Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels discussion

No spoiler thread for The Rise of Endymion

My mass market copy of this book is 709 pages! I was feeling very overwhelmed with what I'd put on my list to try to finish in July, and decided that moving this to August made most sense, as it too counts as an extremely long read (I think the audiobook is close to 30 hours?). So I bumped The Scar off my August plan and will tackle this one maybe by the end of July, early August.

I know it's why I also want to hold off. why is it so long

In this volume, you'll finally find out what Srike is! And audio is 'just' 29:47 :)

Oleksandr wrote: "In this volume, you'll finally find out what Srike is! And audio is 'just' 29:47 :)"

Or about 8 hours of listening at Acorn's speed

Kalin wrote: "My mass market copy of this book is 709 pages! I was feeling very overwhelmed with what I'd put on my list to try to finish in July, and decided that moving this to August made most sense, as it to..."

I'll continue to work on it this month, as I have quite a few long books planned this year. Might not get much other stuff read, but oh well.

Allan wrote: "Or about 8 hours of listening at Acorn's speed"

Lol, actually more, the fastest I can follow English speech is around x2.2, but for most books, to enjoy and not only follow the plot I go at x1.75

My listening speed is max x1.25, and that's only if I'm not enjoying it and just want to finish faster. I am at x1 normal speed most of the time.

But I don't have an audiobook for this one through libby, so it's sight-reading for me.

Oleksandr wrote: "
Lol, actually more, the fastest I can follow English speech is around x2.2, but for most books, to enjoy and not only follow the plot ..."

My max is x1.60, but it depends heavily on the narrator & the accents. I usually wind up at x1.4 or x1.5. Provenance, for example, with all the accents, is going at x1.35. My sight-reading speed is terribly slow & has declined in each of the last three years, to where I can't make 1000 pages in a month. I used to do twice that. Lack of sitting time? Lack of concentration?

I guess we went offtopic a bit, but for now no one discusses the book, so fine :)

I started listening like 10 years ago at x1 speed, then started to increase it. I guess the fact that I don't do anything that may notably distracts me while listening, like driving a car.

I started this a couple days ago. The audio is daunting at 29:47, but it's manageable at 1.5x. It picks up only a few years after the last one, so it's easy to jump right into the story.

I'm loving the Nemes stuff

the questionable relationship not so much

I'm @30% of the book and I like it as much as earlier volumes (I liked it upon the first read back in 1999 or so as well). If we discussed that the 3rd volume lacked women, here are a few with episodic but important roles so far even if Pax is still dominated by men (possibly intentionally). There is even a mention of a female bishop

I just started. 50 pages in and enjoying the start. Surprised by the lack of actual discussion of the book in this page though. Assume u all went over to the spoilers page. Or should I be worried? 800 pages is a big commitment for a text that fails to deliver.

Yes, I think most jumped over there pretty quickly. However, I thought it was a very solid ending to the series. There were a few parts where the author got into infodumps, more so I think than in previous books, but they only slowed things down periodically & certainly didn’t ruin the story. It pulled together all the threads nicely & was a very satisfying conclusion. It was a bit daunting, but I felt I had really accomplished something in completing the series.

yes in spoilers page although my spoiler is that the book is meh

I won't start for another week or so.

kalin you'll be reading it for the next month

Hopefully it'll just be a few weeks. Wish I had Libby access to the audiobook though.

I’m at the part where Endymion departed Vitus-Gray-Balianus B. I feel like this chapter, the first part, is lifted from somewhere. Perhaps an Arthur C Clarke short story?

Also, find myself wondering on the origins of the fast time concept. EC Tubb used the concept a lot in his Dumarest series. He called it quick time. Anyone know of any earlier use of the concept?

I guess accelerated reaction is common stuff in mil-SF, but I haven't met exactly that version