Books Sci Fi and Fantasy Book Club

[Curved_Sw0rd]

A thread for sharing, discussing, and recommending Sci Fi and Fantasy books.

Alright, gonna start this off with a Rec I can really get behind. Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series is probably my favorite piece of literature, or most certainly one of. It boasts a massive scale, rich and in-depth worldbuilding, memorable characters, and compelling stories in perhaps each installment. It deals with themes of love, betrayal, action, adventure, the horrors of war, and the Human Condition, most notably the suffering they all tend to endure.

The majority, though not all, of the installments follow the rank and file of the Malazan Empire as the Empire grinds its way through the world, particularly the Bridgeburners, who's motto is "First in, Last out" which should tell you all you need to know about them.

Gardens of the Moon is the starting point of the series and it plunges you right into the world of Malaz, few holds barred. This type of opening isn't for everyone, though I didn't have much trouble following along myself. It introduces the Bridgeburners and other key players, though there's the promise of more to come, which is fulfilled as the series continues.

Aside from the main line there are the ICE novels, written by Erikson's friend and co-creator of the setting, Ian C. Esslemont, hence the name. These start out pretty slow, but Ian's writing ability seems to get better with each installation. There's also the Bauchelain and Korbal Broach novellas by Erikson, which are written more humorously and follow two Necromancers getting into adventures separate from the main cast, though they show up in the main line and the ICE novels now and again.

The Kharkanas Trilogy is 2/3rds of the way done, and is Erikson's work detailing the plight of the Elder Races of the setting long, long before the main line and ice novels begin. It centers around the Tiste people primarily, who are themselves similar to DnD's elves, but not quite. ICE also has his own sort of prequel trilogy, the Path to Ascendancy series following the origins of the Malazan Empire where it all began.

I've read pretty much everything the series has to offer, and I can safely say I enjoyed the whole ride all the way through. Though be warned, it's a long one.

More to come, stay posted.

 

[bullethead]

Just finished rereading Warped: An Engaging Guide to the Never-Seen 8th Season [of Star Trek: The Next Generation], which came out a few years ago. The author has since become the showrunner of Star Trek: Lower Decks, and for good reason. Mike McMahan manages to infuse TNG with a level of absurdist humor that's beyond what the show would ever do, but feels like only a slight exaggeration of what the show would do.

The book is formatted as a season guide/companion style reference book, with trivia and behind the scenes info for an entire season's worth of episodes that are explained in detail. All of the episodes are based on tweets McMahan made on the TNG_S8 Twitter account, and the summaries come with various pieces of art - typically characters or humorous scenes from the fake episodes, although occasional real photos of the cast are used.

Some examples:
Transporter Madness - Worf deals with ensigns using a program to mess with the transporter safeties so they can get high
The Lowest Decks - two super shitty Ensigns on the officially denied decks of the Enterprise (which handle all the gross clean up and maintenance) go on an adventure
Barclay's Day - Q and another Q watch timelooped Barclay get himself killed in increasingly astounding and inventive ways
Werewolf-Wolf - Riker gets trapped playing through Geordi and Data's collection of poorly written holo-fanfics while Wesley and some ensigns get trapped in mega-amber

 

[Deleted member 1]

Please go read CJ Cherryh's books. If you're uncertain where to start, read Heavy Time, it's a perfectly stand-alone novel. Long before they started getting a great many women to write SJW-centric science fiction, there was CJ Cherryh, who could stand on her own two feet without any of the tricks of modern times. Her prose is sharp and elegant, her plots devious, her care for culture and species profound, her action tense. All the Merchanter novels are worth reading, without exception. That she is so poorly known of in general is worse than a crime, it is a mistake.

 

[CurtisLemay]

Am a military sci fi fan. I read a lot of Baen, John Ringo, David Drake, David Weber..etc. I also read JF Holmes, and the Valkyrie series which is very good.

 

[prinCZess]

I've had Steven Erikson recommended to me before, but never got around to reading any of his work. At some point I'm going to have to rectify that. I'd also second the CJ Cheryh rec--though based on a very limited sampling of her work (to my vague understanding, there's an Asimov level 'long history connected universe' aspect in the background of many of her works, and I have only read some random samplings from that, but they were all very intriguing).

As for my own recommendations, I love to point people towards Elizabeth Moon's work in general for coming-of-age stories with some soft military tones if that's at all something they find themselves enjoying. Her 'Vatta's War' series is a fun, sci-fi take on that kind of story and 'Deed of Paksennarion' a good fantasy analogue (with a good deal of virtues of its own). Similarly, Tanya Huff's 'Valor' series is an entertaining military sci-fi--though it's probably about the most formulaic for the first few books with the usual 'space-marines get put in awkward place, badass bitch of an NCO saves the day'...It's basically 'Ellen Ripley the series!' in tone, and I kind'a love it for that.

 

[GoldRanger]

I made some Urban Fantasy recommendations in this thread.

1) Dresden Files (Jim Butcher)

I don't believe it's necessary to add much more. This famous UF series (currently 15 novels and 2 anthologies and still going) is the king of book UF bar none. It's the bar by which all UF is measured by, and an absolute must read for anyone interested in the genre.

2) Alex Verus (Benedict Jacka)

A UF series by Benedict Jacka, recommended by Jim Butcher himself, the writer of the Dresden Files.

Follows a mage with the ability to see the future as he's trying to survive the intrigues of the ruthless mage society. Not as good as the Dresden Files, but I recommend it nonetheless.

3) The Magicians trilogy (Lev Grossman)

Very good read, not for the faint of heart as characters can die here, or get addicted to drugs, or get raped etc. It's a dark series that takes common Harry Potter and Narnia tropes and twist them into unforgiving hyperrealism (that, surprisingly enough, isn't always as grimdark as I made it sound). Very recommended for people who are not squeamish (and who can stand the sometimes idiotic main character).

4) Amber Chronicles (Roger Zelazny)

It's not exactly urban fantasy, it's more like epic fantasy with interdimensional travel to modern Earth at some points, but I'm still including it. The first 5 books are awesome, while the second series, also 5 books, is considerably worse off (I never finished it).

I hugely recommend this series, just pick up the first book, Nine Princes in Amber, it's amazing.

A couple more book series recommendations:

Monster Hunter International (Larry Correia) - I've only read the first book of the series for now, but it was awesome. A bunch of armed to the teeth mercenaries square off against every supernatural threat imaginable, with a pretty good and epic plot to boot.

Necroscope (Brian Lumley) - finished the first two books thus far, and it's awesome. Psychic agents from different countries during the Cold War era square off against each other and supernatural beings (mostly vampires, who I assure you are very far from sparkling). The protagonist has the power to communicate with the dead at will.

Magic Ex Libris (Jim C. Hines) - the first book is Libriomancer. A very cool series that is based on mages with the power to take a book and use it as a portal to retrieve any object the book described. It has some limitations, so it's only partially as broken as you'd assume. Plenty of pop culture references (a very early scene has the protagonist retrieve a hand phaser from a Star Trek book, for example), and generally a decent story.

So these are 7 book/series recommendations with an Urban/Modern Fantasy theme.

Later I'll post some scifi recommendations too. I have a lot of those.

 

[Curved_Sw0rd]

Gonna toss another one out that I've finished. The Old Kingdom Series by Garth Nix. It's pretty fun stuff. It's Young Adult, set in both a fantasy world and a pre-WW1 Britain expy, divided by a wall that keeps magic out of the latter. Though most of the story takes place in the former.

The worldbuilding and magic system are pretty fantastic, the world feels unique and magic is used rather creatively. The tone is your standard Young Adult fare, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Characters are rather well fleshed out, and the amount of content is decent, featuring five books to the main series and a could scattered novellas that expand the world further.

All in all a good read, with the worldbuilding standing out the most to me.

 

[Deleted member 1]

Since it was only in the other thread, I shall reprise my recommendation for Sonja Blue series. Nancy Collins is extremely good at her craft; they are very adult books, but very good.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

Aristillus by Travis J Corcoran



Basically the majority of the world went Far Left and decided to follow the economic policies of the antagonists of Atlas Shrugged combined with loads of people being accused of all sorts of stuff from being horrible bigots to being a bunch of fascist douchebags who love megacorps whilst also severely restricting things like the use and creation of new technologies(to avoid accidentally causing unemployment)and anything that produces(CO2)

People of all races and nationalities decided that they had enough of this shit and since voicing out their opinions would have the majority of the population dogpile them, its best to just move to the Moon and try things out there

Problem is that the President of the USA who wants to be reelected, needs the money to pay for California’s reconstruction and thinks that Aristillus may as well be theirs because its citizens brought and used technology, tools and resources from Earth to make the foundations. Therefore they have an obligation to pay loads of tax money.

And since these guys have loads of WrongThink and escaped to the Moon in order to get away from Earth, they need US/UN Peacekeeper forces to “liberate” the people

The author makes a number of guys from/on Earth surprisingly sympathetic and humanized, “Just Following Orders” would describe part of their thinking.

And weirdly enough, the guy who counts as a John Galt expy is a flawed man, not in the way of Andrew Ryan, flawed because he’s genuinely NOT a hypocrite and wants to follow his no-government-idea so thoroughly he makes it slightly harder to win because he doesn’t want to end up taxing everybody, even by 1%

 

[Vargas Fan]

I've just started rereading the Serpentwar series by Raymond E Feist. Feists Midkemia books were pretty good but became ever more ponderous as they went on. You had the Magician trilogy (Magician, Silverthorn, A Darkness at Sethanon), then Prince of the Blood, the Kings Bucaneer where we are first introduced to Novindus, then the four Serpentwar books.

This, in my opinion was his peak. Some cite the Daughter, Servant and Mistress of the Empire books as better where they were set on Kelewan during the Riftwar series, but they were largely written by Janny Wurts using material from Feist, and yes they were very good books that I thoroughly enjoyed, with the poltics of a fantasy version of feudal Japan. Lady Mara of House Acoma at the beginning of Daughter of the Empire is young, inexperienced, a bit naive and totally unprepared to be head of a major noble house. At the beginning of the book she was preparing to be enter a religious order and finds herself yanked out due to being the sole heir to her house. Her father and brothers are dead, assasinated by political rivals and it is up to her to save her house.

Anyway, Serpentwar was a four book series, Shadow of a Dark Queen, Rise of a Merchant Prince, Rage of a Demon King, Shards of a Broken Crown. This series caused a major shake up of the world of Midkemia. It's worth reading, though the preceding books are worthwhile as well.

After that...not so much. One thing that Star Wars books eventually did that I liked was putting in a timeline showing all the major comic and book and movie events, it gave an idea where you were. Midkemia eventually needed that, BADLY. Especially when dealing with noble houses and royal families, due to the reuse of names. In later books there was no real indication of where you were in the timeline.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

Does anybody here have any series that are Post-Apocalyptic Settings? And no, I don’t count the ones from Japan where civilization’s rebuilt real quick and lives behind walls/domes/shelters that have modern to futuristic lifestyle-levels

I’m thinking more along the lines of people living in ruins, scavenging resources, recycling, improvising to even do farming, eating rats, making bullets in personal forges or small assembly lines, trade&barter or using bottlecaps as a substitute currency, possibly mutant monsters/aliens/crazy robots&cyborgs/mini-eldritch abominations and even crazy gangs of bandits and raiders.

Just so you guys know, I read and now recommend to you all Metro 2033/34/35

I haven’t played the games but simply put, the books are more....disgusting and really show just how far humanity has fallen. The guys making the games definitely made it so that things could get on a happier note....also more mutant monsters to fight and kill, in the books its mostly just humans

 

[GoldRanger]

Just so you guys know, I read and now recommend to you all Metro 2033/34/35

Ah, Metro is awesome. I've read 2033 and 2034 so far, in the original Russian (2034 was disappointing after 2033 though) . It's better to always read in the original language, so much nuance and atmosphere that I have no idea how they could convey it through translation... I'm just lucky I'm fluent in Russian.

Now if I only knew Japanese... the prospect of learning it from scratch without a bunch of native speakers who I can practice with is daunting.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

Ah, Metro is awesome. I've read 2033 and 2034 so far, in the original Russian (2034 was disappointing after 2033 though) . It's better to always read in the original language, so much nuance and atmosphere that I have no idea how they could convey it through translation... I'm just lucky I'm fluent in Russian.

Now if I only knew Japanese... the prospect of learning it from scratch without a bunch of native speakers who I can practice with is daunting.

If I knew Japanese, I’d be reading the RAW last 18-24 volumes of Ikkitousen which haven’t been translated for more than a decade....also other Light Novels and untranslated manga like Kengan Asura before HokutoNoGun decided to work through every single chapter, one per day

Also, I suggest for Urban Fantasy, that people go and read American Gods by Neil Gaiman, he may be likely to call us NeoNazi’s but you gotta admit his stuff’s great

 

[GoldRanger]

If I knew Japanese, I’d be reading the RAW last 18-24 volumes of Ikkitousen which haven’t been translated for more than a decade....also other Light Novels and untranslated manga like Kengan Asura before HokutoNoGun decided to work through every single chapter, one per day

There's also a buttload of untranslated visual novels, for people who are into that kind of thing. I really wish I could read/play Type-Moon's Mahoutsukai no Yoru, but only half was ever translated into English (by fan projects, all of which are currently stalled).

 

[CarlManvers2019]

There's also a buttload of untranslated visual novels, for people who are into that kind of thing. I really wish I could read/play Type-Moon's Mahoutsukai no Yoru, but only half was ever translated into English (by fan projects, all of which are currently stalled).

I guess the best you can get to even see those other Nasuverse characters is Fate Grand Order, one of the MC’s with those Death-Seeing-Eyes’ a Heroic Spirit last I checked

Say, does anyone have or know any stories or series where the MC is a self-replicating or multi-drone controlling Robot? Outside of Isaac Hooke’s works

 

[GoldRanger]

Say, does anyone have or know any stories or series where the MC is a self-replicating or multi-drone controlling Robot? Outside of Isaac Hooke’s works

"We Are Legion (We Are Bob)" by Dennis Taylor.


It's a the first book of a trilogy of hard-ish scifi. The protagonist is a human consciousness uploaded into a Von-Neumman probe and launched into space in the middle of a global war.

Pretty good books.

@CarlManvers2019 Who is this Isaac Hooke guy and which works of his are best? From skimming the internet he seems to be self-published? (I have a mostly bad experience with self-published writers).

 

[CarlManvers2019]

Is it wrong if I hesitate on Bob? Because as ironic as it is, even I start getting some kneejerk....this guy’s gonna veer very FarLeft and eventually it will spill into the rest of his works and interactions, with how part of the world was ruined by FarRight Religious Fundamentalist stereotypes as mentioned by that AI to the Bob-AI

Guy’s self published and not so sure about the level kf popularity but he writes books FAST

Though, I gotta say with his Humans-Turned-AI very similar to Bob, it gets sorta awkward due to how exposition-y and talk-y they get....kinda hard to describe but think about it almost sorta like if those Isekai LN’s translations weren’t soundjng like strange possibly sociopathic kids and more like awkward adults when it comes to the text

 

[ProphetOfTruth]

I've been laboring to get through Erickson's Gardens of the Moon for about 6 months. I hear he's Martin-But-Richer, which is encouraging.

Speaking of Martin, I forced myself to get through A Song of Ice and Fire due to my deep affection for the first four seasons of Game of Thrones and I was highly disappointed. I appreciate Martin's witty dialogue and his narrative ideas, but the truth his I find his prose shit. It's bland as all get out.

I'd recommend anything written by KJ Parker. I cut my teeth on his Devices & Desires trilogy, which is takes place in a very low fantasy setting. It's about a mechanical engineer who is sentenced to death by his government for the heinous crime of privately constructing a mechanical toy doll for his daughter (which happens to exceed state specifications for toys). The engineer escapes execution and goes about engineering a reunion with his wife and daughter... even if it involves a world war.

Parker's prose is nuanced, intricate, and dryly witty. In addition to having written a few other trilogies and a handful of standalone novels, he's authored many short stories that are worth a read.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

Anyone here ever read Shadows of The Vulture by Robert E. Howard? It’s a story about how the Sultan Suleyman wants to finish his conquest of the West and Christendom

But when he meets the MC, Gottfried, a Frankish alcoholic knight who had once wounded him and escaped, he has the conquest sorta accelerated and hopes to have him assassinated lest he lose face

Honestly, I can see the entire story being adapted rather accurately in a 130-2 hour action movie

MC can even be somewhat different from REH’s usual surprisingly intelligent physical powerhouses with the alcoholism possibly being due to survivors guilt and a scene where a young girl he tried to save got shot by an arrow from the forces looking specifically for him

Could even bring attention to Red Sonya of Rogatino for Rule34 and shipping her with the MC Gottfried and because she was a Badass

 

[Cyan Saiyajin]

While I agree I am Bob's politics are grating honestly its still a good read. And to be fair its only one of several governments screwing things over at the time of Earth's destruction so its a little less pronounced than it could be. But it is something of a turn off.


So I've had the pleasure of listening to several audible series I would recommend, so I am.

The Ember War series

Well written novel series about mankind being attacked by an alien race of machines. Bit of a HFY as despite getting almost wiped out we come back and are about the only ones who can do anything about the bad guys. Author has a thing for cyborgs as well that is enjoyable sub-plot.

The Synchronicity War series,

Man starts to experience precognitive visions on the onset of hostile alien first contact is about all I can say without spoiling it. Honestly very good if the story gets a little shakey as most science fiction with

Spoiler

Time Travel

gets.

Marko Kloos' Frontlines series.

Very good series. A disintegrating society in the middle of an future Earth with Cold War like superpowers and throw in a race of giant aliens. Rather different than the other two as dark as they get they have a larger than life quality to them. You get the feeling that anything can happen in the other two while this work is much more gritty.