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Comments
Not sure if I should recommend Stormlight or not.
Stormlight is quite good (not quite so realistic, but with a fair share of the whole politics thing GoT does), as is Name of the Wind.
Name of the Wind lacks the 'epic' requirement though.
Ah, very true.
Though we already know that the third book will basically involve Kvothe screwing the entire world over by letting out a demonic army or whatever, so...
Yah, but it lacks... every other requirement of epic fantasy ever.
Yeah.
Well, I'll probably look up a little excerpt of Stormlight then and decide if I like what I read. Same with Name of the Wind.
Want to tell me your opinions about these books without spoiling me, please?
If you don't mind cheesy fantasy names and lines like, "Men did that too, he thought. Once," The Way of Kings (the first book in the Stormlight Archives) is pretty good (though I confess that I haven't read any of it in over a week). Can't comment on The Name of the Wind.
They're both really good.
Name of the Wind is a good example of a book which makes itself a lot better through clever use of narrative and prose- the main character is a storyteller, and he's narrating the events of the book to some people long after the events have taken place.
What makes it interesting is that we've seen where the main character, Kvothe, ends up- as an innkeeper in a backwater town, trying to hide from the consequences of his actions.
The Stormlight Archives has been described as... "A successful attempt to repair a hole that has been left in epic fantasy since the publishing of A Game of Thrones." It's quite a dark book, but there's an underlying theme of honour and justice, and the price of being a good man- and why it's worth it to stay a good man, even as the pressures of the world try to bend you.
And then I fell in love with Nova's paragraph long opinion of The Stormlight Archives.
We have a winner. Ding ding.
Both are exceptionally good fantasies, I have to say.
Name of the Wind is a must-read for people who love storyteller characters and tales within tales.
Anything in The Witcher series, perhaps?
@Madass There's a video game series on it. Is it any good?
Having played the first game and part of the second, I'd say they're good for the most part, but the developers have no idea how to do balance. The first one is trivially easy, and the second one overcorrected.
The games are great, if a bit troublesome to come to grips with initially. The books are also great, at least the one's I've read; only two have been translated into English.
So, I started Bel Canto for one of my classes. Has anyone else read it? Was it any good?
Reading Alloy of Law.
Just got to the paper with the "Horseless Carriages are a Menace!" ad. Hilarious.
If you really like stuff like that you should check out a book called Anno Dracula which has things like an ad for an Anger-reducing serum by a Dr. Jekyll
So, I've been reading more of The Casual Vacancy.
Suffice it to say that the more I read it, the more I dislike the book.
so after a long difficult struggle against my own attention span, I finished A Feast For Crows.
next in the queue is Sylvia Nasar's Grand Pursuit: A History of Economic Genius, to complement my recent burst of interest in the profession.
^^ Sadly, you haven't even gotten to the worst part yet as it's the ending.
Yes, I have.
Just got to it a little while ago.
Wow, it's been quite a while since a book has managed to depress me with its bleakness and grimness.
But this book managed it. The one character who didn't suck (Robbi), well...
Everyone got their comeuppance at the end, but it just felt... hollow.
That's how the entirety of the ending felt, really. Hollow. The last bits of decency were stripped away, and in the end, only Sukhvinder ended coming out a somewhat decent person.
Everyone else... Bleh.
I kind of liked Sukhvinder, but I dunno, she still had that 'forced' soap-opera on cocaine thing going on with the characterization.
I kind of felt like there were some really contrived decisions towards the end, like Krystal's rationalization about 'starting a family'.
When I put it down I felt like I'd shut down emotionally long ago. Like I'd just been reading without caring about what happened.
Sukhvinder's angst was... weird, but overall, she was one of the nicer characters in the story.
Everyone had the same sort of forced angst anyway.
It's still better than that one character who was a non-practicing pedophile, bluh.
What did we have in the end? A crack whore, a foul-mouthed slut (who, oddly enough, was one of the most sympathetic characters to me), an abusive father, a non-practicing pedophile, a doctor who violated doctor-patient confidentiality, a man who tries to make a widow of several weeks fall in love with him, and I'm sure that's not even close to the full list of miserable people in the book.
I... would definitely not recommend this book. It's kind of sad, because the book is fairly well-written, but it's just a miserable mess. The only reason I'd ever recommend it would be if you want to read nearly 500 pages of people being miserable assholes before they eventually get their (hollow) comeuppance.
I don't know, sometimes I like that hollow feeling.
Probably won't read this anyway.
@Nova Isn't Casual vacancy that new J.K. Rowling book?
Yes.
Almost done with Alloy of Law.
Just wanted to take a moment to say that "Stop doing that!" has to be the best reaction to being shot ever.