OK, only finished Act 1, but I am reading a YA novel that is the most aggressively weird thing I can remember being published. But I am also super intrigued and want to know what is going on.
Camp So-And-So by Mary McCoy. Brief plot spoilers:
25 girls show up at a summer camp, separated into five cabins. Cabin one wants to beat the camp from across the lake that is full of rich kids at the intercamp games. So that seems normal, until they run into the force field separated the camps. Cabin two has their counselor murdered. Cabin three decides to go on a quest to free the camp from a curse. Cabin four wanders into the woods and finds 4 boys and a girl that they instantly decide are their soul mates. Cabin five is attacked by some kind of magic spell/natural disaster.
And there's some kind of omniscient narrator who I think is also a character and includes asides and it's all very stylistically weird.
But I'm enjoying it thus far.
Full disclosure: a friend of mine is the author's agent.
enlightenedbum on
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
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BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
OK, only finished Act 1, but I am reading a YA novel that is the most aggressively weird thing I can remember being published. But I am also super intrigued and want to know what is going on.
Camp So-And-So by Mary McCoy. Brief plot spoilers:
25 girls show up at a summer camp, separated into five cabins. Cabin one wants to beat the camp from across the lake that is full of rich kids at the intercamp games. So that seems normal, until they run into the force field separated the camps. Cabin two has their counselor murdered. Cabin three decides to go on a quest to free the camp from a curse. Cabin four wanders into the woods and finds 4 boys and a girl that they instantly decide are their soul mates. Cabin five is attacked by some kind of magic spell/natural disaster.
And there's some kind of omniscient narrator who I think is also a character and includes asides and it's all very stylistically weird.
But I'm enjoying it thus far.
Full disclosure: a friend of mine is the author's agent.
So... like, "I wanted to write a book about going to camp, and couldn't decide on a trope, so included all of them"?
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
OK, only finished Act 1, but I am reading a YA novel that is the most aggressively weird thing I can remember being published. But I am also super intrigued and want to know what is going on.
Camp So-And-So by Mary McCoy. Brief plot spoilers:
25 girls show up at a summer camp, separated into five cabins. Cabin one wants to beat the camp from across the lake that is full of rich kids at the intercamp games. So that seems normal, until they run into the force field separated the camps. Cabin two has their counselor murdered. Cabin three decides to go on a quest to free the camp from a curse. Cabin four wanders into the woods and finds 4 boys and a girl that they instantly decide are their soul mates. Cabin five is attacked by some kind of magic spell/natural disaster.
And there's some kind of omniscient narrator who I think is also a character and includes asides and it's all very stylistically weird.
But I'm enjoying it thus far.
Full disclosure: a friend of mine is the author's agent.
So... like, "I wanted to write a book about going to camp, and couldn't decide on a trope, so included all of them"?
Yes. But also it supposedly comes together somehow. My friend has great taste so I trust her.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
I wish I'd read this book in high school, when I was all over the place in my political and social development and would have really gotten a lot out of a book with a nuanced and multifaceted view of anarchy and social organization, but also good concepts of personal ties, and work and vocation. It would have been a very shaping book for me.
I was lucky and read it when I was fairly young, and because of that, I credit Le Guin and a few other artists from saving the world from who I might have been.
Don't know if you've read Richard Kadrey, who writes the Sandman Slim series (which is a lot of fun butnot like anything Le Guin wrote), but he had a great quote about Le Guin when she died:
Michael Scott Rohan died at the weekend. His Winter of the World books are pretty nifty, about a blacksmith in a fantasy world who does things like invent electroplating while trying to stave off encroaching icy desolation.
Oh wow. I've been trying and failing to remember the author or title of those books for the last ten years give or take. I read them when I was 12 or 13 and they left an impression of this mythic, melancholy world that was different than anything else I'd read at the time. Sad that it took his death to spark the memory. Thanks though.
OK, only finished Act 1, but I am reading a YA novel that is the most aggressively weird thing I can remember being published. But I am also super intrigued and want to know what is going on.
Camp So-And-So by Mary McCoy. Brief plot spoilers:
25 girls show up at a summer camp, separated into five cabins. Cabin one wants to beat the camp from across the lake that is full of rich kids at the intercamp games. So that seems normal, until they run into the force field separated the camps. Cabin two has their counselor murdered. Cabin three decides to go on a quest to free the camp from a curse. Cabin four wanders into the woods and finds 4 boys and a girl that they instantly decide are their soul mates. Cabin five is attacked by some kind of magic spell/natural disaster.
And there's some kind of omniscient narrator who I think is also a character and includes asides and it's all very stylistically weird.
But I'm enjoying it thus far.
Full disclosure: a friend of mine is the author's agent.
I finished this. It stays REAL WEIRD.
People are turned into ravens, souls are split, GRRM and/or JK Rowling are made fun of (I asked my friend, she said she'd never asked specifically who it is), there are meta reasons everything feels like a camp story cliche
I enjoyed it though! It's a fun story. As my friend said "I like to recommend it to people who say everything they've read lately feels the same."
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
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BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
I wish Ninefox Gambit and its sequels had a stronger following. More books, exploring more of the world. Something to give us enough background so that someone could make a test so I could see which faction I would be.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
I wish Ninefox Gambit and its sequels had a stronger following. More books, exploring more of the world. Something to give us enough background so that someone could make a test so I could see which faction I would be.
Brainwashed soldier, spy/assassin, spy/seducer, or math nerd
I wish Ninefox Gambit and its sequels had a stronger following. More books, exploring more of the world. Something to give us enough background so that someone could make a test so I could see which faction I would be.
Fortunately, the publisher has already done just such a quiz, so go nuts.
In other news, I'm 25% of the way through Oathbringer, and it's managing to carry quite a lot of ominous undertones. We'll see where the story goes - though the book is a bit of a doorstop! Sanderson seems to have fought down his penchant for explaining stuff in mechanical detail as well, at least enough that it's not irritating me.
I just inhaled Slade House by David Mitchell in a day. Really enjoyable stuff. It felt like it had a touch of Neil Gaiman in there.
I’m pretty sure it went on my list after a drive by browsing of this thread so thanks to whoever inspired that. I hadn’t twigged it was a Mitchell when I put it on my wish list and after being underwhelmed by Cloud Atlas hadn’t really been looking at his stuff up to now. Very much putting Bone Clocks on the list now however.
After rolling through a number more of suggestions
--The Left Hand of Darkness is a stunning book with such a glorious character development, but I'm not sure even my 10th graders are ready to deal with the gender/sexuality there. I may be underestimating them, but. I will keep it on my list for a future class that I think would be into it.
--The Player of Games. Wow. How did I not read any Banks until now? I really loved this. I decided my list before I finished it, but I will likely hit it in the future.
--Ancillary Justice is just so good. I love that it takes a hot minute for the timeline and setting to click, but it does so so very well, and once it does, you're in.
--Currently in the middle of The Broken Kingdoms because I really loved The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms so much. What a beautifully created universe.
--And I read The Parable of the Sower which is fantastic. I get why Octavia Butler is held in such esteem. It's way too heavy to teach right now.
So--we'll be running a throughline of how culture and technology interacts with Fahrenheit 451, I, Robot (possibly excerpts depening on time), and The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. I felt like that was a good combination of ideas and cultural impact, and I think it has enough gender/sexuality/technology diversity to expand their horizons a bit without flinging them out into the wide-world of diverseful sci-fi. We're also hitting a couple of short stories--"By the Waters of Babylon," "A Sound of Thunder," and ... something I haven't picked yet. haha
I am also still rolling through more of the suggestions myself because it's been a while since I've had a good list of sci-fi/sci-fantasy to pull from. You guys all give good suggestions. :-) Thank you!
BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
edited August 2018
@N1tSt4lker If you haven't read it yet, I would suggest Ninefox Gambit for something that I feel falls along a similar line to the Ancillary series.
Also meant to say that the first three books you listed there are some of the best I've read in recent years, and I'm glad you enjoyed them. Banks especially has an impressive body of work.
@SummaryJudgment I still haven't finished Revenant Gun, but holy shit it is getting really good.
Brody on
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
I just bought Revenant Gun and hopefully it gets here soon! Most anticipated book in quite a while. I also ordered Record of a Spaceborn Few (Chambers), The Black Tides of Heaven (Yang), and Radiance: a Novel (Valente). I think these should all be fun reads if not necessarily amazing amazing.
Hm also I don't really want to/don't need to take a personality test, but I'd say in that setting I'm someone who people might expect to be Nirai but who chose to join Shuos...
I just bought Revenant Gun and hopefully it gets here soon! Most anticipated book in quite a while. I also ordered Record of a Spaceborn Few (Chambers), The Black Tides of Heaven (Yang), and Radiance: a Novel (Valente). I think these should all be fun reads if not necessarily amazing amazing.
Hm also I don't really want to/don't need to take a personality test, but I'd say in that setting I'm someone who people might expect to be Nirai but who chose to join Shuos...
I'm pretty sure you're the one correcting other Shuos on their math mistakes while making cold calculated decisions for the good of the Protectorate
I just bought Revenant Gun and hopefully it gets here soon! Most anticipated book in quite a while. I also ordered Record of a Spaceborn Few (Chambers), The Black Tides of Heaven (Yang), and Radiance: a Novel (Valente). I think these should all be fun reads if not necessarily amazing amazing.
Hm also I don't really want to/don't need to take a personality test, but I'd say in that setting I'm someone who people might expect to be Nirai but who chose to join Shuos...
I'm pretty sure you're the one correcting other Shuos on their math mistakes while making cold calculated decisions for the good of the Protectorate
Also, getting really intense about winning at games
There had better be more about Shuos game design college in Revenant Gun; that was so interesting in Ninefox Gambit!
@N1tSt4lkerPlayer of Games is fantastic and made me really glad I started reading Banks
Use of Weapons is even better but a lot less approachable from a teaching standpoint. Player has some interesting and fairly upfront themes for discussion and a great protagonist.
I think it'd be really funny to teach Player of Games, Ancillary Justice, and The Left Hand of Darkness all in one class. Maybe throw in something else by Butler. Subvert all the patriarchy.
@N1tSt4lkerPlayer of Games is fantastic and made me really glad I started reading Banks
Use of Weapons is even better but a lot less approachable from a teaching standpoint. Player has some interesting and fairly upfront themes for discussion and a great protagonist.
I think it'd be really funny to teach Player of Games, Ancillary Justice, and The Left Hand of Darkness all in one class. Maybe throw in something else by Butler. Subvert all the patriarchy.
Use of Weapons is currently sitting on my hall tree in my stack of library "to reads." :-P
*makes note of highly intriguing and probably controversial book list for use after position is thoroughly solidified* haha
I finished Gardens of the Moon this morning, and thought about it enough at work that I started Deadhouse Gates this evening. I very rarely go directly to the next book in a series but I'm making an exception this time, if only so the story is fresh in my mind. I didn't have half as much trouble keeping up as most people did, judging by the Goodreads reviews.
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BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
I finished Gardens of the Moon this morning, and thought about it enough at work that I started Deadhouse Gates this evening. I very rarely go directly to the next book in a series but I'm making an exception this time, if only so the story is fresh in my mind. I didn't have half as much trouble keeping up as most people did, judging by the Goodreads reviews.
I love that series, but it definitely has its mix of fans and detractors.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
That being said, if you enjoyed GotM, that's a good sign for the rest of the series because it's pretty much universally considered one of the weakest books, if not the weakest.
That being said, if you enjoyed GotM, that's a good sign for the rest of the series because it's pretty much universally considered one of the weakest books, if not the weakest.
Eh. I think it's a messy start but the series peaks soon after that and then gets worse as it gets in to the back end. Liking GOTM is not gonna fix the last bunch of books.
That being said, if you enjoyed GotM, that's a good sign for the rest of the series because it's pretty much universally considered one of the weakest books, if not the weakest.
Eh. I think it's a messy start but the series peaks soon after that and then gets worse as it gets in to the back end. Liking GOTM is not gonna fix the last bunch of books.
Also, Toll The Hounds is clearly the worst book.
Toll the Hounds is the worst slog to the climax, but one of the best climaxes.
But yeah, the later books get a tad heavy on the philosophizing, though.
Peak of the series for me was book 6, on reread when the last novel was released.
For fans of the Malazan series, if you haven't read Forge of Darkness, I highly suggest it.
I'll also chime in and suggest the Dancer's Lament/Deadhouse Landing novels (and obviously the rest of Path to Ascendancy whenever they come out). They're more pulpy reads, but a ton of fun.
That being said, if you enjoyed GotM, that's a good sign for the rest of the series because it's pretty much universally considered one of the weakest books, if not the weakest.
Eh. I think it's a messy start but the series peaks soon after that and then gets worse as it gets in to the back end. Liking GOTM is not gonna fix the last bunch of books.
Also, Toll The Hounds is clearly the worst book.
Toll the Hounds is the worst slog to the climax, but one of the best climaxes.
But yeah, the later books get a tad heavy on the philosophizing, though.
Peak of the series for me was book 6, on reread when the last novel was released.
The later books do have some wonderful, very enjoyable philosophizing.
Unrelated to Malazan, I finished Revenant Gun, and I really enjoyed the series, and the final book in the series. I'd really like it if they went more in detail as to how all the things worked, but that wasn't the intent of the books, and I'm not going to fault it for failing to humor my quirks. I feel like it was well paced, and the characters were all generally enjoyable. I'm trying to remember if I had any complaints, and I'm not really finding any. I guess maybe the ending was a little abrupt? Or at least it would have been nice to have more followup? Doesn't detract from the story told, more of just wanting to experience more of the world.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
I finished Gardens of the Moon this morning, and thought about it enough at work that I started Deadhouse Gates this evening. I very rarely go directly to the next book in a series but I'm making an exception this time, if only so the story is fresh in my mind. I didn't have half as much trouble keeping up as most people did, judging by the Goodreads reviews.
I didn't have trouble understanding the series until I got to the last couple of books—and it didn’t help that I’d read most straight through, but then took a break—but at some point I found myself a bit confused as to what armies were where and what was everyone doing and huh who are some of these marines, actually? Still loved the series, but by the end there is definitely a lot going on and it’s all global and somewhat interconnected and a bit hard to keep track of.
A Fire Upon The Deep, by Vernor Vinge, lent to me by @Kamiro (I will get this back to you at some point!) So...hm. When I worked at a public library in college, I did notice Vernor Vinge; there are usually a couple books by him in the stacks in any scifi section. I'm glad I got the chance to check him out. This book was a space opera fusing a couple of storylines--a couple human tweens crashland on a planet populated by medieval tech level civ where each individual is a wolf pack, and are separated and navigate interaction with this weird society. The second storyline follows a couple humans and a couple of uh potted-plants-on-wheels aliens who are trying to stop a galaxy-threatening entity (and of course their path brings them to seek out the tweens.
It's...medium well-written. At first it's kind of quite bad and has some jarring stylistic tics, but it hits its stride after 60 or 100 pages and becomes way more readable. The wolf pack people are really interesting; the humans seeking to stop the galaxy-threatening entity are totally not interesting, unfortunately, so you find yourself hoping to get back to the planetside drama.
I was fairly annoyed at the author's approach to gender. He's so proud his human society comes from a matriarchal background and everyone's last name ends in -dot instead of -sen and there was an Age of Princesses, but for all this, every female we see, human or not, is nurturing-oriented, and every male is action-oriented. Even the plants on wheels inexplicably the nice and caring one is a girl and eventually has plant eggs, and the technologically minded one is a boy. It's just like...y tho. You're writing far far future space opera and even specify a matriarchy and this is the best you can come up with? Q u e s t i o n a b l e.
I wouldn't recommend it, but I didn't mind reading it. The plot moved right along and although I was not invested in any particular character or anything, the pack people were a really cool idea and fun to read about.
Children protagonists are pretty risky to write, honestly...but then again, the adult human protagonist was also not interesting, so...who knows.
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The Black Tides of Heaven, which was recommended to me by @Apocalyptus.
This one I feel pretty positively about--the core ideas and setting are really compelling and I eventually did get care about the characters--but the structure of the book is really, really suboptimal, which makes it significantly weaker and keeps it from being a work I can really describe as good. This book is *short*--but the novella length does not work for it at all, not as it's put together now. You get, essentially, scenes from a person's life when they are born, 6, 9, 17, 25, 29, 35, and in chronological order. And you only get action highlights. So it just goes from high to high to high and there's no ebb and flow to it, and frankly the action/magic is not super descriptively written so it's not like you're super looking forward to the action scenes or descriptions of the surroundings (the static surroundings descriptions are better that the action descriptions, and set a good scene, but that's not really what one reads for), and you never get time to breathe or settle into the story or setting or character, and learn the little quirks and day-to-day that make characters compelling.
The rest contains minor spoilers, sort of..? Not really, but if you wanted to go in quite blind about a particular plot point that the author put in the middle of the book (but I think should have been up front for a better story), then don't read this:
What I want to do to this book is--of course--
1. alternate the plotful action stuff from the present timeline with scenes from the past. It's not good to start off the story with 60 pages of this kid being 6 and 9 years old. Who cares! But you do care once you care about him as an adult. I understand that the author wanted to do a whole reveal (? sort of), because the protagonist and his twin choosing their genders when they are teenagers is a point of conflict (and it is so interesting and feels so true to life emotionally and really hooked me into the book after I was very skeptical during the initial phase), but I think it would have been quite fine to refer to the person as 'he' in the present and 'they' in the past, and still you would get at this concept that there was a rift between the twins now and slowly you'd discover the various reasons why. I get that the author wanted the readers to sink into this concept of the twins as genderless and identical, but...eh, I don't know. I don't think it actually made the book stronger.
2. slow down the pace a bit--perhaps by choosing childhood episodes that show the twins' bond in a more day-to-day way rather than through action situations? Or just slow it down/expand it and include more dialog, more flesh, more setting. As it is, it reads like someone wrote out the key actions scenes and just slapped them together with no transitions and no moments of tranquility and it just makes the whole book read really quickly and just kind of weirdly. Normally I think authors could do to cut a lot of their extraneous crap, but this author needed to put in a bit more! It feels abridged, and I just wanted to know more about Akeha and see certain bits of his character fleshed out a bit--stuff will be mentioned once and you kind of believe it but you'd believe it more if you ever got the chance to see it.
3. Rework some magic descriptions. It should be cool, but it somehow isn't, really. Something about the descriptions is not particularly evocative.
And yet, I liked this book much, much more than the space opera. The character is really intriguing and the setting is cool (...and I love stories about oppressive empires and wayward noble heirs; I am really predictable in that way). I just wish it had been put together differently!
edit: oh hey, I could maybe actually say what this book is about? Basically it takes place in an Asian-inspired society with hmm maybe renaissance-level tech or so, enabled by magic rather than science. The protagonists are children of the empress, and it deals with them sort of contending with that by taking different stations in life and being to different extents involved in rebellion against the empress's cruel rule. Except...argh, it never really gets into anything and just shows you the highlight reel! But the protagonist is so cool and you just want to read more about this person!
it never really gets into anything and just shows you the highlight reel! But the protagonist is so cool and you just want to read more about this person!
This is a fair criticism - apparently that novella started out as background lore for the companion novella Red Threads of Fate which focuses on Akeha's twin.
I really enjoyed it but I can definitely see how the pacing would not be for everyone.
If you want to see a more day to day narrative in the same setting, I recommend checking out Red Threads of Fate, which is set after Black Tides, and focuses only on the span of a few days.
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BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
I thought A Fire Upon the Deep had some interesting thoughts on the speed of light from a scifi perspective.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
A Deepness in the Sky is far better than A Fire Upon The Deep, so if you saw nuggets of potential there then I recommend having a look.
It probably has my favourite plot device that initially I found utterly unfogiveably terrible but that I loved by the end:
The spiders initially seeming anthropomorphic with their spider cars and spider hot dogs and spider teen Vogue and then you realise it's actually because they are super weird but being channeled through computers based on really crude child perception that need to relate everything in that way and then you get a few chapters of weirdness. I'd love to see it filmed, you can imagine lots of interesting ways to gradually show that. It contrasts well with The Algebraist which has gas alien people driving gas alien cars reading gas alien newspapers and going out to gas alien nando's because of a criminal lack of imagination of the author
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
A Deepness in the Sky is far better than A Fire Upon The Deep, so if you saw nuggets of potential there then I recommend having a look.
It probably has my favourite plot device that initially I found utterly unfogiveably terrible but that I loved by the end:
The spiders initially seeming anthropomorphic with their spider cars and spider hot dogs and spider teen Vogue and then you realise it's actually because they are super weird but being channeled through computers based on really crude child perception that need to relate everything in that way and then you get a few chapters of weirdness. I'd love to see it filmed, you can imagine lots of interesting ways to gradually show that. It contrasts well with The Algebraist which has gas alien people driving gas alien cars reading gas alien newspapers and going out to gas alien nando's because of a criminal lack of imagination of the author
I liked how at the end even after the spiders have been shown to be largely benevolent and are beginning to integrate into human society people still constantly talk about how damn creepy they are.
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Camp So-And-So by Mary McCoy. Brief plot spoilers:
And there's some kind of omniscient narrator who I think is also a character and includes asides and it's all very stylistically weird.
But I'm enjoying it thus far.
Full disclosure: a friend of mine is the author's agent.
So... like, "I wanted to write a book about going to camp, and couldn't decide on a trope, so included all of them"?
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
Yes. But also it supposedly comes together somehow. My friend has great taste so I trust her.
I was lucky and read it when I was fairly young, and because of that, I credit Le Guin and a few other artists from saving the world from who I might have been.
Don't know if you've read Richard Kadrey, who writes the Sandman Slim series (which is a lot of fun butnot like anything Le Guin wrote), but he had a great quote about Le Guin when she died:
That's definitely how I feel about her.
Oh wow. I've been trying and failing to remember the author or title of those books for the last ten years give or take. I read them when I was 12 or 13 and they left an impression of this mythic, melancholy world that was different than anything else I'd read at the time. Sad that it took his death to spark the memory. Thanks though.
I finished this. It stays REAL WEIRD.
I enjoyed it though! It's a fun story. As my friend said "I like to recommend it to people who say everything they've read lately feels the same."
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
Brainwashed soldier, spy/assassin, spy/seducer, or math nerd
Fortunately, the publisher has already done just such a quiz, so go nuts.
In other news, I'm 25% of the way through Oathbringer, and it's managing to carry quite a lot of ominous undertones. We'll see where the story goes - though the book is a bit of a doorstop! Sanderson seems to have fought down his penchant for explaining stuff in mechanical detail as well, at least enough that it's not irritating me.
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The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
(you can totally pick answers to be a Vidona on that test, they are predictably the most bloodthirsty ones heh)
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
I’m pretty sure it went on my list after a drive by browsing of this thread so thanks to whoever inspired that. I hadn’t twigged it was a Mitchell when I put it on my wish list and after being underwhelmed by Cloud Atlas hadn’t really been looking at his stuff up to now. Very much putting Bone Clocks on the list now however.
Okay, so update on my 10th grade curriculum:
After rolling through a number more of suggestions
--The Left Hand of Darkness is a stunning book with such a glorious character development, but I'm not sure even my 10th graders are ready to deal with the gender/sexuality there. I may be underestimating them, but. I will keep it on my list for a future class that I think would be into it.
--The Player of Games. Wow. How did I not read any Banks until now? I really loved this. I decided my list before I finished it, but I will likely hit it in the future.
--Ancillary Justice is just so good. I love that it takes a hot minute for the timeline and setting to click, but it does so so very well, and once it does, you're in.
--Currently in the middle of The Broken Kingdoms because I really loved The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms so much. What a beautifully created universe.
--And I read The Parable of the Sower which is fantastic. I get why Octavia Butler is held in such esteem. It's way too heavy to teach right now.
So--we'll be running a throughline of how culture and technology interacts with Fahrenheit 451, I, Robot (possibly excerpts depening on time), and The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. I felt like that was a good combination of ideas and cultural impact, and I think it has enough gender/sexuality/technology diversity to expand their horizons a bit without flinging them out into the wide-world of diverseful sci-fi. We're also hitting a couple of short stories--"By the Waters of Babylon," "A Sound of Thunder," and ... something I haven't picked yet. haha
I am also still rolling through more of the suggestions myself because it's been a while since I've had a good list of sci-fi/sci-fantasy to pull from. You guys all give good suggestions. :-) Thank you!
wish list
Steam wishlist
Etsy wishlist
Also meant to say that the first three books you listed there are some of the best I've read in recent years, and I'm glad you enjoyed them. Banks especially has an impressive body of work.
@SummaryJudgment I still haven't finished Revenant Gun, but holy shit it is getting really good.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
Hm also I don't really want to/don't need to take a personality test, but I'd say in that setting I'm someone who people might expect to be Nirai but who chose to join Shuos...
I'm pretty sure you're the one correcting other Shuos on their math mistakes while making cold calculated decisions for the good of the Protectorate
Also, getting really intense about winning at games
There had better be more about Shuos game design college in Revenant Gun; that was so interesting in Ninefox Gambit!
Use of Weapons is even better but a lot less approachable from a teaching standpoint. Player has some interesting and fairly upfront themes for discussion and a great protagonist.
I think it'd be really funny to teach Player of Games, Ancillary Justice, and The Left Hand of Darkness all in one class. Maybe throw in something else by Butler. Subvert all the patriarchy.
Use of Weapons is currently sitting on my hall tree in my stack of library "to reads." :-P
*makes note of highly intriguing and probably controversial book list for use after position is thoroughly solidified* haha
wish list
Steam wishlist
Etsy wishlist
I love that series, but it definitely has its mix of fans and detractors.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
Eh. I think it's a messy start but the series peaks soon after that and then gets worse as it gets in to the back end. Liking GOTM is not gonna fix the last bunch of books.
Also, Toll The Hounds is clearly the worst book.
Toll the Hounds is the worst slog to the climax, but one of the best climaxes.
But yeah, the later books get a tad heavy on the philosophizing, though.
Peak of the series for me was book 6, on reread when the last novel was released.
I'll also chime in and suggest the Dancer's Lament/Deadhouse Landing novels (and obviously the rest of Path to Ascendancy whenever they come out). They're more pulpy reads, but a ton of fun.
The later books do have some wonderful, very enjoyable philosophizing.
Unrelated to Malazan, I finished Revenant Gun, and I really enjoyed the series, and the final book in the series. I'd really like it if they went more in detail as to how all the things worked, but that wasn't the intent of the books, and I'm not going to fault it for failing to humor my quirks. I feel like it was well paced, and the characters were all generally enjoyable. I'm trying to remember if I had any complaints, and I'm not really finding any. I guess maybe the ending was a little abrupt? Or at least it would have been nice to have more followup? Doesn't detract from the story told, more of just wanting to experience more of the world.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
I didn't have trouble understanding the series until I got to the last couple of books—and it didn’t help that I’d read most straight through, but then took a break—but at some point I found myself a bit confused as to what armies were where and what was everyone doing and huh who are some of these marines, actually? Still loved the series, but by the end there is definitely a lot going on and it’s all global and somewhat interconnected and a bit hard to keep track of.
A Fire Upon The Deep, by Vernor Vinge, lent to me by @Kamiro (I will get this back to you at some point!) So...hm. When I worked at a public library in college, I did notice Vernor Vinge; there are usually a couple books by him in the stacks in any scifi section. I'm glad I got the chance to check him out. This book was a space opera fusing a couple of storylines--a couple human tweens crashland on a planet populated by medieval tech level civ where each individual is a wolf pack, and are separated and navigate interaction with this weird society. The second storyline follows a couple humans and a couple of uh potted-plants-on-wheels aliens who are trying to stop a galaxy-threatening entity (and of course their path brings them to seek out the tweens.
It's...medium well-written. At first it's kind of quite bad and has some jarring stylistic tics, but it hits its stride after 60 or 100 pages and becomes way more readable. The wolf pack people are really interesting; the humans seeking to stop the galaxy-threatening entity are totally not interesting, unfortunately, so you find yourself hoping to get back to the planetside drama.
I was fairly annoyed at the author's approach to gender. He's so proud his human society comes from a matriarchal background and everyone's last name ends in -dot instead of -sen and there was an Age of Princesses, but for all this, every female we see, human or not, is nurturing-oriented, and every male is action-oriented. Even the plants on wheels inexplicably the nice and caring one is a girl and eventually has plant eggs, and the technologically minded one is a boy. It's just like...y tho. You're writing far far future space opera and even specify a matriarchy and this is the best you can come up with? Q u e s t i o n a b l e.
I wouldn't recommend it, but I didn't mind reading it. The plot moved right along and although I was not invested in any particular character or anything, the pack people were a really cool idea and fun to read about.
Children protagonists are pretty risky to write, honestly...but then again, the adult human protagonist was also not interesting, so...who knows.
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The Black Tides of Heaven, which was recommended to me by @Apocalyptus.
This one I feel pretty positively about--the core ideas and setting are really compelling and I eventually did get care about the characters--but the structure of the book is really, really suboptimal, which makes it significantly weaker and keeps it from being a work I can really describe as good. This book is *short*--but the novella length does not work for it at all, not as it's put together now. You get, essentially, scenes from a person's life when they are born, 6, 9, 17, 25, 29, 35, and in chronological order. And you only get action highlights. So it just goes from high to high to high and there's no ebb and flow to it, and frankly the action/magic is not super descriptively written so it's not like you're super looking forward to the action scenes or descriptions of the surroundings (the static surroundings descriptions are better that the action descriptions, and set a good scene, but that's not really what one reads for), and you never get time to breathe or settle into the story or setting or character, and learn the little quirks and day-to-day that make characters compelling.
The rest contains minor spoilers, sort of..? Not really, but if you wanted to go in quite blind about a particular plot point that the author put in the middle of the book (but I think should have been up front for a better story), then don't read this:
What I want to do to this book is--of course--
1. alternate the plotful action stuff from the present timeline with scenes from the past. It's not good to start off the story with 60 pages of this kid being 6 and 9 years old. Who cares! But you do care once you care about him as an adult. I understand that the author wanted to do a whole reveal (? sort of), because the protagonist and his twin choosing their genders when they are teenagers is a point of conflict (and it is so interesting and feels so true to life emotionally and really hooked me into the book after I was very skeptical during the initial phase), but I think it would have been quite fine to refer to the person as 'he' in the present and 'they' in the past, and still you would get at this concept that there was a rift between the twins now and slowly you'd discover the various reasons why. I get that the author wanted the readers to sink into this concept of the twins as genderless and identical, but...eh, I don't know. I don't think it actually made the book stronger.
2. slow down the pace a bit--perhaps by choosing childhood episodes that show the twins' bond in a more day-to-day way rather than through action situations? Or just slow it down/expand it and include more dialog, more flesh, more setting. As it is, it reads like someone wrote out the key actions scenes and just slapped them together with no transitions and no moments of tranquility and it just makes the whole book read really quickly and just kind of weirdly. Normally I think authors could do to cut a lot of their extraneous crap, but this author needed to put in a bit more! It feels abridged, and I just wanted to know more about Akeha and see certain bits of his character fleshed out a bit--stuff will be mentioned once and you kind of believe it but you'd believe it more if you ever got the chance to see it.
3. Rework some magic descriptions. It should be cool, but it somehow isn't, really. Something about the descriptions is not particularly evocative.
And yet, I liked this book much, much more than the space opera. The character is really intriguing and the setting is cool (...and I love stories about oppressive empires and wayward noble heirs; I am really predictable in that way). I just wish it had been put together differently!
edit: oh hey, I could maybe actually say what this book is about? Basically it takes place in an Asian-inspired society with hmm maybe renaissance-level tech or so, enabled by magic rather than science. The protagonists are children of the empress, and it deals with them sort of contending with that by taking different stations in life and being to different extents involved in rebellion against the empress's cruel rule. Except...argh, it never really gets into anything and just shows you the highlight reel! But the protagonist is so cool and you just want to read more about this person!
I really enjoyed it but I can definitely see how the pacing would not be for everyone.
If you want to see a more day to day narrative in the same setting, I recommend checking out Red Threads of Fate, which is set after Black Tides, and focuses only on the span of a few days.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
It probably has my favourite plot device that initially I found utterly unfogiveably terrible but that I loved by the end: