Forum: Story Recommendations

On the commercial side you have peter F. Hamilton with his

"Nights Dawn" Trilogy and the Commonwealth Trilogy and the sequels.

Tried out Night's Dawn, it was interesting, it also certainly had scope and scale, but was poorly focused(scope and scale mostly achieved through that lack of focus). Not a terrible "read" (in so much as it was my first foray into Audible rather than speech to text) so much as a long one. Which certainly qualified it for "epic" in more than one (technical) sense.

But such is a capricious nature of things. Do one thing instead of the other, and you'll have complaints from someone about not taking the other route. In particular if you're going for "epic" type story lines. Had a few other more technical complaints about things that have little relation to those books being nearly 20 years old now.

Although I did like his rationale for why Earth's ecosystem was still screwed, even though they had "completely cleaned up the pollutants" by the end of the 21st Century(high technology/high energy society == lots of heat output even if you're non-polluting otherwise).

Of course, that lead into a slew of technical problems of its own kind that doesn't have much bearing on the plot or story.

It's Hamilton's Multi POV style. On my first read through, I read every POV. On the second and third, I skipped some tedious and boring ones.
I never reread Commonwealth and Void trilogy, but he got better in making the different POV likable or in some few cases more readable without skipping the whole chapter.

The only major issue I have, is that in some chapters you don't know which POV it is even after several paragraphs.

And the scope of Commonwealth and Void is massively bigger than Night's Dawn.

It's Hamilton's Multi POV style. On my first read through, I read every POV. On the second and third, I skipped some tedious and boring ones.

Game of Thrones does a comparable thing, so it isn't entirely unusual. It just causes things to "drag along" when an author goes about advancing their own respective storylines along for a half-dozen or more characters from their own POV when those half-dozen (POV) characters often are having little to no direct interaction with one another. (And in many cases, how/why those characters are relevant... and some of those story lines took a loong time for their paths to cross, with payoffs that were somewhat underwhelming in a few(well, most) cases.)

I never reread Commonwealth and Void trilogy, but he got better in making the different POV likable or in some few cases more readable without skipping the whole chapter.

I could care less about likable adjunct POV characters, just so long as they're believable. Of course, the MC himself (and Louise) was pushing suspension of disbelief more than most of the others for me. As those characters tend to end up being the ones that everybody loves to hate, for all the right(wrong) reasons.

The only major issue I have, is that in some chapters you don't know which POV it is even after several paragraphs.

Yeah, the POV shifts were less than clear a lot of times.

John Wales has posted several epic (in length, and sometimes in scope) SF stories on SOL. He also has written a few time travel novels, some "far past" and some do-over.

I have read your catalyst and great death stories. You're one I enjoy, though I do owe you a strangle for the deaths at the end of great death 1.lol

Blinkreader: Ive read all of The wolves and dragons of the blood thus far.

Samis: I enjoyed retreads. Despite it technically falling in a do over format. Still it avoids many of the annoyances I have with that genre.

Again thanks all for your suggestions.