🧙 🧙‍♀️ zap zap let's have a fantasy thread zap zap 🧙‍♀️ 🧙

[Scagden]

@UncleRetrospective

Lord of the rings, can even make this tired meme fan again

Yup

[1101010]

Cross posting because The Fifth Season is one of those books that’s both Sci Fi and fantasy

pew pew let's have a sci-fi thread pew pew

Just finished The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin and immediately bought the next one. That hasn’t happened in a long while, not since Too Like The Lightning. Such good writing. Also I’m glad I read Children of Blood & Bone first because there are a lot of superficial similarities in setup and while I enjoyed that one too it would have seemed a bit lacking after this.

[xylo]

just made a new deep penoid account

https://www.instagram.com/rollinwithmafaeries/

and basically it’s me and the mrs playing nerdy boardgames. there’ll be a lotta fantasy posts coming up, obv. so i guess follow if it’s your jam.

[xylo]

think i might get into these, your description is lovely

[1101010]

Working my way through Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Not sure how I feel about it TBH. I think the episodic style means it lacks a strong thread to pull me through the tale. I can’t really get a sense of where it’s going.

Anyway I’m a third of the way through so we’ll see.

Finding this post

@Epimer

@Scagden

When I first read it I was really lukewarm on it for the first 200 pages

Ah! I don’t think I made it that far. It can go back on the list.

makes me think maybe it’s about to pick up then.

[UncleRetrospective]

It is. Basically, once Jonathan turns up it’s off.

Hope you enjoy it.

[Epimer]

I’ve gotten further this time and it’s still doing nothing for me

[1101010]

Hmm, well I’m past that and it definitely did improve it.

I mean I enjoyed the Pickwick Papers and she’s captured it perfectly, but at the same time I do find old style writing less good than modern

[Elights]

Did a reread of the whole thing a couple of years ago, also prompted by discovering the podcasting community. I found I have better feelings about it after rereading than I did after the first read - probably because I did it in one go and didn’t have to wait 10 years (and a whole author) between finishing Crossroads of Twighlight and the end.

I will say though that on reread, starting Gathering Storm was massively jarring. Sanderson’s style is a lot different to Jordan’s on ways I hadn’t quite noticed the first time around. Took me about 250 pages to get used to the transition.

I also will confess to skipping a significant chunk of the Andorran succession bollocks too. Seemed to be there just to pad an already ridiculously long story out.

[Gorkys_Forever]

The brilliant and ridiculous “Gentlemen Bastards” series is one that made me want to get back into reading fantasy again, then I read a Patrick Rothfuss one and remembered why I gave up.

[1101010]

Read those Broken Earth ones!

[Gorkys_Forever]

will check them out definitely cheers, did she win a Hugo award or something recently?

[Gorkys_Forever]

…4 years ago in fact

[Epimer]

She won a MacArthur genius grant recently though

[1101010]

I think one for each volume in fact

[1101010]

Btw you might enjoy the Rogues anthology as a bunch of the stories are quite Gentlemen Bastards.

Equally, if you liked that style you could check out this

Theft of Swords (The Riyria Revelations, #1-2)

It’s not as well written but it has a lot of that Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser / guys playing D&D energy that Scott Lynch develops

[1101010]

So on the subject of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell my feelings are summed up by this Instagram Post I made

I really enjoyed the final 10-15 chapters and the world she crafts is amazing (if there’s not already an RPG then there should be) but it’s just really frustrating watching your lead characters just fail to get anywhere over and over

[anon89873996]

On a run of excellent fantasy recently:
Rivers Solomon - The Deep
Kai Ashante Wilson - A Taste of Honey
…and a couple of chapters from finishing Ursula K Le Guin’s Annals of the Western Shore books and honestly they are up with her absolute best and I can’t understand why they aren’t more widely acclaimed as such (wouldn’t even be because of the YA tag, because Earthsea has that too and gets deserved praise)

[1101010]

@anon89873996

I can’t understand why they aren’t more widely acclaimed

At a guess the literature is very contemporary-heavy now.

I feel like in the 80s most books we read as kids were classics, stuff that our parents likely read. Even in adult terms Agatha Christie was a standard as was Conan-Doyle.

I’m not sure that’s nearly as strong now. Unless your big books were also few (e.g. Tolkien) then you get reduced to just those that were big enough getting noted in lists.

Or could just be confirmation bias and bad memory from me

[maggieloveshopey]

Halfway through Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl In the Ring and it’s excellent so far - Caribbean magic in a future run down Toronto.