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Vorik posted:Recently read and enjoyed Rivers Of London by Ben Aaronovitch, and now I'm wondering if anyone could recommend some good Urban Fantasy books that are more serious in tone? (Excluding the Dresden Files which I've already tried and hated.) UF that is more serious in tone like or than RoL?
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Jan 28, 2015 13:01
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Than RoL. Thanks for the recommends so far. Some of those sound really great.
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Jan 28, 2015 13:04
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Paul Cornell's London Falling and Kate Griffin's Madness of Angels would fit that perfectly; both much darker urban fantasy set in London. London Falling is even about a policeman too, setting up a special crimes unit to hunt down the nasty stuff. Both are definitely much grittier, bloodier and less optimistic than Rivers of London.
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Jan 28, 2015 14:02
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Twenty Palace series by Harry Connolly Highly seconding these, especially Faust which were 4 excellent books that only got better as you went on, but London Falling is exactly what you are looking for if you want Rivers of London but serious. I haven't read the other 3.
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Jan 28, 2015 15:03
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Ornamented Death posted:The Darksword Trilogy. There's a fourth novel, too. I'm currently rereading Weis's solo series Star of the Guardian, which is basically Star Wars with some actual politics. It's a bit hinky when the Magnificent Seven appear, and I wouldn't give you two drops of piss for the spinoff series, but the original trilogy and the sequel novel aren't bad.
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Jan 28, 2015 15:09
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Hey Battuta, I like your book's cover art! http://www.tor.com/blogs/2015/01/us-and-uk-cover-reveal-for-the-traitor-baru-cormorant (but not the generic truncated title for the UK market)
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Jan 28, 2015 15:41
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I finished the Foundation trilogy a couple months ago. Really liked book 1 for the world/universe building, thought Book 2 with the Mule was fun, but Book 3 was kind of a circle jerk. Are any of the later books in the series worth reading?
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Jan 28, 2015 17:14
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Look Sir Droids posted:I finished the Foundation trilogy a couple months ago. Really liked book 1 for the world/universe building, thought Book 2 with the Mule was fun, but Book 3 was kind of a circle jerk. Are any of the later books in the series worth reading? no, they get so much more circle-jerk and so much less world-building
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Jan 28, 2015 17:16
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You've read all the Foundation there is to really read. There's a ton of excellent Asimov left if that's all you've read, fortunately!
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Jan 28, 2015 17:19
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Look Sir Droids posted:I finished the Foundation trilogy a couple months ago. Really liked book 1 for the world/universe building, thought Book 2 with the Mule was fun, but Book 3 was kind of a circle jerk. Are any of the later books in the series worth reading? I personally really like all of them but I was also 11 when I started reading them so my opinion is pretty colored by nostalgia.
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Jan 28, 2015 19:08
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Hedrigall posted:Hey Battuta, I like your book's cover art! Thank you!  I can't resist dropping the US one in here. Sam Weber does great covers. It's not out until September. My favorite elevator pitch is still 'Game of Thrones meets Guns, Germs, and Steel.' Antti posted:You've read all the Foundation there is to really read. There's a ton of excellent Asimov left if that's all you've read, fortunately! I liked one of the Asimov-authored prequels (Forward? Prelude?) pretty well when I was a kid. Is it actually poo poo? There's also a prequel trilogy by Brin, Bear, and...someone, and they're unutterably bad.
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Jan 28, 2015 19:08
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"Matches the entire Lannister clan in wit" seems to be a pretty drat double-edged praise to me, given the average IQ of the average ASoIaF character.
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Jan 28, 2015 20:19
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The blurbs are obviously just trying to market it by using the hot property du jour. I'd actually be turned off by them if I hadn't read the original short story. Also this might be the first fantasy novel where I prefer the US cover over the UK cover. The UK cover is so generic. The US cover is pretty and even thematically relevant. And I also prefer the US title. General Battuta posted:
I read every single Asimov-authored Foundation novel when I was a teenager and I thought the ones after the first trilogy were mediocre, I went back to them a few years later and they hadn't gotten any better. I suppose if you're a huge Foundation fan you might like them, but the original poster was getting fed up by Second Foundation. I will grant the Oliwav tie-ins waaay later on (I think somewhere in the prequels) were pretty neat.
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Jan 28, 2015 20:56
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Antti posted:The blurbs are obviously just trying to market it by using the hot property du jour. I'd actually be turned off by them if I hadn't read the original short story. The okivaw tie ins are hamfisted and retarded. So is Gaia. Hope your idea of how Foundation should end is a Mary Sue telling the reader that everything that happened was orchestrated by him and also was pointless
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Jan 28, 2015 21:06
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Look Sir Droids posted:I finished the Foundation trilogy a couple months ago. Really liked book 1 for the world/universe building, thought Book 2 with the Mule was fun, but Book 3 was kind of a circle jerk. Are any of the later books in the series worth reading? No you literally have The Consensus Opinion on the Foundation Novels. But yeah as others have said, Asimov was crazy prolific there's lots of other stuff.
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Jan 28, 2015 21:26
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General Battuta posted:Thank you! I like the US cover a lot as well, did you have any input as to artists or content of the cover art? I've read interviews and blog posts with authors who say that the publishers decide everything and the author just has to hope for the best, but then you get something like that one Charles Stross novel's cover art that's just cringe-worthy and I'd be anxious myself if I was an author that something like that could hurt my book's sales. And when's the ebook edition going to come out? Same day? I only see the hardcover on Amazon.
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Jan 28, 2015 22:21
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I'm most the way through Best Served Cold by Joe Abercombie and oh my god I wish it would end already. It's such an extreme to go from the First Law trilogy, which I loved so much, to this. First Law had morally ambiguous characters who you ultimately rooted for, characters who had their charms but were probably not good people overall. In fact, the reason the books were so good was entirely on the strength of the characters, who made the journey so enjoyable and interesting. Best Served Cold is about a bunch of murderous dickheads going around being murderous dickheads. No ambiguity. It gives me no reason to care about what happens these horrible people, and I don't have any wish to spend any more time reading about them or the horrible things they do. (And I LIKED Shivers at the start!) First Law tried to humanise the faceless henchmen getting killed, even if the bodycount sometimes could be a little much. In Best Served Cold innocent people are killed by the dozen as a punchline which kills a sense of drama and reality. It un-grounds the story. And of course, the awful characters don't bat an eye at this, nor do they notice their own hypocrisy over it. First Law had this great punchy style to its prose that made it flow really well to my mind. It felt like the pace of a good Christopher Nolan or Edgar Wright movie applied to the written medium, with nary a word wasted. Abercrombie could perfectly set a scene in two evocative sentences where another writer would take two paragraphs. In Best Served Cold, he is that other writer. He spends paragraphs describing skies nearly every chapter (oh, something is the colour of blood. AGAIN.) and spends multiple chapters going over and over the same character motivations, everything feels incredibly drawn out. It's like a grimdark cartoon parody. It's like Joe Abercrombie missed the point of everything that was good from the trilogy and exaggerated everything else, and it's incredibly disappointing. I have a really bad feeling about The Heroes and Red Country now. 
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Jan 29, 2015 00:04
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Completely agree. I'm about 60% through BSC myself and I've been stuck there for months now because I just can't bring myself to care about any of the characters or the generic plot. I'm sure I'll get around to finishing it sometime this year, but it has made the prospect of me reading Abercombie's other books a whole lot less certain.
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Jan 29, 2015 01:16
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General Battuta posted:Thank you! The US cover is so much better than the UK one. Well, you've got a publication date, at last. Did you sort the map out?
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Jan 29, 2015 01:59
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The UK cover would be fantastic if they ditched the naff flame effect and the beyond naff tagline and used the space to put the rest of the title back in.
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Jan 29, 2015 02:03
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General Battuta posted:Might as well read Leviathan Wakes if you haven't. The Prefect by Reynolds is a solid entry in the subgenre too. What am I forgetting? Niven's The Patchwork Girl, set on a moonbase, and maybe some of the other Gil Hamilton stories. Russo's Ship of Fools (a.k.a. Unto Leviathan). Starting to stretch the setting a bit, Cyteen, and Hal Clement's Needle (set on a island, but everyone should read it anyway). Stross' Glasshouse is a more modern one.
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Jan 29, 2015 05:06
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Vorik posted:Completely agree. I'm about 60% through BSC myself and I've been stuck there for months now because I just can't bring myself to care about any of the characters or the generic plot. I'm sure I'll get around to finishing it sometime this year, but it has made the prospect of me reading Abercombie's other books a whole lot less certain. Pay more attention to Monza. Also, Cosca is the best horrible mercenary captain. (and The Heroes and Red Country are *entirely* different styles from BSC and one another)
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Jan 29, 2015 06:48
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I really liked BSC, particularly how Monza and Shivers' stories kind of arc past each other. And also yeah, Cosca in BSC is pretty amazing.
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Jan 29, 2015 07:17
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I just started the Daniel Faust series based on someone's recommendation earlier in this thread, and I'm already digging it. I'm a huge Dresden Files fan, even for all the series's faults, so it wasn't a hard sell, but I'm already pleasantly surprised by the book. I'm really interested to see where it goes, since right now it seems pretty similar to a lot of urban fantasy, but has a lot of potential too. And am I imagining things, or does Schaefer take some intentional shots at Jim Butcher and Dresden in the first book?
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Jan 29, 2015 07:30
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MockingQuantum posted:I just started the Daniel Faust series based on someone's recommendation earlier in this thread, and I'm already digging it. I'm a huge Dresden Files fan, even for all the series's faults, so it wasn't a hard sell, but I'm already pleasantly surprised by the book. I'm really interested to see where it goes, since right now it seems pretty similar to a lot of urban fantasy, but has a lot of potential too. And am I imagining things, or does Schaefer take some intentional shots at Jim Butcher and Dresden in the first book? I don't remember any intentional shots, and at any rate you'd think "Be nice to other urban fantasy authors" would be a rule of thumb, especially for a guy publishing his first book. I have to say, though, I think it's pretty hilarious that the series where the most prominent female supporting character is a literal succubus has much less overused male gaze than the other one. Daniel also doesn't lavishly describe the body of his teenaged charge, which is also nice.
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Jan 29, 2015 07:45
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"Main character's sidekick is a teenaged succubus" is certainly the kind of snippet of information that would make me close the book and toss it in a fireplace.
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Jan 29, 2015 07:51
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 its like a parody cover but no, its real
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Jan 29, 2015 08:25
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That cover's actually awesome FYI.
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Jan 29, 2015 09:31
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Hobnob posted:Niven's The Patchwork Girl, set on a moonbase, and maybe some of the other Gil Hamilton stories. Russo's Ship of Fools (a.k.a. Unto Leviathan). Starting to stretch the setting a bit, Cyteen, and Hal Clement's Needle (set on a island, but everyone should read it anyway). Don't forget about the Asimov's classics Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun. There is also a collection of Asimov's short mistery stories published under the name "Asimov's misteries". I can barely recall those (I read that stuff at my teen years) but IIRC the quality varied a lot between stories.
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Jan 29, 2015 13:37
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Look Sir Droids posted:I finished the Foundation trilogy a couple months ago. Really liked book 1 for the world/universe building, thought Book 2 with the Mule was fun, but Book 3 was kind of a circle jerk. Are any of the later books in the series worth reading? Everything *except* the ending of Foundation and Earth was pretty good I thought, at least if an Indiana Jones style "search for the truth" thing appeals to you.
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Jan 29, 2015 13:57
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Man I'm really loving Leviathan Wakes. It's great. Giving me the best B5ish vibes with some Gundam and Blade Runner and everything I love thrown in there. Do the rest of the Expanse novels hold up?
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Jan 29, 2015 14:07
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General Emergency posted:Man I'm really loving Leviathan Wakes. It's great. Giving me the best B5ish vibes with some Gundam and Blade Runner and everything I love thrown in there. Do the rest of the Expanse novels hold up? Book 2, Caliban's War, is even better, and introduces two of the best new characters. It was awesome. Book 3, Abaddon's Gate, was a bit dull in comparison, and half the time focuses on some really loving dull characters. The awesome characters from book two barely show up. I haven't read book 4, Cibola Burn, yet. I've heard it's okay. There will be 9 books. It was originally going to be a trilogy. Expect some storyline streeeetttttchhhhh.
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Jan 29, 2015 14:23
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corn in the bible posted:
 one of the authors threatens murder on the inside jacket
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Jan 29, 2015 15:18
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Peel posted:
who does he want to murder? are you sure he doesnt want to... TECHNOKILL THEM??? 
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Jan 29, 2015 15:28
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General Emergency posted:Man I'm really loving Leviathan Wakes. It's great. Giving me the best B5ish vibes with some Gundam and Blade Runner and everything I love thrown in there. Do the rest of the Expanse novels hold up? They do and then they don't. Hedrigall is right. Caliban's War is a huge step up, but Abbadon's Gate is 500 pages of boredom. Bad enough for me to lose interest in reading the rest of the series. The main problem for me is that Holden, as the main character, is such a douche. I can't suspend my disbelief enough to believe that this guy gets laid easily.
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Jan 29, 2015 16:45
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Hedrigall posted:Book 2, Caliban's War, is even better, and introduces two of the best new characters. It was awesome. This all is exactly spot on. And the stretch to 9 books has really diminished my interest in the next book, unless I hear that the authors are going to devote the rest of the series to Bobbie and the cursing granny. Because I'd happily read another 5 books just about their adventures.
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Jan 29, 2015 16:48
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http://www.syfy.com/theexpanse/videos/the_expanse_trailer
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Jan 29, 2015 16:56
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I'll give the SyFy series a shot though. Even though I think Thomas Jane is a terrible choice for Miller. AND there's obviously no effort to make Belters look different at all.
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Jan 29, 2015 16:59
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Look Sir Droids posted:They do and then they don't. Hedrigall is right. Caliban's War is a huge step up, but Abbadon's Gate is 500 pages of boredom. Bad enough for me to lose interest in reading the rest of the series. The main problem for me is that Holden, as the main character, is such a douche. I can't suspend my disbelief enough to believe that this guy gets laid easily. Holden is really a bad character. Such a mary sue it hurts. More angry grannie and bobbie. Also holdens crew are also so one dimensional.
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Jan 29, 2015 17:06
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Mars4523 posted:I don't remember any intentional shots, and at any rate you'd think "Be nice to other urban fantasy authors" would be a rule of thumb, especially for a guy publishing his first book. There's a couple of nods to Dresden here and there, but they're not really shots, just kind of acknowledgements that are funny if you're familiar with Dresden and completely unnoticeable if you're not. For example: quote:I wondered, for a brief instant, what a necromancer like <redacted> could do with the skeleton of a T. rex. I shrugged the idea off. Nobody’s that good. (And the succubus isn't teenaged, thankfully.)
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