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Jedit posted:You're going to make that recommendation on this forum? You're a brave, brave man/woman/eldritch thing. The Gap Cycle owns.
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Aug 11, 2014 13:39
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Ugh... The first Magicians book isn't available on Audible in Europe. Wonderful... Anyone read The Emperor's Blades? It's getting some positive buzz.
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Aug 11, 2014 13:54
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General Emergency posted:Anyone read The Emperor's Blades? It's getting some positive buzz. I liked it. Some classic training montages, mind you, and some of the more stereotypical character motivations ever in play, but overall a pretty good book.
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Aug 11, 2014 15:47
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:AS to posting freebies or promotions, I'm not going to complain about free books!(for now) (thanks!). For now I only care if it's painfully spammy (i.e., first-post registering just to post your promotion) or if it gets disruptive (clogging threads or the report queue). Can I put this in the OP? At least one other guy PMed me the same question. PupsOfWar posted:Yeah I think when people talk about Tolkien relative to other writers who have constructed languages and fantasy names, we often forget to note that Tolkien was really uniquely qualified in that area. You can always look into M. A. R. Barker's Tékumel. I've got one of the books but not read it, but I understand it has the usual problem of something that's recommended as excellent at doing something non-literary, i.e., it's not very good otherwise. Syle187 posted:Also, could anyone recommend any good Fantasy/Scifi blends? My Dad recommended the Darkover series by Marion Zimmer Bradley, but he also said he hadn't read it in about 30 years. Look in the Science Fiction Encyclopaedia for "science fantasy". Also, please all feast your eyes on one of these books: 
Safety Biscuits fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Aug 11, 2014 |
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Aug 11, 2014 15:54
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House Louse posted:Can I put this in the OP? At least one other guy PMed me the same question. If you want. I may think about it a bit and see if we need to have a new forum rule.
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Aug 11, 2014 16:00
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GENDERWEIRD GREEDO posted:The Gap Cycle owns.
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Aug 11, 2014 17:16
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Cardiovorax posted:Wikipedia makes it sound pretty generic. Is there some kind of controversy surrounding it? There's a lot of rape and sexual torture involved, I believe.
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Aug 11, 2014 17:18
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The first book is kind of a slog. I made it about 20% into it before shelving it for something else. But yea the first book is supposedly lots of rape and poo poo.
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Aug 11, 2014 17:28
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Cardiovorax posted:Wikipedia makes it sound pretty generic. Is there some kind of controversy surrounding it? It's about as rapey as a sci fi novel can get and still have a plot / characters / not be Gor.
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Aug 11, 2014 17:41
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Kalman posted:There's a lot of rape and sexual torture involved, I believe. Hieronymous Alloy posted:It's about as rapey as a sci fi novel can get and still have a plot / characters / not be Gor.
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Aug 11, 2014 18:00
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:It's about as rapey as a sci fi novel can get and still have a plot / characters / not be Gor. Pretty much the entire cast of characters are on a spectrum from unlikable to horrible monsters, so reading the books is unpleasant even when horrific poo poo isn't directly happening. That said, none of this is the author trying and failing, Donaldson is doing exactly what he sets out to do, so in that sense the books are well written. Writing super-rapey books full of horrible monsters is basically Donaldson's thing, but it's only going to be readable/enjoyable/likable by those with a high tolerance for that kind of thing. EDIT: Cardiovorax posted:So... pretty much a normal contemporary sci-fi series, then. Azathoth fucked around with this message at 18:06 on Aug 11, 2014 |
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Aug 11, 2014 18:02
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Azathoth posted:This is far beyond even the F/SF norm.
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Aug 11, 2014 18:09
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Azathoth posted:This is far beyond even the F/SF norm.
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Aug 11, 2014 19:06
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mystes posted:It's beyond the norm, just not as far beyond the norm as before GRRM.
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Aug 12, 2014 05:06
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Kraps posted:What's the norm then? There was a short story that won some kind of award where a space woman stranded on a space ship gets endlessly space raped by a squishy space octopus until she's rescued by space men. I still have limited exposure to the sf/f genre and I hope that poo poo's nowhere near the norm because amazingly I'm still traumatized from listening to that. If we are thinking about the same short story, it had some fairly deep symbolism, not at all just some gratuitous smut. fakeedit: Title is Spar, written by Kij Johnson(I read an interview with her about it), the story was a 2009 Nebula Award Winner, 2010 Hugo Award Nominee, 2010 Locus Award Finalist. I didn't think it was fantastic, but it was interesting.
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Aug 12, 2014 07:12
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Azathoth posted:It didn't feel pornographic to me, unlike what I know about Gor, but to reiterate, there is a lot of rape and sexual violence. It is meant to unsettle the reader, and it sure did that to me. I got through the first book but stopped partway through the second, as it just got to be too much. Not that it necessarily got worse, that's just when I didn't want to deal with it anymore. The big question is: Better or worse than Bakker? Although better is probably not the right word.
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Aug 12, 2014 07:33
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Haerc posted:If we are thinking about the same short story, it had some fairly deep symbolism, not at all just some gratuitous smut. Isn't that the one where the alien and a woman eat lots of bacon? Oh wait...
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Aug 12, 2014 07:47
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This is comparing apples to oranges: there's stories where rape or sexual violence (especially towards women, natch) is gratuitous or gratuitously described, and usually contributes very little to the narrative being told - or is used as a superficial motive for a male character (see "fridging"); and then there's stories about rape and sexual violence. It is, of course, okay to feel uncomfortable reading either.
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Aug 12, 2014 08:31
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I gotta say that Kij Johnson is an awful writer. I've hated everything of hers I read. And Spar is the king turd on top of poo poo mountain.
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Aug 12, 2014 08:33
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Do you hate bacon or something? What is wrong with you!
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Aug 12, 2014 08:36
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Rough Lobster posted:I gotta say that Kij Johnson is an awful writer. I've hated everything of hers I read. And Spar is the king turd on top of poo poo mountain. I think our opinions need to be contained in separate magnetic vessels or risk annihilation e: actually I really agree with basically everything else you've posted in this thread, hm more e: what did anybody else think of Annihilation and Authority by Jeff Vandermeer General Battuta fucked around with this message at 09:09 on Aug 12, 2014 |
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Aug 12, 2014 09:06
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General Battuta posted:I think our opinions need to be contained in separate magnetic vessels or risk annihilation Annihilation was good, loving nothing happened in Authority until the last 10% of the book.
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Aug 12, 2014 09:53
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I enjoyed both! First note, I'm a shameless Vandermeer fan, so I give him a pass on things that I think might annoy other people. With that being said, Vandermeer really excels at a flavor of horror that I think I've only really encountered in other books/short stories like Diamond Dogs or House of Leaves. There's a lot of horror where it's about murderers and sadists doing unspeakable things, but there's a lot less horror about events which have human-comprehensible results while being perpetuated by totally inhuman beings. I think the combination of almost-coherence and the inability to get things to snap together drives a lot of his work -- this feeling of putting together a puzzle and realizing that a) the puzzle pieces aren't fitting together as well as you thought they would and b) the the assembled pieces are still painting a wholly unpleasant picture. Annihilation is more straightforward than Authority. A group of four journey into a bubble of twisted biology and, to absolutely no one's surprise, things begin falling apart pretty much immediately. It's a book about infestation in multiple ways -- Area X is an infestation, of a sort. Obsession is as well, as well as the tower that seems to be completely alien to the surrounding landscape. Things being where they're not supposed to be comes up multiple times, from the doppleganger-husband, the tower / obsession with the tower, and government hypnosis all being different riffs on intrusion. It's a really creepy book with a lot of excellent scenes. I've come around to Authority, despite being a little disappointed at first. If Annihilation was about exploring a setting Authority seems like it deliberately takes the role of the reader as they try to understand the setting. If it has fewer images to chew on it makes up for it by a pervasive sense of helplessness. The reader knows that the main character of Authority is almost certainly doomed -- nothing about the events in Annihilation gives you any confidence a random dude can 'solve' Area X, no matter how good he is as fixing stuff. Even as the book continues it lists breaches by Area X as they occur, even though Control rarely realizes what's happening until it's too late. It's a really interestingly paced story where the reader finds out details about Area X while never getting any closer to figuring out what it's about. There's the experiments with the rabbits, sure, and the haunting video clip from the first expedition. It's voyeuristic, in a way, but in the useless way that collecting someone's clipped fingernails tells you nothing about their personality. There's also a much larger emphasis on personal relationships, whether between Control and various people at the facility, Control and Grace, Control and the biologist or Control and his mother. I'd have to read it again to get a deeper reading on it, but it seemed to be a view on how relationships have both direct and indirect impacts on how people act, and how even second or third-hand relationships with something as alien as Area X can seep outwards. The biologist seems the most human of the bunch, (ending spoilers!)even though she's almost certainly a doppleganger. The theme of contamination and infiltration continue in Authority, just in different forms. It has fewer memorable scenes, but god drat, the description of Lowry's video clips was spooky as hell, and the discovery of the loving mural room were terrifying. I don't know, I feel like I have to re-read them to get a better hold on any ~deeper meaning~ and track the breaches as they occurred but I enjoyed both immensely and can't wait for the final book to come out. Dude is a saint for releasing all three within a year. Where lies the strangling fruit that came from the hand of the sinner I shall bring forth the seeds of the dead to share with the worms that gather in the darkness and surround the world with the power of their lives while from the dim-lit halls of other places forms that never could be writhe for the impatience of the few who have never seen or been seen. In the black water with the sun shining at midnight, those fruit shall come ripe and in the darkness of that which is golden shall split open to reveal the revel
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Aug 12, 2014 09:55
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I am finally catching up on Lev Grossman's Magicians series. The first book was decent enough but holy poo poo I think the only one of the principal group I could stand being around for any length of time would be Josh.
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Aug 12, 2014 12:53
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Neurosis posted:I am finally catching up on Lev Grossman's Magicians series. The first book was decent enough but holy poo poo I think the only one of the principal group I could stand being around for any length of time would be Josh. Josh is the best, but Eliot's also pretty cool. I'm loving his POV stuff in the third book.
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Aug 12, 2014 12:57
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Hedrigall posted:Josh is the best, but Eliot's also pretty cool. I'm loving his POV stuff in the third book. I think anyone that tries so hard to affect urbane world-weariness would poo poo me to tears.
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Aug 12, 2014 13:00
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General Emergency posted:Anyone read The Emperor's Blades? It's getting some positive buzz. I enjoyed it. It's a bit standard Hogwarts-School-Of-Faqntasy-Warrior-Boys - to the point that the story is practically the same as Blood Song, down to the protagonist being named Valyn - but it's got some interesting characters, some cool ideas (eagle dropships!) and it's well written. If you liked Rothfuss, Scott Lynch or Anthony Ryan, it will be right up your alley.
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Aug 12, 2014 13:12
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Cardiac posted:The big question is: I'd say that rape comes up about often, but they each treat it vastly differently. Bakker's rape is gratuitous and almost pornographic in nature and description, and while he does write it as an evil act, it never seems to have the utterly shattering and horrifying effect that it has in Donaldson's stories. Bakker's super-rapey stuff didn't have an effect on me because he didn't do a good job of making it psychologically real. Donaldson, on the other hand, makes it seem very real, and he goes deep into the psychological consequences, and the rape stuff is a critical part of the story, as opposed to something that happened because Bakker needed a quick way to convey something as evil. In terms of reading, it's far more unsettling to read it in Donaldson's books, though I think that Bakker doesn't intend it to be unsettling in the same way that Donaldson does, so take that with a grain of salt. On the whole, I think the comparison between the two is apt. They're both good writers who choose, for very different reasons, to write horribly unreadable books that can only be enjoyed by a small subset of F/SF readers.
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Aug 12, 2014 13:23
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This is weird as gently caress, Echopraxia is coming out in UK/Australia and some other territories as Firefall, except it's not Echopraxia, it's an omnibus of Blindsight AND Echopraxia. http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=5040
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Aug 12, 2014 13:56
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BrosephofArimathea posted:I enjoyed it. It's a bit standard Hogwarts-School-Of-Faqntasy-Warrior-Boys - to the point that the story is practically the same as Blood Song, down to the protagonist being named Valyn - but it's got some interesting characters, some cool ideas (eagle dropships!) and it's well written. Awesome. I do like Rothfuss and Lynch. Sounds like I have my next book to read and then wait forever for the next installment which isn't as good as the first one! Haven't read Anthony Ryan yet so I guess he'll be my go to guy afterwards. If by the way someone hasn't read them "The Powder Mage" books are pretty good. I just finished the ones that have come out and enjoyed them quite a bit. They have a fairly unique setting taking place in a kind of a fantasy version of a revolutionary France. There's a cool magic system with "traditional" magic and a gunpowder based one that's incompatible with the old school magic. It sets up a nice "new vs. old" dynamic for the series. Has a nice set of characters who are all irreparably broken people.
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Aug 12, 2014 15:12
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General Emergency posted:If by the way someone hasn't read them "The Powder Mage" books are pretty good. I just finished the ones that have come out and enjoyed them quite a bit. They have a fairly unique setting taking place in a kind of a fantasy version of a revolutionary France. There's a cool magic system with "traditional" magic and a gunpowder based one that's incompatible with the old school magic. It sets up a nice "new vs. old" dynamic for the series. Has a nice set of characters who are all irreparably broken people. I've read a few chapters of the first book. The prose was... Sandersonian. Django Wexler's The Shadow Throne came out recently and it covers the fantasy version of French Revolution as well, in a more entertaining manner, I thought. If you liked the first one, the second one is just as good.
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Aug 12, 2014 15:54
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Hedrigall posted:This is weird as gently caress, Echopraxia is coming out in UK/Australia and some other territories as Firefall, except it's not Echopraxia, it's an omnibus of Blindsight AND Echopraxia. Smart. Blindsight is already available as a free ebook, so they probably aren't losing much in the way of sales by including it, and it makes Echopraxia more attractive to people who haven't read Blindsight yet.
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Aug 12, 2014 15:55
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Hedrigall posted:Isn't that the one where the alien and a woman eat lots of bacon? Oh wait... oh my god wow
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Aug 12, 2014 16:27
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Hedrigall posted:This is weird as gently caress, Echopraxia is coming out in UK/Australia and some other territories as Firefall, except it's not Echopraxia, it's an omnibus of Blindsight AND Echopraxia. Echopraxia solo is being released a few months later, so it's not a bizarre move, just a cash grab.
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Aug 12, 2014 17:40
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Neurosis posted:I think anyone that tries so hard to affect urbane world-weariness would poo poo me to tears. The characters actually do grow up quite a bit over the trilogy, and not in artificial ways, but as a reaction to their circumstances. I just finished rereading the trilogy and while I originally enjoyed the Magicians but has the same reaction of "gently caress all these people, and also Grossman for making this into a trilogy," I think that's mostly because the story wasn't completed. With it completed, I have a lot more respect for what Grossman was doing and for the characterizations.
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Aug 12, 2014 17:59
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Haerc posted:If we are thinking about the same short story, it had some fairly deep symbolism, not at all just some gratuitous smut. What's the symbolism?
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Aug 12, 2014 18:25
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less laughter posted:What's the symbolism? --Johnson
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Aug 12, 2014 18:26
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She was frustrated with a tendency in her own work to write elegantly indirect stories about broken relationships. She's a very restless writer and she's always looking to alter her style. So she wanted to write something incredibly direct and uncomfortable (though it did end up being about broken relationships anyway!) that would force the reader to engage on a pure gut-reaction 'oh god, what' level. The character in the story has to struggle to figure out whether there's any meaning or message behind this incredibly intrusive, repulsive experience - maybe even another mind trying to reach out to her. She wants to believe there is, but it's hard to understand anything so repugnant. The reader faces the exact same challenge. I don't think it's written as a particularly sexy or erotic story. The physical details are flat and disgusting.
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Aug 12, 2014 19:59
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General Emergency posted:Anyone read The Emperor's Blades? It's getting some positive buzz. It suffers from a few points. The protagonists are sometimes willfully stupid to hurry the plot along, the female lead doesn't get much screen time at all, the villains are kind of laughably evil for no reason. But as others have said, it's well-written (enough that I felt compelled to finish it). Recommended.
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Aug 12, 2014 20:02
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Looking for a new sf to read, something in space and low-key. + explorer or trading vessel + character focus ++ AIs So yes, something slow paced and low key. Politics, romance, doesn't matter as long as it is tasteful. Something vaguely around the parts of Revelation Space and House of Suns that dealt with the ships. I can't find anything I want to read under the mountain of new YA releases. Writing YA seems so cheap... As an aside, I remember enjoying FS: Blue Planet and Battuta published something? Could you link me? edit: rrRRAAARGHHhhhh! I've finished the Brian Herbert stuff, nothing can hurt me now! Sometimes I realize why stubbornness is considered a flaw, books so lovely and so much wasted time. T-T Kellanved fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Aug 12, 2014 |
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Aug 12, 2014 20:03
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