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I just finished Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. I really enjoyed the premise and his exploration of the multiverse. There was some great imagery at times as well like the bloody Jason wandering down the infinite hallway. However, I couldn't really get myself to like any of the characters and I found his description of relationships overly sentimental. Is that unique to this book or are his other stories also going to make me roll my eyes? Basically, I found Jason to be sappy and overly wholesome and early on, kind of a whiner. I wasn't exactly cheering for him along the way and was mostly reading the story to see how Crouch solved the puzzles he built.
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Aug 10, 2020 03:05
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StrixNebulosa posted:I have no opinion on the Culture novels. That said: what are your classics of the genre/books with fantastic writing? In space opera specifically, I honestly can't think of any.
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Aug 10, 2020 04:44
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navyjack posted:Ok, I guess I’ll be a contrary voice here. I enjoyed Gideon the Ninth well enough but I’m finding Harrow in-loving-sufferable. Please, Tasmin, crawl out from out from within thine own delisqulated(?) rear end and tell a story. I’m trying here, I really am, but I’ve about had it. So what is the general plot idea of Harrow? Cause Gideon was a decent haunted house story and my impression from the last chapters of Gideon was that Harrow would be more space opera/court intrigue which looked pretty boring.
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Aug 10, 2020 06:03
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I think the thing that bothered me about Gideon the Ninth is that I felt like I got a bait-and-switch. The way it came recommended to me, and the way people talk about it, led me to believe I wasn't going to get a book that had a pretty standard YA-fare 'Go to the tournament and complete the tasks' plotline, where it then falls into 'relationship drama while the plot happens elsewhere.' It even had the big expository infodump towards the end of the novel, leading to all the chapters Where The Story Actually Happens. Admittedly, it started getting more interesting by the end, but by then I'd slogged through, like, four fifths of the book. And that's not getting into the dynamic between Gideon and Harrow. The world was interesting but I found myself unable to take it remotely seriously, probably because of Gideon's voice and how she sounded like she'd stepped off the entries of a 2019 Twitter account. It made me feel like the tone was all over the place. I can see why people love it, because it's ultimately a very familiar story dressed up in a weird gothic sci-fan world with prose that aims a bit higher than the usual YA fare but is riddled with stuff that's very familiar to a very online audience.
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Aug 10, 2020 06:07
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Cardiac posted:So what is the general plot idea of Harrow? Turns out the immortal God King and his lieutenants are a bunch of fuckups who hate each other, and Harrow's quite literally lobotomized herself into forgetting that Gideon ever existed. It continues to be a story where the protagonist doesn't so much do stuff as have things happen to her and (eventually) react. It's less like court intrigue and more like moving into a house where your roomates are bunch of thirty something burnouts who are all each others exes and are constantly fighting about whose job it was to pay the cable bill.
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Aug 10, 2020 06:19
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The other thing about Gideon the Ninth is that I kept comparing it to Traitor Baru. Maybe that's an unfair comparison but hey.
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Aug 10, 2020 06:24
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:The other thing about Gideon the Ninth is that I kept comparing it to Traitor Baru. Maybe that's an unfair comparison but hey. I'd call that a super unfair comparison, honestly. Though I don't fault people for not liking Gideon or Harrow. They have their faults and I will almost never fault someone for having an opinion on a book. Except people who think Starship Troopers has some good ideas.
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Aug 10, 2020 06:44
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Power Armor is always a good idea. 
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Aug 10, 2020 06:47
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I think there's a pretty interesting article to be written comparing Harrow and Monster, but it would be better written by someone much smarter than me.
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Aug 10, 2020 06:49
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:The other thing about Gideon the Ninth is that I kept comparing it to Traitor Baru. Maybe that's an unfair comparison but hey. It is deeply unfair to compare Baru to books that are fun. But more seriously, I'm not sure what they've got to say to each other. Gideon's a memey, And-Then-There-Were-None style murder mystery with a bunch of gross-out fight scenes. Baru's a very grounded misery tour through the economic and political landscape of a well realized alternate world.
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Aug 10, 2020 07:11
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:The other thing about Gideon the Ninth is that I kept comparing it to Traitor Baru. Maybe that's an unfair comparison but hey. I guess is mostly a confusing comparison for me. They’re just two pretty different books? If you’re looking for Baru stuff from Gideon you’ll definitely be disappointed though I think.
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Aug 10, 2020 07:30
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Cardiac posted:So what is the general plot idea of Harrow? The general idea I'd give for Harrow would probably be something like (spoilering this so as to not spoil Gideon but no spoilers for Harrow) 'Fighting the apocalypse at God's side sucks a lot when you don't have any friends.'. Harrow is the Two Towers of this trilogy so things are gonna get worse before they get better.
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Aug 10, 2020 07:40
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Patrick Spens posted:It is deeply unfair to compare Baru to books that are fun. But more seriously, I'm not sure what they've got to say to each other. Gideon's a memey, And-Then-There-Were-None style murder mystery with a bunch of gross-out fight scenes. Baru's a very grounded misery tour through the economic and political landscape of a well realized alternate world. tildes posted:I guess is mostly a confusing comparison for me. They’re just two pretty different books? If you’re looking for Baru stuff from Gideon you’ll definitely be disappointed though I think. Yeah, like I said, it stems from how the book was sold to me - political intrigue, lesbians, an intriguing world, sacrifices and terrible decisions, etc. When I first tried Gideon, I bounced off it hard. I came back to it recently and managed to make my way through it, now that I had a better idea of what to expect, but it was still not something I'd say I enjoyed. But I don't think the novel ever really bridged the gap between memes and violence played for humor and nerve-gassing two hundred babies to power a necromantic ritual. It's very much a book where I wasn't the intended audience, y'know? I spent a lot of it unsure whether I should be taking it seriously, so to speak, or just having a fun romp where I get the references and aren't supposed to question much of it.
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Aug 10, 2020 07:44
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Gideon feels a lot like Warhammer 40K and Homestuck crossover fanfic written by a Kiwi who grew up in the early 2000s, and if that's something that's gonna land for you then it's really gonna land, but it does also mean a lot of people will bounce pretty hard. That said, the way it treats millennial internet culture the same way we treat Shakespeare or Biblical references is internally consistent with the setting, and not just for the lols.
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Aug 10, 2020 07:47
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Patrick Spens posted:Turns out the immortal God King and his lieutenants are a bunch of fuckups who hate each other, and Harrow's quite literally lobotomized herself into forgetting that Gideon ever existed. It continues to be a story where the protagonist doesn't so much do stuff as have things happen to her and (eventually) react. It's less like court intrigue and more like moving into a house where your roomates are bunch of thirty something burnouts who are all each others exes and are constantly fighting about whose job it was to pay the cable bill. Friends: Season the Ninth?
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Aug 10, 2020 09:14
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Patrick Spens posted:Turns out the immortal God King and his lieutenants are a bunch of fuckups who hate each other, and Harrow's quite literally lobotomized herself into forgetting that Gideon ever existed. It continues to be a story where the protagonist doesn't so much do stuff as have things happen to her and (eventually) react. It's less like court intrigue and more like moving into a house where your roomates are bunch of thirty something burnouts who are all each others exes and are constantly fighting about whose job it was to pay the cable bill. This sounds incredibly boring and tedious and was pretty much what I expected due to the ending of Gideon. Probably not going to continue this series then. I really dislike when my general cynicism proves me right.
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Aug 10, 2020 19:11
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SFL Vol 09 update final. Vol 09 covered all of 1984, which explains why Vol 09 never seemed to end. Reading SFL Vol 10 is going to be much worse, since Vol 10 covers the entirety of 1985 while being twice the size of the endless seeming SFL Vol 09. -anticipation for the upcoming Dune movie has (mostly) overriden Stars Wars chat in the SFL archives towards the end of 1984, similar to the 3 or more dedicated Dune 2020 movie threads scattered around the SA forums. Dune comes out at end of 1984 and gets very mixed SFLer reactions. Same thing happens with 2010, but with lesser buildup, and more anger since 2001 the movie set such a high bar. -lots of Thomas Pynchon chat, with how readable you find Gravity's Rainbow or how far you managed to get into Gravity's Rainbow being a litimus test for true literature fans. -circa November 1984 Harlan Ellison discussion brings up the pitfalls of being an author, with stalker fans, rear end in a top hat fans, kleptomaniac fans, fans doing "ironic hate crimes" on author property, etc. -the movie Brainstorm (1983) gets mentioned again after literal years closing off a dangling thread-topic from earlier SFL archives chat (way back in Vol 3 or 4 I think). Brainstorm 1983 getting delayed lead to an interesting-to-me SFL segue into "insurance polices as applied to hollywood movies/tv production" that I found deeply fascinating because those topics never get mentioned much. -If you liked Iain Bank's Feersum Endjinn, you may want to check out Russell Hoban's "Riddley Walker", which did something similar 14 yrs before Feersum Endjinn came out. -Fans of Tim Powers and Brust, Anubis Gates and Jhereg both get mentioned for the first time in the SFL archives. -heated "Is Richard Bachman a pen-name of Stephen King?" debate kicks off. The answer is Look it up yourself -Someone does a big part-1 effort-post describing and charting out Borges' "Library of Babel", but gets no feedback on it so the SFL effort-poster never posts part 2. personal note: I feel you brother from 16 yrs ago, gently caress them. -anger and debate movie book novelizations not matching up 1:1 to the movie, or vice versa has been a running theme since 1979(SFL Vol 01). Buckaroo Banzai (1984) breaks this trend, with the book setting the tone the movies budget/casting/directing could not match -Terminator 1 came out, starting the rise of 1980's one-liner action movies -SFLer's bring up one of Mad Magazine's earlier attempts to branch out into non-print media: the 1967 Mad Monster Party movie slash cartoon. -Much to my disappointment, David Eddings does get mentioned for a 2nd time in SFL Vol 09. To add to the pain, a spirited defense of MBZ's strongly written female characters also happens. -1980's_BotL/Duntemann continues to troll and hate on published fiction authors, especially R. A. MacAvoy. 1980's_BotL/Duntemann also outed themselves as an author (or re-doxxed themselves since I don't keep track of all the SFL author self-doxxes) and stuff now starts to makes sense. Why? The published fiction authors being trolled and hated on managed to get book deals, while Duntemann up to this point has been unable to get book deals at all. -the running joke "Yngvi is a louse!!" gets cited and expanded upon but never quite nailed down before SFL Vol 09 ends -fittingly, SFL Vol 09 ends with a "Boskone XXII Filksong contest" announcement, completing the "stuff I hate seeing in the SFL archives" disappointment trifecta.
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Aug 10, 2020 20:15
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NEW BARU TOMORROW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Aug 10, 2020 20:24
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quantumfoam posted:-Much to my disappointment, David Eddings does get mentioned for a 2nd time in SFL Vol 09. To add to the pain, a spirited defense of MBZ's strongly written female characters also happens. The Eddingses sucked but at least they served their time and paid their debt to society. I haven't heard any allegations of post-prison crimes. Their books are lame but there are lamer books mentioned in this very thread. As far as I can recall, nothing happened to MZB while she lived.
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Aug 10, 2020 20:36
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Sarern posted:As far as I can recall, nothing happened to MZB while she lived. Nope. Her husband died in prison, but MZB, as far as I know, suffered no legal consequences. Of course, during her life the most she was accused of was being aware of her husband's crimes and doing nothing to stop them; her kids didn't publicly disclose her own abusive behavior until long after she was dead.
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Aug 10, 2020 21:48
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I'm about 25% into Harrow and I'm kind of struggling. This feels a bit like the very start of Gideon, where I wasn't really sure what was actually happen, or even like, the literal geometry of the scenes which were being described. Do things get a bit more clear later on/does the timeline get a bit more linear?
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Aug 11, 2020 00:28
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:Yeah, like I said, it stems from how the book was sold to me - political intrigue, lesbians, an intriguing world, sacrifices and terrible decisions, etc. When I first tried Gideon, I bounced off it hard. I came back to it recently and managed to make my way through it, now that I had a better idea of what to expect, but it was still not something I'd say I enjoyed. But I don't think the novel ever really bridged the gap between memes and violence played for humor and nerve-gassing two hundred babies to power a necromantic ritual. It's very much a book where I wasn't the intended audience, y'know? I spent a lot of it unsure whether I should be taking it seriously, so to speak, or just having a fun romp where I get the references and aren't supposed to question much of it. I think a lot of these authors are influenced by anime where horrific violence can exist alongside gag violence and humor. Fullmetal Alchemist for instance. There's the violence as spectacle and sometimes in a critical moment the tone shifts and it becomes violence that has consequences.
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Aug 11, 2020 00:45
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tildes posted:I'm about 25% into Harrow and I'm kind of struggling. This feels a bit like the very start of Gideon, where I wasn't really sure what was actually happen, or even like, the literal geometry of the scenes which were being described. Do things get a bit more clear later on/does the timeline get a bit more linear? Not especially, but it's intentional. The book is written in such a way that you keep asking "what the hell is going on?" in increasingly louder exclamations right up until the end.
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Aug 11, 2020 01:14
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I felt that Harrow starting fitting together for me around the 50-60% point as it accelerated into the back half of the story. Upon some additional reading after I finished, I find there were a lot of hints about what was going on that I zipped past. Someone smarter (or maybe just more methodical and diligent a reader) than me might well have figured out a number of things far earlier than I did. A goodly amount of "what in the hell was going on?" does get answered, but additional questions are also raised, presumably to be addressed in the third book. I enjoyed the ride, though I do think as a standalone book, Gideon is maybe a bit better. Harrow benefits from having recently read Gideon or having a good memory of it because it then proceeds to gaslight the hell out of those memories and the effect is, I suspect, more impactful the more certain you are that "that's not how it happened". Quinton fucked around with this message at 03:12 on Aug 11, 2020 |
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Aug 11, 2020 02:53
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I'm not sure I understood the end of Gideon which is suddenly hugely important again for Harrow. So far my theory at 40% through is They partially memory wipe Harrow and gaslight her and that's the Ortus stories then at the end regular Harrow comes back and we have Gideon (who knows what a pommel is) tell her what she did as gaslit Harrow so she's ready for part 3. Woops thank you! Harold Fjord fucked around with this message at 03:53 on Aug 11, 2020 |
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Aug 11, 2020 03:02
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Fix your spoilers
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Aug 11, 2020 03:08
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One hour until the next Baru shows up on my Kindle, if this technology works as I expect.
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Aug 11, 2020 04:05
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If this technology doesn't work as expected then there will be hell to pay.
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Aug 11, 2020 04:17
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If this technology doesn't work as expected then I will have nothing to read on my lunch break and I will flail my little fists and feet uselessly against Amazon Dotcom like the feet of krill on the lip of a whale.
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Aug 11, 2020 04:24
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Update: the technology worked as expected.
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Aug 11, 2020 05:07
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Only just downloaded Tyrant, and this has nothing to do with the writing but I think this is one of my favorite beginning of the book maps I've seen. More books should do stuff like that imo, the little notations are great and make it a lot more engaging than just 'here are some continents'.
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Aug 11, 2020 05:47
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In my library :-) I have to get through most of Harrow first, but it's HERE. Steven Brust's The Baron of Magister Valley was good. It's the weakest of the Paarfi novels, but still drat good. Now we just need to find out how badly Vlad has to gently caress up that the cycle turns and Norathar takes the throne.
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Aug 11, 2020 05:55
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I'm finally reading Jade War, and am as immediately hooked as I was with Jade City. Once I finish that, hopefully I'll finally be able to buy Tyrant.
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Aug 11, 2020 05:58
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Ccs posted:I think a lot of these authors are influenced by anime where horrific violence can exist alongside gag violence and humor. Fullmetal Alchemist for instance. There's the violence as spectacle and sometimes in a critical moment the tone shifts and it becomes violence that has consequences. Funnily enough, I kept thinking 'like something out of an anime' at points. Like when Gideon bites Harrow's finger while painting her face. It made me think of the Simpsons. Homer strangles Bart all the time, but he's not actually strangling him. Tyrant's out today? I thought it was tomorrow. Probably can't get my hands on it in Australia yet, though. With Monster, I ordered the hardcover copy because I don't think anyone had any idea when it was getting an Australian release date.
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Aug 11, 2020 07:56
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Read the first Baru book and was really really really hoping it wasn’t going to end up being fantasy 1984 + Funny Games. uuuugggh I was hoping right up until the end that the loose plot threads were just going to be left dangling and all the foreshadowing like struggling to ‘tell her [Tain Hu] the truth’ really would be (only) about her repressed sexuality Alas. So anyway I immediately started the sequel. Compared to the Gideon books, I really appreciate the pacing in Baru. It didn’t read like an endless parade of cliffhangers and the room to breath gave me more time to live with her choices and think about the author’s take on complicity and empire. A+ would be made sad again.
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Aug 11, 2020 08:31
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foutre posted:Only just downloaded Tyrant, and this has nothing to do with the writing but I think this is one of my favorite beginning of the book maps I've seen. More books should do stuff like that imo, the little notations are great and make it a lot more engaging than just 'here are some continents'. It should be the same map as in Monster, shouldn't it? That map lists a whole bunch of things that never happened in the book, presumably because the manuscript was bisected and they're all in Tyrant.
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Aug 11, 2020 09:27
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It's the same map, but the notes are different.
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Aug 11, 2020 09:39
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Hoo boy have to wait till the 20th in the UK. Rooting for the General! If you're reading, is there any social stuff that would be useful to amplify for the release?
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Aug 11, 2020 10:25
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The Kindle I use to read the SFL Archives decided to suicide itself during yet another virtual blowjob review of Spider Robinson at the 2% mark in SFL Vol 10, and I don't blame it. (screenshot of broken Kindle screen attached) My SFL archives read-through is on total hold until I get a replacement kindle screen for it or a new Kindle Device. Continuing the SFL archives read-through with the Kindle App involves rolling the dice on a total reduplication of effort that won't/will carry over, while calibre ebook bookmarking has never worked reliably for me. Algis Budrys's Rogue Moon and John Brunner's Sheep Look Up just got promoted to next up on my physical reading list.
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Aug 11, 2020 12:47
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Finished Blind Lake, a first contact novel which was a 2003 Hugo nominee. I really enjoyed it; a solid 4/5 star book. It's about a research facility in the Midwest using technology they don't quite understand to monitor aliens in a city on another planet; at the same time an unexplained military cordon/lockdown/quarantine descends on their facility, the alien they've been monitoring breaks his unchanging routine and departs the city to walk into the desert. And I think that dual mystery of "why have we been quarantined with no explanation" and "why has The Subject departed his city and gone into the desert on some kind of... pilgrimage?" works really well in a gripping airport thriller kind of way. Most engaging sci-fi book I've read since The Last Policeman trilogy.
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Aug 11, 2020 13:44
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