What did you just read?

Kajiimagi said:

I've tried to read James S.A. Corey's new series 'The Captive's War' 3 times now. Book 1 is 'The Mercy of Gods' and It starts really slow, and takes a while to pick up.

I got to a part where it really picked up and decided I'd at least finish it , then last night realized it was going nowhere and not only DNF but I deleted it. The Expanse was ok as a series but I'm sitting this one out.

I'm restarting Dungeon Crawler Carl. It seemed too ludicrous to me but I'm going to give it another go.

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I feel like the expanse would’ve been better as a duology or trilogy. Book 1-2 were pretty good. I hated book 3. I liked book 4. That’s about it though out of the 6 and 1/2 I read. It started off strong and then turned into a woke soap opera. Likewise had a similar issue that George RR Martin had with too many POV characters and introducing too many new characters late in the game. One of the two authors was martins assistant when he wrote a lot of game of thrones.

Daniel Abraham (one of the expanse authors) hangs out on reddit a lot and he has replied to a few threads of mine just like complaining about Pastor Anna or something else (it was pre covid so I forget).

the low hanging deflection on reddit is “you don’t like pastor Anna because she’s Christian!” And that take is extremely smooth brained. I don’t like Anna because she’s hypocritical, judgmental, pious, and holier than thou. Not because she’s a believer. Matt Murdock, Nightcrawler, Shepherd (Firefly), etc are all well written christian characters.

INTHEMIDSTOFLIONS said:

I liked book 4.

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The stuff with Joe Miller in book four is the only time in the series I felt like I was reading something special. Something about it really seized my interest. I kinda had a similar experience with the Expeditionary Forces series where they were good enough to keep going but the stories rarely transcended the setting and characters to deliver something that knocked your socks off. It happened but at a rate of less than once per book. That's on me of course.

Now for something completely different -

I just finished



the biography of pro wrestler Brian Pillman. I don't watch any of the current product and have not for a long time but I go through a couple wrestling books per year.

It was good, decently written with inside information from the people close to him. The author sucks his cock for the first few chapters going over the early adversity he faced as a small kid with some health issues on his way to a season as a professional football player but it's good. For this kind of book it's above average. Raven's commentary is a standout. There isn't anyone on the planet that saw more of themselves in Brian than Raven did. I've heard Raven's a smart dude from basically everyone and yeah, I think he's a real smart dude.

Kajiimagi said:

Finally finished the Hyperion Cantos, which was a omnibus of the 4 Hyperion books.

They are

Hyperion - This is the classic featuring our favorite bad? guy The Shrike! A 10' tall 4 armed blade covered Lord of Pain. Told in the style of stories of people making a trek to the time tombs.

The Fall of Hyperion - This felt like the end of the series to me. Not sure I need to spoiler a book written in 1990 but

Spoiler

after the humans nuked the farcaster network and basically brought the cyber people to an end

I thought this was at an end.

These 1st two books were really good and I do not regret re-reading them.

I didn't realize until I started that I'd never read these last 2, and they are a total retcon of the start of the series. I cannot count how many times I read 'You were told xyz, but that was a lie, and we will explain it when the time is right just trust me.'

Frankly when I was still 1000+ pages from the end of the last book and nothing was happening (just pages and pages and pages of descriptions of locations and people at meetings , I DNF'd and read the wiki summary.

Endymion

The Rise of Endymion

First 2 are some of the greatest sci-fi of modern times, right up there with Dune (IMO) but the last 2 sucked.

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Springbok said:

Read Between Two Fires in like 2 days. WOW. Been a while since a novel stuck with my like that. Can’t stop thinking about it. Beautifully written, great ending, interesting characters. A few eye roll moments aside, I recommend.

Between Two Fires (novel) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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Never heard of it but it sounds pretty neat. I’ll add it to my ever growing TBR list

Springbok said:

Read Between Two Fires in like 2 days. WOW. Been a while since a novel stuck with my like that. Can’t stop thinking about it. Beautifully written, great ending, interesting characters. A few eye roll moments aside, I recommend.

Between Two Fires (novel) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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I think this is the only one of Buelman's books I haven't read. Those Across the River, The Necromancer's House, The Suicide Motor Club, The Blacktongue Thief and The Daughters War were all varying degrees of good to great.