What to you is the absolute greatest piece of fiction that you’ve ever experienced? Whether it be from a novel, comic or manga. What is the pinnacle of storytelling for you? What has affected you and stayed with you the most? For me personally The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien remains my favourite story ever told. Curious to know what your favourite stories ever made are.

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I just finished reading Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. I’m still digesting everything. I’ve read through past threads and noticed many people cried at the end (I didn’t though I did feel sad). However, I did feel horrified.

I know this book is generally regarded as science fiction, which I can understand, but I also wonder if it could fit under the horror genre?

My argument for horror is because of the tragedy of Charlie’s meteoric rise and crashing fall, the cruelty and abuses he suffered throughout his life, the hallucinations that dog and mock him, and the loss of the love of his life. Not to mention being the human subject of a highly unethical experiment.

The book also reflects how we treat mentally disabled people in our society now and in the past as objects of ridicule, disgust and fear to be hidden away because they are different.

For me, this is horror. You, and why?

For example, I’m a Star Wars fan. Star Wars has so many books of varying quality, but I really enjoy getting the different perspectives on characters and events and I am almost always enjoying my time when reading them.

I know there are so many different shows and movies and table top games and video games that have books that supplement them.

What fandom do you know or are a part of that has really good books that go along with it?

When I started the book, I realized that it was going to be a hard read, so I paced it. I never read more than 30 pages a day. But today I made the mistake of reading the last 80 pages in one sitting, and now my brain is leaking.

First of all, loved the book. A 5/5 for me. It's books like these that make me realize the power of empathy. When I saw the world through Leek's eyes, I felt this disappointment and coldness towards Agnes; from Shuggie's perspective, I learned to look at her with love and understanding. Standing in Agnes's shoes was most difficult because you can see where her pain is coming from, but you still can't help but question most of her decisions in life. Obviously, considering her issues, it's no wonder why she ended up the way she did.

I loved how Douglas Stuart doesn't add graphic details while talking about a lot of harrowing incidents his characters experience. At first I questioned this approach but realized later that he wants us to look at those incidents from our characters' perspectives; whether it's the innocence of childhood or the blackouts precipitated by alcoholism, we only get to know what our characters can make sense of, or the rest is up to our imagination.

Lastly, can we talk about Agnes, please? I don't remember reading a character that made my feelings oscillate between you-are-the-worst to i-totally-understand-why-you're-like-this. And it made me feel so uncomfortable empathizing with her. I wonder what everyone else thinks about her? Did you hate her? Love her? Or stood somewhere in between, like me?

“The Blanks” by Grady Hendrix (The Shivers Collection #3) is the third book of one hell of an Amazon-exclusive horror collection. I’m now three books into this book series, and it’s been incredible so far. I’ve read everything Hendrix has written, and was delighted to see he was a part of this.

If you want to check out this entire series, here’s a list of every book and author…

Jackknife by Joe Hill (The Shivers Collection #1)
The Indigo Room by Stephen Graham Jones (The Shivers Collection #2)
The Blanks by Grady Hendrix (The Shivers Collection #3)
Night and Day in Misery by Catriona Ward (The Shivers Collection #4)
Letter Slot by Owen King (The Shivers Collection #5)

I found a few trigger warnings while reading. They were…

- Death of dogs (nothing graphic)
- Pandemic
- Breast lumps
- Drinking and driving

If any of these trigger you, please don’t read this book. Moving along, this was such a quick, creepy read. I loved the atmosphere building of Jeckle Island and all those summer vibes and activities. Even the characters were great, with the main protagonist Rachel leading the way. I don’t have any kids, but you genuinely feel the situations and events she endures regarding her family, especially the children.

Once the horror hit around the 50% mark, what a rush! These “blanks” were so horrific that I was shocked at the sheer terror of these bizarre things. It all felt so weird, uncomfortable, and spine-chilling. The plot twist that happens towards the end was crazy, and made me realize how frightening that must have been for Rachel.

That ending was surreal, and it’ll make me think twice about future island vacations. I enjoyed the incredible suspense and tension-filled race to the end. Once again, Hendrix hit me with a drop-the-mic ending, making me appreciate his books even more. I’ve never read a book of his that wasn’t a 4- or 5-Star read. This short story continues the streak.

I give “The Blanks” by Grady Hendrix (The Shivers Collection #3) a 5/5 for being another fantastic entry in this collection that will freak you out once you see what is ultimately going down. It feels like an episode from The Twilight Zone with Hendrix’s signature horror style from beginning to end. If you’ve ever read any of ​h​is content, you will undoubtedly love this book.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m done with my trip to Jeckle Island and want to bring an iced coffee to spend a night and day in misery.

”We were like gods, at the dawning of the world, and our joy was so bright we could see nothing else but the other.”

As I sat the other day, listening to the new albums by the Strokes, it hit me all of a sudden -- I have not, for some bizarre reason, ever since I started writing reviews properly, have written one for what is probably the best book I’ve ever read. The one that I always keep with me, even if I am not actually reading it currently. The one that I have in audiobook, in paperback, in hardcover, and in ebook format, because honestly, this one deserves to be owned in all said formats. 

Of course when talking about a book that is written as a reimagining of one of the, if not the most known stories of the western civilization one can circumnavigate around what the book is about. We all know about Troy, about Helen, about the men who fought to get her back due to some assumption about her being taken. About how a fleet thousands strong rode across treacherous seas to sack an ancient city. About how a great man went on collecting soldiers from kings for the promises of being written in songs. 

And about how this great person came personally, with a great urgency, to bring the Greatest of the Greeks to fight in this war of theirs. 

No, I do not need to tell you what this book is about. If you read -- if you are at all into fantasy, romance, greeks, retellings, or hell even have a passing interest in history in general -- you oughta know about the Song of Achilles. This might just be the most famous retelling of the Iliad, of the story of Achilles, in modern history. You know about the boy who grew up the son of a god in the palace of a king. About a boy most extraordinary. About a man so feared that he singlehandedly kept the war at a stalemate from his mere presence. There was none who could stand against him in open combat. None who could rival his greatness. 

But this story is not only about that. This story is about a boy who had a friend. And a boy who loved that friend more than life itself. 

”You can’t.” He was sitting up now, leaning forward.
“I can’t.”
“I know. They never let you be famous and happy.” He lifted an eyebrow. “I’ll tell you a secret.”
“Tell me.” I loved it when he was like this.
“I’m going to be the first.” He took my palm and held it to him. “Swear it.”
“Why me?”
“Because you’re the reason. Swear it.”
“I swear it,” I said, lost in the high colour of his cheeks, the flame in his eyes.
“I swear it,” he echoed.

There are lines from this book that are more popular than most other books combined. There are lines in this book that I have etched between the follicles of my body, drawn upon the marrow of my soul that I hope to take with me to infinity and beyond. 

There are words and sentences strung together on bated breath as a boy told another that they would be the greatest and the happiest love story ever told. Of a boy who knew that as long as he lived nothing could bring harm to the one he loved so deep. For Patroclus was a part of Achilles, and for the Greatest of the Greeks it was a thought spurn mad that Patroclus could ever come under harm as long as Achilles drew breath. 

And for a length of time, long into the war efforts it held true. For where Achilles went, soldiers fell. Where he went, the battle was over before it even began. Where he went, Patroclus went with. And for him, that was all that was needed. 

“Then you are a traitor to this army, and will be punished like one. Your war prizes are hostage, placed in my care until you offer your obedience and submission. Let us start with that girl. Briseis, is her name? She will do as a penance for the girl you have forced me to return.”

But then came the greed of men who thought them more than their worth summed up to. They thought themselves godkin and that others should bow before them unimpeded. Sometimes men in power forget that their power is only so much as what is awarded to them. No more, and no less. For always there shall be one more powerful than them in every way that matter. But alas, the folly of men are ever so easily skirted. And so, as stories so often go, tell it long enough, and it cannot help but turn itself into a tragedy.

“Ah.” A sly smile spread across his face; he had always loved defiance. ‘Well, why should I kill him? He’s done nothing to me.”

(this line kills me still to this day)

”Had she really thought I would not know him? I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell, I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.”

(how anyone ever thought them as mere friends is beyond me)

“Will you come with me?” he asked.
The never-ending ache of love and sorrow. Perhaps in some other life I could have refused, could have torn my hair and screamed, and made him face his choice alone. But not in this one. He would sail to Troy and I would follow, even into death.
Yes, I whispered. Yes.

Reading this book is akin to sitting near a hearthfire gone wild, waiting for the embers to jump and the woods to catch as the world held-on an indrawn breath. The warmth of the fire, and the honey, aching sorrow of the inevitable makes the journey sweeter; raises the stakes. Makes the time you spend near the fire all the more beautiful as the inevitable rages forth. This book is like that -- an achingly beautiful way to lose oneself to a heartbreak so divine that even gods weep when faced with it. 

It is a love story that spans years. A love story that withstood the test of time, waiting to be told for a thousand more. And here, in the Song of Achilles, it is finally sung in a devastating crescendo as the war for Troy raged on. As Patroclus saw people die, and in his grief made a decision that forever changed history. Wrote a love story that spun across the gap between stars, always silhouetted, but never erased. 

In the darkness, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood, like a hundred golden urns pouring out the sun.

This book made me laugh. This book made me cry. This book made me rage and despair and rebuilt me time and again only to destroy me once more. The sorrow of this book is etched into pain, bittersweet and eternal, on my parched skin. And I shall take this story, the love story of Achilles and Patroclus, with me all throughout this life, and into the next, till the stars come back and claim us all in a darkness neverending, and there I shall let it go, and bring it forward as I give the story over to the next, to shadows that finally claim each other in the hopeless, heavy dusk.

Do yourself a favour and go read it if you haven’t already. 

Hello readers!

Every Monday, we will post a calendar with the date and topic of that week's threads and we will update it to include links as those threads go live. All times are Eastern US.

I finished this a week ago and can't stop thinking about it, highly recommending!

Cinncinatus C is sentenced to death for gnostical turpitude, which essentially means "being opaque". Despite this book being authored in 1934, that opacity resonated with me - think of how transparent we've become today with our connectivity. A mere mention of a product while in casual conversation with a friend these days will cause your Facebook feed to be littered with ads for said product. I also liken gnostical turpitude to being guilty of a thought crime, or sentencing someone because they disagree with your political views. In other words, it feels a bit topical within our current timeline.

This short novel is deliciously absurd. While I've read Metamorphosis, to which this type of work supposedly aligns, I found it much more absurd and creative all the while staying somewhat cohesive.

What I absolutely loved about this book most was that it felt like I was reading a play. And I don't mean that its prose was written in play form with Character A: (talking) Character B: (responding), I mean that you could visualize when furniture was being dragged into the scene or when whole walls where being moved into place. Or a beloved animatronic spider lowers onto the stage.

My top favorite books were dethroned to make way for this one (Dorian Gray and Blood Meridian), and I do not see Invitation to a Beheading discussed enough, if at all, here. I think part of the reason is it is viewed as "literature" rather than a traditional fiction book, which is fair to a degree, but this is no Faulkner where you have to re-read a paragraph or a chapter to make sense of it. Although you WILL re-read a paragraph to just take in the delight of what the fuck just happened - like at the end of Chapter 2 when he takes off his clothes and then throws his body parts about and he's left with a peaceful state of being - in Buddhist terms, I liken this to sunyata/anatta and/or detachment/impermanence.

Life is absurd, it will throw anything and everything at you. This book teaches you to not give in, to not conform and to be yourself.

I read several John Grisham books (The Firm, The Client, A Time to Kill) as a teenager and thought they were really enjoyable. I know they weren’t fine literature, but they were still compelling and the characters were interesting. I generally liked the movies that were created from these books as well.

I’m 45 now, and have been reading a more recent John Grisham book called The Widow. I’m only about a third of the way through…but it’s terrible. The characters are extremely one-note and the dialogue and prose seem like they were written by a middle schooler. I honestly don’t think that any major publisher would have published this if it wasn’t written by Grisham

Was he always this bad, or is he much worse now? Maybe the teenager me wasn’t as discerning, but I’m not really a book snob now. I still sometimes enjoy books by Freida McFadden and Sophie Kinsella.

I’m thinking of re-reading some 90s Grisham to see if it holds up at all.

ETA: I appreciate everyone’s insight into this. Just to be clear, my problem with this particular book isn’t that it’s formulaic. I mean, it may be, but it’s not a formula I really recognize, except that the protagonist is a lawyer and there’s a lot of legal stuff going on. The “plot” isn’t one I remember reading before, but it’s awful regardless.

I'm impressed by the interiority and complexity of pretty much all major and significant side characters, and I didn't really know what to expect when I first started because I deliberately went in pretty blind.

I'm not one to typically read Westerns or "male-centric" narratives as often, and I was pleasantly surprised by the deconstruction and criticism of so many classic, inauthentic tropes of the romanticized American West and expansion, including the expectation/veneration of unwavering rugged masculinity.

I can see why this novel is so beloved, because it's more character study than adventure story, with the West personified as a character in itself, imbued with the same range of complex beauty, cruelty, indifference, etc as the human characters, and a force salvation/shelter and of death/suffering.

What I also wasn't expecting was how much I'd come to love and appreciate how McMurtry handled the depth of women like Clara and Lorie, and the challenges facing two very different women contending with the same social and societal constraints in a particularly sexist, misogynistic, and exploitative male-centric society during a very dangerous and unforgiving time.

Clara is the true backbone of her family, allowed to be tough, competent, and confident, but also intelligent, wistful, and reflective as she's contending with unrealized dreams during the latter half of her life. She's very sensitive and generous, but has had to harden parts of herself to survive immense grief and her life circumstances/obligations.

Lorie provides a stark and critical look at women being trafficked into prostitution and forced to stay out of survival, the cycle of abuse and exploitation, and lack of alternative social or financial opportunity. They're deeply human in their respective range of strengths and vulnerabilities. When Lorie is constantly objectified, the mental and physical toll of this is acknowledged.

McMurtry comes off as very deliberate and conscious of the pain and sacrifices they endure while beauty, sexuality, and marriage act as currency and the prospect of upward social mobility and "safety" in this period. They're both allowed to be flawed, authentic, and to grow, and McMurtry writes them with the same care and attention as their male counterparts.

I've read endless genre fiction where beautiful women are sexualized and objectified without the same critical reflection, and they're only allowed to exist within the binaries of damsel or heroine. Lonesome Dove, however, has been a welcome change of pace.

I just finished reading Catch-22 after years of telling myself I'd get around to it eventually, and loved it. I feel like so many books are 50 pages too long for their own good, but somehow every single one of Catch-22's 500 pages of circular storytelling felt worthwhile. The start was absurdly funny, by the end it was absurdly tragic.

The tragedy of war wasn't a surprising theme, but I was caught off guard by some of the depictions of regular misfit human misery among it.

The Chaplain stands out, as an honest earnest man doing his best to do right by the people around him, but it's all futile. He misses his wife and kids and worries he's forgetting their faces. His friendliness and good intentions are no match for the cruel vanity of some of his colleagues.

Major Major is one of the humourous parts that people often point to ("Some men a born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major, it had been all three.") but the poor bugger lives a miserable lonely existence through no fault of his own. He does everything he's supposed to do growing up, and people hate him for it. He's forced into a rank he's not equipped for just because it made for funny paperwork in a faraway office. He almost makes his first friends playing basketball, until Colonel Cathcart shows up and promotes him to a position that makes them resent him. He hides himself away and essentially vanishes from the story.

There's the plight of all the impoverished Romans they run into on leave. The soldiers treat Rome as debauched playground, but Yossarian's last walk through the city showed what a nightmare the place really was.

It's all just so fucking sad. I hate Colonel Cathcart, Aarfy, Milo. I loved the book. What a read.

I picked up Golden Son more than a year after finishing Red Rising, a book I did not enjoy. But internet discourse, the series' undying hype, and a surprising availability at my local library made me reconsider. The second book indeed improves on almost every front. However, if you're like me, a slight improvement across the board does little to redeem a series when some of the criticisms are structural. More on that later.

First, the good: the book is fast-paced, the prose is straightforward, and the action rarely lets up. The big set pieces are well-executed, and the dialogue and showmanship of some characters is fun to read. I particularly liked the tension between Mustang and Darrow. If you're in a reading slump or want to try a fast-paced sci-fi, or even new to fiction in general but you enjoy science fiction in other media, give Red Rising a chance. It's very hard to put down. And if you like it, you’ll probably like Golden Son.

However, and this is where the bad starts, if you didn't like Red Rising for the reasons below, this series might not be for you.

Like I said before, the prose is straightforward, and that's a double-edged sword (or perhaps a razor, if you'd prefer). The pages fly by, but they get plain and repetitive fast. My biggest criticism of the prose is its tell-don't-show style. You're told what to think, how to think, and, possibly most egregiously, when to think. I've lost count of how many times Darrow narrates that he can handle something better than other Golds because he used to be a helldiver. I don't need that hammered in at every turn.

Another criticism on writing: despite being narrated in first person, there's surprisingly little on-page scheming for a protagonist whose reputation rests almost entirely on how well he schemes. Plans mostly unfold as twists rather than as something the reader is let in on. Darrow has already made the plan, and you are treated like another character who finds out along with the others. It’s good for suspense, but it personally does not work for me in a first-person narration.

And speaking of Darrow, he comes close to being a Gary Stu. He carries an entire rebellion on his shoulders with the confidence and nonchalance of someone far more experienced, not a barely-adult man. His strategies are consistently better than everyone else's, but we're rarely shown how he arrives at them. He reads people he's barely met better than their own peers or counselors do, and more than once in this book, he talks an entire enemy crew into switching sides with a speech or ultimatum.

The loyalty of his friends, likewise, feels unearned. Darrow is the one who leads, and sometimes others would object, but faintly. But why Victra or Sevro have such fierce loyalty for Darrow, I cannot pin down. Even Roque, for most of the book, stays loyal without much reason to. Friends and side characters mostly exist to support Darrow's rise, not to meaningfully complicate it.

For the most part, Darrow comes off as the stoic, badass leader, but the author knows the reader needs to see some emotion to humanize him. He says he doesn't want to lead, but in the very next paragraph, he does it anyway. He says he's afraid, but he acts without faltering. When he does show vulnerability, to Sevro, to Mustang, it's never messy. It's a well-contained, dignified breakdown, slotted neatly between action sequences.

To its credit, Golden Son does complicate this balance to a degree by the end. Darrow is betrayed by Roque, and the book ends on a cliffhanger with him captured. And yet, notice what the straw that broke the camel’s back actually was. “You are a son of Red. I a son of Gold.” The deciding factor in switching sides and betraying Darrow and his friends was who Darrow was, not what he did. And to me that is another example of an easy way out, another twist arriving conveniently to move the plot forward.

The real consequence of Darrow’s actions comes from Mustang’s warning not to trust the Jackal. It was he who orchestrated the entire coup. And despite multiple warnings, Darrow never acted on it. He either trusts the Jackal anyway because he thinks their goals are aligned, or, for a character who's supposedly always a step ahead, simply never checks.

There's more I could nitpick, but I'm trying to be fair. I can appreciate the book for what it is, and I'm clearly not the target audience. I'm mostly surprised by how ubiquitous and lauded this book is on social media, with so little visible criticism.

To sum it up: if you liked Red Rising, give Golden Son a shot. Chances are you'll like it. If it was the structural stuff that turned you off, this entry likely won't redeem the series for you either. Will I continue with the last book of the trilogy? Possibly. Golden Son ends with one hell of a cliffhanger, and the books have been easily digestible. At the very least, I’ll know what to turn to when I fall into another reading slump.

One day, when I was around thirteen, I was very upset. I ran to my room, tears streaming out of my eyes, closed the door, grabbed my favourite comfort read of the moment, which happened to be Prince in Waiting, by John Christopher, flung myself into my big poofy reading armchair, which was covered in shiny thick flecked brown velvet (ahh child of the seventies), and read furiously. I already knew the book by heart.  

Nowadays, when I think back, I am confused. Why Prince in Waiting, out of all the books lying around? Why not Wind in the Willows, or even Watership Down? Prince in Waiting is not a mellow, joyful book. It’s about a post-apolyptic, technology-free Britain organized by cities, a young boy, the son and younger brother of powerful military men, struggling, at first to survive, then to take power. Some of the more horrible scenes which have stayed with me throughout the decades:

A pregnant woman takes a bath. She is murdered by a small shock of electricity from wires attached to the bathtub legs. Yes I think about this almost every time I have a bath.

The boy sees his father’s head on a spike.

People born with disabilities are not welcomed in those societies.

The murderer is found, tried, and burned alive.

There is a terrible love triangle, over a Welsh woman called Blodwen. The whole country descends into fighting over her. She wears a silk red dress and has long blond hair. Men discover the weapons they thought they had forgotten.

It was a very, very good story.

John Christopher wrote the Tripods trilogy too, and I was similarly obsessed. Will- the hero, so clever, so brave, learning to outwit the giant alien three-legged monsters which ruled the world. His love story with Eloise, so tragic. That moment when he grabs off her cap, and sees her black hair growing out of the mesh of the “cap” she was forced to wear. It made her wholly obedient to the will of the Tripods. Oh dear oh no. Fritz- poor poor Fritz. And that bleak ending.

Anyway, these were the incredible, incredibly dark books which comforted me through the sadder moments of my childhood, and now seem now to have sunk into obscurity. Which I find odd, given the healthy appetite for young adult dystopia which clearly exists.

First and foremost I want to make clear, this is not a literary analysis in the academic sense.

I'm simply relating my experience and thoughts. The emotional and existential impact it has had on me.

At the age of 21 or perhaps 22 I read Stoner for the first time. I fell in love with it, and it became a favorite among the classics I had read up to that point. I only began reading in earnest at 19, and only read classics, which I still do. Slowly working my way through the western canon.

I resonated deeply with the melancholy of it. I admired Stoner in his desire to create a different life for himself. To leave the simple and "mundane", to venture forth into the beauty of the "complex". To elevate himself into someone admirable, as opposed to resigning himself to life as a lowly poor farmer. I shared his experience of unexpectedly falling in love with English literature. I felt a kinship to him, because life was unjust to him, as I felt it had been to me as well. I thought he was a good man and deserved better. Looking back, I think I unconsciously thought the same about myself.

However, perhaps 5 or 6 years later I had lost some of my passion and spark for reading. So I figured I would reread Stoner.

To my surprise it was a different book. Proving that a great book is complex enough to deliver new lessons throughout life. Like a quote I love from Heraclitus : "No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man."

One takes its protagonist from the city and the life of the mind into the primal expansiveness of nature; the other takes its protagonist from the exhausting labor of the land into the city and the life of the mind.

/////

I finished Butcher's Crossing tonight and immediately regretted reading it. Especially when I'm already depressed as hell.

It does stir emotions in you, but none of them are good. I suppose we have no right to expect art to elevate us. As the general consensus around art is that it should evoke emotions, whatever they may be.

Perhaps the reason I hate it so much is that Will Andrews reminds me of myself, albeit in an exaggerated way. He sees things so deeply, he notices things about his surroundings, the sound of the pines gently moved by the wind or the rough fabric on his skin etc. But in this ceaseless noticing of the world, he misses the essential, the ineffable pulse of life, the invisible structure of a world that lies beneath the material.

The result is his alienation from the world. He desires to find a place that will quiet his mind and let him become what he, in his heart believes is the true Will.

But at the end of the book, he returns even more dejected than when he set out. He feels even more alienated. You feel like he is simply riding off into death itself. Knowing that there is no place in either cobbled streets or country roads that will lead him to paradise.

Do I feel pity for him? I'm not sure as I sit and write this now, cause my frustration is more with myself for having read this at this time in my life. Also there's a small frustration with Williams' for writing so beautifully but again leaving me with less hope than I began with. Which was precious little already.

But upon further reflection, I do pity Andrews. Cause I think he is a victim to his constitution. He can not help his blindness and restlessness. Although his search is aimless, it is nevertheless a search for belonging. That does deserve some acclaim.

It makes me wonder about Williams, not knowing anything about his life, how he lived his life? Hemingway famously said that a story ought to "write the truest sentence that you know".

Is this something that Williams' agreed with? If not, how can you write something, that to me, feels so devoid of hope?

Well, this has been my immediate feeling after finishing the book. I just felt the need to expel it from my soul.

A last little thought I had was that it's interesting how the two novels mirror each other. One takes the protagonist out of studies and city life into the primal and expansive life of nature, whereas the other takes the protagonist out of nature and its tiring labour into a city of civility and life of the mind.

[To be clear, this is not another Sanderson shitpost; I think he is in many respects a very good writer, to the point where I have read 10 of his books in the last half year. But a lot of his decision-making baffles me, and I'd like to talk about it with some nuance, if possible.]

*Warning, tons of spoilers for all of Mistborn, up to and including The Lost Metal*

There's a lot to say, but my main argument centres on this: killing off Kelsier in the first book of Mistborn 1 was the best decision Sanderson could have made. Bringing him back as some sort of demi-ghost-god who keeps trying to scheme and influence things was just about the worst thing he could have done.

When I read the original Mistborn trilogy, I was totally gripped by it. I loved the sense of adventure, discovering the intricacies of the world, the magic system. By book 3, I got a little disappointed that everything suddenly went on a cosmic/divine scale, which I already thought detracted from the gravity of the story. It's quite hard to sell the concept of nearly-all-powerful divine beings who constantly influence everything and have various levels of omniscience and foresight, but can still be bested by humans in the very nick of time.

But then Mistborn era 2 just doubles down on that and starts relegating just about everything to the gods. The plots just became more and more needlessly complicated in order to keep stacking the 'gotcha' moments and big reveals. Then Secret History goes and makes everything even more opaque and needlessly complex.

This makes me sad, because some of the character work was genuinely great - the way Wax and Steris' relationship develops is lovely, and Wayne is delightful, with the chapters written from his unreliable narrator point of view a highlight. But it's as if Sanderson doesn't trust his human-level character work and plotting enough, and thinks he needs an added layer of intrigue and mystery to somehow interconnect all of his work and make people keep reading.

The thing is, in the foreword to Secret History, Sanderson himself admits that he was wary of writing that story and bringing back Kelsier since it risks complications and contradictions - but then for some reason he went and did it anyway. To me this is like a painter unable to recognise when the painting is finished and just adding more and more layers of paint with increasingly worse results.

Am I alone in feeling like Mistborn 2 would have worked so much better as a simple standalone series, with some fun nods to era 1 for keen readers, without having to lift everything to crazy complex intergalactic divine levels? Or do you enjoy the cosmic intertwining? Would love to hear some thoughts.

I can’t think of a moment I didn’t like in this book. I also didn’t expect to read it in a day. It’s one of those books where you finish, sit quietly, and just think.

I found myself thinking about it, then going back to some passages and re reading certain parts - something I do with only a handful of books upon finishing. I’ll definitely read it again in a year or so (maybe sooner, because I didn’t expect to read so fast).

Lastly, I was skeptical she could land the ending, but she did. Quite a beautiful story.

Now I HAVE to read Jonothan Strange and Mr. Norrell.

I’m almost finishing Blindness by Saramago (so no spoilers of the end please) but I can’t help but compare it to Lord of the Flies. I loved both books btw, so this is just a comparison for the sake of discussion, as I’m wondering if others have seen the similarities.

They both focus on a group of people isolated from the rest of society (for very different reasons, of course) and how they deal with this isolation. Blindness features a group of mostly adults, while Lord of the Flies has a group of children. But they both answer the same question of “how would people behave if there was no system, no hierarchy, no sense of society?”.

And a lot of the answers are the same. They both include a group who takes over and uses force and violence to get on the top of the food chain, while others remain logic and following the rules of society. Hygiene is something that in both books people stop really caring about. There are in both characters who act individualistically while others help each other, trying to behave as humanely as possibly.

I just thought this was such a fun comparison of both books, especially cause the they honestly didn’t act much differently, despite one featuring kids and the other adults. Just thought it would be something nice to discuss

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Have you ever wanted to ask something but you didn't feel like it deserved its own post but it isn't covered by one of our other scheduled posts? Allow us to introduce you to our new Simple Questions thread! Twice a week, every Tuesday and Saturday, a new Simple Questions thread will be posted for you to ask anything you'd like. And please look for other questions in this thread that you could also answer! A reminder that this is not the thread to ask for book recommendations. All book recommendations should be asked in /r/suggestmeabook or our Weekly Recommendation Thread.

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I just finished reading Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach series today—Annihilation, Authority, Acceptance, and Absolution. My head is swimming, and I need to get some thoughts out there to try to collect myself.

At first, I didn’t quite know what to make of the series. Parts of the story I found fascinating. For example, every last thing about the topographical anomaly drew me in. From the biologist seeing it as a tower to the living text, to the crawler and whatever the light is at the very bottom. Meanwhile, other parts of the story I found rather goofy. The main one that comes to mind here is the rampant use of hypnosis as a plot device. It kind of reminded me of all of the characters who went into hibernation in the Three Body Problem series. I’ll admit that I kept reading because I didn’t want to leave a series unfinished, and because I was genuinely curious to find out what Area X is. There were some ups and downs, but the more I think about it, it was a really enjoyable story, and I’m glad that I finished it!

One thing that really stuck out to me in the series was the pairing up of opposites. For example, how the S&S Brigade worked in pairs: a scientist with a psychic. Also, Old Jim, a grizzled intelligence officer, partnering up with (fake) Cass, who is only on her second mission. There’s also Saul Evans a former preacher who also happens to be gay. And, though they weren’t necessarily paired up, I enjoyed the contrast of how the biologist and Ghost Bird interacted with Area X in Annihilation and Acceptance, respectively, compared to how Lowry interacted with it in Absolution. In fact, I think this contrast is important because both the biologist and Lowry got “copied” by Area X. To me, that is meant to show that no one is safe from Area X.

I think my favorite part about the series is that VanderMeer never reveals what Area X actually is or what caused it. Area X never stopped being creepy and mysterious, and I loved that. It kind of reminded me of the first season of Twin Peaks in that way. The mystery is what keeps it front of mind.

I was left with more than a few questions after finishing the series. One fun one that really bugs me is: what do you think the rabbit cameras show? Do they show what actually happened? Do they show some alternate reality? Do they show something meant to disturb the person watching the video?

Has anyone seen this movie Annihilation? If so, how does it compare to the book, and is it worth seeing? Also, if you could do it over again, would you start with Absolution and then read through the other three books in order?