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Evil Fluffy posted:Any decent fantasy series in the vein of the Legends of Ethshar books? Looking for something fun to relax and read that isn't a tangled mess of storytelling (IE: not Malazan). 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.
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Oct 4, 2019 04:13
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MockingQuantum posted: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?
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Oct 4, 2019 06:52
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Misenchanted Sword was one I found in a corner of the decrepit used bookstore that I dredged all my books from as a middle schooler and teen. I used to reread it every couple of years because it was just so pleasant and....resolved. Now I’m wondering what happened to my copy.
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Oct 7, 2019 05:44
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TastyShrimpPlatter posted:I bounced off The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet about halfway through, it was cozy but it never felt like there was actually anything at stake (I really wanted to like it more). I'm currently going through The Quantum Magician and it's pretty fun if not a little predictable so far. IMO Small Angry Planet works better if you consider it an anthology of loosely independent scenes rather than a continuous narrative. There's a plot going on in the background, but the author chooses to zoom in on moments that depict something about the characters and their relationships rather than big stakes. Granted, I only gained this appreciation for it on a second reading after I knew the whole story; the first time I was also frustrated in the same way you describe. As others have said though, the other books do offer more in the way of stakes (especially the second one) and you can more or less read them in any order if you don't mind spoilers for an outcome in the first book.
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Oct 7, 2019 15:12
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Sibling of TB posted:I have never read a book before where about half way through I decided that I hated all the characters and wanted to see bad stuff happen to them. Any other books like that? The Blending by Sharon Green. A five-book series that features five protagonists each specializing in a different element of magic. They are brought together from the corners of The Empire to compete in a tournament to crown the next heads of state. The tournament is a Captain Planet cage match in which teams of five coordinate their powers to summon a combined entity. The main antagonists are a team of nobles hand-picked for succession, and you know they're evil because they do BDSM. Meanwhile, in between arena battles the protagonists are forced into a communal living situation which provides no end of soap opera drama and sexual tension. Eventually they sleep together in all possible heterosexual combinations because it strengthens their bonds as teammates; homosexual pairings aren't necessary because they "love each other like siblings". Oh, and the first two books are actually 1/5 the printed length because they cover the characters individually going through solo trials which are beat-by-beat identical to each other, to the point where it feels like the chapters are copied and pasted with the names changed. I hate these books and also can't put them down. I have read them three times. I have considered a chapter-by-chapter hate-read but that just seems spiteful.
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Oct 7, 2019 21:11
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StrixNebulosa posted:You know there's a sequel series, right? Please hate-read these to us, I own all five and never finished them and I'd like to know what happens. I've never read the sequel series but it's why I reread the first five so many times. I'd think, "Man, I'm really curious how those sequels went but I should refresh myself on the originals first. It's light reading, it should go fast." And then by the time I'm done I just want to throw the books in a fire. If people would be entertained by it I could start a thread in a month or so when I have more time.
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Oct 8, 2019 04:04
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Someone from the previous thread recommended Eifelheim and it finally came in from the library. Thanks for the tip. It's a slow burn but just starting to pick up. Though there seems to be some romantic subplot forming with the research assistant in the present-day timeline and I am very much not into it.
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Oct 14, 2019 17:10
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Maybe belongs in the "help me remember a story thread" but since we're talking about Ethshar... Which were the Lawrence Watt-Evans books about the hulking mutant fantasy soldier (an "overman"? "halfman"?) who needed to go on a quest to appease the seven gods or somesuch? I started that series as a teen but never found all the books. I distinctly remember one scene where he wrecked a temple of dark cultists whose magic only worked in pitch black. Were the rest any good?
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Oct 14, 2019 19:14
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freebooter posted:That was me, hope you enjoy it Oh, I definitely appreciate the modern timeline, it casts a third perspective on the medieval timeline because you know the broad strokes of how things end up. (The first two perspectives being Dietrich's POV and what we as sci fi readers can infer about the Krenken. And all three have some degree of unreliability, which is extremely my jam.) So yeah, thanks for the tip.
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Oct 15, 2019 04:11
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Anias posted:Their estates are in trust at Reed College in the Language Arts section, with a direction to fund student tuition for scholars seeking to study secondary languages. So you can read about blue rocks in relative peace. And the college library has a bunch of author notes and other materials in their special collections archive, which is neat to see. Still stinks that someone(s) who created such a formative series for me and many others turned out to be so horrible, though. 
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Oct 18, 2019 23:25
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I put them on hold on my library app and then flail about helplessly when they all arrive at once.
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Oct 19, 2019 16:06
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a foolish pianist posted:pretty much just rightwing anti-liberal strawman, the novel: That crown (for me) is currently held by Directive 51 by John Barnes, which I was tricked into reading because he had a story in Lightspeed that I liked. A political sci-fi thriller where the antagonists are brainwashed tree-huggers being played as pawns by a cabal of nefarious plotters "somewhere in a cave in Afghanistan".
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Oct 24, 2019 22:43
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Fallom posted:First of all I don’t call it “consuming” like a novel is a bottle of Soylent My kid consumes books all the time, but she is 10 months old and thinks Goodnight Moon is delicious so I give it a pass.
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Nov 9, 2019 23:22
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The_White_Crane posted:Yes, and that's a really valuable point to make when it comes to (for example) real world discrimination against Muslims post 9/11, because in the real world what we mean by "potentially dangerous" is "some people who looked like these people did a crime once", which absolutely doesn't justify treating those people differently. Instead of comparing it to a cultural tradition, how about something involuntary that a person can't choose to abandon? Like being a carrier for a devastating illness. And the real world does have a bad track record of stigmatizing people with treatable communicable diseases. Not sure I like that analogy too much as it implies that the magic powers are wholly negative instead of super-abilities, but I'm trying to get at something that could cause a person to harm others around them if they don't manage it.
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Nov 14, 2019 21:02
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The_White_Crane posted:Mmm. For a modern day comparison I was thinking of HIV. It's not something requires quarantine to prevent transmission, but it can be spread if someone has unprotected sex or a blood spill accident. Someone theoretically could do that intentionally, but it would be grossly unethical to lock HIV+ people up out of fear that they have the potential for malice.
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Nov 14, 2019 21:16
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Sarern posted:This quest for a real-world analog of a possibly misdesigned fantasy analog for real-world minority groups is going in weird and icky directions. I don't think it's wise to compare HIV+ status to an innate magical ability to easily, quickly or accidentally kill people in groups. Yes, sorry for starting that tangent. I'm not super comfortable with it myself and should probably have let it fade away before posting.
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Nov 14, 2019 21:32
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I passed over it before but this talk about Ninefox Gambit is making me want to go back and reconsider. Currently reading Gideon and liking it. I can see how the tone and style might turn some people off though.
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Nov 19, 2019 04:23
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Cythereal posted:Directive 51 by John Barnes - As someone keenly interested in information theory, the first third or so of this book is fairly interesting. Twenty minutes into the future, the end of the world as we know it comes crowd-funded and locally sourced, its agents recruited and radicalized through discord chats and memes, its weapons built in garages and make-spaces. Unfortunately, a plot has to come along and rip apart that veneer of a vaguely interesting idea to reveal the ultra-right-wing boomer wank over the end of western civilization at the hands of those dastardly liberals. And, unable to give liberals too much credit, the whole thing turns out to be a magic thought-virus from space because aliens. I remember quitting that one halfway through, right after the liberal president created a uniformed Youth Corps to rough up journalists who were saying bad things about him. And also the chapter where anonymous villains cackled about their plans to destroy the US from their cold, wet bunker in a cave in Afghanistan.
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Nov 26, 2019 18:37
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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%. I was warned that the books were short but seeing it up close is another matter. The only question remaining is why the library hold times are so long for each book when they only take a few hours to read. Return your stuff rather than waiting for the checkout to expire, dammit! 
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Dec 4, 2019 20:41
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Hiro Protagonist posted:I don't begrudge anyone for liking it, and I can see why many people did, I just found myself rolling my eyes at everything. quote:Speaking of stuff I didn't like that a lot of people did, can someone explain to me why Ancillary Justice was such a big deal? I mean, the use of gender-neutral she/her was an interesting idea that I think helped me reconsider some subconscious sexist assumptions I have when reading, but I didn't really enjoy anything else. It felt like the present storyline spoiled the entirety of the past storyline, and the present storyline was a lot of meandering until we got to the assassination attempt. Maybe I'm just not remembering everything, but I feel like it's success was entirely due to the pronoun usage and some admittedly cool tricks with narration from a hive-mind perspective, not the world or the characters. I'm with you on that though; I also tried hard to get in to Ancillary Justice and just couldn't make it.
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Dec 4, 2019 23:10
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Hear me out here....Earthsea?
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Dec 15, 2019 08:56
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Apparatchik Magnet posted:Let me blow your mind: it's true to say that "human beings have five fingers per hand" not withstanding some fringe cases of six fingered people. We don't need to take the six-fingered lobby seriously and waste time changing social definitions to make them happy, even if we shouldn't be rude to them about their unusual condition. That's certainly a take.
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Dec 20, 2019 17:47
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StrixNebulosa posted:Dated cyberpunk is the best kind of cyberpunk imo, as long as it's actually punk. I love it when sci-fi uses "~modern tech~" like tapes or floppies or what have you. My favorite thing about reading Dick and Asimov stories growing up was that everyone was still running programs on punchcards. One PKD story really stuck with me about a person who discovers he's a robot and alters his code by randomly punching holes in the computer tape running through his chest. Not exactly "punk" but it hits a similar theme of taking control of your body that cyberpunk does with augments or mods or whatever.
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Dec 26, 2019 00:38
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:From memory, yes. It's an electric typewriter with a built-in nuclear power source. Isn't the miniaturization of nuclear power a big deal in the Foundation series? As I recall Asimov had a lot of Thoughts about nuclear technology. One of his stories is real brief, like three pages, about an alien recordkeeper preparing to welcome Earth into the galactic community. "This new Type 3a civilization has entered their nuclear age and has begun large-scale testing. Wait, instead of detonating on neighboring empty planets they're testing on each other? *erases Earth from record book* Stupid idiots, they'll never make it."
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Dec 26, 2019 01:23
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I finished Murderbot 4 and came to a realization about the series. It sits in the same genre of "competence porn" as The Martian and older sci fi that features a protagonist constantly solving tricky problems with the application of pure skill and ingenuity. The only difference is that instead of a charismatic white male engineer, the main character is an ambiguously gendered nervous wreck who hates socializing and just wants to binge Netflix 24/7.
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Jan 1, 2020 22:36
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Absurd Alhazred posted:I don't think most of Le Guin's work is like that. I've just read her The Word for World is Forest and it is very much not competence porn. Maybe incompetence porn. There's also the entire lineage of Tolkein/Hero's Journey clones where the hero spends half the story running away from the dark lord's minions.
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Jan 2, 2020 00:16
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Black Griffon posted:What's my next Sanderson if the first I've read is Elantris? Warbreaker if you want a standalone book, Mistborn if you want a standalone series, Way of Kings if you want to dive into the deep end. (None of them are truly standalone, but this only really becomes apparent in WoK and its sequels.)
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Jan 19, 2020 16:40
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avoraciopoctules posted:I'd like to read a fantasy novel with a wizard protagonist. Flashy magic, hopefully something they had to work for rather than being born with. At least a little smug and self-absorbed, but not a total jerk. I would rather avoid stuff with torture or sexual violence. Master of the Five Magics by Lyndon Hardy. Hits all the points you're looking for, at least on paper. The main character has no inborn powers but is driven by pride, stubbornness, and self-entitlement to learn all the magic arts. Over the course of the novel he logics his way through all five of them and (spoiler alert) becomes a master. There's no gore or rape but there is a low-level background radiation of 80s fantasy misogyny. If you like reading about magic systems then this is the book for you because there are five separate ones which follow entirely different rules. There are two sequels with Six and Seven in the name which follow other characters in the same world. I think they're all right but not as good. They each throw several more magic systems into the mix.
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Jan 21, 2020 08:17
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There's also his series about aliens invading during WWII, which I remember chiefly because I read it in middle school and it had sex scenes.
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Jan 23, 2020 05:36
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quantumfoam posted:-Grabbed some Becky Chambers books from the library (spaceborn few + small angry planet). Never read any of her stuff before, going in blind to them. Not that it matters a ton, but those are #3 and #1 of a series respectively, in publication order at least. The books are independent enough that you can read them in any order without much impact but you may want to pick up #2 (A Closed & Common Orbit) while you're at it. (#2's premise has plot spoilers for events late in #1, but as anyone will attest the books are more about character relationships than plot.)
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Jan 31, 2020 12:16
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Arcsquad12 posted:I'm looking for stories of a certain kind. A small group of people fight off a metaphorical or literal giant by committing to an all or nothing strategy to win the day. Only to find out that the giant is one of many and the little people are but ants in a world of giants. "Muse of Fire" by Dan Simmons (found in the New Space Opera anthology by Dozois) might scratch that itch. A human company of Shakespeare players perform for their alien feudal lords and end up taking their performance all the way up the hierarchy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muse_of_Fire
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Feb 8, 2020 20:12
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Not sure if it qualifies as the kind of scientIfic story you're talking about, but I have always liked "The Electric Ant" by Phillip K Dick, in which a man discovers he's a robot and then experiments with his reality by manually tinkering with the punch cards that control his perceptions.
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Feb 9, 2020 16:48
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Jedit posted:The Boy on the Bridge is a prequel, not a sequel. It's an odd duck; it resolves a question asked in the original book, so whichever book you read first, you're spoiling yourself on the other. When in doubt, always read in publication order.
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Feb 12, 2020 16:41
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MockingQuantum posted:Oh I'm absolutely with you there, but she was incredibly mean to her guest liaison too, who is one of the sweetest, most accommodating, and most capable people I know, and she said working with McGuire was the worst she's been treated by anyone in years of doing it. She actually requested mid-convention to have someone else be assigned to McGuire which is unheard of. Basically all the interactions I saw with her made it clear that to Seanan, if you weren't a writer of equal or greater prestige to her, you weren't worth her time, if you weren't a writer period you were nobody, if you were a fan you were dirt, and if you were a convention volunteer you were her servant and less than dirt. It was shocking. I'm pretty surprised to learn that (though I'm not going to deny what other people have seen) because I followed Seanan McGuire for a while and the impression I got was that she would have a lot of respect for "the little guy" since she talks all the time about building her way up from nothing as an impoverished fanfiction writer. FYGM syndrome, I guess. I was entertained by the Feed books, loved Indexing, and thought Parasitology was a load of junk. But she had some short stories in Lightspeed that were pretty good too. Speaking of Lightspeed, I'm working my way through Lightspeed: Year One which collects (surprise) everything from their first year. The stories are great. Love this magazine so much.
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Feb 12, 2020 19:31
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a foolish pianist posted:Watts has a pretty extensive list of references for his vampires at the end of Blindsight: I was really intrigued by the last line about Chernoff Faces and how you could use different facial parameters to represent statistical data. Makes me want to learn the necessary computer skills to be able to set up something that would translate a spreadsheet into a video game character generator. Or even something like https://www.thispersondoesnotexist.com/.
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Feb 28, 2020 22:43
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freebooter posted:If I said to you I'd just read a book involving: That sounds like Minla's Flowers by Alastair Reynolds.
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Mar 8, 2020 21:24
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anilEhilated posted:Not unless you're a massive fan. The first two books are basically just parodies of fantasy conventions and other books; most of the jokes are dated and unlike his later books the stories don't really stand on their own. Disagree on almost every point; the first books stand alone fine, and while the later books have self-contained plots they start to get pretty linear in following the same few casts of characters as the world develops around them. They're all worth reading though.
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Mar 17, 2020 01:54
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genericnick posted:I feel every second book of his I read had a drug that changed the world when you take it. And the ones that didn't had people who realized the world was a lie and they and/or everyone was a robot.
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Mar 17, 2020 13:53
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TheAardvark posted:Are there any books where present vs. past tense makes a big difference? I suppose first person present could leave you in suspense about the main character's fate, or the opposite for an unreliable narrator. Otherwise I only notice it for a couple pages and then completely forget. It's pretty significant in The Fifth Season; different viewpoints who are actually the same character at different points in her timeline are distinguished by person and tense.
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Apr 2, 2020 03:06
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freebooter posted:This is an interesting point when it comes to contemporary urgings to read more female and POC authors (which I totally understand and support): is the purpose of it for representation in fiction, or for supporting the work and careers of actual real-life minority writers? Obviously the ideal answer is "both," but when I make an effort to read more female authors - as I've done recently - I notice that their works don't necessarily feature female characters in any greater number than male-written fiction. LeGuin had a great response to this in an interview I read that was published with one of her stories, can't remember where though. The interviewer noted that her work was very progressive but that many of her stories featured no women at all, and was she trying to make a comment about anything by writing such a conspicuous absence? She replied with a very deadpan line like "stories about men sell better and I still need to get published."
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Apr 4, 2020 14:40
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