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Book Reccomendation: Perilous Waif

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Sun, 2017-02-12 00:58

ShadowDragon8685 ShadowDragon8685's picture

Book Reccomendation: Perilous Waif

I'm just... Wow. Just [url=https://www.amazon.com/Perilous-Waif-Alice-Long-Book-ebook/dp/B01NBWXMP9... It reads like [i]Eclipse Phase[/i] met [i]Star Wars[/i] by way of a [i]Firefly[/i]-type campaign, without any exsurgent virus or Factors, and spun forward four hundred years or so. The only problem is there's only a bit over 500 pages, and it just came up 1 February, so once you hit the end, you're gonna be left jonesing.

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Wed, 2018-01-10 07:52

Xagroth

I got the book this weekend,

I got the book this weekend, and I'm about 25% of it. I confess being jaded enough I've seen all of the plot twists (that Mirai mention in the bar meeting... talk about chekhov's "gun"), but it certainly seems like a good and educational lecture for EP players (ang GMs alike), and by virtue of being targeted at a young adult audience, the style is light enough even the more mundane parts (like the first pages until she gets onboard the spaceship, which serves the same purpose as all the pages between Frodo's receiving the Ring and his arrival at Bree in the Lord of the Rings book) are not a chore. Ended the book, spoilers might be ahed. I can safely say, however, you can read the Appendixes when you reach about page 150 or (after the bar when they meet some mercs)

Spoiler: Highlight to view

Finished the book (about 27 pags or so at the end are appendixes explaining things like how "hyperspace" and "subspace" work, and might be an interesting lecture to take on once you reach page 150 or so), and yeah, predictable "hero's journey" + "Lost XXX" + "Old tech is better than the new one" (justified, I think, and it's not older than 2 decades), and the protagonist is a little too much on the Mary Sue side, a little higher than Honor Harrington and using mostly the same way to apply pressure (she is not really in danger, but external constraints prevent her from wiggling a finger and win effortlessly... even so, she curbstomps a little too much by the end of the book). The worst part is that the author is not all that interested into continuing the series, writing as he feels like (and mixing several collections he is writing), and that the protagonist is more or less at Goku's levels of insanity when Buu came around (with the added bonus of having the whole EP book collection of stuff in blueprints, tons of custom models, almost limitless beta forking and mental multitasking, and several books worth of al kind of miltech, including warbots).

So I would read this knowing that "trilogy" might be extending the word by at least one book (and the second is unlinkely to be as lenghtly). ------------------------------------ I'd want to add the Cassandra Kresnov "trilogy" (6 books in truth, check at TVTropes on http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/CassandraKresnov ) to the list of interesting reads for future-based literature. Centered around a top-of-the-line artificial "human" after a war between "the federation" and the "corporate shiny tech toys", it gives tons of useful ideas, material, and inspiration for EP background, while giving homage to Shirow's Stand Alone Complex (a whole book is devoted to their own "white whale", called Narrative Syndrome, to the plot of the 2nd season... while the Laughing Man metaplot of the first season gets homage'd as more or less the whole collection's metaplot).

Sat, 2018-04-21 16:43

Adison

Good book.

I thought it was a fantastic book, and would be delighted if the author wrote more. Listened to the audiobook for it, and the voice narrator was amazing as well.

Fri, 2018-05-18 01:58

Xagroth

Another one mentioned in EP's

Another one mentioned in EP's Facebook group I now endorse (I did not know it existed before XD): The Quantum Thief Trilogy, I think it's free for a time in TOR.com if you register. It reminded me a lot of the Eschaton series in feeling (for the tech, and technobabble and...), but has nothing to do with it on the plot/narrative levels. Caveats: you need patience, the author loathes exposition and you need to read it all for everything to be explained on the go. The protagonist is, essentially, a "gamma fork" of a TITAN in EP terms. He still is the best in his job XD Tons of Russian words to define certain things (a Matrioshka brain equivalent is called "Guberniya", for example), but the real gems are in the other language (Mieli, Perhohen...). First book could be a Firewall mission, the Oubliette is a great source of inspiration for a hab. The second book is "Welcome to TITANs!" since it gives us some chapters centered on the Founders, and goes into "wtf did I just read, that goes beyond magic", I suggest reading it a lot. I still need to finish it, thought. On a sidenote, the Founders (akin to TITANs, but of human origin) reminded me A WHOLE LOT of the Yozis from Exalted 2nd edition (you have a founder, then his Primes, then tons of rabble... And all are forks in this case, edited, modified and adapted to tasks...). Ah, the main difference with Eclipse Phase: there are no AGI, everything that has some modicum of intelligence while being software is a fork of someone, pruned, edited, modified... a little Nightmare Horror there. Edit: Finished the trilogy, quite good, but reaches levels of insanity by the end. Book 1 is the most accessible one, book 2 is still accessible but heavily surrounded in a 1001 nights theme, last book is an "all bets are off" get the McGuffin and all that, with some parts of it totally out of whack (Chen's 8 year old alpha fork being able to climb to sysop in any system... despite having spent centuries doing nothing, then a few subjective years on fast instruction). Also the third book presents us the most detailed views on the 2 opposite factions: the "fork colonies" of the Founders and their nano-Death Star computronium "houses" and the gamification-heavy quantum-signed Zoku (evolved from gamers, seeing everything as games). In general, I'd say it feels kinda like the Leverage TV series, but made by a group of 2 that don't even fork themselves.