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Re: historical myths Bernard Cornwell's Warlord trilogy is very enjoyable. Historical fiction telling of the King Arthur legend. Starts out slow for the first half of the first book, but gets rolling after that. The audiobook narrator (Jonathan Keeble) does a great job with the audiobooks as well.
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Jun 12, 2018 04:50
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Groke posted:I liked the whole series myself although most of the characters were kind of two-dimensional in the end.  This is amazing.
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Jun 12, 2018 07:54
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So I finished a new novel called Blackfish City recently, and posted my thoughts about it in a few places online. A goon quoted me to the author on twitter, and... https://twitter.com/sentencebender/status/1006545982526558211
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Jun 12, 2018 18:07
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Just started in on Revenant Gun. I missed Jedao.
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Jun 12, 2018 19:35
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The Tor free book of the month is A DARKER SHADE OF MAGIC by V.E. Schwab. Anyone know anything about it?
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Jun 12, 2018 20:37
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Sibling of TB posted:The Tor free book of the month is A DARKER SHADE OF MAGIC by V.E. Schwab. Anyone know anything about it? I read it, it was... Okay. Somewhat interesting setting, decent prose, alright characters. It's alright, but nothing really stood out about it to me. I don't regret reading it, but I don't intend to read the sequels either.
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Jun 12, 2018 20:54
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https://www.tor.com/2018/06/12/the-wheel-of-time-tv-series-in-development-at-amazon-studios/ Wheel of Time in development at Amazon.
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Jun 12, 2018 22:25
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Sibling of TB posted:The Tor free book of the month is A DARKER SHADE OF MAGIC by V.E. Schwab. Anyone know anything about it?
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Jun 12, 2018 23:02
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Common consensus seems to be "worth it for free". I haven't read it yet, but it's always nice to get a free book.
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Jun 12, 2018 23:41
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Arcsech posted:I read it, it was... Okay. Somewhat interesting setting, decent prose, alright characters. It's alright, but nothing really stood out about it to me. I don't regret reading it, but I don't intend to read the sequels either. Seconded. I liked the premise but the characters mostly left me cold and the story wasn't that interesting. Like you, I was not motivated to continue the series.
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Jun 13, 2018 00:34
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The Rat posted:Re: historical myths It has a majour issue with its treatment of Merlin and other mystical parts of the story, and how our viewpoint character treats it all. Apart from that, though, it's pretty good.
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Jun 13, 2018 00:46
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What do y'all think of Michael Shea? I got The Incompleat Nifft a few days ago and have been finding it tough to get into. Lots of rich description and genuine humor, but he throws stuff at the reader so fast that I have to reread graphs frequently. Perhaps I'm just dumb 
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Jun 13, 2018 03:14
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Sibling of TB posted:The Tor free book of the month is A DARKER SHADE OF MAGIC by V.E. Schwab. Anyone know anything about it? They were so bland that I forgot how bland they were and kept reading the sequels by mistake based on a very vague sense of recognition.
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Jun 13, 2018 03:52
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apophenium posted:Just started in on Revenant Gun. I missed Jedao. I dunno, his role in Ninefox was pretty two dimensional.
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Jun 13, 2018 05:04
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I finished Revenant Gun and I think it's pretty interesting how much of SFF has taken a turn towards exploration of the consequences of trauma, how it tends to reverberate and recreate itself in society, and alternative ways to deal with it. Or maybe it's just what I'm reading now? Anyway, I like it a lot, even if I'm not a particularly traumatized person myself.
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Jun 13, 2018 06:16
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General Battuta posted:I dunno, his role in Ninefox was pretty two dimensional. 
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Jun 13, 2018 10:27
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Grimson posted:I finished Revenant Gun and I think it's pretty interesting how much of SFF has taken a turn towards exploration of the consequences of trauma, how it tends to reverberate and recreate itself in society, and alternative ways to deal with it. Or maybe it's just what I'm reading now? Anyway, I like it a lot, even if I'm not a particularly traumatized person myself. We're getting more diverse authors and subjects from the big publishing houses and it's awesome! That said, this isn't an entirely new turn - Cherryh's been writing trauma since forever (Rimrunners) and there's Mary Gentle and others.
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Jun 13, 2018 10:56
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my bony fealty posted:What do y'all think of Michael Shea? I got The Incompleat Nifft a few days ago and have been finding it tough to get into. Lots of rich description and genuine humor, but he throws stuff at the reader so fast that I have to reread graphs frequently. Perhaps I'm just dumb Shea’s fun - Nifft is basically a knockoff of Jack Vance, and he wrote an explicit sequel to Vance’s Eyes of the Overworld too; The Quest for Simbilis. (And then Vance wrote his own actual sequel....) He also wrote sequels to Randall Garrett’s Lord Darcy series, IIRC, and he’s done some blinding short stories - I highly recommend The Autopsy as SF horror.
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Jun 13, 2018 13:31
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my bony fealty posted:What do y'all think of Michael Shea? I got The Incompleat Nifft a few days ago and have been finding it tough to get into. Lots of rich description and genuine humor, but he throws stuff at the reader so fast that I have to reread graphs frequently. Perhaps I'm just dumb
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Jun 13, 2018 20:24
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my bony fealty posted:What do y'all think of Michael Shea? I got The Incompleat Nifft a few days ago and have been finding it tough to get into. Lots of rich description and genuine humor, but he throws stuff at the reader so fast that I have to reread graphs frequently. Perhaps I'm just dumb He's the original monster girl fetishist, keep a track of how often it's obvious he wants to gently caress the female monster he describes.
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Jun 13, 2018 23:00
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Did the person doing a readthrough of Randall Garrett's Gandalara Cycle ever finish them? Legitly want to discuss the Gandalara Cycle series ending in this thread.
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Jun 13, 2018 23:25
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:Did the person doing a readthrough of Randall Garrett's Gandalara Cycle ever finish them? I've been updating the "What did you just finish" thread - I've finished books 1 and 2 and am reading 3 now, so there's still quite a ways to go. I need to order the next omnibus, too.
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Jun 13, 2018 23:41
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Angrymog posted:It has a majour issue with its treatment of Merlin and other mystical parts of the story, and how our viewpoint character treats it all. Apart from that, though, it's pretty good. How so? I liked how it left magic as something ambiguous, for the most part.
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Jun 13, 2018 23:42
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anilEhilated posted:Good if you like Jack Vance; he spoofs him perfectly. Haven't read anything else by him, though - are the Lord Darcy stories worth hunting down if I liked Garrett's? Haven’t read them since my teens, but my opinion then was he does a decent job but he doesn’t do Garrett as well as he does Vance.
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Jun 14, 2018 07:31
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Peter Watts new book/novella The Freeze-Frame Revolution is out. I only looked back a couple of pages but didn't see any mention of it. It's the same setting as three or so earlier stories of his, including The Island. The crew of the Eriophora - a sleeper ship built out of an asteroid, powered by a black hole at its heart, is on a multi-million year mission to build FTL wormhole gates across the galaxy. But if anything ever gets to use them, they're way past any definition of humanity by that time. And with no end to the mission in sight, ever, the crew plots a mutiny against their AI overlord. Despite only a handful of them being awake for a few days every few thousand years or so.
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Jun 14, 2018 13:08
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I've only ever read 1 peter watts book that I liked and that was the crysis novel. I just don't really dig hard sci fi, or at least his. The premise sounds cool though. Is it more on par with his earlier works or is it something that anyone can hop in and enjoy?
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Jun 14, 2018 13:25
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I'd say it's more accessible than his other books. It clocks in at less than 200 pages, and it's fairly straight-forward. It's still hard sci-fi, though. If you're uncertain, I'd say read the three Sunflowers short stories for free on his homepage, and if you like the setting, give it a shot. http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts.htm
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Jun 14, 2018 14:10
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The Rat posted:How so? I liked how it left magic as something ambiguous, for the most part. Very early on in the first book, our protagonist, discovers that a battle-turning spell of Merlin's was a illusion in the stage magician sense of the word. He never once questions any of the other magic afterwards; we, the reader, are expected to take it all at face value. The Merlin books by Mary Stewart does the same thing with a far defter hand - partly because Merlin himself isn't 100% certain what's magic, what's trickery, and what's application of knowledge that no-one else has.
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Jun 14, 2018 15:06
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Nah there's the scene later on where he realizes that the glowing sprite woman is shown to be getting due to clam juice or whatever it was.
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Jun 14, 2018 16:02
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Hannibal Rex posted:Peter Watts new book/novella The Freeze-Frame Revolution is out. I only looked back a couple of pages but didn't see any mention of it. It came out early, there is some talk about it a few pages ago.
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Jun 14, 2018 16:59
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Angrymog posted:Very early on in the first book, our protagonist, discovers that a battle-turning spell of Merlin's was a illusion in the stage magician sense of the word. He never once questions any of the other magic afterwards; we, the reader, are expected to take it all at face value.
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Jun 14, 2018 17:44
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Started Revenant Gun. Someone please give Jedao a holiday and a better life.
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Jun 14, 2018 17:52
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Catherynne Valente must have been so mad when that episode of Rick and Morty with the same exact premise as Space Opera came out. Especially when it was funnier than anything in the book.
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Jun 14, 2018 18:07
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The Rat posted:Nah there's the scene later on where he realizes that the glowing sprite woman is shown to be getting due to clam juice or whatever it was. I think you left a few words out of that sentence. Grabbed a library copy of The Traitor Baru Cormorant and will be reading it next. Encountered some Jerry Pournelle essays in the wild, and ugh. Like most grandmaster science fiction writers, Pournelle's work is severely old-fashioned. Pournelle was a pioner of the milfiction genre(both scifi + fantasy), years before the milfiction subgenre was created. The best snapshot summary of Pournelle is how Pournelle identified himself* in articles published in Avalon Hill's (defunct boardgame/wargaming company) newsletter "The General"(also defunct. RIP The General). that would be as Prof J.E. Pournelle, Prof J.E. Pournelle, Ph D., or J.E. Pournelle P.h. D, etc depending on how insecure he felt at the time. Fun fact, Gary Gygax wrote articles for The General newsletter during that time period too.
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Jun 14, 2018 19:27
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 I need to phone post less in the morning.
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Jun 14, 2018 21:38
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Am about halfway through The Traitor Baru Cormorant so far. Getting a strong "Moon is a Harsh Mistress" vibe from it, with Baru being a combination of Harsh Mistress's narrator + Mike the wonder-computer. e: 3 hrs later, Finished the Traitor Baru Cormorant. I read fast damnit. It was a good starting novel that had to cram in tons of world setup/world building for inevitable sequels. The surplus of Dukedoms in the book made it hard to care what happened to any of them as things happened to them, maybe if there was 4 or 5 less Dukedoms they could have been fleshed out beyond The Sea King, The Fighty Man, The Lady Shakespeare, The Philospher-Poet, The Commerce Baron, etc . After finishing Traitor Baru Cormorant, want to say the main character heavily reminded me of the main character from Ninefox Gambit, only Ninefox Gambit's main character not the ghost general, the other main character came off as way more dynamic while Traitor Baru Cormorant's main character was more cerebrally detached/conflicted. Likelyhood of reading any future sequels: Low. quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 04:01 on Jun 15, 2018 |
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Jun 15, 2018 01:29
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Hey, is Excession a particularly bad Culture book? Asking cause I know goons like that series but I just finished that book today and I gotta say, I'm not a fan of the "vivacious and enthusiastic" rape aliens, the guy who really wanted to be a rape alien, or the girl whose character traits were that she was vain and shallow and wanted to have sex with every boy.
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Jun 15, 2018 06:14
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The Rat posted:Nah there's the scene later on where he realizes that the glowing sprite woman is shown to be getting due to clam juice or whatever it was. That's what I mean. And yet he never questions any of the other magic. Trying to remember what book the other big Merlin fake out I remember is from. Basically ties a dead warrior to a horse and send it out onto the field.
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Jun 15, 2018 07:15
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Oh poo poo. Just finished the new Simon Green novel Night Fall. If you have been a fan of the nightside or the drood series, I'd recommend it. Somewhat big spoilers it's the last nightside/drood/etc novel. poo poo gets real. Somewhat lame ending, but honestly the build up through the book would have made pretty much anything a bit lame. Not the greatest book but one hell of an addition to the series.
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Jun 15, 2018 09:02
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Djeser posted:Hey, is Excession a particularly bad Culture book? Asking cause I know goons like that series but I just finished that book today and I gotta say, I'm not a fan of the "vivacious and enthusiastic" rape aliens, the guy who really wanted to be a rape alien, or the girl whose character traits were that she was vain and shallow and wanted to have sex with every boy. Haven't actually read it, but it's generally considered one of the best.
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Jun 15, 2018 12:19
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