[Ailesbury]

Reading at the moment...I have been interested in science fiction short stories lately. I am in the middle of Volume 1 of The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg: To Be Continued 1953-58.

This post has been edited by Ailesbury: 28 October 2024 - 08:08 PM

[pat5150]

Abyss, on 28 October 2024 - 03:16 AM, said:

i speak both official languages and know how to bribe bystanders, Pat.

Does it help matters if I say that the book features the most entertaining necromancer since Bauchelain and Korbal Broach???

[JPK]

pat5150, on 30 October 2024 - 02:20 AM, said:

Abyss, on 28 October 2024 - 03:16 AM, said:

i speak both official languages and know how to bribe bystanders, Pat.

Does it help matters if I say that the book features the most entertaining necromancer since Bauchelain and Korbal Broach???

I take back every nice thing I've ever said about you...

[amphibian]

I have been curious as to why certain web novels get big and I read my way through Lord of the Mysteries and some of the Tensei Slime.

I loosely believe the most ardent fans of these types of web novels - isekai/rebirth + hyper competency - are on the autism spectrum.

There's a lack of emotional depth, almost no impactful mistakes made by the protagonists, very very few romantic relationships, and a strange detachment from the old and new worlds - as if even the new rules of the fantasy world don't map well onto the person writing it or their characters because being a full and flawed and multi-emotional person just doesn't putter along right.


It's a different vibe from Thomas Covenant or An Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint. The translations can affect the material, but not so much to affect the messages in the material.

I am not a fan of these and I get why they're huge in the free to read web novel world - they're largely emotion free fantasy works to escape into for a bit.

This post has been edited by amphibian: 30 October 2024 - 03:40 AM

[Tsundoku]

pat5150, on 30 October 2024 - 02:20 AM, said:

Abyss, on 28 October 2024 - 03:16 AM, said:

i speak both official languages and know how to bribe bystanders, Pat.

Does it help matters if I say that the book features the most entertaining necromancer since Bauchelain and Korbal Broach???

Pat, the call is coming from inside the house!!!

[pat5150]

I've posted two quotes on the Hotlist since I started reading The Devils if you want to get a taste of the writing. . .

[Abyss]

Abyss, on 28 October 2024 - 03:16 AM, said:

pat5150, on 27 October 2024 - 10:46 PM, said:

Abyss, on 27 October 2024 - 04:05 AM, said:

i know where you live, Pat.

About 120 pages into The Devils and it's a riot so far!

i speak both official languages and know how to bribe bystanders, Pat.

pat5150, on 30 October 2024 - 02:20 AM, said:

Does it help matters if I say that the book features the most entertaining necromancer since Bauchelain and Korbal Broach???

JPK, on 30 October 2024 - 03:23 AM, said:

I take back every nice thing I've ever said about you...

Tsundoku, on 30 October 2024 - 07:54 AM, said:

pat5150, on 30 October 2024 - 02:20 AM, said:

Abyss, on 28 October 2024 - 03:16 AM, said:

i speak both official languages and know how to bribe bystanders, Pat.

Does it help matters if I say that the book features the most entertaining necromancer since Bauchelain and Korbal Broach???

Pat, the call is coming from inside the house!!!

pat5150, on 30 October 2024 - 03:26 PM, said:

I've posted two quotes on the Hotlist since I started reading The Devils if you want to get a taste of the writing. . .

*targeting*
...
*targeting*
...
*targeting*
*target acquired*
*target locked*
*initiating marination protocol lambda*
...
*adding lemons*

[Abyss]

Abyss, on 25 October 2024 - 03:37 AM, said:

Just Finished Martha Wells' BOOK OF THE RAKSURA ... straight in to bk 2 THE SERPENT SEA, which picks up immediately after bk. So far so good.

About 3/4s in and ... this is SPOILERS in a fairly general way, if you were planning to read the books skip this and if you weren't it may convince you to try them without ruining anything....
The MC and his friends... all of whom happen to be large flying-monkey-lizard-people...

Spoiler

broke into a wizard's lair, fought off his demonic and undead minions, were split up, and dropped into the guts of the leviathan the city is built on and are trying to escape while fighting off giant parasite beasties

... this is the kind of crazy i read fantasy for!

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Forgot to mention one thing about my reading of the Chathrand Voyage---it's ironic that, a few days after I killed a mouse, I started on a series in which my favorite character by far

Spoiler

is a talking rat

. Will that stop me from killing again? Of course not! Nothing will but death itself (and even in death, may my memes cascade to slaughter boundless multitudes!), of course. Okay, maybe that's the evil influence of Cormac McCarthy's serial killer book (Child of God) speaking... (just another Kidding of Go*, the Panpsychokiller?... created naturally in our awful image)

Some quotes from The Night of the Swarm:

Quote

Fires in the Dark

Spoiler

there were her hands, two flickering lights,
here was the raft, a spinning pool of jade,
and her friends like burning spirits upon it

all bent by the prism of his touch

shook my hand, and did not bite it either

I don't believe in prayer, and yet I pray

his mind as clear as his body was tortured

I was falling,
the water beneath me disappeared,
there was nothing I could have ahold of,
just wind and darkness, and some vines I think

How by all the roads of twilight did you find your way here?

there was no other light from any quarter, save the heavy brilliance of the stars

their voices so soft that it merged with the night wind

Behind you dieth a dreamland,
Ahead is the blinding day

No silence but thine own is its decay

Go not with winter in your eyes

a helm that gave the wearer titanic strength,
then burned through flesh and skull like some horrible acid

lizard-shaped, elephant-huge, hotter than the depths of a furnace

the man had been remarkable only for his malice and ineptitude

The Editor Pauses for a Drink

[Major spoiler:]

Spoiler

Will history be rescued or erased this day?
Allies or enemies, they will find no mad professor here,
only his clothes and his gold spectacles,
and a black rat named Felthrope Stargraven."

As mentioned in Messing with your groove I listened to about 2/3rds of McCarthy's Child of God. The blurb and the audio sample were a bit misleading; it wasn't as harrowing as I was expecting, and from a narrative standpoint it was slightly more entertaining... though the writing wasn't as impressive as I was expecting. Still a few nice phrases and metaphors. The meandering ramble of the narrative includes a bunch of mini-narratives that managed to hold my attention despite not being very interesting. Most of the audiobook isn't barky or ranty. The accents don't quite sound authentic but weren't distractingly terrible for me. Some quotes I stopped the audio to write down:

Quote

They looked like constipated gargoyles.

A malign star kept him.

a proprietary squint to his eyes

What you in for?

Spoiler

I cut a motherfucker's head off with a pocketknife

I'm a fugitive from the ways of this world,
I'd be a fugitive from my mind if I had me some snow

All the trouble I was ever in came from getting caught

High above their upturned faces it burst, sprays of lit glycerine flaring across the night, trailing down the sky in loosely falling ribbons of hot spectra soon burnt to naught. Another went up, a long whishing sound, fishtailing aloft. In the bloom of its opening you could see like its shadow the image of the rocket gone before, the puff of black smoke and ashen trails arcing out and down like a huge and dark medusa squatting in the sky. In the bloom of light too you could see two men out in the field crouched over their crate of fireworks like assassins or bridge blowers. And you could see among the faces a young girl with candy apple on her lips and her eyes wide. Her pale hair smelled of soap, woman child from beyond the years, rapt below the sulphur glow and pitch light of some medieval fun fair. A lean sky long candle skewered the black pools in her eyes. Her fingers clutched. In the flood of this breaking brimstone galaxy

demon yodlers

Now freeze you son of a bitch, he told the night beyond the window-pane

[Moderately major spoilers:]

Spoiler

huge orange boils of fire

hot pins of light drifted downwind

The flames ran down the batboards and up again like burning squirrels.

gone to sleep [...] with his feet to the embers of the house,
snowflakes falling on him from out of the blackness of the heavens

his finger filled the cold curve of the trigger

For "great literature", it was okay---a little underwhelming. Granted, I only got about 2/3rds of the way through before Audible Plus pulled it. Turns out that "until [date]" for years now has meant Audible Plus might yank it away sometime on that day, even though I could swear I saw one a few days before that still available to play around 10 PM EST on its "until" date, and this one vanished before 10:30 AM EST of its untimely "until"...

Moved on to Tchaikosvky's The Expert System's Brother series. Have "until" the 4th to finish. But it's two short books. Finished book one---well-written, moderately interesting. Science fiction but where humans are ignorant of the science and treat it like magic. Mostly very primitive technology. Not fond of the

Spoiler

anti-utopian

propaganda genre but it's far from the most egregious of them. Slightly slow start for such a short book but overall well-paced, good character development. Obvious Biblical influences but not too obscure (unless there are more that I missed!).

Some quotes:

Quote

Spoiler

man and ghost, clinging to each other,
like climbers on the point of falling

Better a thief than a beggar. The world finds it harder to say no to a thief.

I gave myself over to his destiny

Book two: more overt science fiction, adventure, well done though again I'm not fond of the "oh no scientists shouldn't have done it!" meme-hole's reactionary echochamberpots...

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 01 November 2024 - 11:57 AM

[Briar King]

Only at the 275 mark on Hidden City(yawnnnnn) but it’s been a nerve wracking 2 weeks or so. I would say now I ll be able to focus more time calmly but not just yet as my eyes turn to the Gulf.

[Abyss]

Abyss, on 31 October 2024 - 01:55 PM, said:

Abyss, on 25 October 2024 - 03:37 AM, said:

Just Finished Martha Wells' BOOK OF THE RAKSURA ... straight in to bk 2 THE SERPENT SEA, which picks up immediately after bk. So far so good.

About 3/4s in and ... this is SPOILERS in a fairly general way, if you were planning to read the books skip this and if you weren't it may convince you to try them without ruining anything....
The MC and his friends... all of whom happen to be large flying-monkey-lizard-people...

Spoiler

broke into a wizard's lair, fought off his demonic and undead minions, were split up, and dropped into the guts of the leviathan the city is built on and are trying to escape while fighting off giant parasite beasties

... this is the kind of crazy i read fantasy for!

Just Finished SERPENT SEA, directly into bk 3 THE SIREN DEPTHS.

It's interesting to be reading this after having read Martha Wells' MURDERBOT books. I can see an evolution in her writing, one of the things she does really well w Murderbot is tell the reader about the supporting cast thru M'bot's perspective. While the technique is less advanced for this series, it's still exceptional - we only ever have the MC Moon's pov on a fairly wide supporting cast, but his perspective as a Raksura (winged lizard gorilla shapeshifter person ) who has never lived among his own kind before gives a very clever way to bring the reader in. In bk 3, for logical plot reasons, Moon is separated from the now familiar supporting cast from bks 1-2, and it's properly jarring to him and the reader. When familiar characters reappear the sense of relief is palpable for Moon and for the reader.

I also have to give Wells credit for not making her Raksura into elves, in the 'they're just aloof humans with pointy ears' or dwarves in the 'they're short humans who live in caves' sense. The Raksura are humanoid, they have 'human' emotions, but she works hard at describing their physical reactions with reference to spines, claws, teeth, and wings, and even scent, and she's wonderfully consistent and effective with it. They fight like a flying shapeshifting humanoid with fangs and teeth and feet designed for disembowlments. When they interact their choice of shape is a conscious factor. They kill prey and eat it raw. There are ranks and roles in their culture and Moon being outside of it and confused as hell makes for an engaging way to describe it. I'm halfway into bk 3, action has been low, Raksura politics high, and i'm completely in.

I didn't feel like splitting attention between THE SILT VERSES and the Raksura series - i usually split attention when something isn't quite holding my interest and both of these are just fine on that front. So i paused THE SILT VERSES at the end of S2/start of S3, wild S2 ending with a serious shift of the status quo for all the MCs. Still loving it, the world the writer has made here is so well thought out. I don't want to spoil anything but in a setting where gods can be manufactured by almost anyone and just sent out into the world, a major conflict sets the stage for some messy messy developments. The writer has clearly given a LOT of thought to how this might play out and it makes for a fascinating listen. If you're open to earbooks then podcast/audiodramas are a short hop and this one is completely worth a try.

[polishgenius]

Because I'm feeling a little sick and sorry for myself, I went on a little buying spree even though I already have a big stack. This time I mostly got more recent books on authors I like who I've neglected for a while. One of those is Woman of the Sword, by Anna Smith Spark who wrote The Court of Broken Knives and sequels. Turns out this is set in the same world but it's standalone (which is handy, because despite really enjoying the first I haven't finished that series yet, got stuck on the second).

Anyway it takes her trademark, which is using tricky, somewhat try-hard but it works if you can get into it, writing to depict emotional brutality and tough mental states- but this one a far more grounded and relatable one than the twist on the chosen-one/hero narrative the series went for. Basically it's a retired warrior, now a mother, trying to deal with the death of her husband, interacting with her children, and then looking after them in the coming of a new war. It's not an easy read, but it's very good so far, and I suspect it'll be more approachable for a wider audience than the almost-experimental original trilogy (or at least first book). Like, I really liked Court of Broken Knives, but it was very pretentious from the concept up. This is a lot less so.

[pat5150]

Just finished Joe Abercrombie's The Devils and it's a wild ride! I doubt it will end up on the ballot for the World Fantasy Award, but I can promise you that it's the most fun you'll have reading SFF in 2025!

For anyone interested, you can read my full review here.

[Abyss]

pat5150, on 12 November 2024 - 07:43 PM, said:

Just finished Joe Abercrombie's The Devils and it's a wild ride! I doubt it will end up on the ballot for the World Fantasy Award, but I can promise you that it's the most fun you'll have reading SFF in 2025!

For anyone interested, you can read my full review here.

HATE YOU PAAAAAAAT

[Abyss]

Abyss said:

Abyss said:

Just Finished Martha Wells' BOOK OF THE RAKSURA ...

Just Finished SERPENT SEA, directly into bk 3 THE SIREN DEPTHS.

It's interesting to be reading this after having read Martha Wells' MURDERBOT books. I can see an evolution in her writing, one of the things she does really well w Murderbot is tell the reader about the supporting cast thru M'bot's perspective. While the technique is less advanced for this series, it's still exceptional - we only ever have the MC Moon's pov on a fairly wide supporting cast, but his perspective as a Raksura (winged lizard gorilla shapeshifter person ) who has never lived among his own kind before gives a very clever way to bring the reader in. In bk 3, for logical plot reasons, Moon is separated from the now familiar supporting cast from bks 1-2, and it's properly jarring to him and the reader. When familiar characters reappear the sense of relief is palpable for Moon and for the reader.

I also have to give Wells credit for not making her Raksura into elves, in the 'they're just aloof humans with pointy ears' or dwarves in the 'they're short humans who live in caves' sense. The Raksura are humanoid, they have 'human' emotions, but she works hard at describing their physical reactions with reference to spines, claws, teeth, and wings, and even scent, and she's wonderfully consistent and effective with it. They fight like a flying shapeshifting humanoid with fangs and teeth and feet designed for disembowlments. When they interact their choice of shape is a conscious factor. They kill prey and eat it raw. There are ranks and roles in their culture and Moon being outside of it and confused as hell makes for an engaging way to describe it. I'm halfway into bk 3, action has been low, Raksura politics high, and i'm completely in...

Just finished bk 3 THE SIREN DEPTHS. Great fun. The finale doesn't quite hit the heights of action that bk 2 did (tho still, much action), but instead throws a few whole new elements into the worldbuilding and widens the supporting cast considerably. Am still in. After marathoning three books i might do something else for a change then come back, but there's a decent chance of me jumping in to bk 4 EDGE OF WORLDS too. Im told this one is a bit cliffhangy and while i have bk 5 too, am not decided yet, TBD...

feeling some scifi, lots of good stuff in the TRP, Mike Carey's INFINITY GATE space opera bks 1-2 are tempting, a stack of Adrian Tchaikovsky's novellas, reddit keeps absolutely raving about Buehlman's BETWEEN TWO FIRES....

[polishgenius]

If Ninefox Gambit is in the trp, then that. Trust.

[Briar King]

Mmmmmmm……on pg 358 of Hidden City. This. Is. Boring. As. Fuck!

Unless something epic turns this around it’s approaching DNF territory and I don’t say that lightly cause I’m a stubborn ass cajun when it comes to seeing something through. This is just painful to chip away at though…