Book Recommendations?

Whoever recommended Kings of the Wyld - thanks! I am really enjoying it.

SallyNasty wrote:

Whoever recommended Kings of the Wyld - thanks! I am really enjoying it.

Me! Just finished the second: Bloody Rose. Just as fun.

Good Talk by Mira Jacob

This is a fantastic book. Told in graphic novel form, it presents a look at some of the complexities of living in America for all of us but especially resonated for me given my family's cultural mix which isn't often represented. Powerful, sad at times but also often very funny.

Everyone should read it.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Excession is the worst one I've read so far. Player of Games is one of the best.

Excession is one of my favorites. Player of Games was good, but I'd put it in the middle of the pack.

Gah! Amazon just sent me a recommendation notification for a new Brandon Sanderson book. Turns out, it's some manga-type story. Boo.

Finished The Sky-Blue Wolves by S.M. Stirling, which is the last of the Emberverse books. This section (book 11-15) was much stronger than the previous one and a fun read until the final book. The final book was almost 100 pages shorter than the average for the series and it felt very rushed. Timeline wise it skipped multiple months of stuff for reasons I can't explain other than the author wanted the final part to take place in winter and it almost felt like other than travelling everyone besides the main character just stood around in place doing nothing during the skips. There wasn't even like a triumphant homecoming epilogue it just sort of ended. Two supporting characters ended up sacrificing themselves at the end and it felt pointless. It was a disappointing final book in an overall interesting series and it did leave plenty of stuff open for more books and even introduced the next protagonist through the time bending kingmaking ritual which has only been done twice, but was one of the highlights of this series.

Neal Stephenson's new book comes out tomorrow. "Fall; or, Dodge in Hell" is the title.

Preordered on Audible! Remade was excellent and I can't wait.

Speaking of preorders... William Gibson's new title has been pushed to 2020.

Since it involves current world and near future world components he had to start rewriting it back when Trump got elected. I think it was supposed to be out in March then pushed to June and now it's 2020.

Wait, how did I not hear about this (The Rook TV Show on Starz):

posted about this a few months ago

There was neither humor nor cursing in that trailer. Can it really be a faithful representation of the book?

So I just finished the Kate Daniels series by "Ilona Andrews", a pen name for a husband/wife authorial team.

It occurred to me, while reading, that urban fantasy is wearing itself into some really serious ruts. I've read a lot of these now, at least five or six different series, and I kept being distracted here by how strongly it resembled the October Daye series, by Seanan McGuire. The parallels are so blatant that I assume that at least one of them is reading the other. Both heroines come from powerful bloodlines and have strong blood magic, both are primarily melee combatants, the primary non-human characters are all were-creatures and vampires, their main romantic interests are were-cats, they're in direct conflict with their parents (October's mother, Kate's father), and both assemble a team of misfits to solve massive problems. (that last thing is endemic to all urban fantasy, I think, an absolute staple of the genre, possibly even a defining one.)

Yet, for all the parallels and how distracting they could be, I actually enjoyed these quite a bit. They're paced well, the writing's decent, the characters are excellent, and the plotlines are actually pretty rewarding. And they did one amazing thing that hardly any of the big urban fantasists ever do: they finished the series. After ten books and a few novellas, the story's done. They wrapped things up and put a bow on the package. This alone should be a huge selling point, in that if you're enjoying the story, it's all there, and you can see the end.

Having read McGuire's series first, I was inclined to think less of this one as I realized how similar they were. I don't know who's copying whom (or if it's all just accidental parallels), but on the whole, I'd have to call the execution better on this side of the fence. And the world's more interesting, too: this is a post-apocalyptic world, where magic and technology are swapping back and forth. Tech only works about half the time, as magic waves flood over the world and recede, and all the skyscrapers and big buildings are falling from magical erosion. It's set in the ruins of Atlanta; people still live there, and even maintain a small civilization, but it's nothing like what it was before.

One thing that did kind of bug me was the sense of scale; I lived in Atlanta for awhile, and that place is enormous. The characters do have access to cars, but they also walk and use horses a lot, and I'm really not sure that people could move around anywhere near as fast on a horse as these authors seem to believe. I kept trying to map what the authors were claiming to what I actually know of the place (I never learned it that well, it's gigantic), and I ended up confused and uncertain a lot of the time, thinking to myself that things just didn't sound right. It's like.... Disney Atlanta, or Fallout Atlanta, where everything's about a tenth the size it should actually be. Maybe they know more than I do, but it often didn't sound right to me.

Still, these were good books, and if I hadn't read McGuire first, I would have liked them even better. Particularly since McGuire's series isn't done yet, I'd probably read these and skip those for now, unless you've got a lot of time on your hands and really like urban fantasy.

But the genre as a whole, it seems to me, is getting a bit stale. This entry is better than most, and would be delightful in a vacuum, but a lot of this ground has been pretty thoroughly covered elsewhere.

Robear wrote:

Neal Stephenson's new book comes out tomorrow. "Fall; or, Dodge in Hell" is the title.

Haven't had much chance to dive into it yet, but it certainly starts out with the typical Stephenson "voice", and the requisite amount of stream-of-consciousness side excursions that you might expect.

I really did stop only a few pages in (Dodge hasn't even left his apartment yet), and one of those side excursions struck me oddly.

Spoiler:

Presuming that this is set more or less "present day", and further surmising that somebody with a grandchild is likely in the 45-55 range, Dodge's thoughts about snooze buttons struck me as odd; he seems like the sort of person who would have disassembled a mechanical clock when he was a kid, and would know exactly why it's a nine-minute snooze.

Also, I know the premise of the book, so

Spoiler:

all this self-reflection about how the brain works is making me twitchy, as I surmise about the problems the physicality of the brain is likely to lead to...

On the first one,

Spoiler:

That’s essentially the explanation Stephenson offers. I believe he left out the gearing, but he went a bit deeper on the physiological part. Ends up at the same place.

Humble Bundle has a new scifi bundle up - does anyone have opinions on these?

I have not read any of those books, or anything by those authors. I have absolutely no clue if that bundle's any good.

Martha Wells' "Murderbot" books are very good so her fantasy books in the bundle may be promising, but I have not read them.

I've enjoyed other anthologies edited by Clarke and Datlow, FWIW.

Speaking of anthologies -- for many years, I've been getting my husband a copy of the "Year's Best Science Fiction", edited by Dozois. I can't do that any more (Dozois died in 2018, so last year was the last collection). Is there another similar year's best anthology out there?

Katy wrote:

Speaking of anthologies -- for many years, I've been getting my husband a copy of the "Year's Best Science Fiction", edited by Dozois. I can't do that any more (Dozois died in 2018, so last year was the last collection). Is there another similar year's best anthology out there?

I don't know, I am looking for a replacement as well. I've been getting them since the mid-90s and backfilling as I can. RIP Gardner.

I am looking at The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Volume 13 as an interim replacement but I've read this is the last year for that as well. Supposedly there is a new anthology coming next year by the same editor: Year’s Best Science Fiction: The Saga Annual Anthology of SF

But I don't know. One of the best things about "The Year's Best Science Fiction" each year was the introduction which was essentially the state of the genre for a given year. Without that I am not sure about picking up a replacement.

Just started on the "Bloodfever" series, yet another urban fantasy. So far, I'm not terribly impressed; this is much closer to a bodice-ripper than most entries in the genre, and I don't feel that the writing is particularly skillful. It's reasonably entertaining, but it's probably the poorest quality entry I've read so far.

I'm hanging n there, though. Up to book 3, and it's just barely interesting enough to keep me reading.

Several have asked if Kindle Unlimited is worth it. I've said to wait for one of the $1 promotions, run it for that period and read what you want, then cancel before it goes up to regular price. Wait for the next promotion if you enjoyed your time with it, then repeat.

Now is the time. $.99 for two months. You just have to subscribe by 6/30/19.

I think I've got a couple of audiobooks out or coming out that I will buy as add ons, because once you check out the KU or Amazon Prime Lending book, you can then use the add-on price to get the audible book without every "owning" the Kindle book. So I'm in for this deal.

Thanks, Mannish! I am in!

Play It As It Lays by Didion was a very good, but damn bleak look at the open door and existential dread.

The Bloodfever series is improving some, by the third book. I'm starting to get genuinely interested in what's going to happen. The first two were a bit of a slog, but it's picked up pretty well in #3.

Picked up Galapagos by Vonnegut cause I had a 3 hour flight and ran through my books.

Pretty good, I'm enjoying the dumbness involved. I wonder if it influenced Seven Eves, but was just a far more satirical take on the idea.

So I just finished The Lie: A Memoir of Two Marriages, Catfishing, & Coming Out by William Dameron, courtesy of Amazon's Kindle first reads.

In a nutshell, it's about how a guy who was married with two children went through the process of "coming out" as gay to friends and family, the life events before and during that provided context, and what that meant for his relationships and self-image. It was a fascinating insight into someone's life and situation that is far removed from what I've ever (or will ever) experience. A fairly fast, easy read, but worth picking up.

Katy wrote:
Robear wrote:

Neal Stephenson's new book comes out tomorrow. "Fall; or, Dodge in Hell" is the title.

Haven't had much chance to dive into it yet, but it certainly starts out with the typical Stephenson "voice", and the requisite amount of stream-of-consciousness side excursions that you might expect.

REAMDE was pretty stand-alone, but this book seems to have more ties to the Baroque Cycle, which I've never read. That may need to go back on my to-read list, for the next time I'm ready for an epic. And if I'm going to do that, probably another run through Cryptonomicon as well, since I haven't read that since it came out, and the details are very hazy -- like, all I remember is molten gold and a three-page digression about Captain Crunch cereal hazy.

Katy wrote:
Katy wrote:
Robear wrote:

Neal Stephenson's new book comes out tomorrow. "Fall; or, Dodge in Hell" is the title.

Haven't had much chance to dive into it yet, but it certainly starts out with the typical Stephenson "voice", and the requisite amount of stream-of-consciousness side excursions that you might expect.

REAMDE was pretty stand-alone, but this book seems to have more ties to the Baroque Cycle, which I've never read. That may need to go back on my to-read list, for the next time I'm ready for an epic. And if I'm going to do that, probably another run through Cryptonomicon as well, since I haven't read that since it came out, and the details are very hazy -- like, all I remember is molten gold and a three-page digression about Captain Crunch cereal hazy.

I loved Cryptonomicon at the time, but struggled through book one of the Baroque Cycle and never went on to the next two. Anyone who's read them know if they get better, or if they're just more of same throughout?