Books or Lit-r-cha Recommendations

I'm about to start the First Law Trilogy's second book, Before They Are Hanged, but I'm not sure if I should bother. I liked the first book well enough, but from what I've heard and excerpts I've read, the series gets more pointlessly dark and edgy for its own sake as it goes on — it has "deliciously twisted and evil" as a recommendation on the cover, for pity's sake. So for those that have read it, is it worth it? Why or why not?

And related to that, any other good fantasy (or sci fi books) I should read? Stuff that is fun to read, mainly. I've heard good things about Locke Lamora?

Recently read The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu. It's a Romance of the Three Kingdoms/The Iliad/English literature epic fantasy novel about a revolution. Very good, and it's a fairly fresh take on the genre. Asks some interesting questions like how efficiently is the imperial government actually run?", "does the shifting population under imperial control not improve some aspects of life?", "how are divisions of class perceived and also transcended?". Liu also is interested in how women fare under a male-dominated society, particularly in regards to how history view them.

Locke Lamora/the Gentleman Bastard series is good! Be warned that I found the first book really slow at first though. But it is a fun series, and the world-building and writing are both excellent.

edited 3rd Aug '15 11:01:43 AM by whimsyful

@Ninety- The First Law Trilogy is definitely dark/ends on a downer note. The other three books by Abercrombie in the same verse (Best Served Cold, The Heroes, and Red Country) still have the same touches, but are all somewhat more optimistic, especially Red Country. I didn't like the trilogy the first time I read it, but when I picked up Best Served Cold, it hit me how "funny" the writing style was and after that, I was a fan.

I'd definitely echo The Grace of Kings- fabulous book. I'm also a big book of The Craft Sequence by Max Gladstone and City of Stairs by Robert J. Bennett.

I do like The Lies of Locke Lamora and the subsequent books. Scott Lynch also wrote a great story called "A Year and a Day in Old Theradane" (not in the same verse), that is now free online.

Thanks!

Can anyone recommend me any postmodern novels that essentially eats its own fiction?

One extreme example is John Barth's LETTERS, in which the author engages in arguments via the post with the protagonists of his previous works, although most people agree that his novella-trilogy-as-novel Chimera is a far more readable exploration of the same themes of authorship and text.

In short form, Christopher Fowler's "Learning to Let Go" is just lovely.

Can somebody recommend me a work of literature that's intellectual & highbrow, yet surprisingly entertaining? (Think Salinger's Nine Stories, which was incredibly deep and spiritual yet immensely enjoyable at the same time.

Try Small Gods by Terry Pratchett or, if you don't mind kind of depressing works which are really good, The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy.

edited 3rd Nov '15 7:18:05 PM by Nocturna

I'd recommend Wolf Hall and its sequel(s)- It is an interesting combination of things- part social history, part humorous middle class novel, part historical fiction, and part story of a Tony Soprano or Walter White style antihero.

Can somebody please recommend me a good book with a sad ending? Can be for kids, or teens, or adults; doesn't matter.

Don't really know anything about it, but have heard people mention Code Name Verity as a very good and very sad book.

Also, have a question/request- Can someone recommend a book- either a translation or historical fiction- that's in Scandinavia in a "high society" setting between like 1750-1920. Was reminded of this from previews of The Danish Girl and I found interesting that element in seeing a couple of Ingmar Bergman's comedies.

Seconding Code Name Verity. It's a bit of a slow start, especially if aviation in historical fiction is not your thing, but it's very well researched, cleverly plotted, and the ending is a gut punch. It's also one of the rare YA novels that focuses on the friendships and relationships between women instead of a love triangle.

^^^The works of Kazuo Ishiguro, particularly The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go. Ishiguro is an expert at writing beautiful sorrow.

Okay, so in 2016 I will be participating in a reading challenge #readPOC2016, the idea of which is to deliberately read more books by "people of color." For me, manga won't count as I read plenty of that already.

So I am looking for recommendations in a variety of genres, and a variety of ethnicities. Oh, and especially writers whose names don't immediately suggest that they are people of color (Like Samuel R. Delaney.) For example, I'm going to track down one of the Alexandre Dumas books I haven't read before (he was mixed race.) That'll count for "adventure."

I'd like to avoid depressing stuff as much as possible

Engh

I loved The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin, which came out this year. Really excellent and unique scifi/fantasy type story, though it is the first book in a trilogy and the other two books are not out yet.

I recently realised that the most up to date sci-fi book that I have read that wasn't part of a TV, Film or Wargames franchise was the first Dune book so could anyone please recommend a contemporary sci-fi book/series of books? I generally prefer ones on the softer side of Mohs Scale Of Science Fiction Hardness

Scifi/fantasy: N.K Jemisin, as has been mentioned before (other works of hers include the Dreamblood Duology and the Inheritance Trilogy. Zen Cho (her Sorcerer to the Crown is basically a Georgette Heyer romcom set in magical England, with POC s for leads), Lee Yoon Ha, Ken Liu, S.L Huang.

Mystery: Walter Mosley, Keigo Higashino, Edogawa Rampo

YA: Cindy Pon (Serpentine), Renee Ahdieh (The Wrath and the Dawn has a bit too much typical YA romance tropes for me, but YMMV), Daniel José Older (Shadowshaper)

edited 23rd Dec '15 3:44:24 PM by whimsyful

@SKJAM: I made a list of non-English/American authors in another thread, which can be found here. It has some Po C authors.

edited 24th Dec '15 3:50:15 AM by Yuanchosaan

SKJAM: If you like mysteries, have a go at the Tennyson Hardwick series by Blair Underwood, Steven Barnes, & Tananarive Due. (Barnes also has some very good sci fi & alt history novels, such as Lions Blood & Due has an ongoing fantasy series). For sci fi, Tobuas Buckell's [Crystal Rain Xenowealth series]] is fun space opera, and his near future thrillers like Arctic Rising are also good.

As someone who is trying to truly get into reading for perhaps the first time in their life, (I'm nearly 25 by the way,) could someone recommend me some good sci-fi/fantasy books? I don't really care just what kind of sci-fi or fantasy they are so long as there's something in there somewhere, whether it be High Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Space Opera, Hard Science Fiction, or what have you. Preferably, I'd like books that are more recent, (AKA, within the last 5 years or so,) mainly because I'm trying to get into reading and keep reading, so I want to dig into what's out there now and go from there. Although I'm not adverse to the classics by any means.

Just to clarify, it's not like I've never actually read before, but I've never made a concentrated effort to do so, and I can probably count the number of books I've actually finished on my fingers. That's mainly because I never really bothered with reading novels and just read comic books, but now, I just don't care for them anymore, mainly because off all the events and questionable writing that goes into them these days. That said, it seems like there are a lot of stories in novels and the like that are right up my ally, and so I'd like to finally start getting in there and checking them out. Anyone have any good places to start?

edited 26th Dec '15 10:22:13 PM by kkhohoho

Well, I could always recommend you my personal favourites.

Personally I'm a big fan of the Peter Grant series, aka Rivers Of London, by Ben Aaronovitch. It's an urban fantasy series with 5 installments so far, about a London cop who discovers a magical branch of the Metropolitan Police. The style is pretty fast-paced and lighthearted.

On a more traditional fantasy side, you could try Robin Hobb's Farseer trilogy. It's about the illegitimate son of royalty being raised as an assassin and getting caught up in prophecies and magic and politics. This is the oldest of these recs, been around for a while but very good.

You could also try either Mistborn or the Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson. Traditional fantasy, the Stormlight Archive in particular is in the 'great big doorstopper fantasy with tons of characters and worldshaking battles of good and evil' style.

And there is always Discworld.

Are you looking for something of the entertaining, page-turner variety, or something more slow and even-paced?

Either one's fine with me. That said, I wouldn't want the pace to be overly sluggish either. I can take it slow, but I still generally want things to happen, even if all that's 'happening' is Character Development, Worldbuilding, exploration of the given themes, etc., I don't want to go for 100 pages with absolutely nothing of value happening, though I guess that's a given.