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Megazver posted:It was pretty meh. It solidified my decision to not read any more books by Richard K. Morgan. The only difference between a land fit for heroes and his other series is that fact that the main protagonist fucks men. The macho posture, graphic sex and violence is the same.
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Oct 11, 2019 06:13
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Cardiac posted:The only difference between a land fit for heroes and his other series is that fact that the main protagonist fucks men. The macho posture, graphic sex and violence is the same. And I didn't really enjoy most of his other books either, except for Altered Carbon, which foolishly gave me enough hope to try a few others.
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Oct 11, 2019 11:22
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The Scar is $2 at the Kindle store today. And still so good!
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Oct 11, 2019 15:15
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I've been reading Gideon the Ninth and I'm up to chapter 11. I'll be honest I'm struggling a bit, I dig the "day of the dead" necromancers, but Harrow has left the plot and now it's Gideon, meeting all the characters from the other houses and it's dragging on a bit. Does it pick up soon?
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Oct 11, 2019 16:11
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Yeah. Once they've introduced everybody, the book cycles between necromancer trials, some action, and political intrigue.
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Oct 11, 2019 16:24
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Re-read a bunch of Vernor Vinge stories recently (fire upon the deep/children of time/deepness in the sky) and noticed in Vinge's longer stories the really evil antagonists tend to be bureaucrats/middle management and there's almost always a red-headed love interest (of either gender). Formula holds true in Vinge's Peace War, True Names, and mostly true in Tatja Grimm's world/marooned in realtime. Defintely a testament to Vinge's writing skill that by the end of Fire Upon the Deep, the tines and skroderider's feel more fleshed out than almost any of the alien races in David Brin's Jijo/Uplift universe books. e: forgot about and just remembered the chicken aliens from Brin's Uplift War CLUCK CLUCK Interstellar KFC CLUCK CLUCK quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 02:55 on Oct 12, 2019 |
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Oct 12, 2019 02:46
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$2 for Deathbird today. Ellison rules! https://www.amazon.com/Deathbird-Stories-Harlan-Ellison-ebook/dp/B00JVCHFFQ/ref=sr_1_17?qid=1570898325&s=digital-text&sr=1-17
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Oct 12, 2019 17:39
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I read Through Fiery Trials, David Weber's newest Safehold book that picks up after a ten-year time skip from the last book. I had hoped the time skip would be a chance for Weber to wipe the overstuffed slate clean and return to the more concise and stuff-actually-happening style of Off Armageddon Reef. I was wrong.
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Oct 12, 2019 20:08
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Cythereal posted:I read Through Fiery Trials, David Weber's newest Safehold book that picks up after a ten-year time skip from the last book. Was it at least a library copy? Baen Books does one thing well that other book publishers find near impossible, monetizing advanced reader copies. Baen Books was at the vanguard of ebook publishing, and built their own ebook infrastructure instead of getting hooked on the zero effort/zero control streams of ebook sales money coming in from apple/amazon. That is the one positive thing I will say about Baen Books and their [irony]*visionary*[/irony] stable of authors.
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Oct 12, 2019 20:59
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quantumfoam posted:Was it at least a library copy? Yes. I stopped buying the Safehold books several books ago, but I check them out from the library because I still enjoy them as popcorn reads where I routinely skip several pages at a time. Through Fiery Trials, I feel, is exemplary of the Safehold series: there's no end of interesting ideas here, but Weber is wholly uninterested in engaging with them and would much rather talk about how wonderful the protagonists and their empire are, and how horrible the bad guys and their empires are.
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Oct 12, 2019 22:56
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Cythereal posted:Yes. I stopped buying the Safehold books several books ago, but I check them out from the library because I still enjoy them as popcorn reads where I routinely skip several pages at a time. Agreed. Popcorn reads are fine and everyone has their own favorite flavor of popcorn fiction, mine tend to be the ultra-crappy The Destroyer novelettes and Julian Mays absolutely insane Golden Torc/Pliocene Exile series.
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Oct 13, 2019 04:32
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I really wish there were well-read audiobooks of those. Only the first one of the Exile series ever got an audio release.
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Oct 13, 2019 14:19
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One particular little bugbear I have with Through Fiery Trials and Safehold in general: Weber keeps bringing up the possibility of characters being something other than straight in these books, but only right before affirming that everyone present is heterosexual. Got really annoying in this book with how frantically Weber was pairing off just about every named character and giving everyone a minimum of two, and frequently six or more, kids. That is not how you control a character sheet when there's too drat many characters already.
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Oct 13, 2019 14:33
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In the Annals of Names That Have Not Aged Well, I just picked up Doris Lessing's The Sirian Experiments (published 1980). The protagonist/narrator is named Ambien II. (and no, it is not the sort of book that puts you to sleep.)
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Oct 13, 2019 15:47
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Munin posted:Any good non-bleak and/or uplifting scifi or fantasy? given my excessive news consumption I need a palate cleanser. I'll add my voice to the throng recommending The Misenchanted Sword. Also, though it's also older, there's Archform: Beauty by L. E. Modesitt. It's a story conveyed through five different first person narrators and I really liked it.
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Oct 13, 2019 16:17
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Julian May owns.Cythereal posted:One particular little bugbear I have with Through Fiery Trials and Safehold in general: Weber keeps bringing up the possibility of characters being something other than straight in these books, but only right before affirming that everyone present is heterosexual. This pops up a couple times in the Honorverse, frustratingly. Right in the first book Honor's like 'not like I like girls or anything' so Weber is completely aware gay people exist, but his one word-of-God gay character (a background admiral) never mentions being gay in the books, Honor's wife is paralyzed and despite expressing attraction can't do anything about it, the 75% woman Mormon Planet has 'bisexuality built into the social matrix' but it never appears onscreen, and nobody from the Planet of Liberated Sexual Mores ever mentions queerness in more than an abstract 'oh yeah we have that' way either. I half expected him to turn a bunch of his Solarian League punching bag characters into New York Gay Stereotypes, which would at, at least, have been hilarious. I think they're all Globalist UN Stereotypes instead. General Battuta fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Oct 13, 2019 |
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Oct 13, 2019 18:35
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General Battuta posted:This pops up a couple times in the Honorverse, frustratingly. Right in the first book Honor's like 'not like I like girls or anything' so Weber is completely aware gay people exist, but his one word-of-God gay character (a background admiral) never mentions being gay in the books, Honor's wife is paralyzed and despite expressing attraction can't do anything about it, the 75% woman Mormon Planet has 'bisexuality built into the social matrix' but it never appears onscreen, and nobody from the Planet of Liberated Sexual Mores ever mentions queerness in more than an abstract 'oh yeah we have that' way either. That's obnoxious. Only Honorverse book I ever read was Basilisk Station, which I found mediocre at best so I never read any subsequent books. Weber did finally realize in Through Fiery Trials that he'd made a transgender protagonist, though. Which makes me now wonder if that's why Merlin was barely in the book.
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Oct 13, 2019 21:58
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Two kindle sales on amazon today that I've seen mentioned a bunch here in the past. Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07DN8BQMD/ The Rook by Daniel O'Malley https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004QX07EG/
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Oct 13, 2019 22:03
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pradmer posted:Two kindle sales on amazon today that I've seen mentioned a bunch here in the past. I recommend both.
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Oct 13, 2019 22:49
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Necrotizer F posted:I'll add my voice to the throng recommending The Misenchanted Sword. quote:Also, though it's also older, there's Archform: Beauty by L. E. Modesitt. It's a story conveyed through five different first person narrators and I really liked it. I liked this and the loosely linked sequel, Flash, quite well, but my favourite Modesitt is still probably The Parafaith War. Though I do like the Recluce books despite how many of them are so formulaic, because it's quite a satisfying formula.
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Oct 14, 2019 05:16
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There's no rape (that I can remember anyway) in the Esthar series. Other than the feeling of "gently caress, I bought this piece of poo poo" for the dragon's blood book and the one about the chick with the feathers. The rest are all pretty great. Those 2 are just, bad. Put it this way, I'd recommend him in the same sentence as Pratchett to the same people, if we are talking about just the esthar series. I haven't read his other stuff.
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Oct 14, 2019 06:04
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pradmer posted:Two kindle sales on amazon today that I've seen mentioned a bunch here in the past. rook's decent, children of time is EXCELLENT especially if you're into alien psychologies
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Oct 14, 2019 06:08
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Children of Time is fantastic - can anyone recommend any of Tchaikovsky's other stuff? He seems to be a pretty prolific writer.
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Oct 14, 2019 10:58
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Owlkill posted:Children of Time is fantastic - can anyone recommend any of Tchaikovsky's other stuff? He seems to be a pretty prolific writer. Same; I've only read that and the sequel which was also good, am curious about how the rest of his stuff stacks up.
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Oct 14, 2019 12:01
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Owlkill posted:Children of Time is fantastic - can anyone recommend any of Tchaikovsky's other stuff? He seems to be a pretty prolific writer. I'd recommend Children of Ruin if you liked CoT; I didn't like it as much but it's still a fun sequel. I also enjoyed Spiderlight (Shelob-style giant intelligent spider gets transformed into a human and forced to join a generic D&D adventuring party) and Cage of Souls (a Dying Earth novel about an exiled revolutionary). I got a few books in to Shadows of the Apt before bouncing. IMO it's completely skippable unless you're desperately craving a gigantic epic fantasy series that doesn't do anything particularly exceptional.
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Oct 14, 2019 12:16
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ToxicFrog posted:I'd recommend Children of Ruin if you liked CoT; I didn't like it as much but it's still a fun sequel. I also enjoyed Spiderlight (Shelob-style giant intelligent spider gets transformed into a human and forced to join a generic D&D adventuring party) and Cage of Souls (a Dying Earth novel about an exiled revolutionary). SotA is fun if you like weird bug themed fantasy. Bugs are his thing.
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Oct 14, 2019 12:43
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The Rook is incredibly aggravating in a men-writing-women-badly sort of way. There's lots of poo poo like this:
a foolish pianist fucked around with this message at 15:47 on Oct 14, 2019 |
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Oct 14, 2019 15:07
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a foolish pianist posted:The Rook is incredibly aggravating in a men-writing-women-badly sort of way. There's lots of poo poo like this: drat it, I just impulse bought it and this is my least favorite type of bad fantasy writing.
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Oct 14, 2019 15:48
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Adrian Tchaikovsky is rapidly cornering the spider POV market
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Oct 14, 2019 15:51
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I felt like The Rook has fairly immature writing across the board. Not necessarily poorly written from a technical standpoint (though it's no Nabokov or anything, obviously), more in the sense that it sometimes veered into kind of cringe-y or childish plot points and diversions. Even those moments aside, I didn't care much for the book, so maybe I was looking for problems. It had some very compelling ideas, but I still spent most of the book feeling either a little bored or a little tired of the author trying very hard to be clever or funny.
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Oct 14, 2019 16:07
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a foolish pianist posted:The Rook is incredibly aggravating in a men-writing-women-badly sort of way. There's lots of poo poo like this: how is this real. like I read all sorts of male-authored sci fi that's sexist/dated as hell (hey Jack Vance) but somehow none of it ever manages to reach this level of "women are aliens," even in a story where women are literally compared to aliens.
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Oct 14, 2019 16:15
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I mean it's literally her examining the body she ended up in as a physical object. I don't mind it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Oct 14, 2019 16:35
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Megazver posted:I mean it's literally her examining the body she ended up in as a physical object. It's not the 'just woke up in a strange body and looking at it' bit - it's the 'just woke up in a strange body and checking it for hotness cuz ladies really only care how hot they look, right?' bit.
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Oct 14, 2019 16:40
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Someone from the previous thread recommended Eifelheim and it finally came in from the library. Thanks for the tip. It's a slow burn but just starting to pick up. Though there seems to be some romantic subplot forming with the research assistant in the present-day timeline and I am very much not into it.
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Oct 14, 2019 17:10
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Ben Nerevarine posted:Adrian Tchaikovsky is rapidly cornering the spider POV market
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Oct 14, 2019 17:12
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Of the Ethsar books I've read I think The Unwilling Warlord was the best, and it's perfectly readable stand-alone.
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Oct 14, 2019 19:06
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Maybe belongs in the "help me remember a story thread" but since we're talking about Ethshar... Which were the Lawrence Watt-Evans books about the hulking mutant fantasy soldier (an "overman"? "halfman"?) who needed to go on a quest to appease the seven gods or somesuch? I started that series as a teen but never found all the books. I distinctly remember one scene where he wrecked a temple of dark cultists whose magic only worked in pitch black. Were the rest any good?
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Oct 14, 2019 19:14
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wizzardstaff posted:Maybe belongs in the "help me remember a story thread" but since we're talking about Ethshar... Which were the Lawrence Watt-Evans books about the hulking mutant fantasy soldier (an "overman"? "halfman"?) who needed to go on a quest to appease the seven gods or somesuch? I started that series as a teen but never found all the books. I distinctly remember one scene where he wrecked a temple of dark cultists whose magic only worked in pitch black.
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Oct 14, 2019 19:33
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Owlkill posted:Children of Time is fantastic - can anyone recommend any of Tchaikovsky's other stuff? He seems to be a pretty prolific writer. Shadows of the Apt is pulpy but entertaining, it's 10 books however and you need to like things with too many legs. None of the characters are very symphatetic at all, which is a turnoff for many, and it's far too long for its own good. But I actually think his newer series, Echoes of the Fall, which starts with The Tiger and the Wolf (and continues with the "animal and animal" theme) is better in most respects, not least of being a lot shorter. Instead of bugs this one does basically the same thing with It also seems to be in the same universe as the Apt series, although this is not necessary for enjoying the story. Tchaikovsky also has a shared-world series in progress (?), starting with Redemption's Blade, being set in a world where good kinda won against the evil overlord and now people have to pick up the pieces. It's subversive and funny. The so far only sequel is by another author and not as good. rmdx fucked around with this message at 21:24 on Oct 14, 2019 |
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Oct 14, 2019 21:20
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a foolish pianist posted:It's not the 'just woke up in a strange body and looking at it' bit - it's the 'just woke up in a strange body and checking it for hotness cuz ladies really only care how hot they look, right?' bit. I mean I get that the details there are weird, but man or woman if you wake up in a strange body aren't you going to check yourself out?
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Oct 14, 2019 21:59
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