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Play posted:Great! If you want more Paolo Bacigalupi, one of my favorites by him was Shipbreakers and its sorta-sequel The Drowned Cities. Windup Girl. 
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Jun 20, 2013 23:52
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SUPERFINE CONCUBINE posted:Hey guys, I love me some good hard SF (Alastair Reynolds is a particular go-to of mine). Lately I've been thinking that I'd really like to read some SF that is a bit more various in its depictions of relationships, because I just can't see a future populated entirely by heterosexual people and couples. I'm really not interested in gay/poly/interspecies/whatever relationships being the main focus, but was wondering whether there were any good stories you'd recommend where it's part of the fabric of the universe. I'm specifically interested in the normalisation of homosexual relationships in scifi. I guess if there are any stories with a gay focus you would recommend anyway, I'd still like to hear about them! The Quantam Thief?
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Aug 6, 2013 23:44
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specklebang posted:You might take a look at The Unincorporated Man, a 4 book, now complete series with a very interesting premise. I still can't decide if TUM was tolerable or preachy. I think it comes down to whether or not the author(s?) actually believe the screed their wunderkind main character promulgates, or are using him to critique. Ceebees fucked around with this message at 01:47 on Aug 22, 2013 |
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Aug 22, 2013 01:43
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Red Crown posted:I could be wrong, I got the impression that the Oubliette is essentially human-basic's last stand. Everyone else is either posthuman like the zokus or Mieli's people. Mieli is stuffed to the gills with Sobornost tech from her service to the pelligrini. Aside from their fascination with smartmatter sapphire and some hints that their ship minds like Perhonen might have been pulled out of some sort of communal afterlife, there's not really been any signs that the Oortians aren't pretty baseline too. Still, it's hard to say they count when they basically waltzed off as far as it's humanly possible to get from the inner system so they don't have to deal with anyone else.
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Dec 14, 2013 10:01
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gender illusionist posted:So how was Abaddon's Gate? I enjoyed the other expanse books, even the stuff about cleaning spaceships (I'm in the navy so verisimilitude). They extended the series, so the PoV characters have to spend 80% of Gate not doing anything. Character thoughts: I stopped giving a poo poo about Sociopath Mao about halfway through her arc. Her particular blend of naive, stupid, and crazy put me off, and other 'good guy' characters just seemed to get dumber in her presence. Lesbian Rabbi could have been interesting - the place of faith when everything is changing - but was entirely wasted because her sole bearing on the plot was to be misunderstood by, and then partially redeem, Sociopath Mao, whom i had stopped caring about 300 pages ago. Holden and Co barely show up. Go through Gate, press a button, have holo-Miller assisted revelation, get captured. We learned nothing new about any of them, and they were just there to touch the macguffin and be there in the finale. Cranky Diplomat Grandma (Avasarala) didn't show up at all, which is unacceptable As you can see, i can't even remember the names of the few new characters i had even a passing interest in. There were no real space battles, the whole problem underpinning the climactic finale was foreseeable and avoidable, and 90% of the book could have been cut with no real loss. I really think they have a problem with their plot structure when there's no main threat to polarize the plot, and the result is pretty disappointing. Ceebees fucked around with this message at 11:04 on Jan 2, 2014 |
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Jan 1, 2014 05:10
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Velius posted:Charles Stross has a novel called Accelerando which is all about the singularity, but it has bad characters and it is one of the few books I've ever given up on. Accelerando is Stross waving his arms in the air and screaming "FUUUUUUUUTURE!!!" at you, as hard as he can. If you can get past that, it has a lot of interesting thoughts. Singularity Sky, on the other hand, is the only one of Stross' books that i felt like was a waste of my time after it was over. I'd seen the ideas somewhere else, they weren't deployed in a new or unique way, and the plot was basically a guided tour of said ideas.
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Jan 6, 2014 21:19
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taser rates posted:Haven't read the other one, but Ancillary Justice I enjoyed a lot. Really interesting take on AI, transhumanism and imperialism. See, i didn't find AJ's points on any of those topics terribly arresting, but i did still think it was an interesting examination of culture and language against a kinda generic sci-fi backdrop. Tony Montana posted:I had no idea, I've not read it. I'm interested now though, can you give a non-spoiler, brief description of this race? About all you can say without spoilers is that they have nothing in common with spiders, and a fair bit physically with jellyfish because Watts has a degree in marine biology or something. Blindsight is very interesting. Somewhat unfortunately, because of the nature of the questions it asks, it has something of a reputation for being existentially horrifying as put best by a SF critic; "Whenever I find my will to live becoming too strong, I read Peter Watts."
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Jan 31, 2014 20:11
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General Battuta posted:Read Downbelow Station as soon as you can (assuming you are willing to read ships shooting instead of people shooting). The prose is a bit stiff, especially at first, but it was decades ahead of its time and feels like it could've been one of the primary source texts for the reboot BSG. I barely remember any ships firing at anything in Downbelow Station, and would hardly put it in the same ballpark as mil-sf. In fact, i'd say that all of Cherryh i've read has been, in the end, about the underlying culture(s), and never really about the conflicts they're sparking. Also, i thought Downbelow was the least interesting thing she's written.
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Mar 15, 2014 17:04
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Decius posted:Uglies and The God Engines are really good, Mogworld is an occasionally funny satire, Wheaton's book is whimsey enough to be enjoyable but those alone seems not enough for the 12 dollar the average currently is to be honest. I would've enjoyed God Engines a lot more if it were either half as long, or twice as long. It really hit this weird place for me where it was too long to be snappy, but too short to build any depth. Mogworld was amusing for the first two-thirds, until it remembered that it had to actually finish it's plot at some point
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Mar 28, 2014 23:12
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I skipped every single Hellride sequence in the entire series. Am i a bad person? (Seriously though, did i actually miss anything? The first one just felt like 'let me describe this acid i just took', and that's only slightly less tedious than someone talking about their dreams last night.)
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Aug 20, 2014 04:47
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RoboCicero posted:I liked both about equally I've had The Golem and The Jinni on my kindle account since it was on sale several months ago, but i feel like i keep putting it off because i don't quite know what to expect from it. (Aside from, obviously, a golem and a djinni.) Could i perhaps trouble you (and the thread at large) for a comment on subgenre and emotional tone, with as little spoiled as possible?
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Oct 3, 2014 07:34
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Amberskin posted:It looks really good, but I have not been able to find an ebook edition. Are you US based or willing to lie to Amazon?
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Oct 6, 2014 18:57
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vuk83 posted:I got a serious napoleon in Egypt vibe out of it. This is pretty much explicitly what's going on. Book one is Sherlock Napoleon in Magic Egypt, book two is the not-French revolution in Paris-London, and from the epilogue to 2, #3 will be the Holy War of the Grand Coalition. I guess there are less interesting portions of history you could jam wholesale into your fantasy 18th century setting?
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Mar 31, 2015 06:06
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I have a small question about your definition of 'a good spot', seeing as how the book ended with, one, a grand conspiracy revealed but not meaningfully interacted with, and two, a declaration of "I'm letting you go so you can tell your people that we have assembled this team of experts, many of whom have a bone to pick with them," followed by a literary fade to black. I mean, if that doesn't shout sequel hook, i don't know what does. Besides which, at this point i basically assume from page one that every new SF/F book is intended to have a sequel, whether it needs one or not. Ceebees fucked around with this message at 02:15 on Apr 20, 2015 |
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Apr 19, 2015 23:47
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General Battuta posted:City of Stairs is getting a sequel. I don't know if that was in the game plan all along. Et tu, Battute? (No, but congrats, really.)
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Apr 20, 2015 01:38
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Off of those two authors, i would absolutely not. I realize my antipathy for Asher's books is in the minority, but... well, Jean and every one of Gibson's twitchy quasi-legal entities all have, you know, nuance, detail, depth. In contrast, the opening of Gridlinked is Cormac being told that his wikipedia implant is turning him into an emotionless robot, and frankly, i didn't notice the difference.
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Apr 23, 2015 16:58
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DACK FAYDEN posted:Speaking of ebook availability, what's available for Kindle Unlimited that isn't garbage? It has a smattering of Proper Stuff, some PKD, in particular? Agree that the name is a misleading joke, though.
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May 14, 2015 10:47
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General Battuta posted:Maybe you guys can help me decide between 'Game of Thrones meets Guns Germs and Steel' or 'Lilo and Stitch meets Gone Girl' Speaking of X meets Y pitches, that excerpt is highly reassuring after the amazon page went with "GG&S meets The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms", the latter of which, unless i'm much mistaken, is a book wherein the 'heroine' is mostly concerned with her overwhelming, at-first-sight desire to gently caress the enslaved physical personification of night and murder because he's just ~so dreamy and tormented  ~ 
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May 27, 2015 02:53
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Kalenn Istarion posted:See, I though player of games did a good or at least interesting job of criticizing the imperial leadership of Azad and top down social structure while holding up the more 'earthy' and more... conflicted... lifestyle as an improvement over the Culture's 'homogenized heterogeneity'. If that makes any sense. Maybe it doesn't but that's how I've always thought of it. But again, that's because of the point of view of the character experiencing it. The Culture would never create a game as sweeping and glorious as Azad because they have nothing with which to imbue it with meaning. When nothing can be truly gained or lost, gambling and competition are pale shadows of what we experience them as. To the Morat, this is something of a shame, but to literally anyone else he looks insane, like he has a masochistic need to be deprived of something so that he can struggle to get it back. Which the benevolent Culture, of course, gently tries to cure him of. If anything is a ding against the Culture, i'd think it's how culturites all tend to go native if you leave them sitting out for too long.
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Jun 8, 2015 05:37
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Autonomous Monster posted:I just finished the latest Django Wexler (Thousand Names, Shadow Throne) book, The Price of Valour. I have to say, I'm impressed. It's like Wexler took every single complaint I had with The Shadow Throne and tackled it head on. Eh, whats-his-face's lightning-fast decent from well-intention extremism to power-mad villainy was a bit pat, and crazy lesbian feels like a weak trope, even if it was well-foreshadowed, but otherwise, yeah. It was entertaining pulp again instead of being, well, not. On the other hand, it's been confirm as (at least) a five-book series now and uuuuugh. Why can't anyone ever just finish a story anymore? If an editor had cracked the whip and cut out 90% of 'let's be Revolutionary France with the names filed off', we probably could have been done by now.
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Jul 12, 2015 10:49
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Autonomous Monster posted:Robspierre gonna Robspierre Given that it opened with an adventure in Not-Egypt and most recently hit the fall of The Directorate to the machinations of the First Consul, i've always seen it more as retreating Napoleon's story beat for beat (if slightly out of order), which i am very much on board with. So, it kind of irks me that he devoted two-thirds of a book to the part of the story where Janus Bonaparte wasn't even there. To the other thing, you're quite right that's it's entirely fitting for the character in question. I'm still a touch sour that something that spanned three books smacked into a cliche i find tiresome, but in retrospect it's not like Jen "The Spy Who Loved Me" was exactly a fresh idea either. I guess i just need to adjust my expectations for the parts that don't involve muskets and flanking maneuvers 
Ceebees fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Jul 13, 2015 |
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Jul 13, 2015 00:43
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LemonyTang posted:I just finished Sword and it was great. The focus on characters and the station/planet as opposed to the apparent driving plotpiece from the first book was kind of weird to get used to but once I accepted that Breq just doesn't give a gently caress I realised I liked it - and, mostly, didn't either. I am relieved that the third book is going to come out in October after the last two series that really got me going (Gentleman Bastard & Kingkiller Chronicles) are taking so long inbetween books. I am suspicious of how much Leckie will really be able to "tie-up" however. I find this interesting, because - not to demean your tastes - I loved Justice but Sword bored me to tears. The mystery-through-chronolgy in Justice at least gave it a framework to stand on, and the world building was fresh and new. I don't think a linear story where the reader and protagonist are both equally caught up suits Leckie at all, and the book felt to me like a revolving door of random things that aren't ultimately relevant to books 1 or 3. E: how did my tablet even do that Ceebees fucked around with this message at 04:45 on Aug 13, 2015 |
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Aug 13, 2015 04:33
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Nephzinho posted:60 pages left in Ancillary Mercy, loving it thusfar and kind of want to stay up late enough to finish. Does it go back to Justice, or is it more of Sword? Oh, also, does it actually finish as a trilogy, or is she going to have to invent some new classes of ship for books 4+?
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Oct 5, 2015 07:39
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Kalman posted:CJ Cherryh tends to fit this - Downbelow Station in particular. It might just be that Downbelow left me kind of bored, but i really would have said Cyteen and Regenesis for politics, planning, and manipulation from Cherryh. They're nothing but.
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Oct 8, 2015 20:16
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Chillyrabbit posted:I kind of liked the lost fleet series by jack campbell. Regular joe doing his duty gets stuck in an escape pod and awakens 100 years in the future. He then has to lead the alliance fleet home after it gets trapped in enemy space. But what can you tell me about battlecruisers
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Nov 2, 2015 19:48
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Patrick Weekes has some good books. I felt like he kind of dropped the ball on The Paladin Job. A really fantastical bad-guy concept that the previous two books had both been leading up to just ended up very... mundane in execution. To give an example, the evil office meetings were very evil, yes, but way, way too humanizing for exactly who was participating. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Besides which, the ending was so over the top and had so many twists, it felt like it was trying too hard, and most of the characters are kinda one-note. A few of them get a bit of depth, fair, but the others just spend the whole book being glibly whedonesque so you can tell exactly which archetype they are. Maybe there's something to be said with the ones that do get development subverting the expectations that everyone will be a understood-at-a-glance quip engine, but i'd place my money on him just running low on ideas. The plots roll along entertainingly enough, and the dialogue will probably make you smile momentarily, but there's nothing to digest, nor anything that really sticks with you. Ceebees fucked around with this message at 17:17 on Dec 2, 2015 |
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Dec 2, 2015 17:11
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But have you heard about chitinous good people?
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Jan 7, 2016 21:05
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I finished Rising fairly recently, so i'm curious which inconsistency you mean. Maybe spoiler tag it?
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Mar 7, 2016 06:15
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Bullio posted:I wasn't far enough in when I posted that... it was cleared up a couple chapters later. Ah, yeah. I'd still say the whole metageasa thread is a bit prone to suddenly throwing changes to The Rules at you out of left field, like that one. But, given that the only people in-universe who know anything about those rules will kill the poo poo out of anyone that learns their secrets, i guess that's partially excusable.
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Mar 10, 2016 03:13
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johnsonrod posted:"The Quiet War" by Paul McCauley fits that description. It starts a bit slow and has a bit to much biology infodumping but it really picks up about 1/4 way in. I remember this now. This is the one where the one PoV woman terraforms a place, then has to flee because of a military 'intervention' by 'her' side and falls in with the (now former) locals. Then she helps terraform the colony they land at, before they have to flee from another invasion, at which point she and her new cast of rejects go on to terraform yet another new home. Then in the sequel, she terraforms like five more goddamn habitats, each time because she had to flee from the last one before someone came and shot them. Highly recommended if you can't get enough of someone terraforming yet another hollowed-out comet because, hey, it's Tuesday, time to throw everything back in the space pod, move to an even more isolated rear end-end corner of the solar system than before, and slather vacuum organism cultures all over everything then spend twenty pages watching them grow. (It fits the criteria, sure, but by the sixth repetition of the same basic plot element i really wished he would just get the hell on with it.  )
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Mar 22, 2016 11:14
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StonecutterJoe posted:Finished Queen of the Night, the last book in Craig Schaefer's Revanche Cycle, which he started and then finished in maybe two years tops Craig Schaefer is the Grey Hunter of books.
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Jul 11, 2016 08:18
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It's hard to disagree with goodreads being pretty worthless for picking out new content, though. I mean, Dianetics has 2.3 stars. The worst book i've ever paid for got, like, 3.1. The fact that goodreads supplies the means for a group of devotees to find their icon and worship at it means that scale basically goes from three stars to five stars. E - You know what, i feel like i've said that before. So instead, how about i ask an actual question. I, personal taste, absolutely hated the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. The relevant threads seem to be a-flutter about The Fifth Season, so... is it different? I mean, i don't want to sound sore here about getting bait-and-switched, expecting a grand fantasy book and getting a romance instead. I bought the Sharing Knife at 4am one time because a wizard stabbing a deathless turboghost sounded cool. And, i mean, i didn't buy the rest of the series, no, but it was alright. I'd recommend it to people who wanted that. The 100k kingdoms, though, suggested that we'd be hearing about a society that enslaved its own pantheon of literal gods and how said pantheon felt about it, and then instead i got 200 pages of a (failed) attempt to resist the urge to schtup the dreamy, brooding, misunderstood god of loving psycho bloodmurder, and it just left a bad taste in my mouth. Again, just my (admittedly cranky) opinion. So... do characters still make incredibly, staggeringly bad decisions for inane/'fate' reasons, and, am I going to be cross about the swords&sorcery versus 'fifty shades' ratio again? Ceebees fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Sep 20, 2016 |
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Sep 20, 2016 04:28
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Well, that's somewhat encouraging to hear. On the other hand, if i'd heard i wouldn't like it then i could have saved  , so...
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Sep 20, 2016 08:44
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RoboCicero posted:I hear the second book is better, but I have enough books to read already. It had a tournament arc.
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Oct 20, 2016 01:46
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The Craft Sequence is pretty good in general. I confess it took me a couple swings to actually get in to it - the kindle free sample ends just before the actually interesting part of 3PD - but the magic is all really neat.
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Jan 6, 2017 09:13
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Obligatory 'but that's like seven books from now!' joke.
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Jan 11, 2017 04:19
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My problem was just that even the kickstarted series that he had total control over was insane and rushed at the end, and it still didn't tidy up everything. The main conflict resolves with 50ish pages left, at which point the main characters realize that a side-plot was actually even more important than the main thread (you know, the one that took 7-800 pages to fix), find who's responsible for that side plot, wreck their poo poo, discover in the process that their literal gods are A: 100% real, and B: assholes, and physically meet and punch said gods in the face for it. All in less than a tenth of the space of the rest of the series. It's terribly paced, and it tries to up the stakes to keep the protagonists overwhelmed after it's already given them a huge increase in knowledge and ability. Really, it feels like he was fishing for a second trilogy but nobody bit, so he just ended up with a gross chunk of dead squid on the end of his line. So, maybe it was just the lack of an editor, but it still darkened my outlook on where Twenty Palaces was likely to end up, yeah. But even so, man was 20P a fascinating concept. Ceebees fucked around with this message at 20:23 on Jan 16, 2017 |
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Jan 16, 2017 20:10
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savinhill posted:KOP by Walter Hammond. You didn't mention that the cover makes Far Cry: Blood Dragon look like a restrained and tasteful homage to 80's scifi. It hurts my eyes and i love it.
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Jan 17, 2017 20:18
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So, i've got a somewhat unusual book-related question. I'm looking at a series of boring intervals over the next few weeks where i can't bring a tablet or have reliable access to phone charging, so i'm picking up some physical reading material. Problem being that i've already read a large swath of where my interests lead on their own, so i'd be interested if anyone has some suggestions. Needs to be cheap (amazon's '1 cent [plus $4 shipping]' club ideal), huge (omnibuses preferred), and not godawful. To sort of sketch out the size/quality point i'm looking for and head some suggestions off, i've already read the Amber, Black Company, Ciaphas Cain, Eisenhorn, Foundation, Long Price, Acts of Caine, Rogue/Wraith Squadron, Merchant Princes, Echoes of Empire, Culture, and Dresden (and Alara) serieses Not interested in Weber, Asher, or anything where i would have a battlecruiser explained to me. Unusual magic systems a big plus, will excuse many other flaws. e- You know, after a while i started to feel like this is... brag-y, but my point is more that i'm not super picky, and i've spent many fond years in used bookstores and libraries already
Ceebees fucked around with this message at 11:14 on Jan 18, 2017 |
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Jan 18, 2017 11:00
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Thanks for the comments, all.Hieronymous Alloy posted:If you want non horrible doorstopper fantasy and you aren't too picky, try wheel of Time. Hieronymous Alloy posted:
anilEhilated posted:Malazan. Or Tchaikovsky's Shadows of the Apt. I stopped listing because i started to feel self-conscious about 'ooh, look at all the books i read', but i did actually read Faust, but not Revanche or Harmony Black. Also a friend lent me the Craft sequence last year, which while you're very right about the WIZARD LAWYERSSS, i wouldn't exactly call cheap! Nevvy Z posted:Bakker. They aren't the hugest but there are 7 of them.
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Jan 19, 2017 04:29
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