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Fart of Presto
Feb 9, 2001
Clapping Larry
Latest iteration of the StoryBundle is called The Cosmic Sci-Fi Bundle
The bundle is curated by Kevin J. Anderson, which was not something that got my hopes up.

$3 minimum gets you:
  • METAtropolis by Jay Lake and Ken Scholes
  • Destination Void by Frank Herbert
  • First Person Peculiar by Mike Resnick
  • Assemblers of Infinity by Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason
  • Anniversary Day by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
  • Second Paradigm by Peter J. Wacks

More than $12 also gets you:
  • Crisis on Doona by Anne McCaffrey and Jody Lynn Nye
  • Perfectly Invisible by Michael A. Stackpole
  • Legion by Brandon Sanderson
Does anyone have anything good to say about any of the books?

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Furious Lobster
Jun 17, 2006

Soiled Meat

Fart of Presto posted:

Latest iteration of the StoryBundle is called The Cosmic Sci-Fi Bundle
The bundle is curated by Kevin J. Anderson, which was not something that got my hopes up.

$3 minimum gets you:
  • METAtropolis by Jay Lake and Ken Scholes
  • Destination Void by Frank Herbert
  • First Person Peculiar by Mike Resnick
  • Assemblers of Infinity by Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason
  • Anniversary Day by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
  • Second Paradigm by Peter J. Wacks

More than $12 also gets you:
  • Crisis on Doona by Anne McCaffrey and Jody Lynn Nye
  • Perfectly Invisible by Michael A. Stackpole
  • Legion by Brandon Sanderson
Does anyone have anything good to say about any of the books?

I've only read Legion and it was a fun, short read; I think Sanderson is currently working on Legion 2.However the kindle price is $3 so hopefully the other stories are worth the $12.

Stupid_Sexy_Flander
Mar 14, 2007

Is a man not entitled to the haw of his maw?
Grimey Drawer
I've looked em all up on amazon for the plot synopsis and frankly they all look like they suck.

I read Legion, but it was in no way worth the 12 bucks.

angel opportunity
Sep 7, 2004

Total Eclipse of the Heart
I've only met one guy ever that didn't regret reading all of Wheel of Time. Without hyperbole, out of the 12 or whatever books in the series, 3-4 books worth of writing could and should have been entirely thrown out. As part of that, there is I think one or two actual books (like books that took years to write and were released as books) that could have been reduced to a few chapters. In one of them the main protagonist has something like 30 pages dedicated to himself, and in those I think he's sitting in a chair doing nothing. Jordan introduces entire new civilizations somewhere in book 6 or 7, and then he has to spend several more books forcing them slowly and agonizingly into the main plot thread that has already been going on for decades of real time. There are likely over 1,000 individual characters, many of them totally pointless. The main character has three women he is in love with all at once, and they are cool with it, and I THINK he marries all of them? I can't remember. One entire book, late in the series, has a main character's wife get kidnapped and spends the entire book having her get rescued, all for very minimal advancement of the main plot.

There are a number of "forsaken" that basically are super bad guys that are very powerful. Most early books have the protag dealing with one of them, and then he eventually kills so many of them off that they start coming back to life with different names.

There is just so much incredibly dumb poo poo in this series. Within all of this crap is probably a solid 3-4 books worth of good characterization and interesting plot, but it's simply not worth sifting out of all the terribly boring crap.

Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

Fart of Presto posted:

Latest iteration of the StoryBundle is called The Cosmic Sci-Fi Bundle
The bundle is curated by Kevin J. Anderson, which was not something that got my hopes up.

$3 minimum gets you:
  • METAtropolis by Jay Lake and Ken Scholes
  • Destination Void by Frank Herbert
  • First Person Peculiar by Mike Resnick
  • Assemblers of Infinity by Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason
  • Anniversary Day by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
  • Second Paradigm by Peter J. Wacks

More than $12 also gets you:
  • Crisis on Doona by Anne McCaffrey and Jody Lynn Nye
  • Perfectly Invisible by Michael A. Stackpole
  • Legion by Brandon Sanderson
Does anyone have anything good to say about any of the books?

I recall Destination Void being pretty good. I mean, it isn't Dune, but non-Dune Herbert is still pretty good.

specklebang
Jun 7, 2013

Discount Philosopher and Cat Whisperer

Fart of Presto posted:

Latest iteration of the StoryBundle is called The Cosmic Sci-Fi Bundle
The bundle is curated by Kevin J. Anderson, which was not something that got my hopes up.

$3 minimum gets you:

[*]Anniversary Day by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Does anyone have anything good to say about any of the books?

Anniversary Day is far into The Retrieval Artist series which consists of:
Retrieval Artist
Vol. 1: The Disappeared, 2002
Vol. 2: Extremes, 2003
Vol. 3: Consequences, 2004
Vol. 4: Buried Deep, 2005
Vol. 5: Paloma, 2006
Vol. 6: Recovery Man, 2007
Vol. 7: Duplicate Effort, 2009
Vol. 8: Anniversary Day, 2011
Vol. 9: Blowback 2012

Now, I personally like The Retrieval Artist books and have read all of them. They are essentially police procedurals set maybe 1000 years in the future and mostly based on Earth's Moon which has a large population of various alien races. I doubt that Anniversary Day would be good as a stand-alone.

andrew smash
Jun 26, 2006

smooth soul

Kalman posted:

I recall Destination Void being pretty good. I mean, it isn't Dune, but non-Dune Herbert is still pretty good.

I read it this year, it's excellent.

High Warlord Zog
Dec 12, 2012
Someone has donated box loads of Poul Anderson and Michael Moorcock books to my local second hand store. I know of these guys by reputation and have read some of their more well known stuff (Loved the Broken Sword and Tau Zero, Elric was fun but disposable). Were/Are they consistent writers, or should I just stick with the better known stuff? Are there any stinkers I should look out for?

Darth Walrus
Feb 13, 2012

High Warlord Zog posted:

Someone has donated box loads of Poul Anderson and Michael Moorcock books to my local second hand store. I know of these guys by reputation and have read some of their more well known stuff (Loved the Broken Sword and Tau Zero, Elric was fun but disposable). Were/Are they consistent writers, or should I just stick with the better known stuff? Are there any stinkers I should look out for?

Ferretbrain has a massive series of articles on Moorcock's work which may help you fish out some of the gold.

Lex Talionis
Feb 6, 2011

Kalman posted:

I recall Destination Void being pretty good. I mean, it isn't Dune, but non-Dune Herbert is still pretty good.
Destination Void is really interesting but people should be warned it's not an accessible adventure epic like Dune, it's a seriously odd book that is part confined psychological thriller and part exhaustive philosophical treatise on the nature of consciousness. Like Embassytown meets The Explorer or the movie Cube.

Lowly
Aug 13, 2009

thehacker0 posted:

After doing some searching for a new fantasy series to pick up, I've just started Kingkiller Chronicles. Given the crazy length of some other highly recommended series, I figured a shorter one like this could be worth tackling before diving into something like Wheel of Time. Have I made a solid choice? Others I was considering were Wheel of Time and Malazan Book of the fallen. Will probably go for those next.

I think everyone's going to have different opinions about these, but for what it's worth, having read some of all three, I wouldn't categorize any of these as great literature, but I think any of them could be entertaining to someone, depending on what they connect to.

I am most of the way through Malazan and like it a lot, it's one of my favorite fantasy series despite the length and sheer amount of characters and stuff going on. I do find, though, that I have to take breaks in between reading the books because they are so long and dense, I just need to break it up. But because of that, I think it's a series I can continually return to and reread because there are so many little things that pick up new meanings once you know more about what's going on.

Systran's description of Wheel of Time matches my impression of it. I thought it was pretty entertaining for the first several books but then the story just starts to feel like it's stretching out for no reason. I also found most of the main characters to be pretty dull, which is fine when interesting stuff is happening all around them, but then when it gets to whole books where all they are doing is traveling from one location to another and brooding about their responsibilities it gets deathly boring to slog through.

I absolutely hated the first book of Kingkiller Chronicles, but I know that lots of people love it. I didn't like the main character at all, and I didn't really get the point of the story. It seemed like the whole thing was just to be like "Oh, look how awesome this guy is." The whole first book just seemed to be a series of events designed to show all the ways in which the main character was great. That's nice for him, but I don't really care. And from what I've read about the second book, it's even worse in that regard. But if you find while you are reading it that you are really into this Kvothe guy and his life story, then by all means go for it.

I liked Malazan a lot better than the others because I felt much more of an emotional connection to the characters and the writing than I did to the other two, and I think different people will connect differently to each of these stories. I would say to try them out, but don't feel bad about dropping them if you start to feel bored/frustrated with them.

Megazver
Jan 13, 2006
http://booklog.klio.org/entry/545

quote:

I never thought I’d actually read Robert Jordan’s (and I guess Brandon Sanderson’s) Wheel of Time in its entirety. I had started reading it back in junior high when The Eye of the World was first published, and up into college it was my favorite series of all time. But as I got older, the series got worse; and after finishing the ninth book around the turn of the century, I never bothered picking up another one, and the bad reactions of those who did bother confirmed me in my course of action. When I started hearing good things about the last, Sanderson-penned, volumes, I sort of regretted dropping the series, but who has the time to go back and read a a fourteen-brick series in one big gulp?

It turns out: me. This past winter, I decided I was sick of having to choose a new book every time I finished one, and so I wanted a series that would put me on autopilot for a good long while. Well, nothing says “autopilot” like The Wheel of Time, right? So I started in on the first volume, and then basically just kept reading until I was done, fourteen books and a few months later.

So the conventional wisdom is that the series starts out strong (if you like epic fantasy of this sort), goes badly off the rails in the middle, and then picks back up when Sanderson takes over. That’s not exactly wrong, but when you read it all in one gulp, it’s not quite right, either. Because, yeah, the series gets more digressive in the middle, and if you’re reading as the books are published, waiting years and years to see some eagerly-anticipated plot event, and then you don’t get it… it’s crazy frustrating, and feels like the books aren’t moving at all. But if you know that everything’ll happen shortly enough, and there’s no wait in between books, that frustration goes away, and you can appreciate what actually does happen.

So, yeah, the middle books do get buried in the weeds for a bit, but read as a single coherent whole, that middle section is still entertaining enough, and not the mad frustrating mess of boredom and nothingness that it seemed like as the books were coming out.

And similarly, Sanderson’s turnaround doesn’t quite seem like one when read in a chunk, either—it’s really the book before Sanderson takes over that the forward momentum of the core plot resumes, and Sanderson just keeps that up (though to give Sanderson his credit: I doubt Jordan could have kept that momentum up. It’s Sanderson’s relentless forward drive that lets the series hit its ending in “only” fourteen books).

Overall, this is certainly a flawed series—it’s weirdly paced, significant characters don’t even appear until halfway through it, some plot elements are never dealt with satisfactorily, and of course if you don’t like this particular type of epic fantasy, you’ll find all the flaws of that genre here, too. But if you do like this style of thing, well, I think this is still a very good example of it. Maybe not good enough to really justify fourteen books out of a busy person’s schedule, but if you ever started this series and liked it, it’s worth finishing it, I reckon.

coyo7e
Aug 23, 2007

by zen death robot
Strange as it may seem I got into WoT at the turn of the century (got a job in a bookstore which was moving, and ended up backing my pickup up to a shipping-crate-sized trash container full of stripped paperbacks after work snd pretty much just shoveling in everything I could get my hands on) and ended up with the first 7-10 books for free (I think I bought one or two to fill in gaps my shoveling missed), fully untouched, waiting for my very curious eyes to pore over.

In short, the quote above is almost - except that when one goes through the series as an adult, it's even worse than people talk about. It's slow to start, dithers around for hundreds in every single book, the middle gets really slow and progressively less, less, progressive about where the story is heading.. And then the author dies.

So yeah, I'm sure that Sanderson really made things a lot more interesting however, the series itself is not worth wading through

quote:

basically just kept reading until I was done, fourteen books and a few months later.

So the conventional wisdom is that the series starts out strong (if you like epic fantasy of this sort), goes badly off the rails in the middle, and then picks back up when Sanderson takes over. That’s not exactly wrong, but when you read it all in one gulp, it’s not quite right, either. Because, yeah, the series gets more digressive in the middle, and if you’re reading as the books are published, waiting years and years to see some eagerly-anticipated plot event, and then you don’t get it… it’s crazy frustrating, and feels like the books aren’t moving at all. But if you know that everything’ll happen shortly enough, and there’s no wait in between books, that frustration goes away, and you can appreciate what actually does happen.

So, yeah, the middle books do get buried in the weeds for a bit, but read as a single coherent whole, that middle section is still entertaining enough, and not the mad frustrating mess of boredom and nothingness that it seemed like as the books were coming out.
I guess if this was a series I grew up with as a pre-teen I'd be super inclined to give it the rosy-tinted treatment yet, I read it as a(n almost) adult, went back and tried it again, and frankly Modesitt's pile of Recluse chaos planet/magic novels will probably be a faster read, take you farther from your starting point, and not repeat itself as much as WoT does.(yes, that was an intentional joke, because all the Recluse books are nearly identical, but they're all 1/3 as long as the average WoT book and you'll at least see the same poo poo from a slightly different time-line while reading it - nobody ever gets a hat and a naginata and calls the 800-1000 page novel a day like a certain WoT book I read a couple times!)

Darth Walrus posted:

Ferretbrain has a massive series of articles on Moorcock's work which may help you fish out some of the gold.
Thanks. I read a few hundred pages of Moorcock and never quite got the hype - it was like Solomon Kaine in that I just didn't give a gently caress about the character and it mostly seemed to be emo :emo: filler. I have a roommate who's huge into it though, and I'd like to be able to at least know what I ought to read to try and appreciate what he loves about the series.

coyo7e fucked around with this message at 02:13 on Jun 21, 2014

Popular Human
Jul 17, 2005

and if it's a lie, terrorists made me say it

coyo7e posted:

I guess if this was a series I grew up with as a pre-teen I'd be super inclined to give it the rosy-tinted treatment yet, I read it as a(n almost) adult, went back and tried it again, and frankly Modesitt's pile of Recluse chaos planet/magic novels will probably be a faster read, take you farther from your starting point, and not repeat itself as much as WoT does.

Ding ding ding! I love Wheel of Time, but I've been reading it since I was in middle school. The Eye of the World was the first "big" book I ever read, and I have so many memories of growing up that are tied into reading the series that there's pretty much no way of me ever looking at the books objectively. To me, it's my Lord of the Rings, even though I agree with just about every criticism ever levied at Jordan.

coyo7e
Aug 23, 2007

by zen death robot
Its weird. I grew up on LOTR but it also took me several reads as a kid to really 'grok' everything that was going on,whereas most Feist, Salvatore, Heinlein, Brooks, Eddings etc don't really hold up.. And few of them took more than a casual scan to absorb eveyrhting that was going on in their novels and series.

FWIW I went through the Foundation trilogy when I was also reading Jordan, and despite reading ten times as many pages I can certainly recall more characters and overarching points in Foundation, than,well, Goodkind is more memorable for me than Jordan.

Edit argh tablet's autocorrect

coyo7e fucked around with this message at 04:01 on Jun 21, 2014

mllaneza
Apr 28, 2007

Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1993-1952




Kalman posted:

I recall Destination Void being pretty good. I mean, it isn't Dune, but non-Dune Herbert is still pretty good.

Dune is actually not his best work, just his most popular. Destination Void and its sequels are amazing thrillers with heavy doses of psychology and theology; Whipping Star and Doasdi experiment are in a fascinating universe with really different aliens, and Dosadi is arguably pro to-cyberpunk. All of those are more readable than Dune, which even the fans admit can be a bit of a slog at points.

Clark Nova
Jul 18, 2004

quote:

So the conventional wisdom is that the series starts out strong (if you like epic fantasy of this sort), goes badly off the rails in the middle, and then picks back up when Sanderson takes over. That’s not exactly wrong, but when you read it all in one gulp, it’s not quite right, either. Because, yeah, the series gets more digressive in the middle, and if you’re reading as the books are published, waiting years and years to see some eagerly-anticipated plot event, and then you don’t get it… it’s crazy frustrating, and feels like the books aren’t moving at all. But if you know that everything’ll happen shortly enough, and there’s no wait in between books, that frustration goes away, and you can appreciate what actually does happen.

So, yeah, the middle books do get buried in the weeds for a bit, but read as a single coherent whole, that middle section is still entertaining enough, and not the mad frustrating mess of boredom and nothingness that it seemed like as the books were coming out.

Ha, I wonder if people will be saying this about A Song of Ice and Fire once it is finished by whoever Gurm's estate appoints to do the deed and the asymptopic mess the series currently appears to have devolved into.

Cardiac
Aug 28, 2012

I finished The Rhesus Chart by Charles Stross, the latest in The Laundry, and found it highly enjoyable.
The prior book, The Apocalypse Codex, was somewhat of an disappointment, but The Rhesus Chart is a step up from that.
Tighter story line, more POVs than Bob Howards, and also more reminiscent of a classic spy thriller.
Making it about vampires working in the stock exchange is a nice touch as well.

coyo7e posted:

Strange as it may seem I got into WoT at the turn of the century (got a job in a bookstore which was moving, and ended up backing my pickup up to a shipping-crate-sized trash container full of stripped paperbacks after work snd pretty much just shoveling in everything I could get my hands on) and ended up with the first 7-10 books for free (I think I bought one or two to fill in gaps my shoveling missed), fully untouched, waiting for my very curious eyes to pore over.

In short, the quote above is almost - except that when one goes through the series as an adult, it's even worse than people talk about. It's slow to start, dithers around for hundreds in every single book, the middle gets really slow and progressively less, less, progressive about where the story is heading.. And then the author dies.

So yeah, I'm sure that Sanderson really made things a lot more interesting however, the series itself is not worth wading through

The WoT is worth reading and is still a very good series in comparison to much else out there. Admittedly, book 8-10 are basically filler and is a consequence of Hamilton falling in love with his characters. In his final book he however tightens up the plot significantly and then Sanderson finishes the series in a good way. Sanderson finished the series in a good way, and it is probably his best work so far. Just shows what he can do when someone tells him exactly to write, in contrast to his other work which is visualisation of various RPG systems.

coyo7e posted:

Thanks. I read a few hundred pages of Moorcock and never quite got the hype - it was like Solomon Kaine in that I just didn't give a gently caress about the character and it mostly seemed to be emo :emo: filler. I have a roommate who's huge into it though, and I'd like to be able to at least know what I ought to read to try and appreciate what he loves about the series.

Moorcocks Elric is one of the classic fantasy protagonists, which has inspired a lot of other authors. Anomander Rake in the Malazan books is probably the most obvious one. Moorcock has a interesting universe, which is more dreamy and less determined than most other modern fantasy which often seems like it comes directly from a RPG manual.

Clark Nova posted:

Ha, I wonder if people will be saying this about A Song of Ice and Fire once it is finished by whoever Gurm's estate appoints to do the deed and the asymptopic mess the series currently appears to have devolved into.

ASOIAF is going exactly the same way as WoT did, where the main difference is that Hamilton actually wrote books even though they didn't lead anywhere.

Cardiac fucked around with this message at 11:06 on Jun 21, 2014

Popular Human
Jul 17, 2005

and if it's a lie, terrorists made me say it

Cardiac posted:

Hamilton

You mean Robert Jordan, right?

Although Peter Hamilton is another guy famous for writing novels you can use as doorstops.

Fried Chicken
Jan 9, 2011

Don't fry me, I'm no chicken!

Cardiac posted:

I finished The Rhesus Chart by Charles Stross, the latest in The Laundry, and found it highly enjoyable.
The prior book, The Apocalypse Codex, was somewhat of an disappointment, but The Rhesus Chart is a step up from that.
Tighter story line, more POVs than Bob Howards, and also more reminiscent of a classic spy thriller.
Making it about vampires working in the stock exchange is a nice touch as well.

wait how did you get it? It isn't out for another week

sourdough
Apr 30, 2012

Fried Chicken posted:

wait how did you get it? It isn't out for another week

HOW DARE YOU, THE WORLD DOESN'T REVOLVE AROUND THE US OF A, SOMETIMES EUROPE GETS THINGS FIRST

Fried Chicken
Jan 9, 2011

Don't fry me, I'm no chicken!

RVProfootballer posted:

HOW DARE YOU, THE WORLD DOESN'T REVOLVE AROUND THE US OF A, SOMETIMES EUROPE GETS THINGS FIRST

:golfclap:

Of course, due to Hatchette fuckery, it comes out in the US two days before the UK :unsmigghh:


I'm more curious if he won the contest, or if it leaked early and I should try to acquire a copy rather than waiting some weeks (I already preordered mine a while back, gotta support the artists you like)

Lowly
Aug 13, 2009

Has anyone picked up "The Girl With All the Gifts?" I've read a lot of buzz about it, but it seems to be one of those books where no one will talk about specifics because getting spoiled will ruin some of the enjoyment. Just curious as to whether anyone had read it yet and what people thought. The author seems to be mostly notable for writing comic books. I'm not particularly a comic book fan so I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

bonds0097
Oct 23, 2010

I would cry but I don't think I can spare the moisture.
Pillbug

Lowly posted:

Has anyone picked up "The Girl With All the Gifts?" I've read a lot of buzz about it, but it seems to be one of those books where no one will talk about specifics because getting spoiled will ruin some of the enjoyment. Just curious as to whether anyone had read it yet and what people thought. The author seems to be mostly notable for writing comic books. I'm not particularly a comic book fan so I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

There was a free Kindle preview before the book came out. I enjoyed it but when it ended it felt like a good classical sci-fi short story with a twist at the end.I'm unsure as to how the premise will carry a whole novel. The writing seemed solid though.

Edit: Oh wow, I just realized the author is Mike Carey (M. R. Carey did not ring a bell). He's a fantastic comic book writer, though admittedly that doesn't always translate into good prose (though as I said I thought the writing in the preview was fine). I certainly think his series 'Lucifer' is worth a read regardless.

Captain Mog
Jun 17, 2011
How does everyone feel about Ursula le Guinn? I'm currently halfway through Rocannon's World and, while creative, I'm finding it a bit dated. The character development seems non-existent and there are weird time jumps that occur in single sentences. I think the book would've benefited much more from more character interaction or more description of characters because I'm getting them mixed up and that literally never happens for me. I also have a difficult time picturing this weird place; it reads like someone describing the colors of a tree but never saying what shape the tree is or what kind or what the leaves look like. I almost feel bad saying this because she's a fabulous writer and the plot was surely creative for its time but I honestly don't know what to think.

Captain Mog fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Jun 22, 2014

DFu4ever
Oct 4, 2002

Cardiac posted:

I finished The Rhesus Chart by Charles Stross, the latest in The Laundry, and found it highly enjoyable.

Wait, that is already out? It doesn't look like it comes out until July on both Amazon and Amazon.co.uk.

EDIT: Already discussed. I read gud.

Furious Lobster
Jun 17, 2006

Soiled Meat

Captain Mog posted:

How does everyone feel about Ursula le Guinn? I'm currently halfway through Rocannon's World and, while creative, I'm finding it a bit dated. The character development seems non-existent and there are weird time jumps that occur in single sentences. I think the book would've benefited much more from more character interaction or more description of characters because I'm getting them mixed up and that literally never happens for me. I also have a difficult time picturing this weird place; it reads like someone describing the colors of a tree but never saying what shape the tree is or what kind or what the leaves look like. I almost feel bad saying this because she's a fabulous writer and the plot was surely creative for its time but I honestly don't know what to think.

I think she's a crazy good author who was generations ahead of her time and while it's been a long time since she started writing, her stuff is still good. I'm not saying all her stuff is amazing but generally a Good Writer. There was some discussion earlier about her seminal work The Left Hand of Darkness, which I'll put below but you can find the other points through search:

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

It was revolutionary for the time and LeGuin is one of the best prose stylists in the field. It also kinda depends on what sortof SF reader you are. There's enough male-fantasy SF still being written that if that's all you've read, LHoD is still going to throw you for a loop even today.

Zola posted:

Partly because it won all kinds of awards, partly because it was groundbreaking in its time, and partly because it's 45 years old and it's still a great story.

General Battuta posted:

This is the farthest thing from truth. SF/F has barely begun to crack the gender trove. Hell, society as a whole has barely started to touch on gender in mainstream discourse.

Every time I start a new story I realize how much territory there still is to cover, even in the characterization and worldbuilding of stories that don't foreground gender as a theme. Gender still hasn't reached peak relevance.

The Left Hand of Darkness is a monumental work because it helped point out how little genre touched on gender, because it demonstrated that science fiction about anthropology and understanding could and should be central, and because it remains a beautiful story even with all its other value removed.

Cardiovorax
Jun 5, 2011

I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Captain Mog posted:

How does everyone feel about Ursula le Guinn? I'm currently halfway through Rocannon's World and, while creative, I'm finding it a bit dated. The character development seems non-existent and there are weird time jumps that occur in single sentences. I think the book would've benefited much more from more character interaction or more description of characters because I'm getting them mixed up and that literally never happens for me. I also have a difficult time picturing this weird place; it reads like someone describing the colors of a tree but never saying what shape the tree is or what kind or what the leaves look like. I almost feel bad saying this because she's a fabulous writer and the plot was surely creative for its time but I honestly don't know what to think.
I don't know that novel, but "dated" is how I would describe most of her work. Her writing style has this pseudo-epic quality that some older genre writers have, like Michael Moorcock. It makes her sound like she's trying to imitate Beowulf rather than writing prose. I guess some people feel it makes her characters sound larger than life, but to me it just sounds outdated and artificial.

Don't let that stop you from trying to read her better work, though. The Left Hand of Darkness is great, as are the first three books of the Earthsea saga.

Hedrigall
Mar 27, 2008

by vyelkin

RVProfootballer posted:

HOW DARE YOU, THE WORLD DOESN'T REVOLVE AROUND THE US OF A, SOMETIMES EUROPE GETS THINGS FIRST

I'm telling you guy, time traveling wizards

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound
Yeah, I haven't read Rocannon's World but the Earthsea books are absolute classics.

I think of Earthsea as a non-white, non-European answer to Tolkien, and The Dispossessed as a communist answer to Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 02:44 on Jun 22, 2014

Captain Mog
Jun 17, 2011

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Yeah, I haven't read Rocannon's World but the Earthsea books are absolute classics.

I think of Earthsea as a non-white, non-European answer to Tolkien, and The Dispossessed as a communist answer to Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

That's what I've heard. I absolutely adore Patrick Rothfuss and he said WoE was one of his favorite series, among other people & authors whose opinions I trust. Maybe I should give them a try, then. And since everyone also recommends it to me, the same with Left Hand of Darkness. The idea of androgyny in sci-fi really interests me. I just have the hardest time connecting to a book if I can't grasp the characters- it's probably the biggest thing for me.

Captain Mog fucked around with this message at 02:56 on Jun 22, 2014

Cardiovorax
Jun 5, 2011

I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

I think of Earthsea as a non-white, non-European answer to Tolkien
Earthsea is good, but I think that's overstating it. It's intentionally countercultural in its setting, but all of it taken together doesn't have the worldbuilding and loving attention to detail put into it that Tolkien has in one book.

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound

Cardiovorax posted:

Earthsea is good, but I think that's overstating it. It's intentionally countercultural in its setting, but all of it taken together doesn't have the worldbuilding and loving attention to detail put into it that Tolkien has in one book.

Yeah, but she makes up the difference with her prose style I think.

General Battuta
Feb 7, 2011

This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Cardiovorax posted:

I don't know that novel, but "dated" is how I would describe most of her work. Her writing style has this pseudo-epic quality that some older genre writers have, like Michael Moorcock. It makes her sound like she's trying to imitate Beowulf rather than writing prose. I guess some people feel it makes her characters sound larger than life, but to me it just sounds outdated and artificial.

Don't let that stop you from trying to read her better work, though. The Left Hand of Darkness is great, as are the first three books of the Earthsea saga.

Earthsea also closes with two (three counting the short story collection) superb books that wrap things up beautifully. I have some qualms, particularly with the short story collection, but Earthsea is that rare beast that finishes strong.

General Battuta fucked around with this message at 04:18 on Jun 22, 2014

Cardiovorax
Jun 5, 2011

I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.
Yeah, I was told in this thread that the final books were very very good, but I just can't get myself to work past Tehanu again. Maybe one of these days.

Jedit
Dec 10, 2011

Proudly supporting vanilla legends 1994-2014

Lowly posted:

Has anyone picked up "The Girl With All the Gifts?" I've read a lot of buzz about it, but it seems to be one of those books where no one will talk about specifics because getting spoiled will ruin some of the enjoyment. Just curious as to whether anyone had read it yet and what people thought. The author seems to be mostly notable for writing comic books. I'm not particularly a comic book fan so I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

Read this and you'll know. Mike has written some mainstream comics, but he's best known for his Vertigo stuff. The Unwritten, which finishes in December, is his magnum opus and belongs in this thread more than half the prose novels.

nightchild12
Jan 8, 2005
hi i'm sexy

Lowly posted:

Has anyone picked up "The Girl With All the Gifts?" I've read a lot of buzz about it, but it seems to be one of those books where no one will talk about specifics because getting spoiled will ruin some of the enjoyment. Just curious as to whether anyone had read it yet and what people thought. The author seems to be mostly notable for writing comic books. I'm not particularly a comic book fan so I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

I thought it was an entertaining read, with good (if somewhat predictable) twists. I am not well-read in its particular sub-genre so I can't really compare it to similar books, but it was enjoyable enough.

Lowly
Aug 13, 2009

nightchild12 posted:

I thought it was an entertaining read, with good (if somewhat predictable) twists. I am not well-read in its particular sub-genre so I can't really compare it to similar books, but it was enjoyable enough.

Thanks (and everyone else who answered)! This quote about sums up my initial impression based on what I've seen so far. I'm going to put in on my list -- I've got a weekend trip coming up next month and it sounds like the perfect kind of thing to read then.

bonds0097
Oct 23, 2010

I would cry but I don't think I can spare the moisture.
Pillbug

Jedit posted:

Read this and you'll know. Mike has written some mainstream comics, but he's best known for his Vertigo stuff. The Unwritten, which finishes in December, is his magnum opus and belongs in this thread more than half the prose novels.

I don't know how I forgot about The Unwritten. I absolutely adore the series, can't wait for it to wrap up at the end of the year. But the I'm a sucker for stories about stories, reality and art. Reminds me of my favorite quote from Beatrice & Virgil (which admittedly a lot of people dislike):

quote:

“A work of art works because it is true, not because it is real."

I feel like The Unwritten is the kind of story that The Magician wanted to be, with its pseudo-Narnia.

Totally unrelated, just read Flight of the Silvers and really enjoyed it. I went in totally blind so the beginning was rather strange but as it happens it's about topics I happen to like a lot. The characters were fairly interesting, though I could have done without being reminded that one of the protagonists was well-endowed in the chest area every couple of pages. Sadly, I did not realize that this was not a self-contained novel and since the book just came out this year, it's unlikely we'll see a sequel for some time. I would have enjoyed more world-building or perhaps some deeper introspection regarding the premise of the novel but it was certainly a fun ride and I'll gladly read the sequel.

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regularizer
Mar 5, 2012

I got Apocalypse Now Now by Charlie Human last night and I have about half an hour left of reading. It's very strong urban fantasy set in South Africa, and the review by Tor sums it up pretty well. If anything, the cover art alone should convince you:



I haven't spent so much time reading in a single sitting in a while, so even if it's a little difficult to get in the US because of the lack of a kindle version, it's well worth it. There's also a sequel that just came out in the UK called Kill Baxter, which I can't wait to read.

e: Has anyone read The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August? It's next on my reading list.

regularizer fucked around with this message at 00:28 on Jun 23, 2014

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