Use of weapons is also just fantastic on its own merits (and doesn't touch the Culture side too much anyway). It's stayed with me, even if I've only ever read it twice. I could gush, but I think this one of the works you should go in blind. It's still good on later reads, but the first time is special.
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
- Fantasy Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
- Location
- Seattle
Given that Stonehenge aligns with both the solstice and equinox, and can even predict lunar eclipses, perhaps there is some overlap.
WhiteNights
Notorious Phoneposter
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I've started reading A Memory Called Empire, and it has vibes similar to the beginning part of this quest, so if someone liked that part they might like this book.
I really enjoyed A Memory Called Empire, but I haven't started Desolation yet. It's a great political/spy thriller with some cool worldbuilding (galactic Aztec empire).
Also Animporphs were my childhood. I started reading them at about 6 years old, and today, as a professional bookseller, I don't recommend them to anyone below 12, because dear god Katherine, what made you think a book about kids fighting a guerrilla war against an alien conspiracy and all of them picking up actual PTSD and then marketing it towards young children was a good move?It was a fantastic move actually I loved them and I'm so glad I got to read them at that age.
Also Animporphs were my childhood. I started reading them at about 6 years old, and today, as a professional bookseller, I don't recommend them to anyone below 12, because dear god Katherine, what made you think a book about kids fighting a guerrilla war against an alien conspiracy and all of them picking up actual PTSD and then marketing it towards young children was a good move?
Tasoli
Life is for Living
- Location
- Behind the Keyboard.
Yeah having an Arab* woman being The Man was interesting choice. And there is pretty good supporting cast as well so it works wonderfuly.
I feel the same way. Especially about Techocracy since source books I read about them are actually doing worse worldbuilding than the quest itself.
*Incidently, @Codex you are Arab right? So perhaps you would be interested, and even if not it is a great story with awesome chracters so don't miss out.
Could Mathilde get a less redacted version of the diary of Ptolos, since he was a Grey and presumably the ones redacting his diary are the Grey College? Might be useful for Eike, since she seems to have intuitive Windsight.
NSMS
Probably evil, unfortunately.
- Location
- A rapidly widening tear in the fabric of reality
I can also recommend the Animorphs series. I'm not sure it has enough depth for adult readers- it's been waaaay too long since I read it for me to remember it very well- but it touches on topics like PTSD, what's right and what's wrong and what's acceptable to do in warfare, identity and free will, and a bunch of other similar things. Though, warnings for body horror most definitely apply.
Outside of that, if you're willing to look at older authors Isaac Asimov is a good pick for sci-fi stuff. He doesn't really do action, but there are a lot of interesting ideas in his books- for example, the Three Laws of Robotics are from his work. Based on what you've said I'd recommend the Robot series ('I, Robot', which has nothing to do with the film in case you're wondering, 'Caves of Steel', etc), but honestly most of his books are a good read.
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K von Carstein
Likes to go for a walk
- Location
- Belgium
- Pronouns
- He
I loved his "Foundation" series. The politics and scheming are really fun, and seeing him exploring the various social and politic mechanisms used by the Foundation to survive and prosper is very interesting.
That seems like a good idea, especially since I do want to try and get a windsight action with Eike done at some point. Half of Mathilde-style wizarding is being able to see magic really well, after all (the other half is chopping people in half with a greatsword).
Eike would already have read the version in the Grey Order's library as part of her early lessons on developing her Windsight, those classes would have reading lists on hand for the less common kinds.
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
The main issue with the Animorphs series isn't the depth for adult readers, IMO: there's some genuinely affecting stuff which held up when I reread it in my twenties. No, the problem is the unevenness: the series was being published at the rate of one mainline book a month, plus the occasional Chronicles (backstory novels focusing on a specific important character or setting piece), Megamorphs (larger books narrated by multiple characters at different points rather than the rotation through the main cast of who is narrating a specific book), and Alternamorphs (noncanonical what-if CYOAs). Obviously this is a literally impossible writing schedule for anyone to meet, yes that means you Brandon Sanderson sit your ass down; most of the series, by volume, was ghostwritten.
The problem this presents is that you will have a deeply psychological book about the struggle Tobias has to set aside his trauma and work alongside a defector from the enemy who happened to have brutally tortured him for days back before she defected, wondering all the while if his suspicions of her defection being genuine are rooted in fact or emotional impulse and also needing to control the instincts from one of the most horrifying morphs yet, bookended on one side by "fuck it, we're sending Cassie to Australia, she'll be back by the end, and this story will never connect to anything or be mentioned ever again" and on the other by "we're going to use a shrinking ray to pursue Napoleon-complex aliens that are hiding in Marco's nose."
Blackout
Fed By Comments
- Location
- Who knows?
Yeah, I remember the series being all over the place when I read it as a kid. The parts about a gang of teenagers with shapeshifting powers fighting against alien parasites trying to take over the world was actually very cool, with a lot of exploration of the psychological effects of guerrilla warfare on child soldiers, moral quandaries and the sacrifices they have to make for victory. I remember one book in particular sticking with me, where one of the protagonists gets one of the parasites in her brain and the others have to lock her up in a shed and wait for the parasite to starve to death. So as they wait she talks with the parasite, and we actually get a look at the war from the POV of the parasites.
It turns out that the parasites are kinda fucked over by biology: they have human-level intelligence, yet are stuck in the bodies of pathetic little slugs that cannot do or sense anything, and their only chance to experience life properly is to puppeteer other races. Sure that's a cold comfort to the people being enslaved, but it's a stark reminder that war is not black and white, and when the Animorphs blow up one of the parasite feeding vats they are killing hundreds of thousands of intelligent, living beings who, for all their crimes, were dealt a shit hand by evolution and raised up in an authoritarian fascist empire.
But then the series eventually always veers off into timetraveling to the cretacious period, the pacifist alien dog-robots show up, or the gang needs to help Space Jesus fight Space Satan in their interdimensional war.
It turns out that the parasites are kinda fucked over by biology: they have human-level intelligence, yet are stuck in the bodies of pathetic little slugs that cannot do or sense anything, and their only chance to experience life properly is to puppeteer other races. Sure that's a cold comfort to the people being enslaved, but it's a stark reminder that war is not black and white, and when the Animorphs blow up one of the parasite feeding vats they are killing hundreds of thousands of intelligent, living beings who, for all their crimes, were dealt a shit hand by evolution and raised up in an authoritarian fascist empire.
But then the series eventually always veers off into timetraveling to the cretacious period, the pacifist alien dog-robots show up, or the gang needs to help Space Jesus fight Space Satan in their interdimensional war.
NSMS
Probably evil, unfortunately.
- Location
- A rapidly widening tear in the fabric of reality
Two of the stories I particularly remember are one when they discover an enemy traitor who's turned to cannibalism to survive and gets the 'raw materials' by finding and killing other humans who are being controlled, and one where they discover a substance that acts as an insanity-causing drug to the invaders and decide to use it by poisoning their main food supply.
Codex
Fantasy Addict
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Yeah, I'm an Arab trans woman, and I usually tend to gravitate towards stories that check one of those three boxes. The arab part often goes unchecked, so I think I'll raise the Panopticon Quest up the list. It already sounded interesting.
Voikirium
SV's Estalia Guy
- Location
- Ruritania Illinois
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Okay but every single part of that sounds amazing though
- Pronouns
- He
Another Science-Fiction writer, one that had great influence on me, is Stephen Baxter, who has two main specialties: Historical England (where he lives) and Galaxy spanning civilisations and wars. His Xeelee-Sequenze is probably the most encompassing Story in Sci-Fi (A Galactic war with constant time travel is barely a blip on the radar of the big powers).
Tasoli
Life is for Living
- Location
- Behind the Keyboard.
Oh you are going to enjoy later parts of the story a lot then as characters start their seekings and begin to deal with their identity, memories and its relation to eachother in transhumanist environment where reality might not be as firm as they believed it was.
So you know, have fun.
That the insanity-causing drug was simple oatmeal is oddly fitting given the series' nature.
EDIT: It seems that we moved on from Animorphs, oops
EDIT: It seems that we moved on from Animorphs, oops
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If Ulthuan is the British Empire, and Lothern is London, does that mean Teclis has a cockney accent?
- Location
- USA
I thought it's Orks that have cockney accents? At least, here the QM has been writing them that way.
K von Carstein
Likes to go for a walk
- Location
- Belgium
- Pronouns
- He
Given he's a noble, Teclis probably speaks the Queen's English. Tbh I imagine all elves talking with that accent.
Orcs are football hooligans, which is a much broader cross section of British society than just cockney.
Besides, I've always pictured it as a more northern accent—although that might just be because I'm a northern lad myself.
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- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
"If you're a greenskin, how come you sound like you're from the North?"
"Lots of places have a North!"
"Lots of places have a North!"