31–40 of 57 posts
American Gods and A Game of Thrones were some of the most abandoned books in 2019 as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21957798
On the other hand, his pacing worked well in the short story "How to Talk to Girls at Parties" he published on his blog:
https://www.neilgaiman.com/Cool_Stuff/Short_Stories/How_To_T...
This is great tool to see what everyone is reading but I would refrain from choosing books solely on the ranking shown here because its always better to choose your own books, movies, music, battles,etc,. rather than aggregators or recommendation systems dictating what is good. I am not saying that this tool is doing the same but as a user we all need to be aware of the bias that naturally comes with these kind of se…
I find the commercial top-n lists not useful. top fantasy: #1 urban vampires #2 harry potter top scifi: #1 star wars book #2 star trek book recommended for you: author(s) you bought before
They're not going to do better than that. The author is almost the only thing that matters in determining whether or not you'll like a book.
Now, if it's an author you bought before and then you hated the book, there's room for improvement in the recommendation.
Only other one which I liked was The Sundering series by Jacqueline Carey, and mainly for the dialogue between two of the characters.
Oof! I'm sorry, but Neil Gaiman's writing is... unpleasant. Purposefully so. A lot of people seem to like this, but I'm definitely not one of them.
What do you mean by that? I just finished Stardust and The Ocean At The End Of The Lane and his writing was quite lovely - but he was going for the fairy tale vibe with those books.
But his tastes are different from mine. There are sections of American Gods that are much too vulgar/crass/obscene/whatever for my taste.
This is also why I never read the sequel to Lies of Locke Lamora.
Was a bit disappointed to see Malazan Book of the Fallen #1 - Gardens of the Moon so far down. It'd be interesting if they took the series as a whole. One example is The Lies of Locke Lamora, I think it's a good first book but almost everyone I've spoken to/read comments from agrees is bottoms out in book 2 and 3. Personally think the same of Rothfuss' work. Conversely a lot of people say MBotF improves past the firs…
Two Examples:
Daniel Abraham's (co-author of "The Expanse") The Long Price Books, "Shadow and Betrayal" and "Seasons of War".
Also, the truly fabulous and sadly not widely known books by Geoffrey Wilson in which he imagined a Europe ruled by the Indian Empire and their magic: "Land of Hope and Glory", "The Place of Dead Kings" and "The War of The Grail".
I would have preferred to see some examples of books that are really high quality, but not so well known. Two Examples: Daniel Abraham's (co-author of "The Expanse") The Long Price Books, "Shadow and Betrayal" and "Seasons of War". Also, the truly fabulous and sadly not widely known books by Geoffrey Wilson in which he imagined a Europe ruled by the Indian Empire and their magic: "Land of Hope and Glory", "The Place…
I feel like it would be nice to have a "rising" category - most of these are from heavy hitters/already famous. However, very cool - any thoughts for other categories (SciFi, etc.)?
Was a bit disappointed to see Malazan Book of the Fallen #1 - Gardens of the Moon so far down. It'd be interesting if they took the series as a whole. One example is The Lies of Locke Lamora, I think it's a good first book but almost everyone I've spoken to/read comments from agrees is bottoms out in book 2 and 3. Personally think the same of Rothfuss' work. Conversely a lot of people say MBotF improves past the firs…
Well to add to your data points, I disagree with both statements that the gentlemen bastards and the kingkiller chronicles get worse.
I think they both depart from their source material in the second books but do so necessarily in order to create a standalone story that isn't formulaic.
Especially with regards to Locke, the author made some incredibly bold kill-offs at the end of book one which left the question of how to follow up with a sequel. I'd say his strategy of consolidating the key characters while expanding our knowledge of them through flashbacks is very compelling. I can't get enough of their origin stories and allows me to experience the "dead characters" again, albeit in small quantities. I'm also a huge fan of how powerful wizards are in those books, it seems closer to how unbalanced a mage would be wandering around our world and the fact we follow non-mages really sets the tone for uphill battles.