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nessin posted:Anyone know of at least some passable campy high action space opera books/series that have come out in the past few years? I really crave a new Star of the Guardian/Deerstalker/Star Wars-ish kinda book. Not recent. But there's Simon R Green's Deathstalker series
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Nov 11, 2019 20:22
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Deptfordx posted:Not recent. But there's Simon R Green's Deathstalker series Those books are like 30 years old now. Also, I haven't thought of Simon R Green in years. I really loved Shadows Fall when I was in high school. I wonder if that book holds up.
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Nov 11, 2019 20:25
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Okay so for the first time in weeks my brain is letting me stuff that isn't UF, so I'm into Jo Clayton's Diadem from the Stars - so far weirdly dark, kind of a planetary romance kind of feel, as our heroine is psychic and powerful and living in a terrible, terrible sexist society. She's looking to escape and I'm rooting for her. I'm also starting up Bright of the Sky by Kay Kenyon and mm this opening section about a sapient AI basically shutting down an entire space station so it can think about parallel universes. Good stuff!
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Nov 11, 2019 20:27
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https://twitter.com/marthawells1/status/1193936037850107904 yooo preordered. I've been waiting to get this as a mass market paperback!
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Nov 11, 2019 20:40
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StrixNebulosa posted:https://twitter.com/marthawells1/status/1193936037850107904 I read the first three of these books last month - got them in one of the humble bundles a while ago. They're a pretty interesting exercise in scifi with a different species viewpoint. The first book feels a bit YA to me, but they get better as they go on.
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Nov 11, 2019 20:42
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I'm looking to start a long(er) fantasy series for the holiday season because that's when I'm simultaneously my most mentally taxed at work and have the most free time. What are some good longer fantasy series that aren't Discworld, Wheel of Time, or LE Modesitt? Doesn't need to be the greatest books ever known to humankind, just something engaging and fun that'll keep me busy for a while. fake edit: I realized this is a uselessly vague post. If it helps any, I was thinking of just re-reading the Black Company books or the Chronicles of Prydain, so anything in that (rather wide) ballpark in terms of length and style is what I'm looking for, I'd love something I haven't read before or that flew under my radar though. MockingQuantum fucked around with this message at 20:46 on Nov 11, 2019 |
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Nov 11, 2019 20:43
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MockingQuantum posted:I'm looking to start a long(er) fantasy series for the holiday season because that's when I'm simultaneously my most mentally taxed at work and have the most free time. What are some good longer fantasy series that aren't Discworld, Wheel of Time, or LE Modesitt? Doesn't need to be the greatest books ever known to humankind, just something engaging and fun that'll keep me busy for a while. For something less dense, Shadows of the Apt by Tchaikovsky.
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Nov 11, 2019 20:45
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anilEhilated posted:Malazan! I was considering Malazan since a friend offered to lend the first couple of collections to me, but yeah admittedly I might need something lighter. I'll check out Shadows of the Apt though!
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Nov 11, 2019 20:50
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There's a goon book that just came out, the dawnhounds, that is very good. Not a series, though it will be I understand.
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Nov 11, 2019 20:54
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MockingQuantum posted:I'm looking to start a long(er) fantasy series for the holiday season because that's when I'm simultaneously my most mentally taxed at work and have the most free time. What are some good longer fantasy series that aren't Discworld, Wheel of Time, or LE Modesitt? Doesn't need to be the greatest books ever known to humankind, just something engaging and fun that'll keep me busy for a while. Here is a reddit post about the longest fantasy series: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/8u2xj9/longest_fantasy_book_series/ quote:Series with between 3.5 million and 4 million total words: Obviously not all of those series are good, but you should look at Michelle West/Sagara's works, Shadows of the Apt, The Wars of Light and Shadow by Janny Wurts, and CJ Cherryh's Fortress in the Eye of Time series (not as long but good)
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Nov 11, 2019 21:06
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MockingQuantum posted:I'm looking to start a long(er) fantasy series for the holiday season because that's when I'm simultaneously my most mentally taxed at work and have the most free time. What are some good longer fantasy series that aren't Discworld, Wheel of Time, or LE Modesitt? Doesn't need to be the greatest books ever known to humankind, just something engaging and fun that'll keep me busy for a while. instead I just read whatever random suggestion here's caught my attention in between stuffing my eyes with web serials and fanfic.
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Nov 11, 2019 21:07
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90s Cringe Rock posted:You ever read any Janny Wurts? I keep telling myself I'll start her giant epic fantasy series one day. If you don't want to start Wurts giant series, try reading her To Ride Hell's Chasm instead! It's a standalone book about a missing princess and the captain of the guard who gets sent to find her. It reads like a thriller and I devoured it in under a week. 
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Nov 11, 2019 21:08
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MockingQuantum posted:I'm looking to start a long(er) fantasy series for the holiday season because that's when I'm simultaneously my most mentally taxed at work and have the most free time. What are some good longer fantasy series that aren't Discworld, Wheel of Time, or LE Modesitt? Doesn't need to be the greatest books ever known to humankind, just something engaging and fun that'll keep me busy for a while. There's a good suggestion two posts above yours! (Martha Wells' Raksura)
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Nov 11, 2019 21:17
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MockingQuantum posted:I'm looking to start a long(er) fantasy series for the holiday season because that's when I'm simultaneously my most mentally taxed at work and have the most free time. What are some good longer fantasy series that aren't Discworld, Wheel of Time, or LE Modesitt? Doesn't need to be the greatest books ever known to humankind, just something engaging and fun that'll keep me busy for a while. The Dark Tower books, perhaps? If you like swords and sorcery, you could try Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, or Karl Edward Wagner's Kane books. For urban fantasy, Ben Aaronovitch's "Rivers of London" series is a fun read.
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Nov 11, 2019 21:22
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sebmojo posted:There's a goon book that just came out, the dawnhounds, that is very good. Not a series, though it will be I understand. Yeah I bought this to support a goon (no idea who it is but the premise sounds very familiar so I'm sure I've talked to them about it at some point) so it'll probably get read too. StrixNebulosa posted:Obviously not all of those series are good, but you should look at Michelle West/Sagara's works, Shadows of the Apt, The Wars of Light and Shadow by Janny Wurts, and CJ Cherryh's Fortress in the Eye of Time series (not as long but good) StrixNebulosa posted:If you don't want to start Wurts giant series, try reading her To Ride Hell's Chasm instead! It's a standalone book about a missing princess and the captain of the guard who gets sent to find her. It reads like a thriller and I devoured it in under a week. fritz posted:There's a good suggestion two posts above yours! (Martha Wells' Raksura) Selachian posted:If you like swords and sorcery, you could try Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, or Karl Edward Wagner's Kane books. For urban fantasy, Ben Aaronovitch's "Rivers of London" series is a fun read. Thanks for all of these! Haven't read any of them except Dark Tower, and part of Rivers of London (I loved the first couple of books and got progressively more bored as they went on, haven't read the most recent one). And some of these are definitely series I've heard about in here before and completely forgot about, thus why I'm quoting them all for my later reference.
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Nov 11, 2019 22:24
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MockingQuantum posted:I was considering Malazan since a friend offered to lend the first couple of collections to me, but yeah admittedly I might need something lighter. I'll check out Shadows of the Apt though! I have really liked a lot of what Adrian Tchaikovsky has written (Children of Time/Ruin, Dogs of War, Cage of Souls, After the War) so I went back and bought the entire Shadows of the Apt series thinking I'd enjoy that too but found it incredibly mediocre at best. An anti-recommendation from me. I got a good way through them but just couldn't force myself to finish the last book and a half and I've read the entire Wheel of Time trilogy so it's not like I'm able to slog through long series when the writing dips. My recommendation would be: The World of the Five Gods series by Lois Bujold. 3 main books and 7 (I think now) novellas. Book 3 and the novellas are their own separate stories in the same world. If you've read pretty much any Bujold then hopefully you enjoyed her and you'll enjoy her here because she is very consistently good. If you've never read Bujold, read goddamn Bujold. If you're after something a bit punchier maybe the First Law books by Abercrombie. Imagine Lord of the Rings if most of the Fellowship are flawed assholes. Earthsea is probably more traditional that the above two, following a famous and great wizard from his early beginnings to his retirement. N.K. Jemisin Hundred Thousand Kingdoms trilogy is a fantasy trilogy which combines the adventures or trials of the main characters with a focus on love, redemption, forgiveness and revenge. The two Mistborn Trilogies and then the rest of Sanderson's work in the same universe. He just writes fantasy that is pretty consistently decent doesn't really push boundaries. If you just want fantasy stories you can plough through with all the stuff from fantasy stories you'd expect done to a decent standard, he's your guy. He did the last couple of Wheel of Time books so if you've read WoT and want more like it, which is what you're asking for, then he seems like a very obvious choice. He's a goon favourite and he has his own thread on the Book Barn Comedy Option: There's this great series called A Song of Ice and Fire...
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Nov 12, 2019 00:32
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Maybe Brust's Vlad Taltos novels. There's like 15 books and aren't too grim or anything.
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Nov 12, 2019 00:48
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CJ Cherryh's morgaine books are great, she also has a huge endless sci fi series (all ending in -er) which I have never warmed to.
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Nov 12, 2019 01:21
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Jack2142 posted:The second series in the setting starting with Prince of Fools is more enjoyable imo. What's the timeline of that series in conjunction with the first? Runs mostly parallel? 90s Cringe Rock posted:You ever read any Janny Wurts? I keep telling myself I'll start her giant epic fantasy series one day. Read the Empire trilogy, unless you can't stand the Riftwar setting at all.
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Nov 12, 2019 01:30
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For a more gunpowder feel I really liked The Thousand Names series and the Powder Mage series. The first is pretty much the story of fantasy Napoleon, and the second is a more traditional fantasy story that just steals a couple ideas from the French Revolution
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Nov 12, 2019 03:44
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What I expected from Jo Clayton's Diadem from the stars: sci-fi planetary romance where she has psychic powers and wild adventures and gets a way off of this barbaric planet. What I got: rape, rape, mental rape, suicide, our heroine's mind breaking, and by the end of the book she's pretty well convinced she's a curse to everyone around her. And she's given birth to a baby she's taking into space while telling not-Han Solo that she doesn't want another kid, so they can't have sex. He has secret plans to sell her into sex slavery, just in case he needs money.  e: So many old sci-fi/fantasy works written by women involve rape, from Serpent to Floating Worlds to Cyteen to Diadem. What the gently caress was going on back then?!
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Nov 12, 2019 05:12
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MockingQuantum posted:I'm looking to start a long(er) fantasy series for the holiday season because that's when I'm simultaneously my most mentally taxed at work and have the most free time. What are some good longer fantasy series that aren't Discworld, Wheel of Time, or LE Modesitt? Doesn't need to be the greatest books ever known to humankind, just something engaging and fun that'll keep me busy for a while. Get thee some Michelle West. I suggest you start with The Hidden City.
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Nov 12, 2019 05:19
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StrixNebulosa posted:Here is a reddit post about the longest fantasy series: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/8u2xj9/longest_fantasy_book_series/ I wouldn’t call Hobb or Pratchett a unified series. And the same applies for bundling esslemont with Erikson. As for recommendation, I would say the Chartrand voyage, which was a nice series with some novel ideas and with a good storyline.
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Nov 12, 2019 05:24
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team overhead smash posted:
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Nov 12, 2019 05:46
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Cardiac posted:I wouldn’t call Hobb or Pratchett a unified series. And the same applies for bundling esslemont with Erikson. Hobb's work is definitely a unified series. But even if you want to be weird with definitions, there are still nine books about one character.
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Nov 12, 2019 12:52
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Ornamented Death posted:Hobb's work is definitely a unified series. But even if you want to be weird with definitions, there are still nine books about one character. Nah, of the Fitz series, one is a coming of age, second one is tied to the dragons returning and third one is a generational shift away from Fitz. And the two other series have little to do with Fitz.
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Nov 12, 2019 17:35
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gvibes posted:I thought her subsequent trilogy was much better. Or rather, I gave up on hundred thousand kingdoms and voraciously consumed (heh) the other one. Shattered Earth, maybe? Yeah, Broken Earth, which I've read and loved. I haven't checked out her other series yet, I might get to it some day, but I have found your opinion on Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is kind of a common one.
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Nov 12, 2019 17:53
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StrixNebulosa posted:e: So many old sci-fi/fantasy works written by women involve rape, from Serpent to Floating Worlds to Cyteen to Diadem. What the gently caress was going on back then?! Maybe you only notice it from women authors because SF books written by dudes back then didn't really have any women in them?
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Nov 12, 2019 18:22
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theres no explicit rape per se but when I read Jirel of Joiry a while ago I was taken aback by the relationship of Jirel and the male antagonist. he conquers her kingdom and sexually assaults her and then knocks her out, and then on her quest to get revenge she realizes she's actually in love with him? poo poo's weird
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Nov 12, 2019 19:08
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Cardiac posted:Nah, of the Fitz series, one is a coming of age, second one is tied to the dragons returning and third one is a generational shift away from Fitz. And the two other series have little to do with Fitz. OK so you want to be weird with definitions, gotcha 
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Nov 12, 2019 19:19
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StrixNebulosa posted:What I expected from Jo Clayton's Diadem from the stars: sci-fi planetary romance where she has psychic powers and wild adventures and gets a way off of this barbaric planet. All the big name male scifi/fantasy authors in her era were walking-talking-assaulting sexual harrassment lawsuits waiting to happen. Publishers were shady as poo poo, and covered up stuff because the big name authors made them money. Scifi conventions were danger zones for solitary women, especially women writers/authors. The troublesome generations of male big name authors has mostly died off, and publishers remain shady as poo poo. Did my yearly check and James E. Gunn is still alive. As I posted in the mil-scifi thread, James E. Gunn within the past decade wrote a not-terrible scifi trilogy that wasn't racist or sexist. For a scifi author that old, that's nearly impossible. Can't think of anyone else near his age who managed that. Gunn's not-terrible recent scifi trilogy managed to be amusing at times, and featured a staggering amount of alien forms that were developed/had fleshed out backstories.
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Nov 12, 2019 19:32
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StrixNebulosa posted:Fire with Fire by Charles E Gannon might what you're looking for. I just finished this and really enjoyed it. It was relatively light on aliens until the end but completely pulled off the spy thriller vibe in a space opera setting. I'll probably move on to book #2 sooner rather than later.
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Nov 12, 2019 19:34
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Finished Steel Frame. The action was difficult to follow most of the time, and the mechs had more personality than most the characters. But the setting was solid and the internal narration of the protagonist was cool. Solid 3/5. Big spoiler: 100%
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Nov 12, 2019 19:42
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Ben Nerevarine posted:I just finished this and really enjoyed it. It was relatively light on aliens until the end but completely pulled off the spy thriller vibe in a space opera setting. I'll probably move on to book #2 sooner rather than later. For longer form space opera I really dig Joel Shepherd's stuff - both the The Spiral Wars and Cassandra Kresnov series were really enjoyable and I like the fast-paced action and writing style. I'm always on the lookout for more actiony space opera and I've read a lot of the even eyerollingly bad ones, and those are heads and shoulders above the crowd. For standalone I still can't get over how good a book Zahn's The Icarus Hunt is. I wanted that to be a longer series so badly. Bhodi fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Nov 12, 2019 |
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Nov 12, 2019 21:00
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tokenbrownguy posted:Finished Steel Frame. The action was difficult to follow most of the time, and the mechs had more personality than most the characters. But the setting was solid and the internal narration of the protagonist was cool. Solid 3/5. I also read it and found it very solid. However, I'm slightly disturbed that people who seem to have watched the same Anime as me close to 15+ years ago are writing books now.
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Nov 12, 2019 22:03
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Just read Greg Egan's Permutation City. I didn't understand why half of the characters existed at all, but the central ideas of the book were super cool even if they were also not explored in nearly the depth I wanted.
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Nov 12, 2019 22:12
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Anybody have strong opinions on Jack Campbell's Lost Fleet series? A very light sci-fi/fantasy book club that I might be joining is doing it for their next book and I'm trying to decide if I'll join or tell them I'll wait until the new year (which I might do anyway, given my schedule). I like space opera but have always kind of given "big space battles, also some story" kind of books a pass, I can't tell if this falls in that category or not though.
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Nov 12, 2019 22:15
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On the vaguely related non-fiction front, I'm currently reading The Ego Tunnel and it makes the divided consciousness/problem solving of the octopus minds in Children of Ruin easier to grasp intuitively. I should probably reread Blindsight after I'm done.
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Nov 12, 2019 22:20
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MockingQuantum posted:Anybody have strong opinions on Jack Campbell's Lost Fleet series? A very light sci-fi/fantasy book club that I might be joining is doing it for their next book and I'm trying to decide if I'll join or tell them I'll wait until the new year (which I might do anyway, given my schedule). I like space opera but have always kind of given "big space battles, also some story" kind of books a pass, I can't tell if this falls in that category or not though. The story is, in a future where one group of humanity is at war with another group of humanity, and they've been at war for centuries, Captain America falls into the ocean and gets frozen for a century, and when he wakes up he's immediately drafted into the Avengers and... ahem Early in the war, a dude's ship gets blown up so he gets into an escape capsule and frozen for a century+. When he's found and revived, he discovers he's been turned into a living legend, kind of a saint. Due to the war grinding away and killing all of their tacticians and smart people, he is now the ONLY person in the entire fleet who understands strategy on a level beyond "throw more people at their front line". Naturally the admiral of the fleet gets killed and our poor hero is put in charge of a fleet that is stranded behind enemy lines. He has to beat military discipline and strategy and tactics into his fleet, endure their endless bickering, fight his way home, and get into a stupid love triangle. Oh, and find out why the war got started in the first place, because no one knows. The series is great popcorn reading, light with fun space battles, some of the best I've read in the genre. The character work is ehhhhh, the romance is stupid, but I enjoyed the worldbuilding and all the details of how lovely their ships are because, well, the war basically destroyed their ability to make GOOD ships since they get destroyed so often. The hero going "why are you all suicidal" is great, especially when they're all "FOR VICTORY, OR ARE YOU A COWARD" back at him. If this sounds like fun, go for it! Do not expect anything more complicated or deep than what I just described. The sequel series kind of dips in quality, so I haven't finished it. e: Oh something else I liked is that the first series - the first six books - are almost entirely about getting the fleet home. There's an endgoal and they fight for it and then you can stop and it's a very satisfying read. I get sick of some series where there's a goal and then five hundred books later they still haven't done it. StrixNebulosa fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Nov 12, 2019 |
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Nov 12, 2019 22:21
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MockingQuantum posted:Anybody have strong opinions on Jack Campbell's Lost Fleet series? A very light sci-fi/fantasy book club that I might be joining is doing it for their next book and I'm trying to decide if I'll join or tell them I'll wait until the new year (which I might do anyway, given my schedule). I like space opera but have always kind of given "big space battles, also some story" kind of books a pass, I can't tell if this falls in that category or not though. Definitely falls into that category. I liked them for the space battles because they are treated almost like a standard action sequence only with dozens to hundreds of ships which is fairly unique. However the overall story is extremely repetitive and super annoying. The basis for the story is that the long war has killed off anyone old and experienced leaving idiots behind and the main character is found in a emergency stasis pod having lost his ship in the opening salvo and was revered as a hero for the action, but he was picked up right as they were on their way to sign a treaty deep in enemy territory and have to pull a "Ten Thousand" style march out after being double-crossed and surprise he's got training and knowledge that has been lost. That's all stuff you learn early on so nothing spoiled if you choose to read it, the problem is the story never lets you forget those facts. Every battle ends with a win or advantage only possible because of the miracle tactics of the main character, and they're miracle tactics because everyone else is an idiot (see forgotten everything about fighting a war despite being in a long rear end war and unable to learn), then move on to next crisis where people can't believe he's so good, then he saves the day again, rinse and repeat, then repeat, then repeat, then repeat, then repeat...
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Nov 12, 2019 22:25
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