I haven't read those, but glad you enjoyed!

I've got two on audio that I am just "meh" on, so trying to see if anyone had any "No, no, keep going!" things to say. One is Hyperion. I liked the first "tale" well enough, though the protagonist took kind of a long time to figure shit out, but the second one was just ugh and with bonus bad sex scenes... I just skipped to the next chapter but then fell asleep and woke up in the middle of another chapter. Anyone have any thoughts?

Then I'm listening to Red Rising, and I'm just not getting into it. These plucky, young oppressed folk are not interesting yet. I feel like a curmudgeon. Anyone read the series?

I would never have picked up the Expanse series again had it not been for you all encouraging that one, so I want to check on these, too! I'm still missing the Expanse universe.

Right now I'm reading The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, and I'm enjoying it so far, but I'm only forty or so pages in. I had to take a break from The Name of the Wind. For all its accolades, I'm finding it a little draggy. Maybe I just don't have patience to let a story unfold anymore. (No, that's not true. I'm just hitting a weird run with these right now.)

Becky Chambers is pretty great and that book might be my favorite of hers. There’s a lot to like about it!

I read Hyperion something like 30 years ago, it’s pretty hazy. I do remember liking it at the time but I think I was ultimately frustrated by how the whole series got resolved (or maybe didn’t get resolved? Honestly do not remember). I read a bunch of Simmons off the back of it and then figured I didn’t need to read him anymore and haven’t. What I retained from that is that I liked the short story Cold Carrion but he ruined it when he turned it into a novel and I’ve been low-key mad at him ever since. And his sex scenes are pretty bad. Not, like, award-winning get quoted all over the internet bad, but not good.

Red Rising I kept getting samples for at the end of something else (Murderbot? Something series because it was just something I came to expect in that context) and they didn’t make me want to pick up the actual thing. I did kind of feel like it was the sort of thing I ought to like but I just didn’t.

That's how I'm feeling about Red Rising -- I feel like I should like this, but I don't. So far it's just making me think of the "jolly steerage class partying it up" scene from Titanic, and it's just making me grind my teeth.

Good intel in Hyperion, thanks. Yeah, I maybe should have read it decades ago, but I didn't, and now I'm just... well, a curmudgeon.

I may give another chapter a shot with Hyperion, but I think I'm going to ditch Red Rising unless someone else here chimes in with more thoughts.

Eh, there’s no should about it. I had forgotten about the Canterbury Takes aspect, now that I think about there were definitely some tales I liked more than others, and probably the later ones more than earlier? So my advice is: go ahead and finish Hyperion but don’t bother with the rest of the series

Cool, thanks!

I meant should in the "I might have liked it better when I was younger and things in general were newer to me" sense -- like, if I'd wanted to like it, I should have read it earlier, ha!

I haven't read Red Rising myself (yet), but I bought the first book on the strength of the really, really strong recommendation of a friend whose opinion I value. I'm not sure how strong of a data point that is, but there it is.

Ooh, cool. I look forward to your review!

I'd wanted to like it, I should have read it earlier,

Oh, that totally makes sense!

If you like it I will reconsider my stance, Epic. It’s very possible that what I didn’t like about the samples was the production (I think was one of those “full cast” readings which I can hate even if I like the source material (not always, sometimes I love them. I wish I knew what the critical difference that led to those divergent outcomes was!))

Well, unfortunately, I won't be getting to it soon! My library has been annoyingly prompt with bringing in my holds lately, so those are priority. But I'll let you know. Patrick (my friend) was a really big reader, and a very smart guy, so if he recommended it (and seriously, he REALLY recommended it), it must have ... err ... something to recommend it.

I read Hyperion something like 30 years ago, it’s pretty hazy.

Same here. I remember the worldbuilding more than any of the characters, but I am glad to have read them. (That house that one guy has in Endymion? I want to live there! Except for the, um, consequences.)