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DACK FAYDEN posted:oh man I remember really liking this book and I've totally forgotten what it was but I think I was waiting on a sequel The book is A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe by Alex White (and its sequel, A Bad Deal for the Whole Galaxy), and the sequel you're waiting for is The Worst of All Possible Worlds.
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Oct 31, 2019 17:33
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Cythereal posted:The next book I've started from my trip down the sci-fi/fantasy shelves at my library is interesting so far: Sea of Rust. It's a post-apocalyptic story with the twist that it's told from the perspective of the victorious robots. The AIs won the apocalyptic war with humanity. Humans are extinct. So... what happens now? A really good short film about exactly this
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Oct 31, 2019 17:34
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MockingQuantum posted:I'm curious about this book because I know the author, but to my shame I've never gotten around to reading it. I'd be curious to hear what you think of it. I'm enjoying it so far. Post-apocalypse isn't normally my cup of tea, but the twist got me to give this book a look. I like that the AI civilization immediately fell apart because they're so human: the robot utopia fell in fire for all the same reasons that human utopias fall in fire, and the AIs wage war on one another for all the same reasons humans do. The exact form their conflicts over limited resources, ideology, ego, and fear take are different, but the underlying mentality is the same.
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Oct 31, 2019 17:37
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I started Sea of Rust but everything about the robots was idiotic, the book was clearly written by somebody unfamiliar with either technology or science fiction and it was just unreadable.
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Oct 31, 2019 18:26
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Apparatchik Magnet posted:On the zombie fantasy books front there's Mira Grant stuff, which I haven't read but seems to have sold a lot, and Peter Clines' Ex- stuff, which I have read but wouldn't call great or guess was hugely successful commercially. I'm not sure I'd file either of those as fantasy; Ex-Heroes is the eclectic grab bag of superscience, magic, demons, and steroid abuse that's typical of the superhero genre, just run through a zombie apocalypse, and Newsflesh is more of a political thriller set in near-future post-zombie¹ America than anything else -- Seanan McGuire mostly writes urban fantasy, but that's why her zombie books use a pen name. ¹ Not post-zombie-apocalypse, though.
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Oct 31, 2019 18:28
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Next Murderbot apparently got moved to May 5th, not sure what the previous release date was. And upon further review, Gideon the Ninth is bad. ToxicFrog posted:I'm not sure I'd file either of those as fantasy; Ex-Heroes is the eclectic grab bag of superscience, magic, demons, and steroid abuse that's typical of the superhero genre, just run through a zombie apocalypse, and Newsflesh is more of a political thriller set in near-future post-zombie¹ America than anything else -- Seanan McGuire mostly writes urban fantasy, but that's why her zombie books use a pen name. Fair. Apparatchik Magnet fucked around with this message at 18:48 on Oct 31, 2019 |
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Oct 31, 2019 18:46
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Apparatchik Magnet posted:Next Murderbot apparently got moved to May 5th, not sure what the previous release date was. quote:Have you ever wanted to flex on a necro,
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Oct 31, 2019 19:16
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I just sat down over lunch and opened up the first Murderbot book. I know nothing going into any of this, but the attitude is on point and I love it.
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Oct 31, 2019 19:48
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There's nothing to know, honestly. The title kinda tells you all you need to know about the main character.
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Oct 31, 2019 20:12
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ToxicFrog posted:The book is A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe by Alex White (and its sequel, A Bad Deal for the Whole Galaxy), and the sequel you're waiting for is The Worst of All Possible Worlds.
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Oct 31, 2019 20:24
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Apparatchik Magnet posted:On the zombie fantasy books front there's Mira Grant stuff, which I haven't read but seems to have sold a lot They're good if you like stories of how zombies are defeated using the power of blogging.
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Oct 31, 2019 20:27
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ToxicFrog posted:The book is A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe by Alex White (and its sequel, A Bad Deal for the Whole Galaxy), and the sequel you're waiting for is The Worst of All Possible Worlds.
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Oct 31, 2019 20:27
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:There's nothing to know, honestly. The title kinda tells you all you need to know about the main character. Nuh-uh, it's not titled Social Anxiety Serial-Viewing Bot. 
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Oct 31, 2019 20:36
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The_White_Crane posted:Sea of Rust was pretty good. Not gonna go down as one of my favourites, but it's a nice pulpy adventure story and the setting is cool. Yeah, agreed.
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Oct 31, 2019 21:54
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DACK FAYDEN posted:There we go. Thanks! You're welcome! It was a guess, but I figure there can't be that many unfinished SF series starring a racecar-driving wizard.
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Nov 1, 2019 02:15
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Cythereal posted:The next book I've started from my trip down the sci-fi/fantasy shelves at my library is interesting so far: Sea of Rust. It's a post-apocalyptic story with the twist that it's told from the perspective of the victorious robots. The AIs won the apocalyptic war with humanity. Humans are extinct. So... what happens now? I enjoyed it, I give it a 7 or maybe 8 out of 10. Not as good as Murderbot IMO. More stories about robots would be good.
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Nov 1, 2019 09:16
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The_White_Crane posted:Sea of Rust was pretty good. Not gonna go down as one of my favourites, but it's a nice pulpy adventure story and the setting is cool. I started it a few months ago, loved the idea but I bounced of it for some reason got about 15-20% in?
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Nov 1, 2019 11:01
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A bunch of kindle books on sale today. I haven't read them yet, but I see them being brought up in this thread often. Eon by Greg Bear (is this standalone or do you need to read them in order?) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J3EU5RC/ A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CNLOZ3G Ninefox Gambit and Raven Stratagem by Yoon Ha Lee https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01EBE05X2/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XNX2H6Z The Last Policeman Trilogy by Ben H. Winters https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0076Q1GW2/
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Nov 1, 2019 22:02
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Those are all good books. Eon is a perfectly good standalone and also the first book in its series so it doesn't matter.
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Nov 1, 2019 22:24
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Is Interference good assuming I liked Semiosis? Want more emotional journeys with rainbow bamboo and friends.
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Nov 1, 2019 23:48
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My summary thoughts about my trip to the library last week: The Magic Engineer by L. E. Modesitt Jr. Back of the blurb promises a story about a Leonardo da Vinci born into a world of magic and the revolution he brings with him. This book is not that, and is instead about the rather boring adventures of a wunderchild and his friends, and the protagonist is easily the least interesting person in the book (aside from maybe the villains). I found it to be a quick read, and most of the characters basically likable but shallow and the plot very basic. Not a bad read, I enjoyed it okay, but it was a crushing disappointment from what the book advertised itself to be. Indigo Springs by A. M. Dellamonica So as it turns out you don't need to be straight to write a book full of offensive LGBT stereotypes! There's a fairly interesting, and even vaguely original, system of magic here, but the characters are so shallow and such terrible people (even when they're meant to be heroes) that getting through this book was a chore. Sea of Rust by C. Robert Cargill I can name the exact moment I stopped liking this book, and that moment was the Big Twist. Big Twists, in my experience, come in two flavors: the ones that make you suddenly rethink everything you've read until that point and make perfect sense while throwing everything beforehand into a whole new light, and the ones that come out of left field and just leave you confused while making the preceding drama and events feel cheap. This book has one of the latter type. Funnily for a book about robots, I thought the book's great strength was the humanity of its characters, I was invested in seeing what would happen to everyone until the author decided the stakes weren't big enough. Pity.
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Nov 2, 2019 21:59
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Finished Gideon the Ninth. It was pretty good and it lived up to the many, many in-thread recommendations for it....unlike Tchaikovsky's bargain basement Deepness in the Sky knock-off homage, Children of Time, for me. Gideon the Ninth was pretty much an anti-Zelazny story and all the better for it. The main character wasn't smug as gently caress, the characters inside it had depth, and the fighting scenes didn't require an encyclopedic knowledge of fencing terms to make sense like Zelazny's Amber books. 35th annual Years Best Science Fiction (2017) curated by Gardner Dozois is up next on my reading list. Doesn't seem like St Martin's Press will be continuing the anthology series after Dozois's death, which is understandable.
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Nov 3, 2019 03:14
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quantumfoam posted:Finished Gideon the Ninth. It was pretty good and it lived up to the many, many in-thread recommendations for it....unlike Tchaikovsky's bargain basement Deepness in the Sky knock-off homage, Children of Time, for me. Gideon the Ninth was pretty much an anti-Zelazny story and all the better for it. The main character wasn't smug as gently caress, the characters inside it had depth, and the fighting scenes didn't require an encyclopedic knowledge of fencing terms to make sense like Zelazny's Amber books. Have you tried out The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year anthologies edited by Jonathan Strahan? They're not strictly SF but they include a number of authors who have come up previously in this thread and elsewhere (Yoon Ha Lee, Scott Lynch, N.K. Jemisin, Neil Gaiman) and seem to be fairly inclusive, their detriment if my Audible reviews are to be believed.(sigh) They are apparently also door stoppers, usually clocking in around 24-26 hours as an audiobook. I just got a new credit for Audible and am probably going to spend it on either last year's or this year's edition just to give them a shot. https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Best...dblp13nABCD_1_2
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Nov 3, 2019 07:11
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Ninurta posted:Have you tried out The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year anthologies edited by Jonathan Strahan? They're not strictly SF but they include a number of authors who have come up previously in this thread and elsewhere (Yoon Ha Lee, Scott Lynch, N.K. Jemisin, Neil Gaiman) and seem to be fairly inclusive, their detriment if my Audible reviews are to be believed.(sigh) They are apparently also door stoppers, usually clocking in around 24-26 hours as an audiobook. I just got a new credit for Audible and am probably going to spend it on either last year's or this year's edition just to give them a shot. Strahan is ended the SF and Fantasy series this year and is starting a new SF specialised one with Saga Press in 2020 (seems like it's aiming to fill Dozois void). fez_machine fucked around with this message at 12:59 on Nov 3, 2019 |
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Nov 3, 2019 12:56
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Cythereal posted:Sea of Rust by C. Robert Cargill
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Nov 3, 2019 16:31
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team overhead smash posted:Is Interference good assuming I liked Semiosis? Want more emotional journeys with rainbow bamboo and friends. I enjoyed it, but it's a fairly different sort of story.
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Nov 4, 2019 16:28
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Jo Walton's reading list for last month: https://www.tor.com/2019/11/04/jo-waltons-reading-list-october-2019/quote:Perhaps the Stars, Ada Palmer, 2021. Yes! I can't wait to read the whole quartet next year, or whenever Perhaps the Stars actually drops.
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Nov 4, 2019 17:26
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Ninurta posted:Have you tried out The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year anthologies edited by Jonathan Strahan? They're not strictly SF but they include a number of authors who have come up previously in this thread and elsewhere (Yoon Ha Lee, Scott Lynch, N.K. Jemisin, Neil Gaiman) and seem to be fairly inclusive, their detriment if my Audible reviews are to be believed.(sigh) They are apparently also door stoppers, usually clocking in around 24-26 hours as an audiobook. I just got a new credit for Audible and am probably going to spend it on either last year's or this year's edition just to give them a shot. fez_machine posted:Strahan is ended the SF and Fantasy series this year and is starting a new SF specialised one with Saga Press in 2020 (seems like it's aiming to fill Dozois void). Thanks for the scifi + fantasy anthology advice. Finished the last & final Years Best Science Fiction (2017) anthology. As the final Gardner Dozois curated scifi anthology, it was overall a bittersweet experience. Some of the stories really hit strongly for me, other stories in the anthology were decent to really questionable choices for me.
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Nov 4, 2019 22:24
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Just wrapped up the Last Policeman trilogy, after seeing it mentioned here a few pages back. I agree with what seems to be the consensus that it drops off after the first book. It's not so much that it gets worse, per se, as much as it doesn't bring much new to the table with each book: the well-done arc of decay of civilization he depicts as books two and three unfold doesn't make up for a creeping sameness that takes the punch out of the initial set up. I don't regret reading the last two books, but I don't feel they're necessary, either.
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Nov 5, 2019 20:35
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Thanks to whoever mentioned A Night in the Lonesome October last week. I appreciate that Zelazny wrote a near shaggy dog story narrated by a shaggy dog.
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Nov 5, 2019 21:47
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Just started Steel Frame. Pretty cool so far.
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Nov 6, 2019 02:47
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Reading The Secret Commonwealth and it's fine, but I have the same issue with it as I did with La Belle Sauvage: Pullman appears to have completely lost the ability to edit. 200 pages into Northern Lights, and Lyra's already gone to London with Coulter, run away, met the gyptians, sailed to the North, met Iorek Byrnison. 200 pages into The Secret Commonwealth and everybody's still faffing about in Oxford doing this juvenile cloak and dagger stuff. I find my attention wandering while reading and have to keep turning back to the page.
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Nov 6, 2019 06:02
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I always rate books based on my attention span. If they take me more than a day or two to read, they're mediocre at best. Like I burned through steel frame in like 8 hours, broken up by work and sleep. Goblin Emperor was good but kind of boring and flowery (although that was the point) so it took me about twice as long. Whereas Kindle Unlimited trash takes me like a a week sometimes, if I dont just set it down forever. The crappier the novel, the more my attention wanders and I take breaks.
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Nov 6, 2019 09:04
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Larry Parrish posted:I always rate books based on my attention span. If they take me more than a day or two to read, they're mediocre at best. Like I burned through steel frame in like 8 hours, broken up by work and sleep. Goblin Emperor was good but kind of boring and flowery (although that was the point) so it took me about twice as long. this is not a good system friend some of the best work the genre has produced are lengthy complex books!
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Nov 6, 2019 15:56
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Just finished Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. It's a fantasy set in 1920s Mexico where a young woman working as a servant for her extended family stumbles across a deposed god of the underworld and must help him regain his throne. Story is decent, and decently paced, but the draw here may well be the Mayan mythology. It delves a lot into Xibalba, the Land of the Dead, as well as other demons, spirits, etc all while travelling across a Jazz Age Mexico from a tiny village to a resort in Tijuana. If you're one of those who enjoys fantasy that draws from other traditions, this might be a good one for you.
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Nov 6, 2019 16:13
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Steel Frame was good. Certain things needed work but overall it was a very enjoyable story. I did feel that the ending was somewhat abrupt and I'm hoping there's a sequel in progress.
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Nov 6, 2019 17:03
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Ben Nevis posted:Just finished Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. It's a fantasy set in 1920s Mexico where a young woman working as a servant for her extended family stumbles across a deposed god of the underworld and must help him regain his throne. Story is decent, and decently paced, but the draw here may well be the Mayan mythology. It delves a lot into Xibalba, the Land of the Dead, as well as other demons, spirits, etc all while travelling across a Jazz Age Mexico from a tiny village to a resort in Tijuana. If you're one of those who enjoys fantasy that draws from other traditions, this might be a good one for you. Yes hello I'll take ten directly in my veins.
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Nov 6, 2019 19:39
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Ben Nevis posted:Just finished Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. It's a fantasy set in 1920s Mexico where a young woman working as a servant for her extended family stumbles across a deposed god of the underworld and must help him regain his throne. Story is decent, and decently paced, but the draw here may well be the Mayan mythology. It delves a lot into Xibalba, the Land of the Dead, as well as other demons, spirits, etc all while travelling across a Jazz Age Mexico from a tiny village to a resort in Tijuana. If you're one of those who enjoys fantasy that draws from other traditions, this might be a good one for you.
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Nov 6, 2019 20:39
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my bony fealty posted:this is not a good system friend i dont generally like those but I read fast so it works for me. if i dont enjoy a book series very much it takes me a few weeks to finish, if I do it takes a few days at most
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Nov 7, 2019 00:27
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Ben Nevis posted:Just finished Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. It's a fantasy set in 1920s Mexico where a young woman working as a servant for her extended family stumbles across a deposed god of the underworld and must help him regain his throne. Story is decent, and decently paced, but the draw here may well be the Mayan mythology. It delves a lot into Xibalba, the Land of the Dead, as well as other demons, spirits, etc all while travelling across a Jazz Age Mexico from a tiny village to a resort in Tijuana. If you're one of those who enjoys fantasy that draws from other traditions, this might be a good one for you. I'm exactly in the middle of this right now, and I'm really enjoying it. The descriptions of 1920s Mexico AND Xibalba are fantastic and evocative in different ways. I absolutely love historical fiction, so historical fantasy fiction is A+++ for me, this book really nails it. I'm also actually liking the romance in it, it feels like it's building up really nicely and steadily instead of...just happening. I also read Diana Wynne Jones' Deep Secret last week, where the romance just...happened and it really soured me on a book I was otherwise having fun with.
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Nov 7, 2019 00:49
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