I’m not the first to whine about this - this thread on r/books three years ago raises the same issue. But where the op in that thread got frustrated by the continuity issues, my issue is the actual courtroom stuff. It bugged me enough to pause my audiobook, look up a PDF of the novel, and go back through to count the number of times Weir got it fundamentally wrong. In the span of about 3 pages, there are at least 9 serious errors about how US federal courts work:

• The district court is referred to as Justice Meredith Spencer. The correct title is judge. The only federal court justices are in the supreme court.
• Some kind of “Intellectual Property Alliance” would almost certainly not have standing to sue. You can’t sue unless you personally are harmed (with some very very narrow exceptions). An individual entity - an author or publisher or something - could sue someone for infringing on specific IP. I could imagine a bunch of these publishers banding together to …

I honestly don’t remember the last time I stayed up all night reading a book, but I couldn’t put this down. I’m struggling to find the words to describe how good it is, possibly because I’m terrible at putting my thoughts into words lol. I’ll keep it simple - the prose is incredible, and the story is brutal and beautiful all at once.

Here’s the blurb:

Sir Una Everlasting was Dominion’s greatest hero: the orphaned girl who became a knight, who died for queen and country. Her legend lives on in songs and stories, in children’s books and recruiting posters―but her life as it truly happened has been forgotten.

Centuries later, Owen Mallory―failed soldier, struggling scholar―falls in love with the tale of Una Everlasting. Her story takes him to war, to the archives―and then into the past itself. Una and Owen are tangled together in time, bound to retell the same story over and over again, no matter what it costs.

But that story always ends the same way. If they want to …

Probably the best Sci-Fi/Fantasy author interview I’ve ever seen. Gives great insight in how Adrian Tchaikovsky approaches his novels. Warning: Containts spoilers about some of his books.

What basically prompted this was me playing Final Fantasy XVI for the first time, and the setup for this world is so freaking played out, it’s almost satirical.

“There’s these big crystals that people mine for smaller crystals and people use the smaller crystals to cast magic that have different elemental properties.”

That exact fantasy world has been done a million times over.

But where Final Fantasy XVI excels at is taking that super basic foundation and then asking ‘Okay, now what does that *mean?*’ and then answering that question over and over and over again.

It asks:

• Who controls the crystals?

• What happens when they run out?

• How does this shape borders and wars?

• How do religions interpret them?

• How do rulers justify their power through them?

• What does daily life look like for people who depend on them?

• What happens when access to magic is unequal?

And suddenly, you have a world that feels very lived in.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Kitchen Sink fantasy …

For years I’d see The Goblin Emperor get recommended on here and I’d get confused as to the context of where it got recommended as all this time I thought it was a YA romance, not a tale of political fantasy.

Turns out that I’ve accidentally been thinking of The Hollow Kingdom by Clare B. Dunkle instead whenever I’d come across the title of The Goblin Emperor.

Oops.

Both Fourth Wing and The Black Witch series are on record stating that they were originally a trilogy, and got stretched out to 5 books (whether it be author or publisher decision). And they both have seemed to suffer for it with the books becoming overly padded and decreasing in quality.

ACOTAR is also awaiting its 5th book after being a trilogy, and it is generally accepted that the Throne of Glass Series is of better quality having been a planned out 8 book series. Is this a new trend just to make money, or a bad decision by authors? Has this been happening for a while or is this just a coincidence?

Reading Shadow of What Was Lost, and in the span of a single 10 page chapter, the author used various iterations of the word “gape” seven times. I had already been struggling with the book, finding much of the writing sophomoric. But that sequence of use might have been the final nail…

I’ve had this issue before. I can’t think of any examples, but it drives me absolutely batty and really speaks to the lack of editing - which I think this book suffers from elsewhere. But is this just a me problem?

I’ll try to stick it out, because everyone raves about the series. It just reminds me of a lesser Rothfuss.

A recent Atlantic article (pay walled but I will summarize below) suggests America is not as literate as it once was and warns of a sharp decline in reading habits.

From 2022, a *Survey of Public Participation in the Arts*^(1), found ‘less than half of Americans had read a book in the previous 12 months and a study from the University of Florida and University College London^(2) found that, year-on-year, the number of Americans reading daily declined 3% each year from 2003 to 2023.’

In another revealing statistic, only ‘14% of 13-year-olds read for fun, down from 27% a decade earlier.’^(3)

The article goes on to talk of the need for people to read more challenging books, approaching reading in a ‘growth mindset’ manner but suggests these kinds of arguments often fall on deaf ears and rarely persuade people to do so.

The author then posits it would be better to treat reading as a ‘vice’, shrouding it with counter-culture undertones, making reading ‘cool’ again. The …

I came across a video covering this news and was absolutely in shock. All links will be shared below in the comments. [Edit 2: I never withheld the links. It seems the Mod bot might have removed it. I tried sharing them in parts.]

HarperCollins has apparently ended the contracts of their English-to-French translators for their Harlequin imprint books and will now use AI for translation instead. When I looked for other sources for this, I noticed there was one article from 2024 “quietly” announcing HC would be using their books to train third-party AI models for 2500 USD, with the authors’ permission. And now they’re using AI for translation.

We need more eyes on this issue to stop this practice and avoid Al slop books from taking over. It’s not just HarperCollins. It takes a lot of practice, experience, cultural understanding, and sheer dedication to bring a work into translation.

Edit: We’ve already seen what a disaster AI translation is in the …

I get turned off by plots that rely on the protagonist making dumb decisions or being conveniently clueless just to drive the story forward.

I know Project Hail Mary isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it was good competence porn at least. Same goes for The Martian and House of Suns.

In Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Mars Trilogy” there’s a character called Ursula Kohl, one of the first people to settle on Mars.

The word “kohl” refers to a black powder and dark substance, typically used to darken the skin.

The surname “Le Guin”, meanwhile, means “white” or “fair”, and is derived from the Celtic/Old French gwenn or guin, a nickname for fair-complexioned people.

So Stanley’s “Le Guin” is like a reflected version of the real life Le Guin, who was his professor, friend and mentor. Fittingly (or coincidentally), Ursula Kohl is also the co-inventor of a gerontological treatment in the “Mars Novels”, which allows her to extend her life, which in a sense Stan does as well by letting his friend live on to the late 22nd century.

EDIT - Some people are saying that this surname is coincidental, and I agree that it may be. But note that Stan does have a history of …

I check the io9 site monthly to see if there are going to be any interesting Scifi releases in the sea of YA fantasy. Turns out new books are going to be released by two of the most popular authors, both on Jan 27.

Halcyon Years by Alastair Reynolds

“A private investigator is hired to look into a mysterious, high-profile death aboard the starship *Halcyon* in this fresh new science fiction masterpiece from the creator of the beloved Revelation Space universe. Strap in for a gripping murder mystery.” (January 27)

Hearthspace by Stephen Baxter

“Thousands of years ago, a massive colony ship arrived at the Hearth—the celestial birthplace of millions of planets, ranging from habitable earth-like worlds to unimaginable hellscapes of pressure and heat. Using lightsails to navigate, humanity has spread itself across dozens of these worlds. But they have also forgotten their beginnings, where they came from… and a terrible secret is about to be unveiled.” (January 27)

My wife and I love well written space operas. We love Adrian Tchaikovsky who does a great job with non-human POVs, and Vernor Vinge, whose Zones of Thought were of glorious scope. We loved the Vorkosigan universe but want more aliens. I liked Honor Harrington at first but the thinly veiled polemics got old quickly. We’re looking for suggestions of writers and series we might enjoy that are new to us, any thoughts?

Background - read lots of Adrian Tchaikovsky, House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds, the entire collection of Hyperion novels, Snow Crash, 3-body problem series

Thanks to this forum, I ordered Pandora’s Star a few weeks ago and now – I would rank Pandora’s Star as probably the most engaging

In a way its a mishmash of parts from all these other novels put together, with a dose of Erle Stanley Gardner (Perry Mason) thrown in

And yes, it is very Anglo-centric, with a hell of a lot of stereotypical portrayals of women, ethnicities and cliches dating from when this was written

But by God, this novel made me not put it down once I got past the halfway mark. I even pushed out some work related calls so I continue reading till the end, lol

It probably has the most clean cut / hard sci fi, despite some fantasy element, and the author actually spends time on his characters, cliche as they may be.

That enzyme bonded concrete is mentioned like a gazillion times, but world …

In Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan season 2 finale, their team stormed Venezuela presidential palace which I thought was absurd. I even went to Imdb and ranted about it which I almost never do.

Now what once was ridiculous, is border line prophetic.

I honestly don’t know why more people don’t complain about this, so here’s me complaining about this.

Against my better judgement I decided to watch The Gorge on Apple‘s streaming platform, and boy it turns out even an ending as trite as that can be further undercut by Ted Lasso’s beaming face.

I remember the story about how George Lucas had to go non-union or pay fines to the director’s guild because he refused to open Star Wars with credits. They cared about them that much. Now, in space year 2026, apparently every professional association of filmmakers give not one solitary shit about credits, allowing as they do every single streaming platform to shrink them to Borrower size so they can Run Some Fucken Adverts. “Yes you just watched Schindler’s List for three hours and change, but stop processing it there’s not a moment to lose, have you heard about House MD? We’re gonna play it in 5 seconds unless you tell us not to.”

This is Apple’s own movie, these are their …