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New Super Metis posted:I don't know how you can read Gideon and not think the characters are falling for each other under about forty layers of repression. Maybe it's my lesbian brain, but that subtext is very obvious to me. Middle aged cis male here, that was my read of it too
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Jan 19, 2021 08:55
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TheAardvark posted:I'll take a look at Schizmatrix Plus, thanks! I'm reading Rendezvous with Rama right now, and I've read a lot of other Big Dumb Object stories, but not a lot of Big Smart Object We Built And Are Living On stories. One ringworld I liked (the story itself is very generic evil vizier rebels against royal family) is from Evan Currie's Scourwind legacy books. There's lots of dogfighting using paragliders with magnetic repulsion from the metal base layer for lift. The whole thing takes place in one link of a ringworld
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Jan 19, 2021 09:14
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Started The Ministry for the Future and it's already shaping up as classically frustrating KSR - the brutal opening chapter about the lethal Indian heatwave is one of the best things he's ever written, yet 40 pages later I'm reading truncated minutes from a meeting which screams "I can't be being bothered writing this dialogue."
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Jan 19, 2021 10:27
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awesmoe posted:your lesbian brain is probably reading it more accurately than my straight brain but I just dont read their relationship like that at the moment. While I'm not 100% sure on this, I do think those two characters' story is heading in a romantic direction - Gideon I think is definitely there already, Harrow mostly there but too self-repressed to acknowledge it book 3 will presumably entail Harrow getting over her fixation on Alecto or just figuring out you're allowed to have more than one girlfriend if everyone involved is agreeable, especially if one of 'em is dead and thus unlikely to make demands on anyone's time. The one argument I can see against it is that Gideon's internal narration is not shy about ogling the women she is attracted to (hence endlessly describing Dulcinea's and Coronabeth's appearances while being sort of indifferent to the appearances of the various other women around) and she never really notices Harrow that way. But it's not as if people have to conform to each other's physical tastes in order to end up together, the two have an old and jagged relationship that kinda transcends whether they would swipe right on skeleton tinder. It's healthy for characters to be able to have close friendships without the need for romantic subtext, and Muir clearly knows this, which is why she provides various other important female characters who neither protagonist is ship-teased with. That said, both deliberately and accidentally breaking all the laws of necromancy out of sheer determination to keep someone alive reads as beyond Good Pals territory, to me
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Jan 19, 2021 12:20
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Is skeleton tinder called boner or bonr
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Jan 19, 2021 13:02
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Rattlr
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Jan 19, 2021 13:30
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https://twitter.com/orbitbooks/status/1351560651253149696 Has anyone read anything by this guy?
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Jan 19, 2021 17:17
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I'm honestly shocked that people think the whole lesbian romance thing was even veiled in Gideon, but otoh I've missed plenty of obvious poo poo in my day. It's your standard "raised together/hate each other/also Feelings" thing. Edit: i have not heard of that author and I'm interested in giving it a shot but years of exposure to Warhammer have melted my brain to the point where anytime I see "brutal" i reframe it in Gork/Mork terms. Is the book brutally cinematic, or cinematically brutal?
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Jan 19, 2021 17:29
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StrixNebulosa posted:https://twitter.com/orbitbooks/status/1351560651253149696 I have not. The Abercrombie comparison interests me, but it's got to come with humor and not just grim or its misses the point of the comparison. The comparison also mostly seems to consist of his books set in the North or on the frontier, whereas I prefer the Abercrombie books set in the cities.
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Jan 19, 2021 17:43
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Benagain posted:I'm honestly shocked that people think the whole lesbian romance thing was even veiled in Gideon, but otoh I've missed plenty of obvious poo poo in my day. It's your standard "raised together/hate each other/also Feelings" thing. The relationship trajectory Gideon and Harrow have going is taking its cues from fan fiction, which is its own storytelling mode fairly separate from commercial fiction, imo, so I can see how someone not familiar with the genre would miss its cues. It's a slow burn enemies to lovers romance heaped with ten tons of angst. (And it rules.) eta spoiler tags tiniestacorn fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Jan 19, 2021 |
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Jan 19, 2021 19:49
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I've only read Gideon, not Harrow, and all of this poo poo feels like spoilers to me given how that ended.
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Jan 19, 2021 19:51
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TheAardvark posted:I've only read Gideon, not Harrow, and all of this poo poo feels like spoilers to me given how that ended. and it's one of those lovely books where knowing that its not spoilers isn't itself a spoiler
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Jan 19, 2021 19:58
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Okay, has anyone read any of these? https://twitter.com/orbitbooks/status/1351605785743261703 I might be looking for more books to throw into the pile...
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Jan 19, 2021 20:13
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I didn't realize until now that the third Poppy War was out but yikes the comments in here make me move the second out of the 'to read' pile. I listened to the first one's audiobook and the turn was extremely unpleasant, especially given that after about thirty seconds I realized 'oh this is the rape of Nanking.... oh, she's going to get into ALL the details' so it was just listening to gruesome misery. It does hit a very annoying combination of being just good enough that I want to see it through but not good enough to compensate for the grimdarkness.
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Jan 19, 2021 21:35
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StrixNebulosa posted:Okay, has anyone read any of these? I own Declaration of the Rights of Magicians but haven't read it yet. A friend just finished reading it and she said that it was pretty clearly influenced by Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, if that helps away you one way or the other. She liked it, for what it's worth.
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Jan 19, 2021 21:44
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Yarrington posted:I didn't realize until now that the third Poppy War was out but yikes the comments in here make me move the second out of the 'to read' pile. I listened to the first one's audiobook and the turn was extremely unpleasant, especially given that after about thirty seconds I realized 'oh this is the rape of Nanking.... oh, she's going to get into ALL the details' so it was just listening to gruesome misery. It started off so delightfully wuxia, and with such a sense of humor, I thought that would carry it through. Unfortunately (for me) I was won enough to trudge through what ended up being a death march. I so wish I’d stopped after book one. Why didn’t I stop after book one? 
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Jan 19, 2021 21:49
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StrixNebulosa posted:Okay, has anyone read any of these? edit: bad memory made me mix some stuff up and talk undeserved poo poo for Trudi Canavan's books. I still didn't like her first book because of the weird power imbalances and the constant depictions of bullying but those are soft spots for me. Queer Salutations fucked around with this message at 23:36 on Jan 19, 2021 |
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Jan 19, 2021 23:18
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StrixNebulosa posted:Okay, has anyone read any of these? I haven't read that particular work of Trudi Carnavan but I've read both her Magician's Guild trilogy, Age of the Five series and the Traitor series that follows on from the Magician's Guild (plus the Magician's Apprentice, the prequel). She writes good and if I hadn't already spent my book budget this month I would buy that. Edit: Queer Salutations posted:In one of Trudi Canavans first books a teen at magic school is raped, convicted of doing dark magic with her rapist (aka the headmaster of the school), and exiled from her home alongside her rapist. I read a summary of future books and she ends up staying with him and having his kid who I think is the protagonist of the one pictured... so I'd say skip that her books. Sonea was the one to initiate that relationship honestly, Akkarin was trying to stay away from it entirely because he had concerns about the age difference plus also power disparity which evaporated when they were both exiled, which again was Sonea's choice entirely. where did you get the rape from? Leng fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Jan 19, 2021 |
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Jan 19, 2021 23:23
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Leng posted:where did you get the rape from? Yeah I went looking and I might be mixing that part up with another book I read when I was younger. So my bad there!
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Jan 19, 2021 23:32
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Theft of Swords (Riyria Revelations #1) by Michael J Sullivan - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004XWBUKK/ His Majesty's Dragon (Temeraire #1) by Naomi Novik - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000GCFBQA/ Senlin Ascends (Books of Babel #1) by Josiah Bancroft - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074M62D7Y/ Quick edit How Long 'til Black Future Month? by NK Jemisin - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FSLQXY8/ pradmer fucked around with this message at 01:22 on Jan 20, 2021 |
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Jan 19, 2021 23:36
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tiniestacorn posted:The relationship trajectory Gideon and Harrow have going is taking its cues from fan fiction, which is its own storytelling mode fairly separate from commercial fiction, imo, so I can see how someone not familiar with the genre would miss its cues. It's a slow burn enemies to lovers romance heaped with ten tons of angst. (And it rules.) will they wont they has been a theme in fiction as long as it's been going (, and a major plot point in serialised tv, Moonlighting is probably the one that made it a tv mainstay.
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Jan 19, 2021 23:43
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StrixNebulosa posted:Okay, has anyone read any of these? the kb wagers one isn't bad, it's the first in a series but follows on directly from a previous series. Space Opera, princess runs away to become a 'gunrunner' family is mostly killed, she finds out her bad boy boyfriend is actually from her mothers government keeping an eye on her etc. Eventually she becomes Empress and this is that series. They do drag a bit and there's a lot of angst but overall pretty good. She has another series about space coast guard (NeoG) that is trying to be Becky Chambers and not hitting the mark imo.
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Jan 19, 2021 23:49
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Weird. Most publishers just throw the books online and set em up to be free when they have a sequel coming out. This is the first time I've seen a contest for only one set of the books.
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Jan 20, 2021 00:09
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I think there's probably a psychological difference for someone between "oh yeah I guess I could download this book for free" vs "Oh wow I could win a whole stack of shiny new books!", especially in the twitter SFF fandom space. And the more people you get retweeting it, the more people will see the books and think "Well that looks cool, I guess I didn't win but I'll go buy one for myself instead" And I'm not saying this is especially likely to be the case, but when I was working at a publishing house, we occasionally just ran free book giveaways to clear out the giant pile of ARCs we had building up around our office..
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Jan 20, 2021 00:33
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I’d pick up that Rights of Magicians book if it came on sale. There’s no way it’ll be as good as Strange and Norrell though, as much as I wish anything could measure up
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Jan 20, 2021 01:21
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Ccs posted:I’d pick up that Rights of Magicians book if it came on sale. There’s no way it’ll be as good as Strange and Norrell though, as much as I wish anything could measure up If you're looking for something that feels like Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, check out Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees. It has a similar vibe, and the prose is just astonishing. If you enjoy audiobooks I can highly recommend that version, too, as it has an excellent narrator.
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Jan 20, 2021 03:15
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Kestral posted:If you're looking for something that feels like Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, check out Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees. It has a similar vibe, and the prose is just astonishing. If you enjoy audiobooks I can highly recommend that version, too, as it has an excellent narrator. Oh I’ve read Lud in the Mist. I was a fan of BotLs scathing reviews of genre fiction and that was one of the only books he liked so I checked it out. It’s very good and I’m sure Clarke was inspired by it when she wrote fairy characters.
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Jan 20, 2021 03:34
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It was Neil Gaiman, I think, who said that Strange and Norrell read like it was from a world where Lud-In-The-Mist was the foundational work of the fantasy genre instead of Lord of the Rings, and that's something that stuck with me.
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Jan 20, 2021 03:42
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v. annoyed that the audiobook isn't available in the US
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Jan 20, 2021 04:19
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Anyone read Piranesi by Susanna Clarke yet? It popped up available on holds list so I just took it out
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Jan 20, 2021 06:26
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It's good, read it. It's no Jonathan Strange tho.
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Jan 20, 2021 06:29
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pradmer posted:How Long 'til Black Future Month? by NK Jemisin - $2.99 I'll keep saying it until everyone does it, read this book.
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Jan 20, 2021 07:09
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Stuporstar posted:Anyone read Piranesi by Susanna Clarke yet? It popped up available on holds list so I just took it out It's obviously not as much of a book you can sink your teeth into as JSMN, but it's still an absolute 10/10 classic. One of the best books I read last year.
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Jan 20, 2021 08:16
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pradmer posted:Senlin Ascends (Books of Babel #1) by Josiah Bancroft - $2.99
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Jan 20, 2021 14:25
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Piranesi is fantastic, but yeah, not the same as Jonathan Strange. Out of curiosity, has anyone else read Persephone Station by Stina Leicht? I had read a couple reviews that mentioned it slows down a lot in the middle and (now that I'm about 60% in) I'd say that is definitely the case. I'm also finding the worldbuilding/plot/characters interesting enough but the prose style is not my favorite. A lot of things feel sort of over-explained somehow, especially a lot of (what I would consider) fairly common scifi technology things, so kind of often I'm left thinking something like "I pretty much already know what a mechanized exoskeleton suit is, you don't need to tell me about it for a full page." I wonder if part of that is that I've just read/watched A LOT of scifi over the years so the explanations might be useful for someone who doesn't read a lot of scifi. But it really reminds me of that sort of older style of scifi where people would just egregiously infodump about how a wireless Martian telephone functions or whatever. (It's not super egregious in Persephone, to be clear, but it has a reminiscent flavor.)
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Jan 20, 2021 14:25
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anilEhilated posted:This seems kinda interesting, anyone read it?
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Jan 20, 2021 14:56
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Stuporstar posted:Anyone read Piranesi by Susanna Clarke yet? It popped up available on holds list so I just took it out Like other posters said, it was excellent. Best novel I read in 2020. It was definitely in a different style than Strange and Norrell, which I need to re-read.
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Jan 20, 2021 15:21
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Kestral posted:If you're looking for something that feels like Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, check out Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees. It has a similar vibe, and the prose is just astonishing. If you enjoy audiobooks I can highly recommend that version, too, as it has an excellent narrator. I just started on the under the pendulum sun by Jeannette NG, it definitely has a strong Johnathan Strange vibe as well.
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Jan 20, 2021 15:45
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https://twitter.com/angryrobotbooks/status/1351913742695591940
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Jan 20, 2021 16:37
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anilEhilated posted:This seems kinda interesting, anyone read it? I liked the concept, but I found the execution dull. I didn't finish it.
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Jan 20, 2021 17:04
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