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Dan Simmons started his career with an India is Hellhole (and Poors are Scary) novel. His current politics should come as no surprise to anyone.
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Jul 10, 2014 00:37
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Cardiovorax posted:Depending on how high your tolerance for furries is, anyway. I could only take so many literal rabbits hitting on the main character before I decided that it wasn't for me. Hahah, gently caress. I hadn't read that series in like 20 years so I'd forgotten about that. You're right it might fall into the "things the internet ruined because they contain anthropomorphic animals" category.
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Jul 10, 2014 00:58
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Hahah, gently caress. I hadn't read that series in like 20 years so I'd forgotten about that. You're right it might fall into the "things the internet ruined because they contain anthropomorphic animals" category. Animal Farm now needs to be added to the SFnF Thread Blacklist
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Jul 10, 2014 02:27
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Talking of furry books for furries, I got a book called Tides of Avarice by John Dahlgren at a sale for $2. Looked like Redwall with pirates. Has anyone read it, and is it any good?
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Jul 10, 2014 02:36
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but redwall is already full of pirates
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Jul 10, 2014 02:40
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High Warlord Zog posted:Dan Simmons started his career with an India is Hellhole (and Poors are Scary) novel. His current politics should come as no surprise to anyone. Have you read it? That's not what it is at all. Simmons started off as a strictly horror writer, and that's what Song of Kali is. It's also his first novel. I'd say it's pretty close in tone to The Terror, which loving owns.
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Jul 10, 2014 02:50
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http://www.amazon.com/Bargain-Books/b/ref=xs_gb_rss_A2LADH9XPND5LT/?ie=UTF8&node=9630953011 There are a whole bunch of free Kindle books out right now. I don't know if any of them are good. But they are free. Oh wait, they're only free for Prime members or something. Otherwise, they're discounted. fookolt fucked around with this message at 03:06 on Jul 10, 2014 |
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Jul 10, 2014 03:03
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zoux posted:Have you read it? That's not what it is at all. I'll take you word for it. I read Song of Kali years ago and haven't revisited. From what I recall it felt like a book that could at any point devolve into a racist tirade, but never quite did. And it's not a bad book, I remember it being really disciplined and tightly written in a way Simmons books haven't been for a long time.
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Jul 10, 2014 03:08
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fookolt posted:http://www.amazon.com/Bargain-Books/b/ref=xs_gb_rss_A2LADH9XPND5LT/?ie=UTF8&node=9630953011 I'm not seeing them free, unfortunately. Anyone else seeing them as free for Prime users? I'd be interested in grabbing some for free, like the Mongliad books, but I haven't even read the first so I'm not going to actually spend money on them now. E: I'm dumb, I was looking at physical book and whispersync (or something), not the standard Kindle edition. But yeah, looks like Mongoliad 2 and 3 are $2, not free. "Read for free" just means you can get them in the Kindle lending library, I guess. sourdough fucked around with this message at 03:36 on Jul 10, 2014 |
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Jul 10, 2014 03:32
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Some are free, some aren't. Some that show up as free don't show up as free when you click through.
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Jul 10, 2014 03:33
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fritz posted:Don't read Dan Simmons except maybe Hyperion.
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Jul 10, 2014 04:43
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The Terror was loving amazing, start to finish. gently caress anyone who says the ending was bad. I'm two thirds through Hyperion and it's already the best SF book I've ever read. Dan Simmons is ok in my book.
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Jul 10, 2014 06:02
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Hedrigall posted:The Terror was loving amazing, start to finish. gently caress anyone who says the ending was bad. He was too until I realized that just the color of my skin would probably make him recoil in horror/fury. That's not a really great feeling 
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Jul 10, 2014 06:08
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fookolt posted:He was too until I realized that just the color of my skin would probably make him recoil in horror/fury. That's not a really great feeling Admittedly, crimson red with green polka dots is pretty freaky, man.
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Jul 10, 2014 09:42
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Hedrigall posted:The Terror was loving amazing, start to finish. gently caress anyone who says the ending was bad. Dan Simmons might be a nutcase, as seen in Olympus, but the Hyperion series, The Terror and Carrion Comfort are legit good books. Let us just not have the whole author opinion discussion again. savinhill posted:I'd say characterization is one of the stronger points of West's writing. There's some archetypes(it is fantasy), but she does put a strong effort into giving lots of character development beyond whatever role a character fills in the plot. Call me intrigued. I will give this one a try, after I have finished of Half A King by Abercrombie which arrived in my mailbox yesterday. coyo7e posted:Most of David Gemmell's stuff would line up pretty well. You could start with Legend or Ghost King or Lord of the Silver Bow or Lion of Macedon, which are all a good foothold into his worldbuilding stuff with the latter two being historical fiction set in Greece and Troy (to be blunt, one or both of those two series are about a young kid who gets shat on and then eventually grows up to destroy the known world, intentionally or not). Ghost King is a classic kid grows up to become a badass, but it goes off into wild crazy poo poo (it's an Arthurian legend retelling fwiw) and then there are no more young kids growing up, although occasionally warriors get injured and need to do <training montage> to get back into shape. Legend is my personal favorite probably however, it starts off a bit slow for the first few chapters until they all arrive to the wall they are defending against not-Genghis Khan (who's got a cool backstory himself if you read the rest of the Druss novels which are prequels to Legend). I have read Legend, which was good but felt more like a medieval battle novel in an alternate Earth. I feel kinda bad now, seems like Gemmel is something I have really missed out on. Shitshow posted:If this is what you want then I cannot give enough love to The Broken Sword. It has all of that in a single, self-contained a book. Another great tip, I have read some of the Dominic Flandry series and that was pretty good.
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Jul 10, 2014 09:47
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the poo poo out of things, you could instead go with Gemmell's 'Jon Shannow' (Jerusalem Man) stuff, which is kind of a western fantasy novel in the vein of Mad Max or The Dark Tower. There are no young boys growing up in these, because the loving world ended and sacrificing said kids to the blood god is way more 
but Jon Shannow 
is a bible-quoting 
with a crazy streak a mile wide.
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Cardiac posted:So I'm reading Bloodsong by Anthony Ryan, which is good but pretty predictable sofar. Eh, the Eli Monpress series by Rachael Aaron is pretty decent. No overall "golden one who will save us all" poster child for destiny, a shitton of magic/spirit stuff, and it's really not grimdark at all. All 5 books are out now, and it's a complete series, so no waiting for the next book. You can binge right on through em.
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Jul 10, 2014 10:43
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Hedrigall posted:Dan Simmons is ok in my book. Do not read Flashback unless you want to be horrifyingly disappointed. It's a screed against Muslims and Barack Obama that almost reads like the ramblings of someone with paranoid delusions, yet it's clearly meant to be taken seriously. It's just not a good novel.
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Jul 10, 2014 12:51
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Hedrigall posted:The Terror was loving amazing, start to finish. gently caress anyone who says the ending was bad. Sadly the Hyperion sequels quickly careen into stupidity.
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Jul 10, 2014 13:24
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I finally finished Alastair Reynold's On the Steel Breeze and I have two questions: 1) Reynolds, what are you doing? 2) Reynolds, would you please stop? This new series didn't start great and it sure isn't getting any better.
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Jul 10, 2014 14:08
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Megazver posted:The Reluctant Swordsman is a super-cheesy guilty pleasure portal + power fantasy about a terminally ill guy who ends up in a buff, young body of an elite swordsman with all of his skills intact, is told by Gods who summoned him into this world to own poo poo and totally does by effortlessly loving up who he wants to gently caress up with his leet sword skills and masterminding the hostile locals until he's in command. Oh and there's a hot slave chick that he totally wins over through not being an rear end in a top hat and they fall in love and have hot sex. I completely forgot about this series, but I read it when I was teenager and it was fun. The only thing I really recall about it was that the reveal about the wizards was pretty innovative to me at the time: they're not really wizards, they just have slightly more advanced technology (like gunpowder) and are really good at slight of hand.
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Jul 10, 2014 14:11
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GENDERWEIRD GREEDO posted:I finally finished Alastair Reynold's On the Steel Breeze and I have two questions: I'm on the fence as to whether I want to read this. Leaning toward no
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Jul 10, 2014 14:21
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GENDERWEIRD GREEDO posted:I finally finished Alastair Reynold's On the Steel Breeze and I have two questions: It wasn't thaaaat bad, but it certainly ground to nearly a halt in the last third of the book. One of the rare instances where Reynolds actually loses momentum as the book progresses. Hoping the final volume picks up the pace again.
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Jul 10, 2014 14:46
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Hedrigall posted:It wasn't thaaaat bad, but it certainly ground to nearly a halt in the last third of the book. One of the rare instances where Reynolds actually loses momentum as the book progresses. Hoping the final volume picks up the pace again. I think my favorite part was the setup for the main colony ship conflict where a bunch of near-immortals who also had access to cryo sleep chambers decided to save 40 years out of 300 years of transit time by boosting their engines so much that they literally did not have the physics to slow down. All of them knew this in advance and still did it. Tiny Timbs fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Jul 10, 2014 |
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Jul 10, 2014 14:50
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I'm going through some crazy voracious reading frenzy so here's my reviews on what I've read this week. The Three: This is a cool book but the way it's presented, as a series of interviews and articles might piss some people off. Defenders: Interesting tale about humanity loving itself over, cool aliens, good characters, ok plot. Annihilation: Weird fiction/cosmicy horror book about an expedition into a weird place, very ambiguous. First person. Authority: Sequel to Annihilation, but from the agency running the expedition into weird places. Again, cosmicy horror, but third person. Also has names. I'll be buying the third book in the series day one. The Girl With the Gifts: Got so many good recommendations that I broke down and bought it even though it's a zombie book. Good characters, interesting take on the whole zombie apocalypse thing, with a minimal look on tactical survival realism (which I hate about the genre). I liked it. I'd recommend any of those five books.
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Jul 10, 2014 17:47
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Spellsinger is silly fun. Maybe the best thing Alan Dean Foster has written, which is very, very faint praise, but it's solid fluff. There's a whole series of sequels. I read them in the 80s and seem to remember really enjoying them at the time. But it might be one of those books that is never as good as you remember it being...
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Jul 10, 2014 20:58
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They're fun in that cheesy way you only get with 80s fantasy pulp. On the one hand it has college students banging anthropomorphic rabbits, but on the other it has a communist dragon who is willing and very very eager to go worker's revolution on everybody's asses. It depends on what matters more to you.
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Jul 10, 2014 22:20
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Cardiovorax posted:They're fun in that cheesy way you only get with 80s fantasy pulp. On the one hand it has college students banging anthropomorphic rabbits, but on the other it has a communist dragon who is willing and very very eager to go worker's revolution on everybody's asses. It depends on what matters more to you. Are we supposed to root for the communist dragon? Because I really hope we are.
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Jul 10, 2014 22:26
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Boy are we ever. He's a recurring character, too.
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Jul 10, 2014 22:31
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GENDERWEIRD GREEDO posted:I think my favorite part was the setup for the main colony ship conflict where a bunch of near-immortals who also had access to cryo sleep chambers decided to save 40 years out of 300 years of transit time by boosting their engines so much that they literally did not have the physics to slow down. All of them knew this in advance and still did it. I don't think it'd bother me as much if it wasn't a Reynolds book; he's so good at hard s.f. which made it more of a letdown.
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Jul 10, 2014 23:04
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Yeah. I hate to say it, but this series is a letdown. He's just so much better when he's writing about the inchoate and terrible mysteries of deep space.
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Jul 11, 2014 00:04
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Darth Walrus posted:Are we supposed to root for the communist dragon? Because I really hope we are. Aw I forgot about Falameezar! "ARISE, YE PRISONERS OF SALVATION!" Also, fwiw, although there is some inter species speculation and attraction, the main character never crosses the Rubicon in that sense. If that is worrying anybody.
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Jul 11, 2014 01:04
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zoux posted:
Does Authority get any less ambiguous than Annihilation and provide any type of more concrete/lasting details or plot to the series? I did enjoy Annihilation but I don't really feel like reading a whole series that's so ambiguous and vague.
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Jul 11, 2014 01:52
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savinhill posted:Does Authority get any less ambiguous than Annihilation and provide any type of more concrete/lasting details or plot to the series? I did enjoy Annihilation but I don't really feel like reading a whole series that's so ambiguous and vague. Yes and no. It clears up a fair number of questions from Annihilation, but will ultimately leave you with more questions than answers and it's likely that not all of them will be answered in the final book. It sounds like that may not be your cup of tea.
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Jul 11, 2014 01:57
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Thanks for the book suggestions on fantasy. Time to get some stuff for my Kindle. On something else, what determines the date of a book release? Lately I have gotten copies of The Causal Angel by Rajaniemi, Half A King by Abercrombie and The Rhesus Chart by Stross, and I have gotten them in physical format prior to release in US or UK. Which is kinda funny since I live in a small village in the south of Sweden. I order my stuff through a dedicated scifi-book store, but I still find it odd that I get books, where the release country is US or UK, prior to the actual release in those countries. Any one that can shed some light on how release dates are determined?
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Jul 11, 2014 08:16
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It's mostly determined by marketing, you know, when holiday season starts, what other big releases have hit the market recently or are going to and stuff like that. In practice it means that publishers set a release date and stores decide when to break it and sell stuff anyway. Small internet shops or local bookstores may be playing it a bit more fast and loose because they're less likely to get their asses sued off.
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Jul 11, 2014 08:31
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Ornamented Death posted:Yes and no. It clears up a fair number of questions from Annihilation, but will ultimately leave you with more questions than answers and it's likely that not all of them will be answered in the final book. It sounds like that may not be your cup of tea. I thought Authority was pretty mediocre. It didn't have the interesting/weird Zone that Annihilation introduced and it still was overly obtuse. It had that paranoid oppressive prose that Vandermeer has been using in Finch and the previous novel, but it gave so few answers as to be totally unsatisfying.
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Jul 11, 2014 09:20
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navyjack posted:Aw I forgot about Falameezar! "ARISE, YE PRISONERS OF SALVATION!" Also, fwiw, although there is some inter species speculation and attraction, the main character never crosses the Rubicon in that sense. If that is worrying anybody. In fact, he specifically goes the other way. There's a scene early on where Jon-Tom gets into major trouble because he isn't attracted to the other animals. It's also alluded to that most animals aren't particularly attracted to humans, either, and that the humans almost exclusively stick to their own. Mostly it's played for laughs. Basically, the Spellsinger books are Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll: the Fantasy Series and should not be taken seriously.
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Jul 11, 2014 10:23
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I've been steadily working my way through The Lies of Locke Lamora. Thanks for the recommendations. It's very well written, it engages you very quickly and eventually becomes downright gripping. I'm past halfway through and I'm incredibly annoyed right now that there was a massive cliffhanger and the three or so chapters since have been flashbacks and other characters and still no resolution on what happened to Locke. Aaaaaargh. Stress!  Scott Lynch does have a quite unique style of prose though. It's all very eloquent and reads pretty well, save for some of those run on sentences. Like maybe use a full stop instead of a semicolon sometimes, dude. But he is the kind of writer who makes EVERYTHING into a whole paragraph. Something that would be a simple line or not mentioned at all is lavished with detail. It's a little unnecessary, but I am downright envious of his ability to do that. My library still hasn't gotten back to me about The Red Knight and otherwise my next read will be Joe Abercrombie's The Blade Itself (First Law trilogy?) because much like The Red Knight - I liked the prose in the preview chapter. I read too many previews. On that note, I was not at all impressed by either of the Brandon Sanderson previews I've read, so he's pretty low down in my reading list and I'm kinda puzzled as to his appeal though obviously this is a shallow observation. The previews I've read of the first two Malazan books have fascinating prose and use of language, but goddamn if I have any idea what is happening in them - so I have no idea how to feel about them! 
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Jul 11, 2014 10:47
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VagueRant posted:I've been steadily working my way through The Lies of Locke Lamora. Thanks for the recommendations. It's very well written, it engages you very quickly and eventually becomes downright gripping. I'm past halfway through and I'm incredibly annoyed right now that there was a massive cliffhanger and the three or so chapters since have been flashbacks and other characters and still no resolution on what happened to Locke. Aaaaaargh. Stress! He also has a tendency to outright torture his protagonists, which becomes kinda uninteresting after awhile. I feel Scott Lynch would be much better if he slowed down his plot a bit and didn't add new things on top of what is already presented so far in the books, especially since the story would be more focused. VagueRant posted:My library still hasn't gotten back to me about The Red Knight and otherwise my next read will be Joe Abercrombie's The Blade Itself (First Law trilogy?) because much like The Red Knight - I liked the prose in the preview chapter. The Blade Itself is much better than The Red Knight, where the latter felt rather generic. First impression might say they are similar in prose, but upon reading you will discover Abercrombie does it much better. VagueRant posted:The previews I've read of the first two Malazan books have fascinating prose and use of language, but goddamn if I have any idea what is happening in them - so I have no idea how to feel about them! The Malazan series is great in so many ways, and it has a separate thread. Although the whole series might seem daunting, every book is more or less stand-alone. There is actually no need to start the series from book 1, and instead you can start the series with Deadhouse Gates, House of Chains or Midnight Tides, since it is not until the latter part of the series that all storylines start to mix. Book 1, Garden of the Moon, is the prologue to Deadhouse Gates, but Deadhouse Gates is better and you really don't miss much by initially skipping GoTM. Although it is good to have read it before Memories of Ice.
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Jul 11, 2014 11:06
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Do you guys know of any books that have a utopian, future society like the Culture? I absolutely loved pretty much all the books, and I'm looking for more like it. Preferably nothing with a huge arc, I'd rather have independent stories (like the Culture).
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Jul 11, 2014 12:18
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