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I just finished reading Peter F. Hamilton's The Reality Dysfunction. I didn't think it was very good. I was looking for a popcorn space opera and this was....sort of that? But the execution was all hosed up. First of all, the book is absurdly long: a thousand pages where the actual story could easily fit into half that. Second, the length might make sense if the prose and ideas were adding something to the plot, but they're really not. The prose is very descriptive but in an oddly dry way--even when the characters are having sex or swearing vengeance it feels flat and passionless. Which brings me to the next problem I had--the character are all really unlikable. Now I don't think a story always needs to have "relatable" characters, but this book didn't seem like it was giving me nuanced, complex portraits, just annoying jerks. The main character is supposed to be a roguish hotshot pilot who is maybe psychic and also really good at sex? But I never actually bought him as being cool. The narrative just tells you he is. The ideas, the imagined future, are all very strange. It's taking place something like six or seven hundred years in the future but at one point a space colony is described as being comprised of "ethnic Canadians". It's not just that the setting seems to just project the present into the future though--feudalism and monarchy are back but also still capitalism somehow with seemingly zero thought put into why or how. There are a few moderately cool action scenes but they are not cool or frequent enough to justify the length or all the other bad parts. Finally, there are too many passages where Hamilton describes how hot a teenager is for my comfort. What a weird loving book. And this is the first of a trilogy and I guess he's quite a well known author?
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Feb 3, 2024 06:38
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double post
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Feb 3, 2024 06:39
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voiceless anal fricative posted:I read almost exclusively on a Kindle and love it but its important to acknowledge the limitations: black and white, no ability to zoom in on illustrations, maps etc (this is annoying for the Stormlight Archive series, for e.g.), almost unusable for graphic novels, fiddly for footnotes (looking at you, Babel Yeah, I primarily use a Kindle which is now... goddamn, almost 12 years old. Besides the limitations you mention, however, the e-ink display has a couple of big advantages over typical tablet or phone screens: It's way more like reading on paper (less strain on the eyes, direct sunlight is no problem at all); and this type of display is very frugal, the device STILL has very good battery life despite over a decade of heavy use. Like, charging is a once in a fortnight thing. Also it's about the size of a slim paperback. Unlike a paper book you can also adjust font size to fit your eyesight and other conditions. For graphic novels or anything else that heavily relies on illustrations, however, it's better to use the Kindle app on a regular tablet or something. Which doesn't cost anything extra if you already have a tablet, which I do.
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Feb 3, 2024 07:55
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my bony fealty posted:I wanna read some unique, different-feeling fantasy. Last one I got from this thread was Face in the Frost which was great. Stuff like that, Bridge of Birds hits the same notes. But doesn't have to be quirky and funny like those two. Gormenghast, The King of Elfland's Daughter, The Riddle-Master of Hed, The Worm Ouroboros, Lud-In-the-Mist. Details when I wake up in the morning.
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Feb 3, 2024 08:10
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Side-note: Has anyone read Ruination with no outside knowledge of League of Legends? Curious to what people thought of the League universe with no background.
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Feb 3, 2024 08:25
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nemesis_hub posted:I just finished reading Peter F. Hamilton's The Reality Dysfunction. I didn't think it was very good. I was looking for a popcorn space opera and this was....sort of that? But the execution was all hosed up. So yeah, all of that is a thing. Stop reading Hamilton, it'll never get better. I think he does set-piece action very well, but you aren't going to enjoy what you'll have to slog through to get to the "good stuff". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPY5P0TaC4k
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Feb 3, 2024 08:32
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nemesis_hub posted:I just finished reading Peter F. Hamilton's The Reality Dysfunction. I didn't think it was very good. I was looking for a popcorn space opera and this was....sort of that? But the execution was all hosed up. Ok so.. I started reading this series because there was an episode of "Love, Death, and Robots" that I loved called "Sonnie's Edge" and I wanted more from that world. Like you, I was weirded out by the first book and its length, and the author self insert loving sexy teenagers, but I wanted to know how it ended so I basically did a hate-read of the rest of the trilogy. IT"S NOT WORTH IT. God did it. That's the ending. It's literally Deus Ex Machina. You can safely stop reading unless you want to read about the adventures of Al Capone In Space (this actually happens and I'm not putting spoiler tags because gently caress these books)
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Feb 3, 2024 09:23
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Hamilton is utterly awful. Don't even bother IMO because I can't see how someone with such juvenile writing could accidentally create a good story
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Feb 3, 2024 09:58
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Strategic Tea posted:Hamilton is utterly awful. Don't even bother IMO because I can't see how someone with such juvenile writing could accidentally create a good story I truly don't understand why he's so popular.
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Feb 3, 2024 10:00
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mewse posted:Ok so.. I started reading this series because there was an episode of "Love, Death, and Robots" that I loved called "Sonnie's Edge" and I wanted more from that world. I have this problem where I hate quitting on a movie or a book etc so I end up finishing some atrocious things sometimes, but knowing you went through it and regret it helps, hahaha. I specifically was looking for something like a sexy space opera adventure, but.....not like this. I'll go back to my Culture novels until I can get some CJ Cherryh from the library (who was recommended to me in this very thread). What really struck me was how poorly constructed and turgid the novel seemed overall. Juvenile describes it well actually.
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Feb 3, 2024 10:14
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nemesis_hub posted:I have this problem where I hate quitting on a movie or a book etc so I end up finishing some atrocious things sometimes, but knowing you went through it and regret it helps, hahaha. I specifically was looking for something like a sexy space opera adventure, but.....not like this. I'll go back to my Culture novels until I can get some CJ Cherryh from the library (who was recommended to me in this very thread). The expanse books are kinda modern space opera. I really enjoyed A Memory Called Empire. Project Hail Mary is good (i had to be convinced to pick it up because i didn’t enjoy the tone of the martian film)
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Feb 3, 2024 11:31
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nemesis_hub posted:I have this problem where I hate quitting on a movie or a book etc so I end up finishing some atrocious things sometimes, but knowing you went through it and regret it helps, hahaha. I specifically was looking for something like a sexy space opera adventure, but.....not like this. I'll go back to my Culture novels until I can get some CJ Cherryh from the library (who was recommended to me in this very thread). You might like Walter Jon Williams' books they're pretty fun space operas.
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Feb 3, 2024 13:36
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mewse posted:Ok so.. I started reading this series because there was an episode of "Love, Death, and Robots" that I loved called "Sonnie's Edge" and I wanted more from that world. The second book and the in-depth look at how the dead coming back affected pretty much everything was really interesting, but I first read it when I was a teenager. Coming back to it a years ago it was really juvenile in how it treated sex and how backward it was for a SFF setting, still treating monarchism and cishet patriarchy as the norm. It's bizarre that he could conceive of societies where people upload themselves into biological habitats, but then still has farmer colonists and crime gangs running around, and only curiously handwaves away why these contradictions exist in the third book
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Feb 3, 2024 14:13
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Not So Fast posted:The second book and the in-depth look at how the dead coming back affected pretty much everything was really interesting, but I first read it when I was a teenager. Coming back to it a years ago it was really juvenile in how it treated sex and how backward it was for a SFF setting, still treating monarchism and cishet patriarchy as the norm. It's bizarre that he could conceive of societies where people upload themselves into biological habitats, but then still has farmer colonists and crime gangs running around, and only curiously handwaves away why these contradictions exist in the third book It's a pity because Possessed Biotech is such a cool premise, but yeah. Not from that guy.
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Feb 3, 2024 14:37
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I'm almost done the Commonweal books -- halfway through A Mist of Grit and Splinters -- and they slap. The first one is mil-fantasy that tastes like The Black Company by way of C.J. Cherryh's 80s style, very densely written, very tight viewpoint, basically no exposition. A lot of stuff that other authors would be tempted to narrate on extensively just passes without comment because it's unremarkable to the viewpoint character, to the point that I didn't realize the viewpoint character isn't human until halfway through the book, and that the Creeks aren't human either and "wood-lettuce tea" is actually, not just metaphorically, poisonous to everyone else until a good way into the second book. And I love that poo poo, that sense of gradually unfolding discovery, not being set down and lectured about the setting but just dropped directly into the sensorium of someone who's lived in it their whole life and trusted to catch up at my own pace. Saunders also has a love of using esoteric or archaic words (not all of them from English, either) -- thorp, gesith (and a lot of the specific gesith names like the lug-gesith, geld-gesith, or galdor-gesith), gean, wreaker, décade -- or common english words used as more specific terms of art in this setting, like weeding or entelechy. He's the only author I've seen other than Bard Bloom to use "coolth" in the wild, which (along with some other unusual phrasing and word choice) makes me wonder if Saunders knew Bloom, or read some of their work (or if there is a common inspiration there I haven't yet read). And that's also delicious, a book I come away from knowing a new word (or having a better etymological understanding of a word I already knew) is a treat. Lead out in cuffs posted:The next two books are basically more of the same, but high-stakes wizard school, so you're in for a treat. You (and everyone else who described them as "wizard school") owe me and Saunders personal apologies for lowering my expectations for these books so much.  They're not wizard school, they're wizard civil engineering apprenticeship which is considerably more interesting. And they retain the same style as the first book (and shed light, indirectly, on some unexplained stuff from the first book). So delicious. And spending more time around the Independents gave me a greater appreciation for how, in this setting where the physical sciences are generally well understood and a lot of applications of magic rest on an understanding of chemistry or metallurgy or what have you, the actual nature of magic is weird and ancient and defies explication or description, and the way each sorcerer conceives of or interacts with it is highly unique and personal.Books 4 and 5 I'm not liking as much, they're told in third person multiple viewpoint and actually contain some exposition and narration of stuff the viewpoint character-of-the-moment couldn't have known, which is fine overall, I don't hate it, but it's a bit of a letdown after the first three books. They're also more "behind the scenes on the logistics and doctrine of the Line" which is also of less interest to me than Life, Death, and Constant Strange Mayhem's adventures in canal construction. Next up after I finish these is Exordia, and then probably more Cherryh rereads.
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Feb 3, 2024 15:02
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Gormenghast, The King of Elfland's Daughter, The Riddle-Master of Hed, The Worm Ouroboros, Lud-In-the-Mist. I've read all of these except The Riddle-Master of Hed and can highly recommend them all too. The Worm Ouroboros was a bit tough to get through for me but it's worth it. Will add Hed to the list!
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Feb 3, 2024 15:04
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my bony fealty posted:I wanna read some unique, different-feeling fantasy. Last one I got from this thread was Face in the Frost which was great. Stuff like that, Bridge of Birds hits the same notes. But doesn't have to be quirky and funny like those two. Have you read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell or Piranesi? Other than that, perhaps Walter Wangerin's The Book of the Dun Cow, Tanith Lee's Night's Master, or James Stoddard's The High House.
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Feb 3, 2024 15:14
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my bony fealty posted:I wanna read some unique, different-feeling fantasy. Last one I got from this thread was Face in the Frost which was great. Stuff like that, Bridge of Birds hits the same notes. But doesn't have to be quirky and funny like those two. Spear Cuts Through Water is the most unique fantasy I've read in a long time. Saint of Bright Doors is pretty out there too. There's also Library at Mount Char. All three are a little...gruesome? But still extremely good. Check out The Dawnhounds if you haven't, since it's one of our very own goons who wrote it.
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Feb 3, 2024 15:14
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SPEAKING OF CHERRYHgvibes posted:Just don't let your spouse see the cover. The mocking will be incessant.  lmao Injera posted:Ahh! That's great to know before I get to the end of the book and then scramble to find the next one, thanks. my bony fealty posted:I've read all of these except The Riddle-Master of Hed and can highly recommend them all too. The Worm Ouroboros was a bit tough to get through for me but it's worth it.
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Feb 3, 2024 15:16
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Off to see if any have good covers too 
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Y'all have a way harder time with author's magical realms than I do apparently, or you had a lot fewer friends when you we were 16 hooking up with 21 year old dudes than I did (Louise, girl, again? Was he married this time?). I like most of Hamilton's books. There's some deeply cool ideas in them, and I find the setpiece chapters worth the price of admission (too many pages on multiple books worth of stories crammed into one so it feels like you're reading three books at once that all take too long). Night's Dawn trilogy isn't one I'd recommend, but I really enjoyed the spaceship v spaceship combat being all drones, not something I've seen anyone else do as effectively. Al Capone in space was wacky, but I like a bit of wacky and weird in my SF. But the reason people usually recommend Hamilton is for the Commonwealth books, specifically the Morning Light Mountain, though there's plenty else in that book to enjoy. Also, I've come full circle on regressive forms of governancement and economics IN SPAAAACE. The more history I learn and live through, feudalism and caplitalism never dying seems about right. They're the herpes of human society.
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Feb 3, 2024 15:35
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A Sneaker Broker posted:I just now realized that while reading a paperback book is the premium feel for reading, I won't have enough space for how much I will read. Are Kindles just as good as paperbacks? I know that accessibility is excellent since if you ever need a book, it takes two clicks, and now you own it. But I am not sure if the reading experience is the same. The main drawbacks are that they're more fragile than a paperback (your typical paperback will generally survive being stepped on or falling down the stairs), there is no possibility of coloured text or illustrations, rapidly skimming through a book or flipping to a specific page is awkward, and you need to recharge it occasionally (typically between weekly and monthly depending on how much reading you do). Also, how well footnotes work is heavily dependent on the specific device and how much work the publisher put into typesetting them properly. For me this is well worth it to be able to fit a thousand books in my purse, but I particularly would not recommend an e-reader for reading comics, technical nonfiction, or anything else that depends heavily on diagrams, illustrations, tabular data, etc -- they're best at reading linear text. It is worth noting that Kindles are not the only e-reader out there. My understanding is that they work great if you mostly buy books from Amazon anyways, but will fight you if you ever want to leave that ecosystem. Kobos are compatible with most ebook stores that aren't Amazon, and friendly to sideloading and experimenting with custom firmware, but buying books on Amazon and loading them onto anything that isn't a Kindle is somewhere between "a huge pain in the rear end" and "impossible" depending on the current state of the cat and mouse game between Amazon and everyone else. General Battuta posted:It doesn't have the same father-and-daughter heart, more of a "god I am hosed up!!!" heart, but ASH A SECRET HISTORY is full of weird cosmic horror stuff in a well researched feudal Europe. CW for sexual assault. mllaneza posted:That's is indeed a great book, but some dark poo poo goes on, often to the main character. Haystack posted:The best example of this I've seen in sci-fi/fantasy is Rachel Bach's Paradox series. It's mostly an action-oriented space opera about a power armored lady kicking space lizards, but the romance in the story is well written, important to the development of the characters and the plot, and very goddamn steamy. It'd be a poorer book if the sex scenes just faded to black.
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Feb 3, 2024 15:45
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fez_machine posted:You might like Walter Jon Williams' books they're pretty fun space operas. WJW is one of my favorite authors. His Dread Empire's Fall series is space opera. He wrote those at the same time he wrote the Quillifer books, which are fantasy political comedy, or satire, or something like that. He's written in a great many genres, usually successfully.
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Feb 3, 2024 16:29
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I read almost exclusively ebooks on an iPhone for like 10 years (some app I can't remembrer that died, then Marvin app that died, then Kindle app), then I got a kindle device a few years ago and haven't looked back. It is way more comfortable and I can read more now probably without loving up my eyes as much. Plus reading on a kindle is more upscale, people won't think that you are scrolling insta or tiktok or whatever for hours on end. withak fucked around with this message at 16:38 on Feb 3, 2024 |
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Feb 3, 2024 16:31
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RIP Christopher Priest. https://www.ninaallan.co.uk/?p=6855 A significant figure with a great body of work behind him, The Islanders blew me away for formal inventiveness and cool charm.
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Feb 3, 2024 17:19
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The Destroyer of Worlds (Lovecraft Country #2) by Matt Ruff - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B2578RCL/ Record of a Spaceborn Few (Wayfarers #3) by Becky Chambers - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072BFJCB9/ The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CKDFE9W/ The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway - $4.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001EL6R9W/
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Feb 3, 2024 18:23
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pradmer posted:The Destroyer of Worlds (Lovecraft Country #2) by Matt Ruff - $1.99 1. Thank you for always doing these. I’m going o start snagging some steals. 2. Make these affiliated so you get a small cut. Mere Pennie’s to the dollar but it all adds up.
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Feb 3, 2024 18:46
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mllaneza posted:So yeah, all of that is a thing. Stop reading Hamilton, it'll never get better. I think he does set-piece action very well, but you aren't going to enjoy what you'll have to slog through to get to the "good stuff". Counter point: Hamilton writes excellent action pieces, interesting universes and has cool scenes. And in contrast to Saunders, he has a good flow in his books. Broken dragon is my favourite, well except for the obvious plot detail.
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Feb 3, 2024 18:48
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my bony fealty posted:I wanna read some unique, different-feeling fantasy. Last one I got from this thread was Face in the Frost which was great. Stuff like that, Bridge of Birds hits the same notes. But doesn't have to be quirky and funny like those two. Lighter then other recommendations but I really enjoyed Jonathan Howard's Johannes Cabal the Necromancer books, which are very much their own thing stylistically (though they do draw on Lovecraftian mythos occasionally).
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Feb 3, 2024 18:54
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Yeah, I'm going to add a (weak) defense for Hamilton in that I really enjoyed Fallen Dragon, and Mindstar Rising and The Nano Flower are both solid cyberpunk. Good, not great, but Hamilton has a grasp of setting that has a stylishly gritty vibe, and he can write a drat fine action set-piece. The short story collection A Second Chance at Eden has Sonnie's Edge, which is definitely the best thing he's written. But the Reality Dysfunction mega-series and Commonwealth Saga are bloated messes, where the meandering plot collides with his Squicky Scifi Author Sex Stuff, a lot of setting material doesn't work, and the whole thing is just way too many bad words around the fun bits. It'll never get better.
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Feb 3, 2024 19:08
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If people want "unusual fantasy", it's definitely time to recommend The Night-Bird's Feather by Jenna Moran again.
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Feb 3, 2024 19:23
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I read Peter F Hamilton when I was a teenage boy and it was great! I recommend being a teenage boy and reading him!
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Feb 3, 2024 19:44
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A Sneaker Broker posted:2. Make these affiliated so you get a small cut. Mere Pennie’s to the dollar but it all adds up. Looking it up, I saw it's about 3%-4%, and I sure wouldn't begrudge you that money for the effort. It's not like you're pushing this stuff down people's' throats, and I believe you're providing a valuable service. Check with a mod if you're interested in the idea.
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Feb 3, 2024 20:00
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Biffmotron posted:Yeah, I'm going to add a (weak) defense for Hamilton in that I really enjoyed Fallen Dragon, and Mindstar Rising and The Nano Flower are both solid cyberpunk. Good, not great, but Hamilton has a grasp of setting that has a stylishly gritty vibe, and he can write a drat fine action set-piece. The short story collection A Second Chance at Eden has Sonnie's Edge, which is definitely the best thing he's written. He's got issues but I will agree his non-squicky stuff is interesting and he writes on hell of a set-piece action scene. The whole sequence in the middle of Night's Dawn in the industrial site that chops up asteroids is incredible. The space combat is also extremely good.
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Feb 3, 2024 20:57
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General Battuta posted:I read Peter F Hamilton when I was a teenage boy and it was great! I recommend being a teenage boy and reading him! Well, to be fair, being able to go back and read sci-fi/fantasy as a teenager again would be wonderful since everything would be new and plot twists wouldn’t be obvious half a book away ( like in the traitor) due to resigned cynicism. That said, I thought I would come around and finish the Baru series. What earns you most money, physical copy or kindle?
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Feb 3, 2024 21:12
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Leaving a review is the most important thing, don’t really care what people buy.
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Feb 3, 2024 21:21
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Admiralty Flag posted:That time that someone was bitching about you spamming the thread with affiliate links (and they were wrong about [a] you spamming and [b] these being affiliate links) -- I'm not a mod or anything, but I can certainly see it as permissible for you to post affiliate links to get a few cents for each purchase as recompense for bringing these deals to everyone's attention. You've been doing this for what, a year, out of the goodness of your heart, and have saved thread regulars tons of money (myself included); it seems like the least that could be done to pay you back. Yeah, I think he should be allowed to get paid. Hell, what he should be doing is creating a Instagram or Twitter page for these type of steals. Personally, I know a couple of people who do this sort of thing with sneakers, clothes, and handbags, and they make a very pretty penny. If he can be fast, and always post first, he’s got himself a good side hustle.
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Feb 3, 2024 22:26
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A Sneaker Broker posted:Yeah, I think he should be allowed to get paid. Hell, what he should be doing is creating a Instagram or Twitter page for these type of steals. Personally, I know a couple of people who do this sort of thing with sneakers, clothes, and handbags, and they make a very pretty penny.
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Feb 3, 2024 22:38
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mystes posted:That does sound like something a sneaker broker would say 
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Feb 3, 2024 22:53
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A Sneaker Broker posted:Yeah, I think he should be allowed to get paid. Hell, what he should be doing is creating a Instagram or Twitter page for these type of steals. Personally, I know a couple of people who do this sort of thing with sneakers, clothes, and handbags, and they make a very pretty penny. It's not a problem from a mod perspective.
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Feb 3, 2024 23:02
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I'm a random thread poster but I've saved a ton of money because of that poster and am down for them to be affiliate links. Or really anyone's, if they aren't just spamming the thread constantly or being a weird dick.
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Feb 3, 2024 23:45
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