[polishgenius]

 Chance, on 01 April 2025 - 03:41 AM, said:

Can only really see Jean le Flambeur-serien being comparable for weird sci-fi.

If you've not read it before, Elizabeth Bear's Jacob's Ladder trilogy might be something you enjoy.

Also the standalone Faith, by John Love, from years ago.

This post has been edited by polishgenius: 01 April 2025 - 03:59 PM

[Abyss]

 polishgenius, on 01 April 2025 - 03:56 PM, said:

...
Also the standalone Faith, by John Love, from years ago.

Brilliant book!

...shame the follow-up was the opposite of that.

[Chance]

polishgenius, on 01 April 2025 - 03:56 PM, said:

Chance, on 01 April 2025 - 03:41 AM, said:

Can only really see Jean le Flambeur-serien being comparable for weird sci-fi.

If you've not read it before, Elizabeth Bear's Jacob's Ladder trilogy might be something you enjoy.

Also the standalone Faith, by John Love, from years ago.

Might try Jacob's Ladder the premise sounds interesting.

Faith I did read a long time ago and while it was decent enough sci-fi it wasn't for me that much I remember. Was it that it was a bit too seriously over maximized grimdark can't remember.

I think something that is quite unique for Jean le Flambeur and Ninefox Gambit is how playfully bizarre both technology and civilization becomes while at the same time being rather human, positive, uplifting stories playing with high concept sci-fi ideas on the edge of technology becoming magic. They are both stories that if they had been written in a different way could have been rather grim but instead they are often beautiful and occasionally hilarious. Hard to put into words but they are up there with giants like Banks for me.

This post has been edited by Chance: 02 April 2025 - 05:23 AM

[QuickTidal]

Currently...THE GIRL & THE MOUNTAIN by Marky Mark Lawrence, the 1st of his name.


Deeper thoughts in red-thread....

[Hammerhead88]

Re-reading Dresden and just finished Grave Peril which is where the series really gets going. Absolutely fantastic book.

[worry]

Finished The Spear Cuts Through Water -- this book is a masterpiece. No notes, wouldn't change a single thing. It gets even more playful with the meta stuff than I expected, without robbing a single iota of immersion in the core story. In fact it just reinforces the folkloric elements in a way that's very resonant as a fantasy reader, and layers more meaning into the actions of the main characters. And that core story: it stays horrifying, it stays beautiful, it stays heart-wrenching, it stays wondrous. I might be in love with this book.


Now gonna read book 2 in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. The first was complete unapologetic popcorn, in a good way. It's not without gravity, and Carl has at least a little Dresden DNA in him that gives him backbone and keeps him motivated through the insanity, but it's mostly just a goofball tale being told well enough. I have no interest in LitRPG as a genre, but the first book really is fun and integrates the gamey conventions in a mostly palatable way. Like an RPG meets The Running Man (movie) or something.

[HoosierDaddy]

 worry, on 04 April 2025 - 11:08 AM, said:

Finished The Spear Cuts Through Water -- this book is a masterpiece. No notes, wouldn't change a single thing. It gets even more playful with the meta stuff than I expected, without robbing a single iota of immersion in the core story. In fact it just reinforces the folkloric elements in a way that's very resonant as a fantasy reader, and layers more meaning into the actions of the main characters. And that core story: it stays horrifying, it stays beautiful, it stays heart-wrenching, it stays wondrous. I might be in love with this book.


Now gonna read book 2 in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. The first was complete unapologetic popcorn, in a good way. It's not without gravity, and Carl has at least a little Dresden DNA in him that gives him backbone and keeps him motivated through the insanity, but it's mostly just a goofball tale being told well enough. I have no interest in LitRPG as a genre, but the first book really is fun and integrates the gamey conventions in a mostly palatable way. Like an RPG meets The Running Man (movie) or something.

That's the worst book in the series by far, and it's a fun read! It gets so much better.

[Abyss]

 Abyss, on 31 March 2025 - 07:30 PM, said:

 polishgenius, on 31 March 2025 - 05:55 PM, said:

 Abyss, on 31 March 2025 - 05:37 PM, said:

Next up... not sure... maybe feeling some scifi.

 Chance, on 27 March 2025 - 08:36 PM, said:

Starting up Ninefox Gambit haven't read it in several years and I wanted something delightfully bizarre.

Chance giving you advice clairvoyantly before you even posted.
...

...free w Audible+.... weeeEEEEEeeeeeellllll thennnnnn.....

Started NINEFOX, loved the opening, was intrigued by the worldbuilding.... unfortunately a randon reddit review flipped me over to DRAGON DAY by Bob Proehl. It's an audible original, and i kid you not, it's an absolutely shameless rip of World War Z, only with dragons instead of zombies, and even the dragons are largely pulled right out of the REIGN OF FIRE movie. Seriously, the extent to which this is ripping off the (near perfect) WWZ audiobook is shocking...,. celebrity narrators, stories that rotate through repeating characters with one-shots, tracking the start of the infestation through its stages as a retrospective spoken history, it's truly not even pretending otherwise. That said, 2hrs into a 7hr earbook, it's great! The author to their credit isn't afraid to go really dark, he's got baby dragons attacking a summer camp early on and it is viscerally uncomfortable and the voice actors just nail the delivery. I am reminded of ROBOPOCALYPSE, which was supposed to be WWZ robots but turned into some weird sexbot AI liberation thing i barely finished, but am cautiously optimistic this can stick the landing better.
THEN i'll go back to the Hexagon people and their weird calendars.

[polishgenius]

worry, on 04 April 2025 - 11:08 AM, said:

Finished The Spear Cuts Through Water -- this book is a masterpiece. No notes, wouldn't change a single thing. It gets even more playful with the meta stuff than I expected, without robbing a single iota of immersion in the core story. In fact it just reinforces the folkloric elements in a way that's very resonant as a fantasy reader, and layers more meaning into the actions of the main characters. And that core story: it stays horrifying, it stays beautiful, it stays heart-wrenching, it stays wondrous. I might be in love with this book.

This book is so good. Matthew Stover meets Gene Wolfe was a comparison that came to mind, stylistically. Time will tell if it holds up to that quality but it rocks.

[Abyss]

Abyss, on 04 April 2025 - 02:18 PM, said:

... DRAGON DAY by Bob Proehl. It's an audible original, and i kid you not, it's an absolutely shameless rip of World War Z, only with dragons instead of zombies, and even the dragons are largely pulled right out of the REIGN OF FIRE movie. Seriously, the extent to which this is ripping off the (near perfect) WWZ audiobook is shocking...,. celebrity narrators, stories that rotate through repeating characters with one-shots, tracking the start of the infestation through its stages as a retrospective spoken history, it's truly not even pretending otherwise. That said, 2hrs into a 7hr earbook, it's great! The author to their credit isn't afraid to go really dark, he's got baby dragons attacking a summer camp early on and it is viscerally uncomfortable and the voice actors just nail the delivery. I am reminded of ROBOPOCALYPSE, which was supposed to be WWZ robots but turned into some weird sexbot AI liberation thing i barely finished, but am cautiously optimistic this can stick the landing better....

Sticks the landing well enough. Fun, not brilliant. The REIGN OF FIRE analogy works, if you're content to brain off and watch people fight dragons and not overthink it.
Yknow how WWZ sets the stage. then jumps back in time, then tells the present story, then advances to the even that turned the tide? DRAGON DAY does all of this, but rushes the back end without filling in some important blanks more than just a little. Not plot holes, it's just here's a great big question mark about how things can possibly turn around for the good guys, and then the reader is expected to accept that they just did. It works, but in a way that leaves me wondering whether the author ran out of time or the earbook exclusive production put a limit on the whole thing or just something cut this short. It emphasizes some of the problems w the story rather than shifting the focus away from them. STill better than that robot thing. Overall fun read tho, for an audible freebie it was worth the 6ish hrs. Superb voice cast, Hayley Atwell just nails her role as protag/narrator.


Now back to NINE FOX GAMBIT.

[polishgenius]

About 200 pages into A Song of Legends lost by M.H. Ayinde, a debut epic fantasy that's just come out. So far, it's really good. Great combination of character, politics, forbidden magitech, spirit/ancestor magic, and all sorts of other things. It's a proper, multi-strand epic fantasy, of the sort we rarely get nowadays (funny, though not unwelcome, how as the traditional European-medieval epic fantasy has faded out, writers of other backgrounds in other settings are coming in instead- this is the third in the genre within a few years that's of African background, Nigerian I think, though she's from London and the setting here appears to be more of a mix of various cultures).


Good shit. And unlike Rogba Payne's The Dance of Shadows, which I understand didn't get a US pickup, this one appears to have, though not sure if it's out already.

[Abyss]

Abyss, on 04 April 2025 - 02:18 PM, said:

Abyss, on 31 March 2025 - 07:30 PM, said:

polishgenius, on 31 March 2025 - 05:55 PM, said:

Abyss, on 31 March 2025 - 05:37 PM, said:

Next up... not sure... maybe feeling some scifi.

Chance, on 27 March 2025 - 08:36 PM, said:

Starting up Ninefox Gambit haven't read it in several years and I wanted something delightfully bizarre.

Chance giving you advice clairvoyantly before you even posted.
...

...free w Audible+.... weeeEEEEEeeeeeellllll thennnnnn.....

Started NINEFOX, loved the opening, was intrigued by the worldbuilding.... back to the Hexagon people and their weird calendars.

Abyss, on 07 April 2025 - 02:11 PM, said:

...
Now back to NINE FOX GAMBIT.

Just Finished. Great book, great reco, thanks all, i thoroughly enjoyed this. Superb sf, fast pace, interesting characters, fascinating world - the calendrical system and everything around it was a joy to read and try to figure out. Kel humour is the bestest thing since Aiel humour.

And bless my remembrances because the nice people at Spotify made the entire series available free to me YAY!.... thus, role on bk 2, RAVEN STRATEGEM!

[worry]

Finished Dungeon Crawler Carl #2 a few days ago, and plan to continue the series as my ongoing palate cleanser between other books. I may have said this already, but it reminds me of the popcorn elements of Dresden. Quick, fun, propulsive little stories with a long game clearly in mind. A fraction of the depth of Dresden (so far), so don't take that as like "it's the next Dresden Files" or anything, but Carl does have a sense of humor and a keen eye for injustice, so there is some heart and spine here within the game-y trappings.


Now I'm like a quarter through The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro. I don't ever see this mentioned anywhere, even though it's his most 'fantasy'-leaning novel, to my knowledge. Don't know what I think of it yet. It's a lot of atmosphere and a little confounding otherwise so far, which I expect is deliberate. The basic premise is in a post-Arthurian Britain, an elderly couple sets off from their village to visit their adult son in another village a few days away. One they hardly remember and for purposes they barely discern, because there's this mist giving everyone amnesia. The dialogue is kind of annoying, because everybody talks in uncertainties and barely knows anything, including why they're doing what they're doing. But that isn't to say I'm not interested in what's going to happen or what''s really going on. It feels like a novel-length fable, so I'm sure there's a neat metaphor or two waiting to be revealed.

[amphibian]

Dungeon Crawler Carl is sadder than Dresden as a whole. The usual trope of post apocalyptic fiction being very conservative/hyper-independent as a starting point gets turned onto its head and very much pushed back against.

I'd compare it to a Red Rising that's cloaked in jokes.

To be clear, I think the writing is often good, the characters are mostly great, the cat stuff is mostly dumb, and the books do get better as they go on because they move past jokes and tropes into something significantly more interesting.

[worry]

That's intriguing, I can see some groundwork being laid for that kind of thing already.

[Tiste Simeon]

Been reading some good stuff recently. I've now finished Uncrowned, the 7th Cradle book and they continue to impress and entertain me. Fast paced, action packed and just lots of fun.

I've also nearly finished the Magicians trilogy by Lev Grossman and that has been pretty epic too! Yes Quentin is a massive douchebag on the whole and yes there are a few cringey/creepy moments where the authors obvious love of boobs escapes into the narrative, but overall it's a fantastic series.

And finally I read a stunning novel called Water Moon by Samantha Sotto Yambao, about a small pawnshop in Tokyo that you only find if you need it and everyone coming into it doesn't realise they do need it.

It sounds kind of cozy and tbh that was the vibe I went into it expecting, but man, it's so much more than that! I don't really want to spoil anything but it's fantastic and highly recommended.

[worry]

When you finish The Magicians books you should maybe watch the show. I like the books plenty, but the series might be even better (at least, imo). It's not a 1:1 adaptation (esp after S1), lots of variation on the source material or even original content and character arcs (it was 5 seasons). It doesn't really back down on everyone being douchey at the start either, which I appreciated, thought it does have a little more room for heart as it goes along.


Gonna add Water Moon to my list.

[amphibian]

I think the Magicians show does a better job at being fun and taking the unexpected turns into what Fillory characters can be.

[Tiste Simeon]

worry, on 17 April 2025 - 11:03 PM, said:

When you finish The Magicians books you should maybe watch the show. I like the books plenty, but the series might be even better (at least, imo). It's not a 1:1 adaptation (esp after S1), lots of variation on the source material or even original content and character arcs (it was 5 seasons). It doesn't really back down on everyone being douchey at the start either, which I appreciated, thought it does have a little more room for heart as it goes along.


Gonna add Water Moon to my list.

Yeah I definitely want to watch it but it's seemingly not on any streaming services and the DVDs are a little expensive. I'm keeping my eyes open though!

[Tiste Simeon]

Is the Dark Tower series actually good? They've got all 7 of them in my local library.