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Miss-Bomarc posted:It's resoundingly okay. Go ahead and finish it, but it does not really deliver on the promise of its beginning. Yeah. Read it a good while ago and the main thing I remember is that orbital mechanics do not work that way.
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Oct 21, 2013 10:28
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I've started reading the Star Force series, first book swarm and i'm enjoying it. Description below, an enjoying read, not a lot of 'hard' sci fi so far but it's killing the time while sat on the train Kyle Riggs is snatched by an alien spacecraft sometime after midnight. The ship is testing everyone it catches and murdering the weak. The good news is that Kyle keeps passing tests and staying alive. The bad news is the aliens who sent this ship are the nicest ones out there.... SWARM is the story of Earth's annexation by an alien empire. Long considered a primitive people on a backwater planet, humanity finds itself in the middle of a war, and faced with extinction. SWARM is an 88,000 word novel of science fiction by bestselling author B. V. Larson. Anyone else read it?
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Oct 22, 2013 22:38
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Vanilla posted:I've started reading the Star Force series, first book swarm and i'm enjoying it. Description below, an enjoying read, not a lot of 'hard' sci fi so far but it's killing the time while sat on the train I read the first two, I believe. Unlike, for example, Wool (which also started as self published ultra cheap ebooks), the star force books seem pretty unabashedly pure pulp. Gary Sue protagonist, stupid government doesn't realize how awesome he is, and other common tropes. That doesn't mean they're horrible or anything, provided you know what you are getting into and check your brain at the cover.
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Oct 22, 2013 23:10
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Velius posted:check your brain at the cover. Absolutely, train on the way to work is even before the first coffee. I can barely dress myself
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Oct 22, 2013 23:25
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Stealing Light by Gary Gibson is basically a huge rip-off/mash-up of the Culture series and the Expanse trilogy smushed together, but you could do worse if you're looking for some mindless entertainment... so far, I'm enjoying it, but I'm only 50% through. Hopefully, it doesn't take a poo poo somewhere along the line.
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Oct 24, 2013 16:57
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Vanilla posted:I've started reading the Star Force series, first book swarm and i'm enjoying it. Description below, an enjoying read, not a lot of 'hard' sci fi so far but it's killing the time while sat on the train I actually didn't mind the first few books, doing as Velius advises, but they quickly go downhill over time. I don't remember which book I stopped on, but Larson started blantantly rehashing the same storyline from previous books in the series and coming up with too many artificial reasons to justify limitations on the protagonist. Also there got to be too much idiocy in how the characters respond to situations (too much trying to the perfect goody goody character when it made no sense), but that is more a personal pet peeve than anything else.
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Oct 24, 2013 19:53
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tonytheshoes posted:Stealing Light by Gary Gibson is basically a huge rip-off/mash-up of the Culture series and the Expanse trilogy smushed together, but you could do worse if you're looking for some mindless entertainment... so far, I'm enjoying it, but I'm only 50% through. Hopefully, it doesn't take a poo poo somewhere along the line. Marauder, a stand alone book in the same universe is out now in HC, and I'll be buying it as soon as it's available for the Kindle.
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Oct 24, 2013 21:46
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Fart of Presto posted:I took a break of about a year between Stealing Light and Nova Wars, but having finished NW, went straight to Empire of Light where I'm at the 60% mark, and absolutely love it for a no-nonsense Space Opera pew pew trilogy. Awesome! I'm just excited to finally find another author who scratches this exact itch (you nailed it with the "no-nonsense Space Opera pew pew trilogy" description) for me.
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Oct 25, 2013 14:19
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People are pretty excited by Ancillary Justice right now. I haven't read it yet, but the author is a really capable editor of a really strong magazine and I'd be shocked if it weren't good.
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Oct 25, 2013 16:35
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General Battuta posted:People are pretty excited by Ancillary Justice right now. I haven't read it yet, but the author is a really capable editor of a really strong magazine and I'd be shocked if it weren't good. It thinks about language purely for the sake of thinking about language for a not-insignificant portion of the book. If this bores you, you might not find it good.
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Oct 26, 2013 00:55
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I could have sworn it was this thread, but I can't find it; anyway, someone recommended "The January Dancer" by Michael Flynn, and I'm really liking it so far. The person did say that Flynn really likes going off onto lengthy narrative alleyways that ultimately aren't relevant to the story, and that's true, but I'm enjoying the read enough that I don't mind so much.
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Oct 29, 2013 04:37
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Anyone else read Fire with Fire by Charles E. Gannon? Main character gets frozen, thawed 13 years later and thrust into work as a not-so-secret agent and gets deeply involved (involuntarily) in a big conspiracy. The book literally starts with the main character being called a polymath and renaissance man, and throughout the book he's shown to be smart as hell and being an expert in basically anything he tries his hand at, from foiling assassins to deducing high-level political plays. It's pretty grating; he doesn't really demonstrate having any flaws. The book's pacing is weird and it's all sort of disjointed. It feels like a few short stories mashed together without much connecting material. We start off with the hero investigative reporter getting captured and frozen for a reason we're not privy to. 13 years later, the people who froze him thaw him to send him to investigate rumors of exosapiency on a colonized planet. Oh, and FTL travel didn't exist before he was frozen. He's remarkably calm about this. This mission ends, and he goes back to Earth while foiling two assassination attempts. Then he's on Earth to present his findings to the UN replacement and foils some more assassination attempts and runs away to Mars. Then he gets picked up on Mars by the people who froze him (and foils another assassination attempt) and sent in a small group of people to represent humanity at The Accord, a multi-species assembly that's decided it's time to vote on having humans join. Except it's really just one of the alien species' playing high-level politics to usurp control and the whole thing dissolves into likely war. And he foils two more assassination attempts. The book could have easily been written as two novels, and would've been better served by having each half more fleshed out. First book could've been the freezing/thawing and initial mission. Could've gone all secret-agent and slowly infiltrating the target and gradually uncovering their lies and evading their security; instead he literally stomps in as "I'm on a mission from the Navy", pulls rank, and gets a tour and wraps it up in like a week. Second book could have started immediately after the reveal of the Accord and taken another whole book to set up the politics, rather than the characters literally figuring the whole thing out in about 12 hours. The author's only other novels are coauthorships with Eric Flint and Steve White; everything else is short fiction in other people's universes and he had a stint doing stories for urban pen & paper RPGs. I think it shows; he just cut too much out and turned what should have been a pair of ~400 page novels into one 460 page book. It's almost the opposite of how these things go! I'm game for the sequel, but since this was just published this year, I suppose I'll be waiting a bit. I also finished Abaddon's Gate. I'm not sure why it's disliked around here; I rather enjoyed it. Maybe because I didn't mind Holden in the previous books? I liked the universe that was set up in Abaddon's Gate, and hope it keeps going.
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Oct 31, 2013 06:13
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Pyroclastic posted:I also finished Abaddon's Gate. I'm not sure why it's disliked around here; I rather enjoyed it. Maybe because I didn't mind Holden in the previous books? I liked the universe that was set up in Abaddon's Gate, and hope it keeps going. I don't think it was so much that it was disliked as much as everyone expected the final book and Surprise! Now it's going to be a series! It was okay, but it certainly wasn't as good as Leviathan Wakes or Caliban's War.
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Oct 31, 2013 17:36
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Yeah, and I think it suffered for losing all the best characters from Caliban's War and returning to the charismaless vacuum of the central cast.
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Oct 31, 2013 23:03
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About 80% through it now and still liking it. I'm hoping for the return of foul-mouthed UN grandma in future volumes, though. And/or other more interesting characters; the authors have proved they can do some good ones.
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Nov 1, 2013 06:35
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So I just finished with the latest book in Jack Campbell's Syndic series and I'm looking for something in the same vein. Something about the smaller faction and how it builds itself up , grabbing resources from around, etc. Any ideas?
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Nov 2, 2013 21:18
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Kellanved posted:So I just finished with the latest book in Jack Campbell's Syndic series and I'm looking for something in the same vein. Something about the smaller faction and how it builds itself up , grabbing resources from around, etc. Any ideas? Has Hemry gotten a better editor yet? His stuff gets terribly repetitive, which might be a result of splitting everything into bite-sized books, and I still remember how annoying it was to get the same description of the fleet conference room again and again and again. Can you spoil the interesting bits of Beyond the Frontier like what the hell's up with the aliens and the Syndic stuff for me? Wikipedia's no use at all.
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Nov 3, 2013 02:40
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Tanith posted:Has Hemry gotten a better editor yet? His stuff gets terribly repetitive, which might be a result of splitting everything into bite-sized books, and I still remember how annoying it was to get the same description of the fleet conference room again and again and again. I'd say his writing has gotten slightly better, he's still horribly repetitive but he's more concise about it than in his earlier books. As for your spoilers: The Enigma race is still... well an Enigma. They find out that the race had captured some human's and kept them completely isolated in asteriod colonies, but keeping the number of people a very specific number (whose name I can't remember), but nothing has come of it yet. They find two other races, one of which they fight and the other appear friendly and help them out. Eventually they get back home and the latest book has them visiting Earth and learning some stuff that, in true Campbell style, completely ignores his own previous universe-building. If you've read to Beyond the Frontier, the only new things are Enigma's are still weird, they captured a ship from one crazy new alien race, and the second race wanted to visit earth to return remains of an ancient astronaut to Earth. And if you know Hemry, then you know no matter how crazy and expansive that all sounds, it's basically the full detail of everything meaningful to happen. Presumably something will happen with the Spider Wolves (the friendly race), but the last book ended partially on the surprise of why they came back to Earth (astronaut remains). Nothing has happened with the Syndics. There is the side series about the liberation and subsequent problems with the Midway system which has little actual series wide consequence so far, and the grand total of the outside Syndic goverment influence has been passing on veiled threats and trying to shutdown the hypernet gate on their return trip.
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Nov 3, 2013 08:37
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Are there going to be more books after Beyond The Frontier? I read the return to Earth with the Spider Wolves as kind of a conclusion to the series. There's nothing left unresolved in the current series, which is not to say he can't start up a new plot line. I just kinda assumed that was the end of that though.
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Nov 4, 2013 18:48
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He's got other places to go if he wants. Corruption in the Alliance, where the Spider-Wolves go now, resolution on the Invincible, who these new dipshits are and what they want, etc. Granted it could also be a pretty effective end point if that's what he wants as well. Plus the Lost Stars books clearly have at least one more book in them as well.
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Nov 4, 2013 18:57
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There is also the posturing by the current form of the Syndics and the Enigma race has had no resolution at all. Edit: Unrelated to all that, has Ryk Brown's Frontier Saga been discussed? It's a self published series, but it's actually pretty drat good. Mankind had formerly stablished an interstellar empire that was brought down by a catastrophe and Earth went through a new/actual dark age until finding old caches of information not corrupted by the half biological half computer virus that destroyed it previously. Basic jist is very stereotypical with a young/mostly inexperienced crew being taken on a maiden voyage for Earth's best hope of a bright renewed starfaring future but a malfunction places them in danger, kills the few experienced officers/crew, and the young inherit the ship to get home. Sounds corny, and it is. Each book has your standard disaster/problem crop up, and the crew eventually overcomes through insurmountable odds. There is one recent book and a few moments in between, especially with the protagonist is beating himself up over not being good enough or making hard decisions, where the story does bog down and it gets a bit annoying to read. Also the action scenes are not particularly well written and aren't very cohesive as a whole, but they are usually well paced and not excessively long. If you can get past those cases though? It's well worth the read (at Kindle prices). The books are fast paced, have a decent amount of action, and present a clear short term goal that gets resolved with a long term problem spanning several books. They have some space and ground combat to satisfy a more simple taste if that is what you're after. Best of all? No magical romance. There is a brief encounter in the first book with two main characters but it doesn't lead to the mystical head over heels love at first sight, nor does it become a recurring theme. There are some basic, normal, relationships and that is about it. That alone has restored my faith in humanity, since not even well respected/established authors can manage that much. nessin fucked around with this message at 20:21 on Nov 4, 2013 |
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Nov 4, 2013 20:04
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Tanith posted:Has Hemry gotten a better editor yet? His stuff gets terribly repetitive, which might be a result of splitting everything into bite-sized books, and I still remember how annoying it was to get the same description of the fleet conference room again and again and again. If you're looking for more details on the alien Enigma race, a bit more has been discovered. They're absolutely obsessed with secrecy, to the point that it's been hypothesized that they're hostile to humanity because humanity kept trying to learn about them. They are in fact so big on hiding that even their cities are all obscured from orbital observation, but are all located along bodies of water. The fleet does manage to capture partial remains of one despite the aliens doing everything possible to stop this from happening, and it was described (IIRC) as repulsive and reptilian; they're also amphibious, and based on various hints may have evolved from an ambush predator something like Earth crocodiles. The conclusion of most of the characters seems to be that there's no real chance for friendship between the races, the best that could be hoped for would be an agreement to completely ignore each other.
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Nov 4, 2013 23:53
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I had previously thought that I had read all of Alastair Reynolds' work, but I hadn't! So I am happily reading his short stories as well as Absolution Gap and anything that comes after that in the Revelation Space series. The Thousandth Night was amazing, Pushing Ice (my first Reynolds book) was amazing, seriously he is basically a king of the genre. I've also recently read the Larry Nivens series _____ (betrayer, juggler, destroyer,etc.) of worlds. Those are really good and are pure interspecies space operas which a lot of people would probably find enjoyable. Also, I've been laughing so hard at all the mocking of Honor Harrington bullshit, so thanks for that. I couldn't read past the first 15 pages so its hilariously awesome to be told the ludicrous heights it actually achieved.
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Nov 5, 2013 09:11
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Reynolds' Century Rain is a hoot. Alternate 1950's noir detective AND space opera in the same book.
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Nov 5, 2013 17:05
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You know, that's a good point. I read Century Rain years ago and liked it. I should track down more of Reynolds' stuff. Thanks for the reminder!
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Nov 5, 2013 17:14
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Sadly it does have one of his worst endings, but it's still a marvellously fun book. I'd also recommend Terminal World very strongly. It's amazing how much new and incredible stuff he keeps throwing at you.
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Nov 5, 2013 17:15
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Play posted:I've also recently read the Larry Nivens series _____ (betrayer, juggler, destroyer,etc.) of worlds. Those are really good and are pure interspecies space operas which a lot of people would probably find enjoyable. I read the first two, and I agree that they're better than Niven's other recent stuff (because I suspect it's basically mainly Edward Lerner doing the actual writing). I did have a bit of a problem with the first one, in that it seems like some of the plots were highly influenced by some of the Man-Kzin War stories, particularly Donald Kingsbury's entries. What happens in the later works? After the second book does the story stay focused on the human colony planet or does it weave back in with other Known Space stuff also? I got a big kick from the second book revisiting so many of the classic Known Space stories from the POVs of different characters.
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Nov 5, 2013 20:12
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John Magnum posted:Sadly it does have one of his worst endings, but it's still a marvellously fun book. I'd also recommend Terminal World very strongly. It's amazing how much new and incredible stuff he keeps throwing at you. Uh I just want to caveat this with the general opinion that these are two of his worst books. Which is good, I guess, because it means you've got nowhere to go but up! I personally found some stuff to like in Century Rain, but I'm afraid Terminal World is totally unsalvageable.
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Nov 6, 2013 06:12
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General Battuta posted:Uh I just want to caveat this with the general opinion that these are two of his worst books. Which is good, I guess, because it means you've got nowhere to go but up! I personally found some stuff to like in Century Rain, but I'm afraid Terminal World is totally unsalvageable. I liked Century Rain quite a bit and thought Terminal World was okay, but Pushing Ice just drove me loving nuts. It had a cool plot, but the two female leads were just unbearably, cartoonishly stubborn with each other. These were supposed to be smart, responsible, capable people, and yet they spend decades bickering like spiteful children to the detriment of their entire society. I don't expect characters in novels not to have flaws, as that would be boring. In Pushing Ice, though, the two leads behave in ways that I have never seen an adult human being behave.
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Nov 6, 2013 07:08
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Chairman Capone posted:I read the first two, and I agree that they're better than Niven's other recent stuff (because I suspect it's basically mainly Edward Lerner doing the actual writing). I did have a bit of a problem with the first one, in that it seems like some of the plots were highly influenced by some of the Man-Kzin War stories, particularly Donald Kingsbury's entries. It sticks with the colony & Fleet of Worlds, for the most part. I know I wrote a post on 'em, but it doesn't seem to be in the live forums anymore. I only read a handful of Man-Kzin books (one of them in particular soured me on the series), so I can't really say how they intertwine with * of Worlds. Essentially, the entire series is how the Puppeteer's paranoid plans and hubris are their ultimate undoing. Major plot points: Colony humans break away from the Puppeteers and leave with their planet but remain in the dark about the location of Earth/Known Space Puppeteers go super-paranoid on an intelligent race of starfish that can link up to become super-smart Starfish discover the Puppeteer fail-safe plot to destroy them and instead effectively take over the Fleet of Worlds by threatening to detonate the planetary engines; they've been controlling Puppeteer affairs secretly since before the Ringworld books Colony humans and Puppeteers manage to destroy a significant fleet of Protector ships (fleeing the radiation front destroying the galaxy) with a hyperdrive engine bomb Known Space learns the location of the Fleet of Worlds and everyone zips over, but are cold-war'd for a while because the Starfish's defense network is quite capable poo poo falls apart thanks to a particularly crazy Puppeteer, the defense network becomes self-aware, and a brief war starts. Two of the farm planets blow up while the other three escape with their planetary hyperdrives. Billions of Puppeteers rendered catatonic/dead from exposure to hyperspace.
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Nov 7, 2013 06:45
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Kellanved posted:So I just finished with the latest book in Jack Campbell's Syndic series and I'm looking for something in the same vein. Something about the smaller faction and how it builds itself up , grabbing resources from around, etc. Any ideas? Star Force series. I'm on book 6 and it's all along the same lines but....more enjoyable i found. it is a bit annoying though - it seems it's only the main character who can do anything http://www.goodreads.com/series/69279-star-force
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Nov 9, 2013 21:09
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I'm not entirely sure if it can be counted as space opera, even if Trurl and Klapaucius travel around quite a bit, but I still want to recommend The Cyberiad written by Stanislaw Lem. It's an incredibly fun set of short stories about the adventures of two robotic engineers wreaking (accidental) havoc just by doing stupid stuff like inventing robotic dragons and a machine that can create everything, but only if it starts with the letter "N".
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Nov 12, 2013 19:49
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Recommendations for space opera similar to The Culture series by Banks? Earnest, quirky, and socially progressive is my sort of style.
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Nov 21, 2013 20:03
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fookolt posted:Recommendations for space opera similar to The Culture series by Banks? Earnest, quirky, and socially progressive is my sort of style. I dread the day I eventually finish all the culture books  .
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Nov 21, 2013 20:49
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fookolt posted:Recommendations for space opera similar to The Culture series by Banks? Earnest, quirky, and socially progressive is my sort of style. Scott Westerfeld's Succession is earnest and socially progressive, though, alas, not too quirky. I'd still recommend it.
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Nov 22, 2013 01:16
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General Battuta posted:Scott Westerfeld's Succession is earnest and socially progressive, though, alas, not too quirky. I'd still recommend it. Yeah, this is pretty drat good. Just a heads up: It's originally a two-volume series, The Risen Empire and The Killing of Worlds but there's also a UK edition which collects both and is also just titled The Risen Empire (I have a copy of this). Just to prevent any confusion.
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Nov 22, 2013 07:44
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fookolt posted:Recommendations for space opera similar to The Culture series by Banks? Earnest, quirky, and socially progressive is my sort of style. Asher's The Polity series might be interesting, it's got AI starships and AI run society. More action based than Banks though. Maybe not socially progressive, whatever that is, but on the other hand socialism is hardly progressive these days.
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Nov 22, 2013 09:06
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Cardiac posted:Asher's The Polity series might be interesting, it's got AI starships and AI run society. More action based than Banks though. I don't know if I would qualify Polity as progressive nor Asher's writing (it's fun an lots of action though). Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga would be my recommendation. An isolated, backwards, patriarchal and feudal society regains connections to the greater galactic society and the resulting growing pains shown through the lens of the Vorkosigan family (mainly through the extremely unconventional Miles of course). No AIs though.
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Nov 22, 2013 10:54
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Decius posted:Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga would be my recommendation. An isolated, backwards, patriarchal and feudal society regains connections to the greater galactic society and the resulting growing pains shown through the lens of the Vorkosigan family (mainly through the extremely unconventional Miles of course). No AIs though. A very common recommendation and for good reason. Miles Vorkosigan can briefly be described as "Tyrion Lannister with much better parents, in space" (except it's more like the reverse since the first Vorkosigan books were published maybe a decade before AGOT). Edit: spelling Groke fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Nov 22, 2013 |
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Nov 22, 2013 11:26
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Decius posted:I don't know if I would qualify Polity as progressive nor Asher's writing (it's fun an lots of action though). That sounds great. This thread helped me out as well: http://ask.metafilter.com/186783/What-shall-I-read-next This looks particularly good: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Age_%28novel_series%29
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Nov 22, 2013 18:16
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