Mangler's awesome book thread.

[Livae]

Robin Hobb's Fool's Assassin - in reading.

I adore her Fitz books, she is the one Author who can gets me awash with sadness at the characters death.
I am though not too keen on her Forest Mage/Shaman books.

[khazar]

I just read the powder mage books. Honestly, though they kept my interest, it was annoying how dumb the characters were. One guy who is supposed to be a military genius is just a bully and seems to just likes to tell people to shut up or kill them. A lot of blunders made by dumb characters. It's hard to find a solidly smart protagonist fighting an equally clever antagonist. On the bright side, there was always lots of stuff happening.

I tried the lightbringer books, but early on there was a scene where this character wants to go warn his friends that the army is coming, which means certain doom. He did that and the main response was one friend declared that it didn't matter and he was going to go take the virginity of this one girl from their group not far away. He and the girl start to walk away and then the army came and shot them dead. I stopped reading after that scene. Willfully dumb characters creating drama is bad drama.

Sorry I have no good recommendations at the moment.

[landwin]

Khazar give it another shot. The books get way better.

[Mangler]

Negative reviews are also very welcome! I get rather impatient with badly written fantasy these days. So many authors build a great world then make terrible characters who make absurd decisions! Good to know what to avoid.

I've just finished 'The Providence of Fire' by Brian Staveley. An enjoyable continuation from 'Emperors Blades'. Easily one of the better fantasy series I've read in recent years.

I also read 'Tigerman' by Nick Harkaway, awesome page turner of a book.

[khazar]

So the recommendation for Brian Staveley was strong enough that I gave it a shot. It was definitely the best fantasy I've read in quite a while by an author I didn't know already. However, I have to say, the characters were often pretty stupid, but not so willfully so it was suicidal. They did have their moments of smarts, but more stupid ones I'd say it was more like Jack Bauer from 24, where every 2 episodes, he fell into a trap or agreed to give some bad person what he wanted. So it was good and I recommend it, but that was a bit frustrating. A bit of a digression, one reason The Dark Knight is one of my favorite movies ever is that both the good guy and the bad guy were at the top of their game. Joker was firetrucking smart, but so was Batman. Why is The Martian such a great read? Main character is firetrucking smart! Good times. Well, he was funny, too. I guess I like books about people like me Enjoy.

[Mithos]

Just started Black Prism by Brent Weeks. I start with high hopes.

But Bands of Mourning (Mistborn trilogy new book 3) came out today, and the novella is supposed to launch as soon as Amazon fixes the download date, so...might get postponed.

[edrin]

I personally really liked this series. It starts slow and it lacks a certain dept at the start but it makes up for that the further you go along.

https://www.goodreads.com/series/96465- ... evelations

[Gretchen]

just finished the discworled reread through and really enjoyed it

read the long earth trillogy by stephen baxter and terry pratche was a good plot but i got to the end and was like wtf finish it there it was finaly geting good

[Gretchen]

also read the black magician trillogy by trudi canavan not bad books

[Mangler]

I found the Black Magician trilogy pretty enjoyable, in the realms of what I call "easy reading fantasy." I've not been particularly taken by what few I've read of the follow up books.

I just finished Tigerman by Nick Harkaway which was great, and am stop-start really trying hard to convince myself I'm enjoying Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson.

Oh and I read part of George R R Martin's Tuf Voyaging. Not worth going out of your way for, but enjoyable enough light sci-fi.