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Author Topic: Fantasy / Sci-fi Books  (Read 7758 times)

Tack

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Re: Fantasy / Sci-fi Books
« Reply #75 on: February 21, 2016, 08:01:36 am »

so a friend offered to lend me this quaint little series called m something book of the fallen
he says it's pretty ok i hope its not too long
Autocorrect trying to fix my shitposting. Guess it means I'm usually awesome.
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Sentience, Endurance, and Thumbs: The Trifector of a Superpredator.
Yeah, he's a banned spammer. Normally we'd delete this thread too, but people were having too much fun with it by the time we got here.

Tack

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Re: Fantasy / Sci-fi Books
« Reply #76 on: February 21, 2016, 08:15:18 am »

On the topic of "Badguy main characters", prince of thorns by Mark Laurence does it.
I really like the way the character development worked in that one.
I had a brief glance at the reviews on Goodreads and people pretty much either said it was shocking-yet-amazing or deserved to be burnt along with its author and anyone who enjoyed it. I think I will have to check this book out! :o
To be honest it kind of bored me?
Eventually I'm going to have to, in no small part because I have to suss out my competition, due to the protagonist of my current project being much closer to the "bad guy" end of the spectrum. :E
True.
It's actually pretty evil as his father is the typical "cold megalomaniac" type of evil which I like most.
Whereas Jorg is the "Violent and emotionally unstable" kind which I usually hate.

So the books biggest hook for me was basically when I first found myself rooting for this really unlikeable guy.

As for the drama, it's actually less grim than, say, any Brent weeks book.
I think the books randomly got strawmanned by the rape-in-literature people.
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Yeah, he's a banned spammer. Normally we'd delete this thread too, but people were having too much fun with it by the time we got here.

Vilanat

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Re: Fantasy / Sci-fi Books
« Reply #77 on: February 21, 2016, 08:15:41 am »

Malazan book of the fallen. it's pretty long, but well worth it.

I just read through the first two books, have you read Ilium and Olympos by the same author?
I liked those two much more, but they didn't have the unusual structure of the Hyperion Cantos.

Never even heard of them until now, definitely getting on my wishlist.
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Ghazkull

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Re: Fantasy / Sci-fi Books
« Reply #78 on: February 21, 2016, 11:04:14 am »

so a friend offered to lend me this quaint little series called m something book of the fallen
he says it's pretty ok i hope its not too long
Autocorrect trying to fix my shitposting. Guess it means I'm usually awesome.
Bwahaha "not too long" XD

you are in for a ride.
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ChairmanPoo

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Re: Fantasy / Sci-fi Books
« Reply #79 on: February 21, 2016, 12:45:00 pm »

I found it incoherent and boring, myself. There was no plot advancement to speak of, the ending was in the... eighth? tenth? book, but it might as well have happened in the first or the second one.

Maybe you'll experience will be better, I hope.  ???
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Willfor

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Re: Fantasy / Sci-fi Books
« Reply #80 on: February 21, 2016, 12:51:26 pm »

Malazan is one of those "love it or hate it" kind of series. One where the fans really love it, and everyone else just sort of doesn't really get the appeal. I haven't actually read it, I've just seen the dynamic play out in various fandom areas.

I've heard it can be easiest to start with the second book instead of the first.
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TheKaspa

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Re: Fantasy / Sci-fi Books
« Reply #81 on: March 09, 2016, 06:06:18 am »

so a friend offered to lend me this quaint little series called m something book of the fallen
he says it's pretty ok i hope its not too long
Autocorrect trying to fix my shitposting. Guess it means I'm usually awesome.

Run, you fool!
Joking, I love Malazan. But I have to warn you that the ride is long, it's not "little" as there are 10 books (but they are only the main books). There are at least three "side" series, which can be read later but that cover parts of the main story which otherwise will only be addressed by hearsay or considered known by all the charachters and thus not discussed.
You could start from the second book as it is more fast-paced than the first one, and if you are interested read the first book immediatly after.

I read Gardens of the Moon (the first book) four years ago, as I was looking for new ebooks on Amazon and bought it by mistake (wanted a sample, picked buy with one click). I read it and found it difficult as nothing is ever explained unless the characters are discussing it: so if it common knowledge in the book universe or the character doesn't want to talk it will never be explained. The story starts in the middle of a war, without any backstory of the conflict (you'll learn it in the next books) nor about the parties involved.
After a couple of year, I tried reading it again. It was amazing, as I now understood much more and I was able to better enjoy certain details and episodes.

Giving that your friend is lending you the books, it's up to you to start with the 2nd or the 1st book. If reading the first book, be prepared, if interested in a minimal level, to re-read it.
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Digital Hellhound

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Re: Fantasy / Sci-fi Books
« Reply #82 on: March 09, 2016, 09:10:16 am »

Hyperion Cantos and Olympos/Ilium are some of my favorite books. Soft scifi for sure, but if you're okay with that, fantastic.

The Quantum Thief books that someone mentioned I liked, but I can understand why someone might not. Rajaniemi seems to have a passionate hate for exposition, so nothing is ever explained directly, you just have to piece it together from a tiny sprinkling of facts and context. It's a pretty strange and semi-unusual setting, too, so...

I personally didn't mind - it's a perfectly enjoyable story even if you don't get everything that's happening in it, so do give it a try. :D
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Werdna

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Re: Fantasy / Sci-fi Books
« Reply #83 on: March 09, 2016, 03:20:58 pm »

The Windup Girl was one of the hardest reads I ever made it through. The universe is just so... frustrating to me. Yeah sure, just throw away all this nice stuff we have and replace it with the Flintstones-esque woolly mammoth powered factories, not even joking. The ending was sort of satisfying, but Idk, the book wasn't really worth it in my opinion.

I agree that his books can be tough to decipher, particularly this world (it's not clear to me if he's always writing in the same world; this world I think of as his "calorie" world).  It is rewarding to piece it together though - I found Pump 6 and Other Stories invaluable, particularly the stories "Calorie Man" and "Yellow Card Man".  Essentially, it is a post-oil, post-climate change world where energy is stored only in the form of molecular "springs", and physical labor is required to "wind" them up.  However, engineered viruses have wiped out natural food supplies, and companies control what food remains, doling out "calories" the same way OPEC once controlled oil - so in this world, bio-engineered food is energy.  The milieu is also complicated (Thailand) so piecing together the world (and the Thai politics) is tricky, so i can understand this is a tough read.  I found it quite original though for folks that are looking for something off the beaten path.  After reading Pump 6, I'd recommend those short stories as a better starting point for anyone interested in Bacigalupi.  Pump 6 often appears a Kindle Daily/Monthly Deal for those that troll those lists.

A book I enjoyed in a very similar vein to Bacigalupi is China Mieville's Perdido Street Station.  Sci-fi/horror, pretty crazy read in an even more alien city.

On the other side of the coin, I'd like to recommend The Knife of Never Letting Go, I found this a very fast-moving, original YA sci-fi read.  For $2 it's a good deal.  Warning, it's part of a trilogy and IIRC ends on a cliffhanger, but in this case the ride was so good I didn't even think twice to continue. 

Spoiler: Excerpt from Knife (click to show/hide)
« Last Edit: March 09, 2016, 03:37:35 pm by Werdna »
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Erkki

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Re: Fantasy / Sci-fi Books
« Reply #84 on: May 10, 2016, 01:38:59 am »

Hyperion Cantos and Olympos/Ilium are some of my favorite books. Soft scifi for sure, but if you're okay with that, fantastic.

The Quantum Thief books that someone mentioned I liked, but I can understand why someone might not. Rajaniemi seems to have a passionate hate for exposition, so nothing is ever explained directly, you just have to piece it together from a tiny sprinkling of facts and context. It's a pretty strange and semi-unusual setting, too, so...

I personally didn't mind - it's a perfectly enjoyable story even if you don't get everything that's happening in it, so do give it a try. :D

Bodiless souls adventuring amongst Gods in ever changing virtual realities beyond Saturn's orbit and swapping bodies as they die in a walking Paris-analoque city in Mars where time is literally a currency is "semi-unusual"?  :D

edit: I did enjoy the first 2 books a lot and I intend to eventually get the 3rd one too, in paperback.
« Last Edit: May 10, 2016, 01:44:51 am by Erkki »
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chaotic skies

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Re: Fantasy / Sci-fi Books
« Reply #85 on: May 10, 2016, 06:13:04 pm »

Recently re-read Seveneves by Neal Stephenson, and I forgot how much I love this book. Sure, it's long (~860 some pages) and it only hints at some things, but it's a great book. If you haven't read it, you should.
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Erkki

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Re: Fantasy / Sci-fi Books
« Reply #86 on: July 25, 2016, 04:22:02 am »

I just finished Rajaniemi's Quantum Thief trilogy's final part, The Causal Angel: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18190723-the-causal-angel

I did like it more than the middle part and thought the trilogy received a worthy ending that the reader can interpret in many ways. Great sci-fi. The biggest change to previous books is that the universe is more or less already explained(which helps the reader), so relatively little new is uncovered, and that mostly about the Zoku. Instead, a great deal is revealed about the characters, their origins and their motives though some can be guessed and determined by the first two books alone. Instead of wondering about stuff, the last part is mostly about Jean le Flambeur finally revealing his past in its entirety, Mieli freeing herself and the great showdown between the solar system's superpowers, Sobornost Gods and Jean.

Rajaniemi is still difficult to follow at times and it took me almost 3 books to get used to copies of backup copies running in simulated virtual environments being interchangeable to actual physical characters, but being able to follow and understand(somewhat, heh) the plot is rewarding. He seems to realize how confusing it can be himself, as the recursive and fractal environments and the form of existence constantly swapping between physical and various levels of non-physical confuses the characters too.  :)
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Insanegame27

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Re: Fantasy / Sci-fi Books
« Reply #87 on: July 25, 2016, 04:29:53 am »

Ignoring the Elephant Corpse in the room, I read Feed for English and enjoyed it once I got past the fucking slang. My English teacher who assigned us the book was reading it over the holidays and asked himself, "Why am I teaching this?"


Thoroughly enjoying the I Am Number Four series. I'm up to Fate of Ten. It's hard to get the right book from the librarian when the series goes Four - Six - Nine - Five - Seven - Ten - One.
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