[pat5150]

Just posted my Top 10 on the Hotlist.

Hobb and Bakker at the top!

[Maark Abbott]

H. D., on 08 January 2017 - 06:55 PM, said:

By no means do I think Way of Kings or Words of Radiance was great, but they aren't really bad per se. They definitely drag at times and Ment's spoilered post is true. Sanderson's strength has never been in his characters, it's always been systems of magic, action, and world-building, and in that sense, the two are decent.

Gonna slide back in these DMs to say that whilst the action scenes in Wank of Kings were indeed good, the magic system felt hastily cobbled together and an excuse for Dragonball-style powering up constantly, and the world-building was incredibly slapdash. Yeah, fantasy worlds are often meant to be pretty weird, but making things random for the sake of being random is a fatal flaw (this includes the purposeless interludes that only exist to pad out the page count). It felt like he simply didn't care enough, and as a reader, when I can sense that the author doesn't care about his own product, it sends a major alarm bell ringing. Couple that with the awful characters, cringey dialogue and abortive humour, and you have a recipe for a 2/10. It gets away without being a 1/10 because Giant Enemy Crab and the final battle were very good, but to have to slog through 950 pages of pure turd to get 100 pages of pristine ambrosia is a very poor trade.

[Puck]

Maark Abbott, on 20 December 2017 - 08:42 AM, said:

It felt like he simply didn't care enough, and as a reader, when I can sense that the author doesn't care about his own product, it sends a major alarm bell ringing.

I don't think that's the case, unfortunately. A while ago I listened to several episodes of his podcast about writing and lo and behold, it turns out that Sanderson thinks readers are idiots and should under no circumstances be confused with too complicated plots or worldbuilding. When you're writing for the lowest common denominator, there's only so much you can do before it becomes obvious. On the one hand, he's making a lot of money with that stance and is churning out books like a roboter, on the other hand.. I, as a mature reader able to determine what I want to read and what not, feel insulted. I do recommend that podcast, though, Maark, it's a step by step of what not to do if you want to write deep, interesting fiction.

[Andorion]

Maark Abbott, on 20 December 2017 - 08:42 AM, said:

H. D., on 08 January 2017 - 06:55 PM, said:

By no means do I think Way of Kings or Words of Radiance was great, but they aren't really bad per se. They definitely drag at times and Ment's spoilered post is true. Sanderson's strength has never been in his characters, it's always been systems of magic, action, and world-building, and in that sense, the two are decent.

Gonna slide back in these DMs to say that whilst the action scenes in Wank of Kings were indeed good, the magic system felt hastily cobbled together and an excuse for Dragonball-style powering up constantly, and the world-building was incredibly slapdash. Yeah, fantasy worlds are often meant to be pretty weird, but making things random for the sake of being random is a fatal flaw (this includes the purposeless interludes that only exist to pad out the page count). It felt like he simply didn't care enough, and as a reader, when I can sense that the author doesn't care about his own product, it sends a major alarm bell ringing. Couple that with the awful characters, cringey dialogue and abortive humour, and you have a recipe for a 2/10. It gets away without being a 1/10 because Giant Enemy Crab and the final battle were very good, but to have to slog through 950 pages of pure turd to get 100 pages of pristine ambrosia is a very poor trade.

Actually my objection to Sanderson's magic has always been that its too intricate. You have X types of magic users who use magic through a combination of Y type of elements and different ratios produce Z type of orders - itslike a damned arithmetic problem from school!

Puck, on 20 December 2017 - 09:08 PM, said:

Maark Abbott, on 20 December 2017 - 08:42 AM, said:

It felt like he simply didn't care enough, and as a reader, when I can sense that the author doesn't care about his own product, it sends a major alarm bell ringing.

I don't think that's the case, unfortunately. A while ago I listened to several episodes of his podcast about writing and lo and behold, it turns out that Sanderson thinks readers are idiots and should under no circumstances be confused with too complicated plots or worldbuilding. When you're writing for the lowest common denominator, there's only so much you can do before it becomes obvious. On the one hand, he's making a lot of money with that stance and is churning out books like a roboter, on the other hand.. I, as a mature reader able to determine what I want to read and what not, feel insulted. I do recommend that podcast, though, Maark, it's a step by step of what not to do if you want to write deep, interesting fiction.

I think Sanderson is actually quite committed to what he writes, but, as you said, he really likes spoonfeeding the reader. He is the anti-SE.

Also one thing I have been noting in incremental amounts is that he injects quite a bit of his own religious belief into his books which makes them irritating.

[Slow Ben]

Favorite read of 2017 was my Dresden Re-read.


And Deadhouse Landing.

[Puck]

Andorion, on 21 December 2017 - 01:42 AM, said:

Maark Abbott, on 20 December 2017 - 08:42 AM, said:

H. D., on 08 January 2017 - 06:55 PM, said:

By no means do I think Way of Kings or Words of Radiance was great, but they aren't really bad per se. They definitely drag at times and Ment's spoilered post is true. Sanderson's strength has never been in his characters, it's always been systems of magic, action, and world-building, and in that sense, the two are decent.

Gonna slide back in these DMs to say that whilst the action scenes in Wank of Kings were indeed good, the magic system felt hastily cobbled together and an excuse for Dragonball-style powering up constantly, and the world-building was incredibly slapdash. Yeah, fantasy worlds are often meant to be pretty weird, but making things random for the sake of being random is a fatal flaw (this includes the purposeless interludes that only exist to pad out the page count). It felt like he simply didn't care enough, and as a reader, when I can sense that the author doesn't care about his own product, it sends a major alarm bell ringing. Couple that with the awful characters, cringey dialogue and abortive humour, and you have a recipe for a 2/10. It gets away without being a 1/10 because Giant Enemy Crab and the final battle were very good, but to have to slog through 950 pages of pure turd to get 100 pages of pristine ambrosia is a very poor trade.

Actually my objection to Sanderson's magic has always been that its too intricate. You have X types of magic users who use magic through a combination of Y type of elements and different ratios produce Z type of orders - itslike a damned arithmetic problem from school!

Yeah, this. I find that anti-intuitive. I know that some people critique the Malazan magic system as being too vague and too confusing, but to me it makes much more sense to have a system which has progressed from shamanistic rituals to defined paths and has been influenced by the cultures which came into contact with it and by the general evolution of the world, than to have a magic system that feels like it's spung into existence fully developed and explored out of nothing just because it sounded cool.

Andorion, on 21 December 2017 - 01:42 AM, said:

Puck, on 20 December 2017 - 09:08 PM, said:

Maark Abbott, on 20 December 2017 - 08:42 AM, said:

It felt like he simply didn't care enough, and as a reader, when I can sense that the author doesn't care about his own product, it sends a major alarm bell ringing.

I don't think that's the case, unfortunately. A while ago I listened to several episodes of his podcast about writing and lo and behold, it turns out that Sanderson thinks readers are idiots and should under no circumstances be confused with too complicated plots or worldbuilding. When you're writing for the lowest common denominator, there's only so much you can do before it becomes obvious. On the one hand, he's making a lot of money with that stance and is churning out books like a roboter, on the other hand.. I, as a mature reader able to determine what I want to read and what not, feel insulted. I do recommend that podcast, though, Maark, it's a step by step of what not to do if you want to write deep, interesting fiction.

I think Sanderson is actually quite committed to what he writes, but, as you said, he really likes spoonfeeding the reader. He is the anti-SE.

Also one thing I have been noting in incremental amounts is that he injects quite a bit of his own religious belief into his books which makes them irritating.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I do think - and have gotten the impression of from the podcast I mentioned - that Sanderson cares about what he writes. There's no contradiction in being committed to writing something that's catering to the type of reader Sanderson thinks all readers are, namely easily confused idiots. And I do respect what he's built, I just highly dislike and feel insulted by the entire idea of readers being confused by complexity. I know that's not the case for everyone, and that's fine, but I WANT my fiction to be complex and challenging and I actively search for such fiction and I become very, very unamused at the thought of a potentially great book remaining unwritten because Sanderson is propagating his approach in university writing courses, wth.

/rant

This post has been edited by Puck: 21 December 2017 - 05:41 PM

[Salt-Man Z]

Any of you Sanderfans read his THE RITHMATIST? It's the only thing of his I've read besides ELANTRIS, but it's rip-roaring, edge-of-your-seat fun.

[Abyss]

Puck, on 21 December 2017 - 05:39 PM, said:

[blah blah Sanderson blah]..., than to have a magic system that feels like it's spung into existence fully developed and explored out of nothing just because it sounded cool.
...

A lot of the criticism of Sanderson upthread is valid or at least valid opinion, but this is just not accurate for Mistborn or Stormlight. He doesn't go into the depth that , say Malazan does, but even so, there's more to it than that.

[Tiste Simeon]

Deadhouse Landing.

The Library at Mount Char.

Those were two highlights off the top of my head.

[JPK]

Briar King, on 27 December 2017 - 06:46 AM, said:

Boom 20 read. Quite a feat for me.

I'm just happy you finished Safehold this year.

[Andorion]

Briar King, on 28 December 2017 - 04:45 PM, said:

Yeah that's a year and few months worth of time I ll never have back.

BK, what if there are Safehold sequels?

[worry]

I'm gonna finish out the year on a reread of The Amber Spyglass, so I guess it's time to make my list. That means I never got to Book of Dust. Also didn't read Red Sister yet, and am way behind on "new releases" in general. Anyway, my list is entirely predictable since I checked in pretty consistently in the ongoing Reading thread.

Favorite 2017 books
1. The Stone Sky
2. Deadhouse Landing
(uhh I guess that's it this year)

Favorite other reads in 2017
1. Southern Reach trilogy (VanderMeer)
2. The Library at Mount Char
3. Sword & Citadel (Gene Wolfe)
4. Angels of Destruction (Keith Donohue)
5. The Girl with All the Gifts (Carey)


Honorary Mentions: Sharp Ends (Abercrombie), Sorcerer of the Wildeeps (Wilson), The Magician's Land (Grossman), Mr. Shivers (R.J. Bennett)

Worst thing I read was The Company Man, also by R.J. Bennett. It wasn't bad, I just didn't have a dud this year and it was disappointing.

This post has been edited by worry: 29 December 2017 - 02:33 AM

[Imperial Historian]

Best reads this year were:

Library at mount char
The stone sky ( surprised this isn't on more people's lists, do yourselves a favour and read this series if you haven't, best new series I've read in forever)
Deadhouse Landing
And assassin's fate the latest robin hobb

Worst book was probably the boy on the bridge by Mike Carey big disappointment after girl with all the gifts

[Abyss]

2018 EDITION IS GO!!!!

Commence highly opinionated raving commentary and uninformed gratuitous attacks on other peoples' opinions.

[pat5150]

My speculative fiction top 10 of 2018 is up here.

Was debating whether or not Rejoice, A Knife to the Heart would make it and in the end I placed it at number 10. . .

[End of Disc One]

Overall not quite as strong a year for me as 2017, but still some good reads.

My top 2 books were by the same authors as last year--Ken Liu and China Mieville. This year China takes the #1 spot with The Scar.

Other pleasant experiences:
-Getting into David Gemmell. I read Legend and The Sword in the Storm, and loved them both.
-Brian Staveley's The Emperor's Blades was a lot better than I thought it would be.
-Django Wexler's The Thousand Names was another very strong start to a series.
-Michael Sullivan's Age of War is the best in the series so far.

[Salt-Man Z]

Here's a list of all the books I read in 2018 (comics not included) sorted by rating.
And here's a list of everything I read in 2018, sorted by start date.

As some of you may know, for almost a year and a half now, I've restricted myself to books only by female and/or minority authors. (In practice this year, it's been all female authors.) This doesn't include comics (of which I read a lot this year) and I made an exception for an Anthony Bourdain book (nonfiction) when he died. By my count, that makes 26 female-authored books (including one collection written exclusively by women) on the year, plus 2 that I started and didn't finish. That's a pretty low count by my standards, but as I said, I read a lot comic collections, but also had a number of spells where I just wasn't interested in reading. Anyway, the experiment has been a rousing success thus far; I've discovered a number of new favorite authors, exposed myself to different types of stories than I would normally seek out, and also have a read a couple of books I've been sitting on for a while. (Though not as many of the latter this year.) I'll definitely be keeping it going, though I'll likely make an exception for any Malazan that hits (as I did for DL in 2017.)

Here are my tops reads for 2018:

The Red Tree by Caitlín R. Kiernan
Amazing. Gothic and haunting, with just the right amount of Lovecraftiness, an unreliable (?) narrator and an interesting framing device. Oh, and it's fricking creepy. I was trying to explain to my 9-year-old daughter that I was reading a super-scary book about a tree, and I think she thought I was the crazy one. Loved it. Couldn't put it down. Highly recommend reading it in bed in the dark with a flashlight. (For the fullest experience, have a bedroom window facing a large tree.) Special shoutout to JPK, who asked about this in the "Has anybody read...?" thread, which prompted me to pull this off my shelf where it'd been sitting for 6 years.

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August and The Sudden Appearance of Hope (tie) by Claire North
I put these two as a tie because I can't pick between them. They're both so good. Claire North was a revelation. Both books feature a narrator with a unique spec-fic gift/curse, each dropped into a completely different genre where North explores the ramifications of her characters' abilities to the fullest. August has the more gripping plot (set in a kind of Cold War spy setting), but Hope is a more intimate character study (in a straight-up SF tech-gone-bad story.) Gun to my head, I'd go with Hope, just because you feel for her in a way that Harry August never really lets you. But they're both absolute page-turners.

Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant (Seanan McGuire)
What if mermaids were real, but also predators, and they were caught on film during the mysterious disappearance of a research vessel, so a reality TV company sends an expedition to find out What Really Happened? Awesomeness ensues, that's what.

Daughter of Hounds by Caitlín R. Kiernan
The third book in her Threshold series, though Kiernan herself once recommended diving into her work with Red Tree first, and this one second. (So I did.) Having just finished Threshold (the first book) last night, I'd start with that one. This one's superior, though. This series has a lot of Lovecraftian influence, and this book goes the extra mile by taking place in Providence and other cities with names like Woonsocket (a real place.) You get some bits from the monsters POV, which is interesting, but the main characters are a young woman named Soldier, who's kind of an errand-runner for the people working for/with the monsters, as well as a little girl named Emmy whose life becomes unexpectedly intertwined with Soldier and the Hounds. A bit of action, a lot of eerieness, characters I fell in love with, and just solid from start to finish.

Indexing and Indexing: Reflections by Seanan McGuire
I got on a bit of a Seanan McGuire kick this year, after having enjoyed her first two "Wayward Children" books last year. The two Indexing books are great; they follow a paranormal investigation unit who specialize in fantasy narratives intruding into the real world. (The titular Index is a classification system for fairy tales, and is in a fact a real thing.) The main character herself is a Snow White type whose own narrative was fortunately halted before she, y'know, died. I believe the books were originally written as serials, which is particularly obvious in the first book, though a strong thread quickly begins forming between the various cases. Great characters, and a thorough examination of its premise, these books are a lot of fun.

Queenpin by Megan Abbott
This book deserves a mention here simply for getting me out of a large dry spell that lasted over a month (though I still read a lot comics during that stretch.) It's a noir-style story about a young woman who gets pulled into the mob scene "fixing the books" and her boss, an older woman who takes her under her proverbial wing. Atmospheric and gripping, and probably short enough to devour in one sitting, were you so inclined (I did it in two.) My edition also included the short story, which was fun to read and see how the full-length version diverged from the original.

ALSO WORTH MENTIONING:

Prime Meridian by Silvia Moreno-Garcia - A beautiful novella about a young Mexican woman who dreams of going to Mars. It's technically set in the future, but otherwise has no real sci-fi trappings. Just a lovely character study that rather reminded me of her excellent Signal to Noise that I read last year.

Sawkill Girls by Claire Legrand - YA-ish novel about a trio of girls who discover and do battle with the horrific force that's been controlling Sawkill Island for generations. Some good horror trappings and (again) characters that I really came to love.

The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin - The master. (Mistress?) I gave this one a higher rating than many of the books listed above, but I place it down here because I just didn't enjoy it as much. Having said that, it's very very good, and really made me think the whole time I was reading it (hence my rating.)

[Salt-Man Z]

Oh, I suppose I should mention some comics:

Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples' Saga is AMAZING.
As is Vaughan & Cliff Chiang's Paper Girls.

Gail Simone's run on Red Sonja was fantastic.
Jason Aaron's Wolverine and the X-Men was hilarious, and at times heartwarming.

I also read a lot of old Uncanny X-Men, which is interesting but tediously old-fashioned until Chris Claremont starts writing it.
Also read (partially reread) Larry Hama's old run on Wolverine which mostly held up far better than I would have expected. (Albert and Elsie Dee are amazing.)

[Tiste Simeon]

This year my two favourite reads were Rejoice! A Knife to the Heart and also the Library at Mount Char. Both awesome in their own way.

And in earbooks I listened to both The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August and The Sudden Appearance of Hope both by Claire North. Again both really awesome but quite different.

[Chance]

Been a good year of periods when I read nothing and others when it seemed a book every day or two was normal. As is now usual more earbooks then papper but at least a few of the later. Read 93 and will likely finish one or two more books before new year so its going to be the most I've read since 2015 and only about a third of it is re-reads.


Best book of the year
The Library at Mount Char

Best "new" series
Raven's Mark

Favorits of the Year
A War in Crimson Embers, The Raven Strategem,Dancer's Lament, The Shield of Thunder, Senlin Ascends, Ravencry, Tower of Living and Dying and I'm pretty sure The Revenant Gun is going to join them once its done in a day or two.

Some good not as spectacularly other ones worth a mention
Assail, Tracato, Deadhouse Landing, The Empire of Ash, Spellslinger, Stormdancer, Cold Iron, Thin Air.

This post has been edited by Chance: 21 December 2018 - 11:29 AM