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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...

 

Read A Lick of Frost by Laurell K Hamilton over the weekend and had a pleasant surprise.

 

Hah! Me too.

 

I prefer her fairy stuff to her vampire stuff these days.

 

I don't think Meredith is an Uber female - just that she is the equivalent of sex symbol to any fairies who have been sterile for hundreds of years. She embodies their dreams and desires (even the taboo one of mortality, sickness and death being part human)

 

I hear the next book is mostly angst though - so I'm not that hopeful about it.

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

 

Hah! Me too.

 

I prefer her fairy stuff to her vampire stuff these days.

 

I don't think Meredith is an Uber female - just that she is the equivalent of sex symbol to any fairies who have been sterile for hundreds of years. She embodies their dreams and desires (even the taboo one of mortality, sickness and death being part human)

 

I hear the next book is mostly angst though - so I'm not that hopeful about it.

 

Regardless of the in world justification, the fact that it seems like every significant character wants to have sex with her female lead characters has become an annoying trait of Ms. Hammilton for me.

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

 

I just finished Alice in Wonderland, which combines Alice's Adventures in Wonderland with Through the Looking Glass Utterly bizarre word-play, among other things. On the other hand, it was fun to finally encounter so many well-known bits in the original settings.

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

 

Regardless of the in world justification' date=' the fact that it seems like every significant character wants to have sex with her female lead characters has become an annoying trait of Ms. Hammilton for me.[/quote']

 

Yes - she should write more about minor male characters that have nothing to do with the plot. We need to find out about the guy behind the counter that serves her food - he isn't even mentioned in the books. Let alone the people on the street! How dare she not record the complete ambivalence of the passers-by?

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

 

Yes - she should write more about minor male characters that have nothing to do with the plot. We need to find out about the guy behind the counter that serves her food - he isn't even mentioned in the books. Let alone the people on the street! How dare she not record the complete ambivalence of the passers-by?

 

You know very well that isn't my point. How about:

 

 

not having her uncle so in lust with Merry that he rapes her?

 

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

 

Claws That Catch, John Ringo and Travis S. Taylor, fourth book in the Into the Looking Glass series. Nice piece of military sci-fi, with absolutely NO "Oh, John Ringo, No!" moments. Continues with the mind-bending, EE Smith caliber physics of the previous books, and throws in a nice bit of info about how the real-world military works and functions. Plus some neat deconstructon of Japanese Anime tropes. Better yet, this series shows a definite trend to be going somewhere, rather than beng stuck in an eternal holding pattern.

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

 

Claws That Catch' date=' [/i']John Ringo and Travis S. Taylor, fourth book in the Into the Looking Glass series. Nice piece of military sci-fi, with absolutely NO "Oh, John Ringo, No!" moments. Continues with the mind-bending, EE Smith caliber physics of the previous books, and throws in a nice bit of info about how the real-world military works and functions. Plus some neat deconstructon of Japanese Anime tropes. Better yet, this series shows a definite trend to be going somewhere, rather than beng stuck in an eternal holding pattern.

 

What is an "Oh, John Ringo, No!" moment?

 

Aside: And with a name like John Ringo, I'd expect a sidekick by the name of "George Paul" to show up. :doi:

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

 

The last fantasy books I finished reading were two books by Mercedes Lackey:

FOUNDATION:The Collegium Chronicles and The Phoenix Endangered:Book Two of The Enduring Flame (The second one I've mentioned being a collaboration with Thomas Mallory).

I enjoyed both,despite the fact that The Phoenix Endangered has the desert tribes that the deluded Wildmage Bisochim has deceived have started a war with the rest of the world,destroying the Iteru-cities (the cities at the edge of the desert) and massacring their inhabitants as the first step in a campaign to restore what those murderous lunatics call the "True Balance".

(Foundation,on the other hand,is more in the traditional Lackey vein-set more than half a century after Vanyel,its the story of an abused child who becomes a Herald when the Herald's Collegium is being set up,in place of the student-mentor relationship that the heralds originally followed.There is also a mystery about his actual background,that is clearly going to be explored in the following books).

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

 

Toll the Hounds by Steven Erikson.

 

The latest in the Malazan sequence this has direct links to quite a few of the previous works so they are required reading before you get to this one. Gardens of the Moon and Deadhouse Gates being particularly relevant.

It is good but involved.

 

 

 

I'm on Reaper's Gale.

 

I also just read Odd Thomas.

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

 

I'm finally getting around to finishing Stephen King's Dark Tower series. I started reading it back when it was only a novelette feature in a sci-fi magazine, then read the first three books. The gap was so long before four that even though I actually bought the book I had lost interest in finishing it. I grabbed three & four on audio for a long road trip and my new longer commutes.

 

Re-reading three I find that I remember so little of it I may as well be reading it for the first time. Probably a good thing i picked it up, even if I'm not overly thrilled by it. King has always been a 50/50 writer for me; I either love it or I hate it. I remember loving the first Dark Tower and I absolutely love the character of Roland, the Gunslinger. The rest of the series has been very 'meh' for me. I'd still like to finish the series but overall it is just ok.

 

I enjoyed that series up till book 4 or 5, though my brother says that books 1-3 were altered since he read them way back when based on what happened later. I got them all on Audible, which may have helped. To me the books took a serious left downward turn once

King put himself into the books as not only a character, but as one of the pillars holding up the universe. Also the basic hopelessness of the ending really got to me, when they put Roland into a loop, but not one where, imho, he could actually have made a true difference in his life

. The series as it began had such great promise, it was a great dissapointment.

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

 

I've just finished "Honor Among Enemies" by David weber. It's been a while since I read an "Honor Harrington" novel, and this was fun. I was having a little troublw with her us eof the Colt 1911 however, and the other side's inability to know that she had it !

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

 

I recently finished the first two books in the Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks (I just got the third). Fantasy setting, with one of the more enjoyable stories that I've read since I picked up Game of Thrones. All three books are large without being overly wordy or needlessly decompressed, so the editor did good work. If you enjoy Game of Thrones, I would probably recommend this. The tone is lighter, things aren't quite so graphic, magic is more prevalent... but you still have the politics and long list of major characters. Good stuff.

 

I'm progressing quickly through the third book... more good stuff!

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

 

What is an "Oh, John Ringo, No!" moment?

 

Aside: And with a name like John Ringo, I'd expect a sidekick by the name of "George Paul" to show up. :doi:

 

Or Lorne Greene to do the Ballad. :P

 

I don't get the connection.:think:

 

And I have heard Lorne Green sing the lyrics to the Bonanza theme. I even have an MP3 of it.

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

 

Empress: The story of a unpleasantly self-centered girl who rises from rags to rulership with the sponsorship of a frighteningly bipolar god who can't seem to make up its mind whether it's old or new testament. I found it to be a excessively long prologue to the real story.

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

 

Just finished Stealing Light by Gary Gibson. A Space Opera novel with some serious characterizations, an at times predictable plot, dry humour, and a bit of a disapponting end, it's a solid three out of five Precursor Tech Troves.

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

 

Reread Cordelia’s Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold for I’m not sure what number of times. It has been at least 6 years since I last read it. I loaned a copy to my mother in a foolish attempt to expand our realms of common interest, since it is my two favorite romance novels. She lost it, and I only recently decided to buy a replacement copy.

 

It is an omnibus edition of two other novels Shards of Honor and Barrayar. They are part of her Miles Vorkosigan series. As I understand in the afterward in the omnibus edition, they were actually the first books of the series written in draft format. The original novel grew to long. At some point, Ms. Bujold realized that she needed to break the story. She chose a point and tightened up Shards for submission. She got it published and moved on to writing other novels and stories of the series for publication and it was several years later that she finally finished Barrayar[/y] and had it published.

 

In the internal chronology of the series they would technically be considered the second and third book of the series. They focus on the parents of Miles Vorkosigan the main character of most of the books of the series.

 

Shards of Honor focuses on what is basically the courtship of Lord Admiral Aral Vorkosigan of Barrayar and Captain Cordelia Naismith of Beta Colony, who are on opposite sides of a war. Barrayar covers approximately their first year or so of marriage leading to the birth of their son, Miles.

 

I do not particularly want to dwell too much on the plot, for fear of spoiling a truely delightful story. The books, for me at least, have nicely withstood the test of time. They were as much a pleasure to read this year as they were some 15 years ago when a friend loaned them to me. Though, I will admit that I am more sensitive to some of the flaws.

 

I do not think that Cordelia is quite a Mary Sue, but it is a very close thing. I suspect some readers would find her just a tad too… (not exactly perfect, but I don’t have the right word).

 

While I don’t think that Ms. Bujold had an agenda when writing these books, I do have the sense that she was writing about a specific set of topics, which she admits in the afterward. In this case it is a musing about motherhood.

 

This particular reread gave me an insight into one of my friend’s complaints about Ms. Bujold’s reliance on the convenient coincident. A number of significant plot points revolve and resolve themselves around the universe allowing just the right people be in just the right place at just the right time to let the plot unfold the way it needs to. I think this sin is largest in these the earliest of her works.

 

Let me restate, that I enjoyed rereading them, and I would gladly recommend them to most people for reading. (No book will appeal to everyone.) I’m just feeling more inclined to honest disclosure tonight than to unmitigated hype. I will finish with saying that Ms. Bujold is my favorite author and that these are my favorite novels by her.

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

 

Reread Cordelia’s Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold for I’m not sure what number of times. It has been at least 6 years since I last read it. I loaned a copy to my mother in a foolish attempt to expand our realms of common interest, since it is my two favorite romance novels. She lost it, and I only recently decided to buy a replacement copy.

 

It is an omnibus edition of two other novels Shards of Honor and Barrayar. They are part of her Miles Vorkosigan series. As I understand in the afterward in the omnibus edition, they were actually the first books of the series written in draft format. The original novel grew to long. At some point, Ms. Bujold realized that she needed to break the story. She chose a point and tightened up Shards for submission. She got it published and moved on to writing other novels and stories of the series for publication and it was several years later that she finally finished Barrayar[/y] and had it published.

 

In the internal chronology of the series they would technically be considered the second and third book of the series. They focus on the parents of Miles Vorkosigan the main character of most of the books of the series.

 

Shards of Honor focuses on what is basically the courtship of Lord Admiral Aral Vorkosigan of Barrayar and Captain Cordelia Naismith of Beta Colony, who are on opposite sides of a war. Barrayar covers approximately their first year or so of marriage leading to the birth of their son, Miles.

 

I do not particularly want to dwell too much on the plot, for fear of spoiling a truely delightful story. The books, for me at least, have nicely withstood the test of time. They were as much a pleasure to read this year as they were some 15 years ago when a friend loaned them to me. Though, I will admit that I am more sensitive to some of the flaws.

 

I do not think that Cordelia is quite a Mary Sue, but it is a very close thing. I suspect some readers would find her just a tad too… (not exactly perfect, but I don’t have the right word).

 

While I don’t think that Ms. Bujold had an agenda when writing these books, I do have the sense that she was writing about a specific set of topics, which she admits in the afterward. In this case it is a musing about motherhood.

 

This particular reread gave me an insight into one of my friend’s complaints about Ms. Bujold’s reliance on the convenient coincident. A number of significant plot points revolve and resolve themselves around the universe allowing just the right people be in just the right place at just the right time to let the plot unfold the way it needs to. I think this sin is largest in these the earliest of her works.

 

Let me restate, that I enjoyed rereading them, and I would gladly recommend them to most people for reading. (No book will appeal to everyone.) I’m just feeling more inclined to honest disclosure tonight than to unmitigated hype. I will finish with saying that Ms. Bujold is my favorite author and that these are my favorite novels by her.

 

 

 

I remember being struck by the way she contrasted the ruthlessness of Cordelia's scientific detachment with the attitudes of Aral, the "Warmonger." Also on the cultural differences.

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

 

I just finished Going Postal by Terry Pratchett.

 

What can I say? I thoroughly enjoyed it. I listened to it on audio and the narrator was fantastic. 'Moist von Lipwig' is a great character and an even greater character name. :thumbup:

 

Now moving on to Making Money.

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