What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it...

[csyphrett]

Read Dead Man Walking by Green. Jones and Belcourt are asked to look after Frank Parker in a detention center so he can be debriefed and worked back into civilian life. Then the murders start happening.

CES

[csyphrett]

Read Fallen by Jacka. Alex Verus has his showdown with Richard and his followers, but has to do something no other mage would ever do. Also I was right about what Richard's area of magic was, and that was a cool confirmation for me

CES  

[Bazza]

This probably belongs here

 

 

[csyphrett]

The Adventure Zone boys take on a crystal capable of covering the planet with impenetrable glass in the Crystal Kingdom and try to pop a time bubble on a town in the desert.

CES

[slikmar]

I have a couple series been enjoying:

Reading the Hedge Wizard series by Alex Maher - LITRPG series, better then I thought would be reading description. Recommend it.

 

Listening to the Collin McCool Junkyard Druid by M.D. Massey - Urban Fantasy stuff set in Austin Texas. Up to book 9 or so of the series. Enjoyable. Again, recommended if you are a fan of the urban fantasy stuff.

[csyphrett]

I'm reading the Hedge Wizard too. I am wondering what will happen to the locked up beast boy. I have a feeling the villain is going to turn him loose on the dragon riders.

CES

[death tribble]

Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology edited by Bruce Sterling

A collection of cyberpunk stories from the 80s. A little bit dated now but some interesting ideas here. Drugs feature in several stories. There are also stories dealing with the collapse of systems whether capitalism or communism, space travel, artificial intelligence and time travel

[slikmar]

Reading The Portable Door by Tom Holt after seeing the movie and liking the quirkiness of it. I have never said the following words before - I liked the movie better. Not sure exactly the problem other then to say the book feels like almost a different story AND the author writes too many words (feels like he was paid by the page/word). The book feels plodding to me. Too many page long paragraphs describing nothing really. I am halfway through now, a little more actually, and the weirdness from the movie that started almost immediately didn't really begin until 1/3 of the way through. Not sure if will pick up book 2, will have to decide later.

[Major Tom 2009]

This summer, I had the opportunity to read both 1632 and 1633 by     Eric Flint. These are time-travel stories of a sort, in that a Virginia  town called Grandville (a fictional community, but inspired by an    actual one) is transported through time from the year 2000 to the middle of the Thirty Years' War by what the time-displaced 20th-

Century people come to call the Ring of Fire.

 

This transposition in time causes an alternate timeline to be created,

allowing the survival of certain historical figures -- most notably,

Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, who had died in battle in the     unaltered timeline with which we are more familiar.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

Major Tom 2009 😎

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Doc Democracy]

N.K. Jemisin - Broken Earth trilogy

I have kind of avoided these books because of the hype - each book won the Hugo for best novel that year.

 

The first book was a 99p deal and so I bought it, then did not read it for about a year.  It has an interesting conceit, human communities living on a world so geologically active that there are regular cataclysms that put humanity on the brink of extinction.  You get three perspectives on the society and how the people with the ability to psychically touch the earth (for good and bad purposes) are feared and, unless taken into servitude by the state and forced to work for its benefit under the careful watch of the Guardians who can negate their powers and kill them, hunted down and killed. The story examines the current cataclysm, how it affects the various communities and begins to dive back into previous civilisations and some of the strange artefacts that have survived from those previous ages.

 

Personally, it is a decent read but not something so fantastic that I think it stands out, certainly not when Children of Time was published in the same year (and that did not even make the shortlist).

Anyone else read the whole series, does it improve each book?  The central "twists" of the novel certainly were not twists to me, all pretty much in plain sight from the start. Not saying it was not well-written or even not enjoyable - it passed two days travelling very well, just not what I think about when I think "amazing SF".

 

Doc

[Rich McGee]

Recently (like a month ago) finished Adam Oyebanji's Braking Day.  It was a random library sale purchase that cost me less than a dollar and the author was completely unfamiliar to me, so I was pleasantly surprised to discover it was quite good, easily one of the best hard-ish scifi novels I've read in a couple of decades now while also having compelling character development and good pacing throughout.  Set on a very plausible generation ship that's finally approaching its destination (as in, the current crop of five year-olds will hopefully be walking planetside as young adults), the writer did a very good job of unfolding the setting gradually without awkward exposition dumps.  There's relatively little technological hand-waving going on, the culture of the ship and the Sol system it left behind feels pretty natural.  Without spoiling anything there are no objective "bad guys" in the whole book, just very different opinions of what is and isn't tolerable.  That's made all the better by the fact that are more (a lot more) than just two viewpoints in opposition, and the nuances of how they clash and compromise is what puts this book above the norm in my experience.

 

My only disappointment is that the author is fairly new and doesn't seem to have done any other scifi (although his other book is a mystery novel that's gotten good reviews, and I'll be keeping an eye out for it).  Braking Day doesn't end on a cliffhanger by any means, but there are many questions about what the status quo going forward could develop into and it could easily grow into a series.  At the very least it would be nice to see how the colonization mission goes, although the main plot here doesn't focus on it - it's more of an impending pressure on everyone mostly lurking in the background.

 

Heartily recommend.  Do not be put off by the lead characters being quite young.  They're not children, the environment they've grown up in has made them serious and thoughtful, and this is not some vapid young adult book.  There's also nothing in the book I'd call "agenda grinding" in any direction, unless perhaps you're an actual artificial intelligence in which case some attitudes might be pretty offensive.

 

I've been re-reading Jack Vance's Demon Princes series since then, and it says something that as much as I enjoy reveling in his unique writing style Braking Day is still the best thing I've read this year.

[DShomshak]

Listened to Lord Dunsany's Gods of Pegana and Time and the Gods as Librivox audiobooks. These are seminal works so I'm glad I finally got to them. Pegana is a book of myths that also are sometimes stories, but more often prose poems, describing the gods, their prophets, and miscellaneous doings -- a view into another world's mythology, from igts beginning to its foretold end. Language and imagery are amazing, though the style is florid and deliberately archaic. Time and the Gods is more miscellaneous, a series of stories and vignettes involving, in one way or another, time and "the gods of old." Only some constitute actual stories; more are just vignettes, Dunsany playing around with language and image but having no actual plot. I think that some of the stories that were actual stories, however, did give an authentic feel of myth, however.

 

Recommended, but don't expect a lot of plot, characterization, or action. That's not what Dunsany's doing.

 

EDIT: From a gamer's perspective, these are worthless as potential adventure scenarios. However, they could be great examples of the myths and fables told by people within a Fantasy world -- or the actual supernatural background of the world.

 

Dean Shomshak

Edited December 20, 2023 by DShomshak

[Rich McGee]

37 minutes ago, DShomshak said:

EDIT: From a gamer's perspective, these are worthless as potential adventure scenarios. However, they could be great examples of the myths and fables told by people within a Fantasy world -- or the actual supernatural background of the world.

Heh.  The old Avalon Hill RPG Lords of Creation devotes a number of pages to covering Dunsany's Pegana cycle as a game setting, and has game stats for a fair few of the deities involved there.  Only game I've ever seen that even tried using it and doesn't really do a good job of it, but the whole game is a crazy genre mashup to begin with, with a "monster manual" (the Book of Foes) that has to be seen to be believed.  Makes Rifts look tame and lacking in scope by comparison.  Perhaps more usefully, it also includes what amounts to a thinly-disguised version of the setting of the Lord Darcy supernatural detective stories, which makes for an excellent RPG sandbox for everything from diplomatic intrigue to exploration to crime drama.  Lot of stuff jammed into that old core box.

 

Dunsany's originals are an entertaining read (or listen) regardless.  His writing style is elegant and distinctive, although you can see its influence in a lot of "weird stories" pulp authors - not least of whom being HP Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith.

[Rich McGee]

On 5/3/2023 at 6:39 PM, csyphrett said:

Read Heroic Hearts edited by Butcher and Hughes. This is an anthology where people investigate crimes with magic like Toot Toot and Mister foiling an attack of Gremlins on Dresden's castle, Vincent Graves dealing with a murderous leprechaun, or the Moor dealing with a blind date and her Fae tormentor. I liked a lot of these stories even though I don't read most of the authors presented.

CES 

If you enjoy the "magical detection" subgenre and haven't already done so, I'd recommend taking a look at Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy stories, which got a big compilation a while back that's probably in the library system by now.  Stylistically they're a bit Sherlockian, if Holmes was more lot personable and Watson was a magical forensic expert.  Michael Kurland wrote a few sequel novels after Garrett died, which are also worth a look - they're almost flawless pastiches of his style, something you don't see very often.

 

Or if you want a more "pulp noir" take on the subgenre, there's the lengthy series of Garrett, P.I. (no relation to Garrett) novels by Glen Cook, starting with Sweet Silver Blues way back when.  They're generally much lighter reading than his Dread Empire or Black Company work, but as a fantasy mashup of Nero Wolfe and Sam Spade tropes pretty good.  

[DShomshak]

I enjoyed the "Lord Darcy" stories and am glad to learn that another author continued them -- and did it well, which is flipping amazing.

 

Yeah, I know Dunsany influenced Smith and Lovecraft; I've been fans of theirs for ages. But somehow I'd never gotten around to reading much Dunsany even though I knew perfectly well he was a majpor influence.

 

I've never seen Lords of Creation, but Pegana somewhat influenced early development of White Wolf's Exalted in some of its treatment of gods and demons. Its model for gods shifted to be more Chinese Celestial Bureaucracy, but I think a few stylistic aspects remained. (And Games of Divinity owe their origin to Dunsany as a phrase, if not what they actually were.) The most persistent influence probably came with Exalted's demons and their world of Malfeas -- likely because that was mostly the creation of R. Sean Borgstrom, a.k.a. Jenna Moran, who is one of the very few game writers I can think of with the mental and stylistic chops to achieve a Dunsanian style.

 

Dean Shomshak

[slikmar]

8 hours ago, Rich McGee said:

If you enjoy the "magical detection" subgenre and haven't already done so, I'd recommend taking a look at Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy stories, which got a big compilation a while back that's probably in the library system by now.  Stylistically they're a bit Sherlockian, if Holmes was more lot personable and Watson was a magical forensic expert.  Michael Kurland wrote a few sequel novels after Garrett died, which are also worth a look - they're almost flawless pastiches of his style, something you don't see very often.

 

Or if you want a more "pulp noir" take on the subgenre, there's the lengthy series of Garrett, P.I. (no relation to Garrett) novels by Glen Cook, starting with Sweet Silver Blues way back when.  They're generally much lighter reading than his Dread Empire or Black Company work, but as a fantasy mashup of Nero Wolfe and Sam Spade tropes pretty good.  

Count me as another in favor of the Lord Darcy books. And I am a huge fan of noir detective style, so will look into the Garrett stuff, thanks Rich.

[csyphrett]

8 hours ago, Rich McGee said:

If you enjoy the "magical detection" subgenre and haven't already done so, I'd recommend taking a look at Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy stories, which got a big compilation a while back that's probably in the library system by now.  Stylistically they're a bit Sherlockian, if Holmes was more lot personable and Watson was a magical forensic expert.  Michael Kurland wrote a few sequel novels after Garrett died, which are also worth a look - they're almost flawless pastiches of his style, something you don't see very often.

 

Or if you want a more "pulp noir" take on the subgenre, there's the lengthy series of Garrett, P.I. (no relation to Garrett) novels by Glen Cook, starting with Sweet Silver Blues way back when.  They're generally much lighter reading than his Dread Empire or Black Company work, but as a fantasy mashup of Nero Wolfe and Sam Spade tropes pretty good.  

Read all of Darcy, about half of Garret, maybe all of Jules de Grandin, all of Harry Dresden, the first five or six books of Monster Hunter International, almost all of Alex Verus, Wellman's Silver John collected stories and novels, Christie's Harley Quin, Drake's Old Nathan and alternate Rome books where the protagonists are trying to save the world from a force from outside reality, and all of The Lord of the Isles,  alternate Sherlock Holmes collections (favorite story is Holmes being summoned to a fantasy China and considered a demon while solving mysteries for the local wizard), various stories from the pulps including collections for Solomon Kane, the first four books of Asminov's Caves of Steel, his collection of Urth stories, and the Black Widowers, Saint Crow's Bannon and Clare and Gallowglass, Anton Strout's Simon Canderous, maybe all of the Warlock in spite of himself and part of the spinoff series with Magnus, Doc Sidhe, all of the Doc Savage books printed by Bantam, half of the Avenger books, maybe twenty books about the Shadow, a few Spiders, Lobster Johnson, Lin Carter's first four Prince Zarkov books, Nekropolis, James Butcher's Grimsby series (only one book out so far but another is supposed to be out soon) various collections of stories about different things as well as a long list of things that I can't remember right now.

CES      

[Rich McGee]

11 hours ago, csyphrett said:

Read all of Darcy...as a long list of things that I can't remember right now.

Our list largely overlap, then.  Only one I don't recognize is Nekropolis.

 

If you somehow missed them, Barry Hughhart's Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox are also must-reads, and if you can find them and don't object to some mild but well-intentioned (and old - the newest is from the 1960s) cultural appropriation, Robert van Gulik wrote a long series of Judge Dee mysteries (as well as translating the original novel from Chinese) that do a good job of retaining many of the stylistic elements seen in Dee Goong An.

Edited December 21, 2023 by Rich McGee

[Rich McGee]

7 hours ago, slikmar said:

And I am a huge fan of noir detective style, so will look into the Garrett stuff, thanks Rich.

If you do, try to read them in order - I believe most of them are in three-novel compilations these days, and there's always the used market.  There is quite a bit of character continuity as the series advances through the years, and jumping into one of the more recent books will leave a new reader pretty confused as to some of what's going on.  Garrett himself has changed a lot, and his long roster of girlfriends has done a lot of that changing.  Imagine a mix of Spade and Archie Goodwin if he wasn't frozen in amber.

[csyphrett]

16 hours ago, Rich McGee said:

Our list largely overlap, then.  Only one I don't recognize is Nekropolis.

 

If you somehow missed them, Barry Hughhart's Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox are also must-reads, and if you can find them and don't object to some mild but well-intentioned (and old - the newest is from the 1960s) cultural appropriation, Robert van Gulik wrote a long series of Judge Dee mysteries (as well as translating the original novel from Chinese) that do a good job of retaining many of the stylistic elements seen in Dee Goong An.

Nekropolis was a series, but I only read one book where the hero is a zombie private investigator who is trying to solve a case for a femme fatale in a city moved to a dimension of darkness.

 

I have not read any of Master Li, but I have read at least two Judge Dee books and seen some of the movies.

CES  

[slikmar]

On a more humorous bent, I enjoy the Dan Shamble series of books by Kevin J. Anderson. Noir style PI detective returned as a Zombie after someone messed with the Necronomicon and brought back all the mythological creatures.

[death tribble]

Peace Talks by Jim Butcher

I started this a while ago but then stopped. Started again this Monday and read it in four days. As the saying goes 'Wow that escalated quickly'. The Fomor are going to do WHAT ??

And one unresolved plot thread is now resolved. McCoy now knows. But Mab is going to be seriously upset after what happened.

You have to be aware of a lot of things that have happened before and invested in going forward. I have Battleground from friends and need to finish it before March 2nd when I se them.

[csyphrett]

Battlegrounds is okay. There are some surprises at the end.

CES

[Christopher R Taylor]

Its not a book per se but I have been reading Savage Realms magazines on Kindle.  They are sword and sorcery short stories bundled, a handfull every month.  Some are a lot better than others, but overall its fun stuff and worth reading.

 

I kept up with the Dresden books for a while but got tired of the escalation of the story and it got ridiculous to me after a while.  Dresden wiping out a thousand vampires with a single spell claiming he could have cast it at any time but never had the acreage required.  The stories were at their best just as PI with magic street level stuff, not this huge storyline of epic proportions.  Butcher lost his way.

Edited February 9 by Christopher R Taylor

[death tribble]

On 2/9/2024 at 5:16 AM, Christopher R Taylor said:

I kept up with the Dresden books for a while but got tired of the escalation of the story and it got ridiculous to me after a while.  Dresden wiping out a thousand vampires with a single spell claiming he could have cast it at any time but never had the acreage required.  The stories were at their best just as PI with magic street level stuff, not this huge storyline of epic proportions.  Butcher lost his way.

I disagree entirely with this. Butcher has been building this for years. And in Battleground we get a culmination of a lot of things that have building for a while.

 

Battleground by Jim Butcher

Set over the course mainly of one night, Chicago becomes a battle field as a Titan and her Fomor allies try to take the city apart and anyone who stands in their way. They pick the fight on the Longest Day when Mab's power is at her weakest. And oh boy do we get a fight. There is no easy way out or reasoning this away after all the death and destruction. But it was impressive.

And we get an explanation of stuff that happened in the earlier books as a hidden enemy is finally revealed and thwarted. But there is something to come in the next books. There was stuff I did not expect from Marcone for one and the sad death of another character in a way that I did not expect. And Harry is on the outs with the White Council once more.

You have to have read most of the other books to really appreciate this one and you have to have read Peace Talks.

And now the long wait until the next paid of books comes out.