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Yeah the only one we can say for sure is a terminally online kiwi shitposter is John "Livestreaming necromancy on Twitch from a shed in the Wairarapa" Gaius. We have no idea how online the rest of them were. (Nona the Ninth spoiler)
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Oct 3, 2022 21:44
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https://twitter.com/jeffvandermeer/status/1576972276968214528
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Oct 3, 2022 22:28
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I thought John the emperor was the worst part of Harrow the Ninth, so it sounds like reading Nona the novel will aggravate me severely. Giving M John Harrison's work another pass. He comes off as an enormous idiot in interviews, and I tend to prefer the stuff he disavows, but he's still one of the better British New Wave scifi authors out there.
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Oct 3, 2022 22:45
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quantumfoam posted:I thought John the emperor was the worst part of Harrow the Ninth, so it sounds like reading Nona the novel will aggravate me severely. John features in occasional interludes but is absent from the majority of the book, so you should be fine.
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Oct 3, 2022 23:14
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Groke posted:Oh yeah, he's doing a prequel series? I actually enjoyed the main series right to the end (amazingly, it DID end). And yeah, the author quite effectively shits all over the more fash-y tropes you often find in milSF, "hard men making hard choices" and all. I was especially fond of the bit with the death kudzu they found growing on some island, which could have been used as a bioweapon to permanently ruin the enemy lands, and how there was only one guy who really wanted to use it, and everyone else thought he was a dick. I'm only partway through book 2 of the prequel series, and it's bringing up and answering a lot of questions about the Dominion and the New United States.
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Oct 4, 2022 03:02
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After an unexpected delay, I've been into The Night-Bird's Feather by Jenna Moran, and man is it good. It's not what I expected, and the Amazon description is... technically accurate to the plot, but not at all representative of the reading experience. I'm about halfway through, and so far it's a series of linked short stories with a shared character who is sometimes the PoV and sometimes not, all of which have a delightful vibe that reminds me of Lud-in-the-Mist more than anything else: something like a fairytale, but with a bit more of a wink and a nod, a sense of humor and a warmth you wouldn't necessarily find in the Slavic legends that apparently inspired it. At this point I'd give the short pitch as, "Studio Ghibli doing a story about the life and times of a girl from a family of 1300s AD Eastern European refugees to a sunless land outside the world, whose sacred duties involve defending the community from dream-devouring witches." It's much more allegorical than I expected, which I'm not generally fond of, but can tolerate here because it's done well. I'm one of those philistines who isn't looking for higher meaning in fiction, I just want beautiful (or at least above-average) prose about interesting people, places, and situations, and yeah the core of the narrative is A Story About The Trans Experience wearing a mask of the fantastic - but the mask is beautifully wrought, so I'm here for it. If that sounds appealing to you, then it's absolutely worth checking out: she mentioned on her twitter that Night-Bird is a book that some people might need, and I'm starting to see what she means. If you share my allergy to allegory, it's probably still worth checking out if you can appreciate the cool story about heron-witches, dream magic, and Eastern European cooking. I vaguely recall something from years ago about Moran being synaesthetic, and if that's true it absolutely shows up here: I'm thinking particularly of her descriptions of Outside, the seething chaos beyond the world. I might be wrong on this - Rand Brittain will correct me if so, I imagine? - but if that's accurate, then Night-Bird has a really fascinating depiction of the synaesthetic experience, albeit briefly and couched in metaphor: The Night-Bird's Feather posted:In time the deep Outside lost its regularity. The exacting geometry that characterized the world gave way to psychedelia. Sensations were no longer measured in neat, clean lines and primary colors. Instead they took the form of starbursts, wavering lines of light, and pulsations that came and went against the dark. Experience became not merely scanty but inherently confusing. In short: book good so far, can recommend, and would be interested in hearing what other folks have to say about it, since I know there's at least a couple people in here who said they were picking it up.
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Oct 4, 2022 03:43
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I read a Jenna Moran book long ago. I think it was Fable of the Swan but I'm not sure. It was set in a highschool and involved the main character literally giving her heart to the boy she liked, with predictably unhappy results. I'm pretty sure it was good? Night-Bird's Feather is definitely going on my TBR list.
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Oct 4, 2022 07:47
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quantumfoam posted:I thought John the emperor was the worst part of Harrow the Ninth, so it sounds like reading Nona the novel will aggravate me severely. I was quite surprised to see M John Harrison pop up as a Booker judge this year, although I don't think he's a bad choice. I imagine he had some influence in getting Treacle Walker onto the shortlist.
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Oct 4, 2022 09:24
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Speaking of Jenna Moran: https://twitter.com/JennaKMoran/status/1577071407636193280 https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/jenna-katerin-moran/magical-bears-in-the-context-of-contemporary-polit/ This is free on Kindle, so if you are on the fence about the novel, you can check it out.
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Oct 4, 2022 09:54
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I'm definitely not on the fence about a book with a name like that.
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Oct 4, 2022 10:38
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What's nbf mean?
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Oct 4, 2022 11:08
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:What's nbf mean? National Book Foundation. One of its founders was Virginia Kirkus (as in Kirkus Reviews) and they do a very prestigious set of National Book Awards Kesper North fucked around with this message at 11:35 on Oct 4, 2022 |
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Oct 4, 2022 11:32
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:What's nbf mean? The Night-Bird's Feather. The novel people have been discussing above.
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Oct 4, 2022 11:37
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Just finished reading The Monster and The Tyrant Baru Cormorant back to back and I'm still processing it so I don't have anything interesting to say but I did want to say that these are some extremely good books.
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Oct 4, 2022 13:44
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Recently I have been reading a lot of award winning books, Gideon included, where the characters are “incidentally lesbian". I guess that's important representation, and maybe a neccesary response to fetishization. It's also pretty boring.
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Oct 4, 2022 15:23
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thotsky posted:Recently I have been reading a lot of award winning books, Gideon included, where the characters are “incidentally lesbian". I guess that's important representation, and maybe a neccesary response to fetishization. It's also pretty boring. Idgi. What's boring about this?
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Oct 4, 2022 15:30
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A friend recommended Sanderson's Stormlight series to me. I trust him, his recommendations had not yet failed me, and I liked how Sanderson got Wheel of Time moving again and then finished it off, so I started it. And man I am just blown away by the number of words that have the quality of bad first-novel about them. Shardblade, shardbearer, shardplate, voidbringer, oathpact (seriously, oathpact. That's just redundantly redundant), *spren, highstorm, *ever*storm, clearchip, so on and so on and so on. And the book is very long for the amount of things that happen in it. Does this series get better, or do I just chalk this one up as a miss and let it go?
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Oct 4, 2022 15:35
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thotsky posted:Recently I have been reading a lot of award winning books, Gideon included, where the characters are “incidentally lesbian". I guess that's important representation, and maybe a neccesary response to fetishization. It's also pretty boring. wait, what Okay like, I can respect not wanting [thing] in a book, so if you're finding the presence of lesbians to be boring, read different books! But overall having more rep in mainstream books is really, really cool.
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Oct 4, 2022 15:48
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Oftentimes it is a completely throw away plot point that has no, or at most incidental in-fiction value or consequence. I prefer stuff that is set up in my fiction to have more of a payoff. I get that it is hard; make it too subtle and people might assume according to the heterosexuality is default trope, but having like "oh, and by the way I am gay, but you are from a seductively evil empire so we can never be together" or "oh, I am gay and you like me, but now I am dead" in the last chapter is very unsatisfying to me.
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Oct 4, 2022 15:51
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thotsky posted:Recently I have been reading a lot of award winning books, Gideon included, where the characters are “incidentally lesbian". I guess that's important representation, and maybe a neccesary response to fetishization. It's also pretty boring. thotsky posted:Oftentimes it is a completely throw away plot point that has no, or at most incidental in-fiction value or consequence. I prefer stuff that is set up in my fiction to have more of a payoff. I get that it is hard; make it too subtle and people might assume according to the heterosexuality is default trope, but having like "oh, and by the way I am gay, but you are from a seductively evil empire so we can never be together" or "oh, I am gay and you like me, but now I am dead" in the last chapter is very unsatisfying to me. Well, I'm a straight white guy but the whole of Gideon felt pretty gay (non-pejorative) to me. I'm not sure I'd call it throwaway there. From my perspective a lot of what I see in SFF has the thread running through pretty clearly. It's handled with more or less finesse, but it's rarely quite as minimal as you say. Re: Gideon If "oh, I am gay and you like me, but now I am dead" was a reference to Gideon I think that's a pretty bad misread of what was going on between Harrow and Gideon at the end. They aren't and weren't romantic, that was a purely "family" thing.
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Oct 4, 2022 16:15
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Phanatic posted:A friend recommended Sanderson's Stormlight series to me. I trust him, his recommendations had not yet failed me, and I liked how Sanderson got Wheel of Time moving again and then finished it off, so I started it. Let it go. Your friend had a good streak, but he failed you here.
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Oct 4, 2022 16:45
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thotsky posted:I guess that's important representation, and maybe a neccesary response to fetishization. It's also pretty boring. That's been the case for most fantasy books coming out (ayyy) in the past few years.
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Oct 4, 2022 16:47
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thotsky posted:Oftentimes it is a completely throw away plot point that has no, or at most incidental in-fiction value or consequence. I prefer stuff that is set up in my fiction to have more of a payoff. The fact of someone being heterosexual is also usually "a completely throw away plot point that has no, or at most incidental in-fiction value or consequence", something just thrown in to add a bit of flavour to the character with no bearing on the broader plot. Personally, I quite like seeing an increase in books where someone being queer can also be used as that sort of incidental flavouring rather than something that the book needs to put front and center, and I'm not at all a fan of the implication that authors need to justify the inclusion of queer characters in a way they are never called to do for cishet ones. Danhenge posted:Re: Gideon If "oh, I am gay and you like me, but now I am dead" was a reference to Gideon I think that's a pretty bad misread of what was going on between Harrow and Gideon at the end. They aren't and weren't romantic, that was a purely "family" thing. As a big ol' lesbian this read on Gideon is hilarious to me
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Oct 4, 2022 16:58
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Phanatic posted:A friend recommended Sanderson's Stormlight series to me. I trust him, his recommendations had not yet failed me, and I liked how Sanderson got Wheel of Time moving again and then finished it off, so I started it. Everything you referred to in that list is something specific to the setting (the oathpact is a very specific thing) so you might as well give up because expecting otherwise would be like watching s sci-fi show and getting upset at technobabble.
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Oct 4, 2022 16:59
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I finished Three Body Problem. That was interesting, though it has the classic trilogy problem of just feeling like a long first act. Overall I guess it was ok? I suppose I'm a little bit disappointed. I had expected a mind blowing story based on what internet people have said
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Oct 4, 2022 17:27
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The pit of 'David Eddings was an awful person" was already pretty damned deep, and yet here we are again, delving another few shovelfuls farther into it.
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Oct 4, 2022 18:08
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ToxicFrog posted:The fact of someone being heterosexual is also usually "a completely throw away plot point that has no, or at most incidental in-fiction value or consequence", something just thrown in to add a bit of flavour to the character with no bearing on the broader plot. Personally, I quite like seeing an increase in books where someone being queer can also be used as that sort of incidental flavouring rather than something that the book needs to put front and center, and I'm not at all a fan of the implication that authors need to justify the inclusion of queer characters in a way they are never called to do for cishet ones. As someone who's been listening to lesbians talk about the locked tomb, yeah
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Oct 4, 2022 18:13
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Evil Fluffy posted:Everything you referred to in that list is something specific to the setting (the oathpact is a very specific thing) so you might as well give up because expecting otherwise would be like watching s sci-fi show and getting upset at technobabble. You can have fictional ideas in your setting without using Games Workshop style nounverbs and compounds for everything. Disco Elysium is great at this. It's so good at it that sometimes it renames stuff from the real world just to sound more evocative and cool. The pale (and the paledrivers), porch collapse, entreponetics, the Moralintern, motor carriages and isolas and radiofronts and Jamrock Shuffle and the Volumetric poo poo Compressor and the Volta do Mar. It's a neologism masterclass.
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Oct 4, 2022 19:02
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General Battuta posted:Dramatises personae are for jogging the reader's memory when they're coming back to a series. You don't flip to them (or anything) mid book, ideally, you read them up front and they kind of rattle out the cobwebs a bit. Ideally they're a bit entetaining.
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Oct 4, 2022 19:12
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Foxfire_ posted:Nona uses it's dramatis personae interestingly. "Dogs to invite to birthday party" is the first and largest section and the human guest list is mostly bare names, so it's a very bad character reference, but pretty good at immediately establishing tone and Nona's character The secret subtitle to Nona’s gotta be noodle saves the world 
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Oct 4, 2022 19:17
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thotsky posted:Recently I have been reading a lot of award winning books, Gideon included, where the characters are “incidentally lesbian". I guess that's important representation, and maybe a neccesary response to fetishization. It's also pretty boring. Agreed. If sexuality is mentioned at all, it needs to be accompanied by hardcore loving.
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Oct 4, 2022 19:41
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Still kind of boggling at the idea that Gideon is "incidentally lesbian" and not "a book absolutely overflowing with lesbian energy."
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Oct 4, 2022 19:50
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Danhenge posted:Well, I'm a straight white guy but the whole of Gideon felt pretty gay (non-pejorative) to me. I'm not sure I'd call it throwaway there. From my perspective a lot of what I see in SFF has the thread running through pretty clearly. It's handled with more or less finesse, but it's rarely quite as minimal as you say. Re: Gideon If "oh, I am gay and you like me, but now I am dead" was a reference to Gideon I think that's a pretty bad misread of what was going on between Harrow and Gideon at the end. They aren't and weren't romantic, that was a purely "family" thing. Your PhD in history is showing.
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Oct 4, 2022 19:57
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Lot of weird energy in this thread right now. Going to banish the bad vibes with some good takes Brandon Sanderson writes books that read like USA Today articles. Basically narrative gruel. Dreadful stuff. Kate Atkinson has a new book out. I keep hoping for something that’ll make me feel the way Life After Life did but that never happens! Maybe this new book will do it 😔 I picked the Elric omnibus back up. It is still perfect. Nona was great.
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Oct 4, 2022 20:08
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The Sweet Hereafter posted:I was quite surprised to see M John Harrison pop up as a Booker judge this year, although I don't think he's a bad choice. I imagine he had some influence in getting Treacle Walker onto the shortlist. Speaking of Treacle Walker, I read it in a single sitting last night and it was basically perfect. I think I'm going to need to read it again a couple of times to really get it, but what a book. Sort of the peak that Alan Garner has been building up to over his entire career. If you've ever read and enjoyed an Alan Garner book, you owe it to yourself to read Treacle Walker. If you haven't read any Garner, you should probably read some because you're missing out. Treacle Walker might not be the best starting point, though, it really does feel like a thematic capstone to everything else he's written. Red Shift, The Owl Service, or The Weirdstone of Brisingamen are probably your best bets, if you don't mind children's books. I haven't read any of his adult novels other than Treacle Walker though, so maybe someone else can give a specific suggestion there.
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Oct 4, 2022 20:17
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Huh, Alan Garner is still alive and writing? I'd assumed he had passed away long ago. I agree with your recommendations, although The Owl Service is better if you've read the Mabinogion, or at least "Llew Llaw Gyffes," first.
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Oct 4, 2022 20:28
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Gato The Elder posted:Lot of weird energy in this thread right now. Going to banish the bad vibes with some good takes I was warned earlier in the thread that Elric didn't hold up, so I was holding off on reading it. I may need to take a dive into it afterward I finish Harrow the Ninth.
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Oct 4, 2022 20:53
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Elric is great, not Moorcock's best (because it isn't about time travel and ennui), but still pretty drat great.
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Oct 4, 2022 21:06
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I think the secret to reading the Elric books is *not* treating them like a big series that you need to read all of in one go. They really are multiple self contained stories and it’s fine (preferable) to treat them as such.
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Oct 4, 2022 21:15
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PeterWeller posted:Elric is great, not Moorcock's best (because it isn't about time travel and ennui), but still pretty drat great. This is true! but if, for example, you had recently finished The Long Ships and wanted more of that vibe but with a weird fantasy setting, then I can’t think of anything better than reading some Elric
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Oct 4, 2022 21:19
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