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Avskum posted:I recently got all the books in "The Saga of the Seven Suns" by Kevin J. Anderson as a gift from a friend. He keeps insisting that this is series is great and that I absolutely have to read it, so far I've read the first two books and I'm not that impressed. But I do like the concept of Space Opera, is it worth the ordeal of finish reading the last five books? I'm very interested in this as well! I read the first three, didn't know there were four more (well, in retrospect it's obvious). I enjoyed them quite a bit, but my interested slackened slightly after it goes all FOUR ELEMENTS and MAGIC BABIES but I am willing to pick it back up if it does the aforementioned topics in a way that even approaches passable!
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Nov 16, 2009 02:38
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| # ¿ May 4, 2024 06:32 |
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The Blabber is great, especially if you've read A Fire Upon The Deep and A Deepness in the Sky. Tines are involved, and, though it's been a while since I've read it, I'm pretty sure a certain person we all know and love aka pseudo-Pham plays a starring role. If you can read it I would absolutely suggest it.
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Dec 16, 2009 01:10
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Blindsight was awesome, and I think it's one of my favorite books just because of how bleak it is and how truly aliens the aliens are. The ending is a bit melodramatic, but I remember going  at quite a few moments in the book.If you liked Blindsight, I think you'll like A Fire on the Deep / A Deepness in the Sky (though it's not space opera, per say, also try Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge). I just finished Surface Detail by Ian M. Banks and, though he writes huge tomes, I can't help but think of him as 'light reading', mostly because of his light conversational style and how his stories don't try to leave you staring blankly at the opposite wall at some deep revelation. I'd say skip the Saga of the Seven Suns though -- they were good for the first two or three, but after that it went completely into some half-baked sexy theory of the elements.
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Apr 7, 2011 05:40
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Vernor Vinge's "Children of the Sky" is out! Or has been out, I guess. I really liked Rainbows End, actually, but I might hold off on getting this one until I get a few more impressions. Apparently it's a sequel to his first one, the one with the pack-animal aliens.
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Oct 14, 2011 21:27
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megapuppy posted:One novel I don't think I've seen mentioned on here is "The Risen Empire" by Scott Westerfield. I rather enjoyed this - it's like if Iain M Banks tried to write a new version of Dune. It's set in a futuristic aristocratic society ruled by the immortal undead - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Risen_Empire I really liked The Risen Empire! One of the best space opera books I think I've read in a really long time. I liked his other book, "Evolution's Darling" as well, but it's a bit weirder (aka : underaged robo-sex scene in the beginning, and then some brutal bdsm scenes later) -- aside from those bits I really enjoy it a lot. I remember seeing him at a reading and asking him if he would ever return to writing space opera. I think his response was that "young adult books allow me to more closely examine the trauma of growing up", which may or may not also translate to "writing YA is earning me filthy amounts of money"
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Jan 7, 2012 02:40
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Antti posted:Halfway through The Risen Empire, and I am loving it, although I wouldn't really describe it in the terms originally used. It's extremely entertaining and has a very high "cool poo poo" factor; a lot of a sort of hyper-technological porn where the author e.g. describes in detail how a microscopic rail gun slug fired from a spaceship in orbit enters a building and punches a fist-sized hole in the chest of a cyborg soldier. Reminiscent of technothrillers, really. It also hasn't made me roll my eyes at anything yet which is pretty good for a book in this genre. The lovely/wicked gravity thing was very close though. I'm really glad! You're right about the other thing Westerfeld's great at that slipped my mind earlier -- he has a pretty great imagination with regards to new technologies and a way of describing them that makes you go  at how cool they are. I have to dig up my own copy, but if I remember everything right it only gets better as the plot goes on.
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Jan 18, 2012 03:10
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| # ¿ May 4, 2024 06:32 |
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I remember my first exposure to Stross was Glasshouse and Accelerando and loved them! The Laundry Files aren't bad, but I wish he'd go back to weird hard sci-fi. Also I don't remember who recommended it, but I read Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits and really didn't like it. I got it because John Dies At The End and This Book Is Full of Spiders were decent pulpy reads, but FVaFS just felt really lazy. I guess if you liked Kingsman you'd like FVaFS -- I feel like they both pursue spectacle at the cost of characterization while throwing off some platitudes about classicism that are immediately contradicted by the text.
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Oct 30, 2015 20:15
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