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


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

 

Hell's Gate by David Weber. Fantasy rather than sci-fi - two cultures are bot exploring a vast network of "gates", each leading to an alternate earth. One has magic, one has roughly 19th century technology and psionics. Neither has encountered humans other than themselves.

 

Tragically, the first contact goes very badly indeed...

 

Weber is using all of the stuff he's learned inthe past, particularly in the Honor Harrington series. Both cultures seem very real, and very authentic - they have their own fracture points, failings and problems, and you get heroic, sympathetic, pathetic and villainous characters on both sides. I really want to see where he goes with this.

 

 

 

ONE I MISSED!!!!!

 

 

My wife probably has it in my Christmas pile... :D

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

 

Dzur, by Steven Brust; latest in his Vlad Taltos series.

 

Vlad is back in Adrilanka, the focus is more on down-to-earth Jhereg type stuff than the Cosmic Super NPC stuff of his last book - I liked that. Vlad is showing growth, and there's some nice character interaction, but all in all I was more than a bit disappointed. Not as funny as earlier books have been, and the ending was seriously anticlimactic - just a blah handwave. As interested as I am in finding out how Vlad's story ends up, I'm thinking it's time for Brust to retire the series and focus on what interests him (apparently Vlad no longer does). This has "contractual obligation" written all over it.

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

 

Three Days to Never by Tim Powers: Einstein had two unknown inventions. Frank and Daphne Marrity discover them, and the Mossad and a secret society want them dead.

 

Powers makes the fantastic seem plausible, and plays by the rules all the way through so everything makes sense when you finish the book.

CES

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

 

Midnight Mass by F. Paul Wilson

 

Vampires are taking over the world and four humans (a rabbi, a disgraced priest, his lesbian athesit niece and an insane commando (ex)nun) try to stop them.

 

The characters are a bit sterotyped but the book reads well, has some nice addtions to vampire mythology and, in the end, lots of vampires are destroyed.

 

3.5 out of 5

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  • 3 weeks later...

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

 

Iron Council by China Mieville: Finally finished it. I wouldn't reccommend this book. Most of the characters verge on fanatics, things were done that didn't make sense, and too much was crammed in when in my mind it would have been better to concentrate on one idea.

 

CES

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

 

Just finished March Upcountry and March to the Sea by Ringo/Weber. Series of three books, with what looks like one followup book. Good enough that I'll likely pick up the next two books, though nothing amazing or mindblowing. I'd say a solid 3/5. Sub-genre is military SF, but these also have kind of a pulpish feel too.

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

 

Yes' date=' but how is it? :bounce: We've got a ton of requests for this thing at the library lately. Koontz is hit or miss for me, but I think I want to read this one.[/quote']

 

I think it would be pretty easy to write a Koontz parody. It would have to contain all the Koontz cliches: superintelligent dogs and/or cats, villainous professors of the liberal arts, false memory implantation, and damsels in distress rescued by former Secret Service and/or Vietnam vets with a tortured past.

 

Especially the superintelligent dogs and/or cats.

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

 

Iron Council by China Mieville: Finally finished it. I wouldn't reccommend this book. Most of the characters verge on fanatics, things were done that didn't make sense, and too much was crammed in when in my mind it would have been better to concentrate on one idea.

 

CES

 

Mieville has got to learn to keep his politics out of his books.

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

 

Three Days to Never by Tim Powers: Einstein had two unknown inventions. Frank and Daphne Marrity discover them, and the Mossad and a secret society want them dead.

 

Powers makes the fantastic seem plausible, and plays by the rules all the way through so everything makes sense when you finish the book.

CES

 

Not quite done with this. Definitely a page-turner though. I started it yesterday and I have about 25 pages left now...

 

It would be cool to stat the machines out in Hero terms, but I don't know enough about theoretical physics or Kaballah to do it.

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

 

The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester (originally titled Tiger! Tiger!) Originally published in 1956 it holds up quite well and Gully Foyle is a refreshingly non-standard main character.

 

Totally excellent book - you should try Bester's The Demolished Man, I rate it equally as highly.

 

Oh, and there's a Graphic Novel of The Stars My Destination by Howard Chaykin. Fantastic adaptation.

 

I just finished Night Train to Rigel by Timothy Zahn. Sci-Fi meets Film Noir detective story. Quite enjoyable.

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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

 

 

I know one of the books was titled: The City of Gold and Lead and they are written by John Christopher. That should be enough to let you find them.

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

 

I know one of the books was titled: The City of Gold and Lead and they are written by John Christopher. That should be enough to let you find them.

 

The White Mountains

The City of Gold and Lead

The Pool of Fire

 

prequel:

The Day the Tripods Came

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

 

I just read "Paladins" by Joel rosenberg. Interesting, somewhat disturbing to me based on the background... Mordred the Great overthrew Arthur the Tyrant and founded the Pendragon Dynasty...:nonp:

 

 

It REALLY needed more proofreading and editing though. :(

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

 

Finished the first three Nightside novels, by Simon Greene. Enjoyed them, but they lacked the oomph of something great. I did buy the next one and the first three novels in his Fantasy Series, though.

 

I'm reading the first of the Dresden cycles now. Seems pretty boring, honestly.

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

 

Finished the first three Nightside novels, by Simon Greene. Enjoyed them, but they lacked the oomph of something great. I did buy the next one and the first three novels in his Fantasy Series, though.

 

I'm reading the first of the Dresden cycles now. Seems pretty boring, honestly.

 

 

I havn't read the dresden stuff, but I seriously enjoyed the Nightside books.

 

I won't claim they are great literature, but there were GREAT little bits in them. Some of the npcs and the side comments. :D

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

 

The Hammer and the Cross by Harry Harrison the first in a trilogy (the other books being One King’s Way and King and Emperor). The stories are alternate history and the question on the back of the book sums things up very nicely: “What might have happened if the gods of Asgard challenged the God of the Christians for the soul of mankind?”

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

 

Old Soldiers, David Weber's take on Keith Laumer's Bolo universe. An excellent piece, set in the end of the Human Concordiat (The Ragnarok War with the Melconian Empire). One obsolete Bolo stands against an entire Melconian assault brigade - including eight heavy assault tanks that are near-equivalents to a modern Bolo...

 

Not as good as The Road to Damascus, but still a good treatment.

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

 

“The Initiate Brother” and “The Gatherer of Clouds” by Sean Russell

 

Set in a fictional eastern setting closely resembling Imperial China they are in my opinion Sean Russell’s best works since they are well paced and feature characters who act like real people rather than stereotypes. They aren’t the greatest books ever written but are a solid read that have the additional benefit of taking place in a believable “Eastern” setting, which makes for a nice change of pace.

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