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A reverse medusa 
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Jan 23, 2024 20:30
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zoux posted:A reverse medusa
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Jan 23, 2024 20:35
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Chapter three loving goes places.
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Jan 23, 2024 21:45
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ToxicFrog posted:Reading The March North and I think Blossom just made chlorine trifluoride? She asked for a bunch of salt and fluorite, did some spooky magic poo poo, and produced something that's hypergolic with stone, sand, water, and enemy wizards, so... The next two books are basically more of the same, but high-stakes wizard school, so you're in for a treat.
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Jan 23, 2024 22:06
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OptionalPirate posted:GB - I noticed that Amazon UK doesn't like me searching for Exordia. It auto-corrects to Exodia and just gives Yu-Gi-Oh crap, you're not even on the page. Hope somebody gets fired for this blunder. boy I hope the old nerds in this thread think that's funny
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Jan 23, 2024 22:29
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I've been saving some of an Amazon gift card my family got me for Christmas, so: one more copy of Exordia purchased, thanks GB!
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Jan 23, 2024 22:37
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Going Postal (Discworld #33) by Terry Pratchett - $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000W965QM/
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Jan 23, 2024 23:52
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General Battuta posted:Hello thread. My first book in four years is out today. It is called EXORDIA. Congrats!! I hope it feels great (and sells great), looking forward to diving into it this weekend!
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Jan 24, 2024 00:00
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Just appeared on my kindle today! 
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Jan 24, 2024 00:04
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I've been reading Exordia pretty steadily today, but not as fast as I expected because it's unnerving enough that I need an occasional break.
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Jan 24, 2024 00:47
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I'm on chapter 6 or 7 and I'd like to find Batuta's editor and give them a hug and make sure they're okay.
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Jan 24, 2024 00:55
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Exordia is really good, except it touched on some ideas I thought were original and now kinda don't want to use after going on about how much I enjoyed it because I'm afraid people will think I nicked them, hah. But also, Amazon won't let me leave a review despite spending over $50 in a year, so, is there another aspect to their 'you're a real customer' guidelines? I put one up on Goodreads, but that's not the same thing.
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Jan 24, 2024 01:02
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:Exordia is really good, except it touched on some ideas I thought were original and now kinda don't want to use after going on about how much I enjoyed it because I'm afraid people will think I nicked them, hah. For real - your take on those ideas will be different because you are different. An idea isn't necessarily worse because someone else used it first. You know you didn't nick them, and even if you had it'd be the execution that mattered. Don't hesitate to write your thing because you want to be original. Just write the thing. If it's any good it can't help but be original, because you wrote it this time.
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Jan 24, 2024 01:38
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General I just want you to know that I was sitting here waffling about whether to buy this or that game, all modern day angst over what I'd have the most fun with like the saddest version of mute indecision there ever was and then I read the blurb for your book and that solved the whole thing right quick. I hope this makes you boat loads of money and acclaim. Thanks for writing.
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Jan 24, 2024 03:01
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:Exordia is really good, except it touched on some ideas I thought were original and now kinda don't want to use after going on about how much I enjoyed it because I'm afraid people will think I nicked them, hah. I felt the same way after reading the Xenogenesis trilogy, but that didn’t stop me. My writing is nothing like Octavia Butler’s so the end product is gonna be completely different. Originality is in the execution, not the idea itself
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Jan 24, 2024 03:09
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Edit: wrong thread! To make this post somewhat useful: Exordia chapter 4 is all I can fit in tonight, but boy, what a start to a book. General Battuta, if you don't mind my asking, how intentional of a response to Blindsight is this setting? Kestral fucked around with this message at 04:59 on Jan 24, 2024 |
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Jan 24, 2024 04:57
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I'ma grab it in a while. Got wayyyy too big of a backlog at the moment. The blurbs did sell me though.
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Jan 24, 2024 08:34
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The plot structure reminds me of the pulse detonations of an Orion ship. Most of these bangs would end a normal book.
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Jan 24, 2024 09:16
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Fwiw Amazon says it's reviewing my review and it may take several days. They said they'd email me when it's done so uh that's something I guess.
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Jan 24, 2024 10:32
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GB, man, one day you gotta come over to my place so you can play Trial by Trolley with us
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Jan 24, 2024 13:18
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I am exactly in the middle point of the Ash and Sand Trilogy. I can say without a doubt that this series has some cool ideas and is a way above average read vs the competition. It started slow but has made the investment worth it.
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Jan 24, 2024 18:30
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General Battuta posted:If you pick it up I hope you enjoy it. There is some goon poo poo in there I am sure you will spot.
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Jan 24, 2024 18:35
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gvibes posted:I bought and read a bit of it last night. I was not expecting to be laughing my rear end off half the time. Including oddly personal vendettas against online forums posters. People who hold forum grudges are so loving weird.
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Jan 24, 2024 18:42
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Sickening posted:People who hold forum grudges are so loving weird. But now all the goons in the thread are rushing out to buy it to find out if they're one of the ones General B has a grudge against!
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Jan 24, 2024 19:30
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gvibes posted:I bought and read a bit of it last night. I was not expecting to be laughing my rear end off half the time. Including oddly personal vendettas against online forums posters. I was not expecting quite so many puns, I thought editors hate puns
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Jan 24, 2024 20:13
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General Battuta posted:Hello thread. My first book in four years is out today. It is called EXORDIA. Huh, turns out past me did me a favor and put this on hold at the library ages ago. It's ready to pick up today. Sometimes that guy is alright.
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Jan 24, 2024 20:17
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Kesper North posted:I was not expecting quite so many puns, I thought editors hate puns Tamsyn Muir may have stumbled on trying to get the last of her Locked Tomb books out quickly, but in a sense she balked so Battuta could pun
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Jan 24, 2024 20:33
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gvibes posted:I bought and read a bit of it last night. I was not expecting to be laughing my rear end off half the time. Including oddly personal vendettas against online forums posters. God drat it. Now I have to read it.
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Jan 24, 2024 20:45
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sebmojo posted:Tamsyn Muir may have stumbled on trying to get the last of her Locked Tomb books out quickly, but in a sense she balked so Battuta could pun Jesus christ. Jedit posted:But now all the goons in the thread are rushing out to buy it to find out if they're one of the ones General B has a grudge against! The character has forums grudges, not me.
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Jan 24, 2024 21:00
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General Battuta posted:The character has forums grudges, not me. (wow do I hope I'm not misremembering and that's actually what Michael Crichton did or else this post looks really, really weird)
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Jan 24, 2024 21:05
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DACK FAYDEN posted:so you're saying you did not write me in as a pedophile rapist with a small dick? Yep
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Jan 24, 2024 21:12
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sebmojo posted:Tamsyn Muir may have stumbled on trying to get the last of her Locked Tomb books out quickly, but in a sense she balked so Battuta could pun  i say jod daaaaaamn
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Jan 24, 2024 21:16
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finally got round to reading City of Last Chances, having bought it mid-december. someone upthread mentioned but i found it really goddamn easy to bounce off the first few whirligig chapters as it jumped from person to person. also the very first priest chapter was a bit tedious. it got good with relative speed though; usual Tchaikovsky affair where it's decent-but-not-consistently-astonishing ideas executed with competence-but-not-complete-brilliance. sounds like faint praise - it's not. book good, imo. also read that latest Alisdair Reynolds "Prefect" book, Machine Vendetta. felt rather phoned in. some good bits, but the characters were more sketch-like than usual, and the ending was an enormous lol. central mystery was also a bit... absent.
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Jan 24, 2024 22:44
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sebmojo posted:Tamsyn Muir may have stumbled on trying to get the last of her Locked Tomb books out quickly, but in a sense she balked so Battuta could pun I doubt it, she's Australian so I don't think she plays a lot of baseball.
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Jan 24, 2024 23:05
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I finished Exordia, and I really like it. Very different from Baru. Lots more POVs, but more compact in terms of the timespan of the events of the novel and the number of settings. Much higher stakes. Here's my Amazon review, whenever it goes up. I've spoiled it because it's mildly spoilery but not intensely so: There's a lot to like about Dickinson's Exordia. In a nutshell, one alien sets out to change things, to make right a deep wrong done to the Universe, and there consequences. There are some aliens, lots of important choices being made, and tons of explosions. There's interesting science fiction technology, along with some science-fantasy semi-magic functioning on a set of extra-real laws that are gestured at but thankfully never fully-explained. Throw in some ultra-violence, a little bit of body horror, and every nuke on earth and you've got Exordia. There are also a LOT of fighter jets and plenty of military jargon and callsigns that I will admit to having skimmed over a little bit, but adult lovers of Top Gun will not be disappointed. If we jump past the "wow cool robots" bits of Exordia, at its core it is a meditation on the nature of moral choices. It asks the question "What makes a choice morally good?" It's not difficult to intuit some of of the things that the book argues are immoral, such as suffering inflicted on the innocent for the sake of power. But it elects not to answer the question of what makes a choice moral. Instead, we are presented with a set of individuals who all make choices in different ways. Anna, who always does what it takes to win, with winning representing something that depends on context. Ssrin, an alien who will do whatever is necessary to accomplish the goal of freeing the universe of total, soul-bound domination. Clayton, a mirror to Ssrin, who will do whatever is necessary to make the world better (for his definition of better). Erik, who believes that doing good means laying out the boundaries for good and evil in advance, and always choosing good, no matter the cost to you or those around you. For Erik, the lesser evil will always be evil. Li, for whom the greatest good is understanding the meaning of the world. Chaya, who believes that good comes in helping others. Chaya might be arguable - she's the one for whom you have to read between the lines the most. We see their motivations laid out clearly, and the choices they make are never stupid, even if we don't like them, even if we wouldn't make the same ones. We see the consequences of their actions (and there are CONSEQUENCES), and we are left to draw our own conclusions about who, if anyone, made moral choices. General, are you planning to write a sequel or is it a standalone?
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Jan 24, 2024 23:12
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sebmojo posted:Tamsyn Muir may have stumbled on trying to get the last of her Locked Tomb books out quickly, but in a sense she balked so Battuta could pun General Battuta posted:Jesus christ.  But I hope the Saga of Caro somehow gets immortalized in it or some other future book
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Jan 24, 2024 23:16
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Stardust by Neil Gaiman - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC13Y0/ The Dragon's Path (Dagger & Coin #1) by Daniel Abraham - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0047Y16LC/ The Two of Swords: Volume One by KJ Parker - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06Y5K2CK3/
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Jan 24, 2024 23:34
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Macdeo Lurjtux posted:I doubt it, she's Australian so I don't think she plays a lot of baseball. I think you can balk in cricket but I'm not gonna look it up
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Jan 24, 2024 23:40
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yeah finished machine vendetta and lol at that ending (or lack thereof)...
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Jan 25, 2024 00:10
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shrike82 posted:yeah finished machine vendetta and lol at that ending (or lack thereof)... Ah drat I just picked it up too
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Jan 25, 2024 00:52
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