Return of the Book Thread

[NowhereMan]

Just finished Sanderson's Way of Kings. It's an easy read but something about it just left me feeling a little empty.

Also, I'm growing increasingly impatient with the high fantasy 'invent shit for the sake of it' syle of writing. I don't need an author to invent a million different types of food, and arcane clothing systems, and unimportant cultiral norms and stuff to make a story interesting. Maybe it's all building to something, but I can barely even register the dozen or so different variations of human he seems to want to invent. I suspect most of that stuff could be streamlined and the book wouldn't suffer a jot.

Agreed, while I did enjoy the books keeping track of what the fuck everything actually is was painful.

And I've read neckbeards going on rants about the fact a character in that used cologne, which totally destroyed their immersion what with it specifically being the name of a French city and therefore totally inappropriate for the setting  People have different expectations and I think Sanderson usually does quite well at not making shit up for the sake of making it up or at least doing a fairly good job of explaining what something is when he brings in some made up thing. Way of Kings is fun but I think as a book it suffers somewhat for being the start to a massive series. There's a lot left unexplored and the ending is little flat. That said the first Mistborn book had the opposite problem of being a totally complete novel in and of itself, so the following two books in the trilogy there feel kind of tacked on.

[Khaldun]

This Quantum Thief Trilogy is hard fucking going.

I gave up on it. I wanted to like it. I just couldn't.

[K9]

Writers don't write for you. They write what is interesting to them and hope someone else will like it enough to pay for it. If every fantasy writer just set their story in a proto-typical Middle Earth, many fewer books would be written.

Eh to a point; past a point writing just feels self-indulgent. Sanderson is right on the brink of what I can tolerate.

There are plenty of great authors who can worldbuild without excessive invention, and there are times when rich invention only makes the world seem richer - the Harry Potter books are a good example of this.

As I said, I liked it enought to want to read the follow-up books.

[RhyssaFireheart]

My weekend is set.

[BobtheSomething]

This Quantum Thief Trilogy is hard fucking going.

What makes it hard?

I just picked up the first book hoping for some fun nano-cyber-posthuman wackiness.  Would I do better reading something else, like some Stross?

[Ironwood]

I don't mind sci-fi making shit up.  I don't even mind them talking in a foreign language, if that's what works.

What I don't like is not really giving you sufficient context to 'grasp' what all the new sci-fi words actually fucking MEAN, rendering the initial chapters a fucking wade through linguistic self-congratulatory wank and then only later things being clear.  Give us some better fucking building for what's going on in your fucking head mate and stop thinking you're the next greatest thing because we require a fucking check sheet to grasp a paragraph.  If I want to read about twishing his platters at the zarboss, I NEED SOME FUCKING CONTEXT, YOU DICK.

Also, stop just throwing online gaming culture in there to prove that you're an utterly miserable smug cunt.  I look forward to the chapter about Ethics in Journalism.  (No joke, one of the characters turned out to be a surprise journalist at a gaming convention.  I almost laughed.  Well, smiled.  Well, stopped my frown from reading this fucking book.)

I may give up.

[Khaldun]

I have made it through stuff that was really hard going when the quality of the linguistic invention going on was very high and enjoyed it--when in fact it was the point in part of the book. Riddley Walker is a great example of that, or if we're stretching the genre boundaries, Clockwork Orange. But the Quantum Thief struck me the same way that John Harrison's Light did--most of what it was trying to do to say, "It's the transhuman future, man" was just confusing and wearisome, as if making it confusing and wearisome was a way to convince us how posthuman and futuristic it was. Lots of other folks have messed around with some of these ideas and still been pretty readable--John C. Wright and Walter Jon Williams, fo example.

[Ironwood]

Yup.

[Ironwood]

Finished all 3 of the Quantum books and they....passed the time.  My criticisms above resonate through all three, so don't read if you dislike being frustrated.  It's like highbrow Di Griz.

I've also got the 3rd Half book (Half a War) and, frankly, it really, really jumps the shark.  The 'modern' hints throughout the first two books come home to roost heavily and the main character basically turns into Glotka for no reason whatsoever.

A poor end.

[NowhereMan]

I've started (finished the first two) of Charlie Stross' The Laundry Files. It's fun, light urban fantasy. The basic premise is mathematics can act as a Platonic bridge between different dimensions and so basically can be used to do magic and governments have set up super secret intelligence services aimed specifically at dealing with these kind of things. The protagonist is a geek who ran the wrong sort of interesting formulas and got snatched up by the British version of these before he accidentally destroyed Birmingham and now works for them. The geekery can be a bit strong and the computer programmes as magic thing sometimes feels a bit forced (too much 'I had to install a firewall hack to navigate through the nebulous thaumaturgic virus scanners' type thing) but if you can tolerate that they're fun and competently written. Each one also seems to have a bit of a theme to it, the second one is semi Bond pastiche (with an actual relevant plot reason for it) and he throws a Bond title into the dialogue once a chapter or so.

If you're looking for something light I think most people on this board would enjoy it. If you've enjoyed the Dresden Files its got a similar vibe.

[Ironwood]

Reading the John Meaney Ragnarok stuff.  It's ... not good.

[K9]

I finally got around to reading Heinlein's 'Starship Troopers', it's genuinely a great novel. The thing that blows is how timeless it feels; he's done a remarkable job of making it about the human experience, rather than all the technical gizmos, and as such it doesn't suffer in the way a lot of older sci-fi does when it posits some futuristic version of a technology which went defunct since publication. It's interesting to contrast it to the film; I think the film did well to go in the direction it did, but I'm enjoying the book as a more personal look at Juan Rico's experience.

[MahrinSkel]

Heinlein has gotten a bad rap lately, probably because his role in inspiring the survivalist movement that morphed into ten kinds of right-wing crazy is better remembered than his role in inspiring the hippie communes and 'free love' cultures.

He was a bundle of contradictions, and his later stuff, after his second stroke, kept the ability to string words together but lost the grand vision. Everything from his peak in the 60's holds up well, especially the Boy Scout stuff (which Starship Troopers arguably fits into). There are worse things that a young boy could aspire to than being a Heinlein Hero, although eventually you should grow out of it.

--Dave

EDIT: And Stross is great, even where I disagree with him on politics and futurism his logic is sound. I'd love to get a chance to have VERY LOUD conversations over drinks with him someday. Probably the best Sci-Fi author right now.

[Morat20]

I've started (finished the first two) of Charlie Stross' The Laundry Files. It's fun, light urban fantasy. The basic premise is mathematics can act as a Platonic bridge between different dimensions and so basically can be used to do magic and governments have set up super secret intelligence services aimed specifically at dealing with these kind of things. The protagonist is a geek who ran the wrong sort of interesting formulas and got snatched up by the British version of these before he accidentally destroyed Birmingham and now works for them. The geekery can be a bit strong and the computer programmes as magic thing sometimes feels a bit forced (too much 'I had to install a firewall hack to navigate through the nebulous thaumaturgic virus scanners' type thing) but if you can tolerate that they're fun and competently written. Each one also seems to have a bit of a theme to it, the second one is semi Bond pastiche (with an actual relevant plot reason for it) and he throws a Bond title into the dialogue once a chapter or so.

If you're looking for something light I think most people on this board would enjoy it. If you've enjoyed the Dresden Files its got a similar vibe.

Be aware that Bob Howard is a very, very, unreliable narrator.

Stross drops the "in the style of" stuff around the third or fourth book. The first two are pastiches to famous writers in the spy genre.

[Chimpy]

So I think it was here I saw someone recommend The Lies of Locke Lamora, the other day I was looking for something to read and my library's ebook site had it available so I checked it out. Really enjoyed it, ended up reading the next two books right after.

If you haven't read it, I would recommend.

[Morat20]

So...has anyone read the Three Body Problem? What did you think?

[Quinton]

I need to finish it.  About halfway through, iirc.  It hasn't really grabbed me, but I don't hate it.  But now I've had it set aside for a month or two and read a number of books since then, the cost of context switching back to it has been high enough to deter me from jumping back in.

[dd0029]

I need to finish it.  About halfway through, iirc.  It hasn't really grabbed me, but I don't hate it.  But now I've had it set aside for a month or two and read a number of books since then, the cost of context switching back to it has been high enough to deter me from jumping back in.

I am in much the same situation. There are some neat things. The translator's footnotes are handy for all of the cultural context stuff that shows up. This is hard science stuff, I just hit the spot where he explains the three-body problem and I just flat out don't get it from his explaination and am not interested enough to read outside for it. The reading experience reminds me of how it's felt reading golden age SF on occasion. I am definitely an outsider looking in and was very aware of that.

I will say that it's probably worth it to power through if you read a fair bit of SF. It's novel enough and the basic hard SF premise is thin on the ground any more. If you're just a casual SF reader, I'd say only stick with it if you're hooked when you get to Wang Miao as the protagonist.

[Quinton]

I find the virtual/online world bit more frustrating than the hard science bits, tbh.  Like many virtual worlds in fiction, the scale and mechanics just seem all out of joint with reality.  Some interesting ideas but surrounded in highly immersion-breaking (for me) details.

[Chimpy]

So I read Cary Elwes's memoir about the making of The Princess Bride last night. It was really good and I recommend it if you are a fan of the movie (who isn't?). It has testimonials from several of the other cast members interspersed throughout so it is not just a "this is how I saw things" kind of book.

[shiznitz]

We don't talk a lot about non-fiction here but if you have any interest in the Old West and the Indians, I have been moved and fascinated by Empire of the Summer Moon by Gwynne.  One of the baddass-est Comanches was half white!

[Khaldun]

Somewhat scholarly, but Pekka Hamalainen's The Comanche Empire is really compelling, I think.

[NowhereMan]

Totally out of whack with everything else being mentioned, I just read a totally braindead warporn book called Ghost Fleet. It's a WWIII hypothetical future thing, where China has been taken over by a military/business alliance that has turned them into the terrifyingly efficient force US right wingers always thought they were and the US is and old, worn down power made up of politicians and military leaders entirely too trusting to international diplomacy and adherence to the existing world order to see the threat until its too late. Lots of pop-culture references and current next-gen technology being pulled out to save the day type stuff with a small smattering of 'war is hell' moments and, for pretty much no reason, a couple of Russians now and again.

I'm guessing if you're familiar with this kind of book at all it's probably pretty by the numbers stuff but I enjoyed it on the level of all the pre-WWI novels about dastardly huns launching sneak sea invasion of the British Isles by plucky young writers out for a spot of boating. It's trying to be about WWIII when it's really just WWII only just in the Pacific and with the Chinese instead of the Japanese. It's also much more limited in scope  It's enjoyable except for where he tries to tackle some more serious themes (Racism against American born Chinese people!) where the writing just makes the whole thing horrible hamfisted. If you know anything about naval combat or care in anyway about international politics this will be more like bizarre fantasy than anything else but the pacing at least is good and the basic writing is competent.

[Margalis]

Does his work get any better than Snowcrash? While it had some interesting parts, I wasn't completely thrilled by it.  I love interesting settings and world building, but there just seemed to be too much tangential nonsense that took away from the plot. 

The actual plot of Snowcrash is laid out in one long data dump involving a guy talking to a virtual librarian or something IIRC. I would almost say that the plot itself is tangential nonsense and that the non-plot stuff is the strength of the book.

[Viin]

Just finished Starship Troopers, which is an excellent book. I can't believe I waited this long to read it. I enjoy the movie quite a lot (one of my favorites) but the book is better on so many levels.

Also finished the first 2 books in the Black Fleet trilogy by Joshua Dalzelle. I enjoyed his previous series, Omega Force, too but Black Fleet reads better and seems a bit more mature. As always, space battles and tactics is fun! (Plus he portrays very well how boring/wearing it is waiting forever to get into engagement range with enemy ships in a solar system, and how the "gravity well" will work against you if you aren't prepared to use it).

I've been picking away at a Top 100 Sci-Fi/Fantasy Book List, so I also read The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. This is pretty good, though you can tell it was a bunch of short stories. It was really less about Mars and more about examining humankind from a different vantage point. Amusing that the Martians didn't believe the first humans to land were from another planet.

[Margalis]

Allow me to sperge out a bit - that list is terrible. It's a poll of NPR listeners so it's heavily biased towards things that have been turned into movies and TV, books with mass appeal, etc.

A great example of this is "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?" People know it because it's the novel Blade Runner is based on but if you asked people who have read Dick what his best novels are it might not crack the top 5. (I would put it behind UBIK, Three Stigmata, and Man in a High Castle at the least)

The Thrawn Trilogy. The Thrawn Trilogy!

This list looks a lot better to me. (It's pure SF though)

http://scifilists.sffjazz.com/lists_books_rank1.html

I mean, if you like stuff like Star Wars books I guess that list is fine. (Read that with super-snob voice)

[HaemishM]

Just finished the somewhat convoluted but still very good Excession by Iain Banks in my attempts to get through the Culture books. I'm loving the Culture series, by the way, so thanks for all the recommendations.

I started on Ready Player One because a buddy of mine got it in a Geekbox and already had it. Since I've heard so many people talk about this book over the last year, I figured why not? What... the... fuck? I'm 50 pages in and not liking it at all. It feels like one of those hack comedians whose entire routine is based on making references to obscure pop culture and then saying "Ha! You remember that? Remember?" The plot feels trite as shit and if you removed the cultural references, it feels like it might fit in a pamphlet. Does it get better? I will say I like the idea of "the stacks" as an illustration of how things have gone to shit, but not much else in the setup so far.

[Shannow]

Finished 'Ready Player One'.

That was a popcorn movie in a book. The whole '80s thing was

 YOU WERE WARNED.

(Hopefully Pixels killed any plans of making a movie of this)

[MahrinSkel]

I think Excession is probably the peak of the Culture series. Hydrogen Sonata had potential, but he was writing it when he got his diagnosis and you can tell the last part of it is kind of phoned in (Chekhov's Violin remains above the mantle).

--Dave

[Johny Cee]

Allow me to sperge out a bit - that list is terrible. It's a poll of NPR listeners so it's heavily biased towards things that have been turned into movies and TV, books with mass appeal, etc.

A great example of this is "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?" People know it because it's the novel Blade Runner is based on but if you asked people who have read Dick what his best novels are it might not crack the top 5. (I would put it behind UBIK, Three Stigmata, and Man in a High Castle at the least)

The Thrawn Trilogy. The Thrawn Trilogy!

This list looks a lot better to me. (It's pure SF though)

http://scifilists.sffjazz.com/lists_books_rank1.html

I mean, if you like stuff like Star Wars books I guess that list is fine. (Read that with super-snob voice)

Lists are always stupid, unless you just use it as a broad guideline.

I don't find the NPR list more terrible than the norm for lists.  Tie-in fiction is always an issue, with SFF, as there is so much of it and it sells well.  Throwing a bone to Star Wars and DnD is fine, if it is viewed as a "got people started in reading" vote.  Some of the others are weirder.  Unlike the Hugos, they chose to include Pratchett and Banks.  

The love for Sanderson?  Malazan and Rothfoss on the list?  Soooo much Gaiman, Stephenson.  I like both, but some of their entries are foregettable.  Card should have been on for Ender, maybe Speaker, but Xenocide?  Jacquelin fucking Carey?  (I've read her, it's decent stuff if you ignore the sex/bondage.  Were they that hard up for female authors?)  

Jim Butcher?  I like Dresden, but fuck if that guy doesn't owe his whole schtick to reading Cook's Garret books and Laurel Hamilton (who is batshit insane but probably deserves some kind of recognition for breaking out the hard-boilded/magic detective).  Same thing for Malazan....  the first few books were equal parts Donaldson and Cook.


Lists that just rank SF have the problem of looking like they were compiled by people who have been in a bunker for the past 30 years and recently emerged.  Sooo much 50s to 70s.  And holy shit, the SF classics could be clunky.  Great ideas, but the writing ability was mediocre at best for some of the "greats".  


Either list is still better than some forum posters list where half the entries are recent books in the present "hot" sub-genre.  Example: http://www.sffworld.com/forum/threads/from-tolkien-to-today-the-path-of-epic-fantasy-in-10-books-or-less.47326/

Those lists are supposed to be influential works, and you will have multiple entries from the last 10 years.  

[Viin]

Yay more lists!

Based on the recommendation of that NPR list, I picked up Nine Princes in Amber by Zelazny. It was very good. So good, that I bought the 10 book mega book which is the size of a small child. I was forced to, since the other 9 books aren't out for Kindle yet. Guess I won't be taking it on the plane with me.  

[shiznitz]

Finished 'Ready Player One'.

That was a popcorn movie in a book. The whole '80s thing was

 YOU WERE WARNED.

(Hopefully Pixels killed any plans of making a movie of this)

If a Ready Player One movie happens, it is guaranteed to be only loosely based on the book. The 80s stuff is just too mega retro at this point.

[HaemishM]

Considering the author was a screenwriter first, I'd be surprised if it didn't get picked up. Of course, since most of the first 50-60 pages is all tell and little show, I'm not sure how good a movie it'd be.

[Shannow]

Unfortunately Spielberg is still moving forward with this by the news reports.

[Rendakor]

Started reading the Harry Potter series, after marathoning the movies with the fiance. For D&D-lite, they're pretty entertaining; I'm halfway through Chamber of Secrets. Character bloat is less of an issue in the books; the last few movies I kept asking "Who's that? Have we met him?" every other scene.