Fantasy Buddy Reads discussion
This topic is about
The Perfect Run
Book Clubs!
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Vagabond Treehouse ~ [Fall 2025: World of Chains #1-3 (Wayward Bard) | The Perfect Run 1-3 (alternating)]
Geez. I looked at the Steamy Romance Reads GR post and I hardly recognized any of the authors on there. Is it time for me to do a KU romance spree? I dunno. That sounds like it would lead to book slump madness. XD
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Don't do it Soo! It's not worth the book slump.
Timelord Iain wrote: "many 5-7hr audiobooks, too... sounds like a cash grab..."Probably. I tend to think of these lists as marketing in hopes you go to Amazon and buy the book since GRs is owned by them.
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Also jumped into Amelia the Level Zero Hero #4, and with this one, I'm kinda tired of Amelia ignoring world-ending threats... my favorite aspect of the story is people calling her on her shit, even if it's mostly Bucky the Rooster doing it, and needing a Druid interpreter to get his point across...
⚔️🔪🗡 Is it time to kill off Amelia Mary Stu?!?!
🤣🤣🤣A short story called Closet by A. Lee Martinez:
https://aleemartinez.com/2025/02/closet/
Everyone go read it!
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A short story called Closet by A. Lee Martinez:
https://aleemartinez.com/2025/02/closet/
Everyone go read it!"
Could be an early draft / deleted scene from Chasing the Moon
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If anything manages to kill Amelia, the multiverse is fucked...
The last hour of ALZH4 was this silly knockdown fight across the multiverse between Amelia and the avatar of the big baddie, where she kept killing him and he kept coming back stronger, until she could have finally been hurt by him if she'd let him get a hit in... along the way all the cyborg angels came and bound them away in an impenetrable void cube and she one punched her way out and continued the fight... eventually took the bad back to his Industrial Revolution era Earth and killed him once and for all, on his home world where his soul could pass on into the next life with his family...
There were also a ton of throwaway lines and retcons that revealed Amelia has killed the avatars of the baddie over 1000 times before and he always gets a new one, and she returned to her Earth at some point and learned the truth that decades had passed and she had nothing to return to...
This basically ended the first arc of the story and is an easy quitting point, but a number of side characters are struggling with the realization that both sides in this conflict are bad... the Void Baddie (who might have been ousted by the LitRPG system in the first place) and the LitRPG system entity...
So I assume Arc 2 and any conclusion to the series, is about getting rid of both...
I'll probably wait for multiple releases before thinking about continuing...
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I remember loving Chasing the Moon and Emperor Mollusk versus the Sinister Brain and The Automatic Detective, and enjoying Monster and Divine Misfortune and a few others...
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That aspect also reminds me of D20 Sorceress (Twenty Sided Sorceress), and Black Hat Bureau, to a certain extent... D20 Sorceress is another novella series I quickly abandoned...
I enjoy reading your summaries for the stories! They are (for some of the popcorn reads) WAY more cool than the story told. =DMartinez has some cool stories. Sometimes the plot arc may be whatevs, but he always has interesting characters.
I think my favs were Monster and Automatic Detective. Can't quite remember. I'd have to pull up the reviews. XD
If I wrote even a note! LOL
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Martinez has some cool stories. Sometimes the plot arc may be whatevs..."
I live to serve...
I guess I like summarizing books I know other people will never otherwise read/experience...
One of my more vivid childhool memories was from when I was 12ish, and me and my mom went across country from my grandfather's funeral on my birth father's side (mostly estranged birth father)... and this nice old lady neighbor endured me explaining the plot of like the first 30 Animorphs books, to distract from the situation...
I wonder if this memory feeds into why I never continued with Animorphs 31-54, back then... this was back in the late 90s when they were releasing monthly...
That and co-reading every branching storyline of a Goosebumps Choose Your Own Adventure book on a Greyhound bus... might have been the return trip home... makes the most sense...
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Last year I averaged 18.22 hrs/day, and Jan/Feb/March 2020 I averaged 24.33 hrs/day...
3.5x speed is a game charger! Just need to be more mindful about changing the listening speeds to let your mind have time to absorb and conceptualize the story. 3.5x is my default for most books + decent narrator.
When I want to linger with the story, I'll drop to 2.75-3.25x speeds.
Damn that’s fast!!! I usually can’t go over 2.0 and understand it. British/Scottish narrators and it’s lowered to 1.75
@Iain, time to learn how to listen to one story on audio and read a different one in print at the same time. 😆Dual Reading Mode
It's like next tier reading mode. 😎
Training that was fun and zoomed my book intake. Considering I was never read the whole day. Only during times when I can listen & do other stuff.
Sometimes I feel like my brain needs Dual Reading Mode to calm down properly...
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3.5x is my default for most books ..."
I've been listening at 3.5x speed since last October-ish, I think... last year regardless... I slow down when a narrator is unusually fast, or I need to absorb a new setting, but get away with it 99% of the time...
I even did an Animorphs book at 4x speed...
3.5x speed is the Audible cap, and it really is a game changer, for reading 300 page books in about 3hrs...
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Dual Reading Mode
It's like next tier reading mode. 😎
Training that was fun and zoom..."
I dunno if I want to try Dual Mode... past what I already do sometimes, talking on Discord or Goodreads while listening...
at 3.5x speed, I/you only need to read for 7hrs/day to hit 24.5hrs... nothing too crazy... and I'm still supplementing on my days off for work days... and/or taking mini-breaks to watch TV/etc, sometimes...
Just weird little thing I felt like sharing: three of the books I've read in the past two days have had 432 page count....
Nirkatze wrote: "Sometimes I feel like my brain needs Dual Reading Mode to calm down properly..."People already multi-task listening, seeing, reading and doing stuff. It's a shift to do it how you want to. Practice to make it auto vs effort and then it's normal routine. 👌
Like how many people will turn on a show and exercise or browse online? You're listening and partially watching a show as you read Facebook updates or Goodreads posts, etc.
I like to watch foreign movies/series in original language and English subtitles. That's reading, listening and seeing comprehension.
I thought it was a little tricky to be intentional about listening to one story as I read a different one at first. But it was only odd cause I haven't done it on purpose before. Only took a few books to get into the flow and a couple of weeks to get both listening & reading speeds to my normal.
Thank goodness I can read and listen at fast speeds! It lets me have time to do other stuff. 🎶🎵🎶
Nirkatze wrote: "Just weird little thing I felt like sharing: three of the books I've read in the past two days have had 432 page count...."Which books?
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432, 368, 512, etc...
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An Ambitious Woman and her Very Normal Pet
The Preface on this was pretty cool... apparently there's an indie author competition each year through the publisher of this book, where 100 authors are given book covers/titles, and given June to September to write a book, and the best book gets published at no expense to the author... basically a free chance to publish a book... and this was last year's winner...
And it's about a necromancer given a 2nd chance at life after execution, to retry and avoid the war and just be a necromantic farmer instead... she's supposed to keep her rebirth a secret, but considering this is deemed cozy, I expect the MC's actions to have a snowball effect regardless and lead to a nicer outcome than executing all necromancers after the war...
I picked that up on the Self-Publishing Sale over Christmas too! It looked really cute.re: 432--Driving the Deep, Shards of Time, Across the Wall: A Tale of the Abhorsen and Other Stories
@Iain, come to the dark side! Dual Audio & Print Reads!Just don't be discouraged by reading/listening speeds dropping during the adjustment phases. There are a couple.
@Nirkatze, Oh nice mix of books. 👍
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Downsides are the things I'll have to do during regular business hours that don't start until a bit later, generally... Walmart opens at 6am tho, which isn't too bad... doctors/etc are generally 8am... limiting my ability to be lazy and get fast food is an upside, too...
No biggie. New bed time will be 10am-12pm. Plenty of time to get in those normal work hour visits. It's always good to eat less junk food. XDUnless it's homemade junk food. Then it's no longer junk food. XD
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Half the plot was the continuing robot rights/uprising meta-plot of the first book, and the possible resurrection of the robot messiah/supervillain that the MC killed at the beginning of book 1 and turned up possibly alive thanks to a cryptic message at the end of book 1...
And the other half of the plot was the stolen idea in the title ("and the Best Idea in the Universe")... intellectual property to the Nth degree from a dead civilization...
Plots converge, the big baddie was saved by extra-dimensional aliens, and the MC faces off at the end and nabs the Best Idea and lets the baddie escape...
Along the way, the MC's robot partner gets his affable persona back (he was mind-wiped or something in book 1 and turned into an emotionless robocop with a stick up his exhaust chute for awhile)...
Then the book ended with the sudden assassination of the CEO of Greatest Britain and 6 second rigged election/coup of his successor, who immediately revokes all robotic rights... big cliffhanger... hopefully book 3 doesn't take 3 years to write... and hopefully the audio is better when it comes out...
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The books are 4-5hr audiobook novellas, and it leaves the relationships feeling rushed... the MC is overly attached to his assistant, hired to spy on him by his father in book 1, almost moved back to UK to be with boyfriend in book 2 but came back to Maine at the end, and the MC kissed her in book 3... and he already has this unusual relationship with this other girl who was traumatized by a Fae boogeyman before the series started (she and MC do some sort of sexual immersion therapy to try and get past her triggers, but it generally stalls out)...
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EDIT: Greaney announced/commented on the delay on Twitter 3 days ago... unforeseen delays with the narrator, Jay Snyder...
A good thriller to look forward to! I'm behind on Gray Man. Need to read the one before Midnight Black.
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Either way, I kinda want Gentry/Zoya to get sorted once and for all, now that the handler I hated is out of the way... Zoya's complicated situation feels like it's been a driving force for the plot for like the last 6 books now...
Timelord Iain wrote: "The Gray Man books blend together a bit... blurb indicates the previous book was heavy on AI... not sure if it was the one with the banker and Russia/Ukraine plot or that was the previous one...E..."
Bummed about delay. I like Greaney's writing style. I did get the new Orphan X this week tho and just jumped on it
I'm behind on my thrillers! Orphan X, Gray Man, etc. Need to get caught up. Post thoughts! I'm not gonna click on spoilers. XD
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Post thoughts! I'm not gonna click on spoilers. XD"
This one is different for sure...."
SPOILERS...
That's the thing I've been trying to avoid spoiling for Ann-Marie & Nirkatze, who are on book 6 of the monthly BR... they won't be ready for Nemesis until June...
You want to edit his post and put spoiler tags around that?
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I can't edit, but I can delete and copy...
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Post thoughts! I'm not gonna click on spoilers. XD"
(Still Brian): This one is different for sure. (view spoiler)
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Timelord Iain wrote: "Deleted spoiler and reposted, since Nirkatze & Ann-Marie pop in here alot and that's a biggie for first timers..."That works. I think you got it before they saw it. Whew!
Woah! That's an unexpected twist! Looking forward to reading it.📚🍿📚
Fantasy Buddy Reads
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Authors mentioned in this topic
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If I ever read the novelized story, I'd probably read the print.
A part of my brain is like... is this gonna be like listening to dubbed anime? Which basically gets an immediate rejection from me. XD
Bwahahaha~