|
I tapped out about halfway though Ancillary Sword . My biggest issue was that, after reading other military fiction like The Black Company, the Malazan series, and Matterhorn a bunch of hard nosed veterans on a space ship between deployments caring the most about tea ceremonies and cleaning the showers again and again wasn't cutting it for me.
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2019 00:09
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 31, 2024 11:52 |
|
|
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. Ancillary Justice had a relatively unique main character out for vengeance in a very inspired by the count of monte cristo way. The gender-neutrality in AJ was a nice change up and managed to totally deflate the rescuer/rescuee romance subplot endemic to count of monte cristo revenge stories. Biggest disappointment of the Ancillary Justice universe for me was how each sequel drastically shrank the scope while tea and tea drinking ceremonies became more and more plot relevant. If there is ever a 4th book in the Ancillary Justice series, I fully expect it to take place entirely inside a warehouse, a tea warehouse to be more specific, and be about how the Presger/Radch differences in weight measurements are about to kick off a war over tea trade imbalances.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2019 01:44
|
|
|
https://twitter.com/scalzi/status/1202303321547169795
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2019 03:42
|
|
|
quantumfoam posted:Ancillary Justice had a relatively unique main character out for vengeance in a very inspired by the count of monte cristo way. The gender-neutrality in AJ was a nice change up and managed to totally deflate the rescuer/rescuee romance subplot endemic to count of monte cristo revenge stories. You pretty much nailed my feelings about the series. In the second and third books, when the plot actually moved, it was interesting. But there was far too much "tea room politik" for me.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2019 04:05
|
|
|
The Ancillary series is the only trilogy I've ever read where the third book had middle book syndrome.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2019 04:11
|
|
|
quantumfoam posted:I fully expect it to take place entirely inside a warehouse, a tea warehouse to be more specific, and be about how the Presger/Radch differences in weight measurements are about to kick off a war over tea trade imbalances. I would actually read an sff book all about the tea trade, no lie Or a straight up historical for that matter
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2019 04:30
|
|
|
The Ancillary series sheds the arrogance of many SF books in not assuming that its singular protagonist can alter the fate of the entire human race, let alone the galaxy. "tea room politik" makes change happen, but without guns blazing so I guess no events actually occurred, characters just sat in stasis unmoving and unspeaking until weapons came out. Like, I can understand people wanting a faster pace, but Breq was trying to actually work within a complicated social structure, and trying to do it without violence as much as possible--and in the process reformed exploitative labor practices, exposed massive corruption, worked on damage control and rescue after said corruption caused a huge disaster, managed relations with an alien species, freed a slave, and challenged the most powerful person in the galaxy personally, more than once. Oh, and taught a dumbass rich kid to be nicer. But what Breq tells us and other characters more than once is that she does not expect to go on an epic crusade to End Injustice Forever which might be the plot for a David Weber book, or similar, but is not how the Ancillary universe works. It's more like the real world in that way, where merely shooting the right bad guy will not end tyranny, as satisfying as it may be. Breq even sought out the one gun that could do it, a little, but was smart enough not to waste that. It's not your standard action hero fantasy in any way. No, they're not like a lot of books. It's more like Aubrey-Maturin in some respects than more conventional SF, in that it focuses on its details and stays there until you see why they're relevant. Or not, I guess.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2019 04:52
|
|
|
It's hard to compare the two since I felt like I was really on the deck of a sailing ship watching everyone come around, and O'Brian really has a way with building tension, whereas even though I liked Ancillary I never got a good feeling of the day to day running of the ship in the same way - mostly, I think, because the focus was on Breq and so much of what happened was at a very high politic level and behind closed doors. You never saw the character perspectives of the people around and nearby and never other people's perspective or inner monologue on Breq as a person. Having two very different perspectives on the same situation / event serves this need much better than a single perspective for fleshing out the world.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2019 05:05
|
|
|
I assume the story of the bread is told in twelve individually priced chapters that will later be combined and sold as a single book, then re written four times from the perspective of other things in his kitchen.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2019 09:32
|
|
|
branedotorg posted:I assume the story of the bread is told in twelve individually priced chapters that will later be combined and sold as a single book, then re written four times from the perspective of other things in his kitchen. And all written in phonetic Scottish!
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2019 10:04
|
|
|
Stuporstar posted:I would actually read an sff book all about the tea trade, no lie A couple years back I read For All the Tea in China by Sarah Rose, it's a pop history of Britain's efforts to learn to how process tea and smuggle tea plants out of China that could grow in British territories in India. It has some issues, but is pretty interesting nonetheless.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2019 16:57
|
|
|
Ancillary Justice I really enjoyed. I liked how you were brought into the story not knowing much of anything and wondering if you missed a few chapters, and then it just opened up. The other two books I didn't really care for because the focus turned to stuff I just wasn't interested in. Having to force yourself to finish a book is the worst, and the third book was almost entirely that. Murderbot book 1 was a bit rough around the edges and just kinda vanilla. The rest I liked a lot more, especially the second book since the author seemed to really focus on what made the first book good and left all the other bits out. Overall the series was a thumbs up for me.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2019 17:38
|
|
|
I liked Ancillary overall, there were a few parts that stuck out as being very clumsy - the plot with the gun cache and politics of the world Breq was assigned to and the part on the ice world when Breq fell off the bridge thing? and then was rescued somehow and ended up ok? I didn't get the point of any of that. I enjoyed the conclusion and thought Mianaai was a great character, but don't have much desire to read the sequels. A friend of mine said he couldn't help unconsciously gendering the characters while reading and it's funny to come across online discussions of "what gender do you think character REALLY is?"
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2019 18:09
|
|
|
occamsnailfile posted:The current Storybundle has some pretty interesting stuff in it--a lot of big authors but often lesser-known titles or essays and things like that. Basically an exploration of authors speaking out in one way or another. The Outspoken Authors series is very good and well worth checking out, discover a goddamn good author for once in your life. This is your chance to do it for cheap!
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2019 19:07
|
|
|
I gotta admit I'm a little curious what a drug-sniffing dog picks up from a loaf of bread I'm skeptical that it was the coriander, and I assume the cop had no specific reason to frame this particular package (because the dogs pick up on their handlers), but who knows?
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2019 20:00
|
|
|
DACK FAYDEN posted:I gotta admit I'm a little curious what a drug-sniffing dog picks up from a loaf of bread Drug dogs pick up whatever their handlers want them to pick up.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2019 20:16
|
|
|
Finished listening to The Second Sleep, very interesting take on post apoc, very abrupt ending but that reflected the apocalypse that was mostly only indirectly referenced. My first Harris and will probably read his Pompeii eventually.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2019 20:17
|
|
|
Ben Nevis posted:A couple years back I read For All the Tea in China by Sarah Rose, it's a pop history of Britain's efforts to learn to how process tea and smuggle tea plants out of China that could grow in British territories in India. It has some issues, but is pretty interesting nonetheless. That book looks like exactly my cuppa, thanks! Edit: yesss, the ebook is free at my library right now Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 21:03 on Dec 5, 2019 |
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2019 20:31
|
|
|
im going to continue to say the best way to read ancillary is to pretend breq is basically the ai version of a confused old person
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2019 23:23
|
|
|
DACK FAYDEN posted:I gotta admit I'm a little curious what a drug-sniffing dog picks up from a loaf of bread I assume the dog flagged it because drug dogs are still just dogs. 
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2019 23:33
|
|
|
Spectyr by Philippa Ballantine is the sequel to Geist, and I liked it much less. A charming cast of main characters (despite how wish-fulfillment Sorcha in particular is) struggle to keep a book afloat during a plot whose interesting elements disappear with an offended squeak under the weight of Ballantine's smug atheism.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2019 23:37
|
|
|
my bony fealty posted:I liked Ancillary overall, there were a few parts that stuck out as being very clumsy - the plot with the gun cache and politics of the world Breq was assigned to and the part on the ice world when Breq fell off the bridge thing? and then was rescued somehow and ended up ok? I didn't get the point of any of that. as to your first spoiler: the guns were part of a setup by the Anaander who wants to reignite expansion and control the empire through violence to crack down on locals who were interested in a more egalitarian society as opposed to one ruled via heirarchy and privelege.
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2019 00:13
|
|
|
Reading The Dragon Waiting and Lord Sumption's Hundred Years' War history (this is a superlative set of books; if you have any interest in this war, READ IT) reminded me how good the Banners of Blood books are, despite a somewhat inconsistent tone. I see the third one has a loose date of 2020 for release. Anyone know anything better than that?
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2019 09:46
|
|
|
The Midnight Front by David Mack is a Weird War Two book, the kind of story the old B. J. Blaskowicz would have been right at home in: Allied demon summoning wizards fighting Axis demon summoning wizards in the shadows of the European theater while WW2 erupts and rages around them. When The Midnight Front is good, it's a solid book with some compelling characters: a gay Jewish man searching for his boyfriend in the ghettos of German-occupied Poland, a French Algerian in occupied France struggling between loyalty to his family and the good of the war, a possibly gay young Russian woman caught up in events by accident who ends up at Stalingrad, a black British officer trying to serve his country while his country is host to the American army in all their racist 1940s nastiness. The Soviets feature about as heavily as the Americans and French Resistance, which is unusual for a WW2 action book, and the book touches extensively on the experience of gay people during the war, including their targeting by the Holocaust. The Allies in general are most definitely a lighter shade of grey than the Axis, but Mack doesn't shy away from their questionable actions - not just the American racism, but the firebombing of Dresden is an important part of the book's climax. Unfortunately, none of these characters and events are the protagonists or the main story, and the bulk of The Midnight Front is more or less Harry Potter for people who think they're too badass and grown-up for Harry Potter. We have a lantern-jawed (white American male) Chosen One who is for all intents and purposes a teenager despite supposedly being in his mid-20s with a degree from Oxford who nevertheless can do no wrong and the book never wastes a chance to tell you that the fate of the world rests on his shoulders. We have a snarky older mentor who dies by the end of the book (you know this is for grown-ups because he curses a lot). We have an insane megalomaniac villain with no personality or motives beyond "evil." The action scenes are atrocious and play out like someone's Pokemon fanfic - "Asmodeus, I choose you! Use spectral blade! It's a head-on collision, power versus power!" The story is regularly interrupted by info dumps. The book has a natural climax to the story... then keeps going for another twenty pages trying to wring another climax out of it. The Midnight Front frustrates me as a reader. There's glimmers of a pretty good - not exactly original, but well executed - book here, but the protagonist is such a boring, unstoppable Chosen One who can do no wrong and is so constantly fellated by the book, the villain is a cipher with a bow tie labeled 'bad guy,' and the main plot so tedious that I can't recommend the book at all. And in case you were wondering, just about every character who's not the protagonist dies, and I fear that the Soviet lady who's suggested to be queer (she at least doesn't discourage another woman who flirts with her) is going to be relegated to the protagonist's love interest in the series this book is clearly the first entry in.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2019 22:02
|
|
|
Patrick Spens posted:The Ancillary series is the only trilogy I've ever read where the third book had middle book syndrome. I accidentally started the third book after finishing the first. I got about a quarter of the way into it before the piling up of references to things that had happened that I thought should have been shown instead of skipped over tipped me to check. I spent a long time thinking this was just a typical "six months later..." sequel.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2019 23:26
|
|
|
Another aspect of the Ancillary series that has not been addressed above though? I recommended the trilogy to an acquaintance who is transgender and she absolutely loved it. The gender stuff with the society and Breq in particular spoke to them on a fundamental level and felt absolutely real to them. That has to count for a hell of a lot.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2019 01:00
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:The Midnight Front by David Mack is a Weird War Two book, the kind of story the old B. J. Blaskowicz would have been right at home in: Allied demon summoning wizards fighting Axis demon summoning wizards in the shadows of the European theater while WW2 erupts and rages around them. If you're fine with this kind of setup and conflict, I strongly recommend the Milkweed Triptych by Ian Tregillis, starting with Bitter Seeds. Nazis develop superpowered soldiers in WW2; British warlocks are forced out of hiding to fight back. It's way less goofy than it sounds, and is largely a reflection on the personal costs of devotion to duty. A bit depressing, but nonetheless very good.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2019 04:14
|
|
|
its disturbing how many of these ethshar books can feel lighthearted and almost whimsical while nearly every book heavily features a member of an immortal, dimension spanning syndicate that will immediately kill anyone in brutal and public fashion for embarrassing them or innovating out of their monopoly on magical power additionally, the part of my brain that never stops trying to come up with good MUD ideas loves the magic in these books. wizards would make a good class to annoy poopsockers that try to put all the secrets on the wiki since the whole concept is experimenting nearly always ends in terrible accident, witches could be like a ranger class, theurgists and demonologists are this bizarre dichotomy where gods and demons are basically the same kind of creature and overlap a little so there's a lot of cool places that could be taken. like a hidden alignment meter or something. warlocks obviously would just have to be game admins because lol Larry Parrish fucked around with this message at 11:52 on Dec 8, 2019 |
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2019 11:49
|
|
|
Neurosis posted:If you're fine with this kind of setup and conflict, I strongly recommend the Milkweed Triptych by Ian Tregillis, starting with Bitter Seeds. Nazis develop superpowered soldiers in WW2; British warlocks are forced out of hiding to fight back. It's way less goofy than it sounds, and is largely a reflection on the personal costs of devotion to duty. A bit depressing, but nonetheless very good. I actually sauntered in to ask a question about another Tregillis series, but I'll second this. It's a story about wizards in WWII, only it remembers that war is a horrible thing. It's not going to bring tears to the eyes of hardened critics with its prose or anything, but it's a solid series if you can buy into the premise, which is pretty easy. It's Bletchley Park as magic, without the bad pun inherent in that pitch. Is the Alchemy Wars series worth picking up?
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2019 17:43
|
|
|
grassy gnoll posted:Is the Alchemy Wars series worth picking up? I immensely enjoyed the Milkweed trilogy but the Alchemy Wars bored me to the point where I tapped out early in book 2 and never finished the series.
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2019 19:42
|
|
|
Amazon AI just sent me a $5 gift certificate to buy Heretics of Dune that expires in 7 days because it noticed I stopped reading the series at God Emperor. Nice try but I'm not falling for it!!!
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2019 22:13
|
|
|
The Mechanical by Ian Tregillis - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IRIR85M/ Not Milkweed series and also just called boring, but maybe you'll like it anyway.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2019 01:31
|
|
|
Philthy posted:Amazon AI just sent me a $5 gift certificate to buy Heretics of Dune that expires in 7 days because it noticed I stopped reading the series at God Emperor.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2019 15:47
|
|
|
Philthy posted:Amazon AI just sent me a $5 gift certificate to buy Heretics of Dune that expires in 7 days because it noticed I stopped reading the series at God Emperor. Clearly Amazon AI hasn't read God Emperor. Still, book series is actually a useful application of that type of thing. I've read so many book series that I often don't know when a new book in the series comes out.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2019 16:14
|
|
|
XBenedict posted:Clearly Amazon AI hasn't read God Emperor. Still, book series is actually a useful application of that type of thing. I've read so many book series that I often don't know when a new book in the series comes out. I'm pretty sure the Amazon AI is the God-Emperor.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2019 16:17
|
|
|
Philthy posted:Amazon AI just sent me a $5 gift certificate to buy Heretics of Dune that expires in 7 days because it noticed I stopped reading the series at God Emperor. There must be something going on because I just received a similar thing yesterday giving me $5 off the fourth book in the Red Rising series because I stopped at book three.
|
|
#
?
Dec 11, 2019 01:25
|
|
|
Well, I just finished The Light of All That Falls by James Islington, which was the final book in his Licanius trilogy. The series had some weak spots, I admit, but drat, what an ending and a generally entertaining series. The series starts off looking like a cliche 'magic users are oppressed by humans who hate and fear them' story and ends up hiding a twisty story about if free will even exists in a world where people can and do see the future with absolute clarity and that future cannot be avoided no matter what you do and no matter how hard you try, and to what lengths people will go to try and avoid it.
|
|
#
?
Dec 11, 2019 14:58
|
|
|
Wolpertinger posted:Well, I just finished The Light of All That Falls by James Islington, which was the final book in his Licanius trilogy. The series had some weak spots, I admit, but drat, what an ending and a generally entertaining series. The series starts off looking like a cliche 'magic users are oppressed by humans who hate and fear them' story and ends up hiding a twisty story about if free will even exists in a world where people can and do see the future with absolute clarity and that future cannot be avoided no matter what you do and no matter how hard you try, and to what lengths people will go to try and avoid it. Free will doesn’t exist in any other worlds, so I’m not sure why it would be a question in this one.
|
|
#
?
Dec 11, 2019 15:11
|
|
|
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. I don't care if I've read them before or not. I honestly feel like I'm only enjoying the Gideon audiobook so much because I've read it before, so I'm okay with pausing it for a few days or only listening in little bits between errands and such. Also, I'm not particularly looking for books that are parts of giant series, so I'd prefer to avoid things like the Dresden Files or Wheel of Time. Any suggestions?"
|
|
#
?
Dec 11, 2019 23:29
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 31, 2024 11:52 |
|
|
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.
|
|
#
?
Dec 11, 2019 23:45
|
|
