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Fate Accomplice posted:red rising book 1 is the second worst book I've ever finished. I thought book 1 was fine, definitely required some skimming. Book 2 I didn’t get through.
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Jul 18, 2023 18:27
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:.. . .wait, does he think there weren't any homosexuals in Ancient Rome? because rofls If they're anything like other Roman fan boys I've known, they've taken the factoid about how a lot of what we're taught about Rome comes from Victorian archeologists who exaggerated the negative traits to appease Queen Victoria and applied it to everything they don't like. Vvv some aspects yeah, but they also heavily played up the tamer decadent parts too. Victorian England cast themselves as a reborn Roman Empire. But one that would not fall to the debauchery that 'destroyed' the original. So we get stuff like 'Roman's had a special room to vomit in so they can return to feasting', 'orgies and polyamory were normal aspects of everyday life' and 'they had constant bloodsport where beleaguered slaves fought to the death'. Stuff that came from small grains of truth but grossly exaggerated to show how the British were Rome but better. Though it's not just Victorian England too, there's a good chunk of America that taught that the Roman Empire fell because the Emperors started giving free bread to the populace and in turn they grew lazy and society collapsed. Macdeo Lurjtux fucked around with this message at 18:54 on Jul 18, 2023 |
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Jul 18, 2023 18:32
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Macdeo Lurjtux posted:If they're anything like other Roman fan boys I've known, they've taken the factoid about how a lot of what we're taught about Rome comes from Victorian archeologists who exaggerated the negative traits to appease Queen Victoria and applied it to everything they don't like. . . ..the Victorians, if anything, wildly censored history Half the paintings in Pompeii are of priapus
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Jul 18, 2023 18:35
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:. . ..the Victorians, if anything, wildly censored history Yeah, they tried to downplay just how extremely gay the Greeks and Romans were (especially poo poo like Julius Ceasar and Hadrian being notorious bottoms)
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Jul 18, 2023 19:00
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deplatformed by Amazon (for using slurs in YA book reviews)
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Jul 18, 2023 19:05
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Did the Roman’s even have our conception of sexuality though? I thought our ideas of sexuality were modern, and the Romans and Greeks thought of things quite differently (something about how topping was fine but bottoming was not?).
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Jul 18, 2023 19:09
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Awkward Davies posted:Did the Roman’s even have our conception of sexuality though? I thought our ideas of sexuality were modern, and the Romans and Greeks thought of things quite differently (something about how topping was fine but bottoming was not?). It was somewhat more complicated than that, but that's a decent first approximation of the Roman attitude in particular.
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Jul 18, 2023 19:25
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Awkward Davies posted:Did the Roman’s even have our conception of sexuality though? I thought our ideas of sexuality were modern, and the Romans and Greeks thought of things quite differently (something about how topping was fine but bottoming was not?). Yeah, the Greeks and Romans were far more concerned with masculinity and sexuality had little to do with it. Romans in particular had different standards for citizens vs. non-citizens and slaves—basically it was considered undignified for a citizen to be the “passive” partner, so that role was generally relegated to inferiors. But for young men (pre-beard-growing age basically) they could do whatever the gently caress they wanted. It was only mature male citizens that got looked at askance for bottoming, but if you were beyond reproach like Hadrian, who had what we would consider a pretty firm gay romantic partner, rumors of being passive couldn’t harm your reputation all that much, it was just considered a slightly unsavory vice. As for the Greeks, some philosophers argued that men having sex with men was more masculine than having sex with women because they feared so much the taint of the feminine even from sexual contact. Some even argued it was impossible to have true love with a woman like you could with another man for various reasons (the most misogynist arguing that women were incapable of love due to their inferior female brains) The whole “fellas, is it gay to have sex with a woman?” joke was a genuine concern back then, if you redefined gay as effeminate, which it seems to be shifting to online these days
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Jul 18, 2023 20:14
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Doktor Avalanche posted:how accurate is this: Wildly inaccurate. In the book, it's called "Hellium-3."
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Jul 18, 2023 20:26
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Stuporstar posted:Yeah, the Greeks and Romans were far more concerned with masculinity and sexuality had little to do with it. Romans in particular had different standards for citizens vs. non-citizens and slaves—basically it was considered undignified for a citizen to be the “passive” partner, so that role was generally relegated to inferiors. But for young men (pre-beard-growing age basically) they could do whatever the gently caress they wanted. It was only mature male citizens that got looked at askance for bottoming, but if you were beyond reproach like Hadrian, who had what we would consider a pretty firm gay romantic partner, rumors of being passive couldn’t harm your reputation all that much, it was just considered a slightly unsavory vice. Super interesting, thank you
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Jul 18, 2023 20:40
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Doktor Avalanche posted:how accurate is this: Sounds like a Doom fanfic.
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Jul 18, 2023 22:10
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So, I'm looking for some cyberpunk novels with female protagonists that aren't ones I've read before. So not Gibson, Trouble and her friends, or the like. Does anyone have any ideas?
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Jul 18, 2023 22:38
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FBH991 posted:So, I'm looking for some cyberpunk novels with female protagonists that aren't ones I've read before. So not Gibson, Trouble and her friends, or the like. Does anyone have any ideas? Sorry I only just started my cyberpunk novel with a female protagonist so you won't be able to read it for a few years. There's a sad lack of them.
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Jul 18, 2023 22:42
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shrike82 posted:yeah it's a great book and i haven't come across anything else that does the occult le carre mash as well there's a series that does it worse (still okay though) called the witch who came in from the cold, it's serialised and co-written by max gladstone, ian tregillis, michael swanick and others
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Jul 18, 2023 23:38
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FBH991 posted:So, I'm looking for some cyberpunk novels with female protagonists that aren't ones I've read before. So not Gibson, Trouble and her friends, or the like. Does anyone have any ideas?
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Jul 18, 2023 23:48
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FBH991 posted:So, I'm looking for some cyberpunk novels with female protagonists that aren't ones I've read before. So not Gibson, Trouble and her friends, or the like. Does anyone have any ideas? how about elizabeth bear's casey series, starting with 'hammered'? beat up former cyborg soldier making a living as a down at heel PI Walter Jon Williams dagmar shaw books starting with 'this is not a game'? near future MMO style games designer techno thrillers
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Jul 18, 2023 23:53
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Williams' Hardwired has two protagonists, one of whom is female.
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Jul 18, 2023 23:58
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branedotorg posted:there's a series that does it worse (still okay though) called the witch who came in from the cold, it's serialised and co-written by max gladstone, ian tregillis, michael swanick and others I read this when it came out and was honestly pretty disappointed, it felt like a lot less than the sum of its parts given the quality of the authors involved.
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Jul 18, 2023 23:59
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branedotorg posted:there's a series that does it worse (still okay though) called the witch who came in from the cold, it's serialised and co-written by max gladstone, ian tregillis, michael swanick and others Speaking of Tregellis, what about his Milkweed Triptych trilogy for occult spy shananigans and is heavily (alternate history) Cold War. They're pretty good.
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Jul 19, 2023 00:04
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FBH991 posted:So, I'm looking for some cyberpunk novels with female protagonists that aren't ones I've read before. So not Gibson, Trouble and her friends, or the like. Does anyone have any ideas? Have you read much Pat Cadigan?
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Jul 19, 2023 00:33
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:why were you reading that kind of shithead's blog His reviews are disturbingly high up on Goodreads. His opinions are a nightmare trainwreck I can’t look away from, but there’s also the twisted fact that he picks interesting books to review and is good at summarizing the contents, themes, and ideas.
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Jul 19, 2023 02:34
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FBH991 posted:So, I'm looking for some cyberpunk novels with female protagonists that aren't ones I've read before. So not Gibson, Trouble and her friends, or the like. Does anyone have any ideas? The Fortunate Fall is the best one. I posted about it a while back, if you search for it.
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Jul 19, 2023 02:52
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The most dogshit part of the whole Red Rising series is that it's completely toothless. They never topple the super fascist space empire that keeps all the red caste in underground hell mining slavery, they just get replaced with the nice fascists! There's a whole caste that are sex slaves but that never really gets addressed, it's just kind of 'hm that's sad' and then the narrative quickly moves on. There's a character that gets some clout because she was a very high ranking sex slave at one point. Oh also Darrow goes "I have a plan" out of nowhere at least once, usually twice a book, and then the perspective immediately shifts and we don't actually find out how Darrow got the idea for the plan or how he organized it, just suddenly later on in the book he is flawlessly executing his genius plan.
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Jul 19, 2023 03:04
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A Proper Uppercut posted:Do you have any thoughts on Dungeon Crawler Carl? I always see it recommended along with those. DCC is good. Dinniman is a cosmic horror/body horror writer that masks it with jokes and LitRPG trappings. I’m hoping he goes back to Dominion of Blades after DCC, because in a lot of ways I find the premise more interesting, but DCC actually has a lot to say about the capricious nature of existence and for me the dark comedy really lands.
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Jul 19, 2023 04:21
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SkeletonHero posted:I simply cannot understand what universe these freakos come from, like they all somehow spontaneously budded from a forgotten 50s sitcom or something. "These books can't be for boys because boys don't read books (and I know from hunting down children at bookstores) but they can't be for girls because girls hate action and fights! Based! Girlboss! Homosexual propaganda!" Yeah that snip has some “Don’t put in the newspaper that I got mad” energy that I really love.
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Jul 19, 2023 04:24
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big dyke energy posted:The most dogshit part of the whole Red Rising series is that it's completely toothless. They never topple the super fascist space empire that keeps all the red caste in underground hell mining slavery, they just get replaced with the nice fascists! There's a whole caste that are sex slaves but that never really gets addressed, it's just kind of 'hm that's sad' and then the narrative quickly moves on. There's a character that gets some clout because she was a very high ranking sex slave at one point. That's not fully true. Lyria's whole point of view is how the Rising has kind of bungled things. The Reds got pulled out of the mines, replaced by robots and then just kind of got put in refugee camps. Lyria actually misses the underground hell mining in some ways because even a hosed up purpose can feel better than no purpose at all.
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Jul 19, 2023 04:27
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The 8th book in the expanse is boring. I realized I was halfway through and still waiting for the real plot to start. The conflict just slowly plays out in this one. The guy that the previous book set up to be the interesting villain is unceremoniously killed off, so for most of the book the bad guys are run by a triumvirate of uninteresting characters. There's no fun in that!
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Jul 19, 2023 04:36
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navyjack posted:DCC is good. Dinniman is a cosmic horror/body horror writer that masks it with jokes and LitRPG trappings. I’m hoping he goes back to Dominion of Blades after DCC, because in a lot of ways I find the premise more interesting, but DCC actually has a lot to say about the capricious nature of existence and for me the dark comedy really lands. DCC knows exactly how stupid it is and I can enjoy it more because of that. Plus the dungeon is like 90% just lampooning the internet/internet culture. From the feet thing to the anarchists cookbook to monied interests ruining it to the obsession with cats to the Karen fad to etc etc . Obviously not 1:1 but it's very much a vibe.
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Jul 19, 2023 05:16
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VostokProgram posted:The 8th book in the expanse is boring. I realized I was halfway through and still waiting for the real plot to start. The conflict just slowly plays out in this one. The guy that the previous book set up to be the interesting villain is unceremoniously killed off, so for most of the book the bad guys are run by a triumvirate of uninteresting characters. There's no fun in that! the expanse books seem mostly bad with bits of ok? is that unfair?
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Jul 19, 2023 05:23
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sebmojo posted:the expanse books seem mostly bad with bits of ok? is that unfair? wondering the same myself. Have the first on my shelf and have half a mind to make it my scifi contribution to THE YEAR OF THE BRICK. But I also have Lies of Locke Lamora and Anathem on the shelf so, decisions. Lots of fat books.
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Jul 19, 2023 05:28
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I heard there was a thread where some jerk with a PhD in Space Warfare Pedantry was reading them.
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Jul 19, 2023 05:52
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FBH991 posted:So, I'm looking for some cyberpunk novels with female protagonists that aren't ones I've read before. So not Gibson, Trouble and her friends, or the like. Does anyone have any ideas? https://twitter.com/midnight_pals/status/1656351378607063040
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Jul 19, 2023 06:43
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I love that account 
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Jul 19, 2023 06:58
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sebmojo posted:the expanse books seem mostly bad with bits of ok? is that unfair? I liked the earlier ones because they're fun space operas. Like old star wars eu books without the baggage. The kind of thing you can read in a day and enjoy how the multiple storylines come together for a big grandiose finale where all the poo poo goes down. It's been a long time since I read them, but iirc all of 1-7 were this basic idea executed better or worse. So that's the basis on which I'm disappointed in 8, because as I said it's just boring. And I'm not a hard reader to please.
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Jul 19, 2023 08:30
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the first book has a few sections that read like some dead space poo poo, the second book introduces some better characters, and neither could keep me going past the fourth book
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Jul 19, 2023 08:36
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FBH991 posted:So, I'm looking for some cyberpunk novels with female protagonists that aren't ones I've read before. So not Gibson, Trouble and her friends, or the like. Does anyone have any ideas? Moxyland?
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Jul 19, 2023 08:43
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sebmojo posted:the expanse books seem mostly bad with bits of ok? is that unfair? No that's pretty fair. It's an interesting setting, and the overall setting-level plot held my interest enough to finish the series. But the writing can really drag, with the worst being literal pages of rambling monologue. You kinda have to skim read. And as another poster said, the grand space opera feel of the first three books never really comes back. The plots of books 4 onwards are honestly pretty boring. (Ok 4 was interesting)
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Jul 19, 2023 08:56
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Competently done airport SF novels. IMHO the TV adaptation was in many ways an improvement; they kept most of the good bits and trimmed a lot of the fat and the casting was rather good. Plus it looked cool. Neat touches like showing low-gravity asteroid colonies have birds that are lazy assholes barely flapping their wings.
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Jul 19, 2023 09:35
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The thing about The Expanse is that Daniel Abraham's solo fantasy books sound like they have more things to say with less bloat.
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Jul 19, 2023 09:54
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Groke posted:Competently done airport SF novels. IMHO the TV adaptation was in many ways an improvement; they kept most of the good bits and trimmed a lot of the fat and the casting was rather good. Plus it looked cool. Neat touches like showing low-gravity asteroid colonies have birds that are lazy assholes barely flapping their wings. Pretty much this, yeah. The thing is, I think they'd be better if they were just near-future airport thrillers. The sci-fi/space opera elements add very little and, honestly, tend to detract from the stories the Coreys want to tell. I don't think the "grand space opera" feel of the first novels was what was interesting, I think it was that they were pretty simple stories in a setting you don't normally think of them working in: the noir detective trying to find the girl, a conspiracy in the halls of power, explorers going crazy in the unknown etc. The real problem with the series is that they got extended past three books where the ending of Abaddon's Gate is a natural conclusion to the whole franchise, so much of one that the series just stalls out. But the other problem is that the Corey team simply doesn't seem to have much interest in or knowledge of sci-fi/space opera conventions. This isn't so bad in the first three books where it's mostly backdrop, but as the novels get more into the intricacies of space combat and have whole plots built around fleetwide discrepancies, it all kind of falls apart. But even in the first few novels they can't keep the Rocinante's designation straight. The other things that've stuck out to me about the series during the re-read is the lack of consistency or continuity. Character backstories are basically invented whole cloth in the fifth book, and pretty much contradict what tidbits came before. Belters suffer a pretty severe (heh) series of retcons in books 4, 5, and 6 -- before arguably vanishing entirely in book 7. The Free Navy somehow effectively annihilates the navies of Earth and Mars despite being disadvantaged in numbers, strategic capabilities, supplies, and physiology. No one evolves, no one changes. Which is admittedly the central thesis of the series, but it makes for pretty bland storytelling. There are some genuinely interesting parts, which is pretty much everything relating to the protomolecule and the ancient enemy, but it's pretty clear that the Coreys realized they didn't really know what to do with it until the bizarre turn into, of all things, the Human Instrumentality Project in the final book. The TV adaptation is a runaway improvement. The books are very much stories where you can see how trimming away one or more perspective characters would help the story, not hinder it. So far in Persepolis Rising, for example, there's no need for Drummer to exist and removing her perspective, relegating the events in Sol to something the other characters only hear about in passing while focusing on their immediate concerns, would enhance that part of the novel immensely (and create way less issues in the background worldbuilding.) You also get less of the tics that show up in each book because Franck probably figured it was better to finish the series then end up in GRRM's position -- each novel tends to have a 'thing' that the Coreys hit repeatedly. In Caliban's War, it's characters shouting but not realizing they're shouting. In Nemesis Games (and Babylon's Ashes), it's tribal metaphors. In Persepolis Rising, it's characters being unable to sleep. You also avoid the weird issues that either part of the team (or their editor) should've caught such as character names changing, numbers not adding up, or chapters resolving and then resolving again, etc. Perhaps my most controversial take is this, however. I think the novels are what they are because they were written by two people who were dealing with a setting they didn't create, a team of characters they didn't create (Miller being the exception, and why he's the best), a first book plot they didn't create, and some of the more distinctive parts of the setting -- such as Belter creole -- are also things that Abraham and Franck didn't create. That's not to call them plagiarists or uncreative, because they wrote nine books that are mostly okay, but I do think it should make one think about just how much The Expanse owes to the collaborative process of it being an online play-by-post game which the Corey team basically adapted into a series of novels. Why is Naomi just a bland character whose backstory doesn't add up with what she gets later? Because we know from her player that they basically separated RPG!Naomi into two characters -- Naomi Nagata and Julie Mao. Why does Amos feel like two different characters in the first three novels? Because he was two different characters who they combined together into Amos Burton. Why is Holden how he is? Because we know from his player that they sanded off his more prickly self-righteous aspects. I imagine it's similar to Sanderson stepping in with the last Wheel of Time books. Or if General Battuta told me to write Baru 4. Sure, I love Baru and I adore the story and the world and the characters, but I think it's pretty easy to see how you'd end up with characters feeling odd, intricacies of the world being flattened out, and age of sail terminology being abused, even if I was working off a 75% complete draft. Even if we were writers of comparable skill, and we are not, I think there's something lost when the story and all of its components is not something that came out of your head. But I also have a terminal case of editor brain, so. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 10:58 on Jul 19, 2023 |
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Jul 19, 2023 10:55
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