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A Proper Uppercut posted:Well they were good up until that point. And some series will have a stinker in the middle and be good after that. I don't recall which Temeraire book was that one for me. I *think* the one in South America? I really enjoy the characters and it's not like the books became *crap*, I just sort of realised I wasn't interested in much more. I'd just as soon read the first ones again. I get that with certain TV shows too. Like sure I could watch mediocre or poor new episodes of the Flash, or I could just go watch season 1 again.
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Jul 6, 2023 04:25
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If you want to know an order for the Discworld series I'd say to start with the first one published (The Colour of Magic), and after that, it doesn't really matter.
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Jul 6, 2023 04:50
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Kestral posted:Do not investigate OSC’s Songmaster unless you want significant parts of Ender’s Game recontextualized in the worst ways. You know, Songmaster is less heterosexual than some actual gay porn.
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Jul 6, 2023 05:09
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Groke posted:Yeah there are definitely some lesser books sprinkled all through the bibliography. But I mean, the man was able to producer Night Watch almost twenty years in. He just wrote and wrote and wrote, there was no way he wasn't going to get better at it. Night Watch and Nation were him really flexing his muscles, but arguably from Small Gods right up until the embuggerance took hold he didn't write a bad book. sebmojo posted:The Pratchett biography by his assistant is really really good, it's warm but unflinching and he writes very well. Yeah, Rob Wilkins did it justice.
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Jul 6, 2023 08:42
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RDM posted:Is there any series that this doesn't work for? Cradle. That said, imo the series tops out at book 8. Books 9 and 10 are good too and 11 and 12 are worthy conclusions but the high point of the series is books 5 through 8.
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Jul 6, 2023 12:22
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buffalo all day posted:The best wheel of time book is probably book 4, and the series from 1-3 (relatively self contained quest books) feels completely different from book 4 on (game of thrones style political machinations) Hmmm that’s intriguing to me. I actually stopped with WoT after book 3 but if the style and substance changes that much, I may have to reconsider.
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Jul 6, 2023 13:06
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The pacing really lets it down from around book 5-6 or so (cant remember exactly when, it was 20 years ago when I read them) to an absolute crawl. I think it picked back up when Sanderson stepped in to ghost write but I never got that far. I think WoT is like the Dune series. Read it until you're not having fun anymore. E: lol beaten to that take a whole page ago
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Jul 6, 2023 13:23
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Yeah I don’t think the dune rule works for WOT, 1-3 are pretty zippy adventure novels (and 3 is the best of them imo), 4-5 move well but have lots of politicking and less running from place to place, 6-8 start to slow but have some phenomenal set pieces, 9-10 slog for sure (10 is the worst book in the series) then 11 picks up and is seen as a return to form. I think if you read 4 and don’t like it, definitely stop. The dune rule only works where the first is the best and each book thereafter is less good than the one before it, but wot jumps all over the place in quality, I’d probably say it’s something like 4>5>3>11>2>6>7>1>9>8>10 buffalo all day fucked around with this message at 13:36 on Jul 6, 2023 |
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Jul 6, 2023 13:32
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So I finished The Girl and the Stars the other day and I think it was just ... ok? I bounced hard off Prince of Thorns so I was a little hesitant to give Mark Lawrence another shot but the world and some of the descriptions of the book intrigued me so I thought I'd give it a go. He has so many good ideas in there that should result in a cool experience but somehow they mostly fail to meld together in a satisfying way. I think my main gripe is that he completely wrote himself into a corner with about the last 40% of the book - the only way out of the caves is through a vertical tunnel to an obvious trap by the puppet master priests who were definitely not manipulating everything the whole time. The Eular reveal lost a lot of it's potential power because it was really really loving clear that nothing good was going to happen once they got out onto the ice, and that Yaz would almost certainly end up a prisoner of the Priests... worse still if you made the mistake of reading the name of the second book in the series which is a gigantic spoiler. I think by bashing the reader over the head that everything is bleak for 300 pages and not leaving much room for hope really kills any sense of betrayal or intrigue when the ending is just as bleak as the rest of the book. I didn't exactly hate it though. And I'm unsure if I should dip my toes in to the rest of the series. Does the 2nd or 3rd book improve on it in any meaningful way?
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Jul 6, 2023 13:37
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Hugo 2023 Best Novel finalists: · The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey) · The Kaiju Preservation Society, by John Scalzi (Tor Books) · Legends & Lattes, by Travis Baldree (Tor Books) · Nona the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir (Tordotcom) · Nettle & Bone, by T. Kingfisher (Tor Books) · The Spare Man, by Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor Books) I like a lot of these people as people, but lol
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Jul 6, 2023 14:27
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Nona loves you
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Jul 6, 2023 14:28
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I know we just did a Scalzi thing, but how the gently caress
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Jul 6, 2023 14:43
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I liked Legends and Lattes, but it hardly felt like Hugo material. How is "The Spare Man"?
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Jul 6, 2023 14:55
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Megazver posted:Hugo 2023 Best Novel finalists: are these really the best hugo finalists they could find? christ almighty
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Jul 6, 2023 15:16
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Megazver posted:Hugo 2023 Best Novel finalists: That is brutal
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Jul 6, 2023 15:25
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tor books bad tordotcom (and tor nightfire)... good?
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Jul 6, 2023 15:28
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Where's all the middle aged ladies writing eight novel cycles about very sad and tragic men being sad these days? All of this sub-Ready Player One nerdswill makes my eyes bleed
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Jul 6, 2023 15:28
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Has anybody tried Daughter of Doctor Moreau? I think maybe it was in this thread that somebody said something along these lines a while ago, but I've tried a couple of books by Moreno-Garcia and my experience so far has been that she has some really compelling ideas that she just cannot deliver on in an interesting and engaging way. Certain Dark Things and Gods of Jade and Shadow both had some cool concepts buried in there but neither was in any way engaging enough for me to read more than about a quarter of the book, they're just weirdly lifeless, and at least with Certain Dark Things, the characters were simultaneously kind of 1-dimensional and unlikeable in a boring way. I keep hoping she'll put out a book that really grabs me, maybe Mexican Gothic is better.
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Jul 6, 2023 15:29
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and yeah lol that Hugo list is something... it feels like book twitter and book tiktok have pretty much won the war in establishing a certain kind of trendy SFF novel that's easy going down and kind of all flash and no substance as the preferred type of spec fic novel these days. That's maybe uncharitable of me to say given that I haven't read more than a quarter to a half of any of those books but Kaiju was trash, and I know people ITT like Kingfisher's "horror" novels but dear god are they twee and boring IMO. At least I know a non-zero number of people who genuinely love Legends & Lattes.
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Jul 6, 2023 15:32
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MockingQuantum posted:Has anybody tried Daughter of Doctor Moreau? I think maybe it was in this thread that somebody said something along these lines a while ago, but I've tried a couple of books by Moreno-Garcia and my experience so far has been that she has some really compelling ideas that she just cannot deliver on in an interesting and engaging way. Mexican gothic was good imo, like resident evil meets a Victorian novel
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Jul 6, 2023 15:40
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MockingQuantum posted:Legends & Lattes. Judging that book by its cover, it looks like another self aware banterfest
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Jul 6, 2023 15:41
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MockingQuantum posted:and yeah lol that Hugo list is something... it feels like book twitter and book tiktok have pretty much won the war in establishing a certain kind of trendy SFF novel that's easy going down and kind of all flash and no substance as the preferred type of spec fic novel these days. That's maybe uncharitable of me to say given that I haven't read more than a quarter to a half of any of those books but Kaiju was trash, and I know people ITT like Kingfisher's "horror" novels but dear god are they twee and boring IMO. At least I know a non-zero number of people who genuinely love Legends & Lattes. at least nona owns
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Jul 6, 2023 15:46
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zoux posted:Judging that book by its cover, it looks like another self aware banterfest No, it's a cozy slice-of-life about cute lesbian monster girls who open up a fantasy starbucks. I enjoyed it, but i don't know if it's Best Novel of the Year material.
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Jul 6, 2023 15:46
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zoux posted:Judging that book by its cover, it looks like another self aware banterfest perhaps the same could be said for this thread 
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Jul 6, 2023 15:46
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Horizon Burning posted:are these really the best hugo finalists they could find? christ almighty The decline has been happening for a while.
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Jul 6, 2023 15:47
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buffalo all day posted:Mexican gothic was good imo, like resident evil meets a Victorian novel This is something I didn't know I needed in my life until this moment, I'll definitely check it out
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Jul 6, 2023 15:56
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buffalo all day posted:perhaps the same could be said for this thread Sorry, I'm utterly unaware
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Jul 6, 2023 15:58
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No Dignity posted:Where's all the middle aged ladies writing eight novel cycles about very sad and tragic men being sad these days? All of this sub-Ready Player One nerdswill makes my eyes bleed Robin Hobb is still writing but idk if she's put anything out in the last couple of years, or if she has I don't think they've gotten a ton of attention, she's the only writer I can think of off the top of my head that fits that description, lol
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Jul 6, 2023 15:58
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MockingQuantum posted:Robin Hobb is still writing but idk if she's put anything out in the last couple of years, or if she has I don't think they've gotten a ton of attention, she's the only writer I can think of off the top of my head that fits that description, lol Janny Wurts and Kate Elliot were the other two I had in mind, but also just big earnest fantasy cycles in general that aren't extremely internet brained or boring pseudo-shonen action novels like Sanderson's work seem to be very short supply these days : /
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Jul 6, 2023 16:08
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Megazver posted:· The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey) Megazver posted:· Legends & Lattes, by Travis Baldree (Tor Books) Megazver posted:· The Kaiju Preservation Society, by John Scalzi (Tor Books) I'm kinda annoyed that other SFF publishers haven't decided to commit more to marketing, because outside of Moreau, this is all under the Tor umbrella, and these things are all just popularity contests--but ones that absolutely boost sales and promote more poo poo.
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Jul 6, 2023 16:29
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MockingQuantum posted:Has anybody tried Daughter of Doctor Moreau? I think maybe it was in this thread that somebody said something along these lines a while ago, but I've tried a couple of books by Moreno-Garcia and my experience so far has been that she has some really compelling ideas that she just cannot deliver on in an interesting and engaging way. I thought Mexican Gothic was pretty decent. buffalo all day gave a pretty good comment about the tone. Not the greatest book, but some of the concepts and themes were pretty interesting. It was good enough to get me to read The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, although I honestly regret it. Moreau seemed really confused over what it was trying to be (sci-fi/horror/romance) and in the end didn't do any of it very well.
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Jul 6, 2023 16:41
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OddObserver posted:I liked Legends and Lattes, but it hardly felt like Hugo material. How is "The Spare Man"?
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Jul 6, 2023 16:50
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No Dignity posted:Janny Wurts and Kate Elliot were the other two I had in mind, but also just big earnest fantasy cycles in general that aren't extremely internet brained or boring pseudo-shonen action novels like Sanderson's work seem to be very short supply these days : / I feel like the big publisher for big fantasy cycles was/is DAW books, but it's next to impossible to find out what they're publishing from their website, and since they dropped Janny Wurts I suspect that well is drying up...  There's https://www.isfdb.org/ for raw data btw.
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Jul 6, 2023 17:16
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StrixNebulosa posted:I feel like the big publisher for big fantasy cycles was/is DAW books, but it's next to impossible to find out what they're publishing from their website, and since they dropped Janny Wurts I suspect that well is drying up...
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Jul 6, 2023 17:33
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 I don't like all DAW books but I knew if I saw their logo that I could trust that it'd be at least worth looking at.
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Jul 6, 2023 17:56
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i read a discussion recently (don't remember where) of a contemporary lit-fic writer doing her first fantasy novel. does this ring any bells? i have no further details. i might have dreamt this.
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Jul 6, 2023 19:47
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Megazver posted:No, it's a cozy slice-of-life about cute lesbian monster girls who open up a fantasy starbucks. I enjoyed it, but i don't know if it's Best Novel of the Year material. L&L is incredibly fluffy. I really enjoyed it, because it's cozy af, but I also finished it in an afternoon. MockingQuantum posted:and yeah lol that Hugo list is something... it feels like book twitter and book tiktok have pretty much won the war in establishing a certain kind of trendy SFF novel that's easy going down and kind of all flash and no substance as the preferred type of spec fic novel these days. That's maybe uncharitable of me to say given that I haven't read more than a quarter to a half of any of those books but Kaiju was trash, and I know people ITT like Kingfisher's "horror" novels but dear god are they twee and boring IMO. At least I know a non-zero number of people who genuinely love Legends & Lattes. Don't sleep on book tumblr.
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Jul 6, 2023 20:27
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Fighting Trousers posted:L&L is incredibly fluffy. I really enjoyed it, because it's cozy af, but I also finished it in an afternoon. Where on earth is book tumblr? I use tumblr regularly and they almost never talk books. ...maybe I'm in the wrong fandoms, though
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Jul 6, 2023 20:30
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I thought 2022 was kind of a mid year for SFF (niche releases aside) tbh so I'm not surprised by this.
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Jul 6, 2023 20:45
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Danhenge posted:I thought 2022 was kind of a mid year for SFF (niche releases aside) tbh so I'm not surprised by this. I was about to say there were several good books that I wished would have been represented, but then realized they were all 2021 releases. Oh god, I am getting too old and time has lot all meaning. But looking at what I have read, besides Nona, I did like How High We Go in the Dark and Sea of Tranquility.
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Jul 6, 2023 20:58
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