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StrixNebulosa posted:While I was sorting books last night, I realized that I own like, ten of Sheri S Tepper's stuff - Gate to Woman's Country, Fresco, much more. Grass and gate to women's country are the big ones and they never clicked with me, especially as a teenaged boy when I read them. The obsession with fox hunting and and anti homosexual eugenics didn't make sense to me then and I haven't revisited anything of hers since. I think this obituary is pretty good at explaining the mixed feelings https://www.npr.org/2016/11/05/500668072/remembering-sheri-s-tepper-eco-feminist-sci-fi-firebrand
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Mar 31, 2023 23:10
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anilEhilated posted:The Sad Tale of Brothers Grossbart!
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Mar 31, 2023 23:12
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StrixNebulosa posted:While I was sorting books last night, I realized that I own like, ten of Sheri S Tepper's stuff - Gate to Woman's Country, Fresco, much more. I liked her True Game / Mavin Manyshaped / Jinian Footseer books but like Runcible Cat said, there's some iffy bits, altho Runcible Cat posted:And the point of this lesson, in case you were wondering, is that not everything human-shaped or with human parents is actually human. I don't remember the details but something along these lines is a big plot point, sometimes babies are born without a soul and 'midwives' are supposed to find and kill them at birth, anyway one slipped past in a powerful family, and consequences. I also remember enjoying her 'Northshore' / 'Southshore' books as having some interestingly weird stuff, but it's coming up on 20 years since I read them.
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Apr 1, 2023 01:39
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Poldarn posted:When you describe it like that it doesn't seem so bad. Except that it's R. Scott Bakker so it really is that bad.
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Apr 1, 2023 02:59
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Zorak of Michigan posted:Am I the only one who feels like going back and re-writing the same story from a different POV is kind of taking a punt on creativity? MartingaleJack posted:It's only bad when repeats the same events without some drastic alteration of context. I really liked Harrow The Ninth. Didn't like Ender's Shadow. Sanderson's Stormlight does it with the prologues and it mostly works because there's a big twist each time. Patrick Spens posted:The guy who did Cradle did a set of paired trilogies where each trilogy takes place at the same time and the viewpoint characters interact a lot. It was an interesting idea but didn't wind up being very good. I actually quite liked the Elder Empire parallel trilogies and probably like it over Cradle if I'm honest. Shera and Calder don't actually interact all that much, other than for a couple of pivotal moments in each book. You could read either trilogy standalone and still get a satisfying story out of it though you'd get more of the complete story if you read both. It was a cool, experimental thing with structure that didn't pay off commercially though; he probably would have been better off not splitting the story up the way he did. There's also 3 books in L.E. Modesitt Jr's Recluce Saga that do this: The Magic Engineer (Dorrin's POV) and The White Order and The Colors of Chaos (Cerryl's POV). The three books are all set around the same time period/events but the two POV characters are on opposing sides of the conflict and only share 1 brief scene. It was cool to get both sides of the narrative.
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Apr 1, 2023 03:20
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So I just read Eversion, I saw it on the shelf at the library and legit my research was "search this thread, yep people said it was worth reading, grab". It felt like just the right length, and I'm wondering if there's something I should consider in terms of sci fi and not being giant novel length.
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Apr 1, 2023 03:47
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Poldarn posted:When you describe it like that it doesn't seem so bad.
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Apr 1, 2023 04:02
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Everyone posted:Except that it's R. Scott Bakker so it really is that bad. That’s not fair. Some of it isn’t really that bad. It’s even worse.
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Apr 1, 2023 05:09
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Everyone posted:Except that it's R. Scott Bakker so it really is that bad. And you know, it's really a pity. There are some quite good ideas in there and the guy can string words together well. Sounds like I picked the right spot to bail after book #3 though.
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Apr 1, 2023 08:23
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Everyone posted:Except that it's R. Scott Bakker so it really is that bad. Buddy trust me I know
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Apr 1, 2023 08:51
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Milo and POTUS posted:Someone mentioned a scifi world that was even more grim than wh40k and it had somebody saying humans should reproduce frequently, live short lives and I think expand violently? I don't intend on reading it, just hate forgetting the names of stuff. I think it was more "established" scifi than 40k though. Are you sure you didn't just read a article about Effective Altruism/Longtermism?
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Apr 1, 2023 09:31
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General Battuta posted:weird elf horror This is actually more compelling in a grotesque way than the stuff you see brought up sometimes about how it’s the deepest exploration of nihilism ever, you guys. Still not in a rush to read it but dope. Re: Throne of Bones (which owns), I got similar vibes from parts of Jeff Vandermeer’s Cities of Saints and Madmen, especially the first story. Similar 19th century-feeling setting, grotesquerie, grubby black humour, etc. Also Blood Meridian, maybe, though it’s less… gleeful.
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Apr 1, 2023 09:42
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General Battuta posted:There's a part where they're trying to get the Elf King to snap out of it (he's senile) and the Elf King is just ladling oil all over himself, like Denethor in the Return of the King movie, but the oil is made of human slaves (it is human oil), and the oil is his coping mechanism, he's upset because he and all the Elfs are definitely going to Hell, because of their many sins such as breeding so many human slaves in a hole in the ground that the collective suffering of all the slaves turned into a hole into Hell, now fortunately the Elfs are immortal because they made a deal with the HR Giger xenomorph aliens who have HUGE penises to become immortal, but unfortunately the immortality killed all the Elf women because R Scott Bakker doesn't like them, so the Elf King has had a really long time to go senile, so it really doesn't seem like he's going to snap out of it. But then a huge Elf the size of a skyscraper comes over (because the Elfs are immortal so they just keep growing and growing I guess?) and smashes the Elf King into bits. This is like one chapter and I'm not sure any of it matters very much to the story. What the hell do you call a chapter like that? The aristocrats! Yeah, he had some great bits, but really needed an editor with hate in his heart.
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Apr 1, 2023 11:08
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The Eye of the World (Wheel of Time #1) by Robert Jordan - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002U3CCYM/ The Way of Kings (Stormlight Archive #1) by Brandon Sanderson - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003P2WO5E/ The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09JVQ6DHK/ The Red Knight (Traitor Son #1) by Miles Cameron - $0.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007ZFPUL2/ Edit: Forgot it's a new month today Far Thoughts and Pale Gods by Greg Bear - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0155UBSDC/ Escape from Yokai Land (Laundry Files) by Charles Stross - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08JK7TVXS/ Saint's Blood (Greatcoats #3) by Sebastien de Castell - $0.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07TV2VS7R/ The Way into Chaos (Great Way #1) by Harry Connolly - $0.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00R0G480U/ pradmer fucked around with this message at 16:55 on Apr 1, 2023 |
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Apr 1, 2023 16:23
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General Battuta posted:Read R Scott Bakker, the thread title evolved from 'better than loving a hole in the ground' to 'better than loving a hole in a radioactive leper' over the course of the series' descent into ??? I already own the first book and haven’t read it yet, so I’ll go with that.
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Apr 1, 2023 20:28
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30 pages into The Blade Itself. So far it's entirely like what I always imagined a typical grimdark fantasy to be.
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Apr 2, 2023 03:59
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Nigmaetcetera posted:I already own the first book and haven’t read it yet, so I’ll go with that. Except that it's not quite that because "The Aristocrats" is much shorter and (at least supposed to be) intentionally funny.
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Apr 2, 2023 05:01
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FPyat posted:30 pages into The Blade Itself. So far it's entirely like what I always imagined a typical grimdark fantasy to be. I was kinda lukewarm about The Blade Itself but I'm glad that I plowed through the whole trilogy because I thought things picked up quite a bit by book 2 and 3. I really don't read much fantasy anymore so the fact that those books stuck with me ever since I read them in the early 2010's probably says something about something. A rare instance of a trilogy getting better with each book.
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Apr 2, 2023 05:28
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The heroes is the best standalone.
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Apr 2, 2023 09:01
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FPyat posted:30 pages into The Blade Itself. So far it's entirely like what I always imagined a typical grimdark fantasy to be. You've got almost as far as I did before I closed it and put it down unfinished.
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Apr 2, 2023 10:16
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Same. I read The Traitor Baru Cormorant after people had been talking about it on the thread. I liked it a lot! Parts of it felt like I had stumbled onto a very specific type of gay erotica. It makes a big deal of repressed homosexuality, giving closeted sexual tension terrible and horrific stakes and seemingly using that for titillation. There's multiple instances of "scene fades to black" just as the tension reaches its peak, at one point with characters literally wrestling each other, but nothing canonically happens. It makes me laugh, because I just imagine a Terry Pratchett-style footnote with "insert fanfiction here". thotsky fucked around with this message at 10:39 on Apr 2, 2023 |
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Apr 2, 2023 10:19
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General Battuta posted:There's a part where they're trying to get the Elf King to snap out of it (he's senile) and the Elf King is just ladling oil all over himself, like Denethor in the Return of the King movie, but the oil is made of human slaves (it is human oil), and the oil is his coping mechanism, he's upset because he and all the Elfs are definitely going to Hell, because of their many sins such as breeding so many human slaves in a hole in the ground that the collective suffering of all the slaves turned into a hole into Hell, now fortunately the Elfs are immortal because they made a deal with the HR Giger xenomorph aliens who have HUGE penises to become immortal, but unfortunately the immortality killed all the Elf women because R Scott Bakker doesn't like them, so the Elf King has had a really long time to go senile, so it really doesn't seem like he's going to snap out of it. But then a huge Elf the size of a skyscraper comes over (because the Elfs are immortal so they just keep growing and growing I guess?) and smashes the Elf King into bits. This is like one chapter and I'm not sure any of it matters very much to the story. What the hell do you call a chapter like that? The aristocrats! 'Hello! Is that Hollywood? Boy, do I have a pitch for you!'
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Apr 2, 2023 10:37
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thotsky posted:Same. Baru lives in a world of colonialism, technological disparity and that's run by people with the morals of rural Alabama. Horrific stakes covers it but it didn't see it used for titillation. Baru is a lesbian in a place where being what she is means a lobotomy or death.
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Apr 2, 2023 14:17
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Everyone posted:Baru lives in a world of colonialism, technological disparity and that's run by people with the morals of rural Alabama. Horrific stakes covers it but it didn't see it used for titillation. Baru is a lesbian in a place where being what she is means a lobotomy or death. Falcrest comes across as extremely Victorian with a solid dash of Spencerism in its morality except not OK at all with hypocrisy on the part of the upper classes the way the actual Victorians could be.
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Apr 2, 2023 15:04
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Well, pending a look at the actual upper classes, since we've (mostly) been on the periphery. The use of blackmail as a form of institutionalised control suggests people can get away with a lot as long as they're willing to pay protection.
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Apr 2, 2023 16:08
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zoux posted:I'm reading that smart octopus book and they get into the issue of "what is consciousness" quite a bit. It introduced me to this somewhat famous treatise Just read this and quite enjoyed it. Although it definitely suffered from whatever you call a character monologuing for several pages so the author can make you read their ideas. Not necessarily bad, just could have been done in a less obvious way I guess.
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Apr 2, 2023 16:09
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Dune (#1) by Frank Herbert - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B7NPRY8/ The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NHZVF5T/ The Sword of Kaigen by ML Wang - $0.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MNWKF2M/
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Apr 2, 2023 16:20
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habeasdorkus posted:Falcrest comes across as extremely Victorian with a solid dash of Spencerism in its morality except not OK at all with hypocrisy on the part of the upper classes the way the actual Victorians could be. General Battuta posted:Well, pending a look at the actual upper classes, since we've (mostly) been on the periphery. The use of blackmail as a form of institutionalised control suggests people can get away with a lot as long as they're willing to pay protection. The last book seems to come right out and say that Falcrest prefers it if you have at least a few private peccadilloes that they can use as a leash when necessary. maybe that was just for those who serve as the power behind the throne, but I figured that ran all the way through society.
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Apr 2, 2023 16:29
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General Battuta posted:Well, pending a look at the actual upper classes, since we've (mostly) been on the periphery. The use of blackmail as a form of institutionalised control suggests people can get away with a lot as long as they're willing to pay protection. That fits. Hell, it's not too far from how things work in our own real world. Something about this series kind of screws with my comprehension of names. For a good while I kept reading Baru's surname as "Coramont." Meanwhile, I'm subconsciously expecting Jane Wyatt to show up in this series, because I keep thinking of the main empire as Falcon Crest.
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Apr 2, 2023 17:47
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FPyat posted:30 pages into The Blade Itself. So far it's entirely like what I always imagined a typical grimdark fantasy to be. A lot of the first book is playing up expectations that will later be subverted
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Apr 2, 2023 17:56
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Finished The Other Wind and with it all of Earthsea. Feels good to finally patch that hole in my own personal library I enjoyed each book, with Tombs of Atuan and Tehanu being clear favorites. Unfortunately, I found The Other Wind by far the weakest. The mystery was intriguing, and I appreciate that it was solved not by logic or raw intelligence, but by a bunch of disparate peoples sharing their cultural stories and lore, comparing notes, trying to piece together their own history that they've forgotten. Alder was a great new character, as was the Kargish princess, and it was nice to spend more time with Arren. But in the end it all felt so unnecessary. The dry lands were haunting and mysterious and evocative enough, it did not need to be a problem that must be fixed. In fact, "I didn't need this question answered" was a thought I repeatedly had throughout the book: The Kargs and their role in the afterlife, what the dragons are, Tehanu's situation, what Arren's rule looked like, and so on. I was content letting my imagination fill in those blanks As the final book it should have been a culmination, but it never once felt like this is where the story was always meant to go. Instead, it comes across as a self-contained conflict that is actually at odds with the previous books. Tehanu was already a perfect conclusion. I'm left thinking this book exists not for Earthsea's sake but because a publisher asked for it
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Apr 2, 2023 18:32
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Runcible Cat posted:She's a bit of a weirdie because she's got this very ecofeminist reputation, but holy crap she gets creepy quickly once you notice her obsessions and realise how many books of hers you've seen them in without twigging. Her later books especially... I never understood this type of feminism since it seems to be divorced from any material analysis of the world and just assumes that the crucible of patriarchy has made all women into wonderful people who would make better choices than men, given the same political structures.
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Apr 2, 2023 19:34
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Whirling posted:I never understood this type of feminism since it seems to be divorced from any material analysis of the world and just assumes that the crucible of patriarchy has made all women into wonderful people who would make better choices than men, given the same political structures. EDIT: What I mean is, the existence of the third and fourth waves kinda hints that it's the unreformed second-wave feminists who're in the minority - so by that measure, I think feminism has largely moved on. This is also what makes fiction like that of Sheri S Tepper stand out. BlankSystemDaemon fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Apr 2, 2023 |
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Apr 2, 2023 20:37
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Danhenge posted:The last book seems to come right out and say that It's more like UK parliamentary whips. Each party has them and they're in charge of making sure of two things: first, that if an MP for their party does something immoral (and occasionally illegal) it doesn't get out; second, that the MPs in question know that if they do not cast their votes as instructed it will get out.
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Apr 3, 2023 00:36
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Everyone posted:Baru lives in a world of colonialism, technological disparity and that's run by people with the morals of rural Alabama. Horrific stakes covers it but it didn't see it used for titillation. Baru is a lesbian in a place where being what she is means a lobotomy or death. I feel like the first book revels in the forbidden nature of her sexuality. At times it's like an extreme version of one of those queer high school romances, or maybe like really old smut. It's painfully chaste. I am reading the second book and that aspect is completely dropped. Her lesbianism is treated much more matter of factly, almost dispassionately so. The character also discovers that other gay people don't live nearly as repressed lives as she's been taught to. The sensibilities of each book kind of mirror that of the main character and how she changes. thotsky fucked around with this message at 00:48 on Apr 3, 2023 |
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Apr 3, 2023 00:42
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Sequel to the Dawnhounds name and cover revealed, I'm really excited
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Apr 3, 2023 05:29
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thotsky posted:I feel like the first book revels in the forbidden nature of her sexuality. At times it's like an extreme version of one of those queer high school romances, or maybe like really old smut. It's painfully chaste. In the first book Baru is an outsider among different outsiders. With the second book, she's an insider - and the rules are a little different for insiders. One weird thing is that while the Falcresti are the clear villains of the series, I still feel a kind of distant pity for them. I wonder how much of their society/government/psychology is a continuing generational trauma reaction to the nobles who once ruled them.
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Apr 3, 2023 05:39
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silvergoose posted:Sequel to the Dawnhounds name and cover revealed, I'm really excited Yeah! That was a fun book.
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Apr 3, 2023 08:53
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Looking to update the OP of this thread. Send me whatever interesting fantasy & science-fiction related blogs or YouTube channels, etc you believe should be added, and I will attempt to do so.
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Apr 3, 2023 14:23
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Senlin Ascends (Books of Babel #1) by Josiah Bancroft - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074M62D7Y/ The Rage of Dragons (The Burning #1) by Evan Winter - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07L2VKFP5/ A Song for Arbonne by Guy Gavriel Kay - $4.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MD3BQNW/ Akata Witch (Nsibidi Scripts #1) by Nnedi Okorafor - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004IYJEG0/
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Apr 3, 2023 22:32
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