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Ninefox Gambit was really cool. Loved how unique it was in terms of setting and ideas.
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Jul 1, 2016 23:23
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mllaneza posted:Cassie did at least mark a warding sign on their front door so the Wild Hunt would pass them by. Yeah, she basically turned Alex's family home into an air-raid shelter and told the two people who didn't live there to run for the hills. Seems like the most sensible precaution available to keep them all safe, really. I must say, I did find it very cute that it was Agent First, not Cassie, who fell head-over-heels for our resident vampire nerd.
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Jul 2, 2016 02:43
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Darth Walrus posted:Yeah, she basically turned Alex's family home into an air-raid shelter and told the two people who didn't live there to run for the hills. Seems like the most sensible precaution available to keep them all safe, really. Yeah, that would have been really cringeworthy if it wasn't so brilliantly lampshaded. I rather liked the fact that the manic pixie dreamgirl was completely terrifying.
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Jul 2, 2016 03:25
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Finished Too Like Lightning, apart from not having any sort of climax or ending and the really ham-handed gender politics talk it's a great book and I'm looking forward to the next installment. "Political sci-fi" seems to describe that book pretty well, including the lots of talking about nothing and not achieving anything in the end. On to Nightmare Stacks.
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Jul 2, 2016 07:45
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Turdis McWordis posted:Mo is super boring/bitchy, there are hardly any superheroes in this superhero book, it's all bureaucracy, PowerPoint, midlife crisis, and gobbledygook. The thing that most got me was how Mo avoided the most massive media feeding frenzy since Diana died by simply checking into a hotel for a few days. After which the British media and especially the tabloid press apparently gave up all interest.
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Jul 2, 2016 10:39
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I had a couple long plane rides and bought 'A Crown for Cold Silver' from an airport bookstore, and jeez there were a lot of regrettable parts in there. (One particularly bad bit was where one character said 'Game recognize game' and the author felt the need to have a couple sentences of explanation about how it was a hunting insult). I guess the best thing you can say about it was that it's readable, but I didn't care about any of the characters in the slightest, and I'm not going to read the sequels.
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Jul 2, 2016 18:14
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Anyone here read Grace Of Kings?
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Jul 2, 2016 19:06
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Dandelion Dynasty Book 1? Just finished it a couple of days ago. Felt very solid and competent to me. It draws heavily from / is majorly influenced by Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the Spring and Autumn Period and a few other 'quasi-historical' sources, but with somewhat easier names. That said, it avoids 1:1 analogues so it's not just a scrapbook of Chinese Historical Epics. A few people earlier in the thread weren't impressed with it, but I don't remember anyone explaining why.
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Jul 2, 2016 20:08
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I have a (probably dumb) question about the gender issue in Too Like The Lightning. There are a few characters who Mycroft genders in the narration as 'he' or 'she', but makes clear that they do this based on their judgement of the character's innate qualities, even though their biological gender would usually call for the opposite pronoun (e.g. 'he' for Dominic, 'she' for Chagatai). I'd been pretty sure that referring to Carlyle as 'he' was one of these cases; I thought I remembered it being strongly implied if not said outright , but then during the scene where (minor spoiler)Mycroft is listening in the closet while Dominic visits Julia, Julia says of Carlyle 'they even have a dick between their legs so they're a true heir (to Tremoile)'. Is this implying that there's something more complicated going on with Carlyle's gender or have I mis-remembered Mycroft's narration? For Grace of Kings, I thought it started off strong but as it went on it read too much like an actual historical saga rather than a novel inspired by sagas. Characterization becomes really basic and one-dimensional ('he was very strong and very proud', 'she was very beautiful and very patriotic'), new characters are introduced, given a couple of backstory paragraphs, then immediately start leading armies and killing established supporting characters, and the narration becomes kind-of flat and perfunctory (he bested him and cut off his head and that was the end of him'). It was an interesting story and world, but the way it was written killed my interest and I had to struggle to finish it.
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Jul 2, 2016 20:35
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Apraxin posted:I have a (probably dumb) question about the gender issue in Too Like The Lightning. There are a few characters who Mycroft genders in the narration as 'he' or 'she', but makes clear that they do this based on their judgement of the character's innate qualities, even though their biological gender would usually call for the opposite pronoun (e.g. 'he' for Dominic, 'she' for Chagatai). I'd been pretty sure that referring to Carlyle as 'he' was one of these cases; I thought I remembered it being strongly implied if not said outright , but then during the scene where (minor spoiler)Mycroft is listening in the closet while Dominic visits Julia, Julia says of Carlyle 'they even have a dick between their legs so they're a true heir (to Tremoile)'. Is this implying that there's something more complicated going on with Carlyle's gender or have I mis-remembered Mycroft's narration? carlyle is a biological man but mycroft gets hung up on it because he thinks Cousins (members of carlyle's hive) should all be female because they are accepting and caring or something. It was one of the weaker gender derails in the book IMO.
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Jul 2, 2016 21:57
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holocaust bloopers posted:Anyone here read Grace Of Kings? Posts from earlier in the thread: PlushCow posted:I didn't enjoy Grace of Kings. It started off interesting but it quickly devolved into an outline and summary of plot points of an epic novel - This happened, then this, and then this battle that they won and this other battle too, and all character development has stopped and here are some more summaries of plot events. I got bored of it. Can't remember if goons enjoyed it or not, only that some were excited for it. fritz posted:I was getting bogged down in it, and then the first female pov character showed up and she was a Timeless Beauty and was instructed to use her seductive wiles for the good of her nation and peaced out.
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Jul 2, 2016 22:01
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Apraxin posted:For Grace of Kings, I thought it started off strong but as it went on it read too much like an actual historical saga rather than a novel inspired by sagas. Characterization becomes really basic and one-dimensional ('he was very strong and very proud', 'she was very beautiful and very patriotic'), new characters are introduced, given a couple of backstory paragraphs, then immediately start leading armies and killing established supporting characters, and the narration becomes kind-of flat and perfunctory (he bested him and cut off his head and that was the end of him'). It was an interesting story and world, but the way it was written killed my interest and I had to struggle to finish it. I think it's supposed to be reminiscent of the style the Romance of the Three Kingdoms is written in.
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Jul 2, 2016 22:43
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I've got Grace Of Kings sitting on my coffee table. Thinking it might be a better winter read when it's too drat cold to venture outside.
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Jul 2, 2016 23:02
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andrew smash posted:carlyle is a biological man but mycroft gets hung up on it because he thinks Cousins (members of carlyle's hive) should all be female because they are accepting and caring or something. It was one of the weaker gender derails in the book IMO. As an aside, I liked the book, but holy hell it's a lot darker than the blurb or the opening chapters would lead you to believe Megazver posted:I think it's supposed to be reminiscent of the style the Romance of the Three Kingdoms is written in.
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Jul 2, 2016 23:05
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Antti posted:Amazon just let me know that the Vandermeers' murder-weapon-disguised-as-a-short-story-anthology, The Big Book of Science Fiction, is coming out on July 12. Niiiiice. I'm assuming since it's 800k that stuff like The Slynx will probably be the whole novel-length deal, which is cool. Also I had no idea W.E.B. DuBois wrote a science-fiction story! Only complaint is "All The Hues of Hell" is a really weird choice for a Gene Wolfe story - should have been the novella version of The Fifth Head of Cerberus.
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Jul 3, 2016 15:55
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Any old mans war fans in the thread? It's been years since I last read The Human Division but I remember enjoying the change in direction from Super Cool Space War to Super Cool Space Diplomats. Did anything major happen plotwise I need to be reminded of before I read The End of All Things?
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Jul 3, 2016 16:41
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:Any old mans war fans in the thread? It's been years since I last read The Human Division but I remember enjoying the change in direction from Super Cool Space War to Super Cool Space Diplomats. Did anything major happen plotwise I need to be reminded of before I read The End of All Things? Human Division was the last one in the Old Man's War universe, AFAIK.
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Jul 3, 2016 16:55
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flosofl posted:Human Division was the last one in the Old Man's War universe, AFAIK. End of All Things is a sequel to Human Division that came out last year.
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Jul 3, 2016 17:17
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Finished "polaris", second book in the Alex Benedict series by McDevitt. More adventures by the absolutely not Indiana Jones future old artifacts dealer and his assistant, narrated by her. Spoiler-less resume follows. Sixty years ago, after observing an unusual astrophysical event, the crew of Polaris, a yatch fleeted by the Survey institute formed by six of the most brilliant minds in the human confederation. disappears without a trace. The ship is found adrift, crewless. The space suits and the lander shuttle are aboard, the AI was disabled... it becomes a spooky mistery, after no trace of the crew is found, alive or dead. Conspiracy and supernatural theories abound, but after some years people loses its interest and the Polaris tale fades into oblivion. Fast forward to current time. The Survey institute organizes an exhibit of the things recovered from Polaris. It is basically formed by everyday items: clothes, books, jewelry and so on. As a rare artifacts broker, Alex Benedict buys some of the objects of the exhibit. When he and his aide are leaving the building, someone bombs it, destroying the rest of stuff exposed, in a terrorist act which appears to target a politician present at the moment. In the next weeks, both Alex and the people who bought the objects he salvaged get strange visits which suggest someone is looking for a specific item, for unknown reasons. When Benedict and Chase are targets of assassination attempts themselves, they start a quest to solve the Polaris mistery and hence save their own lives. I liked it. It is a bona fide mistery book. placed in a scifi universe. Fortunately, there are no deus-ex-machina helping our protagonists in their quests. As in the previous book ("A talent for war") they use old school research methods: search for documentation, speak to witnesses, the usual stuff (aided by some AIs and tech stuff), but they not "cheat" and the reader can figure himself the solution by paying a little bit of attention. The ending is satisfactory, both in the human and "scifi" aspects. I'll read more in that series. I planned to switch to Asher, but I've got "Footfall" instead. I have had that oldie in my reading list for some time and I got it for just a few bucks.
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Jul 3, 2016 22:09
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I'm working my way through a book called Escapology. It's pretty solid cyberpunk, even if it's rear end-loaded with errors like "very illegal", misspelling "psych" as "pysch", and non-british/aussie characters using "arse" and "mate". I was really grabbed by the start of the book where a cyberspace jockey's riding downtown on a monorail in the rain to get drugs, because his guts are wrenching and his brain's mush after having spent 10 days in a row being jacked in. It hasn't let go yet, but I get easily suckered into investing myself in any world that involves low-life scum trying to get by in an uncaring megacity. Anyone here read it? What'd you guys think? Also, when I'm done with this book I'm likely to collapse back into the depression of living in an old european city with no sky-scrapers and lots of pretty green parks and clean air, so if you guys wanna recommend me any more cyberpunk to jump on before that happens that'd be swell.
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Jul 3, 2016 23:08
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About to wrap up Endymion....which is the third out of four books in the Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons. If you like SF.....Hyperion is a must read. Read Carrion Comfort about a year ago as well. Also good. I've come to the conclusion that anything that Simmons writes is probably at least good.
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Jul 4, 2016 00:55
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RestingB1tchFace posted:. I've come to the conclusion that anything that Simmons writes is probably at least good. Read Olympos (or any latter period Simmons) to be quickly disabused of that notion.
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Jul 4, 2016 02:51
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UncleSmoothie posted:Read Olympos (or any latter period Simmons) to be quickly disabused of that notion. Good call. Will not read or look at.
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Jul 4, 2016 03:22
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UncleSmoothie posted:Read Olympos (or any latter period Simmons) to be quickly disabused of that notion. I'd say The Terror is actually pretty good, but that's because Islam isn't in it.
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Jul 4, 2016 04:54
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The problem with books like Drood and Terror is they are at least twice as long as they need to be. Which surprises me in a way since, having read some of what Simmons has written outside his fiction, he clearly knows a lot about literature and writing, yet he cavalierly disregards the importance of editing. More than that, he doesn't ask himself 'Is this something the reader will want to know, or be entertained by?' with respect to some of the things he includes (like the exhaustive research regarding Wilkie Collins). Take a hatchet to the aforementioned books and you'd have some loving good and creepy horror stories, though.
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Jul 4, 2016 06:04
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Well.....the Terror is supposedly going to be adapted for TV. But.....I've heard the same about Hyperion. As for length.....I cannot comment since I haven't yet gotten around to The Terror or Drood......but Carrion Comfort was stupid long as well......and I never once thought that it should have been shortened.
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Jul 4, 2016 06:15
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Where should I start with Neal Asher's Polity stuff? Is there a recommended reading order or whatever? I'd usually go publication but it looks like there's a few different series within the same universe that were being published semi-concurrently.
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Jul 4, 2016 07:04
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A Tin Of Beans posted:Where should I start with Neal Asher's Polity stuff? Is there a recommended reading order or whatever? I'd usually go publication but it looks like there's a few different series within the same universe that were being published semi-concurrently. Gridlinked was my first exposure, but I read them in publication order. There's a few "chronological order" lists out there, but I'm usually a fan of reading an author's works in the order it was published.
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Jul 4, 2016 13:53
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A Tin Of Beans posted:Where should I start with Neal Asher's Polity stuff? Is there a recommended reading order or whatever? I'd usually go publication but it looks like there's a few different series within the same universe that were being published semi-concurrently. I started with the Skinner and then went to Gridlinked and the second novel (Line of Polity?) before going back to the second and third Spatterjay books. They're disconnected enough you're not missing out on a whole lot, though part of Orbus (third Spatterjay book) is explained by the Cormac books.
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Jul 4, 2016 14:55
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On Nightmare stacks, the way the Laundry series is going it seems more and more likely that the series will end with Bob and Mo holding hands while watching the world get eaten by the Elder Gods. Neurosis posted:I started with the Skinner and then went to Gridlinked and the second novel (Line of Polity?) before going back to the second and third Spatterjay books. They're disconnected enough you're not missing out on a whole lot, though part of Orbus (third Spatterjay book) is explained by the Cormac books. Seconded. The Skinner is the best introduction to Asher, and imo most of his books are (as you say) disconnected enough to be read stand-alone. Hill diggers is also pretty cool. Gridlinked is actually a pretty bad start, since it has the first book syndrome. UncleSmoothie posted:Read Olympos (or any latter period Simmons) to be quickly disabused of that notion. Well, Olympus was pretty good (especially the Moravecs), Ilium was not. He is pretty much a hit/miss author. Hyperion, The Terror, Carrion Comfort are pretty great, but other books are just bad like Ilium. Can't say I actively disliked the Endymion books, but I hardly remember anything from them, which kinda says something.
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Jul 4, 2016 15:08
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RestingB1tchFace posted:Well.....the Terror is supposedly going to be adapted for TV. But.....I've heard the same about Hyperion. As for length.....I cannot comment since I haven't yet gotten around to The Terror or Drood......but Carrion Comfort was stupid long as well......and I never once thought that it should have been shortened. They just recently re-stated that The Terror is getting turned into a TV series so it is still moving forward.
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Jul 4, 2016 16:49
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A Tin Of Beans posted:Where should I start with Neal Asher's Polity stuff? Is there a recommended reading order or whatever? I'd usually go publication but it looks like there's a few different series within the same universe that were being published semi-concurrently. There's really only two series (Cormac and Spatterjay) -- Transformation isn't finished yet and the others are all standalones. Within a series you should read in order, but apart from that you can read the standalones and the two series in pretty much any order you want. As for where to start, Hilldiggers or The Skinner are probably good places (or maybe The Technician? I remember enjoying it but don't remember specifics). I actually liked the Cormac books the most out of all the Polity books, but Gridlinked is definitely one of his weakest books overall; I might not have bothered with the others if I'd read that first. (I started with Polity Agent, but starting in the middle isn't really something I'd recommend.)
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Jul 4, 2016 17:25
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Too Like the Lightning is like Gene Wolfe set to "Normal" difficulty. This is pretty much the highest praise I can give a book...I love Gene Wolfe but see his brilliance as being mostly orthogonal to how opaque he insists on making his narratives. I draw the comparison because Too Like the Lightning features:
But it's "Normal" difficulty because the broad outlines of the plot seem evident after a single (albeit careful) read and it's if anything too progressive about gender instead of Wolfe's problematic approach to female characters. Highly recommended, though the story just stops for now, it doesn't end. For those who have read the book, I enjoyed how initially Mycroft seems like a "I feel unnecessarily guilty about my not-all-that-dark past" emo stereotype, then whoops, he really did do seriously bad things, and oh, he's still hiding Saladin's existence, and boy, suddenly it's much more scary that he still knows how to evade trackers. I think he'll end up having a semi-sympathetic motive in the end given the railroad track ethics discussions toward the end of the book and the survivor's (forget the name) efforts to destabilize the world system the moment they're back from the Moon. But then by the end of the book, the world system seems more and more ominous, with the world leaders seeming rather corrupt and maybe even colluding against their own populaces, so maybe Mycroft will discover he was manipulated into it. I can see how the gender stuff might annoy people but I loved it and thought it was far more thought-provoking than the Ancillary books. And while the way religion worked was wholly unbelievable (as was the idea that there are 800 million flying cars instead of telepresence) it was still fun (in particular the revelation of what the J in JEDD stood for made me laugh out loud at how offensive it would be to that society).
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Jul 4, 2016 19:11
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Neat! Richard Kadrey (author of the Sandman Slim series) popped up a wraparound pdf for a cigarette pack, so you can make your own pack of Maledictions. http://richardkadrey.com/store
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Jul 4, 2016 19:15
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Lex Talionis posted:A narrator who initially seems way too "special" to be anything but pandering to the reader This is how you do an unreliable narrator right. I still think there was way too much gender preaching that went nowhere but overall a very good book. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 19:55 on Jul 4, 2016 |
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Jul 4, 2016 19:52
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Lex Talionis posted:For those who have read the book, I enjoyed how initially Mycroft seems like a "I feel unnecessarily guilty about my not-all-that-dark past" emo stereotype, then whoops, he really did do seriously bad things, and oh, he's still hiding Saladin's existence, and boy, suddenly it's much more scary that he still knows how to evade trackers. I think he'll end up having a semi-sympathetic motive in the end given the railroad track ethics discussions toward the end of the book and the survivor's (forget the name) efforts to destabilize the world system the moment they're back from the Moon. But then by the end of the book, the world system seems more and more ominous, with the world leaders seeming rather corrupt and maybe even colluding against their own populaces, so maybe Mycroft will discover he was manipulated into it.  . I loved how the next chapter begins with a meta 'Thanks for not putting the book down forever!' message.
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Jul 4, 2016 20:27
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A Tin Of Beans posted:Where should I start with Neal Asher's Polity stuff? Is there a recommended reading order or whatever? I'd usually go publication but it looks like there's a few different series within the same universe that were being published semi-concurrently. Go published order.
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Jul 4, 2016 22:09
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Apraxin posted:I'd been pretty sure from about a quarter of the way in that, from how Mycroft is presented as a slightly-too-perfect narrator and how there was not even a vague allusion to what this crime they'd committed was, we were going to get a reveal at some point that they'd done something really bad, and even then, when we got the details I was like One thing that was implied near the end but not addressed was that maybe Mycroft was (or still is) a potential heir to the emperor, given that JEDD actually can't become the emperor as the son of the current emperor. It's implied that surviving horrifying violence at the behest of the current emperor is one way that an heir proves him or herself worthy of the seat, and I feel like there's also some implication that Mycroft is familiar with this. Edit: Also I'm pretty sure that JEDD has a set of magical powers not unlike those of Bridger, which is why Mycroft is so certain that he's the one they will eventually need to turn to. Grimson fucked around with this message at 00:50 on Jul 5, 2016 |
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Jul 5, 2016 00:45
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ToxicFrog posted:There's really only two series (Cormac and Spatterjay) -- Transformation isn't finished yet and the others are all standalones. Within a series you should read in order, but apart from that you can read the standalones and the two series in pretty much any order you want. Oh, whups, cool. I think I misinterpreted Wiki's list of books a little. Anyway, cheers everyone! Gonna hop on with Hilldiggers and then go back to Gridlinked and just go publication order after that, I think. gently caress it!
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Jul 5, 2016 03:33
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Neat! Richard Kadrey (author of the Sandman Slim series) popped up a wraparound pdf for a cigarette pack, so you can make your own pack of Maledictions. 
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Jul 5, 2016 19:26
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