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It's been a while but I think my favorite Tim Powers would be The Stress of Her Regard and On Stranger Tides, with Anubis Gates bringing up the rear. But if his style of historical fiction or whatever you call it is your poo poo you can't go wrong for the most part.
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Aug 16, 2023 11:58
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I reread the baroque cycle this year, after not having read it since it was first published. It's mostly good, has some great ideas and set pieces, some incredible characters and the info dumps are huge and thorough - it wouldn't be Stevenson without them. It is long though and if a character irritates you they'll be back for another 100 odd pages again soon (hello father Edouard, the Armenians etc). Also it's alternate history, there is a lot that's real or close enough but also a heap of fabrication beyond what's needed to fit his characters into the time period.
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Aug 16, 2023 12:45
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Well yeah, you need the Shaftoe line to be around for Cryptonomicon.
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Aug 16, 2023 13:23
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anilEhilated posted:Not quite on the level of the big two (Declare and Last Call), but I really like The Stress of Her Regard. He wrote a bunch of novels about Romantic poets and artists and I think that's the best one. This was the name of a really annoying list in the X-Wing miniatures game  e: there was a bomber lady who would constantly pile stress tokens on your ships so they'd freak out and fly bad
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Aug 16, 2023 15:09
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Declare is another of those "genre of one" books. I have a lot of favorite books that are genres of one and it's very obnoxious.
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Aug 16, 2023 15:15
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MockingQuantum posted:how is the baroque cycle? Any strong opinions? if it helps I liked Snow Crash and Diamond Age a lot when I was younger but thought both were silly, but fine, when I reread them as an adult, and I absolutely despised Seveneves. I'm not certain I've read any other Stephenson but I do like historical fiction, generally speaking. Start reading it and if you find yourself getting tired of it, just bail out. The characters are fun and have some witty hijinks, but it's not his best and doesn't really have a plot arc to speak of, aside from being threaded into the history of science/technology in the era.
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Aug 16, 2023 15:53
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mdemone posted:Start reading it and if you find yourself getting tired of it, just bail out. The characters are fun and have some witty hijinks, but it's not his best and doesn't really have a plot arc to speak of, aside from being threaded into the history of science/technology in the era. Maybe I’m confused about what a plot arc is, or have a less sophisticated understanding of it, but isn’t the plot arc the entire lives of Eliza, Jack Shaftoe, Daniel Waterhouse and Bob Shaftoe?
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Aug 16, 2023 16:26
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Awkward Davies posted:Maybe I’m confused about what a plot arc is, or have a less sophisticated understanding of it, but isn’t the plot arc the entire lives of Eliza, Jack Shaftoe, Daniel Waterhouse and Bob Shaftoe? well yes but I'm using it in a more traditional modernist sense. like you have rising tensions leading to a resolution, or whatever. Neal is po-mo so he doesn't give a poo poo about any of that, which unfortunately makes him not very good at plotting endings.
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Aug 16, 2023 16:38
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His endings are typically pretty bad
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Aug 16, 2023 16:39
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He cannot write endings, he just puts down his fountain pen when he feels like the book is long enough.
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Aug 16, 2023 16:44
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It's no accident that Anathem is his best book. He clearly had an idea of where the story was going to go, and how it would end. Of course, he wrote Seveneves from the ending backwards (Star Trek humanoid speciation) and that one sucked except for the first part.
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Aug 16, 2023 17:05
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Also why Reamde is great. Just put a leopard there. Story over
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Aug 16, 2023 17:31
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Harold Fjord posted:Also why Reamde is great. They do improve everything. Especially when thrown at other people.
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Aug 16, 2023 18:06
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Finished reading Curse of the Mistwraith by Janny Wurts A nice breath of fresh air prose-wise compared to the kinda stuff I had been reading. Very good, I'm kind of surprised this thread is the only place I have ever seen it mentioned.
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Aug 16, 2023 18:26
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AARD VARKMAN posted:Finished reading Curse of the Mistwraith by Janny Wurts Yeah it drives me nuts that it's one of the biggest epic fantasy series out there and whoops no fanclub or mentions basically anywhere... probably because she put herself on the cover as Janny Wurts, and not as J. Wurts.  e: see also Kate Elliott's Crown of Stars series.
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Aug 16, 2023 18:31
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Margaret Ogden really walked away the champion of the 90s lady fantasy authors lol
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Aug 16, 2023 18:38
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I'm reading my way through the books where a lot of people were upset they didn't get a Hugo nomination this year. Saint Death's Daughter is the most "for fans of Gideon the Ninth" book I have ever read, and I mean that in a good way. There's a particular writing style common to the two that I struggle to describe. Acerbic? Sardonic? And on a surface level, both deal with witty neurotic necromancers tossing lots of bones around. It's very funny, and the character work exceeds Gideon pretty much across the board -- everyone is truly memorable. The only issue is that its about 150 pages too long, with a dragging middle section that reads like an editor insisted on "some hopepunk". Nonetheless, a very good book, should've been nominated. All the Horses of Iceland is a superb myth-making story. I got tired of this genre because -- per the next book -- it was in a real rut of taking some well-known myth and adding some marginalized identity or another to it. I've already read that book. This goes in a simple but wholly new direction by just going cross-country during the Viking era. This lets the writer explore themes like cross-cultural contact, wariness between others, how we relate to others, etc. It has Khazars in it, which is always a good idea. Its pleasingly short. Top-notch. Spear is my second-favorite Spear-related book of the year. Per the above its a woman-centric retelling of King Arthur. Ultimately it hits the standard beats of this subgenre -- everyone has slightly different names [Artos! Not Arthur!], sex, the wistful 'but their true story will never be told' atmosphere. Still, its a good version of the genre, nearly on par with Circe, and does some really interesting stuff blending celtic myth with Geoffrey of Monmouth. I also read Nettle and Bone which WAS nominated and is a strange and uneven book. It starts as a reasonably gritty fairy tale with lots of abuse, and then gradually morphs into a... feel-good D&D campaign with squabbling party members? Its a really weird tonal shift. Ultimately its almost a heist book where the main character recruits a bunch of more interesting people who crack wise all the time. I guess I have nothing against fun characters taking over a book and turning it into something else, but its a real oddball. I don't get why its so popular. E: I have one more to go which is Ballad of Perilous Graves. I just started it but its clearly a banger. My bottom line for everyone is I cannot believe Legends and Lattes, the book equivalent of whisper ASMR, was nominated. Copernic fucked around with this message at 20:32 on Aug 16, 2023 |
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Aug 16, 2023 19:25
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Copernic posted:
This is all dead on. Great read.
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Aug 16, 2023 19:29
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90s Cringe Rock posted:October, November, December? Is that a thing now? Seems like a nice model. I guess it's the final form after trying out the Two of Swords serials a while back? That said, I'll probably hold off on this trilogy, not from the price, but due to a bit of Parker burn-out. I finally finished the aforementioned Two of Swords as well as the Scavenger trilogy so I've had my fill of war-torn, vaguely Byzantine empires whose worst enemies are themselves.
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Aug 16, 2023 19:30
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Everyone posted:They do improve everything. Especially when thrown at other people. So you're voting for the Leopards Being Thrown At People Party? That never ends well.
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Aug 16, 2023 20:21
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buffalo all day posted:This is all dead on. Great read. Hard agree, All the Horses of Iceland was the best novella I read last year and it also finally made me get around to Dictionary of the Khazars.
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Aug 16, 2023 20:36
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Speaking of novellas, I'm about halfway through If Found, Return to Hell, which is fine. I picked it up on the strength of the phrase "Intern Wizard" but it's not really doing much with the premise beyond the obvious. I think comparisons with the Craft Sequence are inevitable, and I don't think it does anything better than Gladstone did it. It's also in second person, which I don't have anything against, but it's also not really doing anything interesting with it. That might change by the end, but for now it just seems kind of gimmicky — there's never been a moment where I've gone "Oh yea they couldn't have done this in first or third person". (The novella is about a wizard intern dealing with a teenager who just got posessed by a demon, so maybe the second person thing will turn into a "You are like a demon possessing the character ~oooh~" but we'll see.)
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Aug 16, 2023 20:50
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Jedit posted:So you're voting for the Leopards Being Thrown At People Party? That never ends well. IIRC RRR ended with a big musical dance number, so I beg to disagree.
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Aug 16, 2023 21:14
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The Heroes (First Law) by Joe Abercrombie - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00480O978/ Forever Free (Forever War #3) by Joe Haldeman - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IX22W4S/
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Aug 16, 2023 22:49
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cptn_dr posted:Speaking of novellas, I'm about halfway through If Found, Return to Hell, which is fine. I picked it up on the strength of the phrase "Intern Wizard" but it's not really doing much with the premise beyond the obvious. I think comparisons with the Craft Sequence are inevitable, and I don't think it does anything better than Gladstone did it. I'm also halfway through and I'm kind of bored, but not so bored that I won't finish it. Kind of wish I hadn't decided to buy it after I tried out the sample, but I'm not gonna ding the author by returning it.
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Aug 16, 2023 22:59
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Copernic posted:Saint Death's Daughter is the most "for fans of Gideon the Ninth" book I have ever read, and I mean that in a good way. There's a particular writing style common to the two that I struggle to describe. Acerbic? Sardonic? And on a surface level, both deal with witty neurotic necromancers tossing lots of bones around. It's very funny, and the character work exceeds Gideon pretty much across the board -- everyone is truly memorable. The only issue is that its about 150 pages too long, with a dragging middle section that reads like an editor insisted on "some hopepunk". Nonetheless, a very good book, should've been nominated. clearly publishers are asking for it - this blurb is from something called 'bonesmith' Copernic posted:
every second new fantasy book blurb meets this description, you really nailed it. This anthology gathers “gender-bent, queered, race-bent, and inclusive retellings” of Greek myths from Alyssa Cole, Sarah Gailey, Valerie Valdes, and more. branedotorg fucked around with this message at 00:06 on Aug 17, 2023 |
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Aug 17, 2023 00:02
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Holy heck, had me by the first page. Endorsed (although only at 17% if it turns terrible it’s not my fault forgive me).Bayham Badger posted:Malört 
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Aug 17, 2023 01:59
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pradmer posted:Forever Free (Forever War #3) by Joe Haldeman - $1.99 I don't want to take away from the daily deals, which i really do like seeing. But there are very few books that are so clearly shat out for a paycheck as Forever Free. Hard avoid.
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Aug 17, 2023 06:36
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Ceebees posted:I don't want to take away from the daily deals, which i really do like seeing. Isn't that literally true, that he tried to switch from writing novels to writing screenplays, only sold the movie Robot Jox, then after about 7 years of not being able to sell another screenplay did Forever Peace and Forever Free to cash in before going back to writing with some effort again?
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Aug 17, 2023 06:45
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pradmer posted:The Heroes (First Law) by Joe Abercrombie - $2.99 This is an ideal entree into Abercrombie, just a good story told well.
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Aug 17, 2023 06:48
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sebmojo posted:This is an ideal entree into Abercrombie, just a good story told well. very military though don't get me wrong, it's great military very low fantasy my personal favorite intro to Abercrombie is Best Served Cold, aka Definitely Not Count Of Monte Cristo
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Aug 17, 2023 07:26
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fermun posted:Isn't that literally true, that he tried to switch from writing novels to writing screenplays, only sold the movie Robot Jox, then after about 7 years of not being able to sell another screenplay did Forever Peace and Forever Free to cash in before going back to writing with some effort again? Forever Peace isn't actually related to War or Free, and it has... a plot? An arc, characters with agency, events that follow from previous ones instead of just a couple hundred pages of random mystery box bullshit leading up to a literal deus ex machina. It looks like the movie was 1990, Peace was '97 and Free was '99 though, so i guess the first one wasn't quite paying the bills. Despite, apparently, winning the hugo and nebula? Wild.
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Aug 17, 2023 07:56
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He got a purple heart for getting his ball(s?) blown up in Vietnam. I 2nd that Forever Peace was enjoyable.
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Aug 17, 2023 08:48
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Jedit posted:So you're voting for the Leopards Being Thrown At People Party? That never ends well. This of all threads should know to beware of the leopard.
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Aug 17, 2023 11:24
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AARD VARKMAN posted:Finished reading Curse of the Mistwraith by Janny Wurts Now come join us in the Janny Wurts thread! https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4030263 StrixNebulosa posted:Yeah it drives me nuts that it's one of the biggest epic fantasy series out there and whoops no fanclub or mentions basically anywhere... probably because she put herself on the cover as Janny Wurts, and not as J. Wurts. This is slowly changing. A whole bunch of book reviewers have started making their way through her books and she's doing the rounds on a bunch of BookTube discussion channels, many for her books, and I'm so happy she's finally getting some recognition. But yeah, not going with a gender neutral pen name is a massive regret for her. https://twitter.com/JannyWurts/status/1643326956300058628?t=vI5Gxx0V_FHeGJvXQO1fPA&s=19
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Aug 17, 2023 12:04
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Leng posted:Now come join us in the Janny Wurts thread! That sucks so much, like all those readers thinking "How can anyone other than a real manly man properly write prissy elves or gruff dwarves?"
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Aug 17, 2023 13:57
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Ugh yeah what a shame.
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Aug 17, 2023 13:59
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sad lol as I remember cherryh not only using initials but adding a letter to her surname
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Aug 17, 2023 14:00
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cherry? sounds like a girl, pass
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Aug 17, 2023 14:01
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90s Cringe Rock posted:cherry? sounds like a girl, pass Gotta have that extra "h" to signify that this is a "He-person." Otherwise publishers and readers will go "Ewwww! No grrls allowed in the fantasy riters club!"
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Aug 17, 2023 15:42
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