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ulmont posted:http://www.amazon.com/Dragons-Dorca...60_SR112%2C160_ It wasn't the greatest book ever, but it wasn't horrible. I'd probably pick up the sequel for cheap. 
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Oct 14, 2015 06:37
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Alec Eiffel posted:Shadowmarch was good, a real page-turner. I was worried about liking it at the beginning (the chapters at the beginning introducing the Funderlings [Williams' dwarf stand-in] were very worrisome, but they became less goofy over time). The Funderlings were some of my favorite characters and they have a pretty neat story arc too. I also really liked the Autarch a lot as a good ol' menacing villain. The pacing definitely reminds me a lot of Memory, Sorrow, Thorn; by the second book the characters have spread out a bit more so you'll be flipping around the world a lot. It's a very Tad Williams story, meaning a lot of crazy stuff happens as you go and there are a fair amount of twists. I enjoyed the series quite a lot, hope you do too! I still haven't read the Dirty Streets of Heaven series he released, was waiting for the whole thing to hit paperback, but as I look at his wikipedia page I see he's going to work on a sequel trilogy to MST, so I'll definitely have to keep an eye out for that! I loved MST and think it's one of the better straight-up fantasy trilogies around.
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Oct 14, 2015 07:16
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ulmont posted:http://www.amazon.com/Dragons-Dorca...60_SR112%2C160_ Dorcastle? I went there last Easter weekend, we bought fudge and went to the sheep farm. The wife got some really nice holiday snaps. Didn't know there were dragons, though. Maybe we'll go back next year.
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Oct 14, 2015 15:30
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I really tried to read Vermilion but gave up at the halfway mark. It's a bad book. The premise starts strong, but the plot takes an enormously long time to go anywhere, with characters introduced and then apparently discarded along the way. Despite the promise of old western ghost-busting said ghost-busting is rare. The author also has a Thomas-The-Tank-Engine tic of constantly telling you how exactly what the protagonist is thinking and feeling. "Dialogue" Joe felt dumb and worried! The protagonist is naive -- not "likable kid" naive but "geez this is a dumb person" naif underscored by her molasses-slow emotional and intellectual reactions to things. There's clearly a push to make this a book about identity and inclusiveness but it's all handled clumsily. I abandoned the book at the point where -- spoilers -- the charming guy she meets who is obviously a conflicted bad guy reveals that he is an near-immortal palling around with his gay vampire lover. They've spent several centuries killing people, up to and including owning slaves and eating the slaves. Despite all this Joe feels like it's hard for her to judge because hey, gays are oppressed too. Also the bad guy is telling her this and then letting her go with enough information to blow their secret operation because he feels a huge connection to her, for absolutely no reason I can tell. He's not attracted to her, she doesn't do anything interesting, and she has been feeding him lame, obvious lies the entire time. Also this revelation out of nowhere ruined any real mystery. I assume the remainder of the book is spent taking down the bad guy, I don't know. I skipped ahead and saw a character named 'Zebulon' and I closed the book. Bottom line is this is not a good book although it does have the best cover of all time that isn't Dinosaur Lords.
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Oct 14, 2015 15:48
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Yes. I only managed to get through a couple of chapters before I deleted the book.
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Oct 14, 2015 15:59
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I don't remember who recommended The Dragon Never Sleeps by Glen Cook, but I really enjoyed it. Are his other books any good?
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Oct 14, 2015 16:03
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DACK FAYDEN posted:I don't remember who recommended The Dragon Never Sleeps by Glen Cook, but I really enjoyed it. Are his other books any good?
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Oct 14, 2015 16:07
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I frankly hated The Dragon Never Sleeps and loved all of the Black Company so you might not find them all that similar.
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Oct 14, 2015 16:29
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DACK FAYDEN posted:I don't remember who recommended The Dragon Never Sleeps by Glen Cook, but I really enjoyed it. Are his other books any good? If you liked the Dragon Never Sleeps - which I loved -, you might be like me and somewhat sorta enjoy the first three or four books of the Black Company, but absolutely love things like Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson.
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Oct 14, 2015 16:46
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DACK FAYDEN posted:I don't remember who recommended The Dragon Never Sleeps by Glen Cook, but I really enjoyed it. Are his other books any good? I'd definitely recommend checking out Passage at Arms and the Black Company series. I quite like Cook, and he is really prolific. I would recommend avoiding his Garret P.I. stuff Patrick Spens fucked around with this message at 16:51 on Oct 14, 2015 |
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Oct 14, 2015 16:47
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chrisoya posted:Yes. Passage At Arms has a different viewpoint on space warfare, the Black Company is a great military fantasy series, a lot of people who aren't me like his Garrett PI fantasy detective books, and I've enjoyed most of the rest of what I've read. Passage at Arms is so good. It takes the whole concept of those shiny fresh clean spaceships of Star Trek and the like and shits all over it. The space ships in Passage at Arms are dirty, cramped, and hilariously unsafe. At the same time he manages to not make it sound too technical or preachy, it's just "this is how poo poo works", and it feels so much more, well, realistic. I hate it when people argue whether or not a book is realistic when its about loving spaceships firing lasers at each other, but Cook creates a world where the spaceships feel like something you can see modern day people build and fly, rather than these pseudo-magical things other sci-fi uses, with artificial gravity and giant windows everywhere. It is also an absolutely unashamed "Das Boot" rewrite in space. It is so good. One of my all-time favorite sci-fi novels.
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Oct 14, 2015 17:23
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Don't forget the Shadowline/Starfishers trilogy. They're set in the same universe as Passage at Arms and they're good milsf. The first one, Shadowline, is a Norse-mythos themed take on free companies of mercenaries locked into a very personal struggle. A great deal of the book concerns warfare on the bright side of a Mercury-like planet; the rest is family fuckups and betrayals. There's some space combat, but it's mostly personal or land-based. The two Starfishes books follow up a decade or so later with one of the sons of the main guy from Shadowline on assignment in Naval Intelligence. He and his partner handle a nasty situation on one planet, then get thrown back together on a long-term undercover assignment to infiltrate the Starfishers. They're a space-based splinter of humanity that have made a deal with the Starfish - semi-energy being living in deep space whose life processes produce the key component for the ftl radio that binds civilizations together. There's lots of spy stuff, some space combat, and Big Secrets In The Stars. Highly recommended. A couple of short stories in the Winter Dreams collection round out the setting.
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Oct 14, 2015 18:09
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AEMINAL posted:The Player Of Games looks very up my alley, loving what I'm seeing on the wiki page for "The Culture"! I envy you reading Banks, and especially his Culture series, for the first time.
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Oct 14, 2015 21:54
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Regarding the Cook talk, I'm gonna chime in as the guy who likes the Garrett PI series. The first book isn't anything special, but it'll get going - a series as long as that has got to have its ups and downs. While the individual stories are usually good, the real star of that show is the setting - Cook manages to develop his fantasy city and its place in the world in a very believable way throughout quite a few historical events (as well as a couple of utterly bizarre ones - aliens, anyone?) and shows how its affected. My personal favorite book from that is Old Tin Sorrows, if you can't get into the first one, you might want to give that a shot. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 23:04 on Oct 14, 2015 |
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Oct 14, 2015 23:02
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Yuppie Scum posted:I envy you reading Banks, and especially his Culture series, for the first time. Speaking of which, I just finished Consider Phlebas, the first Banks novel that I have read. that...got a little dark. Really enjoyed it, in any case. Amazing that this was his first scifi outing, can't wait to see what he puts together in his later stuff.
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Oct 15, 2015 04:17
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MechaFrogzilla posted:Speaking of which, I just finished Consider Phlebas, the first Banks novel that I have read. Hahaha. You think THAT was?  Read through Player of Games so you can read Use of Weapons.
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Oct 15, 2015 04:44
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I don't recommend Roger Zelazny's Isle of the Dead enough in this thread.
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Oct 15, 2015 04:51
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Hey all, don't normally post in here but figured now's a good a time to start as any. Just finished Blindsight by Peter Watts. I definitely enjoyed it, as lacking in compelling characters as it was. I may get crucified for it in here, but I often find hard sci-fi authors are really loving good "idea" people, and those are often strong enough to carry me through a novel, but I'm never super emotionally invested in them. Is Echopraxia worth reading as well if I go in expecting something similar to Blindsight? Also, does anyone have any recs for hard sci-fi that also has a really strong narrative and characters to supplement interesting ideas?
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Oct 15, 2015 16:11
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anilEhilated posted:Regarding the Cook talk, I'm gonna chime in as the guy who likes the Garrett PI series. The first book isn't anything special, but it'll get going - a series as long as that has got to have its ups and downs. While the individual stories are usually good, the real star of that show is the setting - Cook manages to develop his fantasy city and its place in the world in a very believable way throughout quite a few historical events (as well as a couple of utterly bizarre ones - aliens, anyone?) and shows how its affected. The Garret books are enjoyable. Old Tin Sorrows is probably my favorite too, although I did like the most recent two books, Gilded Latten Bones and Dread Bronze Ambitions as well. They're pretty far removed from the rest of the series though, especially Gilded, and change the tone a lot. In the middle some of the books blur together a lot.
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Oct 15, 2015 16:15
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anilEhilated posted:Regarding the Cook talk, I'm gonna chime in as the guy who likes the Garrett PI series. The first book isn't anything special, but it'll get going - a series as long as that has got to have its ups and downs. While the individual stories are usually good, the real star of that show is the setting - Cook manages to develop his fantasy city and its place in the world in a very believable way throughout quite a few historical events (as well as a couple of utterly bizarre ones - aliens, anyone?) and shows how its affected. Every time I start the Garrett Files I switch over to reading the Nero Wolfe books about halfway through.
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Oct 15, 2015 16:23
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trip9 posted:Hey all, don't normally post in here but figured now's a good a time to start as any. Just finished Blindsight by Peter Watts. I definitely enjoyed it, as lacking in compelling characters as it was. I may get crucified for it in here, but I often find hard sci-fi authors are really loving good "idea" people, and those are often strong enough to carry me through a novel, but I'm never super emotionally invested in them. Is Echopraxia worth reading as well if I go in expecting something similar to Blindsight? Kim Stanley Robinson. His latest, Aurora, would be a good start.
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Oct 15, 2015 16:28
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Yuppie Scum posted:I envy you reading Banks, and especially his Culture series, for the first time. Oh poo poo, it's that good? gently caress yeeeeeah, just what I wanted to find. Should I abandon Ann Leckie's poo poo for it?  edit: Jesus christ just found out about "2312" by Kim Stanley Robinson I wish I could read faster  Goons, should I read 2312 first or go full on Banks??? Ahh. I'm leaning 2312 after I finish Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. Halfway through it. Good idea or bad? I really really like hard sci fi. Reviews say "read other KSR books before 2312", is this necessary? AEMINAL fucked around with this message at 17:05 on Oct 15, 2015 |
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Oct 15, 2015 16:54
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I really thought Aurora was all big ideas and weak on characterization, unless you count Ship. Freya got a lot of development but it all seemed irrelevant, disconnected from her later behavior. She never really gets over her inferiority complex so much as she just stops having one. She's supposed to know the ship's population better than anyone but she has no particular insight into the political landscape; instead it falls to her father to predict an uprising based on his afternoon reading of history books. Devi has nothing to her personality beyond being a workaholic with a pessimistic outlook; she mainly exists to show how everything falls apart in space when knowledge is lost. Freya's father is a cardboard old man whose job is to dispense wisdom, and everyone else is even more one-dimensional.
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Oct 15, 2015 16:55
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Every time I start the Garrett Files I switch over to reading the Nero Wolfe books about halfway through.
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Oct 15, 2015 16:57
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trip9 posted:Hey all, don't normally post in here but figured now's a good a time to start as any. Just finished Blindsight by Peter Watts. I definitely enjoyed it, as lacking in compelling characters as it was. I may get crucified for it in here, but I often find hard sci-fi authors are really loving good "idea" people, and those are often strong enough to carry me through a novel, but I'm never super emotionally invested in them. Is Echopraxia worth reading as well if I go in expecting something similar to Blindsight? Echopraxia is a good book but yah it's the same style as Blindsight. I wouldn't really call it "hard sci fi" but Gateway by Frederik Pohl has a pretty well developed main character and definitely fits the bill for "cool idea". Probably one of my favourites.
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Oct 15, 2015 17:08
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trip9 posted:Hey all, don't normally post in here but figured now's a good a time to start as any. Just finished Blindsight by Peter Watts. I definitely enjoyed it, as lacking in compelling characters as it was. I may get crucified for it in here, but I often find hard sci-fi authors are really loving good "idea" people, and those are often strong enough to carry me through a novel, but I'm never super emotionally invested in them. Is Echopraxia worth reading as well if I go in expecting something similar to Blindsight? This is pretty common and is the reason I think a lot of these authors (Niven and PKD come to mind) are at their best in the short story format; it's long enough to showcase a cool idea, but not so long that it bogs down in the lack of anything else.
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Oct 15, 2015 17:38
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Echopraxia really kind of fell flat for me compared to Blindsight which at least had the neat exploration of consciousness and self-awareness. All I took away from Echopraxia was re-covering some ideas from Blindsight and a lot of  about how primeval and backwards spirituality/religiosity is. The aliens make a brief appearance 3/4 through for like one scene and then the whole thing kind of peters out in a weakish ending. At least the dialogue wasn't as truncated and jargon-y as Blindsight so it read more smoothly than intellectuals barking turbo-wikipedia entries back and forth.
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Oct 15, 2015 17:40
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trip9 posted:Hey all, don't normally post in here but figured now's a good a time to start as any. Just finished Blindsight by Peter Watts. I definitely enjoyed it, as lacking in compelling characters as it was. I may get crucified for it in here, but I often find hard sci-fi authors are really loving good "idea" people, and those are often strong enough to carry me through a novel, but I'm never super emotionally invested in them. Is Echopraxia worth reading as well if I go in expecting something similar to Blindsight? I'm hard pressed to think of any sci-fi writers who are actually good at characters - maybe Ian McDonald and William Gibson? But I'm not sure I'd classify them as "hard" sci-fi. As a rule of thumb if you want really well-written, "literary" sci-fi it's better to read literary authors who deign to dip their toe in the genre pool. Margaret Atwood's Oryx & Crake is excellent (though I didn't care for the sequels). Also Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. Edit - Also China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F. McHugh has quite good character writing. And Under the Skin by Michel Faber, and Chris Beckett's Dark Eden books. freebooter fucked around with this message at 02:45 on Oct 16, 2015 |
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Oct 16, 2015 02:41
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trip9 posted:Hey all, don't normally post in here but figured now's a good a time to start as any. Just finished Blindsight by Peter Watts. I definitely enjoyed it, as lacking in compelling characters as it was. I may get crucified for it in here, but I often find hard sci-fi authors are really loving good "idea" people, and those are often strong enough to carry me through a novel, but I'm never super emotionally invested in them. Is Echopraxia worth reading as well if I go in expecting something similar to Blindsight? I'm re-reading Zelazny right now,so I'm sortof on a kick for him, but at his best I think he qualifies here (though each book is a gamble; he liked to experiment and some of his experiments failed). Try Lord of Light or Isle of the Dead. Stars my Destination has a strong narrative and central character also. Le Guin is worth trying too, start with [i]The Dispossessed[/i[. All of those rec's are older-style SF though rather than modern authors.
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Oct 16, 2015 06:12
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trip9 posted:Hey all, don't normally post in here but figured now's a good a time to start as any. Just finished Blindsight by Peter Watts. I definitely enjoyed it, as lacking in compelling characters as it was. I may get crucified for it in here, but I often find hard sci-fi authors are really loving good "idea" people, and those are often strong enough to carry me through a novel, but I'm never super emotionally invested in them. Is Echopraxia worth reading as well if I go in expecting something similar to Blindsight? It's not particularly 'hard' sci-fi, but maybe Cixin Liu's Three Body Problem?
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Oct 16, 2015 06:22
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I don't know about character or hard sci-fi, specifically, but I find Harlan Ellison extremely engaging. If you want both, try Lem's Solaris, perhaps. Megazver fucked around with this message at 08:55 on Oct 16, 2015 |
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Oct 16, 2015 08:51
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Khizan posted:It's not particularly 'hard' sci-fi, but maybe Cixin Liu's Three Body Problem? I am not sure this is appropriate for someone asking for strong characters.
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Oct 16, 2015 08:54
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Bunch of stuff in the UK Kindle daily deal today, including Luna (£9 off!) and (all?) the First Law stuff, Mistborn 1, Rothfuss....... I added Luna to my wishlist after rsjr's recommendation on the last page, so I'd be a fool not to at that price. Junkenstein fucked around with this message at 10:11 on Oct 16, 2015 |
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Oct 16, 2015 09:59
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Junkenstein posted:Bunch of stuff in the UK Kindle daily deal today, including Luna (£9 off!) and (all?) the First Law stuff, Mistborn 1, Rothfuss.......
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Oct 16, 2015 10:43
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chrisoya posted:Last Call is also in there, if anyone hasn't read Tim Powers' second-greatest work. Declare is less that £2 as well, not sure if its a flash sale or not but pretty sure I paid more than that earlier in the year.
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Oct 16, 2015 10:58
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chrisoya posted:Last Call is also in there, if anyone hasn't read Tim Powers' second-greatest work. Oh poo poo, there's actually a hell of a lot more than appears in the usual Kindle Daily bit. The 'Deal of the Day' seems to be SF and Fantasy Kindle books.
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Oct 16, 2015 11:00
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Megazver posted:I don't know about character or hard sci-fi, specifically, but I find Harlan Ellison extremely engaging.
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Oct 16, 2015 17:50
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Cool guys, thanks for the recs, I"m gonna check some of them out and will report back.
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Oct 16, 2015 18:02
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Leckie's top 10 favorite SF books. I thought this list was notable due to the complete and abject lack of Iain Banks: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/tip-sheet/article/68381-the-10-best-science-fiction-books.html
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Oct 16, 2015 22:37
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anilEhilated posted:Regarding the Cook talk, I'm gonna chime in as the guy who likes the Garrett PI series. The first book isn't anything special, but it'll get going - a series as long as that has got to have its ups and downs. While the individual stories are usually good, the real star of that show is the setting - Cook manages to develop his fantasy city and its place in the world in a very believable way throughout quite a few historical events (as well as a couple of utterly bizarre ones - aliens, anyone?) and shows how its affected. I keep buying and reading the Garrett books, but I thought they went off the rails back when the space aliens showed up and the whole tricycle subplot hasn't helped.
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