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Hughlander posted:To be fair, the same could be said about David Weber only there are two archetypes, author insert and strawman adversary. Also SPACE CATS
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Sep 12, 2013 15:19
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NotYella posted:Drake doesn't write characters that are anything but archetypes - this guy is the corrupt politician, this guy is the hardass NCO, etc - but he's really good at setting up battles/combat action scenes. Cool, thanks. I'll put him on my list for the next time I want space opera schlock.
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Sep 12, 2013 15:22
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Drake is so much better than Weber though.
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Sep 12, 2013 21:19
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tonytheshoes posted:I was looking for some opinions on the "Shoal Sequence" trilogy (Stealing Light, Nova War, and Empire of Light) by Gary Gibson... I know I shouldn't judge books by their covers, blah, blah, blah, but they highly resemble the Expanse trilogy, and that kinda makes me want to read them. Anybody else check them out? It took me a few pages to get into it, but I'm really enjoying Stealing Light. So much so, that I went ahead and got the sequels.
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Sep 12, 2013 23:10
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Astroman posted:We're talking about Hornblower/Age of Sail IN SPACE and nobody mentions David Feintuch's Seafort Saga? For shame. I picked up a couple of these books used. I enjoy them as kind of trashy sci-fi but they all feel similar to one another in a formulaic way, especially in the way that every book I read has an emotional climax with Seafort attempting some sort of hail mary/suicide play, but getting denied his sweet sweet suicide as someone else does the hail mary suicide play instead. One can only take that so many times.
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Sep 12, 2013 23:19
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:Drake also can write politics pretty well. I really kind of enjoyed the weird politics of the Republic of Cinabar. Also Drake's protagonist is clearly very gifted, but because he is written to depend very strongly on and trust a number of subordinates who are competent in their fields, it feels less dumb than Honor Harrington literally revolutionizing the way space warfare is waged. Also for some reason I always found Hoggs and Tovera very charming even if they're one dimensional. I also feel like the antagonistic nation is handled better by Drake. Or at least less hamfisted. I think in this case it's mostly because less is more. The enemy head of state is only mentioned and implied to be some kind of North Korea level tyrant and ursurper. You don't really learn how the Alliance of Free Stars is run now or before the Guarantor came to power, but you do see that not everyone is a monster. Also there's no one called Rob S. Pierre. I guess I'm just still bitter Weber's Republic of Haven descended into villainy because they had unemployment benefits. Psykmoe fucked around with this message at 01:50 on Sep 13, 2013 |
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Sep 13, 2013 01:45
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branedotorg posted:Also SPACE CATS
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Sep 13, 2013 01:46
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coyo7e posted:Zero G cat poo poo sounds great, can't wait. It's been awhile but I remember psychic space cats and a Lord Nelson/Lady Hamilton/Hamilton style love triangle but no toilets. Future neo-regency space has passed beyond the toilet
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Sep 14, 2013 06:14
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Psykmoe posted:I really kind of enjoyed the weird politics of the Republic of Cinabar. Also Drake's protagonist is clearly very gifted, but because he is written to depend very strongly on and trust a number of subordinates who are competent in their fields, it feels less dumb than Honor Harrington literally revolutionizing the way space warfare is waged. The Republic of Haven went overboard with unemployment benefits and this in a way no nation on (real) Earth could do before an economic collapse would finish them off, that's a difference to just having them.  Haven in the newer novels even comes of as the good guys and finally saves Manticore from utter defeat from the Solarian League. And after all this, they still have their unemployment benefits! Also, I've always got the feeling Honor Harrington was more or less dragged along the ride by the suddenly changing technology in her world, she just did the best she could with what she got. Like that weird grave lance plus energy torpedo combo her ship got in the very first novel.
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Sep 14, 2013 10:25
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Almost finished with the Void Trilogy. It's been a great ride but I'm lookin' down at my progress bar on the Kindle, and I'm 88% complete. AND there's a short story included. The 2nd dreamer, Oscar, and The Gang just hooked up with a sky lord who's taking them to Makkathran. It just feels like we've got a lot of poo poo to tie up in the final.. what.. 7%? I hope this isn't going to leave me wanting  .
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Sep 18, 2013 16:08
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Libluini posted:
The sad thing is that the first Honor Harrington novel isn't bad, and they're pretty much all fast-paced and dramatically written. They just get dramatically worse with each book in an accelerating curve but you keep reading because ACTION and DRAMA and before you know it she's literally killing master swordsmen with her SPACE KATANA despite only minimal training because she has a "killer instinct" and her magical telepathic space cat is giving her clues on how to defeat the SPACE FRENCH and oh god the pain. I read like the first twelve books in a weekend. I got a headache and almost threw up afterwards. It was the mental equivalent of eating one greasy potato chip, blacking out, and waking up three days later on a pile of discarded chip bags, coated in a fine sheen of salt, vomit, and powdered potato chip fragments.
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Sep 18, 2013 16:51
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The sad thing is that the first Honor Harrington novel isn't bad, and they're pretty much all fast-paced and dramatically written. They just get dramatically worse with each book in an accelerating curve but you keep reading because ACTION and DRAMA and before you know it she's literally killing master swordsmen with her SPACE KATANA despite only minimal training because she has a "killer instinct" and her magical telepathic space cat is giving her clues on how to defeat the SPACE FRENCH and oh god the pain. I'm ashamed to say that I've been reading the Honor Harrington books since like high school. They're badly written, but I'm invested too deeply now to just give up. And now she's not even fighting Space France. Space Britain and Space France have teemed up to fight shadowy Space Freemason-Eugenicist-Nazis. My head hurts now after typing that last sentence.
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Sep 18, 2013 17:00
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Honor Harrington is one of the worst Mary Sues I've ever read. Brilliant admiral, superior at commanding ground troops, super swordswoman, great gunfighter, has a telepathic space cat, everyone loves her to the point of including her in their marriage in one couple's case, is the national hero of a different space nation than the one she works for, and her only flaws are....ummm...wait has she got any flaws? Ugh, it hurts just thinking up the examples.  The Lost Fleet books' Black Jack Geary is almost as bad. He's always right, except when he cleverly listens to his hot space babe political ally (who he bangs) or his hyper militaristic hot space babe ship captain (who he also bangs) and he's always correct about which of the two to listen to in any given moment. He's a paragon of virtue, dedicated to the chain of command (except when he isn't, and in those cases he's exactly right about when to break the rules), and is totally inspiring to everyone except for the one or two malcontents in each book who each receive their comeuppance for daring to disagree with the mighty Black Jack by the end of the book. I almost wish the space battles in the Lost Fleet books were worse so I could justify to myself just dropping the whole series, but I find the novelty of his combat writing good enough to keep me entertained. But God, am I sick of Black Jack Geary! Hell, Hemry even says in one of his afterwords that he writes Geary to be "the perfect commanding officer" and doesn't seem to realize that's a problem. The worst part is that Hemry proved with Tarnished Knight that he can do flawed protagonists (or at least more flawed than the King Arthur on a Starship that is Black Jack) and the book is probably the best thing he's written to date because of it. But since Geary has been the center of the Lost Fleet books, I'm sure the perfect bastard will be around forever, because he won't have the guts to kill him off even when it's appropriate. Just like Weber couldn't bring himself to kill Honor Harrington, herself an obvious Admiral Nelson pastiche, at Space Trafalgar! So we're stuck with endless "perfect Honor" books from now until Weber dies or whatever, and authors that follow in the space opera sub-genre will look at his (and to a lesser degree Hemry's) success with a total Mary Sue and think that the way forward is with an invincible and perfect main character as opposed to realizing that the books succeed in spite of the poorly written main characters and instead succeed on tightly written action. It is to weep.  EDIT: Typo. jng2058 fucked around with this message at 17:24 on Sep 18, 2013 |
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Sep 18, 2013 17:18
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Roark posted:I'm ashamed to say that I've been reading the Honor Harrington books since like high school. They're badly written, but I'm invested too deeply now to just give up. The worst part is that it almost looked like Weber could throw out Honor and continue with the more interesting spinoff characters. But instead all the new protagonists turned into Mary Sues too. I am thinking Hornblower clones are really their own subgenre. Even the original Hornblower had no flaws except for his crippling Pessimism. And because it was the worst part of the original all the copies take it up to 11. Must make sense to them? Somehow.
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Sep 18, 2013 17:39
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What's sad about it is that through most of the books Hornblower is miserable. He's basically poo poo on land and useless in peacetime, and the only thing that keeps him from blowing his own brains out is the hope that he'll be able to get to sea again! Yeah he eventually becomes rich and famous and overcomes his self-doubt, but that's in the last book as Forester lets Hornblower go out with a happy ending. Honor got everything that Hornblower ever achieved in what, book three? But unlike Hornblower, she's still around afterwards. Weber's chickenshit decision to let Honor survive At All Costs was the end for me. I've never read another book in the series, because I just can't take it anymore.
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Sep 18, 2013 17:54
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jng2058 posted:What's sad about it is that through most of the books Hornblower is miserable. He's basically poo poo on land and useless in peacetime, and the only thing that keeps him from blowing his own brains out is the hope that he'll be able to get to sea again! Yeah he eventually becomes rich and famous and overcomes his self-doubt, but that's in the last book as Forester lets Hornblower go out with a happy ending. Honor got everything that Hornblower ever achieved in what, book three? But unlike Hornblower, she's still around afterwards. Weber's chickenshit decision to let Honor survive At All Costs was the end for me. I've never read another book in the series, because I just can't take it anymore. I'm just tagging along to see where the great war against the Space UN and the Secret Space Nazis is going. His last book made me fear one of his mary sues is going to just put them down effortlessly, though. Don't do it, Weber!
Libluini fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Sep 18, 2013 |
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Sep 18, 2013 18:16
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I could skim Honor Harrington's ridiculous wish-fulfillment filler as long as the space battles were entertaining, but somewhere around book three, Weber gave up on the idea of 'dramatic tension' and began to write the war as an increasingly one-sided technological decision. The climactic battle of At All Costs should've been space Trafalgar, but I literally cannot remember anything about it beyond - hang on, let me see if I can work in some Weber prose - 'Abruptly Honor Harrington arrived, and she smiled fiercely as a cataclysmic wave of 7189th generation Super Missiles destroyed the astonished opposition.'
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Sep 18, 2013 18:42
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tonberrytoby posted:I am thinking Hornblower clones are really their own subgenre. Even the original Hornblower had no flaws except for his crippling Pessimism. And because it was the worst part of the original all the copies take it up to 11. Must make sense to them? Somehow. I've only read a couple Hornblower books but for some reason it really, really bothered me that he was tone-deaf. Overall he's just not a very likeable character.
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Sep 18, 2013 18:42
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tonberrytoby posted:You are forgetting that Honors's most consistent and best ally is Space Christian Imperial Japan. Who she shows the error of their ways by defeating their greatest swordsman in a katana fight.
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Sep 18, 2013 18:43
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General Battuta posted:I could skim Honor Harrington's ridiculous wish-fulfillment filler as long as the space battles were entertaining, but somewhere around book three, Weber gave up on the idea of 'dramatic tension' and began to write the war as an increasingly one-sided technological decision. The climactic battle of At All Costs should've been space Trafalgar, but I literally cannot remember anything about it beyond - hang on, let me see if I can work in some Weber prose - 'Abruptly Honor Harrington arrived, and she smiled fiercely as a cataclysmic wave of 7189th generation Super Missiles destroyed the astonished opposition.' That's something that is slowly getting to me, too. Especially in the last books everyone on Honor's side just slaps the enemy silly. The Secret Space Nazis and their Super Secret Stealth Ships gave me hope the interesting battles of older books would make a comeback, but his latest book ended with the dire threat of Henke just sauntering over to those dastardly genetic slavers to kill them all. Without real effort, of course. Just missiles go and blam! If the threat of the Mesan Alignment is really solved like I fear it will, I swear I will not read another of Weber's books ever again.
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Sep 18, 2013 18:55
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jng2058 posted:What's sad about it is that through most of the books Hornblower is miserable. He's basically poo poo on land and useless in peacetime, and the only thing that keeps him from blowing his own brains out is the hope that he'll be able to get to sea again! Yeah he eventually becomes rich and famous and overcomes his self-doubt, but that's in the last book as Forester lets Hornblower go out with a happy ending. Honor got everything that Hornblower ever achieved in what, book three? But unlike Hornblower, she's still around afterwards. Weber's chickenshit decision to let Honor survive At All Costs was the end for me. I've never read another book in the series, because I just can't take it anymore. That's why Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series is superior in every way. Jack is miserable? Usually Stephen is there to cheer him up and vice versa. And it is drat unfortunate there is nothing that comes near in SF (well, Vorkosigan does, but they Bujold turned it from MilSF to SF-Crime-Solving/Politics, which while I really love it, isn't quite the same). Decius fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Sep 18, 2013 |
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Sep 18, 2013 19:49
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The whole Tech Trumps Everything conceit is one that bothers me about the Weber/White Starfire novels, too. It was particularly bad in Insurrection where one side is winning by introducing bigger ships with bigger missiles only to be trumped in the final battle by the other side who developed better shields. No tactics, no strategy, just "our wonder shields beats your wonder missiles so we win the war." In Death Ground was probably my favorite Weber book (though Steve White co-wrote it) because there they had enough sense to acknowledge that while humanity had better tech, the Arachnids had massive numbers and the willingness to accept losses until they wore you down to a nub. Tech was important, sure, but the drama was from seeing if the humans could use the tech well enough versus an overwhelming opponent to keep their heads above water. Sadly, by the time they got to The Shiva Option it kinda of fell apart, since by then the humans (and allies) had done enough damage to overcome the enemy's lead in material and it becomes less a matter of "can they win" to "how will they win" which robs the second book of much of its drama. In Death Ground is still pretty good, though. You'll want to read The Shiva Option to finish the story, but the other books in the series are pretty skipable.
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Sep 18, 2013 19:54
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jng2058 posted:The whole Tech Trumps Everything conceit is one that bothers me about the Weber/White Starfire novels, too. It was particularly bad in Insurrection where one side is winning by introducing bigger ships with bigger missiles only to be trumped in the final battle by the other side who developed better shields. No tactics, no strategy, just "our wonder shields beats your wonder missiles so we win the war." One of the first science fiction stories I ever read was a lot like In Death Ground, just with the roles reversed. Let me see if I can remember it correctly: In the story arc (from the German science fiction universe of Perry Rhodan) humanity faces the threat of the biomechanical Dolans, living ships with impenetrable shields and weapons that simply waste everything humans can throw at them. A subplot inside the larger plot revolves around finding an old weapon from a long gone empire to allow humans and their allies to stop the menace. And it works -for a while. Then the builders of the Dolans simply use their technological prowess to make them invincible again. The last battle is joined, humanity must face thousands of Dolans the old fashioned way: By throwing numbers at them. Dozens of giant space warships have to concentrate fire on a single Dolan to have a chance of breaking its shields, while the Dolan is very well capable of wiping them all out. The battle is quite lengthy and harrowing, with both sides taking horrible losses. It impressed me immensely. I get the feeling that if that had happened in one of Weber's newer books, the story would have been over as soon as the protagonists find the old archaic weapon. The Dolans would have been slaughtered, the end.
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Sep 18, 2013 20:43
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Decius posted:That's why Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series is superior in every way. Jack is miserable? Usually Stephen is there to cheer him up and vice versa. And it is drat unfortunate there is nothing that comes near in SF (well, Vorkosigan does, but they Bujold turned it from MilSF to SF-Crime-Solving/Politics, which while I really love it, isn't quite the same). Drake's RCN series has a fairly good pair of main characters, at least given the competition. He certainly has, in my opinion, the best lead characters of any of the "Hornblower//Aubrey/Maturin in space" series out there.
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Sep 18, 2013 23:01
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pork never goes bad posted:Drake's RCN series has a fairly good pair of main characters, at least given the competition. He certainly has, in my opinion, the best lead characters of any of the "Hornblower//Aubrey/Maturin in space" series out there.
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Sep 18, 2013 23:07
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Yeah, fair point. Perhaps that's what saves it?
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Sep 18, 2013 23:41
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I've only read a couple Hornblower books but for some reason it really, really bothered me that he was tone-deaf. Overall he's just not a very likeable character. That's what I enjoyed about the series. Hornblower isn't a likable character. But he's unlikable in interesting ways. It's been a while since I've read one of the books but from what I remember Hornblower comes across like someone with Asperger's syndrome.
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Sep 19, 2013 05:07
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FYI; the first book of the RCN Series is available for free on Kindle. I downloaded it after finishing the Void Trilogy. I'm a few chapters in, and I'm really loving liking this book. I can tell I'm going to be snapping these up as quickly as possible. If you were wondering about reading them, at least check out the first one for free.
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Sep 20, 2013 16:57
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We need a new thread that bans discussion of books we're happy to admit are trash. This 'I knew it was awful after three pages, but I've made it to book #17 anyway!' poo poo is just enabling an addiction.
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Sep 21, 2013 02:08
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coffeetable posted:We need a new thread that bans discussion of books we're happy to admit are trash. This 'I knew it was awful after three pages, but I've made it to book #17 anyway!' poo poo is just enabling an addiction.
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Sep 21, 2013 03:41
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There's nothing wrong, I think, with enjoying media that is "trash". Lots of people play terrible video games, watch awful movies, etcetera. The difference comes when someone says "Weber's Honor Harrington series is a TOTALLY LEGITAMITE look at politicial evolution and EVERYONE SHOULD READ IT and UNDERSTAND where society is going! And it has COMPLETELY REALISTIC depictions of space combat and is an OBVIOUS result of technological development!" Like, when they stop saying "this is entertaining trash" and start saying "you know, the author is actually right about this stuff".
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Sep 21, 2013 16:03
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This is the Space Opera thread. If you ban conversation about entertaining trash, how much Space Opera is left?
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Sep 21, 2013 16:54
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jng2058 posted:This is the Space Opera thread. If you ban conversation about entertaining trash, how much Space Opera is left? According to an old teacher of mine, nothing. Nothing at all.
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Sep 21, 2013 21:34
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This and the Black Library thread have it covered.
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Sep 21, 2013 21:48
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branedotorg posted:Also SPACE CATS I will loving fight you CJ Cherryh's space cats are best space cats.. It is like a feline Traveller campaign. Unfortunately they have literally the worst covers .
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Sep 22, 2013 08:32
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Libluini posted:According to an old teacher of mine, nothing. Nothing at all. Oh I don't know, Bujold managed to trick about a million nerds into reading Pride and Prejudice with A Civil Campaign.
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Sep 22, 2013 11:57
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sebmojo posted:I will loving fight you CJ Cherryh's space cats are best space cats.. It is like a feline Traveller campaign. What? No, surely you meant the original space cats. You know, "Scream and leap". Bhodi fucked around with this message at 16:25 on Sep 22, 2013 |
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Sep 22, 2013 16:22
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Bhodi posted:What? No, surely you meant the original space cats. You know, "Scream and leap". ...and then get vaporized by a fusion drive and be unknowingly bred for domesticity...
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Sep 22, 2013 17:20
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I forget which one it was, but the Man-Kzin War story about the Kzinti slave-trainer who tries to turn a human woman into a kzinti female equivalent was one of the creepiest, most depressing things I've read in a long time. Particularly the ending line.
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Sep 22, 2013 18:35
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People have talked about Corey's Expanse series (Leviathan Wakes etc.) a lot and I enjoyed the first one. Apparently the series is now being turned into a TV show. http://variety.com/2013/tv/news/iron-man-writers-enter-sci-fi-mystery-tv-project-for-alcon-the-expanse-1200598499/ The Variety article makes it sound like the show will focus on the Miller mystery segments. edit: oops, the authors' pseudonym is Corey, not Carver. Grey Area fucked around with this message at 13:34 on Sep 25, 2013 |
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Sep 25, 2013 09:48
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