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silvergoose posted:I'll have to check that out, then; never heard of it, somehow. Be sure to get the anthology entitled Sandkings and not any standalone. The rest of the stories in there also go really hard. That and Tuf Voyaging should have cemented his rep as a top SFF author.
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Jan 13, 2024 01:07
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Remulak posted:His best work is and will always be Sandkings. Not even close, it's a PERFECT story at the perfect length, not one word wasted. I constantly forget he did Sandkings because it feels like something I'd find in a compilation of the best Sci Fi of 1965. It's such a vibe and every single line builds towards a blindingly obvious ending that still fucks you up. I also have a vague recollection of an alternative Sci Fantasy series he did that was excellent but short lived because ASoIaF took off and he didn't do anything else once it popped. Aces Wild was pretty cool. There's an alternate dimension where everyone's expecting him to die before he finishes his SciFi epic. There's no timeline where he actually finished any of it.
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Jan 13, 2024 01:09
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fischtick posted:One cool bit I learned after reading: the stories are in chronological order, but GRRM wrote like Chapter 4 in the 70s, then worked backwards and forwards in the 80s to give Tuf a more meaningful origin story and a conclusion. Also, I guess Tuf voyages through GRRM's sci-fi universe? I didn't know he had one.
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Jan 13, 2024 01:15
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silvergoose posted:I'll have to check that out, then; never heard of it, somehow. Besides being in the collection titled Sandkings, it’s also published in Ann and Jeff Vandermeer’s excellent, colossal anthology, The Weird. Worth a look in general.
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Jan 13, 2024 01:21
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Ranger Vick posted:Anyone read or have some thoughts on diving into the Wayward Children series by Seanan McGuire? I’m looking for novellas or other shorter books that are sort of breezy and can fit in between other more doorstop books in my backlog. Murderbot worked well for this previously, but sadly I’m all caught up. I really, really liked the second one, but I felt there were diminishing returns past that. By the point I dropped the series, everything felt kinda same-y and hollow. There's a particular style of writing that I (fairly or unfairly) feel like I can only describe as "What people whose taste formed with YA and fanfic think is lush and lyrical", which I mostly see in novellas published by Tordotcom, and Wayward Children mostly falls into that category for me. This isn't an anti-recommendation, as such, but I do think the series benefits from the Dune rule — keep reading until you finish a book and say, "Okay, I don't think I need any more of that."
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Jan 13, 2024 01:24
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Ranger Vick posted:Anyone read or have some thoughts on diving into the Wayward Children series by Seanan McGuire? I’m looking for novellas or other shorter books that are sort of breezy and can fit in between other more doorstop books in my backlog. Murderbot worked well for this previously, but sadly I’m all caught up. They're fine, but after a certain point you really get the impression that she's drawing sexualities out of one hat and fantasy settings out of another and mental illnesses out of a third and then mashing them together to make a story.
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Jan 13, 2024 01:28
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pseudorandom name posted:They're fine, but after a certain point you really get the impression that she's drawing sexualities out of one hat and fantasy settings out of another and mental illnesses out of a third and then mashing them together to make a story. Tbf take fantasy out of that statement and that's pretty much all literature ever
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Jan 13, 2024 01:34
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Benagain posted:Tbf take fantasy out of that statement and that's pretty much all literature ever Yes, but most authors aren't going down the checklist to make sure that they get full coverage.
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Jan 13, 2024 01:35
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cptn_dr posted:There's a particular style of writing that I (fairly or unfairly) feel like I can only describe as "What people whose taste formed with YA and fanfic think is lush and lyrical", which I mostly see in novellas published by Tordotcom, and Wayward Children mostly falls into that category for me. I know exactly what you’re talking about, and yeah, it’s why that series was a big no for me right from the start
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Jan 13, 2024 02:16
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fischtick posted:Also, I guess Tuf voyages through GRRM's sci-fi universe? I didn't know he had one. Before Game of Thrones the show, I legitimately thought of GRRM as primarily a space opera author who also wrote some fantasy books that I vaguely knew were like a riff on Lord of the Rings. Now part of that was me just not being a fan of fantasy, but I do think that in the 70s and 80s GRRM made a big name for himself as a sci-fi author. If you want more of his sci-fi universe you should check out Dying of the Light (his debut novel, just fantastic) and Windhaven. Admiralty Flag posted:I too picked it up thanks to Pradmer’s bulletin (never stop, please!). This background on how he wrote it is fascinating, especially thinking about how he fleshed out things like the dock mistress/ruler and set himself up to tell the earlier story later. Maybe it’s time for him to dump ASOIAF (and get rid of his self-admitted writer’s block) and start on Tuf 2? It's a shame we never got a Tuf Voyaging miniseries with Conleth Hill as Tuf.
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Jan 13, 2024 03:26
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Much appreciated for the input on Wayward Children. I'll put it in the maybe try one or two and see what happens pile. I think in the meantime I'll keep working through Tchaikovsky. One Day All This Will Be Yours had a couple of memorable high points I'm chasing again, especially the historical figure brawl. So far everything I've read from him has been enjoyable, ranging from pretty good (Walking to Aldebaran, Expert Systems, Ogres) to great (Spiderlight, One Day...). Children of Time is on my list and I am really looking forward to it.
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Jan 13, 2024 03:30
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Speaking of Tchaikovsky, I finished The House of Open Wounds a few days ago. Short version, that's a really drat good novel that happens to be about a magical military hospital. It's an excellent follow up to City of Last Chances and has one character in common. The book sprang from a panel discussion at a con that covered the use of magical healing in fantasy literature. There are some excellent twists on that concept in the book. What it's really about is obligation, agreements, balance, and a side order of found family. I will absolutely be re-reading both books to catch what I missed, which has to be a lot. If anyone finds a critical review of either, post it because I'm interested. HoOW is a very deep book, and I'd love to see a good breakdown of what's going on in there. "These books kick rear end and you should read them" is my other version of the short review.
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Jan 13, 2024 03:47
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cptn_dr posted:There's a particular style of writing that I (fairly or unfairly) feel like I can only describe as "What people whose taste formed with YA and fanfic think is lush and lyrical", which I mostly see in novellas published by Tordotcom, and Wayward Children mostly falls into that category for me. eta: I keep logging in here and posting mean-spirited poo poo so I think I need to log out for a while!!! tiniestacorn fucked around with this message at 05:24 on Jan 13, 2024 |
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Jan 13, 2024 04:56
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Chairman Capone posted:Now part of that was me just not being a fan of fantasy, but I do think that in the 70s and 80s GRRM made a big name for himself as a sci-fi author. If you want more of his sci-fi universe you should check out Dying of the Light (his debut novel, just fantastic) and Windhaven. Absolutely. He won two Hugos and a bunch of Locuses in less than ten years. I think he's still the youngest Hugo winner ever.
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Jan 13, 2024 05:57
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GhastlyBizness posted:I’d second Peter Fehervari, he’s so good. Proper feverish horror stuff rather than OTT milsf bolter porn, and well-written, up there with the likes of Vandermeer and Cisco. Not sure how I’d feel about saying “he’s too good for Warhammer”, though it’s hard for the thought not to occur and GW certainly don’t seem to know what they have in him. This is from pages back, but any suggestions on where to start with him? I don’t like bolter porn but I do like the weirder corners of the black library.
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Jan 13, 2024 06:21
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Chairman Capone posted:Before Game of Thrones the show, I legitimately thought of GRRM as primarily a space opera author who also wrote some fantasy books that I vaguely knew were like a riff on Lord of the Rings. Tuf Voyaging was great, i also remember really liking Nighflyers, both the novella and the collection centred around it. i've mentioned them in here before but i really liked the anthologies he edited with Gardner Dozois, OLD VENUS and OLD MARS Not all the stories are great but the idea of stories set in the Edgar Rice Burroughs style of Mars & Venus; being full of canals and dying empires or lush and foreboding really grabbed me https://georgerrmartin.com/grrm_book/old-venus/ https://georgerrmartin.com/grrm_book/old-mars/
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Jan 13, 2024 06:33
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GRRM's best novel is Fevre Dream, and I will not be taking questions.
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Jan 13, 2024 07:03
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Arsenic Lupin posted:GRRM's best novel is Fevre Dream, and I will not be taking questions. I liked that one, but a new reader might find it derivative. Of all the later books it influenced.
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Jan 13, 2024 07:25
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Awkward Davies posted:This is from pages back, but any suggestions on where to start with him? I don’t like bolter porn but I do like the weirder corners of the black library. This site has a chronological reading order listed after a rundown of some of Fehervari's factions and settings: https://www.trackofwords.com/2020/10/31/a-travellers-guide-to-the-dark-coil/ Reverie is his only audiobook, I'm still hoping they release Fire Caste and Requiem Infernal in that format. I've read them both but a second time through helps with his stuff.
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Jan 13, 2024 07:58
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Slightly missed the latest wave of Baru Cormorant chat, but I just finished The Traitor after picking it up on the Kindle sale, and despite my TBR pile being at historical highs due to recommendations on this thread, I'm going to pick up the next two. I reached the conference at the end of the Army of the Wolf's victory, looked at how much of the book was left, thought "Oh no," and needed to finish the rest of the book as soon as I could. I enjoyed the book a lot throughout, but kind of like the Locked Tomb books, if for some reason you stopped reading 80% of the way through, you'd have a really different understanding of what was going on, which isn't something I've seen a lot of books do, and which really appeals to me for some reason. I felt like Baru pulls the same trick on the reader as she does on the Aurdwynni, in that I wanted to trust her despite some pretty strong indications that this was a bad idea (not really a spoiler, given the title of the book), which made the ending hit hard. Eager to see where the series goes.
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Jan 13, 2024 12:08
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Awkward Davies posted:This is from pages back, but any suggestions on where to start with him? I don’t like bolter porn but I do like the weirder corners of the black library. That post by bagrada is excellent but if you’re looking for a place to start…probably either Fire Caste or Requiem Infernal. Fire Caste is more obviously milsf but much more ‘surreal nightmarish space-Vietnam’ than ‘heroic space marine heroically crushes the traitor’. Very feverish, in the best way. This was Fehrvari’s first 40k novel. Requiem Infernal is straight SF-horror set on a convent world, though no less surreal. The author’s writing is a bit more mature and controlled. This was the first novel chronologically but with Fehervari’s “Dark Coil” books, the linkages are more thematic and esoteric so tbh I wouldn’t really worry to much about where you start reading, from that POV.
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Jan 13, 2024 13:08
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I finally finished The Archive Undying, and I think I agree with pretty much every criticism in this thread? In the end, I liked it well enough, but it was almost slice of life with giant mechs and an interesting world purely there as background, barely explored. I found the actual goings on very, very tough to parse, though, with all of the deliberately confusing multiple viewpoints at once, external thoughts barging into scenes, etc. I'm glad I read it, I doubt I'll seek out the next one if she writes it, the cover promised this was book 1 of some series after all.
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Jan 13, 2024 13:19
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Awkward Davies posted:This is from pages back, but any suggestions on where to start with him? I don’t like bolter porn but I do like the weirder corners of the black library. You already got good Fehervari suggestions but if you like the weirder stuff I would highly recommend The Lords of Silence. It's a Death Guard novel (but not bolter porn) and really leans into the weirdness of being a worshipper of Nurgle. It's one of my favorite books period not just 40k. The magnum opus of Chaos novels is the Night Lords trilogy which is just excellent. Never has a book made me root so hard for characters that are so unapologetically evil.
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Jan 13, 2024 16:58
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Runcible Cat posted:Bigot. 
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Jan 13, 2024 17:54
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I almost done with Children of Time, really loving the book, and I was hit unexpectedly hard by crazy space-mom Kern finding out her children weren't highly evolved primates, they were highly evolved spiders, but she still loves them and now she has a deeper understanding of what they've been going through. I think its a situation we can all relate to.
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Jan 13, 2024 18:10
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Revenger (#1) by Alistair Reynolds - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LXW2IUQ/ The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J5X5LVQ/
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Jan 13, 2024 20:31
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Are there authors out there that are similar to Gene Wolfe? Book of the New Sun kind of makes me think of Dark Souls, where you can't expect to have a 100% concrete understanding of everything going on in the book and the best you can do is to to piece all the parts of the puzzle together as best you can. I'm finding myself irritated when I read/watch/play something and every single thing is explicitly explained in detail. Destroys any sense of mystery or wonder. Though I do understand you can't leave things completely opaque either. Like to me there's nothing magical about a magic system with all sorts rules and systems as to how it works. It's just fantasy science.
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Jan 13, 2024 21:46
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CJ Cherryh's Fortress in the Eye of Time isn't the same dark tone as Gene Wolfe or Dark Souls, but it does feature delightfully unexplained magic. You should also check out Tanith Lee's Birthgrave.
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Jan 13, 2024 21:49
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Mustang posted:Are there authors out there that are similar to Gene Wolfe? Book of the New Sun kind of makes me think of Dark Souls, where you can't expect to have a 100% concrete understanding of everything going on in the book and the best you can do is to to piece all the parts of the puzzle together as best you can. The Locked Tomb series is very explicitly Gene Wolfe influenced, full of mystery, and full of clues and foreshadowing that you don't see until you re-read it.
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Jan 13, 2024 22:36
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Mustang posted:Are there authors out there that are similar to Gene Wolfe? Book of the New Sun kind of makes me think of Dark Souls, where you can't expect to have a 100% concrete understanding of everything going on in the book and the best you can do is to to piece all the parts of the puzzle together as best you can. Avram Davidson's work often the evokes the feeling of hearing a conversation in another room that Gene Wolfe has. Wolfe calls him a genius in his introduction to The Adventures of Doctor Eszterhazy. Highly recommend The Avram Davidson Treasury, the Lime Killer collection, the Vergil Magus novels (set in Rome as the Middle Ages/early Renaissance depicted it), The Adventures of Doctor Eszterhazy, and The Boss in The Wall. fez_machine fucked around with this message at 00:03 on Jan 14, 2024 |
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Jan 13, 2024 23:38
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The Vorrh gave me that '???' feeling though I didn't read very much of it, got distracted. I should go back. I really liked what I read.
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Jan 13, 2024 23:49
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Mustang posted:Are there authors out there that are similar to Gene Wolfe? Too Like the Lightning and its sequels by Ada Palmer were heavily inspired by Wolfe in a lot of ways. She also wrote the introduction to one of the newer editions of Book of the New Sun.
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Jan 14, 2024 01:18
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Has anyone read a book where everyone agrees there is magic, but there's only like 3 rules and those rules only exist because if you break them the magic completely kills you, but people are kinda dumb about it anyway? Sort of like the whole "you can't destroy anything in the universe" thing from the belgariad. Yea you can change the state of it, and you can alter the thing, but trying to completely erase it kinda bounces back and makes you go poof out of existence for being an idiot. The universe tolerates a lot of poo poo but not that.
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Jan 14, 2024 01:23
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The Milkweed Triptych -- all magic is a contract negotiation with demons and if you care about your continued existence, do not give them enough information to locate your world in spacetime.
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Jan 14, 2024 01:48
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Hyphen-ated posted:Too Like the Lightning and its sequels by Ada Palmer were heavily inspired by Wolfe in a lot of ways. She also wrote the introduction to one of the newer editions of Book of the New Sun. I've seen her and Adrian Tchaikovsky both write in to the ReReading Wolfe podcast which is about as deep into Wolfe as you can get without becoming a scholar of him like Aramini or Andri-Driussi. That said nobody in the genre ever hits the highs he does with his work. You might be better off looking at people outside the genre whose works are similar to his own. Late Nabokov, Borges, Calvino etc.
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Jan 14, 2024 01:57
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Gaius Marius posted:I've seen her and Adrian Tchaikovsky both write in to the ReReading Wolfe podcast which is about as deep into Wolfe as you can get without becoming a scholar of him like Aramini or Andri-Driussi. calvino fuckin slaps, read invisible cities and if on a winters night a traveller. also stanislaw lem is very good.
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Jan 14, 2024 02:46
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Has anyone read a book where everyone agrees there is magic, but there's only like 3 rules and those rules only exist because if you break them the magic completely kills you, but people are kinda dumb about it anyway? I have had a setting kicking around in my brain for YEARS where magic 100% exists but it kills 90% of would-be sorcerers because routing enough energy through your brain meat without frying it is tricksy. There are all kinds of work-arounds but they tend to be gross and/or evil
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Jan 14, 2024 03:16
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navyjack posted:I have had a setting kicking around in my brain for YEARS where magic 100% exists but it kills 90% of would-be sorcerers because routing enough energy through your brain meat without frying it is tricksy. There are all kinds of work-arounds but they tend to be gross and/or evil My dude have you heard of the Commonweal series?
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Jan 14, 2024 03:53
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D-Pad posted:My dude have you heard of the Commonweal series? Banned for self-promotion.
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Jan 14, 2024 03:56
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navyjack posted:I have had a setting kicking around in my brain for YEARS where magic 100% exists but it kills 90% of would-be sorcerers because routing enough energy through your brain meat without frying it is tricksy. There are all kinds of work-arounds but they tend to be gross and/or evil One of my favorite little wrinkles like this is in Zelazny's Tower of Ice, the culmination of his Dilvish stories. quote:"My brother's stock," she said. "He likes the best."
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