The Book Thread

[warty goblin]

Zero Punctuation has a great video about how "Bad [video]games are better than bland [video]games".

Obviously his genre is videogaming but I think the same concept applies! I'd much rather read something that's bad in a fascinating way than read something that takes no risks. In fact, this past year I had to read a crappy harlequin romance because I lost a bet, and I was disappointed by how mediocre it was.

Ayup. I have concluded that for me really enjoy something it has to either excellent, or actually bad in some way. Not necessarily an abject failure, just something that didn't get the memo on how stuff is supposed to go.

It's the middle of the road stuff that just kills me. Though here I'd actually split mid quality stuff into two approximate camps. The first is your harlequin romance novel, or what I call genre service. It is a piece of genre work whose only purpose is to be a completely unsurprising exercise is delivering the tropes of that genre. Romance falls into this a lot, but any suffienctly codified genre is prone to it. Its sort of like C grade fan fiction, but fan fiction of the genre's cliches, rather than a specific work. It isn't bad, because it isn't ambitious enough to fail enough to be bad, ot isn't surprising because the whole purpose is to be unsurprising.

The second is just a blandly competent execution of a decidedly middlebrow concept. It is developed enough to have a theme, but it's a very safe theme like believe in yourself or stick up for your friends, and it is delivered in the most basic way possible. Nothing about this is actually challenging to the audience, either of their understanding or their worldview , but it's just complex enough you can get the point, then feel smart for getting the point. It isn't bad because while it has ambitions, the are so limited as to be utterly within it's grasp, and if it is at all surprising its probably by accident and will be shied away from with absolute terror.

[Wookieetank]

Finished reading Elysium Fire over the weekend. Turned out not quite how I expected

Spoiler

Show

was not the early days of the melding plague

, but was a solid read. Figured out most of the reveals before they happened, but not in an "oh its so obvious way", and more "I knew it!" once the reveal happened (YMMV). I'm finding more and more of my reading these days is Space Noir (or Noir in space, take your pick), and not mad at this trend. Its makes for a surprisingly good mash up most times.

[Peelee]

This one ALSO has an audio book. Time to pick it up. I can listen to it after the My Cousin Vinny book. Which I started yesterday and am about half an hour into and is almost surreal.

Strap in, you've got a wild ride ahead.

[Eldan]

Regarding Elysium Fire and Chasm City:

Spoiler

Show

Chasm City already gives a pretty solid idea about how the Melding Plague happens, via the alien Gideon and his nanotechnology. However, it is my theory (and one that others also have) that the Melding Plague specifically originates by some kind of combination of the Clockmaker's mind and Gideon's nanotech, because the plague is so often described as creative and malicious.

[Wookieetank]

Regarding Elysium Fire and Chasm City:

Spoiler

Show

Chasm City already gives a pretty solid idea about how the Melding Plague happens, via the alien Gideon and his nanotechnology. However, it is my theory (and one that others also have) that the Melding Plague specifically originates by some kind of combination of the Clockmaker's mind and Gideon's nanotech, because the plague is so often described as creative and malicious.

Spoiler

Show

Once Lethe was discovered to be packed full of smart matter was very much expecting some sort of confrontation between the Clockmaker and Aurora for control of it, and that kicking of the melding plague.

Much as I'd enjoy a follow up book to this, would be very stoked for a book following the Ultras and/or Spiders.

[Eldan]

Have you read The Great Wall of Mars and it's sequels? Just short stories, but they are about the Conjoiners.

[warty goblin]

This one ALSO has an audio book. Time to pick it up. I can listen to it after the My Cousin Vinny book. Which I started yesterday and am about half an hour into and is almost surreal.

I should note if you are actually planning on listening to this that there's another not terribly fun moment of... I'm not sure exactly what, but it's definitely odd.

Sarah gets dumped by her long-suffering girlfriend, on account of some very bad but entirely in character behavior. Her response is to go to a cowboy bar and start dancing/making out with two dudes, one of whom is her boss' boyfriend. There's a lot of alcohol involved, as well as a literal out of body experience/Astral projection bit, which is brought on by the magic sword plot device and/or is just a really on the nose metaphor for watching yourself make really big mistakes.

Anyway, they go out to the boyfriend's truck and things start to get very serious when Sarah decides this is no longer a thing she should be doing, and so does the obvious thing and beats the crap out of the guys and then passes out. She gets taken to the hospital, as happens when you get found unconscious in a parking lot in your underwear, and the police are like "were you sexually assaulted?" and she's all "no I was hooking up with two guys until I came to my senses and kicked their butts and passed out" and the police go "that sounds plausible and also normal and like nothing criminal happened." There are later plot ramifications, but that's the major incident.

This mostly works as a very self destructive choice rooted in the character's self-loathing, but it is deeply strange. And also very uncomfortable, because oh boy are the consent lines blurry as hell.

[Wookieetank]

Have you read The Great Wall of Mars and it's sequels? Just short stories, but they are about the Conjoiners.

Yup. Part of why I find them so fascinating, and want more of them. Much as I enjoy Humans in Space!(TM), its far more interesting for me to look at how humanity could change physiologically and the effects that'd have on societal structures.

[Eldan]

Have you read The Quantum Thief? My favourite vision of transhumanity.

[Wookieetank]

Have you read The Quantum Thief? My favourite vision of transhumanity.

Not yet, but that looks right up my alley. Thanks for the recommendation!

[warty goblin]

On to Honeyed Words, the sequel to Black Blade Blues. There's some chance of this developing somewhat interesting world building after all.

I'm also optimistic that we'll get a proper love triangle going. A boring trope to be sure, but our heroine has a proven track record of awful decision making and the emotional intelligence of an overachieving radish, so if goes that way, things gonna blow up good.

Thankfully the protagonist and author remain as horny as ever. Not 50 pages in and we get a delightfully gross and utterly gratuitous filk groupie orgy, a real thing that I'm sure definitely happens. Never change book, never change. If this continues, By book 3 we may reach Andy Sideris movie levels of utterly surreal horniness.

[Batcathat]

Thankfully the protagonist and author remain as horny as ever. Not 50 pages in and we get a delightfully gross and utterly gratuitous filk groupie orgy, a real thing that I'm sure definitely happens. Never change book, never change. If this continues, By book 3 we may reach Andy Sideris movie levels of utterly surreal horniness.

With all the talk about ChatGPT lately, I'm a little tempted to use this as a prompt and see how deep into the gutter we can drag its poor innocent algoritms.

[Dragonus45]

Strap in, you've got a wild ride ahead.

Couldn't do it. The opening bit in Alabama just felt to spiteful and pointless to the story and it soured me on the whole book and, now it just feels like entirely the wrong kind of bad for me to enjoy it. I'm listening to the Black Blade Blues now, and it's actually not even really bad.

Spoiler

Show

The bit about how the MC met her girlfriend reeks of casual sexism with how all the men are stupid drunk idiots happy to punch each other at drop of a hat but I'm not sure how much of that is the main character just being a generally a bit grumpy and how much is just the author making a statement. I have really appreciated the way the MC's issues feel very real though.

[LaZodiac]

Couldn't do it. The opening bit in Alabama just felt to spiteful and pointless to the story and it soured me on the whole book and, now it just feels like entirely the wrong kind of bad for me to enjoy it. I'm listening to the Black Blade Blues now, and it's actually not even really bad.

Spoiler

Show

The bit about how the MC met her girlfriend reeks of casual sexism with how all the men are stupid drunk idiots happy to punch each other at drop of a hat but I'm not sure how much of that is the main character just being a generally a bit grumpy and how much is just the author making a statement. I have really appreciated the way the MC's issues feel very real though.

A cursory glance at the book and its author suggest it's the latter of those options, and it doesn't much let up. Eesh.

[Peelee]

Couldn't do it. The opening bit in Alabama just felt to spiteful and pointless to the story and it soured me on the whole book and, now it just feels like entirely the wrong kind of bad for me to enjoy it.

Its pointless, yes, but I wouldn't call it spiteful. It read to me like someone trying ro capture the small-town hick-ness of the movie and just failing miserably.

That said, not being able to get through that book isnt exactly a badge of shame. Its just so ****ing bad.

[Dragonus45]

A cursory glance at the book and its author suggest it's the latter of those options, and it doesn't much let up. Eesh.

Well the writing itself is good so far so it's mostly a minor annoyance really.

Its pointless, yes, but I wouldn't call it spiteful. It read to me like someone trying ro capture the small-town hick-ness of the movie and just failing miserably.

That said, not being able to get through that book isn't exactly a badge of shame. Its just so ****ing bad.

I guess they might have been trying to capture the charm of the small town in the movie, but the sort of gross detail the author went into involving how much of a fat burping pushy slob of a man so desperate for his next bit of food he almost chokes to death in the 5 minutes of "screen time" he gets makes me think he probably let some personal issues slip through. If it weren't for that bit I probably would be fine, the badness is funny in it's own right at times. But the joy of the thing was just gone from the experience.

EDIT
So I'm rewatching the movie right now to get the taste of the book out of my ears, and I just got to the grits scene and it clicked for me. The joke with the small town stuff had Vinny as much as the but end of a joke as anyone, like who reacts in such a suspicious and strange way to porridge with some butter on it!

[warty goblin]

Couldn't do it. The opening bit in Alabama just felt to spiteful and pointless to the story and it soured me on the whole book and, now it just feels like entirely the wrong kind of bad for me to enjoy it. I'm listening to the Black Blade Blues now, and it's actually not even really bad.

Spoiler

Show

The bit about how the MC met her girlfriend reeks of casual sexism with how all the men are stupid drunk idiots happy to punch each other at drop of a hat but I'm not sure how much of that is the main character just being a generally a bit grumpy and how much is just the author making a statement. I have really appreciated the way the MC's issues feel very real though.

It's never actually bad, it's just slightly not polished, which is fun.

And I think that's mostly a protagonist's perspective thing, particularly by the second book there's some dudes who aren't useless gibbering sex morons.

[Dragonus45]

It's never actually bad, it's just slightly not polished, which is fun.

And I think that's mostly a protagonist's perspective thing, particularly by the second book there's some dudes who aren't useless gibbering sex morons.

I love urban fantasy so I have a lot of forgiveness in my soul for a rough first book. Also I survived Girl With the Dragon Tattoo so this could be twice as weird about it and still be easy.

[warty goblin]

I love urban fantasy so I have a lot of forgiveness in my soul for a rough first book. Also I survived Girl With the Dragon Tattoo so this could be twice as weird about it and still be easy.

I love rough things, so I tend to really enjoy rocky first novels. It's once the author gets more polished that the boredom sets in.

At least as of a third of the way through book 2 it never gets that weird. Really book 2 is a pretty normal urban fantasy, albeit hornier than most that aren't explicitly paranormal romance. And even those tend to just be more explicit, rather than this series' constant thrum of everybody wanting to get it on. It's honestly sort of adorable.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

I love rough things, so I tend to really enjoy rocky first novels. It's once the author gets more polished that the boredom sets in.

Oh, a few years ago I read Patricia Briggs' first book, Masques. Mostly competently put together actually, but there are a couple of plot-points/-holes where you go "Okay, yeah, this is a debut novel".

Spoiler

Show

Like the part where one of the main characters straight up forgets for three days that his lifelong companion and true love is a shapeshifter, and would thus likely have shifted her shape and need to be identified by scent.

[Peelee]

I guess they might have been trying to capture the charm of the small town in the movie, but the sort of gross detail the author went into involving how much of a fat burping pushy slob of a man so desperate for his next bit of food he almost chokes to death in the 5 minutes of "screen time" he gets makes me think he probably let some personal issues slip through. If it weren't for that bit I probably would be fine, the badness is funny in it's own right at times. But the joy of the thing was just gone from the experience.

I understand, and agree. Fortunately thats the only part like that, ans its also completely irrelevant to the rest of the story. But i know the feeling of being too soured on something to continue. For example, any time I know Ryan Reynolds is in a movie, i know to not watch that movie.

IEDIT
So I'm rewatching the movie right now to get the taste of the book out of my ears, and I just got to the grits scene and it clicked for me. The joke with the small town stuff had Vinny as much as the but end of a joke as anyone, like who reacts in such a suspicious and strange way to porridge with some butter on it!

Agreed. The movie didnt really mock the people in rural USA but used it to showcase how out of his comfort zone Vinny was.

[Dragonus45]

I understand, and agree. Fortunately thats the only part like that, ans its also completely irrelevant to the rest of the story. But i know the feeling of being too soured on something to continue. For example, any time I know Ryan Reynolds is in a movie, i know to not watch that movie.

OK I have to ask, why Ryan Reynolds?

[Peelee]

OK I have to ask, why Ryan Reynolds?

Just dont like him. Its a me thing. He just emanates being smug in the worst ways and after seeing enough things with him in it i just stopped, because im quite simply never going to like him. From everything I've heard hes a very pleasant guy and does good things and has a nice life and i wish him success and happiness but I'm nkt going to watch anything wirh him in it if i can help it.

[The Glyphstone]

Some things in life simply cannot be forgiven , like the Green Lantern movie.

[Eldan]

Just dont like him. Its a me thing. He just emanates being smug in the worst ways and after seeing enough things with him in it i just stopped, because im quite simply never going to like him. From everything I've heard hes a very pleasant guy and does good things and has a nice life and i wish him success and happiness but I'm nkt going to watch anything wirh him in it if i can help it.

I understand. This is 100% me and Paul Rudd.

[warty goblin]

Honeyed Words, the sequel to Black Blade Blues continues to be diverting.

The fantasy elements are fine, if so utterly typical its hard to get much excitement going about them. But the book's rather sarcastic tone helps a lot to keep them from gumming up the pacing too much. There are elves, they can use mirrors as doorways. OK that's weird and stalkerish, so put the mirror behind the couch and move on.

The emotional and character beats however remain pretty solid, arguably even quite good. They're really the most compelling part.

If the narrative has a weakness its that the fantastic and emotional pieces don't complement each other to any great degree. They don't clash, magic stuff happens in the plot, which drives character feeling and action and its all fine. But there's no syncope between them, nothing about the fantastic that deepens the character parts or vice versa. But doing that well is really hard, so while this is a shortcoming it's a pretty usual one.


The general level of horniness is definitely being maintained. At this point it has spread to the supporting cast. This is amusing in its thirstiness, but so far lacks anything as fun as randomly DTF valkryries.

[Ionathus]

Finished Project Hail Mary! I enjoyed it. Absolutely a spiritual successor to The Martian, in both its strengths and weaknesses. The same vivid imagination of sci-fi problems, almost the same practical solutions (occasionally we get a handwave and An Eridian Wizard Does It), the same glut of unnecessary characters, and the same rapid-fire plot that tries to pack in just one or two too many crises.

Seems like Weir has a comfort zone, but I'm not complaining because "more of The Martian" is all I need to hear to be interested. Thank you for the recommendation, Glyphstone!

Spoiler: further thoughts

Show

The First Contact scenes were the highlight of the book. I could've read an entire book dedicated to those first days of communication between Grace and Rocky - first contact is fascinating to me, especially in the problem-solving parts of communication. I love the Cosmic Call project for the same reason. Weir did an excellent job of playing with that and exploring the psychology of a civilization that never needed to "hear light."

Just like with Martian, the bits on Earth were the weakest. I don't know why Weir puts so many unnecessary characters in his books, but it was even more egregious this time. At least with The Martian, Earth trying to do problem-solving and communication with Mars was part of the shtick and it worked. But here, Grace is alone in space and Earth can't help. Doing flashbacks was a clever way to show his science homework, but we didn't need to meet every bit character who invented a new solution. We're never coming back to any of them and it shows. We only got basically 1 scene with every character and it made them feel very flat and archetypal.

Even at the end of the novel, I felt nothing for Ilyukhina and Yao, even though we got hints at the start that Grace was very sad and was fighting back the memories to stay functional. That didn't really go anywhere. Only Stratt was at all interesting to me, and I wanted to focus on Grace & Stratt's relationship the most (of the Earth relationships at least). Doesn't feel like I got a good resolution on that - and the amnesia drug betrayal was interesting but I don't feel like the story did enough with it. Realizing you're a coward who had to be forced into a suicide mission at the end of that suicide mission is a cool storytelling opportunity. I wish we'd gotten more about that.

Basically, I loved Rocky and always preferred more scenes with "him" than anyone on Earth. Tau Ceti was the emotional core of the story, so just keep us there.

Just dont like him. Its a me thing. He just emanates being smug in the worst ways and after seeing enough things with him in it i just stopped, because im quite simply never going to like him. From everything I've heard hes a very pleasant guy and does good things and has a nice life and i wish him success and happiness but I'm nkt going to watch anything wirh him in it if i can help it.

Ryan Reynolds is a good actor but he's definitely developed a "smarmy" typecast. Smarm is particularly subjective and can be such a deal-breaker, so I'll always understand it as a reason for not liking an actor/character/story.

[The Glyphstone]

Finished Project Hail Mary! I enjoyed it. Absolutely a spiritual successor to The Martian, in both its strengths and weaknesses. The same vivid imagination of sci-fi problems, almost the same practical solutions (occasionally we get a handwave and An Eridian Wizard Does It), the same glut of unnecessary characters, and the same rapid-fire plot that tries to pack in just one or two too many crises.

Seems like Weir has a comfort zone, but I'm not complaining because "more of The Martian" is all I need to hear to be interested. Thank you for the recommendation, Glyphstone!

Spoiler: further thoughts

Show

The First Contact scenes were the highlight of the book. I could've read an entire book dedicated to those first days of communication between Grace and Rocky - first contact is fascinating to me, especially in the problem-solving parts of communication. I love the Cosmic Call project for the same reason. Weir did an excellent job of playing with that and exploring the psychology of a civilization that never needed to "hear light."

Just like with Martian, the bits on Earth were the weakest. I don't know why Weir puts so many unnecessary characters in his books, but it was even more egregious this time. At least with The Martian, Earth trying to do problem-solving and communication with Mars was part of the shtick and it worked. But here, Grace is alone in space and Earth can't help. Doing flashbacks was a clever way to show his science homework, but we didn't need to meet every bit character who invented a new solution. We're never coming back to any of them and it shows. We only got basically 1 scene with every character and it made them feel very flat and archetypal.

Even at the end of the novel, I felt nothing for Ilyukhina and Yao, even though we got hints at the start that Grace was very sad and was fighting back the memories to stay functional. That didn't really go anywhere. Only Stratt was at all interesting to me, and I wanted to focus on Grace & Stratt's relationship the most (of the Earth relationships at least). Doesn't feel like I got a good resolution on that - and the amnesia drug betrayal was interesting but I don't feel like the story did enough with it. Realizing you're a coward who had to be forced into a suicide mission at the end of that suicide mission is a cool storytelling opportunity. I wish we'd gotten more about that.

Basically, I loved Rocky and always preferred more scenes with "him" than anyone on Earth. Tau Ceti was the emotional core of the story, so just keep us there.

Ryan Reynolds is a good actor but he's definitely developed a "smarmy" typecast. Smarm is particularly subjective and can be such a deal-breaker, so I'll always understand it as a reason for not liking an actor/character/story.

Spoiler

Show

I noted and liked that in the end, he really is still a coward - faced with the opportunity to return to Earth, he stays on Tau Ceti despite its effects on his health, because going home would mean seeing how Earth had changed, who had lived or died. It was more realistic somehow than having him discover his inner hero and change that fundamental part of his character.

What I wish had been included was a far-future epilogue of sorts, where the first Eridian ship to visit Earth brings Grace's preserved body home with them.

[Ionathus]

Spoiler

Show

I noted and liked that in the end, he really is still a coward - faced with the opportunity to return to Earth, he stays on Tau Ceti despite its effects on his health, because going home would mean seeing how Earth had changed, who had lived or died. It was more realistic somehow than having him discover his inner hero and change that fundamental part of his character.

What I wish had been included was a far-future epilogue of sorts, where the first Eridian ship to visit Earth brings Grace's preserved body home with them.

Spoiler

Show

Far future epilogue would've been great. I think the choice to remove "what happened to Earth?" as a question was probably the right one - the book was already stuffed with so many underdeveloped Earth-based plotlines. But not resolving what happened on Earth did remove a lot of interesting opportunities. Melting Antarctica to buy time, for example, was really interesting, and I wanted to know more about those kinds of mitigation strategies.

Maybe, if Weir had all these ideas for the different Astrophage plotlines on Earth, he could've split the novel into two? The first novel can be all the juicy space plot, following Grace's journey, maybe with just a hint of backstory on the early experiments and the barebones of putting together Project Hail Mary. And then a companion novel could've tackled Earth, how they put the team together, how they mitigate the climate disaster, the aftermath of launch and waiting for the probes to return. And then the upheaval when Grace reveals his contact with intelligent life and the solution to the problem.

Lots of interesting stories, and I think they suffered for being squeezed in the cracks here and there instead of getting to breathe on their own. It would solve my complaint about the thin characterization too. Plus I'd be interested to see if Stratt really did get court-martialed for her behavior in wrangling Project Hail Mary.

As for cowardice: I disagree. I believe the ending on Erid isn't indicating his cowardice -- in fact, it's rewarding him for his bravery.

My thinking goes like this. From the first moment Grace regains his early memories and remembers it's a suicide mission, he thinks a lot about how he's never going home. It really weighs him down (even in 0g, ha ha ha). And when Rocky offers the extra fuel to get him back, he's elated. Getting to go home to Earth is a huge deal to him. The Earth memories too, they all paint a picture of a guy who never wanted to go on this mission and just wants to return to his life of comfort. When he gets tested for coma resistance, he's grumpy about it. He's very "better them than me" when he meets the volunteer astronauts. And when he's asked to fill in, he takes it poorly and, as you stated, is a coward about it. Up until Stratt just straight-up shanghaies him.

And that memory, learning that he was a coward, comes at an important moment because it's near the end, right as the Taumeboa experiment is hitting hiccups and then as they're jetting away to save their respective worlds. If you want to pick a "climax" of the book, I'd place it at the moment he realizes Rocky is in danger from the Taumeboa and chooses to go rescue his friend and an entire alien world, at the cost of (he believes) his own life. He already sent the beetles, all of them even, which fulfills the original mission parameters. Going back himself would be a bonus but isn't necessary to get Earth the info it needs -- the beetles can get there faster anyway.

So the decision is only about whether he, himself, gets to survive or not. And he decides to go save Rocky and drive him to Erid, knowing that he doesn't have remaining food for the journey back to Earth. It's only after Rocky is rescued that he realizes that his food problems aren't an issue. And in my opinion, that moment would've been stronger if we'd only had that realization once they were years en route to Erid, once he'd committed to that course of action.

So my argument is that Grace only ever wanted to go home, and he chooses to give that opportunity up to save his friend, believing that choice will kill him. And then he's rewarded for that choice by getting to live out his life on an alien world! I mean, can you imagine it? I'm not even a scientist, and I'd find that prospect hard to turn down. Grace began his career as a xenobiologist arguing that non-water-based life was possible, and he (likely) ends his life getting to study and even teach a civilization of it.

Add in that he didn't have many social or emotional connections left on Earth (especially after the time dilation of three relativistic flights), and I don't see the choice to not return as cowardice. I see why you do, but I think he already overcame his cowardice in the choice to save Rocky - his first true friend.

[The Glyphstone]

That's a fair counterpoint.