Book Recommendations?

Did not know Faulkner hatred was a thing. Interesting. I've only read a few of his short stories.

I started reading Faulkner after reading a lot of Cormac McCarthy, which felt like kind of a natural progression.

Malor wrote:

From a fantasy perspective, his world makes zero sense. It couldn't possibly work, it's just nonsensical. (eg, almost everyone studying fighting, nobody farming, that sort of thing.)

It's Western wuxia. Looking for a plausible world there is equivalent to watching Dragon Ball Z and pointing out plot holes.

Good that you broke through and started to enjoy it, but, man, you shoulda been there from the first 10 pages when he talks about the advancement system. It's great fun, and everyone should give it a try. Traveler's Gate, too.

Mr Crinkle wrote:
Malor wrote:

From a fantasy perspective, his world makes zero sense. It couldn't possibly work, it's just nonsensical. (eg, almost everyone studying fighting, nobody farming, that sort of thing.)

It's Western wuxia. Looking for a plausible world there is equivalent to watching Dragon Ball Z and pointing out plot holes.

Good that you broke through and started to enjoy it, but, man, you shoulda been there from the first 10 pages when he talks about the advancement system. It's great fun, and everyone should give it a try. Traveler's Gate, too.

Concur. It's a kung-fu movie with magic, in serial novel form. A plausible economic system is not the focus and entirely unnecessary to enjoy the popcorn taste.

And, like Sanderson and unlike most other fantasy authors that start multi-volume series, the guy writes. Like normal, responsible people with jobs do, he puts his work in, and releases stuff consistently. There's always another fun book coming soon.

I listened to the first and second novellas in the Murderbot Diaries series, Artificial Condition. I'm not sure I have ever related to a character more than I do Murderbot. Murderbot is a half robot / half cloned human that hacked itself to achieve free agency. Rather than escape or do something drastic, Murderbot proceeds to do its security guard job half-assed so they can download and watch 35,000 hours of tv.

A true hero

Sadly Murderbot can't lie low forever. There are multiple references in the second book to Murderbot wanting to "slip into my media" as they are placed in awkward or stressful situations. Hits too close to home. Looking forward to finishing the series although the audiobooks feel a bit pricey given the short length. Narrator does a great job though.

Coldstream wrote:
Mr Crinkle wrote:
Malor wrote:

From a fantasy perspective, his world makes zero sense. It couldn't possibly work, it's just nonsensical. (eg, almost everyone studying fighting, nobody farming, that sort of thing.)

It's Western wuxia. Looking for a plausible world there is equivalent to watching Dragon Ball Z and pointing out plot holes.

Good that you broke through and started to enjoy it, but, man, you shoulda been there from the first 10 pages when he talks about the advancement system. It's great fun, and everyone should give it a try. Traveler's Gate, too.

Concur. It's a kung-fu movie with magic, in serial novel form. A plausible economic system is not the focus and entirely unnecessary to enjoy the popcorn taste.

I will say that Wight attends the Rowling school of world building. That is he answers most of the questions given to him that fill in a lot of blanks. Now his answers might not impress. For instance, when asked how Cradle could work physically as a planet that comfortably holds 100 billion people, his answer amounted to "Any answer I give won't pass muster for anyone with a cursory knowledge of science or physics, so I'm just gonna say because magic (i.e. The Way)." But he was asked to clarify if Cradle had any service industry people and he clarified that the only people who are considered Sacred Artists are ones who have the goal of magic system advancement to the exclusion of all else and that only amounts to a fraction of the people on the planet. There are a great many people who are farmers, janitors, restaurant owners, etc.,. And any society can be judged on how high it's average non-Sacred Artist people naturally get to without really trying.

He even does world building AMA's where he gets asked questions about potential Sacred Artist paths that he will answer from his notes or just make up on the fly. He's pretty imaginative in that regard, as he can come up with a cool sounding name like, Path of the Burning Star or Path of the King's Key and have it's focus and powers make sense for the world he created. Some industrious fans have put together a compendium of his answers here if your are interested. I found them to be enlightening and entertaining enough while waiting for Underlord to drop.

ChihuahuaPugs wrote:

I listened to the first and second novellas in the Murderbot Diaries series, Artificial Condition. I'm not sure I have ever related to a character more than I do Murderbot. Murderbot is a half robot / half cloned human that hacked itself to achieve free agency. Rather than escape or do something drastic, Murderbot proceeds to do its security guard job half-assed so they can download and watch 35,000 hours of tv.

A true hero

Sadly Murderbot can't lie low forever. There are multiple references in the second book to Murderbot wanting to "slip into my media" as they are placed in awkward or stressful situations. Hits too close to home. Looking forward to finishing the series although the audiobooks feel a bit pricey given the short length. Narrator does a great job though.

I like those books but the pricing kind of irked me a bit. Novellas that are priced like novels. All of them are less than 200 pages, but parts 2-4 are all $9.99 for the Kindle version.

Rykin wrote:
ChihuahuaPugs wrote:

I listened to the first and second novellas in the Murderbot Diaries series, Artificial Condition. I'm not sure I have ever related to a character more than I do Murderbot. Murderbot is a half robot / half cloned human that hacked itself to achieve free agency. Rather than escape or do something drastic, Murderbot proceeds to do its security guard job half-assed so they can download and watch 35,000 hours of tv.

A true hero

Sadly Murderbot can't lie low forever. There are multiple references in the second book to Murderbot wanting to "slip into my media" as they are placed in awkward or stressful situations. Hits too close to home. Looking forward to finishing the series although the audiobooks feel a bit pricey given the short length. Narrator does a great job though.

I like those books but the pricing kind of irked me a bit. Novellas that are priced like novels. All of them are less than 200 pages, but parts 2-4 are all $9.99 for the Kindle version.

Library. I am checking them out from RB Digital through my library.

Malor wrote:
bnpederson wrote:

All of Will Wight's books will be free on Kindle July 4th. I'll hopefully remember to link them when that comes around, but figured I'd give a heads up if anyone wanted good popcorn fantasy reads.

I've gotten less negative about his Cradle series. From a fantasy perspective, his world makes zero sense. It couldn't possibly work, it's just nonsensical. (eg, almost everyone studying fighting, nobody farming, that sort of thing.)

But if you take it as an MMO in written form, including the logarithmic power scaling of MMO levels, it becomes more entertaining. I mean, it's total junk, and characters have about 1.5 dimensions each, but it's pretty good fun as junk fantasy goes. I can't really think of any redeeming features, but I've enjoyed reading it anyway, once I retuned my internal filters to not keep noticing that the world was ridiculous.

If you can get the series free, what the heck, yanno?

Oddly, I don't remember his earlier Traveler's Gate as being quite so trashy, even though it's the same sort of raw power fantasy thing. Maybe it's because those books were much more limited in scope. He wasn't writing about the world, so it wasn't obvious that it had no real thought behind it.

Just don't expect too much, and you're likely to have a good time. And plenty of eye-rolling, but a good time anyway.

I got the first book this afternoon since your description intrigued me, happily it was included in my prime subscription (A feature of prime I was unaware of and thrilled to find). I'm halfway through it now and quite enjoying it. Perfect light reading with a bourbon on a warm summer evening. It's tropey as all hell, but I'm having fun with following J. Protagonist. Reading it I can see you're complaints about how dysfunctional the world would be, but it's not to a level that would have bothered me without it being pointed out. My mind happily supplies justifications (Read -Handwaves) that fit happily into the broad strokes worldbuilding presented so far.

That comes down to personal preference though. As much as I love the Hannu Rajaniemi's, Tolkien's, Jordan's, and Peter F. Hamilton's of the world with their deep worldbuilding and attention to detail, I'll happily consume shlock so long as its Entertaining shlock.

I feel like I can see the shape of the plot a mile away, but so far it's been fun watching the author get there.

So as I promised, here are the books, linked:

Traveler's Gate Trilogy (completed story)
A pretty general fantasy world, definitely playing with those tropes a bit.

The Elder Empire Trilogies (not yet completed)
Set in a fantasy world with Lovecraft-like existentialist horrors, each trilogy's respective novels take place in the same timeframe with separate protagonists, who interact with one another. Two more novels are loosely planned to come out soon-ish.

Cradle series (incomplete)
As Mr Crinkle noted, this is American-made, English-language wuxia novel. That means absurd power ups, to the point that 10,000 "lower grade" people can't touch someone a few "stages" above them, and that kind of scaling just keeps going until you effectively become gods. This is, last I heard, slated to be a 20+ book series, if not longer.

You can also get them free if you have Kindle Unlimited.

Speaking if KU, if you have Prime, it's free right now for 3 months.

Grenn wrote:

You can also get them free if you have Kindle Unlimited.

Yeah, keeping in mind they'll go away once your KU subscription is over that way, whereas the free version just puts them on your Amazon account until Amazon ceases to be or decides it doesn't want to support the Kindle anymore.

bnpederson wrote:
Grenn wrote:

You can also get them free if you have Kindle Unlimited.

Yeah, keeping in mind they'll go away once your KU subscription is over that way, whereas the free version just puts them on your Amazon account until Amazon ceases to be or decides it doesn't want to support the Kindle anymore.

Or the author/publisher pulls them from KU.

MannishBoy wrote:

Or the author/publisher pulls them from KU.

True, though that could also happen on normal Kindle books.

Oh, or until your account is hacked/socially engineered away and you can never gain access to it again for both of those. On the plus side you don't lose access to them due to a house fire, like with physical books. Tradeoffs.

Or you use Calibre with a deDRM plugin and can save your books without relying on Amazon’s future.

Oh man, just finished Children of Time yesterday and, it really surpassed my expectations. This is legit one of the best books I've read in the past few years, right up there with The Broken Earth trilogy. Just ordered the second book in the series.

In other Sci Fi, I'm on the second book of the great Neal Asher's latest trilogy, Rise of the Jain, and I'm really enjoying it - maybe so far not as compelling as the Transformation trilogy, which is one of my favorite series of Sci Fi books, and compared to Children of Time it's a bit, ah, clinical? Not as emotional an experience for sure, but still top quality stuff, he is really up there with Banks for this kind of far future Sci Fi IMO.

And, on a disappointing note, I found Richard Morgan's latest, Thin Air, to be a rather plodding, by-the-numbers overlong book. I've enjoyed his work in the past but honestly this one just felt phoned in.

LeapingGnome wrote:

Or you use Calibre with a deDRM plugin and can save your books without relying on Amazon’s future.

This is what I do with my Amazon purchases. You install Amazon's software reader, download the books you want to transfer, and use the plugin to do the import. The reader has what it needs to decrypt the content, so the plugin can snoop on that data and permanently decrypt your books.

I think of this as the best of both worlds: Amazon has a copy if you mess up your local store, but you also have your own copy if Amazon loses its mind somehow.

AcidCat wrote:

Oh man, just finished Children of Time yesterday

That's by Adrian Tchaikovsky? There's another Children of Time that ranks higher on Amazon's search, but it's like book 6 in a series.

Malor wrote:

That's by Adrian Tchaikovsky?

Yes.

I totally recommend Children of Time.
Echoing AcidCat, definitely one of the best books I have read in a long time.

LeapingGnome wrote:

Or you use Calibre with a deDRM plugin and can save your books without relying on Amazon’s future.

I do that for a good number of my books, but I haven't attempted it with a KU book. I know with KU Audiobooks, they don't actually download, they only stream.

It works fine with Unlimited, you just use the download option to your PC in addition to sending it to your kindle.

Two of sci-fi author Ken MacLeod's books are on sale today: The Night Sessions and The Corporation Wars trilogy.

Any recommendations?

The Idiot is good, but slow.

All criticism of MT and ND will be held against the poster, as those states proved lovely and filled with very helpful people despite some car troubles on my end.

Eastern WA is also damn pretty.

I like bleak places and also books.

boogle wrote:

The Idiot is good, but slow.

Is basically every medical school evaluation I ever had.

trichy wrote:
trichy wrote:

I really loved Dark Matter by Blake Crouch, but man, his new book Recursion is staggering. It's a whole new level for an author that's becoming one of my favorite science fiction writers.

I wrote this first part when I was about two thirds through the book. I just finished it, and HOLY CRAP people. It's an absolute powerhouse of a novel. I tore through it, and I'm genuinely reeling from the ending. It's the best tradition of science fiction, exploring the ramifications of a technology, but every time you think you might see where it's going, Crouch absolutely shreds your expectations. It's a titanic accomplishment, and one you absolutely need to dive into right now.

Thanks to this recommendation I picked up Dark Matter ebook from the library and am really enjoying so far.

I finished Stephenson's Fall, or Dodge in Hell this week. I'm an unabashed Stephenson fanboy, but was left disappointed in this one. Yes, I was disappointed with the ending of Seveneves but enjoyed most of the ride. This one kind of lost me way earlier. I found it truly hard to care about any of the bitworld characters. I could forgive most things, but what was really the defining disappointment for me was

Spoiler:

the "solution" to the "problem" of El and the angels/beedles/hive/life in bitworld that we spent the majority of the last half of the book doing the quest for and traversing the entire Land, etc, etc, where sacrifices were made and great showdowns took place... was freeing Egdod and him reasserting his primacy. I thought all that build-up was heading somewhere revolutionary but it was just giving the original "god" his power and freedom back.

I'm less of a fanboy now.

ColdForged wrote:
trichy wrote:
trichy wrote:

I really loved Dark Matter by Blake Crouch, but man, his new book Recursion is staggering. It's a whole new level for an author that's becoming one of my favorite science fiction writers.

I wrote this first part when I was about two thirds through the book. I just finished it, and HOLY CRAP people. It's an absolute powerhouse of a novel. I tore through it, and I'm genuinely reeling from the ending. It's the best tradition of science fiction, exploring the ramifications of a technology, but every time you think you might see where it's going, Crouch absolutely shreds your expectations. It's a titanic accomplishment, and one you absolutely need to dive into right now.

Thanks to this recommendation I picked up Dark Matter ebook from the library and am really enjoying so far.

Ha, I also just read Dark Matter based on this rec! I enjoyed it too, but was a bit frustrated by the corners he had to cut to make the story work. Not that I can see how it could be done better, though.

ColdForged wrote:

I finished Stephenson's Fall, or Dodge in Hell this week. I'm an unabashed Stephenson fanboy, but was left disappointed in this one. Yes, I was disappointed with the ending of Seveneves but enjoyed most of the ride. This one kind of lost me way earlier. I found it truly hard to care about any of the bitworld characters. I could forgive most things, but what was really the defining disappointment for me was

Spoiler:

the "solution" to the "problem" of El and the angels/beedles/hive/life in bitworld that we spent the majority of the last half of the book doing the quest for and traversing the entire Land, etc, etc, where sacrifices were made and great showdowns took place... was freeing Egdod and him reasserting his primacy. I thought all that build-up was heading somewhere revolutionary but it was just giving the original "god" his power and freedom back.

I'm less of a fanboy now.

I can't finish it... I lost steam, stopped, and read Dark Matter instead.

I am such a fanboy that I have convinced myself it's because I'm not ultimately interested in his basic subject - What defines a soul? What happens when\if we are able to digitize human consciousness?

The parts leading up to the BitWorld would have been an awesome setting on their own for some classic Stephenson goodness.

Ultimately, since Seveneves is a book that is written so specifically to my taste, I'm disappointed it's not more of that. Which is irrational as all hell.

I loved the first half of Fall, but man - it just wandered weird and nonsensical places in part 2.