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pseudanonymous posted:Though it's not to the degree of the prince in The First Law Trilogy. That part of it was extremely boring with how generic and cliche it was. I was hoping there'd be hints later that the whole thing was orchestrated because it's very convenient to the actual mover and shaker, but there's nary a sign.
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Feb 19, 2020 16:45
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freebooter posted:OK, granted that it sometimes happened, but the reason it's an amusing story is that it's unusual. Whereas Abercrombie presented it (IIRC) as the only reasonable expectation of some sort of effete noble class trying to go into battle against the Real Men (TM) of the North. It's not really an amusing story and it's not that uncommon. You have to remember that for most of history, military leadership hasn't been a meritocracy and there are entrenched interests which push people into positions of power beyond their competence. Even looking back to the US Civil War, a country which at the time was far more based on meritocracy than contemporaries and was not that long ago, it it universally accepted that there was a notable proportion of generals who were elevated based on their political clout rather than military competence and that's in a country without an aristocracy. For around 200 years in the UK between the 17th and 19th century you could literally purchase a commission as an officer with more money getting you a higher rank which was in fact part of what got Elphinstone his command. Also the answer to "How did this empire become so big and powerful if it's putting pampered princelings in charge of its field armies?" is it was secretly lead by a loving wizard. I mean I can understand the criticism of not liking the style as Abercrombie's style is somewhat distinct and he does eschew realism to rely on a self-knowing use of archetypes, but history is full of stupid, arrogant, cruel, dumb generals so that part of it doesn't really stick as criticism. I'd also say that the grimdark aspect of his writing doesn't rely so much on the violence, but on the overall story arc and emphasises that will be picked up on throughout. The First Law Trilogy could easily have been far less grim while still containing every instance of violence if the ending and where characters landed had been tweaked slightly so everyone had managed to scrape a happy ending.
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Feb 19, 2020 21:24
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Downbelow Station by C. J. Cherryh is a Hugo Award winning novel by an author who came highly recommended by goons, and a book I found excruciatingly dull. It's a book about assholes being assholes to assholes while various factions that presumably want something both in general and with the place being fought over intrigue and fight for reasons that are presumably important and I'm presumably supposed to be very invested in the fate of Pell and Pell Station. But I was not, because I didn't like anyone in this book and had no idea what any of the factions involved stood for or why they were fighting over, be it in general or over this place in particular. Oh, and there's pure as the driven snow noble savage primitive aliens who exist to be exploited by humans and contribute nothing to the story.
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Feb 19, 2020 23:20
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Cythereal posted:Downbelow Station by C. J. Cherryh is a Hugo Award winning novel by an author who came highly recommended by goons, and a book I found excruciatingly dull. It's a book about assholes being assholes to assholes while various factions that presumably want something both in general and with the place being fought over intrigue and fight for reasons that are presumably important and I'm presumably supposed to be very invested in the fate of Pell and Pell Station. But I was not, because I didn't like anyone in this book and had no idea what any of the factions involved stood for or why they were fighting over, be it in general or over this place in particular. Oh, and there's pure as the driven snow noble savage primitive aliens who exist to be exploited by humans and contribute nothing to the story. There's a reason why in basically every post I make about CJC I recommend starting somewhere other than Downbelow Station, if you read it at all.
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Feb 20, 2020 00:39
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ToxicFrog posted:There's a reason why in basically every post I make about CJC I recommend starting somewhere other than Downbelow Station, if you read it at all. Can't think of any reason I'd have read any post you've made, much less about CJC. I was prompted to give her a look by a different thread.
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Feb 20, 2020 00:42
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Cythereal posted:Can't think of any reason I'd have read any post you've made, much less about CJC. I was prompted to give her a look by a different thread. I think you're reading ToxicFrog's post as them berating you for not reading their posts, when actually they were just agreeing with you about it while also saying it's not representative of her work or a good starting point.
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Feb 20, 2020 01:00
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Last night read Kat Howard's "An Unkindness Of Magicians", which I guess qualifies as Urban Fantasy (set in modern day NYC). "An Unkindness" wasn't a bad book, it was well written with a minimum of shoe-horned in bullshit/decently developed characters, and featured a lowkey #MeToo subplot/subcurrent that got resolved hard. No idea if "An Unkindness.." is a one-off UF effort by the author(not planning on checking). If so there was staggering amounts of world building for it. = To be fair to biracial bear for uncut's really obnoxious Shakespeare argument yesterday, there was a kernel of truth in it, only it was presented in true idiotic BotL style. Truth: Plays were the multimedia social events of 300+ plus years ago. Shakespeare was a English popular multi-talented person who produced, wrote, and acted in plays. In today's terms Shakespeare would be a multi-talented publisher/anthology editor/writer who occasionally appeared in his own works. Shakespeare definitely outlasted his contemporaries in popularity while incorporating lots of then-current myth, bawdy tales, etc into his own work. Using that same metric of "English popular multi-talented publisher/anthology editor/writer" with a modern author remembered 300+ years from now, I am now filled with dread that in the year 2420, Brian W Aldiss might be remembered as the "Bard of Oxford". 
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Feb 20, 2020 01:07
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Every time I go to the bookstore I can never remember which CJ Cherryh books are worth getting. What are the best half dozen or so that people recommend? I got Cyteen already.
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Feb 20, 2020 01:19
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quantumfoam posted:To be fair to biracial bear for uncut's really obnoxious Shakespeare argument yesterday, there was a kernel of truth in it, only it was presented in true idiotic BotL style. You either didn't understand biracial bear or didn't understand BotL
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Feb 20, 2020 01:20
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pradmer posted:Every time I go to the bookstore I can never remember which CJ Cherryh books are worth getting. What are the best half dozen or so that people recommend? I got Cyteen already. Pride of Chanur, Foreigner, Merchanter's Luck, Forty Thousand in Gehenna, Faded Sun trilogy. Possibly Morgaine as well, but I never liked those as much.
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Feb 20, 2020 01:32
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team overhead smash posted:I think you're reading ToxicFrog's post as them berating you for not reading their posts, when actually they were just agreeing with you about it while also saying it's not representative of her work or a good starting point. Yes, that. I basically wrote off her whole A-U setting for years because of Downbelow Station and ended up enjoying the other books a great deal more. pradmer posted:Every time I go to the bookstore I can never remember which CJ Cherryh books are worth getting. What are the best half dozen or so that people recommend? I got Cyteen already. Cyteen is just as much of a brick as Downbelow Station, with almost as many assholes, but for some reason I found it a much more engaging and enjoyable read. So that's generally one of the ones I recommend. Apart from that, I usually put The Pride of Chanur on the top of the list; it's a fun, fast-paced space adventure about the crew of a freighter getting embroiled in interstellar politics (and hunted by pirates) when a member of a previously-uncontacted alien species stows away on their ship. And while it stands fine on its own, if you like it, there are four sequels. Back in the A-U setting, there's three short books set after Downbelow (Merchanter's Luck, Tripoint, and Rimrunners) which can be read in any order, and two books set in Earth space before it (Heavy Time and Hellburner; read these in order) which are extremely tense and claustrophobic. I enjoyed all of them and they're all quick reads. Moving away from A-U and the Compact, Serpent's Reach and Voyager in Night are excellent standalones.
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Feb 20, 2020 01:54
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StrixNebulosa posted:Pride of Chanur and the next 3 if you liked that, they go deep into gritty political sci fi drama then pop out into borderline romantic comedy for the last one, I should give it another go but I really didn't like Foreigner. it's probably her best seller though since she keeps writing them. I read a funny/true comment about cherryh which is that her books are nearly all about the successful arrangement and completion of meetings
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Feb 20, 2020 02:39
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sebmojo posted:I should give it another go but I really didn't like Foreigner. it's probably her best seller though since she keeps writing them. The successful arrangement and completion of meetings, culminating in a bus ride to a gunfight.
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Feb 20, 2020 03:38
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ToxicFrog posted:The successful arrangement and completion of meetings, culminating in a bus ride to a gunfight. yep lol chanur books have good chaotic gunfights
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Feb 20, 2020 03:46
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quantumfoam posted:Last night read Kat Howard's "An Unkindness Of Magicians", which I guess qualifies as Urban Fantasy (set in modern day NYC). I bought this book on kindle last week hoping for something similar to The Magicians. The setting is fine but I dunno about the writing. This passage almost made me want to quit reading it at chapter 1: “The woman paused at a corner. Her slate-grey eyes flicked up toward some unmarked window in one of the buildings scraping the sky, as if to be sure someone was watching. Her lips, red as blood, quirked up at the corners, and Sydney stepped off the curb and into traffic.“ There’s a lot in that paragraph I dislike but using “buildings scraping the sky” to describe skyscrapers is probably the worst and most uncreative use of language I’ve come across in a while. I also picked up the newest Dyachenko book. It’s good. Same translator as Vita Nostra who isn’t as competent as whoever translated The Scar (their more traditional fantasy novel) but still serviceable. I wish the other books in The Scar series were translated though as that book was incredible.
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Feb 20, 2020 05:56
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The first CJ Cherryh book I read was Faded Sun Trilogy and the one I recommend the most. You don't have to know anything about the other Alliance-Union books even though it's technically in the same universe.
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Feb 20, 2020 07:30
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Cythereal posted:Downbelow Station by C. J. Cherryh is a Hugo Award winning novel by an author who came highly recommended by goons, and a book I found excruciatingly dull. It's a book about assholes being assholes to assholes while various factions that presumably want something both in general and with the place being fought over intrigue and fight for reasons that are presumably important and I'm presumably supposed to be very invested in the fate of Pell and Pell Station. But I was not, because I didn't like anyone in this book and had no idea what any of the factions involved stood for or why they were fighting over, be it in general or over this place in particular. Oh, and there's pure as the driven snow noble savage primitive aliens who exist to be exploited by humans and contribute nothing to the story. That describes precisely my experience with Downbelow Station. On the other hand, I loving adore the Foreigner series. Just approaching the end of my re-read now so I can read the new one!
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Feb 20, 2020 13:05
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dudeness posted:The first CJ Cherryh book I read was Faded Sun Trilogy and the one I recommend the most. You don't have to know anything about the other Alliance-Union books even though it's technically in the same universe. I'm not hugely well-read in Cherryh, but the Faded Sun books were well worth the time.
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Feb 20, 2020 18:14
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Nebula award finalists announced: Marque of Caine, Charles E. Gannon (Baen) The Ten Thousand Doors of January, Alix E. Harrow (Redhook; Orbit UK) A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine (Tor) Gods of Jade and Shadow, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey; Jo Fletcher) Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir (Tor.com Publishing) A Song for a New Day, Sarah Pinsker (Berkley) I’ve only read Gideon, any others that are unmissable?
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Feb 20, 2020 18:16
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buffalo all day posted:Nebula award finalists announced: Other than Gideon, I read Gods of Jade and Shadow. It's a competently done book and good read, mostly notable for being a fantasy drawn from Mayan myth and being set in Mexico during the depression. That being said, I don't think I'd say unmissable.
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Feb 20, 2020 19:13
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buffalo all day posted:Nebula award finalists announced: A Memory Called Empire was good. The Caine books are not good and I regret reading them.
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Feb 20, 2020 19:23
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here are some spoilers on some of the dumbest poo poo in the Caine series. he is very very bad at writing women and romance A woman is secretly paid to be the main character's lover and spy, and falls in love with him but for real, and is obsessed with coming to save him, and its the only thing she, a super badass commando woman, ever thinks about when given a pov. She then dies unceremoniously in the final assault and is never mentioned again in the series, because Caine finds out he secretly has a lovechild with another female character from a 3 day romance that was wiped from his mind. he decides he is madly in love with her and it's really important. then at the end of the book Caine is mortally wounded. rather than writing anything about his new love, the author retcons in the next book that she was also mortally wounded, and had to be carted away to an advanced alien civilization where she exists only to "motivate" him a few times a book for the next 4 books
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Feb 20, 2020 19:29
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Gods of Jade and Shadow is really underwhelming and does very little with the 1920s Mexico setting. The mythology bits are fine, I guess? Honestly expected more out of it. Guess I'll be rooting for Gideon.
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Feb 20, 2020 20:26
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Gideon was pretty special. Is there any word when Harrow will be released?
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Feb 20, 2020 20:47
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mewse posted:Gideon was pretty special. Is there any word when Harrow will be released? June 2nd.
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Feb 20, 2020 20:52
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Katharine Kerr's new Deverry book is out. Thought it was the best in the series since books 5-8, helped in part by it being a few hundred years later with (almost) all new characters and a new arc. I'd call it a pretty good jumping-on point for the series, altho there are a few parts that might only make sense with context. (Like forex some of the Haen Marn stuff).
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Feb 20, 2020 21:07
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fritz posted:Katharine Kerr's new Deverry book is out. Thought it was the best in the series since books 5-8, helped in part by it being a few hundred years later with (almost) all new characters and a new arc. I'd call it a pretty good jumping-on point for the series, altho there are a few parts that might only make sense with context. (Like forex some of the Haen Marn stuff). I looked up what this was and.. just jumping in on Literally Book 16 does not sound like a great idea are the early books worth picking up?
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Feb 20, 2020 23:46
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buffalo all day posted:Nebula award finalists announced: The Gannon stuff is appalling I read the first one it was poor. Can't believe its on any awards list. Gideon & memory called empire were both very good. branedotorg fucked around with this message at 00:30 on Feb 21, 2020 |
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Feb 21, 2020 00:27
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Nebula awards chat reminds me...did the person who was doing the Hugo Award nominee re-read in the last SF&F thread finish or give up on their personal project? Roughly 2/3 of the early Hugo Awards winners aged badly. I discovered some badly OCR'd scans of Dean Ing's 2 post-nuclear survivalist works (Pulling Through/The Chernobyl Syndrome) on the internet archive. If you ever wanted to learn how to make home-made fallout (radiation) detectors using common household items ala MacGyver, and other survivalist stuff, these are the books for you. Ccs posted:I bought this book on kindle last week hoping for something similar to The Magicians. The setting is fine but I dunno about the writing. This passage almost made me want to quit reading it at chapter 1: Yeah the first page or two of "An Unkindness.." was "ugh...really...really?" but it recovered fast. Only flat out quit a book 1 or 2 pages in a handful of times, either because I found the authors writing style grating (Brust, Tchaikovksy), or because it felt like the book had been run through google-translate a couple dozen times (Rajaniemi).
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Feb 21, 2020 01:11
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I thought memory called empire was pretty solid
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Feb 21, 2020 02:56
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eke out posted:I looked up what this was and.. just jumping in on Literally Book 16 does not sound like a great idea preteen me remembers them being vaguely hot in an overheated repressed catholic kind of way, idk if that holds up Could someone sell me on the Foreigner series? I love cherryh but bounced off the first one, if they're really good i should dig in.
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Feb 21, 2020 03:33
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I've got an ARC of Harrow, I'm about 1/3 of the way through and I don't know how much I'm allowed to say yet, but just holy poo poo this is a lot
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Feb 21, 2020 03:44
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Foreigner by Cherryh: skip the two short stories the editor forced her to add in. Go directly to Bren waking up in the middle of the night with an assassin. The series is about a lost human colony ship that had a series of bad times before most of its population landed on an alien planet with no way to leave. The local aliens weren't happy, war happened, and now centuries later the humans live on an island nation and are forbidden to go anywhere else. Contact between the two species is heavily regulated, and the main point of contact is the diplomat Bren, who gets to live on the mainland. The aliens are deeply hierarchical number-obsessed nobles who are struggling to adapt their culture to the technologies humans brought. Phones, for example, are capable of causing all kinds of chaos to their social order. They also don't agree on the best paths and well cue assassins. Book 1 is basically Bren getting sent off to deep in the mainland to be examined by the ruler's grandma as politics move around them. It's heavily psychological and extremely anxious. The series evolves in some absolutely wild ways as it goes along.
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Feb 21, 2020 03:44
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:I've got an ARC of Harrow, I'm about 1/3 of the way through and I don't know how much I'm allowed to say yet, but just Spoil me and I'll stab you
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Feb 21, 2020 03:45
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StrixNebulosa posted:Spoil me and I'll stab you All I'll say is: book very good
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Feb 21, 2020 03:47
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eke out posted:I looked up what this was and.. just jumping in on Literally Book 16 does not sound like a great idea First four absolutely yes, next four if you liked how the first four ended.
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Feb 21, 2020 03:58
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sebmojo posted:preteen me remembers them being vaguely hot in an overheated repressed catholic kind of way, idk if that holds up Those were probably Katherine Kurtz's Deryini books.
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Feb 21, 2020 03:59
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sebmojo posted:preteen me remembers them being vaguely hot in an overheated repressed catholic kind of way, idk if that holds up I feel like that’s Katherine Kurtz, not Kerr? Though they have practically the same last name, one is the Deryni books and the other the Deverry books, and both have vaguely Celtic high fantasy with magic aspects sooooo god knows preteen me confused them constantly.
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Feb 21, 2020 04:00
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freebooter posted:I cannot easily recall any major character in Game of Thrones who is outright stupid. Cruel, vain, reckless, short-sighted, sure - but nobody who is so arrogant and pompous as to be actually dumb, because that's just not an interesting character trait and it doesn't lead to interesting stories. Catelyn Stark. Her arrogance and stupidity directly lead to the Red Wedding because she thought some guest rules were an unbreakable shield against retribution. Her chapters had multiple moments of "what the hell how is Catelyn this loving dumb" for me.
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Feb 21, 2020 04:10
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:I've got an ARC of Harrow, I'm about 1/3 of the way through and I don't know how much I'm allowed to say yet, but just Congrats! I hate you!
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Feb 21, 2020 04:27
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