The Book Thread

[Sermil]

It's not really a holdover from Tolkien, but more an issue of scale and stakes and how they interact with human psychology. Human's mental systems are designed to apply to relatively small social groupings of no more than a few hundred people. Any event that involves more people than that struggles to scale effectively and becomes some nebulous 'really bad thing' unless it impacts you personally. This means that a framework based around 'we must stop Villain A from doing X horrible thing or 10,000 random people we've never met will die' has very little weight. Consider, for example, the effort to save the various people in the city at the end of Justice League (the movie), no one in the audience cares about those people and saving them is only relevant insofar as it reveals aspects of the characters in question.

And this generally holds as well even if the scale and stakes are upped to national scale - if the audience doesn't care about said nation, its potential obliteration may not resonate with the audience. For example, I'm a fan of the Aubrey/Maturin Napoleanic Wars novels, but characters in those have an ironclad belief that the English must triumph over Napolean and that their cause is absolutely just and righteous and while this is perfectly in character for people living at the time it still feels kind of strange to read. In a series that is set in a version of the real world, this can be a big problem.

By contrast, everyone lives on Earth, so blowing up Earth is guaranteed to matter to the entire audience. We can actually see the extension of this in space opera. Notably, in Star Wars: The Force Awakens are bunch of completely random planets get blown up and...no one in the audience cares because none of the characters are from those planets.

Now, Tolkien certainly represents an example of this in action. The Hobbits are from the Shire, which is about as far from the frontlines as it is physically possible to be. Therefore, in order to actively threaten the Shire, and thereby emotionally resonate with the leads, the conflict to come has to threaten everything. There's also the notable example in the Two Towers where Merry and Pippin, and by extension the audience, come to care about the despoiling of Fangorn Forest, and this is a good example of the quantity of words it takes to do this. 'Hijack a nuclear device and hold the world for ransom' - thanks Dr. Evil, is cliche, but it is instantly understandable.

Exactly, it makes the stakes really high - but my point is "our lives, everyone's lives, are at stake!" makes the stakes too high for a lot of other things. It hard to care about teen angst or old friendship hurts or

Spoiler

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transphobia

when the stakes are that big. And I think most of the time, I get the impression that HMRC's author is more interested in those human-scale stakes, but the high stakes makes it hard to care. Or makes the characters who do care seem silly.

If you write the characters well, you don't need everyone-dies level stakes. We worry about people we know. If you have a person you care about because you've been reading about them and living in their head for the last hundred pages, putting that person in danger is plenty of worry. Heck, you don't even need anyone-dies level stakes. Look at the Wayfarers series; most of the time, no one is danger, and half the time they are, it's more a medical emergency than a fight. That gives you a lot more freedom to paint a picture of people living actually lives, not just running from one crisis to another.

(It also, paradoxically, ups the stakes if a single person is in danger. Everyone knows the book isn't going to end with the destruction of the world unless it's a really dark fantasy, but authors do kill off individual characters all the time. Going back to Wayfarers, I genuinely didn't know if

Spoiler: The Galaxy, and the Ground Within spoiler

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Tupo was going to survive xyr accidental poisoning

, whereas I'm not actually worried that the world will end at the end of the HMRC series.)

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I never actually read The Martian, but I did read his 2nd book, Project Hail Mary and thought it was a wonderful depiction of First Contact.

*Third. Second was Artemis, a book set in an established but somewhat struggling moon colony, where the main character, a small-scale smuggler, gets in over her head when she lets her greed overcome her better sense and signs up for a sabotage mission.

I started reading The Martian myself back when Weir was a webcomic author, and started posting chapters on his forums, but I decided to wait until he had put the whole thing together so I could read it in one go. Which I find somewhat ironic, since now I'm reading Pale Lights (the new novel by the author of A Practical Guide to Evil) one chapter a week.

Grey Wolf

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Just finished The Path of Thorns and Be The Serpent (the latest October Daye book).

Path of Thorns is a fairly cynical look at a broken family in medieval fantasy land. Doesn't quite shy into being actively bleak, though; sure she can't fix her awful relatives, but the main character is eventually able to find her own path, and there is hope for the next generation because of her actions.

Be the Serpent is impossible to talk about without major spoilers for both itself and the earlier books in the series. I do highly recommend the October Daye series, though. If you like Urban Fantasy detective stories with a lot of snark, a la The Dresden Files or Mercy Thompson, you'll probably like these as well (though the first book was the author's debut novel IIRC, and is definitely rougher around the edges than the later books).

[theangelJean]

I just read Danger Music by Eddie Ayres. It's a memoir of the year the author spent in Afghanistan teaching at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, his experiences as Emma Ayres in that country in 2015-16 (he was AFAB), the path that led him there and the way that experience helped him realise he could no longer keep living as Emma.

It's entertaining as an account of teaching cello, viola and music theory to kids who had so much going on in their lives, and as an memoir of life as a foreign woman in Afghanistan. It narrowly avoids the "white woman saviour" story, by virtue of the writer realising that the school cannot save anyone, that the author personally will never understand Afghanistan, and that continuing to live as a woman was impossible, inside or outside Afghanistan, due to the author's gender dysphoria. The book is at its best as a record of the many individual stories of the people the author met, taught and loved. I'm relieved it didn't end up with a cliche as its central thesis, and quite happy to have read it as a memoir.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by theangelJean
I'm relieved it didn't end up with a cliche as its central thesis….

What would you have considered a cliché in this context?

[theangelJean]

What would you have considered a cliché in this context?

The "white woman saviour" complex I mentioned earlier.

-This bit edited out in case it stepped over the no-politics line.-

One last thing I forgot to mention was the very British use of creatively-placed profanity, especially to punctuate just how ****ed some situations can be. As an Australian I have a special appreciation for profanity-as-humour, ymmv.

[warty goblin]

I thought I'd do a bit of end-of-year book reflection, organized as a sort of list, as is internet tradition:

Most Pleasant Surprise (fiction)
Joint award to the Scholomance series. I did not think much of A Deadly Education when I first read it, but a call from the local bookstore asking if I wanted to pre-order The Golden Enclaves got me to reread and re evaluate the entire series. While I don't think it's a complex masterpiece for the ages, it is rich, fun, and deeper than I had thought. Well worth reading.

Most pleasant surprise (non-fiction)
Years of Endurance. A memoir by the chief medical officer of HMS Tiger from 2914 through 1916. Really excellently written in that understated fashion you find in early 20th century British prose. It isn't very useful as history - memoirs generally aren't - but it's an excellent look at actually living on board a battlecruiser. Not surprisingly, living on a battlecruiser is wretched and boring and also somehow grand. Mostly this was a surprise because it popped up in my Amazon recommendations, and I've never seen it referenced anywhere.

Most Interesting (Fiction)
Without a doubt this goes to Blood of Roses, by Tanith Lee. Arguably this is in fact a complex masterpiece for the ages, albeit sadly one very few people will actually read, even if they pick it up. This book is a relentlessly difficult read, the plot is bizarre, difficult to summarize, and on first exposure makes absolutely no sense, as in you didn't understand why anything happened, or even what happened. Then the book goes back in time and tells you a bunch of obtuse backstory to the plot you don't understand. This also makes no sense, as you need the next section, which goes back even further and gives you backstory for the backstory. And understanding the plot isn't even half the battle, because the text is so deeply symbolic and metaphorical you need to figure out what the hell everything actually means. Or could mean. Lee gives you an immense amount of interpretive freedom, so like the best abstract and symbolic works, you can use it as a sounding board or interpretive device for your own thinking. Highly recommended, so long ad you are ready to work, and prepared for some really dark content. Like super, super dark.

Most Interesting (nonfiction)
At War, At Sea, a history of, roughly speaking, the evolution of the demands on sailers over the 20th century. This is a bit of a cheat, since I haven't finished it yet, but it's really good and the bibliography has gotten me a whole pile of additional books. Naval history is often deeply obsessed with technology (if you want a catfight, just ask about the relative merits of British 12 inch vs. German 11 inch guns) but this book is extremely uninterested in that. Rather the focus is on how the Navy was perceived, how it was trained, how it fought and what the experience of fighting was like and how it changed with time.

Best Reread
Dragonlance Legends. There's always a bit of trepidation going back to a beloved book after a lot of years, but this held up better than I was afraid it would. For all that it looks like the most cliche fantasy possible, Dragonlance strikes me as frequently weird and daring. This series in particular does a lot of strange things, and is willing to focus on really flawed people with both affection and honesty.

Better than it had any right to be
Dragonlance: Dragons of Deceit. Look, this should be just a lazy nostalgia trip, and I would have been happy with that. Recontextualing arguably the biggest moment in the original Dragonlance trilogy was not in the cards, to say nothing of strongly hinting at massive timeline changes to come. That it does all this mostly successfully, and in classic Weis & Hickman style, is something I am very grateful for.

Exactly as good as it should be
Book of Shadows, by Holly Black. I want to start by saying this is fine. Its also, from theme to plot, unsurprising to the last molecule. Its got a magic system complete with official and slang words for stuff so the world feels Lived In, the protagonist is Complicated and Flawed but not in ways that matter, it's About Trauma and also Inequality, it has a Big Plot Twist that you will see coming from Mars, and standard modern prose which is just fine but also passes through the brain like a linguistic neutrino. This is exactly what you think it will be when you pick it up, and that's fine.

Also Holly Black edited Cassandra Claire's pornographic Rin/Ginny incest fic back in the day. This is completely irrelevant to the text, and also the most interesting thing about it. And - say it with me - that's fine. Not the Ron/Ginny porno fiction, that's disgusting trash and more power to it, but the book. Is fine.

So what stood out to you this year?

[Eldan]

Dammit, you make me want to read Lee again. You had me at incomprehensible, but my too read pile is too big right now.

[warty goblin]

Dammit, you make me want to read Lee again. You had me at incomprehensible, but my too read pile is too big right now.

Dooo iiit. Blood of Roses is excellent, even for Lee. I found it slightly harder than the Blood Opera sequence, but I'd rate it slightly higher. Think roughly the level of incomprehensible as some of the Secret Books of Paradys, but for a 600 page novel rather than linked short stories. It's a really masterful piece of fantasy, although fantasy isn't quite the right description. Maybe novel about a middle ages that didn't exist? Like there's magical things (kind of) but the tone and scope and project is entirely distinct from pretty much anything I'd think of as fantasy.

Also Blood of Roses is actually in print again. The whole thing thing can be yours for like $50, which given that the first printing goes for like $300 is a total bargain.

[Ionathus]

Ooh, year end review? I'm game!

Thunderhead and The Toll by Neal Shusterman's (the Scythe series)

I'd read book 1 in December 2021 and wrapped up the last two in the new year. The ideas and worldbuilding in it kept me going but I was ready to be done. It played with a lot of very fun concepts, but ultimately most of the characters and plot threads were quite stale and went nowhere. The end of the 2nd book set up some crazy opportunities for storytelling but the 3rd book went nowhere. All of the drama hinged on everyone in the room being ignorant, gullible, complacent morons. I got sick of reading the villain's "evil genius" plans being praised as a credible threat when there were 5 ignored solutions to every dire situation.

Points for an attempt at nonbinary inclusion in the 3rd book, but the execution was clunky and I felt like the character didn't get to shine much (though nobody really got to shine in that trainwreck of a 3rd book)

Sounds like it's being optioned for a movie series. I'm honestly excited - it's fertile ground for adaptation, though I hope they don't try to target YA audiences with it since the main theme of the book (murder, i.e. deliberately killing people to death) would have to be at least somewhat censored and would take away from the impact it has in the books.

Once Upon a Crime by Dawn Stewardson
I lost my group's fantasy league and had to read a Harlequin romance/crime thriller. It was the most mediocre book I've ever read. It wasn't even entertainingly bad or naughty or anything - just totally mediocre. A lot of emotional weight was wrung out of "will she still love me after I've spent all those long years in jail for a crime I didn't commit?" and then they get together on day 2 out of prison. Whatever, sure.

Avatar: Rise of Kyoshi and Avatar: Shadow of Kyoshi by F.C. Yee
Very fun! If you liked Avatar and Korra, these are worth a read. They do a great job of building on the world of Avatar without wallowing in it, and telling their own unique story. Kyoshi is a very compelling character. I was worried that the bending and the combat wouldn't translate to prose, but I honestly think it's even more evocative here than in the graphic novels (The Promise, The Search, etc). The storytelling is a little formulaic and the 2nd one took awhile to get going, but overall I still recommend these to any Avatar fan. They're quick, fun reads.

The Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir
I've made my love for this series quite plain on here and I stand by it. I struggled with the first 1/3 of Gideon the Ninth but once I got into it, I was in love with the series. It's one of those stories that I really can't compare to anything else, and I think everyone should at least give it a try. It has the tagline "lesbian necromancers in space" but that's really just a blurb for the cover (the author didn't write that line and doesn't think of it that way).

A lot of complex themes and character arcs, a lot of depth I didn't expect from what sounds like a very pulpy premise. I truly do recommend this series to everyone - but you'll definitely know by the end of the 1st book if it's worth continuing for you.

Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson
A friend recommended this one after we had a conversation about fantasy magic systems and worldbuilding. I found it worth reading, I'm still thinking about it and will probably read the second one. However, I did basically text the friend every week or so with commentary, and very little of it was positive. The storytelling doesn't really grab me and the themes are very shallow, but Sanderson seemingly compensated for this by repeating them over and over and over. I can't count the number of times Vin thought about her brother and how he'd betrayed her, or the number of times she recalled that she used to not wear dresses, but now she does (gasp!). Felt very repetitive and like I was just waiting for things to happen.

The oppression of the skaa was also too far into the "misery porn" realm for me. I recognize that truly horrendous and sadistic people exist even in the real world, but the story's fixation on that cruelty sucked me right out - at one point, I was questioning how it would be physically possible to enact this cruelty without society grinding to a halt - at a certain point, the nobility is expending all their effort just to torture the skaa with seemingly no advantage. If there's a bigger picture here or a secret to be revealed in later books, then I'm not impressed with how long it's taking to show up.

Also also, I listened to it on audiobook and the actor pronounces it as "ska", identical to the music genre, so I just couldn't ever take the situation 100% seriously. You wrote this in 2006, Sanderson, you're telling me you weren't aware of the similarity?

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin

Still reading this first book of the series, am very close to the end. Le Guin's prose is maybe my favorite in the world. It took me a while to shift my brain back into "High Fantasy" language, but I am entranced by this story and by the language it uses. Le Guin was a genius. She deserved every accolade she won, and many that she was passed over for.

[warty goblin]

The reading marches on.

Finished At War, At Sea. Overall very good, wish he had spent more time talking about the Falklands.

For fiction I'm now on to Northern Captives, a history of a Barbary Corsair slave raid on Iceland in the 1620s. This is quite interesting, not just because the specific incident is so bizarre, but as a look at a large and long lasting slave trade that, at least in the US, is completely ignored. Also makes me realize o know basically nothing about the 1600s.

Fiction wise I read something called A Touch of Darkness, a Hades and Persephone romance novel. This was pretty bad; dull prose, mostly lacking in plot, structure, conflict, or anything but a lot of sex. I got it for trashy fun, and only finished because I could read it stupidly fadt without thinking.

Am now reading Prospero's Children by Jan Siegal, which I grabbed at a used book store because it has an awesome cover. This is good, actually quite good. The prose is solid enough, and the author is quite adept at manipulating tone (particularly dread and unreality), and sketching in characters well enough to be clear, but vaguely enough to allow room for your imagination. It also moves at a good pace, tends to just tell you stuff you could probably guess rather than dragging it out for pages of tedious "mystery". I particularly like the dreamlike sense of the world opening up and fraying at the edges, with things hinted at and evoked.

[Bohandas]

Rereading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Even though Deep Thought says he double checked his work, and even though the author confirmed that the number was chosen at random, I still can't help but feel that Deep Thought accidentally left off a zero. If the decimal point were moved one place to the right, the Answer would be intelligible and its meaning entirely clear.

[Rynjin]

It truly would have blazed a trail into our brightest future if he had.

[LibraryOgre]

The Mod Ogre: Come on guys. Don't make me put on my mod hat and weed out this thread.

(No one's crossed the line, yet, but tread carefully.

[Rynjin]

I had such a good pun to make in response, but I won't push my luck. =p

[KorvinStarmast]

I just picked up a couple of used books, Jim Butcher, Harry Dresden stories.
Just began Death Masks. Not the first story, and I wonder if it's better to read them in release order or does each one stand alone well enough? I read a lot of private eye fiction growing up, so the voice/style is easy for me to fall into.

I also like that magic is both dangerous and powerful, and has drawbacks.

[The Glyphstone]

Reading them in order will introduce you to various characters and establish key elements of the setting that grow in importance later. So its not required but can be helpful - Butcher likes recurring characters and call-backs.

Death Masks is book 5 - the 1st free (Storm Front, Fool Moon, Grave Peril) are generally considered to be rather clichéd story-wise and primarily worth reading for the worldbuilding.

[Ionathus]

Started book 2 of Mistborn. Still not sure if I'll finish it but the friend who suggested it ("recommended" is too strong a word) said that the 2nd one is where things go completely off the rails in an either hilarious or infuriating way, so I'm looking forward to watching the fireworks.

For right now though, I'm just slogging through the opening 5 chapters from an author who thinks he has to recap everything down to the most basic worldbuilding at the start of his sequel. Loads of clunky asides and weird tangents just to clarify who everybody is and how they can use their superpowers. Has anyone actually ever picked up the 2nd book of a series and gotten mad that they didn't re-explain all the stuff from the first entry?

[Taevyr]

I just picked up a couple of used books, Jim Butcher, Harry Dresden stories.
Just began Death Masks. Not the first story, and I wonder if it's better to read them in release order or does each one stand alone well enough? I read a lot of private eye fiction growing up, so the voice/style is easy for me to fall into.

I also like that magic is both dangerous and powerful, and has drawbacks.

You'll miss out on some worldbuilding, but Butcher writes them in a way that (until a certain point) you should be able to follow the core story of the book wherever you start: personally, I'd recommend starting at either book 3 or 7, as 3 is where he first starts building the foundations of an overarching storyline, and 7 was deliberately written in a way that anyone could jump in. Five's decent enough for a start.

[Rynjin]

I would definitely recommend reading the first three, as they're still solid books (even if they are weaker in general than the rest of the series). However, I'd say Book 4 (Summer Knight) is ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL reading going forward, and would highly suggest backing up to at least read 4. Summer Knight is probably the most "lore critical" of the first 8 books, with 5 being a close second.

Starting with book 3 is a bit weird because book 3 doesn't make much sense as a mystery without reading book 1...really, Book 2 is the only "true" standalone of the first several novels.

Started book 2 of Mistborn. Still not sure if I'll finish it but the friend who suggested it ("recommended" is too strong a word) said that the 2nd one is where things go completely off the rails in an either hilarious or infuriating way, so I'm looking forward to watching the fireworks.

For right now though, I'm just slogging through the opening 5 chapters from an author who thinks he has to recap everything down to the most basic worldbuilding at the start of his sequel. Loads of clunky asides and weird tangents just to clarify who everybody is and how they can use their superpowers. Has anyone actually ever picked up the 2nd book of a series and gotten mad that they didn't re-explain all the stuff from the first entry?

Yeah...TBH, Misborn is the book that made me fall in love with Sanderson's work. The rest of the Mistborn novels are what made me fall OUT of love lol.

[Dragonus45]

You'll miss out on some worldbuilding, but Butcher writes them in a way that (until a certain point) you should be able to follow the core story of the book wherever you start: personally, I'd recommend starting at either book 3 or 7, as 3 is where he first starts building the foundations of an overarching storyline, and 7 was deliberately written in a way that anyone could jump in. Five's decent enough for a start.

I think three is particularly important because the stuff that happens has a profound effect on Dresden mentally, and if someone really felt the need to skip books I would say to start there.

[Taevyr]

Yeah...TBH, Misborn is the book that made me fall in love with Sanderson's work. The rest of the Mistborn novels are what made me fall OUT of love lol.

I'll always be grateful that the first Sanderson novel I stumbled upon after finishing Wheel of Time was Way of Kings: If I'd started with Mistborn, I don't know if I'd have bothered looking up others after Well.

[KorvinStarmast]

Reading them in order...

You'll miss out on some worldbuilding, but Butcher writes them in a way

I would definitely recommend reading the first three, as they're still solid books (even if they are weaker in general than the rest of the series). However, I'd say Book 4 (Summer Knight) is ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL reading going forward

I think three is particularly important because the stuff that happens has a profound effect on Dresden mentally, and if someone really felt the need to skip books I would say to start there.

Many thank you's to all of you for the insights.
I have an Amazon coupon that I have not yet used, I think I'll get books 1-3 using that, the used book store didn't have very many Dresden Files books. Glad the one I started with is a decent one.

[Rynjin]

There are both Kindle and hardback versions of the series that contain books 1-3 and I think 4-6 at a bargain price, so definitely consider looking for those.

[Dragonus45]

Many thank you's to all of you for the insights.
I have an Amazon coupon that I have not yet used, I think I'll get books 1-3 using that, the used book store didn't have very many Dresden Files books. Glad the one I started with is a decent one.

You said you started on book 5? Yea that one slaps.

[KorvinStarmast]

There are both Kindle and hardback versions of the series that contain books 1-3 and I think 4-6 at a bargain price, so definitely consider looking for those.

Hmm, do Kindle books work on a PC? I gave my kindle fire to my son years ago...

[Mechalich]

Hmm, do Kindle books work on a PC? I gave my kindle fire to my son years ago...

They do. You can either download Kindle for PC, or use the Kindle Cloud Reader through your browser.

[KorvinStarmast]

They do. You can either download Kindle for PC, or use the Kindle Cloud Reader through your browser.

Thank you! I may do just that.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Finally read the 3rd book in the Scholomance trilogy. Really liked it; for all their horror (and surliness from the main character), they're ultimately pretty optimistic and idealistic stories. I've also been reading a lot of Seanan McGuire books, specifically the first few books in the InCryptid and Ghost Stories series.

Next up on the list is The Traitor Baru Cormorant, which I started reading while on vacation 7 months ago, until it got returned before I finished, and I've had it on hold at the library since.

After that, Valor's Choice, the first of a sci-fi series I read years ago, and am now rereading because I tried to read the latest in the series and had no idea what was going on.

[Eldan]

Finally read the 3rd book in the Scholomance trilogy. Really liked it; for all their horror (and surliness from the main character), they're ultimately pretty optimistic and idealistic stories.

You should go back a few pages, we had a lengthy discussion about the ending there. Your opinion?