FREE/BARGAIN — Science Fiction & Fantasy

[Dr. Drib]

I love sword & sorcery and old-school fantasy (Lin Carter, etc.), but I could NOT get into this guy's writing at all.

Maybe it's just me and about 500 other people on Mobileread who feel this way.

[sufue]

Cross-post to the mystery thread for info and links to a big series-starter sale, across multiple genres, at both Nook (70+ titles) and Amazon US (140 titles).

link: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh....php?p=3902829

[Tarana]

Colour of Magic (Diskworld #1) by Terry Pratchett is $1.99 at Amazon. I'd include link, but I lost my bluetooth mouse somewhere and can't copy and paste without it.

[tch65721]

Originally Posted by Tarana

Colour of Magic (Diskworld #1) by Terry Pratchett is $1.99 at Amazon. I'd include link, but I lost my bluetooth mouse somewhere and can't copy and paste without it.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000W9399S

Fair warning: this has changed at some point so Amazon may not recognize that you own the book. They don't seem to think I do at any rate. My copy says something about "bonus material" (whatever that is) so I guess that is the change.

[Fluribus]

Salvatore is one of those authors that I've been aware of for a long time. His Damiano trilogy got good reviews. His Drizzt novels were popular. I picked up the Damiano trilogy in paperback and never got around to reading any of it.

He's got enough of a rep that I'm willing to throw him into my backlog. I'm more metal than emo, though, so he and I might not get along that well.

Speaking of headbanging. I'm pretty sure that Fredric Brown was a metal maven. Amazon.com has Martians, Go Home for $3.99 and What Mad Universe for $2.99.

In fact, they have quite a few other Gateway (owned by Hachette) editions of some good books at reasonable prices. Gateway publisher search.

Norman Spinrad - The Iron Dream for $2.99. Definately metal.

Norman had a self-published edition of the book for sale on Amazon.com a while back and it was badly OCR mangled. A quick glance through this sample looked better than Norman's edition.

[ratinox]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

I love sword & sorcery and old-school fantasy (Lin Carter, etc.), but I could NOT get into this guy's writing at all.

Maybe it's just me and about 500 other people on Mobileread who feel this way.

Nah.

Salvatore doesn't write swords and sorcery. His stuff, at least the D&D tie-in stuff that I've seen, lacks the sense of wonder that swords and sorcery bring to the table. He writes popcorn fantasy (his own description, I believe) which is fine if that's your cuppa.

[tch65721]

Storm Front (The Dresden Files, Book 1) by Jim Butcher - $.99
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000WH7PLS

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by tch65721

Storm Front (The Dresden Files, Book 1) by Jim Butcher - $.99
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000WH7PLS

Thanks for that. I don't think Jim Butcher is going to be my style, but for $0.99 I'll give it a chance.

[tch65721]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Thanks for that. I don't think Jim Butcher is going to be my style, but for $0.99 I'll give it a chance.

I don't know if he will be my style either but decided to give it a shot.

[Dazrin]

RE: Butcher, the first three books were ok but not great for me. Worth reading but mostly forgettable. If you don't like them at all then don't bother with more. If it is "ok" for you, you might try to get to at least book 5 before completely giving up on them. Book 5 is where the series went from "ok" to "WOW!" for me.

[salty-horse]

The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t with Her Mind by Jackson Ford is $2.99 at Amazon.com

Teagan Frost is having a hard time keeping it together. Sure, she's got telekinetic powers -- a skill that the government is all too happy to make use of, sending her on secret break-in missions that no ordinary human could carry out. But all she really wants to do is kick back, have a beer, and pretend she's normal for once.
But then a body turns up at the site of her last job -- murdered in a way that only someone like Teagan could have pulled off. She's got 24 hours to clear her name - and it's not just her life at stake. If she can't unravel the conspiracy in time, her hometown of Los Angeles will be in the crosshairs of an underground battle that's on the brink of exploding...

[Cactus Chef]

The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson is $1.99 today on Amazon, Kobo, and possibly others:
https://www.amazon.com/Broken-Sword-...dp/B00PI181JI/
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-broken-sword-4

This acclaimed fantasy classic of men, elves, and gods is at once breathtakingly exciting and heartbreakingly tragic.

Published the same year as The Fellowship of the Ring, Poul Anderson’s novel The Broken Sword draws on similar Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon sources. In his greed for land and power, Orm the Strong slays the family of a Saxon witch—and for his sins, the Northman must pay with his newborn son. Stolen by elves and replaced by a changeling, Skafloc is raised to manhood unaware of his true heritage and treasured for his ability to handle the iron that the elven dare not touch. Meanwhile, the being who supplanted him as Orm’s son grows up angry and embittered by the humanity he has been denied. A pawn in a witch’s vengeance, the creature Valgard will never know love, and consumed by rage, he will commit a murderous act of unspeakable vileness.

It is their destiny to finally meet on the field of battle—the man-elf and his dark twin, the monster—when the long-simmering war between elves and trolls finally erupts with a devastating fury. And only the mighty sword Tyrfing, broken by Thor and presented to Skafloc in infancy, can turn the tide in a terrible clashing of faerie folk that will ultimately determine the fate of the old gods.

Along with such notables as Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury, multiple Hugo and Nebula Award winner Poul Anderson is considered one of the masters of speculative fiction.

I admit I don't have much familiarity with the book. However, the title immediately jumped out to me when I saw it, as it was one of several books that Michael Moorcock explicitly called out in his preface to Elric of Melnibone (which I am reading at the moment) as being a substantial influence on his work. So for that reason alone, I pounced. One more for the pile...

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Dazrin

RE: Butcher, the first three books were ok but not great for me. Worth reading but mostly forgettable. If you don't like them at all then don't bother with more. If it is "ok" for you, you might try to get to at least book 5 before completely giving up on them. Book 5 is where the series went from "ok" to "WOW!" for me.

Most people will give up before getting to book 5 if they feel the beginning books are just OK. The beginning books have to be better then just OK. They have to be enjoyable enough to bother to keep going.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by salty-horse

The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t with Her Mind by Jackson Ford is $2.99 at Amazon.com

[cc_in_oh]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Most people will give up before getting to book 5 if they feel the beginning books are just OK. The beginning books have to be better then just OK. They have to be enjoyable enough to bother to keep going.

I thought Dresden steadily improved over the first 3 or 4 books. The 6 Alera books were very consistent IMO, and the first (and only so far) Cinder Spires was very promising - I'd like to see more of that than Dresden. The Alera books are set 2 years apart, which I thought worked well to advance the characters and story without losing continuity.

Most series I've read have improved significantly after the first book - Michael Connelly, Ian Rankin, Jo Nesbo, Jussi Adler-Olsen, Louise Penny etc. One exception was The Expanse, which IMO was outstanding from page 1 (though I remember having to restart after 50 or 60 pages to get the characters and the initial events sorted out in my mind).

I'd always recommend starting a series with library borrows before purchasing. I'll often sample 2 or 3 new series before deciding which one to commit to next...