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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:No idea what Red Plenty is, honestly. It's a fun book. Also I bought the paperback version of Children of Ruin since I couldn't be arsed to wait for the ebook version today. 160 pages in and it's a nice ride so far.
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May 16, 2019 14:54
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Now I'm trying to remember what that book is about former Soviet science propaganda writers finding that the future they wrote of was starting to come true. A fairly recent one, I think, that I thought sounded interesting but never got around to reading. Google isn't helping me out, anyone have any ideas?
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May 16, 2019 15:52
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Late to the Monarchies of God talk. I read them years ago and it has a lot of my favorite things. I found his jungle pretty memorable and still think he writes some of the best battles. Highly recommended. I'm also reading House of Suns on thread recommendation. I remember always thinking that the character writing lagged behind the setting with Reynolds, but it works for me here.
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May 16, 2019 16:46
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Neurosis posted:Now I'm trying to remember what that book is about former Soviet science propaganda writers finding that the future they wrote of was starting to come true. A fairly recent one, I think, that I thought sounded interesting but never got around to reading. Google isn't helping me out, anyone have any ideas? Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts? A very cool dude.
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May 16, 2019 17:03
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The new Adrian Tchaikovsky dropped today, looked it up and oh no the first and only amazon review is two stars... ...complaining about the paperback size. I think all authors should have a single use card for ‘Misery’-style ankle hammering they can call upon in these situations.
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May 16, 2019 17:11
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I think I need to examine my bias against novellas/short stories. I buckled and read servant of the crown from the powder mage universe last night and it was really, really good. I had no motivation to read it because it's about a character who long completed his arc in the main novels, but I had it loaded on my ereader with nothing else to read.
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May 16, 2019 17:12
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NoneMoreNegative posted:The new Adrian Tchaikovsky dropped today, looked it up and oh no the first and only amazon review is two stars... e: I misunderstood StrixNebulosa fucked around with this message at 18:52 on May 16, 2019 |
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May 16, 2019 17:25
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StrixNebulosa posted:That sucks, because the book is perfectly sized, it fits the first in the series so they'll be identical on the shelf. So the review is actually not true?
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May 16, 2019 17:43
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Sibling of TB posted:So the review is actually not true?   Still not worth throwing a fit over
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May 16, 2019 18:52
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valid complaint, 2-star review justified
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May 16, 2019 18:54
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I'm just glad I went and compared the two books directly before I shoved my foot entirely into my mouth with that one Anyways, the book itself is good so far. I'm like four pages in and it's compelling...but I keep putting it down because I'm in full Romance of the Three Kingdoms mode and that's gonna take priority for a while.
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May 16, 2019 18:56
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StrixNebulosa posted:
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May 16, 2019 19:04
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Llamadeus posted:This might be obvious but the books are different sizes because they're from two different publishers. If anyone really wanted them to line up on a shelf they could just get both paperbacks from Orbit or both from Pan. The difference is small enough that it's probably within the margins at the top or bottom. Just saw it off.
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May 16, 2019 19:25
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Ben Nevis posted:The difference is small enough that it's probably within the margins at the top or bottom. Just saw it off. No.
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May 16, 2019 19:28
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Get a load of this guy, not sawing his too-big books to size
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May 16, 2019 19:34
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*spits through gap in teeth* Mister fancy-pants here!
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May 16, 2019 19:44
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Reminds me of a conversation I overheard earlier this year: three of my friends were talking about fantasy novels. Friend 1 recommended some series with mammoth doorstoppers (probably Stormlight Archive) to Friend 2, who said he'd love to read it, but barely has the time to read anymore, and only ever reads books that are less than 300 pages these days. Friend 3 chimed in to say, "Any book can be less than 300 pages if you pull hard enough"
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May 16, 2019 19:54
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I know the genre gets a bad rap but are there any good LitRPG books/series? I read The Land: Founding and it was quick and easy but the protag kept flipping between careless psychopath and genuinely caring person whenever the author needed to move the story along.
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May 16, 2019 22:11
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Kraps posted:I know the genre gets a bad rap but are there any good LitRPG books/series? No.
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May 16, 2019 22:14
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Kraps posted:I know the genre gets a bad rap but are there any good LitRPG books/series? I read The Land: Founding and it was quick and easy but the protag kept flipping between careless psychopath and genuinely caring person whenever the author needed to move the story along. Depends on what you consider 'good'. I don't think the genre is inherently trash - I am sure someone who cared could do what Golden Age Scifi authors did with lovely pulp of their day and write some actually good poo poo with all the fun bits of the genre - but pretty much all of it atm is guilty pleasure wish-fulfilment pulp pumped out on KU for a quick buck. I dunno, try Threadbare.
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May 16, 2019 22:19
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genericnick posted:Late to the Monarchies of God talk. I read them years ago and it has a lot of my favorite things. I found his jungle pretty memorable and still think he writes some of the best battles. Highly recommended. yep, Monarchies of God has excellent battle scenes with realistic tactics
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May 16, 2019 22:25
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A Memory Called Empire is the first book I've read in a long time where I thought "this will win the Hugo" when I was only halfway through. I also saw quite a few reviewers comparing it to Baru, at least tonally -- its a fair comparison. I advise everyone to get it.
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May 17, 2019 00:29
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Safety Biscuits posted:Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts? A very cool dude. That's it. Thanks.
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May 17, 2019 00:46
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Copernic posted:A Memory Called Empire is the first book I've read in a long time where I thought "this will win the Hugo" when I was only halfway through. I also saw quite a few reviewers comparing it to Baru, at least tonally -- its a fair comparison. I advise everyone to get it. Haha if you’re after ‘winning the Hugo’ comps it’s also a lot like Ancillary.
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May 17, 2019 02:42
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mewse posted:I think I need to examine my bias against novellas/short stories. I buckled and read servant of the crown from the powder mage universe last night and it was really, really good. I had no motivation to read it because it's about a character who long completed his arc in the main novels, but I had it loaded on my ereader with nothing else to read. I'm not sure why I was so prejudiced against short stories, but my buddy got me reading them a couple years back (all genres) and now I almost prefer them
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May 17, 2019 04:07
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Bilirubin posted:I'm not sure why I was so prejudiced against short stories, but my buddy got me reading them a couple years back (all genres) and now I almost prefer them As a younger person I didn't like a lot of short stories because they felt incomplete. In a short story it is perfectly acceptable to set up an overarching plot thread and just drop it once you've made whatever small point you wanted to focus on, and particularly with fantastic elements it can be fun just spending time in a secondary world--but then the story is over. I also liked novels that came in series because it meant I had material picked out for a goodly while. As an adult I have less patience for nattering meandering text and can infer a great deal of detail that my younger mind would not have grasped, and I don't need all my stories have a three act structure. Also I commute on public transit and short stories and novellas give me good break points for ending a reading session. I also have less free time in general so committing to something that promises to be a long series of novels is less appealing now than it used to be.
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May 17, 2019 04:42
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Any thoughts on Children of Ruin? Just finished it and I enjoyed it although I found the antagonists implausible compared to the spider and octopus races - a parasite organism that can immediately adapt itself to any species?
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May 17, 2019 04:45
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occamsnailfile posted:As a younger person I didn't like a lot of short stories because they felt incomplete. In a short story it is perfectly acceptable to set up an overarching plot thread and just drop it once you've made whatever small point you wanted to focus on, and particularly with fantastic elements it can be fun just spending time in a secondary world--but then the story is over. I also liked novels that came in series because it meant I had material picked out for a goodly while.
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May 17, 2019 06:13
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I'm around 60% done with Baru 2, what was the SA consensus on it? I like it well enough to keep plowing through, but I liked the first book a lot more. The writing is starting to get a little too cute. edit: It's real jarring to read all these original fantasy words in every paragraph and then get something like "uranium" or "cannabis" thrown in there. I know it's nitpicky, but why would these fantasy people call it uranium? Tokelau All Star fucked around with this message at 06:23 on May 17, 2019 |
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May 17, 2019 06:17
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Tokelau All Star posted:I'm around 60% done with Baru 2, what was the SA consensus on it? I like it well enough to keep plowing through, but I liked the first book a lot more. The writing is starting to get a little too cute. Why would they call air 'air'? Why would they call water 'water'?
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May 17, 2019 06:58
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It feels weird because it's named after Greek god Uranus, who I figure didn't exist in that world.
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May 17, 2019 07:32
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Tokelau All Star posted:It feels weird because it's named after Greek god Uranus, who I figure didn't exist in that world. But then what would you call it? Pitchblende (not really accurate). You kind of have to assume that all words are really translations from some other language or something like that, it's part of the suspension of disbelief.
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May 17, 2019 07:46
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The author received the manuscript while vacationing in Prague and translated it into English while traveling the Danube to Salzburg with their beloved, and the usage of "Uranus" or "Uranium" is only an approximation.
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May 17, 2019 07:49
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Tokelau All Star posted:It feels weird because it's named after Greek god Uranus, who I figure didn't exist in that world. The real answer is that in the baruverse, uranium was discovered by the scholar Urectum.
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May 17, 2019 08:21
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Tokelau All Star posted:I'm around 60% done with Baru 2, what was the SA consensus on it? I like it well enough to keep plowing through, but I liked the first book a lot more. The writing is starting to get a little too cute. Baru 2 definitely isn't as tight and economical as Baru 1, although a lot of that is an inevitable function of expanding the world and PoVs. Baru 1 is imho a more interesting artifact of prose - it appeared the General was hand-wringing about prose quality in between finishing 1 and finishing 2, perhaps he shouldn't have so much the ending maybe has a bit too much business going on at once, without quite achieving the full effect of a dramatic 20-car pileup like you're usually going for in these setups where a bunch of people's schemes collide and implode each other all at once. But we can talk about that when you get there. tl;dr it's good but a bit messier than 1, in various ways. in a certain sense this might actually make it better, since it puts you more in the headspace of the characters (most of the main PoV characters themselves being hot messes atm) quote:edit: It's real jarring to read all these original fantasy words in every paragraph and then get something like "uranium" or "cannabis" thrown in there. I know it's nitpicky, but why would these fantasy people call it uranium? calling it uranium allows the reader to immediately grasp what it is, which allows them to find its presence as unsettling as it should be. In general, I think an admixture of real jargon and fantasy jargon can help to generate a sense of the uncanny, which is useful in a story where you've got these bio-punk and horror elements what would be gained by calling it...greenstone or illstone or sickrock or something? not much, imo its uranium, call it uranium always been a little weird that the most frequent complaint goons have about the baru books is...vocabulary choice i still remember the arguments over Exocet
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May 17, 2019 08:29
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General Battuta posted:Haha if you’re after ‘winning the Hugo’ comps it’s also a lot like Ancillary. I thought when I was reading it that it was the first book I'd read which was really "In the tradition of Ann Leckie." It's a very very good book, but I just want to bitch about one thing: It featured the most insultingly half-assed attempt at non-binary inclusivity I’ve ever seen: a single sentence, where a person who isn’t even named is mentioned in passing as “a person of a gender Mahit didn’t recognise”. Not a single named or speaking character is non-binary, and despite her supposed obsession with Teiixcalaanli culture, Mahit never once thinks about how their handling of gender differs from her native culture. Because nor did Martine. It seriously felt like she forgot non-binary people exist, and then a beta reader or someone pointed it out near publication and she went "Oh poo poo!" and stuck that one sentence in just to get the extra Inclusivity Points, and it kinda pissed me off.
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May 17, 2019 09:59
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Kraps posted:I know the genre gets a bad rap but are there any good LitRPG books/series? I read The Land: Founding and it was quick and easy but the protag kept flipping between careless psychopath and genuinely caring person whenever the author needed to move the story along. The only litRPG series I read is the Critical Failures series by Robert Bevan. It's good, but it's not a serious sort of series. If you are looking for sophomore humor and frat guy humor, it's amazing. If you are expecting some sort of wonderful backstory and massive world building, you are not gonna be happy.
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May 17, 2019 10:32
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pseudanonymous posted:But then what would you call it? Pitchblende (not really accurate). You kind of have to assume that all words are really translations from some other language or something like that, it's part of the suspension of disbelief. It's slightly jarring when the first book referred endlessly to tribadism. I assumed that was because lesbianism is named for Lesbos - although General B is welcome to correct me on that.
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May 17, 2019 11:13
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Jedit posted:It's slightly jarring when the first book referred endlessly to tribadism. I assumed that was because lesbianism is named for Lesbos - although General B is welcome to correct me on that. I was/am still trying to get through it, and I'm confused by there being sodomites and tribadism. I don't know on the issue of using eponyms. It seems like calling some a quisling or a Benedict Arnold would take you out of the setting. But so many words actually come from things like that.
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May 17, 2019 12:03
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Kraps posted:I know the genre gets a bad rap but are there any good LitRPG books/series? I read The Land: Founding and it was quick and easy but the protag kept flipping between careless psychopath and genuinely caring person whenever the author needed to move the story along. I've read a bunch of LitRPG books/series, the only one that I feel comfortable calling "good" is Worth the Candle, a web serial. Even there, there's the caveat of it being heavy on 'rationality', the way people talk can often be...robotic or min/max-y. And tonally it's completely different from typical LitRPG's, there's much more emphasis on character development/relationships than normal, there's an element of horror to the whole world, and there's not nearly as much "wow it's so cool being in fantasy land with elves and magic and poo poo" as usual. But I love it, I think it's really well-written overall, and the world-building in particular is extremely strong, shittons of different magic systems and items and races and history. Some of them are typical fantasy fare (they still have elves and dwarves, for example), but many are really unique, like (background species spoilers) a race that instantly gets reborn into an infant each time they die with memories intact, a race that reproduces asexually by splitting (each new person keeps half the memories/skills), a race that ages/sleeps/other things 100x as slow as normal, etc. If you like interesting concepts in fantasy novels then it's super good for that. Even the typical tropes are explored differently. I really like what the author did with dwarf culture, for example, it hits some of the usual notes about dwarves, enough to feel familiar, but it feels less...tropey, less shallow. It's not just "haha dwarves sure are gruff and gold-loving! tee hee!" Cicero fucked around with this message at 12:25 on May 17, 2019 |
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May 17, 2019 12:14
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