Fantasy books, stories, ＆c

I read a lot of self-pub fantasy and this newsletter is one of the resources I use to pick books to read.

Titles that caught my attention so far:

• Card Mage
• Runelight
• Wakespire (7th book of a series, I've already read and enjoyed the first six)
• The Non-Magical Declan Moore

Found this mildly interesting in a world of slick Conde Nast publications.

Can be anything from Hogwarts (the most obvious one) to Scholomance, Brakebills, anything else you can think of. Would you attend it yourself?

Hello everyone,

I joined this community yesterday because I stumbled upon a comment somewhere saying that it was inactive. I tried to post a bit, the posts gained some traction, it seems that you guys already have enough people to get the ball rolling.

Unfortunately, I'm already busy with posting to content to a few others of my communities, so if I may, I suggest that a few of you step in to moderate, and take some actions such as update the sidebar with other relevant communities, reach out to those communities to get your own community listed, cross-post relevant content, organize weekly threads, post some content every day, etc.

I say from the sidebar that @hsl@wayfarershaven.eu is the other mod, but I know from personal experience that he's already quite busy with moderating !asklemmy@lemmy.ml.

That's all for me, I hope you guys have a good day/evening/whatever it is on your side of the world!

Edit: The only requirements to do the jobs are the following

• being willing to help the community grow
• check if your current app/website interface supports mods tools (some of them do, but I don't know exactly which ones)
• timezones are quite flexible, the community is still small
• in terms of security, just don't use a very easy to guess password, and make sure you have an email address configured to reset your password if you ever got compromised (but to fair that's not that different from what you might already be doing)

What defines dark fantasy?

Is it just elves that wear black or is there more to it? Maybe a mood or setting? Maybe it's an antihero thing? Im curious as to what it means and what some of the defining/seminal works of dark fantasy might be.

Finished off the audiobook, this the second part of a prequel series to other Sarah Hawke fantasy series.

It’s really been a pretty fun story that’s riffing off House of the Dragon to some degree. And it is a series that feel a bit different to her other works that I’ve read that have been a bit more interested in sexual relationships. Not that this has none of that, just this feels more interested in other aspects.

Now comes the long wait for book three.

Really am enjoying Ellory Lane and Harry Frost as narrators, especially Ellory.

Mark of the Fool is the first book in the series with the same name written by J.M. Clarke.

Blurb

The gods chose him. He said no.

After his parents died, Alex Roth had one desire: become a wizard. Through hard work, he was accepted into the University of Generasi, the world’s greatest academy of wizardry...

Fate, however, had another plan.

On his eighteenth birthday, he is Marked by prophecy as one of his kingdom’s five Heroes, chosen to fight the Ravener, his land’s great enemy. But his brand is 'The Fool'. Worst of the marks.

Rather than die or serve other Heroes like past Fools, he takes a stand, rejects divine decree…and leaves. With his little sister, his childhood friend, and her cerberus, Alex flees for the university, hoping to research the mystery of the Ravener. He’ll make lifelong friends, learn magic from mad wizards, practice alchemy, fight mana vampires and try to pay tuition.

There’s one small problem. The Mark insists on preventing the Fool from learning and casting spells, while enhancing skills outside of divinity, combat, and spellcraft…

…that is, unless he learns to exploit the hell out of it.

Review

Feels great to have found another progression fantasy series that hit just the right spot for me. The main character's choice to run away from the prophecy and see to his own needs (and that of his sister and friends) was a nice hook to start the story. This might eventually turn out to be just a part of a grand plan of the prophecy itself, still it was good to see this difference from the usual trope.

And then there were the thrilling action scenes, the world slowly opening up, the magical academy and all the lessons, wonderful cast of characters and familiars. The tone was light hearted despite the dangers. The academy instructors being competent and helpful was another plus point in my book. To top it all were the slice-of-life scenes, which I prefer over series that focus just on action. Of course, this series goes a bit overboard on this aspect. I still finished four long books in about five days, but I can see how some readers would drop the series.

The magic system was interesting, with a variety of choice available. It was nice to see non-magical parts being given importance as well! I enjoyed Alex having to come up with workarounds due to his Mark, especially the weaponization of potions. Though, I wondered why other wizards didn't already use them or at least learn from him. Some of his rich friends could easily arm themselves with such potions instead of borrowing from him. And that extends to other options like wizard staff, armor, golems and so on. They are rich, so why aren't they making effective use of their inheritance? To be fair, some did have retainers, familiars and golems, but it felt a bit odd that they didn't maximize their options.

Writing was easy to follow. Given the large cast of characters, I wish they each got POV chapters instead of just some of them. This is an ongoing webserial and the published books don't really have a separate arc on their own. I found the third book a bit dragging, especially as the events promised at the end of the second one were fulfilled in the fourth book! I did enjoy the tournament arc, but it took me a while to realize the plot switch.

Overall, I'd highly recommend the series to those who enjoy progression fantasy, magical academy and slice-of-life.

Hi,

Has anyone here read Artemis Fowl series? Thinking about getting it for my kid. Was wondering if it is fine for 8-9 year old kid.

Also, any other recommendations? He loved Diary of the Wimpy Kid, but struggled to get into Harry Potter.

Thanks.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/1085247

Just putting this here for those who might miss it.

I saw season 1 and it was...okay? I gather that Wheel of Time diehards were upset about plot deviations. I never read the books so that didn't matter much to me. IMO the world setting seemed janky - it was as though Robert Jordan couldn't build an original world to save his life and borrowed bits and pieces of different Earth cultures and threw them in a blender. I could pass on the next season but I have too many people around me who will want to watch it so I feel somewhat compelled to.

What did you think of season 1? Will you be watching season 2?

cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/technology@lemmy.world/t/225780

One developer asked ChatGPT to finish George R.R. Martin's long-stalled book series, A Song of Ice and Fire, upon which the Game of Thrones TV show is based. And the AI did...well, not too bad. But don't expect it to replace Martin anytime soon, either.

I read the comic a few years back and loved it. When I heard Netflix had picked it up, I crossed my fingers so hard. I've forgotten where I saw the comment, but it was something along the lines that the movie is a polished, cleaned up version. I can't agree more - what a fun, moving, gorgeous treat!

Have you read the comic or seen the movie? What did you think?

Anybody know if a sequel to Dark River by Avery Jenkins is forthcoming? The way the book ended strongly hinted at one, and I'd love to go back to Nemaseck.

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/1062613

Masha du Toit is celebrating the release of their books on 7 new platforms by making them free until 31st July (except on Amazon because Amazon has other ideas). Sci-fi and fantasy, LGBTQ.

Spread the word :)

To start with, Masha recommends "The Babylon Eye", "We Broke the Moon" (YA drama), or "Ray and the Cat Thing" (quite light).

Post on Mastodon: https://mefi.social/@Zumbador/110699839834664849

I realized that the mod for this community is @ht_@lemmy.ml - they created the community three years ago but don't seem to have had any activity since. @ht_@lemmy.ml, are you around?

Barring a response, I'd like to see this community have at least one and preferably a few active mods. It doesn't really need much most of the time but it would be nice to take care of our own duplicate posts and have a small team in place in case anything arises. It would also be nice to have a community icon and banner.

I'm happy to take this on - I already mod !fountainpens@wayfarershaven.eu and !asklemmy@lemmy.ml, two very different communities - feel free to take a look at the mod logs for an idea of how I do things. !fountainpens@wayfarershaven.eu would be the better comparison because I don't really need to do much there. At the end of the day, I'd like to see the community well supported.

Does anyone have any concerns with me reaching out to the admins for this? And would anyone else want to be a mod?

I've finally started Rosemary and Rue, the first October Daye book. So far, fascinating world building.

I’m trying to increase my subscriptions. I was wondering if there are any sub communities the community would recommend. As an example, fantasy sub genre (epic fantasy, cozy fantasy, progression fantasy, et Al). Or specific author or series communities?