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My most recent readthrough was Peter Watts Starfish. It's the first part of a trilogy dealing with a future society in which pedophiles, psychopaths, abuse victims and other "broken" individuals are surgically, chemically and psychologically repurposed to serve as maintenance workers on deep-sea thermal power stations. There's an overarching plot exploring the hidden motives of the inventors of this program, but mostly it's an examination of what happens when you take a group of maladjusts, turn them into half-human monsters and isolate them at the bottom of the ocean for a few months. That sounds like the premise of a slasher flick, but Starfish isn't really scary - it's disturbing. It deals with situations, people and technologies that are just plain distasteful. If you're the kind of person who shivers at the idea of a brain in a jar or can't handle the notion that the the universe is inherently meaningless and free will probably a lie, this book is just going to leave you with a bad taste in your mouth. On the other hand, if you're like me with a morbid fascination for radical transhumanism and tend to root for the serial killers in crime dramas, it just might be the best thing you've ever read. Edit: The entire series is available under Creative Commons from the author's website in case anyone is interested. Terrorforge fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Feb 11, 2014 |
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Feb 11, 2014 22:23
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Terrorforge posted:My most recent readthrough was Peter Watts Starfish. edit- never mind Great series, for sure.
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Feb 11, 2014 22:52
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DreadNite posted:Maybe so. But now that i'm only five books from finishing it, I might as well right? Who knows, maybe it will get better.. It doesn't. Wizards First Rule is kind of fun in a long 80s fantasy epic way and there's a few other high points that make the others readable but they just become downright awful after faith of the fallen.
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Feb 12, 2014 01:18
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Urban Achiever posted:Recently finished Consider Phlebas by Iain Banks - and really enjoyed it. It's the first of the Culture series and the first book I've ever read by Banks. I'm a big fan of books that I can really visualize in my head, and something about Banks' writing style really helped drive that for me. There were certain sections that I thought were a little clunky, but they didn't distract me too much and I'm hoping they were due to his relative newness as a writer. Looking forward to reading more! I consider myself an M. Banks fan, but I find a lot of his stuff really hit and miss. Some stuff like Consider Phlebas, Use of Weapons and The Player of Games is fantastic, while others like The Hydrogen Sonata and Feersum Endjinn I struggle to get through. I think he has a real problem pacing his stories. His worst books I find move at a glacial pace (The Hydrogen Sonata)or are plotted much to quickly (Not an 'M' book, but Canal Dreams is just awful. The second worst book I've ever read). e: And by 'has' i mean 'had'. RIP Iain 
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Feb 12, 2014 12:31
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Newjack by Ted Conover This is written by a journalist who became a prison guard and worked in Sing Sing prison; which is a maximum security facility in New York not for from the city itself. I enjoyed reading the book; it does a nice job humanizing the guards and showing what some of the problems they face as well as how the prison system itself works from the guards' perspective. It doesn't offer many prescriptions to improve the prison system. It's a book that doesn't offer a judgement so much as it wants to show you what its like to work as a new guard in a large prison.
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Feb 12, 2014 12:57
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From the last week: Exoskeleton: A horror/sci fi book it fails to provide horror for me at least, probably because of the main premise of the book. A suit designed to torture a prisoner to their limits but keep them alive, does just that - keeps the protagonist alive, so the only options are the book describes 365 days worth of torture or he escapes. Also junk about psychic powers and forbidden nazi experiments. Cthulhu Cymraeg: Short stories with ties to Lovecraft all set in and around Wales. If you want more stories in the style of Lovecraft you'd be disappointed by the book as the only connection to him in most of the stories is in some of the creatures or themes used. The stories were largely enjoyable in themselves although I think I enjoyed 'The Cawl of Cthulhu' more than I should have because of the pun. Extinction Point & Extinction Point: Exodus: They were very cheap on offer and I wasn't expecting too much. Enjoyable enough for what they were and I was vastly relieved when there were no zombies as the book blurb was quite vague on the 'new life forms'. The main character did seem to suffer from having little characterisation, despite the flaws I am interested in what the whole end goal of the alien dust/towers/etc is as it has been kept unexplained. Rivers of Soho UK - Midnight Riot US(What a stupid title change.): Like a nicer, less tacky and more interesting Dresden Files book. The Rook: The most enjoyable book of the week for me, urban fantasy/magic organisation in modern britain. I just found it a very compelling read with interesting characters and it being generally well written, even the amnesiac protagonist cliché is dealt with well with her becoming her own new person rather than just remembering how to be the old self. Pretty good for the author's first novel. FairyNuff fucked around with this message at 16:33 on Feb 13, 2014 |
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Feb 13, 2014 16:31
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Geokinesis posted:From the last week: I haven't read the 2nd book in this series but the biggest annoyance in the first book for me was the fact that the character decided she was going to bike all the way to Alaska instead of just using a car like any sane, normal person. I understand that she has no idea how to drive but it's not really that hard to learn and it's not like she's going to kill anyone since everyone's dead, plus no one's going to arrest her. I kept thinking it was a silly conceit to make the book more suspenseful, or else the author is an avid cycling enthusiast.
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Feb 13, 2014 16:37
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Poutling posted:I haven't read the 2nd book in this series but the biggest annoyance in the first book for me was the fact that the character decided she was going to bike all the way to Alaska instead of just using a car like any sane, normal person. I understand that she has no idea how to drive but it's not really that hard to learn and it's not like she's going to kill anyone since everyone's dead, plus no one's going to arrest her. I kept thinking it was a silly conceit to make the book more suspenseful, or else the author is an avid cycling enthusiast. Yeah, It is silly, especially as nearly all US cars are automatic so she wouldn't even need to learn to drive properly. I think the author being british might have a role in it as whilst it would still be stupid to cycle the UK it'd make a bit more sense due to it being smaller. Also for Book 2: She does get driving.
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Feb 13, 2014 16:55
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Geokinesis posted:Also for Book 2: She does get driving. I'm not surprised because like 60% of the reviews on goodreads mention the stupidity of the cycling thing, I guess he finally clued in. I'm trying to imagine a person that has only cycled in the city their entire lives all of a sudden trying to ride through the Canadian rockies in the winter time. That would be a horror novel in itself.
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Feb 14, 2014 01:13
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Just finished NOS4A2 by Joe Hill, Stephen King's son. As many have said, it really is like early Stephen King - to an eerie degree. Also has some tinges of the Dark Tower universe to it. It was entertaining but not necessarily fulfilling. In hindsight the story's focus toward the end stayed too tight on the main character...the idea of these "inscapes" that the main character and villain are able to travel to was pretty cool, but in the end the badguy's horrific "Christmasland" was given a quick couple of paragraphs as an explainer and that was it. I was expecting more, but then hey, maybe Hill is already sharing traits from modern-era dad too!
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Feb 15, 2014 13:51
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Argali posted:Just finished NOS4A2 by Joe Hill, Stephen King's son. As many have said, it really is like early Stephen King - to an eerie degree. Also has some tinges of the Dark Tower universe to it. It was entertaining but not necessarily fulfilling. In hindsight the story's focus toward the end stayed too tight on the main character...the idea of these "inscapes" that the main character and villain are able to travel to was pretty cool, but in the end the badguy's horrific "Christmasland" was given a quick couple of paragraphs as an explainer and that was it. I was expecting more, but then hey, maybe Hill is already sharing traits from modern-era dad too!
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Feb 15, 2014 14:20
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I finished Machado de Assis's Epitaph of a Small Winner as translated by William L. Grossman. Short, springy book which reminded me both of Tristram Shandy when it frequently upbraids the reader in defence of its peripatetic style, and of The Way of all Flesh in its frequent doses of ironical common-sense philosophy and the refusal of its main character to be in any way extraordinary. There's perhaps a little less sense in his arguments than in Butlers, and it's so bouncy that it's hard to imagine anyone actually being sick of its divagations from the plot. However for all of this there's a deep undercurrent of melencholy. What first tipped me off was when he tossed off the essence of Thomas Bernhard's Correction. The only thing that annoyed me was probably a joke that I didn't get; everything got turned into flowers. Poems, sadness, men, women, children are all various flowers, some of which get pressed flat and referred to several chapters later like an old proverb. I genuinely wonder if there's a single other metaphor in the book.
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Feb 15, 2014 17:52
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I just finished Divergent by Veronica Roth. It's all billed as 'the new Hunger Games' or whatever and all I read was... a not good book. I honestly don't know how it sold so well. There was a very thin plot, a world that needed much more explanation than it got, and a boring 'romance' if you can call it that. Can anyone explain to me why this book was popular? (This is not a troll post, I really don't understand why this book is considered to be so awesome).
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Feb 16, 2014 00:57
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JustAurora posted:I just finished Divergent by Veronica Roth. It's all billed as 'the new Hunger Games' or whatever and all I read was... a not good book. I honestly don't know how it sold so well. There was a very thin plot, a world that needed much more explanation than it got, and a boring 'romance' if you can call it that. Can anyone explain to me why this book was popular? (This is not a troll post, I really don't understand why this book is considered to be so awesome). As a rule, anything that's billed as "The New [X]" is actually "Poor Imitation of [X]." And I have no knowledge of this particular book, but in general? People just don't have very high standards. The average person is not especially critical of the media they consume, and the younger someone is the lower their standards tend to be. So for the target audience, as long as what they're reading isn't gut-wrenchingly awful (or way out of their comfort zone) they'll think it's a good book. If it also has some themes or characters that resonate with them, they'll think it's a great book. This has pretty much always been the case, honestly. Quality and broad appeal have never been synonymous. Edit: also quality is a subjective measure and what appeals to you probably doesn't appeal to the kind of people who buy this book etc. Terrorforge fucked around with this message at 02:01 on Feb 16, 2014 |
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Feb 16, 2014 01:59
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Just finished Under the Volcano. The prose was amazing but I felt like I had to slog through all the bits where they're just traveling from place to place to get to the good parts. I really liked the reminiscing of Hugh's past. I found him more interesting than the Consul and Yvonne, anyway. I also kinda hate how after the Consul dies, the book just ends, with no tying up of Hugh nor Yvonne  .Still, I recommend this book to anyone who is willing to read a book with beautiful writing, but mostly boring content.
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Feb 16, 2014 05:18
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I'm taking an American Novel after World War II class at school, so that's been providing me with reading material recently. Our first assigned book was Slaughterhouse-Five, which I'd read before but was great to revisit. The simplicity of Vonnegut's writing gives it such a clear, straightforward power that I appreciated a lot more this time around. Also, having read a little more Vonnegut in the meantime, I picked up on more connections to his other works (Kilgore Trout, who's also in Breakfast of Champions factors in quite a bit, and Howard W. Campbell, Jr. from Mother Night makes a brief appearance.) It's probably the best antiwar book I've ever read or ever expect to read, maybe since it doesn't seem to be pushing any antiwar message. It just puts the senseless destruction and bitter irony in front of you and lets your humanity do the rest. Also, I just finished The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and loved it. Her descriptions especially were dead-on without feeling too purple or flowery, which really helped give insight into the main character's mental state. Having gone through a bout of depression myself, I really found myself appreciating the struggles depicted in the book, but I think it's written so that just about anyone could feel the same way. Even now, mental health issues are severely misunderstood by a lot of people, which is unfortunate but still means the book feels quite relevant and modern, for the most part. Next on the list is Mumbo Jumbo by Ishmael Reed, which I've had some trouble tracking down a copy of but am excited to start!
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Feb 16, 2014 06:54
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JustAurora posted:I just finished Divergent by Veronica Roth. It's all billed as 'the new Hunger Games' or whatever and all I read was... a not good book. I honestly don't know how it sold so well. There was a very thin plot, a world that needed much more explanation than it got, and a boring 'romance' if you can call it that. Can anyone explain to me why this book was popular? (This is not a troll post, I really don't understand why this book is considered to be so awesome). I actually just finished this book as well, and came here to post about it. I thought it was a great read. Although it didn't possess the level of depth seen in The Hunger Games, I really liked how Roth explored the nature of morality and self-identity in the way she presented her dystopian society. I think its undertones resonated with me because, beyond the surface of her identity as a divergent, lies a character that is trying to define who she is amidst a society who refutes to accept the qualities she possesses. In our day and age, I think this resonates with a lot of people: whether it be career choices, relationships, or even inner conflicts with homosexuality. I'm moving on now to Insurgent, the second in the series. It hasn't grabbed my attention yet, (I'm not into political plotlines) but hopefully it'l make a turn for the better soon!
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Feb 16, 2014 07:19
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I was kinda hesitant to read it when I heard something about the author making all the smart people the bad guys because she didn't like some criticism in her writing class or something to that effect. Might give it a whirl, or just might wait for the movie.
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Feb 16, 2014 13:46
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Finished Richard Ellmann's biography of James Joyce last night. I enjoyed it: it's a through look at Joyce's life that doesn't really try and hide some of his negative aspects - he was pretty loose with other people's money, drank a lot and wasn't always great to Nora - but I especially enjoyed Ellmann breaking down Joyce's major works and putting them into a context. It's especially so with Finnegans Wake, which he almost always opens chapters with, but he touches on the other books as well. I posted this in the Joyce thread, but it really makes me want to take my copies of FW and Ulysses out of storage and read them It was interesting to compare it to Brian Boyd's two volume biography of Vladimir Nabokov, which I read back in December. The big problem I had with that was how focused it was on Nabokov's novels: Boyd constantly interrupts his story to spend a whole chapter focusing on each book in detail, breaking down the plot, language, allusions, etc. Here, Ellmann was able to keep himself from devoting page after page to dissecting each book, instead weaving the inspirations into it. Usually it's something like pointing out how a chance remark was reflected in Wake, then quoting that passage as a footnote. I can only think of a couple places where he stops everything to explain something (Ulysses, The Dead) and even then, he does it in a way that doesn't feel it's grinding the book to a halt. I like this approach. One thing I didn't like: while Nora's often in the story, he never focuses on her too often. By book's end, I almost felt like I knew Joyce's son and brother better than I knew the woman he spent most of his life living with. Maybe it's because she was a private person, maybe it reflects Ellmann's attitude to someone who never bothered reading any of Joyce's novels. But I felt like he missed an important part of the picture.
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Feb 16, 2014 17:11
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:I was kinda hesitant to read it when I heard something about the author making all the smart people the bad guys because she didn't like some criticism in her writing class or something to that effect. This is the best thing I've heard since that one hack wrote in a harsh critic of his as a peadophile with a tiny dick.
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Feb 16, 2014 17:54
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Started the Grimnoir Chronicles by Larry Correia this week. First book was rather fun in a very pulpy UF noir way. The idea of the world is interesting, but the prose was suffering by the end of the first book and the second was a disappointment. I'm not much in the way of a writing critic and tend to consume by volume. But while I can crank through just about any amount of poor writing if the world and/or story underneath grabs me. This didn't.
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Feb 16, 2014 18:19
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Just finished Ship of Theseus and am surprised that I cannot find a thread with people talking about it. I really enjoyed the book and think there is a lot that I missed and would love to talk about it. Reminded me of Pale Fire and House of Leaves for obvious reasons but was just so beautifully done. If there isn't one maybe I will start one when I am not on my ipad.
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Feb 17, 2014 04:37
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Invicta{HOG}, M.D. posted:Just finished Ship of Theseus and am surprised that I cannot find a thread with people talking about it. I really enjoyed the book and think there is a lot that I missed and would love to talk about it. Reminded me of Pale Fire and House of Leaves for obvious reasons but was just so beautifully done. If there isn't one maybe I will start one when I am not on my ipad. A few people in this thread have read it: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3608062
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Feb 17, 2014 04:47
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Jabronie posted:A few people in this thread have read it: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3608062 And I guess it is technically called S. Hadn't heard of it before my wife gave it to me for my birthday and had been avoiding it on the internet while reading it. Definitely a unique book.
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Feb 17, 2014 05:08
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Moon over Soho: The sequel to Rivers of London, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that it didn't just wipe away stuff that had happened in the last book to make the novels seem more episodic. Stuff like Nightingale being shot last book and instead of him being better in this one he is injured and weak. Still enjoying it series but I really wish it was set somewhere other than London.
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Feb 17, 2014 21:22
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Not sure if many of you have read it but I just finished The Daylight War (Third book of the Demon Cycle) by Peter V Brett. Without going into too much detail regarding the plot I'm really enjoying the series so far. The world that the author has created just feels so immense and alive. While some of you may consider it not as sophisticated as a lot of the books talked about here I thoroughly enjoyed it.
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Feb 18, 2014 03:59
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I just blew through Pines by Blake Crouch. I think he did a great job with the setting, I loved the small town and all the mystery, but he didn't spend nearly enough time on the characters. I think that's what makes Twin Peaks so special, so I'm surprised to see that he only really focused on one character in the town. Also, the ending/resolution was terrible. I'd rather have a vague non-explanation than this far-fetched scenario that doesn't even really fit in with the rest of the story. I really enjoyed it, though, couldn't put it down.
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Feb 18, 2014 05:03
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I just finished Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut after hearing constant praise of his writing. I was really drawn in by the way the story literally jumps backwards and forwards, yet stays interesting and understandable. However, although it's considered his anti-war book, I felt like he could have directly addressed his morals more (or maybe I just didn't read hard enough). Overall, I was really satisfied after putting it down, and just started Breakfast of Champions. After this, I'm probably going to read Cat's Cradle. What other black-humor authors should I check out?
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Feb 18, 2014 06:27
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Geokinesis posted:From the last week: I just finished reading this about a half hour ago. It was a kindle prime rental. I regret that I gave up a book rental for this. It's... it's not very good. I can't understand the raving reviews for it, because the basic premise is loving pants on head retarded. Not gonna spoiler block anything cause mainly this book is loving dumb as hell and if you want to read it, you will already either have read it or won't be swayed by my opinion. Basic premise - Guy signs up for "Compressed Punishment" to avoid a 25 year sentence that he shouldn't have been given because of a railroaded court case. Turns out they pop him in an exoskeleton (hence the name) and plan to torture him for a year because that's what compressed punishment is. So... basically the book starts out with "Let's start saying torture is ok", which sorta raised a red flag for me. Not cause I'm anti or pro torture, but because I read another poo poo book a few years back about some dude who's camera took magic pictures and he got tortured because of he took pics before 9/11 that showed the attacks, and when he tried to warn people they noted his name, etc and arrested him/tortured him because that's what  does to government people's logic I guess.So, guy signs up for the CP without know what it is, we get treated to him being tortured with dentistry to set his pain levels, and he starts having out of body experiences. Turns out that's what the nazis did to prisoners because Hitler thought "Hey, we can get super soldiers if we torture the poo poo out of these guys and they can use their crazy rear end mind powers to win the war for us!" So, since 1947 we'd apparently been doing this, but now this one guy who was falsely imprisoned gets tortured in various ways and develops super powers and then blows up the facility, all while 3 people on the outside are trying to reopen his case because he was obviously railroaded. He blows up the building, experiments get exposed, people get in deep poo poo, he gets hired by the FBI to go find all the other people that didn't die when he blew up the building cause they might have super brain powers and they might be JUST a touch pissed off. The main problem, for me anyway, is obvious. WHY THE gently caress WOULD YOU WANT TO GIVE PEOPLE THAT YOU TORTURED THE ABILITY TO loving KILL YOU WITH THEIR MIND!?!?!!?? What sane possible reason is there for that? It's just dumb as poo poo. I can understand "Oh hey let's volunteer for this horrible poo poo and see" if it was a military kinda army building thing, but this is just horrible prisoners that are convicted of all kinds of poo poo like murder and rape and whatnot, and apparently before that, jews and other prisoners of war. Not exactly the kind of people you want having these abilities, and really not the kind of people you'd be able to keep under control if they had them. It makes no sense. It starts out dumb, and just rolls right on past it into retarded, and just wanders around a bit and then shits itself and then goes "TA DA" and ends. There's no likable characters, even the main protagonist is just sort of a cardboard cutout. The way the story is written you are supposed to feel sorry for him while he's being tortured but it just never happens. It's more like a SAW movie than anything else, except it's not an exceptional SAW movie either. For the idea that this exosuit controls his body and they can make him do anything, they don't actually DO anything creative. More dentistry torture, a variation on waterboarding, spin him around in circles and bend him around. I half expected him to have a scene where he's stepping on puppies and crying because he can't control his own limbs. It's just a lazy book. It's an interesting premise, but just shoddy execution and loving retarded to boot. EVIL GOVERNMENT TORTURES INNOCENT GUY is something that is really only played for cheap feels, and the whole basic premise (as noted) is stupid as hell anyway. SURPRISINGLY THE GUY THEY TORTURE THE poo poo OF OUT WHO GETS MIND POWERS USES THEM TO gently caress UP THE PEOPLE WHO TORTURED HIM. WOW NEVER SAW THAT COMING FROM PAGE 1. This book made me angry, but not for the reasons they WANTED me to be angry about. I'm angry because they took a premise that might have been good, and hosed it up horribly. There was a real chance at body horror and all kinds of paranormal crazy poo poo, and they took the cheap action/adventure route. I'd rate it 2 stars, because there were no typos and it was a free rental. If I paid money for this poo poo I'd be requesting a refund and I'd one star the gently caress out of it.
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Feb 18, 2014 15:58
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Yesterday I finished Peter Carey's My Life as a Fake. Its orange cover, overburderend with blurbs just screamed "summer read," an impression confirmed by the fact that my copy seemed to have been pulled from the pool at some time in its life. However I picked it up anyway because Carey was trumpeted as having twice won the Booker, and it promised to be about art-forgery, a metaphor which I am fond of. For the first three quarters I was disappointed. It was definitely meant to be read in a deck chair; sunny locations, sex, little description, lots of dialogue (for some reason or other, Carey eschews quotation marks entirely), and the narrator keeps on telling you how terribly interesting the story's about to get. It's all coated with a thin wash of literariness. People cart about copies of Rilke and Milton, give synopsis of Eliot, and constantly lament the failure of their talent. The art forgery at the centre is an exact duplication of Ern Malloy hoax, where two conservatives exploded an Australian avant garde magazine by feeding it a Wasteland-a-like cobbled together from fragments of an army manual about mosquitoes. The twist here being that a freak emerges claiming to be this fictitious poet and starts throwing his weight around. Since realism is such a dominant style, some might be annoyed by a modern Athena springing fully formed out of a pen, but one of the many blurbs quite helpfully pointed out the book is closely following the model set by Shelley's Frankenstein. As things started rushing to a head, I must say that it did actually thrill me, and it started moving so quickly it dropped the irritating clever references.
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Feb 18, 2014 17:57
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Wronkos posted:I just finished Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut after hearing constant praise of his writing. I was really drawn in by the way the story literally jumps backwards and forwards, yet stays interesting and understandable. However, although it's considered his anti-war book, I felt like he could have directly addressed his morals more (or maybe I just didn't read hard enough). If you haven't read Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, absolutely do so. People also seem to like Chuck Palahniuk for black comedy; I'm not really a fan of his, but maybe I just haven't read the right thing yet.
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Feb 18, 2014 20:36
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:
Exactly, the exoskeleton didn't do anything amazing, no proper psychological stuff or beating up innocent people crying for mercy etc
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Feb 18, 2014 20:49
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Wronkos posted:Overall, I was really satisfied after putting it down, and just started Breakfast of Champions. After this, I'm probably going to read Cat's Cradle. What other black-humor authors should I check out? As noted, Catch-22 should definitely be read. The authors who remind me the most of Vonnegut, as far as both the black humor and stories, are Ron Currie, Jr., Kevin Wilson, and James Morrow. Some people bring up Philip K Dick, but they don't feel all that similar to me, particularly in tone. While not terribly similar in writing style, Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz hits a lot of the same notes in terms of humor and themes/subject matter, so that might be worth checking out.
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Feb 18, 2014 21:18
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3500 An Autistic Boy's Ten-Year Romance with Snow White by Ron Miles This is a very charming story about a young child named Benjamin and how his infatuation with Snow White provided a lever to encourage good behavior which greatly improved his ability to function in the world. The book also does a great job showing what it's like to live with autistic children in my opinion. It's a very quick read (236 pages) with large print and generous page margins. This is a great story with lots of emotional moments. It is not a book about autism. I recommend this one and very much enjoyed reading it.
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Feb 19, 2014 04:25
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Geokinesis posted:Exactly, the exoskeleton didn't do anything amazing, no proper psychological stuff or beating up innocent people crying for mercy etc If they HAD pulled something crazy like that it would have been awesome, and at least helped partially redeem the book. The author just really dropped the ball on this one.
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Feb 19, 2014 06:22
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I just finished The Wheel of Time: A Memory of Light. God that series was a mess. The convoluted lengthy books that led up to the ending left me utterly confused as to who was who. Come the final book I had no idea who half of the characters were. There were apparently people we haven't seen for 5 books showing up and we're just supposed to remember who they were. I guess it doesn't help that I read the previous book about 4 years ago, but I can't really be expected to reread thirteen 500+ page books to just read this last one. There were literally more than 10+ separate plotlines going on during most of the book. I don't know how that poo poo didn't get trimmed down. All the jumping around made the sense of time hard to get a grasp on, and I would forget stuff about plot lines by the time they would come back around again. I really cannot understand how this garbage made it past an editor.
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Feb 19, 2014 07:33
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I just finished Joe Haldeman's The Forever War having stumbled onto it after reading Scalzi's Old Man War. I liked both but really thought both were an extension of Heinlein's work before he went nuts and took the Lazarus Long series too far. Both of the former were worth the money. Now I'm tossing up between the second last Patrick O'Brien Aubrey novel or Alison Weir's Mary Boleyn.
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Feb 19, 2014 09:33
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Nitrousoxide posted:I really cannot understand how this garbage made it past an editor. A combination of having a large, built-in audience and desire to just be loving done with it already? Apparently Jordan wrote the end when he came up with the whole story, but it was a complete mess and I was left totally unsatisfied (hence me poo poo-talking whenever I get the chance). I'm pretty sure at least one or two of those pivotal characters- like the weak Asha'man with the particular Talent- were either non-existent or only mentioned in passing before the last book or two.
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Feb 19, 2014 13:05
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:If they HAD pulled something crazy like that it would have been awesome, and at least helped partially redeem the book. Thinking about it even more, if the prison had worked out all his pain thresholds AND had people controlling stuff in a different room, why even bother with a suit? They've already learnt not to kill the guy, know his breaking limits and don't anything psychological past making him hit a switch at the start. Anyway just finished Whispers Under Ground I'm really enjoying the series, it is such a competent and fun blending of light police stuff and semi secret magical organisation. It helps the main character isn't some kind of magical wunderkind or some complete fool who just learns by rote and actually looks at how stuff works without being obnoxious.
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Feb 19, 2014 20:08
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Setanta posted:I just finished Joe Haldeman's The Forever War having stumbled onto it after reading Scalzi's Old Man War. I liked both but really thought both were an extension of Heinlein's work before he went nuts and took the Lazarus Long series too far. Both of the former were worth the money. I remember reading The Forever War in a Science Fiction class while earning my BS degree. Wasn't this some sort of steampunk novel?
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Feb 19, 2014 21:50
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