D&D General No One Reads Conan Now -- So What Are They Reading?

Bedrockgames said:

I was curious about that one

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Frankly, there's half-a-dozen Guy Gavriel Kay books you could pull out of a hat and, depending on your taste and sensibilities, enjoy equally as well as Under Heaven.

All of Kay's works take place in the same basic fictional continuity, separated by time and geography and culture, with the exceptions of Tigana (which is frankly Kay's other masterwork which I'd put on par with Under Heaven) and the Fionavar trilogy of books.

Under Heaven specifically focuses on a near-real-world-alt-history seventh-century / Tang dynasty China (it's not called "China" in the book, but the analogy is dead obvious). It's so beautifully written, it's hard to describe the feelings it evokes for me.

But take your pick from Under Heaven, Sailing to Sarantium (and its sequel, Lord of Emperors), The Lions of Al-Rassan, The Last Light of the Sun, or A Brightness Long Ago---they're all amazing fiction IMHO.

I happen to like Under Heaven the most, with Tigana a very close second.

The only book of Kay's I haven't absolutely loved was A Song for Arbonne, though it too has a 4.5 star rating on Amazon, so again, tastes vary and all that.

I've not read the Fionavar series because the premise never appealed to me.

innerdude said:

a 4.5 star rating on Amazon

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The problem with going by Amazon and Goodreads ratings is that virtually all fantasy novels that are in the "mediocre to insanely brilliant" range have scores of 4.X, where X is randomly anywhere between 0 and 7. Occasionally they might hit 3.9 or even 3.8, usually only if they're "challenging" in some way (whether that's high reading level required, problematic content, or w/e varies widely).

There's no consistency or apparent logic to it. The Book of the New Sun, which is written so insanely brilliantly that it's been suggested by serious critics that it might be one of the best pieces of English writing in the 20th century, and which is very much multi-layered and has incredible prose, has a 4.23 on Goodreads. Throne of Glass, by Sarah J. Maas, which is a fairly generic and forgettable "teenage assassin" story with a basic-ass Twilight-style romantic subplot, by no means a terrible book, but certainly not an amazing one, has 4.18 on Goodreads, which is basically the same score!

The idea that most star ratings on Amazon and Goodreads actually correlate to any kind of quality or potential popularity in any way at all is obviously pretty silly. They don't even correlate to size of audience! Something with a very niche audience may actually have much higher ratings than something with a broader audience. Indeed, when something which is, essentially, niche is brought to a wider audience, you do tend to see ratings drop (albeit usually still into the 3.8 to 4.7 range).

So I think you have to discount those ratings unless they're outside the 3.8 to 4.7 range, in which case you might want to look into why. I don't think that, realistically, you're any more likely to like or be impressed by a book that gets 4.4 on Goodreads than one that gets 4.2, for example.

Ruin Explorer said:

The idea that most star ratings on Amazon and Goodreads actually correlate to any kind of quality or potential popularity in any way at all is obviously pretty silly.

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Yep, which is why I pay no attention to the average. All I do is read the one star reviews; the worse the English in them, the better the book probably is.

Ruin Explorer said:

But the sequel? Nobody rails at the sequel? Man, were you around when that came out? Have you ever looked at discussion of Wise Man's Fear (WMF) at all? Because absolutely, from the bloody moment it got published, people do very much rail at Kvothe's portrayal of himself in the sequel, as a literal Ninja Sex-god. I mean, the first book, he's penurious magic-student and decent musician. In the second book, he's trained in ninja sword-fighting and ninja skills by a cult of Hot Polyamorous Ninjas, then spends like 1/5th of the book learning sexniques with some sort of Elven Sex Goddess (literal), and then I don't even remember much of the rest except he murders a bunch of people, including ones who can't defend themselves and it seems pretty dodgy.

An awful lot of people who like NotW absolutely loathed WMF, because either Kvothe is being an annoying exaggerator, or the story has gone downhill quite a bit.

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(I appreciate you saying this. If you dig far enough back in the ratings of Wise Man's Fear on Amazon, like, ALL the way back to March 2011, I was one of the first and earliest 2-out-of-5 star ratings of WMF basically saying exactly what you're saying. I loved Name of the Wind and utterly despised Wise Man's Fear and basically will never read another written word of Rothfuss's ever again. But you'd never know what you're saying is true based on the 70,000 5-star ratings of the book on Amazon.)

(*Edit: Which, admittedly, does somewhat undercut my argument that crowdsourced ratings are indicative of quality. But as I've said all along, tastes vary, and there's always exceptions. I often follow @Cordwainer Fish 's example by reading the 1-star and 2-star reviews of media first to get an idea of what's likely to be problematic, and then decide if those things are likely to run against my sensibilities.)

Ruin Explorer said:

Blood Song, as I understand it, doesn't have the same metafictional conceit. This isn't a story we're being told one character to another. There's no unreliable narrator. There's just a really ridiculously overpowered guy, and no, I'm sorry, based on the synopsis, Vaelin Al Sorna is not "10x less of a Gary Stu", he's actually considerably more of one.

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Yeah, I guess my basic disagreement is the notion of Vaelin Al Sorna being "ridiculously overpowered."

He is shown to be extremely competent in combat, but that extraordinary competence doesn't generally spill over into some magical "get out of jail free" at every turn. Whatever power he has is generally shown to be limited to himself. The book shows over and over again that being competent isn't enough to protect his friends or brothers of the Order, it isn't enough to prevent people he cares about getting hurt, it isn't enough to stop terrible, tragic decisions being made that he can't control.

Again, tastes will vary. I've just never viewed the protagonist of Blood Song in any way as being a Gary Stu. If Vaelin Al-Sorna is a Gary Stu, then so is Aragorn, as their basic "portfolio of powers" are the same (extreme fighting competence, outstanding leadership, and a "guiding light" sensibility that leads them to choose unusual paths).

*Edit -- As compared to Kvothe the Deus Ex Machina we see in Wise Man's Fear, who basically tames the wild fae sex goddess for ... reasons? Like, there's literally zero reason for 17-year-old Kvothe to manage this feat, yet somehow he does because he's ... just ... that ... awesome ... no ... other ... explanation ... needed.

innerdude said:

He is shown to be extremely competent in combat, but that extraordinary competence doesn't generally spill over into some magical "get out of jail free" at every turn.

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I haven't read the book so I certainly can't claim otherwise, but the synopsis has him, over, and over, and over, and over again, achieving what was not possible for anyone else, succeeding where all others failed, making friends with everyone who is cool, saving his friends when it counts (so claims the synopsis), and so on.

The rest of what you're saying just tells me the setting is probably grimdark. Lots of genuine fanfiction Mary/Gary Sue/Stus also fail to save their friends where it makes things more dramatic for them.

innerdude said:

If Vaelin Al-Sorna is a Gary Stu, then so is Aragorn

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Well yes, Aragorn absolutely would be in the general Gary Stu bracket if he was the actual hero/main character of LotR (but Tolkien didn't always like Aragorn all that much, to judge from his letters, and intentionally kept him from being front-and-center), and frankly from the synopsis, Vaelin makes Aragorn look like a small toddler by comparative competence at, well, pretty much everything.

Personally I don't hold too much to the Gary Stu/Mary Sue thing outside of fanfiction (where it has a more precise meaning), because it is a bit overused about any heroic character, I'd generally only bring it up if you get into Wise Man's Fear "I trained as a ninja and I screw all the hottest babes also I am the best at sex because the sex-god taught me through sex" kind of "Jesus wept..." eye-roll territory.

If the synopsis is correct, Vaelin is a more overpowered character even than Kvothe's claims about Kvothe in a darker setting/universe (which is not uncommon), but probably less annoying that Kvothe's portrayal in WMF!

innerdude said:

(I appreciate you saying this. If you dig far enough back in the ratings of Wise Man's Fear on Amazon, like, ALL the way back to March 2011, I was one of the first and earliest 2-out-of-5 star ratings of WMF basically saying exactly what you're saying. I loved Name of the Wind and utterly despised Wise Man's Fear and basically will never read another written word of Rothfuss's ever again. But you'd never know what you're saying is true based on the 70,000 5-star ratings of the book on Amazon.)

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Oh I get that the 5-stars can be galling, but look at it like this - pretty much anyone who has the slightest modicum of good taste probably thinks Terry Goodkind is a mediocre to outright terrible writer and most of his books are mediocre to truly appalling and depraved. You can pretty much objectively demonstrate how bad his writing is on a variety of levels, not least that a lot of it is psychotic blood-soaked political polemic/wank fantasy. Yet the first book in his series, A Wizard's First Rule has 4.6 stars on Amazon. Sure Wise Man's Fear has 4.7, but like, you can take some solace in that it has virtually the same scores a truly terrible, utterly generic book about a man called "Richard Cypher" who at one point uses the "special mode" of his "magic sword" to ritually kill a sexy BDSM/torture nun in a bed (who wants to be "killed" with his "magic sword" in bed, you understand). Indeed A Wizard's First Rule remains the first book I ever attempted to literally throw out a window (thankfully it failed, because I don't think it's safe for a book to fall 30+ feet potentially on to people).

Ruin Explorer said:

There's no consistency or apparent logic to it. The Book of the New Sun, which is written so insanely brilliantly that it's been suggested by serious critics that it might be one of the best pieces of English writing in the 20th century, and which is very much multi-layered and has incredible prose, has a 4.23 on Goodreads. Throne of Glass, by Sarah J. Maas, which is a fairly generic and forgettable "teenage assassin" story with a basic-ass Twilight-style romantic subplot, by no means a terrible book, but certainly not an amazing one, has 4.18 on Goodreads, which is basically the same score!

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Also appreciate this thought, because it's applicable to Guy Gavriel Kay.

If a reader comes to Guy Gavriel Kay from a background of reading lots of Lit-RPG and new-age "romanti-fantasy", they're going to be in for a shock.

Kay's books are prosaic and significantly more literarily challenging than anything you'll find on the YA fiction shelf.

innerdude said:

If reader comes to Guy Gavriel Kay from a background of reading lots of Lit-RPG and new-age "romanti-fantasy", they're going to be in for a shock.

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Of the therapeutic kind.

innerdude said:

Also appreciate this thought, because it's applicable to Guy Gavriel Kay.

If reader comes to Guy Gavriel Kay from a background of reading lots of Lit-RPG and new-age "romanti-fantasy", they're going to be in for a shock.

Kay's books are prosaic and significantly more literarily challenging than anything you'll find on the YA fiction shelf.

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Tigana, which remains one of the most beautiful and moving fantasy novels I've ever read, indeed ranks pretty well in novels I've read generally (weakened only by the weird middle bit with the castle and the crops) has a Goodreads score of 4.08, barely above the "danger zone" score.

Which tells you a lot about ratings, honestly!

And they really do go down when people who a book is not suited for read it - I mean, this cuts both ways - Fourth Wing's score is slowly decreasing as more older or less romantasy-oriented readers read it because it's being hyped and thus they're reading it. I think it was over 4.7 at one point, and is at 4.58 now (i.e. in the "standard" range!).

To be fair though, I don't think lit-RPG and new age romantasy's audiences overlap significantly. In fact, I suspect most people who might read Fourth Wing or Throne of Glass or anything by T. Kingfisher will be actively repulsed by most lit-RPG. And people who read T. Kingfisher might well like Tigana.

Ruin Explorer said:

Indeed A Wizard's First Rule remains the first book I ever attempted to literally throw out a window (thankfully it failed, because I don't think it's safe for a book to fall 30+ feet potentially on to people).

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Can totally relate --- I literally hurled my 1100-page hardbound copy of Wise Man's Fear across the room against the wall after finishing the first sex goddess chapter. My wife had to reprimand me for the audible four-letter profanity that accompanied said hurling.

I think another thing about ratings is that, I dunno about anyone else, but my feelings about a book often change a bit over time. My initial "just finished it" reaction is often not the accurate one.

Tigana made me think of this, because when I first read it, my initial reaction was "this book had cool bits but overall it was kinda dumb". But then like, if you'd asked me two years later, with time to think and mature and so on, I'd have said it was pretty good. And when I re-read it years later after getting my wife a copy, I'd have said it was amazing.

Whereas with say, Brian Staveley's The Emperor's Blades, when I first read it, I'd have said it was super-cool, awesome, should read, but now? Having read the rest of the trilogy and the first book from the next (I will not be reading further), particularly? FARTS! I would say it had some cool ideas and characters and it was kind of mid overall, just kind of exciting.