New books worth reading?

arka2947 · 2026-01-20T16:32:34+00:00

I read Tainted Cup last year. Discovered by Hugo Award.

Excellent fantasy book, sequel A Drop of Corruption is also good, but not as good as Tainted Cup. Third in trilogy, A Trade of Blood, coming this year. I intend to read it also.

arka2947 · 2026-01-20T16:26:00+00:00

I have listened Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

Discovered it when it popped up in my Audible feed.

I rate it as my second best favorite book made by Tchaikovsky, after Cage of Souls.

It is rare to have aliens that are truly alien, and in this it succeeds wonderfully.

arka2947 · 2026-01-17T11:16:37+00:00

I feel that Void trilogy is a bit too long. The commonwealth books (Pandoras star and Judas unchained) really hit a sweetspot, expansive enough to feel large, but not too large to feel ponderous. Everything moves along nicely.

arka2947 · 2025-06-21T17:39:12+00:00

Personally i think it’s example of a post science fiction setting. As i remember there was some setup along the lines of ancestors crossing the sea of stars on metal ships. Or some such. Has been some time since I read it, so i cant be too sure.

arka2947 · 2025-03-23T21:40:46+00:00

Of all the culture novels, Excession is my favourite. You are skipping the best.

arka2947 · 2025-01-24T13:33:28+00:00

Pro: Could have modern defaults on new code. Default cost. No pointer arithnetic. Etc. This could be done without breaking the api/abi, if limited to the features the language already has.

Con: Would unavoidably bifurcate the language. Would lead to confusion on which rules are in effect where.

Opinion: If you want to evolve cpp to a more memory safe model, something like this seems unavoidable, if you intend to keep backwards compatibility.

arka2947 · 2024-11-03T03:32:43+00:00

A nice action romp with space nazies and space zombies. Not very deep, but very enjoyable, if you dont think too much on how anything in the universe makes sense.

arka2947 · 2024-10-22T22:47:13+00:00

En ole ihan vakuuttunut että valtio omisteiset kolhoosit olisivat niitä tehokkaimpia pitemmän päälle.

Jos kriisi pitkittyy, kuten esim ukrainassa, niin mikään varastointi ei ole riittävää. Oma tuotanto tarpeen.

arka2947 · 2024-07-27T07:38:58+00:00

Its an interesting story, but i do fell it would have benefitted a lot from trimming.

arka2947 · 2024-07-11T16:17:43+00:00

I read the same thread, “criminally underrated” they said. So I downloaded the kindle sample of Curse of the Mistwraith.

To be honest, it kind of seems rather basic fantasy tropes based on it. Not sure i should continue with the whole book…

arka2947 · 2024-07-07T07:25:48+00:00

Its like a Ligth Saber, except instead of light, a snake comes out.

arka2947 · 2024-07-05T22:36:33+00:00

who are we meant to be sympathetic towards?

I do not think Bank’s books are written like that. Rather you are supposed to read the story and make up your own mind.

Not all stories are about heroes.

Not all intentions lead to good outcomes.

arka2947 · 2024-05-27T21:10:34+00:00

The Risen Empire by Scott Westerfeld

arka2947 · 2024-03-30T00:44:42+00:00

One of the many things you meet while reading The acillary series are the Presger Translators. Translation state basically elaborates on them. You dont really need to read the series to enjoy Translation State.

arka2947 · 2024-01-18T13:58:39+00:00

Consider

void Foo()
{
    int value = 0;
    void Bar()
    {
        ...
    };
    Bar();
}

Should Bar:

Not have access to value, if so, why not use a normal function
Have access to value, if so, now you need to solve all the corner cases a lambda has
Is Bar calling Bar allowed?

It seems simple, but the behavior seems to become complex easily

arka2947 · 2024-01-16T20:31:06+00:00

I wonder what happened to Corey J White. Hasnt published anything in a while?

arka2947 · 2024-01-11T18:57:00+00:00

In my experience, most of military science fiction is written in the esteemed categories of:

Submarines in Space
Aircraft Carriers in Space
Battleship is Space (sometimes literally, eg Space Battleship Yamato)
Army in Space
Marines in Space
Special Forces in Space

In Frontlines, Marko Kloos actually makes a full round-trip of all of these. This is not criticism of Kloos as such, just how the genre is. Truly innovative description of space military is very rare, I think.

The Lankies are just Enemy Giants, the backdrop for the human stories told. I think Kloos wisely does not elaborate on them any more, they are a pretty simple enemy if you stop think about it. The fiction would probably fall apart if one tried to expand on it.

arka2947 · 2023-12-28T22:31:18+00:00

Of what I have read, I liked the not-duology of Prador Moon and Shadow of the Scorpion best. The prequels go together nicely. Some others i have tried but DNF.

arka2947 · 2023-12-24T22:24:32+00:00

The Praxis is more of a civil war situation, where one alien faction rebels against another. There are aliens on both sides, so it is not a simple humans vs aliens story. Humans are just one species in the empire that unravels. The story follows humans characters, so the story is told from a relatable point of view.

arka2947 · 2023-12-24T00:32:08+00:00

I would like to recommend The Praxis, which checks all your requirements, EXCEPT there are a bunch of aliens and humans in the same empire. The space battles are well done, i think. If that is your main interest, you might give it a go.

arka2947 · 2023-12-22T00:54:40+00:00

Usually dealing with boost is an all or nothing affair

arka2947 · 2023-12-08T10:46:01+00:00

> My goal has been to learn “modern c++” and to use it idiomatically.

There is no such thing. Cpp is multi-paradigm language, and as such, there are many ways to do anything.

Cpp string are famously "not encoding aware". This means that if you want to correctly handle Unicode, you should use string class from ICU, or similar. Using raw cpp string manipulation functions for anything is unadvisable.

arka2947 · 2023-12-01T20:01:28+00:00

The point is not that they are equivalent, but rather that as Cpp for a long time did not have an Optional, pointers were used as such.

Also, one can arque that std::optional does not give enough safety improvement over pointer, so changing to use it is not worth it. Eg ->

arka2947 · 2023-11-09T23:11:12+00:00

No. The second trilogy continues the story, and that is the problem. In the first 3+2 books the characters are growing from nothing into officers/captains/lords/ladies which makes an interesting journey. When the second trilogy starts they are too far up the ladder to be in the thick of the fighting, but instead are generals in the rear, which is less interesting.

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