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<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9381374" data-attributes="member: 18">I find Tchaikovsky is a very variable author. Some of his books bore me rigid, others are extremely emotive and fascinating, many are in-between.But based on the Shards of Earth trilogy, I'd put him as comfortably the best space opera (specifically) writer who is writing at the moment, and it's not even close. That series has made it actually hard to read other space opera or space opera-adjacent novels, because they're all so clunky, lack memorable characters, and are light on ideas by comparison. I honestly wish he'd focus on space opera for a while because of that, but he seems to always be all over the place genre-wise.Some of his other books are almost randomly unreasonably good - Dogs of War, for example (and I feel like that's cyberpunk and thus very much modern space opera-adjacent).So I find I'm very much more willing to &quot;roll the dice&quot; on a Tchaikovsky book than I am to accept the near-certain &quot;6.5/10&quot;-ness of most popular modern SF authors. Maybe it'll be like, 4.5/10 but also maybe it'll be like a 10/10 banger. When are SF writers going to learn to write actual characters? I mean, such writers have existed - Iain M. Banks for one, and some still do exist (Tamsyn Muir for example), but most SF writers split into either &quot;can only write cardboard cut-outs of characters&quot; (Andy Weir, for example) or &quot;writes somewhat plausible characters who are utterly milquetoast and forgettable&quot; (I will avoid starting fights by naming names on this latter!). I mean, some cardboard cut-outs can work - Peter F. Hamilton rarely exceeds that level but can tell good and exciting stories nonetheless, but man, why not give them an actual personality? It's really not that hard (Tchaikovsky is an interesting case here because he makes heavy use of trope-y characters who border on the cut-out level, but usually gives them some spark which takes them beyond that). I'd rather have an somewhat over-the-top and memorable character than yet another utterly forgettable one.I should probably read more of Ann Leckie's books - I liked the first one.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 9381374, member: 18"] I find Tchaikovsky is a very variable author. Some of his books bore me rigid, others are extremely emotive and fascinating, many are in-between. But based on the [I]Shards of Earth[/I] trilogy, I'd put him as comfortably the best space opera (specifically) writer who is writing at the moment, and it's not even close. That series has made it actually hard to read other space opera or space opera-adjacent novels, because they're all so clunky, lack memorable characters, and are light on ideas by comparison. I honestly wish he'd focus on space opera for a while because of that, but he seems to always be all over the place genre-wise. Some of his other books are almost randomly unreasonably good - Dogs of War, for example (and I feel like that's cyberpunk and thus very much modern space opera-adjacent). So I find I'm very much more willing to "roll the dice" on a Tchaikovsky book than I am to accept the near-certain "6.5/10"-ness of most popular modern SF authors. Maybe it'll be like, 4.5/10 but also maybe it'll be like a 10/10 banger. When are SF writers going to learn to write actual characters? I mean, such writers have existed - Iain M. Banks for one, and some still do exist (Tamsyn Muir for example), but most SF writers split into either "can only write cardboard cut-outs of characters" (Andy Weir, for example) or "writes somewhat plausible characters who are utterly milquetoast and forgettable" (I will avoid starting fights by naming names on this latter!). I mean, some cardboard cut-outs can work - Peter F. Hamilton rarely exceeds that level but can tell good and exciting stories nonetheless, but man, why not give them an actual personality? It's really not that hard (Tchaikovsky is an interesting case here because he makes heavy use of trope-y characters who border on the cut-out level, but usually gives them some spark which takes them beyond that). I'd rather have an somewhat over-the-top and memorable character than yet another utterly forgettable one. I should probably read more of Ann Leckie's books - I liked the first one. [/QUOTE]

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