[Salt-Man Z]

Last night my dad and I took advantage of my Father's Day gift to him: a Barnes & Noble gift card for a father/son book-shopping trip. I came away with:

Fearsome Journeys: The New Solaris Book of Fantasy, which includes (among others) a new Black Company story
Shadows in Flight by Orson Scott Card, and
Surrender to the Will of the Night by Glen Cook

[Ukjent]

what arrived today:

Leviathan wakes - James S. A. Corey

Old Man's War - John Scalzi

Tomorrow the Killing - Daniel Polansky

[Serenity]

Blood Song (Raven's Shadow Book 1) by Anthony Ryan. Read the first couple of pages of it out of curiosity and clicked 'buy'.

[Abyss]

Random 2ndHBS pass yielded Campbell's LOST FLEET:DAUNTLESS... seen it reco'd here, always up for some new milsf, and Jemisin's HUNDRED THOUSAND KINGDOMS out of curiousity.

[QuickTidal]

Abyss, on 03 July 2013 - 02:51 PM, said:

Random 2ndHBS pass yielded Campbell's LOST FLEET:DAUNTLESS... seen it reco'd here, always up for some new milsf, and Jemisin's HUNDRED THOUSAND KINGDOMS out of curiousity.

I'll be curious what you think of this...it gave me WAY too much of a Battlestar vibe to get into it...but it was well-written...I just didn't have the patience for something so easily familiar.

[Abyss]

QuickTidal, on 03 July 2013 - 03:18 PM, said:

Abyss, on 03 July 2013 - 02:51 PM, said:

Random 2ndHBS pass yielded Campbell's LOST FLEET:DAUNTLESS... seen it reco'd here, always up for some new milsf...

I'll be curious what you think of this...it gave me WAY too much of a Battlestar vibe to get into it...but it was well-written...I just didn't have the patience for something so easily familiar.

Massive space battle scenes in decently well written milsf are always better in my headpartz than they could ever be on tv or film, so there's that.
It may depend on whether it raises the better or worser parts of BSG... i watched the entire series but there were episodes... oh, hell there were near whole seasons... where i ff'd everything that didn't involve vipers vs cylons.

But Weber's entire STARTS AT WAR series (and some of his others) is basically thinly developed archetypical characters getting into MASSIVE BIG SPLODEY HUGE KABOOM DIE ALIENS SCUMS DIE BA_DA_BOOM battles and it's stupidly entertaining. So i'm sort of pre-disposed.

Point being i haven't read any milsf in a while and it's not as present in the TRP(S) as epic fantasy, urbfant, spy vs spy and more plotty sf, so when the whim takes me there it is, likely when i've accumulated the whole series.... since i do have the ORPHAN five parter in there ready to roll.

[Primateus]

Abyss, on 03 July 2013 - 04:56 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 03 July 2013 - 03:18 PM, said:

Abyss, on 03 July 2013 - 02:51 PM, said:

Random 2ndHBS pass yielded Campbell's LOST FLEET:DAUNTLESS... seen it reco'd here, always up for some new milsf...

I'll be curious what you think of this...it gave me WAY too much of a Battlestar vibe to get into it...but it was well-written...I just didn't have the patience for something so easily familiar.

Massive space battle scenes in decently well written milsf are always better in my headpartz than they could ever be on tv or film, so there's that.
It may depend on whether it raises the better or worser parts of BSG... i watched the entire series but there were episodes... oh, hell there were near whole seasons... where i ff'd everything that didn't involve vipers vs cylons.

But Weber's entire STARTS AT WAR series (and some of his others) is basically thinly developed archetypical characters getting into MASSIVE BIG SPLODEY HUGE KABOOM DIE ALIENS SCUMS DIE BA_DA_BOOM battles and it's stupidly entertaining. So i'm sort of pre-disposed.

Point being i haven't read any milsf in a while and it's not as present in the TRP(S) as epic fantasy, urbfant, spy vs spy and more plotty sf, so when the whim takes me there it is, likely when i've accumulated the whole series.... since i do have the ORPHAN five parter in there ready to roll.

Speak more of this "Starts at War" oh wise catlike creature...

[Abyss]

Primateus, on 03 July 2013 - 08:24 PM, said:

Speak more of this "Starts at War" oh wise catlike creature...

It's a brilliant military scifi series where inter-system wars are derailed due to typos in the commanders' orders, followed by flippant comments from junior officers that typically lead to pubic froggings.

[worry]

Humble eBook Bundle 2 is up. Six books right now, but they tend to always add more items as it goes along.

So, uh...
Boneshaker - Cherie Priest
Just a Geek - Wil Wheaton
Little Brother - Cory Doctorow
Shards of Honor - LM Bujold
Spin - Robert Charles Wilson
The Last Unicorn deluxe - Peter the Beagle

Feel free to offer opinions, however reckless, on any of the above. The Last Unicorn is the only one that's not a completely blind buy for me.

[Abyss]

worry, on 03 July 2013 - 09:16 PM, said:

Humble eBook Bundle 2 is up.
...Boneshaker - Cherie Priest
...
Feel free to offer opinions, however reckless, on any of the above. The Last Unicorn is the only one that's not a completely blind buy for me.

I can only tell you that i read the first ten pages of this, liked, and bought it ... and not at all because Warren Ellis told me to.

[Ukjent]

So it's worth the money?

[worry]

You can pay whatever you want.

[Mentalist]

First payday at a new job. First money earned must be spent on oneself.

thusly:

The Dusk Watchman by Tom LLoyd, last volume of the "twilight Reign" series. Been waiting for this to go mmpb. The series got progressively better, once Lloyd stopped trying to make me like his MarySue/ChosenOne protagonist and started using him as a plot device, rather than a main character i'm suppposed to care about. But I'm a sucker for good world-building, so ymmv


Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman. "American Gods" and "Good Omens" are the only Gaiman i've ever read, and I've been meaning to try this one for a looong time.

Age of Aztec by James Lovegrove--more "futuristic super-soldiers v gods". And I'm a sucker for the Mesoamerican.

TheYears of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson. I've heard that his "Mars" trilo is some of the essential SF reading, but wanted to try this standalone, because I like alt-history once in a while.

[Salt-Man Z]

This week is coupon week at Half Price Books (50% off your highest-priced item on Sunday, 40% Mon-Tues, 30% Wed-Thurs, 20% Fri-Sat) so I've been taking advantage of that over the past couple days.

Pawn of Chaos: Tales of the Eternal Champion by Michael Moorcock, et al - Anthology by mostly other writers set in Moorcock's multiverse
Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence - Book club edition I think, so it was already cheap
The Swords of Night and Day by David Gemmell - On clearance for $1

[QuickTidal]

Mentalist, on 05 July 2013 - 11:17 PM, said:

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman. "American Gods" and "Good Omens" are the only Gaiman i've ever read, and I've been meaning to try this one for a looong time.

This one is a tricky animal...as you'd expect it to vibe like AG since it concerns Anansi and his sons...but it actually reads more like a contemporary volume about two brothers than anything resembling the Supernatural aspects of AG.

It's good, but I'd argue it's Gaiman's most "normal" non-fantasy-esque book, and therefore may not be what you are expecting. I didn't actually develop any fondness for it until I re-read it without my high expectations.

[worry]

It's the novelization of the Broadway musical version of The Lion King.

[Mentalist]

I need to stop buying books. At least until me and my dad build that new bookcase.

I walked into the library to wait out the rain after work today, and they had a "friends of the library" book sale. Hardbacks for a dollar.

The Terror by Dan Simons

Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb

[Salt-Man Z]

Mentalist, on 11 July 2013 - 02:50 AM, said:

The Terror by Dan Simons
Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb

Two great books, at a great bargain!

[Serenity]

The Thousand Names (Shadow Campaign Book 1) by Django Wexler. A total shot in the dark, but I liked the sound of it - plus the author sounds like he should be a villain in a Resident Evil game.

[QuickTidal]

After hearing the news which outed her...I picked up Robert Galbraith's THE CUCKOO'S CALLING...which it was revealed is a male pseudonym for JK Rowling.

Apparently the book (a detective novel) is SO good that a UK reporter got suspicious that an unheard of debut author could put out such quality on theior first go...and since the name was apparently a pseudonym for a middle aged retired military guy anyways...he started hunting down leads, and the news came out.

Not only that, but Rowling is currently penning the sequel.

I'm reading it next, so I'll let you fine folk know how it is.