What to read while waiting for the next P.S. Power book

[rockhazard]

What's the best Harrison book to sample first?

[Pyottl]

I'm going to make myself immensely popular by saying that I read the first two (or three?) Alicia Jones and the first two Celia Winters and would generally recommend to just look for a different author altogether But if I had to go with something I'd pick Celia.


Costs a massive 0 money on amazon. Don't know what the author's marketing strategy is here - it's a full-length novel, properly edited, well-written, really no reason to give it away for free. Not that I'm complaining.

Anyway, it's a dystopian novel: most of humanity is already dead, and the rest is dying out, too. The protagonist is an abused, suicidal girl and the bad guys are genocidal psychopath rapists.

Let's just say that BAD stuff happens. First book wasn't too dark, but it doesn't exactly get better when child suicide bombers and whatnot appear in the 2nd book ... haven't yet decided whether I want to read the 3rd book. It only ever seems to get worse. ^^

[rockhazard]

[Mojo]

Would agree with rockhazard that Christopher Stasheff has two great series, which are old school but hold up very well!

[Pyottl]

[rockhazard]

LE Modesitt Jr. wrote the Recluce novels. I think I'll pass. Sorry, but a whole chapter of nothing but the finer points of iron smithing and metallurgy with no pay off later in the book just can't be tolerated. Yes, that happened. The fact that the editor either didn't catch that or was overruled is also a bad sign. And he was doing okay up tot the point, although there were other problems.

It was a seminal lesson on how to kill a story.

[addmoreice]

I once sat down and read all of moby dick. the original, unedited, unmodified for modern sensibility version.

something like 20 chapters of whaling and whaling related information. It was like a whaling textbook.

It was one of the worst slogs I had ever done. Trust me, the edited version is *just* fine. I've seen this kind thing occasionally in modern books, but nothing remotely like that before or since. It's...just painful.

I've got to vote in agreement for Dungeon Born. book two is soon incoming!

I don't know if it's been said or not but Gharon Whited Nightlord series is pretty enjoyable (sunset, shadows, orb, and a fourth to be released soon).

We are legion, We are Bob, book one of the bobiverse is also very awesome.

[qHnED7SnYgQs]

I've mentioned this before, but I've been reading a lot of wuxia/xianxia (and more recently translations of Japanese and Korean fantasy/sci-fi).

Links to a lot of completed and ongoing fan translation efforts can be found at http://www.novelupdates.com/

There are probably 100+ million words of translations already available, and new translated chapters of a large number of web novels coming in daily.

While the Chinese novels are mostly focused on martial arts, the Japanese ones mostly follow the trope of reincarnated in (or transferred or summoned to) another (rpg like) world (with a cheat skill)".

Here are some examples of that (Japanese ones, I introduced a few Chinese ones earlier in this thread):

http://www.novelupdates.com/series/bles ... l-ability/

http://www.novelupdates.com/series/ive- ... g-jobless/

http://www.novelupdates.com/series/i-le ... -too-much/

http://www.novelupdates.com/series/deat ... usoukyoku/

http://www.novelupdates.com/series/rein ... the-lower-

http://www.novelupdates.com/series/the- ... -the-gods/

http://www.novelupdates.com/series/to-d ... ed-person/

An interesting variation is where the body the person is reincarnated into isn't human:

http://www.novelupdates.com/series/kumo ... a-nani-ka/

http://www.novelupdates.com/series/tens ... datta-ken/

http://www.novelupdates.com/series/tens ... datta-ken/

Or even an object:

http://www.novelupdates.com/series/i-wa ... ncarnated/

Another interesting variation is when the protagonist becomes a "dungeon master" instead of a hero:

http://www.novelupdates.com/series/lazy-dungeon-master/

As I do all my reading on my mobile, I've turned a lot of these (10's of millions of words worth) into epubs. Send me a PM if interested. (And please remember to donate to the translation sites if you like a novel, by reading the epub you circumvent their ad financing).

[rockhazard]

[jjmgreen]

Baen has digital copies of Conrad Stargard series, at least most of them - there's an omnibus of the first three.