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I always forget which one is which already, but it's hard to say you should break form. Feet of Clay (Discworld #19) by Terry Pratchett - $2.40 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000TU16OU/
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Aug 27, 2021 22:31
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General Battuta posted:Everybody likes Terror better but I do sort of like how Ends breaks the pattern and says "this one's the last one fucko." Also it's a neat dual meaning, whereas Terror is pretty direct... I want it to be The Ends for the sole specific reason of making the UK publisher look like a loving idiot. And jettison "The Terror" as a possibility so they can't save face by using that as their alternate title.
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Aug 28, 2021 00:13
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Did they explain why they left the name off the titles here?
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Aug 28, 2021 00:25
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Jedit posted:I want it to be The Ends for the sole specific reason of making the UK publisher look like a loving idiot. And jettison "The Terror" as a possibility so they can't save face by using that as their alternate title. They'll just name the final volume BARU CORMORANT and it'll be even worse. e: actually that wouldn't be so bad if you read them all together as one sentence. "The traitor, the monster, the tyrant: Baru Cormorant!"
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Aug 28, 2021 00:27
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mllaneza posted:It's snark at Girdish paladins, who are in fact mostly insufferable moralists. Velius posted:I was trying not to spoil the plot notes of the book. Sorry for being ambiguous. ah, all right. i have to say that the priggishness i can take but what they do to paks in the 2nd book has to be some kind of abuse. one of their officers invites her to train with them in their HQ/sanctum and she goes. she's accepted, trains well, does what they want and then they scheme to break her down psychologically (her instructor and one of the people in charge berate her for no reason while she's bleeding out) to get her pliant enough to take the oath. that's the point where it all became disgusting. i know it's a big order and they fight against evil but for gently caress's sake.
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Aug 28, 2021 00:30
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Hey bros. Last time y'all recommended Children of Time, among others. I'm most of the way through it and... This is fantastic. Easily one of the best fiction books I've read. Thank you. Also, against my better judgment, I finished reading Saturn's Children. Hard pass.
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Aug 28, 2021 02:16
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I quite like The Ends of... for breaking the pattern. Gives it a bit more finality, while Terror feels a little too similar to what came before. I still like Terror though!
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Aug 28, 2021 02:30
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I thought Saturn's Children was good but I love weird robot poo poo, what didn't you like?
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Aug 28, 2021 02:33
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Yeah, The Ends Of... is great for definitively stating this is the last book and I quite like the change in pattern.
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Aug 28, 2021 02:37
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packetmantis posted:I thought Saturn's Children was good but I love weird robot poo poo, what didn't you like? Btw, I'd watched this shortly before starting Children of Time. Got a kick out of "Portia is a genius" vice "Portia has no thoughts". Dominoes fucked around with this message at 02:41 on Aug 28, 2021 |
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Aug 28, 2021 02:38
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New Super Metis posted:I quite like The Ends of... for breaking the pattern. Gives it a bit more finality, while Terror feels a little too similar to what came before. I still like Terror though! Stross changes a lot between books - I didn't like Saturn's children much either but loved accelerando and iron rain. Like the laundry series too, especially the early ones that played off classic spy novel authors, list interest when they because about superheroes though.
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Aug 28, 2021 02:44
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General Battuta posted:… D'awww but I like the joke
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Aug 28, 2021 03:20
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buffalo all day posted:*taps the sign*
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Aug 28, 2021 03:22
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Casting my vote for Ends.
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Aug 28, 2021 04:06
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Sham bam bamina! posted:I imagine that it's a reference to both "ends" as the conclusions of her life and/or various roles she has played and "ends" as goals or objectives. Or maybe her hair has split ends. This made me realize that "The Means of Baru Cormorant" is kind of fun, in that it creates a new pattern (T, M, T, M), but the last book would be a lot more about the ends, wouldn't it? +1 for Terror though! (and my vote for omnibus title goes to "The Great and Terrible Baru Cormorant" or something similar).
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Aug 28, 2021 04:09
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Or go semi ironic and call it The Savior or something
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Aug 28, 2021 04:12
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The Real Dickhead Baru Cormorant
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Aug 28, 2021 04:22
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Sham bam bamina! posted:Casting my vote for Ends. Also voting Ends.
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Aug 28, 2021 04:36
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Doctor Jeep posted:ah, all right. i have to say that the priggishness i can take but what they do to paks in the 2nd book has to be some kind of abuse. one of their officers invites her to train with them in their HQ/sanctum and she goes. she's accepted, trains well, does what they want and then they scheme to break her down psychologically (her instructor and one of the people in charge berate her for no reason while she's bleeding out) to get her pliant enough to take the oath. that's the point where it all became disgusting. i know it's a big order and they fight against evil but for gently caress's sake. You're not even a little bit wrong!
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Aug 28, 2021 06:05
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Finished my sf-lovers mailing list readthrough project a day or so ago. Certain things I thought would get mentioned never came up. Other things got mentioned way too much. A short story collection called Such a pretty face edited by Lee Martindale got brought up near the end of the readthrough, and while SFLer's of the time period didn't care for it (because it covered non-standard-for-SFF-fiction body type main characters/non standard powered supernatural entities), it seems to cover material that would gladly be welcomed in SFF today. Were-elephants, vampires who can only transform into furniture instead of creeping mist or swarms of bats, main characters who are overweight.
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Aug 28, 2021 15:54
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That's sounds like something i want to check out. Wild that 2010 was so different than now, feels like yesterday to me. Edit: Google search brought up the wrong book. Searching...
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Aug 28, 2021 16:11
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Discworld series by Terry Pratchett Pyramids (#7) - $2.40 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000W964S6/ Reaper Man (#11) - $2.70 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000UVBT4A/ Witches Abroad (#12) - $2.40 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001AW2OYC/ Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C Clarke - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07XD75HGV/
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Aug 28, 2021 18:24
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I just started Ancillary Justice this week and hot drat is it can't-put-it-down good. I put off reading the series for a long time because the idea that the main character was a ship AI was unappealing to me, but it's very different in execution than I imagined. Hopefully, the whole series remains high quality.
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Aug 28, 2021 18:40
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Megasabin posted:I just started Ancillary Justice this week and hot drat is it can't-put-it-down good. I put off reading the series for a long time because the idea that the main character was a ship AI was unappealing to me, but it's very different in execution than I imagined. Hopefully, the whole series remains high quality. Good to hear. I bounced off the first time, but will give it a better go.
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Aug 28, 2021 18:43
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Megasabin posted:I just started Ancillary Justice this week and hot drat is it can't-put-it-down good. I put off reading the series for a long time because the idea that the main character was a ship AI was unappealing to me, but it's very different in execution than I imagined. Hopefully, the whole series remains high quality. For me the first was the only one worth reading. The second and third books weirdly scale back the intrigue and drama in favour of extensive lectures about intersectional discrimination and colonialism to the point that it sucks all the air out of the plot, like those Very Important episodes of Doctor Who where they really wanted you to know racism was bad or something. Breq basically becomes an infailible author insert telling off all the racist military administrators for being racist or classist and using Facts and Logic to own them and make them stop oppressing the peasants, it felt very masturbatory and YAish and a real backslide from the quality of the first novel.
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Aug 28, 2021 18:58
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I enjoyed all of the Ancillary books -- and yeah, the scale of conflict shrinks quite a bit in the second one, but it increases a little in the third. The first is probably my favorite though if I had to pick just one. The sort of spinoff book, Provenance, is interesting and more of a political/mystery plot. But other than a really brief mention that the Raadch exists elsewhere in space, it doesn't have anything to do with the Ancillary books (it's also very small/personal stakes for the most part and not as space-opera-y as the trilogy). I listened to the audiobooks of all of them, and out of curiosity, I just found out that at some point they did release the audiobook of Ancillary Justice with Adjoa Andoh (who did all the other ones) as the narrator for the US version. Remarking on this because, if anyone else happened to listen to the original (US) recording for AJ, they know that the first narrator did everything in this really stilted robotic voice except for the dialog from the human characters. It was... kind of grating? At least to me (and a good amount of other people from reviews). But it's great to see that the Andoh version of AJ is available in the US now.
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Aug 28, 2021 19:08
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I started reading Free Live Free then bowed out because the four viewpoint characters in it were creeps then read/finished reading Richard Kadrey's Blind Shrike earlier today. Blind Shike is essentially Kadrey's test run at the first seven sandman slim books.
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Aug 28, 2021 20:49
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Put me down for the Terror Baru Cormorant
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Aug 29, 2021 01:14
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pradmer posted:Discworld series by Terry Pratchett Pyramids is a great standalone Discworld book. If you are curious about Discworld but not sure where to start this is a great one for dipping your toes in to see if you like it.
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Aug 29, 2021 02:21
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I really enjoyed Pyramids. I read it at the beach during summer vacation, and I was fifteen so the memories associated with it quite vivid. I can feel the heat of the sun on my skin just thinking about the book, weird but nice.
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Aug 29, 2021 02:25
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torgeaux posted:Good to hear. I bounced off the first time, but will give it a better go. I bounced off Ancillary Justice both times I tried it, but I absolutely loved The Raven Tower. Leckie did a superb job taking Hamlet as a foundation and building something entirely different with its slow-building yet inevitable tragedy.
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Aug 29, 2021 04:21
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Urcher posted:Pyramids is a great standalone Discworld book. If you are curious about Discworld but not sure where to start this is a great one for dipping your toes in to see if you like it. I've heard the Assassin's Guild entry exam at the start of it was one of Pratchett's favourite pieces of his own writing.
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Aug 29, 2021 05:01
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Urcher posted:Pyramids is a great standalone Discworld book. If you are curious about Discworld but not sure where to start this is a great one for dipping your toes in to see if you like it. Thanks, grabbed this too, I picked up book #1 a few days ago and they keep dropping more on sale but didn't want to spend money even as deals if i wasn't going to like them, hopefully will have time to get to it soon, there have been a ton of good scifi/fantasy books the past week or so on sale.
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Aug 29, 2021 05:25
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freebooter posted:I've heard the Assassin's Guild entry exam at the start of it was one of Pratchett's favourite pieces of his own writing. I'm here Sir is a line that has stuck with me ever since I read that scene. Tars Tarkas posted:Thanks, grabbed this too. You're welcome. Also you're in for a treat.
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Aug 29, 2021 05:45
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Dominoes posted:Btw, I'd watched this shortly before starting Children of Time. Got a kick out of "Portia is a genius" vice "Portia has no thoughts". I just finished the sequel Children of Ruin and I highly reccomend it. If you like the first one you'll love the second, it's a variation on the same theme of alternate evolutionary paths taken by terraforming experiments. Spider biotechnology is loving amazing. The ending 5 chapters drop some enormous revelations that retroactively change the entire book up to that point. The reveal blew my mind. An extremely cool concept with a ballin ending. I hope there's another book in the series cuz the ending of this would be a phenomenal setting for a 3rd.
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Aug 29, 2021 07:26
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freebooter posted:I've heard the Assassin's Guild entry exam at the start of it was one of Pratchett's favourite pieces of his own writing. It's a straight parody of the UK driving test. The only thing that's really changed is that the bit where you identify road signs has been moved to a separate theory portion, and as a result the instructor can no longer accidentally show you the card upside down.
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Aug 29, 2021 10:12
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Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003RRXXMA/
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Aug 29, 2021 18:35
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Started reading Parker's Engineer trilogy. The titular engineer is pretty terrifying? I don't know what the hell he's up to but he kinda seems like a sociopath. Is he supposed to be the hero? Though I suppose with Parker, hero is a kind of nebulous idea. Also, as a machinist I really appreciate the detail in the manufacturing process stuff. It's like, hard fantasy.
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Aug 29, 2021 18:36
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A Proper Uppercut posted:Started reading Parker's Engineer trilogy. The titular engineer is pretty terrifying? I don't know what the hell he's up to but he kinda seems like a sociopath. Is he supposed to be the hero? Though I suppose with Parker, hero is a kind of nebulous idea. You’re in for a ride! Ziani is pretty terrifying but the series has many more terrifying characters, or characters who are forced through what they go through to become terrifying. Curious to see what you make of the themes of the series.
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Aug 29, 2021 18:39
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A Proper Uppercut posted:Started reading Parker's Engineer trilogy. The titular engineer is pretty terrifying? I don't know what the hell he's up to but he kinda seems like a sociopath. Is he supposed to be the hero? Though I suppose with Parker, hero is a kind of nebulous idea. Parker is your man for pre-modern engineering porn, yes.
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Aug 29, 2021 19:40
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