10/26/2025

3/12/2026 9:08 AM

12

0

0 wins / 0 losses

Warden

House of Leaves is definitely a book I COULD put down, though. Great read, but that middle section is not exactly a page-turner.

Soldier of the Mist is good. I might recommend it to someone more interested in fantasy (or Ancient Greece in general). I haven't gotten around to Pirate Freedom, but I do hear that recommended pretty frequently for newer readers. I also think The Sorcerer's House is a pretty good start if you want more of the unreliable narration aspect, while still being a light and accessible read. My introduction was reading New Sun when I was fourteen, which is really not something I can recommend. Did you start with New Sun, too? (And have you read anything else in the Solar Cycle?)

Bloodchild by Octavia Butler. A sci-fi short story about a boy, about the usual male coming-of-age concerns...

Take the plunge!! it's worth it 100%. The series really is some of the best sci fi has to offer. And then there's the sequel tetralogy, Book of the Long Sun, and the sequel trilogy to *that*, Book of the Short Sun (my personal favorite)... And all the short stories, oh man. I can't believe I forgot to mention one of the main features of his books! Great unreliable narrators. Less so of the Nabokovian delusional type (though there is some of that), so much as just a lot of confusion regarding characters and the world. If something is a fact of life for the setting, you won't get much explanation; but on the other hand, if the narrator doesn't have the context for an event, all he can tell you is the surface level actions. Hit me up if/when you get around to reading him.

Is anyone here familiar with Gene Wolfe? He was a pretty prominent SCI-FI/FAN author in the 70s-80s. I've read most of his works. He's pretty incredible. Anyway, I bring him up because the very first page of Necromancer is actually cropped cover art for the Shadow of the Torturer. Not sure if Endmaster's actually read it or not, but I wouldn't be terribly surprised if he had. It's pretty up his alley. If any of you are into that Dying Earth type of setting (which I assume some of you must be), it's worth looking into. The language is pretty dense, though. Might not be the best introduction to Wolfe. A better entry point might be The Fifth Head of Cerberus, which is a lovely triplet of novellas bound into a novel, each sharing the same setting. It's got everything: mad science, shapeshifting aliens who were genocided out of existence—or were they?(!)—slavery, a weird fucked up brothel. The atmosphere of his books are incredible. It's got this weird mix of pulp SCI-FI imagery with a more 'literary' writing style. Highly recommended. I could keep going on about his stories all day, so I'm cutting myself off here.

oh man!! Yes I gotta know, thank you haha.

Good catch. Yeah, it's part of what I love so much about that book. It's so much weirder and creepier than 'just' ghosts. SPOILERS FOR THE SHOW (If you have any interest in watching it; like I said, it's not bad just the last line really blows) So the final note the show ends on is basically that their dead loved one (a ghost in Hill House now) is okay and fine, because time is falling all around us and its not so bad being a ghost and whatever... And the final line of the show is a repetition of the opening line of the book, But it has one word changed. It goes: "And whatever walked there, walked *together*." Terrible. Oh so terrible. Groan. Agony. The way the guy delivers it, too. The phony sentiment of it all. Ruined the whole thing.

Yikes! That's no good. Well that's that I guess. Not the response I was expecting. This site sure has weathered a lot of freaks. I guess it makes sense that this forum would attract some real creeps. I guess I'll just settle on never finishing that particular story. At least Endmaster's stuff is still here, that's most of what I read. It's funny that the guy whose whole thing is being a controversial edgelord troll is the one to basically just be a normal guy... I don't remember my old account name unfortunately! I didn't really engage much in the forums, mostly just played through the games. (Maybe that's a good thing though. I was probably the exact right demographic to be groomed by this author - yikes!)

Despite the amount of time I spent here in those pivotal tender years of my childhood, I never did get into Dead Man Walking. The breadth of its choices completely overwhelmed me, and the one time I saw discussion of its best ending, the actions mentioned were so obscure and unknown to me that I just gave up on it. The furthest I ever managed to reach was a bad ending where your family is already dead when you reach them. I tried giving it another shot and it ended very similarly. There's just so many choices! I applaud it, but it makes it difficult for me to approach. Does anyone have any tips? *Should* I look for a guide? Or should I just keep going in blind and try to figure out the ideal path? Thanks.

I've read it. It's a really weird bit of horror, isn't it? The haunting is far from the conventional tropes and manifestations you see in media. What sticks in my mind today is the fact that though it has an unhappy history, it always seemed to me that it's the *house* which is ill, and not any ghostly residents. Have you seen the show adaptation? It's alright, but it makes the whole thing a lot more traditional in terms of the haunting. And the last line of the show is so stupid, genuinely so unbelievably trite and contrived, it soured the whole thing for me. But never mind... I really liked Eleanor too! She's a very strange character. It doesn't help that everyone in that book is constantly lying or making jokes, including Eleanor. Have you finished it by now? House of Leaves is great. I'm afraid my experience with this genre is somewhat limited, though. Annihilation is a great horror book and has some of the elements you'd be looking for, but it isn't house related at all. It's sequel, Authority, is much more slow burn and deeply strange (if a little boring at times).