Books Fantasy Reads

Finished reading Abaddon's Gate (Book 3 of The Expanse series) and scope keeps getting bigger and bigger :drool:

Missed reading Avasarala's take on all that happened. Hopefully she makes it back in Cibola Burn.
 
Art Vandelay said:
Wheel of Time: Shadow Rising(book 4)

It's taking me a while to get through these despite really liking them. They are huge and my time was limited with work, not to mention they can get kind of irritating like bad 90's stand up comedy "men be like this, but women be like THIS!" Plus there's the braid tugging and skirt arranging, it never ends! The main characters are all much better now that they have more individual personality and things are slowly coming together. Although it's getting hard to take any threat serious when they can face down pretty much anything now. Which makes me fear some of the later books might be vast swathes of filler given their size and the amount of them. I really want to know what happens next though.

I just wish they had more Moiraine, Suian Sanche and Lanfear. Less Nynaeve... much less Nynaeve and her god damn mother fecking braid and stout shoes. She's such an annoying bitch so far too. The male characters so far haven't been as interesting as the female ones, but Perrin was the stand out of the main three. Mat has potential, but feels like he is still being set up for a big story rather than having one.

I dunno whether to push on with the next one or take another break as I felt a bit burned out after reading the first two in a row then had to take a break of a few months between 2 and 3 and between 3 and 4. I do have other stuff there to read I suppose. It's just already getting hard to remember who everyone is with such a big cast, especial the Aiel. All those gingers and blondes being described in various confusing versions of ginger and blonde. Sun haired, flame haired, golden haired, hair the colour of wheat, hair like an albino baboon. Just say ginger or blonde!
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Read the fifth book before the break. It is the best book in the saga (and one of the best books in the genre), in addition to actually actions having consequences.

By having a pause after it, you won't forget about this saga and you will want to cime back ASAP.
 
I'll push on with it then. If I find myself growing hair just so I can make a braid to tug, then I'll be swearing vengeance upon you both.

By the way, did you know Perrin has a beard now? It's rarely mentioned...
 
I knew that Perron had a beard.

'Fires of Heaven' is awesome. I rate only 'A Storm of Swords' higher in the entire genre.

Nynaeve will continue tugging her braid. In fact, I think that even in three Sanderson's books, she continues doing that.
 
King of Thorns

Much better read than the 1st book. The writing style is much better and plot thickens. Though I still get the feeling of being led on, Jorg has all the answers and all the other players seem to dance to his tunes. Gives me interest to finish the series now. Just stated on the final book. It says a lot that my favourite character till now is Miana who's just having bit part roles. I hope she gets some more attention in the final book.

Rating: 7/10
 
Emperor of Thorns

Best book of the lot. Decent pacing of events and a stunning climax that I felt was perhaps a bit rushed. Still very good. Could have tied up some loose ends, but really good end to a good series.

@Revan

What was that about the wheel in the end? Fexler described the wheel as a step that weakened reality, weakening of quantum emphasis or something like that....but what was that actually? How was Jorg able to fix what the builders broke? Is all that was needed was a strong will? Is the logic like "Oh, the weakening lets you change reality to your will, so if you will it hard enough you can eliminate the weakening itself" kind of circular logic?"


8/10

The Broken Empire (series as a whole)

A book vastly different from the run of the mill fantasy series out there. It's dark with a anti-hero for a protagonist. Lots of gore to make most feel queasy. Starts off very mediocre, but picks up pace in book 2 and a fantastic finale in book 3. The alternating timelines in book 2 and 3 were much more interesting to follow.

Though I felt there were some obvious deficiencies in the story. For a kid, Jorg was portrayed as a superman. Everything he attempts in the book he success either through his own will or through some random chance...even though most of his actions can be considered stupid. The way he planned the war in Book 2, the way he sets the stage for his coronation in book 3, he somehow makes plans spanning multiple kings (and kingdoms) for 5 years in the future and everything happens like he predicted. Seriously?By book 3, the novelty was off and I knew Jorg will come up trumps at the end of every single altercation.

And the ending still leaves unfinished business. After Katherine haunted him in all of book 2 and most of book 3, what happened to her?
And Chella? That's one weird love/hate relationship.
So sad that I didn't get enough of the Miana of Book 2.

The best part of the book was the world. Started off medieval, but when I realized it was post apocalyptic, it was awesome. But very underutilized. I feel the builders should have had a larger role in the plot.

The descriptions of torture, rape and cruelty made the story a bit cheap imo. I felt like rather than add gravitas to the character it's main purpose was to shock the reader. Like this turns from a classic horror thriller down to a B grade slasher movie.

Series rating: 6.5/10
 
@Edgar Allan Pillow

Yeah, I don't remember exactly, but I think that was it. A strong will, some metaphysical stuff, and Jorg and his brother turned the wheel, pretty much fixing what the builders broke and so dividing the world from the other magical realm.
 
Akash said:
Has anyone read the Dark Tower Series?

There's a movie coming out based on it and the cast includes Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey!
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Long Price Quartet (by Daniel Abraham)

A very different take on fantasy. A good read, but not without it's flaws. The whole concept of magic has not been explained throughout. If andat's are ideas/concepts why can't they be created a second time. Surely an existing idea/concept is more easy to grasp?

Also the author seems to revel in sorrow at personal, familial and geographical and geopolitical levels. The overall emotion seems to switch between discontent to outright despair. The way he goes about it is quite brilliant and you kinda understand what the characters are going through. There are no clear good/bad characters and almost everyone is realistically portrayed, grey and flawed. This reminds me of Thomas Covenant books. Very realistic, but I gave up the 4th book for about 6 months before picking it up again recently.

Overall a very different undertaking in Fantasy and a good series.

6.5/10
 
Edgar Allan Pillow said:
Now starting on Amber Chronicles. Looks to be a blend of fantasy and sci fi with multiverse and such.

Let's see how this goes.
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I'm about to finish it. It's all right on the whole. Has the tendency to ramble on a bit, the author, which gets a bit grating.
 
6.5/10 for Long Price Quartet is too low, IMO. It was a good series, with the last two books being great.

Just finished the fifth book in The Witcher saga. Boy, this saga is very good.
 
Still reading the Malazan books of the Fallen

Memories of Ice - I didn't really enjoy, dragged my way through it really.
Found the events of Capustan interesting but didn't like any of the characters involved so wasn't really invested in what happened, Bauchelain and his creepy friend were fun i guess.
The march with Caladan and Dujek was just too uneventful to be interesting and reading about them endlessly sucking on each others bumholes got old fast.
I liked Toc and Tools storyline but it got cut out half way through which was pretty disappointing. The Tlann Imass stuff was good too but too spaced out to really get my teeth into
There was probably an element of burnout when reading it.

House of Chains - I enjoyed a lot more
I have a soft spot for Fiddler so reading about their uneventful march wasn't as tiresome. Lots of weird stuff going on around the fringes with the Ottaral Dragon and Heborics crazy space acid trip.
It was good, lots of backstabbing fun around the Raraku camp with a satisfying end when Theloman Toblakai came back.
Trull Sengar and his mate who's name i cant remember was interesting too, not sure what to make of it as it seems it'll continue at a later point.

Currently reading Midnight Tides
My appetite for a whole new slew of characters and a completely different location was limited tbh and took me a while to get going on it really. Some good characters though
I like Tehol Beddict a lot and the slave udinas seems like he could have a good arc. Great Prologue too. Think im on chapter 6 so good way to go still. Im guessing its set before house of chains with Trull knocking about?
 
harshad said:
Blood and bloody ashes its happening! :drool:



The better not feck up Mat's story arc.
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I was just reading about this and I can't wait. Always thought this could make for an amazing series but they could also get it very, very wrong. I'd say it's years away regardless - the scale of cast and locations for this will dwarf anything GoT ever saw.
 
caid said:
Still reading the Malazan books of the Fallen

Memories of Ice - I didn't really enjoy, dragged my way through it really.
Found the events of Capustan interesting but didn't like any of the characters involved so wasn't really invested in what happened, Bauchelain and his creepy friend were fun i guess.
The march with Caladan and Dujek was just too uneventful to be interesting and reading about them endlessly sucking on each others bumholes got old fast.
I liked Toc and Tools storyline but it got cut out half way through which was pretty disappointing. The Tlann Imass stuff was good too but too spaced out to really get my teeth into
There was probably an element of burnout when reading it.

House of Chains - I enjoyed a lot more
I have a soft spot for Fiddler so reading about their uneventful march wasn't as tiresome. Lots of weird stuff going on around the fringes with the Ottaral Dragon and Heborics crazy space acid trip.
It was good, lots of backstabbing fun around the Raraku camp with a satisfying end when Theloman Toblakai came back.
Trull Sengar and his mate who's name i cant remember was interesting too, not sure what to make of it as it seems it'll continue at a later point.

Currently reading Midnight Tides
My appetite for a whole new slew of characters and a completely different location was limited tbh and took me a while to get going on it really. Some good characters though
I like Tehol Beddict a lot and the slave udinas seems like he could have a good arc. Great Prologue too. Think im on chapter 6 so good way to go still. Im guessing its set before house of chains with Trull knocking about?
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Surprised you found MoI dragging. It's one of my favourites along with Toll the Hounds and BoneHunters. Though HoC was critically better, the above trio is just more fun to read.

Been some time now, but I was engrossed in Paran becoming the Master of Deck, Tattersail's history plus Kruppe, Itkovian, Whiskeyjack's death, The atrocities of Pannion seer, side story of Quick Ben's agenda...it was bloody brilliant I thought.
 
I'll watch it (obviously) but I'm far from convinced they won't feck it up. But having Sony do it is a good start and should ensure a sizeable budget which is absolutely essential. Would have preferred Amazon to do it though.

They have a good story, good characters and big built in audience so it's an ideal series to pick for a show. Hopefully they do the books justice and don't get carried away by GoT like crap looking for shocks and deaths. Still, I can't help but feel that some parts of the books will be very tough to adapt and will need some excellent actors to pull it off.
 
Edgar Allan Pillow said:
Surprised you found MoI dragging. It's one of my favourites along with Toll the Hounds and BoneHunters. Though HoC was critically better, the above trio is just more fun to read.

Been some time now, but I was engrossed in Paran becoming the Master of Deck, Tattersail's history plus Kruppe, Itkovian, Whiskeyjack's death, The atrocities of Pannion seer, side story of Quick Ben's agenda...it was bloody brilliant I thought.
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Paran and Quick Ben did rescue it a bit. Tattersail i was definitely interested in but it was just spread too thin to get into it (wasn't helped by me reading it very slowly mind you).

Whiskeyjacks killer was interesting too, but again it was a bit thin on the ground to really get into.
Itkovian i found pretty meh tbh, just felt too one dimensional, wasn't exactly a rounded character
 
Will be very hard for it to not suck. Unlike ASOIAF, the series is much more action and the budget needed for all those fights (especially the climaxes of a few books) would need to dwarf the budget of any other TV series. I also thik that they need to make the characters more mature (they are really juvenile) and add some political drama.

Honestly speaking, would have preferred this as an animated series. As a TV drama it can go really wrong, but if it goes right it will be awesome, especially with ASOIAF already having set the scene and the benchmark for great fantasy TV shows.
 
caid said:
Still reading the Malazan books of th it e Fallen

Memories of Ice - I didn't really enjoy, dragged my way through it really.
Found the events of Capustan interesting but didn't like any of the characters involved so wasn't really invested in what happened, Bauchelain and his creepy friend were fun i guess.
The march with Caladan and Dujek was just too uneventful to be interesting and reading about them endlessly sucking on each others bumholes got old fast.
I liked Toc and Tools storyline but it got cut out half way through which was pretty disappointing. The Tlann Imass stuff was good too but too spaced out to really get my teeth into
There was probably an element of burnout when reading it.

House of Chains - I enjoyed a lot more
I have a soft spot for Fiddler so reading about their uneventful march wasn't as tiresome. Lots of weird stuff going on around the fringes with the Ottaral Dragon and Heborics crazy space acid trip.
It was good, lots of backstabbing fun around the Raraku camp with a satisfying end when Theloman Toblakai came back.
Trull Sengar and his mate who's name i cant remember was interesting too, not sure what to make of it as it seems it'll continue at a later point.

Currently reading Midnight Tides
My appetite for a whole new slew of characters and a completely different location was limited tbh and took me a while to get going on it really. Some good characters though
I like Tehol Beddict a lot and the slave udinas seems like he could have a good arc. Great Prologue too. Think im on chapter 6 so good way to go still. Im guessing its set before house of chains with Trull knocking about?
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Not sure if you'd consider it a spoiler, I wouldn't, but just in case:
Midnight Tides is set way before the other books, as you have guessed.

Tehol and Bugg are brilliant. It takes a while to get into Midnight Tides as it's like a completely different story set in an unconnected universe at the the start (especially since Erikson did more or less the same in the first part of House of Chains), but I think it has some of the greatest characters in the series. It's its own story but it's a very good one.
 
Finished The Witcher saga, and quite liked it. Nice writing, nice story and then games even surpassed it.

...

Talking about TV adaptations, apparently The Black Company is being adapted too. Eliza Dushku has been cast as The Lady.
 
Revan said:
Finished The Witcher saga, and quite liked it. Nice writing, nice story and then games even surpassed it.

...

Talking about TV adaptations, apparently The Black Company is being adapted too. Eliza Dushku has been cast as The Lady.
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I have the first trilogy on my to-read pile. From what I know this should be right up my alley.

Any idea about who will be producing it? This could become really huge but also very bland.
 
Cnaiür urs Skiötha said:
I have the first trilogy on my to-read pile. From what I know this should be right up my alley.

Any idea about who will be producing it? This could become really huge but also very bland.
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Here is the article: http://deadline.com/2017/04/eliza-d...-adaptation-david-goyer-im-global-1202076367/

I haven't heard for any of those companies, but David Goyer will be executive producer which is quite good news.

...

About the series, definitely read it. The writing is a bit weird (at least until you get familiar with it) because the story is told as a chronicle, so there are no explanation for a lot of stuff and shit just happens. It is very good though, the story is big, complex characters, politics and nice action. And of course, you can decide to leave it just after three books (it has quite a good climax that ends the story) or read all of them (a bit like Wheel of Time in that aspect that you can stop reading after the third book and get some closure).

People say that Malazan is very much inspired from it (and actually one of the Malazan books was written as homage of Black Company), but I haven't read Malazan yet to be able to confirm the similarities. Some other people compare it with ASOIAF and The First Law, and definitely there are some similarities. In fact, I would be very surprised if Martin wasn't a bit inspired from this work when he wrote ASOIAF.
 
All this influx of serialization of fantasy novels scares me. GoT was a pioneer and actually made people interested in reading the books, but if it turns out like Shannara, it'd be seriously bad.

Black Company should be made similar to Band of Brothers imo.
 
Edgar Allan Pillow said:
Anyone read Night Watch by Lukyanenko?
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yeah, I've read that and there is a follow up 'Day Watch' which I think I preferred. Decent holiday beach reading


Haven't read any decent fantasy in years, tired the Mark Lawrence trilogy mentioned above but got bored half way through the second book so sacked it off, same with Patrick Rothfuss Name of the Wind, absolutely outstanding first book then the second book was a crock of shite, I even skipped about 30 pages (from memory) when he was in some sort of swamp or dream.

Is there actually anything new and decent without me trawling this thread.
 
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years ago since I read it, I didn't find it that dark and liked the main characters and delving deep into my memory really enjoyed the story as (to me) it was quite believable, I would never have considered it fantasy though, more modern Russian folklore if there is such a thing.
 
Night Watch - by Sergi Lukyanenko

Quite a different read from normal fantasies. A really different good vs evil story that has lots of parallels to current world. Though it has a vein of magic running through it, the story is on morality (and it's flaws) of the characters involved and not an clearcut one vs other battle. It could use bit more character development and some characters are portrayed as more placid than reasonable, but it's more of a fantasy drama than an fantasy adventure.

Theme:
What interests me was the the definitions of good and evil are very gray. You sometimes find yourselves agreeing with the evil faction and sometimes with the good. Morally intriguing. The Light magicians protect people from the dark (vampires, witches and such) but they also experiment to build a perfect society where there can be no evil. Couple of these experiments led to Communism and WW2. Dark magicians are more on freedom of choice. They believe people should have the freedom to choose (which in turn enable preying on weaker creatures etc) o how to live their lives. If they choose to be bad, then it's the normal course. Their belief is that humans are inherently dark and if given freedom of choice will turn dark. Add in the moral dilemma of the characters involved esp when choosing between fighting the dark vs actively pushing humans to the light (taking away of choice).

Setting:
Long time ago there was a fight between good vs evil and neither won. So they had a treaty where they created 2 watches Day Watch (formed by Dark Magicians) and Night Watch (formed by Light Magicians). These 2 watches are bound by the treaty to maintain status quo, but still still try to gain advantage within the rules. The story revolves around a set of characters in these two watches set in modern times Moscow.

Writing:
Writing is mostly first person narrative by the characters. Not real backstory is provided and or characters fleshed out. We get to make our opinions based on their actions now. Not a powerful writing style. You rarely find yourself gripped by the prose (like segments in Malazan) and feels like a broadway show. Scene 1, Scene 2 and such. Story is broken into 3 sub-stories (segments) which are independent of each other but have linking threads. Like 3 separate short stories linked by overall plot.

Overall:
Very different from other fantasy books and very hard to rate this. But it has interested me enough to start on the second book. 7/10
 
Rivers of London (Midnight Riot) - By Ben Aaronovitch

A light fantasy read. Writing style is similar to Terry Pratchett, fun and quirky. The story is set is modern London with the usual fantasy elements (gods, vampires, wizards etc) thrown in. It's a fast moving detective story which reminds me of Perry Mason type novels.

Light, fun and entertaining.

I think this would be perfect for a TV series! Would be brilliant!

7/10
 
2/3's of the way through Wise Mans Fear and there is no way this can be finished as a trilogy surely.. he'd have to really cram the rest of Kvothe's life into one book and even in the present, it feels like his story is very much unfinished.
 
Raees said:
2/3's of the way through Wise Mans Fear and there is no way this can be finished as a trilogy surely.. he'd have to really cram the rest of Kvothe's life into one book and even in the present, it feels like his story is very much unfinished.
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Unfortunately the book doesn't really answer any of the questions posed in NotW and just asks more. The hunt for bandits and trip to Ademre seemed pretty pointless to me.

Superbly written but there seems to be some grounding in the criticism that Rothfuss isn't sure how to end it.
 
ivaldo said:
Unfortunately the book doesn't really answer any of the questions posed in NotW and just asks more. The hunt for bandits and trip to Ademre seemed pretty pointless to me.

Superbly written but there seems to be some grounding in the criticism that Rothfuss isn't sure how to end it.
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TBH it seems very apparent that this is the case. Beautifully written prose but one can't help but feel he lacks discipline as a writer and came up with a great concept but didn't see it through till the end in terms of formulating a proper structure to his plot.

It is by no means impossible to formulate an ending too, but at this moment in time, I think he's in an even trickier situation than GRR Martin, who is a superior story teller and has a much better structure to his tale despite having far more moving pieces in his creation.

It would take two more books to catch up to the modern day and a final book based on present day Kvothe for the tale to reach a satisfactory conclusion.. otherwise I can just envisage a rubbish rush job, which I don't think is in his nature to do.
 
For those who enjoy Robin Hobb - the new Fitz & Fool book 'Assassin's Fate' has been out for a few days. Just got it and will start reading tonight.
 
ctp said:
For those who enjoy Robin Hobb - the new Fitz & Fool book 'Assassin's Fate' has been out for a few days. Just got it and will start reading tonight.
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Great! Was waiting for her to finish before I started this series.
 
ctp said:
For those who enjoy Robin Hobb - the new Fitz & Fool book 'Assassin's Fate' has been out for a few days. Just got it and will start reading tonight.
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Got it today. But have to finish 'The Great Ordeal' from Bakker first.

Will likely start this weekend, and hoping it is a good book. Fitz deserves a great finale.
 
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