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ravenkult posted:Are they basically the same plot over and over again like Twenty Palaces was? Nah, it's a solid trilogy, it (spoilers for ending)just goes to poo poo when the REAL BAD GUYS show up 3/4 of the way through the final book and they're the dudes who possibly a single page beforehand if you put all their appearances together. And then the two main characters don't even fight them, 95% of the way through they meet the gods and fight them instead.
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Dec 24, 2014 14:35
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So what was everyone's favourite book this year? CIty of Stairs cleanly wins out for me.
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Dec 24, 2014 16:43
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There's a lot of choices, but it's a toss up between the Daniel Faust series by Craig Schaefer (they all rocked), or Wolf Hunt 2 by Jeff Strand. Both authors are great guys as well.
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Dec 24, 2014 18:17
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Sci-Fi wise probably The Skinner by Neal Asher. I really liked the ecology and characters of Spatterjay, and it was a solid, fun, if schlocky biological-themed scifi novel. Fantasy-wise probably the Folly series by Ben Aaronovitch, starting with Rivers of London. It's the urban fantasy police procedural I've been wanting to sink my teeth into since Harry Dresden started working alone and not really co-operating with mundane cops very much outside of one or two select individuals.. From the sound of City of Stairs I'll have to pick that up next year. E: if we're talking books which came out this year I think I only read four - Word of Radiance, Skin Game, Foxglove Summer and Valour and Vanity. probably of those Skin Game was the one I most enjoyed. I tend not to read newly published books. thespaceinvader fucked around with this message at 19:36 on Dec 24, 2014 |
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Dec 24, 2014 18:32
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:There's a lot of choices, but it's a toss up between the Daniel Faust series by Craig Schaefer (they all rocked), or Wolf Hunt 2 by Jeff Strand. Both authors are great guys as well. Woah, I didn't know Wolf Hunt had a sequel out, I'll have to pick that up.
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Dec 24, 2014 18:41
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:So what was everyone's favourite book this year? CIty of Stairs cleanly wins out for me. The Magician's Land was my favorite book of the year -- I had pretty high expectations going in, and they were all met, and it's number one by a sizable margin for me. But City of Stairs was probably my favorite surprise of the year, in terms of being a book I hadn't heard anything about, and which I really ended up enjoying.
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Dec 24, 2014 18:47
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I read a lot of good SF&F that came out in 2014 but I can't think of any one book that blew me away and stands out above all others. If I had to think of what I remember enjoying the most it would probably be Daryl Gregory's Afterparty or We Are All Doing Completely Fine.
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Dec 24, 2014 18:48
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Fantasy-wise my vote goes to City of Stairs. I have read really a few books published this year, and none of them deserves to be named "the best" of anything. Unironically, the one I've enjoyed most has been Cibola Burn.
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Dec 24, 2014 18:57
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Almost forgot -- my favorite 2014 fantasy novel about monetary policy was definitely Daniel Abraham's The Widow's House.
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Dec 24, 2014 19:03
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I enjoyed City of Stairs pretty drat much. However, Traitor's Blade was probably my favorite. Not fantastically written but it had a sense of fun I rarely encounter.
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Dec 24, 2014 19:05
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Mine was probably discovering Nick Harkaway; I really loved The Gone-Away World and Angelmaker. Tigerman was okay but not as good as the other two, imo.
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Dec 24, 2014 19:16
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CaptainScraps posted:I enjoyed City of Stairs pretty drat much. Same here on both counts. Though the scene right at the end of Traitor's Blade, where Falcio finally learns exactly what sort of sacrifice he has to make, is one of the more powerful and well-written scenes I've read in a while.
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Dec 24, 2014 20:12
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:So what was everyone's favourite book this year? CIty of Stairs cleanly wins out for me. That is hard to say since it is probably 40+ books and I can't remember if a certain book came out this year or 2 years ago. But best would probably be Rhesus Chart by Stross (a restart of the Laundry Files) and Fools Assassin by Robin Hobb (also gently caress you Hobb for making us suffer and still enjoy it). Biggest disappointment: Assail by Esslemont. After hyping it for 20k pages it ends up as a major train wreck.
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Dec 24, 2014 21:55
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Words of Radiance is my book of the year, it continues the excellent Stormlight Archives by Brandon Sanderson. I especially liked the appearances of characters from other books in his shared setting, the Cosmere, which is actually a first (except for Hoid who is in every book).
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Dec 24, 2014 22:00
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Grimwall posted:Everyone here loves this book. The thing that killed that series for me wasn't really anything in the books themselves but more the release schedule. Especially because before the first book even came out Rothfuss was saying how it was just 3 books and they were already written so it wasn't going to turn into a long drawn out thing like other series. The first book came out in 2007, the second in 2011 and this year he released a side novella. Also the progress was so slow in the second book I doubt he could finish the story in just one more novel.
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Dec 25, 2014 16:15
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The protagonist was such a dweeby goon in the first book I didn't keep reading. "I could've had her and all the guys that were loving her knew but I never did." 
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Dec 25, 2014 16:55
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Probably the stupidest thing in the second book is when the main characters travels to ninja land and learns that they don't know how pregnancy works. As in the society didn't understand the link between having sex and being pregnant, they just thought that sometimes women become pregnant and men have nothing to do with it.
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Dec 25, 2014 17:02
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Said society has also mastered animal husbandry. Somehow.
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Dec 25, 2014 17:14
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Obviously what happens is the horses get a nice place and the baby just turns up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwo8qxUit00
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Dec 25, 2014 17:16
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muscles like this? posted:Probably the stupidest thing in the second book is when the main characters travels to ninja land and learns that they don't know how pregnancy works. As in the society didn't understand the link between having sex and being pregnant, they just thought that sometimes women become pregnant and men have nothing to do with it. I haven't finished Name of the Wind, much less the second book, but that is a thing in some societies. Including not believing that animals multiply by loving either, despite being pig farmers. Megazver fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Dec 25, 2014 |
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Dec 25, 2014 17:24
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muscles like this? posted:Probably the stupidest thing in the second book is when the main characters travels to ninja land and learns that they don't know how pregnancy works. As in the society didn't understand the link between having sex and being pregnant, they just thought that sometimes women become pregnant and men have nothing to do with it. Nah I am pretty sure the dumbest loving thing in the second book is the main character becoming some sort of sex ninja. The only thing worse/weirder was the whole "She's like a deer, and I want to gently caress that deer" thing he has going for his inner monologue.
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Dec 25, 2014 17:36
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Nah I am pretty sure the dumbest loving thing in the second book is the main character becoming some sort of sex ninja. The only thing worse/weirder was the whole "She's like a deer, and I want to gently caress that deer" thing he has going for his inner monologue. The bits where he turns sex into Street Fighter are stupidly hilarious. "She nearly got me with that thousand hands to lotus clasp combo, but I turned the tables, and it was all over with the boner hadoken corner trap."
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Dec 25, 2014 20:22
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What genuinely annoyed me about the sequel was how it just threw out the single most intriguing theme in the series; that legends are gross overexaggerations of decent acts. I think the book has some line like "I killed a dragon, seduced the goddess of sex and killed a king" and that's great, given the reader discovers the dragon was just a drugged up big lizard. The expectation of the sex fairy is interesting; I expected something genuinely clever: some act or deceit that'd say something about the nature of storytelling, or living legends. Instead, it's "I'm so awesome I just did it" and that's just plain boring. The sex ninjas are the loving worst: suddenly the legends about him being a powerful warrior aren't even exaggerations any more, and the character and story just kills my interest. It'd be cool if this was some tale about growing into the legend you weave, but that'd require real character development and difficulty beyond "yo I am the best" The Supreme Court fucked around with this message at 02:44 on Dec 26, 2014 |
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Dec 26, 2014 02:39
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Nevvy Z posted:I remember buying that for my Kindle, never realized City of Stairs was by the same guy. Didn't hate it, but it was largely boring. Oh. The author was in his 30s when the book came out. Well then.
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Dec 26, 2014 05:34
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Mars4523 posted:I just read the summary on that book's Wikipedia page, and holy gently caress Kvothe has to be the Stu-iest Marty Stu that ever Marty Stu'd. How the gently caress do you write somebody like that and still have respect for yourself? Was this some high schooler's NaNoWriMo project that somehow got published? According to the Rothfuss thread this was his writing project in high school that he polished up for publishing after like...ten years as an undergrad or smth. IDK. After perusing the thread OP I ended up sending my brother in law The Rook, if he likes that one I'll recommend London Falling and the other books everyone suggested to him. Thanks everyone!
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Dec 26, 2014 06:24
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So The Martian is pretty cool. It would be even cooler if I didn't have to roll my eyes through my skull every few pages when I saw a "yay!" or "boo!" or "ugh" or whatever. I mean, the rest of the prose isn't exactly amazing (it's mostly competent, if a little workmanlike, awkward, and forced sometimes), but I could live with it and ignore its flaws and enjoy the cool neato story a lot easier without the teenager's journal style interjections and the little jokey parenthesis asides to explain obvious poo poo for "humorous" effect. I know it likely doesn't bother everyone, but it bugs the hell out of me and takes me right out of the story. Every time I'm getting sucked in there is a stupid "yay!" type thing that stands out like a sore thumb in an otherwise competently written sentence or paragraph that just brings it down. It's not so much that I'm a snob about those words, it's more that they are entirely unnecessary and add nothing while at the least annoying people like me. I mean, I get that we are reading a journal and all, but still. It's just not needed and adds nothing of value. It makes it feel like the author is doing your thinking for you, like "you should feel bad/scared/worried about this! Also, this should make you happy!". Thanks, I can figure that out myself dude. Luckily, so far it seems like there are less of these interjections as I get further in the book. Anyway, beyond that stuff, the book is pretty engaging and one of those "why hasn't someone written this exact story yet" concepts. As someone who has read a billion books about space travel, and specifically enjoyed How Apollo Flew to the Moon (easily one of the best books about the Apollo missions ever written, buy it and read it and cherish it), and To Orbit and Back Again, How the Space Shuttle Flew in Space (inspired by HAFTTM, but for the Shuttle), and laps up explanations of how the engineering to get dudes into space and on the moon was accomplished, this almost reads like one of those technical books, but called "How One Dude Survived on Mars Way loving Longer Than Intended With Just the poo poo That Was Laying Around From His Mission." Which is right up my alley. Damo fucked around with this message at 10:05 on Dec 26, 2014 |
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Dec 26, 2014 09:46
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Damo posted:So The Martian is pretty cool. Yes (should I have said "yay"?), it gets annoying because it is excessive and overused. Anyway, my in-history justification is the history happens about 20 years from now, so the guy is really one of those current day teens who can't go without using those expressions.
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Dec 26, 2014 10:05
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Damo posted:So The Martian is pretty cool. This exactly. My favorite example of this is somewhere a quarter of the way through the book when a senior NASA adviser type uses the word "buttload" conversationally.
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Dec 26, 2014 22:33
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Book of the year for me is probably a tossup between The Revolutions or The Bone Clocks.
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Dec 26, 2014 23:09
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:So what was everyone's favourite book this year? CIty of Stairs cleanly wins out for me. I didn't read a whole lot that came out this year ... I always have a big backlog of books. So I don't really have a large pool to pick from, but for me it was Jeff Vandermeer's Southern Reach trilogy. The other genre book I really enjoyed this year was The Ocean at the End of Lane, although that came out last year. This year a lot of my genre-reading time was taken up by re-reading the Wheel of Time series. I gave it up back around book 8 or so, but figured I might as well give it another shot now that it's finally done. I got about halfway through this year and will try to finish it next year. It's been very nostalgic reading back through it so far, but we'll see what happens when I get to the part where I quit before.
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Dec 26, 2014 23:19
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Book of the year for me is a toss up between Halo: Broken Circle (book 13) and Attack On Titan Volume 13. It was a good year for things with the number 13 in them.
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Dec 26, 2014 23:25
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Anybody pick up Endsinger by Jay Kristoff? Book one (Stormdancer) was pretty shaky but I thought the second one was pretty good.
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Dec 27, 2014 01:23
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^^^^^^I've never heard of this but it looks interesting from it's description on goodreads I'm reading The Girl With All The Gifts by MR Carey and I'm about halfway through, it's really good. It would have to have the worst second half followed by the most unclimactic ending for me not to recommend it. It's a zombie apocalypse type setting, but it's done in an original, unique way, with a lot of focus on the characters, their interactions, and evoking those feels. savinhill fucked around with this message at 02:52 on Dec 27, 2014 |
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Dec 27, 2014 02:48
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Just finished Snow Crash and the Sprawl Trilogy a few weeks ago. Are there any other good cyberpunk series you can recommend me?
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Dec 27, 2014 08:06
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Variant_Eris posted:Just finished Snow Crash and the Sprawl Trilogy a few weeks ago. Are there any other good cyberpunk series you can recommend me?
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Dec 27, 2014 10:21
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:So what was everyone's favourite book this year? CIty of Stairs cleanly wins out for me. I haven't read many new releases, but my favorite so far was Carol Berg's Dust and Light. I might be a tad biased considering it's an indirect sequel to her Lighthouse Duet, though, which is among my favorite series.  Thanks to whoever suggested Traitor's Blade. I wouldn't have picked it up on my own based on the book jacket summary, but it had been mentioned here and the voice hooked me immediately. Definitely a fun read. I plan on reading City of Stairs next, since it's getting so many recommendations. The author's blog is a good read, too.
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Dec 27, 2014 11:00
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savinhill posted:^^^^^^I've never heard of this but it looks interesting from it's description on goodreads It's a good book, but when you finish it you'll be strongly reminded of something else. (The contents of the spoiler are deliberately vague, but if you think about it too much you could be spoiled.)
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Dec 27, 2014 12:49
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Junkenstein posted:Really liked City of Stairs, how's his other work? Specifically, I'm looking at American Elsewhere and The Troupe. Just read City of Stairs, American Elsewhere and The Troupe back-to-back over the last few days, and if you enjoyed any one of them I imagine you'd enjoy them all. The writing's up to the same standard and they all play with a similar mix of themes. Going to try The Company Man next. The other book that's surprised and impressed me recently - though not quite to the extent of those three - was Son of the Morning. It's a fantastical retelling of the Hundred Years' War, where angels & demons take sides and Lucifer is a communist. The dialog is a little off-key in a few places, but on the whole it's above what you'd expect from a fantasy author's first novel and those weaknesses are more than made up for by the world and plot. coffeetable fucked around with this message at 14:25 on Dec 27, 2014 |
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Dec 27, 2014 14:21
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Jedit posted:It's a good book, but when you finish it you'll be strongly reminded of something else. (The contents of the spoiler are deliberately vague, but if you think about it too much you could be spoiled.) I finished it last night. Good book. Ending was a little irritating though. HUGE SPOILERS FOR THE ENDING! There's a giant wall of this stuff just waiting to be set on fire, so the pods can all pop, so somehow in however many years it took for London to grow this giant loving wall, there were no lightning strikes from storms? I get that it might not ALL catch on fire, but from the description in the book London wasn't a foggy, damp craptastic mess and that poo poo went up like crazy. Yes, I can accept a zombie takeover like out of TLOU but when I get to a part about a giant fungus wall that hasn't caught fire in years, ~MY IMMERSION~ is ruined. Besides that, and the vaguely slow start to the book (seriously, so slow of a burn for the plot to kick in), it was pretty good. It was nice having an apocalyptic kinda story where the female leads aren't just rape bait.
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Dec 27, 2014 16:48
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Station Eleven is a good runner up for me as well, almost forgot about that one.
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Dec 27, 2014 22:38
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