Currently reading a book called Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the 60s by Tom O ‘Neil. The book that I just finished was Flowers in the Attic.
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I'm busy reading through the Gor series. It's funny, because I'm 8 books in (they're comparatively small to other fantasy novels) and I still can't tell whether or not I actually like them.
Before that I read Hard Magic by Larry Correia. I don't think the book was bad, per se. I don't regret the time I spent reading it (that dishonor falls only on the drivel that was House of Leaves), but I think it falls short of his Monster Hunter International series. The 1940's-ish setting felt tacked on, I don't think enough was done with it. And since I stopped reading MHI after only a few books, I don't think I'll be continuing to the sequels of Hard Magic any time soon.
Been meaning to get some Correia books. Also, is Gor like Conan style fantasy?
Kind of vaguely Conan-ish setting, yeah, though I have to admit all of my knowledge of that setting comes just from the Schwarzenegger movie. There are two very important differences, though.
First, while the world of Gor is largely barbaric (in the sense that fighting is done by warriors using medieval weaponry, it's heavily caste-based with institutionalized slavery, etc.) it's not a magical setting like Conan but instead is established pretty early in the series to be a "sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" setting. There are no wizards or warlocks, etc., there's instead just a group of beings who have sufficiently advanced technology and choose to keep the rest of Gor in a barbaric state.
Second, the main character is from Earth, not Gor, so there's a few "fish out of water" moments that I don't think would exist in Conan. Not too many, though, as there's a decent timeskip in the first book and the main character spends the rest of the book narrating as if he was basically born on Gor. They happen every now and again in later books as he interacts with different cultures in the setting.
If I were to make one principal complaint, it's that while it is definitely refreshing to finally read a "fantasy" series that doesn't insist on trying to force any sort of girlbossing (part of the tagline of the series is literally "where men are masters and women live to serve their every desire")...I actually get tired of how much narration is spent on the anti-girlbossing side. It's like the author 60 years ago foresaw the current state of popular culture and decided to spend large sections of every book going on about how women actually like being subservient, all they really want is to be abducted by a strong man and tied up until they submit, they need a good smack every now and again to learn right, etc.
It was refreshing in the first book, overplayed in the third book, and yet each and every single sequel afterward I have to read several paragraphs of the protagonist's inner monologue about the sexual dynamics of fantasy third-world cultures. I haven't stopped reading yet, but it's definitely worn thin.
Gotcha. I’ll look for it next time I’m at the bookstore. Also if you ever get the chance check out Howard’s Conan books
I've met Correia, he's a bit of an opinionated ass. Brad Torgeson is way nicer.
Hard Magic is a favorite of mine, but it has difficulties with history and some of the characters are weird. I couldn't get through the first Monster Hunter Incorporated book. It kept reading like "and this happened because Larry Correia is right about everything."
Correia is a political sperg. His rants about Trump have convinced me never to meet him