Malazan Empire: Abyss - Viewing Profile - Malazan Empire

QuickTidal, on 13 July 2026 - 04:58 PM, said:

oh gods, he's one of those 'sTar TRek shOUldnt be puhlITICAL (except when it agrees with me / what do you mean it was always political?!)' guys.

QuickTidal, on 13 July 2026 - 03:53 PM, said:

google fails me, what happened?

QuickTidal, on 09 July 2026 - 03:21 PM, said:

1 and the first half of 2 were pretty great. I can only hope this isn't more of the rushed/dumbed-down/garbled story i thought that we got as the back half of 2.

Abyss, on 02 July 2026 - 03:27 PM, said:

I was enjoying this, but it's so very unrelentingly grim that I found i was too often just not feeling it after a few listens. I adored BLACKTONGUE THEIF and enjoyed DAUGHTERS' WAR, but the author's approach here is really quite different. He's exceptionally talented and im impressed w his ability to handle the story he's spinning, it's simply that my brain isn't in the right space for unrelenting damnation and existential angst and so i went looking for something light as a cerebral cleanser between chapters. I have some glorious books in the TRPFH but i wasn't looking to compete w FIRES, just break it up a bit. A random reddit thread gave me A TRADER'S TALES FROM THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE SOLAR CLIPPER by Nathan Lowell. The author did the earbook narration for the series and then posted the chapters as podcasts.

It's a fairly basic premise... young man must leave his home planet, gets a berth on a merchant starship and works his way up the ranks. It might fairly be called 'cozy sf', each chapter is him learning a job, dealing with another crew member, growing as a person. I Just Finished books 1 and 2, QUARTER SHARE and HALF SHARE and am halfway into bk 3 FULL SHARE before there is even anything resembling a 'crisis' or real conflict. Without spoiling, there is near zero action, no marauding space pirates, no hostile aliens, no super-harsh space-wants-to-kill-you (so far). It's simply engaging in a way that works very nicely. The writing has a fwd momentum that walks, near never runs, but never stalls or repeats or circles back either. The protag Ishmael (yes they make all the obvious Moby Dick jokes) is far from flawless or over-the-top, but he's quietly competent and relatable for the most part. I could live w a touch less of his love-life ... to be fair it would be odd for an 18-yr-old male in his situation not to have one... it's that in that area the author skips the learning curve we see in every other respect and jumps between a far more mature perspective and back to uncertain young man in a way that's less believable than virtually everything else in the series so far. I can see where some might cry 'Gary Stu' but i don't think that's fair, the character works, in story, for near everything he gets.

Am continuing w the series alongside FIRES tho i catch myself listening to TRADER'S as much if not more.

It's a fun light read and if you're looking for that it's worth a try and 'free' is very affordable.

yknow.... there's a perfectly realistic timeline where he wins....