What's the last book you've read?

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Darth Wedgius
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Re: What's the last book you've read?

Post by Darth Wedgius »

Majyk By Design by Esther Friesner.

It's set in a fantasy world with it's own, unique design, and follows the most powerful (but far from most competent) wizard in the world through another adventure. In this case, to find a romance novel cover model before his disappearance causes a war.

It's definitely light fantasy, and not everyone's cup of tea, but all the little details she puts in the book to affectionately mock fantasy conventions really sell it for me.
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Re: What's the last book you've read?

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Binge Watching Cure Anthology Vol2. Horror anthologies are always a mixed bag at best, and this was more misses than hits. Still, "Redless" was a beautiful short with such an unusual premise and "Endangered Species of the Animal Kingdom" was great long-form suburban horror. "Don't Look Back" was also that real spooky story sweet spot and felt much shorter than its 4500 words.
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sayla0079
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Re: What's the last book you've read?

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I read a couple doctor who books: the good doctor and combat magicks (was going to get a childhood's end but the barnes and noble temporarily closed before I could get it).
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sayla0079
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Re: What's the last book you've read?

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The star trek Destiny collection good series nice to see some of the characters post their series: [url]https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51ccWf8nmJL._SY346_.jpg[/url]
ChrisTheLovableJerk
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Re: What's the last book you've read?

Post by ChrisTheLovableJerk »

Recently read Peter Straub's novel Ghost Story. Saw the movie and enjoyed it and heard a lot of people say how much better the book was. Both are good, but the novel is much more ambitious and the film clearly didn't have the budget to translate a lot of what was in the book to film, plus it's always hard to cram nearly 500 pages in an under two hour film. The film (starring Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., John Houseman, Craig Wasson, Patricia Neal, and the Borg Queen herself Alice Krige) is very enjoyable for what it is, and is a nice slow-burn, atmosphere-rich horror ghost movie with a fantastic, haunting soundtrack and great performances, but the book is a bit better, as in the book...well, it's not exactly a ghost they're dealing with and shit gets horribly disturbing and nightmarish at times, really feeding off paranoia and makes the reader uneasy with the subtle scares (the scene where the asshole Sheriff hears a noise coming from the cells where they've had to store the dead bodies because a blizzard has cut the small town off, goes inside and notices that the bodies are subtly moving every time he takes his eyes off them) and has some gory bits and other things that will make one rather uncomfortable that are more than a movie from 1981 would allow, but I'd recommend both.
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Re: What's the last book you've read?

Post by ChiggyvonRichthofen »

Recently read The Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe, the first volume of The Book of the New Sun. Pretty interesting and unique sci-fi/fantasy, and very dense. Also read I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara.
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Edvarius
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Re: What's the last book you've read?

Post by Edvarius »

Trying to read Parasite Eve by Hideki Sena right now. Horror's not really my genre, but I wanted to see where the game had come from. And thus far I gotta say... Eve is not impressing me as a villain. Oh sure, she's an ancient mitochondrial hive-mind that has used mind control to set up the moment of her ultimate triumph, but that "master plan" of hers obviously could have gone wrong in so many ways thus far. She seems less like a legitimate evil schemer and more like somebody repeatedly getting really lucky at the roulette table.

I mean one of the first things she does in the book is cause her current host to drive her car into a light pole at high speed in juuuuuuust the right way that would leave the host brain dead but not damage the internal organs so she could get the kidneys transplanted and a liver tissue sample taken.

"Hold my beer and watch this" is not a legitimate evil scheme!
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Beastro
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Re: What's the last book you've read?

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Edvarius wrote: Thu Jun 11, 2020 6:25 am Trying to read Parasite Eve by Hideki Sena right now. Horror's not really my genre, but I wanted to see where the game had come from. And thus far I gotta say... Eve is not impressing me as a villain. Oh sure, she's an ancient mitochondrial hive-mind that has used mind control to set up the moment of her ultimate triumph, but that "master plan" of hers obviously could have gone wrong in so many ways thus far. She seems less like a legitimate evil schemer and more like somebody repeatedly getting really lucky at the roulette table.

I mean one of the first things she does in the book is cause her current host to drive her car into a light pole at high speed in juuuuuuust the right way that would leave the host brain dead but not damage the internal organs so she could get the kidneys transplanted and a liver tissue sample taken.

"Hold my beer and watch this" is not a legitimate evil scheme!
I've wondered what the movie was like.

I always thought the first game was nice and condensed in structure enough to work as a movie on its own without much modification.
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Edvarius
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Re: What's the last book you've read?

Post by Edvarius »

Beastro wrote: Tue Jun 23, 2020 5:09 am
Edvarius wrote: Thu Jun 11, 2020 6:25 am Trying to read Parasite Eve by Hideki Sena right now. Horror's not really my genre, but I wanted to see where the game had come from. And thus far I gotta say... Eve is not impressing me as a villain. Oh sure, she's an ancient mitochondrial hive-mind that has used mind control to set up the moment of her ultimate triumph, but that "master plan" of hers obviously could have gone wrong in so many ways thus far. She seems less like a legitimate evil schemer and more like somebody repeatedly getting really lucky at the roulette table.

I mean one of the first things she does in the book is cause her current host to drive her car into a light pole at high speed in juuuuuuust the right way that would leave the host brain dead but not damage the internal organs so she could get the kidneys transplanted and a liver tissue sample taken.

"Hold my beer and watch this" is not a legitimate evil scheme!
I've wondered what the movie was like.

I always thought the first game was nice and condensed in structure enough to work as a movie on its own without much modification.
Trust me, the book was nothing like the game. I won't spoil anything major, but Eve doesn't roast anybody until the last third of the book. And the first one she incinerated was a piece of herself. Yeah, the person that was the victim of the attack survived that. Needed some skin grafts, but otherwise fine. For all of the power that Eve does eventually display, she really was kind of an unimpressive villain in the end.

Though to the book's credit, you may enjoy it more if you know anything about biology. Which I admittedly do not. But the author obviously did their homework. Literally. They were working on their PhD when this was written, and there is a rather extensive bibliography of all the books and articles consulted during the writing process to make sure that as much of the science side of it was correct as possible while still having a horror monster. Just be warned though, if like me you don't know biology that well it can be kinda technobabble-y.
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sayla0079
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Re: What's the last book you've read?

Post by sayla0079 »

Finally got to Read Doctor Who: a childhood's end good book if you know the characters.
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