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The Great War series by Harry Turtledove. Alternate history providing a look at how World War I might have looked had the south won the Civil War. Turtledove is kind of repetitive but he is quickly becoming my favorite author. I've read about 10 books of his and I'm always looking forward to the next one. http://www.sfsite.com/~silverag/greatwar.html
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Nov 15, 2006 23:59
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Penguin Patrol posted:I've been going through Philip K. Dick's novels recently and I just finished The Man in the High Castle. There were some outstanding individual scenes in the book, but it was very disappointing as a whole. The ending just leaves everything hanging without resolving the plot, and while I guess that's okay for some books, I didn't really think it worked for this one. There was supposed to be a sequel and in fact it was started but was never finished.
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Nov 16, 2006 01:29
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stawk Archer posted:I also just read Harry Turtledove's first Great War book. It was okay. If you're still interested, I promise it gets better. The first one was pretty slow.
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Nov 16, 2006 03:00
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The Descent - Jeff Long. Nothing to do with the movie. A vast underground cave system is discovered and exploited by humanity as the next fronteir. It is discovered to already be inhabited. Its inhabitants are the creatures mankind already knows as demons and its society as hell. I found it in the horror section but it could also just as easily have been placed in science fiction. I thought it was very good and pretty suspenseful. Anyone who enjoys religious thrillers like Da Vinci Code might want to look at it.
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Nov 22, 2006 01:04
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mallratcal posted:World War Z. It took awhile before I started to get into the book but in the end it was a good read. I liked how the stories were interconnected. I hope Brooks writes a full novel on the zombie war. Do you know if there are plans to print a paperback? I would really like to read it.
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Nov 25, 2006 20:46
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Zero Karizma posted:That book had it's own stand at all the stores when it first came out and was a pretty good seller. I don't know for sure, but I'd be willing to bet a tremendous amount of money that it will. It certainly generated a lot of Internet interest at the very least. mallratcal posted:I can't say for sure but I agree with Zero Karizma. I'm willing to bet a paperback edition will be released. Great. I just can't handle hardback books. They look more like decorations than something I'm supposed to read. Plus, books usually look like they've gone through the laundry before I'm done with them.
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Nov 25, 2006 23:50
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Vibes Spliff posted:Alas, Babylon These are now on my list.
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Dec 15, 2006 05:56
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American Empire series by Harry Turtledove. This includes the 5th, 6th and 7th books in his Southern Victory series detailing how world history might have been different had the Confederate states won the Civil War. The American Empire series covers the years between world war I and world war II (1918-1941). Loved it.
Total Party Kill fucked around with this message at 20:25 on Jan 10, 2007 |
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Jan 10, 2007 20:22
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Away Message posted:Does this follow Guns of the South, or is it set in another universe entirely? One thing that made GotS interesting for me was the jump in technology that would follow it. I'm curious how this would develop over the following years. Different universe entirely. This series begins with the book called How Few Remain (A quote from a poem by Abraham Lincoln), which details the second war between the USA and the CSA. This storyline has no book specifically about the civil war.
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Jan 20, 2007 22:38
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Away Message posted:Ahh, thanks. That's too bad, anachronistic technology was one reason I like Turtledove's books. Take the Colonization series - not very good overall, but B-17s dropping laser guided bombs? Awesome. It's still a really great series if you're into Turtledove.
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Jan 22, 2007 01:08
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Okay, I finally finished reading the Southern Victory series by Harry Turtledove. Or at least until the last book comes out this July. It covers an alternative world history after a Confederate victory during the American Civil War. After 10 books and 7,000 pages, it's going to feel weird reading something else. Here's a brief recap for those interested since the books aren't numbered or even officially named the same: SPOILERS IN LINKS -How Few Remain - 1862-1882: The Second Mexican War The Great War series - 1914-1917: World War I -American Front -Walk In Hell -Breakthroughs American Empire series - 1917-1941: The Great Depression -Blood and Iron -The Center Cannot Hold -The Victorious Opposition Settling Accounts series - 1941-unfinished: World War II -Return Engagement -Drive To The East -The Grapple -In At The Death - FORTHCOMING Yes, Turtledove repeats himself A LOT, and yes, his sex scenes are pretty uncomfortable. Yes, he can be pretty slow at times. I really really really have enjoyed this series and anyone with an interest in alternative history should at least try the first book. I've read 18 books by this guy and find them all very entertaining.
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Feb 15, 2007 02:45
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Tedronai66 posted:I just finished John Ringo/David Webers We few. It was really a good series, in my opinion. Hahaha! These guys in this thread would like to speak with you.
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Feb 22, 2007 03:15
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The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson. Alternative History which presents a world where the Black Plague of the 14th century had a 99% mortality rate and destroyed the population of Europe. This new world is dominated by Islam and Buddhism. The book follows a group of characters through the centuries as they are constantly reincarnated into different lives and cultures. I liked it but couldn't finish it. After 500 pages I just lost interest. I don't know enough about Eastern history to know about the points of divergence that make alternative history so much fun to read. I found that it glossed over many important events in history to instead follow the often boring lives of the main characters. There was no story, and no climax. It read like a text book in many places and I could never develop any relationship with the characters as they had different personalities everytime they were reincarnated.
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Mar 6, 2007 16:59
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Cell by Stephen King. I thought it was very exciting and a great page-turner. I read it in less than a week and with my schedule that's practically light speed. It's the zombie novel that isn't a zombie novel. If you like apocalypse stories, then you might want to consider this one.
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Mar 12, 2007 00:24
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inktvis posted:Ugh, I hate Roth's ability to set up something with great potential, only to blow it completely with unnecessary developments in the final stretch. See: The Plot Against America YES. He takes a concept that could have really altered the world as we know it and seems to rush things into a sloppy ending. Like a child told to clean his room before dessert, he throws everything under the bed hoping that will clear it all up.
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Mar 12, 2007 04:36
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Weapons of Choice by John Birmingham. Alternate history/Time travel. An American led multinational naval force in the pacific is transferred through time to the battle for Midway in 1942. This book is the first of an ongoing series that shows an advanced world war II. So far it kicks rear end.
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Mar 20, 2007 03:49
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Lobok posted:Wait, really? It's been a long time since I read it, but That's right...part of the time. Some stories their reincarnations resembled nothing of what their character had been before especially with K. There were times where they connected with what had been established for them previously but I didn't feel it was consistant enough. Did you enjoy it, though? thesurlyspringKAA posted:I just finished Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke Unfortunately, I really don't think any of the sequals do the story justice. The story has such an ending that I felt I had to jump through a window and immediatly make my way to a book store to pick up the next one... But the others seem dissapointing.
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Mar 24, 2007 14:23
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Designated Targets - John Birmingham The sequal to Weapons of Choice in which a multinational US-led naval force is transported from 2021 to June 1942. In the sequal, the powers of the world are armed with the knowledge of how the war would have ended and strategies are quickly adapted. Also, with 21st century technology in the hands of both the allies and the axis there is a great acceleration in the world's technology. Going to be starting the nextbook Final Impact tonight.
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Apr 1, 2007 03:06
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Final Impact by John Birmingham. The end of the Axis of Time trilogy in which a US-led multinational naval force from 2021 lands in 1942 to severely gently caress up world war II. I really enjoyed the series and look forward to the rumored sequels. It's the only book I've been embarrassed to pull out and read in public. Probably because it has a giant helicopter shooting lasers with swastikas painted on it. It looks SO nerdy and stupid. Just started reading 1984 I read it many years ago and just felt like reading it again.
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Apr 11, 2007 00:16
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I finished 1984 this morning and loved it. I read it once for a highschool assignment, but being required it was hard to enjoy the book then and never ended up finishing it and instead finished the report using online notes. I'm really glad I came back and read this because it really is a great book. Reading this has inspired me to read some more classics books and I'm going to start Fahrenheit 451 tonight.
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Apr 17, 2007 20:40
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I just finished Fahrenheit 451. In the back there was an interview with Bradbury which seemed to be somewhat recent (it mentions the Iraq war). In it, he talks about a 451 movie coming out with Mel Gibson producing. How accurate is this? I read this book right after reading 1984. I didn't find it nearly as entertaining as Orwell's book but found that Bradbury's future has been much more accurate than Orwell's. It's scary how situations in the book mirror today (Granted, not to such extremity).
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Apr 21, 2007 15:41
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LooseChanj posted:Yeah, I didn't think 451 was about censorship as much as it was about anti-intellectualism. To quote Bill Hicks: "whatcha readin' for?" Exactly. I didn't quite understand the government's stance on book burning since no one wanted to read in the first place. Although Bradbury certainly didn't focus so much the government apparatus and instead most of the observation covered every-day life and how shallow and stupid people had become. I don't want to spoil it for anyone who wants to read this (and you should) but it's fascinating how so many of the activities enjoyed by people in this book are general approximations of things people do all the time now.
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Apr 21, 2007 17:05
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deadguy posted:The Mel Gibson movie isn't going to happen. Frank Darbabont (The Green Mile, The Shawshank Redemption) has had the rights to it for five years. According to IMDB, he just recently announced that he's in the final stages of actually making the movie happen. We might get a movie in a couple years at best. That's really dissapointing. I wanted to be the rear end in a top hat that walks out saying, "The book was much better!"
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Apr 24, 2007 02:17
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ohsocrafty posted:I just finished: I'm waiting for the paperback. The synopsis on the jacket makes it sound like an Alice in Wonderland sort of story. Is that what this book is like?
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Apr 25, 2007 12:30
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vstheworld posted:I just finished Neil Gaiman's American Gods. We had gone to the beach for the weekend and I sat there reading it for hours on end while my feet were buried in sand the rest of my burned to a crisp. I actually believe it is quite unfortunate that it is over. My boyfriend suggested I start reading The Sandman comics and I have. I am currently on volume 4. I believe Anansi Boys, while not necessarily a sequel does follow the same universe set up in American Gods. I usually hate fantasy but American Gods made me read for longer intervals than I ever have before. I think I went like 3 or 4 hours without even stopping, which is amazing for my attention span.
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Apr 26, 2007 17:31
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I just finished Drown by Junot Diaz. It is a collection of short stories about Latino families living in the Dominican Republic and in New Jersey. I actually found this book on the subway in the seat next to me and started reading it, figuring I would drop it back into the seat when my stop came up but I unconsciously walked out still reading it and found it very interesting. There was an extreme lack of punctuation that I found kind of annoying though.
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Apr 30, 2007 01:51
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I just finished Year Zero by Jeff Long. It's plague fiction about an ancient virus from the first century AD being re-released by the opening of a holy relic. The virus quickly spreads threatening to wipe out humanity. Because the virus was first introduced in the first century, scientists begin cloning humans from bones found at Golgotha in Jerusalem. One clone claims to remember his name. And he is Jesus Christ. Very awesome book. For those that enjoy religious fiction like Da Vinci Code and plague fiction like The Stand I urge you to pick this up.
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May 1, 2007 06:09
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CrimsonGhost posted:Does he end this book well? My main problem with Mr. Long is that his endings always suck rear end. After reading an enjoyable book for 300 or so pages he manages to ruin it with a three page ending that doesn't do any justice at all. For example- The Descent and The Reckoning. Hmmm... I might not be the best person to ask about this as I didn't really have a huge problem with how he ended The Descent, however if you like, there's the small epilogue chapter at the end of thsi book which you could skip altogether.
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May 2, 2007 12:06
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I just finished The Man in the High Castle and I'm sad to say that I did not enjoy it at all. It's frustrating because I love alternate history and this book is enjoyed by a lot of people. I just felt like I was reading the plot to some TV drama, nothing seemed relevant or important. Ugh.
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May 10, 2007 23:10
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CrimsonGhost posted:I just finished this based on your reveiw here. I liked it more than I thought I would. It took a long time to get rolling though and I almost put it down three or four times. It was a little roller coasterish with the up and down pacing but it worked pretty well. And I was happy to find that he ended the book better than his others which always felt rushed and hanging. Wow, I'm flattered. Even moreso that you enjoyed it! It did take some time to get started but there were things in there that kept me interested throughout: Frog boy clone and those assholes that loving INHALED the virus. I've only read this book and The Descent of his as the others seem like straight rock-climbing stories which I don't feel that interested in. Any rave reviews for those if you have read them? Also, Thanks to my busy schedule I can't read nearly as much as I could before and LooseChanj has finally beaten me for most posts in this thread 
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May 20, 2007 14:58
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I finally finished Footfall by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle. It wasn't the longest book in the world but for some reason it read really long. Alien invasion story told with an almost Armageddon-esque ending. Spaceship powered by atom bombs downs an entire fleet of alien ships? It was exciting and enjoyable although I enjoyed Lucifer's Hammer by these two writers much more.
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May 30, 2007 14:16
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Monster Island by David Wellington. I've had this book sitting on my shelf for over a year wincing every time I thought about reading it and wondering why I had bought it. Oh right, an SA banner ad told me to get it. Every couple of months I would read the synopsis on the back and decide that it was not the book I would read next. Well I finally sat down and read it. A team of teenage female Somali soldiers mounts an expedition to New York City to recover medicinal supplies for the last remaining nation in the world after a zombie holocaust that has destroyed civilization. I tend to prefer virus zombies, not magic zombies, which are the flavor presented in this novel. The book switches between first and third person narration depending on where the chapter is centered. It also has a cool twist ending. I think the most fun part was being able to literally follow the story around. I live in NYC and with the entire story taking place in Manhattan it was fun to go around and read a couple chapters IN the exact spots the story was taking place. Despite my assumptions about the book it actually turned out to be pretty entertaining. I bought the sequel (Monster Nation) which takes place in LA (I think) which is fun because I'm going to LA this week on a business trip. Read this if you like zombies. Total Party Kill fucked around with this message at 03:51 on Jun 10, 2007 |
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Jun 10, 2007 03:48
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I was on a business trip in LA this week and was on a zombie book binge so I started reading Plague of the Dead: The Morningstar Strain by Z.A. Recht and ended up throwing the book across my hotel room about 85 pages into it. The dialog was absolutely retarded. It's like the author watched every action movie ever created during a long movie marathon and decided that's how his characters should talk. The last straw was when a cigar-chomping tough but tender general says in response to the possibility of being eaten by a zombie, "When I meet death, I'm going to laugh in his face." SMACK! against the hotel room wall. Now reading Eric Flint's 1812.
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Jun 16, 2007 06:25
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I gave up on 1812 when I decided I'd rather read Lord of the Flies by William Golding. I'd never read it and even though it had been severely spoilered for me over the years, I still was curious. It was very good, yet some of the writing confused me which I will attribute to British slang and idiom that I am ignorant of. The story was great and made me want to read more "desert island" stories. I read Black Beauty as a kid and recently flipped through Robinson Crusoe at the shop. Is Robinson Crusoe difficult to read given its age? Is it any good? Are there any other similar type stories out there? Right now I'm trying to decide whether to read Harry Turtledove's A World of Difference or Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves.
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Jun 24, 2007 04:38
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ProperCoochie posted:Huxley's Brave New World. Would you reccomend it to another 1984 fan?
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Jun 25, 2007 03:01
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House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski A book about a film in which a family finds their house is bigger on the inside than on the outside. I was recommended this by the horror thread when I asked for a haunted house story. I was a little apprehensive before deciding to buy a copy as I knew of its strange formating and thought it might be too gimmicky. I absolutely loving loved this book. Zampano's thesis on The Navidson Record was extremely interesting and the attention to detail and almost obsessive compulsive footnoting and sourcing really made me "know" the character. I didn't really like Johnny Truant as I found him to be kind of unbelievable and didn't really care about what he was going though and mostly skimmed his diaries. I did read a lot of his entries but not with nearly as much attention to Zapano's work. I think Truant was waaay too smart for the type of person he had become. I literally just finished this and I feel kind of emotionally drained after the end so I'm going to go to bed now.
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Jul 7, 2007 06:13
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A World of Difference by Harry Turtledove I read this because I'm such a Turtledove fanboy but was left kind of disappointed. It's set in a universe where the fourth planet from the sun is not Mars but a larger earth-like planet called Minerva, and on an Earth where the Soviet Union has survived into the 90's. When the Viking lander reveals a single picture of an alien with a spear pulling back to swing at the Viking lander, the second space race between the two superpowers is ramped up to send humans to Minerva. The whole thing reads like a 50's pulp. The conflicts presented are easily avoidable and the aliens are way too familiar to humans. It was pretty boring and I probably would have dropped it if I hadn't been reading House of Leaves at the same time. I couldn't read House of Leaves on the subway as it required way too much concentration so I needed this book for those long commutes. This book hasn't ruined me on Turtledove but I wouldn't recommend it. I recently found one of his earliest works (Agent of Byzantium) which I'll probably read in a few months and July 31st marks the release of the last book of his Southern Victory series, which I'm very excited for.
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Jul 8, 2007 00:21
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andrew smash posted:I also read SM Stirling's Dies the Fire based on a few recommendations I've seen here. I can't stress enough how horrible this novel is. I have never read a good review of it on these forums. I read it about a year ago and have the same feelings about it as you. I'm amazed that I finished it and even more amazed that Stirling has decided to lengthen the series to 5 books (maybe 6). He even looks like some Ren-Fair rear end in a top hat who prays to the Goddess every night for guns to stop working so his Lord of the Rings fan fic can finally come true. I hate these books and I can say that having only read one - because gently caress, there is no saving something that lovely.
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Jul 14, 2007 19:50
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andrew smash posted:There's one on page 4 of this very thread Oh man, cut me some slack that was a long time ago!
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Jul 15, 2007 19:16
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RichBomb posted:Sinclair Lewis's Babbit. Other than some good reminders that todays social and political issues aren't horribly new, and that people have been materialistic consumer whores for some time, this book offered me nothing. Then you should read what I just finished, It Can't Happen Here by the same author. It follows the 1936 election as religious extremists hijack the election and put into power a man who quickly becomes dictator. Quickly American life is thrown into the control of maniacs and is warped into a nazi-esque society. Parallels a lot of events going on in today's politics. The story revolves around a group of underground revolutionaries as they try to destroy the dictatorship. It was awesome and I LOVED this book. At the same time, this book kind of pissed me off. Before this I read Phillip Roth's Plot Against America which follows Charles Lindbergh's presidential election in 1940 and Lindbergh's nazi-esque regime. Roth's book is a steaming heap of festering poo poo. It also is a blatant ripoff of Lewis' book. It astounds me that Roth's book won the Sidewise award for alternative history when this story has already been written, only 219834235782623x better. I would constantly read passages in Lewis' story that mirrored exact situations in Roth's and it would piss me off because Lewis' story is so much better. Don't read Roth, read Lewis. And, RichBomb, it is much better than Babbit.
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Jul 18, 2007 17:16
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