The Fantasy/Sci-Fi Books Thread Book • Page 76

Yeah he had a bad experience with the initial publisher and his book was not purchasable for a while. I think he got picked up by a more traditional publisher and got some editing and it’s being rereleased.

 

Thanks for the info, assumed it was some shitty publisher thing, everyone should wishlist it for the re-release!

 

Broken Binding also has a pretty nice edition for sale for the release.

https://thebrokenbindingsub.com/products/sons-of-darkness

 

Got picked up by a publisher and rereleased which it totally deserves!!

 

Yeah sons of darkness was great. I'd forgotten about it but looking forward to the 2nd book.

 

@Vivatoto I haven't seen this whole thing yet (it's not long though), but you should check it out - an interview with David Gemmell for the 30th anniversary of Legend. I'd never heard him speak or anything. Turns out he's as intelligent, wise, quick-spoken, clever, and sincere as you'd expect.

 

So you were all right: almost immediately I fell in love with Mistborn. Man, I can read Kell and Dox adventures forever.

 

Finished Howling Dark and it really ramped up towards the end!!!

 

I put this on my watch later list and forgot about it until I saw it in this thread again, haha. This is a really good interview, you're right, he's extremely well spoken. I could listen to him talk for a really long time. It's really interesting to hear where Legend came from and the metaphor behind it, which makes total sense, and it also explains why he did so many "siege" novels, or climaxes that ended with one, which tracks all the way to the Troy books.

 

Another slow start for Kingdoms of Death, but once he gets capturedit's so fucking good. This might end up being my favorite yet.

 

The narrator changed for the Malazan books and it’s really throwing me. He pronounces things differently

 

Hopefully I can catch up to you soon!

Edit: I completely doubt I will!

 

Well I just finished it (and it was dope) and I'll probably start Ashes of Man next week, so get reading!

 

Sleepless nights for me then!! I’m reading the novellas too

 

Now that I haven't done, I should probably check those out. I think I'll finish Ashes of Man first since I really want to know what happens next, but I'll probably read those while waiting for book 6.

 

Ashes of Man comes out in November in paperback so I’ll have those all finished in plenty of time

 

About a 3rd through the 5th Sun Eater book, Ashes of Man, and I really enjoy it so far. I think the dialogue and character interactions are what make this series shine for me, and that's probably why ultimately I will like this more than Kingdoms of Death. I didn't mind the bleakness, and felt it was excellent in advancing the plot, but I enjoyed the Hadrian / Alexander interactions in Demon in White, and like that so far in Ashes of Man, Hadrian is surround by, and interacting with more characters in this one too. Since I like to plan my books, I will do The will of the many by James Islington next, and then the sun eater novellas, before jumping into the Ryan Cahill series (just got the audio books for all these with my stacked up credits).

On a side note: Where can I find art for the sun eater series if there is any? Does his patreon feature much artwork? Google doesn't pull up much and I think there's an anime or manga with the same or similar title that muddies things. I know it's not the biggest series, but I want fan art of the different factions / characters / house sigils etc.

 

Never heard of this but looked it up now. Any reason not to read in order of events instead of publication?

 

Same. I fell off the last Stormlight Archive. I will finish the last Wax And Wayne soon just because it’s way shorter, but the big presence of the the whole expanded universe stuff kinda annoys me too now. It doesn’t feel like “standalone with some references” anymore. He’s just not for me anymore I guess. It’s too bad because I invested so much time into it.

 

I would 100% start with Legend first. It’s a complete story, it’s very powerful, it’s a really good demonstration of whether you’ll like Gemmell or not, and frankly it’s just really really good.

After that, I’m not sure it matters a ton. Most of the stories are mostly standalone (at least for the Drenai stuff), so I wouldn’t see a ton of benefit to going with chronological order over publication order, but I don’t think you’d miss out either. @Vivatoto probably knows better than me though

 

Also, a new fantasy reader could probably just go through the Gemmell Award winners/nominees year by year and be pretty well served lol. What a roster, and what a good pedigree/honor for Gemmell

 

Personally I would say publication order. There's a rhythm to the way he jumps back and forth in time, and I liked the way that something would be introduced in Legend than you would see how it came to be in the Waylander books. Also after watching that interview with Gemmell, he talks about how he's was always a characters and story first guy, and he wrote the world while it happened around him. It's clear from the way he talks about it, he didn't start with a 11 book outline with a clear end goal, although I wouldn't say it's clear from reading it, he writes with the confidence that it was planned, and the final book definitely feels like a final book.

Either way I do think it's important to start with Legend, which is probably considered pretty late in the chronology, and definitely ending with the final book, but that would be the same in both orders.

But most of the fun with Gemmell is that he always tells a complete story in each book. Even the books that are subtitled within the series like the three Waylander books can each work on their own. So I bet you could really tackle it however you wanted, and you'll never be lost.

Also worth mentioning, if you're like me and you need a map, one doesn't show up until like book 9, so I'd google one beforehand.

 

I agree to an extent. I love Sanderson and what he’s done for my own reading. I’ll continue to get excited for everything involved until the quality massively drops but I do feel myself, as I grow up and read more, more inclined to read other things.

I’ll continue to be in the community but I also understand that we shouldn’t have to read 20 books to pick out a cameo!

 

About halfway through A Ruin of Kings. Enjoying it overall. But yesterday decided to take a break since I was suddenly feeling a need to read some sci-fi. So I started Persephone Station, since I've had that digitally since it came out and somehow haven't read. Already halfway through it lol.

 

Floating the idea around but on the new subreddit for Ryan Cahill, we were planning on hosting a read along from the start.
You can start with The Fall, free novella around 100 pages, and move on to Of Blood and Fire, full novella if you’d like.
No dates set. Just testing the waters but I know a few would like to join. Next novella- The Ice is scheduled for release in August but we wouldn’t be able to catch up by then.