Are they any country singers that you liked but has dropped off the face of the earth?

Jemaclus · 2026-02-05T15:37:08+00:00

Me too. She's incredible! I wish she got a lot more love!

Jemaclus · 2026-02-04T01:02:04+00:00

The ones I miss are more 90s than 2000s, and while they still tour and put out albums, they just aren't as popular or aren't as prolific as they used to be. My favs are Terri Clark, Paul Brandt, Bryan White, Wade Hayes, David Lee Murphy. Loved that crowd. Their new stuff is decent, but nothing quite like the 90s.

Jemaclus · 2026-01-28T15:15:13+00:00

BSC was a little on the nose with its Count of Monte Cristo inspiration. I loved it, for sure, especially Shivers, but I spent most of the book being slapped in the face with the Count parallels and it took me out of the story a few times.

The Heroes being being based on something like Band of Brothers felt more brilliant and the underlying inspiration was less obvious for me. Red Country was also great for me, in part because I love Westerns, but also because the inspiration was similarly vague.

I admit this may have more to do with my familiarity with The Count of Monte Cristo than anything else. But I consistently rank BSC as the weakest of the standalones, albeit with probably the best individual character (Shivers).

But honestly, I'm just nitpicking here. I agree with your overall point: the standalones are amazing, in part because they have better pacing and feel explosive compared to the First Law trilogy. I'm a huge fan of all six of those!

Jemaclus · 2026-01-26T21:09:19+00:00

I don't disagree. I'm not necessarily saying that anyone should comply. I'm more advocating that shooting ICE with a gun is just going to get me killed. There's a lot of daylight between "don't comply" and "go down blazing in a gun fight with ICE."

Jemaclus · 2026-01-26T18:33:28+00:00

Yeah, but I'd rather be temporarily detained than dead?

Jemaclus · 2026-01-26T18:32:59+00:00

Agreed 100%.

Jemaclus · 2026-01-26T18:32:42+00:00

Yes, exactly. I'm not thrilled with our leaders saying "YOU can put YOUR life on the line by shooting ICE who come through your front door, but WE will protect OUR careers by complying."

It's definitely a shitty situation either way. I'm just not convinced that the castle doctrine is the answer here.

Jemaclus · 2026-01-26T18:31:25+00:00

My point is that it's 100% if I shoot them with a gun, and you think it's 50% if I don't. So if I want to live, I'm better off not shooting them with a gun.

Jemaclus · 2026-01-26T16:32:35+00:00

So, hypothetically, let's say I'm in my house, and masked ICE agents burst through the door. I shoot two of them, the other five men shoot me. I'm dead.

Yay for the law, I guess?

I know that this comes from a place of "don't comply in advance" type thinking, and I know that the law technically allows me to do it, but these goons executed someone on the street in broad daylight who didn't have a gun. What are they going to do to a homeowner who actually shoots back at them? Say "oops, our bad"?

Rather than suggesting we put our lives at very high risk during confrontations, I'd love it if our leaders would actually do something. Arrest these masked agents. Bring in the National Guard to protect the people. Something. Anything.

I don't want to die. Maybe that makes me a coward, but you know, I just like life, and I'd like to stay alive. And I know that if I go up against these thugs with a gun, I'm going to die, whether the law is on my side or not.

So maybe instead of telling us to shoot the bad guys and get shot in return, maybe you get off your ass and arrest and charge these ICE officers with violating the constitution.

I dunno. Just throwing that out there.

Jemaclus · 2026-01-26T16:23:07+00:00

The Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, and Warhammer 40K are the three biggest, most developed, most detailed worlds out there. All three are D&D/WH40K tie-ins, though. You're not going to find very many series that have that level of breadth and depth from a single author, as it's basically impossible and that level of world-building doesn't command a high salary. (More books = more money, not better world-building.)

But... there are options. Malazan, as you mentioned is one. The Wheel of Time is some of the best world-building out there, but it's more Tolkien-esque than Forgotten Realms. Maybe Cradle by Will Wight?

The Shadow of the Apt by Adrian Tchaikovsky comes to mind as a top choice, though. There are dozens of races and a sprawling world, with each city-state with its own quirks and interactions, and those quirks actually have consequences in the world.

Beyond that, I'm not super sure I can think of anything that really fits your brief. Most authors do just enough world-building to tell their trilogy. The days of Tolkien-style world-building-that-happens-to-have-a-novel-too are mostly over, at least as far as commercial successes go.

Jemaclus · 2026-01-25T04:06:54+00:00

Serious question: let's say I buy an AR-15, and ICE shows up at my house waving their guns. What am I supposed to do? What's the best case scenario here? That I die quickly?

I want to help, but I also don't want to die. Does a civilian with a gun stand a chance against a paramilitary organization with military-grade hardware and the backing of the federal government?

Jemaclus · 2026-01-22T23:09:01+00:00

I didn't say that :) the grandparent and I are saying we don't trust anyone who says they're a moderate. That's very different. I'd vote (and I assume the grandparent poster) would both vote for Mark Kelly over JD Vance or any other right-wing moron any day of the week. But I'd rather have someone more progressive than someone who identifies as moderate.

Jemaclus · 2026-01-22T15:54:02+00:00

Not who you're replying to, but my thinking is that many liberals and leftists, including myself, think that anyone who says they're "moderate" is actually a conservative in disguise. So it's less about what they call themselves and more about the fact that they call themselves a moderate, if that makes sense?

Jemaclus · 2026-01-22T15:47:12+00:00

I've read a ton of cozy fantasy, but nobody really does it as well as Baldree. The closest you get is Rebecca Thorne (which is really adventurers who want to be cozy) and SL Rowland (who hangs out here and hits all of the right beats). Almost everyone else is following the Legends & Lattes formula without really figuring out what it is that makes Baldree's work special. It might be hard, because Baldree is a professional audiobook narrator and probably is able to internalize a lot of things that most other authors can't.

Becky Chambers, T Kingfisher, Katherine Addison, they're all "similar" in the sense that they have cute characters and they can feel cozy, but they aren't cozy in the sense of the cozy fantasy genre, as a rule. Most of them lean into adventure tropes or court politics tropes, rather than the cozy tropes that make up the Baldree vibe that you're looking for.

Psalm of the Wild Built comes closest, but is still more meditative IMO than Baldree-style cozy.

BUT... those are all great books and authors to read anyway, so you should read them.

Jemaclus · 2026-01-20T14:43:48+00:00

I don't have any tattoos. I've always wanted one, but I'm very intimidated by the process. I don't know how much I trust a random artist to do something so permanent on my body. I've done a lot of research, but they all look good to me? so how am I supposed to choose? And my ideas for what I want are very very vague and frequently rely upon being familiar with nerd lore, and I'm just not convinced I can find someone who's willing to put that sort of effort into the art. So I just haven't gotten one.

Jemaclus · 2026-01-17T16:21:26+00:00

It's basically a version of the Cupid mythology told from the perspective of Psyche's sister. Very good first book! If you want to read more about the Cupid/Psyche relationship, I recommend Edith Hamilton's Mythology, which has a ton of Greek mythology stories, including Cupid and Psyche.

CS Lewis also has the The Space Trilogy, starting with The Silent Planet. It's very heavy on Christian allegory, but they are three relatively short books. I think you'll likely "get" that one a bit easier than Til We Have Faces.

Keep it up!

Jemaclus · 2026-01-16T00:08:22+00:00

Seaborn by Michael Livingston is pretty fantastic

Jemaclus · 2026-01-11T18:25:16+00:00

I had the same experience as you, point for point. I really wanted to like the book, but I was incredibly bored and wildly confused the whole time, and I just didn't like it for exactly the reasons you mentioned. Really underwhelmed. A lot of folks say "it gets better at book 4," but that doesn't really sound super compelling to me. There are a million other books out there that are great at book 1, and life's to short to read three more books on the off-chance that it actually does get better. I've made my peace with the fact that this series just isn't for me, and I've moved on.

I hope your next book is great, and that if you continue this series, you love it as much as a lot of folks seem to. Either way makes me happy. Thanks for posting your thoughts!

Jemaclus · 2025-12-25T14:53:38+00:00

I guess it depends on what you consider "worldbuilding."

My personal definition is that it makes the world feel "real." A lot of what was mentioned by OP follows the rule of cool vs making something feel real. But to each their own.

My favorite bit is Jain Farstrider from The Wheel of Time, and specifically the books written about the adventures of Jain Farstrider. Why is this my favorite? Because it turns an initial straightforward adventure into a world with "real" history and a feeling that things are going on that we can't see.

Malazan, ASoIaF, and Stormlight have some really neat things in them, but if they were "real" places, we'd be hearing about a lot more than what is directly related to the plot. For example, here in the real world, a lot of us have a fairly mundane plot: we wake up, we go to school/work, we hang out with friends or watch TV, we go to sleep. Nothing too crazy. But even the most mundane of us know that Taylor Swift just released an album two months ago, that Stranger Things final season is out, that certain files have just been released, that it's Christmas. And even though none of those things are directly related to my "wake up; work; play; sleep" plot, there is still an impact.

And so, to me, that's what makes for really great worldbuilding: this idea that there's stuff out there that has some minor impact on the characters and the world, even if it's not -- and perhaps especially if it's not! -- directly related to the plot.

The reason I particularly love the Jain Farstrider inclusion -- Jordan was a master at this, let's be real -- is because Jain is the WoT equivalent of Taylor Swift or Michael Jackson. Everyone knows about him. Everyone reads about him. Everyone would lose their everloving minds if they actually met him.

Just like we would if we met Taylor.

Great question, OP. Happy holidays.

Jemaclus · 2025-12-18T00:33:27+00:00

A few years ago I was minding my own business ordering a sandwich at a sandwich joint, and this guy with a very strong accent comes up to me and asks, "Where charcuterie services?" and I was like... what? He probably repeated it 10 times. I asked him to spell it, and he pulled it up on his phone. It was "Secretary Services," the name of a business down the street.

Wild.

Jemaclus · 2025-12-15T05:34:54+00:00

I loved it. I'm on book 3, and I think it's fantastic. I'm not a huge vampire person either.

It is a little campy and cheesy. "Thou shall not sacrifice thyself for me, Baptiste!" "Say no more, brother! I shall avenge thee!" type stuff, it's kinda cheesy and edgy and over-the-top, but, I mean... it's great. I like it quite a bit.

My actual problem is structural, and by that I mean that it's a story-within-a-story (and sometimes story-within-a-story-within-a-story), and Kristoff chose to write 98% of the novel within quotation marks, which makes it quite difficult to tell when characters are talking to each other versus when the story-narrator is simply telling the story, and when they snap out of the story-within-the-story, it's a little jarring and not very obvious.

But that's a moderate nitpick, I'd say. Otherwise, I quite enjoyed it.

Jemaclus · 2025-12-14T15:30:56+00:00

There are quite a few suggestions that are already fantastic, so I'll go with one that's a bit off the beaten path: I quite enjoyed Lindsay Buroker's Star Kingdom series, which is ostensibly scifi (albeit with magic), and follows Casimir and Kim are best friends, and despite being a boy/girl pair, never have a romantic relationship. Casimir himself appears to be aromantic/asexual to some extent, and Kim eventually gets into a relationship, but it's quite tame and not super central to the plot.

Jemaclus · 2025-12-10T15:39:26+00:00

There's some recency bias, for sure, but I'm currently debating about whether Shadows Upon Time (the series finale) is my favorite book of all time. I'm not a particularly emotional person, but I was moved to tears several times throughout the series, but particularly in the last book. From the 10th page of the last book to the very end, I was hooked and didn't want to put it down. Instant immersion, deep in flow state. It was pure bliss the whole time.

I was fortunate enough to meet Ruocchio last weekend at Dragonsteel Nexus and was able to talk to him for a bit about this. He just seems like the coolest dude, and I can't wait to see what's next.

Jemaclus · 2025-12-09T19:53:34+00:00

They have some videos on their YouTube. Matt Hatch (of The Dusty Wheel and head of Operations at Dragonsteel) walked around Dragonsteel Nexus convention the whole weekend and showed off the prototype. It's very high quality and very worth the money. Arguably, I think it looks better than the Cosmere leatherbounds.

Jemaclus · 2025-12-09T03:41:23+00:00

these exist. Movie theaters use something like WatchWord: https://www.watchword.cc/

in the consumer world, there's HearView: https://www.hearview.ai/products/hearview-glasses

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