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failsafeman
Digital Dictator

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PostPosted: Tue Mar 21, 2017 3:01 pm 
 

Yeah some parts are kinda dumb but I really like how Dracula is presented as much more menacing and otherworldly than vampires usually are these days. During the night he can transform at will into basically any "creature of the night", and considering a fucking MIST counts, he's basically unstoppable unless you catch him during the day. A far cry from how mundane most vampires have been represented since.
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Thumbman
Big Cube

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PostPosted: Tue Mar 21, 2017 3:34 pm 
 

InnesI wrote:
I also thought the first part was the best. Stoker somewhat lured me back into it at the end also. I thought the England part was by far the weakest. I also have a problem with the stereotypical vampire stuff like the garlic and such. Obviously it wasn't stereotypical at the time of this being written but having heard the story so many times in different media I can't help but groan a little when things like that are brought up. I'd say its a 3 out 5 kind of book. :-)

Eh, I'd definitely give it a solid 4/5. Would be approaching 5/5 if it kept up the quality from the first section. The England part was indeed the weakest, some really great stuff but it definitely dragged on too long. I guess I can kind of see where you're coming from with the garlic stuff, but that would be like criticizing the Godfather for being too much of a stereotypical mob movie. It's influence has become so great that it's spawned a lot of stupid shit over 100 years later, but you can't really blame Stoker because shit like Twilight happened.
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Razakel
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 21, 2017 3:53 pm 
 

Dracula is awesome but yeah I agree it'd be better if it kept up the quality of the beginning, or if some of the letter sections between Lucy and Mina were shortened or something. Just thought it lost some steam in the middle before returning with a strong climax. The first hundred pages or so are gripping as hell.

Spoiler: show
The passage in which Harker gets lured throughout the castle by Dracula's mistresses and then sees Dracula crawling up the side of a castle wall like a spider always stayed with me. Not actually sure if these are two separate parts, it's been a good few years since I've read it.


Speaking of old horror, I just read "Rappaccini's Daughter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne. A cool story with some potent descriptions and images, but it didn't blow my mind. I guess I'd kind of figured the "twist" out about halfway through, but still very worth reading. Hadn't read any Hawthorne before. Guess I somehow missed out on The Scarlet Letter in school.

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failsafeman
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 21, 2017 4:29 pm 
 

The real "twist" to "Rappaccini's Daughter" I think was that even though Baglioni was the "good guy", he cared way more about crowing over Rappaccini's failure than the actual daughter dying due to his antidote. And even though Rappacinni was the "bad guy" and performing pretty fucked-up experiments on his own daughter, he did seem to genuinely love his daughter and was stricken by her passing. That gray morality made the ending much more ambivalent and complex, I think.
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Sepulchrave
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Joined: Mon Jul 27, 2015 7:29 pm
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 21, 2017 4:50 pm 
 

Any of you guys have this?

Image

It's a huge-arse anthology of weird speculative fiction, 1111 pages, double-column layout. It's got a nice combination of some (sometimes vaguely) more popular stuff like Kafka, Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Bloch, Dunsany, Peake, Ligotti, King, etc. stories and other ones from much less well-known ones like Alfred Kubin, A.M. Merritt, Algernon Blackwood, Jean Ray, Michel Bernanos, Eric Basso, William Sansom, Bruno Schulz, etc. I've actually had it for more than a year (got it Christmas 2015) but I guess I forgot to write about it in this thread. Anyway, I highly recommend it to many M-A'ers here, who seem to be interested in a lot of weird fiction. Probably better for those who are less familiar with the genre, though, and want a comprehensive introduction to it. It sure is one for me so far. :)
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Razakel
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 21, 2017 5:16 pm 
 

failsafeman wrote:
The real "twist" to "Rappaccini's Daughter" I think was that even though Baglioni was the "good guy", he cared way more about crowing over Rappaccini's failure than the actual daughter dying due to his antidote. And even though Rappacinni was the "bad guy" and performing pretty fucked-up experiments on his own daughter, he did seem to genuinely love his daughter and was stricken by her passing. That gray morality made the ending much more ambivalent and complex, I think.


I didn't see the Baglioni antidote twist coming, but I also didn't really see any evidence to suggest that Rappacinni actually cared much about his daughter. If he did, it was definitely because she represented his scientific perfection, his ultimate experiment, rather than because he actually loved her as her father. Maybe I read the ending too quickly and missed something?

@Sepulchrave: That looks awesome! Will look into some of those authors I haven't heard of.

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InnesI
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 21, 2017 5:17 pm 
 

dystopia4 wrote:
Eh, I'd definitely give it a solid 4/5. Would be approaching 5/5 if it kept up the quality from the first section. The England part was indeed the weakest, some really great stuff but it definitely dragged on too long. I guess I can kind of see where you're coming from with the garlic stuff, but that would be like criticizing the Godfather for being too much of a stereotypical mob movie. It's influence has become so great that it's spawned a lot of stupid shit over 100 years later, but you can't really blame Stoker because shit like Twilight happened.


Absolutely but I can't erase my past experiences either which is why I'm not critiquing Bram Stoker per se but my own experience of it since it has been stereotyped so many times.
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Scorntyrant
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Joined: Mon Nov 15, 2004 5:55 am
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 21, 2017 5:42 pm 
 

Sepulchrave wrote:
Any of you guys have this?

Image

It's a huge-arse anthology of weird speculative fiction, 1111 pages, double-column layout. It's got a nice combination of some (sometimes vaguely) more popular stuff like Kafka, Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Bloch, Dunsany, Peake, Ligotti, King, etc. stories and other ones from much less well-known ones like Alfred Kubin, A.M. Merritt, Algernon Blackwood, Jean Ray, Michel Bernanos, Eric Basso, William Sansom, Bruno Schulz, etc. I've actually had it for more than a year (got it Christmas 2015) but I guess I forgot to write about it in this thread. Anyway, I highly recommend it to many M-A'ers here, who seem to be interested in a lot of weird fiction. Probably better for those who are less familiar with the genre, though, and want a comprehensive introduction to it. It sure is one for me so far. :)


Yep, got a copy on my shelf. Great collection but the layout makes it difficult to read.
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Nahsil
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 21, 2017 7:19 pm 
 

Finished Old Man's War...it was good, solid, fast-paced, but I think it made me want something with a little bit more meat. Any scifi recs?

I was reading some of Wolfe's (non-scifi) short stories last night, maybe I should continue with that. Or maybe more Le Guin (only read The Dispossessed, Left Hand, and a couple short stories).
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MARSDUDE
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 21, 2017 10:17 pm 
 

I thought Dr. Bloodmoney by Philip K. Dick was some fantastic sci-fi. Maybe you'd like that one.
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iamntbatman
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 22, 2017 12:10 am 
 

I don't remember the middle part of Dracula really seeming too draggy to me. My main complaint about that book is just how anti-climatic the ending was:

Spoiler: show
I mean, it's this crazy race to catch up to the gypsy mercenaries to kill Dracula before he gets back to his castle and the sun sets, but then they just do that. I mean I guess realistically it would've been a bit over the top to battle and kill him at night, but it's a goddamn vampire book already so over the top is totally fine. I think it would've been even better if it were just a little bit longer, with him not being in the casket when they caught up to the gypsies, or night falling just in time and him high-tailing it back to the castle and then a big fight or whatever....just something other than them killing him while he's asleep.
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Nahsil
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 22, 2017 12:19 am 
 

Definitely been meaning to read more PKD, I've read Man in the High Castle (meh) and Androids (decent).

That said I think it's HIGH TIME I check out some Jack Vance, considering his influence on Gene Wolfe and all the praise he gets. Based on reddit posts I'm gonna check out his Tales of the Dying Earth and start with "The Eyes of the Overworld."
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iamntbatman
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 22, 2017 12:37 am 
 

That was pretty fun reading, but personally I liked Demon Princes way more. Just fuckin' super cool stuff. Both have elements of humor but Tales of the Dying Earth leans much more heavily on that than Demon Princes, which is just not really my preference. I might read the Alastor books next.
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andersbang
Metalhead

Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2009 9:28 am
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 22, 2017 8:50 am 
 

Sepulchrave wrote:
Any of you guys have this?

Image

It's a huge-arse anthology of weird speculative fiction, 1111 pages, double-column layout. It's got a nice combination of some (sometimes vaguely) more popular stuff like Kafka, Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Bloch, Dunsany, Peake, Ligotti, King, etc. stories and other ones from much less well-known ones like Alfred Kubin, A.M. Merritt, Algernon Blackwood, Jean Ray, Michel Bernanos, Eric Basso, William Sansom, Bruno Schulz, etc. I've actually had it for more than a year (got it Christmas 2015) but I guess I forgot to write about it in this thread. Anyway, I highly recommend it to many M-A'ers here, who seem to be interested in a lot of weird fiction. Probably better for those who are less familiar with the genre, though, and want a comprehensive introduction to it. It sure is one for me so far. :)


Yep, I got it too. I binged about half of it then I wanted to read some novels instead of short stories to break it up a little, and now it's been long time since I last read anything in it. Should give it a go again.

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Nahsil
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 22, 2017 4:17 pm 
 

iamntbatman wrote:
That was pretty fun reading, but personally I liked Demon Princes way more. Just fuckin' super cool stuff. Both have elements of humor but Tales of the Dying Earth leans much more heavily on that than Demon Princes, which is just not really my preference. I might read the Alastor books next.


Yeah I haven't loved it so far as much as I thought I would. Some of the writing seems clunky to me, like he's trying too hard. Other passages are really good and I can definitely see where Wolfe was influenced. Demon Princes is actually scifi right? I may go for that instead then.
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failsafeman
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 22, 2017 4:29 pm 
 

Tales of the Dying Earth is arranged roughly in publication order, so the first parts are pretty early Vance. I think between parts II and III there's a gap of about ten years, and it really shows.

Anyway, I've always said that Tales of the Dying Earth is good but overrated as far as Vance's bibliography goes. My three favorites are the Demon Princes series, the Durdane trilogy, and the Alastor trilogy. All three are straight sci-fi.
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~Guest 171512
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 22, 2017 5:47 pm 
 

iamntbatman wrote:
This week I've started up The Stars My Destination and it's awesome so far. Kinda crazy that such a gritty cyberpunk sort of story was written so damn long ago, though it is admittedly pretty weird to describe as cyberpunk a book that has a notable absence of computers. That is kind of the one glaring flaw so far - I mean they make clear that jaunting would result in major changes in warfare, transportation, trade, etc., but it still takes a while for even the best jaunters to go across a continent, so having even phone technology be almost totally obsolete doesn't really make a lot of sense to me. Anyway it's cool as fuck so far, I especially loved the total savages living in that cobbled-together debris-asteroid who were backwards as shit inbred remnants of scientists who just spouted off scientific tropes with no actual understanding or context. Really neat ideas, and I kinda love the protagonist being such a cunning caveman anti-hero.


Hey, I read this recently too! It was a great book. Unfortunately my copy has a lot of typos, but oh well. They've been wanting to make a movie of it for years, but it's considered 'unfilmable'.

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iamntbatman
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 22, 2017 11:24 pm 
 

Yeah, I read that too and was scratching my head a bit. I honestly have no idea what's unfilmable about the story; actually I think it would make a great fit for the big screen.
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failsafeman
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 23, 2017 4:53 am 
 

Well the synesthesia parts at the end would obviously have to be portrayed in some sort of creative way. Otherwise, I think it was considered unfilmable due not to the actual impossibility of filming it, but the huge expense and difficulty of building all the different complex sets - the Vorga, the space colony of scientist-descendents, the shipyards, the underground prison where everything is totally dark - imagine trying to do all of that without CGI. Or even with pre-2010s CGI.
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Azmodes
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 24, 2017 2:47 pm 
 

Cool news for all Reynolds/Revelation Space fans: http://approachingpavonis.blogspot.co.a ... ne-in.html
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Jonpo
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 24, 2017 5:34 pm 
 

The Stars...is unbelievable. One of the greatest things I've ever consumed. Actually, I think it's been about long enough for a re-read! It's so clever and so fucking brutal. Stellar novel. The synesthesia "scene" is impossibly well done.
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failsafeman
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 24, 2017 8:00 pm 
 

Dude, it wasn't that good.
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Jonpo
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 24, 2017 8:47 pm 
 

I know you don't think it was. And from what I hear it wasn't super sustainable for him. But man, it really got ahold of me. Can't wait to read it again. Realized while typing that post I still don't own it. Whoops.
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Nahsil
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 27, 2017 8:57 pm 
 

I'm liking Vance's Demon Princes more than the Tales of the Dying Earth, more my style.

I probably will read more of Tales eventually though, it certainly wasn't bad!
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failsafeman
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 27, 2017 9:08 pm 
 

Just FYI, Demon Princes quality rankings are almost exactly reverse order, so if you liked the first one, you'll like the series even more as it goes on.
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LordStenhammar
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 28, 2017 3:21 am 
 

Been reading Sami Lopakka's "Marras" lately. You know, that Sentenced guy. And it's good. It has a lot of extremely bitter humour, which works very well for me, and it's kind of beautiful and sad at the same time. Don't know if it's translated to English yet. It should be.

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Azmodes
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 28, 2017 4:31 am 
 

I read the first few Demon Princes a few years back. Pretty much fantastic, elegant prose and storytelling. Really made an impression.

Skullcrack City - Jeremy Robert Johnson
Oh wow, what was this? Some crazy bizarro mix of science fiction, gonzo drug trip, conspiracy thriller, cosmic horror, detective noir story and a metric ton of gore. Insane(ly) fun. Cool writing.

Three Parts Dead - Max Gladstone
Kind of reverse urban fantasy, with "modernity" and magic-based tech in a fantasy world. Crisp and clever and an interesting universe, I'll probably be checking out more of his books set in it.
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Necroticism174
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 30, 2017 11:54 pm 
 

Azmodes wrote:
Skullcrack City - Jeremy Robert Johnson
Oh wow, what was this? Some crazy bizarro mix of science fiction, gonzo drug trip, conspiracy thriller, cosmic horror, detective noir story and a metric ton of gore. Insane(ly) fun. Cool writing.


Oh man, I've been waiting for a larger public to stop sleeping on JRJ for so long. Been following him since the days of Angel Dust Apocalypse. Thankfully, this novel seems to have done really decently and introduced him to a slightly bigger audience. It resulted in him getting a book deal, too! So if you loved this, you can look forward to more novels in the near future. Do yourself a favour, a hardcover of all of his best stories with author notes at the end, called ''Entropy in Bloom'' has just been released. You need to get your hands on that, I know I will. Really superlative author whose stories are everything cool that exists, while the writing itself is razor sharp.
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iamntbatman
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 31, 2017 12:14 am 
 

That does sound cool. Added to my "want to read" shelf!
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Azmodes
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 31, 2017 4:12 am 
 

Cool, Necro, I've put that anthology on my list. I actually first found out about him and got interested in that book when you briefly praised it in this thread. So thanks again, I guess.
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Razakel
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 31, 2017 1:15 pm 
 

I got a collection of some Lord Dunsany stuff called In the Land of Time and Other Fantasy Tales. I haven't read any Dunsany yet but this seems to have a bunch of his really early short stories as well as some later stuff. I know he was prolific as hell, so I guess I'll start with his first collection, The Gods of Pegāna, all of which is in this collection, and go from there.

Anyone else know more about his work? I think I recall failsafe talking about him a while ago? What would be a good novel to check out if I get into some of these short stories?

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iamntbatman
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 31, 2017 3:00 pm 
 

I read The King of Elfland's Daughter recently and I dunno, failsafeman chastised me for not being more head-over-heels about it but other than the sometimes really funny bits and the prose itself being beautiful all the time, I found the overall story kind of...ehhhh. None of the characters is particularly deep, which isn't so terrible really, but some characters were just sorta left behind plot-wise and overall I felt like there just wasn't enough going on in the story to really grip me. It was enjoyable, easy reading, but overall I definitely got the impression I'd like Dunsany more in a short story context.
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Razakel
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 31, 2017 3:09 pm 
 

Cool, a friend's recommended that one to me before. I'll start with a handful of short stories and probably get to that one eventually.

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failsafeman
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 31, 2017 4:24 pm 
 

He's best at short stories. Not that his novels were bad or anything, but he wrote relatively few of them and even then, they still tend to feel like really long short stories.
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~Guest 171512
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 31, 2017 7:26 pm 
 

Lord Dunsany rules. I loved The King of Elfland's Daughter, and pretty much all of his short stories. Another great author of classic weird fiction was Algernon Blackwood. Be sure to check out a collection of his stories, and make sure it includes 'The Willows' and 'The Man Whom the Trees Loved'. The latter is such a strange, beautiful, and sad story; it affected me in a way no other story ever has.

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caspian
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 02, 2017 8:53 pm 
 

Dunsany is cool but I reckon Batman nails it. Beautiful writing, elegant prose, you could make a religion out of it quite easily. But the plot and characters tend towards fairly boring.

A good analogy is that he's the Coltrane of fantasy. Amazing technique but a snoozefest when you get down to it and people just say they like him in an attempt to impress old people.

Skullcrack city sounds good! Will be doing a lot of camping shortly so I'll take that along with the 4 malazan books I haven't read.
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failsafeman
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 03, 2017 9:25 am 
 

It's ok, not everybody has poetry in their soul.
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Thumbman
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 03, 2017 7:00 pm 
 

Are you actually trying to say that A Love Supreme and Blue Train are snoozefests? :annoyed:
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caspian
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 03, 2017 11:48 pm 
 

well not snoozefests, cos they're too annoying for that.

I reckon you can draw a quick comparison between Dunsany and Wilde's Book of the New Sun as good examples of dreamy fantasy done right v wrong. DIfferent writing style of course, but Wilde can also wax pretty eloquent/waffle on a bit from time to time, but it works because it's surrounded by engaging characters. It's poetic, but engaging. Poetic, but ugly. Poetic, but with fantastic characters. Dunsany is just poetic. It's like looking at a great landscape painting- technically brilliantly done but it doesn't have all that much to say.
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 03, 2017 11:54 pm 
 

The Picture of Severian Gray? The Importance of Being The New Sun?
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