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Finished Harrow and it's still goofy fun. Honestly it was a bit weaker than the first and could probably have done with a bit more trimming. Also, in the 10kth year of the God Emperor's reign, the English language evolved entirely to dad jokes and memes.
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Sep 8, 2020 12:26
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Finished reading Titus Groan. Author has a truly remarkable eye for the little details that pop out, and dialogue that matches each character with absolute precision. The question of whether to categorize it as fantasy is a bit puzzling, it almost feels like it should be counted as magic realism despite the lack of supernatural elements. Speaking of big castles, has anyone gotten a chance to read Susanna Clarke's new Piranesi? FPyat fucked around with this message at 12:38 on Sep 8, 2020 |
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Sep 8, 2020 12:36
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genericnick posted:Finished Harrow and it's still goofy fun. Honestly it was a bit weaker than the first and could probably have done with a bit more trimming. Also, in the 10kth year of the God Emperor's reign, the English language evolved entirely to dad jokes and memes. Seems to me like God and his buddies are probably a bunch of dorks from around our time, and have basically stagnated at a certain level for the last ten millennia.
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Sep 8, 2020 12:47
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FPyat posted:Finished reading Titus Groan. Author has a truly remarkable eye for the little details that pop out, and dialogue that matches each character with absolute precision. The question of whether to categorize it as fantasy is a bit puzzling, it almost feels like it should be counted as magic realism despite the lack of supernatural elements. The Gormenghast trilogy is technically SF.
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Sep 8, 2020 13:22
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A friend asked me for sci-fi/fantasy books that tended feminist and were mostly happy, and she'd just finished Gideon the Ninth, so here's what I came up with in case anyone else wants my recs: Okay here is a starter book rec set from me, it covers several genres and is mostly happy, and usually feminist: - Survival by Julie E Czerneda. First of a trilogy, very Star Trek in feel. A salmon researcher is ANGRY to be taken from studying salmon and thrown into trying to understand what's been mysteriouslly wiping out planets. - Pride of Chanur by CJ Cherryh. Standalone, has four sequels. Is one of my favorite novels by one of my favorite authors. Is about a crew of space lions who want to be left alone to do merchant stuff, but a human stows away in their cargo and it becomes a race to keep him out of enemy hands while figuring out what to do with him. Lots of cultural stuff! - To Ride Hell's Chasm by Janny Wurts. Standalone chonk. A princess has gone missing on the night of the betrothal wedding, and a guardsman is tapped to find her. The first half of the book is great political/thriller-esque stuff as he tries to find out where she's gone and all the political stuff surrounding it, then the self half of it is a car chase but on horses. Great horses. Great action sequences. It's also one of the only books I've read where the main dude is actually crippled and has to deal with permanent pain and it's not magicked away or anything. - Banner of Souls by Liz Williams. Deeply weird sci-fi fantasy about a Martian warrior-lady who has to find a girl and protect her. Very visual, very weird, I liked it a lot. - This Alien Shore by CS Friedman. Sci-fi, autism, cyberpunk. I need to reread this but it was formative for a teen me. - Kitty and the Midnight Hour by Carrie Vaughn, The only UF on this list (tho I'm waffling on Chronicles of Elantra), and treat it as a standalone, the first is the best. It's about coping when your life has been changed utterly, it's about escaping abusive relationships, it's about growing into yourself and becoming a radio-show host about werewolves.
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Sep 8, 2020 15:32
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Groke posted:Seems to me like God and his buddies are probably a bunch of dorks from around our time, and have basically stagnated at a certain level for the last ten millennia. Also you can tell they’re not speaking English based on Wake’s full name.
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Sep 8, 2020 15:46
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StrixNebulosa posted:A friend asked me for sci-fi/fantasy books that tended feminist and were mostly happy, and she'd just finished Gideon the Ninth, so here's what I came up with in case anyone else wants my recs: Thread favorite Becky Chambers will suit your friend well.
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Sep 8, 2020 16:05
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Confession time I actually enjoyed reading the notorious Ready Player One a while ago. So I finished Harrow the Ninth over the weekend and started on Armada by Ernest Cline a couple days ago. Aside from giving me whiplash - going from the dark and baroque plot of Harrow to YA for man-children of Armada, I finally understand why people can't stand this guy. I've only read a few chapters but the love interest was just introduced and of course her most desirable trait is that she understands all the 80s references the self-insert protagonist cares about. I might stop reading this crap if it keeps making me angry, I've had enough hate-reads this year after the Peter F. Hamilton bullshit I waded through
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Sep 8, 2020 17:27
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StrixNebulosa posted:A friend asked me for sci-fi/fantasy books that tended feminist and were mostly happy, and she'd just finished Gideon the Ninth, so here's what I came up with in case anyone else wants my recs: Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon. An elderly woman stays behind when her colony is abandoned. Then she finds out that she doesn't have the solitude she expected. Terrific book.
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Sep 8, 2020 18:03
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mewse posted:Confession time I actually enjoyed reading the notorious Ready Player One a while ago. RPO is a lot like Name of the Wind in many ways. Sweet candy that received outsized praise implying it was actual food
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Sep 8, 2020 18:08
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I recommend the "372 Pages We'll Never Get Back" Podcast. They cover both Ready Player One and Armada and many other terrible books. Reading Armada along with the podcast may indeed be the only way to actually get through the book.
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Sep 8, 2020 18:18
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Groke posted:Seems to me like God and his buddies are probably a bunch of dorks from around our time, and have basically stagnated at a certain level for the last ten millennia. Science dorks, too. Has anyone checked to see if God's password is something like "correct horse battery staple"?
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Sep 8, 2020 19:32
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I never got the backlash against Name of the Wind, but it's been years since I read it.
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Sep 8, 2020 20:13
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Black Griffon posted:I never got the backlash against Name of the Wind, but it's been years since I read it. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3365216&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=122#post458895404 this is a pretty good explanation
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Sep 8, 2020 20:52
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StrixNebulosa posted:A friend asked me for sci-fi/fantasy books that tended feminist and were mostly happy, and she'd just finished Gideon the Ninth, so here's what I came up with in case anyone else wants my recs: There's an entire series of older anthologies titled Sword And Sorceress that's supposed to be female-focused fantasy. It is unfortunately edited by MZB, but she didn't write most of the stories. I read a couple of volumes and remember some of the stuff being decent with a nice ending.
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Sep 8, 2020 20:58
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Black Griffon posted:I never got the backlash against Name of the Wind, but it's been years since I read it. obviously neither are good but it's the second book that I think really provoked the backlash, then everyone agreed in retrospect that the first was bad too i think the description above as "candy" isn't too far off, it appealed to a ton of people (my parents adore it!) and was really accessible and fun also lol the fact that BOTL wrote a billion words about how bad it is increases my opinion of it
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Sep 8, 2020 21:01
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StrixNebulosa posted:A friend asked me for sci-fi/fantasy books that tended feminist and were mostly happy, and she'd just finished Gideon the Ninth, so here's what I came up with in case anyone else wants my recs: 
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Sep 8, 2020 21:06
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FPyat posted:
Doesnt come out for another week. Mid-september will be good, Piranesi and Abercrombie's new book, The Trouble with Peace.
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Sep 8, 2020 21:25
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FPyat posted:
thanks for mentioning this, i wasn't familiar with it but this sounds like it is extremely my poo poo. quote:Piranesi's house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.
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Sep 8, 2020 21:53
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Jedit posted:No, it's a real word meaning non-consent. The root is the Latin for "leaving a mark upon". I'm not sure where you're getting the non-consent part of that definition. In general it was used in Latin in reference to non-living objects and doesn't really have a forceful context. In the novels, "impress," is used to mean the moment when a dragon meets its rider, which is much more joyful and "two halves uniting as one," than you're implying. That said, Dragonriders of Pern has real issues with consent. Some men are bonded with female dragons and -- if I'm remembering the authorial view on this correctly -- become "permanently gay" when the dragons mate, because their human riders have to mate at the same time. Only the superior dragonriders get a chance at the queen dragon, whose (female) rider is also forced to have sex with the rider of whichever dragon mates with hers. It's mostly elided from the text and described as if all the parties are in heat, but still really weird and gross.
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Sep 8, 2020 22:03
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If I've learned anything from world of warcraft it's that compelling dragons to do whatever you want is very legal and very cool
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Sep 8, 2020 22:12
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The Three Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth's Past #1) by Cixin Liu - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IQO403K/ The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DHJT92Q/ Daughter of the Empire (Empire Trilogy #1) by Raymond E Feist/Janny Wurts - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073TJH5XR/
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Sep 8, 2020 23:03
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Fell Fire posted:I'm not sure where you're getting the non-consent part of that definition. In general it was used in Latin in reference to non-living objects and doesn't really have a forceful context. In the novels, "impress," is used to mean the moment when a dragon meets its rider, which is much more joyful and "two halves uniting as one," than you're implying. Have you not heard of press gangs, who forced people to become sailors back in the day? To be seized by one of those gangs was to be impressed.
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Sep 8, 2020 23:58
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mewse posted:Confession time I actually enjoyed reading the notorious Ready Player One a while ago. Have never read either but this review of Armada (by a critic who similarly enjoyed RPO but hated this) is one of my favourite hatchet jobs, specifically because it strikes at what's so... not toxic, but unhealthy about nostalgia culture: https://slate.com/culture/2015/07/armada-by-ernest-cline-follow-up-to-ready-player-one-reviewed.html quote:Our fantasies can tell us a great deal about ourselves, and the fact that Cline’s work has often been trumpeted as the ultimate “nerdgasm” or some sort of apotheosis of nerd culture should be troubling to anyone who identifies with the label. There’s nothing wrong with nostalgia, on its own; our love for the media of our youth—and more importantly, for the qualities that made us love it in the first place—is not only worth remembering, but also capable of sparking new and wonderful creations, so long as we are able to distinguish inspiration from imitation.
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Sep 9, 2020 00:11
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pradmer posted:The Three Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth's Past #1) by Cixin Liu - $2.99 soo, is it good enough to ignore Liu's horrible politics?
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Sep 9, 2020 00:22
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Black Griffon posted:soo, is it good enough to ignore Liu's horrible politics? No.
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Sep 9, 2020 00:36
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Is the Raven Tower any good?
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Sep 9, 2020 01:39
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PsychedelicWarlord posted:Is the Raven Tower any good? yeah! it's very... different... than most other things i read recently. in a good way but not one i'd want to spoil
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Sep 9, 2020 02:00
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I just read it and liked it a lot. I'd agree with what eke out said, it's very different from anything I've read, and from what I was expecting given what I knew about the book. I know a couple of people who couldn't get into it at all because of the second-person sections, but I think the book pulls it off, and it's kind of important that it's written that way. It's a good twist on fantasy fare. Related, anybody who liked the Divine Cities trilogy (City of Stairs, etc.) is fairly likely to enjoy Raven Tower as well.
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Sep 9, 2020 02:20
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Black Griffon posted:soo, is it good enough to ignore Liu's horrible politics? I didn't know anything about the author's politics going in, but I feel like I really, really did after the first book, and yikes. Books 2 and 3 are a little more (modern) politically neutral, to my reading, although super depressing.
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Sep 9, 2020 03:32
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Anyone read Demon in White I read the first two in the series and was digging setting and world building but man its getting pretty grating having this space opera series where earth was destroyed millennia ago and those halcyon days are barely remembered but the main character can't help but relay every experience through some ancient greek parable. Its also getting a little gross when the character gets upset at people for misgendering the aliens and corrects them with "it" or how he starts as an idealistic youth trying to bring peace with them and grows into actually genocide is the correct answer. Just thought the author was a dumb misguided white guy but getting some real big red flags and wonder if its worth continuing.
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Sep 9, 2020 03:34
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I really dug Raven Tower and it's definitely a lot different from Leckie's other stuff if you've read any of that (Ancillary Justice, etc.). But, I also think that if you've liked her other stuff, it's worth checking out. I definitely agree that the second person works well, and I really enjoyed how the various magic/deities worked. I also just found out that apparently the plot is very loosely based on (maybe not really a spoiler but I'll tag it anyway) Hamlet of all things, which I'm surprised I didn't pick up on when I was reading it, but it makes sense in retrospect. I'm also realizing that I've read a good amount of stuff recently that used some second person narration (Raven Tower, Broken Earth Trilogy, Harrow the Ninth and some others I can't remember off hand), and I'm curious if it might more common now than it used to be? Granted, all the examples I'm thinking of used it in specific ways for specific reasons, and none of them used it exclusively, but I'd love to know other examples of books where it's used well since it can be pretty interesting when it's done well.
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Sep 9, 2020 03:48
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Jedit posted:Have you not heard of press gangs, who forced people to become sailors back in the day? To be seized by one of those gangs was to be impressed. I thought about it, but it doesn't really fit with how the word is being used in the novels. In them it is usually much closer to being impressed with someone, or having an impression made on you by someone else.
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Sep 9, 2020 04:11
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DurianGray posted:I really dug Raven Tower and it's definitely a lot different from Leckie's other stuff if you've read any of that (Ancillary Justice, etc.). But, I also think that if you've liked her other stuff, it's worth checking out. I definitely agree that the second person works well, and I really enjoyed how the various magic/deities worked. Hard disagree re: second person, but I did enjoy the book overall and the concept of the world.
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Sep 9, 2020 04:19
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ulmont posted:Hard disagree re: second person, but I did enjoy the book overall and the concept of the world. Yeah, I think at this point the novelty of "But who is this narrator? And who am I that they're talking to?" is completely gone and it's starting to feel like an overly-simple way to set up some ~mysteries~
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Sep 9, 2020 04:36
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Everybody started doing it after Charlie Stross did it in Halting State and Rule 34 and its reaching the point of over saturation. Stross is weird because Halting State was just second person for the sake of second person (it's a book about
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Sep 9, 2020 05:47
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Greg Stolze did a pretty good horror novel called You that's told entirely in the second person.
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Sep 9, 2020 05:54
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Fell Fire posted:I thought about it, but it doesn't really fit with how the word is being used in the novels. In them it is usually much closer to being impressed with someone, or having an impression made on you by someone else. It's a biological term. When birds, and some reptillians, hatch, they 'impress' the first creature they see as a familial figure. Edit: Wait, no that's imprinting. Though impress is the root word of imprint. Macdeo Lurjtux fucked around with this message at 06:08 on Sep 9, 2020 |
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Sep 9, 2020 06:03
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I thought McCaffrey based it on ducks? They can imprint on humans, think the human is mom.
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Sep 9, 2020 08:27
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StrixNebulosa posted:A friend asked me for sci-fi/fantasy books that tended feminist and were mostly happy, and she'd just finished Gideon the Ninth, so here's what I came up with in case anyone else wants my recs: Lois McMaster Bujold heaps struggle on her characters but usually the protagonists get happy endings. fez_machine fucked around with this message at 10:41 on Sep 9, 2020 |
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Sep 9, 2020 10:24
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