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MarksMan posted:After using the powers of Google/Wikipedia, are you guys referring to the "Thrawn Trilogy": Zahn is a classic Star Wars author, and Admiral Thrawn is a fantastic character. Major bonus points for introducing Mara Jade and Gillad Palleon, the other two most interesting Imperial characters in Star Wars. The Thrawn Trilogy is a good example of the Empire being competent, something that is sorely lacking in most other bits of SW EU writing. Stover writes moral ambiguity in a morally unambiguous setting. His novelization of Revenge of the Sith is orders of magnitude better than all of redeeming features of the rest of the prequels put together, and by itself comes pretty close to redeeming Episode III. It's just plain better. His other major Star Wars foray is Traitor, which is one of the most morally ambiguous stories I've read period, Star Wars and in general. Jacen Solo learns about the force, pain, and the nature of life and the universe to the strange teachings of a Yuuzhan Vong pet bird. Recommend both.
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Jun 30, 2014 04:53
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Beginning of new EU is only few months away so it's pretty bad time to dive in to (soon-to-be) "Legends EU", but I guess it does still make sense to read Zahn ones because they are pretty classic.
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Jun 30, 2014 07:20
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Whether or not they're part of a unified (lel) Star Wars official canon has little bearing on the quality of the writing or story in the book. I still heartily recommend reading both.
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Jun 30, 2014 08:11
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Finished the Dread Empire's Fall trilogy by Walter Jon Williams. It's pretty good, although I wish there was some actual closure for Sula, who I thought was the far more interesting of the two lead characters. Self-made, rags to riches mildly sociopathic naval officers turned guerrilla commanders trump petty Noble squabbling IN SPACE, I guess. Especially since the sequel novella doesn't mention her at all (besides a "You Done hosed Up" dream, but neither her name nor the context are brought up). And I usually don't care much for romance subplots, but drat that was disappointing. The circumstances that lead to Martinez and Sula breaking up were just unbelievably dumb, but it also renders large sections of all three books completely pointless. Mars4523 fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Jun 30, 2014 |
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Jun 30, 2014 17:48
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speaking of all the David Weber chat on the previous page, I spotted this at the town library:  I'd had no idea he was still messing around with this series. Anyone reading them? I'm curious as to whether they got better after the first couple, which I found incredibly dull.
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Jun 30, 2014 18:25
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PupsOfWar posted:speaking of all the David Weber chat on the previous page, I spotted this at the town library: Not really.
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Jun 30, 2014 18:36
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Piell posted:Not really.
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Jun 30, 2014 18:40
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I just have never understood why we needed a 17,000-page version of Heirs of Empire when we already had Heirs of Empire, a mediocre book at best.
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Jun 30, 2014 19:16
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Mars4523 posted:Finished the Praxis trilogy by Walter Jon Williams. It's pretty good, although I wish there was some actual closure for Sula, who I thought was the far more interesting of the two lead characters. Self-made, rags to riches mildly sociopathic naval officers turned guerrilla commanders trump petty Noble squabbling IN SPACE, I guess. Especially since the sequel novella doesn't mention her at all (besides a "You Done hosed Up" dream, but neither her name nor the context are brought up). It's been a while since I read that trilogy, but I remember thinking the same thing. That seems to be par for the course in space opera, though; most of the time, romance subplots are either disappointing and/or stupid as gently caress, or everyone involved who isn't the main character dies before it can go anywhere. And speaking of disappointing-as-gently caress romance subplots, I just finished Hemry's Lost Fleet series, and while I enjoyed it overall, the romance subplot was stupid and irritating as hell throughout most of the series (mostly the petulant bickering between Desjani and Rione), and hit peak stupid right at the very end. I get the impression that the reader is expected to cheer when Geary and Desjani end up together, but holy poo poo no  I know the advice given in that message at the end wasn't sincere (or at least, she hoped he wouldn't follow it), but it was good advice that he should have followed, and running off after Desjani and proposing to her instead is basically the most idiotic possible reaction.
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Jun 30, 2014 20:14
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ToxicFrog posted:It's been a while since I read that trilogy, but I remember thinking the same thing. I've read The Lost Fleet, and I don't particularly like it. The main character is too Always Right, the prose is subpar (especially in the later books, I remember it being workable in the earlier ones) at times bordering on "jarringly awful", and yeah, Greary's relationship with his flag captain is too many flavors of Bad Idea. And the bickering from the two most prominent female characters over the main guy was too stupid for words. Oh well, at least Marine Colonel whatshername was cool.
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Jun 30, 2014 21:13
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Mars4523 posted:I've read The Lost Fleet, and I don't particularly like it. The main character is too Always Right, the prose is subpar (especially in the later books, I remember it being workable in the earlier ones) at times bordering on "jarringly awful", and yeah, Greary's relationship with his flag captain is too many flavors of Bad Idea. And the bickering from the two most prominent female characters over the main guy was too stupid for words. Geary being Always Right is honestly part of what I enjoyed about it.  There's a specific type of SF that is basically:- protagonists from culture X end up stranded among Y - Y are on the losing end of a war with Z - getting home (or whatever their ultimate goal is) requires Y to be victorious - they must use all sorts of unfair advantages known to X but not Y or Z (superior technology, forgotten military tactics, access to surveillance satellites, etc) to ensure that victory I don't know if there's a technical term for it, but Weber is pretty fond of it (March to the Stars, The Armageddon Inheritance) and The Lost Fleet is basically that except in space. I'm not always in the mood for that, but when I am, I really enjoy it. It also helps that the series is short enough that even when it's annoying me it goes by quickly. I read the whole thing in a week. I just wish it had ended on a higher note (and that the whole romance subplot had been less offensively stupid). quote:Oh well, at least Marine Colonel whatshername was cool. Colonel Carabali. Yes. On the one hand, I would have liked to see more of the marines. On the other hand, that sounds a lot like Stark's War and I couldn't even get through the first book of that. So... ToxicFrog fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Jun 30, 2014 |
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Jun 30, 2014 21:28
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I just finished Cibola Burn. The most exciting part about it was the last few paragraphs of the epilogue. I can't wait!
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Jul 1, 2014 00:07
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The epilogue of Cibola Burn is perfect, honestly. And I'm always looking forward to more Bobbie and Avasarala. I'm really enjoying the Expanse books, more than I have a series in a long time. Hell, I'm doing everything I can to shove Leviathan Wakes down my friends' throats so we'll have a book to talk about that I know more about than my wife for once.
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Jul 1, 2014 03:20
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I really enjoy the books but I thought Elvi was a terrible character and at the end Miller dying got rid of my favorite character. The Elvi Needs A Good Hard Dicking subplot was awful.
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Jul 1, 2014 03:26
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Eh, not every plot point can be Avasarala threatening to beat Jules-Pierre Mao to death with a chair. But, think about it - James Holden is basically the closest thing to a universal celebrity that exists. He's been at the leading edge of every major crisis over the span of, like, ten years, and his history of making big stupid broadcasts means that just about everyone with a hand terminal and an interest in space, politics, or space politics has seen his face and heard his voice. He's that story that has so much momentum that news outlets can't shut the gently caress up about it until the next thing comes, except that somehow he ends up being the next thing as well.
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Jul 1, 2014 03:38
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I finished Cibola Burn a couple days ago and thought it was an improvement. I still didn't like it as much as the first book, but I think it benefited from not focusing so much on Holden.FordPRefectLL posted:I really enjoy the books but I thought Elvi was a terrible character and at the end Miller dying got rid of my favorite character. The Elvi Needs A Good Hard Dicking subplot was awful. They only got rid of the way Miller communicated with Holden through the ship, Miller's still stored in the alien thing in the center of the gate things.
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Jul 1, 2014 03:44
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Mars4523 posted:I've read The Lost Fleet, and I don't particularly like it. The main character is too Always Right, the prose is subpar (especially in the later books, I remember it being workable in the earlier ones) at times bordering on "jarringly awful", and yeah, Greary's relationship with his flag captain is too many flavors of Bad Idea. And the bickering from the two most prominent female characters over the main guy was too stupid for words. There are so, so many ways in which The Lost Fleet is bad. The main character is Always Right. The romance subplots are godawful. The books recycle plot elements over and over: oh no the Fleet is outnumbered and it looks hopeless, good thing everyone else is an idiot and Geary knows what to do; politicians are evil and bad and trying to gently caress over our upstanding military heroes who just want to do their job; Geary is conflicted about his duty versus what he wants (spoilers: he chooses his duty and it's the right thing to do - again); blah blah blah loving blah. And yet, I can't keep myself from buying every single new book that comes out in the two new series that split off from The Lost Fleet. In fact, after seeing your post, I'm probably going to re-read every single one of the drat things. I don't know what it is about them, but I can't get enough. I know they're not particularly great books, but like ToxicFrog, when I get in the mood for that kind of thing I love it, and The Lost Fleet is like the best example of that kind of thing that I've ever read. Huge space battles, heroes from when "spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri", and The Good Guys win by the skin of their teeth. It's virtually devoid of literary value, but my god it scratches that itch something fierce. In fact, does anyone have any recommendations along those lines? Space Navy, space battles, exciting adventure stuff. Here are some series that I've liked kind of along those lines (regardless of how good they were): The Lost Fleet, The Vorkosigan Saga (all great, some of them scratch this itch, particularly The Warrior's Apprentice and The Vor Game), the first several books in David Drake's RCN/Leary novels (didn't hit one I disliked, just burned out after reading several in a row), the first few books of Honor Harrington (didn't burn out, just started to hate David Weber), Vatta's War (but not the Serrano books - good but not what I'm asking for). To some extent, the Chanur Saga. I have read several others that were similar but just bad and do not want to try to remember them to list them here. I thought Helfort's War was terrible, despite it being similar to what I want. I thought Poor Man's Fight was allright despite not being what I want (Space Marines vs Space Navy). I thought Spinward Fringe had interesting ideas and technology, but was completely schizophrenic in its plot and characterization. Please help, or I will be rereading The Lost Fleet again, trying to capture the magic of that first time. And nobody needs that. Least of all me. edit: Just reread the first chapter of The Lost Fleet: Dauntless. Here is how pretty much all of the books go: "You've been sent by the living stars to save us!" "But I don't know if I can do this! I'm a worthless depressed sack of poo poo!" "But we can't find our asses with both hands and our heads lodged firmly up there!" "Well, I guess I'll try because it's my duty." "Holy poo poo! You used basic common sense and/or non-suicidal tactics to save us!". ...please tell me what else to read. edit2: Chapter 2: Exciting, well-written space battle! Chapter 3: Exposition (somewhat ham-handed), hero worship, and more angst from our protagonist who is Always Right. nightchild12 fucked around with this message at 06:16 on Jul 1, 2014 |
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Jul 1, 2014 05:11
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GENDERWEIRD GREEDO posted:They only got rid of the way Miller communicated with Holden through the ship, Miller's still stored in the alien thing in the center of the gate things.
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Jul 1, 2014 11:42
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nightchild12 posted:Please help, or I will be rereading The Lost Fleet again, trying to capture the magic of that first time. And nobody needs that. Least of all me.
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Jul 1, 2014 14:13
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nightchild12 posted:A long post that sums up almost exactly my own relationship with The Lost Fleet. Looking for similar books to The Lost Fleet leads me back to Crusade, In Death Ground, and The Shiva Option by Weber and White. I don't care for Crusade as much as I do the other two books, and I suppose if you enjoy the series you could see the story continue another generation forward in Insurrection, though I don't recommend that book much1. Whatever you want to say about Weber, and there is a lot to say about David "redefining Mary Sues since 1993" Weber, the Starfire books went completely into the toilet after he left the series. Don't read any of the Weber-less books in the series. It will only cause you pain. Speaking of Weber, there's of course the Honor books. I bailed out after being disgusted by At All Costs1, but the earlier books in the series do have some decent space combat of the style you're looking for. I'm told that the Honor-less books set in the Honorverse are pretty good, involving Weber's skill at interesting combat but without the dead weight of his pet Mary Sue, but I haven't read them myself. An off the beaten path option would be Execution Hour and Shadow Point by Gordon Rennie. These are set in the Warhammer 40k universe with all that implies, but they're a little less over top than the usual boltgun-porn 40k books as they focus on a naval officer and fleet actions. They're both long out of print, though, so it may take some extra cash to acquire. 1 = Come to think of it, I dislike Insurrection and At All Costs for the same reason: The Best Tech Wins. Boiling the dramatic finale to a book down to "whoever brought the newest toys to the final fight wins!" is boring and frustrating, and I wish Weber would quit leaning on that poo poo.
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Jul 1, 2014 14:15
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In that whole Lost Fleet/Harrington/RCN style of competent hero and cool fleet actions, the RCN one has always been the least guilty pleasure for me. They appear less formulaic than Lost Fleet, and their secondary characters are less forgettable than Harringtons, and Leary, while usually right, at least knows to trust competent allies instead of being surrounded by idiots or nobodies and has some minor flaws. The weird sail-based FTL may not be for everyone but I found it kind of charming.
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Jul 1, 2014 14:38
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nightchild12 posted:In fact, does anyone have any recommendations along those lines? Space Navy, space battles, exciting adventure stuff. Here are some series that I've liked kind of along those lines (regardless of how good they were): The Lost Fleet, The Vorkosigan Saga (all great, some of them scratch this itch, particularly The Warrior's Apprentice and The Vor Game), the first several books in David Drake's RCN/Leary novels (didn't hit one I disliked, just burned out after reading several in a row), the first few books of Honor Harrington (didn't burn out, just started to hate David Weber), Vatta's War (but not the Serrano books - good but not what I'm asking for). To some extent, the Chanur Saga. I have read several others that were similar but just bad and do not want to try to remember them to list them here. I thought Helfort's War was terrible, despite it being similar to what I want. I thought Poor Man's Fight was allright despite not being what I want (Space Marines vs Space Navy). I thought Spinward Fringe had interesting ideas and technology, but was completely schizophrenic in its plot and characterization. I'm going to cheat. I normally wouldn't do this, but it's time you graduated to the big boy leagues. It's time you read the Aubrey / Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian. The problem you're facing is that you've read basically all or most of the good naval space opera there is; Lost Fleet, Vorkosigan, and David Drake are the best of a bad lot. So you've got a choice: you can go read space infantry novels, like Old Man's War and Starship Troopers, or you can read standard earth naval fiction. And that means heading straight for Aubrey/Maturin. EDIT: Oh hell, why don't you just read Xenophon's Anabasis? It's literally the source and inspiration for the entire Lost Fleet series. Anyone who likes Lost Fleet (and I do!) should at least give Anabasis a try, especially since it's a free download. I'm not trying to get all "READ REAL LITTRACHAW" on you or anything, it just sounds like you're looking for something higher-quality anyway. If you want something light fun you can enjoy reading once, and don't mind space infantry, try Starship Troopers, Old Man's War, and Forever War (probably in that order). Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 14:54 on Jul 1, 2014 |
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Jul 1, 2014 14:47
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Other Space Infantry that's worth a poo poo is John Steakley's Armor.
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Jul 1, 2014 16:56
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Whoops.
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Jul 1, 2014 17:06
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I tried getting into the Vorkosigan series after a recommendation by my mom (who, by supplying me with C.J. Cherryh at a young age, is largely responsible for my SF addiction), but couldn't even get through the first book. Maybe I should give it another shot.
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Jul 1, 2014 17:28
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ToxicFrog posted:I tried getting into the Vorkosigan series after a recommendation by my mom (who, by supplying me with C.J. Cherryh at a young age, is largely responsible for my SF addiction), but couldn't even get through the first book. Maybe I should give it another shot. Here's the thing. Shards of Honor, the first book, is pretty bad. Not really bad, but the pacing is a little off and it's trying to be a spruced up Star Trek fanfic. That said, you want to muster through it just to get to Barrayar because Barrayar is an excellent book. The other "first book" in the series, The Warrior's Apprentice, isn't quite so bad because it's filled with a lot more of the antics and characters that the series is known for. Or, skip all that. The books in the series are fairly self contained, so going with pretty much anything else would work as an intro too. I'd suggest Cetaganda if you don't want to start with Shards of Honor or The Warrior's Apprentice: it holds up excellently on its own, it's early enough in the timeline that you won't get any major plot developments revealed to you, and it has Ivan. You can't hate Ivan Vorpatril.
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Jul 1, 2014 18:41
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nightchild12 posted:
Scott Westerfeld isn't known for Space Opera, but he did write one duology that features some bitchin' space battles (well, more like one bitchin' space battle that takes up most of the second book, then some other skirmishes). Westerfeld's a better writer than most dedicated MilSF authors, and the books are relatively concise by genre standards. The hard-to-find collected edition is probably the size of an average Honorverse novel.  
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Jul 1, 2014 18:56
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I'm going to cheat. I normally wouldn't do this, but it's time you graduated to the big boy leagues. It's time you read the Aubrey / Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian. Neal Asher covers both space war and space infantry in his Polity and Spatterjay series. Not so much classic space warfare but more fast-paced AI driven warfare. Passage of Arms by Glen Cook is a classic and deals with space submarines. Highly recommended.
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Jul 1, 2014 19:13
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PupsOfWar posted:Scott Westerfeld isn't known for Space Opera, but he did write one duology that features some bitchin' space battles (well, more like one bitchin' space battle that takes up most of the second book, then some other skirmishes). These books are really excellent in a whole ton of respects. I recommend them wholeheartedly.
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Jul 2, 2014 00:44
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I'm going to cheat. I normally wouldn't do this, but it's time you graduated to the big boy leagues. It's time you read the Aubrey / Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian. I was going to post that, too. MilSF often steals a hell of a lot from Age of Sail naval action so you'll get that itch scratched good and proper. O'Brian's also got marvellous technobabble, it's just about early 19th century sail ships and cannons instead of nuclear torpedoes and whatnot. Finally he does a better job than the vast majority of SF authors when it comes to immersing the reader in an alien and interesting culture (and if you think the world 200 years ago wasn't alien to us... you're just plain wrong). Also he's funny as poo poo.
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Jul 2, 2014 09:20
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I'm going to cheat. I normally wouldn't do this, but it's time you graduated to the big boy leagues. It's time you read the Aubrey / Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian. Read non-genre fiction? *GASP* Surely you are joking. I will choose to believe that you have temporarily taken leave of your senses, and politely ignore your obscene suggestions thank-you-very-much. But thanks for the recommendation. I have both the Aubrey/Maturin novels and the Horatio Hornblower novels on my list of things I probably should get around to reading, given that people keep saying they're a gigantic influence on the genre. And the past few weeks I've been listening to a few friends (who also read mostly SciFi) tell me repeatedly how great they are, so I guess I should just go ahead and read them already. I enjoy reading real literature anyways, although I'm not sure how well adventure stories of any kind count, genre fiction or no. On the space infantry / space marines side, I'm also pretty well read in that subgenre. I've not read Starship Troopers (although I've been meaning to), but I have read Old Man's War (actually, I first read that when Scalzi had it posted online for free before it was published in dead tree form) and The Forever War. Also probably dozens of less good ones.
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Jul 2, 2014 23:43
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Good luck! One word of warning for a first dive into the Aubrey / Maturin books: there are pages and pages and pages of hopelessly obscure nautical terminology that you almost certainly will not follow on a first reading. Give it a go anyway but it's ok to just treat it like technobabble at first. The longer you spend reading the series the more intelligible it gets (almost like learning a new language).
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Jul 2, 2014 23:50
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The Aubrey and Maturin novels are really really good. My only problem with them is that the ebooks are ~$10 each and there's 23 or so of the loving things. I could cut that price in half by skimming through the used bookstores but then I'd have to store the loving things. Without real library access I'm just not willing to jump that far into a series that long.
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Jul 3, 2014 00:08
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Khizan posted:The Aubrey and Maturin novels are really really good. My only problem with them is that the ebooks are ~$10 each and there's 23 or so of the loving things. I could cut that price in half by skimming through the used bookstores but then I'd have to store the loving things. Without real library access I'm just not willing to jump that far into a series that long. http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Aubrey-Maturin-Novels-volumes/dp/039306011X may be your best option.
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Jul 3, 2014 00:55
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I considered that, but I've sworn off of physical books. I'd rather pay the extra $50 or so than have to store physical books, carry them around with me, and worry about damaging them. The latter is especially important as I am brutal on books.
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Jul 3, 2014 01:02
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Khizan posted:The latter is especially important as I am brutal on books. As you should be, unless they're rare or really old or a special edition or whatever. Hell, since I started studying English I've made a habit of always having a pencil or whatever on hand when I read to mark interesting passages and stuff, even with books I read for fun.
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Jul 3, 2014 12:18
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If someone wants to read some really long-running traditional space opera, I can recommend Perry Rhodan. Even the parts of the universe published in English are so loving large and come from so many different authors, it's kind of hard to find something you don't like among it. The quality is surprisingly high if you take into account this essentially started as a penny dreadful series. (Before it spun off into books, audio-books, video games and more.) There should be a US-version running right now, so you could theoretically find Perry Rhodan dime novels everywhere you go. (May not be actually be true, I don't know that much about the US and how dime novels are distributed over there. In Germany, they are loving everywhere.) Edit: One of the games, a Master of Orion-like strategy game, was something I even wanted to do a Let's Play about at one time. Sadly years ago I spilled milk over the box and CD, ruining both. Also it doesn't work on modern operating systems, so I would have to build a system using Windows 98 first, even if I had the CD. But the game was quite good, even if a little bit simple. Libluini fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Jul 3, 2014 |
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Jul 3, 2014 21:38
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Taeke posted:As you should be, unless they're rare or really old or a special edition or whatever. Hell, since I started studying English I've made a habit of always having a pencil or whatever on hand when I read to mark interesting passages and stuff, even with books I read for fun. I will never let you touch one of my books.
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Jul 3, 2014 21:58
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Count Roland posted:I will never let you touch one of my books. That's okay, I'm very careful with other people's books , and besides, I've got enough of my own. Seriously though, a book is meant to be read, and reading means it gets worn. I'm not saying crack the spines, rip the pages kind of stuff, but I prefer my books not feeling like they're hot off the press either.
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Jul 3, 2014 22:03
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Cross-posting from the SF/F Thread: PlushCow posted:Just an FYI, Amazon.com has Ancillary Justice ebook for $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BAXFDLM/
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