Stefan’s Comments (group member since Mar 27, 2009)

Stefan’s comments from the Beyond Reality group.

I prefer 3rd person in most cases. (A particular favorite is the extremely tight third person limited narration in many of CJ Cherryh’s works, which sometimes reads almost like 3rd person stream of consciousness.) I don’t mind 1st person as long as it’s not in the present tense. I really, truly don’t enjoy 2nd person narration, to the point I’ll just skip those novels, so it has to be really good for me to give it a shot. (I haven’t read Broken Earth yet but I will give that series a try at some point, because it looks astonishing and I love Jemisin.)

Just finished my reread yesterday. It’s one of my favorite Culture novels, together with The Player of Games and Use of Weapons.

Finished up the Scholomance trilogy by Naomi Novik as well as the Silo trilogy by Hugh Howey, neither of which blew me away while still being entertaining enough to keep reading. Felt like something really good after all the so-so stuff so decided to reread The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay, which was as great as I remembered it to be. Then I didn’t know what to follow that up with so did what I usually do nowadays in that situation—grabbed a random Neal Stephenson to reread, which ended up being Termination Shock. About halfway through that now, and better the second time through.

Kathi wrote: "The Traitor Son Cycle by Miles Cameron. I know it’s on a lot of shelves here at Goodreads but I hardly even see it mentioned or recommended. I thought it was an excellent series, 5..."

I love that series so much. I reread every previous book as the new ones came out, and I’ve been seriously considering just going through the whole thing again. He has some other good works, including another fantasy trilogy (which I want to reread too, though I didn’t like it quite as much as Traitor Son) and even some SF. And of course a whole separate career with historical fiction, some of which is on my TBR list. Interesting guy too.

Alissa, you are in for such a treat with the rest of this series. These books continue to gain depth and detail with every new volume. You've caught a lot of nuance that I missed on my first reading.

Hi folks,

Believe it or not, I'm just now seeing this thread! Thanks very much for all the kind words. I (clearly) don't stop by this group often enough... I'm also reviewing considerably less than before because tor.com is keeping me busy with other work, but I still post the occasional review on my own site Far Beyond Reality, and once I catch up, I'm hoping to get back to reviewing more frequently for tor.com too. Thanks again!

Stefan

Candiss wrote: "*puts on Moderator hat* Before this gets too heated, let's please remember to keep things civil. I know this sort of subject can cause strong feelings, but we're all friends here, right? Oh, and we're veering notably off-topic, aren't we? ;)"

You're absolutely correct, Candiss. I've been a bad, bad moderator. Thanks for stepping in!

Kevin wrote: "I wish people would not judge an author'w work by their political views. I feel like the two things are separate from each other."

This isn't about political views, Kevin. It's an author fantasizing about grabbing himself and saying "suck it, bitch" to a female fan. That's not politics - it's just offensive. Also, I am not judging his works by that; I just choose not to read them. There are already more books than I can possibly read and review in my life time out there. If I see an author acting like a misogynist idiot in public, it just helps me trim down the list by deciding what not to read and support.

On a more positive note: I'm currently reading The Cormorant by Chuck Wendig, and it's awesome. Fans of the Miriam Black series will definitely want to pick this up.

I was kinda interested in reading Wool, but this situation earlier this year completely turned me off. Based on that, I don't think I'll be buying/reading any books by him in the future.

Hi everyone,

I'm very proud to welcome Kate Elliott, author of this month's Fantasy Book of the Month, Cold Magic and over a dozen other novels, including King's Dragon, which was our BotM in 2008.

If you have any questions for the author about Cold Magic or her other works, please post them here!

Note: rather than setting up an author-free thread, Kate let me know that she will only be reading questions/comments that are posted in this thread. She won't read anything that's posted in the other topics. In other words: if you want to chat with the author, this is the place to do it, and if you're uncomfortable about discussing the book "in front of" the author, rest assured that everything except this thread is "author-free."

With that out of the way, I'll turn it over to Kate and the group!

Stefan

Okay folks, I'm about to set up a separate topic for questions/comments for Kate Elliott!

Rather than doing an author-free topic, Kate has let me know she'll ONLY be reading the questions/comments in the author thread. So: anyone who would rather not interact with the author or would rather discuss the book without the author can do so in every other thread except the one titled "Questions for the author."

(Also, to avoid confusion between the two "author" threads, I'm going to close this topic.)

Ha, just noticed that Candiss beat me to it with this announcement. Well, at least it now has its own Special Dedicated Thread.

Well, obviously Beyond Reality's endorsement carries some weight: the SFWA just announced that Samuel R. Delany is the 2013 Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master for his contributions to the literature of Science Fiction and Fantasy!

More info here!

Hi everyone,

Maybe some of the old-timers here remember when Kate Elliott joined the group, back in 2008 (when we were still on Yahoo Groups!) to discuss her novel The King's Dragon. I just checked in with Kate, and she said she'd be up for dropping by and answering questions from readers during the Cold Magic discussion.

However, before we set this up, I wanted to make sure everyone's okay with this? There was some discussion on the interwebs a few months ago about people feeling uncomfortable discussing a book "in front of" the author. Personally, I always love it when an author is willing to take the time to join a book discussion, but I also want to make sure everyone here is comfortable with it, because we're always about our members first and foremost.

Please put any feedback about this idea in this thread. If it all works out, I'll set everything up with Kate for some time later this week.

Stefan

I haven't read Ysabel (the only book by Kay I haven't read!) and I'm not 100% sure on all the historical details, but this may be a reference to the 13th Century "Albigensian Crusade", which Kay wrote about in A Song for Arbonne. Les Baux seems to be in the right general region. Are there other places that character is sensitive too? It'd be interesting to compare them to the rest of GGK's bibliography.

Sandra wrote: "Helen wrote: "Loved To Ride Hells Chasm."

Me, too!"

That's one of my all-time favorite standalone fantasy novels. Just stunning.

(PS Master of Whitestorm by Janny Wurts was just released as an ebook, after being out of print for years. Another great standalone!)

Just to offer a contrasting opinion - I thought this was one of the best SF novels of the year, and definitely the SF debut of the year. (And rather than "hyped" I'd say it's being very enthusiastically recommended by many people!)) I nominated it last month and would have done so again, but Marty beat me to it :)

Here's my review, in case anyone's interested.

My ears actually perk up when authors stray out of their comfort zones and attempt a different genre. Some are better at it than others, obviously, but e.g. when Richard K. Morgan suddenly launched fantasy trilogy after 5 SF novels, I definitely got intrigued. I understand Robert Jackson Bennett (for my money one of the best genre authors writing today) is doing something new and different too for his next novel. And Ian McDonald has re-invented himself as an author a few times already - his current incarnation, with the Planesrunner YA novels, is as excellent as you'd expect from him.

Then of course there was Bruce Sterling suddenly coming out with a paranormal romance a few years ago. That was a bit much even for me. But in general I like an author who isn't afraid to try something new.

I'll throw in a couple of nominations this time:

For SF: Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, which is probably the most intelligent space opera I've read since the last Culture novel by Iain M. Banks.

For fantasy: Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear, a brilliant epic fantasy novel full of unique characters and ideas.

I've been reading Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear. It's amazingly, spectacularly good. I'm going to start a pretty intensive campaign to make it our Book of the Month at some point soon.

Also just read: Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, which may be the most intelligent space opera novel I've read since Iain M. Banks released his last Culture novel.