VanguardBut now the dream is over. And the insect is awake.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
has anyone read the inheritance trilogy
if so, can you speak to it as something a non-fantasy reader might be interested in
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knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
edited July 2015
Do you mean N.K. Jemisin, or Christopher Paolini?
The N.K. Jemisin one I just read a few months ago, and while it is definitely fantasy, I'd still recommend it to a non-fantasy reader. It deals with issues like family, self-actualization, duty, vengeance. Parts of it are like Game of Thrones if the Lannisters had access to extremely powerful Pokemon (this is far less stupid than it may sound but it's the quickest analogy I could think of).
The world is also very diverse, the main character of the first book is a woman of color whose nation of origin is a highly matriarchal society.
There are a lot of strange names of both people and things, but it takes the time to explain them to the reader and I wouldn't let that put me off.
knitdan on
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Ok so I should keep moving forward? It ended up coming across as unintentional body horror and I'm a little worried about the fact that the author seemed completely unaware of the that.
Ok so I should keep moving forward? It ended up coming across as unintentional body horror and I'm a little worried about the fact that the author seemed completely unaware of the that.
It's a straightforward military action novel. It's not long on ideas, and the main idea - super old, experienced dudes and dudettes as soldiers - goes basically nowhere in the novel. That's my main disappointment: all the characters could just as easily have been twenty. But read as a military action novel, it's solid. The Forever War is better, though.
Account not recoverable. So long.
+2
Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
Flashforward is not a bad little sci fi novel. It's written in an endearing American way that portrays Europe as this strange, homogeneous, alien entity.
It's not all that week developed as a concept unfortunately and the human drama seems tacked on for the most part.
Despite all that, I enjoyed it and sped through it.
Very different to the TV series of the same name and conceit
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
Finished Nemesis Games, the fifth book in the Expanse series. The fourth book felt like a bit of a drag, but oh boy did this one pick the pace up again.
Seriously hoping that the upcoming TV show lives long enough to make it to the fifth book.
Finished Nemesis Games, the fifth book in the Expanse series. The fourth book felt like a bit of a drag, but oh boy did this one pick the pace up again.
Seriously hoping that the upcoming TV show lives long enough to make it to the fifth book.
I see some people say this and I just don't get it. I thought it was great. Really tense.
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Grudgeblessed is the mind too small for doubtRegistered Userregular
Looking to start a new fantasy series. Prince of Thorns, or Blood Song, or Half a King. Which is best?
I realize I'm a month late with this but Blood Song is the only good book in that series. If you like Joe Abercrombie, well, you know what you're getting with Half a King. His writing sorta reminds me of David Gemmell. I have not read Prince of Thorns, altho I'm pretty sure it's in my Kindle.
@Cabezone - I would suggest "Prince of Thorns" myself, but I say that as someone who didn't much care for Abercrombe's "First Law" series. I liked it, but I was glad to be done with it. "Prince of Thorns" I loved, on the otherhand. I usually have a hard time enjoying books that have younger characters as the main protagonist, and books where the protagonist is unlikable/despicable/etc, which partly explains why I struggled with 'First Law". This series has both of those (though to be fair you don't ever get the feel Jorg is that young except when it's mentioned) but I somehow loved them during this series. Jorg is still a very terrible person, but he was written in such a way that, while I knew he was awful, I at the same time felt a bit of admiration for him in a strange way. I liked his whole attitude of if he wants to accomplish something, he's going to find a way to make it happen. I don't agree with his methods but I still appreciated his drive.
I just finished up the second book in his second series in the same world, "The Liar's Key" and enjoyed it immensely, though the new books are a very different tone.
That said, I've recommended "Broken Empire" to three people and not a single one of them liked it the way I did, so this may possibly be a situation of it not being a great series but I love it anyway.
Hey, goes to show how tastes differ. I think Abercombie is one of the really great fantasy writers, and even if the First Law trilogy is a bit rough in places, it's still very solid - my recent re-read really reinforced this. Plus, it leads up to the three stand-alone sequels, which are really great. Dark, but very witty. Half a King is still Abercombie, but it's... simpler in a way, less layers. Not as gritty, but still with some darkness to it.
Prince of Thorns though... I dunno, I found it a bit "meh" to be honest. Some nice ideas, but the writing was ok at best, and I never came to caring very much for the main character. A good 3/5 perhaps, but I think Abercombies books all go beyond that.
Prince of Thorns though... I dunno, I found it a bit "meh" to be honest. Some nice ideas, but the writing was ok at best, and I never came to caring very much for the main character. A good 3/5 perhaps, but I think Abercombies books all go beyond that.
I found Jorg likeable despite being the definition of "the ends justifies the means". I was rooting for him the whole time and was eager to see whatever nutso plan he'd come up with next.
The anti-heroes in Abercrombie's books? I got where they were coming from, I understood them, but I didn't like them. Aside from that crippled guy they're not people you root for.
Prince of Thorns though... I dunno, I found it a bit "meh" to be honest. Some nice ideas, but the writing was ok at best, and I never came to caring very much for the main character. A good 3/5 perhaps, but I think Abercombies books all go beyond that.
I found Jorg likeable despite being the definition of "the ends justifies the means". I was rooting for him the whole time and was eager to see whatever nutso plan he'd come up with next.
The anti-heroes in Abercrombie's books? I got where they were coming from, I understood them, but I didn't like them. Aside from that crippled guy they're not people you root for.
I read the Red Queen recently, and didn't think all that much of it, so I'm going to side with Grudge on this in (vastly) prefering Abercrombie's stuff.
Having been to a few book signings of the latter, I was pretty surprised to find that Shivers seemed to be so popular with the female readers.
so thanks to Echo i picked up Old Mans War and really enjoyed it. should i keep going with the series?
I honestly can't remember what the rest of the books were about. I didn't dislike them, they just weren't very memorable.
I have the entire series. I would recommend getting it. My least favorite is the 2nd book, the third is fun, with a solid ending to the core trilogy. The Anthologies he's put out since I've enjoyed more than the first 3 books, but you need to read the first three for them to make sense.
My girlfriend is blaming me for doing nothing all weekend and reading "The Martian". The thing is, she didn't start reading it until a Kindle copy was available from the local library (electronic book lending... it seems so bass ackwards!). We have an actual hardcover copy of it sitting on my dresser right now that she could have been reading for the past year! We've had it since 2014! But she refused to read it until it came out in Kindle form!
This a total 180 degree turn of where she was several years ago, where the Kindle thing was just a gimmick that she could carry around instead of a paperback or hardcover in her purse. Now she doesn't even pick up a paperback or hardcover, and insists on reading only the Kindle version.
Ah well. I'm just glad that the two of us can FINALLY talk about the book, even though my knowledge of it is from my hazy memory of reading it a whole year ago. :P
Some of Hobb's other books feel like they're stretched out into more books, especially the Rain Wild Chronicles. That was like two books padded out into four.
Some of Hobb's other books feel like they're stretched out into more books, especially the Rain Wild Chronicles. That was like two books padded out into four.
Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
I finished Firefall by Peter Watts the other day - it is Blindsight plus Echopraxia in an omnibus.
Blindsight remains one of my all time favourites. Echopraxia ended remarkably abruptly. It had a lot of the same sort of interesting things in it, but while Siri is great because of how atypical he is, Bruiks is entirely forgettable. It looks like there is another to come, which is great. It also raises meta-narrative questions about Blindsight which I hope it explores more fully.
I will say that Watts seems to have trouble with clear action scenes - I would often be confused as to what happened a and have to track back
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Grudgeblessed is the mind too small for doubtRegistered Userregular
I have the same experience. There is a scene right at the end of Echopraxia which should be an action scene, but is handled very matter-of-factly and almost only in passing. It should be very significant to the story, but I was very confused and had to reread it several times.
Certainly made me feel some feelings. I read an interview with a lady who has adapted it for stage who said what inspired her to do it was the fact that she could only really get to grips with it by reading it out loud, which is surprisingly effective. It can be pretty heavy going, but there is some gorgeous prose in there.
I dream of creeping under. I dream of underground where the warm earth is where the fire goes. Where we're sleep creep you and me in holes. In burrows rabbits safe from rain. Roots growing caverns round our heads. And blind as mice popped out and new and cling and soft our bright pink skin. Who's there? There's no one. You and only me. We sing. We lilt our chamber. No one coming. And we lie. A thousand years of sleep.
I've enjoyed everything I've read by Peter Watts and Blindsight is also my favorite. His Rifter's trilogy is also very good, I still have to read βehemoth, but the first two have been good even if they didn't keep me engaged nearly as well as Blindsight. I want to say I read Blindsight in a day or two, but spread the Rifter novels out across a few months. The Rifter books are grim, violent, and the characters are very fucked up (far more so than those in Blindsight), but they still have a great mix of sci-fi dystopia, characters, and biology.
It's been a few years since I finished the second book in the trilogy, Maelstrom, but I recall the end action scene to be very confusing. I'm still not entirely sure what happened, and even at the time after a few rereads it wasn't any clearer. Everything else up to that point was fine though.
Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
I really hated Rifters.
It had some great cobcepts, but as a story it was super aimless and fairly pointless (at least, insofar as a story about a biological apocalypse and attempts to subvert it can be). Probably the best shaggy dog story one might ever come across runs throughout, which I give it points for.
It also had its fair share of unclear action.
Not sure how I feel about the elements of controversy in the final book either.
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Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
Starfish was great, it seemed to do a bit better with a few of the ideas from Blindsight (which I found a bit muddy generally). The follow-ups bordered on unreadable, however.
I finished Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Coupland yesterday which seemed like it was written because he was pissed off at his kids or something. It was fine, I suppose, but I'll have forgotten it entirely in not too long
Next up is something with an unmemorable title - Dreams of the Earth that was? Something like that. It's by Alastair Reynolds. It's been a while so I can't actually remember if I liked his stuff.
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
Read Speak. Sort of surprised I finished it. It's six interleaved stories built around the creation of an AI that can pass the Turing test, with three of them the narratives used in the AI's creation. None of the stories meaningfully depends on the others, and one I just started skipping. Mostly, I think it was Mary's diary that powered me through the book. Indeed, the less the book talks about computers, the better it is. It has a frustrating lack of insight into the AI that forms its central subject. The final image of the robots winding down in the warehouse, which is supposed to be so poignant, left me unmoved.
Account not recoverable. So long.
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SummaryJudgmentGrab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front doorRegistered Userregular
Finished Nemesis Games, the fifth book in the Expanse series. The fourth book felt like a bit of a drag, but oh boy did this one pick the pace up again.
Seriously hoping that the upcoming TV show lives long enough to make it to the fifth book.
I read the 4th and 5th over the weekend
4th was easily the weakest of the series. Skimmed.
5th is wonderful but there's not really so much of a cliffhanger ending as just...no ending. Idk. Lots of good character growth but it leaves off in a super perilous spot for the overarching plot. Can't wait for the 6th.
Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.
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SummaryJudgmentGrab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front doorRegistered Userregular
Oh, and since we're talking about it, Echopraxia is wonderful and is a good example of less-is-more in terms of Watts picking a few good ideas and rolling with them. It felt like Rifters was comparatively broad and underdeveloped.
Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.
5th is wonderful but there's not really so much of a cliffhanger ending as just...no ending. Idk. Lots of good character growth but it leaves off in a super perilous spot for the overarching plot. Can't wait for the 6th.
If so they ended up being an Inheritance Cycle because he wrote a fourth book, and.. no I would not recommend it to a non-fantasy reader.
The first book showed some promise, coming from a young author. The rest of the cycle ended up showing his inexperience as an author and the weak editing that occurred on the hit series. I found them fairly disappointing and the later books were not the type of stories that are usually considered for publishing. He sold a lot of copies and probably did fairly well on the series.
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jakobaggerLO THY DREAD EMPIRE CHAOS IS RESTOREDRegistered Userregular
If so they ended up being an Inheritance Cycle because he wrote a fourth book, and.. no I would not recommend it to a non-fantasy reader.
I get the impression they're not even necessarily something a fantasy reader should be interested in. I guess I read fantasy like a non-fantasy reader, though. I imagine Vanguard is talking about this though.
The Long Price quartet is a series I read a while back but just thought about today, and I think you might like that @Vanguard. It's fairly low fantasy but with a focus on magic users (who are 'poets', and use language to bind ideas into physical avatars. Problem is, ideas hate this unnatural existence and constantly fight their creator trying to escape).
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Does anyone not own OMW at this point? It's like the book equivalent to Just Cause 2 or Left for Dead 2
I own none of these things.
Same, except for those second two, I have no idea due to the size and nature of my steam library.
if so, can you speak to it as something a non-fantasy reader might be interested in
The N.K. Jemisin one I just read a few months ago, and while it is definitely fantasy, I'd still recommend it to a non-fantasy reader. It deals with issues like family, self-actualization, duty, vengeance. Parts of it are like Game of Thrones if the Lannisters had access to extremely powerful Pokemon (this is far less stupid than it may sound but it's the quickest analogy I could think of).
The world is also very diverse, the main character of the first book is a woman of color whose nation of origin is a highly matriarchal society.
There are a lot of strange names of both people and things, but it takes the time to explain them to the reader and I wouldn't let that put me off.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
I'm going to keep reading but I really hope its more enders game or forever war than star ship troopers.
Funny thing is that tons of people interpreted it as Starship Troopers and went "aww yeah, a new right-wing author!"
Oh boy did they get disappointed later.
I had the same problem first time reading it. Its never addressed, other than maybe a comment or two in later in books.
It's a straightforward military action novel. It's not long on ideas, and the main idea - super old, experienced dudes and dudettes as soldiers - goes basically nowhere in the novel. That's my main disappointment: all the characters could just as easily have been twenty. But read as a military action novel, it's solid. The Forever War is better, though.
It's not all that week developed as a concept unfortunately and the human drama seems tacked on for the most part.
Despite all that, I enjoyed it and sped through it.
Very different to the TV series of the same name and conceit
Seriously hoping that the upcoming TV show lives long enough to make it to the fifth book.
I see some people say this and I just don't get it. I thought it was great. Really tense.
Hey, goes to show how tastes differ. I think Abercombie is one of the really great fantasy writers, and even if the First Law trilogy is a bit rough in places, it's still very solid - my recent re-read really reinforced this. Plus, it leads up to the three stand-alone sequels, which are really great. Dark, but very witty. Half a King is still Abercombie, but it's... simpler in a way, less layers. Not as gritty, but still with some darkness to it.
Prince of Thorns though... I dunno, I found it a bit "meh" to be honest. Some nice ideas, but the writing was ok at best, and I never came to caring very much for the main character. A good 3/5 perhaps, but I think Abercombies books all go beyond that.
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I found Jorg likeable despite being the definition of "the ends justifies the means". I was rooting for him the whole time and was eager to see whatever nutso plan he'd come up with next.
The anti-heroes in Abercrombie's books? I got where they were coming from, I understood them, but I didn't like them. Aside from that crippled guy they're not people you root for.
I read the Red Queen recently, and didn't think all that much of it, so I'm going to side with Grudge on this in (vastly) prefering Abercrombie's stuff.
Having been to a few book signings of the latter, I was pretty surprised to find that Shivers seemed to be so popular with the female readers.
I honestly can't remember what the rest of the books were about. I didn't dislike them, they just weren't very memorable.
I have the entire series. I would recommend getting it. My least favorite is the 2nd book, the third is fun, with a solid ending to the core trilogy. The Anthologies he's put out since I've enjoyed more than the first 3 books, but you need to read the first three for them to make sense.
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This a total 180 degree turn of where she was several years ago, where the Kindle thing was just a gimmick that she could carry around instead of a paperback or hardcover in her purse. Now she doesn't even pick up a paperback or hardcover, and insists on reading only the Kindle version.
Ah well. I'm just glad that the two of us can FINALLY talk about the book, even though my knowledge of it is from my hazy memory of reading it a whole year ago. :P
Well, unsurprisingly, that's actually what it is!
Blindsight remains one of my all time favourites. Echopraxia ended remarkably abruptly. It had a lot of the same sort of interesting things in it, but while Siri is great because of how atypical he is, Bruiks is entirely forgettable. It looks like there is another to come, which is great. It also raises meta-narrative questions about Blindsight which I hope it explores more fully.
I will say that Watts seems to have trouble with clear action scenes - I would often be confused as to what happened a and have to track back
Certainly made me feel some feelings. I read an interview with a lady who has adapted it for stage who said what inspired her to do it was the fact that she could only really get to grips with it by reading it out loud, which is surprisingly effective. It can be pretty heavy going, but there is some gorgeous prose in there.
It's been a few years since I finished the second book in the trilogy, Maelstrom, but I recall the end action scene to be very confusing. I'm still not entirely sure what happened, and even at the time after a few rereads it wasn't any clearer. Everything else up to that point was fine though.
It had some great cobcepts, but as a story it was super aimless and fairly pointless (at least, insofar as a story about a biological apocalypse and attempts to subvert it can be). Probably the best shaggy dog story one might ever come across runs throughout, which I give it points for.
It also had its fair share of unclear action.
Not sure how I feel about the elements of controversy in the final book either.
I finished Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Coupland yesterday which seemed like it was written because he was pissed off at his kids or something. It was fine, I suppose, but I'll have forgotten it entirely in not too long
Next up is something with an unmemorable title - Dreams of the Earth that was? Something like that. It's by Alastair Reynolds. It's been a while so I can't actually remember if I liked his stuff.
I read the 4th and 5th over the weekend
4th was easily the weakest of the series. Skimmed.
5th is wonderful but there's not really so much of a cliffhanger ending as just...no ending. Idk. Lots of good character growth but it leaves off in a super perilous spot for the overarching plot. Can't wait for the 6th.
The Assassin books benefitted from a single narrator. Strong 1st person narration is a rarity in fantasy
Her other stuff is good but less focused on one character so they felt a little less unique.
@Vanguard
Do you mean the Christopher Paolini books?
If so they ended up being an Inheritance Cycle because he wrote a fourth book, and.. no I would not recommend it to a non-fantasy reader.
I'd love it if you took a look at my art and my PATREON!
6th is titled Babylon's Ashes, out in 2016.
The first book showed some promise, coming from a young author. The rest of the cycle ended up showing his inexperience as an author and the weak editing that occurred on the hit series. I found them fairly disappointing and the later books were not the type of stories that are usually considered for publishing. He sold a lot of copies and probably did fairly well on the series.
I get the impression they're not even necessarily something a fantasy reader should be interested in. I guess I read fantasy like a non-fantasy reader, though. I imagine Vanguard is talking about this though.
The Long Price quartet is a series I read a while back but just thought about today, and I think you might like that @Vanguard. It's fairly low fantasy but with a focus on magic users (who are 'poets', and use language to bind ideas into physical avatars. Problem is, ideas hate this unnatural existence and constantly fight their creator trying to escape).