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occamsnailfile posted:So my sister posed a book request to me, which was "Fantasy novel with a strong female protagonist, and a best friend who is also female." I am stumped, can't think of any off the top of my head--strong female leads are more common than in the past, but female lead without a sassy talking animal/dude friend is harder for me to tabulate. Going through my own reading lists for the past couple years doesn't produce much. Some I would recommend: Lois McMaster Bujold's Curse of Chalion and the following book; The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein; The Banner of the Damned by Sherwood Smith; The Last Unicorn; The Secrets of Jin-Shei by Alma A. Hromic For a book that's a bit more popular literature, but still fantasy, Wicked is all about the friendship between two women. I personally found the book boring, though. I also second the recommendation for Valente and would also look into Kate Elliot and maybe Robin McKinley as well, although her books are mainly young adult.
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Mar 10, 2015 08:41
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Lowly posted:Some I would recommend: Lois McMaster Bujold's Curse of Chalion and the following book; The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein; The Banner of the Damned by Sherwood Smith; The Last Unicorn; The Secrets of Jin-Shei by Alma A. Hromic Neat! I hadn't heard of some of these--Jin-Shei and Banner of the Damned look interesting in particular. I agree about Wicked, but I've enjoyed Valente's shorts when I've read them, not really gotten into her novels other than the first one of the Fairyland books.
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Mar 10, 2015 14:56
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I'll second the recommendations of Last Unicorn and Curse of Chalion, though I'm not sure either fits the Bechdel test.
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Mar 10, 2015 15:04
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anilEhilated posted:Do they? I thought even the people who liked him were turned off by Wise Man's Fear. There's an interesting book in there, and with some editing down for redundancy and useless scenes, and a bit of revision it could be good. But unfortunately, Rothfuss wrote a book about a the Best Guy Ever being interviewed by the Most Reliable Historian Ever, rather than about a guy who thinks he's the best guy ever being interviewed by a guy who has heard these kind of stories before and can counter with alternate versions. Hieronymous Alloy posted:I need to read the Kushiel series at some point just so I can know if it's worth recommending for these kinds of polls. I enjoyed them a lot as alternate history and bizarre takes on religion and politics, but unless you define strong female protagonist as "actual, genuine masochist harem girl who gets caught up in religious scheming"... Very much a product of her environment. Realistically written, certainly, but not exactly what the requester is looking for.
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Mar 10, 2015 16:50
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Toph Bei Fong posted:
Some of my female friends seem to like them as examples of Strong Females Taking Control of their Sexuality or that's what they say anyway. Like I said, I haven't read them myself and at this rate am not likely to any time soon.
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Mar 10, 2015 16:55
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Some of my female friends seem to like them as examples of Strong Females Taking Control of their Sexuality or that's what they say anyway. Like I said, I haven't read them myself and at this rate am not likely to any time soon. This is something most of the women I've known who have read the Kushiel books have said; at the very least they seem to be popular. (Also, I enjoyed them quite a bit.)
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Mar 10, 2015 17:15
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Some of my female friends seem to like them as examples of Strong Females Taking Control of their Sexuality or that's what they say anyway. Like I said, I haven't read them myself and at this rate am not likely to any time soon. Oh, yes, definitely, this is the intended take away, and the reading I got as well once you get into them. The world building and the level of detail that Carey puts into her rethinking of how our world could have developed is fascinating, and her grasp of how people think is excellent. I would certainly describe them as feminist works, and worth reading (or at least the first one to see if you enjoy). But if one is looking for Lord of the Rings, but with an all female cast, they definitely aren't that.
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Mar 10, 2015 17:40
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Wife and I are listening to DUNE on audiobook because the new baby keeps us too busy to read. Is it just me or do Paul and Jessica spend an awful lot of time running across the desert fleeing from worms? There are like three separate scenes so far where they just barely escape being eaten and they all sound exactly the same.
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Mar 10, 2015 17:57
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It makes sense in a way given the characters' later progress. Basically it's there for contrast, to show the planet is hostile and they don't belong there.
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Mar 10, 2015 18:09
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Kesper North posted:This is something most of the women I've known who have read the Kushiel books have said; at the very least they seem to be popular. They're the best romance novels I have ever read. Or maybe second, after The Pattern Scars. This is a trap.
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Mar 10, 2015 18:30
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anilEhilated posted:It makes sense in a way given the characters' later progress. Basically it's there for contrast, to show the planet is hostile and they don't belong there. It's also loving tedious. "I am the Lisan-al-Gaib, the Kwisatz Haderach! I am Duke Paul Atreides, the Shortening of the Way, the Voice from the Outer Rim! Try looking within yourself to that place where you dare not go, and find me staring back at you! Now, let me tell you about foam"
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Mar 10, 2015 19:20
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I'm 95% done with the Three Body Problem It's really loving good. I don't read a massive amount of sci-fi, but I do read a lot of it, and I feel like it actually has some really fresh and cool ideas. To contrast with the previous novel I read, which was terrible, (Proxima, by Stephen Baxter), the ideas in this story all just make me think "That is sooo cool!" Every single idea in Proxima felt stale as poo poo and completely uninspired. The only really cool thing Baxter pulled off was the tidally locked planet, but even that felt more like Baxter sperging out on one kind of boring physics idea, fleshing the poo poo out of it, and then shoving a bunch of other trite crap into it with no real love. The Three Body Problem also manages to convey a tight plot through what almost feels like a clusterfuck of weird narrative choices, but it ends up just working out and the fact that there is no real chronological or straight narrative doesn't hurt it at all. It's pretty cool that the whole novel reads more like a series of very inter-connected novelettes than just a standard-issue novel. I don't know when the translation of the second one is out, but I'm almost considering biting the bullet and trying to read the second book in Mandarin, but I'm worried the super dense amount of physics, astronomy, and physics terms will fry my brain.
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Mar 10, 2015 19:22
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I'm about halfway through Catherynne Valente's "The Boy who Lost Fairlyand", and realized I don't really remember what happened to September at the end of "... and Cut the Moon in Two". Could anyone refresh my memory? I've tried Googling for a while and couldn't find any good refreshers.
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Mar 10, 2015 22:12
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occamsnailfile posted:So my sister posed a book request to me, which was "Fantasy novel with a strong female protagonist, and a best friend who is also female." I am stumped, can't think of any off the top of my head--strong female leads are more common than in the past, but female lead without a sassy talking animal/dude friend is harder for me to tabulate. Going through my own reading lists for the past couple years doesn't produce much. You certainly want the "Cold Magic" trilogy by Kate Elliot. (Her 'Spirit Gate' trilogy has an ensemble cast, and one of the viewpoint characters is female with a female best friend). Pamela Dean's "The Dubious Hills" might be a candidate (it's a strong recommend in general), I don't remember a best friend character but the lead has a strong social network with (I think) a majority of female characters. I haven't read Roberta Cray's 'The Sword and the Lion' for several years, but I think the female protagonist had a female best friend. (and it's another strong recommendation in general). A long shot might be Nina Kiriki Hoffmann's 'A Red Heart of Memories' and sequel, that's an ensemble cast of friends and I'm pretty sure at least two are female.
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Mar 10, 2015 23:53
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I'll second the recommendations of Last Unicorn and Curse of Chalion, though I'm not sure either fits the Bechdel test. Surely 'Paladin of Souls' would be a better match in that series.
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Mar 10, 2015 23:56
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More: 'Goblin Moon', Teresa Edgerton. And, depending on how strictly you interpret it, 'The Interior Life' by Katharine Blake (I would say that, morally, this counts).
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Mar 11, 2015 00:01
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occamsnailfile posted:So my sister posed a book request to me, which was "Fantasy novel with a strong female protagonist, and a best friend who is also female." I am stumped, can't think of any off the top of my head--strong female leads are more common than in the past, but female lead without a sassy talking animal/dude friend is harder for me to tabulate. Going through my own reading lists for the past couple years doesn't produce much.
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Mar 11, 2015 02:24
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Did anyone else have problems with The Broken Eye? I really like the first two books but this last one I just can't seem to get into. I don't know if its because it's been over a year since I read the second or if its just poo poo. I just feel like there's not enough Gavin.
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Mar 11, 2015 15:04
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Just finished and enjoyed Son of the Morning, but was I the only one who found it contained a lot of jarring tonal shifts? It would be all serious fantasy alternative history one minute and then an Osbert POV chapter would come along that felt like it had been subcontracted out to Terry Pratchett.
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Mar 11, 2015 15:22
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angel opportunity posted:I'm 95% done with the Three Body Problem I'm about 60% of the way through, and I'm having this issue where I'm not sure if the translation is throwing me off, or I'm just too dumb for it, but I'm enjoying it a lot. I gather I'm about at the point where the book turns and I get a real look at the overriding plot, but the dialogue is so odd, and part of the book are written in this strange, simplistic way, which is then, I assume intentionally, contrasted with the super detailed and in depth science stuff. This has been a book where I've had most fun just kicking back and enjoying the weird ideas and visuals. The Three Body sections in particular are awesome.
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Mar 11, 2015 17:00
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Yeah, right around that point is when I started to get pretty into it. Up to that point I was somewhat lost as to why many things were happening or what their point was. There are definitely some seemingly strange choices though. Wang is married and has a kid, but his wife and kid are shown a total of one or two times. He almost never communicates with them within the narrative, and I effectively forgot that they existed. Maybe it was intentional to show how sucked in he was getting to the game, but I feel like just a small thing (even just a sentence here or there) of showing his wife nagging him about neglecting his kid and always playing the game would have helped it feel less jarring without hurting the narrative or flow at all. Dialogue is pretty minimal in general: you get a lot of short conversations, and when it comes time for someone to answer questions, it just breaks into their life story told from the narrator's voice rather than as an Ayn Rand-sized block of monologue. I finished the book yesterday and loved it though 
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Mar 11, 2015 17:06
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Some of those choices, like the wife and kid, in caulking up to cultural differences that I'm never going to get. I'll probably finish the book later today(hurray for cross country road tripping), so I'll chip in with my feelings then.
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Mar 11, 2015 17:15
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Has anyone read David Wingrove's Chung Kuo series? I read it back in the 1990s and for a while it was loving amazing but then the last couple of books seemed to mostly peter out and go nowhere. I decided to re-read it, and saw that over the past couple of years it was republished but now has 20 books instead of 8, and I gather things have been rearranged somewhat. Worth starting over with it?
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Mar 11, 2015 17:18
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About 2/3rds of the way through the language in Son of the Morning seems to get modern colloquial in its tone to the point it really stands out from the first half. The plot and mythology also started to kind of wander all over. The ending in particular just shudders to a sloppy halt with a bunch of loose ends that feels like a haphazard setup for a sequel. Don't get me wrong, the premise is fantastic and engrosses you but it seems like author really didn't think it through to actually develop a full plot for a novel even though he had 800 pages to work with.
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Mar 11, 2015 17:25
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This is a dumb question, but the part in Three Body about the sun being a giant radio amplifier is complete sci fi right?
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Mar 11, 2015 17:32
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:This is a dumb question, but the part in Three Body about the sun being a giant radio amplifier is complete sci-fi right? Without looking it up or doing any research at all, yes. We would be doing this or at least arguing about whether we should do this if it were possible.
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Mar 11, 2015 17:36
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Phanatic posted:Has anyone read David Wingrove's Chung Kuo series? I read it back in the 1990s and for a while it was loving amazing but then the last couple of books seemed to mostly peter out and go nowhere. I decided to re-read it, and saw that over the past couple of years it was republished but now has 20 books instead of 8, and I gather things have been rearranged somewhat. The Chung Kuo novels are pretty much orientalist trash all around, but the ending to the series just took an amazing left turn into crazy. DeVore turns out to be some kind of extradimensional rape-spider that came to Earth to destabilize and ruin everything
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Mar 11, 2015 17:55
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Just finished Three Body! That ending was kind of an infodump, but I really enjoyed it quite a bit. The actual cliffhanger was seriously a fantastic setup for the series, and the world after the book is gonna be a really interesting setting. It was really fantastic how well the author used the cultural revolution in a way that felt powerful and meaningful, spending a lot of the book examining its effects on science and culture, whereas many sci-fi authors would have just used something like that as some empty justification and dropped it. Also, Da Shi is a badass.
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Mar 11, 2015 22:48
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Phanatic posted:Has anyone read David Wingrove's Chung Kuo series? I read it back in the 1990s and for a while it was loving amazing but then the last couple of books seemed to mostly peter out and go nowhere. I decided to re-read it, and saw that over the past couple of years it was republished but now has 20 books instead of 8, and I gather things have been rearranged somewhat. Wingrove actually wrote two prequel books not too long ago that bridge the gap between the modern world and when the Chinese takes over. He also uses them as an opportunity to explain what happened to modern technology like the internet. Unfortunately the rerelease didn't do well so the publishers canceled it.
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Mar 11, 2015 23:15
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Just finished reading Fools Assassin by Robin Hobb and have got to say it's possibly the biggest steaming pile of money grubbing poo poo I've ever read. I quite liked all of the Fitz and the Fool books and the thought of another in the series excited me. This book does more to destroy Hobb's previous good work than it does to further the story. The characters are hollow and emotionless, the plotline is devoid of any point and just meanders through day to day life. If you're a fan of the series do yourself a favour and leave it where it was.
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Mar 12, 2015 00:43
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:Also, Da Shi is a badass. I love Da Shi. One of the Three Body sections made it into my collection of passages I type out to try to steal its writing mojo, it was that good. I forgive a book any flaws when it has a passage like that. Also did anyone else get a mental picture of the Three Body people even though little was given away? I kept picturing them as big tardigrades.
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Mar 12, 2015 01:24
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I was thinking about holding off on 3-body until all 3 books are out. But everybody raving about it makes me want to read it now. Is the first one stand-alone enough that I won't be mad about waiting for the next 2?
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Mar 12, 2015 01:52
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ZerodotJander posted:I was thinking about holding off on 3-body until all 3 books are out. But everybody raving about it makes me want to read it now. Is the first one stand-alone enough that I won't be mad about waiting for the next 2? It's standalone enough, but you will still probably be sad the second book isn't out yet once you finish
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Mar 12, 2015 12:25
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Good to see some 3 body love. Out of curiosity, what was the section that you use for writing? I do agree he is a great character.
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Mar 12, 2015 14:03
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Aargh posted:Just finished reading Fools Assassin by Robin Hobb and have got to say it's possibly the biggest steaming pile of money grubbing poo poo I've ever read. I quite liked all of the Fitz and the Fool books and the thought of another in the series excited me. This book does more to destroy Hobb's previous good work than it does to further the story. The characters are hollow and emotionless, the plotline is devoid of any point and just meanders through day to day life. If you're a fan of the series do yourself a favour and leave it where it was. I just finished the Fool's Assasin myself and really enjoyed it. It was only until after I read it that I heard about the Fitz and the Fool. Since I already know what happens to Fitz, I've been on the fence about reading the original series.
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Mar 12, 2015 16:01
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RisqueBarber posted:I just finished the Fool's Assasin myself and really enjoyed it. It was only until after I read it that I heard about the Fitz and the Fool. Since I already know what happens to Fitz, I've been on the fence about reading the original series. You definitely should. It's about the journey, not the destination dude. One of the few series that got me a little weepy eyed.
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Mar 12, 2015 16:14
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occamsnailfile posted:So my sister posed a book request to me, which was "Fantasy novel with a strong female protagonist, and a best friend who is also female." I am stumped, can't think of any off the top of my head--strong female leads are more common than in the past, but female lead without a sassy talking animal/dude friend is harder for me to tabulate. Going through my own reading lists for the past couple years doesn't produce much. Try "The Privilege of the Sword" by Ellen Kushner. It's about a woman that learns to be a duelist in a patriarchal society where the privilege to carry and fight with a sword is the #1 arbiter of social and legal status/power. It's  as hell.
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Mar 12, 2015 16:19
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Dammit. Terry Pratchett died 
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Mar 12, 2015 16:19
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RisqueBarber posted:Did anyone else have problems with The Broken Eye? I really like the first two books but this last one I just can't seem to get into. I don't know if its because it's been over a year since I read the second or if its just poo poo. I just feel like there's not enough Gavin. I felt the same. It still has enough moments of outstanding action that I ultimately enjoyed it, but I didn't burn through it like I did the first two. I also felt the series started to get up its own rear end in prophecy, which is a huge pet peeve for me. Not every fantasy series needs to be moored in soothsaying and prophesying, goddamn. More than anything I feel like Weeks made a mistake in the second novel by having Gavin (huge spoiler) kill his brother. The scenes with Dazen in the meticulously crafted prison were among my favorites.
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Mar 12, 2015 16:47
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thehomemaster posted:Good to see some 3 body love. It's the whole bit where they build the giant computer out of people and then get sucked into space when the suns align. I collect bits of writing I find the most vivid, immersive, extra memorable, or something strange that I really admire. As a writing exercise, I type them out then write a paragraph or so about what grabbed me. I got the idea from Hunter S. Thompson typing out The Sun Also Rises and The Great Gatsby to try to gain muscle memory for good writing, but my exercise is more about figuring out what I personally find compelling so I just focus on scenes I like. Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Dammit. Terry Pratchett died Aww, we all knew it was coming, but still.
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Mar 12, 2015 17:49
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