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I mean sometimes series go downhill after you stop reading them but I don't think you could reasonably have predicted that it was going to randomly turn into that
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Dec 10, 2023 01:37
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fermun posted:I have been enjoying them as well, but I just finished book 4 on Monday and it turns out that starting at book 5, they go to Kindle Unlimited only, so the newest 4 books seem to have no legal option for me to read on my Kobo ereader. Dang. I was able to buy them all in the UK When I look on Amazon.com it says kindle unlimited but then it also says “available to buy” with a price tag on the same box as the KU. Unless you aren’t in America?
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Dec 10, 2023 01:44
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Haystack posted:Well, poo poo. Sorry, guess I should actually finish series before I recommend them. All good, appreciate the rec. mystes posted:I mean sometimes series go downhill after you stop reading them but I don't think you could reasonably have predicted that it was going to randomly turn into that Yeah, exactly. It starts out as "lame main dude has three female friends who watch his back" and ends up "after picking up an older lady captain from the bar, he touched her so good (in the middle of the street) that she felt beautiful again."
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Dec 10, 2023 01:45
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ClydeFrog posted:Dang. I was able to buy them all in the UK You’d still have to strip the DRM on the files to get them out of the kindle ecosystem and into a kobo reader. I haven’t kept up with the process but it used to involve installing an ancient version of the kindle reader for windows and I’m not sure that still works 
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Dec 10, 2023 02:21
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Kesper North posted:I loving dare you to read the rest of the series and come back here and say this again, wow minus the comical aggro, it's definitely a topic she explores in depth.
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Dec 10, 2023 09:48
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The City & the City by China Miéville - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001NLKYQ0/ Assassin of Reality (Vita Nostra #2) by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B3XPVZKX/ Half a King (Shattered Sea #1) by Joe Abercrombie - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HBQWGYO/ Ring Shout by P Djčlí Clark - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B082RRJV54/ Red Mars (Mars #1) by Kim Stanley Robinson - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000QCS914/ The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FBJCKI/ Titanium Noir by Nick Harkaway - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B9WPF9NQ/ Lord Foul's Bane (Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever #1) by Stephen R Donaldson - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007WKEM9Q/ The River of Silver (Daevabad) by SA Chakraborty - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09Q3FTXN4/ Stiletto (Rook Files #2) by Daniel O'Malley - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KVK33J4/ Virtual Light (Bridge #1) by William Gibson - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B009Y4I3J8/
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Dec 10, 2023 19:53
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pradmer posted:Snip Nice new avatar friend 👍 AARD VARKMAN fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Dec 10, 2023 |
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Dec 10, 2023 19:55
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pradmer posted:The City & the City by China Miéville - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001NLKYQ0/ The city and the city is a good place to start with Mieville IMO, if you don’t want to jump into the full bore craziness of “Perdido Street Ststion”.
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Dec 10, 2023 20:06
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pradmer posted:The City & the City by China Miéville - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001NLKYQ0/ I recommend these three books personally if you haven't read them. The City & The City is a kind of noir mystery thing with an extremely interesting twist in the setting. Though personally I prefer Embassytown of his works The Mars series is great. I held off on reading it for a long time because I was like "ugh, it's really slow scifi, low technology" and I usually like more fantastical stuff in my SFF. Well I guess that is true, but I loved the characters and the plot and what I guess I would describe as competency porn. Both technological and political. The Diamond Age. I never hear anyone talk about this book, but it was extremely... Vivid? For me, in a good way. The concept is pretty simple: a very poor little girl gets a super high tech interactive teaching tablet. A lot of people around her aren't getting any education at all, but she's getting an amazing personalized one. It's long as hell but I really liked it.
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Dec 10, 2023 20:06
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AARD VARKMAN posted:I recommend these three books personally if you haven't read them. Diamond Age is one of Stevenson’s best IMO.
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Dec 10, 2023 20:39
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Clark Nova posted:You’d still have to strip the DRM on the files to get them out of the kindle ecosystem and into a kobo reader. I haven’t kept up with the process but it used to involve installing an ancient version of the kindle reader for windows and I’m not sure that still works Ugh that sucks greatly 
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Dec 10, 2023 20:43
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pradmer posted:Ring Shout by P Djčlí Clark - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B082RRJV54/
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Dec 10, 2023 21:34
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tokenbrownguy posted:I stumbled upon these this summer. They start okay, but book 3-4 quickly become a harem story where all of the the female characters, including the captain, random captains on the streets, and anything will a pulse will die if they don't gently caress the main kid. 3-4 books is generous. second book is where that happens. here was my review from last year: branedotorg posted:i'm just going to buy some belts and them sell them for more, i am a genius! also everyone in the book wants to gently caress me and i'm a genius so i say yes!
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Dec 10, 2023 21:54
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sebmojo posted:minus the comical aggro, it's definitely a topic she explores in depth. Lol yeah nthing this. I mean, to be fair to OP, most of the characters in Gideon are teens, who are pretty blasé about death at the best of times. But they're also nobility in a galaxy-spanning empire built on necromancy, complete with necromantic god-king (and a few other things we shouldn't spoil). It's careful characterization, rather than something accidental.
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Dec 10, 2023 23:03
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I definitely enjoyed the first Rook files book, which is somewhat in the vein of Laundry Files. Not the humor but British intelligence agency dealing with supernatural nonsense.
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Dec 10, 2023 23:34
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Muir knows all about loss
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Dec 10, 2023 23:35
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Harold Fjord posted:Muir knows all about loss 
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Dec 10, 2023 23:56
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tokenbrownguy posted:I stumbled upon these this summer. They start okay, but book 3-4 quickly become a harem story where all of the the female characters, including the captain, random captains on the streets, and anything will a pulse will die if they don't gently caress the main kid. AARD VARKMAN posted:The Diamond Age. I never hear anyone talk about this book, but it was extremely... Vivid? For me, in a good way. The concept is pretty simple: a very poor little girl gets a super high tech interactive teaching tablet. A lot of people around her aren't getting any education at all, but she's getting an amazing personalized one. It's long as hell but I really liked it.
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Dec 11, 2023 00:10
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That sounds like a different cult in the setting
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Dec 11, 2023 00:16
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Actual lol, goddam how can that cartoon keep on giving
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Dec 11, 2023 00:52
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David Drake has passed away.
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Dec 11, 2023 02:37
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pradmer posted:
Enjoyed this short bit of Cyber-Noir a lot when I picked it up on a daily earlier in the year.
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Dec 11, 2023 02:38
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Dec 11, 2023 03:18
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loving LMAO
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Dec 11, 2023 03:24
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After I heard the news that he was stopping writing and had some degenerative condition I kinda figured, but I still didn't expect to see it :\ might have to re-read some Slammers books in his honor. I haven't read those in a while, tailed off on RCN a while ago too. But I've spent years telling people who couldn't remember which was which that "no, there are two Davids published by Baen, and Drake is the good one..." and it was true. also, the duration of that Platt grudge was legendary. Psion fucked around with this message at 03:45 on Dec 11, 2023 |
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Dec 11, 2023 03:41
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Is that the one where Nell's teacher winds up being some sort of intelligence-through-mass-sex machine, or am I thinking of a different Stephenson? Basically yeah.
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Dec 11, 2023 04:03
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withak posted:Basically yeah.
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Dec 11, 2023 04:39
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Arsenic Lupin posted:God, that was disgusting. I don't recommend anybody read The Diamond Age unless they want to see a female character fridged in a nasty sexual way. It's up with The Windup Girl in the degree to which I wish I hadn't read it. Counterpoint: I read and enjoyed both books despite not enjoying that part of the plot. The diamond age was my favorite Neal Stephenson for a long time.
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Dec 11, 2023 05:08
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Different jowls for different owls!
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Dec 11, 2023 05:14
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I enjoyed The Diamond Age, but I have to admit I don't really see what the Sex Computer added to it.
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Dec 11, 2023 05:36
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It's been a million years but iirc it was a way to both process a shitload of data and involve human empathy in a way that both scaled easily and was really difficult to mess with, since nobody else was digging into the CPU Cycles Per Nut process. It was pretty weird I don't remember it using a lot of pages or curling my nosehairs honestly. It was basically "What if we could harness a Renn Fest after-hours party for CPU cycles". YMMV though. I wish Neal did more sci-fi worldbuilding in general. While I mostly enjoy everything he writes to one degree or another, he is hugely outcompeted in the "very near future political thriller".
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Dec 11, 2023 06:30
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I finished the three short stories for the Silo Series from Machine Learning. I really liked Into the Air, it was a nice bittersweet vignette, but both Mountains and Woods were dumb. The Silo series has always walked a fine line with comparisons to the Fallout universe and Mountains crossed it. I was glad to get an update on the Silo 17/18 community as well as hints at the 37 survivors, though it sounds like the movement that 40 started didn’t fare as well as I’d thought, plus the insinuations that they’d had interactions with other silos who resisted and are “the bad ones”, but quickly killing off Juliette because Howey doesn’t believe in not ending things with death felt cheap and the afterword to comfort the reader was less comforting and more insulting. The entire final interaction reminded me of what I found most frustrating about the series, which is that most of the drama comes from people not listening to each other (which can be an okay theme), but it’s always the fingers-in-ears kind of not listening that comes across as adults acting like teenagers. I thought I was excited for more novels, but it seems maybe I was just excited about getting out of the silo.
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Dec 11, 2023 12:53
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Unlike some other MilSF authors, he never forgot that war sucks a whole loving lot. (Personal experience.)
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Dec 11, 2023 17:13
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The City We Became (Great Cities #1) by NK Jemisin - $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MFKQDJM/ Beowulf: A New Translation by Maria Dahvana Headley - $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07HF1Y4D4/ Sunshine by Robin McKinley - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OGWASCI/ The Door in the Hedge: And Other Stories by Robin McKinley - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OGWASDM/
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Dec 11, 2023 23:27
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pradmer posted:Beowulf: A New Translation by Maria Dahvana Headley - $3.99 Is this a legit good translation of the original or a "flipping an old story on its head with hot new modern takes"? IIRC when I last read it it wasn't in Old English but it was still rendered in fairly archaic language
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Dec 11, 2023 23:30
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Bilirubin posted:Is this a legit good translation of the original or a "flipping an old story on its head with hot new modern takes"? IIRC when I last read it it wasn't in Old English but it was still rendered in fairly archaic language quote:"Beowulf is an ancient tale of men battling monsters, but Headley has made it wholly modern, with language as piercing and relevant as Kendrick Lamar's Pulitzer Prize-winning album 'drat.' With scintillating inversions and her use of au courant idiom--the poem begins with the word 'Bro!' and Queen Wealhtheow is 'hashtag: blessed'--Headley asks one to consider not only present conflicts in light of those of the past, but also the line between human and inhuman, power and powerlessness, and the very nature of moral transformation, the 'suspicion that at any moment a person might shift from hero into howling wretch.' The women of Beowulf have often been sidelined. Not so here." ―Danielle Trussoni, The New York Times Book Review
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Dec 11, 2023 23:33
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Yup, that’s the version that shoulda been called Browulf
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Dec 11, 2023 23:46
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Bilirubin posted:Is this a legit good translation of the original or a "flipping an old story on its head with hot new modern takes"? IIRC when I last read it it wasn't in Old English but it was still rendered in fairly archaic language It does have a few meme-y/slang-y phrases and words thrown in here and there, but iirc it's not the bulk of it by any means.
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Dec 11, 2023 23:51
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You shouldn't read anything that uses Hashtag Blessed unironically, or ironically. And you shouldn't trust any reviewer invoking Kendrick in their reviews of novels.
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Dec 11, 2023 23:52
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I listened to it on audiobook, and it ruled.
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Dec 11, 2023 23:57
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