Fantasy Buddy Reads discussion
Archive [Retired Book Clubs]
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RETIRED THREAD: Vagabond Treehouse Book Club
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And this after picking up some new titles on Audible Plus yesterday: Thomas Prescott Series: Premium, The Reincarnationist Papers, and Of Sea and Shadow... all Will Wight's stuff is on Audible Plus now, I think...
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I'm only looking at audiobooks that are $7.49 or less. That's the KU discount price. Anything around $10 is ..."
Yea... I've bought some stuff, but this sale is definitely a slippery slope... so many deals... but eventually, longer-running series hit a point where the discount isn't better than credit pricing...
Most of what I bought so far was $6 each, and one book I was able to get for $2 with KU... most stuff seems to be priced at whispersync pricing, that I've noticed... as in, if it's $6, it was already $6 with whispersync after checking out the book... that, or Amazon is just lowering the whispersync price from $7.49 during the sale, to match...
is on Audible+. I imagine that it'll do well and Audible will have more added to it as a series. Great narration & fun story. Told from the POV of the bad guys + dimensional hijinx.
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Watched a couple hours of friends and supernatural on hospital TV waiting for my turn in the procedure room…
After/covered: https://i.imgur.com/mIF0VeO.png
Before: https://i.imgur.com/8p3wQyo.png
I woke up about 10 minutes before the end of procedure… drowsy… whatever they were doing hurt quite a bit… not sure if they were finishing removal or stitching up…
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Feeling ok? Looks blurry but visible pics.
The photos work. Glad it's done and now you can heal.
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I sat down too fast yesterday once, and learned my lesson... bit uncomfortable, but healing I hope, and I have some Norco 5/325 if needed... bandage should come off tonight/tomorrow morning, and I can see what it looks like and shower...
No obvious side effects from procedure/meds...
How Like a God is on Audible Plus. Story takes place in my area. DC & VA. It makes the story seem more strange because of the details about my cities. lol I know I had my eye on this story because Bronson Pinchot is the narrator.
Is it going to be a good book? WHO knows? lol
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The Witness for the Dead, The Last Mrs. Summers, and What the Devil Knows... the first one only came out yesterday... I think it was 14 cents cheaper than a credit...
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Not sure what else to look for, at this point...
I'm doing my shopping tonight. I've only been browsing a bit. Going to use my Tracker to look up some books and do topic searches for LitRPG, etc.
My cart will be HUGE and then I'll narrow it down. lol
I'm sure ya'll are already checking, but sometimes the option to borrow on KU and then buy is cheaper than the sale. Keep that in mind! I'm running into that a lot.
For sure. I’m only buying $8 abs below after checking to see. Sale is deadly tho. Easy to buy up a bunch! Lol
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And half the stuff I suddenly remembered not being willing to spend on before, still isn't cheap enough with the sale... still like $15
I've gotten really wary of trying new LitRPG... outside of the half dozen or so I've really liked, none have really grabbed me, and have felt like a waste when I picked them up...
I have a gigantic Wish List and was able to go through about half of it. There are books that are cheaper than the sale. Lots of $1.99 and some that are $7.49 vs whatever the sale price is. But you only see it if you check the individual book page. I've definitely bought a ton! Mostly it's filling in series I've read and want to re-read. There are some new and authors that I wanted to read more and now around $6 per book. Couple of the bundled series are on sale for less than $9. The ones with 30+ hours.
One of the happy updates is how Audible deals with removing books from Wish List. The page refreshes but doesn't send me to the "first" page. That was super annoying and I would leave stuff in the WL cause I didn't have the patience to manually remove them. XD
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I feel like I notice these types of reviews on book pages with limited ratings/reviews... once a book is popular, these types of reviews get buried by popular people getting tons of likes on their reviews...
They feel fake/paid... I was looking at reviews on The Never Army... a book I found and started reading in the past couple days... read nearly half of it today... after about 10%, I wasn't as lost as I was at the start... it's been 4 years since I read the first 2 books... and there are some pretty big character changes early in this 3rd book as well, caused by events at the end of the 2nd book, which I at least vaguely remember, the more I read book 3...
I tend to skip over them, especially if they're the ONLY reviews a book has.
Unless it's a GR friend, I tend to look for 3 to 1 star reviews on books. That gives me a better idea if I want to read it. Negative reviews have their uses! If a book has a ton of 5 star reviews, I'll be the skeptical one about whether or not that's actually true. There's a drive by self-pub authors to have 5 star reviews on several platforms, especially on Amazon. I understand why they're driven to ask their readers to support them by posting 5 stars, but I also feel like that's crapy guilt infused manipulation on those that you should be, well, nice to because they support your career.
Well, you don't have to be nice. But it's not cool to manipulate them for better ratings.
I've seen more than one post by authors that were not happy with a raving 3 star review. *shrug*
Example of cheaper by KU Borrow & Buy Audio:Rhett C. Bruno's Children of Titan series are on KU and the audios are $1.99 to buy. On the current sale, they're $5.98. Cheaper for those without KU. =)
I remember enjoying the first book. I need to re-read it and see if I want to get the rest of the series.
I read the first one and stopped. Maybe I’ll try it again too
Not going to list every book, but I basically ended up filling current series or re-buying books I liked & want to have complete series. I feel like if I listen at my normal pace, I have enough books to last me from this 3 phase splurge until the end of summer. XDMy Splurge on Audible's Entire Inventory Sale:
New:
- Dortmunder series by Donald E. Westlake
- All the Colors of Night #2 by Jayne Ann Krentz
- Across the Green Grass Fields by Seanan McGuire
- Savage Dominion #1 by Luke Chmilenko & G.D. Penman
- Luck Stat Strategy #1 by Blaise Corvin
- Thousand Li #5 by Tao Wong
- This Immortal by Roger Zelazny
- Alex Benedict series #2-8 by Jack McDevitt
- Faded Sun Trilogy by C.J. Cherryh
- Broken Lands #1 by Jonathan Maberry
- Dungeon Crawler Carl #1-3 by Matt Dinniman
- Prince Roger series by David Weber & John Ringo
- On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers
- Declare by Tim Powers
- The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers
- Grisha #1-3 by Leigh Bardugo
- Waldo & Magic Inc by Robert A Heinlein
- Eerie Adventures of the Lycanthrope Robinson Crusoe by Peter Clines
Completing Series:
- Chronicles of Elantra: One of my fav series. I have the paperbacks & ebooks. Got several of the audios on this sale.
- War Aeternus Series (Need to read last book. Held off because the next to last book ticked me off. lol) by Charles Dean
- Artorian's Archives series by Dakota Krout & Dennis Vanderkerken (So, I wasn't thrilled by the 1st book but I am a big fan of Krout & his world. All of the series that Krout has written/co-written link together. Giving it another go because I'm a fan of the world Krout has created.)
- Good Guys by Eric Ugland - Read half of the series, got what's on there & plan to catch up.
- Torch that Igniters the Stars #3 by Andrew Rowe (He FINALLY wrote a book for Arcane Ascension! I didn't think it was going to happen. LitRPG series I really like but it's the only one by this author that I like a lot.)
- Raven series #2 & 3 by Giles Kristian
- Temper #2 by Xander Boyce
- Last Mortal Bond #3 by Brian Staveley
- Skullssworn by Brian Staveley
Read & Want to Re-Read:
- Street Cultivation series by Sarah Lin
- Divine Dungeon Series by Dakota Krout
- Delvers LLC series by Blaise Corvin
- Tallrock #1 by Xander Boyce
Let me go through that list Soo and I’ll BR some of those. I bought Skullsworn as well so we can BR that for sure.
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Rhett C. Bruno's Children of Titan series are on KU and the audios are $1.99 to buy. On the current sale, they're $5.98. Cheaper for those without KU. ..."
The Titan series jumps all over the place... book 2 is from the "enemy" POV... then the stories merge in books 3-5 I think... I read 1-2 and maybe 3...
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Shame you waited so long to buy... usually I use your lists to give me ideas...
EDIT: Perfect example: Alex Benedict... I read the blurb and a review of someone I follow, and it sounds like a cool Space Opera / Mystery series...
- Divine Dungeon Series by Dakota KroutThis one comes up in my recommendations a lot. Since you want to reread it I imagine you enjoy it a lot? It's LitRPG right?
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Narilka wrote: "- Divine Dungeon Series by Dakota KroutThis one comes up in my recommendations a lot. Since you want to reread it I imagine you enjoy it a lot? It's LitRPG right?"
Out of Dakota Krout's work, my FAV is the Completionist Chronicles. If you want to dive into Krout's writing, I recommend starting with the Completionist series.
Divine Dungeon was Krout's 1st series and it has a lot of first work blues. BUT I stuck it out with the audios and the story gains momentum & better writing over time. The cool thing about Krout's series is that they are all written in the same world and there are bloopers/detailed crossovers in all of the books.
I am NOT a big fan of the co-written series because I'm sure it's the other writer doing most of the work and Krout editing/assisting vs writing. Tone/writing style/etc are different. However, the sale made it possible for me to get the books at a cheaper rate & try it again.
Now, the Completionist is a stat filled series but you can sort of tune those out. I think that's what a lot of people do? On the other hand, I argue with some of the choices that Krout takes with the plot because I'm like, "Joe wouldn't DO that! Why would he DO that?!!?" Which is fun and then I get to see what happens instead of whatever I hoped to happen. Keeps you on your toes! =D
It took a bit for some of the humor to come across because it's based mostly within the story world. Then you realize it's all very much in character or style of story. Stuff you can appreciate on the re-reads.
Some of the series I bought are available to borrow via library. I liked it enough to purchase but you can borrow & see if you like it.Like Tallrock, I read that on Royal Road when the author was writing & working it out. He got Andrea Parsneau to narrate the audio. I like both the story and narrator, so I went ahead and got it.
There are other series I went ahead and bought during the splurge by KU and then discounted audio. That was cheaper than the sale. Most of them are LitRPG series that I've been reading and the audios took a year + to go on the KU + Audio sale.
Then there's the couple of new to me books I got on credit. Also cheaper than the sale and those turned out to be fun.
Timelord Iain wrote: "Soo wrote: "Not going to list every book, but I basically ended up filling current series or re-buying books I liked & want to have complete series. I feel like if I listen at my normal pace, I hav..."
Sorry! =D
I thought about that but it was work to dig into individual authors, series, 2/3 of my wish list which is now at 75 pages, and skimmed all over my written TBR list on tracker.
I read the first Alex Benedict book and enjoyed it. It's more of a brain detective work than thriller action.
Westlake's Dortmunder series sounds like it's heist stuff. Which should be fun! I liked getting into his books that are on Audible Plus.
Brian wrote: "Let me go through that list Soo and I’ll BR some of those. I bought Skullsworn as well so we can BR that for sure."I need to read the other books first. Though, I think I heard that Skullsworn can be read as a standalone? That series is one that I started buying in paperback and now I have them in audio to read but haven't started.
A lot of the series I bought are ones that I enjoyed but didn't want to pay full price. Most of those authors do a thing about 3x a year and give the ebook away for free on Kindle. They used to all be on KU but they're not necessarily on KU now. It seems like most of them started off as writers on online story sites & transitioned into self-pub. These are series that I enjoyed & have humor. Didn't want to pay $20+ for audio but down to pay paperback price of $7.50 for audio.
- Sarah Lin's Street Cultivation
- Rimmel's Noobtown
- Ugland's Good Guys
- Xander Boyce & Apollos Thorn books are good but slower writers.
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Completionist Chronicles is one I think you’ve recommended to me before…
Completionist Chronicles is my fav fantasy styled LitRPG. Great characters, lots of action, fun character builds, wacko character developments and humor. System Apocalypse is my fav SF LitRPG.
Threadbare is the cutest & darkest NPC centered series.
Cradle is my fav cultivation/Hong Kong martial arts type series.
I like the Wandering Inn a lot because of how much it goes into the world & characters, but I think that one has a HUGE "get to like it curve" that would derail most people. The problem is that you don't necessarily understand why stuff happens, and the author LOVES to portray the characters in the worst light. Eventually, I figured out that the author likes showing people as they are and doesn't pull any punches on good/bad/etc. Which is like life, right? You get to know someone via the interactions you have with them and find out various layers as you get to know them. That's the whole series. You have to be intrigued enough by something and keep going. Then you suddenly find yourself completely wrapped up in the created world, but it takes lots of time to get there.
Well, lots of time for me to overlook the flaws to get there. I am a snot. =D
Noobtown is a city build strat type story. There's another one I read recently (it was only on KU) and that one had a fun mix of trap building to go with town building strat.
Looked it up:
That one popped up as a rec on FB LitRPG group. The cover is HILARIOUS! That's what caught my eye. I got it on KU and started to read it. Read it in a few days? Author is working on sequel, admitted he sucks at editing and that takes time to get done. So, I totally hope he'll take his time and write a good sequel with less errors. =)
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System Apocalypse is my fav SF LitRPG.
..."
Just proved my point... I've read most of System Apocalype, all of Cradle, all of Threadbare and most of the supplemental material, and all the Wandering Inn audiobooks and a few dozen chapters of the serial...
Still need to read Completionist Chronicles and maybe Noobtown...
I think the writing is better in the Good Guys vs Noobtown. The author did another linked series called the Bad Guys, but that one isn't as engaging as GG. The concepts for Noobtown are great but the author is a newbie writer and it shows in the writing.
I'm going to put Completionist Chronicles on my watch list for the future.
Links from my FB Story posts:Sunset on Bearfence Mountain at Shenandoah National Park
My fav starry sky shot from tonight. I took a few at the visitor center parking lot.
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Makes me wish I was doing more home reading, I guess... most of my reading these days is at work and on exercise walks at the park on my days off...
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So I'm reading book 9 of Kate Daniels. How important is it to read Hugh's book before Kate 10?
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Not really necessary?... main thing it does is give context to Hugh's being more likeable?... and how Hugh survived the severing of his blood bond to Roland...
Hugh & his romantic interest show up for a chapter in book 10 and do some strategizing for the final battle and are part of the ensemble in the final battle, I think, and that's about it, for connective elements... 2nd and 3rd Hugh books haven't been written yet... can't remember if they're supposed to take place before or after book 10... either way, it's kind of a moot point, with delays and other books taking precedent...
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Belcher actually commented on that review with a secondary account, confirming it's not connected to Nightwise/Brotherhood universe/series...
I wish there were non-Graphics Audio versions of the Golgotha books (2-3), because apparently that series isn't over, and I hate GA audiobooks... not to mention they're abridged by default...
Apparently Belcher released a 4th Golgotha book last summer and has more planned... and more Nightwise/Brotherhood stuff, which is good... I definitely want more of those...
Diving back into the SpaceTeam world with book 12. Miss this group of misfits. Hope he continues to write these.
Timelord Iain wrote: "Narilka wrote: "So I'm reading book 9 of Kate Daniels. How important is it to read Hugh's book before Kate 10?"Not really necessary?... main thing it does is give context to Hugh's being more lik..."
Thanks. I'll go on to Kate 10 and read the Hugh book later.
What Iain said. You can totally read Hugh in publication order. I was surprised that I enjoyed that one a lot more than I thought I would. =DYay Space Team! Me too! I mean, he wrote somewhere that he does plan to write more of them but he's been knocking out a bunch of the detective series books.
Iain, where's the link where Belcher said that? Cause Queen's Road has the same setting vibe as Brotherhood of the Wheel. Belcher was supposed to write Audible Original stuff but I only saw news about it and then nothing happened.
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I’ve been rather blase about future Space Team books… I feel like the series got darker in the last 3-6 books… dunno if it’s the side hustle writing detective stories, but the book where they were tortured on that Mustard mining planet stands out in my mind…
Fantasy Buddy Reads
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I'm only looking at audiobooks that are $7.49 or less. That's the KU discount price. Anything around $10 is the price of a credit. So, it's not really a sale for us.
I'm just adding stuff to my cart and deciding what I want later. =D