The Science Fiction & Fantasy Books Thread

[Commander Troi]

I stayed up way too late last night finishing Space Opera by Catherynne Valente. It's extremely funny (very Hitchhiker'Guide), has amazingly imaginative aliens & worlds, and also has a lot of heart. I laughed a lot and cried a little. I've loved everything of Cat's I've read and this is no exception.

Basically, what if humanity is finally contacted by aliens and we have to prove we're sentient by not coming in last in an intergalactic music competition (like EuroVision). If we do come in last, humanity will be annihilated. Our only hope is 2 washed up glam rockers.

"Life is beautiful and life is stupid. This is, in fact, widely regarded as a universal rule not less inviolable than the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the Uncertainty Principle, and No Post on Sundays. As long as you keep that in mind, and never give more weight to one than the other, the history of the galaxy is a simple tune with lyrics flashed on-screen and a helpful, friendly bouncing disco ball of all-annihilating flames to help you follow along."

 

[Starbreaker]

Just finished up The Book of Accidents by Chuck Wendig and moved onto Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Loving it so far.

 

[Livsglede]

First read of the year has been "Gravity" by Tess Gerritsen (no relation to the film Gravity). It's about how a medic astronaut on ISS tries to find out what disease killed all of her crew and is about to kill her. The author is a doctor, do there are a lot of details about biology and medicine, I guess it qualifies as hard sci-fi. I loved it.

 

[JD]

I forgot about this thread.
I've been working my way through both Neuroancer, and The Eye of the World. I'm enjoying both overall, but one issue that they both share is the writing for the women.
It seems like in Eye of the World the two of the main female characters are constantly annoyed and mad the guys, to the point that they're almost getting a little annoying.
And in Neuroancer, the main female character is pretty much your typical male fantasy character. She's this kind of mysterious, sexy, ass kicker, and the first thing she does when she meets the main character is sleep with him.
I've been reading quite a few books by women, so going from their books to these, this just really stood out to me.

 

[Kraig]

I've been reading a lot of military science fiction since the start of the pandemic. I started with John Scalzi's Old Man's War series and Scalzi's trilogy about the Interdependency (The Collapsing Empire, The Consuming Fire and The Last Emperox). Then went on to Jack Campbell's Lost Fleet, Genesis Fleet and Lost Fleet:Beyond the Frontier series. I am now finishing up Craig Alanson's Expeditionary Force series Book 13 after reading Books 1-12.

 

[JD]

There's one other thing I've run into in a few SFF books that kind of bugs me, when they throw around all sorts of made up terms and references without any kind of explanation for what they are. Often times you can figure things out from context, but there have a few times where even that doesn't work. I've run into a little of that with Neomancer, but it was so bad in The City & The City by China Mieville, that I finally just gave up after several chapters, I just couldn't figure out what the hell was going on.

 

[theenglish]

In the last few weeks I've read The Time of Contempt, Story of Your Life, Rogue Protocol (Book 2 of the Murderbot Diaries), and The Abode of Life (an old Star Trek novel).

Time of Contempt: I've really been enjoying this series. Although I am enjoying the show on Netflix show, the books are much more enjoyable. I am liking the character development and world building. It reads like a D&D campaign with individual adventures moving the story (campaign) forward.

Story of Your Life: Awesome novella and made me want to watch the movie again.

Rogue Protocol: I started reading this series because The Network Effect won the Hugo and Nebula awards this year. It is a fun adventure series so far but I can see how the future stories get deeper into the nature of intellect and humanity.

The Abode of Life: The worst Trek novel I've ever read. (Apologies to the late Harry Stine) The characters just don't act like they are supposed to and there are a few WTF moments.

 

[eschaton]

I purchased an E-book of the complete Malazan Book of the Fallen. Apparently it's the largest fantasy series in history, with over 10,000 pages! Been reading for a few weeks, and now up to around page 3,700 (beginning of book five). And when I'm done with that, there's a further 14 books four adjoining series!

I very much recommend it to anyone interested in fantasy with very deep worldbuilding which avoids most of the normal fantasy tropes.

 

[The Lensman]

Apparently it's the largest fantasy series in history.

“Bah Gawd, that’s Discworlds theme!”

Discworld is still largest if I’m not mistaken

 

[eschaton]

“Bah Gawd, that’s Discworlds theme!”

Discworld is still largest if I’m not mistaken

This page says Discworld has a total word count of 5,625,321, while Malazan has 5,630,199. However, they only seem to be counting some of the Malazan books, since there's way more than 13 of them.

In general though, Pratchett avoided writing doorstoppers didn't he? I seem to recall all of the Discworld novels were in the range of 300 pages, not the 1,000-1,200 page monsters which are common now. His longest was Unseen Academicals, I believe, which was in the range of 500 pages.

 

[JD]

I purchased an E-book of the complete Malazan Book of the Fallen. Apparently it's the largest fantasy series in history, with over 10,000 pages! Been reading for a few weeks, and now up to around page 3,700 (beginning of book five). And when I'm done with that, there's a further 14 books four adjoining series!

I very much recommend it to anyone interested in fantasy with very deep worldbuilding which avoids most of the normal fantasy tropes.

Damn, I don't think I've ever come across an all in one e-book for a series that long. Most of the longer series I've seen have it broken up into smaller collection, for example The Dresden Files, which is 17 novels in the series so far, has 1-6 in one e-book, 7-12 in another, and 13-15 in the latest one. It doesn't look like 16 &17 have been collected yet.

 

[EmoBorg]

I just gotten back to the fantasy genre after nearly two decades. I have noticed that there is a trend toward grimdark in recent years with fantasy novels like The Poppy War, The Lies of Locke Lamora and The Blade Itself and various others being of that subgenre.

I am not really a fan of grimdark because i wasn't a goth or emo kid growing up .

What ever happened to lighter, less killjoy and more hopeful type of fantasy stories like those by David Eddings for example ?

 

[eschaton]

I just gotten back to the fantasy genre after nearly two decades. I have noticed that there is a trend toward grimdark in recent years with fantasy novels like The Poppy War, The Lies of Locke Lamora and The Blade Itself and various others being of that subgenre.

I am not really a fan of grimdark because i wasn't a emo or goth kid growing up .

What ever happened to lighter, less killjoy and more hopeful type of fantasy stories like those by David Eddings for example ?

Even YA fantasy tends to be grimdark doesn't it? I mean, it's been a sort of long-term shift in the genre. Even when I compare a single author's work - say Tad Williams - the tone in Memory, Sorrow, & Thorn is way lighter than Shadowmarch or the sequel trilogy he's working on now.

Grimdark is fine IMHO if the author has a point to the setting being dark. There's a point to it in ASOIAF, Malazan, and The Prince of Nothing. Otherwise it just comes across as shit put in to make 14 year old boys think it's kewl.

 

[Owain Taggart]

I think The Lies of Locke Lamora is unique enough to set itself apart. I've only read the first two though, but I keep meaning to get back to it. I also quite like the Dagger & Coin series as its focus is not so much on war, but more on the effects of war and economy.

 

[EmoBorg]

Let me see. We got the Grimdark subgenre. The opposite of that genre may be called Hopebright but that sounds like something Christian fantasy may be called.

May be we need a subgenre called Grimbright or Hopedark. Something not violence porn or uninteresting.

 

[Livsglede]

Just finished reading Network Effect (Book 5 from Killerbot Diaries). Actually, I'm not sure what to say, but I like the series: dynamic and interesting twists. Looking forward to reading the next book, Fugitive Telemetry.

 

[Neopeius]

I've been reading a lot of military science fiction since the start of the pandemic. I started with John Scalzi's Old Man's War series and Scalzi's trilogy about the Interdependency (The Collapsing Empire, The Consuming Fire and The Last Emperox). Then went on to Jack Campbell's Lost Fleet, Genesis Fleet and Lost Fleet:Beyond the Frontier series. I am now finishing up Craig Alanson's Expeditionary Force series Book 13 after reading Books 1-12.

I really enjoyed At First Contact, recently featured on Scalzi's blog. It's three novellas, the first of which is hard science fiction. The others are softer, but still quite good.

 

[JD]

Anybody here read The Obernewtyn Chronicles series? It's one I've been interested in a while, and I finally picked up the e-book version of the first book, Obernetwyn, with an Amazon gift card I got for Christmas.

 

[Neopeius]

Even YA fantasy tends to be grimdark doesn't it? I mean, it's been a sort of long-term shift in the genre. Even when I compare a single author's work - say Tad Williams - the tone in Memory, Sorrow, & Thorn is way lighter than Shadowmarch or the sequel trilogy he's working on now.

One of the big selling points of my Kitra saga has been that it's not grimdark. When I've told booksellers that it's optimistic and hopeful in a sea of dystopian YA, invariably they say something along the lines of "Thank God."

 

[Commander Troi]

I've been reading a lot of military science fiction since the start of the pandemic. I started with John Scalzi's Old Man's War series and Scalzi's trilogy about the Interdependency (The Collapsing Empire, The Consuming Fire and The Last Emperox).

My hubby's read all the Scalzi he can get his hands on recently. I got him the Locked In trilogy for Christmas, so he started that. More books to add to my higher-than-the-ionosphere TBR pile.