Spence Posted June 15, 2009 Report Share Posted June 15, 2009 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... I may have to try again. The first time I tried to read one of his books I couldn't get through the second chapter. It has been a while though, and my tastes do change over time.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Southern Cross Posted June 15, 2009 Report Share Posted June 15, 2009 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... The last Fantasy/scifi book I finished reading was An Evil Guest by Gene Wolfe.While it was as well-written as the rest of his works I thought that the behaviour of the heroine was a bit off. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
csyphrett Posted June 16, 2009 Report Share Posted June 16, 2009 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Read the Spy Who Haunted Me by Simon Greene. Edwin Drood, Walker from the Nightside, and others are invited to take part in a scavenger hunt to gain untold treasures and secrets. CES Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teh bunneh Posted June 17, 2009 Report Share Posted June 17, 2009 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... I just finished The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror, 21st Edition (2008), edited by Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link, and Gavin Grant. I've been getting them every year, since the very first one. It's a nice thick book with some 40+ short stories and novelettes, plus four essays that go into the past year's developments in fantasy/horror movies, literature, comics, and other media. As usual, the book has a lot of good stories and a few middlin' ones. There are also a few great ones -- "Sir Hereward & Mister Fitz Go To War", "The Exchecquer and Lord Iron", "Toother", and "Trickster Tales as Told By Dogs" are a few that stand out in my mind. It's about an even mix between horror and fantasy stories, although there's a lot of overlap between the two genres. There's a lot more stories that take place in the modern world than in a fantasy world, so if your idea of fantasy is swords & sorcery this is probably not the book for you. One thing I've noticed lately -- and I don't know if this is a recent trend or if I'm just now noticing it -- is how many horror stories are of the mid-life crisis variety. The whole "I'm 40 I've passed my peak how sucky my life is" genre has never been my favorite, and seeing it redone in a horror format doesn't really help me like it any better (despite my love of horror). Those stories don't overwhelm the book (thank god) but they are certainly well represented. Overall it's a good read, with a number of real standouts. I miss Terri Windling's editing -- she had a real eye for fantasy stories -- but the new guys (Link & Grant) do all right with their selections. One thing I've always liked is how far afield the editors range to make their picks -- there are stories that were originally published in big circulation mags like Asimov's, but there's also a lot of stories that were found in small-print fanzines and websites as well. There's a number of authors in there that I'm going to look up their other books and stories. If you're a horror/fantasy fan, for $15 on Amazon it's well worth picking up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Susano Posted June 17, 2009 Report Share Posted June 17, 2009 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... The Player of Games -- in which I discover that the Culture can be real bastards at times. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curufea Posted June 18, 2009 Report Share Posted June 18, 2009 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... The Player of Games -- in which I discover that the Culture can be real bastards at times. But sometimes they're also right. Wait until you read the ending of Look to Windward. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mwiggins Posted June 18, 2009 Report Share Posted June 18, 2009 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Freedoms Landing Freedoms choice Freedoms Challange Freedoms Ransom All by Anne McCaffrey LINK Not bad, but not great. A good way of killing some time till something better comes out. Earth has been conqured by a alien race called the Catainie and the humans are now slaves. The troublemakers are dumped with a few basic supplies on a uninhabited planet as a penial colony. If they survive the Catainie will come back and take the planet from them. The planet, now named Botony, turns out to be a mecinized farm for a super advanced alien race. The Humans like the place and make plans to get free of the catainie. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Susano Posted June 19, 2009 Report Share Posted June 19, 2009 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... The Player of Games -- in which I discover that the Culture can be real bastards at times. Use of Weapons -- Another novel of the Culture. Akin in some ways to All My Sins Remembered (Joe Haldeman), it tells the story of a Special Circumstances operative who's really good at war. Although a somewhat dark novel (and yet another case of the Culture far more unpleasant then you expect) it does feature one of those great ship names: What Are The Civilian Applications?. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
input.jack Posted June 19, 2009 Report Share Posted June 19, 2009 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Just finished Honor Harrington: On Basilisk Station. A good adaptation of the CS Forester Horatio Hornblower concept to a science fiction setting. I dont like the "impeller drives", but I understand their necessity to give the ship combats the proper amount of tactical oomph. Overall, a quite good book. I look forward to reading more. Dont let the first chapter stop you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AmadanNaBriona Posted June 19, 2009 Report Share Posted June 19, 2009 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Cry Wolf: Alpha and Omega -Patricia Briggs Her Urban Fantasy is pretty good stuff. I'm beginning to slightly burn out on the genre, however. At least her monsters are properly monstrous and her characters aren't total Mary Sues My favorite bit? Finding out that "Da" in a bad spell was one of the main inspirations for Grendel I think when I get paid I'm going to hunt up some of the Bolo books I haven't read yet... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
input.jack Posted June 19, 2009 Report Share Posted June 19, 2009 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... For good urban fantasy, Id recommend the Harry Dresden books by Jim Butcher. His take on various monsters is always interesting, Harry is a hoot, and his plots are excellent. Hes also a fellow gamer, like us Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
csyphrett Posted June 24, 2009 Report Share Posted June 24, 2009 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Gun Blaze West 3 from Nobuhiro Watsuki, a manga collection where adventurers decided to travel ot a mythical place to be the best they can be. The serial ends as the heroes get over the first hurdle and move to the first set of trials to get to their destination. Watsuki apologized for it not being the best that it could be but I liked it even though it was cancelled at basically the part of the adventure where the hero starts deciding what he has to do to go forward. CES Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted July 2, 2009 Report Share Posted July 2, 2009 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls by Lois Mcmaster Bujold -- very good fantasy. Recommended for those who want believable, sympathetic characters, and can do without much of that action thing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Susano Posted July 2, 2009 Report Share Posted July 2, 2009 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Shardik -- I'll admit, I loved Watership Down when I first read it and now own a copy of that and Tales from Watership Down. So, I picked up two more Richard Adams's novels. I found The Plague Dogs in a used book store and struggled my way through that. I also found Shardik and tried to read that, but gave up after ~100 pages. The prose was dense and slow going and overall it didn't hold my attention. I also read Greg Bear's Eon. While interesting it suffers from being somewhat dated (it's 2005 and the USSR still exists and so on). Also people carry Apples, which are Anti-Personnel Lasers and the computer tech is a bit off. He's also terrible (IMO) of describing a scene. I still am not sure of what the inside of the Stone looks like. While I finished it, it's not a keeper for me. If I want to read about humans exploring an alien rock, I'll read Rendezvous with Rama, which did it better 30 years before (although that's suffers from being rather dated as well...). I'm now reading Look to Windward, another Culture novel. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FenrisUlf Posted July 2, 2009 Report Share Posted July 2, 2009 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Just read Michael Reaves' Star Wars novel Death Star, which is about the construction and use of the dread battle station from the POV of various people on board. I was hoping for a story that could go into the psychology of what it's like to do the kinds of things the people aboard the DS did while staying away from the "generic evil Imperials". Didn't quite make it. If nothing else, it fell apart in the last few chapters when it showed the responses of the various characters, most of which boiled down to "Gosh, I never knew that we'd have to kill people in a war! It's all yucky and evil and stuff! All life is sacred!... Now let's find a way to slip some info to the Rebellion so they can blow the station up and kill the million or so people on board so we can live with ourselves again." It's a Star Wars novel. I didn't expect Shakespeare, but something a little differet wouldn't have been bad. The best they do is with the Death Star's chief gunner. His reactions are well done (he and everyone else aboard was told that the DS would only be used against enemy fleets and bases on abandoned planets or moons; the destruction of Alderaan shocked everyone); he is horrified at what he's done. He can't live with himself afterwards, and he wants this nightmare to end somehow... and yet he knows at the same time that all he can do is to refuse to fire the gun, at which point he'll be executed and replaced with someone who'll do as told. At the climax he keeps stalling rather than shoot at Yavin, hoping that something will stop him. Sadly for him, it does. For that matter, everyone's reaction to the devastation of whole planets - "Nothing like this has ever happened before!" - made me go "Huh?" It's been shown repeatedly in the novels and graphic novels covering the Clone Wars that entire planets were devastated and their populations slaughtered. Did everyone just conveniently forget this? I'd give it three earth-shattering kabooms out of five. An okay read, but it could've been better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BcAugust Posted July 5, 2009 Report Share Posted July 5, 2009 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... The End of the Story, a collection of Clark Ashton Smith stories that was put out by Night Shade books. I've been trying to get into the older pulp stories(Also picked up "And their memory was a bitter tree", a collection of Conan stories, which I'm reading slowly, I don't think I like them as much as the Solomon Kane stories) and Lovecraft's inspirations are usually interesting in their own rights. It's an interesting read, but it feels...not quite dated, but as a relic in some stories(There is an astonishing number of planetary romances, the view of Venus as a tropical jungle feels quaint, rather then horrifying.) However, when he hits, he hits well(A night in Malneant, the Metamorphosis of the World, The Devotee of Evil, The Uncharted Isle) It also has some relics of the age(One of the stories has as it's main conceit an astonishingly racist view of Africa) Strangely enough, given that he's usually mentioned with Lovecraft and the two were apparently great friends, I find his writing closer to Machen and Burroughs in this book. It's very English for someone who lived in California. However, given the collection is done chronologically, and I like how his writing was changing(And the fact I'm a huge fan of Night Shade Press's work), I went ahead and ordered the second book. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
st barbara Posted July 6, 2009 Report Share Posted July 6, 2009 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... I've just read "Domino Lady : Sex As A Weapon". New stories featuring a pulp era heroine who robbed criminals and left her calling card "Compliments Of The Domino Lady" at the scene of her crimes. A little too much emphasis on her looks but lots of fun; including "guest appearences" by The Black Bat, Airboy and The Phantom" ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SuperPheemy Posted July 7, 2009 Report Share Posted July 7, 2009 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Finished The Battle of Corrin which is the last of the "prequel" DUNE books telling the story of the Butlerian Jihad. I give it a B-. It's better than the post-Chapterhouse DUNE books, and as a whole I liked it a lot more than God Emperor of Dune. It does suffer from a self-imposed desire to bring the DUNE civilization to the forms recognized in Frank's original book. Slightly better than I was expecting. I also read Angels and Demons and through the first two thirds of the book I was becoming pleasantly surprised. For a brief moment I felt that Dan Brown might have the storytelling range greater than that of a leaky Daisy Air Rifle. But then the contrived "big twist" hit and "OOOoooOOOOOoooohhhhh, the Catholics remain EEEeeeeeEEEEEeEeViiIIIIiillll!" so, yawn. Double yawn. I appreciated the Art History lesson (and as an artist, I always appreciate seeing reference to work that I normally only encounter in Art History classes). Other than the tour around famous Renaissance Sculpture, the book was an overhyped, overblown let-down. Better than Da Vinci Code, but not much. C- Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Susano Posted July 7, 2009 Report Share Posted July 7, 2009 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Blood Music by Greg Bear. It was a lot more readable than Eon, although some of the explanations for why things were happening seemed more than a little off the wall. (Let me see if I get this right -- the universe responds to theories, adjusting itself to ones it likes and ignoring ones it doesn't?) Also, if you have enough thinking minds in a small enough area, you can create a thought singularity. Still, the idea of sentient, sapient, super-colonies of intelligent cells as well as memories being passed down in genetic material was interesting, as was the visuals of North America being consumed by the cellular equivalent of "gray goo." Unlike Eon I think I'll keep this. A friend tells me that this was his first novel (and a good one it is), but his later books go bizarre and contain absurd theories which apparently Bear says is how things really work.... I don't think I read anything more of his. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Enforcer84 Posted July 7, 2009 Report Share Posted July 7, 2009 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Almost finished with "Devil's Cape." Loving it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sepia Posted July 7, 2009 Report Share Posted July 7, 2009 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Dhampir series by Barb & JC Hendee-A very light read, but keeps you interested. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
input.jack Posted July 7, 2009 Report Share Posted July 7, 2009 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... So here I am at the age of (mumble mumble), having been an avid RPG player since I first discovered the hobby in 1976.....and I just red my first Conan story, by Robert E. Howard. Wow! I did myself a SERIOUS disservice by not picking this up sooner! I totally GET how so many gamers pattern things on Howard (although Conan in the books is much, much more complex a character than most gamer "homages"). I bought the entire Howard collection. Im glad I did Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Susano Posted July 7, 2009 Report Share Posted July 7, 2009 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... So here I am at the age of (mumble mumble), having been an avid RPG player since I first discovered the hobby in 1976.....and I just red my first Conan story, by Robert E. Howard. Wow! I did myself a SERIOUS disservice by not picking this up sooner! I totally GET how so many gamers pattern things on Howard (although Conan in the books is much, much more complex a character than most gamer "homages"). I bought the entire Howard collection. Im glad I did Is this the Del Rey collection? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logan D. Hurricanes Posted July 7, 2009 Report Share Posted July 7, 2009 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Blood Music by Greg Bear... Interesting, I didn't know Blood Music was a full novel now. I remember reading the original short story lo those many years ago in a "Best of" compendium. I should see if I can find the original again and compare to the novel. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teh bunneh Posted July 7, 2009 Report Share Posted July 7, 2009 Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Interesting' date=' I didn't know [i']Blood Music [/i]was a full novel now. I remember reading the original short story lo those many years ago in a "Best of" compendium. I should see if I can find the original again and compare to the novel. It was better as a novella, IMHO. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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