Jᴀᴄᴜʀᴜᴛᴜ - Tʜᴇ Cᴀsᴛ Oᴜᴛ

Hi all, was just wondering if someone could help me "expand my horizons" as far as books are concerned...I'm loving the Dune series so far, but I'm also into the Star Wars expanded universe. It isn't always (or even usually) good, but when it is I really get into them. I have purchased Stephen King's Dark Tower series, among other works by that author, and also the first Song Of Ice And Fire book by George R.R. Martin. Can somebody give me some suggestions that are entertaining, and relatively obscure?

Search here by topic/theme that interests you:

http://www.omphalosbookreviews.com/inde ... arch/books" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Depends what you're looking for, "entertaining" is pretty broad. Omph's review site is a great one to go hunting for potential new reads on.

What do you find entertaining? If you like thriller shoot-em-up stuff, I'd recommend Richard Morgan, his work is excellent and not mindless action-junk, fairly intelligent stuff actually, highly political/social.

If you want just plain awesome, check out Iain M Banks - I'd recommend starting with The Player of Games as it does the best job of introducing a new reader into his "Culture" universe. Really awesome work, thoroughly humourous, dark, very intelligent as well.

I think I could find alot of things entertaining. I don't like books that focus on romance, or books that are just completely over the top with one message. I'm pretty open ended when it comes to entertaining things, I'm willing to try just about anything at the moment...haven't found out where my boundaries are just yet I wrote down some stuff from Omphalo's review site, and I'll look at Richard Morgan too, thanks for the suggestions!

Have you read This Immortal? It tied with Dune for the Hugo, though I'm confused and ashamed that I can't remember a thing about it other than its tone and atmosphere.

Those were really the selling-points for me, as the plot itself wasn't terribly exciting or original.

Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos.

SadisticCynic wrote:Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos.

The Forever War, Joe Haldeman, 1974

Martin will keep you occupied for a long time if you enjoy it, plus there is a decent discussion here of that series as well.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clark. If you love magic you need to read this one.

A Canticle for Leibowitz Walter Miller. Required, period.

The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicles #1) Patric Rothfuss This book is amazingly well written, especially when you realize its the authors first published work. Belongs in the top 10 fantasy books ever written. The second book is just as good, but becomes a bit long winded in places. Third book isn't out yet.

Horus Rising Dan Abnett. If you like Warhammer, required reading. Even if you don't I found this book to be an amazing piece of world-building and mood.

Winds of Dune By Sellout & The Hack Read it. Now you understand why. Bonus: Every book you read from now on will be at least 1 star better. This is what a Zero star book looks like. Small Print: No, you can't have your time or your innocence back.

If you are in the Star Wars EU I suggest you stop. Once Traviss got a hold of it and made the Mandolorians more powerful than the Jedi, when even Fett in his 70's could take them down (with contempt), it went from silly to stupid fanboy porn. The Zhan Trilogy was the only one worth much anyway.

Ampoliros wrote: If you are in the Star Wars EU I suggest you stop. Once Traviss got a hold of it and made the Mandolorians more powerful than the Jedi, when even Fett in his 70's could take them down (with contempt), it went from silly to stupid fanboy porn. The Zhan Trilogy was the only one worth much anyway.

Oh yeah, I stopped reading FURTHER into the continuity after that series (legacy of the force was it?) because of the ridiculous pro mando anti jedi sentiments in Traviss's books, Jacen's fall which was a carbon copy of ROTS, the stagnant development of basically every Jedi character and Daala's return. I've been reading new releases that don't continue the story of all the now geriatric characters, and some of them are actually quite good. I haven't lost hope in Star Wars just yet, but LOTF was definately a turn off as far as reading further into the timeline is concerned.

Alright, so if you don't want to be beat over the head with the same message over and over and over and over in one book, then stay the fuck away from Terry Goodkind's "Sword of Truth" series. I liked the first few books, childish though they were, when I was a teen, later grew out of them. But after the first few Goodkind basically went sliding down a slope of pure shit into "preach at people all day" land... very bad stuff. Very repetitive, like more repetitive than KJA's writing.

And to top it off, he's got an enourmous ego.

SandChigger wrote:

SadisticCynic wrote:Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos.

Plus ONE MILLION. Awesome stuff.

SandRider wrote:The Forever War, Joe Haldeman, 1974

Damnit, why do I keep forgetting this book? I love this book.

Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive, (Sprawl trilogy) by William Gibson

Accelerando, by Charles Stross. You can download this for free (and legal!) http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-st ... intro.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Revelation Space, by Alistair Reynolds

The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K Le Guin.

A Thing of Eternity wrote:

SandRider wrote:The Forever War, Joe Haldeman, 1974

Damnit, why do I keep forgetting this book? I love this book.

it's the only other "science-fiction" book in my top 20 American Classics ....
(and I have also never read the "sequels" ... and most likely won't ...)
(again, the importance of this book is also tied to its time - in 74, nobody believed we'd really ever
pull out of Vietnam for good ... 72 was when the army realized they'd seriously lost control of
the GIs in-theater, and tried real hard to get the "veterans" from the mid-sixties to re-enlist ...)

SandRider wrote:

A Thing of Eternity wrote:

SandRider wrote:The Forever War, Joe Haldeman, 1974

Damnit, why do I keep forgetting this book? I love this book.

it's the only other "science-fiction" book in my top 20 American Classics ....
(and I have also never read the "sequels" ... and most likely won't ...)
(again, the importance of this book is also tied to its time - in 74, nobody believed we'd really ever
pull out of Vietnam for good ... 72 was when the army realized they'd seriously lost control of
the GIs in-theater, and tried real hard to get the "veterans" from the mid-sixties to re-enlist ...)

I've never read the "sequels" either, I probably though because I love Haldeman and I think they're really pretty unrelated to The Forever War.

One of the things I loved about it was how Haldeman managed to utilize both STL and FTL fairly realistically (well... whatever, when is FTL ever realistic?) to show just how ridiculous and difficult anything resembling an inter-stellar war would actually be. Plus, the 'nam allegory (is allegory the right word here?) is great, even for someone who wasn''t around at that time I think it transports the reading into that whole "what the fuck are we doing, and WHY the fuck are we doing it again?" kinda mindset.

after the second big war against germany, the generals thought they had their never-ending struggle with the communists ...
fit their bill exactly, enough of a threat of a huge full-scale outbreak to justify the huge "defense" budget and development
of new weapons &etc, plus enough small-scale "bush-wars" to engage the commies "by proxie" ... satisfied their bloodlust and
need for maintaining a standing, combat-tested army ....

but then, goddamn it, that whole "communism" thing had to go and unravel itself ... took a few years before they could get
the same scenario going against them Muzzlims ... and if France doesn't go ahead and give the Iranians the Bomb before too
long, the CIA will have to do it themselves ... and say Pakistan did it ... can't have a forever-war without the threat of nuclear
holocaust hanging over the citizens' heads ...

SandRider wrote:after the second big war against germany, the generals thought they had their never-ending struggle with the communists ...
fit their bill exactly, enough of a threat of a huge full-scale outbreak to justify the huge "defense" budget and development
of new weapons &etc, plus enough small-scale "bush-wars" to engage the commies "by proxie" ... satisfied their bloodlust and
need for maintaining a standing, combat-tested army ....

but then, goddamn it, that whole "communism" thing had to go and unravel itself ... took a few years before they could get
the same scenario going against them Muzzlims ... and if France doesn't go ahead and give the Iranians the Bomb before too
long, the CIA will have to do it themselves ... and say Pakistan did it ... can't have a forever-war without the threat of nuclear
holocaust hanging over the citizens' heads ...

I like the way you think! Will definately pick up The Forever War...Is it anything like The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien?

Shepherd492 wrote: I like the way you think! Will definately pick up The Forever War...Is it anything like The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien?

I don't think I'd compare them other than the fact that they're both about war, and both kinda deal with the mundane qualities of war at some times.

I thought the way time dialation played into how the war was fought was the most interesting theing about Forever War.

Freakzilla wrote:I thought the way time dialation played into how the war was fought was the most interesting theing about Forever War.

The way it played into how the war was fought was awesome of course, but I think the way it played into the politics of the war and the experiences of the character was what made it for me.

I'm a big fan of hard-SF, and I like STL stuff (Reynolds is pretty good for this, even though his STL ships are as fast as they could possibly be, and the area of space the novels take place in is very tiny) because of how it totally messes up everything that anyone tried to accomplish and essentially makes interstellar war nearly impossible, as it makes the idea of any kind of interstellar nation or empire also almost impossible. Of course, The Forever War has FTL involved, but it still captures some of the utter confusion and nearly-impossible-to-plan-for-fucking-anything-factor that would come with an attempt at STL warfare.

The Forever War sequels sucked soiled ass. The first book was the story he wanted to tell. The rest were stories he n$$ded to tell.

Good to know, I was under the impression they were sort of independant stories set in the same universe, which could be ok, but if they're actually sequels then yeah, I don't see how they couldn't suck!

I did read one of his newer books recently called Camouflage that I thought was pretty good.

I've read his most six recent big books. Camoflague is as good ad it gets, though Old Twentieth is shaping up to be decent. I say in on two seminars with him at Worldcon last week, one of which was on SFF poetry. That guy can write some fuckin' poesy; good, good stuff.

Omphalos wrote:I've read his most six recent big books. Camoflague is as good ad it gets, though Old Twentieth is shaping up to be decent. I say in on two seminars with him at Worldcon last week, one of which was on SFF poetry. That guy can write some fuckin' poesy; good, good stuff.

Dude, you been drinking? I've been drinking.

Really wiped out (+ lazy), but poesy is acceptable.

Omphalos wrote:but poesy is acceptable.

Mmmm... iffy.