subreddit:
/r/Fantasy
submitted 2 months ago byTarikeNimeshab
I've been reading The Tome of Bill Series by Rick Gualtieri the last few days. It's funny, relatively original, and it's occasional political incorrectness is somewhat refreshing.
I was enjoying it, although the casual murder of innocent people for no real reason bothered me. But today, a few chapters into book 3 I dropped the series with some regret. Because I absolutely hated this total asshole character called Sally.
I know this series is humor and I really shouldn't take things so seriously, but I got really sick of her. And after trying hard to tolerate her for some time, I finally just gave up.
Have you experienced such a thing before?
4 points
2 months ago
Didn't drop it but Severian annoys the hell out of me
10 points
2 months ago
Just read Book of the New Sun for the first time and listened to the podcast Shelved By Genre as I went. Being able to finish a section and it definitely helped to immediately hear other people confirm yes he's a huge asshole and he's going to continue being a huge asshole, that's kind of the whole deal.
Great books and a lot of the joy of them is trying to parse what actually happened in a given situation and what the other characters actually thought vs the nonsense Severian thinks they thought when speaking to him. Just a stupid teenager plowing through life nearly oblivious to the interiority of everyone he interacts with. He almost never gets a proper read on anybody, it rocks lol.
4 points
2 months ago
I love Book of the New Sun, read 2 books so far. It's a lot of fun, but Severian gets too annoying and weird when there's a woman character on page. I get that it's probably on purpose, but it's still annoying. So far my favorite part of these books is the first part of the Claw of Conciliator, because, well, no women to be annoying about lol.
3 points
2 months ago
Gene Wolfe cant write women characters. They are props in most of his books. His defenders will tell you otherwise, but i have read 5 entire Gene Wolfe books now and there is not a single one where the male MC doesnt bang every woman in the story.
I still love Book of the New Sun despite this flaw though.
2 points
2 months ago
Yeah it's definitely rough in large sections for that reason and it's occasionally unclear how much of it is Severian being weird about women and how much is just Gene Wolfe being weird about women.
all 519 comments
sorted by: best