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Hi thread, I was wondering if anyone had recommendations for books similar to Void Star by Zachary Mason? I'm not sure how to describe it. Mystery with very abstract ais and memory theft? Rotating POV with wannabe samurai and weird tech ghost? I also have a little request / suggestion. Can author names also be mentioned in addition to titles? I'm reading from page 700 and onwards to find recs, and it's a little tricky to figure out who wrote what. Thank you if you do. I'm still getting familiar with this threads shorthand and personal familiarity with literature haha :p Oh also I was unimpressed with Martha Well's Witch King. The chapters about the past seemed really redundant, especially near the end when it felt dragged out. I kinda wish the flashbacks were varied memories of the titular witch king's relationship with who betrayed humor even his past in general. As a character I just didnt care about him. Ooh ih wow he's THE Demon shellacking guy omg?!? Well why not show that? I think the most was a brief quip about 'oh I'm not a demon. I'm The Demon'. And that ending was.... hm. Flimsy. Yours truly, Grayson Saunders. ps thank you pradmer for the sale links. My wallet hates you but my brain loves you.
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# ¿ Jan 28, 2024 20:40 |
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# ¿ May 16, 2024 17:36 |
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Thanks for the recs everyone! They sound really interesting! By the way, someone some time ago was asking for scifi / fantasy (?) books by Black authors featuring Black men as main characters. The Liminal People by Ayize Jama-everett Book 1 of Liminal series [scifi] quote:The Liminal People is the first of Ayize Jama-Everett's Liminal novels. Membership in the razor neck crew is for life. But when Taggert, who can heal and hurt with just a touch, receives a call from the past he is honor bound to try and help the woman he once loved try to find her daughter. Taggert realizes the girl has more power than even he can imagine and has to wrestle with the nature of his own skills, not to mention risking the wrath of his enigmatic master and perhaps even the gods, in order keep the girl safe. In the end, Taggert will have to delve into the depths of his heart and soul to survive. After all, what really matters is family. New Author Foreword. The fourth and final Liminal novel, Heroes of an Unknown World, will be published in February 2023. I read a little bit of it, but decided I needed to be in the right mindset to tackle it. It's a little grim. I tapped out at the brief scene of Taggart healing a trafficked pre pubescent girl of rampant STIs whose mother was selling her to both a mercenary leader and other people The Getaway by Lamar Giles [scifi] quote:Welcome to the funnest spot around . . . The Beautiful Side of the Moon by Leye Adenle [he's Nigerian!] [fantasy] quote:What would happen if God forgot who he was? Drawing on age-old African story-telling traditions, modern science-fiction and contemporary thriller writing, award-winning Nigerian author Leye Adenle (Easy Motion Tourist, When Trouble Sleeps) conjures up an entirely new way of seeing the world. No comments as I haven't read this yet. The Changeling by Victor Lavalle [fantasy] quote:When Apollo Kagwa's father disappeared, all he left his son were strange recurring dreams and a box of books stamped with the word IMPROBABILIA. I read this and loved it. Hwever that was back in 2021 so I have no recent comments on it, sorry. David Mogo Godhunter by Suyi Davies Okungbowa [fantasy] [He's also Nigerian!] quote:Lagos will not be destroyed I remember enjoying this quite a bit. An ordinary man trying to tackle an impossible task! Fair warning there's some attempted forced marriage and odd treatment of hijabi women wearing hijabis or not. I forget the specifics, just got weirded out by it.
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# ¿ Jan 29, 2024 18:12 |
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re c s e cooneys saint deaths daughter Wow that's a lot of rape for such a twee quickly white girl plot. I also hate that the rapist is described as psycho in the summary. Psychosis does not make people rapists!!! gently caress you!
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# ¿ Jan 30, 2024 21:55 |
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Remulak posted:I read it like a month ago and don’t remember this at all. Mainly I remember a few great scenes surrounded by other forgettables. Ravenfood posted:Yeah I'm about halfway through and don't remember any of that. I want it to either be better or be worse. Every time I think I'm done a good scene comes along and I decide to keep reading. Major plot spoilers for Saint Death's Daughter by C S E Cooney. CW for marital rape, trafficking?, sex slavery, sexual abuse. There is a male character named Mak who is a shapeshifter. He had a consensual lover back in his home country, but Nita [the psycho in the summary] murdered his lover, mind controlled and kidnapped him to bring him back to her own home country. Nita made him her sex slave [in addition to regular slave] and forced him to marry and impregnate her under the threat of erasing all his memories of his home country and previous lover. Nita also forbade him from committing suicide after a first attempt, with mind control magic. So basically he's a imported house sex slave a la those house slaves in Dubai or whatever. Oh, Nita also seduced with mind controlled a person in some Bird court to rape him over several days and then murdered him when she was done. If there was more rape, I don't know. The character is a little repetitive in that trait. I quit at that point because I hated the quirky white girl writing. Sorry I can't do doctor who fanfic voice anymore. It's incredibly weird nobody had mentioned the vast amount of rape. I get that the character is a bad person, but man. That's still rape even if it's woman on man. Does the quirky writing make people ignore that? It's weird. And don't get me wrong, I've voluntarily read that poorly written Captive Prince book. I don't break out in hives just because there's poorly written rape in books. It's just man, is there other ways to make the character a bad person? Give me a lil variety. How about some more child abuse murder attempts? Bullying peasants? By the way someone else wanted stories featuring hosed Up Forests. I know it's too late at this point, but fwiw I know of two short stories. From 'Lost Places' by Sarah Pinsker, a single author short story anthology. Specifically the two stories 'Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather' and 'Science Facts!' The first one is my favorite of the two. I love weird ways of writing a story. In this case, it's in the form of a comment section / mini forum for a song on a music lyric website. The story mainly takes place in footnote type comments in between the song lyrics about a mysterious forest and its inhabitants. No wait please it sounds more interesting than how I wrote it!! Here's a small excerpt. In my epub version there's links back to footnotes and quotes. It's very neat imo. quote:→This song, included among the famous ballads documented by Francis James Child, is an allegorical tale of a tryst between two lovers and its aftermath.—Dynamum (2 upvotes, 1 downvote) The second story is about a group of campers and their camp counselors taking a trek into the woods, and stumbles across a piece of land marked forbidden. Also the fantasy gothic novel, In the Night Wood by Dale Bailey. Two honorary mentions as they're horror, not scifi or fantasy. Briardark by S. A. Harian This Wretched Valley by Jenny Kiefer
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# ¿ Jan 31, 2024 17:45 |
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A Proper Uppercut posted:Looking for some more low stakes/cozy SFF for audiobook listening. I've found that style works better in case my attention wanders. Some stuff that worked well was Murderbot, Wayfarers, Goblin Emperor and the sequels, Legends and Lattes and the sequel. If podcasts are ok, I suggest the Lost Terminal podcast. quote:How do you learn to be human if there's no-one around to teach you? Please note the Seasons link leads to a page summarizing each season which may be spoilers. I suggest searching for the podcast wherever you listen to them instead The transcripts can be consistently found on the official patreon page, not the main website. I'll link it here. https://www.patreon.com/lostterminalpod It is incredibly charming and endearing. It includes some pretty decent lgbt characters and even tactfully too, wow! I really enjoy the interactions between Seth and his friend(s), as well as the neat parts about telecommunications. Who knew ham radios and satellites were so fascinating? The episodes at usually 15 to 20 minutes long. But they can be shorter if you choose to skip the included music interlude in every episode. It's also one of the few sources that portray (medium plot / recurring character spoiler) Dissociative Identity Disorder and the System members with any sort of tact, compassion, or realism to the real life version. Honestly theres a lot of compassion in this world setting and I half wish I lived there.
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# ¿ Feb 15, 2024 02:52 |
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parara posted:Oof, Sarah J. Maas. Nah you can have fun with that one on your own. At least it's not Chani Lynn Feener's Devils of Vitality. Lmao. In other news. Premee Mohamad's 'The Butcher of the Forest' was a neat short story [novella?] of fairy tale forest fuckery. I really need to finish this author's Beneath The Rising trilogy.
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# ¿ Mar 1, 2024 07:34 |
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Groke posted:I am ever so slightly hesitant to start on this, for the admittedly silly reason that Klara is coincidentally the name of my (human) daughter and I feel trepidation at reading about someone with that name having anything bad happen to them. If you dont mind ebooks, there are some apps that have name / word replacement filters for books. My moon + reader app does this. It comes in handy for when main character shares my real life name It does weird medium out when that happens. Or worse, when the romance novel features a love interest with my sibling's irl name lmao
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# ¿ Mar 14, 2024 18:57 |
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fritz posted:Aren't AIs in that setting born as humans and then uploaded into a matrix? IIRC, no. They are gestated in a organic human womb and when they're born, they're implanted directly into their spaceship body. So basically a inorganic AI brain/body that somehow forms in a organic human womb, but it's inorganic from the start. Though it's been a little while so feel free to correct me if I've misunderstood it. I believe this is a point of contention in another short story wherein the main character and her friends are sort of kidnapped by the USAmerican faction of space farers who are repeatedly, torturously trying to shove the AIs [kidnapped from their native spaceships] into organic human american bodies to obvious failing results because the americans think that's the body they're supposed to be in. Dysphoria trans racism cultural genocide etc metaphor!
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# ¿ Mar 16, 2024 16:32 |
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Someone who read both the Hamlet play and Em X Liu's 'The death I gave him' please tell medium what you think. Because my schooling focused on Romeo and Juliet and Midsummer, and this book feels like very well written fanfic except not fanfic at all. Modern interpretation? I mean that as a compliment. Well the sex scenes between Hamlet and Horatio were cool. I really did enjoy the prose, it was a lot better than Liu's 'if found return to hell's novella imo. ps Yospos voice: gently caress and cum in your computer.
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# ¿ Mar 27, 2024 20:23 |
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# ¿ May 16, 2024 17:36 |
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Late, but I'm suggesting The Singing Hills Cycle series by Nghi Vo. Fantasy genre novellas, all standalone, sometimes deals with heavier topics like war but not in a traumaporn, Poppy Wars level.
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# ¿ May 3, 2024 18:20 |