What did you just read?

Slaanesh69

Millie's Staff Member
6,501
19,219
I liked The Road and No Country for Old Men (book and movie for each) but the fans of Blood Meridian have loudly set the expectations too high for any book to meet them. I'll get to it eventually but for now it's staying on ice. I'd much rather give All the Pretty Horses a run first if I'm picking up more Cormac.
Yeah, I don't really recommend it. I loved his other books.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user

Springbok

Karen
<Gold Donor>
10,246
16,022
1773952110497.png

Blood Meridian is a book I have a hard time recommending, but one I feel made me a better, more observant reader. One of the most bizarre, great, dogshit books I’ve ever read. Years after reading it, I finally “got” the ending with the kid and the girl. First read, I’d stupidly assumed the kid was the hero!
 

INTHEMIDSTOFLIONS

Blackwing Lair Raider
1,918
4,173
View attachment 621757
Blood Meridian is a book I have a hard time recommending, but one I feel made me a better, more observant reader. One of the most bizarre, great, dogshit books I’ve ever read. Years after reading it, I finally “got” the ending with the kid and the girl. First read, I’d stupidly assumed the kid was the hero!
That bear looks really adorable there, like he's taking a little nap.
 

TJT

Mr. Poopybutthole
<Gold Donor>
46,801
128,112
1775335947997.png


Just read this. I love Correia's other series Monster Hunter International. This one is way different but the main character is not such an annoying prick this time so its a step up in that regard. Worldbuilding is pretty cool its like everyone lives in the Planes of Power and the hub city is PoK. To practice magic you need a specific reagent from the respective plane. This ends up being some red dust from the Plane of Fire, some clear liquid from the Plane of Air, and so on. The world is completely totalitarian and the magelords that run society prohibit anyone from learning magic through slavery and other social barriers.

Our hero here comes to the PoK and inadvertently stumbles on a conspiracy while trying to escape the Plane of Fire.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user

Intrinsic

Person of Whiteness
<Gold Donor>
16,865
17,014
Easy recommend. I enjoyed it very much and it still pops in to my thoughts.
There was a short film by Dust that came out not too long ago. Dust is pretty popular sci-fi short troupe and puts out some interesting stuff.

I also posted over in my Small Press thread a while back that Conversation Tree Press is doing an edition of the book. They had a waitlist sign up (which was kind of odd since they never do that). Probably a 2027 publish date since they always run a little behind.

 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user

Sheriff Cad

scientia potentia est
<Nazi Janitors>
32,667
77,909
View attachment 623753

Just read this. I love Correia's other series Monster Hunter International. This one is way different but the main character is not such an annoying prick this time so its a step up in that regard. Worldbuilding is pretty cool its like everyone lives in the Planes of Power and the hub city is PoK. To practice magic you need a specific reagent from the respective plane. This ends up being some red dust from the Plane of Fire, some clear liquid from the Plane of Air, and so on. The world is completely totalitarian and the magelords that run society prohibit anyone from learning magic through slavery and other social barriers.

Our hero here comes to the PoK and inadvertently stumbles on a conspiracy while trying to escape the Plane of Fire.
It says this one is based on Indian culture? How heavy-handed did that seem, or did you even notice?
 

Sheriff Cad

scientia potentia est
<Nazi Janitors>
32,667
77,909
Couldn't even remotely tell. It reminded me of Planes of Power mostly.
If they do it right you shouldn't notice, but just wondering since a lot of things are heavy-handed these days. Thanks.
 

Void

Yeah, and?
<Gold Donor>
10,662
13,389
This is what I said about that book a few months ago. tl;dr it was meh.

My Kindle advertised a new Larry Correia book so I'm checking it out. In case that name isn't familiar, he did the Monster Hunter Internation books, and the Grimnoir series. MHI was really good at the beginning and was ok at the end, and Grimnoir was pretty good. This one is supposed to be in a magical world where there are different realms connect to a main hub sort of and wizards are the ruling class, and our intrepid hero wants to become a wizard. It sounded decent enough, and the reviews are sky high, but reviews on Goodreads are usually skewed so high as to be straight retarded.

I'm not quite halfway yet, and it just isn't grabbing me like MHI did. It isn't bad or hard to read or anything like that, but I'm just not excited about it like I was right from the get-go with MHI. So much so, that I'm tempted to just do a re-read of MHI anyway.

Anyway, so far I'm pretty disappointed with something from a guy I really like, but I can't say there is anything actually bad about it. It's just not attention grabbing.


That's exactly what I felt. Have you read any of his other fantasy stuff? I know he has a bunch of weird stuff that isn't anything like Grimnoir or MHI, and even some based around a game system I think? I have only read those two series and then this book, so I'm wondering if those other (older) fantasy books are just as shitty and maybe he just sucks at fantasy?

I will probably not read the next book in the Outcasts series because why? It was uninspired and boring. And their magic system? Am I supposed to be interested in watching them progress (it is advertised as a progression series btw) through ranks to eventually get to rank 10 and beyond? This is definitely no Cradle.

Literally the only thing I remotely cared about was the shark guy, but he's so blatantly a ripoff of the Suicide Squad's King Shark that I can't see anything else when picturing him.
I'm not going to say the India thing is blatantly obvious, but it isn't hard to spot either.

To reiterate what my previous posts said, it wasn't bad, it just didn't provide anything at all that made me give a shit about it.

And my biggest pet peeve about it is that the fucking cover used to say "A Progression Fantasy", and there is almost zero progression of any kind.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user