Space Opera Fans discussion

I just finished . Thumbs up! Very much about the crew members and their differences. Not as action heavy as some space opera, but never slow and the crew was enjoyable. It was like an ensemble tv show in book form., which is great because I read a lot and am not impressed with tv lately.

I'm on the fence about . I read book one and loved it...book two has a lot of set up and meanders and now it's been so long I worry I won't remember enough of the details for book three.


I am thinking of reading The Expanse series. Any other suggestions?

I enjoyed A Long Way as well, and thought the character development was suberb. By the way, Chambers is working on the sequel, due in October, A Closed and Common Orbit. I'll definitely be picking it up when it comes out.

Britt wrote: "I enjoyed A Long Way as well, and thought the character development was suberb. By the way, Chambers is working on the sequel, due in October, A Closed and Common Orbit. I'll defini..."


It's a must buy for me too.

Echo wrote: "I'm on the fence about Ancillary Mercy (Imperial Radch, #3) by Ann Leckie. I read book one and loved it...book two has a lot of set up and meanders and now it's been so long I worry I won't remember enough of the details for book three."

I read all three and enjoyed them. Each has a different feel, for sure.

How funny...I just joined this club and am reading this book. I'll chim in once I get further.

I really liked it, one of the most pleasant surprises I've experienced in a while. My review.

Echo wrote: "I just finished . Thumbs up! Very much about the crew members and their differences. Not as action heavy as some space opera, but never slo..."

If you like large-ish casts, a more slow-burn than action-heavy narrative and such, then yeah, The Expanse series is a good read!

As always, when I don't know what you have and haven't read, if you haven't, you should read all the original Dune series by Frank Herbert.
Not the prequels and sequels his son and Kevin Anderson did, they're entertaining but not as intense or intricately intriguing.

Also out of the oldies, try Cities In Flight if you haven't. It's quite well crafted!

I would go stronger to say that one should avoid the Kevin Anderson & Brian Herbert DUNE books like the plague!! (Maybe the House books, ATREIDES, HARKONNEN & CORRINO).

The original 6 books by Frank Herbert ( DUNE, DUNE MESSIAH, CHILDREN OF DUNE, GOD EMPEROR OF DUNE, HERETICS OF DUNE, DUNE: CHAPTERHOUSE) are still some of my all-time favorites and what got me into Sci-fi decades ago!!

MadProfessah wrote: "I would go stronger to say that one should avoid the Kevin Anderson & Brian Herbert DUNE books like the plague!! (Maybe the House books, ATREIDES, HARKONNEN & CORRINO).

The original 6 books by Fra..."

You and me both Prof.

I used to read a lot and was big into comics and stuff too, but then fell out of it for a couple of years because it wasn't "cool" and I started focussing on studies, basketball, girls, puberty, etc... but then my dad on a whim got me a copy of Dune and the rest is history.

Akshay wrote:: ,,,Also out of the oldies, try Cities In Flight if you haven't. It's quite well crafted! ..."

Written by James Blish and published in the 70s.. I read Cities in Flight several times, the first time as a teenager. I have never forgotten the Spindizzy. It's actually 4 novels combined and was sold as a science fiction book club edition.

At that same time I got Dune from the science fiction book club. I read it and at the end started it over from page one.

I read Dune a long, long time ago. I'm not sure why I didn't continue, because I don't remember disliking it. I should revisit that series.

Yes, only read Frank Herbert's Dune novels. The rest is, frankly, horrible in comparison. It's garbage. I don't say this lightly, believe me, but Brian Herbert pissed on his father's grave with those books.

For me the quality of the Dune series went off a cliff after the first one.

Sacrilege! I will concede that the latter three books are very... different than the first three though.

Trike wrote: "For me the quality of the Dune series went off a cliff after the first one."

I agree. I read the second one and I think I tried the third, but none of them were any where near as good as the first.

NOTE: Sorry to original poster, I feel like Dune is hijacking your thread here!

@Betsy, Trike, Tobias, Echo:

There is no doubt that the first one is the seminal entry, the landmark, the iconic story, the one that covers so much, does so much and is one-of-a-kind in so many ways.
No sequel, prequel or adaptation has ever been able to touch the power of the novel just by itself.
(NOTE: I did however just finish the audiobook of it on a whim - full voice cast edition - and am going to be reviewing it, I was duly impressed and I say that being that this is literally the 3rd audiobook I've ever heard. Ever.)

The prequels, I recommend to no one - well... okay so I would say the "House.." prequels are not terrible, readable enough though I wish I could chop and hack them up to make maybe two books that would excise some of the particularly shit choices. They are entertainment and don't add too much but it's alright.
The Butlerian Jihad... now that is a prequel I recommend not because you should read the series! But because I would read it just for itself, mostly because that is one that it seems genuinely has concepts (like Erasmus and the nature of the machine society and the history of the old human empire and all that) which are fascinating enough and so far removed from chronologically from the Dune-iverse of the main books that it doesn't matter.
I would say you could choose to skip the next two in the series safely though. Again, with some brutal chopping and wholesale murder of chunks of story, I imagine that this series could make for a compelling single-big-novel that would be a passably decent far-prequel.

DONT read the two sequels though... good god, especially that last one! I mean what they hell! They wobbled but had legs of some sort on every single book they wrote but this last one just... it's like an example of how perfectly capable writers can crap a bed.
I lump it in the same category as the last Battlestar Galactica series final seasons - by that I mean they had compelling, well, everything, and a world and mythos that was the stuff of legend for readers. But then after reaching a wonderful near crescendo (the cliffhanger last book that Herbert himself wrote), you make some more noise to keep that crescendo going and just turn a symphony into banging pots and pans.

Also: I gather that some of you are not too fond of Herberts own Dune sequels - I'm not out to defend them as great books but in fairness I feel that the power and high that is Dune is bloody hard to beat.
That said, I have read VERY few writers who can take as many myriad concepts, cultures and such a powerful socio-cultural evolution and follow it and evolve it the way he did.
There were things I loved in the follow ups and things that felt like odd choices but as a whole, as books and as sequels, when I think back on them, I look at it this way: I would read them, reread them and definitely recommend them to others. For me that's a good book and a rare sequel (let alone so many!).

Lizzie wrote: "Akshay wrote:: ,,,Also out of the oldies, try Cities In Flight if you haven't. It's quite well crafted! ..."

Written by James Blish and published in the 70s.. I read Cities in Flight several times..."

I know what you mean, I reread Dune about once a year or at least once every 18 months. Just the first book mainly.
Also, I never had the good fortune to read the books too early on, I only ever read Cities In Flight as the collected "scifi masterworks" edition. Been collecting the books in that series for years now, in whatever measure I can afford. :)

Dune is such a terrible book. I honestly don't understand how anyone has ever finished that book. There's not one single interesting thing going on in it.

I do want to read Long Way To A Small Angry Planet. It seems just the type of book I'd enjoy.

Is it a crime to love both the Dune series and Small Angry Planet? I love them for different reasons. One of the epic scope and the other for its quiet character moments.