Ebook Bargains

$1.99 today only.

Note - if you are looking at the series, you should probably read the collection of short stories “The Last Wish” before reading this.

Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds is $2 today. It’s an outstanding hard sci-fi book in the Revelation Space unviverse. Although it’s now marketed as the second book in that series, it is basically a standalone book with no plot dependencies on the others, so if you haven’t read any of them before this is a great way to start.

Heh. The book I read in that universe (The Prefect) is now known as the last book in the series (book 8), but it was pretty much a standalone book as well. It felt like an introduction to the universe as well.

Thanks Scott. Bought!

What’s funny is the labeling that Amazon has for these books now has two books that are known as Book 2.

Yeah, the first three in the actual series are Revelation Space, Redemption Ark, and Absolution Gap. These three books form a coherent narrative arc like any three-book series.

Chasm City was a stand-alone he published before he wrote the second or third one, which is in the same universe and has a temporal overlap, but isn’t really part of the series narrative.

All the others take place in the same universe but are otherwise largely disconnected from the original series.

If you haven’t read the first three, you need to. It’s a gorgeous hard sf series.

Kindle version on sale today:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I vaguely remember this book being highly recommended here at Qt3 in one of the politics threads.

It’s definitely real good.

Seconded, I recommend it highly!

Looks like Leviathan Wakes is on sale for $2.99, might be my opportunity to start with this series.

A book I’ve touted several times on these boards, Kings of the Wyld, is on sale today for $2.99.

This is on my waitlist. But I wonder I’m reading too much grimdark? Time to make a change?

I finished Kings of the Wyld and the 2nd book and enjoyed them both. While kinda grim dark it’s really more like a spoof of grim dark, it never tries to stay serious for long.

It was especially hilarious to read Kings of the Wyld and then play Pathfinder Kingmaker and keep getting absolutely savaged by owlbears.

So its The Expendables in fantasy land?

In my opinion, Patrick Rothfuss is the most overrated writer going. I have no idea why people think he’s good. I read Name of the Wind, barely made it through, and had no interest in the rest of the series.

For one thing, every single female character in the book is described as ‘beautiful’. Without exception – go check. Including, for some reason, a 10 year old girl who appears for one page. Super creepy.

I feel it too. Rothfuss seems unable to write a sentence without cramming two dozen adverbs and adjectives into it. Every POV character is also immediately the best at whatever he/she tries to do, the first time he/she tries to do it, with zero knowledge beforehand. Why do people enjoy stories about insufferable Wunderkinds?

Some writers can do this and do it well. Mervyn Peake. Gene Wolfe.

Er, are you sure about Gene Wolfe? My grammar is rusty, but I just counted 15 adjectives and adverbs in the first two pages of The Wizard, which seems about average.

THE BLACK TIDES OF HEAVEN by JY Yang is the latest TOR free ebook download.

I will sound like the old man I am, I guess, when I say I have some difficulty parsing this about the author:

JY YANG is a lapsed journalist, a former practicing scientist, and a master of hermitry. A queer, non-binary, postcolonial intersectional feminist, their work often examines issues of race, class, and gender. They have short fiction published or forthcoming in places including Uncanny , Lightspeed , Strange Horizons and Tor.com. They are the author of the Tensorate Series, which begins with the twin novellas The Black Tides of Heaven and The Red Threads of Fortune . They live in Singapore, edit fiction at Epigram Books, and have a MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia.

This is someone who doesn’t identify by gender and as such uses “they” instead of he or she? Or is it a couple of writers who collaborate and publish under one name?

The former. It’s an increasingly common construction for non-binary folks. I don’t particularly like the ambiguity with plural pronouns, but unlike ‘ze’ and ‘ve’, ‘they’ is already common usage for situations where gender is ambiguous or deliberately vague. I think formal adoption of ‘ve/ver/vers’ or something similar would be useful for these cases: those pronouns flow easily with speech and don’t lead to ambiguous interpretation. But without that, ‘they’ will suffice. Liv Hewson, one of the stars of Netflix’s Santa Clarita Diet, is another notable person who uses they/them as personal pronouns.

I agree. I want a new set of pronouns just to keep things simpler. I don’t really care how a person wants to label themselves, though it does make me curious to know what they see when they look down in the shower. I just don’t need having to pause to figure out if “they” is plural or singular.