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Lady Winter Rose

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8 hours ago, Inkdaub said:

I feel like my problem with Priory was that it seemed Shannon was so intent on that rare stand-alone that the story suffered.  So it felt rushed and the pacing was awkward at times.  I still liked it and will pay attention to Shannon's future work.

I felt the same, I enjoyed it overall but it did have big plot developments happen abruptly and briefly and I think they could often have benefited from having more time spent on them. I think it needed to either be a trilogy or become a bit more focused on the core plotlines.

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On 6/17/2020 at 4:10 PM, williamjm said:

I felt the same, I enjoyed it overall but it did have big plot developments happen abruptly and briefly and I think they could often have benefited from having more time spent on them. I think it needed to either be a trilogy or become a bit more focused on the core plotlines.

Agreed. Or a duology which is underrated as a format for fantasy. The Banewreaker series by Jacqueline Carey is one of my faves.  

One more thought crossed my mind in response to the OP's request. I would recommend you read fanzines/reviews a little more broadly and this will keep you well informed and you will develop an opinion as to whose judgment you trust and whose preferences broadly match yours. 

I generally look for recommendations by Wert at the Wertzone (https://thewertzone.blogspot.com/).  That's how I picked up the Salvation and Txeicalaan series.  With the exception of his fondness for naval fantasy novels by Paul Kearney,  my taste generally tracks his pretty well. 

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4 hours ago, Gaston de Foix said:

With the exception of his fondness for naval fantasy novels by Paul Kearney,  my taste generally tracks his pretty well. 

I didn’t even know belly button fantasy was a thing...

:leaving: 

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Like people have said, long-running series with lots of open-ended questions aren't really in vogue with publishers right now, it's about standalones or snappy trilogies that come out within maximum three years of each other, so the kind of forum-based online hype machines we used to have haven't materialised. There have been a couple attempts this year and last so we might find one that lands eventually.

Probably the author who's had the most overall hype in recent years is NK Jemisin with her Broken Earth series. It didn't generate an awful lot of speculation because it was so out there there wasn't that much to get a handle on but there was some, and it certainly got genre and pundit attention. Her new series made less of a splash in forums, at least the ones I frequent, but it was marketed among other things with an interview between her and Neil Gaiman (that went awry), so it's got some push and traction.

 

On 6/15/2020 at 6:26 PM, baxus said:

Honestly, I've never heard of this author and since he was mentioned right after Witcher series I really thought it was a mixup with Slavic last names.

So, it seems I owe an apology to @Derfel Cadarn. Sorry, man.

Tchaikovsky's cool. He's a bit Sandersonish, although I find him much less stilted in his prose as a writer. He's also much more productive (!) and across a wider range- he broke through with a multi-book fantasy epic (which I lost track of and need to go back and restart) and Shadows of the Apt is also a fairly traditional, albeit more bronze-age than medieval, fantasy trilogy, but as mentioned Children of Time is SF, Cage of Souls (my favourite I've read so far) is dying-earth prison drama, Dogs of War is like a more in-depth prose retread of Grant Morrison's WE3, and his many, many novellas range even wider.

 

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Both!

is there plausible horror in umbilical cords, particularly when misplaced? ligotti opens the conspiracy against the human race with the observation that "horror depends on a confusion of what we believe should be and should not be."  accordingly, i recall with distaste the scenes in morgan's fantasy novels where severed heads are functional when attached to tentacle things. and hellraiser 2.  and the pre-RSB obscene rape aliens in lilith's brood

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On 6/22/2020 at 8:51 PM, polishgenius said:

Tchaikovsky's cool. He's a bit Sandersonish, although I find him much less stilted in his prose as a writer. He's also much more productive (!) and across a wider range- he broke through with a multi-book fantasy epic (which I lost track of and need to go back and restart) and Shadows of the Apt is also a fairly traditional, albeit more bronze-age than medieval, fantasy trilogy, but as mentioned Children of Time is SF, Cage of Souls (my favourite I've read so far) is dying-earth prison drama, Dogs of War is like a more in-depth prose retread of Grant Morrison's WE3, and his many, many novellas range even wider.

Shadows of the Apt is Bronze Age? It's steampunk, complete with airplanes.

Did you mean that later series he did?

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7 hours ago, sologdin said:

Both!

is there plausible horror in umbilical cords, particularly when misplaced? ligotti opens the conspiracy against the human race with the observation that "horror depends on a confusion of what we believe should be and should not be."  accordingly, i recall with distaste the scenes in morgan's fantasy novels where severed heads are functional when attached to tentacle things. and hellraiser 2.  and the pre-RSB obscene rape aliens in lilith's brood

More likely, I suspect that like much else - we encounter something in childhood and our shadow brain forever associates it with something unpleasant. 

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2 hours ago, RedEyedGhost said:

:lol:

Even more impressive is that Rage of Dragons also started out as a self-published novel. 

That's no small thing and is worth acknowledging as a personal success for the author. 

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3 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Even more impressive is that Rage of Dragons also started out as a self-published novel. 

That's no small thing and is worth acknowledging as a personal success for the author. 

He's laughing at the Lynch thing. Which is fair :P 

But hey, Scott tweeted a finished draft a year ago. I'm pretty optimistic about it maybe being out by end of 2021. To me that's still "soon," relatively. I've been waiting for Dany to land in Westeros since EZBoard.

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8 hours ago, Werthead said:

Shadows of the Apt is Bronze Age? It's steampunk, complete with airplanes.

Did you mean that later series he did?



Yes I meant Echoes of the Fall, having already mentioned Shadows in the same sentence albeit not by name, my bad.

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1 hour ago, polishgenius said:

Yes I meant Echoes of the Fall, having already mentioned Shadows in the same sentence albeit not by name, my bad.

I've said it before, and I'm saying it again: the level of civility in this place is goddamn beautiful. 

It makes me want to take you all out for scones and tea! 

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 6/16/2020 at 9:06 AM, LongRider said:

I'm reading PRIORY right now and am thinking it's not worth the time.

In the same boat currently. My give-a-shit about the characters has decreased with every page...

 

Nothing is really exciting me out there in fantasy land, except the next Abercrombie...

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