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StrixNebulosa posted:To Honor You Call Us... how chuddy are the books? I can hold my nose for military sci-fi, but anything blatant I should be braced for? (Man I miss David Drake, he was good at not doing that... and Eric Flint...)
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Mar 9, 2024 16:44
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RDM posted:The books aren't overly chuddy just dont read any of the authors tweets Can do, I don't think you even can read tweets without an account these days. Also just so this page isn't chud n' twitter, I've dug up my old review for SN Lewitt's Cyberstealth: (back from 2021!) quote:A revelation like salt.
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Mar 9, 2024 16:50
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StrixNebulosa posted:Help me, thread! I woke up with a weird and very specific desire: starship fights. Where can I go to read the good ones? Cherryh of course, SN Lewitt too, and the RTS-esque joy of the Lost Fleet series, but... where else? Where can I get ship to ship combat? I don't care if it's dogfighting or carrier battles or whatever, I want to read about starships fighting! A Passage at Arms, also by Glen Cook. And if you’re willing to do the A-M thing and treat the sea as sci-fi, submarine books are a good shout - Run Silent, Run Deep is one of the classics in the genre (and was written in the 50s about WWII so just be aware, 50s Navy officer as author), as is Das Boot; there’s also Frank Herbert’s Dragon in the Sea, and of course Hunt for Red October.
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Mar 9, 2024 17:35
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StrixNebulosa posted:Help me, thread! I woke up with a weird and very specific desire: starship fights. Where can I go to read the good ones? Cherryh of course, SN Lewitt too, and the RTS-esque joy of the Lost Fleet series, but... where else? Where can I get ship to ship combat? I don't care if it's dogfighting or carrier battles or whatever, I want to read about starships fighting! Scott Westerfeld's Risen Empire duo contains excellent spaceship fights, along with a bunch of other stuff you are likely to enjoy.
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Mar 9, 2024 18:17
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mewse posted:I still don't know what cozy means, can I request another 100 posts debating it? It's like having golf on in the background while you're working a jigsaw puzzle on a bright sunny day
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Mar 9, 2024 18:48
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Mrenda posted:I have no issue with cozy anything. It's just a clunky book. And it seems people's reactions based on that that, from the likes of the wikipedia and commentary, were for her supporters to say, "They just want edgy stuff!" which isn't fair. This is definitely a Thing, yes. Mostly a feature of twitter discourse thankfully but it’s like there’s a narrowing of focus, where it’s assumed that anyone who doesn’t like her stuff (or who doesn’t find it startlingly new and unprecedented) is under suspicion of being a Grim Edgelord Bro.
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Mar 9, 2024 20:11
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grassy gnoll posted:Scott Westerfeld's Risen Empire duo contains excellent spaceship fights, along with a bunch of other stuff you are likely to enjoy. Yeah!!!
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Mar 9, 2024 21:19
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StrixNebulosa posted:Help me, thread! I woke up with a weird and very specific desire: starship fights. Where can I go to read the good ones? Cherryh of course, SN Lewitt too, and the RTS-esque joy of the Lost Fleet series, but... where else? Where can I get ship to ship combat? I don't care if it's dogfighting or carrier battles or whatever, I want to read about starships fighting! Seconding the recs for Passage at Arms and Risen Empire. Somewhat more schlocky but loads of fun, Glynn Stewart has written a bunch of starships-go-boom books; of those I liked the Duchy of Terra books the most, but he's got lots of others if you're still hungry after that. Blaze Ward also operates in kind of the same niche, but I don't like his stuff as much. Both of them scratch the same itch as Weber for me, but with better writing and less odious politics. David Drake's RCN series is also worth a look; I bounced off it but it's a common rec in this space for good reason. M.D. Cooper has written a shitload of military SF, but the only stuff of hers I've read is more focused on groundside stuff. Over on the webnovel side, The Last Angel starts from the same premise as Duchy of Terra (a single capital ship escapes the alien conquest of earth and is out for revenge) but takes it in a wildly different direction, with the only survivor being the ship's badly damaged AI. Two books (plus lots of short stories and novellas) with a third still being written. Free to read on SpaceBattles. I would be remiss not to mention Yoon Ha Lee's Machineries of Empire trilogy here too. And going further back, Timothy Zahn's Conquerers trilogy is a mix of space and ground fights with many picturesque explosions.
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Mar 9, 2024 21:44
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There's plenty of good starship fights in print, but for the best possible you have to look outside of books. Specifically, you have to watch Outlaw Star.
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Mar 9, 2024 21:55
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I'll put up the Exordium series for some really high-quality spaceship fights. The authors have worked out the really intricate and bizarre tactics that emerge when you have tactical FTL and lightspeed sensors. You can take a long-range shot, then skip in closer for another shot and both will land at the same time for double damage. And then the complex society and intricate revenge plots are also fun reading. Book 1 of 5: https://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Flight-Exordium-Book-ebook/dp/B0051J66J4/
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Mar 9, 2024 22:15
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I thought Exordium took place on Earth/NYC?
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Mar 9, 2024 23:11
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fez_machine posted:I thought Exordium took place on Earth/NYC? The Exordium series and Exordia are different series/books. The latter does take place on Earth.
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Mar 9, 2024 23:21
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See such previous posts asPhobeste posted:I accidentally ended up with these books called the "exordium" series which was definitely not due to loving up searching for exordia but it turns out they're pretty good, especially if you like stuff like overwrought political descriptions and weird space rituals. The Phoenix In Flight is the first one. They are for some reason incredibly hard to search for. Like em a lot
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Mar 9, 2024 23:54
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fez_machine posted:I thought Exordium took place on Earth/NYC? Exordia (Battuta’s thing) does. Exordium is something totally different.
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Mar 10, 2024 00:52
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Which is based on a yugioh card?
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Mar 10, 2024 01:35
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fez_machine posted:Which is based on a yugioh card? That's a book in the Bible>
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Mar 10, 2024 01:45
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StrixNebulosa posted:Help me, thread! I woke up with a weird and very specific desire: starship fights. Where can I go to read the good ones? Cherryh of course, SN Lewitt too, and the RTS-esque joy of the Lost Fleet series, but... where else? Where can I get ship to ship combat? I don't care if it's dogfighting or carrier battles or whatever, I want to read about starships fighting! +1 for Passage at Arms. The Culture novels have some pretty interesting space fights, but its not a huge feature of the series. The STARFIST series also has some interesting space battles and how they would pave the way for an invasion of landing troops, but those are all in the back-half of the series.
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Mar 10, 2024 03:44
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Poldarn posted:The Culture novels have some pretty interesting space fights, but its not a huge feature of the series. It's not what I'd recommend someone who's looking for a great space battle, but I really liked the bit in Surface Detail where The ship knows there's someone following them, so they put their human occupant in all sorts of safety gear and offer to give them a projection of what's happening. At one point when the fighting has started, the ship says "This is my favorite part". It turns out the fight took around 12 seconds and the ship just slowed it down so they could show off to the passenger.
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Mar 10, 2024 05:55
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StumblyWumbly posted:It's not what I'd recommend someone who's looking for a great space battle, but I really liked the bit in Surface Detail where The ship knows there's someone following them, so they put their human occupant in all sorts of safety gear and offer to give them a projection of what's happening. At one point when the fighting has started, the ship says "This is my favorite part". It turns out the fight took around 12 seconds and the ship just slowed it down so they could show off to the passenger. iirc, it was less than a second and the initial mild jolt the passenger felt at the beginning of playback was the entirety of the battle.
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Mar 10, 2024 06:09
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StumblyWumbly posted:It's not what I'd recommend someone who's looking for a great space battle, but I really liked the bit in Surface Detail where The ship knows there's someone following them, so they put their human occupant in all sorts of safety gear and offer to give them a projection of what's happening. At one point when the fighting has started, the ship says "This is my favorite part". It turns out the fight took around 12 seconds and the ship just slowed it down so they could show off to the passenger. Agree w/r/t great space battles, I think that that space battles that do occur are very interesting. StumblyWumbly posted:It's not what I'd recommend someone who's looking for a great space battle, but I really liked the bit in Surface Detail where The ship knows there's someone following them, so they put their human occupant in all sorts of safety gear and offer to give them a projection of what's happening. At one point when the fighting has started, the ship says "This is my favorite part". It turns out the fight took around 12 seconds and the ship just slowed it down so they could show off to the passenger. I forget which one, but its a few books later and there are a some Minds that have been in battles, and they're all off on their own comparing notes with the other Minds thinking that group is a bunch of goobers.
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Mar 10, 2024 07:02
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pseudorandom name posted:iirc, it was less than a second and the initial mild jolt the passenger felt at the beginning of playback was the entirety of the battle. The beginning of excession has a fantastic battle in space
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Mar 10, 2024 07:08
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Nothing wrong with brambly hedge
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Mar 10, 2024 07:31
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Poldarn posted:Agree w/r/t great space battles, I think that that space battles that do occur are very interesting. Excession is the book that's mostly ships talking to each other so it's probably that one Consider Phlebas has an excellent space battle-esque sequence where they have to sacrifice the orbital to avoid the mind being captured
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Mar 10, 2024 10:38
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General Battuta's rewrite of Mission of Honor is the best Honorverse story, IMO https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/mission-of-honor-retold.64883/
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Mar 10, 2024 11:59
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Isolationist posted:Such a goddamn solid book, how did you even find it? To keep it thread appropriate, this is a 900 page doorstop book by an Australian author that hits a lot of the same notes as The Empire Trilogy by Raymond Faust (Daughter of the Empire etc). IMMEDIATELY added to my TBR, thank you! Deptfordx posted:What's a 'Progression Fantasy Epic'? I’m two pages late to this, but seeing as I did actually do the market research on this as part of a deliberate attempt to write the next Cradle, I might as well share if people are interested: https://youtu.be/wnGInMrkBF4?si=NJuf0GTDH0J3Nz25 Skip to 5:33 for the progression fantasy market/niche breakdown which goes until about 14:00. Spoilers: I did not succeed in writing a progression fantasy; if you read my book expecting one you will be horribly disappointed. Since I made this video, there’s been a lot of new progression fantasy published and I haven’t really kept up with it. There might be a new champion in the genre now that Cradle is done. Worth noting that Will Wight, as of June 2023, has sold over 5 million books (all formats, including free downloads) and just finished raising $1 million for an anime adaptation of the first book of Cradle.
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Mar 10, 2024 12:32
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All the Seas of the World by Guy Gavriel Kay - $4.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09CYNZLSV/
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Mar 10, 2024 17:29
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I finally sat down and read The Tombs of Atuan last week. The strange, stark beauty of the setting, the wonderful and haunting prose. The way Ged transforms, Tarot-like, from The Magician to The Hanged Man, in over his head in the locked halls of the labyrinth. It's a nightmare of feminist despair--"You are eaten! You are eaten!" It is so good. The lesson Ged gives Tenar, which is basically, "the forces of darkness, entropy, and negation are real, and they should be respected, but they are not principles to base your life around," is such a weird and potent message. I feel like I could spend the next several years of my life reading only Ursula K. Le Guin and be better for it.
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Mar 10, 2024 18:49
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I actually just finished The Dispossessed, and plan to give Tombs a try next, alternating atuan and hainish. What a masterpiece. Every chapter heavy and necessary. I agree with the "could read Le Guin forever" sentiment.
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Mar 10, 2024 19:01
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Hot take: post-Harry Potter adults should read tombs first and then wizard of Earthsea as a prequel
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Mar 10, 2024 20:56
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buffalo all day posted:Hot take: post-Harry Potter adults should read tombs first and then wizard of Earthsea as a prequel nah, that sounds reasonable to me. I'd extend that take to anyone who's read anything of Kingkiller Chronicle series too
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Mar 10, 2024 21:15
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Literally just bought the Complete Illustrated Earthsea tome thanks to this thread discussion. I’ve only read Wizard previously but always meant to read more and figured, hell, why not?
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Mar 10, 2024 21:31
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buffalo all day posted:Hot take: post-Harry Potter adults should read tombs first and then wizard of Earthsea as a prequel Hot take: Harry Potter adults should read another book, literally any other book.
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Mar 10, 2024 21:43
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Polikarpov posted:General Battuta's rewrite of Mission of Honor is the best Honorverse story, IMO As someone who had noped out of the series 4 or 5 books previously, let me just say that this is a great red. I love it when a good writer gets pissed off about something and starts writing. Cpt. Mahatma Gandhi posted:Literally just bought the Complete Illustrated Earthsea tome thanks to this thread discussion. I’ve only read Wizard previously but always meant to read more and figured, hell, why not? That's the edition that I used to hook my mom into LeGuin! She'd be physically unable to read the type in the classic paperbacks, so this was a great thrift store find.
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Mar 10, 2024 21:43
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No tombs but locked tombs
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Mar 11, 2024 04:29
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Alastair Reynolds' books have some decent space combat (mainly the Revelation Space series). The Fall of Hyperion also ended with things exploding in space rather entertainingly IMO (I have heeded the warnings to stop there, though).
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Mar 11, 2024 04:49
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Completely forgot to post this news—Janny Wurts is finally getting an audiobook of her big epic fantasy series:Leng posted:For anyone who's been putting off starting The Wars of Light and Shadow because all the books are massive chonkers and you want an audiobook, rejoice! An audiobook of Curse of the Mistwraith will be releasing very soon:
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Mar 11, 2024 04:49
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pradmer posted:All the Seas of the World by Guy Gavriel Kay - $4.99 I've not yet read GGK. This an OK place to start?
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Mar 11, 2024 06:16
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StrixNebulosa posted:Help me, thread! I woke up with a weird and very specific desire: starship fights. Where can I go to read the good ones? Cherryh of course, SN Lewitt too, and the RTS-esque joy of the Lost Fleet series, but... where else? Where can I get ship to ship combat? I don't care if it's dogfighting or carrier battles or whatever, I want to read about starships fighting! Two self published recommendations: A.d. Bloom's the war of alien aggression series. First contact, double crossing, lots of small ship stuff. Blaze ward Jessica Keller series. Started as a rip of of honour Harrington but is (to me) way less annoying. He's a content mill and most of it is terrible but for some reason I really liked these ones.
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Mar 11, 2024 09:20
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grassy gnoll posted:Scott Westerfeld's Risen Empire duo contains excellent spaceship fights, along with a bunch of other stuff you are likely to enjoy. Also it's just great, such a great space opera author and it's a real pity he decided to be a successful ya author instead.
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Mar 11, 2024 09:24
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Whale Vomit posted:I've not yet read GGK. This an OK place to start?
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