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orange sky posted:I really don't like the prose in This is how you lose the time war. I don't know what it is but it's just boring, even though the premise is exciting. Enemy soldiers falling in love is a pretty tired plotline, too.
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Feb 5, 2020 21:52
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Dead moon was kinda boring for the first 1/4th or so, but picks up into batshit crazy pretty fast and gets fairly fun. <grabs gun, cocks it> Moon’s haunted.
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Feb 5, 2020 21:52
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Childhood's End by Arthur C Clarke - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07XG6MG3Y/ Ghosts of Gotham by Craig Schaefer - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GZGXP13/
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Feb 5, 2020 23:27
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Childhood's End is such a bitter-sweet, beautiful book full of despair and hope. Please read it if you haven't yet.
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Feb 5, 2020 23:59
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Proteus Jones posted:Childhood's End is such a bitter-sweet, beautiful book full of despair and hope.
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Feb 6, 2020 01:15
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Crossposting. The Billion Dollar Boy by Charles Sheffield is a novella I picked up from my local library, and I enjoyed it. It's a simple story as the length suggests, a sci-fi coming of age adventure tale, but it worked for me. What I found most compelling was the setting, the Messina dust cloud where most of the book takes place is an unusual sci-fi setting that seems to draw heavily from 18th century fishing fleets, or perhaps far-flung trading ships of a century or two previous. And yet, I'm not sure I want to read more books in this setting if they exist, as I think this story covered the Messina cloud pretty well and I'm not sure how much more you could do with it without drastically changing things - the book's ending certainly could be a hook for a fully fledged novel, I'm not sure yet if I want to look. A short, enjoyable romp I read in a day and suitable for YA audiences.
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Feb 6, 2020 02:40
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It is a sci-fi reskin of Captains Courageous, down to exact plot points, but is well done.
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Feb 6, 2020 03:37
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I finished Phillip Pullman's The Secret Commonwealth yesterday. It was great! The last 4 books Pullman wrote were mostly from children's POVs, so it was interesting to see him handle more adult perspectives. His use of language didn't change, but the kinds of thoughts the characters can have about their world aged up with their experiences. The world of His Dark Materials gets explored a lot more, this time only on Lyra's side of the multiverse. The story grapples with the meaning and importance of the fantastic, and Pullman uses a couple of philosopher characters whose works are influencing Lyra as an undergraduate as a way of criticizing the cold and selfish logic of certain virulent strains of thought (the Simon Talbot character seems partially based on Ayn Rand, and a Magisterium official even thinks to himself that such a philosophy is useful to them and that Talbot is a very useful idiot.) In the midst of the ideological concerns are lots of stabbings, brawls, and spycraft. The central plot is an unexpected horticultural discovery that connects to Dust. There's also a dynamic between Lyra and a male antagonist that's like a competent version of the Rey and Kylo relationship in Star Wars. Pullman showed he could finish a satisfying trilogy before, so I'm hoping the next and last book does justice to everything he's presented here.
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Feb 6, 2020 04:34
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I'm glad somebody enjoyed it, because I found it quite the opposite: bloated and sprawling and unimaginative and I was even falling asleep during some of it. It has its moments (the Prague chapter was genuinely good) but it mostly struck me, like its predecessor, as a book written by a famous author whom editors daren't challenge anymore. It was the bloat that really bugged me. 200 pages into Northern Lights and we're already well into the second act, Lyra meeting Iorek Byrnison for the first time; 200 pages into the Secret Commonwealth and we're still faffing about with tedious amateur spy crap in Oxford and there's another 450 pages to go but they no longer seem like something to anticipate. I think my main complaint is that the world he presents no longer seems quite magical. It just feels like our own world, with furry friends. We gets hints of stuff, like the distant citadel in the desert, but the rest of it is a German writer working at his desk or a shoehorned refugees-in-the-Meditteranean moment or the dull politics of the Calvinist church (this was not interesting in the original trilogy and I don't know why he thought it would be interesting here).
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Feb 6, 2020 09:46
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I had the same feeling but at the same time, the world no longer appearing quite as magical is consistent with the protagonist no longer being... 12 or 13, I think she was in the first trilogy?
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Feb 6, 2020 16:40
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The mood shift of jumping from The Gone World and Steel Frame to Becky Chambers's Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, nearly back to back to back, was quite unexpected but welcome. I like the charming enthusiasm as the crew of the ship is introduced in the first half and the gradually ratcheting up of tension and stakes in each new plot beat as things get under way. I'm nearly done and while I'd love to jump right into the rest of the series, I think I want to hold off and save it for when I need another literary pick-me-up. Cherryh's Pride of Chanur is next on my all-women reading list.
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Feb 6, 2020 23:40
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Mr. Peepers posted:The mood shift of jumping from The Gone World and Steel Frame to Becky Chambers's Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, nearly back to back to back, was quite unexpected but welcome. I like the charming enthusiasm as the crew of the ship is introduced in the first half and the gradually ratcheting up of tension and stakes in each new plot beat as things get under way. I'm nearly done and while I'd love to jump right into the rest of the series, I think I want to hold off and save it for when I need another literary pick-me-up. Cherryh's Pride of Chanur is next on my all-women reading list. Fair warning, Becky Chambers changes setting from one book to the next while everything still takes place in the same universe. If you expect "the continued adventures of Rosemary and the crew of The Wayfarer" you'll be disappointed, but that is slightly misleading because there is still plenty of good stuff in the other books. They're just about different people.
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Feb 7, 2020 00:32
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freebooter posted:I'm glad somebody enjoyed it, because I found it quite the opposite: bloated and sprawling and unimaginative and I was even falling asleep during some of it. It has its moments (the Prague chapter was genuinely good) but it mostly struck me, like its predecessor, as a book written by a famous author whom editors daren't challenge anymore. It was the bloat that really bugged me. 200 pages into Northern Lights and we're already well into the second act, Lyra meeting Iorek Byrnison for the first time; 200 pages into the Secret Commonwealth and we're still faffing about with tedious amateur spy crap in Oxford and there's another 450 pages to go but they no longer seem like something to anticipate. The refugees did feel shoehorned. Pacing-wise I really liked and it didn’t feel like it dwelled too long on any one scene to bore me. The only thing I took a bit of issue with is how Lyra can be having the kind of doubts she was experiencing given what she saw throughout His Dark Materials. Like, she’s met witches and angels and harpies and dead souls. Believing in a dead universe because of the writings of some philosophers doesn’t seem like it would hold much weight against all that. But it connects with the point Pullman is trying to make about Dust, which has apparently become an aspect of his own belief system, that consciousness is a property of matter. So he needs to create this conflict so Lyra can come to that same realization in the third book.
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Feb 7, 2020 01:16
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Just found out the second book in the Cry Pilot series got released. It's called Burn Cycle. I remember the first book was pretty well received by the thread, hadn't seen mention of this one yet.
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Feb 7, 2020 09:28
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Just found out the second book in the Cry Pilot series got released. It's called Burn Cycle. I'm about 10% in it's a direct continuation. Nothing's happened yet after the big ending of the first.
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Feb 7, 2020 10:34
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Just found out the second book in the Cry Pilot series got released. It's called Burn Cycle. The first book has an interesting premise, and then spends 85% of its time with the protagonist going through boot camp, like if the Starship Troopers film was exclusively the training segment.
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Feb 7, 2020 16:59
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I need more space opera... good or bad? I've read my way through everything Peter F Hamilton, Alistair Reynolds, Neal Asher, Iain M Banks, Beck Chambers, Peter Watts, James S.A. Corey etc have written, in the last year or two. Any recommendations for other works with some scale and half-compelling characters? Perhaps a few truly alien species?
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Feb 7, 2020 17:30
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BurgerQuest posted:I need more space opera... good or bad? Dennis Taylor's "Bobiverse" books are fun distractions if you don't care about the premise being a lot more serious than the execution. The series is basically "What if Von Neumann Probe, but with a (smartass) human intelligence driving it?"
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Feb 7, 2020 17:34
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biracial bear for uncut posted:Dennis Taylor's "Bobiverse" books are fun distractions if you don't care about the premise being a lot more serious than the execution. I just finished the first Bobiverse book. It's a decent read. Parts of it feel a little "copy/pasted" in places, but it's an interesting read. Do the other books develop any more, or is it just more of the same?
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Feb 7, 2020 17:38
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BurgerQuest posted:I need more space opera... good or bad?
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Feb 7, 2020 17:43
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XBenedict posted:I just finished the first Bobiverse book. It's a decent read. Parts of it feel a little "copy/pasted" in places, but it's an interesting read. Do the other books develop any more, or is it just more of the same? There are alien races and an existential threat later, and the Bob society matures a little with a lot of technology development later.
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Feb 7, 2020 17:48
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BurgerQuest posted:I need more space opera... good or bad? Do you like humor in your space opera? If not, avoid Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers like poison.
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Feb 7, 2020 18:01
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BurgerQuest posted:I need more space opera... good or bad? Vernor Vinge and David Brin are the other Hugo-winning go-tos. Cherryh and Bujold don't do aliens in their space opera settings, I believe.
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Feb 7, 2020 18:02
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FPyat posted:Vernor Vinge and David Brin are the other Hugo-winning go-tos. Cherryh and Bujold don't do aliens in their space opera settings, I believe. Sounds like you haven't read the Chanur books or Serpent's Reach. Cherryh does a lot of aliens, just not in the main A-U books.
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Feb 7, 2020 18:08
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BurgerQuest posted:I need more space opera... good or bad? A Fire Upon the Deep is an all time space opera favorite of mine. Has some cool and interesting aliens in it. Also a map of the Milky Way galaxy at the front of the book which makes it even cooler imo.
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Feb 7, 2020 18:43
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BurgerQuest posted:I need more space opera... good or bad? Donaldson's Gap series?
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Feb 7, 2020 18:46
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Apparatchik Magnet posted:Donaldson's Gap series? Seconding this, although it makes the others seem like happy fun time stories.
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Feb 7, 2020 18:55
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Apparatchik Magnet posted:Donaldson's Gap series? Can’t just recommend this without a seeeeerious warning for rape and sexual abuse in this one. I think it’s still worth reading but that’s a big up front caveat.
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Feb 7, 2020 19:03
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If you don't mind books that probably wouldn't even sell at airports, take a crack at these: https://www.amazon.com/Undying-Mercenaries-10-Book/dp/B07J4SPM3D https://www.amazon.com/Star-Force-12-Book/dp/B01A0UMJP8 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0749RCMS5 Kalman posted:Can’t just recommend this without a seeeeerious warning for rape and sexual abuse in this one. I think it’s still worth reading but that’s a big up front caveat. That's an amazing post/avatar combo.
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Feb 7, 2020 19:16
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Kalman posted:Can’t just recommend this without a seeeeerious warning for rape and sexual abuse in this one. I think it’s still worth reading but that’s a big up front caveat.
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Feb 7, 2020 19:36
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anilEhilated posted:Yeah, I'd honestly feel iffy recommending any Donaldson. Okay, sure, Thomas Covenant has rape in the first book, and the Gap series has rape in the first book, but the Mordant’s Need books just have coercion, manipulation, and lack of consent. poo poo, and off-screen rape in the sequel. Never mind. I do actually quite like the Mordant’s Need books, but they’re really rape-adjacent.
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Feb 7, 2020 19:40
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ToxicFrog posted:Sounds like you haven't read the Chanur books or Serpent's Reach. Cherryh does a lot of aliens, just not in the main A-U books. There's aliens in Serpent's Reach, and space travel in Serpent's Reach, but almost all of the combination between them is planetside. "40000 n Gehenna" is also AU with lots of aliens, and "Downbelow Station" and "Finity's End" are at least alien-adjacent.
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Feb 7, 2020 19:45
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Velius posted:Okay, sure, Thomas Covenant has rape in the first book, and the Gap series has rape in the first book, but the Mordant’s Need books just have coercion, manipulation, and lack of consent. poo poo, and off-screen rape in the sequel. Never mind. From Wikipedia: The books deal with themes of reality, power, inaction and love in the context of a fantasy adventure. This series is much lighter in tone than Donaldson's The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever or The Gap Cycle. Damning with faint praise?
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Feb 7, 2020 20:58
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XBenedict posted:I just finished the first Bobiverse book. It's a decent read. Parts of it feel a little "copy/pasted" in places, but it's an interesting read. Do the other books develop any more, or is it just more of the same? I liked the first book and thought it had lots of potential to explore and expand on concepts but the other books... didn't do that, really. They're enjoyable enough but in terms of big sci fi concepts I didn't think it made any particular progress. I don't think I actually finished the third so stuff might change in the last few acts maybe but it all ended up feeling very surface level to me.
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Feb 7, 2020 21:35
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ToxicFrog posted:Sounds like you haven't read the Chanur books or Serpent's Reach. Cherryh does a lot of aliens, just not in the main A-U books. Speaking of which, I read and liked Alliance Rising. It has some traces of the outline-itis you get when a big name writer and a relative newcomer collaborate on a book, but not as bad as some I've read. This book covers the founding of the Merchanter's Alliance and the last gasp of Earth Corp to maintain power before the FTL route to Sol is opened up. Good plot, solid characters. Apparatchik Magnet posted:Donaldson's Gap series? Which is both literally and figuratively space opera; the genesis of the series was the character name "Angus Thermopyle" and "The Ring Cycle" by Wagner. They're outstanding books, easily his best, most polished works, but do not stint on the content warnings.
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Feb 7, 2020 22:08
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Of course it's Apparatchik Magnet blindly recommending Donaldson's Gap series to people. Of course. Anyway, dipped into the Rivers of London series last month(read the first 4 books). Didn't hate the books, don't blindly love them either. The "UK Wizard Cops" premise kind of aged badly, given all thats gone down in the UK since the series started.
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Feb 7, 2020 23:38
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Whoa awesome, almost all recommendations I've never heard of, thank you! Checking them all out now 
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Feb 8, 2020 00:42
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BurgerQuest posted:Whoa awesome, almost all recommendations I've never heard of, thank you! Checking them all out now Also A MEMORY CALLED EMPIRE by Arkady Martine if you want some poetry in your space opera.
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Feb 8, 2020 08:18
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If you do want some space humor, the Space Team series by Barry Hutchison is pretty great.
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Feb 8, 2020 09:30
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BurgerQuest posted:Whoa awesome, almost all recommendations I've never heard of, thank you! Checking them all out now Oh, Empress of Forever by Gladstone is definitely a one book space opera. No weird aliens per se, but alien adjacent creatures, entities, and weird far future cultures.
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Feb 8, 2020 17:14
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