johnjosephadams.com
Series Editor of BASFF. Publisher of @lightspeedmagazine.com (+ Editor) and NIGHTMARE. Editor of 40+ anthologies. Co-editor (with Jordan Peele) of OUT THERE SCREAMING.
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I've seen other ones that expensive, and I cannot for the life of me figure out how some can be under $400 and some nearly $7500. Thanks for the info!
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haha I hadn't even noticed that!
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What make/model is that? I'm in the market for one of those. I was looking at this one www.homedepot.com/p/Eridanus-1...
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One of the subclasses I created is the Kraken barbarian, which you can see in the preview PDF on the Kickstarter page.
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I can't help but wonder how much that guy got paid to "write" that shit.
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This article identifies the author of the "article" and the guy admits to using AI (and does all the time??) www.404media.co/chicago-sun-...
Apparently it's a special insert in the paper that goes in a bunch of papers, not just Chicago Sun Times (according to the 404 piece).
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I should have mentioned that the author's note at the end of A DROP OF CORRUPTION is another little triumph to put an extra couple of exclamation points at the end of the book. 🤌
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thank YOU!
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To sign up and get your free ebook anthology, visit johnjosephadams.com/newsletter
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So! There's a taste of what you get by subscribing to the newsletter. I also share my thoughts on movies/tv and talk about TTRPGs, short fiction, my anthologies and magazines, and other fun stuff. PLUS frequent dog pics like this one of our Blue Heeler/Aussie Shepherd, Lore.
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DEATH OF THE AUTHOR. 8/10 A landmark achievement for Okorafor. I tore through it, loved it. I have no doubt it will be one of the most discussed books of the year. Everyone should read it! (You may be wondering if it really is a genre book, even once you're reading it; I promise that it is.)
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Which is not to say I'd give every story in here 10/10, but "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" is one that I would, and the overall quality of every story in this book is so high, it's simply one of the best collections ever.
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When I read stories for BASFF or for Lightspeed, I always rate everything on a scale of 1-10 to keep track of how much I liked something, and I've kind of internalized that and generally apply it to most things. For me to give a whole collection 10/10 is basically unheard of.
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EXHALATION. 10/10 This is a re-read for me, but I had never listened to the audiobook, and I'm on an audiobook kick lately, so I decided to revisit. Ted Chiang is amazing—there's pretty universal agreement on that. But I'll just say that for me to give 10/10 to ANYTHING is extremely rare.
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Fantastic worldbuilding, really rich characterization, and mystery novel grade mystery writing. Now I can't wait for the 3rd book, but I have to wait a whole year like everyone else! <grumble>
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A DROP OF CORRUPTION. 9/10 I read the first in this series, The Tainted Cup, and loved it, so I was really excited to dive right into book 2, which just came out as I finished that. And Robert Jackson Bennett did not disappoint. I was just as enthralled with this one as I was with the first.
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I totally got sucked in by the characters and then just sat back and enjoyed the ride. On Amazon it has 4.5 stars from 114,098 reviews (a mind-boggling number ), yet a lot of Redditors say it's terrible, which I find absolutely baffling.
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TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW. 9/10 Firstly, I'll note this book is not SF/F/H in any way, though as noted above it is about video game designers. I didn't even know what to classify this as, but I see online it is called "Friendship Fiction"—and yeah, that's totally what it is.
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from the details about publishing, to the way social media would factor into everything that happens in the book. It's just masterful.
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YELLOWFACE. 9/10 This book sounded like fire when I first heard about it, but despite that I wasn't prepared for how incredibly unflinching and incisive it would be. The prose is electric, and Kuang gets every single aspect of the story right—
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It's a compelling read with excellent worldbuilding, and the romance between the protagonist and her partner is both charming and unique. It's a finalist for both the Hugo and Nebula—and while I wouldn't rank it as my #1 favorite amongst the finalists I've read so far, I wouldn't be mad if it won.
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SOMEONE YOU CAN BUILD A NEST IN. 7/10 Having not read the cover copy at all, this book was not at all what I was thinking it would be based on the title. I thought it would be kind of urban fantasyish, but nope it's a secondary world fantasy, with a protagonist who is an actual monster.
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Also worth noting: This book has a lot of footnotes in it, and because a different narrator reads all the footnotes, it feels seamlessly integrated into the narrative—indeed, they feel like they were way less intrusive than if I'd been reading it rather than listening to it.
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BABEL. 8/10 This was the book of the year the year it came out, so you probably don't need me to tell you how great it is. But it IS great—I absolutely loved it. The audiobook narrator is really special in this one—they're able to really pull off that vocal chameleon thing that is so hard to do.
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I was hooked right from the start, and my interest never wavered. It's definitely one of the best debuts I've read in a long time. And hey, Barack Obama loved it too, if you need another reason to read it.
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THE MINISTRY OF TIME. 8/10 A compulsively readable time travel novel. It uses a very similar plot point as the John Varley story "Air Raid" (adapted to film as Millennium), but otherwise it felt like a very fresh take on time travel tropes.
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SERVICE MODEL. 8/10 Really fun and fast read about AI, free will, and a very occasional murder. The audiobook is included in the Hugo voters packet, which I thought was pretty much perfectly narrated by the author.
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PIRANESI. 9/10 Fascinating, compelling, and super super strange—in the best way possible. I loved it... and have never read anything like it.
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That said, while that's not ideal, it's not always a big negative so long as you're enjoying them as you're reading them. I listened to the audiobook for both of them, narrated by Avi Roque, which I can definitely recommend as a good way to experience them.
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WHAT FEASTS AT NIGHT / WHAT MOVES THE DEAD. 7/10, 7/10 These two Hugo-nominated novellas are both very compelling and I really enjoyed them as I was reading them. I've read a couple other things since I finished them, and I find myself struggling to remembering a ton about them.
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I loved the characters and the worldbuilding, and, while there aren't a ton of action sequences, the ones that are there are freakin' awesome. The sequel just came out, and I'm reading that now—and it seems to be just as good as the first so far.
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THE TAINTED CUP. 9/10 A mystery/fantasy hybrid that excels with both the mystery and fantasy elements. Incredible book—well deserving of its recently-announced Hugo nomination.
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It does some pretty cool things with the source of magic that I thought was innovative, and it had a lot of depth to the characters and worldbuilding. And it says it's a standalone, which is always nice in a world where almost everything is a series.
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BLOOD OVER BRIGHT HAVEN. 8/10 I kind of surprised myself how much I enjoyed this. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised—it was a NY Times Bestseller and gotten rave reviews (including one that compares it to Le Guin... I don't know about all that, but still).
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they just want to give you hugs...and drag you to the ground and give you more hugs
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that's a dope cover!