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extrapenguinSharing Knife quartet, Lois McMaster Bujold
I finished Bujold’s The Sharing Knife quartet [on the 8th of June], and. Well. They’re well-crafted, I’ll give you that, but Not What I Want in a book. Browsing the Tumblr tag, I saw someone say TSK was a very feminine book series, in that relationships and falling in love drive the plot. I did like Fawn’s ingenuety, but the whole extremely feminine and young and short schtick wasn’t my cup of tea. Especially not the extreme femininity, I’ve had enough of that shoved down my throat to last a lifetime.
Of course, then there were the more pressing questions, like WHY IS DAG BENIN RIDING A HORSE IN 1800S AMERICA???? (if Dar and Dag's names had been swapped I probably wouldn't have been bothered so much)
Honestly I hate it when relationship stuff gets described as feminine and everything interesting gets described as masculine: I'm a ciswoman and I like science! and all of the other masculine things, and don't really find relationships all that entertaining. Though of the het relationship lit I've read this was far from the worst, even if I did kind of dislike how Fawn was just a cheerleader for a lot of it.
Long Earth series, Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter
Of The Long Earth, The Long War and The Long Mars, I liked TLE the most, since it was a pretty straightforward journey of discovery. Most of the bits I liked were the exploration of weird cultures and worlds. I wasn’t all that keen on TLW and TLM’s politics bits, and the series has been desperately lacking in infodumps.
(Slightly more spoilery stuff, including character thoughts:)
I actually am not all that fond of Joshua Valienté. I can’t quite put my finger on why, though. I also disapproved of Lobsang, since he’s not all that interesting imho. (Having him as a narrator in TLM was a bad idea, though.
Now, rant on Joshua’s wife Helen: she’s a teen girl in TLE, then the older Joshua marries her offscreen, and she functions entirely as a way to make Joshua resist the call in TLW and is inexplicably pissed off at Joshua helping with the Yellowstone relief efforts in TLW and TLM. I really disliked the authors for that, since she’s presented as essentially a nagging harpy.
Other than Helen, I liked the female characters. Maggie Kaufmann is my favorite, though Sally Linsay and Monica Jansson are also killer.
The biggest appeal in these books imo is the sense of wonder and discovery - the crab civilization, Rectangles, the Martian beanstalk - and I wish there’d been more of that (and infodumps) and less of the interpersonal drama of how shitty humans are to each other. Also, the authors got evolution wrong in TLM.
(discussion with![[tumblr.com profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/d4b3023f9908/-/www.tumblr.com/favicon.ico)
sixth-light )
Nexus, Ramez Naam
I liked the book! (Near-future action SF with a female protag on the moralities of various transhumanism.) It’s in the tradition of ideas-and-concepts-and-moral-dilemmas SF that I like, though with more corpses. Spoilers:
I really didn’t buy Sam’s change of heart at the end, and Wats’ death was vaguely unsatisfying, but I <3 Feng and I’m a shameless Shu fan. Dr Shu is amazing, and I want a book with her as a protagonist. Kade was okay, but I never was enamored with him.
On the moral side, well, I basically agree with Ilyana and Ananda. Such life-enhancing stuff should be free for all who wish to have it.
The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
I ship Maia Drazhar/Deret Beshalar so hard it’s not even funny.
The plot was mostly small on the action (perfectly happy with that!) and large on the Maia-being-a-decent-human-being. I think that a contingent of Vorkosigan fans would find this steampunk-with-high-fantasy novel enjoyable due to the reluctant Emperor part.
Really, my greatest quibble with the book is that almost everyone’s name seems to begin with “cs” and the pronunciation guide is at the end. “Csevet” is apparently pronounced “Ksevet”, not “Chevet”. *sighs* Why are fantasy authors allergic to the letter K?
Confederation/Valor series, Tanya Huff
I <3 Torin, but: what is it with MilSF books with women as protagonists and really dreadful love interests?
(In other news: the Krai, I like them, and the pansexual space elves were a little less pansexual than was promised, but eh. Spoilery ranting on the LI below the cut.)
Craig Ryder was an annnoying asshole in the first book he appeared in, and while he was less anoying in the following books (THANK GOD), I did not buy the Torin Kerr/Craig Ryder at all. Craig Ryder/Presit a Tur durValintrisy, yes, but Torin had more sexual tension with the unconscious body of Captain Travik. I also realy, really hate the whole “slap slap kiss” dynamic, and would rather have Torin establish a “snark snark kiss-while-snarking” dynamic with someone. Preferably a Krai someone, since I found the Krai characters rather enjoyable. Here’s for Torin Kerr/Werst. (Werst is my favorite Krai on acount of the snark.)
My favorite book was 4, since lots of people I already liked (Werst, Ressk, Kichar, Binti), the new introductions were nice (oh Kyster, poor Kyster), and Torin did the awesome “Set Things Right” thing, and the Primacy aliens were neat (…I should probably request Firiv’vrak for next Yuletide). The sentient plastic would be exactly that douchey.
Heris Serrano, Elizabeth Moon
I found it boring.
Decommissioned Fleet Captain pilots around a horse-mad old lady’s yacht, and there is occasional plotty trouble. The books were remarkably light for being so slow-paced, and could definitely have done with more exposition on politics, horses, the galactic neighborhood, or how the spaceship sulfur cycle worked. And space battles. The story would’ve benefited greatly by being told by DAVID WEBER of all people!(It also continued the fine tradition of female-led MilSF having the protagonist in a baffling het relationship. I didn’t see the Heris Serrano/Petris at all, though at least for this I’m only indifferent, rather than GO DIE IN A FIRE. Still, Heris, why bone Petris the Nonentity when you could be boning Lady Cecelia?)
Spin State, Chris Moriarty
I 100% rec it! It’s cyberpunk-adjacent MilSF-ish rather hard SF based on quantum physics with a very nice and complex plotline where Major Catherine Li is sent to her home of Compson’s World to investigate the death of Hannah Sharifi, the quantum physicist who went to study the planet’s Bose-Einstein condensates, the mining of which is the only possible way of sustaining FTL.
If you like action, complex plotlines with lots of working off incomplete information, and mysteries, I recommend reading it. It’s also the only female-led MilSF book I’ve read where the male love interest doesn’t make me want to claw my eyes out.
I finished Bujold’s The Sharing Knife quartet [on the 8th of June], and. Well. They’re well-crafted, I’ll give you that, but Not What I Want in a book. Browsing the Tumblr tag, I saw someone say TSK was a very feminine book series, in that relationships and falling in love drive the plot. I did like Fawn’s ingenuety, but the whole extremely feminine and young and short schtick wasn’t my cup of tea. Especially not the extreme femininity, I’ve had enough of that shoved down my throat to last a lifetime.
Honestly I hate it when relationship stuff gets described as feminine and everything interesting gets described as masculine: I'm a ciswoman and I like science! and all of the other masculine things, and don't really find relationships all that entertaining. Though of the het relationship lit I've read this was far from the worst, even if I did kind of dislike how Fawn was just a cheerleader for a lot of it.
Long Earth series, Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter
Of The Long Earth, The Long War and The Long Mars, I liked TLE the most, since it was a pretty straightforward journey of discovery. Most of the bits I liked were the exploration of weird cultures and worlds. I wasn’t all that keen on TLW and TLM’s politics bits, and the series has been desperately lacking in infodumps.
(Slightly more spoilery stuff, including character thoughts:)
I actually am not all that fond of Joshua Valienté. I can’t quite put my finger on why, though. I also disapproved of Lobsang, since he’s not all that interesting imho. (Having him as a narrator in TLM was a bad idea, though.
Now, rant on Joshua’s wife Helen: she’s a teen girl in TLE, then the older Joshua marries her offscreen, and she functions entirely as a way to make Joshua resist the call in TLW and is inexplicably pissed off at Joshua helping with the Yellowstone relief efforts in TLW and TLM. I really disliked the authors for that, since she’s presented as essentially a nagging harpy.
Other than Helen, I liked the female characters. Maggie Kaufmann is my favorite, though Sally Linsay and Monica Jansson are also killer.
The biggest appeal in these books imo is the sense of wonder and discovery - the crab civilization, Rectangles, the Martian beanstalk - and I wish there’d been more of that (and infodumps) and less of the interpersonal drama of how shitty humans are to each other. Also, the authors got evolution wrong in TLM.
(discussion with
Nexus, Ramez Naam
I liked the book! (Near-future action SF with a female protag on the moralities of various transhumanism.) It’s in the tradition of ideas-and-concepts-and-moral-dilemmas SF that I like, though with more corpses. Spoilers:
I really didn’t buy Sam’s change of heart at the end, and Wats’ death was vaguely unsatisfying, but I <3 Feng and I’m a shameless Shu fan. Dr Shu is amazing, and I want a book with her as a protagonist. Kade was okay, but I never was enamored with him.
On the moral side, well, I basically agree with Ilyana and Ananda. Such life-enhancing stuff should be free for all who wish to have it.
The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
I ship Maia Drazhar/Deret Beshalar so hard it’s not even funny.
The plot was mostly small on the action (perfectly happy with that!) and large on the Maia-being-a-decent-human-being. I think that a contingent of Vorkosigan fans would find this steampunk-with-high-fantasy novel enjoyable due to the reluctant Emperor part.
Really, my greatest quibble with the book is that almost everyone’s name seems to begin with “cs” and the pronunciation guide is at the end. “Csevet” is apparently pronounced “Ksevet”, not “Chevet”. *sighs* Why are fantasy authors allergic to the letter K?
Confederation/Valor series, Tanya Huff
I <3 Torin, but: what is it with MilSF books with women as protagonists and really dreadful love interests?
(In other news: the Krai, I like them, and the pansexual space elves were a little less pansexual than was promised, but eh. Spoilery ranting on the LI below the cut.)
Craig Ryder was an annnoying asshole in the first book he appeared in, and while he was less anoying in the following books (THANK GOD), I did not buy the Torin Kerr/Craig Ryder at all. Craig Ryder/Presit a Tur durValintrisy, yes, but Torin had more sexual tension with the unconscious body of Captain Travik. I also realy, really hate the whole “slap slap kiss” dynamic, and would rather have Torin establish a “snark snark kiss-while-snarking” dynamic with someone. Preferably a Krai someone, since I found the Krai characters rather enjoyable. Here’s for Torin Kerr/Werst. (Werst is my favorite Krai on acount of the snark.)
My favorite book was 4, since lots of people I already liked (Werst, Ressk, Kichar, Binti), the new introductions were nice (oh Kyster, poor Kyster), and Torin did the awesome “Set Things Right” thing, and the Primacy aliens were neat (…I should probably request Firiv’vrak for next Yuletide). The sentient plastic would be exactly that douchey.
Heris Serrano, Elizabeth Moon
I found it boring.
Decommissioned Fleet Captain pilots around a horse-mad old lady’s yacht, and there is occasional plotty trouble. The books were remarkably light for being so slow-paced, and could definitely have done with more exposition on politics, horses, the galactic neighborhood, or how the spaceship sulfur cycle worked. And space battles. The story would’ve benefited greatly by being told by DAVID WEBER of all people!(It also continued the fine tradition of female-led MilSF having the protagonist in a baffling het relationship. I didn’t see the Heris Serrano/Petris at all, though at least for this I’m only indifferent, rather than GO DIE IN A FIRE. Still, Heris, why bone Petris the Nonentity when you could be boning Lady Cecelia?)
Spin State, Chris Moriarty
I 100% rec it! It’s cyberpunk-adjacent MilSF-ish rather hard SF based on quantum physics with a very nice and complex plotline where Major Catherine Li is sent to her home of Compson’s World to investigate the death of Hannah Sharifi, the quantum physicist who went to study the planet’s Bose-Einstein condensates, the mining of which is the only possible way of sustaining FTL.
If you like action, complex plotlines with lots of working off incomplete information, and mysteries, I recommend reading it. It’s also the only female-led MilSF book I’ve read where the male love interest doesn’t make me want to claw my eyes out.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-11 06:44 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-11 09:55 (UTC)The book was light and a touch fluffy, but I liked the pronoun porn. And possibilities for loyalty kink are always nice! /tries to figure out how to get the Vorkosigan saga fandom to be as active
no subject
Date: 2016-01-12 04:20 (UTC)There seems to be a fair amount of people who are fans of both Vorkosigan and TLE (including myself, though I'm not nearly as rabid about TLE).
and the pronunciation guide is at the end.
This was a fairly baffling decision to me. If ever a book needed a pronunciation guide, dramatis personae, and a morphology primer right at the start! XD Or at least somewhere where I would know it was there before stumbling on it by accident three quarters through the book. By which point I was pronouncing Csevet as "Tsevet", and I'm not planning to stop any time soon.
I've been curious to try Elizabeth Moon's sci-fi (I enjoyed her fantasy series about Paksenarrion rather a lot, back in high school), so a bit sad it sounds like this series may not be as great as I might have hoped.
Spin State sounds quite interesting, though, and I hadn't heard of that one before!
no subject
Date: 2016-01-12 14:29 (UTC)Moon's books had enjoyable bits, but there was IMO too much drudgework getting there – with not even some interesting exposition on anything. I don't know about her other sci-fi stuff, though; I only read Hunting Party, Sporting Chance and Winning Colors.
Everyone definitely needs to read Spin State! I devoured the sequel (Spin Control) in two days and it was exactly as good, and introduced secondary characters that I liked. (Router/Decomposer my AI fave and Arkady the tragically out of his depth and scientist.) I'm currently reading part three (Ghost Spin) and it, too, is similarly gripping.
no subject
Date: 2016-05-09 11:11 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-09 12:27 (UTC)All the non-Craigy bits are great, but then there's Craig. Gah. Why is this a trend? (I also don't like White Haven from the Honor Harrington books.)