|
Mars4523 posted:Finished the Praxis trilogy by Walter Jon Williams. It's pretty good, although I wish there was some actual closure for Sula, who I thought was the far more interesting of the two lead characters. Self-made, rags to riches mildly sociopathic naval officers turned guerrilla commanders trump petty Noble squabbling IN SPACE, I guess. Especially since the sequel novella doesn't mention her at all (besides a "You Done hosed Up" dream, but neither her name nor the context are brought up). It's been a while since I read that trilogy, but I remember thinking the same thing. That seems to be par for the course in space opera, though; most of the time, romance subplots are either disappointing and/or stupid as gently caress, or everyone involved who isn't the main character dies before it can go anywhere. And speaking of disappointing-as-gently caress romance subplots, I just finished Hemry's Lost Fleet series, and while I enjoyed it overall, the romance subplot was stupid and irritating as hell throughout most of the series (mostly the petulant bickering between Desjani and Rione), and hit peak stupid right at the very end. I get the impression that the reader is expected to cheer when Geary and Desjani end up together, but holy poo poo no  I know the advice given in that message at the end wasn't sincere (or at least, she hoped he wouldn't follow it), but it was good advice that he should have followed, and running off after Desjani and proposing to her instead is basically the most idiotic possible reaction.
|
#
¿
Jun 30, 2014 20:14
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 7, 2024 20:55 |
|
|
Mars4523 posted:I've read The Lost Fleet, and I don't particularly like it. The main character is too Always Right, the prose is subpar (especially in the later books, I remember it being workable in the earlier ones) at times bordering on "jarringly awful", and yeah, Greary's relationship with his flag captain is too many flavors of Bad Idea. And the bickering from the two most prominent female characters over the main guy was too stupid for words. Geary being Always Right is honestly part of what I enjoyed about it.  There's a specific type of SF that is basically:- protagonists from culture X end up stranded among Y - Y are on the losing end of a war with Z - getting home (or whatever their ultimate goal is) requires Y to be victorious - they must use all sorts of unfair advantages known to X but not Y or Z (superior technology, forgotten military tactics, access to surveillance satellites, etc) to ensure that victory I don't know if there's a technical term for it, but Weber is pretty fond of it (March to the Stars, The Armageddon Inheritance) and The Lost Fleet is basically that except in space. I'm not always in the mood for that, but when I am, I really enjoy it. It also helps that the series is short enough that even when it's annoying me it goes by quickly. I read the whole thing in a week. I just wish it had ended on a higher note (and that the whole romance subplot had been less offensively stupid). quote:Oh well, at least Marine Colonel whatshername was cool. Colonel Carabali. Yes. On the one hand, I would have liked to see more of the marines. On the other hand, that sounds a lot like Stark's War and I couldn't even get through the first book of that. So... ToxicFrog fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Jun 30, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Jun 30, 2014 21:28
|
|
|
I tried getting into the Vorkosigan series after a recommendation by my mom (who, by supplying me with C.J. Cherryh at a young age, is largely responsible for my SF addiction), but couldn't even get through the first book. Maybe I should give it another shot.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 1, 2014 17:28
|
|
|
Count Roland posted:Neat, thanks. Wow, the first in the series is available for free? Its soon time for me to get an e-reader I guess. Gotta say, e-readers own and are much more pleasant for reading on than any reader app on a smartphone/tablet/laptop. You can't beat the battery life, either. I keep about a thousand books on mine and it's great. These days a good one like a Sony PRS-T2 can be had for <$100, down from something like $300 when they were an early technology. Speaking of which, I think this is my cue to find my Tide Rises iso and get all the RCN books off it.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 5, 2014 01:12
|
|
|
Miss-Bomarc posted:In a way it's nice to see the "age of sail only in space" metaphor worn so clearly on the sleeve. Rather than try to dress it up with "oh well the drive energy whatsis just sort of makes a force tachyon flux that inverts the polarity and that's why ships fight by broadsides", Drake is just "yeah I wanted sailing ships in space, therefore my spaceships use sails, if you don't like it gently caress you". Yeah, I haven't started reading RCN yet but I actually like that in concept. All FTL, at some point, involves the author waving their hands and muttering "and then a miracle occurs"; at least sails are (a) stylish and (b) offer scope for interesting failures and interactions with the plot. It's certainly a lot more interesting than, say, the Alderson Drive, which is just a black box where you put energy in and get teleportation out.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 6, 2014 13:10
|
|
|
coyo7e posted:Have I mentioned that there is a delay in sight and communication due to distances of light years, and how it complicates a battle? Let me tell you three more times in this book Light-seconds  On reflection, I kind of feel like he tried to write each book so that someone coming into the middle of the series wouldn't be completely lost -- there's the recap at the start of each book, and then somewhere in there is going to be mention of the light-lag, the effects of high velocity on targeting systems, the difference between battleships and battlecruisers, why the FFAs are important, etc.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 6, 2014 16:19
|
|
|
So I've now read the first five RCN books, and they're pretty fun, although some things are a bit jarring and betray its origins in Aubrey-Maturin, like every involved nation being pretty much horrible. That said, I can't shake the feeling that Adele Mundy is both grossly overpowered and badly underused. Two incidents in particular come to mind -- - In the second book, when she hacks the minefield so that it won't regard their ship as a valid target, why didn't she just also tell the minefield that the base they were attacking was a valid target? They could have just sat back and sipped wine while the base's own defences turned on it. - In the fifth book, she hacks an enemy ship's sensors to lie to the crew about the identification of their ship, and explains that this is possible only because the ship in question doesn't isolate the communications, sensors, and fire-control nets from each other. But if that's possible, why not just lie about the ship's vector, making them impossible to hit, or use fire-control to light off the missiles while still in the interior magazine? There are other, less dramatic occurrences, but it seems like there's a lot of Mundy basically having an I Win button at her fingertips and then no-one thinking to use it.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 4, 2014 17:58
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:I just burned through most of C.J. Cherryh's Alliance/Union universe novels and they're dramatically under-recommended in this thread, possibly because most of the action is political and takes place on space stations, and there's relatively little space pew-pew battling. Still great stuff all around though. I don't really think of CJC's work as space opera; otherwise I'd be recommending her with every post I make in this thread, because she owns. I'm actually just getting back into another serious Cherryh binge myself. I just finished Heavy Time, I'm halfway through Hellburner, Faded Sun is up next and I'm not sure what after that. Rimrunners and Serpent's Reach, possibly, it's been a while since I read those. I'm excited to see more of her books starting to appear on Closed Circle. I refuse to buy DRMd ebooks, but it would be nice to have actual high-quality official digital versions of all her stuff. Hardcopies are bulky and have a tendency to fall apart under heavy load -- I think I've bought the Chanur books three times each at this point -- but home-made OCRs are a pain to make and are never going to be as good as the official builds. Fried Chicken posted:We just need the kindle of John Steakley's Armor to be put back up and I'll be real happy I've actually got Armour, and I remember liking it when I read it ages ago, but I only have a hardcopy, so I'm probably not going to reread it anytime soon.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 6, 2014 00:38
|
|
|
Miss-Bomarc posted:That's partly Aubrey-Maturin and partly just David Drake (seriously, that guy is emo as gently caress.) Aah, you're right, I was thinking of the third book, The Far Side of the Stars -- the Alliance minefield around Gehenna. Specifically, this: "The computer's solved the minefield code," Adele said as her wands moved in tight arcs, transmitting new orders to the node which controlled the defense array. "I'm setting the command node to reject all signals to attack the Goldenfels. I'll have it . . . there, we're clear."
|
|
#
¿
Aug 10, 2014 21:55
|
|
|
Tanith posted:Glen Cook's The Dragon Never Sleeps also has ancient largely autonomous spaceships, some of which are completely AI-run, and might be a bit crazy. Wait, poo poo, there's Glen Cook that I haven't read? I need to fix this.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 17, 2014 01:03
|
|
|
Excession is my favourite Culture novel and I should probably reread it this fall. Speaking of excellent SF, I just finished my Cherryh binge: Heavy Time, Hellburner, Rimrunners, Cuckoo's Egg, and the Faded Sun trilogy. This is your weekly reminder: Cherryh owns, read her books.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 20, 2014 01:55
|
|
|
eriktown posted:I just started reading something by her for the first time ever, Downbelow Station, and it's just the most unbelievable slog. Wat do?? I would say read a bunch of her other stuff and then return to Downbelow. It's a good book, but a heavy one, and IMO it's more accessible once you have historical context to put it into. It is arguably her slowest book, and the hardest to get into. It's commonly recommended as a good book to start with, possibly because it won a whole pile of awards (and justly so), but I think it works better if you start with her lighter work and then read Downbelow when you start getting curious about what actually happened at the Treaty of Pell. I note that all of her work focuses more on personalities and politics than on laserspewpew. The Pride of Chanur is probably her most "swashbuckling" book (and was the book that hooked me on Cherryh and sci-fi in general, in fact). Recommendations from the same setting: - pre-Downbelow: Heavy Time + Hellburner (read both together) - post-Downbelow, Merchanter space: Rimrunners, Tripoint, Finity's End, Merchanter's Luck (read in any order) - post-Downbelow, Union space: Cyteen Recommendations from other settings: - the Pride of Chanur, and the Chanur's Venture/Vengeance/Homecoming trilogy (Pride stands on its own, the trilogy should be read in one go) - the Faded Sun trilogy - Serpent's Reach
|
|
#
¿
Aug 20, 2014 04:24
|
|
|
TLM3101 posted:I'm not nearly as familiar with the Star Wars EU as I probably should be, but I caught enough to be mildly horrified by the huge variation in quality. The Thrawn series, however, I remember as good, solid and fun books. Though that might just be me wearing my nostalgia goggles. Nah, the Thrawn books -- in dramatic contrast to all the other SWEU stuff I read in my misspent youth -- still hold up. In general, Zahn isn't one of those genre-redefining authors whose books leave you going "holy poo poo, I need to tie down all my friends and force them to read this", but they're consistently fun and solidly written.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 3, 2014 22:39
|
|
|
Tanith posted:So have you done this yet? Had to get the book first! It's in my queue once I finish Most Secret War.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 16, 2014 02:28
|
|
|
pokie posted:Any recommendations for spying/intrigue/spec ops heavy sort of books? I really enjoyed all of Banks' works and Hamilton's Commonwealth saga. Also interested in this. Although I can recommend a bunch non-SF ones off the top of my head. quote:Also I just finished the first Uplift trilogy by Brin and am somewhat disappointed. My gripes are mostly with the third book, The Uplift War. The happy resolution comes from a deus ex machina, and none of the mysteries that set up the conflict back in book 2 are resolved. Brief google search indicates that the next trilogy doesn't seem to resolve them either. Kiln People had the same problem: Brin sets up a nice crunchy SF setting and then goes completely off the rails into a magic-powered deus ex machina at the end, resulting in a profoundly unsatisfying ending. That and The Uplift War pretty much killed my desire to read more Brin.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 24, 2014 20:17
|
|
|
G. Quietly posted:From what I remember of the Lost Fleet books the love triangle subplot managed to be worse than the repeated necessary explanations of what a battle cruiser is and people thinking "Black Jack" was going to take over the universe combined. I read them earlier this year. You remember correctly.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 25, 2014 14:54
|
|
|
Washout posted:Is there much out there where Humanity is the Villain? I mean most sci fi has human villains, but the race as a whole? I vaguely remember a few short stories where the ***shocking twist*** is that the invading aliens crushing everything before them are human (and the viewpoint character(s) are not), but don't recall any names offhand. I can't think of any novels or series that do this, although I recall a few where humans are inadvertently a threat due to their alien mindset and the political implications of contact with them (Cherryh is fond of this in the Chanur and Foreigner books, but those aren't really space opera), or where one particular faction of humans are the villains even if others are friendly to or allied with the protagonists (Cook's Doomstalker trilogy). quote:Secondly what else out there is similar to The Damned by Alan Dean Foster? I.e. humanity is the most crazy badass alien race in the milieu? Ringo's Legacy of the Aldenata, where humanity is recruited by the (pacifistic) Galactic Federation as the only thing badass enough to fight off the invading Posleen. Arguably Laumer's Bolo/Concordiat setting as well, although we only see fragments of that.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 24, 2015 13:04
|
|
|
Washout posted:Thanks for the recommendation this really fits the bill of humanity as the bad asses, but it's even more pulpy than The Damned was. I want to murder his poo poo Mary sue characters so bad. And the cally's war bullshit is where I could not take it anymore and quit. His constant Sluggy Freelance references make me want to puke. Ringo has some seriously warped political views too. The cap of it all was his totally poo poo dues ex machina at the end of the first trilogy was about as ham handed an ending as I've ever seen. I didn't say they were good  I actually enjoyed them when I read them years ago, but this is largely down to me being in a mood to read about a lot of poo poo blowing up and not thinking too hard about anything else.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 2, 2015 13:14
|
|
|
Drifter posted:
My biggest problem with TDNS is that it jumps all over the place in both time and space and you practically need to keep a notebook of all the different people, planets and governments so that you can orient yourself after each jump. I did enjoy it, but it's not an easy read.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 6, 2015 11:47
|
|
|
Wait, I thought both of those were finished? Three books for the Fifth Imperium and four for March to the Stars.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 26, 2015 14:08
|
|
|
WarLocke posted:^^^: I haven't read that since someone described Saturn's Children as 'literal scifi porn' to me. That person was an idiot, go read Saturn's Children. I guess you could come away with that impression if all you knew about it was the cover art for the US edition? IIRC Stross objected to it but was overruled by the publisher. gfanikf posted:Ah well perhaps I'll hold off then. I will say that my entire exposure to the genre is through the Seal Team 666 series. It's a lot of fun mixing the Clancy and Monster genre. The Laundry books are pretty great, and if you like that blend of genres you should also check out The Rook by Daniel O'Malley and Declare by Tim Powers. (Is SEAL Team 666 good? I may check it out.)
|
|
#
¿
Oct 27, 2015 13:08
|
|
|
Edmond Dantes posted:Yeah, I know Zahn, I was about to make a comment on the post forestalling Star Wars UE recommendations since I already read Thrawn Trilogy and the rest is crap but forgot. The Icarus Hunt is by Zahn, but it's not SWEU -- most of his work is original. It's also fun as hell. I'd also recommend the Conquerors trilogy, also by Zahn.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 23, 2016 03:01
|
|
|
Katreus posted:Elizabeth Moon's Vatta's War series (starting book Trading in Danger) is pretty fun. It's been a long time since I've read it but I don't think she ever really has any relationship, much less long-term (probably because everywhere she goes, something is exploding literally or figuratively). I actually just finished this, after picking it up based on the recommendations in this thread, so thanks for that.  There's no real romance subplot, but at the very end she does hook up with Rafe -- although it's implied that they won't be staying together long-term, even if they'd like to, because they both have too much other poo poo to deal with.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 26, 2016 00:08
|
|
|
coyo7e posted:No way, A&M novels never repeat themselves without a good reason, and they spend a hell of a lot of time on the minor details of shipboard life. Neither of those are demonstrated in anything involving Blackjack Are you sure you're not thinking of John G. Hemry's godawful Lost Fleet series, not David Drake's RCN?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 10, 2016 16:35
|
|
Leary and his hatefuck relationship with that noble chick, or how every other officer in his leet are utter nincompoops who need to be taught to do things like "use cover" and "use flanking maneuvers".
|
Just finished Westerfeld's Risen Empire books (The Risen Empire and The Killing of Worlds. Those were some solid, well-written space opera and I enjoyed the poo poo out of them. He's an awful tease, though. You find out that this world-shaking secret exists in the first few pages of the first book; the protagonists don't find out what it is until nearly the end of the second book, and even then the reader is left hanging for another few subchapters! That Works posted:I just picked up Pride of Chanur a few days ago and started on it yesterday. It's a bit hard to swallow at first as she dives headlong into using many different names and elements of language describing the aliens that makes it hard to follow. It reminded me a lot of reading the 1st chapters of Anathem but after the action started up it's gone rather well and I'm starting to enjoy it. Cherryh.  The Pride of Chanur is largely responsible for getting me into SF. And yeah, Cherryh doesn't usually spend much time slowing down or explaining things; she tosses you right in and expects you to pick things up on your own. It's one of the things I like about her books.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 28, 2016 18:05
|
|
|
That Works posted:Thanks to this thread I just finished the 1st 3 Chanur novels from CJ Cherryh. It started out kinda rough but I really enjoyed it by the middle of the 2nd book. Do we ever get a backstory on who Tully is exactly?  There are five Chanur books, and Chanur's Legacy is the fifth one, so you've skipped a book somewhere. If the one you skipped was the first one, The Pride of Chanur, that would explain why you have no idea who Tully is.You should go read The Pride of Chanur, but the TL;DR is: (first few chapters of Pride spoilers) he was crew on a deep-space exploration ship, probably from Cherryh's Alliance-Union setting, that blundered into Knnn and then Kif space; the ship was boarded by the Kif and all the crew taken as captives. The others were tortured to death after refusing to help the Kif build Kifish<->Terran translation tapes and astrogation charts leading to human space. Tully escaped before meeting the same fate and took refuge on the Pride. Pyanfar refuses to hand him over after realizing that he's intelligent and not just an exotic pet, angering the Kif greatly. (ending of Pride spoilers) This culminates in a throwdown between the Kif and Hani fleets; it ends when the Knnn find another, much larger human ship and force-jump it into the middle of the battle, taking the Kif flagship in exchange. The ship is never seen again, and neither is its captain, Akukkakk; this creates the power vacuum that Akkhtimakt is moving into at the start of Chanur's Venture, and also explains how Tully makes it back to human space between Pride and Venture. WarLocke posted:Honestly, I'm having a hard time coming up with anything of hers that isn't good. Read it all. Her fantasy is pretty bad, IMO. But apart from that, yeah, read everything. The Chanur series is probably her most "space-operatic" work, but apart from that: - The Merchanter books (Rimrunners, Tripoint, Finity's End, and Merchanter's Luck; each one is a standalone) and Belter books (Heavy Time and Hellburner; read in order) for stuff similar to Chanur but set in human space - Cyteen and Regenesis for lots of political machinations - Downbelow Station is probably her most lauded work, and explains what happens between the Belter books and Cyteen/the Merchanter books to create the Merchanter Alliance, but is also extremely dense; I think it works best after reading the other books in that setting. - The Faded Sun trilogy, Serpent's Reach, and Cuckoo's Egg for single-human-among-aliens stories - Foreigner (a long-running and still ongoing series, but each trilogy stands more or less on its own) for humans and aliens trying to coexist long term Which basically boils down to recommending everything she's written, but hopefully this gives you some direction as to which ones you're most in the mood for.
|
|
#
¿
May 29, 2016 15:44
|
|
|
That Works posted:Ah, I miscounted, I read 4. I started with Pride of Chanur. It mentioned how Tully came into the story, but very little about who he is / his past. Only later finding out about different human factions etc. I was more curious if they ever said more about who he was before he met the Hani etc at any point. Aah. You never learn more about Tully specifically, but the A-U books have lots of background setting details that let you make some educated guesses. (The A-U timeline collects all of these, with citations, but is also full of spoilers.) At the time of Downbelow Station, Earth Company was working on a new fleet of warships. Following the Treaty of Pell, they found themselves with a bunch of mostly-finished carriers and no war to fight with them. With expansion rimward blocked by Union and the Treaty, they decided to repurpose those ships as exploration/colony ships and send them corewards (because setting up extrasolar colonies worked out so well for them last time). Tully is likely from one of these ships -- almost certainly from a rider or other auxiliary vessel rather than a carrier proper. Ulysses itself is likely one of these carriers.
|
|
#
¿
May 30, 2016 14:06
|
|
|
ArchangeI posted:I'm just gonna shamelessly plug my own novel series here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00VVU7164 This sounds pretty cool, adding in the queue. At the moment I'm fully occupied reading Liaden Universe and A Closed And Common Orbit, though.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 16, 2016 00:16
|
|
|
n4 posted:As someone who's never paid attention to the Hugos, what are some other winners that might be attributed to this? I get it in terms of the Ancillary series.  Sorry, did the 2016 Hugo get changed from "The Fifth Season" to "all of the Ancillary books" when I wasn't looking or something? "The Ancillary series" didn't win a Hugo, Ancillary Justice did. Just because you found Sword and Mercy disappointing doesn't retroactively make Justice worse. You could reasonably argue that the 2014 Hugo should have gone to Neptune's Brood instead, but it's not like the clearly inferior book won here.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 9, 2016 21:34
|
|
|
Chairman Capone posted:Frozen beat them to it! 
|
|
#
¿
Dec 27, 2016 05:20
|
|
|
Khizan posted:Okay, Ringo is pretty self explanatory, but Asher and Rajamiemi? Asher's latest books are a gigantic steaming Randian turd, maybe they haven't read/didn't like his earlier stuff? Rocksicles posted:I got bored of Asher halfway through the first book. My imagination must be on the fritz Gridlinked is, honestly, kind of boring. I probably wouldn't have made it through it if I hadn't read Cowl and The Line of Polity first. This is why people generally recommend starting with the Spatterjay books. I'm actually planning to reread the Agent Cormac books this year, but I'll probably skip Gridlinked when I do.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 5, 2017 14:31
|
|
|
FWIW I liked the post-Gridlinked Cormac books more than I did the Spatterjay books, but I still enjoyed the latter, so if you don't like Spatterjay at all, Cormac may not be enough better to be worth reading.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 5, 2017 18:38
|
|
|
NoNostalgia4Grover posted:Neal Asher: Retief owns bones, but is really a completely different kind of book (and character). He's more about, well, actual diplomacy and spycraft, while Cormac is more about hitting things until they break.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 6, 2017 02:09
|
|
|
Patrick Spens posted:I've probably talked about my opinion that the first couple Empire of Man books are decent explosion porn? Yeah, I actually enjoyed March Upcountry/to the Sea/to the Stars and the first few Legacy of the Aldenata books. They're basically a non-stop chorus of HUMANITY, gently caress YEAH while a crying bald eagle shits antimatter munitions in the background, but sometimes that's what I'm in the mood for. (Also, to Ringo's credit, he at least knows and openly acknowledges that Ghost is deeply hosed up rather than trying to hold it and/or its characters up as something noble and worthy of imitation.)
|
|
#
¿
Jan 6, 2017 19:30
|
|
|
General Battuta posted:The problem I have with ninety percent of mil SF even in the explosion porn category is the lack of interesting adversaries. For a bunch of writers who fetishize Rommel and Yamamoto and all those "honorable" foes, they don't seem to get that a hero is only as credible as their antagonist. Fair. Empire of Man is basically the book equivalent of games like Crimsonland or Zombie Shooter, with a dozen or so far-future supersoldiers and a few hundred(?) low-tech friendlies they're giving tactical and technological assistance to versus tens of thousands of weak, functionally mindless enemies that are a threat only because of overwhelming numbers. But then, sometimes I'm in the mood to fire up Zombie Shooter and play a few levels, too. The Aldenata books are a bit more interesting, since the Posleen have numerical parity and technological superiority but less experience at actual warfare, meaning the human forces have to rely heavily on trickery to defeat them (and the Posleen in turn learn from that and adapt, even as the humans start gaining ground technologically thanks to their alien allies). There's no central opposing figures among the Posleen or the real antagonists the Darhel, though -- they're more interesting and credible foes mechanically than the thousands of screaming barbarians, but no better realized or characterized. (Which, in the game analogy, would make the Aldenata books Total Annihilation or something. Which honestly sounds about right.)
|
|
#
¿
Jan 6, 2017 20:05
|
|
|
pseudorandom name posted:Baen included a CD with ebook versions of the entire Vorkosigan Saga in with Cryoburn hardbacks, with explicit permission to make and give away copies. The Fifth Imperium still hosts all the ones that Baen hasn't withdrawn from circulation.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 8, 2017 15:42
|
|
|
NoNostalgia4Grover posted:Ringo's Posleen war series gets more ridiculous once you realize what Ringo ripped off the idea from. Oh? Darkrenown posted:The Posleen have overwhelming numerical superiority too, not sure what you mean about parity. There were also some recurring Posleen characters, some of which were quite interesting and eventually leave earth and head on a quest to discover more about their origins and the Aldenata. I don't know the backstory of the Zerg or whatever else they might have been influenced by, but the Posleen are kind of interesting in that they're a galactic menace that don't particularly want to be one - they were just so hosed about with genetically and culturally that they seem to have become one by accident. I don't remember any "omg we're hugely outnumbered" battles like in March Upcountry, but it has been quite a while since I read it. I don't think I got far enough into it to encounter any recurring Posleen characters, or the Posleen heading out to research the Aldenata -- I only read the first 3? books and there's, what, 8 now? (Zerg spoilers in case anyone cares about spoilers from a 20 year old RTS: the Zerg were created by a Vanished Precursor Race™ as part of their ongoing project to create the perfect lifeform. They ended up with an aggressive, parasitic hivemind that can both infect and control any chordate, and absorb the genetic code of any species it encounters to use as the basis of new creatures the hivemind creates. The first thing they did was control and absorb the precursors that created them. Unlike the Posleen, they're completely non-technological.)
|
|
#
¿
Jan 9, 2017 15:56
|
|
|
hannibal posted:I can agree with that. Honorverse books started out ok with a pretty fleshed out vision of spaceflight and weaponry, but Weber keeps one-upping himself in later books until it's pretty crazy. Let me tell you about battlecruisers, and how they have the armament of a battleship, but the defences and maneuverability of a heavy cruiser. Let me tell you about battlecruisers, and how they have the armament of a battleship, but the defences and maneuverability of a heavy cruiser. Let me tell you about battlecruisers, and how they have the armament of a battleship, but the defences and maneuverability of a heavy cruiser. I would rank Lost Fleet well below the first few HH books, honestly.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 30, 2017 14:32
|
|
|
Biomute posted:The Vorkosigan Saga gave me a lot of the same good feels without the bitter aftertaste, but there are way less naval battles in space. The Vattas War series was also good. Vorkosigan and Vatta's War are both pretty good, but tend to have few and relatively small-scale deep space engagements; I'd recommend both but not to someone specifically looking for "big fleets of ships duking it out".
|
|
#
¿
May 1, 2017 14:19
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 7, 2024 20:55 |
|
|
mllaneza posted:Surprise ! James Doohan (yes, Scotty) has three SF novels to his credit. Stirling is also Canadian so that doesn't really narrow it down. I picked up the first one of these last week and you're right, it was a lot of fun! Your description of it as the "anti-Weber" is spot on. Definitely going to read the other two once I clear my current buffer. Also, through the entire book I couldn't shake the feeling that if you changed some of the names and terminology -- and nothing else -- you'd have a really solid Wing Commander novel, to the point that I wonder if either Stirling or Doohan played Wing Commander 2 a bunch before writing this.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 29, 2017 00:35
|
|
