Recommended reading charts. (Look here before asking for vague recs)
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>>24615650

>Thread Question:
Do you have dedicated reading time and place, or do you read wherever you can? Especially at work.

What do you look for in a story?

>mfw keep seeing imagery of St. Catherine everywhere after reading that book

>>24626043
NEED samurai queen

>>24626053
Hear me out senpai:
Afro Samurai, but female

>>24626043
>black girl gets isekai'd into l5r universe and joins the crab clan
WRITE IT

>>24626061
>L5R universe

I'm getting so sick and tired of Achamian always having tears running down his cheeks for no reason.

>>24626025 (OP)
I WFH so I do a lot of reading when it’s quiet. Most of my work has lots of meetings and usually when there’s downtime between them, I’ll get a chapter or two in. It’s very comfy.

>>24626043
For fantasy specifically, I'm looking for immersion and certain tinge of comfiness (even with darker stuff like ASOIAF, which I would argue has a sense of comfiness in the slower parts). Obviously, interesting plots and characters are also very welcome but plot or character could take a backseat for me if the immersion, tone and comfiness do their job well.

>>24626025 (OP)
>Do you have dedicated reading time and place, or do you read wherever you can? Especially at work.
Been working for over a year at acomfy security guard gig, so I've read a lot. I'm starting a new job next month so I won't have as much time but at a usual job, I'll read during the morning and night before bed.

>>24626025 (OP)
I read whenever I can, the only difference is that I take my physical book with me when I go out. I also work from home, so reading during work tends to be more of an impediment because I get distracted. The one time I worked in an office though I had so little to do, I finished several books in a couple of weeks.

>new fantasy perfect for fans of George RR Martin, John Gwynne and Joe Abercrombie!
What if I'm not a fan of those specific authors? In fact, what if I hate them and want every other fantasy book for men that's published nowadays to start being almost the exact opposite of what they put out?

>>24626224
Then you read GGK and fume silently

>>24626061
You don't even need the Isekai route. Although the Unicorn would be the likeliest one to pick up foreigners and integrate them.

>>24626224
You never know what someone means by that statement. Which specific element did they like or dislike?

>>24626270
Exactly. This kind of author centered advertising isn't too far from the trope based one. In fact it's even more vague because it basically tells you nothing about what the story feels like. What if I'm a fan of GRRM's food descriptions but instead this book has a lot of rape? It's dumb.

Do Japanese write litrpg? Looking for an ero litrpg with futanari, but I believe only a Japanese writer could pull this off.

Test

>>24626397
Doujinshi don't really get translated.

>>24626403
It's not like there are too many plot heavy ones and once you've read one doujinshi you'll know the dialogue in all of them.

>>24626043
Freely available online

Lysander MUST die.

I am within the last 100 chapters of A Will Eternal. :O

>>24626025 (OP)
>tq
I read for one hour before work every day. for weekends it depends.

Been on a crime kick lately, mostly hard boiled stuff. Any recommendations for audio books that blend that with sci fi or fantasy? Not interested in dresden files.

>>24626043
aura farming

>>24626686
He must get shot into the sun

>>24627233
Asimov wrote a series of novels about a cop and his robot partner solving crimes, so Caves of Steel and its sequels. I don't know if those have audio books, but I'd assume so.

>>24627233
Larry Correia had a trilogy called The Grimnoir Chronicles.
It was so so.

>>24627242
He doesn't deserve the honor. Hopefully he asks for a final duel and instead gets shot in the head.

>>24627332
Justice for Alexander and hopefully Rhonna does it

>>24626137
Any recs, homie?

>>24626137
Malazan

>>24627360
>Rhonna does it
How, when she's dead?

>>24627568
No body = no death. the entire fall of mercury is such a clusterfuck with a 1000 things happening at once that it’s possible she escaped and is part of an inusurgency. I don’t think she would just be killed off screen without any fanfare

>>24626043
Mystery tied to the setting. I read fantasy to inhabit other worlds. I want to imagine another world and immerse myself in its history and its unfamiliarity. I want to be intrigued, I want to be hungry to learn more about it.

>>24626224
Aren't Gwynne and GRRM the opposite of Abercrombie as is? Neither of them have shitty Wheddon dialogue.

>>24628020
Gwynne has weaker dialogue than the other two by a mile. Can't write a memorable character to save his life.

>>24628020
I hate Whedon dialogue. I think its weird that so many writers think its peak literature

Anyone read Kushiel's Dart? Sounds like coom kino.

>>24628026
I feel like sometimes clever dialogue is miscategorized as whedon dialogue. Whedon dialogue is cringe, reddit-tier, snarky garbage, but some people detest it to such a degree that the prefer only the other end of the spectrum, which is drab dialogue devoid of humor. Like that lends it gravitas, or something.

Cradle seemed to have some very tolerable Whedon dialogue.

>>24628078
Words ever more only mean "signifier of a tribe I dislike".

>>24628089
Cradle is about the limit for what I can take of quippy whedonshit dialogue
I remember dropping an otherwise promising novel like a hot potato when the main character quipped at a village's cultivator, something like "Alright then, Terminator."
and of course then there was the exchange where the chinese old man misunderstood, "Temineitou?"
and I want to kill myself just writing this out

>>24628193
nta
That's unfortunate that you have such severely negative involuntary reactions. Hopefully you become less sensitive to cringe. It's a sad form of being triggered.

I try not to spam in these threads, but I am writing a fantasy story you can read for free on Royal Road about a Necromancer, loosely based on my own trip to Nepal and the Himalayas. Aside from the chapter-by-chapter release style, it doesn’t really hold any connection to webnovels. (None of the standard tropes or short chapters). It’s basically my completely normal high fantasy slop, except I liked the idea of getting readers and commenters who could throw advice at me since I’m way too cheap to ever get an actual editor.
Anyways I recently got on the rising stars list on RR for the villainous lead category, and my fiction is two chapters away from being finished with book 1, so I figured now might be a good time to share this once again here.
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/93931/born-under-a-black-sun
more than one of you has advised I switch to a less modern dialogue. When I finish the last few chapters I will go back and make sure everything looks okay and works right, and I’ll try to catch dialogue that looks out of place. But I feel that overall, aping a medieval dialogue I don’t actually understand would do more harm than good.
Also: I feel like my protagonist isn’t really a villain, just a heads up. But he is a necromancer, and a few chapters in he gets in a racially motivated altercation and murders a not-indian. And because of that I had some RR readers complain that I needed a trigger warning, so uh yeah, that’s why it’s tagged as such! :]

>And I bade my own to lay her pretty toes upon my lips, and lo the maid did lay her pretty toes upon my lips, for I was very masterful unto her and she did be a naughty maid. And all this you who have been with me on all my journeyings will perceive and lend me your natural human sympathies, for all this is very natural and very human.
The entire second half of the book is just this over and over again. Is this really the best the "dying Earth" genre has to offer, or did the anti-Wolfe fag just lie to me?

>>24628241
I'm exaggerating obviously but this type of dialogue really does take me out of the story, which is why I dislike it so much. It's a lack of earnestness, like the story is afraid of taking itself seriously, like it's embarrassed about being what it is so it keeps making fun of itself.

My favorite works of fiction, literary or otherwise, are over the top gonzo shit that plays it completely straight and takes itself seriously, and that's peak, that's what the pinnacle of fiction is to me. You get a seemingly wacky premise (say, "what if breakdancers got superpowers from magic fruit") and then play it as serious as a funeral, THAT'S how you do peak fiction.

>>24626043
in no particular order

>emotionally gripping interpersonal dynamics
>dream-like and imaginative worldbuilding with lots of mystery
>complex, dimensional and multi-faceted characters
>a good sense of humor
>oozes vitality and a feeling of power in the writing itself
>a plot that is believable and compelling
>is psychological/pulpy/whimsical/romantic
>inspired by mythology and the occult/esoteric

I want stories that will make me excited, laugh, and even cry.

>>24628347
based toku fan

I think you should check out more pulp fiction, it seems right up your alley. Kamen Rider was inspired by The Stars My Destination, which was itself a sci-fi version of The Count of Monte Cristo. There's also the Gregor Samsa parallels (read Kafka) to be denoted, as well as how Ishinomori's mentor was Tezuka himself. So you'd probably get a kick out of reading both Pinocchio and Frankenstein. Kamen Rider was also inspired by Batman and Spider-Man, so read The Shadow and The Spider pulps. Dracula and King Arthur inspired The Shadow, so check them out too. Definitely read or watch Casshern, watch Yatterman, Gundam, Time Bokan, Kikaider, and Speed Racer. Read Astro Boy and the rest of Tezuka's works.

And while you're at it, watch all of Disney's classic animated movies. Read the classic Disney comics, particularly Don Rosa's Ducktales and Scrooge McDuck. At some point check out Doc Savage because he was inspired by The Shadow but went on to inspire Indiana Jones.

>>24628411
Yeah, I love pulps for exactly the reasons I described.

>Casshern
watched
>Yatterman
on the list
>Gundam
been watching for a while
>Time Bokan
added to the list
>Disney classics
watched many times as a kid

go have a go at Concrete Revolutio

>>24628389
read Lord of the Mysteries

>>24628025
Gwynne isnt a excellent author, but he is better than reddit-tier Abercrombie.

Still waiting for kamen rider system novels

Jsut finished reading Project Hail Mary since my ex's mom recommended it.
Why are all science fuck yeah söykike types so obsessed with shitting and their own shit? They make constant references to shit and have to mention it multiple times in their writing. Also in tweets about people they don't like they always have to bring up shit. Is there a psychological explanation for this phenomenon?

>>24628489
it's the ultimate pinnacle of their materialist ethos, if shit has no ontological status as shit and it's just mere material it can be repurposed into anything, which means so can humans

Some time ago I posted about being unable to find more books in the vein of Jack Vance's Cugel. I ended up coming across Matthew Hughes' Fools Errant which finally scratched that itch. I finished it earlier today with great satisfaction and promptly began the pic related sequel, but I am sad to report my now-renewed disappointment. This feels like a fanfiction and lacks the energy and fantastic believability of the first book. I am fifty pages in and probably not going to bother reading any more. I will keep Fools Errant as a favorite but am now back to searching for a new cugelian adventure author.

>>24628496
Oops pic related was meant to be the sequel, Fool Me Twice

>>24628340

Take Lovecraft's word for it:
>It is told in a rather clumsy fashion, as the dreams of a man in the seventeenth century, whose mind merges with its own future incarnation; and is seriously marred by painful verboseness, repetitiousness, artificial and nauseously sticky romantic sentimentality, and an attempt at archaic language even more grotesque and absurd than that in “Glen Carrig”.

Although he does follow with
>Allowing for all its faults, it is yet one of the most potent pieces of macabre imagination ever written.

https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/essays/shil.aspx

>>24628489
Why do you have contact with your mom's ex?

>>24626043
Either that'd be high quality even for standard literature, like Bakker, or giga slop comfiness like idk Witcher

Why isn't there more harem in fantasy?

>read the first Zane chapter in Mistborn

>>24628538
It's problematic and ick. Women like it when the heroine has to choose between multiple attractive males, not when the hero has access to multiple females.

>>24628540
I hated him until it was over

>>24628538
There's already too much.

>>24628556
No there isn't.
>>24628544
Maybe that's why men aren't reading books anymore, because they're written for women?

>>24628560
>Maybe that's why men aren't reading books anymore, because they're written for women?
Took you until 2025 to figure that one out?

>>24628487
I know of one that has not-kamenriders in it...

THEY. DID NOT. END 60,000,000,000 LIVES. USING FUCKING SWORDS AS THEIR PRIMARY WEAPON. IT'S NOT FUCKING POSSIBLE!!!!

>>24628573
The Rwandan Genocide claimed 800k lives using machetes over the course of less than two weeks

>>24628578
You can't get them to work but give them a machete and they never get tired of swinging it at people

>>24628573
still haven't heard why this is a bad thing

>>24628496
Nifft The Lean
Dominions of Irth Series

>>24628538
>>24628562
>Why won't [genre that has always functioned based on bestselling trends in my language of choice (English)] cater to my specific fetish? Surely it must be because the world is a dystopic matriarchate now.
Every single thread. You sound just like the rainbow haired they/thems who complain that capitalism and patriarchy won't let them sip their shitty Starbucks latte in peace.

>>24628340
Do wolfefags really get filtered this hard?
If lovecraft and smith read it then you can too
Maybe you need some more of le pringles man you pathetic manchild

>>24628533
My ex gfs mom was reading it. So months later I am reading it.

>>24628492
Honestly? Makes sense.

I finished Les Xipéhuz. I was looking forward to strange extraterrestrials vs pre-historic humans and the first third or so didn't disappoint, but then we were unfortunately introduced to the hilariously anachronistic protagonist/narrator that felt like a XIX century gentleman observing and narrating things and not some intelligent man from tens of thousands of years ago. The technique to introduce his direct narration was clever (some professor's translation of pre-cuneiform tablets) but besides some metaphors and epithets, he sounded way too modern and his observation of the alien lifeforms were ridiculously precise and mathematical. This in turn turned the final battle with the Xipéhuz into something anticlimactic for me, because I would have preferred seeing a bunch of people with limited knowledge and power cooperate against a seemingly unbeatable enemy instead of one big brained guy using Reason™. But maybe it's just me. The Xipéhuz were very interesting anyway.

>>24628777
I can see what Lovecraft and Smith got out of it. I'd even say it has a few moments that are the most poignant in all of Hodgson's works. But whenever Naani is in the story it's just fucking exhausting.
>And lo the maid did be afflicted with the love sickness and so she tried to throw herself into a volcano to anger me, for she did be a very naughty maid and I saw I must perforce spank her to return her to her natural human wisdom, but I did not want to because of my great love for my own. And if this doth be foolishness on my part you will lend me your natural human sympathies, for this is a very natural and very human fault.

>>24629048
Filtered

>>24626686
Even if he does die it will be at the end of Red God so you'll still have to suffer his existence through the whole book. Probably more Lysander POVs than Darrow POVs again too

Just finished Assassin's Apprentice and left wondering why is it getting praised, even in these threads.
It wasn't offensively bad, just sorta bland and unmemorable. Nothing really happens throughout most of it, nothing feels like it has any weight, the antagonist is so lame and incompetent he makes everyone appear dumb for failing to thwart him way earlier. The protagonist has no agency and just kinda stumbles into everything, all the while being a whiny emo teen. And he doesn't even really assassinate anyone

>>24628732
But the problem in this case is that platforms like Amazon and RRL won't like you when you write that.

>>24629469
For Amazon at least it's true. Not just for haremlit authors, but erotica in general gets buried by the kindle algorithm and though haremlit is not full erotica by Amazon's standards, Amazon is still all too happy to bury those books for the slightest reason. That's why even the blurbs for those books doesn't mention a harem, and instead says things like "unconventional romance catered to men"
I don't know if the reverse harem books for women have the same restrictions.

random question, where do you guys torrent your audio books from? I tried doing it the legit way through spotify but they're fucking retarded and only offer you like 10 hours a month or something? delusional.

>>24629494
there's a website called 4 chan . org that has a board called /t/. Maybe they have a thread about audiobooks?

What do you guys think about technical school?

Is it a waste of time, or is it worth it

How much physical description do you prefer for a character? I don't need to hear read about every single male character’s bulbous nose or square head or barrel chested physique.
But I do care about the breast size of women

>>24629579
hair color, cup size, thigh size, etc.

>>24629579
description is only needed if important to show. So yes breast size is very important

>>24629579
Usually hair and skin colour, height, maybe body type so I don't realise later I've had a completely different character image in my head all along.

>>24626025 (OP)
>female knight in the OP

Are there ANY authors who handle them right? I think Brienne of Tarth is decent and more importantly, she loses all of her fights to any uninjured man with actual training. But are there any others?