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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   3337 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 18, 2024

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So, what are you reading?

I'm going through Dewey's The Public and its Problems. Still on McGilchrist's The Master and his Emissary. Thoughts below.

Someone here recommend Dungeon crawler Carl a few weeks ago and I really enjoyed listening to it. I have tried other litRPGs/Progression fantasy/cultivation but nothing else I've tried has even come close and are usually very poorly written (maybe the writers are ESL?) and I'm dumbfounded as to why they're popular.

Anyone have any recommendations in this space? Goodreads and Amazon ratings don't seem to mean much.

That might have been me. For LitRPG, 'World of Chains' was an enjoyable listen for me (and the compendium, books 1-3 at 45 hours total, is listed as a single audiobook on audible!), but not quite as good as DCC. My bigger recommendation would be the Bobbiverse series, which is technically not considered a progression fantasy and rather just goes under "SciFi". But fundamentally, it follows the trajectory of an initially powerless AI (which is itself just a copy of the mind of the eponymous Bob) towards literally settling the universe, so imo it's conceptually in the same space.

One recurring issue that i note is that characterization is either weak or practically non-existent.

Do these series have real characters other than the main character and is main character acting plausibly within the confines of the established world? I feel this genre has a painful self-insert and infallible MC issues.

Regardless, I'll check them out.

The Bobbiverse kinda sidesteps this issue since the entire point of the series that after a (near) human extinction, the self-replicating AI called Bob becomes it's own spacefaring empire. So there's a decent number of different characters in the main plot, it's just that they're all Bobs. While their values increasingly diverge as he's replicating himself, they generally are recognisably the same kind of nerdy programmer type the original Bob was (and it's implied that some of the latest generations of Bobs diverge even further). On the other hand, it's a book with an unusual lot of sideplots, humans didn't get entirely wiped out and there are a few other species, so there is a small number of non-Bob characters which get okay characterisation. It's sufficiently weird and imo enjoyable to listen to give it a try.

World of Chains is on the other hand a fairly standard Fantasy-RPG setting. One of the main points in the first books is specifically that the MC behaved like an ass to the major of the town he started the game in - which is in the middle of nowhere so he can't go anywhere else - so he has to patch up his relations with the entire town since, unsurprisingly, the major is pretty popular. Most individuals are reasonable people with reasonable motivation, including the major and her supporters. But since it's an RPG in-universe, there are a few enemies that are almost comical archvillain-tier of badness and some oddness around how quests and NPC behaviour/reputation works, but it's explicitly talked about.

Overall both stories regularly have situations where it's implied or explicitly stated that the MC has made a mistake (especially in the bobbiverse, where different Bobs are MCs in different parts of the story and they don't always agree with each other). Admittedly I'd say both stories seem pretty strong on the self-insert - for both Bob and Daniel (WoC's MC) I wouldn't be surprised if their backstory is literally the actual life of their respective authors. And also, both books have a bit stiff prose that is pretty common among nerd writers. And they're very obviously progression fantasies, so while the MCs do make mistakes along the way, they never screw up so badly that they're done for (on the other hand, for Bob this is only true in the aggregate - some Bobs do in fact fail and die).

Do you recommend them as listens or reads? I noticed that WoC is narrated by the soundbooth theatre guys so I assume that is well done.

Listens, for precisely that reason.

Thanks, I'll check them out!

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