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syphon posted:Some may disagree on particular series... but I don't think reading Chronological (as opposed to Published) order is ever preferable. I can't think of a single instance where a series is better read in Chronological order over published order. The Vorkosigan Saga? Even Lois McMaster Bujold said that it was perfectly fine to read it either in publishing order or chronological, and so far it has worked out fine for me. I'm also reading the Polity books (Agent Cormac/Spatterjay) by Neal Asher in chronological order. While the first few were forgettable, they actually said up the universe in nice way. Haven't gotten to the Spatterjay books yet though.
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Aug 29, 2014 19:15
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Yeah, the Vorkosigan books, the Alliance/Union books by Cherryh, and the Fire on the Deep/Deepness in Sky books by Vinge are ones where it's defensible at least to read in chronological instead of published. Where there's doubt though published order is always a safe bet.
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Aug 29, 2014 19:21
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David Willington's vampire books are pretty decent, but the dude seriously needs to learn to write an ending. I haven't read the last one though so he might surprise me. His books just loving, stop. Like, post climax full stop THE END. It's incredibly jarring.
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Aug 29, 2014 20:52
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I wanna plug Craig Schaefer's Daniel Faust books again. I just finished the third one, and it was a heck of a solid book. Satisfyingly resolved a bunch of stuff that he'd clearly laid the groundwork for in the first book, but also set things up for the next books. I really like his writing and his world, give it a read.
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Aug 29, 2014 22:01
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:David Willington's vampire books are pretty decent, but the dude seriously needs to learn to write an ending. I haven't read the last one though so he might surprise me.
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Aug 30, 2014 00:11
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:I've been tempted to read the Vlad series, but is it ok to read without knowing who the gently caress all those other people are? Or is it one of those "You will be utterly lose unless you read every one of this dude's books set in his universe" kinda things? Let me put it this way: if I get the opportunity to recommend any one fantasy book to an interested friend, it ends up being Jhereg, the very first Vlad book. They're incredibly easy stories to pick up and each book is remarkably self-contained. Vlad will occasionally reference an adventure or character he's met in the past, and some of those may turn out to be entire books in themselves, but you won't need to know anything about them to appreciate the events in the book you're reading. Whoever said you need to read the companion series to understand what's going on is dead wrong.
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Aug 30, 2014 00:29
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Cardiovorax posted:I agree that the setting is conceptually interesting and the basic plots were alright enough, but I just couldn't stand what she did with her main characters long enough to get any enjoyment out of it. I read his other series, the zombie one. It was good fun and quite grim with some neat new ideas. Thirteen Bullets is also great but haven't read the sequels.
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Aug 30, 2014 02:05
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Wheeeee I just got my copy of Echopraxia, I'm loving stoked!
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Aug 30, 2014 22:28
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Surely you mean Stokered.
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Aug 31, 2014 02:51
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If I had known The Once and Future King would be so good I'd have read it ages ago. Still on the first book and I can't stop turning pages. Wow.
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Aug 31, 2014 07:57
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Heads up: VanderMeer's Acceptance is out today.
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Aug 31, 2014 20:02
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Neurosis posted:Heads up: VanderMeer's Acceptance is out today. Awesome. I completely forgot it was out so soon. Here's hoping for some explanations.
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Aug 31, 2014 20:09
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You probably won't get many. The series is pretty explicitly about the act of trying to understand the incomprehensible. I'm hoping he won't wrap too many things up explicitly. explicitly explicitly General Battuta fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Aug 31, 2014 |
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Aug 31, 2014 20:14
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Neurosis posted:Heads up: VanderMeer's Acceptance is out today. McCoy Pauley posted:Awesome. I completely forgot it was out so soon. 
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Aug 31, 2014 20:15
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Neurosis posted:Heads up: VanderMeer's Acceptance is out today. Where? My Amazon says Sept 2nd.
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Aug 31, 2014 20:30
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New books (except James Patterson, who gets released on Mondays for reasons) always have publish dates on Tuesdays. For the really big releases, they'll be strict on-sale dates that all retail stores will abide by (or risk legal action), but smaller releases won't be as strict. I don't know if Acceptance qualifies, so you might be able to find it in a bookstore a couple of days early.
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Aug 31, 2014 23:14
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Popular Human posted:Where? My Amazon says Sept 2nd. Oops, tomorrow.
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Sep 1, 2014 05:08
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I just finished Daniel Abraham's new Dagger & Coin book, it was alright. There was some stuff I liked but I think my incorrect assumption that this was the final one messed with my expectations. The concept for the bad guys in this just works less and less for me the more it gets stretched out and the whole defeating them by inventing paper currency is very underwhelming and sorta nonsensical imo.
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Sep 2, 2014 05:38
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savinhill posted:The concept for the bad guys in this just works less and less for me the more it gets stretched out and the whole defeating them by inventing paper currency is very underwhelming and sorta nonsensical imo. Really? I like it a lot, I felt like this book took the overarching plot and made it much more interesting for me. Previously this was a story about a group of adventurers - albeit ones that don't fit typical fantasy archetypes - on a typical fantasy quest to defeat the evil goddess of lies. Now it's the story of Cithrin and friends trying to overcome humanity's innate urge toward self destructive tribalism (accelerated and powered by the spider disease of fanaticism) by building a global economy and web of self interest. And there's still dragons and sword fights. I like it.
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Sep 2, 2014 13:20
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So I just finished Hyperion. I liked it quite a bit, and have started the next book. I seem to remember it being the general opinion around here that everything after Fall of Hyperion is no good. Am I remembering correctly? I'm pretty new to sf in general except for some Bradbury stuff, so any other recommendations in the same vein as Hyperion?
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Sep 2, 2014 16:33
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A Proper Uppercut posted:So I just finished Hyperion. I liked it quite a bit, and have started the next book. I seem to remember it being the general opinion around here that everything after Fall of Hyperion is no good. Am I remembering correctly? You are, mostly. quote:I'm pretty new to sf in general except for some Bradbury stuff, so any other recommendations in the same vein as Hyperion? You could try the classics. If you want a mankind-wide future history which has influenced almost every "galactic empire" book written afterwards, go for the original Foundation books, by Isaac Asimov (Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation). I suggest to steer clear of the rest of the "Foundation" franchise until you have read those ones.
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Sep 2, 2014 16:47
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Amberskin posted:original Foundation books, by Isaac Asimov (Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation). I actually had kind of started looking into those, but I was having trouble figuring out what to start with and what order they went in. I may check those out next. Also that's a shame about the Hyperion books. I really liked the first one.
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Sep 2, 2014 16:55
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The other two books are not nearly as good, but they're tolerably readable, if you don't look too closely. It would help if you explained what is it that you particularly liked about Hyperion.
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Sep 2, 2014 17:15
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Just a heads up. I was surprised to find out the new Alex Verus book was out today. The title is Hidden, and it's book 5 of the series.
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Sep 2, 2014 21:31
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A Proper Uppercut posted:So I just finished Hyperion. I liked it quite a bit, and have started the next book. I seem to remember it being the general opinion around here that everything after Fall of Hyperion is no good. Am I remembering correctly? Yes, but read it anyway. Both Endymion books, too. This series is easily in my top five space operas.
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Sep 2, 2014 23:03
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ZerodotJander posted:Really? I like it a lot, I felt like this book took the overarching plot and made it much more interesting for me. Yeah, like I said, I thought this was gonna be the finale, so when I realized that it wasn't while about halfway through the novel it may have caused me to nitpick more than I normally would. I did enjoy the characters again in this one, he's really improved at making them more memorable and interesting since his first fantasy series.
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Sep 2, 2014 23:14
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I'm 74% of the way through Acceptance. The book has been very uneven. I wasn't particularly impressed with Authority, and the first 1/3 of this book is more of the same. VanderMeer is too intent on obfuscating anything meaningful and putting in lots of run on sentences (really, Jeff, carefully think before using sentences longer than 40 words) with conflicting imagery to build ~atmosphere~. It worked in Annihilation because Area X, and the imagery discussed, were novel. Authority had little that was new, so it just grated. Acceptance picks up after the first 1/3, but it's still not great. I've read that in the book VanderMeer wrote on writing, Wonderland, on how to build imaginative landscapes, he talks a lot about concealing details and letting the mind fill things in. It feels like he's taken it too far, and thinks the mind will always attribute more significance to vague and confusing imagery rather than eventually finding it irritating. Worse, he may have adopted this as some kind of prescriptive law of how he writes, rather than a guideline. The series isn't bad, but I think that if you edited it you could make a really gripping single book about 1/2 or maybe 2/3 of the full 3 books. I liked the Ambergris books a lot more, by comparison.
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Sep 3, 2014 11:06
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Over the last few months I have read a lot of "D&D players get sucked into game" fantasy, and I gotta say the Critical Failures series had me laughing pretty hard. It's pretty much sophomoric humor but it's pretty god damned funny. I've been reading these books, and am up to the third now. They are pretty goddamn funny at times, but what fascinates me about them is how the author went with the concept to a very literal point. The world they get sucked into still operates on the same rules of D&D Third Edition (though renamed) and most of them are aware of the rules and end up taking advantage of stuff in clever manner. Unlike something like the Guardians of the Flame series by Joel Rosenberg, where they just end up in fantasy world, in this series they end up in live action D&D with real consequences. Also, one of the characters, Cooper, made his game character a half orc with a charisma of like 4. This manifests itself in his character being unable to control his bowels or bladder and constantly defecating or urinating all over the ground in front of people, among other things.
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Sep 3, 2014 14:10
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Anyone ever read any L.E. Modesitt Jr.? There's a big pile of his stuff sitting in my local library and some of it sounds intriguing, blurb-wise.
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Sep 3, 2014 19:09
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PupsOfWar posted:Anyone ever read any L.E. Modesitt Jr.? There's a big pile of his stuff sitting in my local library and some of it sounds intriguing, blurb-wise.
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Sep 3, 2014 19:16
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His Recluce stuff is pretty good. It's not exceptional by any stretch of the word, but I enjoyed them enough to read most of them. He had this weird knack of writing his characters as craftsmen (usually the Hero decided to be a furniture maker or something mundane) which really made me want to start building chairs. I have no idea how he did that. Very vague spoiler about the whole series that doesn't reveal the plot of any one book: Another neat thing is that many prequels will go further into the past to analyze the "Legends" of the previous book, and eventually you find out that this Fantasy world/realm was populated by a crash-landed spaceship straight out of a sci-fi book.
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Sep 3, 2014 19:26
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For some reason I really like Modesitt, I think I've read almost everything he's written, but he really does write the same book over and over. His SF is more interesting and varied than his fantasy IMO.
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Sep 3, 2014 20:02
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Victorkm posted:I've been reading these books, and am up to the third now. They are pretty goddamn funny at times, but what fascinates me about them is how the author went with the concept to a very literal point. The world they get sucked into still operates on the same rules of D&D Third Edition (though renamed) and most of them are aware of the rules and end up taking advantage of stuff in clever manner. Unlike something like the Guardians of the Flame series by Joel Rosenberg, where they just end up in fantasy world, in this series they end up in live action D&D with real consequences. There's a few short stories as well, and they are all pretty much identical to the books in terms of hilarity. Glad someone else enjoys em 
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Sep 3, 2014 20:36
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:There's a few short stories as well, and they are all pretty much identical to the books in terms of hilarity. I picked up the first book and then completely forgot who plugged it in the first place. So just wanted to say thanks. I chuckled a hell of a lot. The whole "silly crude" thing was done in just the right way to not be terrible and actually be funny. How stuff (and poo poo for Cooper) goes down and keeps going down.
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Sep 3, 2014 20:44
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Neurosis posted:I'm 74% of the way through Acceptance. The book has been very uneven. I wasn't particularly impressed with Authority, and the first 1/3 of this book is more of the same. VanderMeer is too intent on obfuscating anything meaningful and putting in lots of run on sentences (really, Jeff, carefully think before using sentences longer than 40 words) with conflicting imagery to build ~atmosphere~. It worked in Annihilation because Area X, and the imagery discussed, were novel. Authority had little that was new, so it just grated. Acceptance picks up after the first 1/3, but it's still not great. Nothing in the ending really changed my opinion here. I gather (very general spoilers) VanderMeer's trying to create something truly weird and incomprehensible. Area X isn't meant to be fathomed. While there is some vague explanation as to its origins, there is no exposition or real discovery. We don't even find out what happens to Earth or Area X overall at the end. But loving hell, beyond the first book the ratio of signal to noise is so low that it's a chore to get through. We find out so few scraps about the Area, nearly all the knowledge is already given during the first book. I can't recommend this series. The first novel captured everything the other two did much more entertainingly and elegantly.
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Sep 3, 2014 21:13
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I admire what VanderMeer is doing on some level. He's decided that big reveals and unveiled secrets more often than not compromise and undermine the effect of the story that came before. Readers of weird fiction seem to thrive on uncertainty, speculation, mystery, and elision. So he's decided to commit to that frustration totally. His characters turn away from obvious clues and fail to use the resources given them. His narrative skips over things we really want to see. Whether or not it works for you (it doesn't quite for me) I appreciate his discipline in executing on it. And I think the title is probably meant as a big red flag to those hoping for answers. e: I think it's really hilarious that the second novel's pretty much a story about a reader of the first novel trying to figure it out and getting frustrated.
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Sep 3, 2014 21:22
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I'm in the minority (apparently), but The Magician King is my favorite of the trilogy. Julia's story is well-written, engaging, and tragic. The Magicians: 3.5. The Magician King: 4.5. The Magician's Land: 4.
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Sep 3, 2014 21:24
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syphon posted:His Recluce stuff is pretty good. It's not exceptional by any stretch of the word, but I enjoyed them enough to read most of them. He had this weird knack of writing his characters as craftsmen (usually the Hero decided to be a furniture maker or something mundane) which really made me want to start building chairs. I have no idea how he did that. They aren't the best but I definitely do enjoy them. And you're right definitely want to build chairs or blacksmith some poo poo after reading his books.
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Sep 3, 2014 21:33
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General Battuta posted:I admire what VanderMeer is doing on some level. He's decided that big reveals and unveiled secrets more often than not compromise and undermine the effect of the story that came before. Readers of weird fiction seem to thrive on uncertainty, speculation, mystery, and elision. So he's decided to commit to that frustration totally. His characters turn away from obvious clues and fail to use the resources given them. His narrative skips over things we really want to see.
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Sep 3, 2014 21:34
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I'm not sure! Annihilation and Authority both stuck with me and I'm glad I read them. Although Annihilation was a much more engaging read in the moment, Authority might have unsettled me more profoundly in the long run. I haven't tried his other work. I'd suggest giving him a shot, for sure.
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Sep 3, 2014 21:37
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