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regularizer posted:I was going through my amazon wish list last night and realized that The Severed Streets, sequel to Paul Cornell's London Falling, just got published. It's an incredibly dark supernatural police procedural; the first one was about catching a 400 year old witch that was stealing children and boiling them alive. I bought it and am now rushing through Authority so I can get started on it. Oh crap, I need to get my hands on that, I loved London Falling (though I like to point out it was very English what with football fanaticism being a key plot device). I just finished Dervish House by Ian McDonald. I really liked it, it dealt with the prospects of nanotechnology in an intelligent way and portrayed a plausible 2020s Istanbul in a Turkey that has just joined the EU. Okay, that last part is probably less plausible, the way things have been moving lately, but who knows. I always enjoy a fresh setting, since usually a story with themes such as these is set in, say, Tokyo or New York or Los Angeles instead of Istanbul.
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May 27, 2014 21:02
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InFlames235 posted:Hey everyone. I had read when I was younger but stopped for a time until Game of Thrones on HBO made me read the books. It really brought back my love of reading and after I finished Dance I picked up World War Z yesterday and have started reading that. Going to give you the standard recommendation of the First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie, darker fantasy, grounded in reality (although magic is maybe slightly more prevalent than in ASOIAF), well written, enjoyable characters.
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May 28, 2014 07:28
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I don't think anyone ever recommends starting Uplift with Sundiver, it's the shoddy prequel book you can go read if you want more stuff, even if it was published first.
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Jun 5, 2014 06:16
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Fart of Presto posted:
This is Reynolds's best book too. I recommend it to everyone.
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Jun 15, 2014 17:01
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Merchant Princes is the sort of thing I only recommend to people who find the premise sufficiently fascinating. That's what prompted me to read it in the first place. I won't use the S word but Stross has put a fair amount of thought into how the shadow economy works and what the practical applications of the dimension-hopping ability are. I can see it coming off as dry to anyone who doesn't care about that sort of thing.
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Jul 1, 2014 14:20
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Sounds like Three Worlds Collide aka The Baby-Eating Aliens by Eliezer Yudkowsky, the guy who wrote a gigantic  Harry Potter fanfic.
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Jul 4, 2014 19:20
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For some reason I thought that was a photoshop and the title some kind of inside joke. But it's real and promptly intriguing.
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Jul 11, 2014 17:04
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Azathoth posted:I just finished all three Ambergris books by Jeff Vandermeer, and I enjoyed them unlike anything I've read in quite some time. In searching for something new to read in the same vein (not quite ready to tackle the Southern Reach books yet), I ran across this bundle: I haven't read Tainaron and I've only read Leena Krohn in Finnish but she's a cool author and writes some really great and unsettling weird fiction.
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Jul 13, 2014 14:41
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Hedrigall posted:So has anyone else read this yet and have any thoughts about it? I read Lachrymosa yesterday and I'm pretty much feeling the same as you are. I thought the framing and the ordering of the story was a good device. You could feel the dread building up. I had no idea about any rebooting of the universe, so I had no expectations on that to be disappointed over. It's a good read even if you don't have much RS experience (I've only read the eponynomous novel and the stories in Galactic North).
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Aug 2, 2014 09:10
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fookolt posted:"Cheradenine Zakalwe" is a good name for a cool dude Banks comes up - er, came up  - with brilliant non-Earth names, and for the long ones there was always a short moniker available, like Dizzy or Sma.
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Aug 5, 2014 06:34
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thehomemaster posted:In unrelated news Sabriel by Garth Nix is free on iBooks, with the others at 5 bucks. The prequel is also out. I remember reading Abhorsen years ago and enjoying the world/magic, and the new covers are ace. Might be different now, 10 or so years on. I read the Abhorsen series for the first time last year and I think they've held up perfectly. Even if you have misgivings about the YA label they're in a completely different league from the stuff Hollywood is churning into 'properties'. It's exactly the kind of book I'd give to a 12 year old but I recommend them to anyone and everyone.
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Aug 5, 2014 11:39
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This is comparing apples to oranges: there's stories where rape or sexual violence (especially towards women, natch) is gratuitous or gratuitously described, and usually contributes very little to the narrative being told - or is used as a superficial motive for a male character (see "fridging"); and then there's stories about rape and sexual violence. It is, of course, okay to feel uncomfortable reading either.
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Aug 12, 2014 08:31
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Do you hate bacon or something? What is wrong with you!
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Aug 12, 2014 08:36
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I can also only think of a few examples where the cover is even tangentially related to the story. By which I mean the ship and the planet on the cover resemble anything described. Because it's always a ship and a planet.
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Aug 19, 2014 14:05
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mystes posted:I think it's better to not even think of covers for sci-fi books as actually attempting to depict anything in the story. They're more like cues to show potential buyers what type of book they should expect. Reynolds is SERIOUS SPACE SCI-FI so he gets pictures of random space stuff. You're right, of course. But this and Hugochat is far too great an opportunity to bring us back to Charles Stross and this old gem:  I don't want to speculate what the message for buyers is there. 
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Aug 19, 2014 17:22
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Hell, I suspect I have some kind of weird brain problem because I can never really picture the people I read about in novels but it never detracts from my enjoyment of them in any way. More likely though it's just that the author doesn't usually spend an awful lot of ink describing their characters' appearance, and so it never sticks in my head. This is probably an arrangement both the author and I are fine with.
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Sep 10, 2014 22:07
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Less Fat Luke posted:I read the first and found it interesting, but the second book was a real chore and didn't seem to continue actually exploring the unique environment or even the theme. Your mileage may vary! My experience is the same, I read the first one with relish but the second one was too much work to get through. I have all the books so I'll give #3 a shot some day.
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Sep 28, 2014 21:44
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Soldiers are young men who get up to a lot of dumb poo poo in their downtime. That's basically "a game of soldiers." Tomfoolery. Buffoonery. A contest to see how many matchsticks you can cram up your dick.
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Oct 19, 2014 10:13
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Rules of thumb for Dune: - Read the Frank Herbert books until you feel like they are getting too weird or out there or you can't follow them. The first two sequels are widely considered to be not quite as good as Dune, but still good. (Dune Messiah and Children of Dune) This is sometimes called the "Dune trilogy", although there are actually six Dune books Herbert wrote. The sixth book ends in a bit of a cliffhanger, and his son and Kevin Anderson picked up from there some years later after he died, however, - Don't read anything not written by Frank Herbert. - No seriously, don't. Sulphagnist fucked around with this message at 14:00 on Oct 22, 2014 |
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Oct 22, 2014 13:58
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You now have an excellent reason to reread an excellent book!
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Oct 24, 2014 06:37
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I keep mixing up Blood Song and Blood Music in my head and it's really confusing.
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Oct 29, 2014 11:54
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Publishers believe for good or ill that covers like that move books in stores, so that's what they get. People like us reading this thread make our purchasing decisions through completely different ways - I should hope - so we don't matter. That cover screams "if you love Star Trek you'll love this!" by the fiber of its being. He's wearing command gold and he's got a phaser, for goodness' sake.
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Nov 3, 2014 00:04
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If I were in charge I'd just have Chris Foss design every cover. He can reuse some old ones so he doesn't get overworked to death.
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Nov 3, 2014 09:39
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Baen covers are of course a league of their own, although that's a special snowflake for being an accurate Baen cover. Super Late Edit: gently caress me, I'm as blind as the people who drew and okayed that cover Sulphagnist fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Nov 3, 2014 |
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Nov 3, 2014 15:20
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I'd say just drop it. It gets more into the society and politics later on but the pace doesn't change all that much. E.g. most of the first third of Green Mars is just John Boone doing a grand retour of the planet.
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Nov 4, 2014 21:59
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thehomemaster posted:My God, I cannot even comprehend finding the Mars trilogy boring. You people are missing out. Yeah, but he asked if he should keep going, and if he's getting bored 150 pages in of Red, he should bail out.
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Nov 5, 2014 07:03
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I kept reading "The Color of Herdanties" and wondered what was wrong with it. My brain just wouldn't register the actual meaning.
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Dec 1, 2014 14:30
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Well I'm going to have to chip in just because I want WorldCon in Helsinki very, very badly.
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Dec 3, 2014 19:24
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Well that made me go check if it's available at my library and I found out I can borrow e-books from my library including this one, so thanks Fart of Presto!
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Dec 7, 2014 17:34
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A good rule of thumb in my experience is that the "Arthur C. Clarke with/and X" are not worth your time. Clarke's name is there for the PR and he was at most the "ideas guy." The Rama sequels are a prime example of this.
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Dec 11, 2014 20:08
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I tried to think about this and I kept going back to my favourite books, unsure if I really like the maps as maps, I just like them because they're in my favourite books. Anyway, there's the map in the Abhorsen trilogy:  Maps in fantasy tend to look like actual maps made by cartographers, and are often anachronistically accurate (or at least made to look as such, with a lot of detail, scales, etc). Historical maps can be very abstract and I like the idea of the Hundred Acre Wood type of map which is straddling the line between abstract (the relationship of places to each other) and geographical (how far away everything is from everything else). You could go for historical maps for ideas too, like the Tabula Rogeriana:  Or the extremely abstract T and O map:  Edit: Oh, there's a diegetic (I hope I'm using that correctly) origin for the map. Maybe not the T and O type then But I would love a clearly hand-drawn map which has notes scribbled on it and which is more on the abstract side. I don't know if I've ever seen a map like that in a fantasy novel.
Sulphagnist fucked around with this message at 23:04 on Dec 11, 2014 |
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Dec 11, 2014 23:01
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Or there's another published Mike/Michael Carey. Although I associate that name style with female authors, since female SF authors - especially in the past - resorted to it because their gender would impact sales negatively.
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Jan 1, 2015 14:29
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I wrote a few paragraphs about it in the Space Opera thread.
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Jan 21, 2015 17:42
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Has anyone read #2 in Brian McClellan's Powder Mage trilogy, The Crimson Campaign? I've read #1 and apparently #3 is coming out next month so I'm wondering if I should pick them up. I liked #1 a fair bit so if the books maintain the same level it's enough for me.
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Jan 23, 2015 07:26
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Sounds like waiting/being lazy might pay off in this case then!
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Jan 23, 2015 14:16
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Declare by Tim Powers might be in your wheelhouse, if you're looking for fantasy set in modern times, serious in tone, and relatively low-key in terms of fantastical elements. Bonus points if you enjoy Cold War espionage thrillers. Basically he takes the story of Kim Philby and fills in all the blanks with a looming supernatural element that the US and USSR are fighting over in the shadows.
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Jan 28, 2015 12:18
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You've read all the Foundation there is to really read. There's a ton of excellent Asimov left if that's all you've read, fortunately!
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Jan 28, 2015 17:19
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The blurbs are obviously just trying to market it by using the hot property du jour. I'd actually be turned off by them if I hadn't read the original short story. Also this might be the first fantasy novel where I prefer the US cover over the UK cover. The UK cover is so generic. The US cover is pretty and even thematically relevant. And I also prefer the US title. General Battuta posted:
I read every single Asimov-authored Foundation novel when I was a teenager and I thought the ones after the first trilogy were mediocre, I went back to them a few years later and they hadn't gotten any better. I suppose if you're a huge Foundation fan you might like them, but the original poster was getting fed up by Second Foundation. I will grant the Oliwav tie-ins waaay later on (I think somewhere in the prequels) were pretty neat.
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Jan 28, 2015 20:56
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"Main character's sidekick is a teenaged succubus" is certainly the kind of snippet of information that would make me close the book and toss it in a fireplace.
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Jan 29, 2015 07:51
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Kalman posted:
Ohh, okay. That's a lot better, since it was coming off skeezy even with people saying it's Not Like That.
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Jan 29, 2015 17:41
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