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Okay so I was chatting to an own voices reader about Tasha Suri (RAVE) and Kaikeyi (eh for me; they REALLY disliked it, they were like it makes no sense) and they told me that if I wanted more South Asian fantasy I should read R.R. Virdi and got me to finally start The First Binding. (Sons of Darkness by Gourav Mohanty which is Mahabharata inspired was the other rec.) I went into it knowing that it's been called a retelling of The Name of the Wind without having actually read Rothfuss but having read the BotL teardown of it. I have read the first four chapters and, uh, hum. I'm really not vibing with it. (Opening and blurb is REALLY leaning into the NotW parallel too.) Who here has finished and would recommend continuing?
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Aug 5, 2023 10:31
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platero posted:Which book(s) have that? I havent read any 40k books in a while but I'm down for some dementia robots. Severed by Nate Crowley. The main character is a cheerful, aristocratic, undead space robot who does not realise he is an undead space robot and instead thinks he is still a flesh and blood general. The narrator is his hypercompetent bodyguard who has to manage all the social issues this brings in a society of embittered undead space robots. It’s basically Jeeves and Wooster crossed with Goodbye Lenin for undead space robots. It’s extremely fun!
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Aug 5, 2023 10:50
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Leng posted:Okay so I was chatting to an own voices reader about Tasha Suri (RAVE) and Kaikeyi (eh for me; they REALLY disliked it, they were like it makes no sense) and they told me that if I wanted more South Asian fantasy I should read R.R. Virdi and got me to finally start The First Binding. (Sons of Darkness by Gourav Mohanty which is Mahabharata inspired was the other rec.) If you aren't vibing it I wouldn't have thought you'll enjoy it, it does get out of the fantasy middle eastern city but at no point does it stop being 'heavily inspired' by notw.
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Aug 5, 2023 12:12
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Leng posted:Okay so I was chatting to an own voices reader about Tasha Suri (RAVE) and Kaikeyi (eh for me; they REALLY disliked it, they were like it makes no sense) and they told me that if I wanted more South Asian fantasy I should read R.R. Virdi and got me to finally start The First Binding. (Sons of Darkness by Gourav Mohanty which is Mahabharata inspired was the other rec.) I read like a quarter of it and I would recommend putting it down.
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Aug 5, 2023 13:37
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Reminder that the number of pages you have to read before you are allowed up give up on a book is 100 minus your age in years.
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Aug 5, 2023 13:43
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reading fantasy works inspired by name of the wind (itself insanely derivative) is like having dinner with the dopey copies of Michael Keaton in multiplicity
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Aug 5, 2023 13:50
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GhastlyBizness posted:Severed by Nate Crowley. The main character is a cheerful, aristocratic, undead space robot who does not realise he is an undead space robot and instead thinks he is still a flesh and blood general. The narrator is his hypercompetent bodyguard who has to manage all the social issues this brings in a society of embittered undead space robots. The Infinite and the Divine by Robert Rath has cranky undead robots doing a reprise of "Grumpy Old Men" while trying to secure an extremely powerful space macguffins. That and Rath's other 40k book both strike me as decent gateways to 40k, they're just fun space operas once you get past the technobabble.
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Aug 5, 2023 14:17
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Absurd Alhazred posted:I don't know, I just associate it in my mind with someone at the very least inactive. J. J. Abrams did Super 8 in 2011, which was a pastiche of Steven Spielberg (and also produced by Spielberg). Spielberg is still an active director.
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Aug 5, 2023 14:37
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habeasdorkus posted:The Infinite and the Divine by Robert Rath has cranky undead robots doing a reprise of "Grumpy Old Men" while trying to secure an extremely powerful space macguffins. That and Rath's other 40k book both strike me as decent gateways to 40k, they're just fun space operas once you get past the technobabble. That was fun. Got very Looney Tunes, or maybe Spy vs Spy, with the two necrons constantly stealing the macguffin from each other over millennia.
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Aug 5, 2023 15:08
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The Twice-dead King duology, also by Nate Crowley, is another good 40k necron series. However it leans much farther into madness and body horror. It features a disgraced exiled lord trying to save his people from orks, humans, and themselves. The author is a goon I think, or at least visited the 40k black library thread once when the books were new.
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Aug 5, 2023 16:32
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withak posted:Reminder that the number of pages you have to read before you are allowed up give up on a book is 100 minus your age in years. Does this work with audiobook minutes?
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Aug 5, 2023 17:20
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Beachcomber posted:Does this work with audiobook minutes? Idk, I learned how to read in school so I just do it that way.
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Aug 5, 2023 17:21
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Just finished Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Fairy and is it too much to ask for a heartwarming, fun book that doesn't end in a romance? Like come on, she was socially awkward and very much more into her studies than this dude, why does she need to want to marry him? I'd be cool with a platonic love sort of relationship. And in fact this would work so much better that way. Am I going to have to write this book? Platonic love between mortal and fairy and it's better in every way. Other than that, it was an okay story that followed all the expected beats with an anthropological bent. If you're looking for light, fairy fantasy, it's not a huge waste of time. a friendly penguin fucked around with this message at 12:39 on Aug 6, 2023 |
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Aug 5, 2023 18:53
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Red Moon by Kim Stanley Robinson - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079L5PTZS/ The Witchwood Crown (Last King of Osten Ard #1) by Tad Williams - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IAUG3FM/
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Aug 5, 2023 18:58
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Finished Space Marine. Weird, visceral, grim, gross. So many sentences ending in ellipses. Big fan.
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Aug 5, 2023 20:21
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a friendly penguin posted:Just finished Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Fairy and is it too much to ask for a heartwarming, fun book that doesn't end in a romance? Like come on, she was socially awkward and very much more into her studies than this dude, why does she need to want to marry him? I'd be cool with a platonic love sort of relationship. And in fact this would work so much better that way. Am I going to have to write this book? Platonic love between mortal and fairy and it's better in every way. I am constantly in search of genre books with a strong platonic love component, and I was recently delighted by Howard Pyle’s Merry Adventures of Robin Hood. It’s 24/7 Great Forest Friends have fun adventures and singing and feasting and loving with priests and nobles, basically Redwall with humans.
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Aug 5, 2023 21:41
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Kestral posted:I am constantly in search of genre books with a strong platonic love component, and I was recently delighted by Howard Pyle’s Merry Adventures of Robin Hood. It’s 24/7 Great Forest Friends have fun adventures and singing and feasting and loving with priests and nobles, basically Redwall with humans. At the Feet of the Sun (sequel to Hands of the Emperor) takes this idea straight on, although I'm not sure the book is everyone's cup of tea.
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Aug 6, 2023 01:38
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a friendly penguin posted:Just finished Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Fairy and is it too much to ask for a heartwarming, fun book that doesn't end in a romance? Like come on, she was socially awkward and very much more into her studies than this dude, why does she need to want to marry him? I'd be cool with a platonic love sort of relationship. And in fact this would work so much better that way. Am I going to have to write this book? Platonic love between mortal and fairy and it's better in every way. I don't know what the spoiler rules of the thread are, but it would have been nice not to know this as I'm somewhere near the beginning and whatshisname just showed up.
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Aug 6, 2023 03:57
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Danhenge posted:At the Feet of the Sun (sequel to Hands of I thought about this a little bit and I guess it is quite romantic but not sexual.
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Aug 6, 2023 05:16
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I was in the library and spotted Gnomon and remembered this thread said it was good and picked it up just on that without knowing anything about it. I'm 50 pages in and it's great so far! If I had known it was going to be about a fascist "utopia" I might have held off since I just finished Seven Surrenders and I usually go for variety in my reading. But I'm in it now and it's good, so I'll see it through. Anyway, my initial reaction to Too Like The Lightning and Seven Surrenders: The books posit a utopia of freedom under dictatorships: a world where the problems of dictatorship have been solved by allowing anyone to change which dictator has authority over them at a whim. So the dictators can't be bad or else they would lose all their people! A perfect solution. The only thing that could go wrong is if all those dictators got together and started colluding. The rulers have a panopticon. Everyone is tracked at all times. They have the ability to forecast social unrest and intervene before it occurs. They have people who can discern your secrets at a glance. They have laws against having certain kinds of discussions in groups of 3 or more. Their control is so great that they don't even need the heavy glove of authority. But still, it's a utopia. Yes, there are slaves, but the only one we see is someone who committed the worst crimes ever and thinks he deserves it. And the mass of people are happy - we know they are because the dictators believe it. Our PoV never strays from the dictators so if they are wrong we don't see any evidence. All the rulers agree that everyone is free - the freest society there ever has been! The book asks the question of whether you would destroy utopia for a better utopia. What could be a better utopia? Well, according to the asker of the question, it's one where earth stays basically the same, but he and his kin get to be kings of mars, too. I wondered as I was reading it when we would get to see anyone who is not part of the rulers and their direct functionaries, but of course we never do, except when they are an audience or a mob. To show us how they really feel would give the game away. The book is modeled after the enlightenment and we care about Voltaire and de Sade and the crowned heads and their various personal servants and factota, and we read about their ideas of freedom and governance and their ideals. Because that's what the enlightenment is: the ideals. There's no need to examine what happens when those systems of government actually govern. If it all went wrong in the end, that could never be a failure of the ideals anyway, only a failure of the leaders to live up to those ideals in reality. Anyway, by the end of the second book, these fuckers have managed to gently caress up every single one of their promises of their ideals to society, even the most fundamental, and I love that the dissonance is never resolved. Why should it be? Do we think our overlords in the real world ever bother to recognize the dissonance between their promises and our reality? When they could point fingers at each other instead? Or maybe I'm just reading in things that aren't there, filling in the gaps with my own feelings. Maybe the author really does think that she's written a utopia. Maybe she's a liberal who has described the fascist end of the liberal project without seeing it for what it is. That would be sad. I prefer to think that she's just being utterly scathing with every word she doesn't write and every character she doesn't show and every realization the narrator never has. There's also some fascinating religious stuff in here, but that would be a whole other post. I'll check back in after I've read the next two books, I guess!
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Aug 6, 2023 06:19
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There's a little collection of essays about the first two books here https://crookedtimber.org/category/ada-palmer-seminar/, along with responses from the author. The first response goes a bit into whether it's supposed to a utopia or not.
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Aug 6, 2023 09:10
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Beachcomber posted:I don't know what the spoiler rules of the thread are, but it would have been nice not to know this as I'm somewhere near the beginning and whatshisname just showed up. Ah, poo poo, you're right. I'm sorry. I'll fix it. Hope those who quoted me might fix it too. It really is not the main thrust of the book so I hope you can still enjoy it for other reasons. a friendly penguin fucked around with this message at 12:43 on Aug 6, 2023 |
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Aug 6, 2023 12:37
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Kestral posted:I am constantly in search of genre books with a strong platonic love component, and I was recently delighted by Howard Pyle’s Merry Adventures of Robin Hood. It’s 24/7 Great Forest Friends have fun adventures and singing and feasting and loving with priests and nobles, basically Redwall with humans. Danhenge posted:At the Feet of the Sun (sequel to Hands of Thanks for these to look into. I'm always for this kind of stuff. All of Nicole Kornher-Stace's books are platonic relationship centered. And actually, her YA series Archivist Wasp is just weird enough and not at all trope-y that I think the thread would dig them.
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Aug 6, 2023 12:46
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Jimbozig posted:The books posit a utopia of freedom under dictatorships: a world where the problems of dictatorship have been solved by allowing anyone to change which dictator has authority over them at a whim. So the dictators can't be bad or else they would lose all their people! A perfect solution. The only thing that could go wrong is if all those dictators got together and started colluding. I really like the last two books and they have lots more grist for this mill so looking forward to hearing your thoughts on it. For those who finished the series though: Alas it seems like Ada Palmer is bought in to all this pretty hard! I was really expecting JEDD to be Napoleon who sweeps away the incestuous old order and creates a new enlightened set of laws but...Ada Palmer is a renaissance historian, she likes the renaissance, and she has no interest in letting her setting progress towards some kind of analogue with modernity. She's also into SF fan culture and clearly identifies with the Utopians, even though as Jimbozig alludes to there's a great argument they are actually the bad guys. So...oh well. But what's marvelous and actually strange is that she does very little to jeopardize the cynical reading. Everything works pretty well if you think JEDD is a brainwashed fraud created by Madame as a proxy so she can take over the world. I don't think this was intentional--in a book with this many layers of narration it's easy to pick and choose what you want to believe--but regardless I love that I can still draw my own conclusions.
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Aug 6, 2023 14:40
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I think the (later Terra Ignota book spoilers) gundam with achilles in it was just a step too far for me though I do admire the chutzpah.
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Aug 6, 2023 14:52
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Lex Talionis posted:Why is it that the Hives seem to represent Europe, Japan, and that's about it? Oh God yes, I forgot to even mention the "reservation" in Africa that gets two brief passing mentions and no elaboration. Seems pretty grim!
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Aug 6, 2023 15:57
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Jimbozig posted:I'm two books into Ada Palmer's Terra Ignots and it's good poo poo. drat, that ending to book 2! You shoulda warned me! I got to the chapter that introduced Sniper in the first book and couldn't continue. Good on you for pressing on.
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Aug 6, 2023 16:34
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General Battuta posted:I think the (later Terra Ignota book spoilers) gundam with achilles in it was just a step too far for me though I do admire the chutzpah.
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Aug 6, 2023 16:58
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habeasdorkus posted:Finished Light Bringer, the 6th and latest entry into the Red Rising series by Pierce Brown. It was typical of the series. Propulsive, tense, space opera with some still hanging on bits of the YA trappings it had from the first book and which it's increasingly left behind. And a bunch of swerves in the plot that make sense, but make me sad. Major spoilers because I need to vent and my brother hasn't finished the book yet: Lysander au Lune cannot die a painful enough death.I should have known Cassius was going to actually die when he and Darrow had made peace and agreed that they were brothers until the end. gently caress that Pixie. I really need to go back and do a more thorough reread of the second Red Rising trilogy. After Iron Gold I found myself skipping over some of the other POVs to read Lyria's stuff because I just love the hell out of that character. Lyria's like if the original Star Trek was Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Steve the Redshirt who keeps going on away missions with them but doesn't get eaten/electrocuted or otherwise die in horrible ways. The other POVs are important, powerful people central to the conflict. Lyria's this relatively normal person who ends up getting thrown in with these people due to her circumstances and decisions.
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Aug 6, 2023 17:50
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A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (Song of Ice and Fire) by George RR Martin - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00S3R6HAE/ The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00851M70C/ Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08QGJDSCK/ The Goblin Emperor (Chronicles of Osreth) by Katherine Addison - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FO6NPIO/
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Aug 6, 2023 18:22
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Everyone posted:I really need to go back and do a more thorough reread of the second Red Rising trilogy. After Iron Gold I found myself skipping over some of the other POVs to read Lyria's stuff because I just love the hell out of that character. Lyria's like if the original Star Trek was Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Steve the Redshirt who keeps going on away missions with them but doesn't get eaten/electrocuted or otherwise die in horrible ways. In the latest book I very much like that Lyria makes the very early choiceto have the super-tech taken out of her head instead of repaired.
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Aug 6, 2023 18:52
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habeasdorkus posted:In the latest book I very much like that Lyria makes the very early choiceto have the super-tech taken out of her head instead of repaired. I like that Lyria made the choice though I have to wonder if that choice was fully respected. Matteo spent a little time talking about the six "super-duper" machine implants. I'm wondering if maybe there was a "secret seventh" and that was what got put into Lyria as a replacement that wouldn't harm her memories. I mean, the next book is titled, Red God. Plus, Regulus and Matteo are taking their New Hoomans and leaving the whole loving solar system. They're not going to care if Lyria becomes a Machine Goddess. I admit that I'm giving that possibility maybe a 25%. I really hope that's not what's happening. I like Lyria as a contrast to the other characters. They're big, she's small. They're powerful, she's not. Darrow let himself be Carved and trained as a Gold. Lyria stays a Red. They have grandiose plans and massive goals. Lyria's goals and plans are much more focused and limited. Leverage saving the Gold Noble into getting her and Liam the gently caress off Mars. Make sure Liam's taken care of. Go to the cops to try to help rescue the children she accidentally helped kidnap. Get herself of Volga away from Victra and the ship Fa was attacking. Infiltrate the Red Hand to try to save Volga and Victra. Attach herself to Darrow and his friends to get to the Rim to try to save Volga. There's nothing like "Bring down the Hierarchy. Save the Rim. Conquer the evil Golds." Lyria tries to do poo poo that's ambitious but still barely possible for her.
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Aug 6, 2023 22:05
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General Battuta posted:I think the (later Terra Ignota book spoilers) gundam with achilles in it was just a step too far for me though I do admire the chutzpah. I mean, the books are even self-aware about that. In-world, it comes from Apollo's novel, which everyone in-world agrees is complete trash. One thing about the series is that Ada Palmer is adamant that it's not meant to be a utopia. It has utopian elements for sure, but there are plenty of dystopian elements too. Some of those are even major plot drivers.
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Aug 6, 2023 22:07
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I got Battuta's latest book, Exordia, from NetGalley and have been reading it before bed and it's very good. Excited to spend more time with my best friend, Ssrin.
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Aug 7, 2023 01:58
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tiniestacorn posted:I got Battuta's latest book, Exordia, from NetGalley and have been reading it before bed and it's very good. Excited to spend more time with my best friend, Ssrin. Wikipedia posted:Expected on: January 23, 2024
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Aug 7, 2023 02:14
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Everyone posted:I like Lyria as a contrast to the other characters. They're big, she's small. They're powerful, she's not. Darrow let himself be Carved and trained as a Gold. Lyria stays a Red. They have grandiose plans and massive goals. Lyria's goals and plans are much more focused and limited. Leverage saving the Gold Noble into getting her and Liam the gently caress off Mars. Make sure Liam's taken care of. Go to the cops to try to help rescue the children she accidentally helped kidnap. Get herself of Volga away from Victra and the ship Fa was attacking. Infiltrate the Red Hand to try to save Volga and Victra. Attach herself to Darrow and his friends to get to the Rim to try to save Volga. There's nothing like "Bring down the Hierarchy. Save the Rim. Conquer the evil Golds." Lyria tries to do poo poo that's ambitious but still barely possible for her. I concur. She's a very good antidote to the type of hagiography that'd spring up around Darrow and the other major revolutionaries who remain big movers and shakers a dozen years into a war against the Society. From the very start of her perspective in a refugee camp where she's been stuck for years and watched the revolution fail to fulfill so many of their promises.
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Aug 7, 2023 02:35
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Is this Court of Thorns and Roses just Twilight or is there something to it?
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Aug 7, 2023 03:25
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Lex Talionis posted:Oh! Oh boy can't wait to-- I presume they still do the stuff that does cost them anything, such as trying to space out books to maximize sales. Plus there's still a timeline for physical media and I guess they mostly still try to publish them at the same time. I got a little surprised a few months back when they released Beyond the Burn Line on eBook several months before it was available in physical copy in the US, so all the "release dates" appeared to be in the future after I finished it.
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Aug 7, 2023 13:07
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habeasdorkus posted:I concur. She's a very good antidote to the type of hagiography that'd spring up around Darrow and the other major revolutionaries who remain big movers and shakers a dozen years into a war against the Society. From the very start of her perspective in a refugee camp where she's been stuck for years and watched the revolution fail to fulfill so many of their promises. I may have missed it but I keep waiting for Victra to kind of mock the hell out of Kavax over Lyria, like "She destroyed the Red Hand and brought the Volk back to the Republic. And you had her scooping fox poo poo." I also love that Lyria is now a Howler according to Sevro.
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Aug 7, 2023 15:33
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I liked Light from Uncommon Stars, a bit odd with the various narratives, but good for it.
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Aug 7, 2023 16:01
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