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Hedrigall posted:I'm really sick of telepathy and its ilk popping up in my science fiction.
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Feb 9, 2016 18:49
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I thought Broken Angels and Woken Furies were fine. Not amazing, but pretty good.
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Feb 9, 2016 20:52
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Nevvy Z posted:Should I care about this book? It's a the source material for a famous old space opera anime with a dedicated cult following. This is the first time anything to do with it has been available in an official English version despite its advanced age, hence the joke. It's focused on politics, strategy and principle rather than steely eyed Manticoreans making enemy fleets spontaneously explode or magical space elves doing whatever. It's worth a look if you want a space war saga with two properly developed sides with internal politics and worthwhile characters.
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Feb 9, 2016 21:01
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xian posted:I thought Broken Angels and Woken Furies were fine. Not amazing, but pretty good. I read the series a few years ago and thought the entire thing was pretty darn good. I liked the trilogy better than Neal Asher's Polity/Brass Man stuff. I thought those were pretty good, too, though.Very solid action books. Asher does that well.
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Feb 10, 2016 03:08
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anilEhilated posted:What's with anime and vaguely germanic names? They're allies.
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Feb 10, 2016 06:07
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anilEhilated posted:What's with anime and vaguely germanic names? one of the factions in LOGH is basically Space Germany.
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Feb 10, 2016 17:46
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I recently found and read Adam Whitehead's History of Epic Fantasy. I've been looking for a comprehensive history of the genre for years and this is pretty much the only thing that comes close (as a mostly-linear timeline, not an encyclopedia). Some of it will be old news for most of you, but it highlights some more obscure books as well and the chronological ordering helps contextualize each individual work. For instance, I never got what the big deal with Memory, Sorrow and Thorn was until I read its entry.
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Feb 11, 2016 12:18
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I'd be more interested in a Banner of the Stars translation, to be honest, even if it is literally Peel posted:space elves Are there BotS translations, actually?
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Feb 12, 2016 13:29
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Autonomous Monster posted:I'd be more interested in a Banner of the Stars translation, to be honest, even if it is literally If you mean Crest of the Stars, Tokyopop translated at least one of them back in the day.
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Feb 12, 2016 13:51
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Finished Ancillary Justice this morning. Ugh, I liked the writing and everything, it was just pretty boring. Not much cool happened, the character development was barely there and the ending was not interesting. I felt like I was always waiting for the cool thing to happen. Never really grabbed me. People who really loved this novel, please convince me to read the rest of the series! I feel invested but don't want to at this point. Just before reading it I binged through the Silo series (Wool/Shift/Dust) which was awesome throughout. I am going to finish Malazan book 3 and then either read Beacon 23 (by Silo guy) or more Ancillary novels depending on whether something changes my mind.
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Feb 12, 2016 14:50
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As a fan of the Ancillary trilogy, I think I would be remiss in convincing you to read more of the same if you didn't like it.
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Feb 12, 2016 15:33
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Help me. I can't stop reading Vorkosigan Saga and there are all these other books out there too. It's just too much fun 
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Feb 12, 2016 15:53
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StrixNebulosa posted:If you mean Crest of the Stars, Tokyopop translated at least one of them back in the day. Crest is just the first book in the series, the other five all go by "banner" for whatever reason. It's Banner IV and V I'm interested in primarily, as they never got animated. Looks like TP only did Crest, anyway.
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Feb 12, 2016 17:43
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General Emergency posted:Help me. I can't stop reading Vorkosigan Saga and there are all these other books out there too. It's just too much fun You're doing God's work. Enjoy those books while you can, you'll get to the end and be sad that they're over.  (Although this reminded me that I need to track down a copy of Gentleman Jole, I'm not quite done yet!)
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Feb 12, 2016 18:24
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Vehementi posted:Finished Ancillary Justice this morning. Ugh, I liked the writing and everything, it was just pretty boring. Not much cool happened, the character development was barely there and the ending was not interesting. I felt like I was always waiting for the cool thing to happen. Never really grabbed me. I'm in the same boat as you. Read the first one and didn't find any reason to keep reading. E: typo Amberskin fucked around with this message at 20:53 on Feb 12, 2016 |
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Feb 12, 2016 20:18
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Vehementi posted:Finished Ancillary Justice this morning. Ugh, I liked the writing and everything, it was just pretty boring. Not much cool happened, the character development was barely there and the ending was not interesting. I felt like I was always waiting for the cool thing to happen. Never really grabbed me. Even less happens in the next two books.
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Feb 12, 2016 20:18
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Vehementi posted:Finished Ancillary Justice this morning. Ugh, I liked the writing and everything, it was just pretty boring. Not much cool happened, the character development was barely there and the ending was not interesting. I felt like I was always waiting for the cool thing to happen. Never really grabbed me. I've read Ancillary Justice as well, and while I enjoyed it more than you, I didn't think it was God's gift to science fiction either. I'm OK with it winning the Hugo (because the novel pool that year wasn't terribly good), but there were at least three Nebula nominees that would have been better winners than AJ. I've also read Anc Sword, which I thought was better than AJ, but I enjoy more political stuff. (I loved The Goblin Emperor, for example). Am probably going to read Anc Mercy (among other books) in time for the Hugo votes.
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Feb 12, 2016 23:17
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General Emergency posted:Help me. I can't stop reading Vorkosigan Saga and there are all these other books out there too. It's just too much fun Jesus. Help, please, goons. I'm ready to start reading these books, but there seems to be conflicting information about where to begin. Do I start with Shards of Honor or Falling Free? 
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Feb 13, 2016 02:50
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XBenedict posted:Jesus. Help, please, goons. In case of doubt, I'd go for publication order. (Not really sure if it applies in this case; I just read the three first books on that series)
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Feb 13, 2016 03:14
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XBenedict posted:I'm ready to start reading these books, but there seems to be conflicting information about where to begin. When in doubt, go by publication order.
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Feb 13, 2016 03:14
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Falling Free is like 300 years or so before anything else in the series and it's almost completely unrelated to it. Start with Shards of Honor, move on to Barrayar.
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Feb 13, 2016 03:52
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The Water Knife -- an unpleasant, sometimes thrilling but mostly interesting novel that hit a few nice notes. My biggest issue with it was that the ending came up a bit too quickly. I would've liked another chapter or two to shore up some plot lines. Definitely worth a read, though.
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Feb 13, 2016 05:02
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holocaust bloopers posted:The Water Knife -- an unpleasant, sometimes thrilling but mostly interesting novel that hit a few nice notes. My biggest issue with it was that the ending came up a bit too quickly. I would've liked another chapter or two to shore up some plot lines. Definitely worth a read, though. This book made me really want a New Vegas style game where you're a water knife. Fallout: Phoenix, imo.
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Feb 13, 2016 05:55
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Vehementi posted:Finished Ancillary Justice this morning. Ugh, I liked the writing and everything, it was just pretty boring. Not much cool happened, the character development was barely there and the ending was not interesting. I felt like I was always waiting for the cool thing to happen. Never really grabbed me. If you thought nothing happened in book one... Marvel as even LESS HAPPENS in Book 2! Gasp in Astonishment as the Next Two Books fall VICTIM to MIDDLE BOOK SYNDROME. You Won't Believe how LITTLE GETS RESOLVED!!!!!! Seriously, there are are some good parts to the next two books, but if a lack of cool things happening, and flimsy character development bothered you in Book One, you aren't going to like the rest of them.
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Feb 13, 2016 06:38
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I don't agree that nothing cool happens (One Esk Nineteen kills a starship with a loving pistol, for starters), but it does stay relatively sedate and slow-paced, especially compared to, say, the Polity books. I hugely enjoyed the Imperial Radch trilogy -- it actually reminded me somewhat of C.J. Cherryh, which is never a bad thing -- but if you didn't like Justice, I don't think you're going to enjoy Sword or Mercy either.
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Feb 13, 2016 08:42
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I rather suspect that trilogy would work better if it was a single book.
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Feb 13, 2016 10:29
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The Presger seem cool. If the books devoted as much time to them as they do to setting up communist tea farms then then they'd be a lot more exciting.
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Feb 13, 2016 11:18
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The Presger would be less cool if they went into more detail about them. They're only cool because they're basically unknown. When you do more with them you remove that feeling of alien-ness.
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Feb 13, 2016 14:17
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XBenedict posted:Jesus. Help, please, goons. Falling Free has nothing to do with the other books (other than some shared universe stuff that you'd notice in one later book). Star with Shards of Honor, Barrayar, then The Warrior's Apprentice.
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Feb 13, 2016 20:38
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I haven't read Mercy yet but I loved Justice and Sword. Thing is, they're not about stuff exploding and cool fights or whatever as other series are. I mean I thought the violence in the books well-used but it was never the point--it was about the lives of an alien but still human culture, the inequalities therein, and genuinely trying to do something positive against an overwhelming institutional resistance. Helping shore up a workers collective on a tea farm is about making peoples' lives better, and I like reading about that. If it wasn't hard--if it just required shooting the right corrupt/abusive manager--it wouldn't feel genuine even if it might be superficially satisfying. Not everyone will like those themes but not everyone likes 'rah rah murica shoot space terr'ists' milsf either. I also thought Anaander was a pretty unique and memorable villain, both for being her own worst enemy and for the beliefs and practices she represented, thousands of years of colonial Imperialism that refused to let herself die.
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Feb 14, 2016 09:16
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Finished Harm's Way by Colin Greenland. If I had to sum it up in one sentence, it'd be "Dickens in space" - with all that entails, with the amount of detail on the setting often just putting the reader to sleep. Very imaginative and picturesque - can't really not be with sailboats in space - and some wonderfully caricutaristic (is that a word?) characters and scenes - but that all really happens on the side and the plot itself is dreadfully dull. I realize it's mostly a bunch of fantasy convention subversion ("what's the worst that can happen on a quest to find the identities of your parents") but it's really unfulfilling and generally uninteresting. The vignettes of the universe around it still make it a pretty good read, though. Anyhow, here's the million dollar question - I don't think anyone else did boats in space, but is there any solid naval fantasy around? I read On Stranger Tides (which suffers from a similar amazing setting/predictable and boring story dichotomy) and the Chathrhand (sp?) books (which started off nice enough but were on a constant slope towards stupidity) - can't really think of anything else (/good) in the genre.
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Feb 14, 2016 15:34
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Still on the fence about AJ (thanks for replies) - while I didn't find it really satisfying overall, it was enjoyable to read, minute to minute and hour to hour. Maybe I'll read the other novels later. Finished up Malazan book 3, which on the other hand was devastating and satisfying at many points, and I look forward to reading more aside from how daunting each book is due to length and density of random contextless plot words. In the mean time I read Beacon 23 by the Silo guy, which was kind of an emotional rollercoaster. First 1/3 of the book was hilarious and the rest oscillated rapidly between hope and despair. Totally unrelated question: do there exist decent books that are told in the first person, where the narrator dies? Can't think of any, but I'm not well read and I am probably betraying some embarrassing miss of some classic novel by asking this. (I guess this has to just be a "yes I promise" or "no" question without spoiling by naming books)
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Feb 14, 2016 16:05
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Vehementi posted:Totally unrelated question: do there exist decent books that are told in the first person, where the narrator dies? Can't think of any, but I'm not well read and I am probably betraying some embarrassing miss of some classic novel by asking this. (I guess this has to just be a "yes I promise" or "no" question without spoiling by naming books) Yes. I read one last year, actually. It was excellent. The book is (massive spoilers, obviously) the Newsflesh trilogy by Seanan McGuire aka Mira Grant. That book handled it by changing viewpoint characters when the previous narrator dies. I'm pretty sure I've read at least one other that just went into third person and stayed that way, but it was longer ago and I don't remember the title or author. But yes, there are books that do this. ToxicFrog fucked around with this message at 16:18 on Feb 14, 2016 |
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Feb 14, 2016 16:15
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General Emergency posted:Help me. I can't stop reading Vorkosigan Saga and there are all these other books out there too. It's just too much fun XBenedict posted:Jesus. Help, please, goons. I'm almost finished with Cetaganda now, they're good so far! I'll have to see how the Miles books keep going. They're honestly getting a little samey after ~3 of them. Not that they're not enjoyable, but more that it's the continuing, episodic adventures of Miles (tune in this week to see how he beats the bad guys, then see him do it all over again next week!). I'll keep reading because they're still fun, but I'm hoping it sort of shifts away from that, and towards a bigger story arc, if that makes any sense.
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Feb 14, 2016 16:31
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Vehementi posted:Totally unrelated question: do there exist decent books that are told in the first person, where the narrator dies? Can't think of any, but I'm not well read and I am probably betraying some embarrassing miss of some classic novel by asking this. (I guess this has to just be a "yes I promise" or "no" question without spoiling by naming books) It's a bit of a cheat, but The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August is first-person-narrated by a character who goes through serial reincarnation.
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Feb 14, 2016 17:05
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RVProfootballer posted:I'm almost finished with Cetaganda now, they're good so far! I'll have to see how the Miles books keep going. They're honestly getting a little samey after ~3 of them. Not that they're not enjoyable, but more that it's the continuing, episodic adventures of Miles (tune in this week to see how he beats the bad guys, then see him do it all over again next week!). I'll keep reading because they're still fun, but I'm hoping it sort of shifts away from that, and towards a bigger story arc, if that makes any sense. But yeah, that was my biggest issue with the series. That and Civil Campaign - I get what it's going for, just didn't like it.
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Feb 14, 2016 17:26
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Vehementi posted:Totally unrelated question: do there exist decent books that are told in the first person, where the narrator dies? Can't think of any, but I'm not well read and I am probably betraying some embarrassing miss of some classic novel by asking this. (I guess this has to just be a "yes I promise" or "no" question without spoiling by naming books) It's not first person, but The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson follows a group of people as they are die and are reincarnated over and over from the time of the black plague until almost modern times. It's the only KSR book I've enjoyed and I recommend it!
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Feb 14, 2016 17:29
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RVProfootballer posted:I'm almost finished with Cetaganda now, they're good so far! I'll have to see how the Miles books keep going. They're honestly getting a little samey after ~3 of them. Not that they're not enjoyable, but more that it's the continuing, episodic adventures of Miles (tune in this week to see how he beats the bad guys, then see him do it all over again next week!). I'll keep reading because they're still fun, but I'm hoping it sort of shifts away from that, and towards a bigger story arc, if that makes any sense. You are coming up on a pretty major storyline twist. It's pretty goddamn amazing, too. Really you are pretty much at the end of the 'swashbuckling adventures of Miles Vorkosigan' part of the series. Brothers in Arms sets up some serious stuff that has heavy implications for the next few books. And once that shakes out the status quo is completely different.
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Feb 14, 2016 19:40
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Vehementi posted:Totally unrelated question: do there exist decent books that are told in the first person, where the narrator dies? Can't think of any, but I'm not well read and I am probably betraying some embarrassing miss of some classic novel by asking this. (I guess this has to just be a "yes I promise" or "no" question without spoiling by naming books) Gene Wolfe does this in a few books.
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Feb 14, 2016 22:08
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House Louse posted:Gene Wolfe does this in a few books.
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Feb 14, 2016 22:31
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