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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   4352 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 04, 2022

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Anyone have good fantasy or sci-fi recommendations? I have read a ton of speculative fiction and am always looking for more good, completed series. I tend not to read something if it's ongoing. Sadly the subreddits I've found for fantasy don't tend to skew towards my taste.

Some examples of more obscure fantasy series I've enjoyed:

  • Malazan

  • The Traitor Son Cycle

  • The Black Company

  • The Second Apocalypse

  • The Inda Quartet

  • Chronicles of the Black Gate

  • Mother of Learning

  • Commonwealth Saga

  • Night's Dawn Trilogy

  • The Void Trilogy

  • Diaspora (Greg Egan)

  • Aching God Series

  • Annihilation

  • The Broken Earth

  • Memory, Sorrow, Thorn

  • Book of the New Sun

  • Otherland

  • Gravity Dreams

  • Chronicles of Thomas Covenant

  • Magician series by Feist

As you may be able to tell I prefer my series to be somewhat morally gray, and at least try to have a system of magic/technology that makes internal, consistent sense.

I've heard Worth the Candle is good but haven't gotten around to reading it. Any other suggestions in line with the books/series I listed above?

Diaspora was so good, I've read it three times.

Blindsight by Peter Watts

Three Body Problem trilogy by Cixin Liu

Anathem by Neal Stephenson

The Culture should definitely be on your list. Player of Games and Excession are total bops

I have also read it, and love it. This list was a bit rushed I see now!

Blindsight, by Peter Watts.

  1. Brave new world is my favorite sci-fi book (a classic which has actually aged well)

  2. revelation Space is superb hard sf which centers around the Fermi paradox (while revelation space is great the rest of the series is disappointing). The characters are definitely morally grey although it’s usually more a case of being unable to identify what is actually good. Alistir Reynolds is my favorite contemporary author, he has written many short stories if you wanted to get a sense of his style (Troika is my favorite)

  3. Passage at arms is another one by glen cook. It’s a sci-fi novel which is easily described as Das Boat in space

It's Das Boot.

How dare you get your German wrong!

Have you read anything by Guy Gavriel Kay? He writes mostly standalone fantasy novels, often with little or no magic and sometimes veering close to historical fiction, but with an epic scope. My favorite is Tigana, which is inspired by medieval/renaissance Italy and has a comparatively large amount of magic. Another good one is The Lions of Al-Rassan, which is inspired by medieval Spain.

I would also recommend The Iron Dragon's Daughter and The Dragons of Babel by Michael Swanwick, They're very well written, weird and grim novels set in a steampunkish fantasy world.

If you liked Diaspora by Greg Egan, I'd recommend his short stories. He has several really good collections (I've read Axiomatic, Oceanic and Luminous), but I think he has many stories available on his website. This is one of my favourites: https://www.gregegan.net/MISC/MORAL/Moral.html

If you read Magician series by Feist, did you get to the Empire series, that he wrote together with Janny Wurts? It's more political and a bit of a precursor the Game of Thrones, and I liked it a lot more than the main Magician series.

Thank you! Yes Kay is incredible although I've only read Lions and the Sarantine Mosaic. I should check out more of his work.

Not sure if it'll be up your alley based on what you liked so far, since I haven't read almost all of them, but I really liked The Golden Oecumene trilogy. It's set in the very far future, in what I'd call a trans-humanist utopia. It's hard to describe without spoiling it, so I'll just quote the plot introduction from Wikipedia:

The author's first novel, it revolves around the protagonist Phaethon (full name Phaethon Prime Rhadamanth Humodified (augment) Uncomposed, Indepconsciousness, Base Neuroformed, Silver-Gray Manorial Schola, Era 7043). The novel concerns Phaethon's discovery that parts of his past have been edited out of his mind—apparently by himself.

Added to my list thanks.

For epic/classical fantasy, I always recommend Patricia McKillip’s Riddle-Master of Hed trilogy. It’s my ur-example of how to worldbuild outside of a Tolkien nation war/angel war or D&D adventuring party in a land of many gods context. It’s at once the most personal and the grandest story I’ve read in fantasy, operatic in scale and tone.

I also recommend Matthew Woodring Stover’s SF / fantasy series, the Acts of Caine. Starting with Heroes Die, we follow the son of a failed freedom radical on a cyberpunk dystopia world, an actor with a brain implant which allows his studio bosses to stream his adventures live to the world’s paying customers in full five sense VR. He travels through a portal regularly to an alternate Earth where magic is real and there are various Tolkien-esque/D&D-style races, and commits acts of destabilization (assassinations, starting and ending wars, etc.) to keep the masses entertained. The novel’s trouble begins when the cult of a strange new god captures his ex-wife, a river goddess and an actor herself. Where this novel shines is the visceral descriptions of bodily combat; the writer is a martial artist. It gets more philosophical in the second and fourth novels, and delves more into worldbuilding in the third, but the first novel is one of my top five books of all time. Once I reach the 2/3 point, I can’t put it down until I finish it, even if that’s 2am.

Riddle-Master of Hed is so overlooked. It should be in top 10 lists.

I will check out your 1st recommendation, I've read acts of caine and I actually shouted it out in the book thread.

Feist has more books set in Midkemia that are worth reading if you haven't already. The series Shadow of a Dark Queen > Shards of a Broken Crown is particularly good.

Yup I've read all 12 (?)

A Deadly Education is probably right up your alley: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50548197-a-deadly-education

Looks good, but like I mentioned I have a pretty strict rule about only reading finished series.

The last book comes out this month, if that helps.

Larry Coreia's Son of the Black Sword and Richard Morgan's The Steel Remains are both interesting intersections of Fantasy and Sci-Fi, and I'm still not entirely sure which side of the line they're on.

They both have a lot of fantasy tropes: disillusioned anti-heroes, talking swords, divine messengers, etc

But they also have suggestions of inter-dimensional travel and UFOs that may or may not suggest the setting is a computer simulation.

I've read the steel remains and quite liked it. If you like those stories the acts of caine sounds pretty similar.

You've probably tried it, but how about The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan? I recommend this because I like it, and I also liked Malazan, The Black Company, Mother of Learning, and the Magician series, so it's possible that you might also like the series.

Unfortunately wheel of time is just one series I could never quite finish. I read the first 7 or so books but really lost steam around there.

Have you tried any Brandon Sanderson? I enjoyed many of the books on your list and also love his books, many of which are standalone or in completed series.

I enjoy him but most of his plots are a little too small scale, I will say that storm light archives is pretty awesome so far but I quit reading it because it will take so long to get finished.

If you haven't read The Expanse, give it a go. It really is exceptionally good. Comparable to A Song of Ice and Fire, but tighter, and it sticks the landing. The worldbuilding is very strong, the plot is intricate and internally consistent. There are a few weaker points around characterization, particularly female characters, but overall one of the better works of fiction I've read.

I'll second The Expanse, and recommend The Dagger and the Coin and The Long Price Quartet by (half of) the same author[1]. All three fit your criteria of having defined (if imperfectly understood) magic/tech and focusing on the conflicts between somewhat-sympathetic groups.

If I were to blurb all three series at once, it would go: People are meddling with forces they don't understand. You, as the reader, get a better view of the upcoming disaster than any individual character, but they really should have known better. The disaster causes drastic changes that nobody was adequately prepared for, and everyone has to readjust to the new world before the next thing happens.

1 "James S. A. Corey" is Daniel Abraham and Ty Frank. Those two series are by Abraham.

Good lord how did I forget about those two series, Long price especially is an incredible series and one of my favorites. The magic system and cultural world building is unparalleled.

Also read the expanse and loved it.

I have been enjoying Pact and Pale. Its magic system is internally robust and well-developed, in my opinion. Sadly, it doesn't quite meet your criteria three times: its system has baked-in morality (though it's not linked to contemporary morality and it's one of the core conflicts of the serials that characters don't always agree with it), it is more like TVTropes than science, and Pale is ongoing.

Wildbow is great, really enjoyed worm. I can usually tolerate baked in morality if it's written well, but the ongoing nature of the story is usually a dealbreaker.

Pact is finished.

Didn't know this, thanks.

House of the New Sun

Did you mean Book Of The New Sun by Gene Wolfe? Because the only thing I found on google for HotNS was a reddit post by a user named "VerbalAcrobatics".

Ahh yes, thank you. I was going partially by memory.

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