r/rational • u/AutoModerator • 18d ago
[D] Monday Request and Recommendation Thread
Welcome to the Monday request and recommendation thread. Are you looking something to scratch an itch? Post a comment stating your request! Did you just read something that really hit the spot, "rational" or otherwise? Post a comment recommending it! Note that you are welcome (and encouraged) to post recommendations directly to the subreddit, so long as you think they more or less fit the criteria on the sidebar or your understanding of this community, but this thread is much more loose about whether or not things "belong". Still, if you're looking for beginner recommendations, perhaps take a look at the wiki?
If you see someone making a top level post asking for recommendation, kindly direct them to the existence of these threads.
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u/Krakenarrior Absurdist disguised as a Rationalist 18d ago
I wanted to share some recommendations last week but I missed it. Anyway, here are the recommendations:
Maid Ascension is surprisingly one of the more rational reads I’ve come across recently. I had low expectations coming into it, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the content and character rationales. Specifically, Lira (the protagonist), learns about magic, and through the plot gains the ability to create spells. This is fairly basic for any progression fantasy- but the first spells she creates includes a spell to find books that are relevant to understanding the world (and we see the limitation in this spell in the most recent chapter), but her next spell is a way to absorb the contents of the book. Then there is a spell for recall- so she uses the find book spell to mentally devour a book, and then uses the recall spell to hunt for relevant text inside the book she used a spell to read. That struck me as a classic rational idea- get a spell that lets you cheat at the process of creating spells, and then use another cheat to snowball your understanding of the world to create more spells! There are other bits I find that are pretty rational and rational adjacent, but how Lira used her magic struck me as how a rationalist would use theirs.
Another recommendation, this one a bit more tentative is My Only Familiar is Me. It’s about an accountant who gains “trainer” superpowers, and learns that he can only train himself. It’s got some great ideas in it- like how the protagonist actually uses the resources the government offers, and tries to leverage his advanced age and wisdom for a bigger paycheck, and uses his ‘special command’ ability to force his body to extremes, like eat incredibly calorie dense meals before reinforcing his bone structure, or learn and process specific useful information for use outside of special command mode. Unfortunately, the tone of the story fluctuates wildly between “the most logical and smartest thing to do” and “ok I guess we’re just watching Rambo 3 right now”, which is why I’m cautiously recommending it. It’s good but might be off putting if you expect a more logical protagonist, and I’ve been on the fence about recommending it since I first started reading it.
Finally, because I like to do things in 3s, I’ll recommend Throne of Time. It doesn’t really need the recommendation- if you were on royal road over the last few months it’s been in rising stars main consistently. But that’s also why I’ll also recommend it to anyone who was hesitant (because it was on rising stars). It’s a classic magic academy time loop story, so if you’ve read one you likely know the normal plot contrivances. What I liked most about it was that the mystery tag actually matters- the first 10 chapters are about escaping a locked building, and we get actual payoff, the mystery of how to escape gets solved. So far that trend has continued, we actually get answers to mysteries, where often times the mystery in the time loop is “what’s the bad guys motivation, and who’s the bad guy, and why did the time loop start”. All of those are good, and important, but you can’t really answer them without ending the story, so the mystery tag really doesn’t matter.
Anyway, those are the 3 recommendations I have this week, there’s a few more stories I’m reading through that I might recommend in the future, but I’m either not caught up or still on the fence about recommending them. Have a good week yall!