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quote:I just finished reading A Desolation Called Peace, the sequel to A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine. It was as good or better than the first book. It was my understanding that this is a duology?
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Apr 12, 2021 19:31
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StrixNebulosa posted:Finished the Queen of Rhodia by Effie Calvin, third in her light n' fluffy lesbian fantasy romance series and it was fun! Better than the first book, but as it returned to the couple from that first book and examined the fallout from them now having a baby dragon and being married, it wasn't as fun for me? It was good to see a more established couple deal with problems as a team and such but I wanted more of what I got in Order of the Sun, with slowly discovering emotions for each other and traveling and such. By the way, thanks for the rec - I really appreciate a book that's got lighthearted, blatantly obvious romance stuff between two reasonable people, and the constant splatters of actual thoughtful worldbuilding were a lovely complement (I have that autist/structural mind, so I don't even need a narrative, I'll just read worldbuilding given the opportunity). (I felt Esofi's mother was pretty blatantly Not Cool in the first book, though! IIRC Adale's mom the queen mentions it to Adale briefly.)
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Apr 12, 2021 20:15
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mewse posted:Swarm was an excellent character as well. Really anticipating the third book. Swarm has a posse StrixNebulosa posted:It was my understanding that this is a duology? I just finished the sequel, it seemed to be setting up for a third. Book good.
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Apr 12, 2021 20:50
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mewse posted:I just finished reading A Desolation Called Peace, the sequel to A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine. It was as good or better than the first book. I found the ambassador situation mostly plausible; I got the impression that Teixcalaan isn't used to having real ambassadors--things go from outside the world to inside the world without spending a lot of time in the middle--while on the Lsel side, low population + imago tech means each person is expected to do a lot. It is a little weird how much they respect the station's sovereignty! I could understand not wanting to be contaminated by barbarians but they don't really seem concerned about that; the brain tech might be a worry if they knew about it, but they don't, because they haven't read station comix. Not annexing the station makes sense: war of conquest is mostly a way of earning political points back home, so putting it on hold while there's a real war on keeps your generals focused. But infringing a little for military purposes seems reasonable? quote:Darj Tarats' motivations are also messy. He wanted Yskander to start a war between the empire and the aliens to take the focus away from annexing the station, and it's accomplished by Mahit, but putting the station between the empire and their enemy just entangles the station further. He wants Mahit to sabotage the empire into an unwinnable war with the cloaking, incomprehensible enemy, but it's unclear how the station benefits from the empire getting a bloody nose. Like the station is profiting from trade with the empire, Tarats represents mining, but he wants the war escalated with the station in the middle? Tarats is as much an ideologue as Amnardbat! His portfolio is Miners, but personally he wants to see the empire destroyed, not just distracted. It did bug me a little that everyone back home turned out to be a giant rear end in a top hat; Mahit takes a week off because she's responsible for an emperor killing himself AND her brain is literally malfunctioning, and they go straight to blackmail and death threats. Sure, sure, you can't go home again, but that's a little much.
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Apr 12, 2021 20:55
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HopperUK posted:I read Blood Meridian and I thought it was amazing but I don't think I got it. I felt the whole time like there were a million cultural references I was missing. I should give it another spin sometime. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3643994&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=584 Near the bottom of the page you'll find my post, I read it very recently. some nice discusison followed. Also on the BB discord if you are in it. It's a good book, certainly not my cup of tea, but the discussion helped me appreciate it more. Huh, Sci fi content. Read some kim stanley robinson. Aurora and The memory of whiteness. I liked the first one a lot more, but goddamn that was a weird tangent to end on. Totally unexpected. But to be fair it was very well written, it made me long for an activity i actively avoid doing. Aurora took a direction I wasn't expected based on what I knew, and the tone certainly wasn't what I'm used to from him. Memory of whiteness disappointed me a bit. It's plot can be described as an orchestra giving a tour from the outer reaches of the solar system all the way to Venus. I was eager for the exploration of different cultures and their values, and some sci fi info dumping, but it goes into a different reaction. It's not bad. It's just that I wasn't expecting a conspiracy thriller? from him. For sure, his style is there, one part is repeated verbatim in Aurora, and other excerpts would've been right at home in ministry for the future, written 35 years later, but in an early version I'd say. Mostly it was that the focus is in such a reduced cast of characters over such an specific period of time. Even if the main character for something else.
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Apr 12, 2021 21:36
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General Battuta posted:What bothered me about that is where does she get the nutrients to make more fish if all her nutrients come from the fish??? thank you, I'm glad it's not just me But yeah, The Stars Are Legion was really good, in a gross, slimy, biological way. StrixNebulosa posted:For future reference, gender has nothing to do with genitals and vise-versa. Humans have moved beyond that. God I loving wish that were universally true  FWIW I read this as an honest mistake stemming from Stupid_Sexy_Flander just not ever really having had to think about this stuff before.
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Apr 12, 2021 22:17
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StrixNebulosa posted:It was my understanding that this is a duology? I think it’s a trilogy (or a duology with a very unsatisfying ending — definitely feels like a middle book to me).
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Apr 12, 2021 23:23
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StrixNebulosa posted:It was my understanding that this is a duology? Well crap I thought I read somewhere it was planned as a trilogy but I probably invented that. I hope there is a third, the villainous councilors of the station need their comeuppance
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Apr 13, 2021 00:12
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Time to ask again - is there a good blog that tracks new releases of sci-fi/fantasy books? I stopped paying attention for the last six months and don't want to sort through tor's endless movie/tv show articles to get to the good stuff.
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Apr 13, 2021 00:45
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dreamless posted:Tarats is as much an ideologue as Amnardbat! His portfolio is Miners, but personally he wants to see the empire destroyed, not just distracted. It did bug me a little that everyone back home turned out to be a giant rear end in a top hat; Mahit takes a week off because she's responsible for an emperor killing himself AND her brain is literally malfunctioning, and they go straight to blackmail and death threats. Sure, sure, you can't go home again, but that's a little much. Read the news lately? That's just government service, really. 
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Apr 13, 2021 01:40
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Only quibble I had in Stars are legion are all the characters pointing out how things aren't poisonous, or how nothing really rots, and how things aren't actually trying to kill you, when they're presumably talking about the world they've spent their while lives in and I'm not sure where they would have acquired any other worldview where those things weren't true.
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Apr 13, 2021 01:41
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packetmantis posted:It's been a long time since I read it, but I didn't rememember all of that other stuff. Maybe I stopped midway or there was an expanded version or something. No there has just been the one version of Breathmoss. It's very likely a similar story to Breathmoss was placed very close to it in the same anthology, and you mentally combined the worse elements of both stories into one. That has happened to me a bunch of times, even in the Gardner Dozois Years Best SF anthologies. StrixNebulosa posted:Time to ask again - is there a good blog that tracks new releases of sci-fi/fantasy books? I stopped paying attention for the last six months and don't want to sort through tor's endless movie/tv show articles to get to the good stuff. Tor.com is worthless on many levels. Literally the 4th link from the OP of this thread: https://www.freesfonline.de/ -it focuses exclusively on speculative SF&F fiction and was last updated on April 3 2021. That site also has a rss feed & twitter account.
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Apr 13, 2021 01:48
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StrixNebulosa posted:Time to ask again - is there a good blog that tracks new releases of sci-fi/fantasy books? I stopped paying attention for the last six months and don't want to sort through tor's endless movie/tv show articles to get to the good stuff. https://www.tor.com/tag/new-releases/ Looks like if you just use that URL, it'll filter the Tor articles by just the 'new releases' tag. I'm pleasantly surprised it seems to only show the roundup lists and they don't seem to use the tag for articles about individual titles.
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Apr 13, 2021 01:54
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quantumfoam posted:Tor.com is worthless on many levels. Tor puts together neat listings of books - well, they host James Davis Nicoll and he does it for them - but yeah, they're not great. The link is neat, but not what I'm looking for! If I want a list of new books I go to the isfdb, which I'm more used to. DurianGray posted:https://www.tor.com/tag/new-releases/ Huh, neat. Still on the look for a new-to-me blog about books, though!
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Apr 13, 2021 02:04
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Mr. Nemo posted:Read some kim stanley robinson. Aurora and The memory of whiteness. I liked the first one a lot more, but goddamn that was a weird tangent to end on. Totally unexpected. The ending of Aurora is Freya surviving her tumble in the ocean and crawling back to dry land. There are several things happening here: She'll be ok after this; the Earth is still a huge intimidating place but she went out and faced her fear head on and lived. The specific image of a creature pulling itself out of the water to make a new life on land is something you would see in a fifteen second montage of the history of life on Earth, it's one of the most important steps in our conception of evolution and of ourselves, as inheritors of that striving life-force. The people who launched the starships would have said settling new planets is like that first creature pulling itself on to land; human life expanding to new environmental niches in the stars. The obvious metaphor is of the ocean as vast, empty space, and new planets as the uncharted shores we'll land on. But KSR is giving us this triumphant moment back on Earth. Freya (humanity) flings herself out in to the ocean (interstellar space), she has some misadventures (most would-be settlers die), and is deeply thankful to be alive when she gets back after all her struggles. It's the whole novel summed up in a scene. Writing this it occurs to me that Euan goes to the ocean to die on Aurora. He says he's going to try to catch a wave then stay under. His death is the failure of the starship mission in miniature. He gets to that alien beach, undoes his helmet and breathes the air, and then dies. Freya does the same thing, except she does it on Earth and lives. She is figuratively reborn as a creature of Earth, having lived the evolutionary struggle out of the ocean in fractal miniature - in the trip out and back from Tau Ceti, in a ship, with others, and now personally, with just her own body (her fins having been shed like parts of Ship as it decelerates), as she nearly drowns herself trying to surf. It's basically the same ending as Gravity, is what I'm saying: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCq8gQWxkBQ Prolonged Panorama fucked around with this message at 04:20 on Apr 13, 2021 |
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Apr 13, 2021 04:07
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Ornamented Death posted:I REALLY hate how he deals with rights and, combined with his accelerated release schedule, find it abusive to his most loyal customers. I thought it as kind of funny when a bunch of horror and sci-fi nerds had to buy a copy of The Bridges of Madison County, but when he published a short story and charged $350 for it? And you had to buy it to "stay on the train?" That's insane. lmao this is like a predatory gacha game level of FOMO.
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Apr 13, 2021 08:36
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hmm, i was sufficiently tuned out last year that i missed seeing mike resnick had died
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Apr 13, 2021 10:57
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lol, you were all discussing a book in good faith; why do you have to make it into a cold war standoff
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Apr 13, 2021 12:42
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Because everything is about sex.
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Apr 13, 2021 13:08
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thotsky posted:lol, you were all discussing a book in good faith; why do you have to make it into a cold war standoff cant believe a forum community traditionally made up of socially awkward male nerds thats over 20 years old, has members that still struggle with modern gender issues cancel his rear end boys
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Apr 13, 2021 14:22
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https://twitter.com/kameronhurley/status/1381960063888334849?s=21
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Apr 13, 2021 14:32
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Just finished two of swords. Damnit but that was a hell of a ride. Really enjoyed that behind it all was the conductor A full trilogy in about 5 days. Dang
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Apr 13, 2021 15:57
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I asked Effie Calvin about more books that feel like hers - fun lesbian fantasy - and she delivered. https://twitter.com/EffieCalvin/status/1381983148536434695 https://twitter.com/EffieCalvin/status/1381984037913423876 https://twitter.com/EffieCalvin/status/1381984304453070851 And my reading list grew three sizes ---
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Apr 13, 2021 16:16
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Hugo Award nominations are out. My favorite title is whatever this related work is: “George R.R. Martin Can gently caress Off Into the Sun, or: The 2020 Hugo Awards Ceremony (Rageblog Edition)”, Natalie Luhrs (Pretty Terrible 8/20) https://locusmag.com/2021/04/2021-hugo-astounding-and-lodestar-awards-finalists/ The best novel nominees are basically what you’d expect with at least one big omission: Best Novel Piranesi, Susanna Clarke (Bloomsbury US; Bloomsbury UK) The City We Became, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US; Orbit UK) The Relentless Moon, Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor; Solaris) Harrow the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir (Tordotcom) Black Sun, Rebecca Roanhorse (Saga; Solaris) Network Effect, Martha Wells (Tordotcom)
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Apr 13, 2021 17:58
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What's the big omission?
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Apr 13, 2021 18:01
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General Battuta posted:What's the big omission? Ready Player Two, obviously
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Apr 13, 2021 18:04
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Aardvark! posted:Ready Player Two, obviously This was my ironic guess 
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Apr 13, 2021 18:10
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General Battuta posted:What's the big omission? There was this one book which took a strong anti-hygiene stance, which I think is such a bold corrective to big hand washing in the age of covid
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Apr 13, 2021 18:17
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Extremely glad Isabel Fall's story was nominated, that was an incredible piece of fiction and the way it and her were treated was a disgrace. e: going to be weird asking people to vote on a story that's not (officially) publicly available though, lol Peel fucked around with this message at 19:55 on Apr 13, 2021 |
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Apr 13, 2021 19:51
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Peel posted:e: going to be weird asking people to vote on a story that's not (officially) publicly available though, lol It should be in the Hugo voter packet, which everyone who buys an attending or voting membership will receive, so hopefully voters will get a chance to read it before votes close.
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Apr 13, 2021 20:19
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Peel posted:Extremely glad Isabel Fall's story was nominated, that was an incredible piece of fiction and the way it and her were treated was a disgrace. That was the one a bunch of idiots thought was transphobic right? What happened to it that it's not available?
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Apr 13, 2021 20:25
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Patrick Spens posted:That was the one a bunch of idiots thought was transphobic right? What happened to it that it's not available? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Sexually_Identify_as_an_Attack_Helicopter quote:The editor of Clarkesworld, Neil Clarke, removed the story from the online magazine's website a few days later.[7] According to Clarke's initial note, the withdrawal was made at the author's request.[5] In a later statement, Clarke explained that he had removed the story after a "barrage of attacks" on Fall, "for her own personal safety and health".[8] He wrote that Fall was a trans woman, but had not been out as such at the time of publication, and used an intentionally short biography and "negligible" Internet presence.[8] According to Clarke, the story was not a hoax, and Fall was not a Neo-Nazi (as some had assumed because "88" is a Neo-Nazi code). He wrote that the story was an attempt by Fall to "take away some of the power of that very hurtful meme" by subverting it.[8] Clarke wrote that the story had been subject to many revisions and it had been reviewed by trans sensitivity readers, but he apologized "to those who were hurt by the story or the ensuing storms".[8][4]
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Apr 13, 2021 20:27
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Reading the news stories about that just makes me ... So tired.
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Apr 13, 2021 20:29
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Oy.
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Apr 13, 2021 20:30
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this was such an embarrassing poo poo storm. what a mess.
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Apr 13, 2021 20:32
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I forgot the packet! Haven't been involved in the Hugos for a few years, though this might tempt me back in.
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Apr 13, 2021 20:52
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General Battuta posted:What's the big omission? I saw more then a few people who thought Once and Future Witches was going to make it. The only other one I can honestly think of as having buzz is Unconquerable Sun. There's a number of people on twitter legitimately angry that Helicopter Story was retitled, assuming its because of Hugos/Voters, and without asking themselves 'hey, did the writer maybe make this change?'. Its a sad echo of the original battle. E: Kinda surprised Mexican Gothic wasn't nommed as well. Copernic fucked around with this message at 21:11 on Apr 13, 2021 |
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Apr 13, 2021 20:57
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Oh wait, for the Hugos, are the voters basically just people who pay the $50 to be a supporting member? For some reason I thought it was limited to published authors or something like that a la film awards. I guess that's not a terrible amount to pay for a packet of apparently good novellas + the ability to feel like at least I'm slightly rectifying the deep injustices being done to Baru on the awards circuit. e: to be clear, Baru = the big omission, incredibly confused how it isn't making it onto these lists. Continue to think it was much better than a lot of the other (also often very good!) nominees.
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Apr 13, 2021 21:03
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Prolonged Priapism posted:The ending of Aurora is Freya Let me rephrase. I didn't expect the generational starship book to end with a dozens page long info dump onto the subject it does, beach regeneration in future earth. It was very interesting, but a much better fit for some of his other books. Not this one. Has anyone read The memory of Whiteness? Eager to hear what smarter people thought.
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Apr 13, 2021 21:07
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tildes posted:Best Novel All of these of good, except for Black Sun which I'm about a third of the way through and undecided on. It's a lot better than her first nomination but so far she's relying heavily on abbreviated chapters that jump between character viewpoints and flashbacks in a failed attempt to add drama and nothing of consequence has happened except the countdown timer at the beginning of every chapter has steadily decreased.
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Apr 13, 2021 21:09
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