|
HopperUK posted:I think people who like science fiction will find the O'Brien books easier to read than people who don't perhaps. You're brought into a world with different customs and technology and it may not be fully explained. You're expected to gather a lot of detail about how the world works from context. Some folk will read something they don't entirely understand and think 'I don't get it, this sucks', but scifi readers are more likely to think 'I don't get it, I will read on, if it's important I expect the author will make sure I understand it in time'. This was my experience, yeah, and key to that experience was that the culture, as you’ve mentioned, is alien. You can see some of the places where the author has sort of smoothed it out for modern-reader consumption, but they’re few and far between. I like my aliens to be truly alien, but in the tier of most SF where the aliens are rubber-forehead humans, the people in the Aubrey-Maturin series are basically an alien culture.
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 01:59
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 2, 2024 21:50 |
|
|
I should probably get my hands on them. Loved the film and really enjoyed Return of the Obra Dinn which requires a similar learning curve.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 03:15
|
|
|
Absurd Alhazred posted:I should probably get my hands on them. Loved the film and really enjoyed Return of the Obra Dinn which requires a similar learning curve. Yesss you'll love em. The character stuff is just so good too. The main friendship is adorable. “Why there you are, Stephen," cried Jack. "You are come home, I find." "That is true," said Stephen with an affectionate look: he prized statements of this kind in Jack.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 03:34
|
|
|
Graydon Saunders here, finished reading my own book The March North and can’t stop thinking about it so I bought the next one. Also, what kind of goddamn nut am I to eschew the biggest book marketplace that has ever existed due to whatever ‘principle’ is.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 04:40
|
|
|
Remulak posted:Graydon Saunders here, finished reading my own book The March North and can’t stop thinking about it so I bought the next one. Also, what kind of goddamn nut am I to eschew the biggest book marketplace that has ever existed due to whatever ‘principle’ is. Graydon can you please explain what principle makes Amazon a bridge too far for you but not Google?
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 05:15
|
|
withak posted:Post about it later or else. This is much later than I had anticipated but, hey, here it is. It's called In Sekhmet's Shadow. It follows a young woman who dons a suit of power armor to avenge her father and avert her nightmares of an apocalyptic future -- nightmares of fire and ash and blood, where the air isn't filled with the cries of those she has saved but the screams of her victims. Think The Boys meets Neon Genesis Evangelion. Had I been better versed in publisher-speak I would've called it a queer retelling of the myth of Sekhmet and pushed that line -- but that's not really accurate. It's triple-drafted, completed, edited and, according to a wide variety of genre agents, pretty much impossible to market. Too thriller for sci-fi readers, too sci-fi for thriller readers. Well-plotted and paced but too long. General Battuta is the one who termed it an "anticapitalist post-superhero thriller" and I'd just like to thank him for being a big creative inspiration and also putting up with dumb questions like 'how does pacing work?' Go read Baru, and pre-order Exordia. I'm bad at marketing, so, I'm just going to list off random thoughts. It's a novel about superheroes in the sense that Blindsight is a novel about vampires. An editor said I have the sensibilities of Zack Snyder directing an arthouse film. If you liked Gideon the Ninth, you might like the relationship between Sabra and Revenant. If you like your worldbuilding in inferences and allusions, then you'll be happy because I was asked to include less of those and more infodumps. There's a Zybourne Clock reference by the third chapter. The most cutting remark I got over the past year or so was 'the strength of your concept is not matched by the strength of your prose.' Tommy Arnold did the cover art and he's a wonderful dude to work with. As I said ages ago: we're asking the big questions like "Can superheroes reconcile the contradictions within capital and themselves? DOES power corrupt? Is it gay if you're a woman and she's a goth-rock robot?" It's a novel about saving the world when the status quo is the bad guy. "It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism." I'll be putting up a chapter every day at the following link, but the first six are up now. If you would prefer an ebook, that'll be soon after it wraps up (so, in about two months.) But I'd really rather give people an opportunity to just read it. Blurb below: quote:
Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 10:00 on Jun 22, 2023 |
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 06:13
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:
The advanced technology is so lovingly described and everything in the story depends on it. Also one of the main POV characters is an outsider to this technology while the other is very much an insider. Thus providing contrasting perspectives. (The advanced technology in this case is circa-1800 sailing ships.)
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 09:51
|
|
|
So I was recommended Babel by RF Kuang. They said that if I liked Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, this would be up my alley. I did like JS&MN: I loved the first third, then the later parts dragged a bit by comparison, but overall the style and prose was good fun. I have mixed thoughts about Babel, but noticed the writing was way less sophisticated than JS&MR. It felt like YA, but it's marketed to adults. There is simply no comparison to JS&MN in terms of the prose. This is not the first time I've run into this. I think "let's try read some SF published recently" and find that the stuff being marketed to adults and winning awards is written at a 6th grade reading level. So please tell me - who is writing and publishing sophisticated SF these days? Who is today's Gene Wolfe?
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 12:45
|
|
|
Milkfred E. Moore posted:In Sekhmet's Shadow. Congrats on publication! You should have the right timing to enter it in the Self-Published Sci-fi Competition (SPSFC, the sci-fi counterpart to the more established Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off/SPFBO): https://thespsfc.org/competition-dates/ And especially with a Tommy Arnold cover, I'd say you'd have a good shot in the cover contest, except they might not have one for 2023 thanks to the AI cover controversy for SPFBO. Anyway, I just read the first chapter and I'm enjoying it, but I am one of those who wants an ebook instead of reading it on Royal Road. Please let us know when you've got one out! Edit: Jimbozig posted:So I was recommended Babel by RF Kuang. They said that if I liked Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, this would be up my alley. I did like JS&MN: I loved the first third, then the later parts dragged a bit by comparison, but overall the style and prose was good fun. I have mixed thoughts about Babel, but noticed the writing was way less sophisticated than JS&MR. It felt like YA, but it's marketed to adults. There is simply no comparison to JS&MN in terms of the prose. Oh no. This is on my shelf right now and I wasn't exactly thrilled to jump in but now I'm really not sure if I want to start. Leng fucked around with this message at 13:03 on Jun 22, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 12:54
|
|
Leng posted:You should have the right timing to enter it in the Self-Published Sci-fi Competition (SPSFC, the sci-fi counterpart to the more established Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off/SPFBO): https://thespsfc.org/competition-dates/ Oh, neat! Thanks for the heads-up! Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 13:41 on Jun 22, 2023 |
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 13:38
|
|
|
Jimbozig posted:Who is today's Gene Wolfe?
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 14:10
|
|
|
Milkfred E. Moore posted:This is much later than I had anticipated but, hey, here it is. I like what I see of the first chapter, though, so I'll load it onto my e-reader and check it out once it's finished -- thank you for posting it!
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 14:57
|
|
|
Jimbozig posted:So I was recommended Babel by RF Kuang. They said that if I liked Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, this would be up my alley. I did like JS&MN: I loved the first third, then the later parts dragged a bit by comparison, but overall the style and prose was good fun. I have mixed thoughts about Babel, but noticed the writing was way less sophisticated than JS&MR. It felt like YA, but it's marketed to adults. There is simply no comparison to JS&MN in terms of the prose. Brandon Sande- *snerk* sorry, couldn't resist. Try https://blackforestbasilisks.com/2019/12/19/a-love-letter-to-imaginary-worlds-the-prose-of-science-fiction-and-fantasy/
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 14:58
|
|
|
Jimbozig posted:So I was recommended Babel by RF Kuang. They said that if I liked Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, this would be up my alley. I did like JS&MN: I loved the first third, then the later parts dragged a bit by comparison, but overall the style and prose was good fun. I have mixed thoughts about Babel, but noticed the writing was way less sophisticated than JS&MR. It felt like YA, but it's marketed to adults. There is simply no comparison to JS&MN in terms of the prose. Tamsyn Muir? I mean, the prose ranges from Gormenghast to a teenager dropping dank memes on Reddit, but it does so with intention and skill. There's also plenty of unreliable narrator and mystery.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 16:04
|
|
|
I don't like everywhere she takes it but Ada Palmer is a very dense and clever writer in TOO LIKE THE LIGHTNING + sequels. And consciously Wolfe inspired.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 17:07
|
|
|
Leng posted:Oh no. This is on my shelf right now and I wasn't exactly thrilled to jump in but now I'm really not sure if I want to start. Read Babel. The interesting bit in Babel is how magic relates to colonialism, which is given a fairy sophisticated portrayal. Regarding reading levels as a marker for prose quality, I can’t help but wonder what reading level most Hemingway is at.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 17:18
|
|
|
ulmont posted:Read Babel. The interesting bit in Babel is how magic relates to colonialism, which is given a fairy sophisticated portrayal. Annoyingly, there is now a tool for judging reading level called “Hemingway”. Seems that his work is judged to be between 4th and 6th grade level tho.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 17:33
|
|
|
Lead out in cuffs posted:Tamsyn Muir? General Battuta posted:I don't like everywhere she takes it but Ada Palmer is a very dense and clever writer in TOO LIKE THE LIGHTNING + sequels. And consciously Wolfe inspired. ulmont posted:Read Babel. The interesting bit in Babel is how magic relates to colonialism, which is given a fairy sophisticated portrayal. Yeah, I think Babel was really interesting in exactly the way you say. I wasn't trying to discourage anyone from reading it. I grated against it for a good chunk of the book because it wasn't what I thought I had signed up for. I thought from what I had read beforehand that I was getting something like Susanna Clarke and I really really wasn't, at all. Once I got with the program, I spent the next chunk of the book anxious that the plot and resolution were going to be simplistic nonsense, but that anxiety was not justified. She did a good job at what she set out to do, which was writing a book that you could hand to a bright 13 year old and they would come away with a sense of what colonialism is and how it works and some of the problems with pat simplistic answers for how to fix the system, all grounded in the reality of what empire does to those who resist it and those who go along with it. It also has good pacing and I was always keen to find time to pick it up and keep reading. That's pretty basic but if a book fails that, the rest doesn't really matter.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 17:55
|
|
|
HopperUK posted:I think people who like science fiction will find the O'Brien books easier to read than people who don't perhaps. You're brought into a world with different customs and technology and it may not be fully explained. You're expected to gather a lot of detail about how the world works from context. Some folk will read something they don't entirely understand and think 'I don't get it, this sucks', but scifi readers are more likely to think 'I don't get it, I will read on, if it's important I expect the author will make sure I understand it in time'. I kind of went this way as a young child who liked old children's novels - I devoured and loved the Swallows and Amazons series, everything by E. Nesbit, etc., and got accused of being too old-fashioned in my reading tastes. But decoding now-changed social mores from context seemed very similar to understanding the society and technology in Asimov and Arthur C. Clark stories. I also remember being prevented from reading a girl's school story by a teacher who said I (as a boy) "wouldn't be able to empathise with the characters". Despite the fact I was allowed to read SF stories and knew no space explorers or robots, but fully half the people I did know were female. (Nowadays, as an old-rear end man, thanks to PG, archive.org, and Amazon I can read almost anything I like, and rather resent being deprived of some really good storytelling in my youth. Boy, can Angela Brazil describe the misery of being an outsider.)
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 18:41
|
|
|
Awkward Davies posted:Annoyingly, there is now a tool for judging reading level called “Hemingway”. Seems that his work is judged to be between 4th and 6th grade level tho. "Reading level" is definitely a metric that breaks down pretty quickly if you try to use it beyond "would an average child in X grade be able to understand most of the vocabulary in this work and get the basic gist of what's happening." Even if a kid can read something fluently, it doesn't mean they necessarily have the full context/experience to 'get' the work itself (I'm sure there are exceptions, but I'd wager that most 9-year-olds aren't going to be engrossed by Hemmingway the way adults who enjoy his stuff are, even if they're able to read it easily enough). I'm guessing the original post about it meant more that Babel is written in a  "YA-style" which I'd say is more of a style/structure thing than a reading level thing, though they can sort of overlap with each other with stuff aimed at younger audiences. (FWIW, I have only read the first Poppy War book by Kuang and if Babel is at all close to that, I'd put it in the YA-style nebula too.)
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 19:34
|
|
|
DurianGray posted:"Reading level" is definitely a metric that breaks down pretty quickly if you try to use it beyond "would an average child in X grade be able to understand most of the vocabulary in this work and get the basic gist of what's happening." Even if a kid can read something fluently, it doesn't mean they necessarily have the full context/experience to 'get' the work itself (I'm sure there are exceptions, but I'd wager that most 9-year-olds aren't going to be engrossed by Hemmingway the way adults who enjoy his stuff are, even if they're able to read it easily enough). I read The Old Man and the Sea for a book report in 5th grade because it was on the Reading List and fairly short (127pp.) All I got out of it at the time was "Sharks bite (literally) and suck. Good for the old dude for killing some of them. He brought the skeleton home so happy ending?"
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 19:43
|
|
|
DurianGray posted:"Reading level" is definitely a metric that breaks down pretty quickly if you try to use it beyond "would an average child in X grade be able to understand most of the vocabulary in this work and get the basic gist of what's happening." Even if a kid can read something fluently, it doesn't mean they necessarily have the full context/experience to 'get' the work itself (I'm sure there are exceptions, but I'd wager that most 9-year-olds aren't going to be engrossed by Hemmingway the way adults who enjoy his stuff are, even if they're able to read it easily enough). Absolutely run into this with my kid, she reads several grades above and if we go by "can read" we get a lot of boyfriends girlfriends and backbiting teenage BS, which isn't where she is. We also get stuff like Bea Wolf, which was awesome and she enjoyed, but didn't "appreciate".
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 20:01
|
|
|
Jimbozig posted:Oh, I'm already on that train! I thought Nona was a little bit of a step down, but Gideon was top notch and Harrow was almost as good, so I'm still excited for Alecto when it comes out. Yeah I think you'd enjoy Too Like the Lightning. Note that it's written in a style meant to somewhat emulate Renaissance history primary sources (but in English), which is surprisingly readable most of the time, but can also drag a bit. There are also a lot of segues into politics, philosophy, etc. It's Very Nerdy.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 20:58
|
|
|
Hobnob posted:I also remember being prevented from reading a girl's school story by a teacher who said I (as a boy) "wouldn't be able to empathise with the characters". Despite the fact I was allowed to read SF stories and knew no space explorers or robots, but fully half the people I did know were female.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 21:04
|
|
|
Jimbozig posted:So please tell me - who is writing and publishing sophisticated SF these days? Who is today's Gene Wolfe? In addition to Ada Palmer, I'd give a look at Amal El-Mohtar/Max Gladstone's "This Is How You Lose The Time War" for prose.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 22:32
|
|
|
Hobnob posted:I kind of went this way as a young child who liked old children's novels - I devoured and loved the Swallows and Amazons series, everything by E. Nesbit, etc., and got accused of being too old-fashioned in my reading tastes. But decoding now-changed social mores from context seemed very similar to understanding the society and technology in Asimov and Arthur C. Clark stories. Yeah this is a good comparison. I never had to struggle too hard as a kid reading Victorian kids' books. You just work it out as you go along. Man maybe it's time to read What Katy Did again.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 22:48
|
|
|
Hobnob posted:I also remember being prevented from reading a girl's school story by a teacher who said I (as a boy) "wouldn't be able to empathise with the characters". Despite the fact I was allowed to read SF stories and knew no space explorers or robots, but fully half the people I did know were female. My sister and I were voracious readers and probably read as much of each other's Babysitter's Club and Forgotten Realms novels as we did anything else growing up. Didn't bother the family at least, who were happy we were keeping busy and quiet. Then when I moved years ago my young niece was helping us and got into one of the boxes and asked why I had "girl's books" in my library. It was some Kushiel's Dart books, she was just judging based on the covers. "Oh thats just the cover art, you wouldn't like those."
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 23:03
|
|
|
Jimbozig posted:So I was recommended Babel by RF Kuang. They said that if I liked Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, this would be up my alley. I did like JS&MN: I loved the first third, then the later parts dragged a bit by comparison, but overall the style and prose was good fun. I have mixed thoughts about Babel, but noticed the writing was way less sophisticated than JS&MR. It felt like YA, but it's marketed to adults. There is simply no comparison to JS&MN in terms of the prose. If you haven't read Susanna Clarke's Piranesi, then you should give that a go — much, much shorter than JS&MN, very different, but the prose is absolutely gorgeous and I enjoyed it at least as much as JS&MN. I'm about to start reading Deep Wheel Orcadia, which is a verse novel written by Orcadian poet Harry Josephine Giles. I have no thoughts on it yet, but I'm assured it's very, very literary. Looking through my bookshelf, you might enjoy Elizabeth Knox's The Absolute Book. She's one of those authors who the Literary World loves to say isn't actually writing genre because she's actually writing Capital L Literature, which is horseshit but she is definitely writing in a much more literary register than most SFF that gets published. David Mitchell gets lumped into that category a bit too, so if you haven't read The Bone Clocks or Cloud Atlas, you might get a kick out of those too.
|
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2023 23:14
|
|
|
Jimbozig posted:So I was recommended Babel by RF Kuang. They said that if I liked Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, this would be up my alley. I did like JS&MN: I loved the first third, then the later parts dragged a bit by comparison, but overall the style and prose was good fun. I have mixed thoughts about Babel, but noticed the writing was way less sophisticated than JS&MR. It felt like YA, but it's marketed to adults. There is simply no comparison to JS&MN in terms of the prose. NK Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy? Echoing Ada Palmer as well. But the best SF isn’t marketed as SF. Here’s the best written stuff I’ve come across: Kazuo Ishiguro’s last three books - Never Let Me Go, The Buried Giant, and Klara and the Sun - are pure SF and have won various mainstream awards. Iain Reid’s last two - Foe and We Spread (maybe more horror than SF) The Book of Strange New Things - Michael Faber Under the Skin - Michael Faber
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2023 00:31
|
|
|
*double-checks thread*. I guess by Babel you don't mean Isaac Babel?
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2023 01:52
|
|
|
I just read Babel recently. I felt about as disappointed with it as I did with her debut, The Poppy War. Interesting ideas, lots of research, but ultimately quite a boring execution with thin characters. And absolutely zero subtlety or trust in the reader to come to their own conclusions.
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2023 02:06
|
|
|
I read all the Poppy War books and came away feeling like it was a waste of a premise on boring writing.
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2023 02:39
|
|
|
Metis of the Hallway posted:I just read Babel recently. I felt about as disappointed with it as I did with her debut, The Poppy War. Interesting ideas, lots of research, but ultimately quite a boring execution with thin characters. And absolutely zero subtlety or trust in the reader to come to their own conclusions. i stayed away, despite the reviews after ready the first two in the poppy war. Similar to Megan E O'Keefe, great reviews, boring reads.
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2023 02:53
|
|
|
OddObserver posted:*double-checks thread*. I guess by Babel you don't mean Isaac Babel?
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2023 02:54
|
|
|
Metis of the Hallway posted:I just read Babel recently. I felt about as disappointed with it as I did with her debut, The Poppy War. Interesting ideas, lots of research, but ultimately quite a boring execution with thin characters. And absolutely zero subtlety or trust in the reader to come to their own conclusions. There was a lot I found deeply irritating about Babel, but the one thing that sums it up for me is the bit where a student at Oxford in 1830-something uses the phrase "narco-military state". If everyone sounds like an American grad student circa 2020, I don't think you get to go on about how well-researched and realistic the novel is. Everything else I hated about it is sort of along those lines, but I think that's the most useful single example to illustrate why. The ultimate combination of modern sensibilities, bland writing, and aversion to subtlety. Edit: As much as I generally hate Goodreads reviews, I thought this review was spot-on. cptn_dr fucked around with this message at 04:10 on Jun 23, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2023 03:07
|
|
|
General Battuta posted:I don't like everywhere she takes it but Ada Palmer is a very dense and clever writer in TOO LIKE THE LIGHTNING + sequels. And consciously Wolfe inspired. also a generally really cool woman she has terminal Renaissance history brain, what with being a respected professor about it at the university of chicago
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2023 04:30
|
|
|
DurianGray posted:I'm guessing the original post about it meant more that Babel is written in a I just recently (barely) finished Black Water Sister by Zen Cho and I genuinely think the book would have been improved in every way if it had been rewritten as first person present YA and the protagonist aged down to somewhere between 14-16 instead of aiming for an adult audience. ulmont posted:Read Babel. The interesting bit in Babel is how magic relates to colonialism, which is given a fairy sophisticated portrayal. Jimbozig posted:Yeah, I think Babel was really interesting in exactly the way you say. I wasn't trying to discourage anyone from reading it. I grated against it for a good chunk of the book because it wasn't what I thought I had signed up for. I thought from what I had read beforehand that I was getting something like Susanna Clarke and I really really wasn't, at all. Metis of the Hallway posted:I just read Babel recently. I felt about as disappointed with it as I did with her debut, The Poppy War. Interesting ideas, lots of research, but ultimately quite a boring execution with thin characters. And absolutely zero subtlety or trust in the reader to come to their own conclusions. zerofiend posted:I read all the Poppy War books and came away feeling like it was a waste of a premise on boring writing. cptn_dr posted:There was a lot I found deeply irritating about Babel, but the one thing that sums it up for me is the bit where a student at Oxford in 1830-something uses the phrase "narco-military state". If everyone sounds like an American grad student circa 2020, I don't think you get to go on about how well-researched and realistic the novel is. Okay I will read Babel and report back. Because the other alternative is A Day of Fallen Night and I haven't had a great track record with second books that follow up initially overhyped books.
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2023 04:56
|
|
|
cptn_dr posted:Edit: As much as I generally hate Goodreads reviews, I thought this review was spot-on. I can't remember the last time a review made me hate a book and the reviewer so much. Babel sounds loving intolerable, so, good job reviewer. On the other hand, you wrote 1500 words that were well-considered, not shitposting, about this bad book, but capitalizing even a single one of those words was apparently a bridge too far?
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2023 05:12
|
|
|
Kestral posted:I can't remember the last time a review made me hate a book and the reviewer so much. Babel sounds loving intolerable, so, good job reviewer. On the other hand, you wrote 1500 words that were well-considered, not shitposting, about this bad book, but capitalizing even a single one of those words was apparently a bridge too far? that's right
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2023 05:17
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 2, 2024 21:50 |
|
|
Metis of the Hallway posted:And absolutely zero subtlety or trust in the reader to come to their own conclusions. Book twitter will do that to you
|
|
#
?
Jun 23, 2023 05:28
|
|
