What Are You Reading?

Jayd0g

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119936201#Comment_119936201

I'm in the middle of "Agency", the follow up to "The Peripheral". Same universe, some overlapping characters but it's a stand alone book.

Well worth checking out if you like The Peripheral.

Neuromancer was one of his earlier novels, and I think Gibson has gotten much better at gradually creating the world of his books while progressing the plot. In Neuromancer, I found he had to take large timeouts or detours to explain concepts, which didn't really flow with the plot.

CalamariFritti

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119937911#Comment_119937911

Thanks. I'm not really complaining about the lack of explanation. Tedious explanation can come across contrived and take away from the story and the experience. Sometimes you have to just go with it and usually things become clearer as one goes along. Neuromancer has a lot of stuff though.

Still very good I find!

Igotadose

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119938353#Comment_119938353

Neuromancer was the first 'cyberpunk' novel though, had to explain a whole new universe. It was amazing to read back then.

CalamariFritti

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119938394#Comment_119938394

What I was struggling with was/is that he doesn't really explain anything. You just have to 'get it' as you go along from context. It's good for the book as such but it can be difficult at times.

Thargor

Christmas reading was Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky, I was looking forward to it all year and I had no trouble reading it but it was nowhere as good as the first two, spent an awful lot of the book spinning its wheels and repeating itself due to the nature of the plot device which I wont spoil. The mentions of the ruined Earth launching desperate colony ships in this universe are pure gold dust and the best thing about this series but theres just not enough of it here.

Also read Weaponized by Neal Asher. I think thats me done with the Polity stuff now, Gridlinked and the whole Agent Cormack series set in the Prador War are some of the best sci-fi novels you'll read but he has been milking the universe with repetitive low effort novels since then. The amount of times he repeats himself in this book is criminal, for example there are these aliens that are hard to kill, they have to hit them with lasers until they turn "asbestos white" then hit them with a railgun or a missile so they explode. That "asbestos white" description of killing the aliens appears literally 50 times in the book word for word over and over again. It also has these pointless flashbacks to irrelevant stuff that happened a few weeks beforehand, its literally irrelevant to the plot and is just pure filler, I was angry reading this book which is sad because I always thought The Polity was second only to The Culture as my favourite sci-fi universe.

keane2097

I read Ancillary Justice there over Christmas and thought it was good. Is the series any use after?

Glebee

70% through final Malazan book and it's a struggle. Looking forward to finishing it up and moving onto something else. Not getting much reading time these days hope to rectify that during the week.

Think I'm going to tackle the Farseer trilogy next, it's been on my list for a while

Thargor

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120052574#Comment_120052574

You'll love Farseer, make sure you read Liveships and the other trilogies aswell, its all one big tale.

Im really in the market for something like Farseer aswell these days, Ive been reading an awful amount of duds lately. Stormlight Archive is about the only thing I havent read yet though.

lordgoat

Ancillary Series was great.

Liveships aside I find everything else by Hobby absolute fantasy by numbers. If you think you see a trope coming it duly appears. I'd recommend Sanderson over her, but Liveships were a fun and interesting series and worth the read.

Igotadose

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120056659#Comment_120056659

Hobb is as you say pretty formulaic. Plus she didn't IMO do a good job on masculine emotions in the Farseer trilogy. I tried Live ships after, about 30 pages in and that was enough.

Lately been reading old Tom Holt sillinesses like the Portable Door series. Light reading to get me through this wretched cold that's visited us since Xmas

shootermacg

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120052747#Comment_120052747

Found her very very dreary indeed.

lordgoat

Finished Scalzi - Kaiju Preservation - a nice page turner, easy peasy read.

CalamariFritti

Transition from Iain Banks

Munching my way through Iains non science fictions books and so far they are all excellent. Some are just thrillers or so, some are a bit off-the-wall, but so far I haven regretted a single one. Quite the opposite.

While not strictly speaking science fiction I bring up Transition here 'cos it's not a real-world novel either. Could call it a real-world fantasy, maybe fitting the aforementioned bit-off-the-wall category.

Its premise is there are an infinite number of parallel universes created by all the different choices and happenstances and things that go this way or that way throughout history. Some are almost identical to our universe some are a bit different some are vastly different. An infinite number of them and the story plays on nowadays Earth and its parallel versions. No space faring or classic science fiction here.

There are people who can 'Transition' between the different universes and a so-called 'Council' that is meant to keep some sort of order to all that. But the Council goes rogue and bad and nasty and things go from there.

If you're a Banks fan like myself, but mostly went with 'the Culture' so far, this one is an excellent entry point into his non science-fiction books. Couldnt put it down.

Also excellent but definitely not science fiction or fantasy or even strange were Stonemouth and also The Crow Road. The Bridge is very good too but I found it challenging at times. Luckily I have a good few left to go through.

shrapnel222

Finished "Babel, or the necessity of Violence:an arcane history of the oxford translators' revolution". This is R.F Kuang's new book for which she's had rave reviews. Big fan of hers after the poppy war trilogy, where i thought book one was just phenomenal, even though 2 and 3 fall short of that high standard imo, but still, i really like how she writes, and book reviewers seem to love this new one.

Personally very disappointed as i found it very unsatisfying once finished. it feels like half the book is the introduction and then unfortunately it's much ado about not a lot. i do like how she writes though and this was an easy and enjoyable read, as i flew through its 650 pages, but felt like it fell very flat.

shootermacg

Here's more progression fantasy crack for lovers of Cradle.

Not particularly well written but, has that one-more-page vibe in spades:

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/55559974-iron-prince

Xofpod

Reading Alan Moore's Illuminations book of short stories. Mixed bag so far but in fairness, I'll read anything he writes...

lordgoat

Sanderson - the lost metal

Anyone read the Passage trilogy? thoughts?

Black Sheep

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120109224#Comment_120109224

THE PASSAGE as in the vampire apocalypse trilogy by Justin Cronin?

It's good if you like either type of genre writing.

Cronin has a more literary style and the story is that he wrote the series to please a child of his.

It's very well thought out, and quite cinematic in parts.

There was some page-turning quality lacking for me though, although I did finish it.

Black Sheep

ELANTRIS by Brandon Sanderson. I keep a reading log so I won't go into great detail here, but I was just going to say I was kind of surprised how good this Sanderson stand-alone novel is... I think it's a far better book than the Stormlight series I've read by him.

Reminds me of Orson Scott Card... And I don't think it's just because they're both Mormons!

CalamariFritti

Iain Banks 'The Business'. Going though Iain's non science-fiction portfolio this is my favourite so far.

It's being described on wikipedia as a present day science-fiction novel so I think its OK to bring it up here.

It's following Kate who is a high-level executive in a massive and somewhat secretive multinational financial corporation. One of the few books of Iain where the main protagonist is female. The story describes her exploits as she thinks she may have stumbled over a conspiracy aimed at embezzling staggering amounts of money from her company. Very good, very witty and would make for a great movie I think.

shootermacg

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120109224#Comment_120109224

Very enjoyable, if you like vamps.

shootermacg

This is an easy read if you like vampire hunters etc:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56269205-empire-of-the-vampire

lordgoat

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120114411#Comment_120114411

Great Book, Stormlight is the only fantasy series by Sanderson I haven't read yet.

shootermacg

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120116515#Comment_120116515

Stormlight Archive is OK, better than the rest, but the usual weaknesses are there too.

The characters are just terribly realized 2D plot devices and the books could easily be a third shorter - if he was a good writer, which he isn't.

His world building has always been great, he writes some good scenes, but the characterization is really really really poor.

keane2097

Christ yeah, think I read three of them? Enormous books where just nothing interesting happens. A lot of fantasy authors are self-indulgent with page counts but that series just takes the biscuit. Nice world building as mentioned but everything I read could have been in one decently paced volume.

Heraclius

Just finished Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin. I enjoyed it quite a lot and especially enjoyed the scenes during the Cultural Revolution early in the book.

shootermacg

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120122234#Comment_120122234

Fantastic books, some great concepts and the scope is vast.

Thargor

Id say Ive thought about 3 Body Problem and the rest of Remembrance of Earths Past at least once a day since I read it a couple of years ago, must give it a reread, about as good as sci-fi gets. When they finish The Expanse tv series that whole team should be transferred over to a 3 Body tv series.

Id say the Dark Forest theory probably is a good explanation for the Fermi Paradox aswell, apparently it was David Brin who came up with it though, Liu Cixin just appropriated it.

shrapnel222

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120136980#Comment_120136980

i got through book one and two. never got around to book three weirdly enough. i did enjoy them but found them very slow going. as for the series, i know you're referring to the netflix series which is due out end of 2023, but the chinese series is airing currently. just waiting for a subtitled version tbh.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Body_%28TV_series%29

Thargor

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120138836#Comment_120138836

Never heard of either thanks, great news, well great news apart from the involvement of the two from Game of Thrones anyway..