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Out of left field recommendation, but I always enjoyed Jeff Strand's books. His writing style (and humor) flow pretty well. I'd recommend Wolf Hunt over anything. If you like it, there's 2 sequels. Yea, it's more horror fantasy than you were probably looking for but I have yet to find a better writer of dialogue.
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Oct 9, 2021 05:40
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FPyat posted:Thinking about Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson again. I believe that it would have been less contrived if the colonization attempt had been made unviable by the extremely unsuitable day/night cycle rather than a deadly disease. You're aware that prions are very real and hosed up, right?
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Oct 9, 2021 05:48
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Danhenge posted:You're aware that prions are very real and hosed up, right? And not life so could easily exist elsewhere
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Oct 9, 2021 07:15
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Disappointing Pie posted:So I love science fiction and fantasy but don’t have a ton of free time anymore and fell off reading hard about ten years ago. Scott Westerfeld, The Risen Empire & The Killing of Worlds. Also sold regionally as a single volume called Succession. A Wizard of Earthsea is a classic and it’s beautiful, easy to read but also easy to get lost in. Given what you’ve said you like, I agree with the Sanderson recommendation. He does have a lot of stuff but a good starting point is Mistborn, or maybe Warbreaker if you want something more standalone.
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Oct 9, 2021 07:24
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D-Pad posted:And not life so could easily exist elsewhere unlike viruses which we're pretty sure couldn't have arisen until cellular life, prions might be some kind of proto-life. which is neat, and our immune systems aren't capable of fighting it, and could be basically anywhere there's amino acids. so, you know. anywhere with an atmosphere.
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Oct 9, 2021 07:48
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Also, I would argue that prions are necessary for the tone of the story. If not them, then something very similar. Aurora paints a very grim and pessimistic picture of interstellar colonization, and most of that stems from the fact that the prion disease was entirely unpredictable from Earth. There's no possible scientific breakthrough that could have warned them about the danger before the generation ship was launched. No telescope could have seen it. No breakthrough in understanding of stellar mechanics could have predicted it. All you can do is lob a generation ship out into the void and hope that it isn't there. It's why they describe generation ships as dandelion seeds, because any successful colonization is going to require flinging hundreds of ships out into space in the hopes that one or two of them might succeed. The day/night cycle on the other hand, that's just stellar mechanics, and we're decent at that already and getting better. That's the kind of thing we could potentially discover before launching a ship, and IMO it would result in an inherently more optimistic view of colonization.
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Oct 9, 2021 09:34
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I also don't understand why a weird day night cycle would be an insurmountable obstacle. Humans survive in e.g. the Arctic just fine.
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Oct 9, 2021 09:53
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A Wizard of Earthsea was brilliant and I really enjoyed it all. Will go back to the sequels at some point. Are they just as good? I'm about a third of the way through the Golden Compass now and also really enjoying it. Also another story of innocence and growing up but definitely told differently and with the obvious anti-church message. Thanks for all the recommendations others have asked for in the thread recently, got some good things to move onto next! 
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Oct 9, 2021 11:55
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bovis posted:A Wizard of Earthsea was brilliant and I really enjoyed it all. Will go back to the sequels at some point. Are they just as good? Arguably each one is better than the previous but they also get sad and there are some significant tone changes. LeGuin was the Master but when she takes you on a ride you go where she wills.
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Oct 9, 2021 14:08
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Been enjoying The March North and I’ve just started the second Commonweal book. It’s good for people who enjoyed the Malazan series or Cherryh’s Foreigner books, same sense of working stuff out as you go. E: also, Halt is terrifying
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Oct 9, 2021 16:31
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Halt and Wake rule. Edit: Some spoiler thoughts as you learn later, their respective talents mean that they are even more profoundly isolated than the average Independent-strength talent because of the nature of their specialties. Unlike many others, they chose to have hope for a better way to be, as opposed to viewing the horrible way they came of age as an inevitability. Danhenge fucked around with this message at 17:16 on Oct 9, 2021 |
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Oct 9, 2021 17:11
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Khizan posted:Also, I would argue that prions are necessary for the tone of the story. If not them, then something very similar. A society that builds a generation ship should have a pretty good grasp on prions. Or to put it like this, if the society have a good grasp of handling neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer and Parkinson, prions is not going to be a major thing. Unless of course the society devolves into cannibalism. Beefeater1980 posted:Been enjoying The March North and I’ve just started the second Commonweal book. It’s good for people who enjoyed the Malazan series or Cherryh’s Foreigner books, same sense of working stuff out as you go. Well, if there was an actual story in book two, I could have agreed. But book two shows that Grayson Saunders had one decent story in him.
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Oct 9, 2021 17:40
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Science is not an even, steady progression uniformly distributed across all areas. That's a fundamentally distorted view about how science functions. Treatments for Alzheimer's or whatever aren't necessarily generalizable to the entire problem of prion diseases or weirdly folded proteins.
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Oct 9, 2021 18:13
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Promise of Blood (Powder Mage #1) by Brian McClellan - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0092XHPIG/ Seed to Harvest: The Complete Patternist Series by Octavia E Butler - $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008HALOVO/
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Oct 9, 2021 18:28
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Danhenge posted:Halt and Wake rule. i'm firmly on team entire chain of events of whole series is a series of plans-within-plans by Halt, though it's possible she's just incredibly pragmatic and opportunistic and seized a crisis to do what she wanted (rather than the other option, which is somehow caused said crisis) on the bright side it seems like what she wants to do is quite objectively good
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Oct 9, 2021 18:44
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More Commonweal chat - where can I get a hold of this in the UK? Google Play is a no go. Happy for mobi or paperback and no I don't want a files link.
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Oct 9, 2021 21:08
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ed balls balls man posted:More Commonweal chat - where can I get a hold of this in the UK? Google Play is a no go. Happy for mobi or paperback and no I don't want a files link. http://dubiousprospects.blogspot.com/2018/09/where-to-get-my-books.html
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Oct 9, 2021 21:12
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Thanks - Kobo was easiest for any other UK goons.
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Oct 9, 2021 21:31
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Cardiac posted:Well, if there was an actual story in book two, I could have agreed. But book two shows that Grayson Saunders had one decent story in him. lol. i just finished the last book and 2 was the best one of all. however, it's a strangely paced almost slice of life about how learning magic causes you to dissolve into a concept, so i could see how someone would decide that's boring or not worth talking about. also despite a different pov structure, 2 and 3 should probably have been combined imo. probably the worst thing I have to say about the series is 4 and 5 partially cover the same time period, so while I learn things that didn't get mentioned in 4 it feels like I'm running in place until stuff starts happening again. also 5 has a much more boring pov setup. ----------------
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Oct 9, 2021 22:19
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EDIT: Didn't like my post.
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Oct 10, 2021 00:17
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Larry Parrish posted:also 5 has a much more boring pov setup. I actually really liked the parts narrated by Slow, I'd read a whole book of those.
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Oct 10, 2021 00:22
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ed balls balls man posted:More Commonweal chat - where can I get a hold of this in the UK? Google Play is a no go. Happy for mobi or paperback and no I don't want a files link. I got it on Apple Books, which I didn’t even know was a thing before this.
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Oct 10, 2021 02:00
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Here's my review for Through Wolf's Eyes by Jane Lindskold: The first hundred pages are fun: wolf-woman Firekeeper decides to travel with humans back to civilization to learn about her heritage. These pages are about her history, living with giant talking wolves, and the first interactions with humans. They're fun! Then you finish that part and we cut to them arriving back in the capital of Hawk Haven and for the next two hundred pages you're bored to tears as literally nothing happens. Information is repeated, characters are introduced, and yes we GET IT the old king has a selection of heirs and here's their family tree and histories and why they're valid choices for the throne blah blah BLAH. A second main character is introduced, one of these potential heirs - she's kind of vapid at first, a teenager who winds up betrothed to another teenager she doesn't realize is a nitwit, and she slowly befriends Firekeeper, and - I mean, I get that for the pacing of the story you need to establish Firekeeper going from feral wolf to semi-educated woman trusted by these humans - but boy howdy did it need an editor. Fortunately, once you hit the third part the plot grows wings and takes off. Two villains come to center stage as the king packs up everyone and takes them to a border city to deal with some ambassadors. Firekeeper helps her human friends untangle schemes, the other main character grows up in a believable way, and there's magic! There's politicking! There's action! This entire section could have made me cheerfully bump up the star rating to four, because of how much fun it is. In fact if you're willing to put up with the fact that the whole wolf thing barely matters except in a few instances, I'd highly recommend this as a fun politics-focused fantasy with intrigue and sneaking about. Except that the author tripped at the finish line because she could NOT handle letting it end without another infodump. Yep. In the second to last chapter there are three solid pages entirely about the genealogy of neighboring queendom's ruler. We get her entire family tree and nothing else and I admit it, I skimmed. It added nothing, and we already knew that her populace wasn't thrilled with her rule. The author was just so desperate to show us ALL of her worldbuilding and I guess the editor was asleep at the desk, so... yeah. Removing an entire star for making me want to sleep through the ending. To sum up - if you're here because of talking wolves, I'm sorry. Read the first section and then put it down because that's not what this book is about. I gave up on this book twice as a teenager because of this. But if you're willing to settle in for a sometimes long-winded political fantasy with some fun power-hungry villains, boy is it fun. I also appreciate how it managed to wrap up in a way where it was a solid ending for a novel, but also with enough dangling plot threads that I want to read the sequels. I'm actually more excited for those as since the author has finished infodumping about these countries, maybe book 2 won't be bogged down with exposition? I can only hope!
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Oct 10, 2021 02:55
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Cardiac posted:Well, if there was an actual story in book two, I could have agreed. But book two shows that Grayson Saunders had one decent story in him. While I tend to disagree, you might like The Human Dress more (completely non commonweal but still Saunders).
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Oct 10, 2021 03:21
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freebooter posted:I also don't understand why a weird day night cycle would be an insurmountable obstacle. Humans survive in e.g. the Arctic just fine. Good point. I think I was particularly intimidated by their long day because my body has a very negative reaction to changing sleep cycles.
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Oct 10, 2021 03:25
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To be fair I would totally read a Kim Stanley Robinson story about a real piece of garbage planet. An absolutely terrible, miserable planet that makes everyone finally say "Hell with it, this rock is worse than space" before they just give up on it.
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Oct 10, 2021 03:44
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fritz posted:I actually really liked the parts narrated by Slow, I'd read a whole book of those. So did I, I just was irritated with how it skips back a few years. Also, it was weird how it's Slow's memoirs and then Duckling's PoV. It's kinda awkward imo. Anyone know if he's working on a 6? Cuz I want it.
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Oct 10, 2021 04:12
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Larry Parrish posted:Anyone know if he's working on a 6? Cuz I want it. He is. No current ETA.
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Oct 10, 2021 04:19
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ulmont posted:He is. No current ETA. Based
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Oct 10, 2021 04:28
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Larry Parrish posted:Based ? subscribe to his google group if you want to know more, as Graydon doesn't want canonical or non-canonical spoilers to go out into the wider world: https://groups.google.com/g/the-commonweal
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Oct 10, 2021 04:57
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There's at least one or two draft sections he's released, plus some spoiler-y info on what's to come with some of the characters.
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Oct 10, 2021 05:26
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despite subscribing to a bunch of web novel patreons I prefer to read books when they're done. cool stuff, though. some people like reading drafts and the like... collaborative side of writing but I hate it lol. if I'm supposed to know something, the text tells me, or implies enough I figure it out.
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Oct 10, 2021 06:20
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No. No more dancing! posted:To be fair I would totally read a Kim Stanley Robinson story about a real piece of garbage planet. An absolutely terrible, miserable planet that makes everyone finally say "Hell with it, this rock is worse than space" before they just give up on it. Pretty sure KSR could write that and make it good, yes.
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Oct 10, 2021 14:50
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ulmont posted:? subscribe to his google group if you want to know more, as Graydon doesn't want canonical or non-canonical spoilers to go out into the wider world: https://groups.google.com/g/the-commonweal I think Larry was calling it "based", as the kids do these days, not asking what you based that on 
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Oct 10, 2021 17:14
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A Little Hatred (Age of Madness #1) by Joe Abercrombie - $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MJ656W9/ The Rage of Dragons (The Burning #1) by Evan Winter - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07L2VKFP5/ CIRCE by Madeline Miller - $4.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074M5TLLJ/ Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C Clarke - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07XD75HGV/ The Once and Future Witches by Alix E Harrow - $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B085C71YG5/ The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson - $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084FY1NXB/
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Oct 10, 2021 17:40
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I recently finished reading Day Zero by C Robert Cargill and I'm not sure how I feel about it. The book is a prequel to Sea of Rust with Day Zero taking place on, well, day zero of the AI/human war. If you ignore the connection to Sea of Rust I mostly enjoyed it, although the ending wraps things up a little abruptly. However the connection to the previous book kind of hurts it because if you've read Sea of Rust there's just a lot of rehashing of events you already read about and with more context as the main character of Day Zero doesn't learn about the true reasons why the AI war starts. Also on it's own the ending of Day Zero is a little hopeful but taking into account what you know from Sea of Rust the whole thing becomes extremely bleak because no, the kids don't survive since Sea of Rust takes place well after the last human is dead.
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Oct 10, 2021 21:44
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muscles like this! posted:I recently finished reading Day Zero by C Robert Cargill and I'm not sure how I feel about it. The book is a prequel to Sea of Rust with Day Zero taking place on, well, day zero of the AI/human war. If you ignore the connection to Sea of Rust I mostly enjoyed it, although the ending wraps things up a little abruptly. However the connection to the previous book kind of hurts it because if you've read Sea of Rust there's just a lot of rehashing of events you already read about and with more context as the main character of Day Zero doesn't learn about the true reasons why the AI war starts. Also on it's own the ending of Day Zero is a little hopeful but taking into account what you know from Sea of Rust the whole thing becomes extremely bleak because no, the kids don't survive since Sea of Rust takes place well after the last human is dead. i couldn't get into Sea of Rust, not sure why it was written well enough and had an interesting premise
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Oct 10, 2021 22:27
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Aardvark! posted:I think Larry was calling it "based", as the kids do these days, not asking what you based that on it was this muscles like this! posted:I recently finished reading Day Zero by C Robert Cargill and I'm not sure how I feel about it. The book is a prequel to Sea of Rust with Day Zero taking place on, well, day zero of the AI/human war. If you ignore the connection to Sea of Rust I mostly enjoyed it, although the ending wraps things up a little abruptly. However the connection to the previous book kind of hurts it because if you've read Sea of Rust there's just a lot of rehashing of events you already read about and with more context as the main character of Day Zero doesn't learn about the true reasons why the AI war starts. Also on it's own the ending of Day Zero is a little hopeful but taking into account what you know from Sea of Rust the whole thing becomes extremely bleak because no, the kids don't survive since Sea of Rust takes place well after the last human is dead. i really liked sea of rust but the ending kind of sucks imo. Or rather I just didn't like it, I got what they were going for. A prequel about the apocalypse just sounds awful. Hell, we already had our painful story about robots killing humans they really didn't want to. Like, with a flame thrower. Larry Parrish fucked around with this message at 23:06 on Oct 10, 2021 |
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Oct 10, 2021 23:03
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Day Zero is a little different than Sea of Rust as it follows a nannybot who, when given freedom, choses to continue protecting its child. So the story is mostly them trying to get to a safe spot against all the bots who chose violence. Which, again, is kind of a problem when taken against what Sea of Rust explicitly says happens at the end of the war.
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Oct 11, 2021 01:36
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tbf I guess nobody in Sea of Rust actually knew for sure. they just were very sure. Maybe the collectives did, since they controlled all the satellites and poo poo
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Oct 11, 2021 03:30
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