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FMK #13: First Book in the Series
Since I will be away from my book collection for the next two weeks, there will be an FMK break; next poll should go up June 12. I will keep reading and possibly posting reactions, though - the plan is to take the K books that I really wanted to read first with me on the trip, and leave them there.
This week's poll: Books where I own only the first book in the series (and have read none of them.)
How FMK works, short version: I am trying to clear out my unreads. So there is a poll, in which you get to pick F, M, or K. F means I should spend a night of wild passion with the book ASAP, and then decide whether to keep it or not. M means I should continue to commit to a long-term relationship of sharing my bedroom with it. K means it should go away immediately. Anyone can vote, you don't have to actually know anything about the books.
I pick a winner on Friday night (although won't actually close the poll, people can still vote,) and report results/ post the new poll on the following Tuesday, and write a response to the F winner sometime in the next week.
Link to long version of explanation (on first poll)
Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks (Culture series, 1987)
A Million Open Doors by John Barnes (Thousand Cultures series, 1992)
Foreigner by C. J. Cherryh (Foreigner series, 1994)
A Thousand Words for Stranger by Julie E. Czerneda (Trade Pact Universe, 1991)
The Price of the Stars by Debra Doyle and James MacDonald (Mageworlds, 1992)
Pawn of Prophecy by David Eddings (Belgariad, 1982)
Expendable by James Alan Gardner (League of Peoples, 1999)
Libriomancer by Jim C. Hines (Magic ex Libris, 2012)
Watchtower by Elizabeth A. Lynn (Chronicles of Tornor, 1979)
Discount Armageddon by Seanan McGuire (InCryptid, 2012)
The Man-Kzin Wars by Larry Niven (Man-Kzin Wars, 1988)
Point of Hopes by Melissa Scott and Lisa A Barnett (Pointsman, 1995)
On Basilisk Station by David Weber (Honor Harrington, 1993)
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The Jim Hines has polyamory and consent issues done well, plus a cool concept where librarians rule.
McGuire's Incryptid series has a plot hole you could drive the Spruce Goose through, but apart from the massive, ridiculous flaw that never gets fixed, it's pretty well-done and is charming.
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I started the Jim Hines one last fall and then had to stop because I needed a different kind of book right then, so maybe y'all will vote me into finishing it.
That... sounds about right for the one McGuire that I have read.
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Also, it was the first book that introduced me to the fact that "she" and "her" could be default pronouns, which was fairly revolutionary as a teenager.
(This icon is the second set of covers from Ashes of Victory, one of the later books in the series.)
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Expendable has a super-dark premise - people with disabilities/physical differences used as redshirts because the beautiful, physically perfect majority doesn't give a shit if they die - but ends up a fairly light adventure story. It was interesting and I liked the writing style but the disjunct didn't really work for me.
Consider Phlebas isn't as representative of the Culture as some other books, but I liked it. It's also got a lot of tonal shifts (tragedy! black comedy! gory violence! jokes!) but they worked for me better than Expendable did.
I am really hoping Pawn of Prophecy wins fuck because it would be a fun review. I retain fondness in memory for the series, which I enjoyed as a teenager, but I am positive it is not actually good.
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It occurs to me that we should be voting F on this principle generally. Like those reality shows where you vote on what would be most fun to watch, not on who would be best at whatever.
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(Sometimes I vote that way - after all my goal is for me to get rid of them once read, which doesn't happen if I only read the good ones.
Also it's way easier to review books I despise.)
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Seconding the concentration thing.
I am really hoping Pawn of Prophecy wins fuck because it would be a fun review. I retain fondness in memory for the series, which I enjoyed as a teenager, but I am positive it is not actually good.
And this, which is why I voted F for it. (I didn't like the Belgariad series much, but I loved and wallowed in the Eleniad when I was twelve or so.)
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I remember little detail of either Foreigner or Watchtower, but I read both series and they are still here. I should re-read them. Hey you are doing a great service here, I'm back to re-reading with an eye to disposing of books that no longer work for me.
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Voted kill on Niven because of unspeakable sexism and general rapeyness. I don't remember which of that series what story was in, but UGH.
I usually like Hines, but bounced off this series. I found the protag boring, and the heroine a bit of a stereotype (which he was trying to subvert, but it fell flat for me.)
Found Weber really, really boring.
Never met a McGuire book I've liked.
My wife ADORES the early books of the Foreigner series.
I keep meaning to read the Culture series, since so many friends love it.
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I love InCryptid overall (some books more than others; Discount Armageddon is one I like quite well but not one of my very favorites), but have no sense of how you might do with it, so I voted F.
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(I know I don't have to have read something to cast a vote, but I'm not really wired that way, much as I enjoy reading other people's "I want you to read this so I don't have to!" comments.)
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Fuck: the Czerneda (forgettable but pleasant SF romance hard on the h/c) and the Cherryh (mentally exhausting and emotionally unsatisfying, IMO, but some people seem to really like that series, so).
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The Culture series has always sounded like something I would either really like or really not like. (They have AI ships with really cool names, right? I think that's all I actually know. It's probably not a good sign that I have read multiple posts talking about the worldbuilding and none about the plot.)
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If you read Man-Kzin Wars, you will know everything you might ever need to know about the political, aesthetic, and cultural roots of modern furry fandom. I don't know whether that's a plus or a run-away-screaming sign. (SO many kzinti fursonas out there, even now. SO MANY.)
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(I know Kzinti p. much only from Ringworld.)
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I don't think of furrydom as being a terribly woman-unfriendly fandom, but I also tend to run around in the TBLG+ portions and avoid straight male furs like the plague, so. I definitely believe that organized furry fandom started as primarily straight men who liked a certain kind of cheesecake/porn art, though there's been a large TBLG+ contingent from the beginning. The early fur netspaces were heavily male and heavily kzinti; the fandom at large has moved away from that now but all that still exists, just as a minority. And it is an avoidable minority, mostly-- Anthrocon is the best con I've ever been to as far as code of conduct/handling harassment, and I went years before the famous incidents in SFF conspace started.
I think at the moment kzinti and furry fandom are a lot like how Gor RPers exist in BDSM spaces, and were among the early subcultures involved in that, and there's a lot of history there and most people in those spaces know about the subculture and history and who they are and kind of wince when the whole thing comes up, except the ones who are actively into that. That's the best analogy I can think of.
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(I got rid of my own copies, after a brief dither over whether to keep them for when my own children are teens, but they're really not that good, and there's so much better YA stuff being published now, and libraries will probably have them forever anyway ...)
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I like the setting itself and the characters that inhabit it - especially that they feel like they have lives and there's continuity from one book to another.
(Every series has to have some kind of continuity, of course, but it doesn't always feel like it matters and with this one it does.)
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Eddings was dull to me even as a teen. It was LotR lite, imho.
Watchtower was one of the first books I read with non-whitebread sexuality. I have no idea how it stands up today but together with a disabled hero that made it confusing in a very interesting way to me as a teen. It broke stereotypes.
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As for On Basilisk Station, read it! Here, have a post on why Honor is the most awesome character ever, or at least why I thought so when I was in middle and high school. I don't know if you've ever read Weber, but beware that he does love his infodumps (though less so at the beginning of the series) and he's not a great writer, but if you want Horatio-Hornblower-as-a-woman-in-SPAAAAACE, the Honor Harrington series is for you! (At least the first half of the series. The later books ... the more he focuses on the grand overarching plot, the more his defects as a writer become obvious.)
(BTW, the icon above is taken from one of the French covers of a later Harrington book.)
ETA: Do be aware the Weber and Bujold were both starting out as Baen authors at close to the same time, and Weber was a big ol' Bujold fanboy. So you will note plot echoes and homages all throughout the first half of the series.
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The Price of the Stars -- this whole series is on my Desert Island Books list. There are 7 books to date, and I strongly recommend that you read them in publication order -- in particular, the 4th book will seriously spoil the end of the trilogy if you read it first. There's supposed to be an 8th book in the works, but it's been "real soon now" for more than 5 years and I'll honestly be amazed if it ever gets finished.
Libriomancer is a good start to a worthy series, and does some interesting trope-avoidance along the way.
The Honor Harrington series is a space-opera classic; I had it recommended to me by someone who knew I liked the Mageworlds books, and although it's quite different in style from those, it has great characters and character arcs. Content warning for violence, but it's not glorified or sexualized; it's just that in battle scenes, there's going to be blood and death, and Weber doesn't pretend there isn't. I lost interest after Ashes of Victory, but that's about 12 books in. :-)