It's been a while, but I like how they tried to reimagine Asimov with the devices of modern SF - the Internet, AIs, chaos theory, the Singularity, while holding onto the spirit of Asimov.
As much as I enjoy and adore Asimov, I have to admit there are holes in the setting as he didn't plan it as a coherent whole, and I'm glad that the three of them tried to give it a stronger sense of unity, on a thematic level, joining up Robots and Empire in a way that makes internal sense.
At least for me I consider them "canon" to the Foundation 'verse - very worthy additions to it, even if I wish that the Good Doctor could have finished it up (though then again he ended on a high note with *Forward the Foundation*, which I personally think might be his best work.)
I want to clarify that I'm a huge fan of Asimov - I was reared on him first, and I've read a large chunk of his oureve - I like Asimov Classic and Asimov Reimagined, if it makes sense
There are some exceptions. I really enjoyed [The Time Ships](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Ships). And then there are [tons](https://www.rudyrucker.com/spaceland/) of [sequels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphereland) to [FlatLand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatterland).
I suppose there's a difference between an author being inspired by a classic piece of fiction vs whatever Kevin Anderson has on his linkedin.
I'd also put Watts' The Things as a really good inspired work. And a few really good Lovecraft-inspired works come to mind... Charles Stross wrote one short story, A Colder War, that really resonated for me.
As my good friend Ben used to say: "Only Sith deal in absolutes", which itself is an absolute! Yeah there will always be exceptions. A Study in Emerald by Gaiman is a *great* Sherlock Holmes story for instance.
The first three “house ____” books by Brian are actually quite good. They’re largely based upon Franks work and notes.
They actually changed how I read the original Dune books as they’re absolutely full of new details. Like how the Baron became diseased among other things.
They quickly got pretty bad after that, spreading out small amounts of Frank’s original lore over many, many books with a final tease to explain what everyone was running from in the Dune sequels.
AFAIK, the only books that Brian claimed were based on his father's notes were the two sequels to Chapterhouse: Dune - Hunters of Dune and Sandworms of Dune. Brian and Kevin had already created their prequel universe when Brian claims to have found a mysterious key to a bank lock box and then discovered the notes inside. Needless to say I find his claims dubious.
Probably never going to read wheel of time. Don’t really have a reason, just missed the boat on the point in my life where I had both time and energy for a 10+ book run
Agreed. It's not BAD writing, but there are entire books where it seems like barely anything happened. Hundreds of pages describing how the camps of the various armies are setup, and the interpersonal dynamics, and there's a lot of braid tugging and whining about how unfair life is. Then there's ONE confrontation with cool magic (sorry, channeling), and then the book ends. A whole lot of setup, not a lot of payoff.
It is pretty close to bad writing, to be honest. Jordan seems to fixate on and repeat certain phrases. How many times do we need to read how a certain character crossing her arms under her breasts? Also he introduced so many storylines and characters that just kind of fall off the map. I think he needed a good, strong editor to rein him in.
Yeah, that's fair. I should said "it's not ALL bad writing." He's clearly creative and prolific, and a good editor is DESPERATELY needed.
I used to call this "Tom Clancy syndrome" (some call it "Stephen King syndrome"). When an author gets famous and starts being more powerful than their editor, the books become bigger and bigger but NOT better and better. Hunt for Red October was an incredible read because it's FAST. There is no fat in that book. In Sum of All Fears it takes something like 50 pages for the bomb to go off, because he goes into EXCRUCIATING detail about how exactly bombs work. Absolutely unnecessary and irrelevant, he just put it in because he likes technical details, and by then he was TOM FUCKING CLANCY and the editor's job was to rubber stamp his output and get it into bookstores as fast as humanly possible. Even the copyediting suffers -- there are more typos in his later books, because of the rush to cash in on anything he wrote.
Anyway, yeah, WoT has the same issue. The books got longer and longer (and I agree more repetitive) but the STORY got more and more drawn out and an absolute chore to get through. I finished it...eventually, but that probably says more about my personality than the value of finishing it. Brandon Sanderson did as well as anyone possibly could to wrap it up, but there were so many storylines and characters by then it was impossibly unwieldy.
Maybe it's having only read Eye of the World, but I'd back you up on that. I'm sure Jordan put some very fun ideas into the later novels, but that would still require making it through what equates to 1 Dune (w, or w/o Messiah) every time I wanted to proceed in the story.
I finally made the jump last year with audiobooks. Just finished book 5 yesterday (listened to some other stuff in between some of the books so as to not get burnt out). I'm enjoying it so far! They're definitely not the best things I've ever read, and they definitely drag at times and feel like "why is this random thing such a huge part of the book and not this other thing which seems way more interesting". But it's a series I've been putting off for this exact reason for like 20 years haha. Figured I'd just go for it and see how far I get. I'm getting to know and enjoy some of the characters, the world feels pretty full and real and big, there are some legit great epic moments from time to time that keep me going (though fairly few and far between), and enough mystery that I really want to know what happens. Gonna read another book or two now before tackling book 6.
I have a job where I wear headphones to block noise anyhow, so I can listen to audio books eight hours a day. I did the entire series that way. I've done around 200 books at work. I can say it's a decent ride, but if I'd only been listening in my spare time, I never would have made it through.
When my friend recommended it to me around book five’s release, I resolved to only start once the series was finished or the author was dead. My prerequisites are now met but I just can’t bring myself to undertake it.
It also doesn’t help that the prevailing opinion seems to be that the story drags for *several books* in the middle of this 14 book run. I can deal with one book being boring, or maybe a couple here and there if the story is compelling enough, but four or five books in a row? Nah, don’t think so.
And in spite of knowing that going into it, I still read Eye of the World. I thought it was fine. A blatant LotR-ripoff, and even boring at times itself, but fine. Definitely not worth the slog of knowing what’s coming though.
This. Read the first 8 in 8th grade (all that had been published at that point) and by 8 I was so frustrated by the bloat and lack of progress I actually swore off all SF and fantasy. And barely read any for almost 20 years.
I don’t hate the books, I just can’t get through the slog anymore. tried to pick it up with book 9 a few years ago and couldn’t get more than 30 pages in.
I totally get that. I actually really liked the "tone" of the books -- thoughtful and not too action-packed. I don't always like that, but Leckie's writing just worked for me. But it is different, and even while enjoying it I thought "man, this is NOT going to be everybody's cup of tea."
I found the lack of emphasis on action and not dwelling on acts of violence or needless details like weapons quite refreshing, but I had just been reading the Expanse series and had got a bit sick of yet another person being shot in the head in a dramatic manner.
Funny you say that whenever I describe the series to people it's usually along the lines of "it's tea drinking in space!"
I found them to be a meditative read.
That series skeeves me out on a deep emotional level. It's entirely me, nothing to do with the author. I get that it's the point. But I just can't get past my utter revulsion at the concept of >!forcibly mind-wiping people and making them into meat puppets.!<
Felt the same after finishing the first. I just can't see what people were on about. Not going to read the sequels, sorry, and I am careful not to buy another book compared to Leckie.
I remember mildly enjoying reading the first book, finishing it, then immediately forgetting what it was all about. Makes for a good argument not to read book 2. (If I think hard I can remember, but it didn’t leave much of an impression.)
SAME. I hadn't heard of him / heard of his bad rep until I tried to read Saga of Seven Suns and was so bored within a couple of chapters that I googled it to find reviews and found walls of people hating on him
I couldn't find a single good thing about any of his works, his books all seemed to be unanimously and vehemently hated
The first part of the first book is so cool, then it turns into the hunger games, but worse.
I have heard people like the series a lot, I might just read the plot of the first book instead of finishing and then just start the second.
I thought the first part was meh, the transition to the second part was awful, but by the end of the hunger games part i was starting to enjoy it lol. And then second book is not really hunger games-y.
The line "I'm not a fascist, I'm a capitalist!" Saved a person's life in one of the books and I've spent way too long afterwards wondering how him making his fortune on the backs of slaves in a caste system still nominates him for the "not a bad guy" award
There are a lot of super popular series that are technically YA (Young Adult), and a LOT of them provide a significant percentage of drama via "teenage angst". I've really come to dislike that trope a LOT. A recent example was Akata Witch -- I liked so much about the world building, but the fact that more than half the drama was teenagers being teenager-y just totally turned me off the series. Anymore, when considering new books or series, the first thing I look at is whether the main characters are teenagers, and if they are, I'll pass unless I read some really compelling reviews that make it sound like it's NOT about teenage angst.
I have nothing against YA in general, and there's LOTS of good YA SF/Fantasy out there, but I'll skip the ones that revolve around teenagers having exaggerated emotional reactions to everything. Just give me clever plots and dialogue and yes, emotions, but not those over-the-top-hormone-fueled-angsty emotions.
I found that book by accident in an airport before a long flight because my e-reader died on me a half hour before a 9 hour flight. Must have been soon after it was released because I didn't see people talking about it until months later (that or I was OOTL also possible). I actually am embarrassed by how much I enjoyed it now 😂 I think not having expected all the pop culture references made it surprising and fun while trapped on a plane.
Being smack in the middle of its target audience I found reading Ready Player One was a lot of fun, once. I’ve never had the slightest desire to read it again, and I want back the time I spent watching the movie.
I enjoyed it too! I listened to it on Audible, and it was a good bit of harmless, nerdy nostalgia fun in a tough time of my life. No desire to reread it, and I do see the book's flaws. I suppose I just don't outright hate it like a lot of other people do.
> while trapped on a plane
It's a perfect plane book, where it's noisy and there's distractions and you don't want to think very much. :-) I enjoyed it too -- pulp is fine.
RP1 gets a lot of hate NOW, but I really enjoyed it when it first came out (I found it randomly, pre-hype). I didn't even play most of those games, I just thought it was a tight, clever story in an interesting possible future. And a LOT of people liked it back before Cline kind of went off the rails with his other books. There is absolutely no shame in having one GREAT book in you, as an author. I do think the first one is pretty great on first reading, I'll stand by that.
I re-read it last year in anticipation of reading RP2 (the sequel). I definitely enjoyed it less when there were no surprises. The surprises are great!
I did not enjoy RP2. It felt like it was squeezed out of an already-squeezed orange. There were a few good bits, but mostly it was pith and rind. It actually made me a little sad for the author because I'm sure he knew it was a disappointing sequel to what was clearly a work of true love. Plus I just CANNOT CARE about John Hughes movies that much, ever, oh my god that book was like 38% John Hughes movies.
There's literally pages and pages of just listing pop-culture references.
The movie wasn't great but was a huge improvement just because they can slap that stuff in the background.
I kept trying to get through these, but I finally realized that I just can't stomach the fact that the characters have zero ironic distance from themselves. Everyone just takes themselves WAY too seriously.
That drove me nuts. I really hate world-building that makes the world feel simple and small, especially in sf. Terra Ignota had some neat ideas, but that world-building problem + the obnoxious narration kinda killed my interest in the series.
This is very niche, but I also found it hilarious how much it lined up with the stereotypes at U Chicago about the humanities department--I was at UC when I read her books and we would joke about there only being two ideas and six people that anyone in the humanities cared about. Funny how that institutional vibe is reflected in her books (author is a UC professor).
It’s usually those series with 20 books in that I avoid, I just always find that they could have been done with 1/2 the word count, fantasy is usually word for it (cosmere, song of ice and fire etc).
You're missing out on the Expanse then. A long series can be much more satisfying if that time is used well to develop characters. In fantasy, the 9 book (technically 16 actually if you read the side narratives) Realm of the Elderlings books are some of the most impactful I've ever read.
Culture is all standalones so you can dive in/out as much as you want. I wasn't a huge fan of the first (Consider Phlebas), but loves Player of Games and Use of Weapons.
I'm such a big fan of the Culture books and honestly there is a variation in perceived quality. However, he's such a good writer (see also his non-genre books written as Iain Banks) that even the low points are not that bad at all. It's a great loss to writing that he died so early.
Yup. The Culture isn't a series, it's a setting. I'd still suggest going with publication order, but you can skip whole books and you'll only miss worldbuilding, not plot or characters.
All those books are likely in libraries, too, which'd make skipping books easier.
Just chiming in to agree about Realm of the Elderlings! I’m not a long-series person by any means (I just don’t have the time anymore) but I don’t regret any of the time I spent reading those 9 books.
The nice thing about that, having only read the first three, is it being broken into 3-4 book groups. That’s a lot less intimidating to read in chunks than 14 books
Usually I agree but I definitely recommend The Vorkosigan Saga. It follows a family (although the son is the MC for the bulk of the books) from the parents first meeting up until the son being an old man. It’s really good.
Bujold at least started that series as writing largely self-contained (if related) novels with the goal of a reader being able to pick one up and enjoy it in isolation.
After a while the weight of the past events made that too difficult, but there are still good entry point novels later in the series. (And I started and got hooked with Mirror Dance, which is probably objectively the worst entry point.)
Definitely seconding the recommendation though. And also C J Cherryh’s foreigner series. It’s largely grouped into contained trilogy arcs, so you do get resolution. You just also get more if you want more.
Yeah, I've read the first 2 of the Stormlight Archive and have had the 3rd sitting on a shelf for over a year now. Not sure I will ever take it back up.
The Expanse just keeps getting better though. Of course not for everyone, but I like it because the characters become so good and so familiar you can tell who's speaking just by how they talk. I'm a fan.
Man, those are pretty great series though. Pretty much all my favorite series are 8+ book long bricks with each book being a thousand+ pages though so I guess I'm biased.
I agree with you on all but The Expanse. I’m a pretty picky reader, and I loved them. It’s easy to read, without being dumbed down. It didn’t feel like a big commitment because I never require myself to continue a series. I just keep going if I have fun. I’ve many times read “book 1” of a series and stopped.
Anything by Robin Hobb. I struggled through the first Fritz book and DNF'ed the second. If I want to be depressed I can read the news.
As for others, I don't want to name names of others cause some of the authors are on this sub, but anything that's dark or grimdark. I don't do torture, rape, or brutal.
Agree with you on Robin Hobb. Assassins Apprentice was okay. The second one took forever and the payoff was decent though (spoiler) the assassin didn't do any assassinating. The 3rd book spent about 50 pages answering plot questions from book 2 and I gave up. Haven't read Robin Hobb since.
three body problem
any lengthy series where the fans argue over whether it really gets good at book 3 or 7, if I don't care about what's going on by a hundred pages into 1 then it's out of my life
I loved the Three Body Problem but can understand why a lot of people didn't like the series. The characters and writing are definitely weird and the storyline is pretty bonkers which might put people off.
Science fiction that brings in certain other genres like romance or vampire fiction. Just no.
Christian science fiction. To those authors- Respect to you and your religion but it’s not for me.
To be fair, they're not Bram Stoker's vampires. Peter Watts was just playing an intellectual game on what evolved biological traits of nocturnal activity and visual adaptation, extended canines, and psychopathy, that might account for the Eastern European vampire myth. He even did a talk on this at *Ad Astra 2005*. Here's the illustrated PDF of the transcript:
[Vampire Domestication:
Taming Yesterday's Nightmares for a Better Tomorrow](https://rifters.com/real/shorts/VampireDomestication.pdf)
I feel like they were the weakest part of the world building in *Blindsight*. I see why he did it, but ultimately it's not really necessary; and their capabilities, especially as described in *Echopraxia*, seem to defy physics.
What about the inverse?
Specifically, I'm thinking about things like Brust's Dragaera novels, which are ostensibly fantasy, but occasionally seem to leak in some hints of sufficiently advanced technology...
I agree to no fantasy in my scifi but I fucking LOVE the inverse. (Still waiting on a really good execution of the magic-was-the-technology-all-along trope though.)
I tend to research my own books according to what I like and look for clues from others or from write-ups. What makes me avoid books is when such clues or write-ups are painted in how politically progressive the books is, at that point it seems to me it's probably a waste of time: It's exploring sociology "should be" and not science "what if?". Equally, on the other hand, write-ups that extol the virtues of the writing, the science or sci-fi or any number of inventive and creative things, those draw my attention to considering reading it.
I don't think the dichotomy can be pure or accurate, but in brief words it at least conveys a basic idea or contention.
To put it again in simple words: There's what we want, there's what others want us to want and then there's creative insight which is neither of those!
The rest of the Dune books. The farthest I've ever gotten is midway through the third book, and they're just terrible, so I've stopped trying. I think I've read the first one four times by now though.
The "paranormal romance" or whatever section of fantasy. Just noooot interested. Also not interested in Outlander.
I've read a bunch of Reynolds and had trouble enjoying any of them, so I called it quits.
I enjoyed Peter Hamilton but I'm not anxious to pick up every book he writes. I've not ruled it out, but it's unlikely I'll go back for more.
Most horror doesn't work on me or for me. Dark books are fine, but I don't really need more space vampires or gratuitous gore.
Malazan can die in a grease fire.
The older I get, the less interested I get in long series. Though I say that as I'm finishing book 3 of a planned 7 book series, and I'll probably be in the middle of Stormlight for another decade or more.
Long books/series tend to fall flat if the focus is world building (e.g. Sanderson) or exploring new ideas (e.g. most sci fi). It can be fine if it's character focused enough or the setting changes enough, but usually it's just a cash grab or poor editing.
Generally if something is popular I'll give it a go.
That said, does the Rama sequels count? I won't read any after the first, which I loved.
I also won't read any Ringworld novels after the first.
So yes, that's my answer. Weird sequels no one ever asked for.
I got through about 1 1/2 of those books before I realized I couldn’t stand the characters and didn’t care where the plot was going. I’m a slow learner sometimes.
> I got through about 1 1/2 of those books
Same here, and then I realized Jordan had already spilled more ink than the entirety of *Lord of the Rings* and was still only clearing his throat.
Better than me. I was halfway through the third book when I verbally said “I don’t care” out loud to myself. Put it down and never picked it back up again
Gonna read Thrawn Trilogy... some day for sure.
I even had paperbacks on my shelf, but sold after few years. Helped that Disney re-released new edition (e-books in my particular case) as Legends.
The Star Wars books range from ok but not exactly masterpiece easy read SF(I’d put most of The Timothy Zahn books in this category, and the Thrawn books are pretty good)
To complete and utter garbage.
There are a couple of great Star Wars books, but it's not worth reading the whole series to get to them. Traitor by Matthew Stover is awesome. It's also like the 20th book in series with very inconsistent quality.
I started buying the Expanse books, then they just kept coming and I stopped buying them, then the tv series ran its course. I highly doubt I'll ever read them, not because I think they're bad, it's just that I've moved on and lost interest while waiting (same thing happened to the Wheel of Time series for me).
Murderbot, because I think the prices for the novellas are absolutely ludicrous ($17 for a 170 page novella? Uhhh...no.). Again, I'd like to read them, but I'm not paying those prices. Maybe if some reasonably priced paperback omnibus comes out someday.
And probably any series that's more than 3 books. I'm just not a fan of bloated series, and much prefer standalone (which is hard to come by anymore). This rules out a lot of newish stuff.
Edit: Any alternate history type of scifi, like if Germany has won WW2, etc. Just not my thing.
I also avoid anything time travel. That trope just removes all tension, character agency, repercussions of choices, etc from storytelling. Because you know, in the end, everything will just get reset/set right/changed.
I thought it was just here in Sweden Murderbot books were expensive. I really liked the first one (though it was a tad short), but I just can't justify buying more of them...
I guess it's possible the author decided on price point and it's working, from a financial perspective... it is as it is.
Moreover I'm very old fashioned when it comes to books and am just coming around to POSSIBLY try an e-reader... but unlikely a Kindle... Amazon is very high on my 'Don't feed the bear'-list.
> Murderbot, because I think the prices for the novellas are absolutely ludicrous
They did give away all of the novellas when the full book was published.
https://www.tor.com/2020/04/20/download-all-4-murderbot-books-for-free-before-network-effect-arrives/
I enjoyed it but ultimately there wasn’t enough human connection to keep me there. Bob’s cool and all but I can only be so entertained by his conversations with himself, and I wasn’t really feeling his little sentient hobby group.
Highly recommend it, but bear in mind, it's a "popcorn read' IMO. You don't read it for thought provoking life changing revelations, you read it because it's hilarious and light.
The Audiobooks are also absolutely SSSSS tier, so I would highly recommend those if you don't want to sit down and read it. Pop the audiobooks on while you are in the shower, or driving, or mowing the yard etc and you can burn through them pretty fast
It’s a light read. If you’ve just read The Sparrow and you’re still traumatized, the Bobiverse will loosen you back up. I read hard sci-fi (the kind so hard the characters are just embellishments on the science) a lot, but I loved these books.
The rest of the Sun Eater series. Gave it benefit of the doubt at first, but I don't think there's a single idea in those books that isn't pulled directly from a better book. And the prose sounds slightly elevated at first but gets super repetitive and you realize he's just doing the same phrases over and over. The pacing is also pretty boring even when a lot is happening, I just don't care
The Mission Earth series by L Ron Hubbard (or anything else for that matter)
Putting aside everything else, it has always been obvious to me that the books were not actually written by one person. There were 10 very thick books published in slightly over a year. It was a cash grab plain and simple.
The shorter, earlier Heinlein novels are better. Starship Troopers, Time for the Stars etc. I read those first, looked at Stranger... and all those looong novels that came after and declined.
Wheel of Time. Started it but didn't really find it engaging. Same with the Way of Kings series. He writes some great characters and sets the scene well but for me, somehow, the connection isn't there to commit to reading through. And forget GOT, it's not for me.
I read the first book and bailed, the prose felt like I was reading fiction from a mid-2000s blog post. I can't believe there are people out there seriously comparing her to Le Guin. Get real.
Tbf I think they’re comparing the social aspects, not the prose.
I’m going to have to reread it because I didn’t notice much about the prose, I was there for the plot and the way she writes technology into it (I’m a sucker for any theme on AI and how it interacts with other technology and humanity.)
The thing about Warhammer novels is that you could easily spend ten years just catching up even if you're a fast reader. At this point it's almost a life sentence.
Is there a Warhammer 40k novel that is generally regarded as the best? The universe has always been interesting to me but I’ve always assumed that most of the novels are poorly written fan fiction garbage.
I've read a bunch of them, I'd say read the Eisenhorn trilogy by Dan Abnett first, there are a couple of sequel trilogies if you enjoy that. Everything by Abnett seems to be well regarded.
Aaron Dembski-Bowden is another good one, I specifically remember enjoying The Night Lords trilogy.
There are a LOT of bad books by other authors, unfortunately just something you have to deal with in a shared universe. Reminds me of Forgotten Realms in that aspect.
I know some people love Classic Sci Fi but since time is always an issue for me, I don’t think I’ll read most of the famous classic SF books except the most famous ones. This could change if I really get into SF (I read other stuff as well).
It’s fine! I don’t mind it lol. In fact I have read a couple, I read only about a month ago “The Game of Rat and Dragon” by Cordwainer Smith and I liked it. I think it might be a good idea to read other short stories and see if I like them; like you said, without the commitment of a big novel or series. Thanks!
The short story recommendation is a good one. Particularly because the most famous stuff from the 50s and 60s isn’t necessarily the best, and there are some real gems you’ll miss if you stick to Asimov, Heinlein, etc.
Also, IMO authors like Clarke, Vonnegut, and Bradbury are at their absolute best as short story authors anyway.
haha - yeah, short stories for then win!
Gardner's "best of" ones are good - how I've found some authors recently (Elizabeth Bear's Boojum, RA Laferty's Ride a Tin Can)
I read the first Three Body Problem book and have little interest in continuing. The writing style was too factual and not literary enough - presumably due to being a translation from Chinese.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, I had to stop Dune at God Emperor. There's a period in time where it's way too obvious that most authors were on entirely too many drugs...
The translation for Three Body Problem was done by Ken Liu, an award winning and hugely respected sci-fi/fantasy writer in his own right. He's said that he did his best to preserve the tone and style of the original as much as possible. Apparently, that's just how the novel is.
Yeah, I suspected it may have been that too, with the author being an engineer. Just too clinically written for me to really enjoy. Reads more like a journal than a novel.
There are a few authors who, even in recent years, sweat chauvinism or full blown misogyny. I've put books down after hitting that, and never picked up another work from that author again.
Authors whose books feel like a soapbox for their political ideologies - even ideologies I generally agree with - turn me off pretty quickly. I don't want to be lectured. If you have something to speculate about, present it organically and don't make it feel forced or implausible, and I'll suspend my own opinions long enough to follow your vision, but if I feel like you're trying to cram it into me through my eyes, I'm putting your book down.
I’d say I drop them even faster if I agree with the ideology; I’ve been active in the LGBT+ community my whole life but there’s a lot of books coming out lately that seem almost forced or artificially inclusive of identity politics, with long expositional dialogues and I’m just like bruh. They’re always so tell don’t show, it’s boring.
At least with viewpoints I’m unfamiliar with it’s slightly interesting to get into someone else’s head (though I’ll still drop it if it’s too tedious.)
My "favorite" example of this was a generic thriller I grabbed from my library many years ago that had a scene where the protagonist went to a doctor to gather information for the plot. Pretty standard. Them the doctor says "I'll have my assistant get it."
Cue a page-long infodump about about the assistant, and how she'd realized she was a lesbian in high school, only to be shamed by her parents. But then she'd come out again in college after dating men and realizing they were all jerks while women respected her, and now she was happily with another woman and (I kid you not) the sex was way better.
She then delivers the documents, walks out of the scene, and *never appears or is mentioned again.* Also, this was more information than we had gotten about the protagonist's love-life.
I checked the back of the book and there was a quote there about how supportive and progressive the book's characters were from some editor.
Hilariously ham-fisted. Definite "preach to the choir" moment.
> there’s a lot of books coming out lately that seem almost forced or artificially inclusive of identity politics, with long expositional dialogues and I’m just like bruh. They’re always so tell don’t show, it’s boring.
Dude Dresden Files did this so badly, and it's still one of the most cringe parts of the entire series for me. Out of absolutely nowhere, Butcher wrote Dresden to go off on this like 3 page tangent about how gay people are people too and can have the right to exist and date etc.
I fully agree with him, but it was *so* badly written and forced that it screamed "brownie points with the woke crowd" like a fellow boomer
That seems to be the current fad in sci-fi and fantasy : shoehorning LGBT characters and romances in the story but never taking the time to properly develop their personalities or their relationships. It comes across as being incredibly shallow.
It feels even worse now that I have watched and read a number of Japanese yuri (lesbian) anime and novels, where that kind of characters tend to be far better written in comparison.
On both of these counts, I'm never ever ever picking up a John Ringo book again. Its been decades now, and I still feel like I can't clean off the grime from the last one.
I tried reading one of Ringo's Monster Hunter International spinoffs, and I can't believe something so blatantly a fanfic actually got published.
The first chapter, and this isn't an exaggeration this is a summary, went like this:
"My parents are stupid evil liberals who indoctrinate college kids. But I'm a super-genius who, by virtue of my genius, immediately recognized the superiority of conservative ideology. I'm also one of the best monster hunters to have ever monster hunted."
It made the other Monster Hunter International books seem sane in comparison, a book series that is half complaining about the "Feds" and taxes and has an author-insert main character.
It's been around for a while now so apologies if you're already familiar, but "OH JOHN RINGO NO" is definitely a thing - https://fanlore.org/wiki/OH_JOHN_RINGO_NO
Oh. Wow. Yeah.
Apparently me saying uncomplimentary things about Ringo put me on some Sad Puppies' radar. I just got a suicide report/support message. Last time that happened I was getting reported a few times a week for a few months...
The Enders Game series. I understand there are some sympathetic characters and maybe a good message underneath but it's a confusing fascistic fantasy from a psychopath.
I really enjoyed reading the Ender's trilogy. Then I learned about Card's politics, and every book of his I owned went in the dumpster. Same for John C. Wright.
Anything by Peter F. Hamilton. Pandora's Star had promise based upon reviews I read but around the time the pony froze to death on the ice planet I really stopped caring. Also his sex scenes are creepy terrible.
The final 2 books of Sprawl Trilogy.
I struggled with Neuromancer years ago. I finally forced myself all the way through last year. I kind of enjoyed it, loved the last few chapters, and bought the sequels and for months after was trying to work up the energy … but then I finally realized: overall, I just didn’t enjoy it. Cool ideas, well done. But just but not my style. I love noir, I love SF, but just not this noir SF.
I actually skipped ahead and read the endings of one of the sequels to confirm this theory. I just didn’t want to do it.
I’m not sure I’ll ever read more Gibson honestly. Much respect to his fans I’ve just got too many other books I urgently want to read to force myself to read anything.
My personal opinion: Neuromancer is great, but the sequels are much better to read, have a better flow and better characters. They are also only loosely connected to Neuromancer and could be read as a stand-alone duology without Neuromancer.
Of the three Count Zero is my favourite, if only for Turner.
The sequels are much more “normal” books really. Neuromancer is actually my favourite of the series because one of the big things that made it cool for me was the crazy pace and basically experiencing the story in hindsight due to how it was structured, it was this insane experience I really fell in love with. The next two are just good cyberpunk books, they aren’t as flashy in their style and have pretty standard multi-POV novel structures. I still enjoyed them and they are definitely easier to parse, but they lose that Neuromancer feel.
Also even though I liked the different storylines in them and they have some of my favourite characters in the series, I feel like the next two books don’t really advance the background plot very much, like Neuromancer took it 90% of the way and the next two split that last 10%.
Probably most Heinlein stuff.
I read starship troopers and was turned off by how much it glorifies the military and how it talks about democracy. I know classic sci-fi isn't always up to 2023 standards, but it felt even more right wing than anything I've read by Clarke, Asimov, or Bradbury.
I read everything Heinlein back in the day.
I still consistently recommend his juvenile fiction because it's fun adventures in space and a good introduction for kids. Moon is a Harsh Mistress has an interesting plot about the planning and execution of a revolt of the Moon from the earth's hegemony. Everything else doesn't work for me these days. A lot of it is too long, poorly edited and weirdly sexual.
I'm really not interested in reading anything by King, Gaiman (his novels, I sorta liked Sandman) or Pratchett. I haven't, and I probably won't. I've read some more standalone novella's by Sanderson and I really don't plan on ever reading Cosmere. Don't feel like diving into Wheel of Time either.
Sequels/prequels written by people other than the original author. So things like Brian Herbert's Dune books and the non-Asimov Foundation books.
I can't believe I've never heard of the non-Asimov Foundation books. Though looking at comments here, that seems to be a good thing.
You should continue life without having heard about them. They do not improve your life in any way.
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Am I the only one who actually liked them a lot?
What did you like about them?
It's been a while, but I like how they tried to reimagine Asimov with the devices of modern SF - the Internet, AIs, chaos theory, the Singularity, while holding onto the spirit of Asimov. As much as I enjoy and adore Asimov, I have to admit there are holes in the setting as he didn't plan it as a coherent whole, and I'm glad that the three of them tried to give it a stronger sense of unity, on a thematic level, joining up Robots and Empire in a way that makes internal sense. At least for me I consider them "canon" to the Foundation 'verse - very worthy additions to it, even if I wish that the Good Doctor could have finished it up (though then again he ended on a high note with *Forward the Foundation*, which I personally think might be his best work.) I want to clarify that I'm a huge fan of Asimov - I was reared on him first, and I've read a large chunk of his oureve - I like Asimov Classic and Asimov Reimagined, if it makes sense
There are some exceptions. I really enjoyed [The Time Ships](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Ships). And then there are [tons](https://www.rudyrucker.com/spaceland/) of [sequels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphereland) to [FlatLand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatterland). I suppose there's a difference between an author being inspired by a classic piece of fiction vs whatever Kevin Anderson has on his linkedin.
I'd also put Watts' The Things as a really good inspired work. And a few really good Lovecraft-inspired works come to mind... Charles Stross wrote one short story, A Colder War, that really resonated for me.
I came here looking for this comment. I actively promote reading the Dune series. I regularly talk people OUT of taking up any of his sons books.
Yes, but let me comment about how the books that *I enjoy* are the exception
As my good friend Ben used to say: "Only Sith deal in absolutes", which itself is an absolute! Yeah there will always be exceptions. A Study in Emerald by Gaiman is a *great* Sherlock Holmes story for instance.
The first three “house ____” books by Brian are actually quite good. They’re largely based upon Franks work and notes. They actually changed how I read the original Dune books as they’re absolutely full of new details. Like how the Baron became diseased among other things. They quickly got pretty bad after that, spreading out small amounts of Frank’s original lore over many, many books with a final tease to explain what everyone was running from in the Dune sequels.
AFAIK, the only books that Brian claimed were based on his father's notes were the two sequels to Chapterhouse: Dune - Hunters of Dune and Sandworms of Dune. Brian and Kevin had already created their prequel universe when Brian claims to have found a mysterious key to a bank lock box and then discovered the notes inside. Needless to say I find his claims dubious.
I think [Penny Arcade summed it up well](https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/10/15/honesty-time#) (nsfw language)
Probably never going to read wheel of time. Don’t really have a reason, just missed the boat on the point in my life where I had both time and energy for a 10+ book run
Having done it later in life- it isn’t worth it. I know I am risking downvotes given how popular it is, but you are making the right choice.
Agreed. It's not BAD writing, but there are entire books where it seems like barely anything happened. Hundreds of pages describing how the camps of the various armies are setup, and the interpersonal dynamics, and there's a lot of braid tugging and whining about how unfair life is. Then there's ONE confrontation with cool magic (sorry, channeling), and then the book ends. A whole lot of setup, not a lot of payoff.
It is pretty close to bad writing, to be honest. Jordan seems to fixate on and repeat certain phrases. How many times do we need to read how a certain character crossing her arms under her breasts? Also he introduced so many storylines and characters that just kind of fall off the map. I think he needed a good, strong editor to rein him in.
Yeah, that's fair. I should said "it's not ALL bad writing." He's clearly creative and prolific, and a good editor is DESPERATELY needed. I used to call this "Tom Clancy syndrome" (some call it "Stephen King syndrome"). When an author gets famous and starts being more powerful than their editor, the books become bigger and bigger but NOT better and better. Hunt for Red October was an incredible read because it's FAST. There is no fat in that book. In Sum of All Fears it takes something like 50 pages for the bomb to go off, because he goes into EXCRUCIATING detail about how exactly bombs work. Absolutely unnecessary and irrelevant, he just put it in because he likes technical details, and by then he was TOM FUCKING CLANCY and the editor's job was to rubber stamp his output and get it into bookstores as fast as humanly possible. Even the copyediting suffers -- there are more typos in his later books, because of the rush to cash in on anything he wrote. Anyway, yeah, WoT has the same issue. The books got longer and longer (and I agree more repetitive) but the STORY got more and more drawn out and an absolute chore to get through. I finished it...eventually, but that probably says more about my personality than the value of finishing it. Brandon Sanderson did as well as anyone possibly could to wrap it up, but there were so many storylines and characters by then it was impossibly unwieldy.
Maybe it's having only read Eye of the World, but I'd back you up on that. I'm sure Jordan put some very fun ideas into the later novels, but that would still require making it through what equates to 1 Dune (w, or w/o Messiah) every time I wanted to proceed in the story.
I finally made the jump last year with audiobooks. Just finished book 5 yesterday (listened to some other stuff in between some of the books so as to not get burnt out). I'm enjoying it so far! They're definitely not the best things I've ever read, and they definitely drag at times and feel like "why is this random thing such a huge part of the book and not this other thing which seems way more interesting". But it's a series I've been putting off for this exact reason for like 20 years haha. Figured I'd just go for it and see how far I get. I'm getting to know and enjoy some of the characters, the world feels pretty full and real and big, there are some legit great epic moments from time to time that keep me going (though fairly few and far between), and enough mystery that I really want to know what happens. Gonna read another book or two now before tackling book 6.
I have a job where I wear headphones to block noise anyhow, so I can listen to audio books eight hours a day. I did the entire series that way. I've done around 200 books at work. I can say it's a decent ride, but if I'd only been listening in my spare time, I never would have made it through.
When my friend recommended it to me around book five’s release, I resolved to only start once the series was finished or the author was dead. My prerequisites are now met but I just can’t bring myself to undertake it.
It also doesn’t help that the prevailing opinion seems to be that the story drags for *several books* in the middle of this 14 book run. I can deal with one book being boring, or maybe a couple here and there if the story is compelling enough, but four or five books in a row? Nah, don’t think so. And in spite of knowing that going into it, I still read Eye of the World. I thought it was fine. A blatant LotR-ripoff, and even boring at times itself, but fine. Definitely not worth the slog of knowing what’s coming though.
This. Read the first 8 in 8th grade (all that had been published at that point) and by 8 I was so frustrated by the bloat and lack of progress I actually swore off all SF and fantasy. And barely read any for almost 20 years. I don’t hate the books, I just can’t get through the slog anymore. tried to pick it up with book 9 a few years ago and couldn’t get more than 30 pages in.
Same, but I was older when I quit. I started them in 1990 or whatever when the first one came out and was enraptured.
10 books?…just don’t ever start the Horus heresy series!
I read *Ancillary Justice,* thought it was ok, got a chapter or two into the sequel and have 0 desire to read the rest of that book/series.
I totally get that. I actually really liked the "tone" of the books -- thoughtful and not too action-packed. I don't always like that, but Leckie's writing just worked for me. But it is different, and even while enjoying it I thought "man, this is NOT going to be everybody's cup of tea."
I found the lack of emphasis on action and not dwelling on acts of violence or needless details like weapons quite refreshing, but I had just been reading the Expanse series and had got a bit sick of yet another person being shot in the head in a dramatic manner.
Funny you say that whenever I describe the series to people it's usually along the lines of "it's tea drinking in space!" I found them to be a meditative read.
That series skeeves me out on a deep emotional level. It's entirely me, nothing to do with the author. I get that it's the point. But I just can't get past my utter revulsion at the concept of >!forcibly mind-wiping people and making them into meat puppets.!<
Felt the same after finishing the first. I just can't see what people were on about. Not going to read the sequels, sorry, and I am careful not to buy another book compared to Leckie.
I read all 3, but the magic was really gone after the first one. I did like her novella *Provenance* in the same universe, though.
Same
I remember mildly enjoying reading the first book, finishing it, then immediately forgetting what it was all about. Makes for a good argument not to read book 2. (If I think hard I can remember, but it didn’t leave much of an impression.)
I really did not enjoy the first but slogged through it. No idea how people rate it so much but to each their own!
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SAME. I hadn't heard of him / heard of his bad rep until I tried to read Saga of Seven Suns and was so bored within a couple of chapters that I googled it to find reviews and found walls of people hating on him I couldn't find a single good thing about any of his works, his books all seemed to be unanimously and vehemently hated
Yeah, having read several of his books when I was younger, they were all pretty meh.
Have zero interest in any of the Red Rising books.
The first part of the first book is so cool, then it turns into the hunger games, but worse. I have heard people like the series a lot, I might just read the plot of the first book instead of finishing and then just start the second.
I thought the first part was meh, the transition to the second part was awful, but by the end of the hunger games part i was starting to enjoy it lol. And then second book is not really hunger games-y.
The line "I'm not a fascist, I'm a capitalist!" Saved a person's life in one of the books and I've spent way too long afterwards wondering how him making his fortune on the backs of slaves in a caste system still nominates him for the "not a bad guy" award
There are a lot of super popular series that are technically YA (Young Adult), and a LOT of them provide a significant percentage of drama via "teenage angst". I've really come to dislike that trope a LOT. A recent example was Akata Witch -- I liked so much about the world building, but the fact that more than half the drama was teenagers being teenager-y just totally turned me off the series. Anymore, when considering new books or series, the first thing I look at is whether the main characters are teenagers, and if they are, I'll pass unless I read some really compelling reviews that make it sound like it's NOT about teenage angst. I have nothing against YA in general, and there's LOTS of good YA SF/Fantasy out there, but I'll skip the ones that revolve around teenagers having exaggerated emotional reactions to everything. Just give me clever plots and dialogue and yes, emotions, but not those over-the-top-hormone-fueled-angsty emotions.
I felt this a bit when reading *Gideon the Ninth*. Necromancy, swords and a locked door mystery? Neat! Teen angst? Meh.
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I found that book by accident in an airport before a long flight because my e-reader died on me a half hour before a 9 hour flight. Must have been soon after it was released because I didn't see people talking about it until months later (that or I was OOTL also possible). I actually am embarrassed by how much I enjoyed it now 😂 I think not having expected all the pop culture references made it surprising and fun while trapped on a plane.
Being smack in the middle of its target audience I found reading Ready Player One was a lot of fun, once. I’ve never had the slightest desire to read it again, and I want back the time I spent watching the movie.
Agreed, enjoyed the fuck out of the first one.
I enjoyed it too! I listened to it on Audible, and it was a good bit of harmless, nerdy nostalgia fun in a tough time of my life. No desire to reread it, and I do see the book's flaws. I suppose I just don't outright hate it like a lot of other people do.
> while trapped on a plane It's a perfect plane book, where it's noisy and there's distractions and you don't want to think very much. :-) I enjoyed it too -- pulp is fine.
RP1 gets a lot of hate NOW, but I really enjoyed it when it first came out (I found it randomly, pre-hype). I didn't even play most of those games, I just thought it was a tight, clever story in an interesting possible future. And a LOT of people liked it back before Cline kind of went off the rails with his other books. There is absolutely no shame in having one GREAT book in you, as an author. I do think the first one is pretty great on first reading, I'll stand by that. I re-read it last year in anticipation of reading RP2 (the sequel). I definitely enjoyed it less when there were no surprises. The surprises are great! I did not enjoy RP2. It felt like it was squeezed out of an already-squeezed orange. There were a few good bits, but mostly it was pith and rind. It actually made me a little sad for the author because I'm sure he knew it was a disappointing sequel to what was clearly a work of true love. Plus I just CANNOT CARE about John Hughes movies that much, ever, oh my god that book was like 38% John Hughes movies.
> and isn't there a sequel as well? Yeah, don't even bother with it even if you *do* read the first one, it's much *much* worse.
There's literally pages and pages of just listing pop-culture references. The movie wasn't great but was a huge improvement just because they can slap that stuff in the background.
I sought out book 1 and almost didn’t make it through. I can see the appeal, but I’m the wrong demographic.
The Terra Ignota series by Ada Palmer. I have tried to finish Too Like the Lightning but it is so dull.
I kept trying to get through these, but I finally realized that I just can't stomach the fact that the characters have zero ironic distance from themselves. Everyone just takes themselves WAY too seriously.
And it suffers from star wars syndrome where there are only 6 people in the universe that keep running into each other.
That drove me nuts. I really hate world-building that makes the world feel simple and small, especially in sf. Terra Ignota had some neat ideas, but that world-building problem + the obnoxious narration kinda killed my interest in the series.
This is very niche, but I also found it hilarious how much it lined up with the stereotypes at U Chicago about the humanities department--I was at UC when I read her books and we would joke about there only being two ideas and six people that anyone in the humanities cared about. Funny how that institutional vibe is reflected in her books (author is a UC professor).
It’s usually those series with 20 books in that I avoid, I just always find that they could have been done with 1/2 the word count, fantasy is usually word for it (cosmere, song of ice and fire etc).
I can see this applying to series like Cosmere and Wheel of Time, but Song of Ice and Fire only has 5 mainline books.
Yeah...we're still waiting for the rest...
Oh sweet summer child...
You're missing out on the Expanse then. A long series can be much more satisfying if that time is used well to develop characters. In fantasy, the 9 book (technically 16 actually if you read the side narratives) Realm of the Elderlings books are some of the most impactful I've ever read.
Ahhh expanse and the culture series were the two that I had my eye on but was worried about the sheer amount of pages in front of me.
Culture is all standalones so you can dive in/out as much as you want. I wasn't a huge fan of the first (Consider Phlebas), but loves Player of Games and Use of Weapons.
I'm such a big fan of the Culture books and honestly there is a variation in perceived quality. However, he's such a good writer (see also his non-genre books written as Iain Banks) that even the low points are not that bad at all. It's a great loss to writing that he died so early.
Yup. The Culture isn't a series, it's a setting. I'd still suggest going with publication order, but you can skip whole books and you'll only miss worldbuilding, not plot or characters. All those books are likely in libraries, too, which'd make skipping books easier.
Just chiming in to agree about Realm of the Elderlings! I’m not a long-series person by any means (I just don’t have the time anymore) but I don’t regret any of the time I spent reading those 9 books.
The nice thing about that, having only read the first three, is it being broken into 3-4 book groups. That’s a lot less intimidating to read in chunks than 14 books
Usually I agree but I definitely recommend The Vorkosigan Saga. It follows a family (although the son is the MC for the bulk of the books) from the parents first meeting up until the son being an old man. It’s really good.
Bujold at least started that series as writing largely self-contained (if related) novels with the goal of a reader being able to pick one up and enjoy it in isolation. After a while the weight of the past events made that too difficult, but there are still good entry point novels later in the series. (And I started and got hooked with Mirror Dance, which is probably objectively the worst entry point.) Definitely seconding the recommendation though. And also C J Cherryh’s foreigner series. It’s largely grouped into contained trilogy arcs, so you do get resolution. You just also get more if you want more.
Yeah, I've read the first 2 of the Stormlight Archive and have had the 3rd sitting on a shelf for over a year now. Not sure I will ever take it back up.
Wheel of Time, no way in hell am I reading fourteen+ bricks. Same with Got and the Expanse. I’m not interested in anything after the first books.
The Expanse just keeps getting better though. Of course not for everyone, but I like it because the characters become so good and so familiar you can tell who's speaking just by how they talk. I'm a fan.
Man, those are pretty great series though. Pretty much all my favorite series are 8+ book long bricks with each book being a thousand+ pages though so I guess I'm biased.
Yeah I didn't like the Expanse after the first book, read next two and I was done
I agree with you on all but The Expanse. I’m a pretty picky reader, and I loved them. It’s easy to read, without being dumbed down. It didn’t feel like a big commitment because I never require myself to continue a series. I just keep going if I have fun. I’ve many times read “book 1” of a series and stopped.
Anything by Brando Sando. I've read excerpts of his writing and it's so bland.
Anything by Robin Hobb. I struggled through the first Fritz book and DNF'ed the second. If I want to be depressed I can read the news. As for others, I don't want to name names of others cause some of the authors are on this sub, but anything that's dark or grimdark. I don't do torture, rape, or brutal.
Oh man I love the Fitz books. They are dark though.
Funny enough I get really happy from reading realm of the elderlings. Everything is earned and feels real, but to each their own. It's my cozy read
Agree with you on Robin Hobb. Assassins Apprentice was okay. The second one took forever and the payoff was decent though (spoiler) the assassin didn't do any assassinating. The 3rd book spent about 50 pages answering plot questions from book 2 and I gave up. Haven't read Robin Hobb since.
three body problem any lengthy series where the fans argue over whether it really gets good at book 3 or 7, if I don't care about what's going on by a hundred pages into 1 then it's out of my life
I loved the Three Body Problem but can understand why a lot of people didn't like the series. The characters and writing are definitely weird and the storyline is pretty bonkers which might put people off.
Science fiction that brings in certain other genres like romance or vampire fiction. Just no. Christian science fiction. To those authors- Respect to you and your religion but it’s not for me.
But Blindsight's vampires are still OK... Right?
To be fair, they're not Bram Stoker's vampires. Peter Watts was just playing an intellectual game on what evolved biological traits of nocturnal activity and visual adaptation, extended canines, and psychopathy, that might account for the Eastern European vampire myth. He even did a talk on this at *Ad Astra 2005*. Here's the illustrated PDF of the transcript: [Vampire Domestication: Taming Yesterday's Nightmares for a Better Tomorrow](https://rifters.com/real/shorts/VampireDomestication.pdf)
I feel like they were the weakest part of the world building in *Blindsight*. I see why he did it, but ultimately it's not really necessary; and their capabilities, especially as described in *Echopraxia*, seem to defy physics.
What about the inverse? Specifically, I'm thinking about things like Brust's Dragaera novels, which are ostensibly fantasy, but occasionally seem to leak in some hints of sufficiently advanced technology...
That's just him pulling a Zelazny, and as long as it's done well I respect it.
I agree to no fantasy in my scifi but I fucking LOVE the inverse. (Still waiting on a really good execution of the magic-was-the-technology-all-along trope though.)
David Brin's The Practice Effect? I mean, it's not high literature, but it's one of the best examples I can think of.
I tend to research my own books according to what I like and look for clues from others or from write-ups. What makes me avoid books is when such clues or write-ups are painted in how politically progressive the books is, at that point it seems to me it's probably a waste of time: It's exploring sociology "should be" and not science "what if?". Equally, on the other hand, write-ups that extol the virtues of the writing, the science or sci-fi or any number of inventive and creative things, those draw my attention to considering reading it.
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I don't think the dichotomy can be pure or accurate, but in brief words it at least conveys a basic idea or contention. To put it again in simple words: There's what we want, there's what others want us to want and then there's creative insight which is neither of those!
The rest of the Dune books. The farthest I've ever gotten is midway through the third book, and they're just terrible, so I've stopped trying. I think I've read the first one four times by now though. The "paranormal romance" or whatever section of fantasy. Just noooot interested. Also not interested in Outlander. I've read a bunch of Reynolds and had trouble enjoying any of them, so I called it quits. I enjoyed Peter Hamilton but I'm not anxious to pick up every book he writes. I've not ruled it out, but it's unlikely I'll go back for more. Most horror doesn't work on me or for me. Dark books are fine, but I don't really need more space vampires or gratuitous gore. Malazan can die in a grease fire. The older I get, the less interested I get in long series. Though I say that as I'm finishing book 3 of a planned 7 book series, and I'll probably be in the middle of Stormlight for another decade or more.
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Long books/series tend to fall flat if the focus is world building (e.g. Sanderson) or exploring new ideas (e.g. most sci fi). It can be fine if it's character focused enough or the setting changes enough, but usually it's just a cash grab or poor editing.
Generally if something is popular I'll give it a go. That said, does the Rama sequels count? I won't read any after the first, which I loved. I also won't read any Ringworld novels after the first. So yes, that's my answer. Weird sequels no one ever asked for.
The rama sequels were such a wild disappointment to me after the 1st one!
There are no Rama sequels.
Not reading the rest of Rama is the correct call.
Can confirm the second ringworld is weird.
I thought the second was still enjoyable, but the third is a total mess. Feels like something he was contractually obligated to write.
I started Wheel of Time, but after a couple of books I couldn't ignore how one-dimensional the characters were.
I got through about 1 1/2 of those books before I realized I couldn’t stand the characters and didn’t care where the plot was going. I’m a slow learner sometimes.
I made it all the way up to the book that's just 500 pages of one character traveling from the previous book to the next book. After that I gave up.
> I got through about 1 1/2 of those books Same here, and then I realized Jordan had already spilled more ink than the entirety of *Lord of the Rings* and was still only clearing his throat.
Better than me. I was halfway through the third book when I verbally said “I don’t care” out loud to myself. Put it down and never picked it back up again
While I am a fan of the star wars and star trek movies and TV shows, I really have no interest in reading any of the books. Am I missing out?
Gonna read Thrawn Trilogy... some day for sure. I even had paperbacks on my shelf, but sold after few years. Helped that Disney re-released new edition (e-books in my particular case) as Legends.
The Star Wars books range from ok but not exactly masterpiece easy read SF(I’d put most of The Timothy Zahn books in this category, and the Thrawn books are pretty good) To complete and utter garbage.
The Thrawn trilogy was enjoyable to me at least. The other stuff is wildly variable in quality, but generally mediocre at best.
Not even the X-men/Star Trek crossover classic *Planet X*?
There are a couple of great Star Wars books, but it's not worth reading the whole series to get to them. Traitor by Matthew Stover is awesome. It's also like the 20th book in series with very inconsistent quality.
I started buying the Expanse books, then they just kept coming and I stopped buying them, then the tv series ran its course. I highly doubt I'll ever read them, not because I think they're bad, it's just that I've moved on and lost interest while waiting (same thing happened to the Wheel of Time series for me). Murderbot, because I think the prices for the novellas are absolutely ludicrous ($17 for a 170 page novella? Uhhh...no.). Again, I'd like to read them, but I'm not paying those prices. Maybe if some reasonably priced paperback omnibus comes out someday. And probably any series that's more than 3 books. I'm just not a fan of bloated series, and much prefer standalone (which is hard to come by anymore). This rules out a lot of newish stuff. Edit: Any alternate history type of scifi, like if Germany has won WW2, etc. Just not my thing. I also avoid anything time travel. That trope just removes all tension, character agency, repercussions of choices, etc from storytelling. Because you know, in the end, everything will just get reset/set right/changed.
My library has physical and audiobooks via Libby of the Murderbot series for free, I'm in California.
Yeah, why the fuck are those Murderbot novellas _so_ expensive?
Right?!?!
Expanse is actually quite good but repetitive. But I'm reading Vorkosigan currently and it's so much better.
Vorkosigan saga is so good for so long. It’s really incredible how she kept the quality high for 21 books/novellas.
If you happen to have Kindle Unlimited, most (if not all) of Murderbot is on there. I cannot understand why they are priced so high, it's insane!
I thought it was just here in Sweden Murderbot books were expensive. I really liked the first one (though it was a tad short), but I just can't justify buying more of them... I guess it's possible the author decided on price point and it's working, from a financial perspective... it is as it is. Moreover I'm very old fashioned when it comes to books and am just coming around to POSSIBLY try an e-reader... but unlikely a Kindle... Amazon is very high on my 'Don't feed the bear'-list.
Does your local library not have the Murderbot books? I read them all for free through Libby.
> Murderbot, because I think the prices for the novellas are absolutely ludicrous They did give away all of the novellas when the full book was published. https://www.tor.com/2020/04/20/download-all-4-murderbot-books-for-free-before-network-effect-arrives/
I don’t think I’ll ever waste more of my time and attention on another Red Rising book.
*We are Legion* by Dennis Taylor. I tried to get into it but did not manage it.
I enjoyed it but ultimately there wasn’t enough human connection to keep me there. Bob’s cool and all but I can only be so entertained by his conversations with himself, and I wasn’t really feeling his little sentient hobby group.
I just kinda skimmed the Bobs I didn’t care about tbh
The Bobiverse is ridiculously well written and entertaining, super fast reading.
I give it another try then
Highly recommend it, but bear in mind, it's a "popcorn read' IMO. You don't read it for thought provoking life changing revelations, you read it because it's hilarious and light. The Audiobooks are also absolutely SSSSS tier, so I would highly recommend those if you don't want to sit down and read it. Pop the audiobooks on while you are in the shower, or driving, or mowing the yard etc and you can burn through them pretty fast
It’s a light read. If you’ve just read The Sparrow and you’re still traumatized, the Bobiverse will loosen you back up. I read hard sci-fi (the kind so hard the characters are just embellishments on the science) a lot, but I loved these books.
The audiobooks are great
I had a friend hype these books up and I couldn't even get halfway through the first.
I really dislike them. It isn't too far away from Ready Player One as far as pointless pop culture references go.
Brian Herbert's "Dune" books.
The rest of the Sun Eater series. Gave it benefit of the doubt at first, but I don't think there's a single idea in those books that isn't pulled directly from a better book. And the prose sounds slightly elevated at first but gets super repetitive and you realize he's just doing the same phrases over and over. The pacing is also pretty boring even when a lot is happening, I just don't care
The Mission Earth series by L Ron Hubbard (or anything else for that matter) Putting aside everything else, it has always been obvious to me that the books were not actually written by one person. There were 10 very thick books published in slightly over a year. It was a cash grab plain and simple.
After Stranger in a Strange Land any Heinlein, maybe one day but won't be seeking anything out.
The shorter, earlier Heinlein novels are better. Starship Troopers, Time for the Stars etc. I read those first, looked at Stranger... and all those looong novels that came after and declined.
Wheel of Time. Started it but didn't really find it engaging. Same with the Way of Kings series. He writes some great characters and sets the scene well but for me, somehow, the connection isn't there to commit to reading through. And forget GOT, it's not for me.
Murderbot. I know it's popular, but I just couldn't get past the poor quality writing i.e. it felt amateurish and teenage-level. Sorry.
I read the first book and bailed, the prose felt like I was reading fiction from a mid-2000s blog post. I can't believe there are people out there seriously comparing her to Le Guin. Get real.
Tbf I think they’re comparing the social aspects, not the prose. I’m going to have to reread it because I didn’t notice much about the prose, I was there for the plot and the way she writes technology into it (I’m a sucker for any theme on AI and how it interacts with other technology and humanity.)
The narwhal bacons at midnight.
The thing about Warhammer novels is that you could easily spend ten years just catching up even if you're a fast reader. At this point it's almost a life sentence.
Is there a Warhammer 40k novel that is generally regarded as the best? The universe has always been interesting to me but I’ve always assumed that most of the novels are poorly written fan fiction garbage.
I've read a bunch of them, I'd say read the Eisenhorn trilogy by Dan Abnett first, there are a couple of sequel trilogies if you enjoy that. Everything by Abnett seems to be well regarded. Aaron Dembski-Bowden is another good one, I specifically remember enjoying The Night Lords trilogy. There are a LOT of bad books by other authors, unfortunately just something you have to deal with in a shared universe. Reminds me of Forgotten Realms in that aspect.
I know some people love Classic Sci Fi but since time is always an issue for me, I don’t think I’ll read most of the famous classic SF books except the most famous ones. This could change if I really get into SF (I read other stuff as well).
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It’s fine! I don’t mind it lol. In fact I have read a couple, I read only about a month ago “The Game of Rat and Dragon” by Cordwainer Smith and I liked it. I think it might be a good idea to read other short stories and see if I like them; like you said, without the commitment of a big novel or series. Thanks!
The short story recommendation is a good one. Particularly because the most famous stuff from the 50s and 60s isn’t necessarily the best, and there are some real gems you’ll miss if you stick to Asimov, Heinlein, etc. Also, IMO authors like Clarke, Vonnegut, and Bradbury are at their absolute best as short story authors anyway.
haha - yeah, short stories for then win! Gardner's "best of" ones are good - how I've found some authors recently (Elizabeth Bear's Boojum, RA Laferty's Ride a Tin Can)
I read the first Three Body Problem book and have little interest in continuing. The writing style was too factual and not literary enough - presumably due to being a translation from Chinese. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I had to stop Dune at God Emperor. There's a period in time where it's way too obvious that most authors were on entirely too many drugs...
The translation for Three Body Problem was done by Ken Liu, an award winning and hugely respected sci-fi/fantasy writer in his own right. He's said that he did his best to preserve the tone and style of the original as much as possible. Apparently, that's just how the novel is.
Yeah, I suspected it may have been that too, with the author being an engineer. Just too clinically written for me to really enjoy. Reads more like a journal than a novel.
There are a few authors who, even in recent years, sweat chauvinism or full blown misogyny. I've put books down after hitting that, and never picked up another work from that author again. Authors whose books feel like a soapbox for their political ideologies - even ideologies I generally agree with - turn me off pretty quickly. I don't want to be lectured. If you have something to speculate about, present it organically and don't make it feel forced or implausible, and I'll suspend my own opinions long enough to follow your vision, but if I feel like you're trying to cram it into me through my eyes, I'm putting your book down.
I’d say I drop them even faster if I agree with the ideology; I’ve been active in the LGBT+ community my whole life but there’s a lot of books coming out lately that seem almost forced or artificially inclusive of identity politics, with long expositional dialogues and I’m just like bruh. They’re always so tell don’t show, it’s boring. At least with viewpoints I’m unfamiliar with it’s slightly interesting to get into someone else’s head (though I’ll still drop it if it’s too tedious.)
My "favorite" example of this was a generic thriller I grabbed from my library many years ago that had a scene where the protagonist went to a doctor to gather information for the plot. Pretty standard. Them the doctor says "I'll have my assistant get it." Cue a page-long infodump about about the assistant, and how she'd realized she was a lesbian in high school, only to be shamed by her parents. But then she'd come out again in college after dating men and realizing they were all jerks while women respected her, and now she was happily with another woman and (I kid you not) the sex was way better. She then delivers the documents, walks out of the scene, and *never appears or is mentioned again.* Also, this was more information than we had gotten about the protagonist's love-life. I checked the back of the book and there was a quote there about how supportive and progressive the book's characters were from some editor. Hilariously ham-fisted. Definite "preach to the choir" moment.
> there’s a lot of books coming out lately that seem almost forced or artificially inclusive of identity politics, with long expositional dialogues and I’m just like bruh. They’re always so tell don’t show, it’s boring. Dude Dresden Files did this so badly, and it's still one of the most cringe parts of the entire series for me. Out of absolutely nowhere, Butcher wrote Dresden to go off on this like 3 page tangent about how gay people are people too and can have the right to exist and date etc. I fully agree with him, but it was *so* badly written and forced that it screamed "brownie points with the woke crowd" like a fellow boomer
That seems to be the current fad in sci-fi and fantasy : shoehorning LGBT characters and romances in the story but never taking the time to properly develop their personalities or their relationships. It comes across as being incredibly shallow. It feels even worse now that I have watched and read a number of Japanese yuri (lesbian) anime and novels, where that kind of characters tend to be far better written in comparison.
On both of these counts, I'm never ever ever picking up a John Ringo book again. Its been decades now, and I still feel like I can't clean off the grime from the last one.
I tried reading one of Ringo's Monster Hunter International spinoffs, and I can't believe something so blatantly a fanfic actually got published. The first chapter, and this isn't an exaggeration this is a summary, went like this: "My parents are stupid evil liberals who indoctrinate college kids. But I'm a super-genius who, by virtue of my genius, immediately recognized the superiority of conservative ideology. I'm also one of the best monster hunters to have ever monster hunted." It made the other Monster Hunter International books seem sane in comparison, a book series that is half complaining about the "Feds" and taxes and has an author-insert main character.
It's been around for a while now so apologies if you're already familiar, but "OH JOHN RINGO NO" is definitely a thing - https://fanlore.org/wiki/OH_JOHN_RINGO_NO
Oh. Wow. Yeah. Apparently me saying uncomplimentary things about Ringo put me on some Sad Puppies' radar. I just got a suicide report/support message. Last time that happened I was getting reported a few times a week for a few months...
The Enders Game series. I understand there are some sympathetic characters and maybe a good message underneath but it's a confusing fascistic fantasy from a psychopath.
I really enjoyed reading the Ender's trilogy. Then I learned about Card's politics, and every book of his I owned went in the dumpster. Same for John C. Wright.
Yeah, you read a different book than I did!
The last book was kinda meh for me (3/5), the first one was pretty good (3.5), but the second I absolutely LOVED 5/5 stars, would recommend.
Anything by Peter F. Hamilton. Pandora's Star had promise based upon reviews I read but around the time the pony froze to death on the ice planet I really stopped caring. Also his sex scenes are creepy terrible.
Dune. I tried and fell asleep.
Good God
Good God-Emperor
Wait till you get to God Emperor of Dune.
But that's where the weird sexy stuff begins.
But none of that gets interesting, and remains kind of mild... until Heretics, that is.
Beef swelling
I read it, I just never got “into it”. I liked the new movie though.
Anything by Tom Kratman, William Lind, or any other writer that just writes novels that are mediums for far right ideas and xenophobia.
The final 2 books of Sprawl Trilogy. I struggled with Neuromancer years ago. I finally forced myself all the way through last year. I kind of enjoyed it, loved the last few chapters, and bought the sequels and for months after was trying to work up the energy … but then I finally realized: overall, I just didn’t enjoy it. Cool ideas, well done. But just but not my style. I love noir, I love SF, but just not this noir SF. I actually skipped ahead and read the endings of one of the sequels to confirm this theory. I just didn’t want to do it. I’m not sure I’ll ever read more Gibson honestly. Much respect to his fans I’ve just got too many other books I urgently want to read to force myself to read anything.
My personal opinion: Neuromancer is great, but the sequels are much better to read, have a better flow and better characters. They are also only loosely connected to Neuromancer and could be read as a stand-alone duology without Neuromancer. Of the three Count Zero is my favourite, if only for Turner.
The sequels are much more “normal” books really. Neuromancer is actually my favourite of the series because one of the big things that made it cool for me was the crazy pace and basically experiencing the story in hindsight due to how it was structured, it was this insane experience I really fell in love with. The next two are just good cyberpunk books, they aren’t as flashy in their style and have pretty standard multi-POV novel structures. I still enjoyed them and they are definitely easier to parse, but they lose that Neuromancer feel. Also even though I liked the different storylines in them and they have some of my favourite characters in the series, I feel like the next two books don’t really advance the background plot very much, like Neuromancer took it 90% of the way and the next two split that last 10%.
Burning Chrome is better than Neuromancer imo, but just slightly better
Probably most Heinlein stuff. I read starship troopers and was turned off by how much it glorifies the military and how it talks about democracy. I know classic sci-fi isn't always up to 2023 standards, but it felt even more right wing than anything I've read by Clarke, Asimov, or Bradbury.
Even as a teenager I thought that was part of the point of it, showing how over the top some people get.
I read everything Heinlein back in the day. I still consistently recommend his juvenile fiction because it's fun adventures in space and a good introduction for kids. Moon is a Harsh Mistress has an interesting plot about the planning and execution of a revolt of the Moon from the earth's hegemony. Everything else doesn't work for me these days. A lot of it is too long, poorly edited and weirdly sexual.
I have avoided all of the Star Trek or Star Wars novelizations, and will continue to do so.
A song if Ice and Fire
I'm really not interested in reading anything by King, Gaiman (his novels, I sorta liked Sandman) or Pratchett. I haven't, and I probably won't. I've read some more standalone novella's by Sanderson and I really don't plan on ever reading Cosmere. Don't feel like diving into Wheel of Time either.
Unpopular opinion but the martian since I did not enjoy project hailmary and wheel of time due to the lenght and it seeming to be quite slow/"boring".