Wow, not a single mention of Robin Hobb or Terry Pratchett so far. I'm disappointed in you, MtgSalvation
Robin Hobb's Realm of the Elderlings saga (Farseer Trilogy, Liveship Traders Trilogy, Tawny Man Trilogy and the Rainwild Chronicles) is one of my favorite series. Very well written characters, both lovable and hate-able and believable, somewhat original stories.
Terry Pratchett's massive Discworld series can be a bit hit and miss (especially his earlier books are less enjoyable in my opinion), but most of the 30 something books are very entertaining. Clever, humorous writing, set in an amazingly lively world that evolves as the series progresses.
Some other good ones are obviously Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and Rowling's Harry Potter, and I'm currently enjoying Weis and Hickman's Death Gate series a lot.
The Wheel of Time and His Dark Materials were disappointing to me. The Wheel of Time isn't all bad, but going through several hundred pages without any plot advancement is just silly, and a lot of the characters never seemed very interesting. I've read 10 of the books, but I don't know if I'll ever finish it.
I find it amusing that you criticize the WoT for long stretches of no plot advancement and un-interesting characters, but say that LotR is 'obviously good'. LotR is the worst offender ever when it comes to 'spending hundreds of pages with nothing happening', and in the books, the characters are all either void or obnoxious. If LOTR were written today instead of 50 years ago, it would get awful reviews. It just gets a pass now because it was one of the first fantasy series.
I'm not saying that you're wrong about WoT. Jordan definitely tended to ramble on for stretches. But nowhere near as much as Tolkien did. And the characters in WoT are very distinctive and interesting, IMO.
Well, I guess everybody reacts differently. I grew very fond of Fitz and many of the other characters, and there were certainly some emotional moments here and there. Perhaps it's the way it's told, from the perspective of Fitz looking back on his childhood that made that event seem less emotional. I'm not sure.
Yeah, that theory crossed my mind. It may have simply been a bad call to frame the story that way. But Mary Stewart pulled it off just fine in her Merlin trilogy. (Oh, that's another good one.)
I'm not sure which lovely lady you're referring to actually, but wouldn't it be weirder if every woman within a certain culture acted the same way? It seems far more natural to me that there are different personalities, just like in real life.
It's not how they act; I have no particular criticism of how Hobb characterizes the women as individuals. It it's how their culture perceives them. The implication of the lovely ladies is that they're expected to be lovely ladies. But the women in the military imply that there is no such expectation at all.
Look at Eowyn in LotR. She has very strong individual ideas about who she is and what she should be doing. These lead her to defy the expectations of the culture in which she was raised. That's fine. That's solid characterization. That's not Hobb's problem. The difference between Tolkien and Hobb is that in Tolkien, the expectations Eowyn is defying are portrayed consistently. You don't have her angsting about how she's not allowed to fight while other women of Rohan are uncontroversially serving as professional soldiers. (Also, the expectations in Rohan are a little more interesting and complicated to begin with than archetypical medieval romance gender roles, since the culture is based on Saxon England, highly Teutonic in sensibilities and not far removed from paganism.)
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
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Some other good ones are obviously Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and Rowling's Harry Potter, and I'm currently enjoying Weis and Hickman's Death Gate series a lot.
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Be prepared for extreme disappointment at the end of death gate unfortunately. Such a huge buildup, awesome characters, amazing world building, all to end it a big pile of crap in book 7.
The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan (and Brandon Sanderson)
The Mistborn Series by Brandon Sanderson
The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson
A Song of Ice and Fire by GRRM
The Night Angel series (don't forget to read the ebook prequel) by Brent Weeks
The Lightbringer Series by Brent Weeks
The Kingkiller Chronicle by Patrick Rothfuss
Here is my addition:
Tales of the Otori by Lian Hearn (Pen Name)
It's about a feudal Japanese island where a Ninja clan known only as 'The Tribe' has actual supernatural abilities. It surrounds a Sengoku-eque (That is, warring states period of Japan) conflict for control of the three nations of the country.
I will take your list (I am a big Brandon Sanderson Fan, and a Patrick Rothfuss fan which is funny because Rothfuss has a man crush on Sanderson) and I will throw in Any of the Jim Butcher Series the Dresden Files and Codex Alera. I really liked Codex Alera because it was made on a bet that he could not make a book based on two bad ideas. Those Bad Ideas. The Lost Roman Legion and Pokemon. What we ended up with is a book that combined Ancient Roman and Germanic settings, mixed with a Magic system that was based off the Elements of Pokemon. The series was funny, really deep in characterization, a lot of good ol fashion roman politics and backstabbing and a completely engrossing series.
Now I have read probably every major Fantasy Series except Wheel of Time (which I want to start because Sanderson did and is writing the last three books) and I cannot tell anyone not to read either one of them. I enjoyed them all. The only issue I have with a lot of them is that the longer the series goes, the more the stories drag on and on. The Shannara Series to me was good with the Initial 4 Shannara books, the Books that begun the whole earth becoming shanarra The Word and Void Series but in both of those series the later books just seemed to rehash the same stories just with different people. The Sword of Truth Series was good for the first 3 Books, then just really became Tedious. All of Feist's Magician series to me was good until the last three story arcs when it just went off complete weird as hell tangents (I do suggest reading up until the Conclave of Shadows arc).
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Now I have read probably every major Fantasy Series except Wheel of Time (which I want to start because Sanderson did and is writing the last three books) and I cannot tell anyone not to read either one of them. I enjoyed them all. The only issue I have with a lot of them is that the longer the series goes, the more the stories drag on and on.
It's even true of Wheel of Time. Books 7-11 drag on, but I still liked them. It picks back up at Book 12. I just finished Book 13 (literally yesterday), and can't wait for the final book in January. If you start the series now, you may have a chance of being caught up in time! I was just glad for a series I didn't finish inside of a month. If a book isn't 500 or more pages, it's light reading for me at this point.
Thoughts on some of the series(es?) mentioned here:
Wheel of Time: Yes, Jordan's prose (especially the arms folded beneath breasts line mentioned here) can become tiring after a time. However, like Hedge Troll, the plot alone sustains me. I haven't read any of Sanderson's other work, but nothing I've seen in the two Sanderson books inspires me to do so. The changes he worked on one of the series's main characters, Mat, seem totally irredeemable, not to mention some of his awful, anachronistic one-liners (i.e. "Do that math, Jolene!") Despite that, I'm still looking forward massively to A Memory of Light and to the conclusion of all of the enjoyable subplots.
Song of Ice and Fire: I think Blinking Spirit called this "commercial", which is a good word for it. I'm hugely entertained when I read these books, and I feel there's good character development and an engrossing plot. Martin is obviously in it for the money - there's no shame in that, especially when he's so up front about it - but he has crafted something that I want to see through to the end, even if it isn't exactly a literary masterpiece.
LOTR: Yes, "nothing happens" for vast stretches, but LOTR has that mythical, epic-oral-tradition feel to it that Norse lays and the like also share. It definitely stands the test of time. Tolkien achieved exactly what he set out to achieve in my opinion.
Sword of Truth: Goodkind isn't exactly the greatest writer, let's be blunt, and the endless preaching and homily about individualism and the danger of collectives was much better done in Atlas Shrugged. Still, I found some of his characters fun, and I thought the last book was a better-than-average ending to a long series, closing most plot holes and bringing in many supporting characters for a big finale.
Dark Tower: One of my favorite series ever. King's introduction of himself was a sour note, but the ending was tremendous. I don't think any work of fiction has ever inspired a physical reaction in me, save for the ending of book 7. My heart pounded, my eyes went out of focus, and I couldn't think about anything else for about 20 minutes. Brilliant. Thoroughly recommend.
Thursday Next: I've only read The Eyre Affair, but I'm working my way through Lost in a Good Book on trips to Barnes & Noble. These books are hilarious and innovative. I'm not that crazy about classical literature, a major theme of this series, but Fforde's vision of an alternative Britain rarely fails to crack me up.
Hyperion/Olympos/Ilium: After being intrigued by the cover of Hyperion on various trips through the aforementioned B&N, I finally gave in about a year ago and bought the first book of the series.
It was utterly fascinating, although the ending really disappointed - I was expecting a showdown with the Shrike, but the book rather deliberately ended just before the seemingly fated meeting. Local stores didn't have the second book in, so I decided to buy Olympos and Ilium, a sort of two-part sci-fi reimagining of the Trojan War, authored by the same guy (I don't call him a gentleman for reasons about to be illuminated), Dan Simmons.
Olympos was a sometimes confusing but overall enjoyable work, but Ilium totally and permanently turned me off Mr. Simmons's writing. I discovered that the voynix, mysterious robots who had previously done humanity's will but later turned into killing machines, were actually genocidal murderbots created by the New Caliphate, which took over the world after being helped into power by various European nations, to exterminate Jews (who with their superior intellect crafted a virus that wiped out almost all of the world's population except the Jews themselves, leading to the sort of situation portrayed in Olympos.)
What!? I mean, what!? Seriously? Because obviously our (speaking as a Muslim here) only goal is to take over the world and eliminate our ancient enemies before imposing our religion on everyone and stifling all intellectual thought. I looked online and found out that almost all of his books include some sort of anti-Muslim diatribe and that he has issued repeated warnings that Islam is the great enemy, etc etc. Yawn. I'm sorry, but when I want to read about that kind of crap (which I never do), I can go to any number of right-wing blogs based in America or Europe. I don't want to find it in the sci-fi section as well. I mailed Mr. Simmons's books back to him, complete with a friendly note letting him know just what I think of his political views. So yeah, heartily NOT recommended. Prejudice is not OK.
It was utterly fascinating, although the ending really disappointed - I was expecting a showdown with the Shrike, but the book rather deliberately ended just before the seemingly fated meeting. Local stores didn't have the second book in, so I decided to buy Olympos and Ilium, a sort of two-part sci-fi reimagining of the Trojan War, authored by the same guy (I don't call him a gentleman for reasons about to be illuminated), Dan Simmons.
Olympos was a sometimes confusing but overall enjoyable work, but Ilium totally and permanently turned me off Mr. Simmons's writing. I discovered that the voynix, mysterious robots who had previously done humanity's will but later turned into killing machines, were actually genocidal murderbots created by the New Caliphate, which took over the world after being helped into power by various European nations, to exterminate Jews (who with their superior intellect crafted a virus that wiped out almost all of the world's population except the Jews themselves, leading to the sort of situation portrayed in Olympos.)
What!? I mean, what!? Seriously? Because obviously our (speaking as a Muslim here) only goal is to take over the world and eliminate our ancient enemies before imposing our religion on everyone and stifling all intellectual thought. I looked online and found out that almost all of his books include some sort of anti-Muslim diatribe and that he has issued repeated warnings that Islam is the great enemy, etc etc. Yawn. I'm sorry, but when I want to read about that kind of crap (which I never do), I can go to any number of right-wing blogs based in America or Europe. I don't want to find it in the sci-fi section as well. I mailed Mr. Simmons's books back to him, complete with a friendly note letting him know just what I think of his political views. So yeah, heartily NOT recommended. Prejudice is not OK.
To the best of my knowledge, all of his supposed "anti-Muslim" stuff occurs in the one universe where the New Caliphate happened. He's writing a future history. Sometimes bad stuff happens in future histories. It could be an American empire or a Christian theocracy or an Islamic caliphate. It doesn't mean that these groups are intrinsically evil; it just means that at some point somebody like Douglas MacArthur or Girolamo Savonarola or Ayatollah Khomeini somehow acquires unchecked power. I have not seen a single word from Dan Simmons that suggests he thinks all Muslims' "only goal is to take over the world and eliminate our ancient enemies before imposing our religion on everyone and stifling all intellectual thought." What I have seen is a consistent and (in my judgment) realistic suspicion towards all forms of religious intolerance and totalitarianism. In his Hyperion books, both Jewish and Christian theocracies appear in antagonistic roles - why aren't you complaining about them?
Also: Fedmahn Kassad. Palestinian Muslim. Baddest badass in the universe. You were saying something about a showdown with the Shrike...? But I guess you have to read the second book for that.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Wheel of Time: Yes, Jordan's prose (especially the arms folded beneath breasts line mentioned here) can become tiring after a time. However, like Hedge Troll, the plot alone sustains me. I haven't read any of Sanderson's other work, but nothing I've seen in the two Sanderson books inspires me to do so. The changes he worked on one of the series's main characters, Mat, seem totally irredeemable, not to mention some of his awful, anachronistic one-liners (i.e. "Do that math, Jolene!") Despite that, I'm still looking forward massively to A Memory of Light and to the conclusion of all of the enjoyable subplots.
What did he do to Mat? I'm honestly confused, I just finished the last published book and Mat seems perfectly in character with the rest of his arc. You realize that he's working from finished and partial chapters, as well as a plot outline and notes from Jordan, right?
To the best of my knowledge, all of his supposed "anti-Muslim" stuff occurs in the one universe where the New Caliphate happened. He's writing a future history. Sometimes bad stuff happens in future histories. It could be an American empire or a Christian theocracy or an Islamic caliphate. It doesn't mean that these groups are intrinsically evil; it just means that at some point somebody like Douglas MacArthur or Girolamo Savonarola or Ayatollah Khomeini somehow acquires unchecked power. I have not seen a single word from Dan Simmons that suggests he thinks all Muslims' "only goal is to take over the world and eliminate our ancient enemies before imposing our religion on everyone and stifling all intellectual thought." What I have seen is a consistent and (in my judgment) realistic suspicion towards all forms of religious intolerance and totalitarianism. In his Hyperion books, both Jewish and Christian theocracies appear in antagonistic roles - why aren't you complaining about them?
Also: Fedmahn Kassad. Palestinian Muslim. Baddest badass in the universe. You were saying something about a showdown with the Shrike...? But I guess you have to read the second book for that.
Fair points. Last first: Kassad is definitely a badass, but as I recall, he was born into a Muslim family but shows no sign of believing in the religion, and actually fights against New Mecca/whatever crackpot name Simmons gave it. In additional, Hyperion was written before 9/11 when Simmons apparently went off the deep end.
You'll have to remind me about those theocracies, actually. I remember the Church of the Shrike, but I don't see them as a Christian organization. I agree that the Catholics were portrayed negatively in Hyperion (and from what I hear it only gets worse in the second half of the series) but I don't recall any antagonistic Jewish organization in the first book.
At the same time, a New Global Caliphate flourishes and Islam spreads. An immense and towering mosque sits at ground zero and annual celebrations commemorate the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In Los Angeles, where much of the story takes place, the bells of Christian churches add their peels to “the cries of the muezzin … to show their solidarity, understanding, and forgiveness.” The Caliphate has obliterated Israel with 11 exceedingly dirty nuclear bombs, killing 6 million Jews. The survivors of this “Second Holocaust” are now sequestered in a former Six Flags amusement park in Denver by a U.S. government “terrified of angering the Global Caliphate” that is waiting to exterminate them.
Wow, sound familiar? Like the hysteria over the "ground zero mosque" from 2 years ago? Not to mention that the rest of the story describes an America taken over in parts by the Japanese, Muslims and Mexicans, which of course all started when crypto-Muslim Barack Hussein Obama got elected. Ridiculous. How about the infamous short story "A Traveler's Tale", where he warns of a "century war" with Islam, written in 2006? The man has lost the plot. Everything he's written since the Hyperion Cantos has smacked of anti-Islam hatemongering.
I forgot some of the key details in Olympos, actually - it wasn't the Jews who developed the virus, oh no, the Jewish people are too compassionate for that. They only used the virus that the bad Muslims developed to exterminate them and reversed it, inoculating themselves while leaving the Caliphate to hoist with its own petard. It was at that point that the bad Muslims developed the killer bots and - get this! - sent them forward in time to exterminate the Jews again.
This is just awful writing, and it has nothing to do with the story of Ilium and Olympos. That's why I'm saying that it's anti-Muslim propaganda and not part of a story or an attack on radicalism/intolerance/etc. The Caliphate are supposed to be backwards lunatics, but somehow were advanced enough to develop a virus that could genocidally exterminate a subset of people. Then, they were smart enough to create virtually indestructible killer voynix robots, and to time travel...but still dumb enough to get beaten by the reverse-engineered virus, and dumb enough not transport themselves forward (or back) in time. Give me a break. Oh! I almost forgot the nuclear submarine with enough bombs to obliterate reality, which was called "Sword of Allah" (I just threw up a bit in my mouth) and was ordered to destroy existence itself if the Jews showed any sign of surviving.
That's not fiction, plotcrafting, a warning against intolerance, etc etc. It's frothing, insane, throbbing, monstrous hatred. It has no place in his books. It doesn't connect to them in the least. I mean, how did this supposed Caliphate rise to power? Modern Islam is fragmented beyond belief. Are we supposed to believe that since 9/11, all the Muslims of the world, including the millions upon millions of secular and moderate ones, decided to unify and take over the world? Or maybe it's a "charismatic demagogue rises to power" moment, like Khomeini, who you mention above. Well and good - but in Hyperion, Kassad destroyed a psycho-Muslim demagogue. In Olympos, they won. What changed, besides Simmons losing the plot?
What did he do to Mat? I'm honestly confused, I just finished the last published book and Mat seems perfectly in character with the rest of his arc. You realize that he's working from finished and partial chapters, as well as a plot outline and notes from Jordan, right?
Mats overall actions and decisions are in character, but his day to day interaction seem... more juvenile than before. Not that Jordan's Matt wasn't immature in some ways, it was just different.
Mats overall actions and decisions are in character, but his day to day interaction seem... more juvenile than before. Not that Jordan's Matt wasn't immature in some ways, it was just different.
I see. That's fair enough. I didn't notice much a difference, he always seemed pretty juvenile to me, I didn't notice any increase from say:
His time spent in Luca's circus or in the Ebou Dar castle as 'Toy'. Both times he was always whining about something or other. As far as his character, I had always through of him as that guy who you can never count on to show up for dinner on time but is always there to help you when you really need it.
I see. That's fair enough. I didn't notice much a difference, he always seemed pretty juvenile to me, I didn't notice any increase from say:
His time spent in Luca's circus or in the Ebou Dar castle as 'Toy'. Both times he was always whining about something or other. As far as his character, I had always through of him as that guy who you can never count on to show up for dinner on time but is always there to help you when you really need it.
right, but
His time as toy was not "juvenile" -- it was immature. It's what I meant about a different kind of immature. In Ebou Dar he was acting like an irresponsible late teen/early twenties. In the new books, his overall actions were consistent with previous Matt, but his dialogue and day to day interactions were more in line with late tweens early teens.)
All in all, not a huge difference, and not terrible. But I noticed it.
Some of my favourites are The Fist Law trilogy, Best Served Cold, and Heroes by Joe Abercrombie; The Black Company by Glenn cook; the Acacia trilogy by David Anthony Durham; The King Killer Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss; and the first 2 books of The Gentleman Bastard Sequence by Scott Lynch.
Some of my favourites are The Fist Law trilogy, Best Served Cold, and Heroes by Joe Abercrombie;
I just had this author recommended to me by a coworker last week when he saw me reading Robert Jordan on my lunch break. I'll have to check him out soon.
I'm currently reading A Song of Ice and Fire (A Dance with Dragons now) and it might be my favorite series ever (of course, it's too early to tell for sure, since it's not finished yet). I really enjoy the multitude of plot lines, the unpredictability, and the amazingly deep characters.
The Dark Tower currently holds the name of my favorite books. It seems you either hate or love the ending, and I absolutely loved it. "Brilliant" is also the word I'd use to describe it.
The Death Gate cycle is part great, part terrible. Personally I think the last two books were crap, but most of what came before that is really good.
I've read the first four or five books of Sword of Truth, but it gets kind of repetitive. The storylines are generally quite good, but I kinda hate the main characters and the writing's pretty bad.
You really just need to embrace the rage. I keep a small colony of hamsters next to my computer and every time I lose a match to mana screw I throw one against the wall.
People have recommended Dragonlance, but are the books really that good? I have read Flint the King and the Gates of Thorbardin and they did not really excite me. Granted, I might have just picked up the wrong books...?
Yes, you read the completely wrong books. Start with Chronicles (great), then Legends (the best) and maybe the first Tales triologies. Weiss and Hickman were basically the reason Dragonlance became popular, so avoid other authors unless you are a hardcore fan like myself.
You really want to read the first six books that introduced all the characters that people will endlessly try and copy into their own games.
I mean, seriously, for a number of years every single rpg group I played with had at least one idiot who wanted to play a kender as an excuse to be an ******* for 5 hours every friday evening.
I'd like to thank the posters of this thread for giving me a lot of new material to check out, and make a few recommendations of my own:
The Old Kingdom series by Garth Nix (Sabriel, Lirael and Abhorsen): Nix is more a purveyor of young adult fiction, but this trilogy I believe holds up under scrutiny. If you like these check out Across the Wall: Tales of the Abhorsen and Other Stories.
Savage Tales of Solomon Kane, Kull of Atlantis by Robert E. Howard: I saw Conan being mentioned, and those are great sword-and-sorcery stories, but Howard's other works are just as amazing. To make things easier, almost all of his works are available as free domain!
Xanth series by Piers Anthony: A bit silly at times, but this series spans over thirty books and manages to keep things fresh along the way. If you love puns and plays on words, be sure to check it out.
Sorry to say that's all the ones I can remember, I honestly have been severely slacking on my reading lately, but I hope to fix that after reading this thread.
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"Gotta have opposites dark and light, light and dark in painting. It's like in life. Gotta have a little sadness once in a while so you know when the good times come." -Bob Ross
I cannot recommend all of Joe Abercrombie's work enough, the First Law trilogy and his 3 stand-alones: Best Served Cold, The Heroes, and Red Country. I'm also partial to The Black Company series by Glen Cook.
Also, The King Killer Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss is pretty good, the first 2 book, still waiting on the third.
The concepts behind the saga are great...no good and evil; only Neutrality.
I am a tremendous fan of Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen. Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius novels, the Elric Saga (The Stealer of Souls to The White Wolf's Son) are also worth your time. I'm really enjoying Conan, too. Howard manages to write in an evocative style similar to Tolkien's; yet Howard's prose and description never grow tedious or filler for lack of plot.
I have yet to read it, but Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword is supposedly a straight Nordic world-myth of the sort Tolkien wanted LotR to become for England.
A Song of Ice and Fire gets my vote. The intricate plot coupled with a multitude of likeable, complex (and dislikable and complex) characters makes for a completely amazing story.
Now let's hope Martin lives long enough to finish it...
And don't read Wheel of Time. Ever. It's horrible plotless trash filled with sexism and assumed morality, padded with excessive description.
For me, it's Peter David's series Sir Apropos of Nothing. I find Apropos to be a relatable character, and the satire in the series for me is far more memorable than the books which David lampoons.
And don't read Wheel of Time. Ever. It's horrible plotless trash filled with sexism and assumed morality, padded with excessive description.
Very refershing to hear this, I thought I was alone in my distaste for WOT. I read the first book, hated it and stopped there. The author's name rang famliar to me, then I remembered that he was one of the many hack writers who churned out a bunch of bad Conan books. And that pretty much is how he remained.
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I find it amusing that you criticize the WoT for long stretches of no plot advancement and un-interesting characters, but say that LotR is 'obviously good'. LotR is the worst offender ever when it comes to 'spending hundreds of pages with nothing happening', and in the books, the characters are all either void or obnoxious. If LOTR were written today instead of 50 years ago, it would get awful reviews. It just gets a pass now because it was one of the first fantasy series.
I'm not saying that you're wrong about WoT. Jordan definitely tended to ramble on for stretches. But nowhere near as much as Tolkien did. And the characters in WoT are very distinctive and interesting, IMO.
Yeah, that theory crossed my mind. It may have simply been a bad call to frame the story that way. But Mary Stewart pulled it off just fine in her Merlin trilogy. (Oh, that's another good one.)
It's not how they act; I have no particular criticism of how Hobb characterizes the women as individuals. It it's how their culture perceives them. The implication of the lovely ladies is that they're expected to be lovely ladies. But the women in the military imply that there is no such expectation at all.
Look at Eowyn in LotR. She has very strong individual ideas about who she is and what she should be doing. These lead her to defy the expectations of the culture in which she was raised. That's fine. That's solid characterization. That's not Hobb's problem. The difference between Tolkien and Hobb is that in Tolkien, the expectations Eowyn is defying are portrayed consistently. You don't have her angsting about how she's not allowed to fight while other women of Rohan are uncontroversially serving as professional soldiers. (Also, the expectations in Rohan are a little more interesting and complicated to begin with than archetypical medieval romance gender roles, since the culture is based on Saxon England, highly Teutonic in sensibilities and not far removed from paganism.)
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Be prepared for extreme disappointment at the end of death gate unfortunately. Such a huge buildup, awesome characters, amazing world building, all to end it a big pile of crap in book 7.
I will take your list (I am a big Brandon Sanderson Fan, and a Patrick Rothfuss fan which is funny because Rothfuss has a man crush on Sanderson) and I will throw in Any of the Jim Butcher Series the Dresden Files and Codex Alera. I really liked Codex Alera because it was made on a bet that he could not make a book based on two bad ideas. Those Bad Ideas. The Lost Roman Legion and Pokemon. What we ended up with is a book that combined Ancient Roman and Germanic settings, mixed with a Magic system that was based off the Elements of Pokemon. The series was funny, really deep in characterization, a lot of good ol fashion roman politics and backstabbing and a completely engrossing series.
Now I have read probably every major Fantasy Series except Wheel of Time (which I want to start because Sanderson did and is writing the last three books) and I cannot tell anyone not to read either one of them. I enjoyed them all. The only issue I have with a lot of them is that the longer the series goes, the more the stories drag on and on. The Shannara Series to me was good with the Initial 4 Shannara books, the Books that begun the whole earth becoming shanarra The Word and Void Series but in both of those series the later books just seemed to rehash the same stories just with different people. The Sword of Truth Series was good for the first 3 Books, then just really became Tedious. All of Feist's Magician series to me was good until the last three story arcs when it just went off complete weird as hell tangents (I do suggest reading up until the Conclave of Shadows arc).
Tried to pull away, but now I'm Back At it
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It's even true of Wheel of Time. Books 7-11 drag on, but I still liked them. It picks back up at Book 12. I just finished Book 13 (literally yesterday), and can't wait for the final book in January. If you start the series now, you may have a chance of being caught up in time! I was just glad for a series I didn't finish inside of a month. If a book isn't 500 or more pages, it's light reading for me at this point.
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Wheel of Time: Yes, Jordan's prose (especially the arms folded beneath breasts line mentioned here) can become tiring after a time. However, like Hedge Troll, the plot alone sustains me. I haven't read any of Sanderson's other work, but nothing I've seen in the two Sanderson books inspires me to do so. The changes he worked on one of the series's main characters, Mat, seem totally irredeemable, not to mention some of his awful, anachronistic one-liners (i.e. "Do that math, Jolene!") Despite that, I'm still looking forward massively to A Memory of Light and to the conclusion of all of the enjoyable subplots.
Song of Ice and Fire: I think Blinking Spirit called this "commercial", which is a good word for it. I'm hugely entertained when I read these books, and I feel there's good character development and an engrossing plot. Martin is obviously in it for the money - there's no shame in that, especially when he's so up front about it - but he has crafted something that I want to see through to the end, even if it isn't exactly a literary masterpiece.
LOTR: Yes, "nothing happens" for vast stretches, but LOTR has that mythical, epic-oral-tradition feel to it that Norse lays and the like also share. It definitely stands the test of time. Tolkien achieved exactly what he set out to achieve in my opinion.
Sword of Truth: Goodkind isn't exactly the greatest writer, let's be blunt, and the endless preaching and homily about individualism and the danger of collectives was much better done in Atlas Shrugged. Still, I found some of his characters fun, and I thought the last book was a better-than-average ending to a long series, closing most plot holes and bringing in many supporting characters for a big finale.
Dark Tower: One of my favorite series ever. King's introduction of himself was a sour note, but the ending was tremendous. I don't think any work of fiction has ever inspired a physical reaction in me, save for the ending of book 7. My heart pounded, my eyes went out of focus, and I couldn't think about anything else for about 20 minutes. Brilliant. Thoroughly recommend.
Thursday Next: I've only read The Eyre Affair, but I'm working my way through Lost in a Good Book on trips to Barnes & Noble. These books are hilarious and innovative. I'm not that crazy about classical literature, a major theme of this series, but Fforde's vision of an alternative Britain rarely fails to crack me up.
Hyperion/Olympos/Ilium: After being intrigued by the cover of Hyperion on various trips through the aforementioned B&N, I finally gave in about a year ago and bought the first book of the series.
Olympos was a sometimes confusing but overall enjoyable work, but Ilium totally and permanently turned me off Mr. Simmons's writing. I discovered that the voynix, mysterious robots who had previously done humanity's will but later turned into killing machines, were actually genocidal murderbots created by the New Caliphate, which took over the world after being helped into power by various European nations, to exterminate Jews (who with their superior intellect crafted a virus that wiped out almost all of the world's population except the Jews themselves, leading to the sort of situation portrayed in Olympos.)
What!? I mean, what!? Seriously? Because obviously our (speaking as a Muslim here) only goal is to take over the world and eliminate our ancient enemies before imposing our religion on everyone and stifling all intellectual thought. I looked online and found out that almost all of his books include some sort of anti-Muslim diatribe and that he has issued repeated warnings that Islam is the great enemy, etc etc. Yawn. I'm sorry, but when I want to read about that kind of crap (which I never do), I can go to any number of right-wing blogs based in America or Europe. I don't want to find it in the sci-fi section as well. I mailed Mr. Simmons's books back to him, complete with a friendly note letting him know just what I think of his political views. So yeah, heartily NOT recommended. Prejudice is not OK.
"...a talisman against all evil, so long as you obey me."
Also: Fedmahn Kassad. Palestinian Muslim. Baddest badass in the universe. You were saying something about a showdown with the Shrike...? But I guess you have to read the second book for that.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
What did he do to Mat? I'm honestly confused, I just finished the last published book and Mat seems perfectly in character with the rest of his arc. You realize that he's working from finished and partial chapters, as well as a plot outline and notes from Jordan, right?
TerribleBad at Magic since 1998.A Vorthos Guide to Magic Story | Twitter | Tumblr
[Primer] Krenko | Azor | Kess | Zacama | Kumena | Sram | The Ur-Dragon | Edgar Markov | Daretti | Marath
You'll have to remind me about those theocracies, actually. I remember the Church of the Shrike, but I don't see them as a Christian organization. I agree that the Catholics were portrayed negatively in Hyperion (and from what I hear it only gets worse in the second half of the series) but I don't recall any antagonistic Jewish organization in the first book.
Here's another example:
On his 2011 book Flashback: http://www.salon.com/2011/07/21/flashback_don_simmons/
Wow, sound familiar? Like the hysteria over the "ground zero mosque" from 2 years ago? Not to mention that the rest of the story describes an America taken over in parts by the Japanese, Muslims and Mexicans, which of course all started when crypto-Muslim Barack Hussein Obama got elected. Ridiculous. How about the infamous short story "A Traveler's Tale", where he warns of a "century war" with Islam, written in 2006? The man has lost the plot. Everything he's written since the Hyperion Cantos has smacked of anti-Islam hatemongering.
I forgot some of the key details in Olympos, actually - it wasn't the Jews who developed the virus, oh no, the Jewish people are too compassionate for that. They only used the virus that the bad Muslims developed to exterminate them and reversed it, inoculating themselves while leaving the Caliphate to hoist with its own petard. It was at that point that the bad Muslims developed the killer bots and - get this! - sent them forward in time to exterminate the Jews again.
This is just awful writing, and it has nothing to do with the story of Ilium and Olympos. That's why I'm saying that it's anti-Muslim propaganda and not part of a story or an attack on radicalism/intolerance/etc. The Caliphate are supposed to be backwards lunatics, but somehow were advanced enough to develop a virus that could genocidally exterminate a subset of people. Then, they were smart enough to create virtually indestructible killer voynix robots, and to time travel...but still dumb enough to get beaten by the reverse-engineered virus, and dumb enough not transport themselves forward (or back) in time. Give me a break. Oh! I almost forgot the nuclear submarine with enough bombs to obliterate reality, which was called "Sword of Allah" (I just threw up a bit in my mouth) and was ordered to destroy existence itself if the Jews showed any sign of surviving.
That's not fiction, plotcrafting, a warning against intolerance, etc etc. It's frothing, insane, throbbing, monstrous hatred. It has no place in his books. It doesn't connect to them in the least. I mean, how did this supposed Caliphate rise to power? Modern Islam is fragmented beyond belief. Are we supposed to believe that since 9/11, all the Muslims of the world, including the millions upon millions of secular and moderate ones, decided to unify and take over the world? Or maybe it's a "charismatic demagogue rises to power" moment, like Khomeini, who you mention above. Well and good - but in Hyperion, Kassad destroyed a psycho-Muslim demagogue. In Olympos, they won. What changed, besides Simmons losing the plot?
"...a talisman against all evil, so long as you obey me."
Mats overall actions and decisions are in character, but his day to day interaction seem... more juvenile than before. Not that Jordan's Matt wasn't immature in some ways, it was just different.
I see. That's fair enough. I didn't notice much a difference, he always seemed pretty juvenile to me, I didn't notice any increase from say:
TerribleBad at Magic since 1998.A Vorthos Guide to Magic Story | Twitter | Tumblr
[Primer] Krenko | Azor | Kess | Zacama | Kumena | Sram | The Ur-Dragon | Edgar Markov | Daretti | Marath
right, but
His time as toy was not "juvenile" -- it was immature. It's what I meant about a different kind of immature. In Ebou Dar he was acting like an irresponsible late teen/early twenties. In the new books, his overall actions were consistent with previous Matt, but his dialogue and day to day interactions were more in line with late tweens early teens.)
All in all, not a huge difference, and not terrible. But I noticed it.
I just had this author recommended to me by a coworker last week when he saw me reading Robert Jordan on my lunch break. I'll have to check him out soon.
TerribleBad at Magic since 1998.A Vorthos Guide to Magic Story | Twitter | Tumblr
[Primer] Krenko | Azor | Kess | Zacama | Kumena | Sram | The Ur-Dragon | Edgar Markov | Daretti | Marath
The Dark Tower currently holds the name of my favorite books. It seems you either hate or love the ending, and I absolutely loved it. "Brilliant" is also the word I'd use to describe it.
The Death Gate cycle is part great, part terrible. Personally I think the last two books were crap, but most of what came before that is really good.
I've read the first four or five books of Sword of Truth, but it gets kind of repetitive. The storylines are generally quite good, but I kinda hate the main characters and the writing's pretty bad.
Yes, you read the completely wrong books. Start with Chronicles (great), then Legends (the best) and maybe the first Tales triologies. Weiss and Hickman were basically the reason Dragonlance became popular, so avoid other authors unless you are a hardcore fan like myself.
You really want to read the first six books that introduced all the characters that people will endlessly try and copy into their own games.
I mean, seriously, for a number of years every single rpg group I played with had at least one idiot who wanted to play a kender as an excuse to be an ******* for 5 hours every friday evening.
The Old Kingdom series by Garth Nix (Sabriel, Lirael and Abhorsen): Nix is more a purveyor of young adult fiction, but this trilogy I believe holds up under scrutiny. If you like these check out Across the Wall: Tales of the Abhorsen and Other Stories.
Savage Tales of Solomon Kane, Kull of Atlantis by Robert E. Howard: I saw Conan being mentioned, and those are great sword-and-sorcery stories, but Howard's other works are just as amazing. To make things easier, almost all of his works are available as free domain!
Xanth series by Piers Anthony: A bit silly at times, but this series spans over thirty books and manages to keep things fresh along the way. If you love puns and plays on words, be sure to check it out.
Sorry to say that's all the ones I can remember, I honestly have been severely slacking on my reading lately, but I hope to fix that after reading this thread.
UBUWydwyn, the Biting Gale 1v1UBU
WRWBrion Cho Aniki!! I Wanna Be Strong Like Big Brother!WRW
BRBLyzie Borden and the Thrill Kill CultBRB
GWUDerevi, Birdman TacticianGWU
"Gotta have opposites dark and light, light and dark in painting. It's like in life. Gotta have a little sadness once in a while so you know when the good times come." -Bob Ross
Also, The King Killer Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss is pretty good, the first 2 book, still waiting on the third.
I am a tremendous fan of Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen. Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius novels, the Elric Saga (The Stealer of Souls to The White Wolf's Son) are also worth your time. I'm really enjoying Conan, too. Howard manages to write in an evocative style similar to Tolkien's; yet Howard's prose and description never grow tedious or filler for lack of plot.
I have yet to read it, but Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword is supposedly a straight Nordic world-myth of the sort Tolkien wanted LotR to become for England.
The Winter King, Enemy of God, and Excalibur. Amazing take on the Arthurian Legend.
Volrath the FallenB Empress GalinaU Oona, Queen of the FaeBUAgrus Kos, Wojek VeteranRW
Now let's hope Martin lives long enough to finish it...
And don't read Wheel of Time. Ever. It's horrible plotless trash filled with sexism and assumed morality, padded with excessive description.
Decks:
:symgu::simic: Momir Vig, Simic Visionary :simic::symgu:
:symb::symub: Grimgrin, Corpse-Born :symub::symb:
edit: wrong genre.
Very refershing to hear this, I thought I was alone in my distaste for WOT. I read the first book, hated it and stopped there. The author's name rang famliar to me, then I remembered that he was one of the many hack writers who churned out a bunch of bad Conan books. And that pretty much is how he remained.