Book Recommendations?

Eric Flint, who wrote a lot of speculative historical fiction and space opera with David Weber, died on July 17, 2022.

@robear Match Game (Expeditionary Force Book 14) is out

Hmmm. Probably time to actually read the three I've got. I think I started the series and got distracted. Thanks!

Edit - Yep. Remembering some of the first book but enjoying it anyway.

Wow up to 14 books. I think I read the first three years ago, I didn't know there were so many.

I love those books a lot.

LeapingGnome wrote:

Wow up to 14 books. I think I read the first three years ago, I didn't know there were so many.

Embrace the Fluffernutter.

Are those Expeditionary Force books worthwhile then? There's an awful lot of mediocre military sci-fi books around, and the blurbs didn't really stand out to me.

DudleySmith wrote:

Are those Expeditionary Force books worthwhile then? There's an awful lot of mediocre military sci-fi books around, and the blurbs didn't really stand out to me.

They've got good sarcastic humor. And the audiobook performance is great. After a point they probably would seem repetitive, but I still enjoy them. I'm a few behind, but keep meaning to catch up. Think I'm about book 9 or 10 plus one or two of the offshoot series.

I think somehow in my mind, these and the Bobiverse books are at least cousins.

They are not typical "hoorah" military sci-fi, more buddy comedy/adventures. They are not super deep but I find them very enjoyable.

MannishBoy wrote:
DudleySmith wrote:

Are those Expeditionary Force books worthwhile then? There's an awful lot of mediocre military sci-fi books around, and the blurbs didn't really stand out to me.

They've got good sarcastic humor. And the audiobook performance is great. After a point they probably would seem repetitive, but I still enjoy them. I'm a few behind, but keep meaning to catch up. Think I'm about book 9 or 10 plus one or two of the offshoot series.

I think somehow in my mind, these and the Bobiverse books are at least cousins.

SallyNasty wrote:

They are not typical "hoorah" military sci-fi, more buddy comedy/adventures. They are not super deep but I find them very enjoyable.

Interesting. That's not how the blurbs make them sound at all.

tboon wrote:
MannishBoy wrote:
DudleySmith wrote:

Are those Expeditionary Force books worthwhile then? There's an awful lot of mediocre military sci-fi books around, and the blurbs didn't really stand out to me.

They've got good sarcastic humor. And the audiobook performance is great. After a point they probably would seem repetitive, but I still enjoy them. I'm a few behind, but keep meaning to catch up. Think I'm about book 9 or 10 plus one or two of the offshoot series.

I think somehow in my mind, these and the Bobiverse books are at least cousins.

SallyNasty wrote:

They are not typical "hoorah" military sci-fi, more buddy comedy/adventures. They are not super deep but I find them very enjoyable.

Interesting. That's not how the blurbs make them sound at all.

The main character is frequently the foil in his own story, and the buddy is a very powerful AI that thinks even more of himself than is realistic. The humor is how the MC's unconventional methods and strategies often save the day in concert with the AI's abilities. The main character often stumbles his way out of trouble. Lots of ribbing going on both direction, in addition to the other characters that come along for the ride.

I think I just gravitate to these types of series. I like good sarcasm and good natured ribbing amongst characters that face very tall odds.

See also Mark Tufo's Zombie Fallout series. The Mike and BT characters back and forth is so good. And his other Fallout series in different universes that spin around the Mike character are nearly as good (Lycan Fallout and Indian Hill (aliens)).

It is also a fun read on the laws of unintended consequences. Where some stories beat you over the head with the protagonist's deus ex machina and make it tiresome after a short bit, the Expeditionary Force books get you cheering on just how bad they've screwed the pooch instead because that's where the fun really kicks in.

ranalin wrote:

It is also a fun read on the laws of unintended consequences. Where some stories beat you over the head with the protagonist's deus ex machina and make it tiresome after a short bit, the Expeditionary Force books get you cheering on just how bad they've screwed the pooch instead because that's where the fun really kicks in.

See, that sounds fun. The blurbs make it sound like they fall into the "some stories" category - I've read some of those and they are fine but the series' tend to fall apart because every succeeding book has to have higher stakes. And they are so grim that trudging through them becomes less and less enjoyable until I stop.

I like lots of military sci-fi, but I probably prefer the less ra-ra types. Jack Campbell is nice and cuddly, and biases the professionalism of the navy. I liked Rick Partlow and Michael Mammay, and I really like Marko Kloos's stuff but wasn't so keen on Elliot Kay. I've read lots of BV Larson but it's at a lower standard than the others.

I've never got on with the Honorverse books for some reason. They aren't bad or anything, but they always felt a bit r/menwritingwomen to me.

The "Honorverse" only took a few books to devolve into stories about the sophisticated, tough, brave, Capitalist, right-thinking, honorable Monarchists outwitting the stupid, venal, foolishly well-meaning, Marxist, corrupt, weak-minded, devious, incompetent Liberals. Truly distasteful, running to repugnant. The author ends up deliberately parodying American liberals and pretty viciously too.

I hate accusing characters of being a Mary Sue, I hate it hate it hate it...

but Honor Harrington is a Mary Sue. The first book is good. The following ones each get worse.

Q, are we talking overpowered with ever present plot armor or an obvious author stand-in or both?

Of course, finding a decent definition of a Mary Sue is tough. This comes from TV Tropes.

The prototypical Mary Sue is an original female character in a fanfic who obviously serves as an idealized version of the author mainly for the purpose of Wish-Fulfillment. She's exotically beautiful, often having an unusual hair or eye color, and has a similarly cool and exotic name. She's exceptionally talented in an implausibly wide variety of areas, and may possess skills that are rare or nonexistent in the canon setting. She also lacks any realistic, or at least story-relevant, character flaws — either that or her "flaws" are obviously meant to be endearing.

She has an unusual and dramatic Back Story. The canon protagonists are all overwhelmed with admiration for her beauty, wit, courage and other virtues, and are quick to adopt her as one of their True Companions, even characters who are usually antisocial and untrusting; if any character doesn't love her, that character gets an extremely unsympathetic portrayal. She has some sort of especially close relationship to the author's favorite canon character — their love interest, illegitimate child, never-before-mentioned sister, etc. Other than that, the canon characters are quickly reduced to awestruck cheerleaders, watching from the sidelines as Mary Sue outstrips them in their areas of expertise and solves problems that have stymied them for the entire series. (See Common Mary Sue Traits for more detail on any of these cliches.)

In other words, the term "Mary Sue" is generally slapped on a character who is important in the story, possesses unusual physical traits, and has an irrelevantly over-skilled or over-idealized nature.

Honor Harrington isn't a fanfic character, but she fulfills a lot of the requirements. She's more or less perfect. She's an expert marksmen in a world where no one uses handheld weapons anymore. The only people who hate her turn out to be villains. She has a special pet who can read people's emotions.

Weber uses Deus Ex Machina solutions like they are popcorn. Every single book of his, across multiple different series, solves their problems through fantastical events that make little sense and have little precedent in the world building and characters he has setup. He can write paragraphs and chapters, but he cannot write plots. I know he has sold a lot of books, but definitely not for me. I think I gave up on the Honor Harrington books in the middle of book 3 or so, this was at least a decade ago.

I'm not sure how many Weber books I read, my library history doesn't go that far back. Probably book 3 or 4.

The series could be entitled "Neocons In Spaaace" or "You know, hereditary absolute monarchies might be role models after all". Honor is kind of like an inverse Harry Flashman - her skills keep increasing under pressure and she comes out with all the wins for all the dogmatically proper reasons.

He also had "Zhaspahr Clyhntahn" as the evil politician in the Safehold series (first book was in 2007), a venal, corrupt, narcissistic, power-hungry, gluttonous, betraying, scheming, cynical, bigoted, cronyist, self-justifying mass murdering zealot who manipulates a society into an absolute dictatorship. Because of course.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Honor Harrington isn't a fanfic character, but she fulfills a lot of the requirements. She's more or less perfect. She's an expert marksmen in a world where no one uses handheld weapons anymore. The only people who hate her turn out to be villains. She has a special pet who can read people's emotions.

I have to strongly disagree. She is not the only expert marksman with hand weapons: there is a dueling culture in the Kingdom complete with hired guns like Summervale, and she basically cheats to kill Summervale (using her electronic eye as a gunsight). And she only becomes an expert marksman through extensive practice due to her overwhelming desire for revenge. Their marines and infantry also are experienced with hand weapons and hand to hand combat, and she benefits from their experience and assistance throughout the series.

The only reason she's able to stay on active duty through the first half of the series is the patronage of senior admirals who like her. She loses an eye and an arm in service, and Nimitz/Laughs Brightly is also severely injured due to her inability to control her temper. She constantly makes mistakes that get people killed, and she makes correct decisions that get people killed as well. She goes through several horrific, traumatic events in the series and struggles with the mental and emotional consequences, but grows as a result. For example she is initially a competent officer, but completely unschooled and uninterested in politics. In fact, much of the series is her learning the hard way about the consequences political decisions have on the military, which is a good theme.

Honor is constantly training, which is the exact opposite of a Mary Sue. Her skills and abilities are the result of thousands of hours of practice and experience, and if anything the books err in the opposite direction by constantly talking about the various things she does to stay in shape and keep her skills sharp.

LeapingGnome wrote:

Weber uses Deus Ex Machina solutions like they are popcorn.

I'm not sure where you get this. In the first book she barely survives a suicide run in a light cruiser against a much more heavily armed Q-ship, and the only reason she makes it through is that the enemy captain makes a mistake that she's able to exploit with her ship's unique-but-ill-conceived armament.

In the second book she is able to match her ship against a larger, much more powerful ship only because the enemy crew is inexperienced, and her ship is still wrecked and nearly destroyed.

In the third book her desire for revenge completely derails her Manticoran career. She ends up in the Grayson Navy instead, which at the time is essentially a backwater, and her opponents in that conflict are the religious conservatives on Grayson. She ends up killing one of them in a sword fight, and then winning a space battle through deception and superior tactics.

Through all of this, there aren't any characters suddenly introduced to fix her problems, nor are there artificial or contrived circumstances that result in her success. She is lucky sometimes, but that happens in battle and there are plenty of cases where the enemy is lucky as well. She succeeds through sheer will and determination in situations that are often the result of political or military incompetence, and often only through the blood and sacrifice of her subordinates (and sometimes superiors). If anything, the series is quite the opposite.

Robear wrote:

The "Honorverse" only took a few books to devolve into stories about the sophisticated, tough, brave, Capitalist, right-thinking, honorable Monarchists outwitting the stupid, venal, foolishly well-meaning, Marxist, corrupt, weak-minded, devious, incompetent Liberals. Truly distasteful, running to repugnant. The author ends up deliberately parodying American liberals and pretty viciously too.

In case it wasn't obvious - and the author really did make it obvious, talking about it in the books themselves - the series is modeled on C.S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower series and the conflicts between England and France in the early 19th century. There is plenty of stupid and venal to go around - the Manticoran conservatives, for example. The Havenites start out as sort of hereditary oligarchy, go through a populist revolution, and then eventually settle into a republic that ends up allied with the Manticorans against the Solarians. I'm not sure where you get Marxist, as both societies are quite clearly semi-capitalist with different levels of government control. There are people on both sides who are honorable and smart, and there are people on both sides who are devious and corrupt.

If the books have a weakness it's that those are pretty much the only two character categories: characters are either all good or all bad, and the series often devolves into the good vs. the bad with the actual war pushed into the background. Also, the characters are almost uniformly hyper-competent in their fields, with a few "bad category" exceptions (Houseman, for example). This leads to a kind of wooden formality to a lot of the character interactions. (Campbell/Hemry's Lost Fleet series has this same issue but worse, though it does get somewhat better as the series progresses.)

I've just finished A Prayer For the Crown-Shy, the sequel to A Psalm for the Wild-Built. Sibling Dex and Mosscamp are back in civilization, and tour around different villages talking about life etc. It's another small, lovely little book.

DudleySmith wrote:

I've just finished A Prayer For the Crown-Shy, the sequel to A Psalm for the Wild-Built. Sibling Dex and Mosscamp are back in civilization, and tour around different villages talking about life etc. It's another small, lovely little book.

I got it but Im waiting to take it on vacation!

My reading for the past two months has been abysmal...way too much going on in my head of no real consequence, and the noise crowds out the reading.

Made a valiant stab at Naomi Novik's Uprooted but I just didn't care enough to continue (I hear her Spinning Silver is better). I loved the use of the Russo-Polish fables, but there wasn't enough there for me to sink my teeth into.

Started Becky Chambers' novella To Be Taught if Fortunate and liked it a lot. I should finish it soon. No excuse.

Also listening to Jenny O'Dell's How to Do Nothing, about de-commodifying art. Really turns everything that I grew up with on its head, but it definitely synchs with how I'm living now.

My quick opinions - McKay's Poor Mans Fight series is head and shoulders over Kloos' books. The MC has so much more direction and personality. Kloos' Frontline series MC - the dude is just a cardboard cut out of a soldier for real. I did read the 1st few books of the more current series and it is a bit better but again I enjoy McKay's much much more. That includes the other characters in McKay's books.

I enjoyed the most recent Becky Chambers book. Very easy going and in the same vein as the last.

I'll also disagree with Honor Harrington being a (yuck word) mary sue. The books are full of the MC training and gaining the experience to support being a competent person. There is 100x more justification then, for example, Thrawn being so competent.

Nice sale on Audible for the next 12 hours. Some titles as low as $1.00.

Natus wrote:

Nice sale on Audible for the next 12 hours. Some titles as low as $1.00.

This has been going on a couple of days. It's focused on short format books/novellas. I had a bunch that I would never waste a credit on but would spend a buck or two on. Several Sanderson titles for instance. Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell is even part of his Cosmere universe.

Just finished Hunters of Dune by Brian Herbert (Frank's son) and Kevin J. Anderson. It was legitimately one of the worst books I have ever read. I wish I could unread it because it's tainting the other Dune books by association.

If you are a rare person who somehow made it all the way through to Chapterhouse: Dune but like me had never continued further then I have a recommendation for you: do not read Brian's books.

The new Clarkesworld is out. Read the first couple of stories and I'm very happy with the quality. Check it out! It's an inexpensive subscription.