Looking for actually good modern fantasy novels
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For a quick Sanderson, try reading The Emperor's Soul. It's shorter and simpler than most of his books, shows his habitual pacing habits without pushing them to their extreme, and shows off his skill with magic systems.
Vebyast wrote:Here's a fun target for Major Creation: hydrazine. One casting every six seconds at CL9 gives you a bit more than 40 liters per second, which is comparable to the flow rates of some small, but serious, rocket engines. Six items running at full blast through a well-engineered engine will put you, and something like 50 tons of cargo, into space. Alternatively, if you thrust sideways, you will briefly be a fireball screaming across the sky at mach 14 before you melt from atmospheric friction.
Somewhat belatedly, I got off my ass and pointed Mrs. t at this thread. She adds further recommendations:Ikeren wrote: And I've already read Canticle for Leibowitz. Solid but a bit on the plodding side; he's too clearly borrowing from Orwell's pacing. I like Mrs. Talozin, but I think her taste runs older than mine. And Umberto Eco's already made a different list.
Michael Cisco (specifically for metafiction), Jay Lake, and "The Etched City" by K. J. Bishop.
TheFlatline wrote:This is like arguing that blowjobs have to be terrible, pain-inflicting endeavors so that when you get a chick who *doesn't* draw blood everyone can high-five and feel good about it.
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Concise Locket
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I'm not a big fantasy guy but I've had a lot of books recommended to me. I haven't read all of these but they're sitting on my bookshelf right now:
Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed, The Black Company novels and Dread Empire novels by Glenn Cook, Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay, and the Eternal Warrior cycle of novels by Michael Moorcock, especially the Elric and Hawkmoon books.
EDIT: I'll also second Sanderson's Final Empire books and the follow up Alloy of Law as well as Warbreaker, the Stormlight Archive books, and the Reckoners Series books. They're spread over my apartment.
EDIT 2: Also, Patrick Rothfuss' Kingkiller Chronicles.
Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed, The Black Company novels and Dread Empire novels by Glenn Cook, Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay, and the Eternal Warrior cycle of novels by Michael Moorcock, especially the Elric and Hawkmoon books.
EDIT: I'll also second Sanderson's Final Empire books and the follow up Alloy of Law as well as Warbreaker, the Stormlight Archive books, and the Reckoners Series books. They're spread over my apartment.
EDIT 2: Also, Patrick Rothfuss' Kingkiller Chronicles.
Last edited by Concise Locket on Tue Jan 28, 2014 5:38 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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JigokuBosatsu
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I'll also second Jay Lake. It's good stuff, and he is dying of cancer right now so any book sales will certainly help his family out.
Omegonthesane wrote:a glass armonica which causes a target city to have horrific nightmares that prevent sleep
JigokuBosatsu wrote:so a regular glass armonica?
I never got into Lake's clockwork universe fiction but I decided that I'd try out his writing again and picked up "The Trial of Flowers" in his 'The City Imperishable' series. I'm only about 10 pages in but it isn't bad so far.
Ancient History wrote:We were working on Street Magic, and Frank asked me if a houngan had run over my dog.
Yeah, I found Mainspring too preachy. The world was too obviously a metaphor for how religious people feel all the time. I also found it weird how the main characters is a Good Christian Kid every time it comes up--he doesn't lie, don't back down, resists temptation--and all that. Some of morals are a little too obvious.
However, I am saddened to hear Lake has cancer. When I was reading Mainspring, I kept feeling like...oh...like this would be great were it written by someone capable of more subtlety. I was gonna look up him again in a few years to see what he was doing, because it wasn't so much the universe or even the religious exemplar of a protagonist, as much as the heavy-handedness.
However, I am saddened to hear Lake has cancer. When I was reading Mainspring, I kept feeling like...oh...like this would be great were it written by someone capable of more subtlety. I was gonna look up him again in a few years to see what he was doing, because it wasn't so much the universe or even the religious exemplar of a protagonist, as much as the heavy-handedness.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!