Fallible wrote:Where does it say it's YA?

surreptitious57 wrote:I have read one Mieville and that was The City And The City which was very a powerful imaginative piece
But steampunk is unfortunately not a favourite genre of mine so I dont know if I will be reading him again

I think that genres are necessary in order to guide one in their reading material of choice
And every writer is put into a category including those who dont want to be put into one

Ultimately there are only two categories : good writing and bad writing and all else is irrelevant to this
You can find truly phenomenal writers in any genre and just as equally absolutely awful ones as well
The knack is to be able to separate the two and this can only come with actually reading their books

I will give Jemisin a go and try and read her with an open mind
However I am wary of reading YA because it is aimed at a younger audience so it will
not address adult themes with the same degree of authenticity as it otherwise would

The most famous YA writer is of course JK Rowling with Harry Potter but I never have and never will read any of them as they do absolutely nothing for me. I know that many adults do read them but if what I am reading is not entirely realistic I simply switch off. Wishy washy fiction does not do it for me my mind automatically rejects it as it is essentially hardwired to do so

I recently tried reading Revenger by Alastair Reynolds my favourite author. But I had to stop very early on because
it was a book for children and as such lacked his usual attention to detail wrt dark plots and dark characterisation

I think it is great that writers are aiming for the younger market but it is not a market I am a member of so I accept this
and focus instead on the market for me namely serious fiction [ which is usually although not exclusively science fiction ]

surreptitious57 wrote:
I have just bought The Fifth Season and so hopefully I will not be disappointed

UncertainSloth wrote:just as an aside, canticle for liebowitz is awesome....

UncertainSloth wrote:read some dan simmons when i was much younger - the hyperion books - but never given him much thought since...first came across this because of the tv series which, due to twattishness, we don't get to watch yet...the fallible creature bought me this for my birthday and it's one of the best books i've read (so far) for a long, long time...atmospheric, detailed, well-researched (i have no previous interest in naval history etc but this has really engaged me), suspenseful and gripping....can only hope it keeps this up...

The Aubrey–Maturin series is a sequence of nautical historical novels—20 completed and one unfinished—by Patrick O'Brian, set during the Napoleonic Wars and centering on the friendship between Captain Jack Aubrey of the Royal Navy and his ship's surgeon Stephen Maturin, a physician, natural philosopher, and intelligence agent.

Period language and naval jargon[edit]
Patrick O'Brian once wrote "Obviously, I have lived very much out of the world: I know little of present-day Dublin or London or Paris, even less of post-modernity, post-structuralism, hard rock or rap, and I cannot write with much conviction about the contemporary scene."[13] This becomes obvious for readers of the Aubrey-Maturin Series, as he adopts a narrative voice contemporary with their setting.[10] Richard Ollard, in examining the general reception to O'Brian's books, suggests that O'Brian's naval officers would be able to talk with and recognise Jane Austen's characters.[8]
In addition to the period language, O'Brian is adept at using naval jargon with little or no translation for the "lubberly" reader. The combination of the historical-voice narration and naval terms may seem daunting at first to some readers; but most note that after a short while a "total immersion" effect results.[14] Occasionally, O'Brian explains obscure nautical terms by placing Stephen Maturin into the tutelage of seamen, allowing the author to vicariously teach the reader about various parts and functions of a period sailing vessel without breaking from the narrative. This was especially common early in the series, when Maturin was still new to the Royal Navy.[8]
In the first of the series, during a tour of the rigging, Maturin askes his tourguide if he "could not explain this maze of ropes and wood and canvas without using sea-terms" and the reply came "No, for it is by those names alone that they are known, in nearly every case" [15]