I don’t get the sense that it was intended to have follow-ups, but yeah, the ending is pretty nonexistent. The journey, however, is entirely delightful. Which I cannot say for the Baroque Cycle.
I just finished Grey Sister, the followup to Red Sister by Mark Lawrence (who wrote the Prince of Thorns, Red Queen’s War trilogies). It’s fantastic. Lawrence was already one of my favorite authors, and this new trilogy is his best work imo. I can’t improve on the description someone posted on Twitter of “Hogwarts, but with assassin nuns.” It’s not quite as grimdark as his previous trilogies, but I highly recommend it for anyone who likes gritty fantasy.
I read that about a year ago. I confess a couple times I just skipped forward a few pages, but stick with it because there is a pretty good story there.
I have heard a lot of good about it, and I have enjoyed it so far. It is more that it is over 1100 pages. Luckily I’m reading it on my kindle.
I enjoyed the first book, and have the other two, but never started them. For whatever reason it’s never been the book I pick up when looking for something new…
I am currently reading Interface by him though. It’s decent to good, but not Anathem level, which might be my favorite outside his early cyberpunk works.
If you liked the first book of the Baroque Cycle, you should get back to it because imo the other two are substantially better. (In fact, I found the first book to be a slog.)
I recently bought Snow Crash and figure to give it a try soon.
Just expect it to be a little bit dated. In 1992 the concept of memes was progressive and mind-blowing.
Speaking of which, anyone read any of Dawkins’ old stuff, The Selfish Gene and Extended Phenotype? Dude pretty much invented the concept of memes, it’s weird seeing this stuff blow up decades later.
The Selfish Gene is a tour de force of how to write popular science. Still excellent after 40 years.
@Scuzz Snow Crash is really good.
I re-read Snow Crash a couple years back (I read it 1992 as well) and I thought it held up relatively well. The re-read allowed me see how Stephenson’s concepts shaped later writers and TV projects. The Audiobook is really excellent – Jonathan Davis narrating.
Any book that teaches you to boil your urine to produce white phosphorus gets two thumbs up from me.
Based on the conversation between @RichVR and @Sharpe upthread, I took a swing at Watt’s Blindsight.
https://www.amazon.com/Blindsight/dp/B001J6XFNS/
Quite a ride. I’m not certain that I actually liked the book that much, but it was absolutely fascinating and I enjoyed it a great deal. I guess all I can say is that if you can’t parse the difference between liking something and enjoying something… well, you probably will neither like nor enjoy the book. It’s dense and thought-provoking and forces you to look at things in a different light. Basically exactly what good, hard sci-fi should do.
The audiobook production is top-notch and although I don’t think I’ve ever run into T. Ryder Smith as a narrator, he does a great job: In most cases I can identify the character he’s reading by the voice and cadence that he uses, even without context. Even better, there are times when you’re not supposed to be able to do that in the story… and you can’t do that by his narration. Great stuff.
Snow Crash is problematic. It does have a fun opening even though the male MC is irritating due to marty-stu superiority. But there’s this appealing and strong young female character who looks like she will be a co-equal POV to the annoying worlds-greatest-swordsman bro. And then halfway through the book she is kidnapped by a thug, emotionally dominated, and has to be rescued at the end after trailing around after the thug for the rest of the story.
But it does have a lot of fun ideas and sharp social commentary. It’s a more entertaining read up to that problematic point than most other Stephenson books.
Blindsight was one of those books that got seriously under my skin, I was thinking about it long after I read it. I went back to his citations and read some of those papers. And it’s a science fiction novel, with space vampires fer chrissakes! But before I read Blindsight I would have probably said blithely of course we all have free will, we act of our own volition, according to our own conscious decisions. After reading it, I’m not so sure.
I think you may have just sold me on the book.
Yes.
How scary is Blindsight? I dont much like scary books (I am already terrified I dont need more) but I love hard SF.
It’s interesting that you put it that way. Up until Blindsight I would have said that just reading a book couldn’t scare me. But it did. There was one part that had my heart racing and a serious adrenaline rush. But maybe that’s just me. Maybe I’m old and gullible. Easily manipulated? So take that with a few grains of salt. I would still recommend it.
Thanks. Hmm. Well if something scares you it is certain to terrify me.
update: @divedivedive . This is NOT helping :)