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SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:Does anyone have suggestions of books similar to The Lies of Locke Lamora? I'm not sure what about it, maybe it's just the heist aspect because I also liked the Great Train Robbery. Godstalk by PC Hodgell is a fantasy thief book. The sequels are different and become progressively worse, but I like Godstalk as a stand alone.
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Oct 7, 2019 23:06
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orange sky posted:So, I finally got around to reading Bridge of Birds and oh man, after reading semi serious stuff for years it was hard for me to grasp the tone of the book, I kept falling into the trap of trying to seriously understand it all, instead of just... Enjoying the crazy stuff? I can't really explain it, I think until the end I never got the way to read it right, I'll probably need a reread. It's so different to everything I'm used to. I can see how A Brief Interlude for Murder and The Triumph of Henpecked Ho can be hard for some people to vibe on the same level as The Art of Porcupine Cookery. It's best on a reread when you can enjoy the three part structure, the hidden main plot points, the repetitions, the language (and the alliteration) without having to worry about figuring out what's going on with the episodic story chapters and how they fit into the overall quite intricately plotted structure. Apparatchik Magnet fucked around with this message at 19:46 on Oct 8, 2019 |
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Oct 8, 2019 19:43
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Rereading Gideon the Ninth, and I wonder how far to take the symbolism of the names (largely Biblical with some classical influences) and Foucalt's Pendulum-style numerology. Is it, for example, a coincidence that the house necromancers with the most on the ball are multiples of three, and the two who succeed are from houses that are powers of three? That the bad guy is lucky number 7? If one assumes this is a future earth and these names are deliberate carry overs by the Emperor from the lost past, then probably not a coincidence that we have some trinity stuff going on. It's also interesting to see this story unfold when you already understand the players and their personalities. There are plenty of hints at the right times (houses three and seven get held up in orbit over irregularities, but only three's oddity is immediately explained, Teacher and another priest have a side bar conversation about the implied failure of having two necromancers but only one cavalier, etc.) to guess at least some of what is going on. Apparatchik Magnet fucked around with this message at 02:06 on Oct 20, 2019 |
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Oct 19, 2019 22:06
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Minor Gideon the Ninth issue on the reread, but I wonder how water is going to interact with necromancy/Emperor-vision as a plot point. Teacher hates water, Harrow was taught only to discuss super secrets when surrounded by salt water, and the Fifth House are "Watchers over the River" which seems to be a metaphor for the division between the living and the spirit world. Water seems to definitely be doing something to counteract some First House/Emperor-derived powers, even if a general anti-necromancy effect is less likely since no one other than Teacher remarked upon it and Harrow doesn't seem to know any practical reason for the superstition she inherited from her parents. Edit: And the Locked Tomb is surrounded by salt water that moves with an unexplainable current. Apparatchik Magnet fucked around with this message at 00:08 on Oct 22, 2019 |
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Oct 21, 2019 18:44
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CaptainCrunch posted:My Gideon “issue.” I think it was willing vs forced. One fights you, one integrates pretty smoothly.
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Oct 22, 2019 02:01
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coolusername posted:Anyone have recs for books similar to Gideon in the vein of 'Snarky but not intolerable protagonist on an adventure with a buddy s/he has a complex relationship with?' in sci-fi or fantasy genre? Vlad Taltos and Loiosh?
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Oct 22, 2019 23:37
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(Gideon)Riot Carol Danvers posted:I thought the book made it clear through dialogue that they'll see each other in the end, and I don't just mean the "see you on the flip side, sugarlips" bit. Why does she know Ruth 1:17 if this isn’t a future Earth, he wondered.
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Oct 23, 2019 13:08
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Qwertycoatl posted:Why does she know Poochie died on the way back to his home planet if this isn't a future earth? Some things span all cultures and are timelessly inherent to the human experience.
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Oct 23, 2019 17:30
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Riot Carol Danvers posted:As I've never read a single page of the NIV Bible, I didn't know that was anything other than made up whole cloth. Me either, but I could tell it had to be either a line of poetry or scripture and I did know about Google.
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Oct 23, 2019 17:31
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Riot Carol Danvers posted:Hrm yes clearly an author could never come up with some in-universe scripture or poetry and clearly I should spend my time googling that type of stuff instead of enjoying the story. Yes, it would definitely be a reasonable assumption that in a book whose most notable quips are all stolen from internet pop culture that a touching bit of poetry recited at a climactic death was an original piece. Thus the wise man bowed his head solemnly and spoke.
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Oct 23, 2019 18:49
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cptn_dr posted:Oh, is Alex Verus Baru-like realpolitik? I'd thought it was kind of Dresden-y, but if it's more like Baru I'd be interested. It's Dresden if the White Council periodically alternated between hiring him under the table for secret jobs, trying to assassinate him deniably, issuing official death warrants, and formally appointing him to temporary Council offices, while Dresden was also regularly killing warlocks (and the occasional corrupt Warden) in job lots because they won't leave him alone. And instead of being one of the strongest wizards of his generation, he's one of the weakest but with this One Weird Trick. I still wouldn't consider it grim realpolitik in tone, though. Apparatchik Magnet fucked around with this message at 21:39 on Oct 23, 2019 |
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Oct 23, 2019 21:36
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Kassad posted:In hindsight, the bit about the Muslim planet in the first book was kind of hinting at things to come. It also makes sense considering his portrayal of the evil Catholic church in the last 2 books, he's just doing the same thing as other vaguely anti-religious people in ignoring that Muslims are a religious minority with nowhere near the power and influence of Christian churches. Yeah, he was really out there with his wild speculations about a majority Muslim society even existing, let alone how it might behave.
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Oct 25, 2019 15:01
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withak posted:Just finished this and anyone not currently reading it is Making A Mistake. Endorse, it’s good, folks.
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Oct 28, 2019 12:30
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The best thing about Andrew Skinner's Steel Frame is that the characters regularly refer to "Christs" (one one occasion expounding "both of them) when cursing, showing that Skinner was prescient about Kanye's recent developments and where they're going to end up.
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Oct 29, 2019 18:36
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Larry Parrish posted:Steel Frame was way better than I thought it would be. It came across as a Luminous Dead-style recommendation, but it's actually quite good and not disappointing at all.
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Oct 29, 2019 20:26
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StrixNebulosa posted:I don't see why that's a bad thing, as I loved Luminous Dead too. Luminous Dead is very much a chick book, for both good and ill. Not my kind of thing.
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Oct 29, 2019 20:36
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StrixNebulosa posted:What does chick book mean? I'm confused here, like... it features women? It features emotions? What? Like a chick flick, it's of interest largely to women and assumes a certain psychological viewpoint. Yes, the emotional stuff was the biggest turn off. I was flabbergasted by the motivations of the mastermind and appalled by the reactions of the protagonist. I couldn't even imagine a "normal" person (which I belatedly realized meant male viewpoint) behaving in such a fashion, but could just about stretch my imagination to cover some of my more vapid girlfriends doing that.
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Oct 29, 2019 21:00
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The Luminous Dead is Gone Girl in a Cave, but with all female characters and a higher body count.
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Oct 29, 2019 21:28
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:I consider romance (or porn books) as chick books, but that's just me. Yeah, that's what made this very slightly interesting, branching out into a an overemotional individual sacrificing the lives of several people via lies and manipulation on a quixotic quest to erase her childhood mommy issues via a bizarre goal's whose symbolic value was questionable even as its practical value was nil. With a better awareness by the author of how batshit the premise is and a realistic reaction from the protagonist, rather than becoming an after the fact coconspirator due to her own codependence issues, it might have had some payoff. Instead it just becomes two emotionally crippled people with bizarre motivations chained to unlikely domain competence do a thing. Apparatchik Magnet fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Oct 29, 2019 |
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Oct 29, 2019 23:09
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Queer Salutations posted:Labelling any specific genre as being for [GENDER] is incredibly reductive and bad. Do you think the romance publishers are leaving any money on the table by not marketing to men?
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Oct 29, 2019 23:19
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StrixNebulosa posted:An "overemotional individual" .... That's one hell of a thing to say after your earlier comments. How is this descent into the cave any less logical than famed mountain climbers ascending "because it's there"? What's batshit about the premise in that context? Humans are emotion, and attach emotions to goals that don't make sense. If your parents died a decade ago in a cave, you think it would be psychologically healthy to send seven or eight successive individuals, most of whom died, under false premises on a mission that is actually insanely more dangerous than they think and whose actual purpose is just to find some bodies to give a spoiled rich kid some closure? She should be in jail after her psychiatric treatment is done. This is the rich girl managerial equivalent to a serial killer. Hell, since those guys get marriage proposals in prison I guess I shouldn't be surprised others write positive reviews of this book.
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Oct 29, 2019 23:32
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General Battuta posted:Authors must approve of all their character’s behavior because people can only write things they think are Correct. Beep boop. Huh? I don't care if the author thinks the characters' actions are Correct, I care that she erroneously thinks they are Interesting and Believable. Use of Weapons, great book. Zakalwe, great character. Very male, incidentally.
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Oct 30, 2019 00:11
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World War Z probably deserves a “most influential” discussion, and it feels SF (and definitely not science fiction) more than horror adjacent.
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Oct 31, 2019 14:13
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Proteus Jones posted:How so? I mean, I liked the Ken Burns "oral history of the zombie war" vibe it had. But other than that, it was a fairly mediocre zombie story. What about it has influenced subsequent works? Where did it fall in the larger cultural moment of zombies? I agree there's probably not some larger fantasy movement inspired by it, but I had this sense it was toward the front rather than the middle of the zombies everywhere cultural phase. On the zombie fantasy books front there's Mira Grant stuff, which I haven't read but seems to have sold a lot, and Peter Clines' Ex- stuff, which I have read but wouldn't call great or guess was hugely successful commercially. It's hard to even say what's influential in fantasy books because there's so much being published and so little of it read in this thread. It feels like fewer and fewer books break through with reasonable readership, and on my rare visits to a physical bookstore I see that 90% of the books on the SF shelves are those I've never heard of and never will again. Apparatchik Magnet fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Oct 31, 2019 |
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Oct 31, 2019 14:49
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Next Murderbot apparently got moved to May 5th, not sure what the previous release date was. And upon further review, Gideon the Ninth is bad. ToxicFrog posted:I'm not sure I'd file either of those as fantasy; Ex-Heroes is the eclectic grab bag of superscience, magic, demons, and steroid abuse that's typical of the superhero genre, just run through a zombie apocalypse, and Newsflesh is more of a political thriller set in near-future post-zombie¹ America than anything else -- Seanan McGuire mostly writes urban fantasy, but that's why her zombie books use a pen name. Fair. Apparatchik Magnet fucked around with this message at 18:48 on Oct 31, 2019 |
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Oct 31, 2019 18:46
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Thanks to whoever mentioned A Night in the Lonesome October last week. I appreciate that Zelazny wrote a near shaggy dog story narrated by a shaggy dog.
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Nov 5, 2019 21:47
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nessin posted:Anyone know of at least some passable campy high action space opera books/series that have come out in the past few years? I really crave a new Star of the Guardian/Deerstalker/Star Wars-ish kinda book. Empress of Forever.
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Nov 11, 2019 15:00
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On the vaguely related non-fiction front, I'm currently reading The Ego Tunnel and it makes the divided consciousness/problem solving of the octopus minds in Children of Ruin easier to grasp intuitively. I should probably reread Blindsight after I'm done.
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Nov 12, 2019 22:20
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90s Cringe Rock posted:battlecruisers are fast and have good guns but don't have the armour of the heavier ships how can you be sure
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Nov 12, 2019 22:31
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I've gone through about three periods of trying to find John M. Ford books after reading The Last Hot Time, so I'm super thrilled to hear the old stuff is coming back and some new stuff published for the first time. It occurs to me that The Last Hot Time's opening, which I found gripping, will have less impact on younger readers who never had a Casio digital watch with that block typeface and won't quite understand what it is meant to look like when the time changes to RAGE and FEAR. Although I guess they can still write 80085 on a calculator to get a similar effect.
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Nov 15, 2019 16:17
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The_White_Crane posted:Yes. I think it had a weird feel to it, but I was ok with it. Like a less bonkers Library at Mount Char? That comparison doesn't really make any sense when I think about it, but it's what my subconscious kicked up.
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Nov 18, 2019 19:37
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Basically, yea. General Battuta posted:Noted literary failures and reprehensible Mary Sues: Achilles, Sherlock Holmes, Jesus of Nazareth The son of a god and the Son of God are "unrealistically" perfect in the context of their stories? The previous crying about the internet dude bro Force Awakens complaints faces the problem that their use of the term was perfectly apt, as we didn't see (and still haven't seen) any explanation for why Rey is so instantly much better at this stuff than the novice jedi we've previously seen. If the other movies didn't exist we could just assume that instant supercompetency is a feature of some particularly gifted jedi way out on the right end of the bell curve. But we instead had context that makes that hard to swallow.
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Nov 19, 2019 19:14
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Hiro Protagonist posted:Speaking of stuff I didn't like that a lot of people did, can someone explain to me why Ancillary Justice was such a big deal? I mean, the use of gender-neutral she/her was an interesting idea that I think helped me reconsider some subconscious sexist assumptions I have when reading, but I didn't really enjoy anything else. It felt like the present storyline spoiled the entirety of the past storyline, and the present storyline was a lot of meandering until we got to the assassination attempt. Maybe I'm just not remembering everything, but I feel like it's success was entirely due to the pronoun usage and some admittedly cool tricks with narration from a hive-mind perspective, not the world or the characters. This is correct. The sequels were liked because people have an apparent passion for tea. Certainly few other merits suggested themselves.
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Dec 4, 2019 22:53
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Wolpertinger posted:Well, I just finished The Light of All That Falls by James Islington, which was the final book in his Licanius trilogy. The series had some weak spots, I admit, but drat, what an ending and a generally entertaining series. The series starts off looking like a cliche 'magic users are oppressed by humans who hate and fear them' story and ends up hiding a twisty story about if free will even exists in a world where people can and do see the future with absolute clarity and that future cannot be avoided no matter what you do and no matter how hard you try, and to what lengths people will go to try and avoid it. Free will doesn’t exist in any other worlds, so I’m not sure why it would be a question in this one.
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Dec 11, 2019 15:11
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my bony fealty posted:the dumbest thing is people who actually research sex will tell you that it's very much not a clear cut binary. all these fuckers hiding behind science when the actual science says the opposite of what they use to justify their bigotry Let me blow your mind: it's true to say that "human beings have five fingers per hand" not withstanding some fringe cases of six fingered people. We don't need to take the six-fingered lobby seriously and waste time changing social definitions to make them happy, even if we shouldn't be rude to them about their unusual condition. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Dec 20, 2019 17:43
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Sex is about sexual reproduction. There are two sexes involved in sexual reproduction. In some rare cases there are also binary sexed individuals (who produce both gametes) or unsexed individuals (who produce no gametes). In other rare cases, there are people in one of these categories who feel like they belong to one of the other categories. This is separate from which of these categories they actually occupy for the purposes of sexual reproduction. All of these people deserve respect, but not all of their views about how to classify themselves or humanity deserve similar respect. The vast majority of humanity understands this. Science fiction novels, of course, can be an interesting way to intellectually play in areas where those false classifications can be true. Can anyone recommend some good ones along those lines? (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Dec 20, 2019 18:59
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There are a couple of follow ups to Iron Dragon’ Daughter set in the same world.
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Dec 23, 2019 01:49
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Sextro posted:Last time I read a female author she turned out to be a centrist and a terf to boot Name???
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Dec 25, 2019 07:15
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It would be hilarious if original Mr. Avasarala came back for season 5.
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Dec 29, 2019 18:47
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StrixNebulosa posted:I'm reading Bright of the Sky by Kay Kenyon and while I'm digging the setting so far - a future where everyone is guaranteed basic income, food, shelter....god it's a utopia. Ahem. While I'm digging the setting I am not enjoying how all of the pov characters so far think it's demeaning to live on the "dole."  What kind of person doesn't think it's demeaning to live on the dole?
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Dec 31, 2019 18:39
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