Harrow the Ninth: it is very confusing whilst you're reading it, but it's playing fair with you, and it will explain things at the end. You have to go with it, and I think it's worth it by the end. Ht9 is a lot of fan's favourite for a reason.
fangblackbone wrote:Harrow is way more complicated.
I'll be honest, I think I'm too dumb for Harrow. I've reread Gideon twice now and still have difficulty keeping things straight. Harrow just makes me feel lost the entire time.
I'm of the unpopular opinion that Harrow is an authorial misstep where you're stuck with the POV of an incredibly boring character where all of the interesting stuff is taking place off-screen. The previous two books were relatively self-contained and pretty tightly plotted, whereas Harrow requires you to have deeply internalized a constellation of characters and actions from two separate and elaborate plotlines. I think you really have to put in a lot of effort to make the book work and I'm just not sure it's worth the payoff.
ColdForged wrote:fangblackbone wrote:Harrow is way more complicated.
I'll be honest, I think I'm too dumb for Harrow. I've reread Gideon twice now and still have difficulty keeping things straight. Harrow just makes me feel lost the entire time.
I'm of the unpopular opinion that Harrow is an authorial misstep where you're stuck with the POV of an incredibly boring character where all of the interesting stuff is taking place off-screen. The previous two books were relatively self-contained and pretty tightly plotted, whereas Harrow requires you to have deeply internalized a constellation of characters and actions from two separate and elaborate plotlines. I think you really have to put in a lot of effort to make the book work and I'm just not sure it's worth the payoff.
Are you talking about the third book, Nona the Ninth, there?
I found Nona a bit disappointing initially too, but I've come to really appreciate it on later reads. There's a sort of slow sadness to it: the characters are all expecting to die / fail, but are showing humanity and proving that the human connections they're making are still meaningful, even if they're temporary. I think it's rather beautiful.
For me, the author drops you into the center of a story and then the circle slowly reveals itself through the MC of the book's perspective, including the other characters. Think like the ripple after a drop hits a puddle. In this way Nona is exactly like the previous two books. (IMO)
No more Bob? Oh noes...
But I do like the New Management side of it as well.
Still, maybe he'll do stories in the Laundry Files now and then.
No more Bob? Oh noes...
But I do like the New Management side of it as well.
Still, maybe he'll do stories in the Laundry Files now and then.
This is why i had a pause, where I am in the books Bob and Mo are turning up less and less and they really are the central core to the appeal to me. I shall see how i get on though as I have thoroughly enjoyed the books so far but those lead by other characters a bit less.
kazooka wrote:ColdForged wrote:fangblackbone wrote:Harrow is way more complicated.
I'll be honest, I think I'm too dumb for Harrow. I've reread Gideon twice now and still have difficulty keeping things straight. Harrow just makes me feel lost the entire time.
I'm of the unpopular opinion that Harrow is an authorial misstep where you're stuck with the POV of an incredibly boring character where all of the interesting stuff is taking place off-screen. The previous two books were relatively self-contained and pretty tightly plotted, whereas Harrow requires you to have deeply internalized a constellation of characters and actions from two separate and elaborate plotlines. I think you really have to put in a lot of effort to make the book work and I'm just not sure it's worth the payoff.
Are you talking about the third book, Nona the Ninth, there?
I found Nona a bit disappointing initially too, but I've come to really appreciate it on later reads. There's a sort of slow sadness to it: the characters are all expecting to die / fail, but are showing humanity and proving that the human connections they're making are still meaningful, even if they're temporary. I think it's rather beautiful.
Oh yeah, sorry, I've got them crossed up. I really liked parts of that book, but again, centering it on a protagonist with no real agency, motivation, understanding, or even interesting commentary really made it a slog. I enjoyed Harrow.
edit: this deserves a longer, more coherent response, but it's a workday, I'm tired, and social media has apparently slowly eroded my ability to do good forum posting.
Robear wrote:No more Bob? Oh noes...
But I do like the New Management side of it as well.
Still, maybe he'll do stories in the Laundry Files now and then.
This is why i had a pause, where I am in the books Bob and Mo are turning up less and less and they really are the central core to the appeal to me. I shall see how i get on though as I have thoroughly enjoyed the books so far but those lead by other characters a bit less.
In the last 6 or 7 books Bob is only the POV character in one (Escape from Yokai Island), and it’s a self-contained story separate from the main continuity. Most of the recent books follow an entirely separate cast not affiliated with the Laundry at all that since they were initially designed as a separate series that eventually got folded into the Laundry series. I’m sort of indifferent on the new characters but still like the world enough to keep up with the series.
I'm of the unpopular opinion that Harrow is an authorial misstep where you're stuck with the POV of an incredibly boring character where all of the interesting stuff is taking place off-screen
I'd be all for a rewrite of Harrow through Palamedes Sextus's POV. Or Sextus and Camilla Hect.
That being said, I love puzzles or turning things into puzzles. So while I had to "wait what?" and reread certain parts, I really enjoyed it. There were plenty of times where I had no idea most of what just happened but was able to figure it out after reading some more.
I read it mostly on an airplane if that gives you any clarity. It was someplace where I had no temptation to drop it for easier quick hits.
but are showing humanity and proving that the human connections they're making are still meaningful, even if they're temporary. I think it's rather beautiful.
The political alliances and swaps I found interesting Nona. I also enjoyed the attempt at creating a nuclear family among the chaos compelling. Protecting the young and naive at the climax of war is a time honored strong theme too.
Wrapped up Sanderson's Wind and Truth. Overall I enjoyed it a lot and am happy with where this 5-book arc concluded. All the characters got endings that felt appropriate without being too predictable. It answered a lot of lingering questions about the Cosmere and set-up the future series in a (relatively) natural way.
I should say, though, that I am more sympathetic to critics of Sanderson now too. This read-through I did find some of the prose (in particular, witty banter) to be bad. I still like how his characters are flawed, and how overcoming those flaws is a central theme, but I did not like how close it got sometimes to "mental health issues are a superpower" tropes. Finally, there seemed to be some blatant fanservice in Wind and Truth that wasn't there in previous books. While I like how close Sanderson is to his fans, maybe it's a two-edged sword...
Alien Clay, by Adrian Tchaikovsky was really bloody good. The revolution themes felt incredibly apposite, too.
I've read all the available Millennial Mage books (progressive fantasy) and really enjoyed them.
Alien Clay, by Adrian Tchaikovsky was really bloody good. The revolution themes felt incredibly apposite, too.
Do you mean revolution in his s/f world?
Tchaikovsky is one of my favorite contemporary sci-fi authors and Alien Clay is possibly my favorite of his books.
I liked Alien Clay, but he hit such a high note in Children of Memory that everything since then has felt like a bit of a letdown. It had one of the most striking scenes in contemporary sci-fi, if not contemporary literature:
The scene where they visit Liff as the last surviving human in a dying/dead space colony and she begs them for food is going to haunt me for a long time.
Nice, I really liked the Children of Time series and had already picked that one up. I recently finished Dogs of War, and I get what he was trying to do, but having half of the book be in first person was a bad idea. "I am Rex, I am a good dog..."
Been reading Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed, and it's unsurprisingly great. I really need to dig more into her oeuvre.
DudleySmith wrote:Alien Clay, by Adrian Tchaikovsky was really bloody good. The revolution themes felt incredibly apposite, too.
Do you mean revolution in his s/f world?
Naturally
Been reading Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed, and it's unsurprisingly great. I really need to dig more into her oeuvre.
Such a great book. Fascinating look at realistic Anarchism
Natus wrote:DudleySmith wrote:Alien Clay, by Adrian Tchaikovsky was really bloody good. The revolution themes felt incredibly apposite, too.
Do you mean revolution in his s/f world?
Naturally
My question was regarding his ability to bring historical revolutions into the new scope of his imagined universe, meaning he would have to have some familiarity with them (the Russian, the French, etc.) Why I ask is that I feel a boardgame sci-fi game depicting a revolution that did not work was Red Dust Rebellion, so any media that does it well, in my view, is well worth exploring.
DudleySmith wrote:Natus wrote:DudleySmith wrote:Alien Clay, by Adrian Tchaikovsky was really bloody good. The revolution themes felt incredibly apposite, too.
Do you mean revolution in his s/f world?
Naturally
My question was regarding his ability to bring historical revolutions into the new scope of his imagined universe, meaning he would have to have some familiarity with them (the Russian, the French, etc.) Why I ask is that I feel a boardgame sci-fi game depicting a revolution that did not work was Red Dust Rebellion, so any media that does it well, in my view, is well worth exploring.
Oh, I thought you were asking about any revolutions pertaining to modern contexts.
I'd be very interested to learn whether he did historical research. It really felt like he had first hand accounts of what it's like to face off against riot police, tear gas, informants and ideological oppression. It's not a happy book by any means. It reminds me of that quote about hope not being a shining pristine figure, but battered and bruised, spitting teeth out as it gets back up for another go.
New Joe Abercrombie May 6th!
https://us.macmillan.com/books/97812...
Yes… yesss!
Been a fan since 2014, eagerly anticipating the Devils. We had our second son in October and my wife, who did not know his works, picked the First Law around December on my recommendation.
She’s 2/3rds through the second book in the final trilogy (Age of Madness), firmly planted on team Shivers, after being team Logen for a bit.
We’re both very excited!
Admittedly, it is a bit off-topic, but I just stumbled over this article/interview with Storygraph’s developer Nadia Odunayo from last month and found it worth sharing. I have been using Storygraph* since January 2024 and it has pushed my reading input quite a bit. So much so that I haven’t even touched a game this year apart from the Times’s Spelling Bee and Wordle.
Is anyone else using Storygraph? If you want to add me, my user name is the same as it is here.
*Storygraph lets you log your read/listened pages/minutes of books and neatly puts the data together into all kinds of statistics.
My copy of Extraction finally arrived! Yay!
I read the first book in the Martin Hench series by Cory Doctorow a while back and I quite enjoyed it. I just finished the second and third, and wow, he really nails the shady aspects of Silicon Valley culture in the second one, and the feel of the early computer boom in the third. I recommend them.
I read the first book in the Martin Hench series by Cory Doctorow a while back and I quite enjoyed it. I just finished the second and third, and wow, he really nails the shady aspects of Silicon Valley culture in the second one, and the feel of the early computer boom in the third. I recommend them.
And all too topical!
Absolutely! I should have said that they have strong social and political and hacktivist themes, as well as a bunch of great references to actual hacking and computing history. Nerd books.
Goodreads recommended me Artifact Space and after reading some reviews I'm interested. However the Kindle and Audible versions seem to have disappeared, in the US stores, even though the sequels are still available. So weird.
Goodreads recommended me Artifact Space and after reading some reviews I'm interested. However the Kindle and Audible versions seem to have disappeared, in the US stores, even though the sequels are still available. So weird.
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