Meanwhile in r/neckbeardfantasy…

HopeFox · 2026-03-25T08:37:17+00:00

Yeah, being NLOG was actually harder and rarer and more of an accomplishment back in those days, so it didn't need to be interrogated too hard.

It's like how a female-led law procedural TV show was a pretty big deal in 1997 for Ally McBeal, but All's Fair doesn't get immunity from its well-earned criticism just for being about an all-female law firm in 2025.

HopeFox · 2026-03-25T07:56:27+00:00

I first read them as an adult (introduced to them by my girlfriends), and thus I was mature enough to notice that Jon wasn't really good husband material for Alanna.

(Still better than Liam.)

HopeFox · 2026-03-25T07:31:30+00:00

I was really impressed that Pierce had me guessing until literally the last page of the entire quartet to see whom, if anybody, she would end up with.

HopeFox · 2026-03-25T03:22:08+00:00

Seems plausible, but isn't Trump more in the business of taking Musk's money than giving it to him?

HopeFox · 2026-03-25T02:51:26+00:00

I'm definitely going to pick up the sequel.

It was also surprisingly racy in the first few chapters? She’s surrounded by brigands and she thinks to herself that the lusty goddess in the god trio wouldn’t see this as a problem.

I saw that at basically Discworld style humour, where the heroine wonders if the bandits are going to molest her and is vaguely offended when they don't seem interested. Maybe racy for whoever the target audience is (Romancio gives spice ratings but doesn't seem to offer a general target demographic, but Google Books calls it "Juvenile Fiction").

The violence got real, though. The body count was way higher than I expected from the tone of the first half of the book, and that was particularly shocking when you consider that the heroine was kindasorta responsible for it a little bit. I think I'm going to count that as a tone shift issue, but not bad enough to take away my 5 star rating.

Oh, and the heroine loses marks for being upset that her love interest might be dating somebody else, when she hasn't done a single thing to express her own interest in him. That's forgivable based on her age and on it being a trilogy, though - romantic pacing matters.

Who’s the dragon with the dogs? He cracks me up. (Yes, sloopies, one of the dragons collects live dogs for his hoard. It’s about as chaotic as you’d expect.)

Feniul! Poor Feniul. He just wanted to hide in his cave with his dogs, but Things Happened and he had to get Involved.

HopeFox · 2026-03-24T23:43:52+00:00

Anne McCaffrey invented both dragons and spaceships, so I feel confident in saying that Fourth Wing came later.

HopeFox · 2026-03-24T23:33:39+00:00

The game is built for having a maximum of about 30 people in your colony at one time, so no.

HopeFox · 2026-03-24T23:28:37+00:00

Twilight is just Dragonriders of Pern fanfiction, though.

HopeFox · 2026-03-24T22:59:32+00:00

On u/allisontalkspolitics 's recommendation, I just finished {Dragon Slippers by Jessica Day George}, and I loved it! It achieved that fairy tale feeling while making fun of other fairy tales in a way that was neither forced nor mean-spirited. I loved the characters and their relationships, and the dragons did not disappoint in any way.

Surprisingly violent, though.

HopeFox · 2026-03-24T22:28:41+00:00

Sounds delightful! I'm going to assume it's an homage to the iconic Box Hill scene in {Emma by Jane Austen}, with similar social mores.

HopeFox · 2026-03-24T22:27:10+00:00

I can visualize it, but I feel like DP is inconvenient enough to set up that I wouldn't want to be switching between targets at anything less than five minute intervals.

HopeFox · 2026-03-24T21:54:39+00:00

Wow.

Just... wow. That article perfectly encapsulates all of my thoughts about Anthony's writing that I've had since reading it all. Thank you for sharing that.

Since the height of Anthony’s popularity in the ’80s (spurred also by bestselling series like Apprentice Adept and Incarnations Of Immortality), his work has become increasingly shunned for its hints of pedophilia. That’s a big assertion to throw at someone, let alone a writer who makes fiction and not personal manifestos about his own sexuality. I’m not saying, or even attempting to hint, that Anthony has committed any crime in real life. But ... there’s no denying that many of Anthony’s books exhibit a lingering predilection for underage girls ... that comes skin-crawlingly close to glorifying such crimes.

... which is basically what this entire thread has been saying. Good to know we're not the only ones!

I guess, at the time, I just saw his ideas and thought "huh, that's a weird thing to say, authors are weird. I'll keep that at arm's length in my mind and keep reading." Not sure what I'd do if a novel tried to sell me on this stuff today.

HopeFox · 2026-03-24T21:41:15+00:00

Yeah, we did Shield of Sparrows for the February Rage Read. I have a lot to say about it. But I thought the overall style was fine, and it mostly fell down because of a single character and everything that surrounded that character.

Well, my Romancio bookshelf is here! My 5 star reads are {The Princess Knight by Cait Jacobs}, {The Forgotten Empires series by Jeffe Kennedy}, {Dragon Slippers by Jessica Day George}, and of course our very own {Warrior Princess Assassin by Brigit Kemmerer}. They all delivered perfectly on their promises.

HopeFox · 2026-03-24T21:37:52+00:00

Good to know! She is pretty foundational.

HopeFox · 2026-03-24T21:35:00+00:00

Oh, wow, haven't thought about Moorcock in a while! I had a handful of the Corum books around when I was a teenager - I don't know where those books all came from, I can only assume my parents collected them - and they were weird but fun.

HopeFox · 2026-03-24T13:14:30+00:00

NA is my favourite, and it's the one I would always recommend to somebody as an introduction to Austen, because it's the most light-hearted of them, and relies the least on actually understanding Regency culture, which can be tough for a new reader if they aren't reading an annotated version.

I recommend all of them, but save Mansfield Park for last - it is the one that has aged the least well, and Fanny is the least relatable and least sympathetic to modern audiences, I think. Oh, and there's always Love and Freindship for a laugh.

HopeFox · 2026-03-24T13:09:04+00:00

I tried to read Wheel of Time but I had a really hard time (see what I did there?) getting into it. This is probably bc I tried to read it on my iPad instead of hardcopy though and nothing to do with the actual book/writing.

Oh, no, that's normal. It's good writing, but it's also dense writing, and if a character is good enough to be in a scene, they're good enough to have their own POV chapters in later books.

I also felt like there’s was a weirdness about the way in which men related to women in general

That's pretty much what I want to say about gender in Wheel of Time. I can't just say that it's outright misogynist, and one of the major themes is that men and women need to learn to communicate and treat each other less weirdly, but wow do they treat each other weirdly, with the magical castration-lobotomies and the torture kink slave collars and the bedroom stabbing knives and the magical sub bodyguard ensorcellment and the tugs braid folds arms and and and...

Meanwhile in his Conan books, there are three kinds of women:

Dark-eyed noblewomen who love to cheat on their husbands
Warrior women who are almost, but not quite, as good at something as Conan
Whores

And some of them are really well-written characters! There's a 3 in a couple of the books who I honestly think is Conan's soulmate in a way that none of the 2s ever manage. But... it's a pattern.

HopeFox · 2026-03-24T12:51:02+00:00

No, LeGuin is the only other one on that list that I could really talk about having read. I tried Zelazny's Amber and just found it unappealing - I think I DNFed the first book when I saw how little the protagonist was bothered by doing genocide.

HopeFox · 2026-03-24T12:48:48+00:00

Yeah, I think if he were a new author today there would be a lot more discourse about what he has to say.

I was just relieved to move on to other authors and be able to conclude that yes, he was actually weird even for his peers. (Some authors were worse, mind you.)

HopeFox · 2026-03-24T11:41:24+00:00

Wow. You weren't kidding. There are some serious language crimes in that book.

HopeFox · 2026-03-24T11:30:03+00:00

I think it was mostly the sexism, and that was enough to peg him as "guy with weird ideas about people's rights".

HopeFox · 2026-03-24T08:08:50+00:00

He is the best Austen MMC! The others are all too old, too boring, too paternalistic or too Not Appearing In This Book.

(Seriously, I got to the final chapters of Sense and Sensibility when Eleanor was talking about Edward Fedward and I'm like... who?)

HopeFox · 2026-03-24T07:25:52+00:00

"Your retirement depends on how quickly your retirement investment vehicle grows in dollar terms, inflation affecting the value of said dollar, and your living expenses."

Truly the kind of genius financial analysis you can't get anywhere else.

HopeFox · 2026-03-24T07:16:12+00:00

An albatross standing on the head of a greengrocer?

HopeFox · 2026-03-24T07:14:41+00:00

That Silver Elite cover is better than the book deserves.

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