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ArisKatsaris comments on January 2015 Media Thread - Less Wrong Discussion
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Fiction Books Thread
Waylander book 1, a fantasy series. Readable, but meh. The world is a pretty standard fantasy setting, the sudden character development from selfish to self-sacrificing is not at all believable, the fantastic elements are run-of-the-mill. Relying on deux-ex-machina and coincidences doesn't help. Still, a way to pass the time without getting too bored.
Camouflage by Joe Haldeman: a disappointment. No idea how it won the Nebula in 2004. A mundane shape-shifter story, with no emotion, no reason for the protagonist to do what he does, and an idiotic ending.
Currently reading: The Blade Itself, Pretty amazing so far. Great characters, great dialogue, a quality world. The author does an admirable job of self-consistently and believably describing the inner dialogue of the major characters, which are all multidimensional and interesting, not just good or evil. Reminds me of the Song of Ice and Fire, only a PG version. The trilogy has not won any awards, so I am afraid that the quality will drop off.
Huh, I loved Camouflage. Different strokes I guess.
Could be the difference in the medium, print vs audiobook.
I felt the writing quality wasn't good enough, even in The Blade Itself; I think I might have read the second one but certainly gave up before the third. If you like that kind of world I found The Straight Razor Cure to be a more enjoyable/better-plotted example of it.
The Peripheral; very readable, very Gibson. Felt if anything like a reworking of Pattern Recognition into a more explicitly sci-fi story; the same style, the same kind of arc, but with an explicit premise that requires a bit more suspension of disbelief. I liked it for being a vision of the post-scarcity future that at least took a few stabs at telling us what ordinary people do all day (in contrast to e.g. the Culture novels, where I never had any sense for what non-special-circumstances people did with themselves). Though part of that is probably just being set in London.
Yeah, I felt Un Lun Dun was weaker Miéville. Kraken is better (by which I mean I remember some of it rather than none of it), but still relies overmuch on a lazy, conventional kind of magic. The works of his that I'd really recommend are The City & The City (shorter, clever, and in some sense not even sci-fi) and the Bas-Lag series (Perdido Street Station et al) (long, high but non-tolkien fantasy, plot that was clever enough (at least for me). Mostly I love the worldbuilding so maybe not for people who don't value that as much as me).