when usually I can finish a book in a few days. The author just insists on dragging out every single detail of the story excruciatingly. The third book somehow managed to be even more dull than the first two. I could only ever read 10ish pages at a time without getting bored. There was never any sense of suspense. It was just painful.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

Dark Squiggle said:


> All this stuff about names... There was a guy I went to highschool with who called himself Fat Cats, another who called himself Ducky, another was Korah, as in the rebel from the Bible, I was 'Einstein', or 'Giggidy' (A Family Guy reference I did not get).... People do use such names.



One of my highschool friends was called Poodle by the group almost exclusively. She owned a poodle, but this was before we knew that. I also knew of someone who was only ever called Taco. 

I think the Malazan names annoyed me so much because they were so random and inconsistent. Some of it was stuff that didn't seem to really work as a nickname. And the made-up words seemed weird to me as well.


----------



## Mytherea

All right, so 'cause this thread says vent, I shall vent. 

Sooo, in my browsing through agents and such on querytracker, I came across a success interview and fell in love with the query. Everything about it screamed "totally up my alley." This was _exactly _the kind of book I'd read to absolute pieces. I needed it now, right now, didn't matter that I was in the middle of reading something else, this book demanded my attention. I fought the initial urge to buy it as an ebook and got it through the library's system instead (which is important) and settled in to start reading something I knew I was going to love. 

After twelve pages, all I can say about it is that it's a few rungs above indecipherable? Really though, it's like the opening has been strapped to a rocket. In twelve pages (which aren't actually "pages", just finger flicks on my phone since I borrowed it as an e-book, so in print, it's maybe five, six pages long, maybe 2,000 words, if that) seven named characters are introduced, two walk-on unnamed characters blow past, the location switches four times, one of the named characters is murdered, the main character doesn't get a name till page eight and then he gets three and is apparently a knight? I don't know. Oh, and gets magic from the murdered guy (well, he already had magic, but got more magic?). Aaaaaaand then a conspiracy is introduced and someone witnesses something they shouldn't and there's a war and a bunch of soldiers coming home but that plot thread gets maybe half a paragraph before it's subsequently forgotten and I'm sitting here, reaching for the hand brake. Stop! Stop, I say! You're going way too frickin' fast! Especially since this is supposed to be secondary world fantasy meaning, more description please? So far, there's an under-described hallway, a (waiting?) room with a desk, a street, and another room with a chair (of some sort, it doesn't get much more description other than 'chair'). 

I reach the end of those twelve pages, gasping. _Oh, good, _I think, _there's a line break. This was just some kind of weird, attention-grabbing prologue-thing to get my interest piqued. Now it's going to actually describe things and orient me to where the hell I am and what is going on. 
_
Ah... no. No, that'd be asking too much. Nope, the story just blazes onward, with me floundering along behind going, _What? What the heck? What is this even? Where am I, what am I supposed to be visualizing, who are any of these people and why were seven of them introduced in less than a breath? _No, I still don't know who half these people are and I keep having to flip back to figure out who was introduced when and if that woman is the secretary, the nurse, or someone entirely different. 

So yeah. I'm done with this book. I'm an immersion reader. I want to be transported. And I want to sink _in to _a story. I don't like getting thrown into the middle of things with nothing described, relying on me having watched enough historical dramas set in the late 1800's/turn of the last century to give me a semi-clear picture of what the heck this is supposed to look like. 

Grr. Thankfully I didn't buy the thing. I'd be screaming about my wasted dollars at this point. 

Venting, done.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

Mytherea said:


> All right, so 'cause this thread says vent, I shall vent.
> 
> Sooo, in my browsing through agents and such on querytracker, I came across a success interview and fell in love with the query. Everything about it screamed "totally up my alley." This was _exactly _the kind of book I'd read to absolute pieces. I needed it now, right now, didn't matter that I was in the middle of reading something else, this book demanded my attention. I fought the initial urge to buy it as an ebook and got it through the library's system instead (which is important) and settled in to start reading something I knew I was going to love.
> 
> After twelve pages, all I can say about it is that it's a few rungs above indecipherable? Really though, it's like the opening has been strapped to a rocket. In twelve pages (which aren't actually "pages", just finger flicks on my phone since I borrowed it as an e-book, so in print, it's maybe five, six pages long, maybe 2,000 words, if that) seven named characters are introduced, two walk-on unnamed characters blow past, the location switches four times, one of the named characters is murdered, the main character doesn't get a name till page eight and then he gets three and is apparently a knight? I don't know. Oh, and gets magic from the murdered guy (well, he already had magic, but got more magic?). Aaaaaaand then a conspiracy is introduced and someone witnesses something they shouldn't and there's a war and a bunch of soldiers coming home but that plot thread gets maybe half a paragraph before it's subsequently forgotten and I'm sitting here, reaching for the hand brake. Stop! Stop, I say! You're going way too frickin' fast! Especially since this is supposed to be secondary world fantasy meaning, more description please? So far, there's an under-described hallway, a (waiting?) room with a desk, a street, and another room with a chair (of some sort, it doesn't get much more description other than 'chair').
> 
> I reach the end of those twelve pages, gasping. _Oh, good, _I think, _there's a line break. This was just some kind of weird, attention-grabbing prologue-thing to get my interest piqued. Now it's going to actually describe things and orient me to where the hell I am and what is going on.
> _
> Ah... no. No, that'd be asking too much. Nope, the story just blazes onward, with me floundering along behind going, _What? What the heck? What is this even? Where am I, what am I supposed to be visualizing, who are any of these people and why were seven of them introduced in less than a breath? _No, I still don't know who half these people are and I keep having to flip back to figure out who was introduced when and if that woman is the secretary, the nurse, or someone entirely different.
> 
> So yeah. I'm done with this book. I'm an immersion reader. I want to be transported. And I want to sink _in to _a story. I don't like getting thrown into the middle of things with nothing described, relying on me having watched enough historical dramas set in the late 1800's/turn of the last century to give me a semi-clear picture of what the heck this is supposed to look like.
> 
> Grr. Thankfully I didn't buy the thing. I'd be screaming about my wasted dollars at this point.
> 
> Venting, done.



Yikes. What book?


----------



## Mytherea

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> Yikes. What book?



Messaged you with the title.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

Well, I just DNF'd Mark Lawrence's Red Sister. 

This book has been showered in five star reviews since it came out and holds almost a 4.3 average rating on goodreads. I thought I would love it but after 160 pages I can't convince myself to plow through. 

It's so dull. Nothing happens. I don't care about any of the characters; they're very one-dimensional and just bland. The writing is mediocre and a lot of aspects of the style seem amateurish. This writer just doesn't have a solid, evocative writing style; it's kind of clunky and drab. I must have a totally different copy than everyone else. I can imagine someone with a different perspective than me giving this four stars maybe, just out of having not experienced other, better books, but in what world is this a five-star book? 

Not to mention this was marketed as "grimdark" and it's just absolutely not? Honestly it's very YA-ish both in content and style. I've read YA that is far darker and with better worldbuilding and more complicated writing. So much for adult novels being more sophisticated. This hasn't much substance to it. 

My biggest problem with this book, though, is that barring a massive, possible God-orchestrated coincidence, this author basically plagiarized his entire plot and concept from a book published the previous year. Which was FAR better and actually dark and gritty. 

That book is Nevernight by Jay Kristoff and here's a incomplete list of the things the books have in common 

-the entire concept (young girl who is a murderer and fleeing the retribution of nobility in a late-medieval-type world, being inducted into a religious order/convent/monastery of some sort dedicated to training young people either to serve a mysterious god or to be deadly assassins) 
-just the whole vibe of the nobles and "high society " in this world is THE SAME 
-girl's story begins with a hanging (so similar it makes me cringe) 
-world building centers mostly on weird shit up with the sun/heavenly bodies (nevernight's world has multiple suns, red sister's has a red sun and some weird moon which gives heat idk)
-girl has extremely dangerous magic, which showed itself in response to a traumatic event and which she tries to keep secret 
-story begins with girl being 9-10ish but she matures 
-the teachers in the convent/whatever have weird names 
-getting poisoned in poison class (except in nevernight people actually died lol) 
-just all of the being taught stuff except this book makes everything incredibly boring and has the girls learn geology 
-basically all the drama between the girls being trained and the training itself is violently familiar as in close to identical 

Honestly the two books are so similar i'm having trouble remembering which details were in which. They're basically the same story. I am very well aware that everything's been done before, but you shouldn't exactly copy the plot and ideas of another person's book. That's just not a good look especially for a bestselling author. I've read some very derivative books, but i'm horrified. 

The only ways Red Sister really diverges from Nevernight in concept is when it borrows from overused cliches (there's a Chosen One thing being thrown around, the main character is poor and doesn't know of her unique heritage) 

There are so many just plain bad devices used in this story. There are so many flashbacks that are irrelevant to the plot. The main character makes up two different false stories about her heritage (when the first is busted she defaults to the other) and both take PAGES for her to tell. We know the story is false both times (though the first one did leave me confused as hell) and there's really little plot relevance at all to having her lie let alone do it twice, but the author treats us to pages of her made up story both times. It's done very badly too: he keeps narrating in almost the exact same style, but it's in quotation marks, which leads you to try to picture the main character actually spitting out the vocabulary and sentence structure that the author would use in writing. She's 9. It's dialogue. No one talks like an author would when writing a book. But he doesn't attempt to tell it in her voice at all and it's just. very badly done. If i was an editor i would have told him to set both scenes on fire. It's a mess. You know how they tell you to "show" and not "tell?" Im starting to painfully understand why that's so important because so much shit is just blandly shoveled in the direction of the reader. The writing is just not good at all. 

I'm just horrified that this is so popular and loved and for some reason thought of as "dark and gritty." What?   There's nothing dark and gritty in this book, at least not in the first 160 pages. 

Especially since Nevernight was actually dark and gritty, suspenseful, had well-drawn characters, had good worldbuilding and (imo) writing, and is mostly forgotten except for a small following keeping watch for the third book. 

I started skimming because my eyes just wouldn't stick to the page lol. I've rated it two stars, but i'm starting to think hard about why it deserves the second star. There's nothing good about it except the basic concept, and thats probably copied imo. Even if it wasn't, it's already been done WAY BETTER.  

And i thought my WIP was similar, but it turns out they're not that alike lol


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

I'm serious i'm so mad that this thing is so popular


----------



## Steerpike

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> I'm serious i'm so mad that this thing is so popular



I haven’t read either book. Given the timeline between manuscript completion and actual publication, does it seem likely Red Sister was a direct take off of Neverknight?

July 2016 for Neverknight. April 2017 for Red Sister.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

Steerpike said:


> I haven’t read either book. Given the timeline between manuscript completion and actual publication, does it seem likely Red Sister was a direct take off of Neverknight?
> 
> July 2016 for Neverknight. April 2017 for Red Sister.



It's very close, true. But the books are at least similar enough for me to have no interest at all in reading Red Sister.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

Steerpike said:


> I haven’t read either book. Given the timeline between manuscript completion and actual publication, does it seem likely Red Sister was a direct take off of Neverknight?
> 
> July 2016 for Neverknight. April 2017 for Red Sister.



So i was reading an interview from Mark Lawrence and apparently he had all three books in the series written before he even published them! First of all, damn. Second of all, I wonder at how the two books are so similar if the option that he borrowed clearly isn't possible. 

Since he didn't appear to plagiarize, I don't think i have to reduce my rating any more than it is (2 stars on goodreads) but i'm still bewildered at how disappointing this one was. 

I mean, my WIP at the time i found out about both of these followed an assassin-school type topic/main idea, including a setting that was a cathedral (though there's no religion involved), but it's not even close.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

I rated it one star i feel so dirty


----------



## Demesnedenoir

Honestly, Nevernight sounds so cliche it isn’t shocking at all to see something eerily like it. At one point EoS was ranked near Grey Sister so I checked the books out and... No, not going there.

But, get used to this sort of thing. When carousing the Hollywood screenwriting scene I met a guy who wrote a screenplay, sent it to Cali, he was flown out there, wined, dined, fawned over, they alked 6 figures, and then! Another studio announced a movie called (if memory serves) Drumline. Boom! It was damned near identical to his screenplay, everyone he’d spoken to said, yeah, shit happens, tough luck, maybe next time. This sort of thing is shockingly common, a million monkeys typing and they’ll produce damned similar stories quite often.

I can’t call this a vent about a book I’m reading, because I didn’t make it past the first page... It opens with weather, which hey! I’m cool with, but the “yawning puddle” makes me gurgle a bit. Leaping over a yawning puddle... This is freakin’ reaching, man. Either the character is Evil Knievel  and this is a monster puddle... Or, okay... I survive the yawning puddddddle, I’ve seen worse, I can forgive it. The writing is meh but okay, and a few paragraphs later, there is a sentence that just... Yikes. Awkward, most likely the result of an incomplete edit. Sure, that shit happens, it happens to Brandon Sanderson in a different more forgivable way, but all this on page one? And then, another pet peeve my inner editor can’t bypass... click... done. Sad to say, this is similar to my experiences with most books.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

Demesnedenoir said:


> Honestly, Nevernight sounds so cliche it isn’t shocking at all to see something eerily like it. At one point EoS was ranked near Grey Sister so I checked the books out and... No, not going there.
> 
> But, get used to this sort of thing. When carousing the Hollywood screenwriting scene I met a guy who wrote a screenplay, sent it to Cali, he was flown out there, wined, dined, fawned over, they alked 6 figures, and then! Another studio announced a movie called (if memory serves) Drumline. Boom! It was damned near identical to his screenplay, everyone he’d spoken to said, yeah, shit happens, tough luck, maybe next time. This sort of thing is shockingly common, a million monkeys typing and they’ll produce damned similar stories quite often.
> 
> I can’t call this a vent about a book I’m reading, because I didn’t make it past the first page... It opens with weather, which hey! I’m cool with, but the “yawning puddle” makes me gurgle a bit. Leaping over a yawning puddle... This is freakin’ reaching, man. Either the character is Evil Knievel  and this is a monster puddle... Or, okay... I survive the yawning puddddddle, I’ve seen worse, I can forgive it. The writing is meh but okay, and a few paragraphs later, there is a sentence that just... Yikes. Awkward, most likely the result of an incomplete edit. Sure, that shit happens, it happens to Brandon Sanderson in a different more forgivable way, but all this on page one? And then, another pet peeve my inner editor can’t bypass... click... done. Sad to say, this is similar to my experiences with most books.



What's EoS?


----------



## Demesnedenoir

Eve of Snows, book I released about 5 months ago. When it hit #1 in category in the UK, Grey Sister (and lots of Diana Gabaldon books) and EoS were in the 1-2 area, I often check out books in the nearby ranks and on EoS’ also boughts... the aforementioned book above recently took #1 on the also boughts from nowwhere, and I took a look. Was not impressed. But then, Name of the Wind doesn’t impress me either, and many thousands love it, LOL. To each their own.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

Demesnedenoir said:


> Eve of Snows, book I released about 5 months ago. When it hit #1 in category in the UK, Grey Sister (and lots of Diana Gabaldon books) and EoS were in the 1-2 area, I often check out books in the nearby ranks and on EoS’ also boughts... the aforementioned book above recently took #1 on the also boughts from nowwhere, and I took a look. Was not impressed. But then, Name of the Wind doesn’t impress me either, and many thousands love it, LOL. To each their own.



Ohhh! I heard something about your book I think...Congrats, I'm a bit out of the loop on Scribes's doings. 

I can't find a reason to feel interested in Name of the Wind? Just doesn't sound like i'd like it and i've gotten pretty good at discerning that sort of thing. 

Anyways, cliche or no, I did love Nevernight. Rare that I find a book that's better than okay. Have to jump on em.


----------



## Demesnedenoir

I always want to like epic fantasy, but my inner editor is a nasty ol’ cuss. Name of the Wind, it isn’t so much the writing but the character and story which leaves me flat.

Cliche is fine, until they’re piled one on top of the other it can get annoying... but then again, Avatar was a walking cliche in pretty CGI and it was still entertaining... but books don’t have the luxury of visuals, LOL.

No idea if Eve would interest you, but hey, check it out. You never know.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

Demesnedenoir said:


> I always want to like epic fantasy, but my inner editor is a nasty ol’ cuss. Name of the Wind, it isn’t so much the writing but the character and story which leaves me flat.
> 
> Cliche is fine, until they’re piled one on top of the other it can get annoying... but then again, Avatar was a walking cliche in pretty CGI and it was still entertaining... but books don’t have the luxury of visuals, LOL.
> 
> No idea if Eve would interest you, but hey, check it out. You never know.



If i don't like any of the characters in a story, I can't get through it. Bottom line. Unless i'm feeling particularly masochistic and haven't made it to my goodreads goal yet...

I'll do so


----------



## Demesnedenoir

Yeah, I read one book out of pure masochism recently to see if it had some redeeming quality with all its positive reviews... it did not. LOL. But it wasn’t huge either. If it’d been any longer I might not have made it.



DragonOfTheAerie said:


> If i don't like any of the characters in a story, I can't get through it. Bottom line. Unless i'm feeling particularly masochistic and haven't made it to my goodreads goal yet...
> 
> I'll do so


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

So I just finished a book made of four short stories from four different authors. The theme was dragons, and unfortunately I only liked one of the stories. The other stories...well, let's just say I was vividly reminded of why I mainly read children's fiction. Urgh...I want to clean my mind. The story i liked isn't enough for me to keep the book. >.<


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## DragonOfTheAerie

TheCrystallineEntity said:


> So I just finished a book made of four short stories from four different authors. The theme was dragons, and unfortunately I only liked one of the stories. The other stories...well, let's just say I was vividly reminded of why I mainly read children's fiction. Urgh...I want to clean my mind. The story i liked isn't enough for me to keep the book. >.<



I feel this so hard. I love to pick up children's books because I know there's going to be no horrific scenes of sexual assault just thrown in there for no reason. I personally am generally okay with sex scenes, but sometimes it's nice to not have that, because many authors just CANNOT write sex scenes. Literary writers should hire romance novelist ghostwriters for such scenes, but they're too snobby about something something Literary Merit.


----------



## Steerpike

How long will you continue to read a book that makes you want to vent over it? I’m curious. I used to finish almost every book I started, no matter what. I quit that years ago, and now I’m quick to put a book down if I don’t like it and move on to something else.


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## Demesnedenoir

I’ve always had this theory that HBO spends good money on bad porn writers to jot down some of their scenes, LOL. It’s always better after they fire the porn writers.

In general, I don’t read sex scenes because I just don’t give a crap. It’s a skim for story at best situation.



DragonOfTheAerie said:


> I feel this so hard. I love to pick up children's books because I know there's going to be no horrific scenes of sexual assault just thrown in there for no reason. I personally am generally okay with sex scenes, but sometimes it's nice to not have that, because many authors just CANNOT write sex scenes. Literary writers should hire romance novelist ghostwriters for such scenes, but they're too snobby about something something Literary Merit.


----------



## Demesnedenoir

Steerpike said:


> How long will you continue to read a book that makes you want to vent over it? I’m curious. I used to finish almost every book I started, no matter what. I quit that years ago, and now I’m quick to put a book down if I don’t like it and move on to something else.



I tend to not read far enough to need to vent. The only book I’ve gotten past 100 pages on that I have no intent to finish is Name of the Wind. I tried more than once, but life is too short. Most often I don’t get past Amazon’s sample pages.


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## TheCrystallineEntity

Steerpike said:


> How long will you continue to read a book that makes you want to vent over it? I’m curious. I used to finish almost every book I started, no matter what. I quit that years ago, and now I’m quick to put a book down if I don’t like it and move on to something else.



I can usually tell within the first couple pages or first chapter if I'm going to like a book or not, and then I know whether to keep reading if I like it and stop if I don't. Though one time I got around a quarter of the way through one book, and then the protagonist randomly killed someone and made advances on this princess, and I went 'Nope nope nope' and put the book down and walked away.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

Steerpike said:


> How long will you continue to read a book that makes you want to vent over it? I’m curious. I used to finish almost every book I started, no matter what. I quit that years ago, and now I’m quick to put a book down if I don’t like it and move on to something else.



I have difficulties with stopping books without finishing. I feel like even bad ones have something to teach me. 

When I get a really bad one, sometimes I will hate-read so I can be snarky about it. It's fun. Or sometimes I just keep going in hopes it gets better because I was hoping this one would be good, but it usually doesn't improve if it's not doing anything for me after the first 50-100 pages.


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## Svrtnsse

I used to force myself to finish books I'd started, but these days I try to get rid of that. There are too many other books out there to waste time on once I don't like - at least that's the theory. It's still a hard habit to shake though. I used to feel like I ought to finish what I started, and to a certain extent I still do.

Usually what happens now is that if a book doesn't keep me interested, I do something else instead of read. Like play games, or write. It's lead to long periods of not-reading anything, and I'd like to try and get out of that. So I'm looking at formalising my to-read list, rather than just recognising names of books as ones I ought to read. That way, I'll have something else to swap over to in case what I'm reading at the moment doesn't interest me.

Also, when I'm reading a book from someone I know, or that I'm acquainted with, I try a lot harder to stick with it, but even then there are books written by friends of mine I still haven't gotten through. Knowing how much effort it takes to write a book, I'd hate to admit to someone I've give up on something I've written.

On the flipside, and since I'm derailing anyway. I had someone (unintentionally) tell me they couldn't bear to finish one of my books because it didn't keep their interest. I have a distinct feeling they felt worse about it than I did. Some people just aren't going to enjoy what I do.


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## skip.knox

I encourage you, Svrtnsse, to make that reading list. I use mine frequently. In my spreadsheet I include a comment line where I can say something about why I might want to read that book. Once read, I can make a note about what I thought. Not a review, just for personal reference.


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## Svrtnsse

skip.knox said:


> I encourage you, Svrtnsse, to make that reading list. I use mine frequently. In my spreadsheet I include a comment line where I can say something about why I might want to read that book. Once read, I can make a note about what I thought. Not a review, just for personal reference.


I got a new kindle recently (I put a portable speaker on my old one, and it didn't like that), and it comes with integration to goodreads, so it imported my want to read list from there. It's how the thought eventually occurred to me.


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

So...I got another book with a lot more short stories, from discards of my aunt. 

There's only two stories I like in that one, but they're so good I wanted them to be whole books. The others...well...


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

I attempted to read The Way of Kings again, but maybe I wasn't in the right mood for it. Plus I have a bit of a problem with over-excessive use of names and terms. I prefer both to be kept as simple and concise as possible, in movies and tv shows and video games, not just books. The Alcatraz series proves that Brandon Sanderson can do this. 

Maybe I'm just not used to reading high fantasy [besides Tolkien, of course], and need to get in the right mindset. I don't know.

Ironically, when I first started writing, I made up a whole dictionary with invented words, 90% of which never got used and 10% of which were used without explanation.

I'd like to think I've improved since then.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

Current read: The Lies of Locke Lamora 
spoilers, obviously

This one def joins Gardens of the Moon in being a very excellent fantasy novel...that takes 300+ pages to get going. But when it _does _get going, holy _shit. 
_
I'm horribly irritated with the author continually stopping the story to splice in backstory, though I guess it's important and I feel affectionate toward Chains. But my main interest is in How In The Hell Is Locke Not Dead This Time. 

Locke: *gets turned inside out with an emetic, beaten, stabbed, damn near drowned in horse piss, dragged all over creation trying to escape people trying to kill him, witnesses the murders of his closest friends, travels across the city again, and witnesses MORE murders* 
Locke: Wtf why am I so dizzy? I can think of nothing in the recent past that could have resulted in me feeling maybe not at my be--*collapses and passes out*


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

On the other hand, anyone complaining that the Lies of Locke Lamora is difficult to get through has obviously not dulled all the feeling in their head on the cinder block that is the Temeraire series. 

And I love dragons. Like, absolutely _adore_ them.


----------



## Miles Lacey

I've been reading Kim Stanley Robinson's _New York 2140. _I'm about halfway through and I still haven't figured out what the hell it's about.  There's no main character, there's lots of preaching about economics and there's no sign of anything happening.  Not since the God Bless America and its military BS of James Paterson's _Jacky Ha-Ha _have I wanted to punch a writer so hard.


----------



## Tom

Just finished: _The Changeling_ by Joy Williams

I gotta say, this one was a little tough to wrap my head around. Williams is cryptic at best, and her style is deceptively minimalist. You have to really hunt for the double meanings she hides behind straightforward Hemingway-ish sentences. Not that that's a bad thing, but I got a little annoyed by all the short, choppy sentences and small words. I like writers with a more lyrical, syntactically complex style so this book was a real step outside my comfort zone. 

I also didn't appreciate the long, punctuation-free stream of consciousness passages toward the end. Really played havoc with my semi dyslexic brain. They_ probably_ had some important bits of symbolism in there, but I gave up after the first few lines short-circuited my reading comprehension. I tried switching to a different font in hopes that sans serif would help me process it better, but even that didn't help. The final chapter was two solid pages of stream of consciousness paragraphs so I just skipped to the last line. Not putting up with that.


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

For the most part, I like Charles de Lint, which is interesting since I'm not usually a fan of magical realism. But then sometimes, out of the blue, he'll add "adult content", and I want to throw the book at the wall and swear off reading him forever. >.<
This has happened three times in three separate books, by the way.


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## TheCrystallineEntity

Argh. Not another book that has a guy act like a huge jerk towards his supposed love interest, and the love interest keeps coming back. Well, that one's going in the 'get rid of' pile for sure.


----------



## pmmg

I don't really have much to complain about. I just finished Homeland in the Dark Elf series by R A Savlatore. I picked mostly cause I'd not read anything by Mr. Salvatore before and he is quite prominent. I noticed his style was much more descriptive than shown and there was not really a lot of dialog as much has head hopping, I did not mind, but its not a style that seems in fashion anymore. Certainly not my style.

I just started A brief History of Time, which is actually pretty cool, but I already know most of it through other sources. I think it would have been cooler if I was learning it for the first time from the book, but....what can you do?

The only book I hated on recently was a wrinkle in time, which I read as it gets a lot of attention and sounded cool when I was younger, but I had never read. I did not like it... Anyway... I don't feel a need to rag on books.


----------



## pmmg

Oh, and before that I read Outpost: Monsters maces and magic from our own Terry Ervin. I thought it was a fun read.


----------



## ThinkerX

Ok, the 'Benjamin Ashwood' series, billed as 'old fashioned sword and sorcery.'  I picked up the digital version of the first three books for a steal many months ago, read part of the first one, wasn't impressed, wrote a review to that effect and moved on to other works.  Then, I noticed more and more four and five star reviews on Amazon to that effect, dug it out of digital storage, and began reading it anew.  Along the way, I began making comparisons to my own efforts.  (yes, not supposed to do this, but couldn't help myself)

Ok, 'sword and sorcery.'  Means lots of fights, evil magicians, and assorted monsters.  'Benjamin Ashwood' has plenty of that.  I'll also give the author points for worldbuilding - once I grasped the historical severity of the demon issue, the political arrangement of petty kingdoms made sense. 

The demons, however, are barely even one dimensional - they appear, they attack, and you either fight and win or you die - every single time.  That was one strike - I kept waiting for demons to display something other than mindless violence; instead, there were a few more powerful specimens with a rudimentary grasp of tactics.

Ok, I have demons in my own writings (especially 'Empire') that play major roles in what's going on.  Monstrous demons on murderous rampages feature in several characters recollections.  But, my demons were more than mere killing machines - they possess formidable intellect and knowledge, plus they have goals of their own that only sometimes involve mortals. 

Another strike is the discrepancy between the highly advanced knowledge (20th century level) displayed by some characters - notably the mages - compared with the feudal city-state and petty kingdom level everybody dwelled in.  At this point, I'm wondering 'lost colony' or 'cataclysm.'  If it's not one of those, then, well, the strike sticks.

My primary world (and almost all the secondary ones, for that matter) have multiple high tech devices, and a number of characters with rudimentary understanding of them.  Those devices and attendant knowledge stem from the 'ancient aliens.'  In my worlds, the discrepancy exists, but it's accounted for. It's not well understood and is frequently regarded as magical or demonic. In Ashwood, it's like some of the characters are quoting from a 20th century college text.

A strike of sorts is the total absence of religion.  No priests, no discussions of theology, no mention of a deity or a pantheon.  Comes across as 'weird' for a quasi feudal society. The closest is a sort of martial mysticism - the 'thirty ohms.'

In my world - at least the primary one - religion is a very big deal.  The faith of the True God exercises major influence across the Solarian Empire and beyond.  Priests act as counselors for peasant couples, (sometimes) provide education, moral guidance, and more.  There are also feuds between the True Faith and lingering pagan religions, plus splits within the faith itself. 

The 'long lived' are another strike of sorts.  Seems you master a profession, one that requires great will (almost always either a warrior or a wizard) and aging just sort of 'stops.'  Mind over body.  Seems to me there should be more to it than that.

Then, there is the body count in Benjamin Ashwood - people die in droves in these books.  I could accept that, but all too often, it gets repetitious: Benjamin and company meet up with somebody, who is almost always presented as a fellow refugee or guide of some sort.  Said character either gets killed in the next demon attack or assassination attempt, or is an assassin themselves.  Then there are the small groups of assassins, some backed by mages, who just sort of randomly show up and try to kill the heroes.  Very few of these secondary characters survive.  For that matter, the body count amongst ordinary artisans, traders, and like folk is high as well, especially after even casual contact with Benjamin (and he's really, really trying to make things better for these people.) 

Ok, in my works, people died in droves during the Traag War. Unlike Ashwood, though, which has 'unsettled conditions,' the Traag War was a major, decades long conflict against a realm ruled by demons who regarded their subjects as bugs.  Afterwards, though, well, Solaria is unsettled, plagued by banditry, piracy, widespread poverty, and occasional urban rioting - but the body count is (mostly) far less than Ashwood's.  It's a symptom of social change.

Social Change - that is something my tales have in common with Ashwood, though the thrust is different. In Empire, it's a massive seismic shift; in Ashwood, it's more 'ordinary folk building free states in the wilderness.' 

Ok...so the Benjamin Ashwood series gets some pretty good reviews (and is better than some other digital fantasy series I've read over the past year or two) - yet, it has these issues, places where I might have done a better job.  Gives me a modicum of hope.  Or maybe I'm being delusional.


----------



## Kittie Brandybuck

I recently finished the whole Harry Potter series and it was just... i can't describe my feelings about it. 
First of all, they ruined my favourite character. Hermione Granger was the intelligent one who always found a way to help Harry out of tight situations. But in book 7, she was literally holding Harry back from defeating Voldemort.
Book 7 itself was one of the two worst ones. The first half was just them being moody and the only reason i read it all was i just had to finish the series. The second half was so action-packed i got confused. The battle of Hogwarts was just pointless. I can't describe why, i know it was important, but it just felt pointless. Also, what sort of villain tries to take over a high school and fails?
Snape. At first he was just your ordinary strict teacher who everyone loves to hate. But then you find out about his past with Lily and all that. I DO NOT understand why people like him and why he's treated as some huge hero after this shocking revelation. Because he just reminds me of a very annoying ex who wouldn't understand our relationship was over.
Book 8. This just seemed like a badly written fanfic instead of the real thing. They got so much stuff wrong, like when they make polyjuice potion in, like, a day or something. I thought it took a month? Also, why the heck would Voldemort have a child with Bellatrix? I thought Voldemort couldn't love or whatever? And the time turners were totally different. In book 3, if you change something in the past, it ever-so-slightly changes the present. In book 8, if you change the past, it leads you to an alternate reality. Also, they ruined Ron. At one point, he runs into the room, points his wand, realizes it is upside down, and turns it the right way around. Seriously? That is not funny, it's just plain dumb.
The movies. They changed everything and made it horrible.
Harry himself. He's moody, arrogant, mean, rude, and stupid. He annoyed me sooooooo much.
The other stuff (Lego, Pottermore, etc.). All that stuff is TOO MUCH. I just annoys me so much when I walk into a shop and the first thing i see is a kawaii-style Harry Potter plushie, right next to a tiny bag of Bertie Bott's every flavour beans. They are basically jelly beans with a differnt name (also, the flavours are renamed too, to make them "every flavour". All it does is make them disgusting). 
I'm actually sad about all this. If J.K. Rowling wrote every book in the style of the first 3, kept every flavour beans as something non-existing, and kept the films with only one director instead of 4, and written book 8 by herself instead of with 3 random people, and not made it a play, i wouldn't dislike this series so much.


----------



## CupofJoe

Kittie Brandybuck said:


> I recently finished the whole Harry Potter series and it was just... i can't describe my feelings about it.
> First of all, they ruined my favourite character. Hermione Granger was the intelligent one who always found a way to help Harry out of tight situations. But in book 7, she was literally holding Harry back from defeating Voldemort.
> Book 7 itself was one of the two worst ones. The first half was just them being moody and the only reason i read it all was i just had to finish the series. The second half was so action-packed i got confused. The battle of Hogwarts was just pointless. I can't describe why, i know it was important, but it just felt pointless. Also, what sort of villain tries to take over a high school and fails?
> Snape. At first he was just your ordinary strict teacher who everyone loves to hate. But then you find out about his past with Lily and all that. I DO NOT understand why people like him and why he's treated as some huge hero after this shocking revelation. Because he just reminds me of a very annoying ex who wouldn't understand our relationship was over.
> Book 8. This just seemed like a badly written fanfic instead of the real thing. They got so much stuff wrong, like when they make polyjuice potion in, like, a day or something. I thought it took a month? Also, why the heck would Voldemort have a child with Bellatrix? I thought Voldemort couldn't love or whatever? And the time turners were totally different. In book 3, if you change something in the past, it ever-so-slightly changes the present. In book 8, if you change the past, it leads you to an alternate reality. Also, they ruined Ron. At one point, he runs into the room, points his wand, realizes it is upside down, and turns it the right way around. Seriously? That is not funny, it's just plain dumb.
> The movies. They changed everything and made it horrible.
> Harry himself. He's moody, arrogant, mean, rude, and stupid. He annoyed me sooooooo much.
> The other stuff (Lego, Pottermore, etc.). All that stuff is TOO MUCH. I just annoys me so much when I walk into a shop and the first thing i see is a kawaii-style Harry Potter plushie, right next to a tiny bag of Bertie Bott's every flavour beans. They are basically jelly beans with a differnt name (also, the flavours are renamed too, to make them "every flavour". All it does is make them disgusting).
> I'm actually sad about all this. If J.K. Rowling wrote every book in the style of the first 3, kept every flavour beans as something non-existing, and kept the films with only one director instead of 4, and written book 8 by herself instead of with 3 random people, and not made it a play, i wouldn't dislike this series so much.


From what I remember, the first 3 books had an editor run through them before they got published. I wonder how much was red-lined? Then they got really successful... and a lot less red-lining.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

Kittie Brandybuck said:


> I recently finished the whole Harry Potter series and it was just... i can't describe my feelings about it.
> First of all, they ruined my favourite character. Hermione Granger was the intelligent one who always found a way to help Harry out of tight situations. But in book 7, she was literally holding Harry back from defeating Voldemort.
> Book 7 itself was one of the two worst ones. The first half was just them being moody and the only reason i read it all was i just had to finish the series. The second half was so action-packed i got confused. The battle of Hogwarts was just pointless. I can't describe why, i know it was important, but it just felt pointless. Also, what sort of villain tries to take over a high school and fails?
> Snape. At first he was just your ordinary strict teacher who everyone loves to hate. But then you find out about his past with Lily and all that. I DO NOT understand why people like him and why he's treated as some huge hero after this shocking revelation. Because he just reminds me of a very annoying ex who wouldn't understand our relationship was over.
> Book 8. This just seemed like a badly written fanfic instead of the real thing. They got so much stuff wrong, like when they make polyjuice potion in, like, a day or something. I thought it took a month? Also, why the heck would Voldemort have a child with Bellatrix? I thought Voldemort couldn't love or whatever? And the time turners were totally different. In book 3, if you change something in the past, it ever-so-slightly changes the present. In book 8, if you change the past, it leads you to an alternate reality. Also, they ruined Ron. At one point, he runs into the room, points his wand, realizes it is upside down, and turns it the right way around. Seriously? That is not funny, it's just plain dumb.
> The movies. They changed everything and made it horrible.
> Harry himself. He's moody, arrogant, mean, rude, and stupid. He annoyed me sooooooo much.
> The other stuff (Lego, Pottermore, etc.). All that stuff is TOO MUCH. I just annoys me so much when I walk into a shop and the first thing i see is a kawaii-style Harry Potter plushie, right next to a tiny bag of Bertie Bott's every flavour beans. They are basically jelly beans with a differnt name (also, the flavours are renamed too, to make them "every flavour". All it does is make them disgusting).
> I'm actually sad about all this. If J.K. Rowling wrote every book in the style of the first 3, kept every flavour beans as something non-existing, and kept the films with only one director instead of 4, and written book 8 by herself instead of with 3 random people, and not made it a play, i wouldn't dislike this series so much.



Wow, straight up forgot that “Book 8” was a thing. 

I remember liking the 7th book when I read it, but in hindsight I don’t really know why, since a lot of the worldbuilding stuff came totally out of left field for me. The Deathly Hallows just don’t fit with the previously established character of the magic system. (Not that the magic system has consistent rules that make sense, but it’s at least consistent in feel.)


----------



## piperofyork

I couldn't finish _Mistborn_. After a while it started to feel like a graphic novel with superheroes. Are all of Sanderson's books like this? _Mistborn_ was published in 2006, so maybe his style has changed...


----------



## Demesnedenoir

Funny, some of this is the same I felt after page 1, book 1, heh heh. Okay, I’m just taking pot shots at Potter. I made it part way through chapter 2 before my eyes rolled into the back of my head. In some ways I do wish I had been 10 when Potter came out, I would’ve enjoyed it and moved along with the story for a while at least. It’s the sme way I recall loving Narnia, and trying to read it now just doesn’t work. Tolkien’s LoTR is about the only books I read around the age of 10-12 that I can stlil read.




Kittie Brandybuck said:


> I recently finished the whole Harry Potter series and it was just... i can't describe my feelings about it.
> First of all, they ruined my favourite character. Hermione Granger was the intelligent one who always found a way to help Harry out of tight situations. But in book 7, she was literally holding Harry back from defeating Voldemort.
> Book 7 itself was one of the two worst ones. The first half was just them being moody and the only reason i read it all was i just had to finish the series. The second half was so action-packed i got confused. The battle of Hogwarts was just pointless. I can't describe why, i know it was important, but it just felt pointless. Also, what sort of villain tries to take over a high school and fails?
> Snape. At first he was just your ordinary strict teacher who everyone loves to hate. But then you find out about his past with Lily and all that. I DO NOT understand why people like him and why he's treated as some huge hero after this shocking revelation. Because he just reminds me of a very annoying ex who wouldn't understand our relationship was over.
> Book 8. This just seemed like a badly written fanfic instead of the real thing. They got so much stuff wrong, like when they make polyjuice potion in, like, a day or something. I thought it took a month? Also, why the heck would Voldemort have a child with Bellatrix? I thought Voldemort couldn't love or whatever? And the time turners were totally different. In book 3, if you change something in the past, it ever-so-slightly changes the present. In book 8, if you change the past, it leads you to an alternate reality. Also, they ruined Ron. At one point, he runs into the room, points his wand, realizes it is upside down, and turns it the right way around. Seriously? That is not funny, it's just plain dumb.
> The movies. They changed everything and made it horrible.
> Harry himself. He's moody, arrogant, mean, rude, and stupid. He annoyed me sooooooo much.
> The other stuff (Lego, Pottermore, etc.). All that stuff is TOO MUCH. I just annoys me so much when I walk into a shop and the first thing i see is a kawaii-style Harry Potter plushie, right next to a tiny bag of Bertie Bott's every flavour beans. They are basically jelly beans with a differnt name (also, the flavours are renamed too, to make them "every flavour". All it does is make them disgusting).
> I'm actually sad about all this. If J.K. Rowling wrote every book in the style of the first 3, kept every flavour beans as something non-existing, and kept the films with only one director instead of 4, and written book 8 by herself instead of with 3 random people, and not made it a play, i wouldn't dislike this series so much.


----------



## Demesnedenoir

Mistborn is fairly “immature” for his writing, but it would probably depend on what you call “Style”. I’m not sure his writing changed a great deal from the books I’ve read, but the stories vary widely. I’m not a Sanderson-nista, so I’m sure his true followers would rail against us, heh heh. While I’ve not encountered those fans myself, several of my readers have mentioned how rabid his fans can be in our conversations.



piperofyork said:


> I couldn't finish _Mistborn_. After a while it started to feel like a graphic novel with superheroes. Are all of Sanderson's books like this? _Mistborn_ was published in 2006, so maybe his style has changed...


----------



## Prince of Spires

piperofyork said:


> I couldn't finish _Mistborn_. After a while it started to feel like a graphic novel with superheroes. Are all of Sanderson's books like this? _Mistborn_ was published in 2006, so maybe his style has changed...


Yes and no. His style evolves from book to book (though I haven't read that many of them). I think this happens with all authors. And mistborn is clearly one of his earlier works, so he moves away from it a bit.

At the same time, he likes very visible, action-packed magic systems. So there is often some of this. In the Stomlight Archive series you'll find people walking on ceilings and fighting while flying through the air. So still superhero stuff. 

As for Harry Potter, I think the later books needed a brave editor with a big red pen to remove 1/3 of the chapters. The pacing is just off in them and there's too many chapters where nothing happens, where there's no tension and they're just meh. She even manages to kill one of the important side characters by having him simply walk through a curtain.... They felt like the editors didn't dare say anything to her which would upset her in any way...


----------



## piperofyork

Thank you Demesnedenoir and Prince of Spires. Your replies make me wonder: is there a resource out there that provides encapsulations of what one can (generally) expect from published fantasy authors? Something on the order of: 

If you read Tolkien, you should (generally) expect ABC...

If you read Brandon Sanderson, you should (generally) expect DEF...

If you read Robert Jordan, you should (generally) expect XYZ...

It might be useful to have such a resource for a variety of reasons. (I imagine any attempt to include _evaluations _in the encapsulations would attract disagreement, though!)


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## skip.knox

I would almost (not quite; I do read reviews; I'm only mortal after all) ... er, where was I? Oh yeah, here.

I would almost argue the opposite, piperofyork. Rather than people being able to read summaries, they ought to face the work as the author intended--alone and unaided. No expectations. That's the way I would wish people would come to my books.

After reading two or ten of the author's books, then the reader comes to the third or eleventh with expectations certainly, but with *their* expectations. They have formed their own opinions of the author's work, uncolored by both the opinions and the characterizations of others.


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## piperofyork

You make an excellent point, skip.knox. My thoughts on the matter were probably too pedestrian: since we have such limited time, it might be useful to have a very rough guide, as non-evaluative as possible, to help us determine where to invest our reading time. But despite any such benefits, the cost you mention is serious and prohibitive. Better to let the storyteller tell the story. Quite right.


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## piperofyork

Anyone else have a hard time finishing _Dune_? The repetitiveness, the constant interruptions by internal voice...all honor to F. Herbert - the book is littered with jewels; I couldn't do anything like it - but these days I'm fighting through chapters more than enjoying them.


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## FifthView

piperofyork said:


> Anyone else have a hard time finishing _Dune_? The repetitiveness, the constant interruptions by internal voice...all honor to F. Herbert - the book is littered with jewels; I couldn't do anything like it - but these days I'm fighting through chapters more than enjoying them.



_Dune_ is one of a small handful of novels I've read multiple times. At one point, I would have said I've read _Dune_ more times than I've read any other novel, but I've failed to keep track now. Either that, or I'm losing those memories in my old age. I haven't read the book in at least two decades. I wonder if I'd feel differently about it now?

For me, the internal voice was _key_ to enjoying it, or at least one of the keys. It and other features, particularly the 3rd omniscient narration, combine to create an effect the Writing Excuses podcasters called _intrigue_. (Giving credit to them because I had never considered _Dune_ through this lens before I listened to that podcast.)

In one of the seasons of the podcast*, they focused on various aspects of fiction, or tools a writer could use, and intrigue was one. Intrigue is different in this way:  mystery hides a lot from the reader, but intrigue reveals everything.

There may be an enjoyment in uncovering mystery, bit by bit, while reading a novel; but with intrigue the enjoyment for a reader is in having everything revealed and seeing the tensions and interactions of characters while having this knowledge that the characters don't have. The characters hide things from one another, but the reader sees all of this.

Anywho. I wonder if this is the aspect that bores you. It thrills me, but everyone is different.

*It was Season 10, Episode 19.


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## S J Lee

I love Dune too (the first book, anyway) but I felt it was good in spite of the headhopping etc, not because of it. Tried a few other FH books, eg Dosadi Experiment, but they didn't seem to have a "spark"

Cannot understand the appeal of BS - I see few people commenting here seem to like his stuff, yet SOMEBODY does - who are these people? Where are they hiding? I started the 10 page free sample of "Way of Kings" on Amazon, reasoning that if people talk about him, he must have SOME merits, but had to give up on p7. It seemed like it was written by a 14 year old, not FOR 14 year olds (which I wouldn't have minded). Even someone like RA Salvetore was way better - RAS is no great writer of "literature", but at least he churns out reasonably entertaining yarns fast - or did when I last read anything of his 20 years ago. But BS' lectures on Youtube about arc and "three toggles" etc are fairly good, and I cannot help but suspect he is a writer of some sort of real ability deliberately writing in a fairly naff way for a big-enough-to-succeed niche audience. Does his "clumsy" style help him churn the books out quickly or something?

I've deliberately never read a HP book, my wife loves them and my kid reads them, or at least pretends to, to make mom happy. If I read them and say they are crap, I'll have a big argument, and I'm pretty sure they won't interest me (Was forced to watch the movies, the whole premise sounds annoying - to ME...) so better by far to admit, "I've never read one, so I shouldn't have an opinion, maybe they are good after all"....


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## Demesnedenoir

Dune was good… the next books flailed and died, IMO. I didn’t mind all the in the head stuff, I’m indifferent to it, but I can see where it would annoy a great many people.

Sanderson’s niche made him a millionaire, so it works. I would read Way of Kings over Malazon, but both bore me to death, much like Name of the Wind. I don’t know whether this is really the writing style or just the stories. The only Sanderson book I’ve finished was the first Mistborn book and it was okay, but didn’t make me want to read the second one.

Harry Potter is just a no go. I glanced at a copy once way back before the movies when I bought it for my niece… Yikes. Love that kids are digging fantasy, but no idea why so many adults got into it.


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## Nighty_Knight

Demesnedenoir said:


> Dune was good… the next books flailed and died, IMO. I didn’t mind all the in the head stuff, I’m indifferent to it, but I can see where it would annoy a great many people.
> 
> Sanderson’s niche made him a millionaire, so it works. I would read Way of Kings over Malazon, but both bore me to death, much like Name of the Wind. I don’t know whether this is really the writing style or just the stories. The only Sanderson book I’ve finished was the first Mistborn book and it was okay, but didn’t make me want to read the second one.
> 
> Harry Potter is just a no go. I glanced at a copy once way back before the movies when I bought it for my niece… Yikes. Love that kids are digging fantasy, but no idea why so many adults got into it.


Big thing with the Harry Potter books is they got much better as they went along.  The first was decent, but I was sucked into it by book 5.  Her pacing I feel is very good, that was my issue with the Name of the Wind.  That book I felt had bad pacing and dragged on in many parts, it lost my interest a few times and I kinda had to force myself to finish.  If the writer for that had better pacing I would have probably really liked it.

Funny, reading some of the comments, I feel very different about much of those series than others.  Kinda funny how it works that way.


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## ThinkerX

Could not get into Dune.  

Same with Harry Potter, though I did enjoy the movies when the daughter brought them over.

Did read a fair pile of the Malazan books. Author did do a fair bit of research and they were entertaining, but way to many assassins and large sections seemed lifted from an ADnD campaign.

Sanderson.  Barely made it through Mistborn. Couldn't get into most of his other stuff, at least until Way of Kings came out.  Made it through the first three books.

Ones I did like...

Fiests Magician series...at least the first ten books or so.  Main complaint, not many prominent female characters, and most of the characters hail from the aristocracy.

Elliot's Crown of Stars. Multiple complex characters in desperate and convoluted situations, with good writing.

Kerr's Deverry series, characters reincarnated through the ages on a fantasy world. Good writing, credible situations.

Then there be assorted olds favorites. Lord of the Rings. Earthsea. Witchworld.


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## Karlin

The Story of the Stone is great, but a tad long. 5 volumes, 2,339 pages. In English translation.


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