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Lunsku posted:Dropping in the Leckie chat to remind that The Raven Tower is really good. Agreed. Just make sure you read the Leckie one and not that other book with the same name like some poor poster did ITT 
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Dec 18, 2023 16:19
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ToxicFrog posted:I haven't read Dreamwalker, but I have read Magister. The basic premise is that it's a fantasy setting where magic exists, but is rarely used, because using it drains the caster's life-force, hastening their death. Mild spoilers for the Coldfire Trilogy: this follows directly from the ending of the Coldfire Trilogy, where IIRC the fae can no longer be influenced without sacrifice.
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Dec 18, 2023 18:31
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Lunsku posted:Dropping in the Leckie chat to remind that The Raven Tower is really good. Woulda been 5 times better without the second person narrator.
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Dec 18, 2023 18:32
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IShallRiseAgain posted:They has been a singular gender neutral pronoun for a very long time though. Was good enough for goddamn Chaucer and Shakespeare. Good enough for us, then.
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Dec 18, 2023 19:01
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Hiro Protagonist posted:Ah, I think I was getting it confused with Daughter of the Empire. I had a coworker who swore by it but said that you had to read the first Rfitwar Trilogy which wasn't as good. I'm pretty sure Wurst or Feist even says in the preface(?) to Daughter of the Empire that reading Magician isn't necessary since it just adds additional context on some characters and events so it's a bit odd that your coworker insisted you needed to read the Riftwar books.
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Dec 18, 2023 19:18
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American Gods (#1) by Neil Gaiman - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004YW4L5K/ The Great Hunt (Wheel of Time #2) by Robert Jordan - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002VBV1R2/ The Wandering Earth by Cixin Liu - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08QGMTFNW/ The Perdition Score (Sandman Slim #8) by Richard Kadrey - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B015MOCRH2/
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Dec 18, 2023 22:15
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pradmer posted:... some other books... I've been picking this series of books off one by one as they've gone on sale. I got the first 4 around the same time back in 2019 and it's been a long long journey since then. Too bad the only one I'm missing after purchasing the above one is #5. Will have to decide whether to give in and pay full price or stand firm to my morals and possibly never get to read #5 through #12.
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Dec 19, 2023 00:08
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sebmojo posted:yeah it was cool, and worked fine, it wasn't a big part of the thematic payload afaict (unless I missed it). i liked how breq would sort of flail at a guess while being impressively competent at her core goal of annihilating a galactic emperor Translation State is my favorite of the five. As much as I liked Breq, I like the characters here more, even the more alien ones. It also has some really neat Sufficiently Advanced technology. I especially like the whole "useless person becoming useful after a major upheaval of their life".
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Dec 19, 2023 00:32
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ulmont posted:Mild spoilers for the Coldfire Trilogy: this follows directly from the ending of the Coldfire Trilogy, where IIRC the fae can no longer be influenced without sacrifice. It follows thematically, but there is no indication that they share a setting. Also, to be a bit pedantic: without self-sacrifice. Most intentional workings require sacrifice; it's described as "the primal pattern of Erna" in a few places. What changes is that you can no longer sacrifice someone or something else. You want magic? You have to put your life on the line for it. ulmont posted:Woulda been 5 times better without the second person narrator. 
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Dec 19, 2023 01:36
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Alright I finished Baxter's Manifold: Space and now need more recs for big picture, epic timescale, fate-of-humanity type of sci fi. Really liked how characters would jump through time to return to a vastly different Earth and solar system. It was good, I liked it more than Time. Manifold: Origin appears to be universally disliked and the weird hominid stuff was the weakest part of Space so I think I'll be avoiding it. At one point in Space a fifteen year old fur-covered homo erectus girl is described by the main character as "sexy as hell" which uh, ok Baxter, don't need more of that. House of Suns and the one Revelation Space short story with the Greenfly are other examples of what I'm looking for more of. Or Egan's Permutation City. Stuff like that?
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Dec 19, 2023 02:46
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Children of Time
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Dec 19, 2023 03:46
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my bony fealty posted:Alright I finished Baxter's Manifold: Space and now need more recs for big picture, epic timescale, fate-of-humanity type of sci fi. Really liked how characters would jump through time to return to a vastly different Earth and solar system. maybe you already know it and it may not be exactly what you're looking for but there's another Reynolds book that involves Deep Time, kind of a spoiler to say which. Pushing Ice
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Dec 19, 2023 03:57
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my bony fealty posted:Alright I finished Baxter's Manifold: Space and now need more recs for big picture, epic timescale, fate-of-humanity type of sci fi. Really liked how characters would jump through time to return to a vastly different Earth and solar system. That's like half of what Baxter writes. The Ring books are pretty good for that, especially because there is no trace of Malenfant. Grab Vacuum Diagrams and if that does it for you, you can snag the novels for more.
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Dec 19, 2023 04:38
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ToxicFrog posted:It follows thematically, but there is no indication that they share a setting. Also, to be a bit pedantic: without self-sacrifice. Most intentional workings require sacrifice; it's described as "the primal pattern of Erna" in a few places. What changes is that you can no longer sacrifice someone or something else. You want magic? You have to put your life on the line for it. The spot where this is wrong / there’s a loophole is the deliberate shift / trick of the second set of books, though.
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Dec 19, 2023 05:08
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ulmont posted:The spot where this is wrong / there’s a loophole is the deliberate shift / trick of the second set of books, though. I'm not sure what you think is "wrong" about that statement given that Magister and Coldfire are completely different settings.
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Dec 19, 2023 05:36
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my bony fealty posted:House of Suns and the one Revelation Space short story with the Greenfly are other examples of what I'm looking for more of. Or Egan's Permutation City. Stuff like that? Half of Star-Maker by Olaf Stapledon is about the evolution of various weird alien species, and then it balloons into this enormous galactic panorama that you can't find anywhere else.
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Dec 19, 2023 05:51
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my bony fealty posted:Alright I finished Baxter's Manifold: Space and now need more recs for big picture, epic timescale, fate-of-humanity type of sci fi. Really liked how characters would jump through time to return to a vastly different Earth and solar system. Robert Reed's Great Ship series
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Dec 19, 2023 06:17
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my bony fealty posted:Alright I finished Baxter's Manifold: Space and now need more recs for big picture, epic timescale, fate-of-humanity type of sci fi. Really liked how characters would jump through time to return to a vastly different Earth and solar system. Three Body Problem trilogy aka Remembrance of Earth's Past.
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Dec 19, 2023 07:32
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my bony fealty posted:Alright I finished Baxter's Manifold: Space and now need more recs for big picture, epic timescale, fate-of-humanity type of sci fi. Really liked how characters would jump through time to return to a vastly different Earth and solar system. grassy gnoll posted:That's like half of what Baxter writes. The Ring books are pretty good for that, especially because there is no trace of Malenfant. Grab Vacuum Diagrams and if that does it for you, you can snag the novels for more. Extremely seconding grassy gnoll's recommendation, The Xeelee Sequence is what you're looking for.
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Dec 19, 2023 08:21
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fez_machine posted:Robert Reed's Great Ship series Even though it's book 3, I'd read the great ship short stories if you aren't ready to jump into marrow I loved the shorts, thought the full lengths were ok.
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Dec 19, 2023 10:41
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jaadee posted:I've been picking this series of books off one by one as they've gone on sale. I got the first 4 around the same time back in 2019 and it's been a long long journey since then. Too bad the only one I'm missing after purchasing the above one is #5. Will have to decide whether to give in and pay full price or stand firm to my morals and possibly never get to read #5 through #12. Kill City Blues is probably the last Sandman Slim book that is worth paying full price for.
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Dec 19, 2023 11:13
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branedotorg posted:Even though it's book 3, I'd read the great ship short stories if you aren't ready to jump into marrow Yeah, the shorts are where the best stuff happens. Even the author's recommended reading order puts all the novels at the end and he no longer includes Marrow (preferring a reworked Marrow novella known as Marrow Redux) and The Well of Stars as in continuity.
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Dec 19, 2023 13:37
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ToxicFrog posted:I'm not sure what you think is "wrong" about that statement given that Magister and Coldfire are completely different settings. It really feels like she started to write a sequel trilogy to Coldfire play with that idea then felt like an entirely new setting was a better way to do that since she could write whatever instead of being tied to previous worldbuilding elements.
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Dec 19, 2023 13:55
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New offering in alternate history - a collection of LGBTQ-themed stories, hopefully a good example of divergence from the political and military focus of the genre. https://www.amazon.com/Pride-Points-Divergence-Anthology-Alternate-ebook/dp/B0CPX8172R/
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Dec 19, 2023 14:05
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I have a reading pattern where I alternate between trilogies/duologies and stand alones. I’ve had Old Man’s War and Forever War on my reading list forever. I have them both marked as “trilogies”, but I think I’ve read a sentiment in this thread that at least one of them should just be read as a standalone because the rest of the trilogy is bad. Any insight on these two and the respective series they belong to?
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Dec 19, 2023 15:26
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Megasabin posted:I have a reading pattern where I alternate between trilogies/duologies and stand alones. I’ve had Old Man’s War and Forever War on my reading list forever. I'd say that for both of them you can just read the first book and walk away. This is especially true of The Forever War -- Forever Free was written 25 years later and is unnecessary in every way possible, and Forever Peace is unrelated to either of the first two books except for the title and being mil-SF. I haven't read all the Old Man's War sequels, but the ones I've read have been okay but not outstanding.
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Dec 19, 2023 15:56
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That said, Forever Peace is pretty worthy in and of itself. Both the high concept and the details of executing that concept are quite solid.
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Dec 19, 2023 16:01
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ulmont posted:Mild spoilers for the Coldfire Trilogy: this follows directly from the ending of the Coldfire Trilogy, where IIRC the fae can no longer be influenced without sacrifice. I don't think they're related. In Coldfire the basic formula established by the first settlers always required sacrifice. At the end of the series, the Patriarch used his death and the focus of the faithful to further specify that any human working now required the death of the worker as the sacrifice, rather than lesser sacrifices for lesser workings. In Magister the magic is related to the bad bugs from across the wall. The first Magister was a guy bonded as a rider of one of the life stealing bug dragons and when his mount died he survived with the lifestealing power now lodged in him. Basically, becoming a Magister requires working with another Magister so that you can inherit the magical parasitism from them.
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Dec 19, 2023 19:05
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Just finished Children of Time. What a great, old-school sci-fi book. Big trundling generation ships, first contact, existential horror, weird science. It's got it all! I just put a hold on the sequel at my library but I'll probably just go ahead and buy the next one, haha.
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Dec 19, 2023 19:15
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RoboCicero posted:Just finished Children of Time. What a great, old-school sci-fi book. Big trundling generation ships, first contact, existential horror, weird science. It's got it all! I just put a hold on the sequel at my library but I'll probably just go ahead and buy the next one, haha.
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Dec 19, 2023 19:41
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RoboCicero posted:Just finished Children of Time. What a great, old-school sci-fi book. Big trundling generation ships, first contact, existential horror, weird science. It's got it all! I just put a hold on the sequel at my library but I'll probably just go ahead and buy the next one, haha. It’s not the best thing I’ve ever read but it’s so frequently the answer when people come into this thread looking to scratch a particular SF itch
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Dec 19, 2023 20:20
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Slyphic posted:Second one is almost as good as the first. It's the last one that gets weird and deviates from the pattern. This is kind of a good post/avatar combo!
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Dec 19, 2023 22:01
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Slyphic posted:Second one is almost as good as the first. It's the last one that gets weird and deviates from the pattern. I didn't like the last one as much as the first two overall, but I loved the corvids and it ends extremely strong even if it is a bit of a slog to get there.
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Dec 19, 2023 22:18
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Each book was two related but distinct stories; the generation ship and the spiders, the octopuses and the monosentience alien, the corvids and the alien device. I love 5 of those stories, and one of them yes had a satisfying ending, but I absolutely hold the process of getting there against it.
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Dec 19, 2023 22:23
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As a random thing I've been noticing - The Deed of Paksenarrion and its sequel series are the only fantasy books I've ever read that acknowledge how the characters need to visit the restroom regularly.
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Dec 19, 2023 22:27
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Slyphic posted:Each book was two related but distinct stories; the generation ship and the spiders, the octopuses and the monosentience alien, the corvids and the alien device. See, I liked the ending of both of the stories in Memory, but only one of them felt like an enjoyable process to get there.
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Dec 19, 2023 22:33
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The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart by Jesse Bullington - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002UGU33Q/ The Folding Knife by KJ Parker - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0035IICZO/ The Rising (Alchemy Wars #2) by Ian Tregillis - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00W22IMAO/ Exogene (Subterrene War #2) by TC McCarthy - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004RCNGS0/
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Dec 19, 2023 22:33
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dwarf74 posted:As a random thing I've been noticing - The Deed of Paksenarrion and its sequel series are the only fantasy books I've ever read that acknowledge how the characters need to visit the restroom regularly. It has been [0] days since "evening found her squatting in the grass..." Or however it goes
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Dec 20, 2023 00:18
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Strategic Tea posted:It has been [0] days since "evening found her squatting in the grass..." Or however it goes
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Dec 20, 2023 00:36
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dwarf74 posted:As a random thing I've been noticing - The Deed of Paksenarrion and its sequel series are the only fantasy books I've ever read that acknowledge how the characters need to visit the restroom regularly. does Blood Meridian count as a fantasy book?
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Dec 20, 2023 03:07
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