Book Reviews & Recommendations - Printable Version +- Hydaelyn Role-Players (https://ffxiv-roleplayers.com/mybb18) +-- Forum: Off-Topic (https://ffxiv-roleplayers.com/mybb18/forumdisplay.php?fid=42) +--- Forum: Off-Topic Discussion (https://ffxiv-roleplayers.com/mybb18/forumdisplay.php?fid=14) +--- Thread: Book Reviews & Recommendations (/showthread.php?tid=12531)

Book Reviews & Recommendations - Syranelle Ironleaf - 07-10-2015 (Dear Mods:  I tried to do a search to make sure there wasn't a similar/same thread already in existence and didn't find one, but if I happened to miss it, feel free to merge this into it!) I love to read (and write) so I'm always going through books on a regular basis.  I take recommendations from friends sometimes, but it really depends on what they have to say about the book(s) that determines whether or not I'll pick it up. This morning, I finished reading Ready Player One by Ernest Cline at the recommendation of a friend from my D&D Adventurers League table.  I finished it in about two days of extremely light reading (FFXIV first, man!) and came to the following conclusions: The Good:  It was mildly entertaining and nostalgic, enough that I was enjoying it enough to finish the entire novel without skipping parts.  The puzzles were interesting and reminiscent of many old games I played when I was younger. The Bad:  The plot is water-thin and predictable from start to finish.  Don't go into this expecting any kind of deep plot.  I'm more inclined to think this is a Young Adult book more than it is adult fiction.  There's no real critical thinking and the characters all seem pretty one-dimensional. The Ugly:  Oh my gawd, so many negative gamer tropes, like we're all isolated, anti-social fatties that lock ourselves away in games because we can't handle Real Life.  Ugh.  And so many "tokens"; Token Asian, Token Gamer Girl, Token Gay Person, Token Black Person... I would've liked to have seen a little more diversity in the characters, but c'est la vie.  It's not my book. I found very little to connect to or like about the characters because they all seemed to have various negative connotations about them that made them distinctly unlikable to me as both an online and tabletop gamer. Conclusion:  Would I recommend it to a friend to read?  Sure, it makes a diverting read for a car trip or a rainy afternoon.  I'd just add the caveats above.  This isn't a Great Classic by any means.  You won't get much invested in the story beyond the nostalgic value of the 80's -- if you were an 80's kid.  XD RE: Book Reviews & Recommendations - V'aleera - 07-11-2015 Since a lot of people in this community seem to enjoy the Game of Thrones style of fantasy, I'd like to recommend Glen Cook's The Black Company. The series follows a band of elite sellswords in a high fantasy setting, but with very gritty, dark fantasy overtones. It is essentially the story of the grunts in the trenches fighting it out in wars between heroes, legends, and gods. The writing style takes a bit of getting used to, since certain important events will be described in immense detail while other events that an author like GRR Martin might spend tens of pages depicting from multiple perspectives are conveyed in a single paragraph. It can get especially jarring in the later books when the first person narrator shifts with far greater frequency than in the earlier ones. All in all, a great and largely underexposed series that I think a lot of people (especially on these boards) would enjoy. RE: Book Reviews & Recommendations - McBeef™ - 07-12-2015 I like the Black Company, but my favorite series in that 'Genre' is the Malazan Books of the Fallen It's very hard to get into, as the story sort of starts when its halfway over, and various books go back and describe the past. There will also be entire books that have almost nothing to do with the main characters. At its heart though its an Epic Fantasy with non epic characters. Aka there are lots of epic gods and heros and great champions running around doing things, but generally we don't see things from their viewpoints. And in the end, the little people tend to make a larger difference than the gods and heroes. Also I read Ready Player One recently, and I really enjoyed it. It's trashy and self indulgent at times, and it has a lot of token characters. But its a book about 80s pop culture, it itself feels like a product of the 80s. Just like the movies and games and books that are part of its plot, it follows the same notes. Young loser gets involved over their head, uses their wit and intelligence to save the day, and gets the girl. Only it loses a bit of that 80s optimism, only to be replaced with the cynicism of the 2000s.