u/dream-splorer

Thoughts on the narrator James Lailey? I really like Andrew Wincott and am curious about Lailey because he's doing the splintered sun. I've only seen one person talk about that audiobook and they didn't like it. I think mentioned specifically the sithi and norns sounded too human compared to Wincott's delivery. I'm curious about his just overall performance on it. I know I could listen to a sample but just wondering from anyone who listened to the whole book.

Something had me thinking about this last night and then a post made earlier by someone who fell off after MPP brought it back to mind.

I've been a huge fan since 2008, they've been my favorite band by a wide margin ever since then. I think they've made a lot of amazing music since then both as a band and apart. That being said though I think the whole "golden era" thing is pretty true for many including me. The only part I really disagree with is calling the golden era Sung Tongs through MPP. To me the quality is so consistently high that I would count their entire output in the 2000's from Spirit all the way to ODDSAC, which while released in 2010 was made from 2006-2009.

As I said though I think they've put out a lot of amazing songs since then, but no single release has truly come to that masterpiece level that I would give to Spirit and Ark all the way through to ODDSAC. CHz is very good, some songs on it are top shelf AC. Painting With is good, it's very fun. The last two albums, especially together, come closest probably. Maybe not more than CHz to me, but maybe. I think if they had been one album and an ep, maybe then it could have reached that SJ level to me, but as two albums or a sort of double album there are too many songs that feel like b sides to reach that top tier for me, though they're still like four star albums to me.

It's just interesting to think about. I feel like I dismissed that idea of there being a golden age for many years and didn't really agree until post PW. I do think they could absolutely have another career high album or even string of albums, I'll always believe in them to be able to. I believe they'll release another album that's a masterpiece to me. Is this all a bit sad? Yeah but no other band has come close for me despite that, the closest is probably King Gizzard and they're not really anywhere close to me. Again, I think everything post 2010 is pretty underrated but still like in a 4 star range for me, just as a way to quantify how I would rank them.

Overall thoughts about this? Favorite songs post 2010? Maybe your favorite album is CHz or PW or Isn't It Now?

A few of my favorites that, individually, do reach those classic period highs: Moonjock, Applesauce, New Town Burnout, Amanita, Floridada, The Burglars, On Delay, Bridge to Quiet (the song), Prester John, almost Strung With Everything (the back half), most of Deakin's songs especially Golden Chords and Just Am and Good House, Magicians From Baltimore, Defeat, and a handful more. Several Avey and Panda solo songs as well.

I was looking for the release date to confirm it's October 6th like I thought and was surprised how many goodreads reviews there are from early copies.

- a lot of 4 star reviews from existing fans and several as their first tad williams book. Some of each kind saying it's clearly written to be a good starting place and a couple saying they felt they were missing some context

- it sounds like it is a bit more adventure, swashbuckling as talked about but also not a huge departure from the other books in style

- some reviews said it's a little faster paced, others said it's still a slow burn

- didn't read entire reviews but I didn't see any mention of the dialogue. I know in that very short text preview there was some concern about it being too quippy or something but no negative mention of dialogue that I saw. Tad did say on a stream he did intentionally want it to be more dialogue heavy

- many 4 star reviews like I mentioned. Very positive on average. A lot of mentions of it being great as a first book in a series specifically and of being epic fantasy done right

I'm really excited to read it soon, still finishing Last King and he's quickly become my favorite living fantasy author.

Favorites that I've already seen:

- Station Eleven

- Dark Matter

- Severance

- Dark

Watched and loved:

- Lost

- Walking Dead

- The Last of Us

- Silo

- Three Body Problem

- Scavenger's Reign

- The OA

- Andor

- 1899

Tried and didn't finish:

- Manifest

- Sense8

Considering watching:

- Under the Dome (falls off after season 1?)

- The 100 (surprisingly good reviews)

- Battlestar Galactica

- Pantheon (definitely at some point I hear it's great)

I know about From on MGM, plan to watch it. Also would love movie and book reccomendations. I just finished Neal Stephenson's book Termination Shock and enjoyed it overall, climate fiction near future type book. I really liked Leave the World Behind on Netflix, gonna check out the audiobook soon. Want to check out more Stephenson and Blake Crouch books and more full on sci fi.

Saw a couple booktube things and also some adaptation news (Narnia please be good) and I was about to read some of Into the Narrowdark and thought that it would be interesting to see other Tad fan's favorites and rankings. One of the booktube things was about favorite active authors only but I think it's more interesting probably to say all time, but either way.

I read a good amount of fantasy back in the day and have only started again in the past couple years, so a mix of nostalgia and recent favorites like Tad. My top 3 right now would probably be:

1. J.R.R. Tolkien

2. Tad Williams

3. Joe Abercrombie

I was going to do five but it's hard to sort a lot of the old nostalgic ones and recent ones I want to read more of so honorable mentions to Philip Pullman, C.S. Lewis, Lloyd Alexander, J.K. Rowling, and Terry Pratchett.

I really, really like their music and have listened for maybe a year and change now but most of the pre Mercurial World songs haven't stuck yet and on shuffle I usually go to the album tracks. Pretty casual fan still, but I do think their third album is one of my most anticipated albums in general. I do love the songs from last year too. I'm curious if there are some of the early songs and other non album songs that are a lot of people's favorites.

Do you think reccomending people read the trilogy first is worth the trade off that it's not fast paced enough for many and Last King seems like it would get more fantasy fans into Osten Ard? What I mean is do you think people who read MST later are missing out on too much context and lore? Just a thought that maybe it would get the series more of the recognition it deserves if more people, for the sake of widespread accessibility, said start with the Last King series. It'll also be interesting to see whether Splintered Sun seems like it's truly a good starting place. It definitely seems like it's meant to be at least an option to start there. I started with The Dragonbone Chair and while I have loved it from the beginning it was definitely pretty dense coming into it without being as used to epic fantasy for a long time before that. I've definitely seen several people on r/fantasy and on booktube who never get to Last King because MST was too deliberately paced for them, when they probably would actually really like the later books.

Does anybody know how early advanced copies came out for the LKOA books? I'm curious because I've wondered if my uncle might have been able to get one before passing. He was really the only relative that I ever talked to about fantasy books and really cool. Several years ago he was in town and I was asking him about his favorite fantasy author and I remember he said Terry Pratchett and Discworld. I asked who his second favorite was and he said Tad Williams who I didn't know at the time. He told me about MST and had also read The Witchwood Crown which had just come out. Then several years later he got sick and passed away like six months before the final book came out. I've wondered several times if he could have possibly managed to get a copy. If it was his second favorite fantasy series and he read the first trilogy all those years earlier I think he would care a lot and try to get an ARC. He read tons of fantasy, I think it would have meant a lot to him. I don't know if six or seven months is too long that he could've tried to get an early copy or not but I hope he did and got to finish the series.

Brothers of the Wind 1,000 years earlier.

Do we know for sure the timeline with the two short stories in relation to The Splintered Sun? It takes place around 300 years before TDC right? What about The Burning Man and The Lady of the Wood?

What are the long series you loved enough to go through them multiple times? Whether you have already done your second read or not, whether reading or audio.

Wheel of Time? Real of the Elderlings? Osten Ard? Discworld? Tolkien's wider Legendarium? First Law?

I've slowly gotten back into reading and started branching out but the two big ones that made me think of this so far are the books in First Law and Osten Ard. Fair game to Harry Potter I think it counts as reasonably long and I've gone through them countless times and they're still very important to me. I haven't read deeper Legendarium stuff yet or finished ASOIAF but I think those will probably end up in this category.

I was talking to my Mom about Emotion by CRJ and how I like it more than 1989 which is my favorite Taylor swift album, who she likes a lot. Then I was like I think as far as straight up Pop albums Emotion is probably my favorite period. Talking main pop girl/boy albums as opposed to like psychedelic pop or anything like that. Then I thought, actually maybe I like Charli's album how i'm feeling now more. But that makes me feel like, as great as those albums are, it feels like there should be not only so many more on par with those two but some that are better. Those albums are amazing but it's like, surely there are some better ones old or new that have more soaring choruses, better lyrics etc. and are more perfect front to back. Any thoughts? What's your favorite pop album of all time and am I overrating those two?

tldr: name some better all time pop albums than Carly Rae Jepsen's Emotion or Charli xcx's hifn.

I just saw that the final OTC album is finally coming out October 23. I was always a bigger Circulatory System fan, got into them in 2009 when Signal Morning came out after hearing of them from AC fans. The two OTC albums are great though, I definitely need to revisit them. For anyone not familiar both bands had members in common and are psychedelic pop, Olivia Tremor Control being more 60's sunshine pop than CS but both are great stuff. Both OTC albums came out before Spirit in 1996 and 1999, and this third and final album coming out in October was made on and off for 20+ years. Both vocalists have passed, Bill Doss in 2012 and Will Cullen Hart in 2024. The remaining members finished the album that was originally started in 2002. The last CS album was in 2014, all three of their albums are very good too. Just thought this was super cool and exciting, and yeah there was a direct line to AC for me and thought other fans might have missed the news too.

From another post, I commented about it and it made me really excited about AC and then nothing...kind of a bummer. Please downvote if you want, I just think this is such cool lore that should be remembered and brought up.

"There were a bunch of recordings of countless hours of jamming in the early new york days that are kind of fabled. They said that in those recordings/in those sessions playing together, in the practice space they shared with Black Dice, they explored so much of what they would go on to do in the next 5-10 years (I don't know when they first talked about this) in the 2000's. The recordings were all in one place and were in one of their cars one day in New York I believe, and someone stole them and those recordings were lost to time.

Edit: one of the very coolest and most legendary pieces of lore of the early days of the band, and every time it's brought up crickets. I just want to talk to someone about how epic and interesting that story is! We're talking about all four of them for some of it, literally phrasing it as "countless hours" of early recordings before they made Danse, that they said explored all kinds of stuff that would lead to everything they made up to like SJ. Like that's about as big lore as it gets???"

Or if it's different, also the longest audiobook you've listened to?

Here's a word count post for reference, last I checked there wasn't a newer one.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/s/F7NFcRse0h

For me the longest I've read and the longest I've listened to are both from Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. I read Stone of Farewell (about 282,000 words) and had a free month on audible and decided to listen to the huge To Green Angel Tower (around 565,000 words, 63 hours audio) as it was honestly pretty intimidating to me and I didn't think my reading stamina was high enough yet. I loved them, quickly went in my top 5 fantasy series. I'm about to start reading my copy of Empire of Grass from the sequel series and it made me think of all this, at 318,000 words it'll be the longest.

I'm pretty excited for the update especially the pond and almost equally the ziplines. They're just so cool to build and to use. I just finished a huge tower that starts on a base on top of the ice cream cart and goes to a little higher than where the pine needles start in the tree, so quite a bit higher than the podium. It'll be cool to have them go to different corners of the map.

I agree with what some people have said that flying buggies wouldn't be quite as cool as they sound. Like it wouldn't break the game the way full on, open fast travel from the map would but it would be less fun than ziplines to me. I mean it's great if we have options: ziplines, a dragonfly or something, more tube shortcuts, and maybe eventually the teleporters.

It's been a couple years almost since I went through all of First Law and Shattered Sea, been reading and loving Tad Williams in that time. I forget if the Devils is supposed to be three standalone books? Is that accurate? Are there any updates on those or other upcoming books related to first law or the devils or in general?

- Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn

- The Last King of Osten Ard

- Shadowmarch

- Otherland

- The War of the Flowers

- Tailchaser's Song

- Bobby Dollar

- Ordinary Farm

Like no vocals besides maybe plunderphonics type samples if any. I think it would be super exciting to me. Maybe even a Black Dice collab album, I've always wanted them to make that, but on their own would be just as cool. I think they could make something pretty special. I was making a playlist of electronic music mostly older classic stuff and long time favorites, and it made me think of this. Realizing/remembering now that KGLW is about to put out an electronic album so that's probably also part of why it's on my mind. Also wanted to make a Boards of Canada post a couple months ago and didn't, I really love the new album and I know I've seen some BoC fans here.

- Very excited for the update, always very grateful and giving props to the devs for all they do. Eidos and Obsidian are doing an amazing job.

- Really, really hope the performance in my current save is fixed. Since the dozer update my combat has been very laggy. Not broken, but it has major latency in every single fight. The effects when you perfect block and other visual and feedback effects have major lag to the point where you'll finish a fight and turn around and there are still effects going off. I had a large build going on with a big bounce elevator so I didn't want to start over. Also starting over and doing all the content now is a big ask of 30+ hours. I tried redownloading the game and it didn't fix it, plan on doing the same when the update comes out. I made a post about this and didn't get any responses, no idea if this is an issue for everyone or just my current save.

- Also really hoping there's a better source of chocolate chunks. On a previous save during the valentine's event there was so much chocolate that it was game breaking. Just chests overflowing with chocolate and with chunky smoothies. But without that chocolate is so limited. Having to go through the ice cream cart for chocolate is an extremely repetitive and boring chore after the third or fourth time. The limited amount of it, the cold status, the scorpions, it's so lame having to go in there for chocolate. Bring back something farmable like muscle sprouts please or some large source of chocolate outside of the freezer.

- They've said the tool to go up ziplines won't be quick to get. "Good luck finding it." That's a little annoying, like making it to where you could only use the bench shortcut after getting the tang bangers.

- I hope there's several new tube shortcuts added, especially between the ice cream cart station and the new area.

This sounded fun and really entertaining to me, hopefully a handful of people give their thoughts and favorites. The idea is just to pick however many of them you have an opinion on one way or the other, and maybe to list a favorite album or other things like that. A lot of these will be more in the same world as AC but a lot are more from a different area of music and I think those would be even more interesting to see Animal Collective fan's opinion on. Again, you can just pick a few or do all the ones you know, I think it would be really interesting to read the replies. Also feel free to bring up other artists not listed so we can comment on them as well.

Magdalena Bay

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

The Avalanches

Grizzly Bear

Fleet Foxes

Arcade Fire

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard

King Buffalo

Kings of Leon

The Strokes

Charli xcx

Carly Rae Jepsen

Taylor Swift

Lightning Bolt

Dan Deacon

Black Moth Super Rainbow

Boards of Canada

Aphex Twin

Mastodon

Automatic

Lana Del Rey

Black Dice

Turnstile

My Chemical Romance

All Them Witches

Frankie and the Witch Fingers

Gorillaz

Beach House

Broadcast

Liars

The Blood Brothers

The Beatles

Black Sabbath

Kero Kero Bonito

Tame Impala

Daft Punk

Porter Robinson

MGMT

The Lemon Twigs

Everything Everything

Radiohead

Rap in general

George Clanton

Tom Waits

Björk

Fontaines D.C.

Battles

Hot Chip

Wet Leg

Elder

Fishmans

Holy Fuck

Pond

black midi

Gelli Haha

American Football

Modern Baseball

Country in general

Wand

Squid

Geese

Imogen Heap

Bob Dylan

Autechre

Pogo

The Books

The Ink Spots

Ninajirachi

100 gecs

High on Fire

Sleep

Queen

Led Zeppelin

Crown Lands

Gojira

Metal in general

Tune Yards

Grouper

Animal Collective 2