What Are You Reading?

Both Murderbot and Empire have won Hugos and others. A Memory Called Empire Hugo in 2020, its successor A Desolation Called Peace Hugo in 2022, All Systems Red (Murderbot) Hugo for novella in 2018, Network Effect (Murderbot) Hugo 2021 Nebula 2020 and Locus 2021.

I google for awards & nominations like yourself after that Goodreads or Amazon 'others who liked this book liked those books'. I found stuff via this thread. Sometimes I just take a chance or I come across something older I somehow missed and then I go through the entire works of that author. The more you read the harder it gets alright.

Tad Williams (Memory, Sorry, Thorn) is an excellent writer and that series is an 'edge of the seat' epic fantasy. Definitely worth reading. If you like cats, Tailchaser's song is an entertaining, 'Watership down' stand-alone fantasy novel by him. I don't particularly care for his Otherland series, could never get deep into it, though.

The followup series to Memory, Sorrow and Thorn wasn't as good, but I read M/S/T when it was new and the followup recently, so a lot of time had passed and I'd forgotten the original quite a bit.

Never heard of the Sword of Shadow series nor its author.

All a matter of opinion of course. I was about to post "N. K. Jemison is a bad writer and I can't believe the hype her books get." I read the City we became and didn't hate it but it was a repetitive one-trick pony and frankly I didn't like how much her hate for the city I grew up in poured from the book.

Then I said, "well, she got a Mac Arthur grant, supposedly going to be the next best thing" so I read "The 100,000 Kingdoms."

Utter drivel that's poorly written. I think that's the biggest thing I see in modern writing - poor writing. I began to think of "The 100,000 kingdoms" as "The book of Sighs" because literally (yes, literally) there was someone sighing on every freaking page after awhile. It was a joke! Can't come up with a better action? Farting? Picking their godlike noses? No, sighing. Sigh, sigh, sigh. Oh, and the mishmash of a plot that kind of limps to conclusion was just that.

Now, do I think all new writers are bad? No. To purge Jemison, I dug out some Adrian Tchaikowsky, simple stuff, clearly written, lots of action not much thinking. Is he 'great?' No, Connie Willis is great. But, she's not new. Cixin Liu is great and new (and maybe, not from a Western country so a better writer?) Guy Gavrial Kay has his moments.

Haven't read Brandon Sanderson, think I'll give it a pass.

Best Connie Willis book to start with is "The Doomsday Book." Then there are lots to look for, she's a great short story writer and if the collection includes "The Last of the Winnebagos" try that one.

Re: Suzanna Clarke. I couldn't put down 'Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell' and the BBC adaptation was incredible. But, 'Piranesi' was seriously meh. Sometimes writers just have 1 great book in them. Choosing another genre, Harper Lee never wrote anything good after "To Kill a Mockingbird" and Capote never published another novel after "In Cold Blood."

After having it on my Kindle for years I started the first book in the Galactic Milieu trilogy (called something something Jack something, there's some other book called Intervention that can apparently be read first or not as well).

I'm maybe 20% of the way through it. It reads a bit more like classic sci-fi in terms of style and I'm enjoying it so far. I believe the series is pretty well thought of?

Yeah Jack the Bodiless it is.

Started and stopped "Red Rising" by Pierce Brown. Harry Potter meets the Hunger Games. Ugh. Got about 50 pages in and gave up. Don't know how this author turned that into a series of 6, but it definitely didn't work for me.

For lack of material I tried Jack the Bodiless and it's not for me. Tedious intro to some mega elitist family dynasty that never seems to end and after a few attempts I just had to give up. Shame cos after good reviews I was hoping for something new but defy not this.