They’re more usually referred to as “self-published”, I think. They’re all over Amazon and Kindle Unlimited. The trick is finding the ones that are actually readable - for me that’s been Hugh Howey (author of the enormous hit Wool series), the two authors I mentioned above, and…with caveats… Aleron Kong’s Chaos Seed series of “LitRPG” novels. (I don’t recommend those last as widely, but I’m hooked, okay.) But I’m sure there have got to be others.
I’ve been reading some LitRPG or Gamelit books and I think they are kind of fun. Not crazy about Kong, though. Dungeon Lord by Hugo Huesca is the best-written one I’ve read. I believe he has two or three out in this series. Viridian Gate Online by James Hunter has been entertaining.
LitRPG is a new genre that seems to be doing quite well. It started in Russia and has spread, and yeah, it’s indie writers. It’s all about being put into a VR game that seems like real life, but you level and get new abilities, etc. Sounds a bit corny but there’s something about the MC getting more powerful as the book progresses that is interesting.
I enjoyed both, though the Rithmatist really smells like the start of a series. Wikipedia claims it is, and the next book is due out “real soon now” so … maybe 2019?
Red Rising I loved, but I liked the second and third books in the series a little less and less. I have not picked up volume 4 (and I see there is a 5th volume promised). Still a reasonable read though.
The Rithmatist is one of the few books by Brandon Sanderson I haven’t read, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up on a sequel anytime soon which is why I haven’t read it yet.
The good news is he will be working on a new series alongside the excellent Stormlight series called Skyward that will also be based at an academy, just scifi this time.
Wow, Red Rising has gotten so good. Can I just ask, how did you guys discover this book? It hasn’t been nominated for Hugo, Nebula, or anything, so how did you find out about it? I’d never heard of it until @inactive_user recommended it. Clearly I don’t go about looking for good books the right way.
Buddy of mine recommended it. Not sure where he found it.
I"m reading the fourth book now… and yeah, it seems to continue that trend. Still decent enough.
Thats likely in part because when the first book came out it was originally marketed as the first of a trilogy. But its success may have made the author rethink that because the series was stretched out to at least 5 books. Im guessing that has brought some filler into the the rest of the books in the series, which waters down the narrative.
I dunno, the end of the third book felt very much like an ending to me. I doubt he padded the narrative so much as extended it past the original plotting.
Yeah, from what I read on Amazon reviews, it sounds like the original trilogy is still a trilogy, and that book 4 starts something new.
I finished Book 1 this morning. It’s so funny that it took me over a year for Darrow to get to school, and then it took me 3 days to finish the rest of the book, or 10 hours reading time.
I mean, that’s where the narrative takes off. If Darrow’s world isn’t totally grabbing you before then, I could see it being a bit of a slog.
Just to continue talk of Red Rising, I just finished the sequel, Golden Son. Honestly, I liked it even more than Red Rising.
Reasons why Red Rising is better
- 2nd half of book is “Students learning together”, one of my favorite themes
- Everything is fresh, unexpected, the beats are not established yet, so there’s a lot of true shocks, which you can’t do again in a sequel
Reasons why Golden Son is better
- It continues the overall arch of the story from the first half of Red Rising, and gives it much greater meaning
- Even though the beats are more predictable, thanks to it being a sequel, I still thought they were masterfully executed
- This novel finally addresses the big issues that is the main reason I love science fiction as a genre, that it makes you reflect on your own life as it uses science fiction as the tool to do so. The first novel didn’t have much I could reflect on in this regard, but the sequel does.
Now to read the end of the trilogy. I’ve never read a 3rd book in a trilogy that has been as good as the first two. Endings are never as satisfying as the meat of the story, so I’ll adjust my expectations accordingly.
Even with lowered expectations, the third book was a disappointment to me. It started off promising enough. I thought maybe I’d get an interesting look at the effects of isolation and torture. But no, it was mostly by the numbers, it finished the story that it needed to finish, but I never really got out of it the character catharsis that I was hoping for. Darrow and his love interest never really had any interesting conversations. The conversations he did have with new allies and old allies weren’t deeply satisfying in the way some of them were in the 2nd book.
Oh well. At the very least, the third book really ends things. I might one day look into reading the new books he’s writing in this universe, but this story is finished, so I had no desire to buy another book in this universe right away.
Except then he spoiled it by going and writing a fourth book… :P
There’s an excerpt of the fourth book at the end of the third one. I wasn’t really interested, but I was curious to see what character’s perspective the book followed. And it’s a character who was in 2nd and 3rd book, but was a kid. I didn’t read much more than that. Once the new trilogy (or whatever it turns out to be) is complete, maybe I’ll check it out. But that doesn’t mean the story being told in the original trilogy wasn’t complete. It was.
The fourth book follows multiple perspectives, including Darrow and his crew. At least in the first third it does, as I’ve kind of stalled there for now. :)
For those of you wanting to see what all of the talk is regarding The Expanse series, the first book is on sale for $3.99.
I finished The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson last night.
Overall I’d recommend it. For creating a whole new type of magic and the world that evolved around that magic, I’d give him good marks. It reminds a little of Harry Potter that way. And also in the way that it is about a student going to school at a magic-teaching institution. However, it was a much smaller scale book than Harry Potter. Harry’s world is inhabited by such a huge cast of characters, right from the beginning. The Rithmatist, by contrast, has 9 characters in it, total, and 4 or 5 them only have minor speaking parts.
So it’s a much smaller scale book. My only complaint about that is that the book is also a whodunit mystery. And when you’ve got a mystery, and your cast is so small, the list of suspects in the reader’s head is also really small, and easy to narrow down. I really wish he’d thrown in more characters, just for the sake of giving the reader more suspects to mull over.
Anyway, regardless, it is an enjoyable read.
Aw crap, I missed this, I would like to start reading The Expanse. Guess I could just start watching it instead.