Author Topic: 5 star books  (Read 9519 times)

kahlil34

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on: August 05, 2007, 03:35:44 PM
I am new on this message board and I am always looking for great new books to read.  I am going to list some of my favorites and I would love to hear about yours.

The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss.  It is a little slow to get started but it goes on my top ten list.
 
Mistborn, by Brandon Sanderson.  He also wrote Elantris which is good.
 
Furies of Calderon, Academ's Fury and Cursor's Fury, by Jim Butcher.  A very enjoyable series so far.
 
The Deed of Paksenarrion, by Elizabeth Moon.
 
Anything by Lois McMaster Bujold.  I particularly like her series, The Curse of Chalion, Paladin of Souls, and The Hallowed Hunt.
 
The Shadow of the Lion, This Rough Magic, by Mercedes Lackey, David Freer and Eric Flint.  I loved these books.  Some people do not like that there are 4 or 5 plot lines going on at the same time but I thought they were all good.  Freer also wrote "A Mankind Witch" that ties into the series.
 
Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card.
 
Jumper, by Steven Gould.
 
Parable of the Sower, by Octavia Bulter.
 
Altered Carbon, by Richard Morgan.  This one is racy and violent.  Not everyone will love it because of that.  Great writing though.
 
A Game of Thrones, George R. Martin.  This is the first in a series.

I could probably list 20 more top notch books, and 100 really good books without to much trouble.  If you like these and would like more recommendations let me know.

Kahlil34



lowky

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Reply #1 on: August 05, 2007, 10:59:01 PM
The Caverns of Socrates by McKiernan.  It has SciFi, it has Swords and Sorcery.  Something for everyone.
« Last Edit: August 06, 2007, 06:54:24 AM by Russell Nash »



Listener

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Reply #2 on: August 06, 2007, 03:38:58 PM
"Souls in the Great Machine" - Sean McMullen - clockwork steampunk fantasy/sci-fi

"Voyage of the Shadowmoon" - Sean McMullen - big fantasy with a little SF thrown in

"The Scar" - China Mieville - even better than the first one, "Perdido Street Station", and the way he depicts the city of Armada is completely awesome (IMO)

"How Much For Just The Planet" - John M. Ford - hands-down the funniest Star Trek novel ever.  Even my grandmother liked it, and she doesn't watch Star Trek.

"The Two Georges" - Harry Turtledove - stand-alone alternate-history about an America that never broke away from England; I had a few problems with the pacing toward the end, but I still love the book

"Serpents Among the Ruins" - David R George III - Star Trek again, but if you ever wondered what the Tomed Incident was, this is the book for you... truly great storytelling, especially when the Tomed Incident happens

the Sector General series - James White - sometimes a bit repetitive but as a whole it's great, classic, hard SF

"Passage" - Connie Willis - a great medical suspense fantasy about near-death experiences.  Not as horror-filled as Flatliners, but still great, with wry humor, likeable characters, and a twist that comes 2/3 through the book that I swear I was totally not expecting in any way.

I'm sure I've got more on my shelf; I'll look tonight and update, if I can.

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mjn9

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Reply #3 on: August 06, 2007, 10:24:32 PM
Anything by Gene Wolfe, but especially the Book of the New Sun (actually 4 books, reprinted as 2 sets of 2):
The Shadow of the Torturer and The Claw of the Conciliator (reprinted as Shadow and Claw)
Sword of the Lictor and Citadel of the Autarch (reprinted as Sword & Citadel)



Leon Kensington

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Reply #4 on: August 06, 2007, 10:41:19 PM
Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson- All around good cyberpunk.
Dresden Files Series by Jim Butcher- The greatest modern urban fantasy I have read.
Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlien(sp)- What made me start to become politically involved.
Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko- Second greatest modern urban fantasy I have read, and it's Russian!
Anything Cory Doctorow- It's Doctorow!
2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clark-  Would you like to play a game Dave?
I, Robot by Isaac Asimov- ASIMOV.
Dune by Frank Herburt-  Sandworms.



SFEley

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Reply #5 on: August 11, 2007, 08:49:11 PM
Most of my "Wow Factor 5" list was covered here already.  The only other two that come to mind immediately are:


Both books unscrewed the top of my head, extracted my mind, scrambled it and cooked it, then put it back.

ESCAPE POD - The Science Fiction Podcast Magazine


Planish

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Reply #6 on: August 18, 2007, 05:22:44 PM
Odd. Of all the titles kahlil34 mentioned, I've only read "Jumper". It was okay, and my two boys liked it. It read a bit like early Heinlein. I'm more of a "Campbellian Golden Age" SF fan, having started reading SF in the mid-'60s, and that's what was available to me in libraries. Add a dash of Cold War post-apoc.
There wasn't much High Fantasy until the early '70s rediscovery of Tolkien.

My list, in no particular order:
- The "Worldwar" series and its sequel "Colonization" series, by Harry Turtledove.
- "Born To Run" by Mercedes Lackey & Larry Dixon. (my top candidate to become a movie)
- "On Basilisk Station" by David Weber (plus most of the other Honor Harrington novels. She could kick Kirk's or Picard's butts. A good ol' space opera.)
- miscellaneous novels and collections of Larry Niven's short stories set in his "Known Space" universe.
- "Gateway" by Frederick Pohl.
- "Dragon's Egg" by Robert L. Forward (contains no dragons)
- "The Flight of the Dragonfly"  by Robert L. Forward (also contains no dragons)
- "Timemaster" by Robert L. Forward (the only story ever to use time-travel convincingly, ie. without paradoxes)
- "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Heinlein
- Asimov's Robot short stories featuring Susan Calvin.
- "The Lathe of Heaven" by Ursula K. LeGuin
- "Cannery Row" by John Steinbeck. ... oh, were you looking just for SciFi/Fantasy titles?
- The Chrysalids" by John Wyndham
- Philip José Farmer's "Riverworld" series.
- "Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut (plus a few others).

I really liked Kubrick's movie of "2001: A Space Odyssey", but there were many other Clarke books that I liked better for reading.

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Roney

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Reply #7 on: August 18, 2007, 10:15:33 PM
- "Timemaster" by Robert L. Forward (the only story ever to use time-travel convincingly, ie. without paradoxes)

That seems slightly unfair to Harlan Ellison, and I'm a terrible pedant about time travel.  (Unless you're taking "closed loop" time travel as paradoxical, which is a fair position -- I'm not familiar with Timemaster so I don't know what it is about the story that recommends itself to you.  I shall have to check it out.)

Personal choices that haven't already been mentioned:
  • Only Forward, Michael Marshall Smith -- since I read it ~10 years ago, my favourite book.  I'm resisting the temptation to list all his other books here: each time I finish one I need to give myself a bit of recovery time to process what I've read, and I'm left wondering why no other author seems able to combine deeply personal insights into the human condition with big, original ideas in quite such a heady way.  MMS: Where do you want to go tomorrow?
  • Use Of Weapons, Iain M Banks -- how space opera can be written really well, with themes and characters and all the twiddly bits that stand up to close analysis, and still be space opera, and fun.



SFEley

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Reply #8 on: August 18, 2007, 11:18:17 PM
Use Of Weapons, Iain M Banks -- how space opera can be written really well, with themes and characters and all the twiddly bits that stand up to close analysis, and still be space opera, and fun.

This also happens to be one of the most disturbing books I've ever read.  Not the whole thing, but some of it.  It's definitely more SF than horror, but the horror bits...  Oh yes, they worked.

ESCAPE POD - The Science Fiction Podcast Magazine


mjn9

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Reply #9 on: August 19, 2007, 01:13:36 AM




Oh, yes!  I liked the sequel/prequel "A Deepness in the Sky" just as much.  Philosophical spiders in a frozen wasteland- what can be more fun than that?

Another powerful book- The Sparrow  by Mary Doria Russell.  About a Jesuit-led first contact mission.
« Last Edit: August 19, 2007, 03:02:15 AM by mjn9 »



Planish

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Reply #10 on: August 23, 2007, 10:02:30 PM
- "Timemaster" by Robert L. Forward (the only story ever to use time-travel convincingly, ie. without paradoxes)
That seems slightly unfair to Harlan Ellison, and I'm a terrible pedant about time travel. 
[snip]
It's been a long while since I've read any Ellison. Are you thinking of "The City on the Edge of Forever"?

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Alasdair5000

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Reply #11 on: August 24, 2007, 09:40:52 AM
Orbital Decay by Allen Steele
   His first novel and one of the first pieces of modern, blue collar SF I ever read.  Part slice of life drama following construction workers in low Earth orbit, part epic and oddly touching conspiracy novel.  Huge fun and oddly poetic in places.  The section dealing with the Challenger ghost still gives me goosebumps.

Virtual Light by William Gibson
   Gibson's cyberpunk work is seminal but this, for me, was the first novel I really connected with him on.  Following Berry, a rent a cop forced to take a very unusual job, it's as much a trip through a slightly odd, 'ten minutes into the future' version of America as it is an SF novel.  Wonderful ideas are thrown casually onto the page, there are some great characters (How can you fail to love a name like Lucius K Warbaby?) and the whole thing is shot through with wry, almost gentle humour.

British Summertime by Paul Cornell
   A young girl in Bath who can sense probabilities starts lowering the odds on the end of the world.  In the far future, a British fighter pilot and his severed head navcomp find themselves hurled back in time.  In the caves above Bath, something wakes up and two thousand years ago, Judas Iscariot is given the most difficult job of his life...Astonishing doesn't quite cover British Summertime.  Written by the author of two of this year's best Doctor Who episodes 'Human Nature' and 'Family of Blood', British Summertime is an incredibly ambitious, successful and utterly, utterly English piece of science fiction.  Unlike anything else on the market and completely deserving off attention.




Roney

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Reply #12 on: August 27, 2007, 05:18:06 PM
- "Timemaster" by Robert L. Forward (the only story ever to use time-travel convincingly, ie. without paradoxes)
That seems slightly unfair to Harlan Ellison, and I'm a terrible pedant about time travel.
It's been a long while since I've read any Ellison. Are you thinking of "The City on the Edge of Forever"?

I haven't read much Ellison myself because his work hasn't always been easy to get hold of in the UK.  Those stories I have read (or seen) have consistently failed to set off my mental time paradox alarm, which is a sufficiently rare occurrence that he's stuck in my mind as an author who "gets" time travel.

I was thinking in particular of the episodes of The Outer Limits "Demon with a Glass Hand" and the one that Ellison successfully sued to get listed as an inspiration for The Terminator.  (I've never seen "Soldier", though, and the Wikipedia entry makes it sound as if some of the neat circularity is original to the film... I'd always assumed, based on the cleverness of James Cameron's subsequent plots, that it must have been something he'd lifted.  Bad me.)



sirana

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Reply #13 on: August 27, 2007, 08:31:30 PM
Jhereg by Steven Brust (standing for entire Taltos-Series)
A Game of Thrones (standing for A Song of Ice and Fire)
The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling (best Steampunk I've read so far)
Pretty much anything Gibson wrote, for that matter.
The Stranger by Albert Camus (well it's not scifi, but it feels like it anyway)
Axiomatic by Greg Egan (Mathematically correct Science Fiction short stories)




Leon Kensington

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Reply #14 on: August 28, 2007, 03:01:20 AM
A Game of Thrones (standing for A Song of Ice and Fire)

One of the greatest series that I have EVER read.



wherethewild

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Reply #15 on: August 28, 2007, 02:43:55 PM
A Game of Thrones (standing for A Song of Ice and Fire)

One of the greatest series that I have EVER read.

Interesting, ´cause for me, I finished that series (or got up to date at least) just wishing everyone would die already. The last time I think I disliked characters that much was the Thomas Covenant series. I was involved in one discussion many years ago which came to the conclusion that the seperation of like/hated for Thomas Covenant split down gender lines, but that was an informal conclusion ;).

Some of my favourites are:

Maps In A Mirror by Orson Scott Card (some of the stories don´t do it for me at all, but others...whoa)
The Chosen by Ricardo Pinto (it was unusual for me to find such an asian history/culture influenced fantasy book and I enjoyed it for that reason)
Dune by Frank Herbert (already mentioned, but *shrug*)
Feersum Endjinn and The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks (I haven´t read any Culture novels yet)
Imajica by Clive Barker (was the first Barker I read and the closest I can get to horror. I´m a wimp.)

Hmm, looks like I need to get to the newer authors more.

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Talia

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Reply #16 on: August 30, 2007, 03:58:59 AM
kahlil34 listed a couple of my favorites.. in particular 'Deed of Paksenarrion' (must-read for any fantasy fans) and 'Altered carbon' (working on the sequel, which isnt quite catching me as much).

I would also put for the 'Otherworld' and 'Memory, sorrow & thorn' series by Tad Williams, sci-fi (arguably) and fantasy respectively (hell of a writer!), the Deverry novels by Katherine Kerr (reincarnation-based fantasy) and anything by Jack McDevitt (a pretty solid sci-fi writer, though his stuff is probably a little light for hardcore sci-fi fans).



Alasdair5000

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Reply #17 on: August 30, 2007, 06:53:54 AM
Jack Mcdevitt!  Oh hell yes!  Loved the Engines of God series to pieces, especially the pay off and the moments of completely unexpected horror in Chindi.  Superb author, and once I've got Charles Stross' new one out of the way I'll be making my way through Slow Lightning by him.