Return of the Book Thread

[Boedha]

Going to try Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth. Will report back.

I enjoyed this book and the sequel quite a bit.  It's very weird in a fun way.

Same reception here. Weird is exactly the right word.

[Count Nerfedalot]

I haven't seen it mentioned, so it's probably not good, but does anyone know anything about The Secret of Askir series by German author Richard Schwartz?

[lamaros]

Finally finished the expanse series. Gee they held on a bit tight there at the end. Quite slow and boring and.. boring. Certainly the worst book in the series, but they rounded it out well enough that it wasn't completely unsatisfying.

[Khaldun]

Just finished the last book too. I didn't love it but I don't think it fucked up the landing, if you know what I mean. It's hard to go out to the scale of action and problem that they did and come out with anything remotely satisfying. See for further reference the resolution of the Shadow War on Babylon 5.

[lamaros]

This is exactly what it felt like to me too.

I think concept wise they stuck the landing. The writing quality was pretty lax tho. I especially got bored with how they rewrote everything from the other persons PoV each chapter change. So repetitive and.. unrewarding. And the Kit chapters were just sentimental fluff.

[NowhereMan]

Been reading more trashy WH40k stuff. Twice Dead King has just had the second part of it's 2 parter released and it's fun sci-fi even if you're not a 40k nerd. The focus is on a young prince of an obscure Necron dynasty and does a fun job of exploring a post-'human' existence and part of a race that is beyond imagining hierarchical with nothing left to sustain them beyond celebrating lost glory. Also most of them are slipping into senility with a healthy dose of body horror as minds evolved in biological bodies find themselves occasionally trying to breathe when panicking, etc. An actually interesting viewpoint character.

Peter Feheravi also has some 40k stuff that is really well written, Fire Caste does a really good job of eliciting Lovecraftian horror crossed with Apocalypse Now/Heart of Darkness travelling through a jungle planet. It's 40k but it's well written. Hell Games Workshop's Black Library has recently stepped up its game a lot in terms of the authors they've got and stuff that's being put out. There's still a lot of bolter porn dross but they seem to be getting some talented writers on board as well and giving them space to explore some of the insanity of the universe rather than treating the lore as a Saturday morning cartoon toy advert.

[Rendakor]

Speaking of 40k, I started reading the Horus Heresy stuff. None of it is good literature, but the story of it all is interesting. I think I'm on book 5, maybe? The first one to POV the Emperor's Children.

[NowhereMan]

As a warning the Heresy stuff starts out a bit mixed and quickly turns to absolute crap as the editorial board realised that there was huge (and profitable!) demand for the works about 4 books into a plotted out 10 or so book series. They quickly started with the padding and the whole Heresy series is like 30 novels, numerous novellas and a crap load of audio dramas. For a lot of the earlier stuff they even just grabbed 40k books and made the big bad a Heresy era person. They also did crap like have running plot threads resolved in a random audio drama or decide to incorporate stuff from a limited release novella into the main series and just kind of assume everyone would be familiar with it. That's without getting into the fact that a lot of the set up just feels really weak because they had 4-5 novels to cover one of the biggest elements of the whole thing  and then just kept dragging it on and on.

They had a number of authors either quit or just stop doing BL stuff during that period because they were demanding so much material and paying such little attention to the quality that it was just stressing them out far too much.

[Rendakor]

That's a shame, because the first three were pretty good for what they were. And, I think there are more than 50 books now...I do not like the idea of having to go listen to audio dramas and shit at all though.

[MediumHigh]

Been reading more trashy WH40k stuff. Twice Dead King has just had the second part of it's 2 parter released and it's fun sci-fi even if you're not a 40k nerd. The focus is on a young prince of an obscure Necron dynasty and does a fun job of exploring a post-'human' existence and part of a race that is beyond imagining hierarchical with nothing left to sustain them beyond celebrating lost glory. Also most of them are slipping into senility with a healthy dose of body horror as minds evolved in biological bodies find themselves occasionally trying to breathe when panicking, etc. An actually interesting viewpoint character.

Peter Feheravi also has some 40k stuff that is really well written, Fire Caste does a really good job of eliciting Lovecraftian horror crossed with Apocalypse Now/Heart of Darkness travelling through a jungle planet. It's 40k but it's well written. Hell Games Workshop's Black Library has recently stepped up its game a lot in terms of the authors they've got and stuff that's being put out. There's still a lot of bolter porn dross but they seem to be getting some talented writers on board as well and giving them space to explore some of the insanity of the universe rather than treating the lore as a Saturday morning cartoon toy advert.

My into into 40k books were the Ciphas Cain stories, and while I enjoyed them I haven't went out of my way to grab more 40k stories, so thanks for this.

[NowhereMan]

That's a shame, because the first three were pretty good for what they were. And, I think there are more than 50 books now...I do not like the idea of having to go listen to audio dramas and shit at all though.

There are some good books in there, frustratingly a list of the well-written ones doesn't neatly line up with the ones where important plot stuff happens. The audio drama thing is more a bugbear. They don't do any big stories that way but there are some B/C plots that get developed or wrapped up in audio dramas and the characters reappear and you're just kind of expected to understand why this character you last saw fleeing disaster is now with 2 other characters you thought were dead, 3 people you've never met before who get 0 introduction and they're all part of some new clandestine organisation. A 'fine, just roll with it' thing you can ignore but it bothered me.

The Istvaan books are quite fun, skip Battle for the Abyss, read the Thousand Sons mini-trilogy in the HH series. Legion was interesting. I'd kind of recommend then skipping straight to the Siege of Terra stuff but there are definitely some things in there that are going to be really confusing if you've skipped the whole HH series.

[WayAbvPar]

Blew threw The Fifth Season (definitely worth reading!), and bought the other books in the series. Started the 2nd book, and then watched WoT on Prime, started discussing it with people, and now I am reading it again. About 5 chapters into TDR. Definitely some bloat, and some annoying characters and tropes, but I truly do enjoy the world.

[lamaros]

I've gone on a buying binge of classic SF I've never read. Same for crime. Looking forward to finding out I've actually read half of it but didn't find it distinctive enough to remember...

[Khaldun]

Some classic stuff is kind of astonishingly good in prescient ways. Some isn't. I think John Brunner for one is still mind-bogglingly great; so are Alfred Bester's two major novels.

[Mandella]

Some classic stuff is kind of astonishingly good in prescient ways. Some isn't. I think John Brunner for one is still mind-bogglingly great; so are Alfred Bester's two major novels.

Stand on Zanzibar is an all time favorite.

Actually, since we seem to be living it out pretty much as he wrote it, maybe not so favorite.

[lamaros]

Some classic stuff is kind of astonishingly good in prescient ways. Some isn't. I think John Brunner for one is still mind-bogglingly great; so are Alfred Bester's two major novels.

I'm looking forward to reading some Bester, but I started with Hyperion and after enjoying the first story enough, the framing narrative and the second story has really bogged me down. Would probably ditch and go to something else but it's actually a good bedtime book, in that I get bored and tired in equal measure and don't read too long...

[Khaldun]

Simmons is a fucking loon now but I still like Hyperion and the sequel. I even liked Endymion though a lot of people didn't care for it.

[Chimpy]

Simmons is a fucking loon now but I still like Hyperion and the sequel. I even liked Endymion though a lot of people didn't care for it.

Simmons was always a lunatic, just like Orson Scott Card has always been a lunatic.

With Simmons, his first book in a pair is always really pretty good and then the sequel is full of pants-on-head ridiculousness. Hyperion/Fall of Hyperion, Endymion/Rise of Endymion, and Illium/Olympos all follow that axiom.

(note, I still enjoyed the second books but they were definitely not as good as the story they "completed")

[Rishathra]

The Hyperion books were my absolute favorites for a long time.  It's sad to hear that the guy is a loon in real life, but the more I think about a lot of the stuff that happens in the Hyperion Cantos, and especially the 2 Ilium books, it makes sense that only a loon would come up with some of the stuff going on in them.

[Khaldun]

The second book following Ilium is especially bad.

[lamaros]

Some classic stuff is kind of astonishingly good in prescient ways. Some isn't. I think John Brunner for one is still mind-bogglingly great; so are Alfred Bester's two major novels.

I'm looking forward to reading some Bester, but I started with Hyperion and after enjoying the first story enough, the framing narrative and the second story has really bogged me down. Would probably ditch and go to something else but it's actually a good bedtime book, in that I get bored and tired in equal measure and don't read too long...

Well I finished it and my opinion didn't really change. It didn't work for me. Who knew the future of humanity would be so fixed on historical records and references that make so much sense to white guys in the 1990s! Some of the stories were good, some were less good. The overall framing and general plot was the worst of the lot - and I general love stuff that just leaves things up in the air and doesn't need closure. But that only works if the plot itself is engaging...

Anyhow I was looking to get on to something really good after that and made the mistake of reading Great North Road by Hamilton instead... Not his worst, but nowhere near his best. You could have cut 80% of it and it'd be a nice decent story. So much unrewarding bloat.
Def going to read the Bester now...

[Khaldun]

I have absolutely no idea why people like Hamilton's work. I think it's wretched just on its own terms and it's also got some creepy shit that isn't all that meant to be creepy going on in it.

[Rendakor]

I enjoyed the Night's Dawn Trilogy, even if the ending was silly. I've read some other stuff of his and didn't hate it, but didn't find it to be exceptional.

[lamaros]

I find he has a lot of fun imaginative energy for stuff, and he can drive a story pretty well with mystery elements. But he includes a lot of stupid stuff in with that. When it works ok it's very entertaining, but there's always something in there to take you out for some moments. And his later novels are getting worse in quality and more bloated and slow.

Often you will have to accept he wraps things up with a deus ex machina when he decides he's had enough (which I'm ok with if the journey is fun), and almost always there will be some sort of creepy elements regarding old men and/or the objectification of young women. Never anything properly awful like some authors I can think of, but always the lecherous old man stuff. Even when written as the old guys being creeps he still has to put it in, and it's still unnecessarily objectifying.

Fallen Dragon is probs my favourite of his standalone stories, and I also enjoyed much of the Night's Dawn Trilogy too. I also enjoyed A Quantum Murder (others in that series pretty lame), but I read that when I was a young teen and have no idea if it is actually any good. A few of the stories in the short story collection A Better Chance at Eden are also decent.

Never read Misspent Youth, which is fucking awful and all of the worst things about his writing and none of the good stuff.

[Count Nerfedalot]

My first and only Hamilton read was the Great North Road. 

[Samwise]

"Orwell's Roses" was good.  It took me a while because some parts captured my interest more than others, but I particularly liked the part about Stalin trying to grow lemons in the snow because the Soviets believed Lysenko over Darwin and Mendel.  It definitely gave me more of an appreciation for Orwell, having previously only read the stuff of his that we all had to read in high school.

Next up is "Finding the Mother Tree" by Suzanne Simard.  This one is more narrowly tailored to my interests and I've been tearing right through it.  It's part autobiography and part science, with the author talking about her life and career studying interactions between plants in the forests of the Pacific Northwest.  Based on the book jacket I thought it'd be pretty hippy-dippy, but there's a lot of technical detail in there too.  Really good stuff if you're at all interested in biology.

[Samwise]

"Finding the Mother Tree" was great.  The discovery that it leads up to (being a chronological account of the author's research over a period of decades) is essentially that many of the tree species under study transfer water, energy, and nutrients to each other in ways that improve the survivability of both their own offspring and the wider "community", in direct conflict with the prevailing wisdom that plants are in constant cutthroat competition with each other for water and sunlight (which is then applied to forestry management practices, frequently with poor results).  I'd done some reading previously about the concept of the "mycorrhizal grid" in native plant gardening (basically that you want to cultivate good soil fungi for healthy plants and that specific plant communities tend to be mutually beneficial because they help keep the fungi healthy which in turn help them absorb water more efficiently), but this book took that concept a lot further by discussing specific "cooperative" behaviors, down to established trees putting more into the "grid" than they take out (observed experimentally by using carbon isotopes to track the transfer of organic compounds between individuals) in order to nurture specific other trees at specific times, showing particular favoritism toward their own offspring when possible (hence "mother tree") but also aiding members of other species during critical stages in their own growth and trusting that it'll pay off in the long run.

That worked out to be a good pairing with The Ohlone Way which is a relatively early attempt to document pre-Columbian life on the West Coast.  I learned a lot of interesting things about native plant usage and local myths and whatnot, but the thing that stuck with me is that according to archaeological evidence the Ohlone tribes went for thousands of years without any major cultural changes that would be indicative of conquest or assimilation, which is a kind of goddamn weird length of time for that large of a group of people to just be happy doing what they're doing and not try to murder each other.  Another example of the West Coast being inherently harmonious until white people came along to fuck it up.

Having finished the "nonfiction" stack I get to move on to the fun stuff.  Spade and Archer is the family-authorized prequel to the Maltese Falcon that establishes how Sam Spade started his detective agency with Effie Perrine and Miles Archer.  It's definitely fanfic but it's fun and I appreciate the obsessive research and careful thought that obviously went into it (unlike some other prequels I could name).  It made me want to go back and reread the Maltese Falcon in the context of all that stage-setting, and also got me excited for the impending reopening of Julius' Castle.

[Samwise]

Last on the stack of Christmas presents was Gods Behaving Badly, which was fine, but not as good as American Gods or any of the other books by Neil Gaiman with a vaguely similar premise, and therefore skippable since those other books exist.

Having read it, though, I'm now very interested in seeing the unreleased film adaptation.

Alicia Silverstone as Kate
Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Neil
Christopher Walken as Zeus
Sharon Stone as Aphrodite
John Turturro as Hades
Edie Falco as Artemis
Oliver Platt as Apollo
Rosie Perez as Persephone
Phylicia Rashad as Demeter

seriously, somebody made a movie with Christopher Walken as a senile Zeus and it never saw the light of day?    

[lamaros]

I don't think I've read any novel by Gaiman that I've enjoyed, but admittedly I've not read a lot because I came to that conclusion early.

I'm slowly getting through the stack of older SF I decided to binge buy. Finished the first two books of the Chronicles of Amber, but which part the promise of the opening few chapters of Nine Princes in Amber well and truly fell into a boring, slow, and uninteresting waffle. Moved on to The Riddle-Master of Hed, which was fast enough in it's dreamy LotR-inspired journey to get me to move on to the second book in the series there also.

I also read Future Crimes: Mysteries and Detection Through Time and Space, which was a good little series of SF mystery short stories. Nothing amazing, but enough to pass a few mins before bed.

[Rendakor]

I don't think I've read any novel by Gaiman that I've enjoyed, but admittedly I've not read a lot because I came to that conclusion early.

Same here. Good Omens was great, but I've always enjoyed Pratchett. I read a handful of Gaiman's stuff on the strength of Good Omens and the recommendations of some friends, and none of them were really my cup of tea: American Gods, Neverwhere, and Anansi Boys. Three was enough, for me.

[Khaldun]

I liked Stardust well enough, but I like the movie of it much better. I don't think he's a great novelist.

I'm not even sure I think that much of Sandman now when I re-read it.

[HaemishM]

Sandman was great because 1) it was novel at the time and 2) it approached comics with a bit more maturity without resorting to shock value, something that was much appreciated at the time. His sort of melancholic writing style grates a bit on me after a while.

[Phildo]

Funny, I just finished reading The Ocean at the End of the Lane over the weekend.  It's a sort of dark fairy tale very much in line with his older stories about a normal child getting accidentally entangled with various fantasy forces.  Found it really enjoyable as a quick read, but definitely nothing new and probably not worth it if you already don't like his other work.

[Samwise]

Speaking of British authors, I started reading "Uncle Fred in the Springtime" the other day on the subway and I probably alarmed the other riders with my literal LOLing.  Fuckin' Wodehouse, man.

[Fraeg]

Going to try Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth. Will report back.

I enjoyed this book and the sequel quite a bit.  It's very weird in a fun way.

Same reception here. Weird is exactly the right word.

reminded me of Gene Wolfe - The Shadow of the Torturer series  as far as vibe and world building, which is a very very good thing in my book    Read the first and really enjoyed it, found a used copy of the 2nd and will get to it this summer.