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Onean posted:I felt the same way about it at first, but I'd say try again if you feel like it. The payoff afterwards was worth it for me. Do you remember where you stopped? I'm guessing it was a little before things got going, and started really tying into the other two books. I will try to finish it, eventually. I think I stopped on the chapter where one of the protags was breaking into her old job or something? Eh. I do look forward to the next book. (It's going to be about the second book's protagonist's rear end in a top hat Aztec Batman dad.)
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Apr 2, 2015 13:45
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I'd definitely try and finish it before reading the next one, then. It seems like the meat of first three were to introduce some major characters, and the ending scenes of the second and third feel like they're setting up the grounds for an overarching plot across the entire series.
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Apr 2, 2015 14:24
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I really like Gladstone's books, and he's a super nice guy too. Give him money.
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Apr 2, 2015 15:15
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fritz posted:It's not just this thread: https://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/2015/02/04/sad-puppies-3-the-unraveling-of-an-unreliable-field/ Aha hahahaha! "Oh no, the field is growing beyond the pointless recycled pap! This is terrible! I might have to practice and develop some skills if I can't put out the same poo poo again and again and again!" Holy gently caress these people are useless. Fried Chicken fucked around with this message at 16:18 on Apr 2, 2015 |
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Apr 2, 2015 16:16
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Some months ago I read the first book in the Polity series (Gridlinked), and I found it to be quite good. How is the rest of the series? Is it worth to read everybook or should I leave the "big picture" and go to the Spatterjay books (which if I'm not mistaken are quite different even happening in the same universe)?
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Apr 2, 2015 17:12
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Ani posted:I thought Three Parts Dead was pretty lighthearted and read very quickly, whereas City of Stairs was relatively slower going, and felt a bit more "literary". If you like it (I did!) the author has written two other books in the same universe, but with different characters. I read City of Stairs immediately after William Gibson's The Peripheral, and it felt like such an easy quick read. Now that I'm reading The Causal Angel, CoS feels like a children's book. Basically what I'm saying is gently caress, this poo poo is confusing and hard to process but it's so goddamn good
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Apr 2, 2015 17:24
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Fried Chicken posted:Aha hahahaha! "Oh no, the field is growing beyond the pointless recycled pap! This is terrible! I might have to practice and develop some skills if I can't put out the same poo poo again and again and again!" I like how he ignores that there has always been political and philosophical SF/F, and that it is what usually garners awards, attention and longevity over rote boy-adventure dreck. He also somehow thinks that works that support his worldview and his politics are completely apolitical, because "white dude uses violence to overcome adversity, defeats the evil and inscrutable Other, and gets laid along the way because he is a Nice Guy and Deserves It" has absolutely no ramifications.
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Apr 2, 2015 17:46
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Am I missing something? I haven't noticed minority-themed sf/fantasy fiction crowding out mainstream ones online or in retail.
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Apr 2, 2015 18:13
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Amberskin posted:Some months ago I read the first book in the Polity series (Gridlinked), and I found it to be quite good. How is the rest of the series? Is it worth to read everybook or should I leave the "big picture" and go to the Spatterjay books (which if I'm not mistaken are quite different even happening in the same universe)? They're great, in my opinion. Regarding Spatterjay, you could go straight to them, or continue on with the Agent Cormac series. It won't really matter. I really liked the Spatterjay books, and there are only three to the Cormac five, so eh, I'd start on spatterjay because they're fun as gently caress.
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Apr 2, 2015 18:56
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I've been reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Galileo's Dream as my bedtime book for a while. It is pretty slow (not unexpected from KSR) but eventually drew me in. The basic premise is that Galileo is interacting with future-people from the Galilean moons: learning from them, helping them, and being manipulated by them. KSR has a gift for presenting ahistorical events as fact that always gets by me for a bit (In Antarctica, it was the collapse of the Ross Ice Shelf due to warming). In this book it was events around the Catholic Church of Galileo's time. Does anybody else get fooled by SF that way? I had a similar bit of confusion reading Heinlein's The Door into Summer - it's set in 1970 with cryogenic time-travel to 2000. I knew that 2000 was in the future, but it hadn't occurred to me that 1970 was also in the future. It took me a long time to figure out why the tech and culture of 1970 seemed so weird; the book was published in the mid-fifties.
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Apr 2, 2015 19:07
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shrike82 posted:Am I missing something? I haven't noticed minority-themed sf/fantasy fiction crowding out mainstream ones online or in retail. I think it's fair to call it the current fashion in SF lit circles and worldcon-going fandom, though it hasn't dominated the Hugos by any means as a quick look at recent awards will show. Sad Puppies is sort-of the SFF equivalent of gamergate, but smaller and less virulent because different demographic, so instead it just trolls the Hugo nominations.
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Apr 2, 2015 19:24
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So the Hugo shortlist is out Saturday, but until then what are your personal Hugo lists?
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Apr 2, 2015 20:14
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http://boingboing.net/2015/04/02/octavias-brood.html I can't wait to have my imagination decolonized by radical activists.
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Apr 2, 2015 20:18
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How are Paolo Bacigalupi's Ship Breaker, The Drowned Cities, The Doubt Factory, and The Alchemist? I read The Windup Girl and mostly liked it, but the first three of these seem to be YA, which can mean anything from "trying to not confuse 10-year-olds" to "quality writing minus the grimdark".
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Apr 2, 2015 20:46
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The Alchemist was pretty great, but you should be aware that it's only like... 60 pages or something.
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Apr 2, 2015 22:12
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rchandra posted:I've been reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Galileo's Dream as my bedtime book for a while. It is pretty slow (not unexpected from KSR) but eventually drew me in. The basic premise is that Galileo is interacting with future-people from the Galilean moons: learning from them, helping them, and being manipulated by them. I find KSR has that effect on me too - even for stuff that's blatantly made up (predictions for stuff in the far future). His style is pretty matter of fact, and there's almost no whiz-bang or technofetish stuff happening in his writing. His style is more like he's displaying this curated view - picking some nice things out to show you, rather than giving a spin on something. He's in awe of people rather than technology, and especially not in awe of his own style or voice, or the various predictions/projects he makes. So when he gives the three page summary for how to make Venus habitable in 2312, it has this aura of something already existing, that he just decided to show you, instead of something he made up.
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Apr 2, 2015 23:00
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Soviet Canuckistan posted:How are Paolo Bacigalupi's Ship Breaker, The Drowned Cities, The Doubt Factory, and The Alchemist? I read The Windup Girl and mostly liked it, but the first three of these seem to be YA, which can mean anything from "trying to not confuse 10-year-olds" to "quality writing minus the grimdark". I enjoyed Ship Breaker and The Drowned Cities. They explore some of the same themes as The Windup Girl. They are both incredibly dark at times, which may be a turn off.
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Apr 3, 2015 04:35
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thespaceinvader posted:The Alchemist was pretty great, but you should be aware that it's only like... 60 pages or something. There's a companion book to this, set in the same world but written by someone else: The Executioness by Tobias Buckell.
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Apr 3, 2015 04:47
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my copy of the new translation of the dead mountaineer's inn arrived and it is a good book
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Apr 3, 2015 05:37
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shrike82 posted:Am I missing something? I haven't noticed minority-themed sf/fantasy fiction crowding out mainstream ones online or in retail. It's not. However, if you read a lot of forums and such it's easy to get that idea. Somebody in one of these threads posted the cover of the first book of Jim Butcher's new series and I think the first response was basically "yet another white male protagonist". Leckie's Ancillary Justice got huge press(and good press) solely because of the gender issues thing when they weren't even that relevant to the story. Somebody else in this thread was talking about how they can't make themselves read Bridge of Birds because of cultural appropriation. On another forum I used to read, I ran into somebody saying that the Black Company books were awful because there were no gay characters. There's a lot of noise about that kind of thing now and I can see how people can wind up with the idea that the only way to write an 'acceptable' book now is to play SJW bingo, especially if they're already of a conservative bent.
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Apr 3, 2015 06:45
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I'm waiting for Joe Abercrombie's next ultraviolent book with a quadriplegic viking as the main protagonist. Those swordfights are gonna be brutal.
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Apr 3, 2015 07:08
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Khizan posted:It's not. On that note, there is a newly started company here in Sweden where the business idea is to make a texts and books "acceptable" by playing SJW bingo.
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Apr 3, 2015 07:11
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Ornamented Death posted:There's a companion book to this, set in the same world but written by someone else: The Executioness by Tobias Buckell. Yep, they are both pretty great, but similarly both very short. I would like more set in that world, it's a neat world.
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Apr 3, 2015 09:25
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Last month I read Hyperion. Essentially, it's a group of pilgrims on their way to almost certain death but maybe to get a wish granted by a robotic murder machine from the future on the planet Hyperion. They all fly there in a tree through outer space. They tell their stories so even though all but one of them is definitely going to get summarily punched through the face by a bladed claw, they can at least die knowing what everyone else would have wished for if they also weren't gutted like mackerel. I loved some of the stories. Overall it was an interesting world and I came to hope all of their wishes would be granted instead of getting murdered for all eternity by the antagonist. It ended abruptly, just before the promised spine-flaying. Tune in next week was the basic feeling by the end. I was suckered in by the cliff hanger so much I read the sequel, which was more straight forward. Instead of tales of the past, the people from the first book served as point of view characters moving forward and the different chapters would jump in and out of the group of pilgrims or the government maneuvering to avoid a war back home, and the interplay between them as events progress. Then it ended and I was pretty nonplussed. It felt wrapped up way too fast, all at once, and too neatly - or maybe I was just exhausted of reading and played too fast and loose in the last 8%. Now I see there's a third book, and while I generally liked the first two, it looks like none of the cast returns, as it's even further in the future, and I feel exhausted just thinking about it. The hardest part of the dune books was when they'd go another 20k years in the future and everyone is dead but ol' duncan idaho's eleventy billionth awakened clone. I'm reflexively flinching in anticipation of that kind of deal, here. My question is: Is the third book a good book/worth reading/even necessary? Everything felt wrapped up, slapdash as I felt it was. I don't know where else the story needs to go.
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Apr 3, 2015 10:05
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Established wisdom on the Hyperion cantos: Hyperion is great, Fall of Hyperion is okay, the two Endymion books are hot garbage.
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Apr 3, 2015 10:40
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Cardiac posted:On that note, there is a newly started company here in Sweden where the business idea is to make a texts and books "acceptable" by playing SJW bingo. Triggered
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Apr 3, 2015 11:49
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Amberskin posted:Some months ago I read the first book in the Polity series (Gridlinked), and I found it to be quite good. How is the rest of the series? Is it worth to read everybook or should I leave the "big picture" and go to the Spatterjay books (which if I'm not mistaken are quite different even happening in the same universe)? They're easy reads. Never going to win a Hugo, but they rattle along in a entertaining fashion. They're not without flaw, Cormac gets a bit Mary-sue and there's some Lensman Arm Racing going on as the books progress but they're still fun. I'd definitely read the first Spatterjay book, regardless of whether you decide to continue/lose interest in the mainline books. It's worth it just for the insane Ecosystem. Forget your worlds of pseudo-dinosaurs, now that's a Deathworld.
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Apr 3, 2015 12:00
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Antti posted:Established wisdom on the Hyperion cantos: Hyperion is great, Fall of Hyperion is okay, the two Endymion books are hot garbage.
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Apr 3, 2015 17:16
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DACK FAYDEN posted:So bad that they retroactively make the first two worse. I mean that. However bad you might be imagining them to be, they're worse than that. So bad.
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Apr 3, 2015 18:05
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:However bad you might be imagining them to be, they're worse than that. So bad. So bad that SyFy will probably option them for a series.
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Apr 3, 2015 18:08
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Krinkle posted:
Read the third book, and run away from the Endymion ones. This is a rare example of an author loving his own work by trying to milk it a little bit more.
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Apr 3, 2015 18:15
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Amberskin posted:Read the third book, and run away from the Endymion ones. This is a rare example of an author loving his own work by trying to milk it a little bit more. The third book is Endymion. It's Hyperion, Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, Rise of Endymion.
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Apr 3, 2015 18:19
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Antti posted:The third book is Endymion. It's Hyperion, Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, Rise of Endymion. gently caress, you are right. I swapped the numbers. So, forget about the third book too!
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Apr 3, 2015 18:58
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Goddamn, glad I asked before buying the next on kindle. That oneclick is too fast and irrevocable. XBenedict posted:So bad that SyFy will probably option them for a series. This is possibly the most hateful thing I've ever seen said about a book so I will stay clear away.
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Apr 3, 2015 19:19
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Krinkle posted:That oneclick is too fast and irrevocable. Nah, Amazon is pretty good about issuing refunds for Kindle stuff.
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Apr 3, 2015 19:25
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Am I the only one who was perfectly satisfied with the ending to Hyperion? Admittedly, I had been forewarned that everything after it is a step down in quality. It seemed like a good way to cap off what was essentially a collection of very loosely interconnected short stories, and by the end of it civilization is on the verge of being destroyed by several separate unresolvable threats, and the magic boojum at the end of the rainbow is only going to get more ridiculous the more that is revealed about it so why not quit while you're ahead?
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Apr 3, 2015 19:27
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I liked it. I ended up stopping about halfway through Fall of Hyperion, it just didn't just didn't grab my attention the way Hyperion did. I guess it would be nice to see how it all goes down so I may finish it eventually, but there's too much on my list right now.
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Apr 3, 2015 22:06
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I liked Fall's conclusions for some characters (the poet in particular) and the generally hopeful note it ends on. The thing about Hyperion is that it's a series of vignettes of the universe and I never really got the sense of pressing threat from it - there's a lot of hosed up places and there's something connecting them but it really feels like the first half of a book. That being said, all of the stories are self-contained and pretty good on their own.
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Apr 3, 2015 22:17
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anilEhilated posted:I liked Fall's conclusions for some characters (the poet in particular) and the generally hopeful note it ends on. The thing about Hyperion is that it's a series of vignettes of the universe and I never really got the sense of pressing threat from it - there's a lot of hosed up places and there's something connecting them but it really feels like the first half of a book. I guess I'll be the odd one out and say I enjoyed the entire series but will admit Endymion did drag a bit in places. I have read the whole thing 4-5 times. Some bits that stand out for me are: Father Duré's fate in the Tesla forest. Rachel Weintraub's story The whole cruciform thing The completely hosed up Space Pope story The farcaster portals The resurrection creches - yeah, I'd love to travel FTL, but not like that.
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Apr 3, 2015 23:36
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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. This is from a while back, but you really don't unless you like kind of well written (relatively speaking) BDSM torture porn. I picked the first book up by accident when I was a teenager and was really taken in by the first couple dozen pages and then it just turned into porn.
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