Ralif Redhammer
Legend
I finished reading Sterling's Schismatrix. It was good sci-fi, but I wouldn't necessarily classify it as cyberpunk.
Now I'm reading Richard Kadrey's Metrophage.
Now I'm reading Richard Kadrey's Metrophage.
What are you reading in 2025?
- Thread starter Elodan
- Start date
Ralif Redhammer
Legend
Digging it so far. I discovered the book when a scan of an article on cyberpunk from the 90s appeared on my Tumblr. Metrophage was barely discernable in the image, but it was only one I wasn't familiar with.I love Metrophage with an unseemly love, even as I recognize its flaws. I apparently startled Kadrey on Facebook in the late ‘00s or early ‘10s by being a continuing fan of the book.
Eyes of Nine
Everything's Fine
Haven't read Metrophage, but I'm slowly slowly working my way through the Sandman Slim novels. Kadrey is kind of underrated I think.
This past week was another week-long business trip, so I had plenty of time for reading. I finished Chuck Grossart's The Gemini Effect which was really well-written (and you could tell the author had a military background by how well the military parts read), and had a point not quite at the end where everything was coming together to a head, and then he threw the reader a really interesting curveball. It was easy to see why this, his first novel, won so many awards.
Then, I took advantage of the fact that Monday was a travel day and my hotel was across the street from a bookstore and picked up a graphic novel, Swamp Thing: Green Hell, that takes place in a possible future where mankind has pretty much ruined the Earth, what's left of humanity lives on one of the few mountaintops still above water, and the Green (AKA: the Parliament of Trees), as well as the Red (the sentient animal life force of Earth) and the Gray (the sentient fungal life force of Earth) decide to just wipe the slate clean, destroy mankind, and start life over on Earth. This, naturally, does not sit well with Alec Holland (Swamp Thing), and it goes on for three issues of a comic book miniseries bound together in hardback. I'm normally more of a Marvel guy than a DC guy, but I loved Alan Moore's run on Saga of the Swamp Thing and this one played on a lot of the events he put into his stories. Plus, there were some interesting cameos for a series set far enough in the future that presumably Superman and most of the standard DC heroes are already long gone.
After that, I read (in two days) another book I picked up at the bookstore: Eruption, a new novel by Michael Crichton and James Patterson, which I thought was quite the feat considering Crichton died in 2008. (Apparently he had the unfinished novel and a bunch of notes on his computer and his widow convinced Patterson to finish it.) It's a science thriller involving a major eruption of a volcano in Hawai'i, and a military secret that makes it much more deadly than a normal volcanic eruption would be.
And then today, at the airport and on the plane home, I started and got 250 pages into The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson, which I can already pretty confidently state will have been the best novel I've read thus far this year. Excellent world-building, fascinating characters, interesting premises, and some great one-liners. I have another business trip next week, Tuesday through Friday, and I can already tell the remaining 400 pages or so won't hold me to the end of that trip.
Johnathan
Then, I took advantage of the fact that Monday was a travel day and my hotel was across the street from a bookstore and picked up a graphic novel, Swamp Thing: Green Hell, that takes place in a possible future where mankind has pretty much ruined the Earth, what's left of humanity lives on one of the few mountaintops still above water, and the Green (AKA: the Parliament of Trees), as well as the Red (the sentient animal life force of Earth) and the Gray (the sentient fungal life force of Earth) decide to just wipe the slate clean, destroy mankind, and start life over on Earth. This, naturally, does not sit well with Alec Holland (Swamp Thing), and it goes on for three issues of a comic book miniseries bound together in hardback. I'm normally more of a Marvel guy than a DC guy, but I loved Alan Moore's run on Saga of the Swamp Thing and this one played on a lot of the events he put into his stories. Plus, there were some interesting cameos for a series set far enough in the future that presumably Superman and most of the standard DC heroes are already long gone.
After that, I read (in two days) another book I picked up at the bookstore: Eruption, a new novel by Michael Crichton and James Patterson, which I thought was quite the feat considering Crichton died in 2008. (Apparently he had the unfinished novel and a bunch of notes on his computer and his widow convinced Patterson to finish it.) It's a science thriller involving a major eruption of a volcano in Hawai'i, and a military secret that makes it much more deadly than a normal volcanic eruption would be.
And then today, at the airport and on the plane home, I started and got 250 pages into The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson, which I can already pretty confidently state will have been the best novel I've read thus far this year. Excellent world-building, fascinating characters, interesting premises, and some great one-liners. I have another business trip next week, Tuesday through Friday, and I can already tell the remaining 400 pages or so won't hold me to the end of that trip.
Johnathan
trappedslider
Legend
That was a good one imo
Retros_x
Hero
So I have finished "The Raven Scholar" by Antonia Hodgson!
I think its quite the long time ago that I consumed a 700 page book that fast, it honestly felt more like 400 pages. Expertly paced, well plotted, intricate worldbuilding, interesting characters - this book has it all. I love how masterful the several plotlines and subplotlines get orchestrated by the author without ever being confusing. I also love how the character dynamics evolve over the course of the book. Some great prose too, sometimes even a bit experimental.
The exposition was a bit heavy-handed in the first chapters, but overall better done than in most other fantasy books. Also for a book with such delicate pacing, sometimes the "expositition paragraphs" felt really off... but only in the first chapters. Because than something genius happens - we shift our POV to our main character - who is a nerd! She wants to explain stuff all the time. Suddenly the exposition feels not wrong and stiff, but it makes sense from the POV that everything gets explained. Loved this! I think it would've been cool if the first chapters would've done much less exposition so the POV shift would be even stronger in contrast.
There were moments where the prose or the dialogue felt too modern for the time period I think this setting is inspired from. I remember for example some nobles at a dinner party complaining about their yachting crew. Sailing yacht as leisure for the rich developed in our world in 18th and 19th century, I envisioned the world in the book as older than that. Ofc a fantasy book doesn't need to follow real world timeline, but it felt a bit out of touch with the own worldbuilding, and I had several of these moments.
I also am a bit annoyed by this new fantasy worldbuilding trope of castes/social classes that are very strictly defined. Every follower of the fox always behaves like this, every follower of the raven like that. It seems to be the new "elves are always like this and dwarves like that" of modern fantasy books, because I have seen this multiple times now, but normally more in YA (Red Rising comes to mind).
Another small gripe, although its not even the authors fault: This was marketed as epic fantasy but it didn't felt like that until the final chapters. Regarding the climax of the book and where it left the characters and world - the trilogy will probably be quite epic. But for the most part of the book our characters are limited to one location, basically the seat of government. They solve a murder mystery and participate in a competition. Its all very exciting, but it doesn't feel like epic fantasy, it feels like we only see a small but focussed glimpse of the larger world. For me epic fantasy means the opposite, broad strokes into a huge world.
But these are all minimal negative points. Every fantasy fan should pick this up, its just great, a super fun and easy read. Unfortunately I want the second book right now, but it will probably need a few years. Hopefully the second book writes faster because most of the world building is alredy done? I think I've read somewhere that Hodgson worked 5 years on the first book.
I think its quite the long time ago that I consumed a 700 page book that fast, it honestly felt more like 400 pages. Expertly paced, well plotted, intricate worldbuilding, interesting characters - this book has it all. I love how masterful the several plotlines and subplotlines get orchestrated by the author without ever being confusing. I also love how the character dynamics evolve over the course of the book. Some great prose too, sometimes even a bit experimental.
The exposition was a bit heavy-handed in the first chapters, but overall better done than in most other fantasy books. Also for a book with such delicate pacing, sometimes the "expositition paragraphs" felt really off... but only in the first chapters. Because than something genius happens - we shift our POV to our main character - who is a nerd! She wants to explain stuff all the time. Suddenly the exposition feels not wrong and stiff, but it makes sense from the POV that everything gets explained. Loved this! I think it would've been cool if the first chapters would've done much less exposition so the POV shift would be even stronger in contrast.
There were moments where the prose or the dialogue felt too modern for the time period I think this setting is inspired from. I remember for example some nobles at a dinner party complaining about their yachting crew. Sailing yacht as leisure for the rich developed in our world in 18th and 19th century, I envisioned the world in the book as older than that. Ofc a fantasy book doesn't need to follow real world timeline, but it felt a bit out of touch with the own worldbuilding, and I had several of these moments.
I also am a bit annoyed by this new fantasy worldbuilding trope of castes/social classes that are very strictly defined. Every follower of the fox always behaves like this, every follower of the raven like that. It seems to be the new "elves are always like this and dwarves like that" of modern fantasy books, because I have seen this multiple times now, but normally more in YA (Red Rising comes to mind).
Another small gripe, although its not even the authors fault: This was marketed as epic fantasy but it didn't felt like that until the final chapters. Regarding the climax of the book and where it left the characters and world - the trilogy will probably be quite epic. But for the most part of the book our characters are limited to one location, basically the seat of government. They solve a murder mystery and participate in a competition. Its all very exciting, but it doesn't feel like epic fantasy, it feels like we only see a small but focussed glimpse of the larger world. For me epic fantasy means the opposite, broad strokes into a huge world.
But these are all minimal negative points. Every fantasy fan should pick this up, its just great, a super fun and easy read. Unfortunately I want the second book right now, but it will probably need a few years. Hopefully the second book writes faster because most of the world building is alredy done? I think I've read somewhere that Hodgson worked 5 years on the first book.
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Ruin Explorer
Legend
Yeah I think a lot of this comes from authors coming at the issue of worldbuilding "backwards" as it were. I.e. instead of thinking about the society they envision and how it would work, and how things would come to be from that society, and just building things up, they decide on the characteristics of certain organisations/groups and then just slap them in regardless of whether they actually fit with the overall worldbuilding. In longer series you often see some shifts as they gradually backwork the group into the setting more. I think it's fine to have some fixed points you want but it's really good if you can like, work out how they'd naturally exist, rather than just slapping in clunky stereotypes. Definitely agree this is more common in YA but the line between YA and mainstream fantasy has been pretty blurry for a while now.
(This is very common RPGs too, you can see it at every level, from dungeon design to setting design. I.e. people decide they want some set-piece room in a dungeon, immediately slap it in, and don't think about how it doesn't actually fit with the rest of the dungeon, nor make sense in the context of the history of the dungeon they've provided. Rather than starting with the concept of the dungeon as "this is an old demon-cultist lair, now held by a faction of undead monks" and thinking "What would be in that?". Hell the entire Mystara setting is just this approach and basically nothing else lol, stereotyped societies where basically everyone acts a certain way "because" and where they don't really fit organically into the world.)
This is a symptom of the same "backwards" approach to worldbuilding - i.e. the author just thinks "What do rich people do for fun?", doesn't even really think historically beyond like, the 1920s very often (let alone do historical research to get any ideas - I mean you don't have to then follow those ideas, but it's good to know), and then puts it pretty much straight into their setting and works around that, rather than the actual worldbuilding approach where you think about the society you've created, and what resources and traditions the nobles have, and what they might be doing because of that (what social benefits and so on).
I'd say it's pretty notable how different and more diverse and organic and complex the societies of people who use "forwards" worldbuilding (like NK Jemisin, when I think of "proper" worldbuilding in a modern fantasy novel, I think of The Broken Earth trilogy) are to authors using more "backwards" worldbuilding (though being everyone does a bit of both) but I think there's a real question as to whether most audiences care about this or even notice the issues.
Old Fezziwig
hell yes bro
Last night, I finished Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live by Susan Morrison. It's kind of a fascinating book, equally a Lorne Michaels biography and a book about SNL and its processes. As a biography, I thought it was even-handed and interesting. Michaels is a bit of a weird dude, and Morrison doesn't shy away from that or from detailing some of his less-appealing traits and decisions, but he also seems to have figured out his personal best life early, pursued it, and lived it -- there's an authenticity to his single-mindedness and weirdness that I found somewhat charming, even if I found some of his choices disagreeable or worse, though most everything to say about that has been said. The process stuff about SNL is particularly strong, and Morrison's structuring of the book (a chapter on how each day of the week works on the show, followed by a handful of chapters of biography) is clever and paces the book nicely. If you're into pairings, the book would go particularly well with a viewing of Jason Reitman's Saturday Night.
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