Book Recommendations?

I'm wondering if he's to the point where his proof readers and editors are no longer able to tell him no?

The scope for part 2 was WAY out of whack. I like what he tried to do, but it was just way over the top.

If you're not a subscriber of Tor's newsletter, you 100% should be. They provide a free ebook each month, showcasing an author they're excited about. This month was a Kindle novella called The Murders of Molly Southborne by Tade Thompson. It's a horror writer's take on hemophilia, but taken to a horrifying supernatural level. It's amazing, although it does feature some fairly disturbing body horror sequences, so be warned.

EDIT: And I just found out the followup is available today! Sweet!

Natus wrote:

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

Any recommendations?

I haven’t read either of those, but I’ve read his older stuff (Fall Revolution series, Newton’s Wake, and (I think) Cosmonaut Keep). Either I got better at reading him, or he got better at writing (probably the former) - I like them enough to try out his newer work.

Aw man -- RIP Jim Bouton.

I can remember my uncle -- as he was explaining why I really needed to read Ball Four -- telling me that it was his favorite book at 13. A re-read at 18 didn't go so well ('I came away from that reading thinking Bouton was only interested in promoting Bouton and nothing else.'), but another reading at 20 reversed that and he read it every few years from that point on.

I've read it a few times myself at this point and it's definitely pretty high on my list. I don't think you have to like baseball to enjoy the book -- actually, you might like it even more if you don't like baseball so long as you understand the context that the book was released in. Bouton was basically blacklisted from anything baseball related for decades after the release of the book because up until that point, most new stories about baseball players completely left out basically anything real about them. As soon as the book came out they went from these squeaky-clean mythical heroes to normal people who did all the stupid stuff that other normal people did. Also, it's very, very funny.

So ... highly recommended for pretty much everyone.

Just finished Dark Matter - thanks for the earlier recommendation, Malor.

Just finished Tigana. I really enjoyed it. Thanks for all who recommended it.

So, Kay’s other books are okay, too, you say? Where should I go next?

firesloth wrote:

Just finished Tigana. I really enjoyed it. Thanks for all who recommended it.

So, Kay’s other books are okay, too, you say? Where should I go next?

For my tastes, his best works are the Sarantine Mosaic and The Lions of Al-Rassan; the Fionavar Tapestry is an excellent classic fantasy trilogy that catches a mood somewhere between Lord of the Rings and The Prydain Chronicles, but it doesn't hit the same highs as the ones I mentioned before.

I enjoyed "Under Heaven" a great deal.

I just finished listening to Educated by Tara Westover. It was different than I expected but mesmerizing. The audio version is quite well done as well if you are thinking of going that route.

https://tarawestover.com/book

I homeschooled my son from 1st grade through 8th grade. It is scary that there are homeschoolers out there like her family. I read Educated last year. It’s disturbing.

Finished Skyward by Brandon Sanderson. Definitely YA, but I liked it.

Not on the level with Stormlight, but if you're looking for a coming of age sci-fi book with the typical school environment (this time pilot school), it's a fun time.

I don't remember if I heard about it here or just found it browsing the store, but I just finished the Wings of War series by Bryce O'Connor. It is pretty decent, a step above the typical self-publisher and free on Kindle Unlimited or only a dollar to buy. I don't know why it is so cheap.

They follow a typical fantasy 'coming of age / into power' storyline but with different takes on common tropes, and are well written enough that I finished the four books in less than three weeks. The story moves quickly, and there is a good amount of action and variety. The first book was the author's first and the books get better and longer as the story goes on.

There is a book five coming and I wish it was out now, but each of the books do tell a complete story without any weird cutoffs between them.

Just finished The Last by Hanna Jameson and really enjoyed it.

It deals with the immediate aftermath of nuclear war, told in diary form by one of the survivors staying in a hotel in Switzerland.

It is pretty grim in parts, and there is some violence.
The main character, Jon, is believable and there is even a joke about being an "unreliable narrator".

A worthy read.

Just looked at my Amazon content page. You folks are bad/good influences. My recently delivered list is:

  • Sailing to Sarantium
  • Children of Time
  • Children of Ruin
  • Record of a Spaceborn Few (on sale...I know it's not likely as good as the first, which I learned about here)
  • The Rosewater Insurrection
  • The Name of the Wind (library)
  • A Memory Called Empire (library, currently reading)
  • Tigana (library, finished)
  • The Grey Bastards (library)
  • Black Leopard, Red Wolf (library, not going to finish)
  • The Dragon's Path
  • The Book of M
  • Tiamat's Wrath (library, finished)

All these since the beginning of May. Not all are on my Kindle yet: I've had to turn on airplane mode to keep a few books from the library that I haven't gotten to yet!

EDIT: Added the first of the Sarantine Mosaic books...somehow had missed that earlier.

That's a great list! You're welcome!

Wink_and_the_Gun wrote:

Just finished Dark Matter - thanks for the earlier recommendation, Malor.

edit: I'm an idiot, I got my books confused. I'm talking here about Empress of Forever, by Max Gladstone, rather than Dark Matter, by Blake Crouch. Duh.

Oddly, I didn't finish it until after you did. I was just interested because it was Max Gladstone, and said so. I hadn't actually read it yet!

It's an interesting book, one of the unbelievably-high-tech, extreme-far-future SF novels, where the scale of things has gone to an insane degree. People are all but immortal, planets can be artificially constructed, that kind of thing.

Gladstone is vague about the tech. He usually is, but the effect is stronger here. I was trying to explain it to myself, and came up with the phrase "watercolor SF", where he's just sort of hinting at things and using great swaths of bright color to suggest images, rather than making things at all concrete. It's not a story about tech, it's a story about people, which is true of all the good SF, and this particular story is one that would only work in that context. It needed to be a science fiction novel, but it reads more like a high-magic fantasy book in most respects.

He focuses more on his characters here than usual. Characters are kind of Gladstone's weak spot. I still didn't get a good handle on his 'grey goo' character, and there were a number of instances of fridge logic around him in particular. But he does quite a good job with the main protagonist, and pretty well with the other secondary characters, so you have more of a sense of them as people than you typically do in his Craft series.

This isn't the launch of a new series, as far as I can tell. It's just a standalone novel, requiring nothing else, and it's a good time. It's a bit reminiscent of Vernor Vinge, albeit with much less rigor.

Interesting. I started Dark Matter and couldn't get more than about 5 pages in before I moved on in disgust. There was something that really rubbed me the wrong way about the writing or setting or...something. I'll have to go back to give it a look.

I bought the book when it was on sale for a buck or two through Amazon. That's sort of my no-questions-asked threshold for something I've seen recommended here.

Great list, firesloth!

I got a few more on my list now.

firesloth wrote:

Interesting. I started Dark Matter and couldn't get more than about 5 pages in before I moved on in disgust. There was something that really rubbed me the wrong way about the writing or setting or...something. I'll have to go back to give it a look.

I bought the book when it was on sale for a buck or two through Amazon. That's sort of my no-questions-asked threshold for something I've seen recommended here.

HIs main protagonist is a bit unlikeable, an important aspect of the plot, but it's not dire. She's an extremely goal-oriented woman who's bad at relationships, and doesn't have a lot of self-insight. She's not horrible, though, and she does grow throughout, one of the main plot foci.

It also starts out in a pretty low-tech phase, here on Earth in the not too distant future. That part will change.

Malor wrote:
firesloth wrote:

Interesting. I started Dark Matter and couldn't get more than about 5 pages in before I moved on in disgust. There was something that really rubbed me the wrong way about the writing or setting or...something. I'll have to go back to give it a look.

I bought the book when it was on sale for a buck or two through Amazon. That's sort of my no-questions-asked threshold for something I've seen recommended here.

HIs main protagonist is a bit unlikeable, an important aspect of the plot, but it's not dire. She's an extremely goal-oriented woman who's bad at relationships, and doesn't have a lot of self-insight. She's not horrible, though, and she does grow throughout, one of the main plot foci.

It also starts out in a pretty low-tech phase, here on Earth in the not too distant future. That part will change.

What is going on here? Are we talking about two different books? The Dark Matter I just finished, by Blake Crouch, features a male protagonist in a multiverse scenario in present day.

ColdForged wrote:
Malor wrote:
firesloth wrote:

Interesting. I started Dark Matter and couldn't get more than about 5 pages in before I moved on in disgust. There was something that really rubbed me the wrong way about the writing or setting or...something. I'll have to go back to give it a look.

I bought the book when it was on sale for a buck or two through Amazon. That's sort of my no-questions-asked threshold for something I've seen recommended here.

HIs main protagonist is a bit unlikeable, an important aspect of the plot, but it's not dire. She's an extremely goal-oriented woman who's bad at relationships, and doesn't have a lot of self-insight. She's not horrible, though, and she does grow throughout, one of the main plot foci.

It also starts out in a pretty low-tech phase, here on Earth in the not too distant future. That part will change.

What is going on here? Are we talking about two different books? The Dark Matter I just finished, by Blake Crouch, features a male protagonist in a multiverse scenario in present day.

Right...now I may be remembering. The outset is full of physics gobbly-goop? Like really bad? As a semi-professional physicist (astronomer, thus the semi), I couldn’t do it.

I'm such a dork. Yeah, I screwed up and got my books confused. I was talking about Empress of Forever by Max Gladstone, while you were talking about Dark Matter, by Blake Crouch. I'd read that one immediately prior, and got them mixed up.

I edited my comment to help reduce the confusion. I'm sorry.

Dark Matter is one of the only good multiverse stories I've read. Empress of Forever is a high-fantasy SF epic, slightly Vernor Vingian. Very very different books.

I didn't want to say it, but I had the same reaction as Firesloth. I was squirming, reading the early part of Dark Matter, and I eventually just rolled my eyes and gave up. The "science" was Dan Brown ridiculous (and he's the guy who built a series on lying to us about what's on a dollar bill...)

God the Idiot is f*cking slow

His weakest, imo. Demons is the best.

Whoah...a different version of Malor went back and edited his comment about Dark Matter. SO META!

To be fair, the reviews I have read ding Dark Matter for its junk science and arbitrary line breaks, but they still seemed to love the ride. My wife loved it and it is in my reading queue.

For what it's worth, I didn't notice either problem. The Cradle series bugged me much, much more than Dark Matter in terms of 'that couldn't possibly work.'

Dark Matter did annoy me with its cherry picking approach to the science, especially because the protagonist is supposed to be a world leading physicist. The worst parts are where he tries to talk the science talk, and ends up sounding like a bit of a charlatan. But then again, it does work out for him, so maybe he's just living in a different universe governed by weird science-magicky principles?

I still devoured the book in a couple of days, so make of that what you will! Guess I loved those line breaks!

SallyNasty wrote:

His weakest, imo. Demons is the best.

I mean, just look at at the cover for the P&V edition.

IMAGE(https://photos.smugmug.com/Hobby-misc/i-5Z7pJmz/0/312b9631/M/demons-M.jpg)

boogle wrote:

God the Idiot is f*cking slow

Hey, I'm doing my best.

I'll catch up! Eventually. Probably.