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Oh and whatever the hell Whitley Striber's Communion would be classified as
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Dec 28, 2023 07:01
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lol a pro snipe
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Dec 28, 2023 07:02
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Most of what I read this year was nonfiction, but that still left some room for genre. 12. Amygdalatropolis by B.R. Yeager is a book about a sick depraved bedroom-bound 4channer interspersed with fictionalized messageboard logs. I'll be honest, I've seen so many dark things trawling through threads that nothing in the book felt too new to me. I think I'd get a better version of the same experience from reading PKD. 11. The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie was fun enough on a moment-to-moment basis, but went on for a very long time. More humorous than I was expecting. I am intent on beginning book 2 sooner or later. 10. The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells. Like his other work I've read, lives more off its ideas than a fulsome story. But those ideas and the animal people sure are something! I'll get on to The Invisible Man. 9. Century Rain by Alastair Reynolds, could have done things more intriguingly by not revealing the future setting right off the bat. Reynolds shows off his passion for music, as always. 6-8. Three of Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts books. I read a number of World War 2 history books over the year, and these blended in fine with them. 5. Damnation Alley by Roger Zelazny - Mad Max before Mad Max. I don't actually know of any other novels about driving all the way from coast to coast. 4. Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky had what might be my favorite depiction of nonhuman psychology I've seen in fiction so far, although my memory probably fails me. 3. Diaspora by Greg Egan was one of my rare rereads. Still magnificent and insane, though my older wiser self was not as astounded by the imagery. 2. Between Two Fires, I have nothing to contribute. 1. The Star Diaries by Stanislaw Lem, like The Futurological Congress, hit me with a constant Douglas Adams-esque winking humor that you'd never expect having only read Solaris. A mix of silly parables and utterly vast imagination. All in all, not so dramatic a year compared to the older days. I hope in 2024 to dig into some longer series I've been avoiding, including First Law, as well as short stories from Gene Wolfe and R.A. Lafferty and King's 11/22/63.
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Dec 28, 2023 09:05
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:I am looking for stuff to read. I really need something that’s decently written and mixes that cosmic horror dread with utter bleakness. Mystical and unexplained is ok. I absolutely loved The Gone World and was very happy with Ship of Fools, to mention some of the thread favorites. Carrier Wave, also very enjoyable. The Last Astronaut was meh, too rational and wrapped up. So please recommend me something I might enjoy. Have you read Annihilation and the read of the Southern Reach trilogy. It's precisely cosmic horror and bleakness. IMO the second two books don't live up to the promise of the first, but it's worth the entry fee just for the first book, which is brilliant. Charles Stross's A Colder War is only a short-story/novelette, but also worth a read.
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Dec 28, 2023 09:39
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I keep misreading Between Two Fires as Between Two Ferns and it's a very different book that way.
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Dec 28, 2023 13:55
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Major Ryan posted:Have you read Annihilation and the read of the Southern Reach trilogy. It's precisely cosmic horror and bleakness. IMO the second two books don't live up to the promise of the first, but it's worth the entry fee just for the first book, which is brilliant. Will offer my rando opinion which is that the second book, Control, is just as good as book 1 and definitely scarier, but rather than a warped quest/adventure story it’s more like a John LeCarre novel that’s been twisted by Area X.
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Dec 28, 2023 13:56
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Yeah and I’ll pile on to say the third book, Acceptance, is my personal favorite and for me contains the best horror of the series.
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Dec 28, 2023 15:22
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And that's a cool way to recommend a trilogy!
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Dec 28, 2023 15:32
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buffalo all day posted:Will offer my rando opinion which is that the second book, Control, is just as good as book 1 and definitely scarier, but rather than a warped quest/adventure story it’s more like a John LeCarre novel that’s been twisted by Area X. Will second this, Authority gets poo poo on by a lot of people for not being the same as the first book but that septic, ingrown, paranoid bureaucracy-horror rules and offers some wonderfully creepy moments.
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Dec 28, 2023 16:27
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I really need to read those one of these days. Meanwhile, I just finished rereading the Machineries of Empire books, and while I liked them on first read, I enjoyed them a lot more the second time around. Reading them all in one go helped in just not forgetting important bits between books, but also having read them before recontexualized a lot of stuff, especially in the first book. mllaneza posted:She is the Darkness is probably my favorite of the whole series. There's so much going on and it's all described by Cook at his best. The Book of Lady does indeed slap, that's the good poo poo right there. Murgen... the Books of Murgen are fine to great, but Murgen himself kinda sucks. He's a sad sack who is just lucky that the addiction he withdraws into is actually useful. The scene where Croaker calls him out on his bullshit and his poor writing is great. It's absolutely worth it and Water Sleeps/Soldiers Live sticks the landing in a really satisfying way, but still. RDM posted:The worst part of the books of the south are how much they retcon the original trilogy so that all the taken who die are just back now don't think about it too much, because who can bother to make new villains. Just gonna keep reusing the same ones that already got clearly and unambiguously murdered cause magic. In fairness, half the Taken do stay dead, and as you get further into the later books they are eclipsed by the Shadowbringers and then by Kina, although IIRC Stormbringer hooks up with the Shadowbringers and remains a problem for quite a while longer than the other Taken. Ravus Ursus posted:Steel Frame hasn't stuck with me. I liked it while reading it and afterwards. But I haven't thought about it since. I feel like I've seen what it's trying to do in too many other places before I read it so none of the events, themes, or ideas really stood out to me.
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Dec 28, 2023 16:28
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Major Ryan posted:Have you read Annihilation and the read of the Southern Reach trilogy. It's precisely cosmic horror and bleakness. IMO the second two books don't live up to the promise of the first, but it's worth the entry fee just for the first book, which is brilliant. I kind of bounced off Annihilation before it was a trilogy. Might give it another try with all the glowing recommendations. I loved the Vandermeer edited weird fiction anthology. That one story about sailing on the Danube was amazing. And the one with the woman across the street. And the one with the weird sanatorium. Great stories all around.
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Dec 28, 2023 16:49
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GhastlyBizness posted:Will second this, Authority gets poo poo on by a lot of people for not being the same as the first book but that septic, ingrown, paranoid bureaucracy-horror rules and offers some wonderfully creepy moments. and who doesn't love rabbits?
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Dec 28, 2023 17:00
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:I kind of bounced off Annihilation before it was a trilogy. Might give it another try with all the glowing recommendations. Thats gotta be The Willows right? Blackwood is amazing and you should read more of him! And contemporaries like Arthur Machen and William Hope Hodgson.
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Dec 28, 2023 17:01
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Bilirubin posted:and who doesn't love rabbits? Take the plunge! Okay! posted:I kind of bounced off Annihilation before it was a trilogy. Might give it another try with all the glowing recommendations. Excellent, my Secret Santa got it for me this year and I am looking forward to tearing into those 1000 pages. lol quote is not edit
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Dec 28, 2023 17:02
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I finished the Final Architecture series this year as well, and have nothing to add that hasn’t been said already, but hell yeah I’d play a TTRPG in that setting. I also finished K.J. Parker’s Siege trilogy, which was fun enough, but nowhere near as good as the first. Whereas the Final Architecture I loved each book more than the last mostly following the development of Ollie and the Essiel lol Other than that, I’ve read a lot more non-fiction this year than sff, but I still got to quite a few and mostly new releases. The Stars Undying was the first one I read this year, and I don’t recommend it unless you actually want to just read Cleopatra in space. She really didn’t go far enough in filing the serial numbers off. It’s like she’d written a straight up historical novel and just did a find/replace with names and threw in some scifi poo poo. Honestly I don’t know why. The mytho-historical fantasy novel has been so big over the past few years, she probably would have had a bigger release if she’d just done Cleopatra with magic instead. Not that I’m against trying something new, but I probably woulda liked it better if she’d been a bit more original with it. The Spear Cuts Through Water is one of the standouts this year. drat what an incredible feat of sheer story structure and prose mastery to tell an absolutely mythic tale.That book sings. I particularly loved how the Moon’s magic powers were woven into how the tale was told itself. It’s criminal how it won no awards this year, The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi was probably my favorite book this year. Yes, even over The Spear Cuts Through Water. The latter is undeniably the greatest book I’ve read all year, but Amina just hit all my favorite things—pirate adventure, Arabic folklore, done-with-this-poo poo middle aged pirate queen protagonist. Basically Stranger Tides with more niche, extremely detailed historical research and a more upbeat sense of humor. I’m thrilled there’s gonna be more adventures to come. To Shape a Dragon’s Breath was another one of my favorites. Even though a story about a girl going to dragon training school is probably YA, it was good YA. For one, an indigenous character dealing with colonial power gave her a lot more character than your typical generic YA protagonist. Also I loved all the Anglish used in this alt history. It was great. The Archive Undying was another one I loved, but I see how many people bounced off that one, so I’m pretty sure it just hit all my personal weirds the right way. I love a slow burn romance—make it Akira but gay with cyborg biotech body horror and I’m all in. The Water Outlaws was one of my funnest reads this year. Basically a fantasy retelling The Water Margin with a group of all female bandits and magic. Another one that’s gonna have sequels I’m excited to read. I also read the entire Rosewater series this year. I don’t remember all that much about it tbh, even though I totally enjoyed it while reading. That tends to happen when I burn through an entire trilogy in a week, so it’s not a comment on its quality. The rest was mostly catching up on older scifi I’ve had sitting on my bookshelf for years. I read a lot of the Zelazny on my tbr pile like Eye of Cat and Isle of the Dead and… I dunno, those ones just didn’t quite do it for me (and the last Navajo thing was uh… of it’s time is the best I can say). I still have Lord of Light and Creatures of Light and Darkness to go, which I hear are way better though. The best one was probably Fool’s Run—being Patricia Mckillip’s only scifi made it particularly interesting to me. I was lucky enough to stumble on it at my friend’s used bookstore (seeing as it’s currently out of print). I can’t say much about what made it interesting without giving too much away, so I’ll leave it at what my dad said about it when I lent it to him, “It’s like William Gibson, but she’s much much better at writing characters.” I read all the Norman Spinrad I had languishing on my shelf since I picked them up at a book sale ages ago. Some of them still hold up. I wasn’t expecting Little Heroes to hold up at all, but it wasn’t actually as bad as I remembered, but the horrible sexual politics dates it terribly. Surprisingly A World Between, which was all about sexual politics, was far less dated. In fact it was so prescient of current toxic social media discourse it’s scary. As for The Iron Dream, I couldn’t finish it. I gave up trying to read the actual novel, because the whole joke was contained in the intro and afterward and the rest was an exercise of sadomasochism. I also read a bunch of old short story collections, like Mirrorshades (meh) and England Swings SF, which inspired Dangerous Visions. And uh… I guess there were a few interesting stories in there, but most of them were barely stories at all. One of them was just a dude loving about with a computer until he broke it and people making snide comments. I guess, in the 60s, when computers were mostly only used by computer scientists, that coulda been called sf, but today that’s just Tuesday. I never liked J.G. Ballard when doing the Kennedy Downhill Motor Race bit and not only was that in there but a lot trying to emulate it. And the rest was 50% vaguely scifi Monty Python skits. An interesting time capsule, but that’s about it. Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 17:35 on Dec 28, 2023 |
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Dec 28, 2023 17:22
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Groke posted:Fine Structure is actually not a short story collection though it's just disguised as one.
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Dec 28, 2023 17:49
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DACK FAYDEN posted:I would also call Steven Baxter's Vacuum Diagrams a short story collection despite it also having a clear narrative throughline and framing conceit. But your point's valid! Fine structures had the exact same story structure as there is no antimemonics division and that didn't seem to cause this confusion.
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Dec 28, 2023 18:21
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FPyat posted:Between Two Fires, I have nothing to contribute.
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Dec 28, 2023 18:21
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He actually has multiple other books, and I liked all of them. They fall more into the horror genre though. Those Across the River, The Necromancer’s House, The Lesser Dead, The Suicide Motor Club.
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Dec 28, 2023 18:26
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Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077WXP3KG/
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Dec 28, 2023 18:27
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Stuporstar posted:The best one was probably Fool’s Run—being Patricia Mckillip’s only scifi made it particularly interesting to me. I was lucky enough to stumble on it at my friend’s used bookstore (seeing as it’s currently out of print). I can’t say much about what made it interesting without giving too much away, so I’ll leave it at what my dad said about it when I lent it to him, “It’s like William Gibson, but she’s much much better at writing characters.” The Changeling Sea and The Forgotten Beasts of Eld McKillip? Oh poo poo, I need to read this immediately.
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Dec 28, 2023 18:47
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pradmer posted:Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik - $2.99 I really enjoyed this, Naomi Novik's one shots are consistently good. Just a rock solid fairy tale.
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Dec 28, 2023 18:51
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:I kind of bounced off Annihilation before it was a trilogy. Might give it another try with all the glowing recommendations. This is THE WEIRD, right?
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Dec 28, 2023 20:19
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General Battuta posted:This is THE WEIRD, right?
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Dec 28, 2023 20:26
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Aw man, no instant gratification ebook!
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Dec 28, 2023 20:29
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General Battuta posted:This is THE WEIRD, right? Yes, that is correct. Just an amazing anthology. So many amazing stories that stick in your mind for so long.
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Dec 28, 2023 20:33
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General Battuta posted:Aw man, no instant gratification ebook! There should be a The Weird ebook because it's sitting on my kindle
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Dec 29, 2023 01:13
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My book club is going over our favorite books of the year and I am laughing because half of them are saying Baru was their least favorite. Their main arguments come down to whether it is a fantasy novel or not (I am in the camp that it is because it's a non-real world context for exploring our world's problems) but they definitely want more magic. It was definitely one of our best meetings in my opinion because we had a fantastic discussion (read as multiple people about what constitutes fantasy or what makes a good one. Also we are doing a read along of The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper and I at least don't see why people like this book. It just all feels really stilted and overly odd, can someone sell me on why people like it?
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Dec 29, 2023 01:25
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Teh Madd Hatter posted:
I think it benefits from having been competently written YA fantasy with a solid grounding in actual mythology . . . in the 1980's, when that was pretty revolutionary.
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Dec 29, 2023 01:29
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The Weird is on kindle. The New Weird is not, but looks like it was at some point in the past? It is still out there though.
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Dec 29, 2023 01:32
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Armauk posted:Any interest in reading The Blacktongue Thief, Christopher Buehlman's other book? The historical setting was my big draw in BTF. I’m interssted, but there are a lot of other fantasy books I want to read first.
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Dec 29, 2023 01:37
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I think it benefits from having been competently written YA fantasy with a solid grounding in actual mythology . . . in the 1980's, when that was pretty revolutionary. So yeah lots of other books have done similar things but the Dark is Rising series predates most of those books
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Dec 29, 2023 01:42
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Teh Madd Hatter posted:My book club is going over our favorite books of the year and I am laughing because half of them are saying Baru was their least favorite. Their main arguments come down to whether it is a fantasy novel or not (I am in the camp that it is because it's a non-real world context for exploring our world's problems) but they definitely want more magic. It was definitely one of our best meetings in my opinion because we had a fantastic discussion (read as multiple people about what constitutes fantasy or what makes a good one. are you english? it's incredibly, intensely english in a borderline fetishistic way.
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Dec 29, 2023 01:44
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sebmojo posted:are you english? it's incredibly, intensely english in a borderline fetishistic way.
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Dec 29, 2023 01:50
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It's pretty great if you're a 10 year old American.
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Dec 29, 2023 01:59
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I think it benefits from having been competently written YA fantasy with a solid grounding in actual mythology . . . in the 1980's, when that was pretty revolutionary. she also worked in layers of meaning which can benefit contemplation
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Dec 29, 2023 02:06
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cardinale posted:I'm from the UK and I dropped The Dark is Rising not many pages in because of this feeling! Was like reading Enid Blyton or something yeah, it's also a book for ten year olds and is fairly video gamey in its collect the themed maguffins to send in for the ending structure. My pick of those books is the grey king and greenwitch, they're both kind of weird and dark, but if you're not digging it as an adult that's fine too.
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Dec 29, 2023 02:10
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I read prolific thread favourite Adrian Tchaikovsky's CITY OF LAST CHANCES a couple months back - it was an enjoyable fantasy novel, maybe the story was a little scattered following several different characters, but the vibe of Les Miserables in Ankh Morpork, only somewhat grittier had me invested. Good enough for me to preorder HOUSE OF OPEN WOUNDS, which dropped not long back and I just finished. Our reluctant
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Dec 29, 2023 02:27
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NoneMoreNegative posted:Can't believe they retconned OSC out of existence What the hell is a "digital weapon" in the context of 40K? Like... I assume they're not talking about no-click 0days?
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Dec 29, 2023 03:49
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Kesper North posted:What the hell is a "digital weapon" in the context of 40K? Like... I assume they're not talking about no-click 0days? I'm guessing "digital" in the "pertaining to the fingers" sense, so probably miniature weapons worn on (or built into?) the fingers.
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Dec 29, 2023 04:01
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