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I’m about halfway through Circe and if it keeps going the way it’s going I might dnf it. It started well enough but at a certain point it feels like it turned into Ready Player One, the Greek Edition, things went more tell than show, and the writing got a little too tropey & clumsy. Kind of a letdown because I really enjoy good mythological rewrites.
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Apr 20, 2024 16:35
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You're halfway through just finish the dang book, even if you hate it at least your hatred can be complete
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Apr 20, 2024 17:22
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Also what does 'tropey' mean????
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Apr 20, 2024 17:22
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General Battuta posted:Also what does 'tropey' mean????
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Apr 20, 2024 17:26
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mystes posted:Clichéd? Circéd
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Apr 20, 2024 17:33
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I'm DNF on a bunch of books right now. I've gotten really anal about pacing. I feel like I appreciate books more when the pacing gels with me, but I just don't have the patience for meandering or repetition, even when it's done for effect. I still love me some Tarkovsky movies but I guess it's not analogous.
thotsky fucked around with this message at 18:08 on Apr 20, 2024 |
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Apr 20, 2024 17:36
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Fool on the Hill by Matt Ruff - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008UX3CYU/ Eon (The Way #1) by Greg Bear - $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J3EU5RC/ Invisible Planets: Collected Fiction by Hannu Rajaniemi - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019NFEILY/
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Apr 20, 2024 18:03
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idiotsavant posted:I’m about halfway through Circe and if it keeps going the way it’s going I might dnf it. It started well enough but at a certain point it feels like it turned into Ready Player One, the Greek Edition, things went more tell than show, and the writing got a little too tropey & clumsy. Kind of a letdown because I really enjoy good mythological rewrites. If you want to read some sort-of mythological books about Greek stuff try Mary Renault. She was writing about Greek heroes in like the 70's and her writing definitely tries to capture the mind set of her characters as Greek heroes. In terms of the supernatural she plays it as though this occurs in the natural world but her characters are pious and act as though divine intervention is a real thing and there are enough coincidences in how stories unfold that you can see why they would believe in the supernatural. Last Summer I read Song for Achilles and The King Must Die and I can definitely tell you one of these books was much better than the other.
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Apr 20, 2024 18:38
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mystes posted:Clichéd?
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Apr 20, 2024 19:57
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General Battuta posted:Also what does 'tropey' mean???? "These stories are very old and sound stale because of literal millennia of other media using their themes."
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Apr 20, 2024 20:49
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thotsky posted:I'm DNF on a bunch of books right now. I've gotten really anal about pacing. I feel like I appreciate books more when the pacing gels with me, but I just don't have the patience for meandering or repetition, even when it's done for effect. I still love me some Tarkovsky movies but I guess it's not analogous. a tarkovsky film is like three hours tops but a boring book could waste weeks worth of your free
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Apr 20, 2024 21:03
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tetrapyloctomy posted:"These stories are very old and sound stale because of literal millennia of other media using their themes." I think it's the box ticking thing above, rather than the story elements arising organically.
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Apr 20, 2024 22:09
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General Battuta posted:Also what does 'tropey' mean???? It's very much the box-ticky thing - a lot of plot devices/character actions feel very idk, "down pat" or kind of checking off necessary story points but in a very uninteresting stereotyped way. I think the book starts off pretty well, there's an interesting angle on life as a lesser immortal living with a family of gods told in an understated/muted style that feels like it bridges the sort of Homeric epic language to modern prose gap very nicely. By the time Odysseus shows up (spoiler alert lol) it's all devolved to other people showing up and stuff just happening to Circe, while cramming in as many Greek myth references as possible. There's no real, idk, joy in the storytelling anymore and it's just a chore to get through. One reader review put it pretty well when they said "Forrest Gump for Greek myth". I think the storytelling part is what gets me, because to a large extent this kind of retelling really demands good storytelling. It's a reductive I guess but it's the very essence of what you're doing, you are telling a well-known, well-told story over again. There's a real pleasure to reading a really well-told story, even if all the characters and settings and plot beats are all the same. Ursula Le Guin is the first writer I think about, or someone like Howard Waldrop. Or Patricia McKillip - I think her writing leans a little heavily on mysterious/vague portentous mystical poo poo a little much, but as stories they're great. Idk if there's a more accurate or more appropriate way to put it than "storytelling" but that's what I think of it as.
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Apr 20, 2024 23:36
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The God Beneath the Sea is a great take on Greek myth, with fantastic art too.
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Apr 20, 2024 23:44
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Speaking of retellings I read John Gardner's Grendel like 15? 20? years ago and liked it at the time, but wow, people at GoodReads who rated it poorly fuckin HATED it lol. IIRC I enjoyed the contrast between the heroic, noble original and the brutish nihilistic retelling, gonna grab it from the library and see if I still enjoy it Lmao half of these reviews are really angry high-schoolers/college freshman. And a guy who is very, very upset that Grendel smushed a goat with a rock because he had pet goats as a kid idiotsavant fucked around with this message at 00:18 on Apr 21, 2024 |
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Apr 21, 2024 00:10
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zoux posted:World changing events that stick is your base criteria for a satisfying story? IMO one of the reasons Crichton's decent stuff works so well is that he doesn't go for the lame war room scenes or have the President gravely intoning about the nuclear option or whatever, a lot of his stories are structured within isolated/compartmentalized bureaucracies where things can get buried very easily.
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Apr 21, 2024 00:20
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Heck, he's so good at avoiding world changing consequences, he wrote State of Fear!
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Apr 21, 2024 03:57
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I'm just going to DNF Echopraxia unless you guys tell me that it actually gets really good. I'm 31% in and the protagonist has not done one loving thing, just gotten dragged from baffling situation to baffling situation with a bunch of smug assholes who won't tell him what is going on. I don't mind the mystery, but at some point I need the protagonist to protag a bit.
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Apr 21, 2024 06:21
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I'm digging into The History of Science Fiction by Adam Roberts, which sits at a nice thorough 500 pages. Chapter 1 has to deal with the thorny question of defining just what science fiction is, so instead of fiction the writers in discussion are Feyerabend, Heidegger, and Harraway. The book will proceed to spend a juicy 200 pages on the history of SF before 1900.
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Apr 21, 2024 08:22
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Jimbozig posted:I'm just going to DNF Echopraxia unless you guys tell me that it actually gets really good. I'm 31% in and the protagonist has not done one loving thing, just gotten dragged from baffling situation to baffling situation with a bunch of smug assholes who won't tell him what is going on. I don't mind the mystery, but at some point I need the protagonist to protag a bit. It doesn't really get good  at least imo.
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Apr 21, 2024 11:14
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Jimbozig posted:I'm just going to DNF Echopraxia unless you guys tell me that it actually gets really good. I'm 31% in and the protagonist has not done one loving thing, just gotten dragged from baffling situation to baffling situation with a bunch of smug assholes who won't tell him what is going on. I don't mind the mystery, but at some point I need the protagonist to protag a bit. Dude is along for the ride, mostly
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Apr 21, 2024 11:33
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Yeah, don’t wait for Brüks to drive the plot—it doesn’t happen. Jim and Valerie (and Portia) do some cool poo poo though.
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Apr 21, 2024 12:37
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Jimbozig posted:I'm just going to DNF Echopraxia unless you guys tell me that it actually gets really good. I'm 31% in and the protagonist has not done one loving thing, just gotten dragged from baffling situation to baffling situation with a bunch of smug assholes who won't tell him what is going on. I don't mind the mystery, but at some point I need the protagonist to protag a bit. If you don't like it now, that probably won't change.
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Apr 21, 2024 13:50
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Echopraxia owns but I can't say that anything is actually going to happen. The biggest things I recall  the alien entity is streaming the story of the first book to Siris dad for manipulative purposes. Really makes me rethink the chapters about imagining being a scrambler. in the end a little tiny bit of alien intelligence is growing in the POV character which is why I keep making a joke about Children of Memory
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Apr 21, 2024 14:13
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The Blacktongue Thief (#1) by Christopher Buehlman - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08GJQFFDX/ She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan - 2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08GZXND63/
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Apr 21, 2024 18:42
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Finished Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds. It started out strong but I found it petering out by the time the three characters finally met. I turned it around in my head a bit and what I think the problem was is that given the vast scale in both time and space plus the incredible technology that is involved in the setting I was painting the events with a very abstract brush. Filling in gaps in the revolutionary plot with random smatterings of the French revolution, of the Chasm City story with some Cyberpunk nonsense, and in the Lighthugger story with bits and bobs from System Shock and Prey. The thing is when the disparate narratives started to come together it became harder to fill in gaps with other stories in the background and I had to start focusing on the actual story Reynolds was telling which wasn't awful but it felt overly reliant on being cliffhangery in the way later ASOIAF was, people trailing off right at the moment of revelation or on some false moment of consequence that is resolved off screen. The second problem is that Reynolds is very interesting when he's talking about long gone alien cultures whether that's the Amarantin, the Yellowstoner's of the Belle Epoque, the Ultras, the Shrouders, or the Sun Stealers and not very interesting when he's trying to compose an action set piece, the only one of which I found at all interesting was the first when Volyova kills her Gunner. It did manage to come to an interesting conclusion despite the very clunky crowbarring of the Fermi Paradox into the narrative, pro tip if you're writing a space epic with xenoarcheology as a major focus your audience probably doesn't need to be informed of Mr.Fermi and if they are unaware they can fire up the Wiki and look it up. I am interested in seeing more about the Inhibitors and the culture that preceded them who constructed Hades Cerberus. Plus hopefully finding out more about what Shrouder culture is actually like behind their veil and perhaps what a Conjoiner is. More xenoarcheology would be nice too, but I think that that might not happen with who is left in the cast.
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Apr 22, 2024 00:05
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idiotsavant posted:There's a real pleasure to reading a really well-told story, even if all the characters and settings and plot beats are all the same. Ursula Le Guin is the first writer I think about, Speaking of Le Guin, I can strongly recommend her take on Greek myth/history, she wrote about the life of Lavinia. She never gets a single line in The Aeneid, so now there's this for her. It's an interesting story with strong characterizations, unsurprising for Le Guin. https://www.ursulakleguin.com/lavinia
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Apr 22, 2024 00:23
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Gaius Marius posted:It did manage to come to an interesting conclusion despite the very clunky crowbarring of the Fermi Paradox into the narrative, pro tip if you're writing a space epic with xenoarcheology as a major focus your audience probably doesn't need to be informed of Mr.Fermi and if they are unaware they can fire up the Wiki and look it up. 
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Apr 22, 2024 00:24
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Doktor Avalanche posted:Miles Cameron has been very hit or miss for me, no inbetween i liked masters & mages, also the chivalry series of historical fiction. Tom Swan lands in the miss category, along with age of bronze.
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Apr 22, 2024 00:25
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FPyat posted:I'm digging into The History of Science Fiction by Adam Roberts, which sits at a nice thorough 500 pages. Chapter 1 has to deal with the thorny question of defining just what science fiction is, so instead of fiction the writers in discussion are Feyerabend, Heidegger, and Harraway. The book will proceed to spend a juicy 200 pages on the history of SF before 1900. If you want a more personal, essay style history of Sci Fi after this, try 'the dreams our stuff is made of' by thomas m disch - it's filtered through his lens, a gay progressive writer and editor of novels and poetry. Won a hugo.
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Apr 22, 2024 00:31
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Gaius Marius posted:It did manage to come to an interesting conclusion despite the very clunky crowbarring of the Fermi Paradox into the narrative, pro tip if you're writing a space epic with xenoarcheology as a major focus your audience probably doesn't need to be informed of Mr.Fermi and if they are unaware they can fire up the Wiki and look it up. Revelation Space came out in 2000, you really couldn’t count on people having reference work handy. It also inspired Mass Effect as openly as ASOIAF inspired Dragon Age. Which isn’t really relevant but is kind of cool.
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Apr 22, 2024 01:28
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I read my first Kingfisher novella, "What moves the dead" and after a very clear "this is where I might subvert the horror genre for a Star Trek ending" moment near the end I felt gratified that she brought up the possibility of communication, coexistence and Star Trek in the authors notes. It felt pretty Lovecraftian too but then he was also inspired by Poe.
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Apr 22, 2024 01:30
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Gaius Marius posted:Finished Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds. Same! Just got back from a beach weekend where I was able to finish it. It’s my second full-length Reynolds novel after Pushing Ice. Dude apparently loves honeypot traps setup by ancient aliens. I’m a sucker for BDO sci fi so I enjoyed (in both novels) the way the plot is basically structured around a series of increasingly bigger, dumber objects. Decided to start Chasm City next and I’m enjoying it so far. Cool to see Sky’s Edge (and by extension Ana Khouri) fleshed out. I’ve already got Galactic North in my Kindle library so I’ll probably read that too before moving onto Redemption Ark, because I saw something about the former containing stories/characters continued in the latter. Gaius Marius posted:people trailing off right at the moment of revelation or on some false moment of consequence that is resolved off screen. Yeah, this bugged me too the first time it happened, but I chose to trust that those gaps would be filled before book ended. I’m glad my trust wasn’t misplaced lol Gaius Marius posted:Reynolds is […] not very interesting when he's trying to compose an action set piece, the only one of which I found at all interesting was the first when Volyova kills her Gunner. Ah man, you didn’t like the wrestling match between the spider-room and the hijacked cache-weapon?
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Apr 22, 2024 02:40
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Redemption Ark (godawful pun it took me twenty years to get) has some of my favorite action scenes in all of SFF, alongside one of the most inexplicably absent ones.
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Apr 22, 2024 02:51
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General Battuta posted:Redemption Ark (godawful pun it took me twenty years to get) god loving damnit
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Apr 22, 2024 03:07
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Oh I didn't think about that until literally now somehow (Maybe it was a less common phrase back then?)
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Apr 22, 2024 03:13
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Lol
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Apr 22, 2024 03:13
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General Battuta posted:Revelation Space came out in 2000, you really couldn’t count on people having reference work handy. It also inspired Mass Effect as openly as ASOIAF inspired Dragon Age. Which isn’t really relevant but is kind of cool. you say “openly”, but I’ve never heard that before and I used to read entirely too much video game media
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Apr 22, 2024 03:33
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I've read almost all of Reynolds books over the last 20 years of my life and here is my tier list: S House of Suns A Chasm City The Prefect/Aurora Rising (he renamed it for some reason) B Inhibitor Phase Revelation Space Absolution Gap Elysium Fire Redemption Arc C Entire Revenger Trilogy (Maybe it's C+ or B-. I actually really liked certain things about this trilogy but it also let me down in certain ways. It's very much worth reading though.) Absolution Gap (Would still be a B if the pacing of the ending were better) D Pushing Ice (I know this is usually more well-regarded but I found the character conflict forced and the last plot arc too goofy and off feeling) Terminal World Machine Vendetta Poseidon's Children (I disliked this enough that I never read the next two books in the series) F Troika Century Rain Some of these come down to personal preference. I don't think Inhibitor Phase is objectively that good, but I just liked it. I acknowledge Pushing Ice is probably better but I just didn't like it. Chasm City could be S-tier if House of Suns weren't just way better. I liked the Prefect a lot when I first read it, but I think the third book in that series being so bad tainted the whole series for me. The Revelation Space trilogy is actually really "uneven" and I think you described faults of book one really well in your post. He tries to pack too many various ideas into it and loses the pacing pretty badly. Still...I think it's really good and even though I haven't read any of the books for over 20 years, they have stuck with me quite well.
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Apr 22, 2024 05:39
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Nostalgia for Infinity is still the best spaceship name I've ever come across. I really should reread his short story collections. Haven't read them in like 15 years but I remember thinking that both Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days and Galactic North had some real bangers in them. e: is Zima Blue any good? Don't think I ever got around to reading that one actually.
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Apr 22, 2024 05:55
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