Books

[Grefter]

I would cut my teeth on standalone Sanderson before hitting the series.  Not because either is bad, but Elantris is short and a very good flavour setter for his work.  Also starting earlier in an author and watch them develop is fun etcetc (yes I know Elantris is technically a series now, but it was more standalone at the time).

Also Lady Door got me kind of hooked on Charles Stross for some really down to earth near future sci fi.  He paints a banal corporate future rather than a flat out dystopia (though I think it is somewhat chanelling Thatcher-era UK at times).   Bonus points for police procedurals written in second person, also lesbian main characters.

[Ranmilia]

Charles Stross

Yes.

[superaielman]

Mistborn is excellent. Elantris is also a good standalone Sanderson work.

Hobb is good but gets really weird really quickly. I liked the first trilogy but felt no urge to read any more of the series myself.

[NotMiki]

I would definitely start here. Super basically got most of the DL to read this, and I believe that it was universally very well liked here.

[metroid composite]

Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined

So.................there's a new twilight book.  Kind-of.  It's mostly a gender-swapped version of the first Twilight book (with a bunch of new scenes, and several scenes rewritten).

It's good, well-written and all, but it does confirm a few things for me.  In particular, I had gotten the feeling before that basically all of Stephenie Meyer's characters acted female.  (With a couple of minor exceptions).  This book really drills that home.  Edward Cullen (now Edythe Cullen) -- feels slightly more natural as a girl.

Bella Swan (now Beau Swan) LOLno, this character kind of just oozes girl.

Like...here's a scene that wasn't in the original book--this was imported specifically for the male Beau Swan--the context of this scene is that he's trying to get out of going to the Prom with Taylor, a girl who already bought a dress in anticipation:

At my  usual table, my friends were all just getting to their feet.  I walked towards them.
Patches of red flared in my cheeks, but that was probably okay. I was supposed to look emotional.  Anyway, the pretty guy in the melodramatic soap my mom used to watch religiously looked fired up when he did this scene.  Thanks to him, at least i had a general outline for my script, embellished by something I'd once thought about Edythe; I wanted to keep this flattering.
Jeremy noticed me first, and his eyes were speculative.  They flashed from my red face to where Edythe was and back to me.
"Taylor, can I have a minute?" I said as I walked up to her.  I didn't say it quietly.
She was right in the very middle of the cluster.  Logan turned to glower at me with his fishy green eyes.
"Sure, Beau," Taylor said looking confused.
"Look," I said, "I can't do this anymore."
Everyone fell silent.  Jeremy's eyes got all round.  Allen looked embarrassed.  McKayla shot me a critical glance, like she couldn't believe I was doing it this way.  But she didn't know exactly what I was doing, or why I needed this audience.
Taylor was shocked.  "What?"
I scowled.  It was easy--I was pretty angry right now that I hadn't talked myself out of this, or come up with a better way.  But it was too late for improv now.
"I'm tired of being a pawn in your game, Taylor.  Do you even realize that I have feelings of my own?  And all I can do is watch while you use me to make someone else jealous."  My eyes darted quickly to Logan, whose mouth was hanging open, and back to Taylor.  "You don't care if you break my heart in the process.  Is it being beautiful that's made you so cruel?"
Taylor's eyes were wide, her mouth opened in a little o.
"I'm not going to play anymore.  This whole prom charade?  I'm out.  Go with the person you really want to be with."  A longer glare this time at Logan.
And then I stalked away, slamming through the cafeteria doors in what I hoped was a dramatic way.
I was never going to live this down.
But at least I was free.  Probably worth it.
Suddenly Edythe was right next to me, keeping pace like we'd been walking together all along.
"That was truly spectacular," she said.
I took a deep breath.  "Maybe a little over the top.  Did it work?"
"Like a charm.  Taylor's feeling quite the femme fatale, and she's not even sure why.  If Logan doesn't ask her to the prom by Monday, I'll be surprised."
"Good," I grunted.

-pp 179-180 Life and Death, Twilight Reimagined

Like...it's a hilarious scene, don't get me wrong.  I'm glad Stephenie Meyer threw it in that chapter (the original chapter was kind-of dull).

But like...this scene, that wasn't in the original chapter, STILL feels gender swapped.  Could a guy get inspiration from his mother's soaps?  Sure, I guess.  Would a guy remember the lines from his mother's soaps?  Actually, Beau/Bella is a bit of an English nerd, so sure, remembering words is easy for this character.  But...the mannerisms.  Saying "it's clear who you want to be with" and then glaring at Logan without saying his name......  This feels like culturally, at least in the pacific northwest, like a very female way of communicating.  Relying on body language to complete your sentence for you rather than speaking it out loud.

[SnowFire]

Also Lady Door got me kind of hooked on Charles Stross for some really down to earth near future sci fi.  He paints a banal corporate future rather than a flat out dystopia (though I think it is somewhat chanelling Thatcher-era UK at times).   Bonus points for police procedurals written in second person, also lesbian main characters.

Hey now, I recommended Stross as well...  if not that series.

...anyway, finished up Halting State a bit ago (haven't read Rule 34 yet).  You forgot the swordgirl, Grefter, I suspect that will sell the book more around these parts.  Anyway, pretty good: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1425379417 has a review.  For around here...  for the most part it's a pretty accurate future as predicted from 2006/7, but I'm skeptical of the way some of it worked as far as vidja games.  Stross basically hypothesizes that Future MMOs are:
A) Distributed systems via cell phones & Bitcoin-esque group validation to stop cheating.  Well...  maybe.  Cell phones ARE being used in lots of gaming, but not so much linked, and for a lot simpler games.  Still, sure, this is something that *could* happen.
B) And most of the future MMOs are apparently built on the same framework, just with different "zones" and sets of rules.  At a wimpy level, this is merely something like Steam where you can always see what games friends are playing and there's a common framework amongst them; at a more extreme level, this is hop-in-VR-hole in one game, pop up in other game.   This is *obviously* done because it's very dramatic and interesting for people from Game B to walk into Game A and have people in Game A yell cheats WTF.  Seems unlikely to happen, but in conjunction with A...?  Sure, I can buy it as a reasonable follow-on.  However.  While I can maybe see such a global framework coming into existence at some point, I can't ever imagine many games voluntarily letting in immigrants.  There's a plot point where some games seem to have some kind of happy open framework where they try & attract people over by basically agreeing to honor the items they got before.  That's something that's already dicey in D&D campaigns, and now we're talking about between *systems*?  We'll honor your WoW gear if you come play in WildStar or whatever?  Uh...  no.  Even if it's technically feasible, there's no way it'd be voluntarily allowed.  Regulars in a game who earned their stuff the hard way would revolt to see newbies walk in way better than them because they're from a higher level game.  The grind to build up a character is usually more fun than a max'd character anyway.  And for the power-players whom this would appeal to, games would crop up that just handed out max-level candy left & right in exchange for a nominal fee, and then those players would proceed to other games to wreck them.  Yeah, not seeing this as ever likely.

My little mini-rant!  But the book is great, don't let the above complaint throw you off, I just figured the DL would be the right audience for the above nitpicking.

[Grefter]

Well yes but I didn't want to tell people the reason I got into it was because you chose wrong and I bought Rule 34 because you decided to pick something else up (Rule 34 I think is better than Halting State, but that says nothing, I think Halting State is rad as hell).

On some of those concepts... A) is yeah pretty much something you could expect if the processing power could be distributed out and then can also support the bitcoin economy etcetc.  It is feasible I guess, but is still far enough out of reach to be in the realms of speculative and clearly shows he is pretty up on current popular tech ideas.


B) I have honestly been stunned this kind of doesn't happen already.  I have actually shaken it out of my head before but not sure who with.  I am honestly stunned that with all the free to play mobile games that are clones of each other to act as store fronts for microtransactions, I am honestly stunned there isn't a series of stuff all from one publisher that is a series of games that have 1:1 the same mechanics underneath the hood and shared servers just with different flavour skins over the top.  Why run Age of War and Age of Space, Age of Fairies and Age of No John You Are the Demons where they all functionally work the same with 1 million subscribers each when you could secretly run 1 game with 4 million subscribers that all chase different demographics?  Blur that into VR stuff with distributed networks and heyyyy I could totally see skin cheats showing up in other people's games if they have player built stuff.

[superaielman]

Wheel of Time Companion: Basically a sequel to the big white book. I'd more recommend it as something to pick up secondhand or borrow from a library.  The book does solve some minor mysteries (Jared Byar was compelled by Grendael and Nicola was the one who betrayed Egwene to the tower Aes Sedai) but by and large it's rehash and background information. 

[Shale]

Shadows of Self: Fun read! I feel like it was a step down from Alloy of Law -- much more of a direct through-line, with less world-building and character work -- but that might be the fact that it's clearly the middle part of a trilogy, while AoL could have stood alone if necessary. Still, middling Sanderson is still a good time, especially when it's action-focused.

Spoilery stuff: I'm really glad to see that Sazed is still an actual character in the books going forward, and that Sanderson's going to (hopefully) explore the motives and agency of an active, long-term Shard-holder.
Called the mayor being Bleeder early on. Did NOT call her being Lessie for reals. Not sure how I feel about that.
Hoid's cameo is super lazy, which may have contributed to my overall opinion of the book; it's inconsequential but still kind of jarring, tonally.

[superaielman]

I've read most every Sanderson book and I still have yet to see or care about Hoid.
Shadows of Self:  Basically see Shale. I didn't call the big plot tw\ists but I also wasn't trying too hard to figure it out ahead of time. Decent fun but not amazing.

For the Wheel of Time fans: One of the super hardcore fans got access to Jordan's notes (They were donated to a library) and found two pretty interesting tidbits that did not make it into the companion.  I won't spoil it but I was pretty amused when I read them.

http://www.theoryland.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=8767

[superaielman]

Mirror Dance and Memories- Finished. Mirror Dance was a slow starter (What the hell, Thorne) but it was as good as expected. Same as Memories. Simon Illyan gets a Michael Carpenter style retirement and the book in general was great fun. 

I also read Komarr, a civil campaign, winterfaire gift, and diplomatic immunity. Been busy reading! Mirror Dance was a bit of slow starter but the books are pretty great  Ivan remains my favorite character in the series who isn't miles or his immediate family.

[Luther Lansfeld]

I've been working on Robin Hobb's Liveship series and read both Ship of Magic and Mad Ship. Overall I'm a little happier with the series than with Farseer thus far, but neither book is quite as good as the second book in that series. I'm a little worried about the direction of the end of the second book, but we'll see. I'm now taking a break from that series to read The Hunger Games.

[superaielman]

And finished off all the current Bujold books. I'm not surprised her pace slowed down massively after Miles's wedding, but it's still sad to see she's only done a few books in the past 15 years. It was a great read with strong characters and world building. Definitely recommend the series.

[metroid composite]

A Dance with Dragons

I had actually never picked this up, feeling pretty worn-out after the previous book.  Luckily a lot of my complaints of the other books weren't too relevant so far--the first few chapters were Danerys, Tyrion, Jon (and a prologue, but a prologue where someone jumps bodies between humans, so it was still moderately interesting).

That said, my reaction after reading the first few chapters was "this book sucks, I'm going to try the other book I bought which I knew nothing about on buying."  Aaaaand I kinda ended up reading that entire series and forgetting about A Dance with Dragons.

Lunar Chronicles Series

So...this entire series is a sci-fi re-imagining of fairy tales, often heavily re-done to the point that you really don't know what's going to happen.

Actually I'm going to break this down by character rather than by book or fairy tale inspiration.

Cinder: She's a cyborg, she's a mechanic, she's badass, and overall honestly probably the most compelling character in the series, or in the running.  Which is good when you're the main character.

Scarlet: If I have a criticism of Scarlet, it's that she sometimes feels like her personality doesn't differ enough from Cinder's.  I mean, yeah, she's a pilot and not a mechanic, and a farmer who uses a shotgun, and she doesn't have Cinder's various superpowers.  But they both mostly fill the niche of badass competent protagonist.  This would also explain why they're not often in the same place at the same time.

Cress: Best programmer in the solar system, and constantly upbeat and ridiculously idealistic.  I feel like I -should- looooove Cress, but...I honestly think she's the weakest of the four main characters.  I think part of the problem is that she's taken out of her element a lot, which admittedly isn't hard (get her away from a computer terminal and she's pretty useless.  Get her computer access and she's god).  I also felt like her romance subplot kind-of grated at times.  (I mean, it's not a computer terminal, so she's really bad at it, but then that means it takes a long time for that arc to resolve...).

Winter: OK, Winter can maybe compete with Cinder for best character.  I don't even want to give anything away about the character, but she actually is really visceral, and I like her implementation.

Kai: Eh...I'm pretty lukewarm on Kai.  Like...in theory everything about him is fairly likeable (the fariy tale character he represents is Prince Charming after all).  But he's part of a number of some of the slower more political chapters (pulled out whenever we need a perspective into global politics).  And he also gets damseled a lot.  Really, there's nothing wrong with his character, highly competent, empathetic, etc, but he gets used as storyline glue a lot.

Dr. Erland: a.k.a. Doctor "Ends justify the means".  Honestly, I think he's an excellent morally grey character.  I really ended the series thinking he's a total asshole.  But would the world have been better without him?  Probably not, to be honest.

Captain Thorne: He is a walking clichee, but he's a likeable walking clichee, and he does actually have genuine character development.  Can't really complain.

Wolf: In a series where the male characters are sometimes sidelined, he's probably the best male character.  His character arc has a lot of highs and lows, and some fairly unexpected twists (to me).

Jacin: Hmm...honestly he exists to be the straight man.  Hugely eclipsed by the characters around him, he's kind-of just a normal dude.

Levana: I actually haven't read the side book about her yet (Fairest) so I'll reserve judgment.  Excluding that, she's like...comic-book levels of evil.

Aimery Park: Although Park shows us that being a comic-book evil henchman can be done with some spice.  He's genuinely twisted and deranged, instead of just being efficient like Sybil Myra.

[metroid composite]

(Continued from last post).  I've now read Fairest, time to give my opinion on Levana

Iko: Not sure how I forgot her.  Iko is great, although comic releif.

Levana: So.....now that I understand her character better...basically she is a less ruthless Stalin.  She really wants to run her country efficiently, and she finds out she's actually really good at it, and willing to put her country before her emotional attachments.

Channary: Channary needs to be a villain to Levana, needs to make you root for Levana, which sounds like a tall order given that Levana is basically Stalin, but Channary actually succeeds quite well in her role.  Part of this is achieved through jealousy.  Part of this is achieved through direct cruelty towards Levana.  But what really makes Channary work as a villain is her irresponsibility.  She'd much rather be partying than running a country.  Which, as a foil to space stalin works quite well.

[AndrewRogue]

The Innocent Mage by Karen Miller

So this was a book. It was largely 600 pages of characters faffing about. The antagonist was not introduced until about 4/5's of the way through the book, the overarching plot is presented early but is never really relevant during the story, it protracts some trainwrecks with stupid decision making (does this drive anyone nuts when something is obviously going to go horribly wrong and it takes forever for it to happen?), the "bad" folks are all irredeemably nasty, and, even when it tries to soften some of them (I'm looking at you, Fane), it completely ignores the fact that they tried to do things like commit straight up murder, and it ends effectively mid-scene to go into the follow-up book. Like, literally, some characters go off a cliff, some don't, book end.

Basically, it's kind of infuriating.

I will say that the dialogue and character stuff, on average, is quite fun. It's just that 600 pages of plotless, developmentless, faffing is a lot of goddamn faffing.

Unsure if I'll give book 2 a look.

[superaielman]

Gentlemen Jole and the Red Queen: Eh. It has it's moments, but by and large it wasn't an impressive outing. Bujold called this a novel for adults, but that's a pretty lazy copout to avoid looking at the fundamentla issues with the book. The subplots are an absolute mess and the main plot's predicable. There's character work in the book I like, but I can't really recommend it unless you're a serious Vorkosigan fan.

[Luther Lansfeld]

The Hunger Games trilogy - First one is quite good, second one is very enjoyable, and the third is a weird drama-filled mess of decent ideas with poor execution.

Pride and Prejudice - too much dithering and nothing happens

[Captain K]

Pride and Prejudice - too much dithering and nothing happens

That may be why Jane Austen decided to add the zombies.

[Dhyerwolf]

Ken Scholes- Requiem. Book 4 out of a 5 book series. The plotlines keep getting more insane, but in the best ways possible. I would highly recommend the series. The world, the plotlines and the characters all feel relatively fresh. All 6 main characters are incredibly distinct and generally awesome as fuck. Really excited to see how the series wraps up. Book 5 isn't done yet, but Scholes is really upfront about where he is in the process.

I also love how the main plot line is basically FF 4 the book and 2-3 character plot lines take place on the moon.

[Dhyerwolf]

The Innocent Mage by Karen Miller

So this was a book. It was largely 600 pages of characters faffing about. The antagonist was not introduced until about 4/5's of the way through the book, the overarching plot is presented early but is never really relevant during the story, it protracts some trainwrecks with stupid decision making (does this drive anyone nuts when something is obviously going to go horribly wrong and it takes forever for it to happen?), the "bad" folks are all irredeemably nasty, and, even when it tries to soften some of them (I'm looking at you, Fane), it completely ignores the fact that they tried to do things like commit straight up murder, and it ends effectively mid-scene to go into the follow-up book. Like, literally, some characters go off a cliff, some don't, book end.

Basically, it's kind of infuriating.

I will say that the dialogue and character stuff, on average, is quite fun. It's just that 600 pages of plotless, developmentless, faffing is a lot of goddamn faffing.

Unsure if I'll give book 2 a look.

I would say that 2 is more plotty, but less fun. There's probably another a lot of other better stuff to read. It's funny that out of all the fantasy authors out there, Karen Miller has had at least 3 DLers have her stuff now (Since she's not particularly prominent). I liked her other series more (and I think Ciato did too?).

[superaielman]

Mistborn: The Bands of Mourning: It's more of the same. There's some good character work and world building here, but it's nothing to go out of the way to read if you didn't love the first two Wax and Wayne books. (Note to Shale: I can loan you the third book). It's fun but I don't love it; I enjoy the Mistborn universe but I don't care at all about the Cosmere; see below. The books read like a way for Sanderson to have fun and blow off steam. The character work is excellent as always. Steris in particular stands out, she is hilarious and makes the perfect match for Wax.

Mistborn: Secret History- A behind the scenes look at the first three Mistborn books from a spoilery PoV.  It very specifically spoils everything written in Mistborn to this point, so don't read it until then if you care. See spoiler tags. Kelsier 'cheated' death through the power of the Well and helps the good guys and Preservation win the day. It's been heavily hinted at in the main books, but this confirms the extent of it. He also hid the Bands of Mourning (Rashek's Metalminds) and impersonated the Lord Ruler to the people living on the other side of the planet. It's fun  to get inside of Kelsier's head again at least! There's also a bunch of Cosmere stuff in there but I don't care at all.

The best scene in the book was Kelsier meeting Rashek after Vin killed him. It was pretty hilarious to see Rashek see what was going on, literally going NOPE and moving on to the afterlife. Kelsier meeting Vin again was great too.

[Luther Lansfeld]

I've actually only read the first book in Karen Miller's second series, but I plan to fix that pretty soon! I finished Pride and Prejudice, which ended up being fairly entertaining if a bit slow and a bit derailed toward the end. Now I am going to try out the Night Angel series by Brent Weeks (since one of my friends recommended it highly) and then probably read the second book in the Empress series.

[Dhyerwolf]

Night Angel is a fun romp. I think all the DLers who I know read it liked it.

[superaielman]

Been reading parts of the series again at a slower clip to chew on things. It's a wonderful series, but the degree to which it trails off after a civil campaign (Okay and Winterfaire Gifts is great) is painful. She gets increasingly bad about working sideplots into the main book. Cyroburn could've been reduced to the final page+500 word epilogue and have lost nothing of value; diplomatic immunity had too much rehash and The Red Queen was a mess in spite of having Cordelia as the POV character. I also think one  of the big premises of The Red Queen (Aral and Cordelia had a secret husband) is pretty terrible. Aral bedded his underling who was young enough to be his son and we are supposed to find that to be acceptable? Ugh. (This has nothing to do with the whole bisexual part and everything to do with it being a fucked up thing for a commanding officer to do)

Captain Vorpatril's Alliance was great fun at least, but it benefited tremendously from a strong cast (Ivan, Simon, Gregor, Duv).  Per the author she's in semiretirement so it's not surprising that the books have trailed off in terms of pace, but the quality of them has been a letdown.