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Haystack posted:Thread favorite Dungeon Crawler Carl I'm now on book 5, I can't believe how fast I went from "oh this is cute and silly fun," to "Wait is this actually good?" Deep Glove Bruno posted:I thought the Sapkowski Witcher series did this especially well. I think the narrator's name is Peter Kenny. The October Daye books have a narrator, Mary Robinette, that does a huge amount of distinct voices , if you like urban fantasy.
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Apr 20, 2024 13:34
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Soonmot posted:I'm now on book 5, I can't believe how fast I went from "oh this is cute and silly fun," to "Wait is this actually good?" For me, the Hoarder was the tipping point where the book went from merely interesting to excellent. What an amazingly hosed up and poignant setpiece.
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Apr 20, 2024 15:01
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Soonmot posted:I'm now on book 5, I can't believe how fast I went from "oh this is cute and silly fun," to "Wait is this actually good?" I had this experience with Cradle a while back, and I’m currently watching a friend fall deep into the light novel / webnovel hole on that same progression. I’m reasonably certain what’s happening is our brains are just being terraformed by this stuff. Expose yourself to enough of something that’s just good enough to get past your filters, and you can start building up engagement with it. Like, I would hesitate to call the Cradle series good books, but they’re fun and trivially easy to read, so you can ingest huge amounts of it, and at a certain point you’ve spent so much time with those characters that the fact that its prose is mediocre at best stops mattering.
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Apr 21, 2024 22:32
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I'm a comic book fan, I understand that type of thing lol. With DCC, I actually think the books are Good. Not just familiar or comfortable. The way you learn about Carl's relationship with his ex, his father and mother, the trauma he's already been through, really works. Learning how to hold onto your humanity in a horrible situation, or with Donut, maturing into a caring person instead of a self centered child. Themes of found family or capitalism eating itself along side everything else, the bits of body horror sprinkled throughout. It's good. Do we have a thread for DCC, I hate to keep derailing this one?
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Apr 21, 2024 23:15
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Soonmot posted:I'm a comic book fan, I understand that type of thing lol. Looks like it gets discussed in the Web Serials thread, though I'm not sure how much.
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Apr 22, 2024 02:30
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Soonmot posted:With DCC, I actually think the books are Good. Not just familiar or comfortable. The way you learn about Carl's relationship with his ex, his father and mother, the trauma he's already been through, really works. Learning how to hold onto your humanity in a horrible situation, or with Donut, maturing into a caring person instead of a self centered child. Themes of found family or capitalism eating itself along side everything else, the bits of body horror sprinkled throughout. It's good. I'm a guy who basically doesn't cry, and DCC and Jeff Hayes have gotten me to choke up more than once. You're right - it's GOOD. The tough part is working up the guts to recommend it to other people, because it's LitRPG and it's called loving Dungeon Crawler Carl.
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Apr 22, 2024 19:27
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Yeah, I will freely admit, I almost turned off DCC in the first hour because "Oh loving lord it's about some stupid Manly fuckhead with an Evil Slut Girlfriend getting magic powers and going to an isekai world" gave me hives, and if not for the excellent work of the reader there is no way I would have gotten far enough into it to actually like it.
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Apr 22, 2024 19:49
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lol i felt the same way, especially with how Hayes voices Carl, double so because a few years ago I decided not to read any books about straight white guys by straight white guys, but also i'm not gonna NOT finish an audiobook, and there was enough cute stuff to keep me interested, especially once Donut transforms. Then, like Haystack posted above, by the time they got to the Horder scene, I was 100% on board this stupid ride. So this was originally a web serial? That explains the recapping that seems to happen a lot.
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Apr 22, 2024 23:17
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I've been getting into Marvel Comics as of late and I had no idea that, not only are there many Marvel prose stories and novelizations of important comic storylines, many of those have been turned into audiobooks. I was curious if anyone here has tried any? If not, maybe you'll have some interest. I'm getting sucked into a rabbit hole myself. X-Men and Spider-Man: Time's Arrow: A Marvel Omnibus X-Men Mutant Empire Daredevil: Predator's Smile. I pickd this one up since I'm in a DD mood and figured why not. Apparently mostly about Bullseye. Then there are novelizations of important comics stories: Daredevil: Guardian Devil I've head ithe original story is not great but it is kinda important so I might just listen to this rather than read teh comic, I dunno. Daredevil: The Man Without Fear X-Men: The Dark Phoenix Saga.
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May 4, 2024 14:00
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The man called M posted:Going through the Penguin version of the Night Watch stories in Discworld. Are there any other audiobooks that aren’t Discworld where the narrator does different voices for the characters well? As mentioned, Moira Quirke is a delight. I've found that Kobna Holbrook-Smith's narration and character voices in the Rivers of London are fantastic, to the point that the author has been adding characters to challenge him. Non fantasy, the narrator of Slough House is so good, just the right amount of droll.
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May 6, 2024 16:39
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NikkolasKing posted:I've been getting into Marvel Comics as of late and I had no idea that, not only are there many Marvel prose stories and novelizations of important comic storylines, many of those have been turned into audiobooks. I was curious if anyone here has tried any? If not, maybe you'll have some interest. I'm getting sucked into a rabbit hole myself. I remember reading and liking Time's Arrow as a kid but I have no idea if it'd hold up now.
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May 6, 2024 16:44
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NikkolasKing posted:I've been getting into Marvel Comics as of late and I had no idea that, not only are there many Marvel prose stories and novelizations of important comic storylines, many of those have been turned into audiobooks. I was curious if anyone here has tried any? If not, maybe you'll have some interest. I'm getting sucked into a rabbit hole myself. Right as I had managed to accumulate 2 credits....  Thanks though!
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May 6, 2024 20:28
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I noticed 1-6 of the Murderbot Diaries are available in the Audible Plus catalogue, so I've started listening to them. Absolutely great audiobooks that I'm really enjoying.
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May 14, 2024 12:32
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Those are incredibly good, yes.
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May 14, 2024 19:24
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Would love to listen to some detective fiction that has the vibes of The Nice Guys movie. That makes me think I should give Elmore Leonard a shot, though it looks like Get Shorty isn't available anywhere in the US. I thought about checking out the Hap & Leonard books, too. What else might fit that "fun detective" vibe with a decent narrator?
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May 19, 2024 16:09
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All over the place, but check out: The Hunter; by Richard Stark, I think it’s free on Audible QT’s Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood, read by Jennifer Jason Leigh And yeah anything by Elmore Leonard
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May 19, 2024 16:43
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The Dortmunder books by Donald E Westlake are comedic slice-of-70s-life caper novels, starting with The Hot Rock. I don't know about any of the modern narrators for those, I have cassette rips of Frank Muller reading them that I adore. Muller has also read a bunch of the 70s era Elmore Leonards and I love his narration for crime stuff. Check out Gold Coast and Freaky Deaky for stand alone novels and Swag/Stick for continuing characters.
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May 19, 2024 16:57
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Small world, I was just listening to the sample of Hot Rock earlier. I'd say it seems the narrator on audible is just "ok" for that one. Frank would be good, that guy's voice is fun. I'll say for Elmore Leonard, who I love, Robert Forster did an awesome job on Mr. Paradise. So cool, effortlessly cool, just like the writing. Swag is one I went the paper route with, but definitely recommended, awesome book. Also gonna read Stick soon. As for Parker books like The Hunter, they just took those off of the free with audible membership in the US region (the fiends). But I did buy the first one, gonna dig into those too. I noticed they have the Vampire Hunter D audiobooks and Dramatized versions on there now though, which is cool. Heavy Metal fucked around with this message at 09:27 on May 20, 2024 |
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May 20, 2024 09:22
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I'm about to start The Three Body Problem series and saw there's two versions of the first book on audible. Do I want the original 2014 version or the new Rosalind Chao version that was just released?
Koryk fucked around with this message at 21:04 on May 21, 2024 |
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May 21, 2024 21:00
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Any good selections in the 2 for 1 sale? Like most nerds I like Fantasy and Sci-Fi
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May 21, 2024 21:11
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Syrinxx posted:Any good selections in the 2 for 1 sale? Like most nerds I like Fantasy and Sci-Fi My eternal recs will always be The Locked Tomb, and now Dungeon Crawler Carl. I like pretty much everything Seanan McGuire writes with her October Daye books being my fav. The Murderbot books are really fun and a cool sci-fi setting, it also gave me the autistic aroace representation that I crave.
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May 21, 2024 21:32
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Koryk posted:Do I want the original 2014 version or the new Rosalind Chao version that was just released? Listen to five-minute samples and pick the narrator you most tolerate.
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May 22, 2024 13:23
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A friend of mine recommended He Who Fights With Monsters and I'm finishing up book 2 today or tomorrow depending on traffic. It's silly and fun with some pretty cool monsters, magic abilities and an interesting magic system. An Australian nerd is magically transported to another world and gets Super Awesome But Disturbing And Possibly Evil Powers, upsets the locals by being a weird Australian, breaks a lot of social conventions and is generally a pain in the rear end to anyone in a position of authority. It's no DCC and I think I'd have enjoyed it more if this was my introduction to litrpg but it's entertaining and outlandish enough to keep it interesting. They could have trimmed down all the status effect descriptions and stuff for the audiobook version, though, copy pasting stat blocks works well for a serialized online publication but gets pretty old when read by a narrator. Special attack X has inflicted Y on enemy Z Enemy Z has resisted Y Y does not take effect
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May 23, 2024 07:57
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It gets worse. Way to many words dedicated to status effects and describing the same abilities over and over again. I recently listened to Heretical fishing and it really hit the same fish out of water aspects that I liked from he who fights monsters. I'd recommend checking it out when you finish your current series. It's also about a carefree Aussie dude that ends up getting isekai'd to a magical world and he's all about chilling at the beach and fishing rather than making his numbers go up. Same narrator too.
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May 23, 2024 13:49
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I don't get that. Why not just narrativize it properly and get rid of the gaming statistics? Is it because it's just strictly for people into D&D (etc.) to vicariously experience a campaign? Wouldn't it still appeal to those people (and many more who don't have an inbuilt fondness for the mechanics) without that stuff?
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May 23, 2024 15:56
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Deep Glove Bruno posted:I don't get that. Why not just narrativize it properly and get rid of the gaming statistics? Is it because it's just strictly for people into D&D (etc.) to vicariously experience a campaign? Wouldn't it still appeal to those people (and many more who don't have an inbuilt fondness for the mechanics) without that stuff? The gaming statistic parts seems to be part of the appeal for people. I think because it offers a power fantasy that is inherently swift and pleasurable. (Things work in exact definable numbers and if I do (x) number goes up, and as a D&D nerd/video game player/expert chef I am experienced in figuring out loopholes to make power go up very quickly.) Much like the stories themselves it often serves as a shortcut to the power fantasy aspect where you can be super strong/cool/awesome very quickly.
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May 23, 2024 16:07
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Deep Glove Bruno posted:I don't get that. Why not just narrativize it properly and get rid of the gaming statistics? Is it because it's just strictly for people into D&D (etc.) to vicariously experience a campaign? Wouldn't it still appeal to those people (and many more who don't have an inbuilt fondness for the mechanics) without that stuff? It's all about target audience. They're for people that WANT to see Number Go Up; the idea that you have maximum control over your own development and destiny in the most direct and literal fashion.
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May 23, 2024 16:38
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Okay, I can see that. Also I can see that that genre is insanely not for me. Numerical representation of character development is like the opposite of what I go to books for, but I get how it can appeal to people. I once read a kids book series about a little league team that had little box scores after each game, that's as far as I'd ever go.
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May 23, 2024 16:59
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I wouldn't mind it so much if I were reading the text version and could skim over the numbers, but it gets very repetitive having it narrated so often. Just got done with a part where the entire party gets a bunch of new abilities and it was just an endless barrage of "you have awakening stone of x. Awakening stone of x has bound to ability y. Ability y, iron rank level A, BB% you have 4/5 abilities filled. New skill: shid pant. Shid pant: effect, you poo poo your entire rear end. Aura ability, nearby creatures throw up in their mouth a little. Mana cost low, cooldown 20 minutes."
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May 23, 2024 17:19
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