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Mikojan posted:I've been wanting to delve into the Dune universe but I'm unsure of where to start. As everyone else has mentioned, read in published order, including prequels (though those are a SIGNIFICANT drop in quality from the Frank Herbert books), but even then every single book is worse than the book before it, so when you reach a point where a book is only just OK, stop, you've gotten a full story. The Dune books are actually pretty good about every book being a decent stopping point.
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May 24, 2023 10:34
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Crashbee posted:Today's UK Kindle deal is a whole bunch of Raymond E. Feist books. Any recommendations here? Never read anything by him. https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/browse.html/ref=pe_151291_77773501_pe_button/?node=5400977031 Deptfordx posted:The original Riftwar saga is probably worth reading, although much like the Belgariad if released in 2023 it'd probably be considered YA. Oh and it's clearly the authors D&D game, although I believe he had his own homebrew. However it's a fun ripping yarn. The trilogy that starts with Talon of the Silver Hawk is him starting a new D&D game in the same world and is an improvement of quality over some earlier books, but is again, very YA
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May 29, 2023 06:13
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I'll always love the paragraph Brust wrote in one of his non-Taltos books where he explains the name of a town as it gets conquered over and over for a few hundred years by people who speak different languages and so the town's name goes from "ford" to "fordford" to "fordfordford" to "fordfordfordford" to "fordfordfordford bridge"
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May 30, 2023 05:59
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Yeah, I use Kobo and I'd say like 80% of the things that are on sale on Amazon are also on sale for Kobo
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Jun 7, 2023 02:22
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Major Ryan posted:Phlebas was the one I started and didn't like, skipped, and have now read everything else in the Culture series. So now I'm thinking it's worth going back to it for completeness, but I remember really not enjoying that book ~5 years ago. I believe that Consider Phlebas, Player of Games, and Use of Weapons were all written multiple years before Phlebas was published and that the publisher chose Phlebas first but all 3 got very heavily edited before publishing, but that Phlebas was the first to get a perspective from outside of the Culture
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Jun 21, 2023 19:13
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Hell yeah wasn't a response to the end of Baru 1, but the fact that they are starting Baru 2. Makes a lot of sense to me. I'm gonna "Hell yeah" when 4 comes.
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Jul 16, 2023 13:01
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Cpt. Mahatma Gandhi posted:I really need to check that series out. So, not exactly what you asked as it's not the deep sea but deep space, but Passage at Arms by Glen Cook is perhaps the most submarine-like sci fi book I've read. Been a while since I've read it but felt very claustrophobic
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Jul 22, 2023 20:55
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eXXon posted:Something mildly traumatic happens and someone makes a soothing tea, luxuriously using fresh leaves instead of the old batch that had been there for a week (but would normally have been used for another week, since the stuff is expensive as it's an obsession in that particular space empire). "That's not how tea works!! What the gently caress!", the reviewer sputtered. I feel you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXzoJin8-p0
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Aug 14, 2023 03:03
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cptn_dr posted:I can't speak for anything else in the post, but nearly every embassy I've ever dealt with IRL has had locals staffing it alongside the Ambassadors/mission staff from the country in question. I am a US citizen and I worked for the Indian Consulate for about 9 months where my job was 6 hours a day processing applications for Overseas Citizen of India documentation and then for 2 hours a day I was required to take off my dress shirt, where I was supposed to wear a heavy metal t-shirt underneath to look like a bouncer, and smoke a nicotine-free vape, wait for a car (driven by a guy from Nepal) to show up, then I'd open up a locked door and transfer 6 locked suitcases to the trunk (it was always 6, sometimes one or two would be clearly empty), hop in, and go to an off-site location where they'd do additional security checks if needed, phone/online customer support, and various other things. I would say maybe half the people working there were not Indian citizens. mdemone posted:I was in a restaurant once that had Hot Ham Water on the menu. I tried to order it but they said it was just a joke. I have a water carbonator thing where you put a mix of baking soda and citric acid into a compartment and close it up and then it will squirt some sacrificial water into there which generates CO2 and bubbles that CO2 around through a water bottle you hook up to the machine which will carbonate the water and every 4th of July and Labor Day I buy a couple packs of hot dogs, pour out the 30ish mL of packing water and add some fresh water to make a lightly hot dog-flavored carbonated water and bring it to whatever BBQ party I go to. It's both better and worse than it sounds. Better tasting, worse smelling, and also you don't want to drink it when you're actually eating a hot dog, and it for some reason makes everyone whose tried it not feel as hungry come dinner time unless they give it a couple hours, so they don't eat as much as they normally would then they are absolutely ravenously hungry later in the evening and if they're drinking then they often have drank on an empty stomach.
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Aug 15, 2023 05:16
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Ceebees posted:I don't want to take away from the daily deals, which i really do like seeing. Isn't that literally true, that he tried to switch from writing novels to writing screenplays, only sold the movie Robot Jox, then after about 7 years of not being able to sell another screenplay did Forever Peace and Forever Free to cash in before going back to writing with some effort again?
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Aug 17, 2023 06:45
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BadOptics posted:I would have never thought to be interested in reading fiction based on early 19th century sailing, but here I am ordering Master and Commander based off the thread's recommendations. I *did* love the movie, so pretty excited about going through all the novels. This may also get me to finish Hydrogen Sonata in a decent amount of time so I can get to M&C.... It's far inferior to A/M, but David Drake wrote a 13 book A/M in space series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCN_Series if you're feeling like more of the same tone after you finish
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Sep 3, 2023 23:24
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mystes posted:I guess GRRM is the person who actually uses a weird dos word processor but it's something even older than word perfect He got used to it when he was a TV script writer for the show Beauty and the Beast starring Linda Hamilton and Ron Perlman and he maintains an old computer from the late 80s/early 90s in order to keep running his word processor. He had several parts that failed while he was writing A Dance With Dragons and lost months of writing and then took him additional months to find someone who could source parts and fix his then nearly 20 year old machine.
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Sep 12, 2023 04:20
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branedotorg posted:is this one fantasy or urban fantasy? Urban Fantasy with some more regular fantasy according to Jacka. https://benedictjacka.co.uk/inheritance-of-magic/ That link about what it is also links to the first chapter to read online
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Oct 6, 2023 04:08
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The Sweet Hereafter posted:It really bugs me that just about all the urban fantasy set in the UK is set in London. I can't even think of any examples that aren't, would be open to any recommendations if anyone else can come up with some. I haven't read them yet but a friend recommended me the Endinburgh Nights series by TL Huchu which are presumably set outside of London
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Oct 17, 2023 08:58
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Aggro posted:Authors that I've really enjoyed, in no particular order: Ann Leckie, Anthony Ryan, Brandon Sanderson, Brent Weeks, Brian McClellan, Brian Staveley, Daniel O'Malley, Django Wexler, Joe Abercrombie, John Gwynne, Kameron Hurley, Mark Lawrence, Michael J. Sullivan (although honestly, each book has been worse than the last), N.K. Jemisin, Nicholas Eames, Richard Morgan (A Land Fit for Heroes), Richard Swan, Robert Jackson Bennett, Robin Hobb, and Sam Sykes, Scott Lynch. You can't fool me, it is in a particular order and the order is alphabetical by first name.
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Nov 20, 2023 03:44
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Curse of the Mistrwraith was my only did not finish of the year.
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Nov 28, 2023 07:00
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dang, it's a shame that the fred the vampire accountant series is kindle-exclusive starting at book 5. books being e-reader exclusive is dumb as gently caress and gently caress amazon for making that a thing.
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Dec 5, 2023 10:44
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I have been enjoying them as well, but I just finished book 4 on Monday and it turns out that starting at book 5, they go to Kindle Unlimited only, so the newest 4 books seem to have no legal option for me to read on my Kobo ereader.
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Dec 8, 2023 03:24
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Doktor Avalanche posted:there can also be a fake one invented by a german antisemitic christofascist lunatic and spread by the predictably complicit western media apparatus, conveniently resurrected in the last few weeks to counteract the public relations nightmare of the global hegemon's main ride-or-die partner being accused of genocide in international court (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) (USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)
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Jan 21, 2024 20:26
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A Sneaker Broker posted:War, Drama, Action, epicness. Passage at Arms by Glenn Cook is technically the 4th in a series but you really don't actually need to read the others beforehand unless you want to, it is essentially a high-stress submarine novel in a spaceship setting The Forever War by Joe Haldeman tells the story of a war between humanity and an alien species through the perspective of a soldier early in the war who also has to deal with the changes in society as time stands still for him when travelling to missions due to near-light speed travel but is passing back on Earth Armor by John Steakley a suit of power armor is discovered with the recorded memories of its former owner who participated in a war between humans and an insect-like alien species. It's focused on the psychological damage that violence inflicts
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Jan 31, 2024 08:55
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Speaking of "use publisher font" on Kobo, I've downloaded this and tossed it onto my Kobo and am reading it with publisher font:pradmer posted:Cradle, Foundation (#1-3) by Will Wight - FREE And it has made it so that every page break is between two paragraphs so that every new page starts a new paragraph, sometimes meaning there's like an inch of blank space at the bottom of a page so that the next page can start with a new paragraph. With an ebook it's not like page space is at a premium, but I don't think I've ever seen a book do that before.
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Feb 6, 2024 05:46
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To not offend the sponsors, is the suspicion from that member of the nomination committeequote:“Investment deals valued at approximately $1.09 billion were signed during the 81st World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) held in Chengdu.” But this has all been known from the start that it was the American and Canadians that removed nominees. They have been saying that from the start, even before they released emails showing it. The emails do show that none of the Chinese members of the nomination committee were involved at all though.
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Feb 15, 2024 05:53
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Even as much as I've enjoyed the Villeneuve Dune movies, I'm still skeptical about the upcoming HBO Max series about the origin of the Bene Gesserit. But I'd absolutely love Villeneuve doing Messiah and Children, give us the god emperor!!
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Mar 5, 2024 04:41
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I add books to my wishlist for my Kobo ereader and then forget about them until pradmer posts a sale and I check if anything they posted is on my wishlist.
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Mar 24, 2024 03:50
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Mikojan posted:I got recommended Ender's Game by a friend. I checked it out and apparently it's a series as well so unsure where to start. It's a book aimed at middle schoolers by a conservative Mormon homophobe who mostly keeps his opinions out of the book but if you're 13 you might enjoy it. There's a movie you can watch, it gets the story across. The sequels to Ender's Game are all bad. Posting on forums saves humanity.
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Mar 26, 2024 08:34
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LifeLynx posted:Same here with the semi-transparent pages. This was a book I bought while debating an ereader, and at $25, I considered that it's 1/4th the price of a cheaper Kobo. Looks like I should have gone with the other choice. Might return the book, it's distractingly bad quality. I've had well-loved library books that are more pleasant to hold. I absolutely love my Kobo, 99% of Pradmer's sales posts are on Kobo as well as Amazon, it has direct library integration without having to use a computer as an intermediary to load your library ebook rentals, and I've had mine for 7 years and it still has great battery life. One big downside is that it's hard to get any books that are published on Amazon Unlimited, which I sometimes run into from recommendations in this thread, Fred the Zombie Accountant or whatever it was called was my most recent run-in with that.
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Mar 30, 2024 06:32
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Ceebees posted:Pradmer i swear i buy a bunch of the things you post and am not just here to rag on your suggestions, but hey, this series is... let's say $3 is about the most i'd suggest paying for it. I believe it was written serially or something, and ran out of cash at the end, because the last 30 pages of a trilogy is not the right place to introduce, and then resolve, a new villain who was secretly behind all the problems. It has some kinda interesting ideas, some solid character work, but the plot ultimately doesn't really pay off at all. It wasn't written serially, it was a kickstarter, but you are correct that he ran out of cash and had to wrap it up and get it (self)published. Then he did a decent standalone, A Key, an Egg, an Unfortunate Remark, followed by one of the worst books I've ever read, One Man, and I only finished that out of sheer curiosity because the plot was so blatantly copied from the 2010 Korean movie The Man from Nowhere and I wanted to see if he tried to deviate from that even a little bit (he did not). That said, I enjoyed both Iron Gate and Flood Circle.
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Apr 14, 2024 01:26
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FPyat posted:The downside of their success is that some Western readers bring themselves to the conclusion that the books are written that way because it is the conventional fashion for Chinese literature to have bad characterization. It doesn't help that the other main Chinese SF/F series that gets recommended is Bridge of Birds
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Apr 26, 2024 10:37
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KKKLIP ART posted:If the author for The Traitor Baru Cormorant still pokes around in this thread, just wanted to let you know ive recommended the series to a few folks and they've really enjoyed it. Hope you are doing well! They literally posted on this page like 9 posts up from you They're a great thread regular
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Apr 30, 2024 01:04
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