Skip to the second, definitely. They aren't serial, so no harm in skipping one if you don't like it.

They're just... different. Like completely different. I love the second two books more than the first two, but I know I'm in the minority.

+1

That sounds utterly disgusting. I like it.

Check out Shipbreaker. It's technically YA but it's a great book.

Connolly's work is dark but excellent. I never thought of it as being analogous to Angel working for Wolfram and Hart but it totally is. I highly recommend you pick it up.

Agreed. I think four was an abomination against man and nature.

The Hyperion/Endymion books are how I parsed the ending of BSG. My brain just said, "Oh, a scrap between the AI god and whatever passes for the humans of the future" and everything fell into place. That's why I never groused about that ending because it all made sense to me in that light.

Okay, so I didn't like Consider Phlebas either, but I manned up through it because people here loved it so much. The second one, Player of Games, was better. The third one, however, Use of Weapons, was wonderful. I loved it from start to finish. It's funny, heart-breaking, grim, and enlightening by turns. I…

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Oh, absolutely. I should have remembered that one.

ZD is the most annoying ever in the history of ever...

I'm thinking the gaming industry must be more integrated than IT infrastructure, then. I'm still surprised when a guy I work with doesn't assume I'm a moron just because I have boobs.

All of this is stuff and nonsense.

Did I say she needed to be an asshole? No. I said she needed to be firm. You can correct someone firmly and still be civil.

And so there I was, hands twisted awkwardly and uselessly in my lap as a guy walked me through his game.

I'll grant you that all these questions are important. But the problem I had with Prometheus was this: All of this - every bit of it - was implicit from Alien onward.

Agree 100%.

I like the magic in The Wheel of Time. There are some hard limits and there are some things that you can do that you should not do, ever, for any reason. However, the characters wielding these powers don't actually know most of those limits or caveats. They're living in a post-apocalyptic world and even three…

I loved that Roger Rabbit explanation. It was said so sincerely that you knew it was true. That's a great comparison.