AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Yea, I've seen a few people on here praise American Gods, and I've heard Good Omens is good from a lot of people. I'll probably have them both finished by next week. And I'll definitely check out more of Gaiman's stuff.

Ive been reading the last few books in Classandra Clare's series. The Mortal Instruments, The Infernal Devices, and The Dark Artifices are all great series.

I finished reading Good Omens. (Finished it in a day and a half...probably the quickest I've read a book that size). I really liked it and it made me sad again that Terry Pratchett is dead.

I'm starting American Gods tomorrow.

What did you think of the Four Horsepersons?

Also here's some choice quotes I highlighted.



And of course, to sum up the point of basically the whole book:

I thought they were pretty cool. I liked how Death was kinda similar to Death in Terry Pratchett's Discworld books. The part where it talks about Pollution and how he made foods that made people fat while also starving to death was kinda funny.

I liked how the voice of God was called Metatron. Also, Shadwell was a really interesting character.

I actually laughed a little out loud today when I read the part about the Scots so my friends had me explain what was funny. None of them thought it was as funny as I did.

Also, the quote when it was talking about the "Buggre Alle this" bible made me laugh. And all the little jokes they made about English and American people throughout the whole book were funny.

This was probably one of my favorite quotes from it though:

This is a good choice.

Do yourself a huge fucking favour and read Anansi Boys right after finishing American Gods. It will make you pop flyin'.

I started NPCs by Drew Hayes. No, not Drew Hayes the graphic artist, Drew Hayes the novelist.

You don't know who that is? Neither did I just an hour ago. Maybe a quote from the "about the author" section on his website will help.


So now that that's squared away, let me give you my initial impressions of this novel. It didn't seem like anything special at first, just another parody of D&D tropes. What would happen if the background characters picked up weapons and armor and decided to go adventuring? You get Goblins "NPCs". Not actual NPCs, I meant the nov- oh fuck it.

So I wasn't hooked until about a quarter of the way through after the adventurers' first real battle, wherein their classes become obvious. In a humorous twist, the classes they chose do not work for them, and instead they take to different roles as if they were chosen for them by fate. The half-orc becomes the wizard, the mayor's daughter a barbarian, the town guardsman a rogue, and the crippled gnome a paladin. It all makes sense in context, trust me. That's where I'm at, and I'm now interested enough to keep plugging along and seeing how this plays out.

FINAL VERDICT: 5d10

Rather short, but not enough going on to fill out the story, so there's a weird combo of too fast and too slow at the same time. Nothing's going on for a chapter, and then I look again and the main antagonist has been defeated. If you've read Goblins and/or Mogworld, there's nothing new here. The dialogue is stiff; all of the main characters speak like they're on loan from an R. A. Salvatore novel, and not in a good way. It's interesting enough if you're hard up for a postmodern fantasy story, but I don't plan on following up on this series.

Guys.

Guys.

Leviathan Wakes.

Read it at your earliest convenience. I can't say much about it without spoiling anything but it is so very good. It's a space opera/mystery grounded in real, though mostly undiscussed, science. Culture, politics, and science of the setting are all presented as-is, without a ridiculous amount of heavy-handed technical detail. It leads to a certain amount of guesswork, but I prefer it greatly to being held by the hand through the story, and it leaves the plot to flow smoothly. The characters are developed and the romances that crop up are honest and realistic, if in some cases extremely unconventional. One of my favorite bits is that the asteroid belt has been colonized and after two hundred years, the ones born and raised there are practically a new species of human with a patois of all the different languages of the colonists, mixed with hand signals borne of a lifetime spent in environmental suits rendering common body signals unreadable.

SyFy is picking up the novel series as a TV show and I already feel like they can't do it justice (although Thomas Jane in a lead role has got me giddy). Do yourself a favor and read.

This thread may be deader than the tmi one, but I need you nerds help. Recommend me good sci fi audiobooks. You could save a life!!!!!

Specifically audio books, or just good books that have audio narration?

You should check out Dancing with Eternity: it's a daisies good space opera, and the audiobook is narrated by John Patrick Lowrie and Ellen McLain, best know for voicing the tf2 Sniper and GladOS, respectively.

Audio books are best. I wanted something to listen to while gaming

I've been trying to read American Gods for so long but it's always checked out in the library, I will one day. Good Omens is fantastic too, although I found myself preferring Terry's chapters.
As a bit of a checklist, I finished Still Alice (recently made into a film) and if you like books which feature medical problems as a plot point (in this one, it's Alzheimer's), it's v. in depth and good, although not for everybody I guess.

I've read a few sci-fi books, but I decided to take on the "grandfather" of them all by reading Dune by Frank Herbert. Honestly at first I couldn't see the fuss and found it extremely hard to understand, but after about 80 pages in it all finally started to click and I really, really like it (admittedly, more the world and stories than the main character, but I guess that's just the author's strengths). Sad that the author is no longer alive and the ghostwritten ones are (supposedly) not very good as I'm sorta interested in continuing the series, although I've been told it stands great on its own two feet.

I'm finally picking up Patrick Rothfuss' Kingkiller series. The beginning was a bit slow but I'm completely engrossed now. I read during lunch because it doesn't take a lot of brain process to cram food down my fat throat, but I was reading for about 15 minutes at one point before I remembered there was slowly cooling food next to me.