Search results

I've loved all the T. Kingfisher stuff I've read, and have enjoyed Sarah J. Maas' books (my wife loves the Court of Thorns and Roses). LitRPG won't necessarily kill the fantasy genre, but I could see too much of it making the genre less respected as a whole.

I think in getting older, we can find our tastes crystallizing, oftentimes towards the stuff of yore. Which, if a person wants to just read old stuff, fine. But I would say that it is a deep mistake when "I like older stuff" slides into "new books are garbage." It's okay to have preferences, but...

How the Malazan Book of the Fallen series connects and weaves so many threads together impressed the heck out of me. It struggled a little bit towards the end, but still managed to thread the needle. The elder peoples of its world all mostly in decline or trapped away, were very well-written...

Playing a first level magic-user back in the day was rough. It was a real trial by fire to get out of those low levels. The "max HP at 1st level" concept is a good one, one I didn't come to until it was codified in the rules of 3e. But I also didn't make anyone start off with a character with 1...

So by that standard, Conan's stories are adventure novels with a fantasy background, The Lies of Locke Lamora is a heist novel with a fantasy background, The Black Company is a war series with a fantasy background. Genre has ever been a fluid thing. Now, there is a ton of shovelware romantic...

Special is right...

I did not know that! But I've also never been to Niagara Falls, something I really need to rectify.

This video pairs nicely with that article:

I would second that it is well worth the stop if you ever find yourself in London. It's also pretty close to Madame Tussauds and the kitschy but fun Sherlock Holmes Museum.

I didn't read Treasure Island until my late 30s, and I really regret not doing so sooner. This and the Forgotten Beasts of Eld are phenomenal. I know I was just talking about how much I prefer shorter novels, but The Burning series is one of the exceptions. Reading Rage of Dragons and The...

I was nine years old when a slightly older hessian kid introduced my brother and I to D&D. It was a completely bizarre version of the game, with stats and levels way beyond the standard range. The DMPC had a wizard that lived in his hair. I got a pair of lightning-charged crystal daggers that I...

I just don't want to read these giant tomes of fiction anymore. So many of them to me feel like they could've had 100-300 pages trimmed off to make them better works. I would posit that had GRRM written A Song of Ice and Fire series as, say, a dozen 300-page novels, he would not have ended up...

As much as I enjoy REH's works, they contain some deeply racist elements, full stop. Far more overtly than Tolkien's writings. If I recall correctly, he wrote the stories of Mirt the Moneylender and Durnan as his own riff on Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, too.

I would disagree. Having read every Barsoom novel, I think there's plenty complexity to John Carter's background. He's a straightforward character, but that doesn't make him boring. And on Barsoom, John Carter is an alien. Agreed. Even the stories that were eventually collected into novels...

That's the thing about ERB (and Lord Dunsany and REH, whom I mentioned in another thread) - people might not be able to name their stories and characters, but I guarantee if you magically removed them from existence, the shape of fiction would be irrevocably altered. I'm reminded of Ray Bradbury...

I cannot imagine the pain of losing a brother. I remember going to a seminar of his at the first virtual Gary Con; his love of gaming and his enthusiasm really shined.

Conan remains a favorite of mine, one I will continue to return to for years to come. But I am also a bit of An Old. I do think that REH continues to exist in fantasy DNA in much the same way Tolkien does. It perhaps isn't always as obvious, but if someone were to remove REH's works from...