|
If I hated perdido st for those reasons what mieville should i read? The city and the city?
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 23:02
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 20, 2024 10:07 |
|
|
sebmojo posted:If I hated perdido st for those reasons what mieville should i read? The city and the city? I've heard good things about The City and The City but haven't ever read it. If you liked the world in Perdido, just not the story, The Scar is set in the same world but imo a significantly better book with a more coherent plot, and still a very cool setting without it being the whole book. Embassytown is possibly one of my favorite sci fi books, and is one of the rare cases of aliens that are genuinely so alien that it's kind of hard to wrap your head around them sometimes.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 23:18
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:A true Mary Sue protagonist is never, ever *wrong*. By the end of the story, all their actions will have been justified. Yeah, I think a Mary Sue character can be flawed, but only when the author is oblivious to those flaws (generally because they are the author's own). The archetypical example for me is whatever the self-insert protagonist was called in Time Enough For Love by Robert Heinlein. An uber-competent, super-smart galactic sex adventurer who spends much of the book contemptuously lecturing straw men. sebmojo posted:If I hated perdido st for those reasons what mieville should i read? The city and the city? Yes. The Bas-Lag books are the work of a writer with an overactive imagination throwing all of his ideas at the wall; The City & The City is a much more disciplined novel in which he takes one (1) idea and fully develops it. It's also a novel which develops that (ridiculous on the face of it) idea so well that by the third act, when there's brilliant setpiece culminating in a character breaking the rules, it's genuinely shocking.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 23:20
|
|
|
sebmojo posted:If I hated perdido st for those reasons what mieville should i read? The city and the city? Only enjoyable mieville story I've read was Kraken. It's so unlike his other work I half think it was ghost written, similar to my "ghost-written?: probably" stance on Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 23:34
|
|
|
Megazver posted:Full Fathom Five basically has the inciting incident about 50% into a not-very-slender novel, which is quite a few pages without the reader understanding what the gently caress the actual story is about, and just kind of meanders showing author's precious worldbuilding before that. I like the guy and I liked the first two books, but I am not sure I'll ever get around to reading the rest of the series. Does't it have it right at the start? A god dies under mysterious circumstances and the heroine decides something is up and needs to investigate as they cotton on that more goes wrong while side-character linked in to the plot have their own goings on? MockingQuantum posted:Yeah Full Fathom Five was kind of miserable for me, I skimmed a lot of it and I'm glad I did. I think I agree that part of the issue is the worldbuilding-- I think Gladstone is pretty good at writing a decent plot, but at least for me personally, his world isn't quite interesting enough (or maybe just not quite specific/fleshed out enough) to justify the time he takes on worldbuilding. Like FFF especially, I felt like the whole idea behind the island and the penitents and the idols were cool, but extremely half baked in such a way that all the cool ideas in the world wouldn't ever hang together nicely, in a way that felt coherent and engaging. I had the same problem with Two Serpents or whatever it was, the setting was kind of meh, but the story was engaging. Last First Snow was still the same meh setting, but with a disproportionately slow, bland story that could have been written more engagingly in a lot fewer pages. I've got to say I disagree completely and and loved all the books. I will say that the themes the first one touches on which could simply be considered twists of the plot are hammered home more-so throughout the series, that it isn't simply about lawyer magical necromancers getting into scrapes but about the dialectics between labour and capital as seen through this weird magical economic system where both labour and capital are tied into gods and necromancy. Remembering back to Full Fathom Five which I probably read a year or two ago, the main plot basically is revealed to be a CEO of a bank in a tax haven commits murder to protect the bank's profits, with everything tied into this magiic-capitalist framework like the bank being a conglomeration of quiescent artificial gods that people invest in. That permeates the setting like I'm sure it's pointed out how the entire economic system of the island has distorted and prostituted the culture of the islands to make it a tourist attraction and the CEO's rationale for committing murder being that subservience to capitalism is the best way to keep the island afloat and that if not for that they'd need to play host to a military base from a world power (which in this case would be a massive cult of worshippers of a mind-controlling squid god). You have the juxtaposition of the wealthy tourist areas and the impoverished native children, one of whom is a POV character. You have the broken system which protects children from jail (magic golem jail) while simultaneously leaving them in poverty and almost no options but some form of crime. I think the book and the writing stands well enough on it's own, but I think people will get a lot more enjoyment out of it if they're interested in sociology, economics or are basically the kind of person that pays attention to people like Sanders or Corbyn. Empress of Forever I enjoyed didn't think was quite as good as the Craft sequence, but then it was also a much more straightforward story.
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2019 00:18
|
|
|
team overhead smash posted:Does't it have it right at the start? A god dies under mysterious circumstances and the heroine decides something is up and needs to investigate as they cotton on that more goes wrong while side-character linked in to the plot have their own goings on? No. Whatsherface breaking into the bank is the inciting incident and, as far as I recall. Everything before that is pretty much all the characters ambling around while you're thinking "why the gently caress are we shown these people and when will the story start?" The fired magic financier mopes, gets drunk, gets interviewed about her firing. The hobo girl just kinda reactively lives her life and until it ties into the other story like 2/3 into the book, it just has zero relation to it or apparent point. It's kinda poo poo, tbh.
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2019 00:40
|
|
|
StrixNebulosa posted:To completely derail things - I brought this up in the UF thread but I think you guys would have something to say here too - I'm reading Anne Bishop's Others series and Black Jewels trilogy. Oh man I completely forgot the Black Jewels series existed and I read it ... ...thanks?
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2019 01:01
|
|
|
GreyjoyBastard posted:Oh man I completely forgot the Black Jewels series existed and I read it You're welcome, I guess. How was it?
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2019 01:25
|
|
|
Megazver posted:No. Whatsherface breaking into the bank is the inciting incident and, as far as I recall. Everything before that is pretty much all the characters ambling around while you're thinking "why the gently caress are we shown these people and when will the story start?" The fired magic financier mopes, gets drunk, gets interviewed about her firing. The hobo girl just kinda reactively lives her life and until it ties into the other story like 2/3 into the book, it just has zero relation to it or apparent point. Okay, I've flicked through it and I feel like there's some difference in how inciting incident is being understood here. You were saying "Full Fathom Five basically has the inciting incident about 50% into a not-very-slender novel," but as far as I'm concerned the inciting incident happens at the end the very first chapter where one of the two main characters against orders almost kills herself trying to save a dying god. This completely changes their life and sets in motion the events of the rest of the book. That's the exciting incident as far as I'm concerned and it's at the start, like you'd expect Your complaint that "hobo girl just kinda reactively lives her life" is wrong for sure seeing as her inciting incident in Chapter 4 (her second chapter) is intervening in a fight between the super-powered priestess spy of a moon god and the island's implacable law golems which again upends her life and sets her arc in motion. The issue you actually seem to be having, as you describe it, is that the effect this has on their life is very low-key until the poo poo really starts hitting the fan and it goes into action mode later in the book. What I don't get is how really it's that different from either of the first two books. Maybe that the magic is less overwhelming in how it effects the narrative? By which I mean has less stuff like that scene in the first book where the main characters are fundamentally just checking a paper trail but the way that manifests when applied to a magic system is the weird magical autopsy of a city sized god that they're standing on top of while it slowly rots?
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2019 01:26
|
|
|
Recommending the Black Jewels series to anyone is a very mean thing to do. There is quite a bit of very  stuff in there.I read them years earlier because at one point my sister was obsessed with them and insisted I do so, and I regret it a lot.
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2019 10:48
|
|
|
mewse posted:NK Jemison was streaming some video game on twitch last night, it was kinda fun. Only 40 viewers lol
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2019 11:04
|
|
|
AGGGGH BEES posted:Recommending the Black Jewels series to anyone is a very mean thing to do. There is quite a bit of very The friend who introduced them to me was very clear about how I probably wouldn't enjoy them. She loves them but is very aware of how they're uh, flawed. She brought them up in the context of there being a new book in the series dropping next year and how she's afraid of it. Thing is, I'm too curious for my own good. I have only myself to blame.
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2019 14:18
|
|
|
Knocked out another Modesitt book from the library, Timediver's Dawn. In which a succession of events happen to a young man of no discernable personality or motivation who is possessed of unique superpowers for no particular reason or explanation and ends up saving the day from a variety of villains possessed of no discernable motive for their actions and the story loudly talks at length about how important strong-willed, independent, capable women are while presenting no female character who fits that description as a figure in the story.
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2019 18:37
|
|
|
Glen Mazarra is set to adapt Michael Moorcocks Elric Saga for television.
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2019 18:53
|
|
|
If this isn't utterly berzerk then it will be a failure, elric is a fuckin fever dream
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2019 18:57
|
|
|
sebmojo posted:If this isn't utterly berzerk then it will be a failure, elric is a fuckin fever dream Yeah, you gotta lean into the crazy or not even bother. It's like the mess they made of the adaptation of The Rook. If you didn't want crazy superpowers vs. Belgian fleshcrafters, why did you want to adapt The Rook in the first place?
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2019 19:21
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:Knocked out another Modesitt book from the library, Timediver's Dawn. In which a succession of events happen to a young man of no discernable personality or motivation who is possessed of unique superpowers for no particular reason or explanation and ends up saving the day from a variety of villains possessed of no discernable motive for their actions and the story loudly talks at length about how important strong-willed, independent, capable women are while presenting no female character who fits that description as a figure in the story. I warned you, right?
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2019 19:24
|
|
|
ulmont posted:I warned you, right? You did, but I thought The Magic Engineer was a brisk, decently entertaining read as long as I didn't think about it too much. Timediver's Dawn is part of a duology in one volume I got from the library, and I think it showed - I don't know whether this or the second, The Timegod, came first, but Timediver's Dawn smacked of a prequel no one asked for.
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2019 23:10
|
|
|
Megazver posted:No. Whatsherface breaking into the bank is the inciting incident and, as far as I recall. Everything before that is pretty much all the characters ambling around while you're thinking "why the gently caress are we shown these people and when will the story start?" The fired magic financier mopes, gets drunk, gets interviewed about her firing. The hobo girl just kinda reactively lives her life and until it ties into the other story like 2/3 into the book, it just has zero relation to it or apparent point. I’m not sure we are using the word inciting in the same way, but the reason that she does this is set up at the very beginning of the book when the god dies. The pacing is definitely slower than some of the other books, but I’m not sure where you’re getting this from.
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2019 23:35
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:You did, but I thought The Magic Engineer was a brisk, decently entertaining read as long as I didn't think about it too much. Timediver's Dawn is part of a duology in one volume I got from the library, and I think it showed - I don't know whether this or the second, The Timegod, came first, but Timediver's Dawn smacked of a prequel no one asked for. Yeah - the Timegod stuff is some of Modesitt's earliest books and I think he at least got better about writing with practice if not coming up with interesting new stuff to write about.
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2019 23:46
|
|
|
Finished a reread of Echnopraxia. It...really didn't hold up. I think it took something like 150 pages until I got sucked back into the story and Bruk's fedora atheism made the nerd discussions a bit more tedious than in Blindsight. Or maybe they just felt more tacked on? Still a lot of neat ideas though. And I couldn't help but read the last couple dialogues in the voice of ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN so all is forgiven.
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2019 23:52
|
|
|
ulmont posted:Yeah - the Timegod stuff is some of Modesitt's earliest books and I think he at least got better about writing with practice if not coming up with interesting new stuff to write about. I remember liking The Fires of Paratime, which was the original novel he reworked into the Timegod books, but it's been at least a couple decades since I read it and I have no idea if the Suck Fairy has visited.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2019 00:12
|
|
|
Finished Countdown City, the second book in the Last Policeman trilogy. Probably objectively the weaker book (or at least has the weaker central mystery) but I really loved it in a morbid way as the impact date gets closer and society starts breaking down more and more. Looking forward to the last one.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2019 01:06
|
|
|
Full Fathom Five was painful and difficult to write so I’m not surprised some of that comes through in the reading.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2019 01:08
|
|
|
StrixNebulosa posted:You're welcome, I guess. How was it? I liked it fine at the time - certainly enough to finish without hatereading - but it is very definitely a Problematic Romance-Adjacent Series. I don't remember enough details to offer a more precise critique, which may be for the best.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2019 01:57
|
|
|
genericnick posted:Finished a reread of Echnopraxia. It...really didn't hold up. I think it took something like 150 pages until I got sucked back into the story and Bruk's fedora atheism made the nerd discussions a bit more tedious than in Blindsight. Or maybe they just felt more tacked on? Still a lot of neat ideas though. And I couldn't help but read the last couple dialogues in the voice of ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN so all is forgiven. last bit: lol But yeah, it's not quite as fantastic as Blindsight. Still great.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2019 01:58
|
|
|
freebooter posted:Finished Countdown City, the second book in the Last Policeman trilogy. Probably objectively the weaker book (or at least has the weaker central mystery) but I really loved it in a morbid way as the impact date gets closer and society starts breaking down more and more. Looking forward to the last one. My general feeling as well. Through the whole trilogy I felt that the story of the book was always secondary to the story of the end of the world: it sticks in my mind much more than any of the individual plots. As he's willing to avoid info dumps and has a trilogy to space things out, it all progresses at a wonderful, terrible pace.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2019 02:21
|
|
|
I recommended Gideon the Ninth to someone and they recommended the Abhorsen series by Garth Nix back. I read all of them and they were great. Is there other necromancer canon I should be reading?
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2019 02:53
|
|
|
I've been reading Oathbringer, the third Stormlight book, and having an odd experience. I like the component parts but as a whole it is kind of annoying. Mainly because it seems like Sanderson can't sit down and just tell a story. Instead he has to constantly skip around to various viewpoints.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2019 03:21
|
|
|
mewse posted:I recommended Gideon the Ninth to someone and they recommended the Abhorsen series by Garth Nix back. I read all of them and they were great. Is there other necromancer canon I should be reading? I love the necromancy in The Old Kingdom books. Traveling into death, walking the river, passing the gates, ringing the bells. I don't know anything else like it and would also like necromancy recommendations.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2019 04:18
|
|
|
Hi, I don't post in this forum much but I feel compelled to tell people that I am around 100 pages from finishing Provenance by Ann Leckie and I think it's really bad. I read and enjoyed the three Ancillary books but this one just feels like people sitting around talking about what's happening, like the characters are telling me about a book they read or a show they watched. I finished chapter 16 and came across this gem: quote:And still smiling she turned away from him, from the Rejection, and walked unhurriedly over to where the two other Hwaeans sat, not to give the impression that she was unafraid and unintimidated, but because if she moved too quickly she'd be unable to stop herself from running in panic. And because the more deliberately she moved, the more she might be able to conceal the fact that she was trembling with fear. So, not to give the impression that she was unafraid, but to conceal the fact that she was trembling in fear. Got it. Ann Leckie, if you read these forums, do better. Because Provenance is poo poo. ~~ To add an opinion that isn't negative, the previous book I read was Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee and I liked it a lot and would recommend it.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2019 04:36
|
|
|
Xotl posted:My general feeling as well. Through the whole trilogy I felt that the story of the book was always secondary to the story of the end of the world: it sticks in my mind much more than any of the individual plots. As he's willing to avoid info dumps and has a trilogy to space things out, it all progresses at a wonderful, terrible pace. Yeah, one of the things he does really well is explore how the infrastructure of the state responds to an increasingly unmanageable situation. One of the eerie bits near the start is when Palace describes how the Concord police force is doing no more investigation, no more community policing: there's just a patrol car on every corner ready to bring an immediate response to any suggestion of violence, rioting or looting, and that's all. It sort of feels like semi-police state stuff (especially given the other impressions we get), but really, from the point of view of the state government, it's an understandable response to try to keep things as peaceful as possible for as long as possible with their limited remaining resources.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2019 06:58
|
|
|
mewse posted:I recommended Gideon the Ninth to someone and they recommended the Abhorsen series by Garth Nix back. I read all of them and they were great. Is there other necromancer canon I should be reading? If your sense of humor leans towards “British” and “gallows” and you don’t mind fuzzy settings and wild genre switches between books, Jonathan L. Howard’s Johannes Cabal books loving whip. They’re funny as poo poo but also have parts that are really moving and the characters are great.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2019 07:37
|
|
|
genericnick posted:Finished a reread of Echnopraxia. It...really didn't hold up. I think it took something like 150 pages until I got sucked back into the story and Bruk's fedora atheism made the nerd discussions a bit more tedious than in Blindsight. Or maybe they just felt more tacked on? Still a lot of neat ideas though. And I couldn't help but read the last couple dialogues in the voice of ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN so all is forgiven. i want ol' mr. du bois' VA to voice everything for me now
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2019 08:01
|
|
|
MockingQuantum posted:and still posts in TBB Your inexplicable disaffection with the books mirrors my own experience - sans I mostly had the same existence with the first book. There's something I find hard to pin down with the Craft books where the writing itself is decent, the plots are reasonably tight and the world has some really interesting premises yet the books feel much less enjoyable than I would expect thinking about the books' attributes abstractly. The lack of interesting characters is certainly part of it - the only one I remember being intrigued by was the dad of the protagonist in Two Serpents Rise - but I suspect it's also a failure to realise the potential of the setting where said failure is real but doesn't stand out.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2019 08:41
|
|
|
Doctor Faustine posted:If your sense of humor leans towards “British” and “gallows” and you don’t mind fuzzy settings and wild genre switches between books, Jonathan L. Howard’s Johannes Cabal books loving whip. They’re funny as poo poo but also have parts that are really moving and the characters are great. Possibly. I love dry brit humour but I don't enjoy the wit of Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams - don't know why. I'll check this one out, thanks for the recommendation.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2019 12:34
|
|
|
mewse posted:Possibly. I love dry brit humour but I don't enjoy the wit of Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams - don't know why. I'll check this one out, thanks for the recommendation. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 12:53 on Nov 22, 2019 |
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2019 12:49
|
|
|
anilEhilated posted:The first one is really weird tonally with the protagonist being a complete rear end in a top hat to mostly innocent people. It gets better from book two on when there's actual bad guys. I actually like the first book the most (followed very closely by five and three), but you definitely have to have a tolerance for villain protagonists. In the character’s defense, he was literally soulless at the time.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2019 14:58
|
|
|
Could be just differing tastes since my favorites are two and four, i.e. when Cabal gets pitted against an even more absurd antagonist.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2019 15:22
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 20, 2024 10:07 |
|
|
I've had a little bit of time to read over the last couple days, finally. Halfway through China Mountain Zhang and I don't care if this thing came out more than 25 years ago, I'm loving every minute of it. And of course since this was written in 1992, I'm 100% sure that the current "y'know, Zhang's got it pretty good right now in the story" feeling is going to be shattered any minute now, because Gays Can't Have Nice Things In Fiction. 
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2019 18:19
|
|
