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Ammonsa posted:However, I'll still stand by the first trilogy, which is pretty much one of my favourite coming of age fantasy stories there are. And The Empire Trilogy is something else entirely, those three books I like even more than the Riftwar Saga trilogy.  Daughter of the Empire is the best Riftwar book by a wide margin, IMO.
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Jul 16, 2018 15:31
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90s Cringe Rock posted:let me tell you about battlecruisers though The firepower of a battleship with the mobility and armor of a cruiser. Bless you Jack Campbell at least it's better than haveing a ship spontaneously change class multiple times.
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Jul 16, 2018 15:41
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The Honor Harrington can be pretty bad, but I don't think I've ever read a space opera book that did that Wrath of Khan / O'Brian in space better where battles are just brutal slogs where ships are slowly taken apart. You really feel that metal bouncing around wrecking crew and equipment every time a ship takes fire in a Harrington book. The writing elsewhere is usually pretty bad though. I didn't read the follow up series but the Lost Fleet were a lot better books. It has dodgy bits but overall the non-battles writing is many times over better than HH and Campbell at least tries to make the space battles make some sort of proper sense. The space battles are less visceral (and a little less fun) but much more sensible. Great books to kill time when traveling.
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Jul 16, 2018 21:23
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If it's the series I'm thinking of, Lost Fleet did at least have some decently interesting aliens. They're based on crocodiles - water-based ambush predators, and this heavily influences their psychology. To them, humanity learning they existed meant humanity was a threat to them, because why would you indicate you know someone is there if you don't intend to attack them? It takes the humans a long time to even learn that much about the aliens.
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Jul 16, 2018 21:37
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alternate history timeline where david weber kept writing dahak books instead of honor harrington books
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Jul 16, 2018 22:39
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Cythereal posted:If it's the series I'm thinking of, Lost Fleet did at least have some decently interesting aliens. They're based on crocodiles - water-based ambush predators, and this heavily influences their psychology. To them, humanity learning they existed meant humanity was a threat to them, because why would you indicate you know someone is there if you don't intend to attack them? It takes the humans a long time to even learn that much about the aliens. There were also the genocidal koala-cows, and the non-genocidal spiders who got to be on the cover of one of the French editions. 
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Jul 16, 2018 22:41
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Honor Harrington had about three books of good battles, but the moment it escalated from small squadron action to proper fleet fights it gets dire. Lots of dry missile census and redshirt ships deleting each other instantly. For most of the series the battles are predetermined by technological advantage. It’s odd because modern naval war (see Red Storm Rising) provides a good tense template of how to do missile fights with some real tension. Ninefox makes fleet fights interesting by giving formations essentially magic power.
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Jul 16, 2018 23:58
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I dunno, something about his writing always bugs me. he's got nothing on Kameron Hurley's Belle Dame though
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Jul 17, 2018 01:27
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Jarvisi posted:Just started reading skullcracker and wow. This is definitely an antidote to my boredom from reading too much sci fi. My antidote to the lackluster slate of Hugo noms this year has been Valente's Radiance. General Battuta posted:Honor Harrington had about three books of good battles, but the moment it escalated from small squadron action to proper fleet fights it gets dire. Lots of dry missile census and redshirt ships deleting each other instantly. For most of the series the battles are predetermined by technological advantage. I honestly think the fleet fights are the least interesting parts of Yoon Ha Lee's books by far, but maybe that's just me.
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Jul 17, 2018 02:26
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murderbot novel
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Jul 17, 2018 13:05
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Yay I love Murderbot
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Jul 17, 2018 13:16
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Jarvisi posted:Just started reading skullcracker and wow. This is definitely an antidote to my boredom from reading too much sci fi. What book is this? An Amazon search on just "skullcracker" doesn't show an obvious answer.
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Jul 17, 2018 13:16
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That's good to hear, I liked the first one and just recently read the second one. I thought it was even better than the first, although too short of course. The AIs reminded me of Banks' Culture novels, which isn't a bad thing.
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Jul 17, 2018 13:32
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Hopefully there will be a Murderbot Omnibus as well.
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Jul 17, 2018 13:36
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General Battuta posted:Honor Harrington had about three books of good battles, but the moment it escalated from small squadron action to proper fleet fights it gets dire. Lots of dry missile census and redshirt ships deleting each other instantly. For most of the series the battles are predetermined by technological advantage. There are tons of books that do small squadron action well. But, almost nobody even attempts giant proper fleet fights, and that was kind of my friends point or perhaps you could say complaint. He wasn't really singing the praises of Honor more lamenting that nobody else even tries.
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Jul 17, 2018 15:41
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General Battuta posted:Honor Harrington had about three books of good battles, but the moment it escalated from small squadron action to proper fleet fights it gets dire. Lots of dry missile census and redshirt ships deleting each other instantly. For most of the series the battles are predetermined by technological advantage. On the topic of Honor, I feel like there was one good fleet battle, the one where the whole Haven navy gated into the Manticore home system and they basically ground each other to powder, there were like several stages of action there where the Home Fleet got destroyed and successive waves of relief came in. It still ended with Honor saving the day but that was an interesting climax that changed the status quo of the series. Of course I still pretty much stopped reading at that point because because I'd only gotten that far due to inertia. Also yay murderbot
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Jul 17, 2018 17:37
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Cythereal posted:The UED was envisioned as being a bigger deal than it ended up being in the series - it was meant to be a fully fledged fourth race as advanced or more so than the Protoss, but time and money constraints forced the development team to axe all of that and justify the UED using the same units as the regular Terrans plus a couple of new ones as being an expeditionary force specifically equipped with antiquated technology to eliminate the possibility of anyone capturing or reverse-engineering their tech. Sorry to drag BIDEO-JAMES chat into book chat, but where can I read more about this? Found it, here's the article if someone else is curious. Snuffman fucked around with this message at 18:48 on Jul 17, 2018 |
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Jul 17, 2018 18:43
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I have complex (guilty???) feelings about harrington missile-creep this is because one of the three weber books I would call unironically entertaining (Honor Among Enemies) is the same book where the series-ruining missile pod launcher-rail was introduced. It was fine in that case, since it was counterbalanced by the extreme fragility of the Q-ship fielding it. I suspect weber did not originally intend the missile-creep, but, after writing that book, thought "wow, this thing is way too effective, it makes sense that they'd just install this system on a superdreadnought", and felt obligated to follow through on that conclusion. Hence, the infinite supermissile holocaust we now recognize. weber would make an amazingly bad dungeon master i imagine - the type who absolutely refuses to fudge a roll or improv anything anyway my favorite space battle in a book is probably the one from westerfeld's The Killing of Worlds, which was a two-ship cat/mouse piece that took up half of the book
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Jul 17, 2018 23:47
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PupsOfWar posted:anyway my favorite space battle in a book is probably the one from westerfeld's The Killing of Worlds, which was a two-ship cat/mouse piece that took up half of the book Besides all of Passage at Arms, I'm partial to the chase through the asteroid field at the end of the 4th of the Gap novels by Donaldson. Very character driven and he almost gets the physics right.
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Jul 18, 2018 00:25
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mllaneza posted:Besides all of Passage at Arms, I'm partial to the chase through the asteroid field at the end of the 4th of the Gap novels by Donaldson. Very character driven and he almost gets the physics right. I was just thinking this, actually. I quite liked that chase sequence. (I also liked the fight between Punisher and Calm Horizons right afterwards, where the crew of Punisher kept rotating the ship so that the damage would be spread more easily so that they could remain in combat for longer, along with having a damaged sensor/blind spot to contend with. The chase through the asteroid field was better though; I just found the latter to be interesting, too. And I'm looking forward to reading Passage at Arms too, once I've finished TBC!
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Jul 18, 2018 00:31
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PupsOfWar posted:this is because one of the three weber books I would call unironically entertaining (Honor Among Enemies) What are the other two?
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Jul 18, 2018 04:18
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Major Isoor posted:I was just thinking this, actually. I quite liked that chase sequence. (I also liked the fight between Punisher and Calm Horizons right afterwards, where the crew of Punisher kept rotating the ship so that the damage would be spread more easily so that they could remain in combat for longer, along with having a damaged sensor/blind spot to contend with. The Gap cycle is such a weird series. Some parts are really excellent, while it manages to have some of the more unlikeable protagonists. It is also noteworthy how different the first book is compared to the rest of the series, which indicates that the first was meant as a stand-alone and then the publisher wanted more of that. As for space battles, early Asher books (before moon sized dreadnoughts are wiped in a second) are good for fast paced Ai battles.
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Jul 18, 2018 05:54
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PupsOfWar posted:anyway my favorite space battle in a book is probably the one from westerfeld's The Killing of Worlds, which was a two-ship cat/mouse piece that took up half of the book It's insanely good, even better than the lighthugger chase in Redemption Ark.
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Jul 18, 2018 06:35
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Was going to mention the Redemption Arc chase so I guess I have to read these Risen Empire books now. Edit: Wait, looks like there was some book-splitting shenanigans? This seems to have both parts? Junkenstein fucked around with this message at 09:17 on Jul 18, 2018 |
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Jul 18, 2018 09:12
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Phanatic posted:What book is this? An Amazon search on just "skullcracker" doesn't show an obvious answer. I meant "Skullcrack City" it is definitely a hosed up book.
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Jul 18, 2018 10:51
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KSR's Red/Green/Blue Mars trilogy, just picked it up as a result of this thread. It's really good so far (I'm 4% in to the trilogy kindle book).
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Jul 18, 2018 11:09
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FuzzySlippers posted:The Honor Harrington can be pretty bad, but I don't think I've ever read a space opera book that did that Wrath of Khan / O'Brian in space better where battles are just brutal slogs where ships are slowly taken apart. You really feel that metal bouncing around wrecking crew and equipment every time a ship takes fire in a Harrington book. The writing elsewhere is usually pretty bad though. If you really want more, William Forstchen's novels based on the Wing Commander games will give it to you. This especially applies to the ones set aboard the Tarawa, a ship best described as a Cheap Useless poo poo class mini-carrier.
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Jul 18, 2018 12:01
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If you don’t mind watching rather than reading, Legend of Galactic Heroes is pretty good milsf, although while the big shiny space battles do happen (especially in the currently-airing remake, Die Neue These), they tend to play second fiddle to depressingly insightful political commentary.
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Jul 18, 2018 13:15
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Jedit posted:If you really want more, William Forstchen's novels based on the Wing Commander games will give it to you. This especially applies to the ones set aboard the Tarawa, a ship best described as a Cheap Useless poo poo class mini-carrier. There's also James Doohan & S.M. Stirling's Flight Engineer series, which is definitely not based on Wing Commander in any way that a copyright lawyer would consider worth suing over.
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Jul 18, 2018 13:58
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Man, I really, really enjoyed The Long Way to the Small Angry Planet. Def more about the Long Way than the Small Angry Planet, but the kind of humane drama focusing on the people and not anything galactic really was what I was looking for this summer.
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Jul 18, 2018 19:35
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Darth Walrus posted:If you don’t mind watching rather than reading, Legend of Galactic Heroes is pretty good milsf, although while the big shiny space battles do happen (especially in the currently-airing remake, Die Neue These), they tend to play second fiddle to depressingly insightful political commentary. The books are being translated and on kindle https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01BI91F00/ref=series_rw_dp_sw Also as audiobooks.
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Jul 18, 2018 19:47
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Khizan posted:What are the other two? - On Basilisk Station, since weber hadn't got invested in Honor's legendarium yet and was able to convincingly present her as a normal put-upon colonial officer - Path of the Fury (NOT the extended re-release, In Fury Born, which is turbo bad) Junkenstein posted:Was going to mention the Redemption Arc chase so I guess I have to read these Risen Empire books now. that's the duology version yeah each of thw two volumes is pretty slim, so, if you see something cracking 700 pages, that's got to have both of 'em in it PupsOfWar fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Jul 18, 2018 |
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Jul 18, 2018 20:14
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General Emergency posted:The books are being translated and on kindle https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01BI91F00/ref=series_rw_dp_sw True, and I’ve heard OK things about them, but I tend to prefer watching foreign media to reading them. Visual storytelling is way less likely to suffer the vicissitudes of unreliable translation - if a big shiny space battle happens in a TV show, you can just see it, but if a big shiny space battle happens in a novel, then you have to get it filtered through a translator who may have a questionable grasp of English, a questionable grasp of Japanese, and/or a questionable grasp of prose and dialogue.
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Jul 18, 2018 20:41
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The new Legend of Galactic Heroes show is surprisingly good given how nervous the character designs made people. The old show is also a classic though the cinematography isn't nearly as fancy.
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Jul 18, 2018 22:34
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Lunsku posted:Man, I really, really enjoyed The Long Way to the Small Angry Planet. Def more about the Long Way than the Small Angry Planet, but the kind of humane drama focusing on the people and not anything galactic really was what I was looking for this summer. That is generally regarded as being a pretty drat sweet book, yes. Must get around to the sequel soon.
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Jul 18, 2018 23:35
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Groke posted:That is generally regarded as being a pretty drat sweet book, yes. Must get around to the sequel soon. Better read it quickly, the third book comes out at the end of the month.
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Jul 18, 2018 23:45
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Captain_Person posted:Better read it quickly, the third book comes out at the end of the month. And that will make it impossible to read the second?
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Jul 19, 2018 11:21
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Groke posted:And that will make it impossible to read the second? Yup! The previous books in the series disintegrate once new ones come out, that's why so many series have good recaps built into their books. 
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Jul 19, 2018 12:22
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Ccs posted:The new Legend of Galactic Heroes show is surprisingly good given how nervous the character designs made people. the what the new what why did I not hear about this sooner
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Jul 20, 2018 00:13
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GreyjoyBastard posted:the what That's what I said when I heard about it a couple weeks ago. It's pretty much almost exactly the same as the original run (at least from what I remember). The eyelashes on Reinhard and his sister are... something else though.
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Jul 20, 2018 01:33
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