Weekly Sale from Phoenix Pick

[gbm]

Received this in email today.

PUBLISHER'S PICK

This Week's Deals on Publisher's Pick.
Deals are available from now through the coming Monday.

bernie

[gbm]

This Week's Deals on Publisher's Pick.(12/19/2018)
Deals are available from now through the coming Monday.

The Seeds of Man by William C. Dietz
offered by William C. Dietz direct
Regular Price $4.99
Sale Price $1.99
With The Seeds of Man New York Times bestselling author William C. Dietz offers us a post apocalyptic future

Spoiler:

in which millions were killed during a nuclear war--and the world is locked in the cold embrace of a nuclear winter.

​

But there is a chance for something better if a young man and woman can survive--and if the seeds stored in a doomsday vault can be distributed to those who are starving.

Oath of Fealty
by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
offered by Phoenix Pick
Regular Price $6.99
Sale Price $2.99
Todos Santos is thousand-foot-high arcology, a Utopia in a dystopian future; a single-structured city that

Spoiler:

rises above the festering skyscrapers to offer its privileged residents the perfect blend of technology and security in exchange for their oath of allegiance and vigilance.



But is this orderly city elevating humanity, or shackling it? There are those who will do anything to oppose the order imposed by it. And the actions of three youths may bring humanities most ambitious projects to its knees.

Deathstalker by Simon R. Green
offered by Jabberwocky
Regular Price $5.99
Sale Price $1.99

Owen Deathstalker, last of the infamous warrior Clan, always considered himself more of a writer than a fighter, preferring history books to making history

Spoiler:

with a sword. But books won't protect him from Her Imperial Majesty Lionstone XIV, who just condemned Owen to death, without explanation or warning.



Now, on the run from Imperial starcruisers, shady mercenaries, and just about everyone else in the Empire, Owen's options are limited. If he's to live, Owen can either run forever...or take down the corrupt Empire. The time has come for Owen to embrace his heritage...and all the blood and death that go along with it.

I very highly recommend Oath of Fealty it is on my reread list, try to get to it about once every ten years.


bernie

[Manabi]

Originally Posted by gbm

I very highly recommend Oath of Fealty it is on my reread list, try to get to it about once every ten years.

Weird how things work, I hated that book. One of things that bothered me the most was how the women characters are handled, and in particular:

Spoiler:

The whole rape scene is awful. The reactions of the woman are not remotely realistic, and it makes the whole thing even more horrifying because of it. It was also completely unnecessary to the plot, the kidnapping alone was all that was needed. Ultimately it felt like the authors had a woman raped merely for shock value.

About the only thing I remember liking about the book was the diving board on the roof. That really did seem like an effective way to make a lot of potential jumpers reconsider their plan.

If you liked it, great, you should reread it and enjoy it! I just can't recommend it to anyone personally.

[Rbneader]

Originally Posted by Manabi

Weird how things work, I hated that book. One of things that bothered me the most was how the women characters are handled, and in particular:

Spoiler:

The whole rape scene is awful. The reactions of the woman are not remotely realistic, and it makes the whole thing even more horrifying because of it. It was also completely unnecessary to the plot, the kidnapping alone was all that was needed. Ultimately it felt like the authors had a woman raped merely for shock value.

About the only thing I remember liking about the book was the diving board on the roof. That really did seem like an effective way to make a lot of potential jumpers reconsider their plan.

If you liked it, great, you should reread it and enjoy it! I just can't recommend it to anyone personally.

Thanks for the heads-up! I'm passing on the book.

[gbm]

Originally Posted by Manabi

Weird how things work, I hated that book. One of things that bothered me the most was how the women characters are handled, and in particular:

Spoiler:

The whole rape scene is awful. The reactions of the woman are not remotely realistic, and it makes the whole thing even more horrifying because of it. It was also completely unnecessary to the plot, the kidnapping alone was all that was needed. Ultimately it felt like the authors had a woman raped merely for shock value.

About the only thing I remember liking about the book was the diving board on the roof. That really did seem like an effective way to make a lot of potential jumpers reconsider their plan.

If you liked it, great, you should reread it and enjoy it! I just can't recommend it to anyone personally.

I envy you for you have led a sheltered life.

As for the rape scene it is happening on a daily basic in real life in the present, e.g. Yazidi women.

Originally Posted by Rbneader

Thanks for the heads-up! I'm passing on the book.

Before passing on the book go and read the sample at Baenebooks.


bernie

[Rbneader]

Originally Posted by gbm

I envy you for you have led a sheltered life.

As for the rape scene it is happening on a daily basic in real life in the present, e.g. Yazidi women.



Before passing on the book go and read the sample at Baenebooks.


bernie

The objections were to the gratuitous nature of the rape scene and how badly written the characters are in it.

Insisting that people need to try something they already know they're not interested in is actually pretty rude.

[gbm]

Originally Posted by Rbneader

Insisting that people need to try something they already know they're not interested in is actually pretty rude.

No one was insisting at all.
bernie

[Rbneader]

Originally Posted by gbm

No one was insisting at all.
bernie

You flat out said 'do this'. That's insisting, or near enough as makes no difference.

[Manabi]

Originally Posted by gbm

I envy you for you have led a sheltered life.

As for the rape scene it is happening on a daily basic in real life in the present, e.g. Yazidi women.

Well, thanks for explaining that to me, it was a real help, it's always nice when someone assumes they know more about your life than you do. Even though you decided to openly spoil the fact there's a rape scene, I'm going to use spoiler tags, out of respect for those who get upset reading about rape.

Spoiler:

Fair warning, the next two paragraphs are going to be discussing rape, both in the novel and talking about an experience I had with a rape victim. Don't read on if that'll bother you.

I have not led a sheltered life, I have known (as most women do) actual real life rape victims. The scene as written is disgusting and horrible, in large part because it trivializes the rape. It's not a big deal, she's able to keep communicating over the computer radio link in real time, only complaining once that something "really hurt". She also has no problems at all afterward through the rest of the novel. No PTSD, no bouts of random crying, no becoming withdrawn, nothing. She was raped and it was No Big Deal in the world of the novel. Here in reality rape is a truly horrifying experience, most real women would struggle to keep their sanity during the event, much less act like it's nothing worse than a bee sting or a snake bite. I didn't want to go into gender issues originally, but since you decided to trivialize my opinion (you do realize I'm a woman, right?), I will now: It is blatantly obvious that two men wrote that book and that scene, and no women were consulted.

Maybe you're the one who's led a sheltered life in reality. You don't seem to understand how and why rape is so horrible and traumatizing, leading me to wonder if you've ever known any actual rape victims. I helped save the life of one once, a 14yo girl I knew online and only talked to on IRC. She was date-raped and suicidal, and wouldn't talk to anyone in the real world. She barely would talk to me online, but I discovered she would talk about Sailor Moon, and it would cheer her up. I quickly started learning everything I could about the show, so I could draw her out more and try to get her out of her clearly suicidal state. It worked somewhat, although she did later make a suicide attempt. Fortunately for her, it was a "cry for help" suicide attempt, meant to fail, and her parents finally learned something was wrong with her. And that bit about saving her life? That came from her, months after her suicide attempt, when she told me I had saved her life by doing what I'd done. It remains to this day one of the things I'm most proud of, because I made an actual difference in someone's life.

So you can take your "you have led a sheltered life" and shove it where the sun doesn't shine. You can also take your opinion and shove it in the same place. I didn't try to belittle your opinion of the book, as my last paragraph showed clearly. You did the opposite with mine, so apparently you think only your opinion has any validity in the world.

Let me be a bit more blunt in my assessment: It's a horrible novel, with horrible characterization, and trivializes rape because the authors didn't understand it. It also didn't need that rape scene at all, so I question why the authors wanted it in there. Did they think they had to have a woman raped for shock value? Did they think their readers would get off on reading about a woman being raped? I don't know, but the end result was disgusting, and made what was a so-so novel at best into a definite "avoid at all costs" novel instead.

As a final point, the fact that rape occurs every day in the real world is not a valid reason to shoehorn it into a novel for no good reason. It's bad writing, period, and I'm not alone in that opinion. For example, this lengthy essay about writing about rape has this part:

I don’t believe in “Write what you know,” but I’m a big believer in “Know what you write.” If you’re going to write about sexual violence, read about it first. Read about the dynamics of rape and power. Read about rape myths, and read about the statistics and research that bust those myths. Read books written by survivors of sexual violence.

None of that happened for Oath of Fealty.

[Apache]

The problem most men have with understanding rape, is that they think of rape as a sex crime. Yes sex is involved, but rape is actually a person assaulting another person using sex as the weapon. And do not get me started on people who blame the victim for encouraging the rapist.
Apache