05-08-2026, 09:24 PM
Oh boy its time for me to vomit opinions!
I have a sort of weird thing with Brandon Sanderson where I really like him as a person but I have never been able to get into his books. I feel similarly about John Scalzi. Great guy, I follow him on social media, I feel like i *should* like his books, but I just do not. Lots of people do! Clearly its a me problem! Its been so long since I tried to read books by either one of them I can't even tell you why at this point. I did like Elantris okay, from Sanderson. I guess he wrote some more in that but I think I recall them being disconnected from the first book so ppphth.
Robert Jordan: I liked the first two books in the wheel of time, and then I got really tired of it really fast. Nearly every character was an unlikable asshole in some way and it just turned into a slog of people I didn't care about. I'm sure if you dug Jordan up and asked him about it he would be like "it's realistic for everyone to have flaws!" but the reality is that it just made it tiresome to read a whole series full of assholes. Same with the game of thrones series, or whatever, Song of Ice and Fire, i guess. I did like Martin's attempt at scifi with his Tuf Voyaging book. I might try to read through ASoIaF again when its done, presuming it ever is. I read for escapism so if I have to make a goddamn flowchart to keep track of your characters, you can get fucked.
I read predominantly fantasy throughout my life starting early in childhood and then about 10 or 15 years ago I just decided that I was done with fantasy. So unless there is a pretty unique hook for the series, I generally skip it now. I mostly read scifi, horror, mysteries, and modern or "urban" fantasy now.
Anyway, I just got finished reading the recent Murderbot... novella(?), by Martha Wells. This has been one of my favorite series recently, though I usually don't read novellas or short stories. I highly recommend it if you haven't already. The show didn't really capture it, I don't think, but it was, you know, okay. The real, actual, novels in the series are great, and the novellas are... novellas, but also in the series so they're not terrible.
For older recommendations:
The Aubrey/Maturin sea adventure books written by Patrick O'Brian are probably my absolute favorite series. And then the RCN scifi series, which David Drake modeled directly on the Patrick O'Brian books, are almost as good.
Also set during the Napoleonic war, the Sharpe books are also fantastic if you are into historical adventure type fiction. Reading the Aubrey/Maturin series and the Sharpe series together gives you a real sense of the whole thing, since both authors did pretty painstaking research.
I have a sort of weird thing with Brandon Sanderson where I really like him as a person but I have never been able to get into his books. I feel similarly about John Scalzi. Great guy, I follow him on social media, I feel like i *should* like his books, but I just do not. Lots of people do! Clearly its a me problem! Its been so long since I tried to read books by either one of them I can't even tell you why at this point. I did like Elantris okay, from Sanderson. I guess he wrote some more in that but I think I recall them being disconnected from the first book so ppphth.
Robert Jordan: I liked the first two books in the wheel of time, and then I got really tired of it really fast. Nearly every character was an unlikable asshole in some way and it just turned into a slog of people I didn't care about. I'm sure if you dug Jordan up and asked him about it he would be like "it's realistic for everyone to have flaws!" but the reality is that it just made it tiresome to read a whole series full of assholes. Same with the game of thrones series, or whatever, Song of Ice and Fire, i guess. I did like Martin's attempt at scifi with his Tuf Voyaging book. I might try to read through ASoIaF again when its done, presuming it ever is. I read for escapism so if I have to make a goddamn flowchart to keep track of your characters, you can get fucked.
I read predominantly fantasy throughout my life starting early in childhood and then about 10 or 15 years ago I just decided that I was done with fantasy. So unless there is a pretty unique hook for the series, I generally skip it now. I mostly read scifi, horror, mysteries, and modern or "urban" fantasy now.
Anyway, I just got finished reading the recent Murderbot... novella(?), by Martha Wells. This has been one of my favorite series recently, though I usually don't read novellas or short stories. I highly recommend it if you haven't already. The show didn't really capture it, I don't think, but it was, you know, okay. The real, actual, novels in the series are great, and the novellas are... novellas, but also in the series so they're not terrible.
For older recommendations:
The Aubrey/Maturin sea adventure books written by Patrick O'Brian are probably my absolute favorite series. And then the RCN scifi series, which David Drake modeled directly on the Patrick O'Brian books, are almost as good.
Also set during the Napoleonic war, the Sharpe books are also fantastic if you are into historical adventure type fiction. Reading the Aubrey/Maturin series and the Sharpe series together gives you a real sense of the whole thing, since both authors did pretty painstaking research.