This is definitely the case. If the Three Body Problem’s style turns you off, don’t bother continuing. Personally, I loved the whole trilogy. The concepts and century-spanning changes in the world were fascinating. And I suppose I have a high tolerance for uninteresting characterization.
I may bite on the later books in the future if I am searching for something. I didn’t dislike Three Body Problem, but based on the almost-universal praise I really expected it to be better than I found it.
I do most of my “pleasure” reading via audible, so I usually post those links rather than to the paper copy. Typically I try to comment on the quality of the narrator here too, but I forgot in this case. Luke Daniels is just fine in this, handling the Chinese names with ease.
Re Three-Body Problem, I hear the sequels are different in content and tone. I thought the first volume was interesting to begin with, with the cultural revolution stuff. But the interstellar SF was just plain crazy as far as I was concerned, and I lost interest as soon as that content began to dominate.
Before the Storm by Rick Perlstein
This is the first in a trilogy of books Perlstein wrote about the change in the republican party to the far right. It is subtitled the end of consensus in America.
I had already read the 2nd and 3rd book. The second book being about the Nixon era and the third being about the rise of Reagan. This book is about the Goldwater run for the presidency. I had skipped past it previously because I didn’t have that much interest in Goldwater. The other two books, Nixonland and The Invisible Bridge are very good.
This was a hard book for me to get into. Goldwater comes across as a pretty dull guy who really never wanted to be president anyway. In fact, one of the biggest take aways from the book is how much Goldwater’s run reminds you of Trump. Goldwater was more idealogue in his beliefs than Trump, but you really get the feeling he never thought out the real long term effects of things he believed or said. He thought saying them was enough.
What I do enjoy about this book, as with the other two, is how it takes a snapshot of the history of the time. The people, places and things. The names that appear in this book only to reappear in the other two. The background on the Nixon and Reagan years. The cultural and social events of the day.
The book is mixed on LBJ, giving him credit for the Civil Rights Act while basically calling him out on his paranoia during the election. It also doesn’t paint Bill Moyers in a very good light. I had never known his background as a hatchet man for LBJ. He was basically LBJ’s director or dirty tricks, and some of them were very unethical.
I would give this a 2.5 stars out of 5. You probably should read this before the other two, but I think in recommending the trilogy I would also tell you to just start with Nixonland.
Finally getting around to reading Persepolis Rising, the 7th book of the Expanse series.
While it’s generally enjoyable in the way all of the books are (they’re beach-reads to me; not particularly well written, just fun space opera), there are some issues I have with it off the bat. I’m halfway through, but feel free to answer if you’ve read the book. Spoilers below!
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I’m having an issue with the 30 year time jump. While I get it makes sense in order to have Laconia do their build-up, so far it’s having almost no impact on the characters themselves. Prior books had not exactly gone out of their way to indicate that older folks had it much better than we do now, so having the characters age all of a sudden should impact their personalities, their physicality, etc. Other than a throwaway reference here and there, this seems to be a non-issue. The characters are literally exactly the same. They’ve apparently exhibited zero development.
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Let’s get back to the Laconia thing. So, Duarte saw something in the probe reports that made him do his thing. You’re telling me that in the 30 years, no one got access to the same probe reports? And inferred the same thing? There are a lot of people in the Solar System (and now beyond!). And there are some governments that had a lot of time to be paranoid and careful after the Inaros stuff and the rebuild from the last books. This just feels like total plot convenience.
Anyhow, as stated - I’m enjoying it, but this one feels a little more “hole-y” than some of the others.
I pretty much agree, except that I do think the books are mostly well-written. The 30-year span between the last two books is totally unearned, and is only done because they wanted to do this story. They couldn’t think of any other stories to tell that wouldn’t have required it? Or even a way to do this story without it? For pete’s sake, even Avasarala is still alive!
Also, it’s kind of a big FU to the TV show. Fire all the actors!
I enjoyed the Three Body Problem a lot and thought the second book (The Dark Forest) was even better.
I was stuck on the 6th book in the Expanse series for so long that I finally gave up on it and moved onto other books early in 2018.
How did you get past all the long chapters from the perspective of these new characters who are the bad guys? Did you read them in detail? Is it okay if I come back to it and mostly skip those chapters? Or are these guys going to be important?
God those are the worst. Terribly written, or at least the characters are so annoying that I can’t tell the difference between bad writing, or great writing but from the perspective of awful, annoying humans whose heads you don’t want to be in. Not because they’re, like, Hannibal Lecter or anything; one is like Che Guevara and Donald Trump had a baby, and the other is more or less an emo\millenial Belter brat.
To answer your question - maybe they’re important in Books 8 and\or 9, but they have zero impact on Book 7. I’d read the last chapter for … Marco? Because what happens to him is “important” in the sense that it probably is an omen for shit later (again, unrealized). And probably skim the ending for … whatever the eff the kid’s name is, because it’ll probably come back (has not yet).
NK Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy’s 3rd volume just won the Hugo for best Novel this weekend. I was just thinking how rare it is for third books in a trilogy to win the Hugo award, and found out that the first two books in the series also won Hugo awards for best Novel. And that this third book (Stone Sky) also won the Nebula Award this year. I’m impressed.
Wishlisted the trilogy! :)
That trilogy is absolutely brutal and wonderful and deserves every single award it’s gotten.
Cool. Next time I pick up that book, I’ll try to skip that chapter I was on, see if the story still makes sense without it.
I took advantage of travel/downtime last week to get through a few books I had set aside, starting with The Last Policeman series. I really liked these, they showed what the life of a police detective, and the world around him, is going through with the discovery that a massive asteroid is going to collide with earth in a few months’ time, ending life as we know it.
As you can imagine, things progress downhill through each book. In the first, collision is six months away; in the second, two months to go; and the final book describes the final week before impact. I won’t give anything away, but it’s really interesting how the main character keeps plugging along with his work as a way of coping with impending doom. It may be a bit of a downer, but it’s definitely a good read.
Also got about halfway through Legionnaire, the first book of the Galaxy’s Edge series. I’m finding this one to be a slog - it was described as “stormtroopers in Afghanistan” and that seems to fit, our protagonists are high tech soldiers way out on a desolate planet fighting against natives in guerilla warfare. And man does this book love its tech and it’s tactics, it’s like if Tom Clancy wrote sci-fi. If that sounds up your alley, best of luck. Don’t know if I’ll finish.
So my local library had their annual book sale in a local mall over the weekend. For about $12 I ended up with 14 books, mostly Cussler and Francis with a few other authors for me to try. I also got 1491 and Krakatoa for a buck each.
Absolutely. Hands down one of my favorite reading experiences of the past few years. Can’t recommend the Broken Earth trilogy enough.
Really? I have been avoiding them because I had heard the Hugo awards were some type of Ballot stuffing thing.
I have not participated in this thread for a while, so I have some catching up to do:
I like the Harry Hole Norwegian police procedurals, so I’ve been reading some other Scandinavian ones. Department Q, Denmark, Kurt Wallender, Sweden, and Inspector Erlendur, Iceland,have all been good to excellent.
I’ve also read the Jack Campbell Pillars of reality fantasies, and am 2 books into the sequel trilogy.
I’ve read the Black Fleet and Omega Force military SF series.
I’ve read a couple of Nameless Detective books, I had not realized this series has continued from when I left off a good 20 years ago.
I just started Peter F Hamilton’s Night’s Dawn trilogy.
The Sad Puppy debacle actually demonstrated that the Hugos were fairly immune to ballot stuffing. And the procedures for balloting have since been amended to prevent bloc voting attempts and the Puppies campaigns have basically withered up and blown away. The Hugos are fine.
They had a couple campaigns to try that but I assure you neither Jemisin nor her stories would have met with approval by the Sad Puppy contingent, who were fighting for the poor, oppressed conservative white man demographic.