The Culture series by Iain M. Banks.
Not sure what it was. Maybe expectations were too high. Tried the first two books and they were fine, just didn't really trigger anything in me that made me want to keep going.
this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
78 points (98.8% liked)
Science Fiction
15197 readers
2 users here now
Welcome to /c/ScienceFiction
December book club canceled. Short stories instead!
We are a community for discussing all things Science Fiction. We want this to be a place for members to discuss and share everything they love about Science Fiction, whether that be books, movies, TV shows and more. Please feel free to take part and help our community grow.
- Be civil: disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally insult others.
- Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, ableist, or advocating violence will be removed.
- Spam, self promotion, trolling, and bots are not allowed
- Put (Spoilers) in the title of your post if you anticipate spoilers.
- Please use spoiler tags whenever commenting a spoiler in a non-spoiler thread.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Me too. Tried the first. Didn't make much progress.
I like the first but it is very heavy on world building at the expense of anything else - I guess in some respects you could apply that to the series as a whole to an extent.
I haven't read the whole series btw, just guessing that from the ones I have read
I personally do enjoy world building, but not at the cost of characterisation. So I guess this series is definitely not for me.
Possibly not lol! The character motivation obviously develops throughout the book (I forget his name), but I'd say the focus is on the extremely weird things he sees and what he has to do to survive. I don't remember there being much in the way of emotional development though.
I don't know how far you got before stopping. I think they are definitely well written books - but I definitely have to be in the right headspace to enjoy them
Red Rising. I tried to like it. Couldn't get through more than 20%. Seemed very YA and characters seemed very flat.
I don’t feel like it’s worth getting into, the writing is just too poor… but that’s my opinion. I finished it, just because it was so Ashley I was hoping it would get better. I did not try out the second one.
I agree with you on this. According to me the writing and character work is subpar and so I have stayed away from other works by the author. But this series is very popular and I don't get why that is the case.
Seconding Red Rising. I managed to finish the first book, but throughout nearly the entire book it felt like a fantasy rather than a science fiction. They are in a science fiction setting, but then intentionally remove all technology or futuristic elements for almost the entire story. From what I am told the rest of the books continue this similar theme somehow despite no longer being in the extremely specific situation of book 1.
As far as TV shows: The Expanse and Foundation. I really want to like them but the first 3-4 episodes left me quite meh. Someone tell me it’s a slow start and gets better?
I tend to put more priority to story line vs special effects or action scenes.
As I said elsewhere in this thread, the first couple of episodes of the Expanse are kinda slow. It picks up if you stick with it :)
I'm still mad they ended it early :(
load more comments
(2 replies)