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My Red Rising experience is a couple of my friends loved it and bought a board game based on it that we played a couple of times. It involved crafting a hand of cards out of the hundreds of characters ranging from Darrow and what looked like a bunch of roman emperors all the way down to random tax accountants and sex workers. The two people who had read the books couldn't tell me who most of the characters on the cards were when I asked, but assured me it was good and they spent most of the game going "Oh yeah that guy!". Unfortunately the book owner moved away before I could borrow them from her so I may never know who all those people were if the series doesn't pop up on a kindle daily deal or something.
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Sep 8, 2022 20:06
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bagrada posted:My Red Rising experience is a couple of my friends loved it and bought a board game based on it that we played a couple of times. It involved crafting a hand of cards out of the hundreds of characters ranging from Darrow and what looked like a bunch of roman emperors all the way down to random tax accountants and sex workers. The two people who had read the books couldn't tell me who most of the characters on the cards were when I asked, but assured me it was good and they spent most of the game going "Oh yeah that guy!". Unfortunately the book owner moved away before I could borrow them from her so I may never know who all those people were if the series doesn't pop up on a kindle daily deal or something. This reminds me that the Battlestar Galactica board game is really fun, and I've never even seen the show. It's kinda like Mafia but with a spaceship and the Mafia want to blow up the ship because they're robots or something
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Sep 8, 2022 20:20
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Clark Nova posted:if you're bothered by the mention of 14 year olds, there is happily none of that poo poo in the bone ships series. if you're bothered by the prospect of lots of grimdark suffering on a planet made out of poop and boogers, I uh, have some bad news for you Neither of those things bother me! As long as I don't have to deal with the extremely on the nose woe is me nobody understands my sorrows melodramatic style of narration that seems to be popular in current YA, I'm good.
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Sep 8, 2022 20:29
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bagrada posted:My Red Rising experience is a couple of my friends loved it and bought a board game based on it that we played a couple of times. It involved crafting a hand of cards out of the hundreds of characters ranging from Darrow and what looked like a bunch of roman emperors all the way down to random tax accountants and sex workers. The two people who had read the books couldn't tell me who most of the characters on the cards were when I asked, but assured me it was good and they spent most of the game going "Oh yeah that guy!". Unfortunately the book owner moved away before I could borrow them from her so I may never know who all those people were if the series doesn't pop up on a kindle daily deal or something. Red Rising was recommended to me by a friend of a friend immediately after they talked about how they liked reading Ayn Rand. She's an electrical engineer who earnestly thinks that her techs who wear MAGA hats to work support Trump because he supports small businesses. Her coworkers also think the government gives aid to the 'wrong' people and she thought that was a completely anodyne opinion. Anyways, haven't read it. Maybe it's great, just can't get over who recommended it.
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Sep 8, 2022 20:50
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VostokProgram posted:This reminds me that the Battlestar Galactica board game is really fun, and I've never even seen the show. It's kinda like Mafia but with a spaceship and the Mafia want to blow up the ship because they're robots or something It's also hugely out of print as the license was lost. It's been reskinned, perhaps inevitably, as Cthulhu.
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Sep 8, 2022 21:09
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Jedit posted:It's also hugely out of print as the license was lost. It's been reskinned, perhaps inevitably, as Cthulhu. Ah Cthulhu, the cause of, and solution to, all of licensing's problems. I wanted to get Unfathomable but my gaming group hates hidden traitor games.
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Sep 8, 2022 21:17
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:The first chapter of Red Rising is like: I am the grittiest toughest miner known to man -- a helldiver. I use my helldrill to hellmine Helium-3 as I sip from my drinktube. My frysuit is ironically named because it keeps me from frying. I spit into my helmet that stinks like piss. Here on Mars, the planet that is red, girls get married off at fourteen. Life's just that tough on the red planet but my uncle is weak and my father is dead -- everyone is weak, my hands are worn and my expression grim and the caverns of Mars smell like death. The society killed my wife on our wedding day. I am fourteen years old. For some reason Kindle has been trying to sell me the 3rd book in the series for like 5 years, it's not gonna happen.
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Sep 8, 2022 21:36
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Kestral posted:That was probably one of my posts! I can highly recommend the Martin Shaw narration of the audiobook, it elevates the original text considerably imo. One of the best narrator-to-text fits I’ve heard out of the hundreds of audiobooks I’ve listened to. I started this Silmarillion audiobook and it is great when I am in the mood to give it some focus. Unfortunately my Marvel-movie-broken brain keeps hearing Martin Shaw's accent as Chris Hemsworth's Thor trying to put on gravitas in his speeches, and it is hard to keep track of everything even though I consider myself a hardened veteran of fantasy names. I'll power through a bit more but I think it better fits sitting at home with a map and cast of characters handy than as background noise while driving. I'll probably grab my next Discworld when my audible credit comes through to replace it on my commute.
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Sep 8, 2022 21:44
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FPyat posted:Third of a way through The Forever War, and the book easily feels like it could have been written in the 90s, eerily so. Thank god the audiobook narrator doesn’t do a super exaggerated gay voice. it's kind of timeless in many ways lol. Especially because iirc he wasn't trying to be particularly forward thinking, he just picked the most shocking stuff he could think of to define each era.
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Sep 8, 2022 21:59
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Red Rising is in my mental category of “the people who like it aren’t very good at making it sound appealing.”
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Sep 8, 2022 22:44
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FPyat posted:Third of a way through The Forever War, and the book easily feels like it could have been written in the 90s, eerily so. Thank god the audiobook narrator doesn’t do a super exaggerated gay voice. Don't bother with the sequel Forever Free, it sucks. His unrelated The Forever Peace is very much worth a look, though.
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Sep 9, 2022 00:13
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Gnoman posted:Don't bother with the sequel Forever Free, it sucks. Forever War is incredible and totally self contained, thankfully. Definitely agree to skip Forever Free which was written 25 years later.
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Sep 9, 2022 00:20
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Sailor Viy posted:I'm reading The Rediscovery of Man on recommendation from this thread. It's good, certainly unique. Some stories are very well-written, some clunky, some nakedly homophobic. Yeah, it's an interesting set of stories for exactly those reasons. If you haven't done so yet, go ahead and look up the biographical information on the author. I promise you he's one of the weirder human beings ever to write science fiction. As far as the connection to Dune, it was just the ambient environment at the time. Linebarger and Herbert were just decent enough at writing that we keep reading them, as opposed to all the other also-rans who used the same themes.
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Sep 9, 2022 00:35
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RDM posted:The entire rest of the series is the protagonist going "after dodging demon spiders and ultraworms with the helldrill, none of the space assassins stood a chance against my reflexes". The first Red Rising trilogy is kind of like the Star Wars original trilogy told except narrated by a Luke Skywalker who's even more of a tool. The second Red Rising trilogy (starting with Iron Gold) is a lot more interesting because it takes the "happy ending" of the first trilogy and applies a degree of "get real" to it. Plus it adds other viewpoint characters instead of just Darrow.
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Sep 9, 2022 01:20
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MartingaleJack posted:If it was just one time, sure. But it happens over and over again. It happens with Darrow maneuvering the fleet, it happens at the academy contest, the sword duel, and maybe most blatantly Sevro's fakeout death at the climax of book 3. The entire point of the second book doing that is so that when Darrow is at his triumph and about to win and then everything turns to poo poo because he and the revolution's been outmaneuvered and Fitchner's head is in a loving box, you expect him to have a secret plan to get out of it. Nope!
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Sep 9, 2022 03:03
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Tezer posted:Red Rising was recommended to me by a friend of a friend immediately after they talked about how they liked reading Ayn Rand. She's an electrical engineer who earnestly thinks that her techs who wear MAGA hats to work support Trump because he supports small businesses. Her coworkers also think the government gives aid to the 'wrong' people and she thought that was a completely anodyne opinion. LOL, a major point of the books is that those who set themselves up as the masters of the universe are entirely undeserving and that they're enforcing inequality through literal eugenics.
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Sep 9, 2022 03:08
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:The first chapter of Red Rising is like: I am the grittiest toughest miner known to man -- a helldiver. I use my helldrill to hellmine Helium-3 as I sip from my drinktube. My frysuit is ironically named because it keeps me from frying. I spit into my helmet that stinks like piss. Here on Mars, the planet that is red, girls get married off at fourteen. Life's just that tough on the red planet but my uncle is weak and my father is dead -- everyone is weak, my hands are worn and my expression grim and the caverns of Mars smell like death. The society killed my wife on our wedding day. I am fourteen years old. You have captured its essence, my good man. The books dont follow any logic when it comes to his "helldiver" hands. Darrow is a weakling until his entire body is "carved" by a body hacker. He gains 200 kg of muscle and a meter of height, yet his hands are still always stronger than anyone he meets because he spent two years as a teenager running a claw drill.
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Sep 9, 2022 03:12
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grassy gnoll posted:Yeah, it's an interesting set of stories for exactly those reasons. If you haven't done so yet, go ahead and look up the biographical information on the author. I promise you he's one of the weirder human beings ever to write science fiction. His bio sounds like it would make a great novel or movie in itself. Writing CIA propaganda by day, science fiction by night.
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Sep 9, 2022 03:48
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Sailor Viy posted:His bio sounds like it would make a great novel or movie in itself. Writing CIA propaganda by day, science fiction by night. Wonder if he ever crossed paths with Alice (James Tiptree Jr.) Sheldon, who also worked for the OSS/CIA in the 50s.
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Sep 9, 2022 04:15
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MartingaleJack posted:You have captured its essence, my good man. I think that was more along the lines of being super dexterous with your hands. And I guess since a lot of that happens in the brain, you might be better at it even if you had a massive surgery. I enjoyed the 5 (?) books of this series, but it was really uneven. I kind of liked how te ruling class made a giant Viking theme park to control their warrior caste. What are some good examples where the protagonist/point of view character isn't quite honest with the audience? I did enjoy that stuff in the throne of glass novels. The main character did some convoluted plans, which seem reasonable at first glance. But in the relevant moment it turns out that her specific approach also has three other positive side effects.
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Sep 10, 2022 00:00
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cant cook creole bream posted:What are some good examples where the protagonist/point of view character isn't quite honest with the audience?
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Sep 10, 2022 02:10
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cant cook creole bream posted:
Pale Fire. Lolita
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Sep 10, 2022 02:11
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cant cook creole bream posted:What are some good examples where the protagonist/point of view character isn't quite honest with the audience? I did enjoy that stuff in the throne of glass novels. The main character did some convoluted plans, which seem reasonable at first glance. But in the relevant moment it turns out that her specific approach also has three other positive side effects. The Pyat Quartet by Michael Moorcock
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Sep 10, 2022 04:49
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Hey can I just say again how the Aubrey-Maturin audiobooks are literally the best of ones I've ever listened to. Because they are.
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Sep 10, 2022 13:40
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General Battuta posted:The protagonist is also an even worse person than Baru! Baru did nothing wrong.
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Sep 10, 2022 14:32
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Whale Vomit posted:I'm a third through Snow Crash and honestly having a blast. I was a little hesitant with the premise but everything has come together well and I'm rolling with the tongue-in-cheek narrative. The best Stephenson book is Zodiac
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Sep 10, 2022 16:16
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His other stuff is very ambitious, but also completely different imo. A lot of people think Snow Crash is trash. A lot of people think his later output is great. I enjoyed Snow Crash but could not get through any of his other stuff.
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Sep 10, 2022 16:38
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Whale Vomit posted:I'm a third through Snow Crash and honestly having a blast. I was a little hesitant with the premise but everything has come together well and I'm rolling with the tongue-in-cheek narrative. If you are liking Snow Crash, you might like anything else he wrote. I'd stay away from DODO, Fall, and termination shock but otherwise go nuts.
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Sep 10, 2022 16:59
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I tried The Magicians and I dunno if I want to keep going past the first book. Almost every character seems to be some combination of self-absorbed, self-hating rear end in a top hat chasing their own annihilation and it was just kinda wearing. Are the sequels more of the same? Also doesn’t help that the author tends to introduce every female character with a) how attractive they are and b) the size of their breasts
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Sep 10, 2022 17:26
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idiotsavant posted:I tried The Magicians and I dunno if I want to keep going past the first book. Almost every character seems to be some combination of self-absorbed, self-hating rear end in a top hat chasing their own annihilation and it was just kinda wearing. Are the sequels more of the same? Honestly this is one of those series where i thought the tv show (after season 1) was better than the books.
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Sep 10, 2022 17:28
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The TV show treats the books with the contempt they deserve.
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Sep 10, 2022 17:41
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MartingaleJack posted:
This is legit one of my favourite bits about his writing. The Golds are meant to evoke the feel of british private school kids, so they talk in a weird mix of poorly remembered latin and posh-boy slang. Imagine Boris Johnson or the other Bullingdon Club assholes saying "Salve, my goodman!" and it'll all make sense. quote:There were several meme jokes in book three that just slapped me out of the read. I don’t recall the first book having any, but the second one might have. I don’t always hate this kind of thing. In Gideon and Harrow the Ninth they almost always worked for me. I can usually read several chapters of the Dresden Files in one sitting without cringing. But the use of meme stuff here was just pointless and unfunny. There are a bunch of off-hand references to modern books in the first book. "Lady Casterley's Penance" is a mangled version of Game of Thrones, and when hearing about the Jackal and the cave-in Darrow makes a reference to a snippet of some book that talks about "a wolf caught in a trap will gnaw off its own leg to escape" but he can't quite remember the rest of the quote. (It's Dune, and it's great how the Jackal would absolutely fail the Gom Jabbar test, but Darrow is the perfect embodiment of the second half of the quote "but a human will lay in wait to kill the hunter, and so remove a threat to the rest of its kind") FPyat posted:Red Rising is in my mental category of “the people who like it aren’t very good at making it sound appealing.” It's kind of a YA style series, but really really good YA. Over the top opressive dystopias, teenagers killing each other all the time, adolescent rage against a background of war and politics. It also manages to have spectacular 40K style space battles, and an understanding of fascism somewhat more nuanced than "what if highschool cliques were legally enforced?". The Ayn Rand fan who loves it is one of the funniest loving things I have ever heard. It's like thinking V for Vendetta is arguing how cool totalitarian governments are.
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Sep 10, 2022 22:38
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One thing that would probably mess with my enjoyment is that whenever I read the name "Darrow" I'll immediately think of a guy making fun of the Bible to a former secretary of state in a courtroom while a bunch of yokels watch.
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Sep 11, 2022 00:56
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GoodluckJonathan posted:Baru did nothing wrong. Baru did everything wrong. Which is mostly the point.
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Sep 11, 2022 01:26
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If doing Tain Hu is wrong then, heck, I don't want to be right. edit: this is an actual line from baru 4
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Sep 11, 2022 01:41
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Artefact Space by Miles Cameron is like, strange, because on one level it's your very standard quasi-mil-SF space opera about finding fulfillment by joining the navy, and on the other hand it's executed in an incredibly charming way, and doesn't come off as incredibly reactionary. Also the enemies seem legitimately threatening despite the main character being the standard mil-SF hot, slightly vunerable junior officer who is somehow superhumanly lucky and good. It's like the good version of one of those Baen novels from 20 years ago
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Sep 11, 2022 02:03
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I'm partway through tamsyn "Gideon" Muir's latest and it's vg, bits of it are going to be incomprehensibly kiwi to anyone else though lol (only incidental details, and you can probably work it all out from context though)
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Sep 11, 2022 02:16
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idiotsavant posted:I tried The Magicians and I dunno if I want to keep going past the first book. Almost every character seems to be some combination of self-absorbed, self-hating rear end in a top hat chasing their own annihilation and it was just kinda wearing. Are the sequels more of the same? Becoming not quite so self-absorbed is basically the protagonist's arc, but there is certainly more of it to come after book 1, along with the rape of another character (not by the protag). I don't recall it being gratuitous, in that it's all plot relevant and you can see what the author was going for (Narnia/ Hogwarts but with real people who occasionally have awful things happen to them), but it can make for a grind to read and could have been handled differently with hindsight. The TV show, on the other hand, was my favorite show currently on for a couple of years.
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Sep 11, 2022 03:43
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Welp, reread Traitor Baru, and it worked a lot better in my brain than the first time. Physical book instead of ebook, I always do better with rereads, more in the mood for the anxiety in the storytelling. Might hold off on Monster until after Nona the Ninth, switching from the middle of Monster on Tuesday might be a little jarring...
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Sep 11, 2022 03:49
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Fumblemouse posted:Becoming not quite so self-absorbed is basically the protagonist's arc I quite liked that it's a coming of age story which takes place in the decade when people actually do become properly mature, i.e. their 20s, not their teens.
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Sep 11, 2022 05:06
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