Recently finished Promise of Blood (Powder Mage #1) by Brian McClellan. I might as well just copy/paste my Goodreads review here...
Brian McClellan has written a competent introduction to a new fantasy series, which has potential, but for me it does not quite reach the level of becoming a must-read.
The world building is good, and the setting may be compared to an early 1800's level of technology, featuring gunpowder and steam engines. This is combined with politics also of the time - nationalism and colonialism and a rising republican movement. Magic comes in two flavors; a gunpowder-fueled trick-shooting kind, and the more traditional fantasy hand-waving sort - and these two are naturally in conflict, each connected to opposing political factions.
So far so good, the setting is interesting, but I find it slightly inconsistant. At first there was this eastern european vibe to the city of of Adopest where the majority of the story takes place, reminiscent of the Austrian Empire of the early 1800's, but later this is mixed with English and more clichéed fantasy elements and it loses a lot of its charm.
The same goes with the characters - the premise is promising, but you never really get under their skin. There is not much internal monologue, and while there are a few attempts to communicate their motivations, I can't help but feel that they are all kind of shallow and simple. I can't bring myself to symphatize much with any of the characters, they all come off a bit whiny, to be frank.
McClellands use of language is ok, but a bit rough in places. Maybe it is the editing that is lacking, as some formulations are outright strange and feel out of place, but in general it is ok but nothing special. This seems to be his first novel, so hopefully the language will develop as he continues writing.
All in all, a promising start that doesn't quite go all the way. I give it 3 stars due to the potential of the continuation of the series, however on its own it actually would be closer to 2.
Having read the Powder Mage trilogy, I'm of the opinion that the promise that is shown in the first book, which I really enjoyed, isn't really fulfilled in the other two. The third book in particular seems very rushed, as the author attempts to tie up most of the storylines. A bit of a let down truth be told.
Recently finished Promise of Blood (Powder Mage #1) by Brian McClellan. I might as well just copy/paste my Goodreads review here...
Brian McClellan has written a competent introduction to a new fantasy series, which has potential, but for me it does not quite reach the level of becoming a must-read.
The world building is good, and the setting may be compared to an early 1800's level of technology, featuring gunpowder and steam engines. This is combined with politics also of the time - nationalism and colonialism and a rising republican movement. Magic comes in two flavors; a gunpowder-fueled trick-shooting kind, and the more traditional fantasy hand-waving sort - and these two are naturally in conflict, each connected to opposing political factions.
So far so good, the setting is interesting, but I find it slightly inconsistant. At first there was this eastern european vibe to the city of of Adopest where the majority of the story takes place, reminiscent of the Austrian Empire of the early 1800's, but later this is mixed with English and more clichéed fantasy elements and it loses a lot of its charm.
The same goes with the characters - the premise is promising, but you never really get under their skin. There is not much internal monologue, and while there are a few attempts to communicate their motivations, I can't help but feel that they are all kind of shallow and simple. I can't bring myself to symphatize much with any of the characters, they all come off a bit whiny, to be frank.
McClellands use of language is ok, but a bit rough in places. Maybe it is the editing that is lacking, as some formulations are outright strange and feel out of place, but in general it is ok but nothing special. This seems to be his first novel, so hopefully the language will develop as he continues writing.
All in all, a promising start that doesn't quite go all the way. I give it 3 stars due to the potential of the continuation of the series, however on its own it actually would be closer to 2.
Having read the Powder Mage trilogy, I'm of the opinion that the promise that is shown in the first book, which I really enjoyed, isn't really fulfilled in the other two. The third book in particular seems very rushed, as the author attempts to tie up most of the storylines. A bit of a let down truth be told.
I'll agree with that.
I was hoping for a fantasy take on the French Revolution.
That is not really what we ended up getting.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
Recently finished Promise of Blood (Powder Mage #1) by Brian McClellan. I might as well just copy/paste my Goodreads review here...
Brian McClellan has written a competent introduction to a new fantasy series, which has potential, but for me it does not quite reach the level of becoming a must-read.
The world building is good, and the setting may be compared to an early 1800's level of technology, featuring gunpowder and steam engines. This is combined with politics also of the time - nationalism and colonialism and a rising republican movement. Magic comes in two flavors; a gunpowder-fueled trick-shooting kind, and the more traditional fantasy hand-waving sort - and these two are naturally in conflict, each connected to opposing political factions.
So far so good, the setting is interesting, but I find it slightly inconsistant. At first there was this eastern european vibe to the city of of Adopest where the majority of the story takes place, reminiscent of the Austrian Empire of the early 1800's, but later this is mixed with English and more clichéed fantasy elements and it loses a lot of its charm.
The same goes with the characters - the premise is promising, but you never really get under their skin. There is not much internal monologue, and while there are a few attempts to communicate their motivations, I can't help but feel that they are all kind of shallow and simple. I can't bring myself to symphatize much with any of the characters, they all come off a bit whiny, to be frank.
McClellands use of language is ok, but a bit rough in places. Maybe it is the editing that is lacking, as some formulations are outright strange and feel out of place, but in general it is ok but nothing special. This seems to be his first novel, so hopefully the language will develop as he continues writing.
All in all, a promising start that doesn't quite go all the way. I give it 3 stars due to the potential of the continuation of the series, however on its own it actually would be closer to 2.
Having read the Powder Mage trilogy, I'm of the opinion that the promise that is shown in the first book, which I really enjoyed, isn't really fulfilled in the other two. The third book in particular seems very rushed, as the author attempts to tie up most of the storylines. A bit of a let down truth be told.
I'll agree with that.
I was hoping for a fantasy take on the French Revolution.
That is not really what we ended up getting.
Have you had a look at Django Wexler's Shadow Campaign books (the Thousand Names / The Shadow Throne)? To say the 2nd book is inspired by the French Revolution, would be an understatement.
I don't know if I'd recommend the books either, because some of the things going on, are extremely silly.
The Broken Empire series was fantastic and had me excited all the way to the end. I need to take a look at Lawrence's next couple of books, which are apparently another character's story in Jorg's world, set at the same time.
I have only nice things to say about the first of those books, Prince of Fools. It has a different tone to the "* of Thorns* series, mind you. There's a lot more humour, most of which actually hits the mark, and less unrelenting sociopathery, which is also a good thing.
It's almost like a very grim buddy/journey movie, cored through with wry prose.
...that's a terrible description, but yeah, Prince of Fools is great. If you ever read the Flashman books, it's kind of like that, but in the Broken Empire world.
So I happened upon this short interview with Neal Asher, where he talks about the origins of the Owner trilogy.
On a whim I check Amazon, and it turns out his short story collection The Engineer is getting a reprint that's out next month! I've been looking for that for ages to complete my collection.
...though it's also available for Kindle right now, but I kind of want it in my shelf since everything else I have of his is physical.
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Grudgeblessed is the mind too small for doubtRegistered Userregular
Recently finished Promise of Blood (Powder Mage #1) by Brian McClellan. I might as well just copy/paste my Goodreads review here...
Brian McClellan has written a competent introduction to a new fantasy series, which has potential, but for me it does not quite reach the level of becoming a must-read.
The world building is good, and the setting may be compared to an early 1800's level of technology, featuring gunpowder and steam engines. This is combined with politics also of the time - nationalism and colonialism and a rising republican movement. Magic comes in two flavors; a gunpowder-fueled trick-shooting kind, and the more traditional fantasy hand-waving sort - and these two are naturally in conflict, each connected to opposing political factions.
So far so good, the setting is interesting, but I find it slightly inconsistant. At first there was this eastern european vibe to the city of of Adopest where the majority of the story takes place, reminiscent of the Austrian Empire of the early 1800's, but later this is mixed with English and more clichéed fantasy elements and it loses a lot of its charm.
The same goes with the characters - the premise is promising, but you never really get under their skin. There is not much internal monologue, and while there are a few attempts to communicate their motivations, I can't help but feel that they are all kind of shallow and simple. I can't bring myself to symphatize much with any of the characters, they all come off a bit whiny, to be frank.
McClellands use of language is ok, but a bit rough in places. Maybe it is the editing that is lacking, as some formulations are outright strange and feel out of place, but in general it is ok but nothing special. This seems to be his first novel, so hopefully the language will develop as he continues writing.
All in all, a promising start that doesn't quite go all the way. I give it 3 stars due to the potential of the continuation of the series, however on its own it actually would be closer to 2.
Having read the Powder Mage trilogy, I'm of the opinion that the promise that is shown in the first book, which I really enjoyed, isn't really fulfilled in the other two. The third book in particular seems very rushed, as the author attempts to tie up most of the storylines. A bit of a let down truth be told.
Hmm, that's a shame. I think part of the problem with the first one is that it also felt rushed. It's like he was in such a hurry to tell the story that he kind of forgot about the atmosphere and the characters.
Recently finished Promise of Blood (Powder Mage #1) by Brian McClellan. I might as well just copy/paste my Goodreads review here...
Brian McClellan has written a competent introduction to a new fantasy series, which has potential, but for me it does not quite reach the level of becoming a must-read.
The world building is good, and the setting may be compared to an early 1800's level of technology, featuring gunpowder and steam engines. This is combined with politics also of the time - nationalism and colonialism and a rising republican movement. Magic comes in two flavors; a gunpowder-fueled trick-shooting kind, and the more traditional fantasy hand-waving sort - and these two are naturally in conflict, each connected to opposing political factions.
So far so good, the setting is interesting, but I find it slightly inconsistant. At first there was this eastern european vibe to the city of of Adopest where the majority of the story takes place, reminiscent of the Austrian Empire of the early 1800's, but later this is mixed with English and more clichéed fantasy elements and it loses a lot of its charm.
The same goes with the characters - the premise is promising, but you never really get under their skin. There is not much internal monologue, and while there are a few attempts to communicate their motivations, I can't help but feel that they are all kind of shallow and simple. I can't bring myself to symphatize much with any of the characters, they all come off a bit whiny, to be frank.
McClellands use of language is ok, but a bit rough in places. Maybe it is the editing that is lacking, as some formulations are outright strange and feel out of place, but in general it is ok but nothing special. This seems to be his first novel, so hopefully the language will develop as he continues writing.
All in all, a promising start that doesn't quite go all the way. I give it 3 stars due to the potential of the continuation of the series, however on its own it actually would be closer to 2.
Having read the Powder Mage trilogy, I'm of the opinion that the promise that is shown in the first book, which I really enjoyed, isn't really fulfilled in the other two. The third book in particular seems very rushed, as the author attempts to tie up most of the storylines. A bit of a let down truth be told.
Hmm, that's a shame. I think part of the problem with the first one is that it also felt rushed. It's like he was in such a hurry to tell the story that he kind of forgot about the atmosphere and the characters.
I will say that I really liked the setting of the book and some of the ideas going on, and ultimately I didn't think I wasted my time reading the whole series, but if you felt the first book was rushed, and some characters were too whiny (in addition to perhaps behaving inconsistently), then things only get worse.
The first book is the best of the lot, the second one is probably the worst, while the third one is better but suffers from having far too many storylines being crammed in, with some beginning and ending very abruptly, while others don't seem to be properly resolved. The writer also seems to paint himself into a bit of a corner with regards to the power creep of its foes.
I’ve since found the division of opinion on these books is along political lines, which is a shame.
If you write a book where the protagonist is a libertarian super Mary Sue, you've put yourself on one side of a political line and you shouldn't be surprised when readers notice it.
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Captain Marcusnow arrives the hour of actionRegistered Userregular
I have only nice things to say about the first of those books, Prince of Fools. It has a different tone to the "* of Thorns* series, mind you. There's a lot more humour, most of which actually hits the mark, and less unrelenting sociopathery, which is also a good thing.
It's almost like a very grim buddy/journey movie, cored through with wry prose.
...that's a terrible description, but yeah, Prince of Fools is great. If you ever read the Flashman books, it's kind of like that, but in the Broken Empire world.
That sounds fantastic. The first book of the Thorns series is just -unrelentingly- grim and brutal, to the point where I felt bad reading it.
I’ve since found the division of opinion on these books is along political lines, which is a shame.
If you write a book where the protagonist is a libertarian super Mary Sue, you've put yourself on one side of a political line and you shouldn't be surprised when readers notice it.
The first book is also really nasty in its violence. There's a section where the "bad guys" along with their families are brutally killed, and Asher spends way too much time and attention gleefully describing the mutilation of their corpses. Like, he keeps coming back to it repeatedly without any story function. You just get the feeling that he really enjoys describing how the statists and their families got what they deserved.
Like, I liked his Polity novels well enough. They read like a poor man's Culture mixed with future James Bond, but the action is fun. In retrospect, you do realize why the villains are always one-dimensional and kind of shit. He's not that interested in understanding his evil-doers, just punishing them.
Listneed to Oryx and Crake on cd recently. I found it very interesting. What did people think of that one? I have not really read any other Atwood stuff.
One of the best things I've ever read. The other books in the same setting are much weaker
Oh what are the other books?
I wouldn't have thought there would be others, it felt very self contained
Listneed to Oryx and Crake on cd recently. I found it very interesting. What did people think of that one? I have not really read any other Atwood stuff.
One of the best things I've ever read. The other books in the same setting are much weaker
Oh what are the other books?
I wouldn't have thought there would be others, it felt very self contained
iirc, it was written as a one-off and then sold as a series? I seem to remember reading that somewhere.
I liked them well enough but I didn't think they really did as much as they could with the setting.
Finished Seveneves by Stephenson a few weeks ago and have finally digested it and arrived at conclusions.
The first part re-demonstrates that Stephenson is one of the greatest writers of fiction about science currently going. I'm not sure that means he's a great science fiction writer, though.
Beyond that, it's into spoiler territory:
As I mentioned above, the first, present-dayish part of the book is vintage Stephenson. He makes fascinating reading out technical and scientific minutiae. Also, using a Neil deGrasse Tyson type professional science explainer as one of the central characters was a stroke of genius, both for the story and at a meta-level. That being said, he seems to have lost whatever editor kept his info-dumping in check. Seveneves has some of the most brazen info-dumps I've read in a long time.
Part 2 was considerably less good, which gets back to my point that Stephenson is best as a writer of fiction about science. The timeline has advanced 5000 years, and he does a great job riffing on some future tech, but the humans of his future just aren't different enough. I mean... 5000 years is pretty much longer than recorded human history so far. After that long, the people should seem weird to us. But, alas, no. They're pretty much just stereotypical space people with some congenital personality tics that derive from whichever of the original seven "Eves" they're descended from.
Worse than that, though, part 2 is sort of inexplicably, dumbfoundingly heteronormative. It's about a society that's descended from seven women (and no men) who repopulated the entire human race using parthenogenesis (genetically engineered reproduction that either requires no sperm or which the sperm is fabricated), but...
there are no lesbians.
Seriously, WTF? The foundational lack of men in the origin story of the future society ought to have a profound impact on its gender mix and sexual mores, but after part 1, there's nary a mention of non-hetero sex. There's a sort-of romance, but it's between the biggest, burliest male character and the youngest, prettiest female character. It's just a total fail on all sorts of levels.
So yeah, Seveneves probably reveals more about Stephenson than it does about any of the things its about.
Finished Seveneves by Stephenson a few weeks ago and have finally digested it and arrived at conclusions.
The first part re-demonstrates that Stephenson is one of the greatest writers of fiction about science currently going. I'm not sure that means he's a great science fiction writer, though.
Beyond that, it's into spoiler territory:
As I mentioned above, the first, present-dayish part of the book is vintage Stephenson. He makes fascinating reading out technical and scientific minutiae. Also, using a Neil deGrasse Tyson type professional science explainer as one of the central characters was a stroke of genius, both for the story and at a meta-level. That being said, he seems to have lost whatever editor kept his info-dumping in check. Seveneves has some of the most brazen info-dumps I've read in a long time.
Part 2 was considerably less good, which gets back to my point that Stephenson is best as a writer of fiction about science. The timeline has advanced 5000 years, and he does a great job riffing on some future tech, but the humans of his future just aren't different enough. I mean... 5000 years is pretty much longer than recorded human history so far. After that long, the people should seem weird to us. But, alas, no. They're pretty much just stereotypical space people with some congenital personality tics that derive from whichever of the original seven "Eves" they're descended from.
Worse than that, though, part 2 is sort of inexplicably, dumbfoundingly heteronormative. It's about a society that's descended from seven women (and no men) who repopulated the entire human race using parthenogenesis (genetically engineered reproduction that either requires no sperm or which the sperm is fabricated), but...
there are no lesbians.
Seriously, WTF? The foundational lack of men in the origin story of the future society ought to have a profound impact on its gender mix and sexual mores, but after part 1, there's nary a mention of non-hetero sex. There's a sort-of romance, but it's between the biggest, burliest male character and the youngest, prettiest female character. It's just a total fail on all sorts of levels.
So yeah, Seveneves probably reveals more about Stephenson than it does about any of the things its about.
I getting really bored with his rugged individualist sub plots in basically everything he writes. Just so eye rolly. And the info dump stuff was just insanely out of hand. And, yeah we get it, you think Morse Code and one time pads are neat, but do you seriously have to reuse info dumps about shit?
Stupid BS about cloud/swarm formations that require constant correction, when there are an infinite number of non-intersecting complementary orbits. But some people don't understand the crap they write, for a second time now, about conic sections.
A good fiction writer can create a villain, or an opposing ideology, without making the a lunatic or a fairly insulting joke. Meh.
I had to reread the bit about dumping nuke plant/rocket that had obtained orbital velocity twice.
Once to be sure I understood it.
And again to see if there was some reason they couldn't just spit some water and go find some more asteroids.
Whatever. There's better hard sci-fi and there better action based sci-fi and better character driven sci-fi. Sure as hell better post human space opera.
Uh... Water Cutter was about what one would expect. Maybe a little more noir...ish. Finer details of the setting and characters aside, I've read this book before and seen the movie. Actually had a T-shirt from the anime based on the game.
William Gibson's Peripheral is a post human, pre/post apocalyptic time travel romp about gamers 3d printing tools to fight off the corrupt government and narco barons and taking over the world.
No one does moistly creepy like Jeff VanderMeer. I'm almost done with the 2nd book in the Southern Reach trilogy and I am on edge, worried and questioning my own sanity. I'm not sure I could describe how effectively disturbing his writing is to a civilian. Like, how would I tell my Mom why his stuff is so good? "He consistently conveys a menacingly fungal atmosphere?"
I'm about a quarter of the way through The Peripheral by Gibson and... it's slow going, I'm like 24 chapters deep and it still feels like it's in set-up mode, but otherwise it's standard Gibson. My favorite thing about Gibson is that he throws you into his worlds and expects you to catch up, he doesn't waste time explaining the tech and the slang, he just trusts that you're intelligent enough to fill in the gaps yourself. My least favorite thing about Gibson is that he seems incapable of writing dialogue the way any human beings actually talk. The "near future" sections of the book are only ~10 years in the future, but everyone talks in those clipped sentence fragments that he loves and nobody talks that way, William.
I'm about a quarter of the way through The Peripheral by Gibson and... it's slow going, I'm like 24 chapters deep and it still feels like it's in set-up mode, but otherwise it's standard Gibson. My favorite thing about Gibson is that he throws you into his worlds and expects you to catch up, he doesn't waste time explaining the tech and the slang, he just trusts that you're intelligent enough to fill in the gaps yourself. My least favorite thing about Gibson is that he seems incapable of writing dialogue the way any human beings actually talk. The "near future" sections of the book are only ~10 years in the future, but everyone talks in those clipped sentence fragments that he loves and nobody talks that way, William.
It was slow going, but I think ultimately worthwhile. The main character, Maia, is great, but the supporting cast is largely ultimately one-dimensional. Characters have a role to plat in the story, and are duitifully shuffled on and off stage to play fairly simple parts. More disapointingly, the world building didn't do anything for me. It seemed minimal at best; at it's deepest, the goblin/elf divide brings up comparisons to real world racism and to the tentative nature of peace between superpowers. But it didn't work particularly hard at those themes. Despite the problems I have with it, the last half of the book flew by, and I definitely liked it better than the Three Body Problem.
I now just need to read the Dark Between the Stars to be all caught up on the Hugo award for best novel.
I also bought and read A Darker Shade of Magic today. While one subplot basically went nowhere, another subplot works only because everyone is holding an idiot ball, and a portion of the main plot practically has the author say "please don't think about this part too hard" the book was pretty great overall. Perhaps I'm being a bit soft on the book for being set entirely in London (and the other London, and the other London) while I'm on vacation in London, but I thought that it did an excellent job of world building and had some really fun characters. Also, some wonderfully creepy magic was in play throughout the story.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
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Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
Listneed to Oryx and Crake on cd recently. I found it very interesting. What did people think of that one? I have not really read any other Atwood stuff.
One of the best things I've ever read. The other books in the same setting are much weaker
Oh what are the other books?
I wouldn't have thought there would be others, it felt very self contained
The Year of the Flood
Maddaddam
Although come to think of it, I'm not actually sure if I read Maddaddam or not.
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
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Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
If you want some inoffensive, generic fantasy then you can do worse than The Copper Promise.
It's got some fairly significant structural problems as it's effectively four or five novellas pushed up against one another, and the setting has some pretty major gaffs.
It certainly helped pass a train journey though.
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
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Having read the Powder Mage trilogy, I'm of the opinion that the promise that is shown in the first book, which I really enjoyed, isn't really fulfilled in the other two. The third book in particular seems very rushed, as the author attempts to tie up most of the storylines. A bit of a let down truth be told.
I'll agree with that.
I was hoping for a fantasy take on the French Revolution.
That is not really what we ended up getting.
Have you had a look at Django Wexler's Shadow Campaign books (the Thousand Names / The Shadow Throne)? To say the 2nd book is inspired by the French Revolution, would be an understatement.
I don't know if I'd recommend the books either, because some of the things going on, are extremely silly.
I have only nice things to say about the first of those books, Prince of Fools. It has a different tone to the "* of Thorns* series, mind you. There's a lot more humour, most of which actually hits the mark, and less unrelenting sociopathery, which is also a good thing.
It's almost like a very grim buddy/journey movie, cored through with wry prose.
...that's a terrible description, but yeah, Prince of Fools is great. If you ever read the Flashman books, it's kind of like that, but in the Broken Empire world.
Goodreads
SF&F Reviews blog
On a whim I check Amazon, and it turns out his short story collection The Engineer is getting a reprint that's out next month! I've been looking for that for ages to complete my collection.
...though it's also available for Kindle right now, but I kind of want it in my shelf since everything else I have of his is physical.
Hmm, that's a shame. I think part of the problem with the first one is that it also felt rushed. It's like he was in such a hurry to tell the story that he kind of forgot about the atmosphere and the characters.
I will say that I really liked the setting of the book and some of the ideas going on, and ultimately I didn't think I wasted my time reading the whole series, but if you felt the first book was rushed, and some characters were too whiny (in addition to perhaps behaving inconsistently), then things only get worse.
The first book is the best of the lot, the second one is probably the worst, while the third one is better but suffers from having far too many storylines being crammed in, with some beginning and ending very abruptly, while others don't seem to be properly resolved. The writer also seems to paint himself into a bit of a corner with regards to the power creep of its foes.
I snickered at this bit:
If you write a book where the protagonist is a libertarian super Mary Sue, you've put yourself on one side of a political line and you shouldn't be surprised when readers notice it.
That sounds fantastic. The first book of the Thorns series is just -unrelentingly- grim and brutal, to the point where I felt bad reading it.
Fun fact: Brandon Sanderson is Brian McClellan's mentor.
The first book is also really nasty in its violence. There's a section where the "bad guys" along with their families are brutally killed, and Asher spends way too much time and attention gleefully describing the mutilation of their corpses. Like, he keeps coming back to it repeatedly without any story function. You just get the feeling that he really enjoys describing how the statists and their families got what they deserved.
Like, I liked his Polity novels well enough. They read like a poor man's Culture mixed with future James Bond, but the action is fun. In retrospect, you do realize why the villains are always one-dimensional and kind of shit. He's not that interested in understanding his evil-doers, just punishing them.
Oh what are the other books?
I wouldn't have thought there would be others, it felt very self contained
iirc, it was written as a one-off and then sold as a series? I seem to remember reading that somewhere.
I liked them well enough but I didn't think they really did as much as they could with the setting.
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union
The first part re-demonstrates that Stephenson is one of the greatest writers of fiction about science currently going. I'm not sure that means he's a great science fiction writer, though.
Beyond that, it's into spoiler territory:
Part 2 was considerably less good, which gets back to my point that Stephenson is best as a writer of fiction about science. The timeline has advanced 5000 years, and he does a great job riffing on some future tech, but the humans of his future just aren't different enough. I mean... 5000 years is pretty much longer than recorded human history so far. After that long, the people should seem weird to us. But, alas, no. They're pretty much just stereotypical space people with some congenital personality tics that derive from whichever of the original seven "Eves" they're descended from.
Worse than that, though, part 2 is sort of inexplicably, dumbfoundingly heteronormative. It's about a society that's descended from seven women (and no men) who repopulated the entire human race using parthenogenesis (genetically engineered reproduction that either requires no sperm or which the sperm is fabricated), but...
there are no lesbians.
Seriously, WTF? The foundational lack of men in the origin story of the future society ought to have a profound impact on its gender mix and sexual mores, but after part 1, there's nary a mention of non-hetero sex. There's a sort-of romance, but it's between the biggest, burliest male character and the youngest, prettiest female character. It's just a total fail on all sorts of levels.
So yeah, Seveneves probably reveals more about Stephenson than it does about any of the things its about.
I getting really bored with his rugged individualist sub plots in basically everything he writes. Just so eye rolly. And the info dump stuff was just insanely out of hand. And, yeah we get it, you think Morse Code and one time pads are neat, but do you seriously have to reuse info dumps about shit?
Stupid BS about cloud/swarm formations that require constant correction, when there are an infinite number of non-intersecting complementary orbits. But some people don't understand the crap they write, for a second time now, about conic sections.
A good fiction writer can create a villain, or an opposing ideology, without making the a lunatic or a fairly insulting joke. Meh.
Once to be sure I understood it.
And again to see if there was some reason they couldn't just spit some water and go find some more asteroids.
Whatever. There's better hard sci-fi and there better action based sci-fi and better character driven sci-fi. Sure as hell better post human space opera.
Uh... Water Cutter was about what one would expect. Maybe a little more noir...ish. Finer details of the setting and characters aside, I've read this book before and seen the movie. Actually had a T-shirt from the anime based on the game.
William Gibson's Peripheral is a post human, pre/post apocalyptic time travel romp about gamers 3d printing tools to fight off the corrupt government and narco barons and taking over the world.
He basically nailed.
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
This is not a thing I've noticed.
I finished up the Goblin Emperor.
It was slow going, but I think ultimately worthwhile. The main character, Maia, is great, but the supporting cast is largely ultimately one-dimensional. Characters have a role to plat in the story, and are duitifully shuffled on and off stage to play fairly simple parts. More disapointingly, the world building didn't do anything for me. It seemed minimal at best; at it's deepest, the goblin/elf divide brings up comparisons to real world racism and to the tentative nature of peace between superpowers. But it didn't work particularly hard at those themes. Despite the problems I have with it, the last half of the book flew by, and I definitely liked it better than the Three Body Problem.
I now just need to read the Dark Between the Stars to be all caught up on the Hugo award for best novel.
I also bought and read A Darker Shade of Magic today. While one subplot basically went nowhere, another subplot works only because everyone is holding an idiot ball, and a portion of the main plot practically has the author say "please don't think about this part too hard" the book was pretty great overall. Perhaps I'm being a bit soft on the book for being set entirely in London (and the other London, and the other London) while I'm on vacation in London, but I thought that it did an excellent job of world building and had some really fun characters. Also, some wonderfully creepy magic was in play throughout the story.
Maddaddam
Although come to think of it, I'm not actually sure if I read Maddaddam or not.
It's got some fairly significant structural problems as it's effectively four or five novellas pushed up against one another, and the setting has some pretty major gaffs.
It certainly helped pass a train journey though.