|
Ssrin better get a ssequel
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2024 02:16
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 20, 2024 05:44 |
|
|
Kesper North posted:Ssrin better get a ssequel SsrIIn
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2024 02:43
|
|
|
Exordia is fantastic. I love the way it rotates through sci-fi subgenres and does so with genuine excitement and sincerity. Some spoilers for the whole book below: I loved the way the chapter headers reflect what is important to each character -- Erik counts up from the moment Blackbird emerges, Clayton counts down until the deadline elapses, Davoud his current altitude, etc. Anna's is in what I can only guess is the khai language? and the final POV chapter from Ssrin has the same header, but mirrored -- the payoff for someone bound in serendure with Anna. It's a dark book, I think, and something about the book is reflected in how Anna at the end, has the feeling that she's on an loving adventure and doesn't have to deal with rent, or jobs, or mundane bullshit and all it required was the near-total genocide of the human race -- but she's happier now than she's ever been. Everyone has been sharpened to a point, and no-one that's not part of a larger story can exist in it (the same way no one not embroiled in a story can initially enter Blackbird) Abdiel is mentioned only passingly in the final closing chapter as the person who broke Ssrin from the philosophy of khai supremacy. The name isn't really mentioned anywhere else except twice, but they're a neuroscythe and the creator of the Ubiet so, hopefully, we'll get to see them again since that sounds like a pretty impressive feat! I assume each POV character embodies one passion just because it'd be formally complete. I'm not completely sure about this because some of the later ones are a little looser. Prajna: Aixue Serendure: Anna / Ssrin Caryatasis: Chaya Rath: Erik + Clayton (and Rosamaria, via induction) Geashade: Davoud (assuming that Iruvage taking his sight was the pain necessary to complete geashade) Hesper: Khaje, in relation to Davoud Preyjest: Iruvage, in relation to Erik? Anna, in relation to Erik? Chaya, in relation to Clayton? I assume not Iruvage since he could've ensouled Blackbird via preyjest, but possibly the soul that comes out of it hasn't been told long enough to be complete the way that one via Erik/Clayton/Anna/Ssrin would be. There are also seven main positions on the Enterprise in Star Trek: TOS, but I think trying to pair each of them with a character would be even more of a stretch and even more insufferable than what I'm already doing. A superlative book, and I think only a little unfair in that I'm now waiting for multiple sequels from the same author 
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2024 05:54
|
|
|
I am so sad that my copy of Exordia isn’t here yet. I am even sorrier that what I read instead was The Book That Wouldn’t Burn. It’s one of the most disjointed books I’ve read in a while and also 576 pages of incredibly repetitive exposition dumps with flat characters. Takes three pages to say what could’ve been conveyed in one paragraph. I found the twists pretty predictable and the interspecies “love story” strained. The prose isn’t bad but I wouldn’t call it good. I kept pushing on, somehow hoping that it would get better, but it did not. Wish I had just DNF’d way earlier, like maybe in the first 50 pages. It’s a very mid, boring book.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2024 13:27
|
|
|
Leng posted:I am so sad that my copy of Exordia isn’t here yet. You should try burning it OP
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2024 16:37
|
|
|
Darn I bought an audiobook of The Book that Wouldn't Burn. I made it through the first 2 chapters but it felt very... YA.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2024 16:56
|
|
|
Leng posted:I am so sad that my copy of Exordia isn’t here yet. That's too bad, I like Mark Lawrence's stuff. The last thing I read from him was the "Impossible Times" trilogy which was like what if Ready Player One wasn't written by an idiot e: it also felt like YA however
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2024 17:04
|
|
|
Thanks for the recs everyone! They sound really interesting! By the way, someone some time ago was asking for scifi / fantasy (?) books by Black authors featuring Black men as main characters. The Liminal People by Ayize Jama-everett Book 1 of Liminal series [scifi] quote:The Liminal People is the first of Ayize Jama-Everett's Liminal novels. Membership in the razor neck crew is for life. But when Taggert, who can heal and hurt with just a touch, receives a call from the past he is honor bound to try and help the woman he once loved try to find her daughter. Taggert realizes the girl has more power than even he can imagine and has to wrestle with the nature of his own skills, not to mention risking the wrath of his enigmatic master and perhaps even the gods, in order keep the girl safe. In the end, Taggert will have to delve into the depths of his heart and soul to survive. After all, what really matters is family. New Author Foreword. The fourth and final Liminal novel, Heroes of an Unknown World, will be published in February 2023. I read a little bit of it, but decided I needed to be in the right mindset to tackle it. It's a little grim. I tapped out at the brief scene of Taggart healing a trafficked pre pubescent girl of rampant STIs whose mother was selling her to both a mercenary leader and other people The Getaway by Lamar Giles [scifi] quote:Welcome to the funnest spot around . . . The Beautiful Side of the Moon by Leye Adenle [he's Nigerian!] [fantasy] quote:What would happen if God forgot who he was? Drawing on age-old African story-telling traditions, modern science-fiction and contemporary thriller writing, award-winning Nigerian author Leye Adenle (Easy Motion Tourist, When Trouble Sleeps) conjures up an entirely new way of seeing the world. No comments as I haven't read this yet. The Changeling by Victor Lavalle [fantasy] quote:When Apollo Kagwa's father disappeared, all he left his son were strange recurring dreams and a box of books stamped with the word IMPROBABILIA. I read this and loved it. Hwever that was back in 2021 so I have no recent comments on it, sorry. David Mogo Godhunter by Suyi Davies Okungbowa [fantasy] [He's also Nigerian!] quote:Lagos will not be destroyed I remember enjoying this quite a bit. An ordinary man trying to tackle an impossible task! Fair warning there's some attempted forced marriage and odd treatment of hijabi women wearing hijabis or not. I forget the specifics, just got weirded out by it.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2024 18:12
|
|
|
Victor LaValle's Ballad of Black Tom also fits the bill. Works well on its own (and interesting look at some of the Harlem Renaissance cults that sprouted up) but is also probably the best of the "revisionist Lovecraft" works that have really flourished in the last ~10-ish years.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2024 18:21
|
|
|
"Lovecraft but seriously gently caress racism" is a fertile field.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2024 18:24
|
|
|
Groke posted:"Lovecraft but seriously gently caress racism" is a fertile field. I mean, you would think so, but I've found a lot of them to just not really click, as at least for a lot of them the big message was "Lovecraft sure was racist, wasn't he? I bet he'd hate having a non-white author use his work!" and forget to actually tell a good story. Ballad of Black Tom, short as it is, I found to be a really strong story with well developed main character first and foremost, and its approach was more the racism of 1920s US society in general rather than Lovecraft as an individual, if that makes sense.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2024 19:38
|
|
|
Has anyone read the second Bloodsworn saga book, Hunger of the Gods? I enjoyed the first one, but not enough that I definitely want to continue with the series. #2 is higher rated on Goodreads though, which has made me wonder.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2024 19:52
|
|
|
Ccs posted:Darn I bought an audiobook of The Book that Wouldn't Burn. I made it through the first 2 chapters but it felt very... YA. Did you burn it to CD?
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2024 19:55
|
|
|
Chairman Capone posted:Victor LaValle's Ballad of Black Tom
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2024 20:05
|
|
|
Followed up Exordia by reading Lavie Tidhar's The Circumference of the World, which I really enjoyed. It is, among other things, a tribute to the golden age of sci-fi and a weird fractal narrative about a fictional novel that may not exist, written by a very thinly-veiled L Ron Hubbard type. It reminded me a little bit of David Mitchell's stuff, particularly Cloud Atlas or The Bone Clocks, as it hops around genre and style before tying everything up. It doesn't quiiite come together totally successfully, in the end, but the prose is so good that I didn't really mind. Solid recommendation if you enjoy good prose and/or if you are familiar with the early days of sci-fi. I'll probably put it in my Hugo nominations for best novel, but I think (ironically) it's probably a bit too literary to get real Hugo attention, despite being all about the early WorldCon set (with all the good and the bad that entails). cptn_dr fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Jan 29, 2024 |
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2024 20:11
|
|
|
Jedit posted:Did you burn it to CD? I tried, but it wouldn't for some reason.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2024 20:48
|
|
|
I recently read Goblin Emperor and whew I have some conflicting opinions about it. The world building is fun and feels foreign, and being a book about court intrigue that actually focuses on court intrigue is really fantastic after I've read roughly a dozen and one books that were described to be about court intrigue and were absolutely not. Anyway foreign world building and focusing on intrigue make for a novel that is difficult to follow, but Goblin Emperor is a pretty easy read. In fact it's oddly comforting, like settling into a cozy chair. Round about the last section I figured out the reason that everything feels cozy is that the protagonist has an ideology and value system that mirrors our dominant liberal humanist ideology/value system, and that value system is shown to be invariably correct and never without unfortunate consequences. How convenient that in this fantastic world with all sorts of different problems and competing value system it's our own real world ideology that is always right. The protagonist was raised in the boondocks and uneducated so of course it makes sense that his ideology differs from everyone else in their world and clearly our real world hegemonic values are natural and spring up when no cultural influences are present. Please insert here a wild rant referencing Antonio Gramsci and how hegemonic thought pretends that it isn't actually an ideology at all. There's a part where the anarchist explains their X leads to Y leads to Z plot and the protagonist wonders if the villain is a genius or magical or just lucky, which will feel uncanny to anyone who's tried to explain even the simplest part of Das Kapital to their parents. Anyway figuring that out put a damper on my enjoyment of the last little bit. I'm rereading some Gene Wolfe to get back some alien is alien vibe. Anyone have any other suggestions for court intrigue books that are actually about court intrigue? It doesn't have to be an alien puzzlebox like the works of myself, thread favorite Graydon Saunders, but if it doesn't manage to undercut itself like Goblin Emperor does that'd be nice.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2024 21:36
|
|
|
GladRagKraken posted:I recently read Goblin Emperor and whew I have some conflicting opinions about it. The world building is fun and feels foreign, and being a book about court intrigue that actually focuses on court intrigue is really fantastic after I've read roughly a dozen and one books that were described to be about court intrigue and were absolutely not. Anyway foreign world building and focusing on intrigue make for a novel that is difficult to follow, but Goblin Emperor is a pretty easy read. In fact it's oddly comforting, like settling into a cozy chair. Round about the last section I figured out the reason that everything feels cozy is that the protagonist has an ideology and value system that mirrors our dominant liberal humanist ideology/value system, and that value system is shown to be invariably correct and never without unfortunate consequences. How convenient that in this fantastic world with all sorts of different problems and competing value system it's our own real world ideology that is always right. The protagonist was raised in the boondocks and uneducated so of course it makes sense that his ideology differs from everyone else in their world and clearly our real world hegemonic values are natural and spring up when no cultural influences are present. Please insert here a wild rant referencing Antonio Gramsci and how hegemonic thought pretends that it isn't actually an ideology at all. There's a part where the anarchist explains their X leads to Y leads to Z plot and the protagonist wonders if the villain is a genius or magical or just lucky, which will feel uncanny to anyone who's tried to explain even the simplest part of Das Kapital to their parents. Mentioned in this thread many times, but the “sequels” are very good. They’re basically entirely unrelated, but in the same world. I enjoyed them more than The Goblin Emperor.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2024 22:04
|
|
|
GladRagKraken posted:Anyway figuring that out put a damper on my enjoyment of the last little bit. I'm rereading some Gene Wolfe to get back some alien is alien vibe. Anyone have any other suggestions for court intrigue books that are actually about court intrigue? The Foreigner series by C J Cherryh (hell most of C J Cherryh's later Sci-Fi work is this) Lois McMaster Bujold's Curse of Challion (on the lighter side of intrigue though) The first two Gormenghast books by Mervyn Peake Gloriana by Michael Moorcock The Green Earth by Kim Stanley Robinson
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2024 22:06
|
|
|
Daughter of the Empire (Janny Wurst/Raymond Feist) is also pretty good for courtly drama.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2024 22:41
|
|
|
fez_machine posted:Gloriana by Michael Moorcock ... but only if you get the post-1993 revised version. Holly Black's Elfhame books are pretty good for Faerie politicking and intrigue. Also, Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Dart and its sequels.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2024 22:55
|
|
|
GladRagKraken posted:I recently read Goblin Emperor and whew I have some conflicting opinions about it. The world building is fun and feels foreign, and being a book about court intrigue that actually focuses on court intrigue is really fantastic after I've read roughly a dozen and one books that were described to be about court intrigue and were absolutely not. Anyway foreign world building and focusing on intrigue make for a novel that is difficult to follow, but Goblin Emperor is a pretty easy read. In fact it's oddly comforting, like settling into a cozy chair. Round about the last section I figured out the reason that everything feels cozy is that the protagonist has an ideology and value system that mirrors our dominant liberal humanist ideology/value system, and that value system is shown to be invariably correct and never without unfortunate consequences. How convenient that in this fantastic world with all sorts of different problems and competing value system it's our own real world ideology that is always right. The protagonist was raised in the boondocks and uneducated so of course it makes sense that his ideology differs from everyone else in their world and clearly our real world hegemonic values are natural and spring up when no cultural influences are present. Please insert here a wild rant referencing Antonio Gramsci and how hegemonic thought pretends that it isn't actually an ideology at all. There's a part where the anarchist explains their X leads to Y leads to Z plot and the protagonist wonders if the villain is a genius or magical or just lucky, which will feel uncanny to anyone who's tried to explain even the simplest part of Das Kapital to their parents. the kushiel books are fantastic for court intrigue, though there is also A Lot of narratively important bdsm so fair warning.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2024 23:01
|
|
|
GladRagKraken posted:. I'm rereading some Gene Wolfe to get back some alien is alien vibe. Anyone have any other suggestions for court intrigue books that are actually about court intrigue? It doesn't have to be an alien puzzlebox like the works of myself, thread favorite Graydon Saunders, but if it doesn't manage to undercut itself like Goblin Emperor does that'd be nice. The Trial by Franz Kafka
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2024 23:07
|
|
|
sebmojo posted:the kushiel books are fantastic for court intrigue, though there is also A Lot of narratively important bdsm so fair warning. Most of the BDSM/detailed sex scene stuff happens in the first 1/3. After that it's almost more of a travel adventure, and most of the sex scenes become fade-to-black. (I am only pointing that out because the way most folks talked about it here, I was expecting it to be way more explicit way more often than it actually was. Whether one finds that to be a boon or a disappointment, ymmv of course.)
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2024 23:14
|
|
|
voiceless anal fricative posted:Has anyone read the second Bloodsworn saga book, Hunger of the Gods? I enjoyed the first one, but not enough that I definitely want to continue with the series. #2 is higher rated on Goodreads though, which has made me wonder. yeah i read the first one too and it was just OK. doubt I'll go on with it.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2024 23:31
|
|
|
Awkward Davies posted:Mentioned in this thread many times, but the “sequels” are very good. They’re basically entirely unrelated, but in the same world. I enjoyed them more than The Goblin Emperor. absolutely, i thought GE was ok but surprised myself at how much I enjoyed witness for the dead and the speaker of stones
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2024 23:36
|
|
|
Shards of Earth (Final Architecture #1) by Adrian Tchaikovsky - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08HLPZY6X/ The Rage of Dragons (The Burning #1) by Evan Winter - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07L2VKFP5/ Malice (The Faithful and the Fallen #1) by John Gwynne - $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AER8240/
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2024 23:43
|
|
|
fez_machine posted:Lois McMaster Bujold's Curse of Challion (on the lighter side of intrigue though) Her Five Gods series are uniformly excellent, some of her very best work. She's semi-retired and putting out the Penric novellas on her own schedule, those are very enjoyable and she obviously enjoyed writing them.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2024 00:31
|
|
|
mllaneza posted:Her Five Gods series are uniformly excellent, some of her very best work. She's semi-retired and putting out the Penric novellas on her own schedule, those are very enjoyable and she obviously enjoyed writing them. New one dropped a couple weeks ago!
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2024 02:07
|
|
|
Today I learned that "duralumin", a material that shows up a lot in '40s and '50s science fiction, is a real metal. I thought it had been made up.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2024 02:08
|
|
|
DurianGray posted:Most of the BDSM/detailed sex scene stuff happens in the first 1/3. After that it's almost more of a travel adventure, and most of the sex scenes become fade-to-black. Same, after a certain point it shifts to a surprisingly conventional big epic fantasy through an alternate medieval Europe where the protagonist occasionally sleeps with people. Tame, yes, but also familiar, kind of like putting on a comfy old jumper.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2024 07:56
|
|
|
My sister has asked me to read Crescent City. Iiiiiiii do not get it.
|
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2024 10:26
|
|
|
Milkfred E. Moore posted:My sister has asked me to read Crescent City. Sarah J Maas writes romantasy. It's not going to be good. It's primarily about pleasing the database animal.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2024 12:39
|
|
|
fez_machine posted:Sarah J Maas writes romantasy. It's not going to be good. It's primarily about pleasing the database animal. That seems oddly reductive.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2024 13:25
|
|
|
fez_machine posted:Sarah J Maas writes romantasy. It's not going to be good. It's primarily about pleasing the database animal. How is romantasy different than any other subgenre in this regard?
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2024 14:27
|
|
|
fritz posted:How is romantasy different than any other subgenre in this regard? from my cursory glance at Maas' stuff, she writes YA but for adults, so it hits this weird intersection where it feels immature as hell while covering subject matter too 'adult' for YA books. Which is just really weird. e: I want to blame this trend on Twilight and the Hunger Games.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2024 14:35
|
|
|
I haven't read any of it but in my perhaps stupid opinion "fantasy but with explicit sex" seems like a pretty inevitable genre. Romance and erotica are already huge sellers, it makes sense someone would put the fantasy peanut butter in the romance chocolate. TikTok also moves books like crazy, it sells books the way people thought Twitter sold books.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2024 15:02
|
|
|
General Battuta posted:I haven't read any of it but in my perhaps stupid opinion "fantasy but with explicit sex" seems like a pretty inevitable genre. Romance and erotica are already huge sellers, it makes sense someone would put the fantasy peanut butter in the romance chocolate. Guys like Andrew Offutt were writing "fantasy, but also porn" decades ago, so it's not like it's a huge step.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2024 16:00
|
|
|
Just read KJ Parker/Tom Holt’s The Belly of the Bow. The prose is fun and character work is good, any scene with the Loredan family is great, but my entire enjoyment of the book was severely undermined by the farcical military plot. For those who haven’t read it, there is a war between Shastel and Sconia. Shastel’s got an army of professional halberdiers, Sconia’s got a much smaller force of archers. Neither has any auxiliaries or variation whatsoever. Classic underdog matchup, right? Except any tension is lost because from the get-go, the halberdiers lose horrifically at every occasion. By the end of the novel, I was just flipping through yet another battle scene where hapless “””heavy infantry””” are mowed down en masse by archers. I mean, near the end, the archers win a battle in an open field, outnumbered five to one, by inventing Maurician drill and simply massacring the, again supposedly armored, halberdiers, before they engage. And then do the same thing the next day, this time starting out exhausted, confused, and surrounded! It’s like Parker transposed scenes from Zulu but replaced modern rifles with bows. It’s absurd and really reduced my enjoyment of the novel. In the Engineer trilogy, Parker did the same thing, drastically increasing the lethality of medieval siege weaponry, but there the novels were built around those super lethal weapons, both in plot and theme. In Belly of the Bow, there’s no reason why hugely outnumbered, lightly equipped Sconians need to win again and again against professional soldiers — just seemed an excuse for Parker/Holt to revisit Athens’ Sicilian campaign, a clear interest of his. In conclusion: it doesn’t feel like scrappy underdogs barely eking out a victory when they’ve spent the last thousand pages styling all over what the characters keep saying is a powerful foe.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2024 16:05
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 20, 2024 05:44 |
|
|
While I'm thinking about it, fwiw I'm totally cool with YA covering 'adult' subjects and being mature. It's part of why the Giver is so drat good. I'm just less okay with the weird... almost cutesy writing style modern YA has mixing with those adult subjects. Weird tonal dissonance for me. And I say this as someone who writes and reads fanfic.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2024 16:35
|
|