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Ritley

Karazhan Raider
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Salvage Trouble – J S Moring
This was an unusual setting – it’s basically futuristic spaceflight tech, but they are using literal magic with wizards etc for the FTL flight. It follows the semi-legitimate adventures of a salvage vessel and it’s crew after they pick up a nun and the child she’s escorting as passengers, despite their rather sketchy background and story.

This was entertaining – kind of Firefly like I guess, with the general space adventures type stuff. Will probably read more in future.
This is one that is a pretty good audiobook for those that have a commute that they like to listen on. Whole series is one credit, like 60 hours or something like that. The quality is pretty consistent for the most part, entertaining and not overly complicated and narrator does a good job.
 

Ukerric

Bearded Ape
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Black Chamber – S.M. Stirling
Alt-history with Teddy Roosevelt taking over for the duration of world war 1. Follows the exploits of a female spy trying to discover the secrets of the German weapons program. This was entertaining, good action, interesting setting. Marred a bit by the author being a little overeager to show off just how much research he did, which is occasionally detrimental to the story. I had some trouble with suspension of disbelief on the superweapon though, the US military just wishes they had something even 1/10th that effective even now.
It's James Bond in WW1 (if James Bond was a Mexican-born bisexual woman). With Nikola Tesla as Q.

But there's more if you read the second book, once you realize exactly where he's headed, in between the 007esque antics of Luz and her geek girlfriend. And you realize it's a metaphor of the 21st century, not 1917...
Teddy Roosevelt's USA is headed straight to a socialist single-party "democracy" mode, complete with full media control, "progressive" social mores massively pushed to everyone, etc.
 
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Arbitrary

Tranny Chaser
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I picked up Ball Four by Jim Bouten after it was recommended in the celebrity death thread (Bouten had passed away in July). Serpens Serpens had said it was the funniest thing he had ever read and I like occasionally listening to something on a topic I have a don't know/don't care relationship with and baseball fits the bill. I ended up with the audiobook version of Ball Four : The Final Pitch which is I guess the last version with multiple updates.

Where as the first part that made up the original book detailing Bouten's 1969 season was pretty funny at spots the later chapters, which represent a substantial portion of this version of the book, are about a man that has his marriage fall apart, continues to try and play for ever smaller and smaller leagues and is crushed by a death in the family. There's some real whiplash from hearing amusing anecdotes about partying with Mickey Mantle or catching peeks up ladies' skirts to our reader, Bouten himself, crying as he tries to get through the chapter he wrote about the death of his daughter.

I don't regret finishing it by any means but if I was passing a book on to a nephew about baseball I'd stick to a slim early edition without the 10, 20 and 30 year time jumps.
 
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Quineloe

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Didn't read them yet, but a friend of my wife's brought over a bunch of books she intended to throw away but my wife requested them instead.

My wife really knows the worst people this area has to offer:

i4DbZsz.jpg
 
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TJT

Mr. Poopybutthole
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Read through that entire Demons Accords series. I ended up really liking it. The fact that the main characters are mostly absurdly overpowered is addressed very well in the later books. To the point that I really appreciated how clever the author was about it. Declan is a walking bomb, but he's still a 19 year old moron about a ton of stuff. Chris and Tanya are supremely effective combatants. But they can't be everywhere. So it handles their ridiculously op natures in effective ways.

I also really like the social critique on how society adopts publicly outed supernaturals. Like yes, the FBI would benefit from hiring werewolves as investigators, vampire based medicines and all kinds of nonsense.
 

Ukerric

Bearded Ape
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Stumbled upon the shining diamond gem of webnovels: Mother of Learning.

(or, in the entirety, "Repetition is the Mother of Learning")

It is, basically, Groundhog Day meets High Sorcery Fantasy. The premise is simple: following an incident (involving a vexed Lich necromancer trying to shred a soul), Zorian Kazinski, a young sorcerer on his third year at a magic academy experiences a month-long time loop. Every time, he returns to the same morning with his little sister jumping on him to wake him up before vacation ends and he has to go back to academy, and goes on until the fateful 400-year planetary conjunction day (or he dies, whichever comes first).

Except that he remembers the previous times. Accumulating experience and skill, he attempts to unravel the why, the how, and, ultimately, figure out how to leave this endless loop. The story is meticulously crafted, it is full of twists, and it's the first time I've ever seen the term "Chekov's Armory" used - Chekov's gun is the rule is that if you show a gun being loaded on part 1, it has to be used in part 3 or you shouldn't even have shown it. Chekov's Armory is that every bit in the original part will be used at one point in the plot.

The series has been ongoing for years now, with one chapter every 2-3 weeks, which is the only absolutely infuriating part about it. Once you catch up, you are left screaming for more.


My sincere hope is that once he's finished (which should be soon), there MUST be a major publishing house snapping him up and putting the book in every places they can find, and he ends up richer than J.K. Rowling.

(it's so good, it appears on basically almost every webnovel site)
 
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Arbitrary

Tranny Chaser
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The 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis De Sade.

Oscillates between farce and torture porn with nothing redeeming that I can think of. At least it was short.
 

Ritley

Karazhan Raider
15,698
34,169
Stumbled upon the shining diamond gem of webnovels: Mother of Learning.

(or, in the entirety, "Repetition is the Mother of Learning")

It is, basically, Groundhog Day meets High Sorcery Fantasy. The premise is simple: following an incident (involving a vexed Lich necromancer trying to shred a soul), Zorian Kazinski, a young sorcerer on his third year at a magic academy experiences a month-long time loop. Every time, he returns to the same morning with his little sister jumping on him to wake him up before vacation ends and he has to go back to academy, and goes on until the fateful 400-year planetary conjunction day (or he dies, whichever comes first).

Except that he remembers the previous times. Accumulating experience and skill, he attempts to unravel the why, the how, and, ultimately, figure out how to leave this endless loop. The story is meticulously crafted, it is full of twists, and it's the first time I've ever seen the term "Chekov's Armory" used - Chekov's gun is the rule is that if you show a gun being loaded on part 1, it has to be used in part 3 or you shouldn't even have shown it. Chekov's Armory is that every bit in the original part will be used at one point in the plot.

The series has been ongoing for years now, with one chapter every 2-3 weeks, which is the only absolutely infuriating part about it. Once you catch up, you are left screaming for more.


My sincere hope is that once he's finished (which should be soon), there MUST be a major publishing house snapping him up and putting the book in every places they can find, and he ends up richer than J.K. Rowling.

(it's so good, it appears on basically almost every webnovel site)
So how many chapters is it up to? Just started reading it and I’m at chapter 10. So far it’s great.

Edit: never mind, found it. 101 chapters
 
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Ukerric

Bearded Ape
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Is this not available in a nice kindle distribution?
It's one of the handful of webnovels I've seen that has even tutorials to convert to epub. I assume that, once the last few chapters (we're in straight in the endgame, there's probably two to five chapters left?) it is going to hit Amazon.

Because it's in the top 5% (or higher) of webnovels.

For now, you may check Mother of Learning External Link Guide
 

TJT

Mr. Poopybutthole
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It's one of the handful of webnovels I've seen that has even tutorials to convert to epub. I assume that, once the last few chapters (we're in straight in the endgame, there's probably two to five chapters left?) it is going to hit Amazon.

Because it's in the top 5% (or higher) of webnovels.

For now, you may check Mother of Learning External Link Guide

Then i may just wait it out!
 

Ritley

Karazhan Raider
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Just caught up to chapter 101, and yeah there can’t be many chapters left. Overall definitely a solid read
 
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Nester

Vyemm Raider
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Just read “The Fires Of Heaven”

I think this is my favorite WoT book so far.

Seemed like a fitting post for this site
 

TJT

Mr. Poopybutthole
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Okay Mother of Learning is some quite good shit. God damn long too. Took me 4 days of commuting and part of Saturday to finish it. Most books are like 300 pages or so and end up taking 1.5 days of commuting to finish. Praise be to kindle and how much faster it is to read with it.
 
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Ukerric

Bearded Ape
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Okay Mother of Learning is some quite good shit. God damn long too. Took me 4 days of commuting and part of Saturday to finish it. Most books are like 300 pages or so and end up taking 1.5 days of commuting to finish. Praise be to kindle and how much faster it is to read with it.
RR estimate it at 2760 paperback pages at the moment. It's supposed to be 3 books overall, but that'd be english-style (the english don't bat an eye when they print 1200-pages doorstops).
 
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TJT

Mr. Poopybutthole
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Ukerric Ukerric

MOL
So do you think they will have a reasonable explanation as to how Vernak the Lawyer guy was able to get a marker? Because we are left with the idea that he got a 6th month marker and in that time accumulated the 5 keys so he could be let out by Panaxeth to do his thing. Also mindraping Zach so he didn't remember any of it. He also only spent 6 months in the Loop because of the temporary marker... or something?

That part of it is kind of bugging me.
 

Ukerric

Bearded Ape
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Ukerric Ukerric

MOL
So do you think they will have a reasonable explanation as to how Vernak the Lawyer guy was able to get a marker?
Given that the MC spends some time thinking about it without figuring it out, I'm fairly confident there's an explanation waiting in the wings for "the right time".