Locus Award 2016 winners: your summer reading!

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I wish all authors would just add a donate button to their sites, I’d like to chuck money at the authors I like.

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I’ve read Ancillary Mercy and Uprooted and they’re both excellent. I do think that the second “Ancillary” novel was the weakest of the three, but it’s setting up for the premise of “Mercy” so it helps to read them all as a unit.

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Maaaaan, I loved “Justice” and would love to get to conclusion but, really, slog through another tome of who-wore-what-pin-where-while-having-tea to get there?

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It takes an interesting turn into the rights of artificial intelligence. I really liked it.

I’m in the final pages of Ancillary Justice and up until the last few chapters, I thought it was really good - reminded me of Foundation. But for some reason the last few chapters have been hard to finish for me. It could just be my schedule - I’m hoping for some more reading on the beach time soon.**

** Time is an illusion. Free time, when you’re the parent of a toddler, doubly so.

Unfortunately it’s just boring writing. Really, excruciatingly boring. That’s really all there is to it. i have a hard time even remembering any plot points beyond something involving fish and guns. It gets interesting again at the end of the final chapter, when finally things start happening beyond mundanities and tea drinking. I hear the second is even worse.

Well, except for all the people that loved it and gave some of the books awards. I loved all three novels.

You read the third novel of a trilogy and didn’t read the second? No wonder it was boring to you.

Perhaps you forgot that Ancillary Justice is the first novel of the series? This was a reply to weatherman finding the last few chapters of ancillary justice a slog, which I found them to be as well. Having been so bored by parts of the first book, I didn’t read the second, of which many people who’d liked the first book maintained was slow/boring in comparison. I’m glad you loved all three books. Some people love watching golf, some people find it boring as heck. No accounting for taste.

As for why it won so many awards, the ancillary series were first-rate, innovative, comprehensive world building, and IMO they won on that aspect. It’s just that the writing was…well…kinda boring. For long stretches not very much happens. Kinda like the first few hundred pages of Jonathan Strange, which I also found incredibly slow, and is the only book in the last decade that I started but DNF. On the other hand I found Uprooted to be excellent. Far superior writing.

I missed the part three messages back where you switched from the novel that was mentioned in the article to another…

No accounting for taste, sure, but I think more people like the book(s) than you seem to implying, given the general high praise and award status.

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