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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2803 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 26, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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In anticipation of the what are we reading thread: What are we reading?

I have just finished the 2-book story by Daniel Suarez, Daemon and Freedom tm, which are not at all my usual genre but were given to me by a friend. I found them very fast and interesting reads on my commute. They're neither of them newly published, but has anyone read them?

Fate points. Classic litRPG about humans placed into a competition with 7(?) other "competitor races" and forced to fight to survive. The pacing is off at times but I enjoy the characterization (characters are generally rational and interested in their own, and humanity's survival, but not perfect, psychopathic, or lacking emotion) and the system is pretty well thought-out.

Seriously though the pacing can be pretty bad. Not nearly as bad as The Path of Ascension, where seemingly nothing ever happens even during vast multi-galaxy wars, but it did take this book a hundred and something chapters to resolve a minor secondary plotline.

I can strongly recommend Dungeon Crawler Carl if you're into this kind of stuff. Intentionally comedic most of the time (which is also enjoyable, especially the whiplash when the tone changes), but imo it's core strength is exploring a certain kind of horror about how the system works that is notably absent in most of other works. The audiobook is also quite good, for people who prefer that medium. Main weaknesses are imo the typical things that are almost unavoidable (main character has superficial allusions of being the underdog but is in practice always winning, the power level of everyone is always rising, as soon as ethics come up it's always from the lens of modern mainstream liberalism, women are noticeably male-ish, etc.) but most of those things make sense even inside the world itself so its not so irritating.

That's a great one! Though imo on a slight decline since book 3 or so. The genre as a whole really suffers from a sort of "fight-everything-itis" where there are no character stakes, no growth, and basically no plot, and the main characters are just a bunch of psychopaths wandering from one fight to the next. Usually they'll have like 1 moral principle--maybe they hate being disrespected, or hate slavery (but not murder, mysteriously), or racism, or something. The few books like DCC that manage both a system and an actual story are real gems haha.

Yes, I agree, DCC is slowly getting a bit formulaic & morphing into a standard "rebellion against the evil empire" story, but it has subverted my expectations before, so let's see.

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