Recommended Reading?(Fantasy)

[KysenMurrin]

Or the price started at $30 and has come down over time.

[fuzzygeek]

Is $30 a common starting price point for an audio book?

[Arnock]

From what I know, they generally range from 30-40 bucks.

Or... you could check one out at your local library for free!

[fuzzygeek]

Moving this conversation out of the Random Picture post thread.

It gets better. The second and third books continue setting the stage of players, and introducing the main character to the political stage, rather than merely "be an awesome Captain".

See, that's the thing -- I didn't think she *was* an awesome captain in the first book. I thought she was rather dumb and ineffectual for the most part, especially when it came to handling her own crew. It's been several months, but IIRC the entire bit during the last chase where she's willing her ship to "mustgofastermustgofastermustgofaster" was just wallbangingly bad.

[cakeftw]

Anyone ever read The Painted Man by Peter V Brett? The girl im seeing pretty much forced the book on me last time I saw her and I've got to say, its a pretty good read.

The basics of it is the world is fucked, on a royal scale. Every night demons rise out of the "core" of the world and humanity has long since lost the "wards" or magical symbols required to actually harm the things, so theyre forced to rely on the few defensive wards they do know to hide and cower when night falls behind protective shields.

The book follows three seperate peoples lives in this world.
One is a farm boy who desperately wants to do something to get back at the demons after they killed his mother.
The second is a girl who's entire life revolves around being nearly raped or actually raped or being called a whore because people think she's been shagging outside marriage (which is a really bad thing in this world) because thats exactly the sort of person her mother is and like mother like daughter they assume. Oh and she's one of the few remaining skilled herbalist healers in the world.
The last is a kid who can play a fiddle well enough to hurt demons, and is extremely annoying due to him being a clown by trade.

The switching around is actually done pretty well so it doesnt interrupt the flow of the story and the three main characters are written pretty damn well (apart from the third kid, although that might just be me finding him annoying as piss). The way the story follows them in certain periods of their lives skipping out all the boring shit and foccusing only on the build up to and happening of important stuff also stopped me from getting bored of pages and pages of nothing at all happening but said very eloquently in 600 words. My only annoyance when I finished it was my knowledge that its the first of a trilogy, the third part of which isnt out yet, and the second part of which is at this girls house (and she lives in wales).

I'd definitely recommend giving it a read if you can especially given that you can find it on amazon for less than £5 brand new.

[Shyrtandros]

This flowchart was posted in Random Pic Post and I believe that everyone can agree it should be accessable here.
Real image / size http://www.forevergeek.com/wp-content/m ... wchart.jpg

[KysenMurrin]

It's a shame that the poll was more populist than quality based, but it's a decent resource.

[Fivelives]

It wasn't even all that populist. Consider the source - NPR listeners/readers tend to be pretty hipster-ish in some ways. Most of the shit on that list are books that people think they're "supposed" to like.

Also, since when are horror novels considered sci-fi/fantasy? And they left out young adult sci-fi/fantasy (except for the Pern novels, and the Thomas Covenant novels, and a few others as well). I wouldn't even go so far as to call it a decent resource, myself.

But then, I can be pretty opinionated at times. In case you haven't noticed, heh.

[Shyrtandros]

It wasn't even all that populist. Consider the source - NPR listeners/readers tend to be pretty hipster-ish in some ways. Most of the shit on that list are books that people think they're "supposed" to like.

Also, since when are horror novels considered sci-fi/fantasy? And they left out young adult sci-fi/fantasy (except for the Pern novels, and the Thomas Covenant novels, and a few others as well). I wouldn't even go so far as to call it a decent resource, myself.

But then, I can be pretty opinionated at times. In case you haven't noticed, heh.

A good handful of the books on there are labeled "young adult"

[Kelaan]

What makes a book "young adult"? I was reading Les Miserables and Shogun (and King Rat etc etc) in high school (not for class), and so on. It WOULD be neat to have one with more classic stuff, like Treasure Island and the like so I could ask my son what we want to read, but .... I should make my own, once he's old enough to actually listen to it.

[Fivelives]

It wasn't even all that populist. Consider the source - NPR listeners/readers tend to be pretty hipster-ish in some ways. Most of the shit on that list are books that people think they're "supposed" to like.

Also, since when are horror novels considered sci-fi/fantasy? And they left out young adult sci-fi/fantasy (except for the Pern novels, and the Thomas Covenant novels, and a few others as well). I wouldn't even go so far as to call it a decent resource, myself.

But then, I can be pretty opinionated at times. In case you haven't noticed, heh.

A good handful of the books on there are labeled "young adult"

I noted that :p

They only left out the YA novels when it would've skewed the results they wanted to see (otherwise Twilight and Harry Potter would've knocked LotR out of the #1 spot - and god knows, WE ALL MUST WORSHIP AT THE ALTAR OF TOLKIEN).

Also, in what universe are the Earthsea novels "young adult"? Someone else mentioned a few of the problems with the list here: http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2011 ... he-results

What makes a book "young adult"?

Apparently it's a completely subjective decision on the "experts'" part. They put in the LotR trilogy - which was written for Tolkien's children, but left off Narnia, which was written for CS Lewis' kids. The whole survey was ridiculous to begin with, even before you consider the respondent bias.

[fuzzygeek]

Also, in what universe are the Earthsea novels "young adult"?

It's interesting to me that you'd consider the Covenant series YA, but not Earthsea.

[Kelaan]

They only left out the YA novels when it would've skewed the results they wanted to see (otherwise Twilight and Harry Potter would've knocked LotR out of the #1 spot - and god knows, WE ALL MUST WORSHIP AT THE ALTAR OF TOLKIEN).

Are you honestly suggesting that Twilight and Harry Potter are similar grades of literature to Tolkein? Granted, I would understand HP being on there (due mainly to cultural impact -- and same goes for twilight, I guess ), but Tolkein's a much brainier book. (I'd not have called Tolkein "Young Adult", mind you...)

I agree that not much from CS Lewis is a bit of a puzzler, but again, don't think it's on the "if you've not read this, you're really missing out" that I interpreted this list as. Probably my misconception of the list showing. Thanks for the link to that blog, though.

edit: As that blog points out, they deliberately left out some YA stuff, and will be doing a list like that next year for YA books.

[Fivelives]

I'm not suggesting that at all, Kelaan. What I am suggesting is that if people were given the option to vote on Twilight and HP, they would have easily knocked Tolkien off the #1 spot.

And yeah - if you haven't read Narnia, you really are missing out. It's far better than Middle Earth - Middle Earth may have the world building, but the books really fall flat because of the horrible characters in them. In order to write a good book, you have to write good characters, and that's where Tolkien fails in comparison to Lewis.

[Kelaan]

And yeah - if you haven't read Narnia, you really are missing out. It's far better than Middle Earth - Middle Earth may have the world building, but the books really fall flat because of the horrible characters in them. In order to write a good book, you have to write good characters, and that's where Tolkien fails in comparison to Lewis.

Interesting. Having read Narnia a long time ago, I'd not have said that. I read both series at around the same time (~6th grade), and Tolkien grabbed me a lot more. (Let us not speak of the Silmarillion. ) I agree that CS Lewis wrote some good stuff, but Narnia never seemed to stick much with me. Perhaps it's because I don't remember much about any of the characters outside the first book (or even within it), whereas I could write a few sentences about many of the major and semi-major characters in the Lord of the Rings talking about their behavior, motivations, and relation to one another.