[pat5150]

QuickTidal, on 02 May 2023 - 07:16 PM, said:

I want to, but I need to work up to it as I know it will wreck me....since Robin Hobb DELIGHTS in wrecking me emotionally.

Yeah, and that's like 5 series' worth of wrecking you up. But it hurt so good!

[polishgenius]

Started a recent debut, Godkiller by Hannah Kaner (first of the series of the same name). Good fun so far. Seems to be mixing some properly epic-fantasy stuff (it's one of those teeming-with-gods type worlds, one of the main characters is a professional god-assassin, and there's also knights and quests and assassins, oh my, which seems to be pointing towards a quest or two) with a pretty down-to-earth charm about the characters and writing.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

A few hours into the Library at Mount Char---it does have some gestures towards humor, which add a bit of levity. It's not great humor or dark comedy so far, but it's interesting. The beginning leans more towards horror and gross-out but it quickly becomes more fantasy (for now...).

The audiobook performance is not great. Performer seems to be American, but gives the main protagonist what sounds like a parody of a 'standard' American accent (similar to Homelander in The Boys)---which doesn't seem to fit the character. But it gives her a wry feel, which might be fitting. The narrative voice is sonorous and understated but doesn't always match the text well---it sounds like they didn't bother reading ahead or doing multiple takes.

Plot, characterization, and mythos seem engaging and unpredictable so far. Veering through a wide range of emotions....

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 02 May 2023 - 10:29 PM

[QuickTidal]

QuickTidal, on 02 May 2023 - 05:06 PM, said:

Whisperzzzzzzz, on 02 May 2023 - 04:33 PM, said:

And, on a whim, I pulled Hobb's Assassin's Apprentice off of the shelf a few days ago — and now I've finished that and am halfway through Royal Assassin. Unlike LOTR, this is a reread that has grabbed me. RIP Smithy, RIP Nosy, RIP Vixen, hello Nighteyes!! Good to see you all again!

(Also, FUCK Galen)

Nettle is the MVP of that entire series by a LONG ass margin. She's such an exquisite character who we often see so fleetingly. I need to do a full re-read as I still haven't read the final trilogy past book 1 yet.

So I finished DERYNI CHECKMATE by Kurtz yesterday, and really enjoyed it. Solid with some juicy twists.

And due to the above post I ALSO pulled ASSASSIN'S APPRENTICE off my shelf for a re-read. Last year I got myself the trilogy in those swanky hardback Illustrated Editions, but had not sat down to read them yet....it was time...and what happened to Whisperszzzz happened to me too....SUCKED RIGHT BACK IN.

And it's amusing, this is why I need a full series re-read before I read the final trilogy, because it's been like 20+ years since I read it the first time (and have never re-read it before) and I've forgotten SO MUCH of this story.

Spoiler

Like I'd forgotten that Fitz's dad abdicated after he showed up, and moved to WITHYWOODS!.....the fucking estate that I know Fitz has retired to in the final trilogy. And I'd forgotten that Burrich kills Nosy offscreen to break the bond he has with Fitz using the Wit..

Anyways, I'm probably in for the initial trilogy for now. I think I'd forgotten how engrossing these books are.

[worry]

I'm keeping up with the Assassin's Apprentice comic right now (it's up to #5 and I think there will be only six issues, it's a mini series at least for now). If you're wondering how they can pack the entire novel into six issues...

Spoiler

They can't! By issue 5, the king just apologized to kiddo Fitz for the test of loyalty he made Chade pull on him.

Anyway, it's very faithful and very good.

[pat5150]

QuickTidal, on 03 May 2023 - 12:28 PM, said:

So I finished DERYNI CHECKMATE by Kurtz yesterday, and really enjoyed it. Solid with some juicy twists.

Regarding Katherine Kurtz everything that comes after the first trilogy is 100 times better. One of the best fantasy sagas ever written!

[QuickTidal]

pat5150, on 03 May 2023 - 03:02 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 03 May 2023 - 12:28 PM, said:

So I finished DERYNI CHECKMATE by Kurtz yesterday, and really enjoyed it. Solid with some juicy twists.

Regarding Katherine Kurtz everything that comes after the first trilogy is 100 times better. One of the best fantasy sagas ever written!

Good to hear! I own it all from a used bookstore haul, so I look forward to reading the rest of them!

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Azath Vitr (D, on 02 May 2023 - 10:28 PM, said:

A few hours into the Library at Mount Char---it does have some gestures towards humor, which add a bit of levity. It's not great humor or dark comedy so far, but it's interesting. The beginning leans more towards horror and gross-out but it quickly becomes more fantasy (for now...).

The audiobook performance is not great. Performer seems to be American, but gives the main protagonist what sounds like a parody of a 'standard' American accent (similar to Homelander in The Boys)---which doesn't seem to fit the character. But it gives her a wry feel, which might be fitting. The narrative voice is sonorous and understated but doesn't always match the text well---it sounds like they didn't bother reading ahead or doing multiple takes.

Plot, characterization, and mythos seem engaging and unpredictable so far. Veering through a wide range of emotions....

Just over 6 hours into The Library at Mount Char---I actually have lol'd multiple times now. Still not the greatest humor ever, maybe, but it works.

The audiobook performer tries to do a bunch of other accents and is amazingly terrible at them... and they're not even 'foreign' accents.

The performer's 'narrator voice' changes with a new pov and becomes much more sardonic, which doesn't really fit the new character well at all, but makes what might otherwise be very brutal maybe-deadpan-humor-maybe-not substantially lighter, which renders it a bit easier to listen to.

OTOH her attempts at accents are distractingly bad, and I don't recall anything in the text (so far at least) explicitly suggesting the characters even should have those accents. One time she even randomly changed up the pronunciation of the main protagonist's name, which just seems unprofessional. She'll also sometimes add dramatic over-emphasis for no reason, though it's difficult to imagine her being bored (Dull must they be of soul who could ...)

The book itself is very good. The plot manages to be wildly unpredictable and wide-ranging, jumping around to new times and perspectives, and yet at the same time consistently riveting. Goes in deep on pov characters while portraying others from their (often judgmental, antiheroic) pov as a bit like caricatures, but with a decent amount of complexity.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 04 May 2023 - 04:37 PM

[Macros]

I think the above is why I am out off by ear book.
A few I've tried the narration was awful

[Abyss]

Macros, on 04 May 2023 - 04:54 PM, said:

I think the above is why I am out off by ear book.
A few I've tried the narration was awful

A bad narrator can utterly terminate my interest in an otherwise perfectly good book.
Made worse by the fact that if i revert to ebook or dead tree, my odds of finishing the book are abyssmal (pun intended).

In contrast a good book only needs a decent narrator, and a great narrator or narrators can elevate the experience from good to great.

[Abyss]

Abyss, on 02 May 2023 - 07:53 PM, said:

...Spotify's all out onslaught on the podcastverse. Spotify has been expending money and resources just hoovering the podcast fiction market for content to draw in listeners towards an eventual assault on Audible. Ymmv as you might expect, but i've been pleasantly surprised at some of the productions. ...

Now this one is truly worth your eartime... Just Finished FATHOM... a 10 part sf podcast story, very very well produced with cast, sfx, and soundtrack.

The setting is pretty blunt... in the future a giant corporation with a compound name finds a 7 million year old vault at the bottom of the ocean and sets up a facility to 'study' it. The facility's staff include a handful of conflicted people, some obvious redshirts, and an AI. You know where this is going, you can predict the major story beats no problem, this by no means does anything wildly new... THE ABYSS, DEEPSTAR 6, LEVIATHAN, EVENT HORIZON, ALIEN, THE THING... the influences are obvious to the point of tribute... BUT... the writing is really really solid, the characters are played very effectively by the cast, and while the story may be mostly predictable, the dialogue, the character arcs, the people (not the plot) will surprise you and the end is satisfying.


The dialogue can be a little hard to follow during some of the heavy action scenes but those are brief moments and most of it involves screaming.


Worth your time, and FREE at
https://podfollow.com/derelict/view
or wherever you get your pods.


Note - FATHOM is season 1 of a series called DERELICT. You will see DERELICT ep 1 (thus, ep 1 of season 2... yeah i don't know why they did that, i think they completed Fathom and then decided to work it into the bigger story) on the site along w the ten eps of FATHOM. FATHOM is entirely self-contained and while it leaves space (pun intended) for the second season, there is no cliffhanger, no tbc. I accidentally listened to DERELICT ep 1, was hooked, realized my mistake, and decided to listen to all of FATHOM and am a satisfied customer who will absolutely be back for Season 2 when it lands in a few months, having been fully funded on Patreon last year.

[QuickTidal]

Nearly finished my re-read of ASSASSIN'S APPRENTICE....man there's a reason I have all Hobb's books in hardcover. She's just so good. I know people get on her for how much she puts her protagonists through, most of all Fitz himself and those around him...and that seemingly doesn't jive with my feelings in the "Bleak" thread, but the highs in these books match the lows for me. For as much as some of these characters are dragged through the absolute muck....when they succeed even briefly, it's SO incredibly fulfilling.

Most recent moment for me in my re-read:

Spoiler

Up till now I'd have said it was Patience becoming Pseudo-not-mom-but-also-proud-mom to Fitz and hugging him fiercely...but no, it's really when Galen beats the shit out of Fitz in the guise of "teaching him the Skill"...and Burrich (unbeknownst to an insensate Fitz) fucking DRAGGING Galen out to the Witness Stones and challenging him to a fight, mopping the floor with him, and having the Witness Stones "witness" that truth of the altercation to keep Fitz safe from any future beatings.

Also, when I first read this initial trilogy I didn't understand how important the Fool was to the whole shebang (in my defence, I was really young when I read it and missed the nuance of like Chade perking his ears up at the Fool just "talking" to Fitz...indicating he was someone who beared attention being paid), but on a re-read it's so very apparent and I am very much and enjoying EVERY Fitz & Fool interaction on another level.

I really do ADORE these books. I really do. I'm likely going to roll right into ROYAL ASSASSIN next.

Oh, and the illustrations in the Illustrated version are simply exquisite. So much is close to how I pictured it...barring Chade who I will always picture in my head in the Malcom McDowell way that Michael Whelan drew him on the original cover.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 08 May 2023 - 04:55 PM

[Whisperzzzzzzz]

QuickTidal, on 08 May 2023 - 04:53 PM, said:

Nearly finished my re-read of ASSASSIN'S APPRENTICE....man there's a reason I have all Hobb's books in hardcover. She's just so good. I know people get on her for how much she puts her protagonists through, most of all Fitz himself and those around him...and that seemingly doesn't jive with my feelings in the "Bleak" thread, but the highs in these books match the lows for me. For as much as some of these characters are dragged through the absolute muck....when they succeed even briefly, it's SO incredibly fulfilling.

Most recent moment for me in my re-read:

Spoiler

Up till now I'd have said it was Patience becoming Pseudo-not-mom-but-also-proud-mom to Fitz and hugging him fiercely...but no, it's really when Galen beats the shit out of Fitz in the guise of "teaching him the Skill"...and Burrich (unbeknownst to an insensate Fitz) fucking DRAGGING Galen out to the Witness Stones and challenging him to a fight, mopping the floor with him, and having the Witness Stones "witness" that truth of the altercation to keep Fitz safe from any future beatings.

Also, when I first read this initial trilogy I didn't understand how important the Fool was to the whole shebang (in my defence, I was really young when I read it and missed the nuance of like Chade perking his ears up at the Fool just "talking" to Fitz...indicating he was someone who beared attention being paid), but on a re-read it's so very apparent and I am very much and enjoying EVERY Fitz & Fool interaction on another level.

I really do ADORE these books. I really do. I'm likely going to roll right into ROYAL ASSASSIN next.

Oh, and the illustrations in the Illustrated version are simply exquisite. So much is close to how I pictured it...barring Chade who I will always picture in my head in the Malcom McDowell way that Michael Whelan drew him on the original cover.

I just finished the original trilogy. It was so good! I want to skip Liveship Traders and get right into Tawny Man, but I feel like I shouldn't. Tough choice!

[worry]

You shouldn’t.

[QuickTidal]

I liked liveship, and I think it’s a nice break between the first two trilogies….you’ll miss Fitz (if not the Fool), but you get to root for Althea and watch scenery chewing Kennit. It’s also got a lot of hidden world building for the world you don’t get in the early Fitz books.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Finished the Library at Mount Char. Some aspects of the ending were perhaps a little too maudlin and predictable (particularly

Spoiler

the whole 'father planned it all along in his infinite wisdom, it had to be this way' stuff---though a book this unpredictable going in such a 'predictable' direction is itself a bit unpredictable...

), and it lost a lot of momentum at the end, but overall, very good. Some might be bothered by obvious logical objections that go unaddressed, or by large parts of the mythos not being developed (despite setting up the expectation---in me at least---that they would be).

Finally started listening to The Realm of the Elderlings. The audiobook performer is an 'award-winning' reader who has done many audiobooks... but he's also very clearly an American doing a crappy attempt at a vaguely 'Shakespearean' (modern) English accent---and awkwardly over-emphasizing the un-American vowels, as if to rub in just how much he sucks. (Confirmed by his bio.) Why emphasize the vowels if you're terrible at them? Smh....

On top of that, he inserts inappropriate dramatic pauses that almost certainly aren't indicated by the text. Instead of (and I looked up the original text just to make sure there wasn't any indication of a pause) 'it all starts there' he says 'it all starts... THERE!'

About an hour in now----first minute or two isn't great (especially while acclimating to the performer), but the writing quickly gets better.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 09 May 2023 - 01:00 AM

[Macros]

QuickTidal, on 09 May 2023 - 12:36 AM, said:

I liked liveship, and I think it’s a nice break between the first two trilogies….you’ll miss Fitz (if not the Fool), but you get to root for Althea and watch scenery chewing Kennit. It’s also got a lot of hidden world building for the world you don’t get in the early Fitz books.

I've avoided the assassin books because the only Hobbs books I tried I remember bouncing off, soldiers son? Military academy type set up, new blood versus old blood etc.

Am I doing myself out of some goodness or was that series par for the course for Hobb?

[Macros]

Read Ultra Processed People, by Chris Van Tulleken.

Interesting read, depressing in parts, showcasing corporations lack of fucks given and the moral Abyss that politics seems to be. But hugely interesting on the side of how some food replacements were discovered. It won't stop me eating the bad stuff, but I was already cutting a lot of it out before reading anyway

[QuickTidal]

Macros, on 09 May 2023 - 02:02 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 09 May 2023 - 12:36 AM, said:

I liked liveship, and I think it’s a nice break between the first two trilogies….you’ll miss Fitz (if not the Fool), but you get to root for Althea and watch scenery chewing Kennit. It’s also got a lot of hidden world building for the world you don’t get in the early Fitz books.

I've avoided the assassin books because the only Hobbs books I tried I remember bouncing off, soldiers son? Military academy type set up, new blood versus old blood etc.

Am I doing myself out of some goodness or was that series par for the course for Hobb?

Soldiers Son is considered her main failure of a series in her time as a writer. I could not personally read it (tried the first book but it was not for me)....

The Farseer books, on the other hand, are NEXT level, are collectively her best works, and sit on my shelf next to Tolkien as one of my all time faves ever. Ever ever.

So I say yeah. At least read ASSASSINS APPRENTICE and see if you jive with it.

[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

Agreed. Soldier's Son was an unfortunate pick of Hobb book.

The Farseer books are brilliant, although I personally edge the Liveship trilogy just above them (but that's largely out of attachment to them as my first Hobb books).

The whole lot (Farseer, Tawny Man and Liveship) were my lockdown rereads, having not read them in years. Beautiful prose and almost complete emotional destruction, what more could a woman ask for?

Props to Mr Not a Blacksmith for sitting through a straight five minutes of me weeping inconsolably at the death of

Spoiler

Nighteyes

And remembering enough about my explanation of that level of distress that he now quotes "Bring ginger cakes!" at me and occasionally sends photos if he finds them in a shop

This post has been edited by TheRetiredBridgeburner: 09 May 2023 - 02:25 PM