re: Sci-Fi/Fantasy Recommendation & Discussion Thread

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I was hoping one of the stand alones picked up where the trilogy ended

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Best served Cold takes place in Styria (Jezal's father in law's country) and takes place a couple years after the end of the trilogy. The Heroes takes place in the north and takes place 8 to 9 years after the trilogy. Red Country takes place in the far country and takes place about 15 years after the trilogy. The new trilogy starts about 30 years after the first trilogy.

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Those later books are filled with that kinda stuff. And the braid pulling and sniffing. Oh, the braid pulling.

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Oh ya, the slog stretch you notice it more because they needed to be two books. For the most part up through book 7 I thought it was very well balanced, I thought you were just talking about his general style throughout the series.


Erikson I felt like would sit on sections a lot, Toll the Hounds and Dust of Dreams are the two that get a little challenging where we revisit people doing the same thing a few too many times.


I'm nitpicking but I get frustrated with current authors who seem to put descriptive prose and worldbuilding at the back of the bus a lot. But its a fine balance, you really need to have a great story and characters to be able to pull that off without killing the momentum of the story.

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And as far as Jordan goes, those issues are present somewhat throughout the entire series, it just doesn't detract from the series too much until book 8 because of the excellent story and character

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Ya but for my tastes really Books 2 - 7 are right at the balance I want - and 4 through 6 are just about perfect for me. Especially on the re-reads now that I am not worried about getting back to a certain character. On my first read I would sometimes skip certain viewpoint characters, but I really like all of them now - some of they way they act is the only thing that really grates me in that section.

I really like slightly slower stories. Its why I love the 3 main foundation books as probably my favorite sci fi.


On a different note, I just got the used hardcopy of Memories of Ice in. I'm putting together a full hardcover set of Malazan as I re-read them.

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Malazan

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Another series I tried hard to like but just couldn’t get into. It was just too damn tedious. I want my fantasy to be fun dammit. I love a well built world just as much as the next fantasy nerd but get to the damn story already. I have no desire to be confused for 400 pages.

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Did you just read the first Malazan,

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I made it about halfway through the first one realized I wasn’t enjoying myself at all and gave up on it.

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I made it about halfway through the first one realized I wasn’t enjoying myself at all and gave up on it.

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See now this is the series you should probably give another shot. My recommendations would be to begin with Book 2, then backtrack to 1 - its much easier to follow that way. And one key thing is to understand you arent going to just pick it up and burn through it.

Im slowly working my way rereading. And im usually readong two books at once. Malazan has just tons of informations coming at you in each sentence. Each book is broken up into like 6 or 7 sections. So i just try to get through one of those every day or two. And have a nice light read to open up when im not feeling it.

Also there is a podcast called Ten Very Big Books on spotify. They break each book up into 3 or 4 chapter sections and discuss after. Ive been listening on my reread and really enjoy it. It has one person who has read the books lead it, one avid fantasy reader trying it out for the first time and one girl reading who has only ever read twilight. They even get Erikson to come on an episode and answer questions after each book.

But they dont talk about future spoilers, but it helps highlight subtle things you may have missed to help keep you grounded in what is going on.

As Erikson said on the show, he didnt let editors do much and he had no history of novel writing, only short stories. So the books in his mind are really just a bunch of short stories tacked together - which may explain the density and level of information coming across.

nice, i've had it on my radar - hopefully the audiobook is on libby

Well shite, I guess I need to get Kindle

I'd suggest reading them in order, a couple of characters in Best served Cold are in the later books and go through major changes as the stand alones progress. Their character arcs will have far more impact if you read them in order.

Kindle is better on your eyes than a tablet, at least to me. You can choose to go with no backlight at all and just use actual light in your house to read with if you prefer. Easier to adjust font size and other things quickly with kindle to me as well.

Plus if you get a cover for a kindle with it's smaller size compared to a tablet it will feel more like you are reading an actual book.

If you are buying one you might want to check and see if amazon has any deals running in kindle unlimited when you buy one. Think I got like 3-4 free months of kindle unlimited when I bought a new one a year ago.

ETA- yeah, looks like you can still get 3 months of kindle unlimited free when you buy one, and almost all of the Lawrence SPA awards books you are talking about are on kindle unlimited.