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Lasting Damage posted:Seconding 2001 and Childhood's End. But avoid the Rama sequels, in fact avoid anything by him collaborating with another author.
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| # ? Nov 26, 2011 20:08 |
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| # ? May 24, 2013 02:18 |
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Megazver posted:The first two books are good, the third one is slightly worse but still okay. It's fantasy with some romance in it. She also wrote The Sharing Knife series and it's pretty much pure romance with a bit of fantasy smeared on top. It was way, way too much for me, but I am not a romance reader. Haven't read Sharing Knife myself but will second that the Chalion trilogy is pretty solid.
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| # ? Nov 26, 2011 20:45 |
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Talas posted:Childhood's End is one of the best science fiction stories ever written. The short story was brilliant. The novel was the short story larded out with nothing of consequence. If you can find it, Clarke's Tales from the White Hart is excellent. Hugely dated, but every single story is very cute and makes you think a bit. Clarke figured out earlier than most that you could sell a short story, then have somebody else co-write the novel version, and get paid twice.
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| # ? Nov 27, 2011 05:27 |
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Childhood's End is mostly a science fantasy story with very little accurate science. It is still fun and worth a read. True hard sci fi is at least becoming more common. Also the Iron Maiden song wasn't bad, but then, very few Iron Maiden songs are.
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| # ? Nov 27, 2011 11:06 |
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Slo-Tek posted:The short story was brilliant. The novel was the short story larded out with nothing of consequence.
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| # ? Nov 27, 2011 12:53 |
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So all this Skyrim playing I've been doing has got me interested in trying a fantasy book. The only fantasy I have ever read was some owl series by Mercedes Lackey when I was in middle school and ISOIAF. What's something that has some of the cool magical elements of The Elder Scrolls without being full of dumb stuff? Maybe the Lord of the Rings? The movies were fantastic, but is there a lot of lore that they left out and that is worth reading? or The Hobbit, which I know nothing about.
blue squares fucked around with this message at Nov 27, 2011 around 22:56 |
| # ? Nov 27, 2011 22:44 |
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blue squares posted:So all this Skyrim playing I've been doing has got me interested in trying a fantasy book. The only fantasy I have ever read was some owl series by Mercedes Lackey when I was in middle school and ISOIAF. What's something that has some of the cool magical elements of The Elder Scrolls without being full of dumb stuff? Maybe the Lord of the Rings? The movies were fantastic, but is there a lot of lore that they left out and that is worth reading? or The Hobbit, which I know nothing about. LOTR is slow slow going. Hobbit is much quicker paced. Pretty much every fantasy written (and particularly all those 10 volume 700 page each monsters that plug up the sci-fi/fantasy aisle in the book store) were written to satisfy people who wanted more Lord of the Rings. So yeah, read those, Hobbit first. It is what everything else is knocking off.
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| # ? Nov 28, 2011 00:06 |
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Slo-Tek posted:LOTR is slow slow going. Hobbit is much quicker paced. Pretty much every fantasy written (and particularly all those 10 volume 700 page each monsters that plug up the sci-fi/fantasy aisle in the book store) were written to satisfy people who wanted more Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit is definitely worth a read, but I'd advise giving a wide berth to the Lord of the Rings and most of the derivative tomes that take up fantasy's shelves. If it's a fantastical world with gruesome battles and epic sagas you're after, I'd go for Joe Abercrombie's The Blade Itself trilogy. It opens with a bang and is fast paced while generally well-written. Barbarians, sub-human evil creatures, the odd monster and nasty wizards abound, though no dragons. His books have got a Book Barn thread here, worth checking out. Other than that, I think my favourite fantasy book of all time is The Lies of Locke Lamora. It's essentially a heist novel, following a bunch of crooks in a fantastical but wonderfully realised setting, though it's pretty far away from the likes of Skyrim. The Supreme Court fucked around with this message at Nov 28, 2011 around 00:48 |
| # ? Nov 28, 2011 00:46 |
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First fantasy series I read that I actually liked was The Belgariad by David Eddings. After that was the Mallorean, Elenium and Tamuli series. Loved em. I hated fantasy with ... how can I put it.... WAY too extremely detailed overly anal characters who spoke in their own language and gently caress you if you don't understand dark elf trollspeak or know what in the hell one specific weapon is or looks like cause if you don't, the book is meaningless. My friend, on the other hand, LOVES those god damned things. I think he even reads the EVE books. After Eddings, I discovered David Gemmell, and holy fuckballs this dude can WRITE. He is awesome! He is amazing! Oh poo poo, he is dead  Still love his books though. Decent magic, great characters, and I can forgive the surprise sex victim on wheels female leads in a few books, cause the majority of em rule. After (or should I say during) Gemmell, I discovered Jim Butcher, and then he kinda slipped off to the side and wrote The Codex Alera books. Not urban fantasy, but more rome and element control kinda stuff. To quote him, it's ancient rome and pokemon, but it's actually a damned good read too. I think there's a little airbender kinda bit to it as well. Yes, it sounds retarded, but it's actually pretty cool. Fantasy is kinda hard to nail down to just one guy, but if you wanted to just "dip your toe in the water", I would suggest Sanderson's mistborn trilogy. It's pretty awesome.
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| # ? Nov 28, 2011 01:00 |
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blue squares posted:So all this Skyrim playing I've been doing has got me interested in trying a fantasy book. It has been said but I want to suggest it again, try Joe Abercrombie's The First Law trilogy. If someone were to ask me my favorite fantasy book I wouldn't even have to think about my choice. Well I would have to think about what one of the 5 books he has written to choice as my favorite but it would be one of his books. The series starts with The Blade Itself. It sounds like you are looking for something in a sword & sorcery setting but if you don't mind a current day setting then I would have to suggest Jim Butcher's Dresden Files as well. Takes place in Chicago and the main character is a Wizard who also works as a detective. After you get past the 2nd book (which everyone seems to agree is the worst in the series) you will have a hard time putting the book down before you finish it and before you know it you will have read all 13 books that he currently has out. Request I have been wanting to read a fantasy or sci-fi book with really well written fight / battles scenes. I loved the action parts of Armor by John Steakley and the fight scenes from books like The First Law, Mistborn and the Night Angel series. Most of the fantasy I have read recently has been world building type stories (Just did a re-read of WoT) and I really want some mind numbing action.
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| # ? Nov 28, 2011 21:11 |
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Clinton1011 posted:
You might want to look at Scalzi's Old Man's War series. It's very heinleinesque sci-fi. Alternately the Shadows of the Apt series has some great battle sequences and fight scenes in it but it's *very* pulpy; I'd only recommend it if you don't necessarily mind thinking "oh, look, that character has a Constitution bonus!" every so often. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at Nov 28, 2011 around 21:32 |
| # ? Nov 28, 2011 21:13 |
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:You might want to look at Scalzi's Old Man's War series. It's very heinleinesque sci-fi. The Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell is pulpy to the point of self parody with amazing space combat scenes. The author does a really good job making Newtonian and relativistic space combat seem terrifying and realistic (i.e., two spacecraft heading towards each other at 0.98c exchanging broadsides inside a window of a millisecond). The Gap Cycle by Stephen R. Donaldson is also one of my favorite sci-fi series that includes some really well-done space combat scenes, but, uh, the other bits aren't for the faint of heart. Vertigus fucked around with this message at Nov 28, 2011 around 21:29 |
| # ? Nov 28, 2011 21:24 |
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blue squares posted:So all this Skyrim playing I've been doing has got me interested in trying a fantasy book. The only fantasy I have ever read was some owl series by Mercedes Lackey when I was in middle school and ISOIAF. What's something that has some of the cool magical elements of The Elder Scrolls without being full of dumb stuff? Maybe the Lord of the Rings? The movies were fantastic, but is there a lot of lore that they left out and that is worth reading? or The Hobbit, which I know nothing about. For the guy looking for Stabbathon IV: The Bladening. Try Brent Weeks. Dumb, pulpy, objectifies women something awful but the scraps are ace.
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| # ? Nov 28, 2011 21:56 |
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^^^ I loved both his Night Angel and Black Prism series and cant wait for the sequel to Black Prism. Edit: Looks like he released a novella that is a prequel to Night Angel featuring Durzo Blint so I will need to get that as well. Edit 2: For a bit of a laugh here is a trailer for the book Black Prism. The reason it's funny is that they have a fit black guy playing the overweight white kid who is one of the main characters. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k06j...player_embedded Hieronymous Alloy posted:You might want to look at Scalzi's Old Man's War series. It's very heinleinesque sci-fi. John Scalzi is an author I have been meaning to check out and somehow always forget about. I am going to get Old Man's War tonight since its on audible and I want something to listen to on the drive to work. I have read Shadows of the Apt and really liked that series as well. Clinton1011 fucked around with this message at Nov 28, 2011 around 22:16 |
| # ? Nov 28, 2011 22:07 |
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Hedrigall posted:Here's a really awesome thing: Have you had a chance to read any yet? I'll probably get it just for the Alistair Reynolds story, but was wondering what the general quality was like.
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| # ? Nov 29, 2011 01:06 |
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Junkenstein posted:Have you had a chance to read any yet? I'll probably get it just for the Alistair Reynolds story, but was wondering what the general quality was like. Nah, not yet, but I also bought it pretty much just for the Reynolds story, so the rest was a sweet bonus.
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| # ? Nov 29, 2011 01:19 |
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Evfedu posted:If it's Skyrim that's got you looking, the best place to start would likely be Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea trilogy. Skyrim nakedly rips off the dragon language from there, and they're probably the best Old School fantasy out there. Very few recommendations that include the Earthsea trilogy are misplaced.
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| # ? Nov 29, 2011 02:11 |
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quote:If it's a fantastical world with gruesome battles and epic sagas you're after, I'd go for Joe Abercrombie's The Blade Itself trilogy. It opens with a bang and is fast paced while generally well-written. Barbarians, sub-human evil creatures, the odd monster and nasty wizards abound, though no dragons. His books have got a Book Barn thread here, worth checking out. Want to counter this by saying that this trilogy is really bad. It is true that it's definitely fast-paced and has lots of action. Unfortunately unless you mostly just like really long battle scenes for no reason other than to describe a battle scene, pass on this. I think some battles in this series take like 200+ pages. He also develops a lot of backstory that is never expanded on. Also a large amount of the characters are completely two-dimensional in an unintended way. Like in some books an author will intentionally make a two-dimensional character as an intentional device, in this book the "intentionally flat" characters are basically walking cliches and the characters that are supposed to have depth are two-dimensional. This series really just felt extremely anti-climactic and hazy. You keep thinking interesting resolutions are going to happen but instead you get what feels like boss fights from an MMO rather than an actual novel.
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| # ? Nov 29, 2011 02:43 |
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fritz posted:Very few recommendations that include the Earthsea trilogy are misplaced. This is very true. The first three books are three different types of fantasy -- a male coming of age novel, a female coming of age novel, and a quest for (im)mortality. Plus, great dragons. Also, recommending Abercrombie to a first-time fantasy reader is like recommending Watchmen as someone's first superhero comic -- 9/10 of the interest is watching the author play with and subvert cliches (also it's nowhere near as good as Watchmen).
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| # ? Nov 29, 2011 02:58 |
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Trying to finish up CS Lewis's scifi trilogy. Yes, scifi trilogy. The first book moved at a good clip and is kind of reminiscent of his Narnia stuff in tone, pacing and complexity. The second book was a little harder to get through- more character study and less action. The third book I'm having trouble finishing because it's going on and on about two characters in whom I have absolutely no sympathy. They're boring shallow people and I doubt he'll kill them off in any way that is satisfying. Things seem to be picking up however, and the vague foreshadowing of the first half of the book is starting to be paid off.
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| # ? Nov 29, 2011 03:15 |
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I finished the first scene in the Hobbit with Gandalf and the Dwarves and I'm into it, thanks. As for the Blade Itself, I actually was listening to that on audiobooks several months ago and I made it 7 hours in but still had no clue what the plot was. I liked Logan but that's about all I knew.
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| # ? Nov 29, 2011 05:37 |
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Maytag posted:Trying to finish up CS Lewis's scifi trilogy. That third book is a bitch to get through. I do like the whole series, it's nothing at all like Narnia for anyone looking at it on a shelf. These are far more metaphorical and abstract.
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| # ? Nov 29, 2011 06:02 |
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systran posted:Want to counter this by saying that this trilogy is really bad. It is true that it's definitely fast-paced and has lots of action. Unfortunately unless you mostly just like really long battle scenes for no reason other than to describe a battle scene, pass on this. I think some battles in this series take like 200+ pages. He also develops a lot of backstory that is never expanded on. Also a large amount of the characters are completely two-dimensional in an unintended way. Like in some books an author will intentionally make a two-dimensional character as an intentional device, in this book the "intentionally flat" characters are basically walking cliches and the characters that are supposed to have depth are two-dimensional. This puzzles me. Could you be more specific? I thought all his fight scenes were pretty appropriate for the setting (what with it being merciless and full of people who wanted to kill other people) and moved pretty fluidly. It was almost like a reversal of your typical fantasy book: world-building was suspended at times, but combat was there to enhance character.
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| # ? Nov 29, 2011 06:43 |
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I am also puzzled by that - even the Heroes, which is all about a war and battles, has breaks to the fighting scenes. I thought almost all the characters had interesting resolutions to their stories, too. And I would say the Heroes is very similar in tone to a lot of Skyrim - you even have an empire clashing with a bunch of Northerners. However, to get the most out of it, it's really worth reading the first three books and Best Served Cold, which I thought were all excellent in their own right.
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| # ? Nov 29, 2011 14:49 |
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Here's a heads up for those who liked Twenty Palaces by Harry Connolly - a few days ago he released a prequel he's self publishing via his website for $5. Link is below: http://www.harryjconnolly.com/blog/?p=5719
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| # ? Nov 29, 2011 17:11 |
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blue squares posted:So all this Skyrim playing I've been doing has got me interested in trying a fantasy book. The only fantasy I have ever read was some owl series by Mercedes Lackey when I was in middle school and ISOIAF. What's something that has some of the cool magical elements of The Elder Scrolls without being full of dumb stuff? Maybe the Lord of the Rings? The movies were fantastic, but is there a lot of lore that they left out and that is worth reading? or The Hobbit, which I know nothing about. To be honest, I wouldn't recommend most of the books recommended to you here to a first-time reader, with the exception of Lies of Locke Lamora. Go with that one.
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| # ? Nov 29, 2011 17:12 |
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anathenema posted:This puzzles me. Could you be more specific? I thought all his fight scenes were pretty appropriate for the setting (what with it being merciless and full of people who wanted to kill other people) and moved pretty fluidly. It was almost like a reversal of your typical fantasy book: world-building was suspended at times, but combat was there to enhance character. It comes down a lot to what each individual reader wants out of a book. To me, the most interesting ideas presented in the trilogy were those related to the backstory. He kind of hinted at this backstory that was much more interesting than what was currently happening. I kept thinking it was going to build up and connect together elegantly. That connection never happened at all, which felt really lame to me. As far as the battles; he did a good job at times making the battles enhance the character. For instance Glotka (can't remember how to spell his name) defending the siege did work well with his character. Unfortunately it still took like 200 pages to do that. I just don't care enough about battle scenes for a battle to drag on that long. There were many battles in this series that drug on way longer than needed. Yes they developed the characters in certain ways, but they often were just writing involved battles for the sake of doing so more than anything. I'll go into some specific instances of things that just felt really stupid and lazy: I think the end of the second book where Logan falls into some underground pit full of a bunch of monsters felt like a raid extracted from an MMO. He just ran around beating up a bunch of fodder, and then at the end he encountered some random giant "boss" monster that had nothing to do with the plot and was never mentioned again. The whole sequence was just a long, boring action thing that was pretty much there just to be a long action scene. It was used in part to get Logan and the demon lady together, but that could have been done in plenty of other ways. The end of the third book was especially terrible. I don't remember when Logan fought the guy with all the marks on one side of his body, but that again was essentially just a lame throwaway fight against a character that had been built up over three books basically. Also, to me, Logan turning into the Bloody Nine was really loving stupid and predictable. It was like "Hmm Logan is losing a fight... I wonder if he'll turn into the Bloody Nine and do a bunch of 'cool poo poo'...?" At the end of the book a bunch of stupid ghosts (I don't even remember what they actually were) flew in and some inane bullshit happened that didn't really resolve any of the backstory or plot details. It was just like a lovely battle thrown in because he felt the climax of the final book needed another battle. There was some really crappy writing strewn in to all three books as well. I'm sure a lot of people liked the "Say one thing for", "Still alive" etc., but to me it just felt like Bruce Willis saying a punchline in Die Hard or something. Also in one of the books he used some device where the beginning of every chapter had one character say the same thing as whatever another character just said at the end of their chapter. He did this like four or five times in a row and it just made me cringe really bad every time I saw it. I'll give some credit on certain characters. Bayaz was a fairly interesting character who kept you guessing and went through a fairly interesting transition. Jezel was alright in some regards but it was fairly unbelievable that getting in one single real fight completely changed his personality over night. Glotka was alright; I enjoyed reading his chapters usually. He was done pretty well in that you didn't know if you should sympathize with him or not. You'd often just wonder why he didn't kill himself and why he bothered struggling on. The demon lady was a joke, "hissssss" shoots bow really well bla bla. Logan wasn't really that interesting; he appeals to goons for sure because he does badass poo poo and is basically a viking. Really though he didn't develop at all and was just presented as a "very likable guy despite his faults" in an extremely transparent manner. He didn't do anything outside of fight scenes and his little crisis of trying to be a good person felt pretty forced throughout. Then there were the characters like those two generals as well as the prince and his friends who were just so ridiculously cartoony that it made the whole setting feel fake. Whereas Logan was transparently written in a way that made the reader have to like him, these characters were written so that you had to dislike them. It was just a blatant action movie cliche of the incompetent general who says "Full frontal charge! We'll crush them in one fell swoop!" while the Mel Gibson main character that you are meant to like says "No, we should send in a few scouts first and set up a flank!" All of these things I'm critiquing can be defended I'm sure, but as a whole I just didn't feel like the trilogy went anywhere at all. If you don't like the battle scenes very much then you're not left with much. I feel like this would make a much better action movie than a book. There are just too many flat characters, too much battle scene padding, not enough character development, and the biggest thing to me is that he set up this whole history and world that he never managed to connect in any meaningful way. It basically felt like he might as well have not bothered with the back story since he just let it hang uselessly in the end. systran fucked around with this message at Nov 29, 2011 around 17:42 |
| # ? Nov 29, 2011 17:38 |
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blue squares posted:So all this Skyrim playing I've been doing has got me interested in trying a fantasy book. The only fantasy I have ever read was some owl series by Mercedes Lackey when I was in middle school and ISOIAF. What's something that has some of the cool magical elements of The Elder Scrolls without being full of dumb stuff? Maybe the Lord of the Rings? The movies were fantastic, but is there a lot of lore that they left out and that is worth reading? or The Hobbit, which I know nothing about. I'm late to the discussion on this one, but it's a really good question -- where to start? The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings is the best place to start if you plan on reading a lot of other fantasy afterwards, because if you read modern fantasy then go back and read Tolkien, Tolkien can end up feeling bland and cliched. So the argument for starting with Tolkien is that it's best to start the genre at the beginning, so you appreciate how original and great Tolkien is. If you just want one single really amazingly good fantasy novel, though, I'd recommend something more modern, but also something that stayed out of the Tolkien tradition as much as possible. To that end, I'd recommend one of these three: Barry Hughart's Bridge of Birds is the favorite novel of everyone who reads it. It's set in a pseudohistorical Ancient China, so about as far removed from Tolkien's norse-epic roots as you can get. Neil Gaiman's Stardust is a an absolutely beautiful fairy-tale style story (Gaiman was deliberately trying to write a "Pre-Tolkien" style fantasy). Similarly, Gaiman's Neverwhere is a brilliant bit of modern urban fantasy. Either one would be a great choice for a one-off fantasy novel read. ( If you like Neverwhere, move on to the Dresden Files afterwards). I wouldn't mess around with most of the other suggestions above -- they're all decent but they aren't masterpieces on the level of Tolkien or Gaiman's works, and for your first novel in the genre you want a masterpiece. EDIT: Actually the Earthsea books are masterpieces and also a good place to start. Just stop after the first three. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at Nov 29, 2011 around 19:33 |
| # ? Nov 29, 2011 19:25 |
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I read it when I was 13/14 so I'm almost definitely wrong but, in my mind, Magician by Raymond E Feist is one of the best fantasy books ever and would be a good place to start.
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| # ? Nov 29, 2011 19:39 |
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Junkenstein posted:I read it when I was 13/14 so I'm almost definitely wrong but, in my mind, Magician by Raymond E Feist is one of the best fantasy books ever and would be a good place to start. Don't troll.
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| # ? Nov 29, 2011 21:13 |
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Junkenstein posted:I read it when I was 13/14 so I'm almost definitely wrong but, in my mind, Magician by Raymond E Feist is one of the best fantasy books ever and would be a good place to start. Can I also direct your attention to R.A. Salvatore's magnum opus, the Icewind Dale trilogy... ...while we're on the subject of awful bloody books that are nothing but a write-up of someone's crappy D&D campaign.
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| # ? Nov 29, 2011 21:21 |
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systran posted:It comes down a lot to what each individual reader wants out of a book. To me, the most interesting ideas presented in the trilogy were those related to the backstory. He kind of hinted at this backstory that was much more interesting than what was currently happening. I kept thinking it was going to build up and connect together elegantly. That connection never happened at all, which felt really lame to me. A lot of this stuff comes across as you just... not having read the last couple hundred pages of the third book? Like about Logen's character development: he most definitely was not presented as you saw him, and that's a central part of the trilogy. He's presented in such a way that he can only remain a likeable character if you accept that his faults are entirely due to the Bloody Nine, and that this is a completely alien part of him and not his true nature. But Last Argument of Kings destroys that notion - this is the lie that Logen tells himself, and he is in fact an evil man who returns to his evil as a dog returns to his vomit. You can go along with his self-deception for maybe two, two and a half novels, but it becomes inescapably clear at least midway through Last Argument as to what Logen's true nature is. Then there's your entire description of the ending, which... even allowing for flippancy and the fact that you obviously couldn't give a poo poo by that point, that's impressive missing of every single narrative and thematic beat in the climax. There are also no 200-page battle sequences in any of the books - the nearest that qualifies is the siege of Dagoska in Before They Are Hanged, and even there it's more concerned with the stuff that goes on around the battle and you only get a couple pages of actual fighting (and it's only 200 pages long if you count all bits of unrelated plot strands that intersperse it). In general the fights and battles are pretty short and sharp, even in The Heroes which is an entire book about a single battle. They're not perfect books by any stretch. Your point about the lax characterisation of some secondary characters is a pretty good one, although that's a weakness more for the inconsistency than anything else - Kroy and Poulder are rather Pratchett-esque and don't quite fit in with the general tone. I also agree that Ferro is a weak character in general, and I agree that the sequence in the middle of Before They Are Hanged seems entirely superfluous. And the thing about phrases ending a chapter being used to begin the next one - that only really works in a comedic context, and not here. But in general your criticisms seem to stem from skimming over, well. The plot. And seemingly any nuance in the main characters, too. John Charity Spring fucked around with this message at Nov 29, 2011 around 21:29 |
| # ? Nov 29, 2011 21:26 |
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Flatscan posted:Can I also direct your attention to R.A. Salvatore's magnum opus, the Icewind Dale trilogy... Hence why I said in my mind, and why I have no intention of ever revisiting it. Is it really that bad?
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| # ? Nov 29, 2011 21:35 |
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Junkenstein posted:Hence why I said in my mind, and why I have no intention of ever revisiting it. Yes and no. Would you say Thundercats (the original) is bad, seeing it today? Sure. But at the time, it was awesome. The same goes with Salvatore. If you didn't read him when you were 14, you're not going to get a lot out of it.
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| # ? Nov 29, 2011 21:39 |
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John Charity Spring posted:A lot of this stuff comes across as you just... not having read the last couple hundred pages of the third book? Like about Logen's character development: he most definitely was not presented as you saw him, and that's a central part of the trilogy. He's presented in such a way that he can only remain a likeable character if you accept that his faults are entirely due to the Bloody Nine, and that this is a completely alien part of him and not his true nature. But Last Argument of Kings destroys that notion - this is the lie that Logen tells himself, and he is in fact an evil man who returns to his evil as a dog returns to his vomit. You can go along with his self-deception for maybe two, two and a half novels, but it becomes inescapably clear at least midway through Last Argument as to what Logen's true nature is. Then there's your entire description of the ending, which... even allowing for flippancy and the fact that you obviously couldn't give a poo poo by that point, that's impressive missing of every single narrative and thematic beat in the climax. I guess I really didn't care by the end. Even with what you said about Logan I still don't find him to be an interesting character. Whether he deep down really is a terrible person or not, he basically is presented as a nice guy who the reader is supposed to like. I think evidence for this is the fact that even after it's revealed that he is indeed a terrible person you still like him and root for him. The final battle really was terrible. They built up this mysterious villain throughout three books and in the end I think they fought one of his underlings instead? In addition, that fight with the guy who had all the markings on him was really just pointless. There was basically no dialogue around that battle, and I think that's a problem I had with a lot of the battles in this book. It wasn't like fights between two relevant characters, but rather a fight between a relevant character and a generic monster/bad guy/enemy. The climax with the ghosts flying in or whatever the gently caress they were (I can't remember other than it being a bunch of supernatural something or other) didn't really seem to mesh with the plot or have any underlying relevance. The actual ending after the climax was pretty good (showing Bayaz's true nature etc.), I was mostly having a beef with the battle before that. And while the ending did wrap up most of the plot of the three books, it didn't really wrap up much of the backstory or connect it to the plot. Why is Bayaz still alive after so long? What is the deal with the magic? What is an eater really? Why can Logan see spirits? Why are the spirits going away? What relevance do the demons have to the story at all other than for Ferro to be good at fighting and have good eyesight etc. (yes this is a flippant reduction of her importance but really think about all that backstory about demons, Kanedias etc. and what they did to interact with the actual plot of these three books). I wanted the books to start resolving these issues and answering these questions rather than having more and more random battles pop up. The siege was really long and did an okay job at developing Glotka. The battle in the north wasn't that long but it took loving forever to build up to it and honestly not much important poo poo happened during that process. Whether or not the battles were as long or as reoccurring as I made them sound, the point stands that as I was reading the books I would think "God another battle already?" or "Why is this battle/chase scene/boss fight still happening?" meaning there were too many for my liking.
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| # ? Nov 29, 2011 22:18 |
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anathenema posted:Yes and no. I was talking about Feist. I know it wouldn't stand up if I read it today, but I always thought it a cut above D&D licensed stuff, which I couldn't bring myself to read even then.
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| # ? Nov 29, 2011 23:13 |
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systran posted:I guess I really didn't care by the end. Even with what you said about Logan I still don't find him to be an interesting character. Whether he deep down really is a terrible person or not, he basically is presented as a nice guy who the reader is supposed to like. I think evidence for this is the fact that even after it's revealed that he is indeed a terrible person you still like him and root for him. Speaking for myself, I most certainly didn't like Logen as he ended up. I found him a very compelling character and his lapse back into his old ways was pretty heartbreaking but it's central to his character - he's not a good man. He's presented as someone likeable before we know all the facts, but if the reader still thinks he's a genuinely good person by the end of the trilogy then they've got a hell of a different moral compass from me. You have him murdering children, his friends, probably dozens of his own side, Black Dow says that Logen's a worse man than he is, even the half-mad mountain chieftain who worships the moon recognises the evil in him. Logen himself comes to terms with how terrible he is; the Dogman, who sees good in everyone, gives up on him; the only character who likes Logen by the end of the trilogy is Jezal, and that's because Jezal isn't in possession of the facts. Jezal has only ever seen Logen at his best; he is the reader, circa The Blade Itself/Before They Are Hanged, before the scales fall from the reader's eyes towards the end of the trilogy. By the end, I was only rooting for Logen because he was an interesting character; much the same sort of reason that I root for Harry Flashman in George MacDonald Fraser's books, even though Flashman is a terrible human being. I don't want to get too in-depth here and derail the thread (this is a general recommendation thread after all), so I'll just finish up by saying that the 'ghosts' you're on about are the Hundred Words: Eaters loyal to the Prophet Khalul. They're the elite of the Gurkish invasion force and intended specifically to battle Bayaz, given superhuman powers of endurance, strength, agility, healing and so on, due to breaking the Second Law and eating human flesh. I think Eaters are explained pretty well in the books, really.
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| # ? Nov 30, 2011 00:46 |
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Clinton1011 posted:Request I have been wanting to read a fantasy or sci-fi book with really well written fight / battles scenes. (*) instead, if you ask me, because there's nothing Scalzi does that Drake doesn't do more of and better, and Scalzi reads more like nerd wish-fulfillment and less like actual combat. But I'm sure that there are people who find Drake too unrelentingly harsh. edit: whoops, "Tank Lords" isn't actually free! Miss-Bomarc fucked around with this message at Nov 30, 2011 around 01:07 |
| # ? Nov 30, 2011 00:48 |
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People don't like Feist because they read too many books. Stop after the fourth book.
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| # ? Nov 30, 2011 03:42 |
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| # ? May 24, 2013 02:18 |
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systran posted:Questions Magic. Magic has either Consequences on use, or Dire Prerequisites to gain its power. Or both. They're humans endowed with magic via constant ritual cannabalism - see Dire Prerequisites. He's the last known inheritant of an old kind of magic that was known in the north. Not precisely explained, but the fact that Bayaz caused the deaths/imprisonments of most of the magi is probably related. Alternately, the common trope of magic fading from the world as technology advances, or a combination of the two. They're the Source of magic, and the probable cause for the Consequences/Prerequisites. systran posted:I wanted the books to start resolving these issues and answering these questions rather than having more and more random battles pop up. The history of the world is a backdrop to Abercrombie's character development (or lack thereof) of this dysfunctional gang of characters, not a focus of the book - and one of the main ways they develop is to be tested by combat. So basically, this ain't your kind of book. Hell, i'd be more inclined to criticize the series for being so goddamn depressing. I read and unironically enjoyed Blindsight - a book which poses a solid case for the elimination of free will as we understand it - and 4 books of Joe was enough for me for an entire lifetime. While i'm nattering, Blindsight was neat. Some people may find it to be a bit of a downer. You probably shouldn't read that spoiler if you're considering picking it up.
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| # ? Nov 30, 2011 04:11 |
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