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How fantasy, how much magic? I just got done reading The City and the City by Mieville, and it's pretty good. It's more of a noirish crime novel, less pulpy than Butcher and also less magical. If either of those dissuade you, you should try it out anyway! It's real fun trying to understand the relationship between the cities.
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Jul 5, 2013 05:34
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 14:33 |
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Yeah The Scar is definitely the best. I thought I was going to like Iron Council a whole lot more than I actually did, and it ended up being a chore to get through. A chore I enjoyed, I guess, I really liked some bits of it, but it somehow just didn't all work for me.
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Jul 6, 2013 15:16
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No. No, he did not.
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Jul 7, 2013 17:25
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Hey, I'm in the middle of Mote in God's Eye and I was hoping someone could clear something up for me. There's a whole bunch of weird stuff where the only female character talks about human gender relations and how she thinks very little of women who take birth control pills or whatever. Is this poo poo supposed to be just the way the culture of the Empire is, or are Pournelle and Niven just kinda weird old dudes?
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Jul 12, 2013 23:17
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Yeah I might try that, but at this point I don't think I'm going to be any kind of big fan of these guys. It helps to keep in mind this book is nearly 50 years old, I suppose.
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Jul 12, 2013 23:28
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Stuporstar posted:Pournelle is well known as a sexist shitheap. Look up the "12 rabid weasels of SFWA." He's one of them. That's a shame. I guess it isn't though, since this book isn't doing a whole lot for me. The Gunslinger posted:What's the best starting point with Mieville? I've never read anything of his before, just heard praise about Bas-Lag. Should I start there or is his standalone work a better place to begin? You can start anywhere you want, really. None of his books are direct sequels to the others, even the Bas-Lag ones. My favorite is the Scar, but Perdido Street Station is loving fascinating in the world it's able to convey. Iron Council didn't do anything for me. It's not bas-lag, but The City and the City is very different from his usual prose in a way that it's almost like a different author, and I say that to mean he's rather versatile.
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Jul 13, 2013 06:37
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I liked the story and idea and characters and everything in Iron Council, I just... I just felt like I had to work to read it.
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Jul 13, 2013 20:19
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I don't know if I agree with that. And it wasn't really his prose that bugged me as much as the pacing, I think.
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Jul 13, 2013 20:38
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People really really exaggerate how overtly political mieville's work is. Yeah, it's there, because that's the lens he sees the world through. His fiction is not the same as his paper on international law and marxism or whatever. He's a marxist who likes cool rear end monsters and strange fantasy worlds.
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Jul 15, 2013 02:50
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How did John Steakley's Armor get published?? I'm kind of enjoying it but the Jack Crow parts are kinda really bad and the only parts I enjoy reading are about the cliche space marine badass king of another planet with a sweet name.
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Jul 22, 2013 20:50
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I just feel like a 'tard every time I open up a new schlocky sci-fi book hoping for something literary instead of reveling in its pulpery. I mean I can appreciate that, but I always set myself up for disappointment.
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Jul 22, 2013 21:03
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Dear Neal Asher, Please do not write about those dumb religion havers and how smart atheists are. Do not use the word Jihad. Do not write about how cool and horny immortal shipbabes are. And please don't write a weird scene where she's totally like "check out my snatch. lol we're naked" Thank you, A reader of Shell Game
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Aug 18, 2013 00:09
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I don't think of anyone in Bas Lag as white because they're too busy being covered in literal poo poo and soot.
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Aug 18, 2013 00:19
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I read Altered Carbon and I didn't like the sex scenes (like most of the book) but it felt hilariously self-indulgent to me. It felt like the author writing fanfiction about himself.
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Aug 30, 2013 20:17
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Books I thought benefited from sex scenes: Old Man's War, China Mountain Zhang. China Mountain Zhang kinda benefited from everything though. Cool book, but not one of my favorites. muike fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Aug 31, 2013 |
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Aug 31, 2013 00:36
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Ingram posted:I'm about halfway through Wakes and I've got to admit I'm not feeling it all too much. It's interesting enough to keep going but I'm not blown away like I thought I would be. I've seen so much praise for the first book and I'm wondering why?... I don't know either. When I started reading it I was amped for solar system only space opera, but when it got to the actual characters it was just a struggle for me to bear with them. Then the reveal of the horrible evil plot was just completely lackluster and almost laughable.
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Sep 18, 2013 22:04
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TOOT BOOT posted:I've never understood why some people are bothered by things like aliens and FTL in science fiction. Aliens don't bother me so much as really loving boring aliens do. And that seems to be all I ever run in to.
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Sep 25, 2013 01:18
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I liked it in the Gundam novels
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Sep 25, 2013 03:28
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I just finished the first story perspective in Wool, and I really like it so far! I went into the store looking for Railsea, and same as last store, they didn't have it, so I grabbed Wool when it caught my eye, having heard a lot of good things about it.
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Nov 12, 2013 05:28
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andrew smash posted:The mote in god's eye has a laser figure pretty prominently in the plot. Yeah that's pretty much a good way to put it from what I've heard of the rest of their oeuvre
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Dec 17, 2013 06:56
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Generally the people who end up writing books like that are really really bad writers. Your best choices to check out are the aforementioned books and the Armored anthology, which varies between full sized mecha stuff and powered armor.
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Dec 29, 2013 02:00
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I don't recommend the Gundam novels unless you're already a Gundam fan. They have a very very very dry and literal translation (as required by the licensor). In addition to that, there's some weird poo poo that only really makes sense if you're familiar with Tomino.
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Dec 29, 2013 03:40
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Is there a place where I can read in sperging detail kind of equipment a bolo has
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Jan 4, 2014 07:18
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I just tried reading Ryk Spoor's Grand Central Arena and I got to chapter 6 before I realized I wasn't going to be able to go any further. Do his other books use the same prose style or did he write like a dingus in this one on purpose?
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Jan 5, 2014 18:34
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Ok maybe I shouldn't have bought this book without checking it out a bit more first then.
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Jan 5, 2014 20:32
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I read a short story of Asher's in some compilation and I immediately got the feeling he was kind of a twat
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Jan 8, 2014 02:03
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 14:33 |
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Is the translation any good? Japanese pulp rarely gets good translations, they're usually serviceable at most.
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Jun 7, 2014 02:40
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