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XBenedict posted:I really enjoyed M.R. Carey's TheGirl With All The Gifts, so I'm pretty excited about the newly announced post-apocolyptic series. Have you read The Boy on the Bridge? I was actually kind of lukewarm on Girl for most of the book, but ended up enjoying it well enough, so I'm curious how the second book stands up. And anybody read Fellside or Someone Like Me? I generally like, but not love, Mike Carey's books so I'm curious about them, but not enough to just dive in without a recommendation.
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Oct 3, 2019 16:37
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wizzardstaff posted:How do you feel about something with a magic system designed by a math teacher featuring several Nice Guy dweeb-gets-the-hot-girl protagonists? Master of the Five Magics and its sequels by Lyndon Hardy may be up your alley. I loved these as a 11-12 year old and I've been tempted (and absolutely terrified) to look them up again, in case they were full of questionable opinions/viewpoints like a handful of other favorites from when I was too young to really understand the degree of yeesh that exists in so much "classic" sf/f. How are they in that sense? For Evil Fluffy, though: if you haven't read them already, the Chronicles of Prydain are excellent, though they do get dark at times. But they're cozy and satisfying in a similar way to Misenchanted Sword. They probably get marketed as YA these days but don't let that put you off if you're not someone who usually dips into YA fantasy.
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Oct 4, 2019 04:50
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Cardiac posted:This is probably the best review of the book so far, so I guess it goes into the list. For what it's worth, 2 Like 2 Lightning does back off of that style a bit once the book gets rolling. There are occasional spans where it pops back up, though. It takes a bit, but the book actually becomes pretty compelling techno/political conspiracy fare before too long. The stuff with Bridger is present throughout too, but he's actually not the focus (of the first book, at least, I assume he becomes more central later?)
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Oct 7, 2019 17:41
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I felt like The Rook has fairly immature writing across the board. Not necessarily poorly written from a technical standpoint (though it's no Nabokov or anything, obviously), more in the sense that it sometimes veered into kind of cringe-y or childish plot points and diversions. Even those moments aside, I didn't care much for the book, so maybe I was looking for problems. It had some very compelling ideas, but I still spent most of the book feeling either a little bored or a little tired of the author trying very hard to be clever or funny.
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Oct 14, 2019 16:07
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I'm about a third to halfway through Quantum Thief and I'm having a hard time deciding if I like it. I think to some degree I'm kind of over sci-fi novels stubbornly refusing to explain things, but at the same time I'm happy it hasn't taken the time for big exposition dumps. I think maybe I feel like it just has too much going on so far? I like it enough to keep reading, so I'm hoping it all kind of shakes out in an interesting way by the end of the book.
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Oct 15, 2019 19:49
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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'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.
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Oct 31, 2019 17:28
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I recently read Prince of Thorns, which I enjoyed but it didn't really blow me away (I'm a big fan of the post-post-apocalypse fantasy idea). Now I'm on to King of Thorns, and maybe a little shy of a quarter of the way through, and it feels very slow and aimless. I'm kind of lost as to what the bigger picture is in this book, it kind of feels like Jorg just loving around and pointedly not letting the reader know why. Does the pace pick up at all, or start going in a different direction? I'm getting kind of bored with it but would soldier through if it's worth it.
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Nov 9, 2019 04:27
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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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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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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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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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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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ToxicFrog posted:The books are very repetitious, the characterization is weak and the romance subplot is spectacularly dumb and gets worse as the series continues. Okay this (and the posts above...) lead me to believe that it's probably not my cup of tea for a variety of reasons, I think I'm gonna pass on this one.
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Nov 12, 2019 22:44
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gvibes posted:You should really read Malazan. Except for the first book, maybe. But if you don’t like the second book, it’s probably not going to click. Why not the first book?
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Nov 13, 2019 06:21
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90s Cringe Rock posted:You're looking at subtext, which is for cowards. A friend of mine who is an ex-Mormon has a personal conspiracy that Card is explicitly, definitely gay but that a big contingent of his sales are to Mormons so he chooses to put up the party-line front so as to not alienate them, but I have no idea if there's any credence to it, or if it matters in the long run. Regardless of who the guy is or what his sexuality is, he's certainly flat-out said a lot of hateful homophobic things so it's hard to reconcile that through any kind of theorizing.
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Nov 15, 2019 18:36
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tbf I'm not really sure why you'd read the other book either
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Nov 15, 2019 19:37
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Drone posted:um, why would you not just read both an equally valid approach, i have to admit
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Nov 15, 2019 20:21
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This reminds me that I have some late-70s pulp sci fi novel that I'd never heard of and never read sitting on my shelf at home, somebody gave it to me in a gift exchange as a joke and I can't decide if it's going to be terrible or wonderful when I get around to reading it. I wish I could remember the name because the cover is a sight to behold.
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Nov 15, 2019 20:31
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Has anybody else read Steel Frame and felt like it's kind of weirdly written? Not badly, just... I feel like there are sections of the book where I'm flat out missing information or narration, or actions are happening that aren't fully explained, to the point where it's very occasionally hard to follow what's going on. Maybe it's just me, and it's not really negatively affecting my enjoyment of the book, but I feel like I occasionally have to re-read the same passage a couple of times to parse what's going on.
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Nov 18, 2019 17:12
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The_White_Crane posted:Yes. Oh good, I'm glad it wasn't just me, I've never really experienced this reading a book before (at least, other than books that are doing it intentionally for one reason or another) and was worried I was having some sort of brain problem.
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Nov 18, 2019 17:31
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Apparatchik Magnet posted:I think it had a weird feel to it, but I was ok with it. Like a less bonkers Library at Mount Char? No, I kind of get what you mean. But I do feel like Library at Mount Char was intentionally disorienting, where Steel Frame feels a bit like it needed editing/reworking in some sections to make things more clear. Like I said, I can't say it's hurting my enjoyment of the book (though I'm finding my mind wanders more than normal when I'm reading) but it was weird enough that I was curious if I was the only one experiencing it.
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Nov 18, 2019 19:48
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Also geometry (troop/ship formations) literally creates magic powers, which the book calls "exotic effects" or something. It's more science fantasy than science fiction so it might be easier to think of in that sense because a lot of things in the books just don't adhere to scientific reality, even setting aside exotic magic stuff. I think Lee wrote a blog post or something explaining that it was a conscious choice to ignore stuff like relativity in favor of spacemagic. And yeah, what Strix said comes up a whole lot, and the book will refer to calendrical zones and calendrical rot, that's all related to people literally observing (or not, in the case of rot) the same calendar of rituals and feast days. I know a couple of people who felt the houses can also be confusing and hard to keep track of, but don't worry about it too much, there are two (sort of three) of them that are actually important to the story, the other three will be mentioned occasionally but you don't need to memorize what their significance is or anything. edit: I had my issues with the trilogy but this: nessin posted:I don't have to literally wonder if stuff is so screwed up do they even sit down to take a poo poo. Does mathematical calculation and poo poo happens isn't even that bad, until suddenly it's the existence of mathematical calculations somehow made people immortal, and somehow heresy to a calendar becomes reality altering extinction event. There isn't enough in the book that I'm still not sure is the Fortress in question an actual building, some sort of space station, or a day of the week? wasn't one of them, for me. The books aren't going to explain a whole lot of the calendrical effects (other than "thing A happens because of the High Calendar") so if you''re hoping for explanation, there's not really one coming. By extension I'm not sure you'll find cliffnotes. There might be a wiki up somewhere that has some details about the houses but beyond that I'm not sure what to tell you, other than I'm not sure you're going to enjoy the books if those things are bothering you right out of the gate. I'm not trying to be dismissive here, the book isn't everybody's cup of tea and it notoriously doesn't explain a whole lot of the calendar effects to more than a shallow degree. It throws less of that at you as the book goes on and the second and third book don't have as much space magic in them, but it all sort of trades on the reader's willingness to just go with the whole "High Calendar gives you magic powers" concept. MockingQuantum fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Nov 18, 2019 |
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Nov 18, 2019 22:22
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Ironically I liked Ninefox the most out of all three books in large part due to how much poo poo it just threw at the reader, it felt like a really unique setting to me, and the other two books didn't quite have the same impact for me (though admittedly both were more plot- and character-driven than setting-driven)
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Nov 18, 2019 23:22
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Ceebees posted:It's never made extremely clear how the Kel are modified It is, sort of. at one point it's made clear that (if I remember right) it's a combination of chemical injections and psych surgery, the former for physical conditioning reasons, the latter for formation instinct. I know its explicitly said somewhere in the book that most crashhawks come about because the psych surgery doesn't take, for whatever reason. In any case, I may be misremembering things but the books definitely do make it clear that the Kel are both physically and mentally mutilated to make them better soldiers. I think Cheris talks about the Kel "intake" process at some point and yeah, it's only vaguely hinted at, but Kujen also makes it clear that the Kel are more heavily manipulated, on an individual, physical level, than any other branch of the Hexarchate.
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Nov 18, 2019 23:29
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anilEhilated posted:Same here. I suspect the primary reason for that would be that Jedao just isn't that interesting a character once you scrape off the initial mystery. I definitely had a moment where I realized that Jedao slaughtered millions specifically to get stuck in the Black Cradle so he could come back hundreds of years later and unmake the Hexarchate, and I'm not sure exactly when it was in the course of the books, but after that I felt a bit like I was just watching the inevitable play out, and Jedao had lost a lot of the intrigue surrounding him. Also while the reveal that it turns out Jedao didn't take over Cheris's body, it was just Cheris, was initially sort of cool, but then kind of lost its impact when I realized that in retrospect it didn't really change much. And yeah, I got very fatigued reading the clone-Jedao chapters in Revenant Gun, waiting for him to inevitably turn on Kujen.
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Nov 18, 2019 23:33
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Never read the book, so I have no idea who that is. Just saw the discussion of Mary/Gary and thought I'd lob in an opinion grenade. Please don't do this, if you haven't read the book, then all you're doing is dogpiling for the sake of dogpiling, which is childish. The problem with a term like Mary Sue is that if it's wide enough to represent all those separate nuances Battuta pointed out, then it's wide enough to not mean anything. It's a lukewarm criticism that's not much more specific than just saying a book is bad. It also smacks of the kind of low effort internet criticism that is really just shorthand for "I didn't like this popular book but can't tell you why other than by using a buzzword" that infests Twitter, Reddit, and Goodreads. And honestly, if you didn't care enough about a book to actually put forward a considered criticism beyond what amounts to "it bad goon" then I think your input is going to be ignored most of the time anyway. That's not discussion, it's just noise. This is all setting aside the fact that regardless of what dozen of definitions people give the phrase Mary Sue these days, it isn't even accurate in this case. I honestly didn't like much of the Machineries of Empires books and they probably wouldn't be in my too five recommendations to someone looking for new sci fi, but calling Jedao a Mary Sue is pointlessly reductive. it's not critical, just dismissive.
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Nov 19, 2019 16:02
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quantumfoam posted:The way that Yoon Ha Leee presented Jeado through most of Ninefox Gambit didn''t land for me. Yeah I generally agree with this criticism of Jedao, what he was in practice when interacting with Cheris was so different from the response he got elsewhere. I know that was intentional and is justified later in the books, but it felt incongruous enough to me that it felt like a bit of a fumble in the way the story was told. I almost wish I'd gotten a book where Jedao was less of a character than this enigmatic half-crazed legend, as then when you get the full details of his backstory in the later books, it would have had much more impact. I personally felt like Cheris was a much more interesting character to focus on, and was actually kind of disappointed how Jedao-centric the later books got. By the third book, though, she also felt like she was pretty heavily sidelined and flat. FWIW I hate dismissive terms like Mary Sue, it didn't bother me so much when you used it because I know if asked you could probably articulate what you meant by that, I just hate it when forums use buzzwords like that as a way to just dismiss discussion of a book they didn't like (or didn't read, which is even more stupid). I would always rather hear why someone didn't like a book with some more thought than "character is a Mary Sue, I know because I read it on TVTropes". MockingQuantum fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Nov 19, 2019 |
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Nov 19, 2019 17:09
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sebmojo posted:Avshalom never left and still posts in TBB In actual content, I'm reading Four Roads Cross, the fourth/fifth book in the Craft Sequence depending on how you want to count them. I definitely enjoy it more than the last couple (Last First Snow & Full Fathom Five) but I still don't find it quite as gripping as I did the very first book I read and I just can't figure out why. FFF was a total slog for me, and LFS was fine but kind of bland, so this one is a big improvement in large part because I enjoy the setting and characters more, but I'm not tearing through it like I did Three Parts Dead. Maybe it's because I mostly enjoyed the novelty of the world in the first book and not the actual story, I don't know. MockingQuantum fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Nov 20, 2019 |
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Nov 20, 2019 21:05
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Megazver posted:Full Fathom Five basically has the inciting incident about 50% into a not-very-slender novel, which is quite a few pages without the reader understanding what the gently caress the actual story is about, and just kind of meanders showing author's precious worldbuilding before that. I like the guy and I liked the first two books, but I am not sure I'll ever get around to reading the rest of the series. Yeah Full Fathom Five was kind of miserable for me, I skimmed a lot of it and I'm glad I did. I think I agree that part of the issue is the worldbuilding-- I think Gladstone is pretty good at writing a decent plot, but at least for me personally, his world isn't quite interesting enough (or maybe just not quite specific/fleshed out enough) to justify the time he takes on worldbuilding. Like FFF especially, I felt like the whole idea behind the island and the penitents and the idols were cool, but extremely half baked in such a way that all the cool ideas in the world wouldn't ever hang together nicely, in a way that felt coherent and engaging. I had the same problem with Two Serpents or whatever it was, the setting was kind of meh, but the story was engaging. Last First Snow was still the same meh setting, but with a disproportionately slow, bland story that could have been written more engagingly in a lot fewer pages. edit: Reading what I just wrote, it sounds like I hate the series! I actually don't, but I do think the longer I spend on the books, the more my enjoyment drops. Not in the Dune kind of way where each book is shittier/weirder/more convoluted than the one before it. I think the books just kind of overstay their welcome and a lot of the ideas are half-baked. It's a similar feeling to what I had after reading Perdido Street Station, and I think for similar reasons. I'm still interested to read more of Gladstone's writing-- I think I'll give Empress of Forever a try since it's unrelated and (hopefully) not as drawn out as the five Craft Sequence books feel like they are, sometimes. MockingQuantum fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Nov 20, 2019 |
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Nov 20, 2019 22:53
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sebmojo posted:If I hated perdido st for those reasons what mieville should i read? The city and the city? I've heard good things about The City and The City but haven't ever read it. If you liked the world in Perdido, just not the story, The Scar is set in the same world but imo a significantly better book with a more coherent plot, and still a very cool setting without it being the whole book. Embassytown is possibly one of my favorite sci fi books, and is one of the rare cases of aliens that are genuinely so alien that it's kind of hard to wrap your head around them sometimes.
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Nov 20, 2019 23:18
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"bathos"
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Nov 29, 2019 01:05
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wizzardstaff posted:Finally got my hands on the first Murderbot book from the library, downloaded it to my phone and started reading it on commutes. After a little reading it felt like the story was just getting started, I was looking forward to seeing what happens next...and then I noticed that the progress bar was at 70%. This is a (very minor) pet peeve of mine, too. I have three Overdrive accounts at three separate libraries, and their app makes it super easy to return books. It also very nicely tells you when there's a wait list on a book you have checked out, so there's been a few times where I got a book that was on hold, but realized I'd never get around to reading it before the checkout expired, so I just return it so the next person can get it a little quicker. Or I have books on hold for ages, forget, buy the book, then months later get the same book from each Overdrive account in short succession.
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Dec 4, 2019 20:54
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Khizan posted:I got the Gideon the Ninth audiobook with a free Audible credit thing that Amazon emailed me a while back, and to my surprise I've been enjoying listening to it in the car despite my long history of not being able to deal with them. I've got another 2 free credits from a trial to spend, and I'm looking for some more titles that are particularly good in audiobook form. Sabriel is great, and narrated by Tim Curry. Also one of the versions of Dune on Audible has a whole voice cast and is really well executed. And I'm not sure if this qualifies as a giant series, but the First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie is good grimdark fantasy with a sense of humor, and has some of the best narration out there, IMO. Also, I can't get Audible to open on my phone at the moment, so I'm not certain it's available on there, but there's a recording of A Wizard of Earthsea read by Harlan Ellison that's also excellent. He didn't do any of the other books, unfortunately.
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Dec 11, 2019 23:45
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StrixNebulosa posted:To turn this into a good thing: I know of two trans authors off the top of my head: Yoon Ha Lee and Caitlin R Kiernan. Are there any others out there? I've got money and a need for more books to hoard. JY Yang, whose Tensorate series directly addresses gender identification as part of the main character(s) culture. Charlie Jane Anders too, though I haven't read any of her work personally. edit: Margaret Killjoy too, she writes these kind of anarcho-punk supernatural horror novellas but, uh, I actually don't like her writing very much, YMMV though MockingQuantum fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Dec 20, 2019 |
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Dec 20, 2019 19:42
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anilEhilated posted:It's pretty good for YA. Predictable but a very enjoyable read. Heh same, I would be completely fine with scifi/fantasy authors just kind of giving up on romance plots for the most part. That's more a personal preference than some sweeping statement on the genre, though. But they can gently caress right off when it comes to sex scenes, I don't think I've read any genre book with a sex scene that didn't make me cringe or roll my eyes at least once. On a related note, I've found I have near-zero patience for reading fight scenes. Some of it is just flat-out bad writing (you can tell which sf/f writers are like martial arts or HEMA enthusiasts because they write the most blisteringly boring blow-by-blow fight scenes), some of it is that most fight scenes or combat scenes in books seem to just be about the fight and not about developing characters, or setting a scene, or moving the action along, or literally anything but two dudes wrasslin. So that said, does anybody do combat or fights really well? It seems like a bit of a unicorn.
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Dec 20, 2019 20:07
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Ben Nevis posted:Abercrombie's Heroes has my favorite fight scene, and also does pretty well with characters. It's a standalone in the same world as his doorstopper trilogy, but I read it without having read the series, so it can be done. Which one was your favorite, out of curiosity? I just read this, and I will agree that in general Abercrombie does a better job than most, in part because he does a good job of depicting how much of a hosed up mess actual fights are (or inevitably become). pseudorandom name posted:You haven't read any Mary Robinette Kowal. That's correct, I have not. Calculating Stars is on my shortlist though.
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Dec 20, 2019 20:29
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Thank you for this.
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Dec 20, 2019 20:46
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Ben Nevis posted:I probably should have specifically said battle scene, I suppose. It's the one where it jumps from character to character with each dying in turn and culminating in Whirrun's death. It was quite well done, I thought, and gave you a little bit of a lot of things and did show what a mess it actually all is. Oh yeah, that one was very good. ps you're missing a / in your second spoilertag
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Dec 20, 2019 21:41
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pradmer posted:Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C Clarke - $1.99 That Complete Lovecraft isn't really a deal, and is actually kind of a ripoff. Lovecraft is entirely in public domain, so if you absolutely must have his work in a Kindle ebook, you can almost always find one for a buck, or if you look at the right time, free. If an ebook isn't necessary you can find all of his work here: http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/sources/hplcf.aspx
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Jan 7, 2020 00:24
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Cugel is an rear end in a top hat though, and not a wizard, so Eyes of the Overworld aka Cugel the Clever might not be your speed. I haven't read Cugel's Saga (and don't know if I will) so I can't attest to its wizardlyness.
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Jan 21, 2020 18:44
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