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The City We Became (Great Cities #1) by NK Jemisin - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MFKQDJM/ Titus Alone (Gormenghast #3) by Mervyn Peake - $2.51 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MW646PK/ The John Brunner Collection Volume One: The Sheep Look Up, The Crucible of Time, and The Jagged Orbit - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CXSMQCT/
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Sep 24, 2022 17:57
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Horizon Burning posted:reckoners is easily the worst thing sanderson has ever written I've never been able to get through Elantris; it's just a slog. There's some interesting ideas in there (including an unintentional prediction of the problems caused by the spread of US-style evangelical Protestantism in Latin America  ), but the plot feels like endless setup in a depressing setting. The characterization (aside from one or two characters) and prose are slightly below par even by Sanderson standards, and while there's one of the trademark Sanderson "magic systems," it doesn't work anymore and the characters are trying to get it to work at all rather than to use it to do interesting things.Is Reckoners really worse than that?
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Sep 24, 2022 18:52
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Everyone posted:I will note that that bit was averted in Sanderson's Reckoners series. David Charleston has spent something like the last 10 years (AKA from age 8 to the present) learning as much as he could about various Epics and ferreting out their weaknesses, because 10 years prior an Epic murdered his father. David is still fallible on this and other fronts. I too spent the ages of 8-18 ferreting out and exploiting (in order to increase misery and disaster) the weaknesses of a certain individual (myself)
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Sep 24, 2022 19:31
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Larry Parrish posted:I haven't read a single YA series I haven't thought sucked tbh So You Want To Be A Wizard is pretty good iirc, the second one in particular is strong. The protagonist accidentally volunteers to be ritually sacrificed to the god of all sharks. Those books used heaven very effectively, it was definitely real and a place people and things could go, so the author was free to brutally kill off adorable sidekicks, parents, etc with the fig leaf that they were happy in Timeheart now.
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Sep 24, 2022 19:34
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Blamestorm posted:The third Scholomance book by Naomi Novik is out - the Golden Enclaves - and I thought it was Pretty Good and a fairly satisfying conclusion to the trilogy. Because it moves out into the proper world it has to throw a lot of detail out fast on stuff that had been more ambiguous in the early books and introduce a number of characters who come and go very quickly. I wonder whether it would have benefitted from being two books instead. But it wraps everything up quite neatly (I suspect some people will think too neatly) and it’s obvious in retrospect how much she was seeding in books 1 and 2 as many disparate things turn out to be more connected than perhaps they appeared early on. (Being super vague as I guessed two of the major revelations shortly before they were spelled out and I wouldn’t want to deprive others of the same satisfaction). It's not out in the US until Tuesday - where do you live that you have it already? edit: I see this was covered.
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Sep 24, 2022 20:55
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General Battuta posted:So You Want To Be A Wizard is pretty good iirc, the second one in particular is strong. The protagonist accidentally volunteers to be ritually sacrificed to the god of all sharks. Those books used heaven very effectively, it was definitely real and a place people and things could go, so the author was free to brutally kill off adorable sidekicks, parents, etc with the fig leaf that they were happy in Timeheart now. Deep Wizardry was tough but effective to read as a teen grappling with the idea of my own death
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Sep 24, 2022 20:57
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ShutteredIn posted:Patricia Wrede’s Enchanted Forest series is one of the best fantasy series ever written and it’s YA. Megan Whalen Turner’s Queen Thief to a lesser extent as well. i forgot about the thief, it's brilliant
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Sep 24, 2022 21:06
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team overhead smash posted:Earthsea. Earthsea was written before YA existed as a publishing category. It's nebulously for children/adolescents. fez_machine fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Sep 24, 2022 |
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Sep 24, 2022 21:16
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Larry Parrish posted:I haven't read a single YA series I haven't thought sucked tbh fez_machine posted:Earthsea was written before YA existed as a publishing category. It's nebulously for children/adolescents. Ok then, Howl's Moving Castle.
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Sep 24, 2022 21:19
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Ok then, Howl's Moving Castle. yeah as I said, DWJ. Honestly of her books, Howl isn't my favorite, but Hexwood, the Chrestomanci books, Dogsbody, Homeward Bounders, Archer's Goon. Lots of hits. On the young wizards books, Diane Duane is shockingly on Twitter and not awful.
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Sep 24, 2022 21:25
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Danhenge posted:Deep Wizardry was tough but effective to read as a teen grappling with the idea of my own death Yeah this is one of my top all-time reads tbh, even outside YA. Not old enough to love as yet, but old enough to die, indeed is still stuck in my brain 30-x years later. The first three books are near flawless, towards the end of the series she runs into a serious problem with too many characters left floating around but they're still a good yarn.
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Sep 24, 2022 22:00
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fez_machine posted:Earthsea was written before YA existed as a publishing category. It's nebulously for children/adolescents. yeah, when people say "YA" they usually mean Harry Potter pastiche
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Sep 24, 2022 22:12
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ive obviously read good children's books. i haven't read good YA and the stuff recentlyish published as that is especially grotesque.
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Sep 24, 2022 23:24
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General Battuta posted:I too spent the ages of 8-18 ferreting out and exploiting (in order to increase misery and disaster) the weaknesses of a certain individual (myself) Understandable. You had to get your Baru Cormorant practice in somehow.
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Sep 25, 2022 01:00
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Armauk posted:This why I always skip anything remotely YA. I was going to bring up a bunch of counterarguments to this (Diane Duane, DWJ, Megan Whalen Turner, etc) but I see the thread has beaten me to it. I actually just finished a reread of the Queen's Thief series and enjoyed it just as much the second time around; while I do feel that the series peaks around books 2-3, that doesn't mean the back half is bad, it's just not as good. I should (re)read the Young Wizards books soon, too; I read the first three when I was younger but the library didn't have any of the later ones. I have the full set now, though! Everyone posted:I'm considering taking a crack at Leigh Bardugo's "Grishaverse" stuff because her The Ninth House was really good. Amusingly, the conversation about YA started because of me talking about how much I didn't like one of the Grishaverse books (Six of Crows).
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Sep 25, 2022 01:21
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Everyone posted:Maybe, but it still isn't unreadable. well yeah that's whole reason it's such a hit? you get a few pages of, like, wow, weird grimdark sci-fi... then it's like haha but enough about that, it's time for The Standard YA Plot. anyway, apologies for saying your reckoners series was bad, brandon.
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Sep 25, 2022 02:43
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Silver2195 posted:I've never been able to get through Elantris; it's just a slog. There's some interesting ideas in there (including an unintentional prediction of the problems caused by the spread of US-style evangelical Protestantism in Latin America quote:but the plot feels like endless setup in a depressing setting. The characterization (aside from one or two characters) and prose are slightly below par even by Sanderson standards, and while there's one of the trademark Sanderson "magic systems," it doesn't work anymore and the characters are trying to get it to work at all rather than to use it to do interesting things. Won't dispute that Elantris has problems though. The non-Hrathen PoV characters seemed very generically heroic to me.
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Sep 25, 2022 03:12
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Anyone read Viriconium? It's supposed to be a huge thing that Wolfe and Mieville were indebted to but I bounced off it quickly.
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Sep 25, 2022 04:05
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FPyat posted:Anyone read Viriconium? It's supposed to be a huge thing that Wolfe and Mieville were indebted to but I bounced off it quickly. The Viriconium series is very Michael Moorcock on drugs. Once M John Harrison got over his Michael Moorcock obsession, the Viriconium stories improved or got worse. I sort of prefer the Moorcock influenced version of "The Lamia and Lord Cromis" versus the rewritten version. OG Moorcock influenced version has the main character dressing like a clown while snorting cocaine constantly and having relations with a mysterious lady to distract himself from his fated doom while the rewritten version has the main character being a pedophile to distract himself from his fated doom.
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Sep 25, 2022 05:08
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quantumfoam posted:The Viriconium series is very Michael Moorcock on drugs. So, Michael Moorcock, then.
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Sep 25, 2022 05:15
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Clark Nova posted:yeah, when people say "YA" they usually mean Harry Potter pastiche While the publishing category existed before they were published and the seeds of modern YA genres were planted in the early 90s, I really feel like it only gains its current shape post-Harry Potter and Hunger Games and the spread of fan fiction as a training place for young writers. Specifically I feel YA's derangements originate from the tastes of and culture of fan fiction writers. While I don't want to play no true Scotsman, for me there's a true separation between Diana Wynne Jones and early Harry Potter which exist in a continuum with children's literature, and modern YA and later Harry Potter which became completely their own thing. fez_machine fucked around with this message at 05:30 on Sep 25, 2022 |
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Sep 25, 2022 05:26
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Huh, Cabin at the end of the world got turned into a m night film.
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Sep 25, 2022 07:53
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I thought the 'Uglies' series was pretty good despite a premise that could have been dreadful. The Chaos Walking books are very well-written but I had to bounce because they were a bit too brutal for me. When I was a kid I read a lot of what was probably roughly YA science fiction, stuff like A Rag, A Bone and a Hank of Hair and Children of Dust. Though that was 35 years ago so.
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Sep 25, 2022 09:16
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Clark Nova posted:yeah, when people say "YA" they usually mean Harry Potter pastiche Or a trilogy/quadrilogy with a perky young heroine set in a dystopia. This is selling the genre short. Yes, a lot of it is publishers trying to push the next Harry Potter/Hunger Games/Twilight, but a lot of it isn't. Pratchett's Tiffany Aching novels are YA. There's the Old Kingdom series by Garth Nix, Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman. Going back past the ridiculous concept that YA didn't exist until Rowling created it, there's The Tripods, the Colsec trilogy by Douglas Hill, Seven Citadels by Geraldine Harris, the first two Brisingamen books (the third is an adult novel) and the Belgariad, which has aged poorly in places but is still a solid fantasy epic. And that's just off the top of my head.
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Sep 25, 2022 10:18
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Book of three, maybe the dark is rising series?
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Sep 25, 2022 10:22
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Jedit posted:Or a trilogy/quadrilogy with a perky young heroine set in a dystopia. This is selling the genre short. Yes, a lot of it is publishers trying to push the next Harry Potter/Hunger Games/Twilight, but a lot of it isn't. Pratchett's Tiffany Aching novels are YA. There's the Old Kingdom series by Garth Nix, Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman. Going back past the ridiculous concept that YA didn't exist until Rowling created it, there's The Tripods, the Colsec trilogy by Douglas Hill, Seven Citadels by Geraldine Harris, the first two Brisingamen books (the third is an adult novel) and the Belgariad, which has aged poorly in places but is still a solid fantasy epic. And that's just off the top of my head. Literally everyone of those authors started writing pre-Potter. Modern YA is a different beast.
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Sep 25, 2022 10:50
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I just watched a YouTube video on Heinlein. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8AyxQ-J1no In the novel Starship Troopers, only veterans are allowed to vote. Heinlein believed that veterans would vote more wisely than non-veterans because they understand discipline and sacrifice, which would lead to better governance. But selectorate theory tells me that this would be a terrible idea. Only 7% of Americans are veterans and therefore only 7% of the American population would have a vote in Heinlein's Utopia. Since voter turnout in elections is never 100% and a candidate needs only a majority of the vote to win, you're talking about presidents winning elections with something like 2% of the population's support. This is what political scientists call a small-coalition regime. In a small-coalition regime, the ruler is incentivized to run a regime oriented towards private rewards. He looks after the interests of that 2% at the expense of everybody else, because he only needs that 2% of people supporting him to stay in power. This will lead to a neglect of public goods. The country will have worse roads, worse education systems, worse healthcare, etc. The people will actually be worse off. What's more, the veterans themselves won't have it so good either. A feature of small-coalition regimes is that the members of the coalition are always looking to expel members and reduce the size of the coalition, so that the surviving members can have larger fractions of the pie for themselves. So what I imagine would happen is that, over time, the ruler would pass laws narrowing what "veteran" means. He might pass laws saying that only veterans who served a minimum number of years can vote. Or maybe only veterans above a certain rank (eg anyone below captain cannot vote). Or maybe only veterans who served in combat roles. Whatever, the idea is to reduce the number of people who are eligible to vote, thereby reducing the size of the winning coalition. The smaller the coalition, the easier it is for the ruler to hold on to power. What Heinlein's Utopia will be is what Bruce Bueno de Mesquita calls a junta regime. Small coalition, small selectorate. These kinds of regimes are very unstable. Junta leaders face revolts far more often than dictators or democratic leaders. So Heinlein's Utopia will be lovely for everyone. Kurzon fucked around with this message at 11:38 on Sep 25, 2022 |
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Sep 25, 2022 11:01
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Kurzon posted:In the novel Starship Troopers, only veterans are allowed to vote. Heinlein believed that veterans would vote more wisely than non-veterans because they understand discipline and sacrifice, which would lead to better governance. But selectorate theory tells me that this would be a terrible idea. I'm sure GIP posters could tell you better than anyone else just what an absolutely terrible idea it would be.
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Sep 25, 2022 11:46
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sebmojo posted:Book of three, maybe the dark is rising series? Yeah prydain and dark is rising both are still good
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Sep 25, 2022 12:01
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sebmojo posted:Book of three, maybe the dark is rising series? The Dark is Rising seems a little young for YA, especially the first book, Over Sea, Under Stone. I still enjoyed the series even though I first read it in college.
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Sep 25, 2022 13:05
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Kurzon posted:I just watched a YouTube video on Heinlein. It sounds like this theory is geared towards understanding dictatorial petrostates and not narrow-franchise democracies like 19th century Britain.
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Sep 25, 2022 16:25
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day-gas posted:Finished Ventus by Karl Schroeder, very very good and the first book I've read by Schroeder. Any suggestions on what series of his to follow up with? Definitely check out Lady of Mazes (prequel to Ventus) if you haven't yet.
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Sep 25, 2022 18:21
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I'm pretty sure Cory Doctorow's Little Brother was billed as YA too.
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Sep 25, 2022 18:31
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The obvious soluion to the Heinlein voter quandary is a mandatory draft so everyone gets to be a veteran like Israel does. I'm certain it will fix all our problems just like it did over there.
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Sep 25, 2022 18:36
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Is Journey to the Center of the Earth any good? I remember enjoying 20k leagues when I was a kid
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Sep 25, 2022 18:44
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I am enjoying Cage of Souls. I definitely get a periodic itch for the kind of Book of the New Sun / Numenera type of setting with vast unfathomable lost technology everywhere, and it is scratching that.
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Sep 25, 2022 19:49
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Kurzon posted:heinlein, the politics understander yeah his weird military republic is straight up just America lol, but magically there's less problems
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Sep 25, 2022 20:25
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Against All Gods: The Age of Bronze (#1) by Miles Cameron - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09K78SJV3/ The Jasmine Throne (Burning Kingdoms #1) by Tasha Suri - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08F4YZZ84/ The Pariah (Covenant of Steel #1) by Anthony Ryan - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08PV49R1G/
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Sep 25, 2022 20:49
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VostokProgram posted:Is Journey to the Center of the Earth any good? I remember enjoying 20k leagues when I was a kid I read that as a kid. I still remember the constant sense of just how dangerous the whole thing was. So if you want a book of existential dread, you'll probably enjoy this.
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Sep 25, 2022 20:58
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VostokProgram posted:Is Journey to the Center of the Earth any good? I remember enjoying 20k leagues when I was a kid I remember enjoying Journey to the Center of the Earth as a kid. I liked the twist ending (although maybe I'm misremembering it) where they don't actually reach the center of the Earth. At the beginning of the story the scientist character makes some superficially plausible arguments about why the center of the Earth isn't as hot as might be expected, but in the end it turns out that the center of the Earth is too hot after all and the have to turn back before they reach it.
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Sep 25, 2022 22:10
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