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freebooter posted:What's the best SFF book you read this year? Vallista, without a doubt.
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Dec 22, 2017 21:11
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freebooter posted:
Seven Surrenders
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Dec 22, 2017 22:37
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freebooter posted:What's the best SFF book you read this year?
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Dec 22, 2017 23:47
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I'm giving McDonald's Luna series a shot. Hopefully it'll scratch the itch of Game of Thrones in Space that The Expanse completely failed at for me. (I think why I didn't like The Expanse is because I don't actually want GoT in space, I want scheming political space bullshit, with none of the extraneous snow/space zombie rubbish)
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Dec 23, 2017 00:48
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The second Alex Verus novel contains a literal monkey's paw, but the antagonist picks it up, not the protagonist. Yeah actually that's what put me on the idea to read a book entirely dedicated to it haha Thank you for the recs. Adding them to my To Read list to start my upcoming Goodreads challenge
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Dec 23, 2017 01:02
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Looking at the list of what I've read, The Devil You Know by KJ Parker, perhaps?
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Dec 23, 2017 01:40
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freebooter posted:What's the best SFF book you read this year? So far it's a tie between The Other Wind or one of the several-dozen Discworld books I read. There's still just over a week to go and I've just started Too Like the Lightning so this might change. Edit: And a special mention to the Craft novels, The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, The Traitor Baru Cormorant and The Goblin Emperor. I really a LOT of great books this year.
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Dec 23, 2017 01:43
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if you are craving that mind-bending sci-fi wierdness you have got to read "Beholder's Eye" by Julie E. Czerneda
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Dec 23, 2017 13:21
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cptn_dr posted:I'm giving McDonald's Luna series a shot. Hopefully it'll scratch the itch of Game of Thrones in Space that The Expanse completely failed at for me. Is the Expanse really compared to GOT though, apart from being written by GRRM's helper monkey? Regardless, Luna is probably what you're after. Even McDonald himself calls it Game of Domes. How's the new Expanse anyway? I'm just starting Book 5 and didn't mind Book 4, which seems to be regarded as the low point (?).
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Dec 23, 2017 13:53
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Junkenstein posted:Is the Expanse really compared to GOT though, apart from being written by GRRM's helper monkey? Regardless, Luna is probably what you're after. Even McDonald himself calls it Game of Domes. I don’t get the comparison either. There’s no scheming and plotting to speak of - the bad guys are clear all the way through and are clearly Bad; our Heroes are pretty universally Good. Other than the IRL connection I don’t get it. Nthing the Luna series as scratching that itch, for sure.
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Dec 23, 2017 14:56
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With the hype of GoT anything with a plot involving political power plays was getting characterized as the next GoT. The connection of the authors to GRRM to give his blessing to the affair is just icing on the cake.quote:I'm just starting Book 5 and didn't mind Book 4, which seems to be regarded as the low point (?). After the third book every previous book seems to get regarded as the low point on the eve of hype of the next. The third was the lowest because it was too slow, the fourth was the lowest because it was out in the middle of nowhere where it didn't interact with the politics, the fifth and sixth were hampered by having some of the most cardboard cutout cartoon villains...
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Dec 23, 2017 19:42
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freebooter posted:What's the best SFF book you read this year? Baru Cormorant probably. I didn't read much "hard" stuff this year due to having a lot of mentally taxing classes. Honorable mentions would be, in no order: David Drake's RCN series, I've read through most of it this year and it's a good space opera series. Though I would say it gets a bit formulaic and some of the more recent books (8 and 9) have dragged somewhat. City of Stairs series. Just really good overall. Goblin Emperor. Technically I think I started it late last December and then finished it in January but whatever. Binti by Nnedi Okorafor. Nice couple of stories about a young woman from Southern Africa going to space and wrestling with who she is. I'm looking forwards to the next one. Raven Stratagem. A Small Colonial War by Robert Frezza. "Hammer's Slammers but it's COIN and the Boer War." Worst of the year is Ken Liu's Grace of Kings series, a bad attempt at turning Romance of the Three Kingdoms into a Game of Kings clone. Runner up is Corsair by James L. Cambias, which wastes a premise (space pirates hacking automated payloads of He3 from the moon) with cardboard characters and crummy writing. Third place is James Gunn's Trancendential/Transgalatic, which were more tiresome and boring than outright bad.
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Dec 23, 2017 23:04
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freebooter posted:What's the best SFF book you read this year? The best SFF book I've read this year was A Storm of Wings by M John Harrison. The worst SFF book I've read this year was The Deceivers by Alfred Bester.
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Dec 24, 2017 02:09
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Best SFF I read in 2017: The Stone Sky, Kindred, and The Goblin Emperor. Worst SFF I read in 2017: Star Trek TNG: Dragon's Honor and Star Trek DIS: Desperate Hours. Maybe next year I'll finally stop reading awful Star Trek books.
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Dec 24, 2017 16:20
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i think the best fantasy book is "The Walking Drum" by Louis L'Amour. I know he mostly writes westerns, but hear me out: it is sort of like Game of Thrones, but set in the real middle east in the medieval time period. So he strives for an authentic & true-to-life feel that really shines in that setting
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Dec 24, 2017 16:20
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freebooter posted:What's the best SFF book you read this year? I didn't really read that much Sff this year aside from the Hugo ballot. The best book on that was A Closed And Common Orbit, with Too Like the Lightning being a very close second.
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Dec 24, 2017 20:51
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On Christmas Eve I bought Gene Wolfe's Shadow & Claw: The First Half of The Book of the New Sun and it's all thanks to this thread. It'll be here in early January, so I should have time to finish reading a book or two. Thank you all for your opinions and good posts. 
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Dec 24, 2017 21:36
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Feel free to drop by the Wolfe thread; it's active, we just don't bump it much because the first thing that leaps into the minds of most of us when we see it on the first page is "oh poo poo, Wolfe died".
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Dec 24, 2017 21:47
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StrixNebulosa posted:On Christmas Eve I bought Gene Wolfe's Shadow & Claw: The First Half of The Book of the New Sun and it's all thanks to this thread. It'll be here in early January, so I should have time to finish reading a book or two. Thank you all for your opinions and good posts. It's my favorite book ever, reread it for the third time this year and I fully intend to reread it many more times. I'm reading Wolfe's An Evil Guest now and as is typical for later Wolfe, I have absolutely no idea at all what's going on. Digging the Lovecrafty stuff though.
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Dec 25, 2017 02:50
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apophenium posted:Best SFF I read in 2017: The Stone Sky, Kindred, and The Goblin Emperor. Did you really read a star trek discovery book. I can't believe they eist
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Dec 25, 2017 04:10
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my bony fealty posted:It's my favorite book ever, reread it for the third time this year and I fully intend to reread it many more times. An Evil Guest is particularly odd because there are three genres being mashed together - the obvious sci fi and Lovecraft, and the fantasy relating to Woldercan.
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Dec 25, 2017 05:37
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I would also say A Closed and Common Orbit was my favorite this year, though I am in the process of reading Nina Allen's The Rift which is competing. It's a very different kind of book and I'm not done with it yet. Worst would be, um, hm. The Bloodprint I guess, in that it actually made me angry with bait-and-switch from female-besties-adventure into dumb romantic swooning for the dark prince lover and the female lead having zero agency in the story.
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Dec 25, 2017 07:04
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Phobeste posted:Did you really read a star trek discovery book. I can't believe they eist The Star Trek tie-in novel machine never rests. It was a prequel where Burnham spent most of the page-count running through a Legends of the Hidden Temple obstacle course with Spock. It was... Not good.
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Dec 25, 2017 17:53
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freebooter posted:What's the best SFF book you read this year? For me, it was probably Jeremy Robert Johnson's 2015 Skullcrack City. It's a sort of scifi/body horror/nearly cyberpunk/cosmic horror/forensic accounting/apocalypse tale, sometimes hilarious, sometimes quite touching. It dips its feet into bizarro fiction without getting itself too wet, which is a hard thing to accomplish. I'm really looking forward to reading more of Johnson's work next year. I also read Ishiguro's The Buried Giant this year, which tops the list of books in general that I read over 2017. a foolish pianist fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Dec 25, 2017 |
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Dec 25, 2017 19:22
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Dunno if it was the best, but the most memorable one this year was The Wrong Stars by Tim Pratt. Had an interesting premise, and stuck with me. I'll probably pick up a few more from him if the writing stays good.
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Dec 25, 2017 19:59
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Dunno if it was the best, but the most memorable one this year was The Wrong Stars by Tim Pratt. Really? I'd just tried reading it a few days ago and I thought that for an author with ~20 books published, the whole thing was written inexcusably clumsy.
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Dec 25, 2017 20:30
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The writing wasn't the best but I dug the plot enough to forgive it. As long as he doesn't backslide in quality I'm willing to give him a shot.
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Dec 25, 2017 22:24
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Can't really name one best book of the year. As hyped as it was I did really enjoy Oathbringer so either that or Sins of Empire. If short story collections count Stories of Your Life and Others was pretty darn good. Worst was probably one of the myriad of lovely litrpg I read but I can't really put most of them here because they are enjoyable in the same way MST3K is. One does stand out though: The Selfless Hero Trilogy. Most of this stuff is dumb MMO nerd wish fulfillment stuff but this one managed to disgust me.
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Dec 25, 2017 22:30
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Didn't read as much new SF/Fantasy as I would have liked this year, but I did read Small Angry Planet and Closed and Common Orbit, which were both super charming and I loved them. I also read some Tim Powers for the first time, which was a goddamn revelation.
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Dec 26, 2017 00:34
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Best book: Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone, great magic concept, great world, good writing. I'm also including 2 Serpents rise in here, I need to read the rest of the series soon. Runner up: Shadow Linger by Glen Cook, 2nd book in the Black Company series, starts a bit slow but the whole second half is just amazing. Worst book: Red Sister by Mark Lawrence. I really like his other books, but this one just feels poorly written and unispired. Didn't really like the characters and just felt like another mediocre Magical school books, just read The Red Queen series, it's the best thing he's ever written. Runner up: Sufficiently Advanced Magic by Andrew Rowe. Another mediocre Magical school book, it has a lot of cool ideas and a very interesting world (magical fuedal society emerging from the industrial revolution where gods plays a direct role), but he just isn't a good enough writer to do it right. Recommend, but mediocre: Brian McClellan's new Powder Mage book, Society of the Sword trilogy (sword and assassin books, but just not great. Some good stuff, but overall kind of meh), Black Company books 4-9 (there are some solid ones in there), Orconomics by J Pike (fun parody of modern economics and D&D) The Glumslinger fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Dec 26, 2017 |
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Dec 26, 2017 01:01
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I read the Sandman books they were p. good.
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Dec 26, 2017 03:05
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I really liked the last fitz book.
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Dec 26, 2017 08:24
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Good:small angry planet and a close and commom orbit are charming and basically perfect summer reading. Ambivalent: raising steam.its pratchett,but so clearly diminished pratchett.still better than Awesome:space merchants by frederik pohl. odd jonh and last and first men by stappledon. The sf masterworks collection basically ruined my tolerance for bad or midling sff.
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Dec 26, 2017 13:50
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I read The Left Hand of Darkness for the first time this year and kind of went on a Ligotti spree, so that was good. Everything else I read in 2017 was poop, with Cibola Burn really taking the cake. I’m not counting non-fic and ~Literature~ tho
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Dec 26, 2017 15:13
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I read a lot of books this year that I liked, but I'm not really coming up with any SF/F that I loved or that clearly stand out above the rest. Hawk, perhaps (I know Vallista has been getting a lot of love ITT, but I liked Hawk more). Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy was good times, as was Ninefox Gambit, and Fortress in the Eye of Time turned out to be fun once I got through that first hundred pages. Fledgling and The Library at Mount Char also deserve a mention. But there was nothing that had me going  and accosting random friends to tell them to read it like Long Way or Traitor Baru last year.Currently wrapping up the year with some Nancy Kress (the Probability Space trilogy), and I got two SF short story collections for christmas (Invisible Planets and Mash Up) that are probably next on the list after that. Not sure what I'll read after those. Time to reread The Legend of Eli Monpress, perhaps, or check out Tuf Voyaging.
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Dec 26, 2017 15:14
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The best SFF book I read this year was The Book of the Short Sun. If I had to pick one volume, gotta be In Green's Jungles. Worst: Empire of the Atom. It got okay about half way through but it is not a good book.
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Dec 26, 2017 16:00
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My favorite out of what was published this year was The Stone Sky by N. K. Jemisin. The one I read for the first time this year that I know I will read again and again is The Scar by China Mieville. Honorable mention goes to Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor. Was pleasantly surprised by If Then and The Destructives by Matthew De Abaitua, and Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson. Most disappointing were All the Birds in the Sky and Arkwright.
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Dec 26, 2017 18:44
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I have a soft spot for "The Courtship of Princess Leah" by Dave Wolverton. I know those kinds of novels are schlock but they are fun to read
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Dec 26, 2017 21:55
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Skritch posted:My favorite out of what was published this year was The Stone Sky by N. K. Jemisin. The one I read for the first time this year that I know I will read again and again is The Scar by China Mieville. Honorable mention goes to Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor. The Scar is so good. Might be my favorite SF book written this millennium. The prose, the setting, the characters, it all just sticks with you.
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Dec 27, 2017 04:46
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Did people get any good SF books as gifts? I got Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty which I am v. excited about. Also got a big coffee table book of history stuff but that's not for the same kind of reading.
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Dec 27, 2017 06:50
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