quote:

Just as our current society has domesticated animals to sustain ourselves, the human societies of this future have yoked insects to their service. Food, weapons, clothing, art - even the most sacred religious beliefs - are derived from Humankind's profound intertwining with the once-lowly insect world . . . Corrupt elites ruthlessly enforce a rigid caste system over a debased and ignorant populace. Duplicitous clergymen and power-mongering Royalty wage pointless wars for their own glory. Fantasies of a better life, a better world, serve only to torment those who dare to dream. One so cursed is a half-breed slave named Anand, a dung-collector of the midden caste who, against all possibility, rises above hopelessness to lead his people against a genocidal army of men who fight atop fearsome, translucent Ghost Ants.

ed balls balls man posted:

I've only read the Ian Cormac books but I blew threw them in two weeks and really enjoyed them. He has some great ideas when it comes to AIs, Androids and other sci-fi concepts, the universe he builds is a testament to that.

Smapti posted:

Yes! I second this. Monument has one of the best antiheros as a main character I've ever read. This isn't an "antihero" in scare quotes like in other genre novels (eg a gritty and morally flawed but still fundamentally decent person) -- no, the main character in Monument truly is despicable, which is a very difficult thing to pull off; but Graham does a fantastic job of it. And his plotting and world-building is top-notch. If I recall correctly this is Graham's only genre work, which is a real shame.

Neurosis posted:

Joe Abercrombie is a very fast writer. I don't think Morgan is particularly slow either - the Kovacs novels came out over a 3-4 year period, for example.

andrew smash posted:

Hugh howey flipped his poo poo and spouted off some pretty misogynistic stuff at a reporter that rubbed him the wrong way a while back and since then I've been unwilling to buy any more of his books, despite the fact that I thought wool was pretty okay. He just seems like a total slimebag now. It's too bad really.

Rurik posted:

This needed a new thread? Okay.

In the previous thread someone mentioned a fantasy book in which royalty ruling due to divine grace gets wiped out in a revolution. Things turn sour cause the divinity thing was true. It sounded interesting, what's the name of the book?

Another question: I liked Reynolds' novel Pushing Ice a lot. Any similar sf books about people trying to colonize or survive on a comet/lifeless rock in space?

ShutteredIn posted:

I'm not seeing it as available on the .com site either. Strange.

Joramun posted:

quote:

This is a monster of a book, and within its pages can be found monsters of many types (not every character is a 'monster', though - there are some rather nice folk along the way - and some are nice but still monstrous). Before beginning this book, I'd suggest parking any preconceived notions about demons, wizards, dwarves, queens princesses, etc., on the doorstep, because while you will encounter all those things in this book, they aren't going to be anything like those you've encountered before. For that matter, I'd suggest forgetting any notions you've already formed regarding any place named Hell, because Fraser's Hell is going to be different from any you've likely even imagined before.

PlushCow posted:

Last week I started reading Chronicles of the Black Company on ebook, an omnibus of the first three novels by Glen Cook. I remember hearing good things about it, and Steven Erikson cites it as a major influence of his for the Malazan series that I love, so I though I'd give it a go - and I couldn't get more than 10% through it before I stopped.

It's the way it's written. The first-person narration was really stilted and slightly jarring. The novel skips scenes it shouldn't, such as "Ok we need to go kidnap this important guy and ask him some tough questions" immediately followed by in the text "that was a tough kidnapping and he's answered some of our questions after we worked him," glossing over events that really should be shown, and Cook does this over and over again. It's nothing but lulls; reaction scenes that are telling me what's going to happen, what has happened, but never showing it happening, which is really boring!

Maybe it gets better later on but I can't power through it.

Victorkm posted:

Re: From Hell by Ian Fraser:

I'm about halfway through now and I would seriously recommend against this book. The writing itself is decently done but the content is pretty dumb. So far there has been projectile explosive diarrhea used as a life saving device, male on male rape treated tongue in cheek contrasted with male on female gang rape treated seriously, and a male character who has changed himself to female and is exploring lesbianism. All in all, it's the last bit that has been the most exasperating. It smacks of author self-insert wish fulfillment.

I'm going to end up finishing the book but I would not recommend it to others.

quote:

I rarely stop reading books part way through, but I couldn't continue with Altered Carbon. The writing is a dreadful imitation of the noir style, with sentences that clunk and burp, filled with superficial and unsatisfying details. The central character is a juvenile's sketch of an action hero: utterly without personality, banal and psychotic. The minor characters are so unconvincing I wonder how much life experience the author had before putting them to paper.

quote:

What promises from the reviews to be a complex and intriguing story turns out to be 500+ pages of superficial scenarios that are poorly stringed together. I only bothered to finish the book because I assumed events would come together for a grand finale, but the ending was just as blasι as the rest.

quote:

After about 100 pages I couldn't even read it anymore. The writing was poor and disjointed and the story is totally uninteresting. I would never guess that someone could make sci fi this boring and take any kind of wonder out of it.

quote:

Brilliant that hell has a disco & the waiters are infamous characters from history. Witty dialogue and really interesting situations that the characters fine equally unique and interesting ways of getting out of during the course of their adventures. I'm so glad I picked this book up which is truly a blend of Tolkien & Pratchett.

quote:

Despite the title, which I'm not sure really captures the essence of the book beyond it, this is a brilliantly constructed work, with excellent narrative, rounded dialogue and some truly inspired world building.

torgo posted:

Can anyone recommend some sci-fi books about contact with incomprehensibly alien aliens? Blindsight is a good example of what I'm looking for. Spin by Robert Charles Wilson is another book that touches on this theme, but I have the feeling if I read the rest of the trilogy, the aliens' motivations will be revealed to be pretty "human" in the end.

KingAsmo posted:

Hey guys I've been on a two year long sci-fi binge and I'm running out of ideas for what to read next, was hoping you had some suggestions for me.

I would really like something with cyberpunk elements but also with strong prose and that has been written recently enough to extrapolate contemporary technology in to the future. I'm cool with anything from contemporary to the distant future as far as setting goes. Needs to be available in audiobook.

Gibson is great but I thought Pattern Recognition was a little dull and low on technology futurism stuff. I intend to read Broken Angels (Kovachs 2) but I'd like to try a different author first since I just finished Altered Carbon.

robotox posted:

I'm looking for something that I guess would best be described as cyberpunky, which I know was discussed a little in the last page, though I have some caveats/additions.

Basically, my job is incredibly reactionary so I have time to read occasionally. I'm looking for something light-ish, by which I mean anything short of the hyper-dense, philosophical tomes that some people put out. They're fine, but I don't want to have to reread the last handful of pages when I have to read in short bursts. It doesn't need to be some piece of OH MY GOD NONSTOP ACTION novel, but a little escapist.

I say I'm looking for cyberpunk because I tend to have a fondness for the noir vibe and I have a preference for near-to-mid-future stuff that's based on Earth, or at least not extremely space opera stuff. One way that I'd describe what I'm looking for is urban fantasy with tech instead of magic. Also, I like transhumanism/cyborgs/genetic engineering stuff, some AI stuff, etc. Not a big fan of aliens and spaceships.

I just finished reading the Petrovitch Trilogy by Simon Morden and it fit what I'm looking for really well. I read Altered Carbon and liked it and have read the notable stuff from the '80s and '90s as far as original cyberpunk stuff goes. Again, I'm reticent to strictly say cyberpunk so much as cyberpunk influenced, perhaps.

Loving Life Partner posted:

For people that have read Takeshi Kovacs, is the second book a bit of a letdown?

I'm about 85% finished or something, and some big bad thing is about to be perpetrated, but, I don't even really care all that much at this point.

I feel like the decision to center so much of the book on the mysterious Martian's was a mistake. The flavors of Earth and posthumanism and whatnot were the real draw in the first novel. Having so much hinging on the incredibly incomprehensible machines of Martians, and their singing not-rocks-not-plants and whatnot blah blah blah. It just seems so whatever. Maybe the book will bring it all together in the end, or in the third installment, but this is definitely a drop off after the awesome first book.

Megazver posted:

The Breach by Patrick Lee. Unrelenting, mindfucky thriller.

VanSandman posted:

Does anyone have any good recommendations for a fantasy novel or series that is relatively optimistic? I'm just not very into the whole GRRM grim-and-gritty-'realism' schtick. If you don't mind a bit of a rant, I like my fantasy to be, well, fantasy. I already know people suck, I'd like to get away from that for a while. I've tried reading the Wheel of Time series and didn't like it very much. I also like urban fantasy quite a bit - I've read the Dresden Files, Rivers of London, Felix Castor, the Rook, and some others.
Now I don't mean to imply I dislike it when bad things happen, I'm ok with horrific destruction so long as it's treated with gravitas and anguish and it all ends on a somewhat upbeat note.

General Battuta posted:

Someone tell me if there's a quick way to tell whether a book is self-published or not.

Victorkm posted:

Blood Song was self published.

And it was awesome.

I haven't finished From Hell yet but I can assure you it is not awesome. See my comments on it in the last couple pages.

Bunnita posted:

These were great up until the very end. I was actually kind of angry at how they left it, I don't want to figure it out I want an ending . Others may enjoy it but it really didn't do it for me.

Geek U.S.A. posted:

Ahh I hope this is good. I've been wanting to get into that series for a while now, but everyone said book 2 had a huge cliffhanger so I never bothered starting.

General Battuta posted:

I've read it, it's real. You can believe in it.

'Mental instability' is a pretty lovely way to describe it, and you should feel bad!

General Battuta posted:

I assumed (unfairly) that you spoke out of hostility, tacit or otherwise. I took issue with the language because I don't think depression or anxiety really belong under the same label - 'instability' - as problems like schizophrenia or dissociative disorders. But I leapt to conclusions, and honestly you've done more to support him and people with similar issues than I have. I apologize.

BlazinLow305 posted:

Hello thread. I came in here a few weeks back and got a lot of really good fantasy recommendations which I'm still reading on. However, I'm almost done with the 3rd book in Reynold's RS series, so I figured I'd go ahead and ask some opinions on a new sci-fi series. Here is what I want - A series(The longer the better) that's at least mostly serialized. I like to invest myself. You can probably tell from context, but by sci fi I mean the spaceships kind, rather than superpowers or something. I don't mind hard sci-fi but it doesn't have to be packed full of technobabble or anything. I prefer something with a good bit of characters, hopefully a more complex story that takes place either over a big distance, or over time. It doesn't matter particularly, just something "epic". I probably should ask this in the space opera thread maybe, but I'm not sure. There should obviously be space travel, battles, etc but it doesn't have to solely focus on only that. Also, I can't stand first person.

edit: I also liked The Expanse, but I'm putting off reading the latest book for now until the next comes out. And while the whole in solar system thing didn't bother me, I prefer a bigger scale. Also the whole big mystery thing it had going for it was really cool, so I like big mysteries that make you go "WTF" even if it's a bit ridiculous.

buildmorefarms posted:

My wife's hunting for some examples (for a class of 16-17 year olds) of "difficult/sophisticated" fantasy novels in order to demonstrate how titles within the same genre can vary wildly in terms of:

* sophisticated language (read: heavy)
* complexity (i.e. not the standard "saving the world from a clearly defined evil")

I thought that maybe grabbing some examples of "high" fantasy would fit the bill, but I'm not a big fantasy reader myself so I didn't want to dive headlong into a few titles only to find that they're considered teenage-fantasy-levels by experienced fantasy readers.

The OP and flow-chart were very helpful in terms of a starting point - just curious if there's other titles out there any of you would recommend. My wife's initial request was something along the lines of "like Heart of Darkness but Fantasy"; one other stipulation she made is that it has to maintain a non-adult rating (I think the incest from something like A Song of Ice and Fire might be a bit much for a catholic school).

Hopefully that's not too specific - thanks!

Ceebees posted:

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.

Datasmurf posted:

So I am looking for some new fantasy to read.
I've read everything by Terry Brooks, Tolkien, Rowling, Salvatore and 1/4 of Discworld (and I've loved every book by every one of the aforementioned authors so far), and loads of other fantasy books the past 13 years. My last love was for Anne Bishops "Dark Jewels" books, and I'm currently looking for more like that. Strong female characters, a bit smut, some magic and lots of different humanoid races.

I'm also looking for something with dragons that isn't D&D or DragonLance (Don't get me wrong, as I said, I love every D&D book put out by R.A. Salvatore, and I really liked the 8 first books in DragonLance too, I just want something else).
I read "The Heart of Myrial" by Maggie Furey and the other books in "Shadowleague" 10 years ago and I loved them, so maybe something like that?

Oh, and something with elves, where the elves are evil and malign, and again, no D&D or such. I read "The Guardian Cycle" by Julia Gray 11-12 years ago, and it was great and first put me on track for elves that weren't always "good" or "neutral", but just plain evil (like the drow in D&D).

So … Any tips?

Wangsbig posted:

Oh boy The Emperor of Thorns was underwhelming. The setting interested me enough to force myself through three pretty unlikable books but Mark Lawrence was too in love with his weird brooding anime prince to expand on the great world he created.

I've also decided to read a YA book or two since I basically never have in my life. I think I'm going to be book sad for a long time.

AreYouStillThere posted:

Oh, well poo poo. I picked up Mortal Engines from the library assuming it would be the best place to start. Is it that big a deal? Should I send it back and get Fever Crumb?

Hedrigall posted:

Relax, Mortal Engines is the first book and is great. Fever Crumb is a recent prequel. Don't ever, ever listen to people who tell you to read a book series in internal chronological order. What would you recommend to people to watch first: A New Hope or The Phantom Menace?

Hedrigall posted:

Counter: if an author wanted to tell a story a particular way, he/she would have written it in that order.

House Louse posted:

I've only read the (published) first, but

General Battuta posted:

That's a cat face, dude, not an expression of dislike for the book. He's communicating adoration for the cat illustration you posted.

Hedrigall posted:

I just discovered the story "Scales" by Alastair Reynolds. It's a super short (less than 2000 words) and succinct "gently caress you" to the entire Military SF genre, and it's got a great ending.

Phummus posted:

The third chunk of the Wool books, called Dust came out last month. Has anyone read it yet? I enjoyed Wool, but not so much Shift. I'm really in need of a good, long series to read. I'm usually a fantasy guy, but I've read most of the major recommendations here. If anyone could just travel into the future and get me the rest of The Way of Kings, that would be splendid.