[Baco Xtath]

QuickTidal, on 12 February 2014 - 04:14 PM, said:

Baco Xtath, on 12 February 2014 - 03:56 PM, said:

the Emperor's Blades - so far so good (only 4 hrs in).

Who's your fave of the three protags so far?

I'd have to say Valyn. Not necessarily because of him personally but his story/setting is more interesting thus far. Also, his supporting characters are more interesting.

This post has been edited by Baco Xtath: 12 February 2014 - 06:14 PM

[QuickTidal]

Baco Xtath, on 12 February 2014 - 06:13 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 12 February 2014 - 04:14 PM, said:

Baco Xtath, on 12 February 2014 - 03:56 PM, said:

the Emperor's Blades - so far so good (only 4 hrs in).

Who's your fave of the three protags so far?

I'd have to say Valyn. Not necessarily because of him personally but his story/setting is more interesting thus far. Also, his supporting characters are more interesting.

I just rounded page 175 (I don't know where that puts me ahead of you in your audio listen)...but I'd have agreed...till I got to around 140 and Kaden's story took off in a totally new and interesting direction as well. Adare has only had a few chapters so far, so I hope I'm coming to a significant portion for her as well soon. But yeah Valyn and the Kettral is a badass POV...but yeah I'm officially now loving Kaden's POV as well.

Also, just discovered that umial is pronounced with a Y sound like "y-umial"....cause Staveley used the phrase "a umial" and not "an umial". Is that how the Audio book pronounces it?

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 12 February 2014 - 07:19 PM

[Tiste Simeon]

All you Reynolds fans, how does he measure up against Iain M Banks? Bear in mind I am a huge Banks fan, especially his Sci Fi stuff...

[Baco Xtath]

Tiste Brent Not Abyss Weeks Simeon, on 12 February 2014 - 07:32 PM, said:

All you Reynolds fans, how does he measure up against Iain M Banks? Bear in mind I am a huge Banks fan, especially his Sci Fi stuff...

Reynolds is much darker and has very little humor. Also, he is more realistic i.e. he tries to stay true to physics and discusses this in detail whereas in Banks' Culture, the Minds take care of travel and little is explained about how. I love both but Reynolds is my favorite. But, both are different so it really just depends on what you're in the mood for. If I were to compare them to their fantasy equivalents I would say Reynolds is like aSoIaF or the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant and Banks is like Abercrombie or the Black Company. All good but tone, style....etc. very different.

[Salt-Man Z]

Maybe Apt, on 12 February 2014 - 05:36 PM, said:

Anyone have an opinion of the rest of the books? There's like 7 all in all I think. Are they worth reading and do they synergise with the first book?

Definitely read the next book, Speaker for the Dead. It's a completely different animal, but I'm not alone in thinking it's Card's best book. (It won back-to-back Hugos and Nebulas with Ender's Game, after all.) Some people don't like it because it's nothing like the first book, but if you go in not expecting EG part 2, you should be fine. And you can stop there if you want, because...

...The other books are where it gets a bit dicey. Book three, Xenocide, picks up the dangling plot threads left in Speaker, but it's very much a love-it-or-hate-it book. Personally, I really like it. The writing is very much on the same level as Speaker, but Card pulls some stunts, plot-wise, that you'll either really enjoy or just outright loathe; I'm in the first camp. Of course, Xenocide is really only Part 1 of 2, so if you want to finish the story, you'll need to pick up Children of the Mind. Now, I like CotM, and it's a fitting end to the (original) saga, but writing-wise it's such a let down from the earlier books.

Having said all that, lots of folks who disliked the direction the original saga took after the first book swear by the first book in the spin-off series. Ender's Shadow is basically EG told from the point of Bean. Lots of people hold it up alongside EG; I think it's merely okay. That's also my opinion of the following "Shadow" books that follow Bean and other Battle School kids (and to some extent Peter) back on Earth, which declined in quality with each installment (IMO).

I have yet to read the fifth Ender book or fifth Bean book, so I can't comment on those, but my general recommendation is that anything Card wrote before the turn of the century is worth trying, but after that, not so much.

[QuickTidal]

Tiste Brent Not Abyss Weeks Simeon, on 12 February 2014 - 07:32 PM, said:

All you Reynolds fans, how does he measure up against Iain M Banks? Bear in mind I am a huge Banks fan, especially his Sci Fi stuff...

In addition to Baco's response: Reynolds also adds a significant aspect of mystery and archeology to his books that I think achieves more than Banks does. Even the short pieces that take place in the RS universe are brilliant in this regard.

[stone monkey]

To my mind, Banks is the better writer of the two, stylistically speaking. Reynolds has... rigour on his side.

[Aptorian]

Salt-Man Z, on 12 February 2014 - 08:06 PM, said:

...The other books are where it gets a bit dicey. Book three, Xenocide, picks up the dangling plot threads left in Speaker, but it's very much a love-it-or-hate-it book. Personally, I really like it. The writing is very much on the same level as Speaker, but Card pulls some stunts, plot-wise, that you'll either really enjoy or just outright loathe; I'm in the first camp. Of course, Xenocide is really only Part 1 of 2, so if you want to finish the story, you'll need to pick up Children of the Mind. Now, I like CotM, and it's a fitting end to the (original) saga, but writing-wise it's such a let down from the earlier books.

I probably won't bother with the Shadow storyline but I think I need to give Speaker for the Dead a try and see if the next two are worth it.

Great thing about older books like those is that they can be bought dirt cheap.

[worry]

Agree w/ Salt on those four Ender books, for what it's worth. Haven't read the Shadow ones.

[D'rek]

I agree with Salt Man. I liked Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide and Children of the Mind. I agree that Xenocide and CotM are not as good as SftD, but they're still quite good and get way more hate than they deserve compared to SftD. Expect the same light level of sci-fi as Ender's Game, but IMO tackling more adult ideas and relationships. They also, IMO, have a lot more imagination for futuristic societies, species, etc than Ender's Game shows.

I've read the first four Shadow books. The first one (which is basically a longer Ender's Game from Beans' perspective) is good for what it is, and the next two are alright but IMO are also pretty YA. I read the fourth (Shadow of the Giant) years later, and it's either not nearly as good or else I was just too old and better read to appreciate it.

As Salt Man says, DO NOT read any of the later stuff (Ender in Exile, the Aaron Johnston stuff, or Shadows in Flight). Don't even read the synopses on Wikipedia - they actually bring the series down by messing around with some established canon and being really sappy.

Also, I'm totally biased in that Card's Homecoming series was (I think) the first sci-fi series I ever read.

[D'rek]

In other news, finished The Stories of Ibis. It comes together really well. I like that the "truth" is nothing like the possibilities explored so far but a smart and realistic idea, and I also like that Ibis ties in the fictional stories she told into the "truth" so that there is a reason she told these stories, and a reason she told these specific stories. Not a hugely emotional novel, but it's both a very smart conceptualization of the future and gave me a lot to think about.


Two more chapters down in Best Served Cold - I'm up to Ospiria now. Glad to see more significant events occurring and the inter-character tensions finally resulting in something. The Shenkt and Ishri capabilities have sort of come out of nowhere, though. I think I'll have to get to the end of this one before I can form a proper opinion on it.

[Aptorian]

On a whim, instead of starting the next Ender book, I picked up the first book in Phillip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy, which I've had sitting on a shelf for 3 or 4 years now.

Some 60 pages in, if I had to sum up the experience with one word, it would be delightful.

I really love the way he describes the every day adventures of childhood as experienced by the protagonist Lyra. The strange world building and the cultural weirdness mixed with the recognizable is excellent as well.

Most interestingly he's thrown in a bunch of Danish references, namely certain place names and the armored bear people, which are given the Danish name "Panserbjørne".

[Abyss]

Maybe Apt, on 12 February 2014 - 10:01 PM, said:

On a whim, instead of starting the next Ender book, I picked up the first book in Phillip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy, which I've had sitting on a shelf for 3 or 4 years now.

Some 60 pages in, if I had to sum up the experience with one word, it would be delightful.

I really love the way he describes the every day adventures of childhood as experienced by the protagonist Lyra. The strange world building and the cultural weirdness mixed with the recognizable is excellent as well.

Most interestingly he's thrown in a bunch of Danish references, namely certain place names and the armored bear people, which are given the Danish name "Panserbjørne".

Interesting... this has been siting in the TRPFHAB for ages.

[worry]

Dang dude, it's awesome. Read it!

[D'rek]

Abyss, on 12 February 2014 - 10:29 PM, said:

Maybe Apt, on 12 February 2014 - 10:01 PM, said:

On a whim, instead of starting the next Ender book, I picked up the first book in Phillip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy, which I've had sitting on a shelf for 3 or 4 years now.

Some 60 pages in, if I had to sum up the experience with one word, it would be delightful.

I really love the way he describes the every day adventures of childhood as experienced by the protagonist Lyra. The strange world building and the cultural weirdness mixed with the recognizable is excellent as well.

Most interestingly he's thrown in a bunch of Danish references, namely certain place names and the armored bear people, which are given the Danish name "Panserbjørne".

Interesting... this has been siting in the TRPFHAB for ages.

It's been a long time since I read that trilogy but I really liked it. IIRC, some people were disappointed by the way it all wraps up, but the imaginative world and interplay between them has always IMO been the more important part of that series than the plot, anyways.

[Baco Xtath]

I read the Golden Compass before Christmas and really enjoyed it. I've got the following two on Kindle but I've yet to push on. And, yeah, delightful is a very apt word,....Apt.

[QuickTidal]

D, on 12 February 2014 - 09:53 PM, said:

Not a hugely emotional novel, but it's both a very smart conceptualization of the future and gave me a lot to think about.

This is the best part about reading that book. It gives you a LOT to think about in terms of humanity. Loved that it did that to me.

[Tiste Simeon]

Thanks for the Reynolds thought chaps. Any particular starting point? Are they series or more like linked standalones (ala Banks...)

[Baco Xtath]

Tiste Brent Not Abyss Weeks Simeon, on 12 February 2014 - 11:50 PM, said:

Thanks for the Reynolds thought chaps. Any particular starting point? Are they series or more like linked standalones (ala Banks...)

I would suggest Revelation Space, Chasm City, Redemption Ark, Absolution Gap, Galactic North, the Prefect. Some will suggest Chasm City first but I don't. I think Revelation gives the proper introduction to the Reynolds' universe. Chasm City and the Prefect are stand-alones. Galactic North is a collection of short stories. Some hundreds of years before the main sequence and some giving closure to the series as a whole. Also, Diamond Dogs and Turquoise Days are two short stories that can be read whenever.

Outside of the Revelation Space universe, you can read in whatever order as they're all different universes. House of Suns is fantastic, mind-blowing stuff. Pushing Ice starts out like Rendezvous with Rama then goes nuclear (metaphorically speaking). Century Rain is a detective noir set in an alternate 1950's Paris with some insane sci-fi elements. Terminal World is a steampunk/new weird craziness that is very original and one of my favorites.

Poseidon's Children (his newest series) is set only a couple hundred years in the future and is absolutely great. Blue Remembered Earth, especially the audio version, is probably my favorite near future sci-fi and right with it is the sequel On the Steel Breeze which is likewise phenomenal.

My summaries are shit so google some of this stuff if you want the real low-down.

Edit: Forgot about Zima Blue and other stories. I don't remember a lot of it, having read it a while back but I see that I gave it 4.5 stars so it's probably pretty good. Also, a prequel novella to House of Suns is Thousandth Night which I own but have yet to read.

He's got a lot more short stories, a Doctor Who, and what not but that's all I've read.

This post has been edited by Baco Xtath: 13 February 2014 - 01:15 AM

[Stormcat]

The lives they left behind. Suitcases from a state hospital attic.