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pradmer
Mar 31, 2009

Follow me for more books on special!
Sword of Destiny (Witcher) by Andrzej Sapkowski - $2.99
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The Killing Moon (Dreamblood #1) by NK Jemisin - $2.99
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005SCS4IK/

The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson - $2.99
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Knight's Shadow (Greatcoats #2) by Sebastien de Castell - $0.99
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The Once and Future Witches by Alix E Harrow - $2.99
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RDM
Apr 6, 2009

I LOVE FINLAND AND ESPECIALLY FINLAND'S MILITARY ALLIANCES, GOOGLE FINLAND WORLD WAR 2 FOR MORE INFORMATION SLAVA UKRANI

pradmer posted:

A Deadly Education (Scholomance #1) by Naomi Novik - $2.99
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B083RZC8KQ/
I bought this pretty much at random. It's grimdark YA Harry Potter written first person where the narrator is the angstiest magic teenager (there is a *prophecy*).

There's nothing really wrong with it, but I'm probably not going to keep reading the series. The writing was fine and I would have loved it 20 years ago.

Chainclaw
Feb 14, 2009

I'm probably 20% into Harrow the Ninth and it's not really grabbing me as much as Gideon the Ninth did. I'll still stick with it, it's enough to keep me going, but Gideon was a more fun read so far. The pop culture references keep popping me out of both stories for sure, although they're more subtle so far in Harrow at least.

Also on the subject of Alastair Reynolds, I made the mistake of trying to read Chasm City after finishing the Revelation Space trilogy and found it really hard to engage with so I gave up really early into the book, probably under 10% through.

It wasn't Alastair Reynolds specific fatigue, because I read the Poseidon's Children trilogy and House of Suns after putting down Chasm City. Something about Chasm City just didn't grip me.

Ravenfood
Nov 4, 2011

RDM posted:

I bought this pretty much at random. It's grimdark YA Harry Potter written first person where the narrator is the angstiest magic teenager (there is a *prophecy*).

There's nothing really wrong with it, but I'm probably not going to keep reading the series. The writing was fine and I would have loved it 20 years ago.

I enjoyed the gimmick. It's basically set in a world where something like the Triwizard Cup or the absurd lethality of some parts of HP would make sense. In Harry Potter it's weird that a bunch of middle and high schoolers are wandering around a ton of incredibly lethal potions and dark wizards and creatures, and even weirder that a fun competition between schools throws children at dragons without warning or preparation to see what happens. And it's not like the kids are actually trained to a level where they could be expected to handle a dragon easily; everyone acknowledges that the tournament is dangerous as poo poo.

So scholomance just takes that and runs with it pretty far. It's definitely young adult fantasy, but its pretty funny in its own right and like I said, I liked the gimmick.

Also similarly enjoyed the bits where the protagonist keeps being annoyed by her affinity for mass death, domination, and destruction spells. It's funny.

Zorak of Michigan
Jun 10, 2006


Scholomance also takes an interesting turn in the third book.

NinjaDebugger
Apr 22, 2008


Zorak of Michigan posted:

Scholomance also takes an interesting turn in the third book.

It is a twist that is foreshadowed in the first book, telegraphed in the second, and finally hits in the third and when it hits, goddamn it's worth it, IMO.

RDM
Apr 6, 2009

I LOVE FINLAND AND ESPECIALLY FINLAND'S MILITARY ALLIANCES, GOOGLE FINLAND WORLD WAR 2 FOR MORE INFORMATION SLAVA UKRANI
Y'all are making me reconsider not reading the rest of the series.

It was just *so* teen angsty.

Ravenfood
Nov 4, 2011

RDM posted:

Y'all are making me reconsider not reading the rest of the series.

It was just *so* teen angsty.
Honestly, if you didn't like the angst it doesn't really change in that regard, but I didn't find it particularly angst to begin with.

There is a lot of "this system is hosed where the wealthy get a comparatively easy route out of this pure hellhole", yes, and it does kind of beat you over the head with that, but that wasn't a particularly bad thing, imo.

NinjaDebugger
Apr 22, 2008


Ravenfood posted:

Honestly, if you didn't like the angst it doesn't really change in that regard, but I didn't find it particularly angst to begin with.

There is a lot of "this system is hosed where the wealthy get a comparatively easy route out of this pure hellhole", yes, and it does kind of beat you over the head with that, but that wasn't a particularly bad thing, imo.

Just in case you didn't get the message in the first and second books, the third book has literal commuter wage slaves and magical dwellings built on the eternal suffering of a single child

I should be slightly more clear here about what I'm saying. The books are not angsty. The books are punk.

NinjaDebugger fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Dec 26, 2022

Kestral
Nov 24, 2000

Forum Veteran

NinjaDebugger posted:

Just in case you didn't get the message in the first and second books, the third book has literal commuter wage slaves and magical dwellings built on the eternal suffering of a single child

I should be slightly more clear here about what I'm saying. The books are not angsty. The books are punk.

I'm a bit over halfway through The Golden Enclaves, and sometimes I wonder if they are punk, because El is the most consistently wrong character I've encountered in a book in a long time, and I have the sneaking suspicion that she's just incapable of perceiving the world in a way that wouldn't get described as punk.

It's really incredible how consistently wrong she is about virtually everything that has to do with people or groups, leaping to conclusions that are disproved immediately, often on the same page she made this unshakeable assertion of fact. Yet when she jumps to other unsupported conclusions about how the world works, we're supposed to blindly trust the narration of this teenager who spent her whole life living in a yurt with a mom who she admits erases her "bad thoughts" with magic before being transferred to a hellschool. It's like if you took a a Welsh child who was raised in an isolated cult compound by anarchist hippies, sent them to a boarding high school that only taught Romance languages, and then were expected to take them seriously when they hold forth on the civics of Taiwan. There is absolutely no reason to trust El's point of view on anything, least of all the target of her grudges, and at this point I'm mostly reading the book to laugh at her and see what the final twist will be.

I think my favorite part of this book so far was El meeting first Orion's dad, then his mom, and watching her absolutely lose her poo poo because people weren't grieving in exactly the way she wanted them to. She immediately assigns the least-charitable motivations possible for why someone who just lost their kid might act this way, explicitly sees nothing of Orion in his dad despite the guy also being signposted with a similar kind of neurodivergence as his kid, and contorts herself wildly to make every extremely normal thing from the mom into indicators of Sauron-like malevolence.

It all rings very true for an angsty, poorly-adjusted teenager, though. El is an intolerable piece of poo poo to everyone around her, with the occasional exception of her allies, and is full of blinding certainty that she is Absolutely Correct About Everything while being insanely wrong all the time. As someone who spends a lot of time working with teens, yes, this is correct for the kind of person she's created here, well done Naomi Novik.

I can't really support El's hard-line stance against the enclaves even after the big reveal about how they're created. At least at the point in Book 3 where I'm at, it doesn't seem like there's really much choice. Being a wizard in this universe loving sucks, and they don't get to opt out of it: it's not like swearing off magic will protect you or your children, the mals come for you no matter what. You have something like an 80% or higher child mortality rate, why would you not sacrifice one person to cut that in half or better? As far as I can tell the problem isn't the enclave system, it's that there's not enough enclaves - which is the only place I can really agree with El, since her Golden Stones enclave-spamming ambition is objectively good and correct. These are people who do not live in the same moral universe as normal humans, because a sustained child mortality rate that high is beyond the experience of anyone, anywhere, anywhen, and you're going to see people do some fairly extreme things in order to mitigate it unless you start rewriting their ancient mammal brains with spellcraft.

Ravenfood
Nov 4, 2011

NinjaDebugger posted:

Just in case you didn't get the message in the first and second books, the third book has literal commuter wage slaves and magical dwellings built on the eternal suffering of a single child

I should be slightly more clear here about what I'm saying. The books are not angsty. The books are punk.

Yeah. I didn't read teenage angst into the books, but if you did, I dont think that will change in later books.

E: completed series spoilers: the Omelas enclaves aren't objectively better, either, just easier to make so they can set up more of them.

Ravenfood fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Dec 26, 2022

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









Chainclaw posted:

I'm probably 20% into Harrow the Ninth and it's not really grabbing me as much as Gideon the Ninth did. I'll still stick with it, it's enough to keep me going, but Gideon was a more fun read so far. The pop culture references keep popping me out of both stories for sure, although they're more subtle so far in Harrow at least.

Harrow Goes Places, and is definitely worth sticking with; the three books are all wildly different.

Having just read harrow again I can promise that nearly everything that seems wtf on your first read does make sense once you've read all three, and in a very satisfying way.

Danhenge
Dec 16, 2005

Kestral posted:

I can't really support El's hard-line stance against the enclaves even after the big reveal about how they're created. At least at the point in Book 3 where I'm at, it doesn't seem like there's really much choice. Being a wizard in this universe loving sucks, and they don't get to opt out of it: it's not like swearing off magic will protect you or your children, the mals come for you no matter what. You have something like an 80% or higher child mortality rate, why would you not sacrifice one person to cut that in half or better? As far as I can tell the problem isn't the enclave system, it's that there's not enough enclaves - which is the only place I can really agree with El, since her Golden Stones enclave-spamming ambition is objectively good and correct. These are people who do not live in the same moral universe as normal humans, because a sustained child mortality rate that high is beyond the experience of anyone, anywhere, anywhen, and you're going to see people do some fairly extreme things in order to mitigate it unless you start rewriting their ancient mammal brains with spellcraft.

Except that

the existence of the non-Golden Stones Enclaves doesn't just protect people inside of them but also makes the world outside it categorically worse and more dangerous.

Also, the idea that we can categorically do whatever we want that we believe will protect our own children no matter the consequences is itself a source of suffering for many people.

The other thing is that it's not shared equitably. All the people in charge have tons of space and expend lots of resources on beautiful things like that park instead of trying to share the safety around.

RDM
Apr 6, 2009

I LOVE FINLAND AND ESPECIALLY FINLAND'S MILITARY ALLIANCES, GOOGLE FINLAND WORLD WAR 2 FOR MORE INFORMATION SLAVA UKRANI
The sixteen year old girl doing the first person narration spends 20% of the book on high school cafeteria seating charts and why specific people are invited to sit at specific tables.

I feel angsty is fair.

I think this is why it helps to mix other first person pov for narration. If you go all in on a narrator with a real annoying character flaw, now that flaw is tied to the novel, not just the character.

RDM fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Dec 26, 2022

Leng
May 13, 2006

One song / Glory
One song before I go / Glory
One song to leave behind


No other road
No other way
No day but today

RDM posted:

I bought this pretty much at random. It's grimdark YA Harry Potter written first person where the narrator is the angstiest magic teenager (there is a *prophecy*).

There's nothing really wrong with it, but I'm probably not going to keep reading the series. The writing was fine and I would have loved it 20 years ago.

Ravenfood posted:

It's definitely young adult fantasy, but its pretty funny in its own right and like I said, I liked the gimmick.

The funny thing is Scholomance wasn't intended to be YA. Novik is on record as saying that she thought the people who would enjoy it the most are those in their 30s (though I can't find that particular interview right now) but the first book got nominated for a YA awards and now everybody thinks it's YA.

RDM posted:

The sixteen year old girl doing the first person narration spends 20% of the book on high school cafeteria seating charts and why specific people are invited to sit at specific tables.

I feel angsty is fair.

I think this is why it helps to mix other first person pov for narration. If you go all in on a narrator with a real annoying character flaw, now that flaw is tied to the novel, not just the character.

El's narration is pretty repetitive, I'll grant you, but I wouldn't describe it as angst. She's pissed (and understandably so) and cafeteria seating arrangements are vital to survival, not to mention important for future prospects. I enjoyed Scholomance for a fun take on what if Hogwarts were actually real but if you're not enjoying the narration and El's character, no amount of plot is going to make you change your mind. (But the payoffs in the Golden Enclaves are pretty awesome.)

To contribute: there's a huge indie fantasy sale being run on r/fantasy right now with a whole bunch of books either $0.99 or free. YMMV as to quality but there are a fair few Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off finalists and semi-finalists in the list: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/zvmmxt/over_450_books_free_or_099_almost_175/

I'm snagging these two which have been on my list for a while:

The Sword of Kaigen by M.L. Wang - $0.99
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MNWKF2M/

Threadlight trilogy boxset by Zack Argyle - $0.99
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BH3SW5XF

SimonChris
Apr 24, 2008

The Baron's daughter is missing, and you are the man to find her. No problem. With your inexhaustible arsenal of hard-boiled similes, there is nothing you can't handle.
Grimey Drawer
If people are looking for some grimdark magic school reading, I highly recommend the German classic Krabat and the Sorcerer's Mill. I loved that book as a kid. The children are literally taught black magic by Satan. This book does not pull any punches.

SimonChris fucked around with this message at 22:16 on Dec 26, 2022

Ravenfood
Nov 4, 2011

Leng posted:

The funny thing is Scholomance wasn't intended to be YA. Novik is on record as saying that she thought the people who would enjoy it the most are those in their 30s (though I can't find that particular interview right now) but the first book got nominated for a YA awards and now everybody thinks it's YA.


Would it be fair to describe it as YA written for adults?

Kestral
Nov 24, 2000

Forum Veteran

Ravenfood posted:

Would it be fair to describe it as YA written for adults?

Utterly fair, except that the prose is indistinguishable from YA written (ostensibly) for young readers, and if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.

Leng
May 13, 2006

One song / Glory
One song before I go / Glory
One song to leave behind


No other road
No other way
No day but today

Ravenfood posted:

Would it be fair to describe it as YA written for adults?

Counterpoint: I think most readers of YA are actually adults :v:

Kestral posted:

Utterly fair, except that the prose is indistinguishable from YA written (ostensibly) for young readers, and if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.

Prose is not the barometer I would have used as a determinant though?

Perhaps I'm just sensitive to fantasy written by female authors being lumped into YA when it was not intended to be YA. Pretty sure both The Poppy War and Jade City were somehow shelved as YA by some places despite both of those books being very much NOT YA simply on the basis of "female author" and "young protagonist/s". Both written in third person too, not even the first person POV that is common across most YA books these days.

Copernic
Sep 16, 2006

...A Champion, who by mettle of his glowing personal charm alone, saved the universe...
I finished The Spear Cuts Through Water and it was excellent. Perhaps there will come a day when Fantasy Epic but Gay and Witty becomes old but it is not this book. Most special of all, like finding a diamond at the beach, it is a stylistically original fantasy epic. It has a framing device that briefly seems like it'll be overwrought and is then brilliant and novel.

Superb book. Everyone should read it instead of debating What Is YA again.

THIS BOOK IS FOR YOU IF: you enjoy gross, creepy psychic tortoises.

Copernic fucked around with this message at 02:30 on Dec 27, 2022

cptn_dr
Sep 7, 2011

Seven for beauty that blossoms and dies


Copernic posted:

I finished The Spear Cuts Through Water and it was excellent. Perhaps there will come a day when Fantasy Epic but Gay and Witty becomes old but it is not this book. Most special of all, like finding a diamond at the beach, it is a stylistically original fantasy epic. It has a framing device that briefly seems like it'll be overwrought and is then brilliant and novel.

Superb book. Everyone should read it instead of debating What Is YA again.

I found The Spear Cuts Through Water really hard going for whatever reason (I think probably because I had it out from the library and that made me feel pressured), so I'm going to buy a copy and re-read it at a more leisurely pace, because yeah it was fantastic and I want to appreciate it better. Definitely seconding this recommendation.

It took me a while to work out what it was going for with the framing device, but when it all fell into place I was delighted by it.

(This was going to be a post about how I still can't define YA neatly, except for "well I know it when I see it" but I'd much rather talk about Good Books)

neongrey
Feb 28, 2007

Plaguing your posts with incidental music.
picked up vita nostra the other day and inhaled it and am simultaneously annoyed that the translation of the sequel is not out yet and excited for that it appears to be out soon, literally everything I wanted from a book at the time i picked it up

fuckin love books about words

Everyone
Sep 6, 2019

by sebmojo

Leng posted:

Counterpoint: I think most readers of YA are actually adults :v:

Prose is not the barometer I would have used as a determinant though?

Perhaps I'm just sensitive to fantasy written by female authors being lumped into YA when it was not intended to be YA. Pretty sure both The Poppy War and Jade City were somehow shelved as YA by some places despite both of those books being very much NOT YA simply on the basis of "female author" and "young protagonist/s". Both written in third person too, not even the first person POV that is common across most YA books these days.

Well, hell, by that criteria given that you are a female author and Rahelu is a youngish protagonist, then Petition is YA, but I never saw it as that.

I mean, Rahelu routinely faces choices like, "Do I wear the less destroyed shoes and let my mother get blisters so I can fit in with this place that is our family's only hope to claw our way out of poverty or not?" Anyone who has to make choices like that has already "come of age" and grown the gently caress up.

Rahelu's not worried about which cute boy will take her to the prom. She's worried about how to keep her family from going through the plot from Grave of the Fireflies.

D-Pad
Jun 28, 2006

I'm bored of "plucky salvage crew finds macguffin and does stuff" book 3,635. Looking for recommendations for what I would call "big idea" sci-fi. Something that starts off with an interesting big idea about how the setting works and then tells a good story based on the consequences of that big idea being a thing. The Zones of Thought series by Vernor Vinge is a good example of this, galaxy is divided up into zones that have upper limits on cognition and as a result we get really interesting stuff like the dog hive-mind race. Another example would be something like The Long Earth where there are an infinite series of parallel earths but you have to travel them in sequential order and what might happen if humanity was suddenly given this ability. Riverworld is another good example.

They are often large in scope but don't have to be. I do prefer big scope though, the bigger the better. If it is a well known one I've probably read it, but maybe not! Good chance anything newer than 2018 or so I haven't read unless it made a big splash though. Somebody help me my reading list is drying up.

D-Pad fucked around with this message at 03:14 on Dec 27, 2022

StrixNebulosa
Feb 14, 2012

You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

D-Pad posted:

I'm bored of "plucky salvage crew finds macguffin and does stuff" book 3,635. Looking for recommendations for what I would call "big idea" sci-fi. Something that starts off with an interesting big idea about how the setting works and then tells a good story based on the consequences of that big idea being a thing. The Zones of Thought series by Vernor Vinge is a good example of this, galaxy is divided up into zones that have upper limits on cognition and as a result we get really interesting stuff like the dog hive-mind race. Another example would be something like The Long Earth where there are an infinite series of parallel earths but you have to travel them in sequential order and what might happen if humanity was suddenly given this ability. Riverworld is another good example.

They are often large in scope but don't have to be. I do prefer big scope though, the bigger the better. If it is a well known one I've probably read it, but maybe not! Good chance anything newer than 2018 or so I haven't read unless it made a big splash though. Somebody help me my reading list is drying up.

You’ve read Alastair Reynolds and CJ Cherryh yeah?

D-Pad
Jun 28, 2006

StrixNebulosa posted:

You’ve read Alastair Reynolds and CJ Cherryh yeah?

Yes, recently finished House of Suns and really enjoyed it.

Kestral
Nov 24, 2000

Forum Veteran

Danhenge posted:

Except that

the existence of the non-Golden Stones Enclaves doesn't just protect people inside of them but also makes the world outside it categorically worse and more dangerous.

Also, the idea that we can categorically do whatever we want that we believe will protect our own children no matter the consequences is itself a source of suffering for many people.


Sure, but it's not about whether the enclaves existing is right or wrong, as even El herself admits eventually, about 2/3rds of the way through Golden Enclaves. It's about the fact that the enclaves represent the only hope of not needing every woman to bear ten children, at least eight of whom will die a hideous death, just to keep your population from plummeting. There's nothing humans won't do to mitigate a scenario like that, whether it inflicts suffering on others or not isn't going to be part of their moral calculus. El wants to take what she perceives as the high ground without compromise every time, because she was raised by a moral absolutist, and that's a very Teen thing to want, but it's also a nonsense fairytale: the real world demands you make compromises, even if you're a Tertiary Order Entity, and people who aren't wielders of godlike destructive power are going to be performing a different moral calculus. They will demand a world where more than two children out of ten survive puberty, and if you can't give it to them, they'll find someone who can, at any cost.

Overall, you save more wizard lives (the only ones that are relevant here, since mundanes are blissfully unaffected by all of this) with the enclave system than you do without it. The people outside the enclaves Should Have Enclaves, at just about any cost, but there's no point in railing against the existence of the one thing that keeps your species going, at least until you have a viable alternative.

quote:

The other thing is that it's not shared equitably. All the people in charge have tons of space and expend lots of resources on beautiful things like that park instead of trying to share the safety around.

That isn't supported by the text. The enclavers are advantaged, but aren't actually in charge of anything but their own enclaves. The London park is common ground for enclave residents, and space is at a terrible premium for everyone in all the enclaves. The enclaves themselves can't consist of nothing but grim Soviet housing blocks, because again, people won't tolerate it. Even the best-off enclavers are explicitly described as having worse living conditions than their mundane equivalents, they're not living like kings in there. If you strip even the illusion of open space from the One Place On Earth They Can Be Safe just so you can increase the population density a little more, the results are not going to be pretty, but they will be predictable. The solution is more enclaves because under the current constraints of the setting, it's the only way forward that actually acknowledges how human nature works.

pseudorandom name
May 6, 2007

It is weird how often "Omelas is good, actually" comes up in this thread.

Kestral
Nov 24, 2000

Forum Veteran

D-Pad posted:

I'm bored of "plucky salvage crew finds macguffin and does stuff" book 3,635. Looking for recommendations for what I would call "big idea" sci-fi. Something that starts off with an interesting big idea about how the setting works and then tells a good story based on the consequences of that big idea being a thing. The Zones of Thought series by Vernor Vinge is a good example of this, galaxy is divided up into zones that have upper limits on cognition and as a result we get really interesting stuff like the dog hive-mind race. Another example would be something like The Long Earth where there are an infinite series of parallel earths but you have to travel them in sequential order and what might happen if humanity was suddenly given this ability. Riverworld is another good example.

They are often large in scope but don't have to be. I do prefer big scope though, the bigger the better. If it is a well known one I've probably read it, but maybe not! Good chance anything newer than 2018 or so I haven't read unless it made a big splash though. Somebody help me my reading list is drying up.

I'm deep into Fine Structure, the same author behind goon favorite There Is No Antimemetics Division, and its fits this bill. It starts out rough - its early parts were short stories written years apart, when the author was nowhere near as good as they get later - and it's definitely a journeyman work compared to Antimemetics Division, but it is Big Ideas SF to the max.

The more traditional recommendation would be Stephen Baxter's Xeelee Sequence, which has a scope about as broad as it is possible to get, and genuinely alien aliens.

Kestral
Nov 24, 2000

Forum Veteran

pseudorandom name posted:

It is weird how often "Omelas is good, actually" comes up in this thread.

Omelas is a horrifying nightmare because everyone there has a choice, and the choice they make is, "let one innocent suffer so that we can be comfortable and happy." The enclaver choice is, let one person + their victims be nightmarishly tortured forever so that we and all our descendants aren't subjected to a >80% child mortality rate. These things are not equivalent. The enclaver system loving sucks, but everything about being a wizard in that setting loving sucks, and there's no better alternative since Golden Enclave building techniques were abandoned because people who can make them are once-in-a-thousand-years miraculous talents.

Kestral fucked around with this message at 03:41 on Dec 27, 2022

pseudorandom name
May 6, 2007

Kestral posted:

Omelas is a horrifying nightmare because everyone there has a choice, and the choice they make is, "let one innocent suffer so that we can be comfortable and happy." The enclaver choice is, let one person + their victims be nightmarishly tortured forever so that we and all our descendants aren't subjected to a >80% child mortality rate. These things are not equivalent. The enclaver system loving sucks, but everything about being a wizard in that setting loving sucks, and there's no better alternative since Golden Enclave building techniques were abandoned because people who can make them are once-in-a-thousand-years miraculous talents.

The Golden Enclaves can be built by choruses my dude, they just didn't bother to look for an alternative because selling on the Omelas solution was very profitable and by the time the buyers knew what they had purchased they were already deep in the sunk cost fallacy.

Also, if your species is wholly dependent on unspeakable evil, then you deserve extinction. Especially when Mundane humanity is right there, mostly indistinguishable from wizards in nearly every way, and not intrinsically evil monsters.

D-Pad
Jun 28, 2006

Kestral posted:

The more traditional recommendation would be Stephen Baxter's Xeelee Sequence, which has a scope about as broad as it is possible to get, and genuinely alien aliens.

Ah I had forgotten about this, but weirdly only book 5, 8, and 9 are on kindle.

Everyone
Sep 6, 2019

by sebmojo

pseudorandom name posted:

The Golden Enclaves can be built by choruses my dude, they just didn't bother to look for an alternative because selling on the Omelas solution was very profitable and by the time the buyers knew what they had purchased they were already deep in the sunk cost fallacy.

Also, if your species is wholly dependent on unspeakable evil, then you deserve extinction. Especially when Mundane humanity is right there, mostly indistinguishable from wizards in nearly every way, and not intrinsically evil monsters.


So yeah, based on all this discussion, I'm going to need to check out the Scholomance series next.

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound
Yall are selling me but it's Naomi Novik?? I've been burned by ms. " great concept, shitt execution " before

Zore
Sep 21, 2010
willfully illiterate, aggressively miserable sourpuss whose sole raison d’etre is to put other people down for liking the wrong things

Kestral posted:

Omelas is a horrifying nightmare because everyone there has a choice, and the choice they make is, "let one innocent suffer so that we can be comfortable and happy." The enclaver choice is, let one person + their victims be nightmarishly tortured forever so that we and all our descendants aren't subjected to a >80% child mortality rate. These things are not equivalent. The enclaver system loving sucks, but everything about being a wizard in that setting loving sucks, and there's no better alternative since Golden Enclave building techniques were abandoned because people who can make them are once-in-a-thousand-years miraculous talents.

Have you finished the last book?

because democratizing the Golden Enclave technique to be a community thing instead of a 1 in a billion talent is the entire point. And it was always possible, people just didn't do it because the Omelas version was both easier and deliberately strangled the Golden Enclaves out.

Also the Omelas enclaves are exacerbating the issue by creating even bigger unkillable monsters


Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Yall are selling me but it's Naomi Novik?? I've been burned by ms. " great concept, shitt execution " before

Have you read her post-Temeraire stuff? I don't think her work in general suffers from the same issues that plagued that series, especially as she's mostly done singular books since.

Zore fucked around with this message at 04:30 on Dec 27, 2022

a computing pun
Jan 1, 2013
poster, encountering a series of extremely clear metaphors for capitalism, systemic economic inequality, global warming, and how even morally good policies that save the lives of children result in injustice and exploitation when their benefits and costs aren't distributed equally, while reading a transparent power-fantasy in which the main character has the individual capability to convince and/or coerce others to cooperate in the collective interest, and where, in every case that she succeeds at uniting people, a better outcome is achieved for all involved than would've been possible under the old system of individual self-interest and in which the main antagonists are the entrenched elite who benefit the most from the existing system, and who are both compelled to keep the true human cost of the system secret from those who are less deeply involved and to protect their own monopoly on power by eliminating any other way of organising society that doesn't depend on them

Kestral posted:

"wow, the main character is so wrong. why doesn't she realise that a better world truly is not possible?"

Leng
May 13, 2006

One song / Glory
One song before I go / Glory
One song to leave behind


No other road
No other way
No day but today

Everyone posted:

Well, hell, by that criteria given that you are a female author and Rahelu is a youngish protagonist, then Petition is YA, but I never saw it as that.

...

Anyone who has to make choices like that has already "come of age" and grown the gently caress up.

Yeeeeeeep. Petition is new adult/adult but it doesn't stop people from classifying it YA for the abovementioned reasons.

Everyone posted:

So yeah, based on all this discussion, I'm going to need to check out the Scholomance series next.

Definitely should! It's a lot of fun.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Yall are selling me but it's Naomi Novik?? I've been burned by ms. " great concept, shitt execution " before

Zore posted:

Have you read her post-Temeraire stuff? I don't think her work in general suffers from the same issues that plagued that series, especially as she's mostly done singular books since.

There's a great interview Christopher Paolini did with her on his YouTube channel where she talked about how she felt so exhausted and trapped by writing a long series because she couldn't retcon anything if she thought of a better way to write it (she's a discovery writer) hence why she's now gravitating towards standalones and also why Scholomance was sold as a duology and the publisher agreed to let her write BOTH manuscripts first. The second manuscript got too big and that's how we ended up with a trilogy instead.

Jedit
Dec 10, 2011

Proudly supporting vanilla legends 1994-2014

Leng posted:

The funny thing is Scholomance wasn't intended to be YA. Novik is on record as saying that she thought the people who would enjoy it the most are those in their 30s (though I can't find that particular interview right now) but the first book got nominated for a YA awards and now everybody thinks it's YA.

She might as well just have said "I'm writing this for the people who read Harry Potter as kids and still read it". It's not like she hasn't literally stated that her Scholomance is based on Hogwarts.

She's also got some balls outright calling her young teenage girl learning to control dangerous psychic magical powers "El".

Siivola
Dec 23, 2012

How is Paolini doing these days? I only remember Eragon being dog poo poo awful, but that was twenty years ago.

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Runcible Cat
May 28, 2007

Ignoring this post

Siivola posted:

How is Paolini doing these days? I only remember Eragon being dog poo poo awful, but that was twenty years ago.

Grew a pretty nice beard, wrote a space opera that Tor pushed heavily but I've no idea if it's actually any good and no interest in finding out.

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