Barsk
"An historian who speaks with the dead is ensnared by the past. A child who feels no pain and who should not exist sees the future. Between them are truths that will shake worlds. In a distant future, no remnants of human beings remain, but their successors thrive throughout the galaxy. These are the offspring of humanity's genius--animals uplifted into walking, talking, sentient beings. The Fant are one such species: anthropomorphic elephants ostracized by other races, and long ago exiled to the rainy ghetto world of Barsk. There, they develop medicines upon which all species now depend. The most coveted of these drugs is koph, which allows a small number of users to interact with the recently deceased and learn their secrets. To break the Fant's control of koph, an offworld shadow group attempts to force the Fant to surrender their knowledge. Jorl, a Fant Speaker with the dead, is compelled to question his deceased best friend, who years ago mysteriously committed suicide. In so doing, Jorl unearths a secret the powers that be would prefer to keep buried forever. Meanwhile, his dead friend's son, a physically challenged young Fant named Pizlo, is driven by disturbing visions to take his first unsteady steps toward an uncertain future"
Stats for nerds
2recommend
3mentions
2people
2016–2019years
100% recommend
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Currently:
Through a Camel's Eye by Dorothy Johnston although admit I'm having trouble getting into it. Will give it another 50 pages before I decide.
And today started listening to Dune Messiah on audiobook. I loved the first book which I've reread many times, but didn't enjoy the following books at all when I read them years and years ago. Decided to give them another try.
Recommend:
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North for beautiful prose, charming writing and an inventive story. Her first and best book under that pseudonym.
Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard and The Moons of Barsk by Lawrence M. Schoen for making me care about anthropomorphic elephants.
Children of Time and Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky for almost making me care about non-anthropomorphic spiders.
I Am Not a Serial Killer and sequels by Dan Wells for tricking me into reading a horror novel when I at first thought it was a thriller, but really enjoying it anyway.
The Lost Man by Jane Harper for being similar but so far a lot better than Through a Camel's Eye.
- Farmer in the Sky by Robert Heinlein [1]
The Complete Robot by Isaac Asimov [2]
The Wrong Unit [3] wasn't a bad little humorous tale.
Pretty much anything by Timothy Zahn (sans Star Wars novelisations) [4] or Robert Sawyer [5] floats my boat.
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North [6]
Barsk: The Elephants’ Graveyard by Lawrence M. Schoen [7] made me care about sentient elephants.
Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi [8] is very funny. Audiobook version narrated by Wil Wheaton.
Of ones already mentioned:
The Bobiverse was surprisingly good (including the audiobook version).
The Expanse is good.
With regards to Dune, there are some like myself who only ever liked the first book in the series. (Also there is a good audiobook version out there.)
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and sequels are great world building and characters, although the plots seem to meander about with not too much purpose.
The Martian is great.
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50851.Farmer_in_the_Sky
[2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50091.The_Complete_Robot
[3] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30959279-the-wrong-unit
[4] https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/12479.Timothy_Zahn
[5] https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/25883.Robert_J_Sawyer
[6] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18295861-the-first-fifte...
[7] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25667916-barsk
[8] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11167622-fuzzy-nation
- Seconding Barsk, and just about anything by Robert Sawyer; I would recommend his Neanderthal Parallax series, which begins with Hominids: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/264946.Hominids
