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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Anyone recommend books about reluctant adventurers? Like they don't wanna go on this stupid quest or they don't wanna be a child of destiny or plot but god dammit every loving solstice some weird poo poo happens and bam, stuck in a new adventure. The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi is about a retired middle-aged lady pirate who is totally done with poo poo and gets dragged back into magical adventures. And it’s got humor to it And oh hey, it’s on sale today https://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Amina-al-Sirafi-Novel-ebook/dp/B0B3XQBGPS
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Jul 8, 2023 15:42
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Cool book located: I think it’s fantasy but I will have to read it to be sure. 
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Jul 8, 2023 15:43
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StrixNebulosa posted:Cool book located: I think it’s fantasy but I will have to read it to be sure. Love that book! (And: it is).
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Jul 8, 2023 16:47
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StrixNebulosa posted:Cool book located: I think it’s fantasy but I will have to read it to be sure. I love the focus on the cat. Does it have anything to do with the story?
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Jul 8, 2023 16:58
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Stuporstar posted:The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi is about a retired middle-aged lady pirate who is totally done with poo poo and gets dragged back into magical adventures. And it’s got humor to it A Prayer for the Crown-Shy (Monk & Robot #2) by Becky Chambers - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09CNFL3W7/
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Jul 8, 2023 17:05
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StrixNebulosa posted:Cool book located: I think it’s fantasy but I will have to read it to be sure. This book is great but will make you very hungry.
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Jul 8, 2023 19:26
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buffalo all day posted:This book, and the LBJ biography (the whole series, but especially the first book), are absolute musts. I looked up The Power Broker and the one I found is the third book in a trilogy by Stephen Frey apparently, am I looking at the right one? And is it necessary/recommended to eat the first two beforehand? It sounds like something that's very up my alley.
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Jul 8, 2023 20:08
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No, you want The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, by Robert Caro, a monster of a non-fiction book about this one guy who really hosed up New York City and to some extent State for generations to come. (Want to know who to blame for our Governor essentially being able to do most of the legislation, leading to an extremely weak legislative branch? That's right, Bobby Moses!) It makes for good reading, but it's looong. Took me 8 weeks to read, as in I returned it after the very end of my renewal period at the library.
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Jul 8, 2023 20:15
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Has anyone read The rise and fall of D.O.D.O. and if so, does it ever get good? I'm about 20% of the way in, and the plot idea so far seems kinda neat and it's definitely original, but it's going off on a loving weird tangent and I'm not sure I wanna keep going. If it gets better, I'll stay, but if it just gets more odd, I'm gonna tap out. I remember it being worth finishing. It starts quite slow but does pick up. The highlight was (minor spoiler) a viking raid on a Walmart as accounted in verse by an attending skald. I would read the sequel if it ever gets written. But also I wouldn't put it super high on any lists of must-reads.
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Jul 8, 2023 21:30
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Lead out in cuffs posted:I remember it being worth finishing. It starts quite slow but does pick up. The highlight was (minor spoiler) a viking raid on a Walmart as accounted in verse by an attending skald. The sequel exists, written by the co-author alone. (Master of the Revels)
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Jul 8, 2023 21:58
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Lead out in cuffs posted:I remember it being worth finishing. It starts quite slow but does pick up. The highlight was (minor spoiler) a viking raid on a Walmart as accounted in verse by an attending skald.
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Jul 8, 2023 22:02
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Silver2195 posted:Ooh, another Elder Empire reader! Am I the only one who noticed that the setting is basically Ravnica? I didn't! But I've never played MtG; the only thing I know about the setting is what I read in the Sanderson MtG book, which was fun but not set in Ravnica. But I was intrigued enough to go look up a few of the other stories and maybe vaguely read one or two of the online shorts. pradmer posted:Senlin Ascends (Books of Babel #1) by Josiah Bancroft - $2.99 Ror posted:Has anyone here ever read the rest of the series? I've read the first three: Leng posted:I finished Senlin Ascends last night and the whole time I was reading the book I pictured Thomas Senlin as some sort of weird alt-world where Mario is a British headmaster instead of an Italian plumber. The Tower of Babel and its ringdoms are intriguing but Senlin spends so long wandering around the Market and the Parlour and the Baths that I kept having to check the progress indicator on my Kindle app. By the time something happened, I was like OH THANK GOODNESS yet simultaneously resigned to knowing what the ending of the book was gonna be: Thank you Thomas! But your wife is in another ringdom! and then I had to read like...another 130 odd pages before the book actually ended since we already found out shortly after the midpoint exactly which ringdom it was. Leng posted:I have now read the sequels Arm of the Sphinx and The Hod King and enjoyed both a lot more than Senlin Ascends. The multi POV treatment is interesting because instead of interleaving them, Bancroft opts to tell each POV's arc in a single continuous part and when you get to the next part, the narrative rewinds to the split point again and again to pick up the next POV. I haven't gotten around to reading the final volume yet but do intend to.
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Jul 8, 2023 23:48
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Anyone recommend books about reluctant adventurers? Like they don't wanna go on this stupid quest or they don't wanna be a child of destiny or plot but god dammit every loving solstice some weird poo poo happens and bam, stuck in a new adventure. Comedy Option: The Thomas Covenant books.
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Jul 9, 2023 00:34
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Anyone recommend books about reluctant adventurers? Like they don't wanna go on this stupid quest or they don't wanna be a child of destiny or plot but god dammit every loving solstice some weird poo poo happens and bam, stuck in a new adventure. Curse of Chalion, its sequels, and Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking have reluctant heroes. I don't know if they're adventurers. And it's a comic but Digger is wonderful.
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Jul 9, 2023 00:52
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Anyone recommend books about reluctant adventurers? Like they don't wanna go on this stupid quest or they don't wanna be a child of destiny or plot but god dammit every loving solstice some weird poo poo happens and bam, stuck in a new adventure. Maybe check out Rick Cook's Wizardry. The set-up: In a world beset by wild magic and evil warlocks a wizard summons someone he thinks can save the world: "Wiz" Zumwalt a computer programmer from Earth who is, as far as he knows, completely non-magical, out of his depth and really wishing he could go home soon.
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Jul 9, 2023 01:38
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Everyone posted:Maybe check out Rick Cook's Wizardry. I read a book in the exact middle of this series when I was like eight after picking it up randomly at a library because its cover looks like this:  Dragons vs Jet Fighters let's loving gooooo I am convinced that if I read this now I would hate it, but it completely blew my mind as a tiny human who had recently started playing D&D. Speaking of bizarre 80s SF/F, finished The Many-Colored Land and man is that a trip. The dialogue is still godawful, but the premise of psychic alien colonizers of prehistoric Earth enslave time-traveling human exiles from the far future, and thereby becomes the basis for Welsh / Celtic / Breton mythology is so goddamn good that I'm going to have to at least read the second one. For the Pliocene Exile enjoyers in the thread, what's the structure of the series like? I got the impression from the afterword of Many-Colored Land that it's sort of a duology with Golden Torc, but I know there's four books in the series. I do need a palate-cleanser from Many-Colored Land though, so I've started on The Archive Undying, Emma Mieko Candon's extremely gay mecha novel. Only about 50 pages in so far, but the writing is good enough that I'm excited to dig into it. Anyone else reading / have read this?
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Jul 9, 2023 03:39
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There are four books, golden torc ends on a holy poo poo really?! moment that then sets up the remaining two books. Quality stays roughly the same, both good and bad.
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Jul 9, 2023 03:50
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After the four Pliocene exile books are some sequel/prequels set in the non-past. They’re okay, but I think the Pliocene books are the best work that May had in the setting. I generally liked books 3 and 4 more than 1 and 2, myself, but I also didn’t find Aiken Drum to be too offensive.
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Jul 9, 2023 04:02
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Kestral posted:
It's high on my list to read, partially because of the editor of all things because he also edited the locked tomb and so I follow him on Twitter and he's been hyping it up a bunch
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Jul 9, 2023 04:03
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Kestral posted:I do need a palate-cleanser from Many-Colored Land though, so I've started on The Archive Undying, Emma Mieko Candon's extremely gay mecha novel. Only about 50 pages in so far, but the writing is good enough that I'm excited to dig into it. Anyone else reading / have read this? I’m on the hold list at the library for this one. Hopefully get it in a week or two. I don’t normally go for mecha stuff, but this one’s premise grabbed me
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Jul 9, 2023 04:18
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anilEhilated posted:I'd honestly argue that the spoilered part is the only good bit in an otherwise extremely boring story, but YMMV. Having looked, it's also ripped off from Tom Holt's Who's Afraid Of Beowulf?
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Jul 9, 2023 10:59
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Kestral posted:I do need a palate-cleanser from Many-Colored Land though, so I've started on The Archive Undying, Emma Mieko Candon's extremely gay mecha novel. Only about 50 pages in so far, but the writing is good enough that I'm excited to dig into it. Anyone else reading / have read this? I liked it pretty well, enough that I'd read more by the same author, but not enough that it'll be on my list of favorites for the year. I think the ending kind of dragged a little. That said, I suspect other posters might enjoy it more than I did! It does a pretty nice job of painting a picture that implies a weirder and more complex world than we see. For instance (minor spoiler, not super plot relevant)it seems like the story takes place on a colony world where there used to be some sort of space station orbiting the planet that a lot of people lived on. It's not totally relevant to the plot, but there are oblique hints a few times.
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Jul 9, 2023 13:05
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Jedit posted:Having looked, it's also ripped off from Tom Holt's Who's Afraid Of Beowulf? My favourite non KJ parker book of his
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Jul 9, 2023 13:58
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buffalo all day posted:This book, and the LBJ biography (the whole series, but especially the first book), are absolute musts. I found it interesting how Caro found himself growing more to appreciate LBJ as he continued writing the books, really coming around on him in Master of the Senate. At that point he still saw LBJ as immensely flawed and also a bit of a crook, but someone who was actually doing the right thing when so many people who could have been entirely on his side weren't because of their white supremacy.
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Jul 9, 2023 16:02
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Lead out in cuffs posted:Every book is from a different pov, with some having multiple. Every pov is written in a distinct voice. Yeah, one thing that's underappreciated about the books is that each narrator is actually a different voice and the writing style matches. Zora is probably the most plainspoken of all the series narrators in SYD, but she tends to flit from idea to idea because she's a damned genius. Grue, who gets POV chapters in that same book, is probably the most "normal" narrator in the whole series compared to the genre as a whole. Interestingly, I recall Graydon saying Eugenia was meant to be an entry point POV for new readers in Under One Banner, and I find her the most stilted of the main narrators (The Captain, Ed, Zora, Eugenia, Duckling).
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Jul 9, 2023 16:07
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buffalo all day posted:This book, and the LBJ biography (the whole series, but especially the first book), are absolute musts. What’s the appeal for reading The Power Broker? A book about “power” in New York sounds interesting, but this is a tome. Interesting a good e-book doesn’t exist.
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Jul 9, 2023 16:33
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habeasdorkus posted:and I find her the most stilted of the main narrators (The Captain, Ed, Zora, Eugenia, Duckling). It just occurred to me that "duckling" as a nickname would have a very different connotation in the Commonweal than it does in our reality.
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Jul 9, 2023 16:45
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Armauk posted:What’s the appeal for reading The Power Broker? A book about “power” in New York sounds interesting, but this is a tome. Interesting a good e-book doesn’t exist. Caro is an incredibly gifted writer- the books are clearly written, thoroughly researched and absolute pageturners. So the appeal is a well told and interesting story that has the advantage of being true and also considers a lot of themes that come up in fantasy - the acquisition and use of power, and it’s consequences. Maybe Power Broker isn’t the place to start (unless you are a New Yorker) but it’s a single self contained story. I couldn’t put down The Path to Power and The Means of Ascent (the first two LBJ books) - the first is rags to…well not riches but on the way up that could easily get the numbers filed off and turned into book one of a fantasy series; book 2 is a deep dive into LBJs first senate race that’s absolutely nuts - helicopters, vote buying at the Texas/Mexico border. You could start with either, really. It’s hard to believe it all really happened.
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Jul 9, 2023 17:05
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mllaneza posted:It just occurred to me that "duckling" as a nickname would have a very different connotation in the Commonweal than it does in our reality. Oh lol. Yes that had not occurred to me either.
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Jul 9, 2023 18:00
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Memory's Legion: The Complete Expanse Story Collection by James SA Corey - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B096RSDCVK/ Rule 34 (Halting State #2) by Charles Stross - $4.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004Y3I6XW/
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Jul 9, 2023 18:53
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mllaneza posted:It just occurred to me that "duckling" as a nickname would have a very different connotation in the Commonweal than it does in our reality. I had always interpreted it as in 'Ugly Duckling' but given what swans are like in that setting....
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Jul 9, 2023 19:18
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mllaneza posted:It just occurred to me that "duckling" as a nickname would have a very different connotation in the Commonweal than it does in our reality. Haha, drat, that never occurred to me.
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Jul 9, 2023 19:18
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Armauk posted:What’s the appeal for reading The Power Broker? A book about “power” in New York sounds interesting, but this is a tome. Interesting a good e-book doesn’t exist. So, here's the thing. This is ostensibly about Robert Moses, and really has a lot about him, his life, and his work, but it also contains a lot of small vignettes about other important people of the time he interacted with, so it's almost like a short story collection with one overarching main story that ties them all together. And as buffalo all day says, he's a really gifted writer, so the presentation is very compelling. But if you give up after 100 pages you'll still feel like you've learned something important about a bunch of people and New York of the era covered.
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Jul 9, 2023 19:54
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In a time when it feels like nothing works right THE POWER BROKER says a lot about how things ended up working the way they do. Also a lot about how things did get done - Robert Moses, for better or worse, made a lot of poo poo happen. Often for worse!
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Jul 9, 2023 22:18
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General Battuta posted:In a time when it feels like nothing works right THE POWER BROKER says a lot about how things ended up working the way they do. Also a lot about how things did get done - Robert Moses, for better or worse, made a lot of poo poo happen. Often for worse! Making the trains run on time, except he wasn’t into trains because poor and/or black people used them.
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Jul 9, 2023 22:41
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Kalman posted:Making the trains run on time, except he wasn’t into trains because poor and/or black people used them. Or busses.
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Jul 9, 2023 22:44
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Armauk posted:What’s the appeal for reading The Power Broker? A book about “power” in New York sounds interesting, but this is a tome. Interesting a good e-book doesn’t exist. Caro is both a capable writer and an incredible journalist to have strung together such a complete account of Moses' life. It's quite an achievement to have that much detail on a guy that had the press under his thumb most of his career. And what you get with that is both a lot of texture about New York City and state and a look into how and for whom power worked for the crucial forty-year period in which the idea of what a modern city in America (car-dependent paved-over hellholes sutured together by eight-lane highways) was developed, and who to blame. Frankly it crosses into "if you had written this in a work of fiction, it would be too over-the-top" territory (Moses' treatment of Impelliterri). Would probably own as a political/economic fantasy thriller though
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Jul 10, 2023 01:04
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Absurd Alhazred posted:So, here's the thing. This is ostensibly about Robert Moses, and really has a lot about him, his life, and his work, but it also contains a lot of small vignettes about other important people of the time he interacted with, so it's almost like a short story collection with one overarching main story that ties them all together. This is also true of his LBJ biography, which currently stretches four volumes and only just got to LBJ's presidency. I don't expect the 5th volume to ever come out, it's the Winds of Winter of non-fiction... and Caro is like 93.
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Jul 10, 2023 01:52
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No worries, Brandon Sanderson will be able to finish it.
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Jul 10, 2023 02:12
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Can he really do it justice? I have to imagine LBJ's presidency saw some story-important loving.
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Jul 10, 2023 02:14
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