Still reading The Crystal Shard by R. A. Salvatore. First book of The Icewind Dale Trilogy, and The Legend of Drizzt / Forgotten Realms series (publication order).
Book is pretty fast paced and full of action. Really enjoying it.
What about all of you? What have you been reading or listening to lately?
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I’m currently reading the first book of the 3 body problem series. Still trying to decide if I like it or not even though I’m almost done with it.
I’ve read the English translations of the trilogy. If you like mystery, high-concept sci-fi, and epic storytelling, the series is pretty terrific. But if your into rounded and compelling characters, especially if those characters are women, your going to have a bad time.
Kinda reminds me of classic authors like Heinlein.
Heinlein or Niven are pretty accurate comparisons IMO
I’ve never read anything by Heinlein, is there a particular book you would recommend?
I watched half of the first episode before it was mentioned to me that there were already elements of the second book there. To keep me interested in the tv show, I decided to read the books first but I’m glad to hear you enjoyed it.
Ah, I set the Witcher books down halfway through but gotta get back to them! Glad to hear you’re enjoying them. At least they’re mostly short-ish.
Holy shit! Me too, except I’ve decided I like it. It is a compelling story. It goes a bit hard on the scientific accuracy which can kind of interrupt the flow, though.
I find the most interesting part is the insight of modern Chinese commentary of recent Chinese history. I wasn’t sure what popular sentiment was, or what criticism / critiques would be allowed to be published by the party.
I read the entire trilogy a couple of years ago and I’ll say a couple of things about it: the big ideas are great and the plot is interesting but the characters and the actual mechanics of the writing are solidly mediocre at times. I’m not sure if that’s down to the translation between languages (Ken Liu’s two translations are much better than the middle book IMO) or just the style of the novels but it’s definitely a pain point for the series.
Parts of the later books read like bad western SF from the 60s or 70s and some of the later themes are ridiculously reactionary. Like women being incapable of aggressive choices necessary for survival or the feminized men who are incapable in general. There’s some large scale human social critique involved later that’s 100% on point but I won’t spoil that for you.
It’s definitely worth reading, pieces of the trilogy are great, but it also goes in decidedly reactionary directions as well. It’s sort of like reading Ringworld at times - neat concepts, odd social commentary.