csyphrett Posted August 25, 2005 Report Share Posted August 25, 2005 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... There are three books about the Tripods, BD. I don't remember their names off hand, but information should be easy to look up. CES BoneDaddy 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
garou Posted August 25, 2005 Report Share Posted August 25, 2005 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... The White Mountains' date=' by John Christopher, 1967 (an old book, sure, but new to me). It clearly is, but does not claim to be, a sequel of sorts to War of the Worlds. The long feared reinvasion occurred, followed by an occupation. Neat book about three boys coming of age by traveling to join the resistance. If it had a sequel I would read it (and maybe it does...) The target age is probably 10-15 or so.[/quote'] It does. I'm not sure that it is directly related to the War of the Worlds, but it certainly does pull from it a great deal. I vaguely remember the series (or at least the last three books - I don't recall reading "When the Tripods Came"), and I believe that, back in the 80's, it was done as a comic strip in Boy's Life. The target age is young adolescent - and I have put it back on my list of books to have here at home. The li'l guy is still less than 2, but I really ought to start looking for some of my childhood favorites in order to pass them on. BoneDaddy 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BoneDaddy Posted August 25, 2005 Report Share Posted August 25, 2005 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Oh bother - I owned those books a few decades ago. Drat. But thanks for the info. Now - off to the library! and then the paperback exchange. garou 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
garou Posted August 25, 2005 Report Share Posted August 25, 2005 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Thank you. I'd forgotten the exact title and the author - it's kinda hard to hunt down favorite childhood books when you're looking for "a book with masters, and tripods, and mountains. . . but I don't recall the title, or the author." Too many people kept referring me to War of the Worlds. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
csyphrett Posted August 26, 2005 Report Share Posted August 26, 2005 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Just finished the two volume Speaks the Nightbird by Robert McCammon. It's a historical mystery centering around an English S.C. settlement who seems to have a witch in residence. The books revolve proving the accused witch innocent despite the community. Be warned that the first book has a scene where the local blacksmith is a little too friendly with his horse. CES Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
csyphrett Posted August 27, 2005 Report Share Posted August 27, 2005 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Just finished Paths Not Taken by Simon Green. John Taylor tries to find a way to stop his mother from destroying the world by traveling to the creation of the nightside. CES Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gewing Posted August 27, 2005 Report Share Posted August 27, 2005 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Just finished Paths Not Taken by Simon Green. John Taylor tries to find a way to stop his mother from destroying the world by traveling to the creation of the nightside. CES AAARRRRGHHHH!!!! I'll have to go look for it. wait a minute, My wife brought home a box of stuff I can't look at because my birthday is coming up... I just re read Illegal Aliens by Phil Foglio and Nick Pollatta. 5 stars. I'd give it six, but that might be silly. :D I also re read "Darkspell" by Katherine Kerr, iirc. Not bad, some very interesting ideas/complications from Reincarnation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanguard00 Posted August 27, 2005 Report Share Posted August 27, 2005 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... The last two fantasy books I read (a couple of weeks ago) were the first two books in a new series by Jim Butcher (of Dresden Chronicles fame...which if you haven't read you really should). They're pretty good, following the exploits of a young man in a world where everyone has some 'magic' but him. He just keeps finding himself mixed up in things so much larger than him, but he's growing into it. Invasions, evil thingies from the dark, bullies with magic, assassinations, political intrigue...it's shaping up quite nicely. I recommend 'em. Oh yeah! They're the 'Codex Alera' books, Furies of Calderon (book 1) and Academ's Fury (book 2). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brother Jim Posted August 27, 2005 Report Share Posted August 27, 2005 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Just finished Paths Not Taken by Simon Green. John Taylor tries to find a way to stop his mother from destroying the world by traveling to the creation of the nightside. CES there's a new Nightside book ???!?!?!?!?!?.....wwwooooooohhooooooooooo !!!!!! wait.....i'm broke until the 10th:thumbdown :( :( thanks for the info though, maybe i'll just eat lots of ramen... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AliceTheOwl Posted August 28, 2005 Report Share Posted August 28, 2005 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... I'm reading the last book of the Dalemark series by Diana Wynn Jones. I've liked all the others I've read so far, though the fourth book is bringing in some off things out of the blue: magical time travel and going from what I thought was slightly medieval to modern in a 200-year span seems abrupt. Maybe she'll address that. It's also aimed for young adults, so maybe it's truncated because kids think 200 years is a REALLY long time. Though I doubt it; I haven't noticed her talking down to her readers in anything else she wrote. In fact, that's kind of why I'm not embarrassed about reading "kids' books." They're not written in that dumbed-down way that most kids' books are. Hmm. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
death tribble Posted August 31, 2005 Report Share Posted August 31, 2005 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Just finished Pompeii by Robert Harris which looks at the eruption of Vesuvious in AD79 over four days. Short, sharp and to the point and putting a Roman spin on the manifold effects of the eruption of a volcano. I liked it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curufea Posted August 31, 2005 Report Share Posted August 31, 2005 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... American Gods by Neil Gaiman. Audiobook (long train trip recently) - however I have read the book as well (when it first came out). Wonderful stuff, visceral myth. But then, I've never read any Gaiman I didn't like. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logan D. Hurricanes Posted September 5, 2005 Report Share Posted September 5, 2005 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... The Giver by Lois Lowry I have to read a ton of books for my Young Adults literature class, and this is one of the few fantasy/ sci fi books on the list. Briefly: I loved it. It is written for young adults, so the language is generally very accessible which enhances the mood and tone of the book. It's a Utopian style perfect world story with some very interesting ideas. Of course, not everything is nearly as perfect as it seems. I would reccommend it even those of us who are considered adults by the outside world. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gewing Posted September 5, 2005 Report Share Posted September 5, 2005 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... there's a new Nightside book ???!?!?!?!?!?.....wwwooooooohhooooooooooo !!!!!! wait.....i'm broke until the 10th:thumbdown :( :( thanks for the info though, maybe i'll just eat lots of ramen... I read it, good as usual. I am, however getting an "oh no" feeling, it has been growing for a couple books now... Trebuchet 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Susano Posted September 5, 2005 Report Share Posted September 5, 2005 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Let's see... Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson. An interesting and fun read, but not overly spectacular. Notable being the source for the AD&D troll. Roadmarks by Roger Zelazny. A quirky book (it starts with Chapter 2, goes to Chapter 1, then alternates) with cameos by Adolph Hitler, the Marquis de Sade, Doc. Savage, John Sunlight, and (I'm 90% sure) Jack the Ripper. I like it, even if it is a bit odd. Would make for a great (time travel) setting. A Dark Traveling by Roger Zelazny. It starts okay, but then runs out of steam and ends kinda quick. It also has a lot of explanation near the end that really falls flat and seems unneeded. It sort of reads like a teen action/adventure story, but gets bogged down with exposition. Anyway, read Three Hearts and Three Lions at least once, just to say you have, read Roadmarks and wish they'd listened to Roger and kept his title (Last Exit to Babylon, and (to be honest) skip A Dark Traveling. I just bought a book titled Jennifer Government written by Max Barry. It sounds like Snow Crash taken to an absurd extreme. Anyone else have any comments? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Samuraiko Posted September 5, 2005 Report Share Posted September 5, 2005 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Finished STAR WARS: Survivor's Quest by Timothy Zahn. Quite good, but then, his books for STAR WARS usually are. Michelle aka Samuraiko Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Man Posted September 5, 2005 Report Share Posted September 5, 2005 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Finished "Patrick: Son of Ireland" by Stephen Lawhead. Short on action, protagonist somewhat stupid, but still an engrossing read. Strong christian overtones, obviously. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ross_winn Posted September 5, 2005 Report Share Posted September 5, 2005 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... I just finished rereading "A Scanner Darkly" by Philip K. Dick. The book si a complete mind****. It has the distinction (along with books like The Naked Lunch, Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas, and On The Road) of makling you actually feel stoned while you are reading it. I reread the book in anticipation of the film version debuting soon. Weird, wild stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sinanju Posted September 5, 2005 Report Share Posted September 5, 2005 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan, an English writer whose books are just now getting published over here in the USA. It's the first of three books about Takeshi Kovacs, a former UN Envoy (read: super-soldier*) in a world where everyone is implanted with a device that digitally records their personality/memories. If you die/are killed, the implant ("stack") can be recovered and your identity stored, eventually to be written into a new body. There's no FTL travel in these books, but there is FTL communication, so once colonies are established by slowboat, people mostly travel from one world to another by having their recorded personalities transmitted. That's how Envoys travel from world to world, policing them. Most violent crimes are punished by storage--you're reduced to a digital recording and stored for decades or centuries, while your body gets assigned to someone being resurrected after _his_ term of storage is over, or may be bought by someone who takes a shine to it for their own use. When you're decanted after your punishment, you get whatever body they have handy. (The uber-rich have clones of themselves kept ready, or obtain genetically-tailored bodies of various sorts, and periodically save their digital personalities to offsite backups, making them even MORE immortal than the average joe.) Takeshi gets killed at the beginning of the novel, caught redhanded in a crime. He wakes up on earth, where he's been given a new body and an assignment to find out who killed Very Rich Guy. If he succeeds, the remainder of his sentence will be eliminated, he'll be paid well, and he'll get transmitted to the world of his choice and given a nifty new body. If he doesn't, well....let's not discuss that. It's a very interesting world. I immediately went out and bought every other book I could find by Richard K. Morgan (two more Takeshi novels and a standalone near-future novel). I reccomend them, even though I find the technology implausible. (I don't believe in the mind/body dichotomy--I think you _are_ your brain, and that it will never be possible to transfer consciousness that way, like pouring water from one glass to another...but it's a fun idea nonetheless.) *PSYCHOLOGICIAL super-soldier, of course. Given that people--especially Envoys--trade bodies like we change underwear, all their specialized training is mental. Envoys are better at reading people, lying, intimidation, interrogation, and so forth than ANY other human beings. They're trained to adapt to a situation, analyze it, and figure out how best to handle everyone around them better than anyone else. They're able to endure torture--or end it by stopping their own hearts--and whatnot. THEN you give them a custom-built, super-soldier sleeve to wear.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AliceTheOwl Posted September 7, 2005 Report Share Posted September 7, 2005 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... I just bought a book titled Jennifer Government written by Max Barry. It sounds like Snow Crash taken to an absurd extreme. Anyone else have any comments? I LOVED that book. Very funny, fast-paced, quirky, and an interesting commentary on capitalism taken to extremes. I'd recommend it. I just finished Ender's Game for the very first time. So many people had recommended it to me, and one had spoiled it, so I don't think I enjoyed it as much as I should've. But I did enjoy it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Susano Posted September 7, 2005 Report Share Posted September 7, 2005 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... I LOVED that book. Very funny' date=' fast-paced, quirky, and an interesting commentary on capitalism taken to extremes. I'd recommend it.[/quote'] Yeah, I'm getting that out of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Susano Posted September 10, 2005 Report Share Posted September 10, 2005 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... I just finished Jennifer Government. Whooo.... it's even crazier than Snow Crash! Anarcho-Capatalism gone utterly crazy! For those wishing for an unusual twist on dystopian futures, go no further. Wikipedia does a good job of summarizing the novel: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Government Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
death tribble Posted September 12, 2005 Report Share Posted September 12, 2005 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... The Poison Master by Liz Williams. The book tracks between the life of John Dee the famous Elizabethan and a world based on a marsh where the mysterious Lords of Night hold sway. I would give this 7 out of 10. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OddHat Posted September 12, 2005 Report Share Posted September 12, 2005 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Just finished Tom Holt's "A Song for Nero". Great comic historical novel. No magic. Goes from the premise that it was one of Nero's doubles rather than Nero who was killed after his fall, and that Nero spent the next ten years fleeing from one end of the Roman Empire to the other in the company of his double's con-man brother. Nice use of bits from the Odyssey and an interesting view of the Roman Empire from the bottom. Very worth reading. I like Tom Holt's historical novels more than his fantasy stuff these days; he puts a lot more craft into them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slim_McCoy Posted September 15, 2005 Report Share Posted September 15, 2005 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Having not read them in over 20 years, I found a collected edition of C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia. A childhood favorite can really take you back... I love the narrative style of these books, and though the style of writing is dated, some things never go out of style. Hopefully, the upcoming movie (movies?) will do the books justice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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