Caligula_K3

Finally got around to reading this book too. I liked it and thought it was a strong conclusion to a book series I haven't always loved or liked. I agree with pretty much everyone here that the first half of the book had major pacing issues. It's not just that Tanaka is (at least at the beginning of the book) yet another one note Expanse villain ranting about how much she hates Jim Holden, and the endless cat and mouse chase. It's also Teresa Duarte - she was a really hard character to care about. The universe is in constant danger of disintegrating. Who cares if she gets to live with her aunt and go to school? It doesn't help that she doesn't do much in the end, and that her character arc ends on a really depressing note. But in the second half of the book, Teresa aside, things picked up. Tanaka as our main POV into humanity sharing consciousness was surprisingly effective. To me, the book series has always been better when it focuses on alien weirdness than human was and politics, and I loved pretty much everything from that perspective. I was expecting more traditional exposition on the Romans and Goths, and I was surprised that I enjoyed the fact that everything wasn't explained. I feel like I got a good enough grounding in what the two sides were about while they still feel alien and mysterious. That's pretty cool. And then the climax was a big success, especially with the return of Miller. There's nothing wrong with predictable if you do it well and deliver on the emotional stakes. My only couple of late-game plot quibbles was that I didn't really understand how Duarte's hive mind effect was able to become so powerful and affect people all over the universe, even if they hadn't passed through the ring gates. I also felt we could have used some more denouement. I loved the epilogue, but it did feel strange to end both Teresa's and Naomi's arcs right after the big battles where they lose nearly everyone they care about. Kudos to "Corey" on wrapping this series up well. And I am very excited for Abraham's return to fantasy.

I've read four of the Hugo finalists now. Black Sun and Relentless Moon are the only two left to go. Of the four, Piranesi is by far my favourite. It's, to me, a perfect little surrealist novel. I enjoyed Harrow the Ninth less than Gideon, but I still respect the ambition and I see why people would nominate it. Network Effect... I don't know, I don't think it did Murderbot any favours to have a full length novel. The writing is very clunky and repetitive, the plot is a bore (which has always been a problem in Murderbot), and there's not much going on beneath the surface. I enjoy Murderbot and ART banter, but this was my least favourite Murderbot so far. But I'd take it over The City We Became, which I thought was a bad novel - and this is coming from someone who loved Broken Earth. It reminded me a little of Mieville's Kraken - lots of fun and interesting ideas, but with so frantic a pace and such shallow characters that you can't care about any of it.

I don't think I hate this show as much as some. Ultimately, I do think Foundation is unfilmable and that it's next to impossible to do it well - I see some of what they're going for as they adapt it, and there are some cool ideas. But I am continually bored by the show, the absence of Seldon/Jared Harris is getting to me, and I think I'm done with it.

Absolutely. I really, really, really did not like Book 3, but I thought the show did a fantastic job adapting it by giving nearly all the characters more depth and complexity.

Yeah, if this weren't the last season and it was covering only Babylon's Ashes, I'd be fine with six episodes. I agree that season 3 was the best, partially because it was willing to speed through Book 3. Seasons 4 and 5, meanwhile, have both dragged, especially in last season's "Naomi's stuck on a spaceship" arc. But because this season should be wrapping up the show, six episodes is a bit harder to swallow. I'm sure I'll enjoy the season as a standalone. But my only hope for the show getting wrapped up in a satisfactory way is if Jeff Bezos pops up at the end of episode 6 and says "surprise! The Expanse is cancelled, but there's going to be three movies to wrap it up!"

If the showrunners knew that they were only getting six seasons, then that makes many of the recent adaptation decisions very... questionable. Of course, there's no way you can adapt all nine books in six seasons. But if you know as of the end of Season 3 that you're only getting three more seasons, you don't try to adapt all nine books, and you don't follow books 4-5 as closely as the show did. You focus on a few plotlines. And one of those absolutely has to be the protomolecule plotline. I agree with @Spockydog that it's going to be a very unsatisfactory ending if all of that is ignored. Unless the showrunners know something I don't, which is possible, it's also very naive to hope that this cancellation is a pause. Actors and crew get other gigs. This must be an expensive show relative to its audience. The Expanse isn't such a cult hit that we can expect a Twin Peaks like revival in 20 years.

I'm interested to see how this season goes. From watching season 5, it seems that the showrunners didn't know they would only have one more season to wrap things up. I think it's going to be very hard for them to wrap up both the Inaros and protomolecule plotlines with so little time. My expectations aren't super high, but I'm sure it'll at least be enjoyable.

Done with the Age of Madness.

About 355 pages in now; I'm sure I'll be done by tonight or tomorrow.

I just read the beginning of the last post and believe I got spoiled. Watch out, people who come to this thread after me. @SeanFplease edit your post and spoiler tag it. Most people in this thread haven't got their copy of the book yet, and the thread title only includes spoilers up to the sample chapter.

155 pages in so far (at the end of Part I, which is called Part VII. It's been good.

All right, finished my other book and now I'm 50 pages into this. It starts with a bang. Though I realize that I may have forgotten a few things from the ending of The Trouble With Peace, so I might re-read its ending before I go any further.

My copy just came in the mail! I'm in the middle of another book, but I have a feeling that once I start this one it'll get finished very quickly.

I really liked Under Heaven but thought River of Stars fell very flat (and for me, was the start of GGK's decline as a really enjoyable author). It seems you have a lot on your backlog, @Jerol, so If you have a library near you, I would take it out from there instead. I re-read The Sarantine Mosaic in the last year. I still loved the books, but one thing that absolutely rubbed me the wrong way (which didn't bother me as a teenager when I first read them) was the fact that every woman character is attracted to sexy hunk mosaicist Crispin. It felt completely like authorial wish-fulfillment and makes the ending not work for me.

My impression is that the Hugos are just becoming too insular. I'm sure this has been a problem before, and familiarity bias is always going to be a thing. But when the same authors come up again and again, even when their new books aren't very good, the award stops being worth much. Leckie's Ancillary Justice was a phenomenal book. But Provenance up for a Hugo a couple years ago? Jemisin is another example here: the Broken Earth trilogy was great. Did all three books deserve to win the Hugo? I'm not so sure, but I do see a case for all of them to be nominated and for one or two wins. Does The City We Became deserve a nomination? I'm sorry, I don't see it at all. And then there's all the fan categories. I agree with the poster who says that it's hard to take any of this seriously when important scholarly works are going up against blog rants or five-minute-long speeches about the Hugo Award itself and losing.

I finally finished Harrow. Although I really enjoyed the first couple hundred pages, overall I liked it but didn't love it, for a lot of the reasons that posters have already listed in this thread. Overall, Muir was probably just too ambitious and couldn't pull it all off. But it is still an enjoyable novel and I'm looking forward to see how it all wraps up in #3.

180 pages in and enjoying it more and more. This is not actually a spoiler, just a guess, but I'm putting it into a spoiler box in case other readers don't want to read speculation:

I definitely agree that second person was used to great effect in Fifth Season; Raven's Tower is one of the ones I was thinking of where I felt it really weakened the book. I understand what Leckie was going for intellectually, but it's effect (for me at least) was to flatten all the characters who weren't the narrator. Anyway, greatly enjoying the book as I get further, and I should probably stay out of this thread till I finish too.

I'd be very down with the second person trend dying. Maybe this will be the rare book where it's used well, but it is very hard to pull off. Bonkers is definitely the right word for Harrow the Ninth though- I'm enjoying it so far, though it's pretty slow reading as I try to keep track of everything, kind of like a Wolfe book (though not at that level of density yet).

I finally got Harrow the Ninth from the library - I started reading it last night and I'm deeply confused. Which is exactly what I expected, based on what you've all said.

I'm a bit behind the times and just finished Gideon the Ninth, so I'll have to avoid the recent spoiler tags. I really liked it. I thought I'd be annoyed by Gideon's 21st century voice (I usually really don't like it when characters in the future sound like they've time traveled from my instagram feed) but somehow Muir makes it work. Spoilers for Gideon the Ninth: But this was a very strong debut novel, and I'm excited to read the sequel soon.

As someone who didn't like River of Stars and Children of Earth and Sky, or who at least found them do be way below Kay's past quality, do you think I'd enjoy this new one? It's been a while since I've read those two, but I remember feeling like I was reading the same Kay story, just with flatter characters and an increasing propensity for authorial intrusion into the narrative and tons of "telling, not showing." Is the new one similar?

This is repeated a lot, but it's not exactly true. HBO was fine with more episodes, and might have increased the budget slightly - they'd have to, because more episodes means the cast gets paid more - but the choice D&D made was to use c. 90 million dollars over six episodes rather than 10; this is a huge budget for a TV show. It took them an extra year to do these six episodes, they had to film much of it in winter, and as @ToddDavid points out, filming was an incredible slog and episodes 3 and 5 were expensive. Now, maybe this was the wrong choice; maybe the Long Night battle could have been condensed to lower its budget and filming time and give us an extra episode or two to let developments breath more. But television budgets aren't unlimited, even for Game of Thrones. Filming time isn't unlimited, and many of the cast and crew want to move on, etc... They made this decision for understandable reasons.

His top books for me are The Lions of Al-Rassan and The Sarantine Mosaic duology (Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors). Under Heaven is another excellent one.