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The Gunslinger posted:I'm struggling with the Martin "A Song of Fire and Ice" series mentioned above me. It seems like there are moments of brilliance speckled into the books but for the most part it just seems like fantasy reader-torture porn. No, I don't mean like Terry Goodkind. I mean he basically tortures the reader. It's like he set out beforehand and wrote an amazing back story for the material then decided to treat every single character like poo poo and see how long the reader will tolerate it. I get why people like it because there are spots where you forget the dreariness and dread of "Who will get raped, lose an arm or be savagely murdered for no reason?". To me those spots are too few and far between. I stopped on the second or third book I think, I don't know if I'll go back since I hear it just gets worse in terms of what I dislike about it. Yeah, Martin comes across as a butcher. It seems like his idea of characterization is to make you like characters just so he can make you go "Yeeuurgh!" when he kills them. Anyway, my answer: Swann's Way by Marcel Proust. AFter three attempts I've made it all of 400 pages into it, but I can never finish it. I always fall asleep. It's beautifully written, it's just so beautiful it puts me to sleep. The literary equivalent of chloroform. Calenth fucked around with this message at 17:21 on May 8, 2008 |
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May 8, 2008 17:16
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The Gunslinger posted:I've posted this one every time these threads come up but I really can't reinforce enough just how truly awful an experience that book is. I hear the series just continues to get worse and worse too(Evil Chicken, torture/rape, etc). A friend of mine insisted that I check it out as supposedly it was the first original fantasy series in years. Excluding for a moment the torture porn and other disgusting fetishes of the author, the actual characters and story are boring and formulaic at best. The first 50 pages are the only good part of the book and everyone else should stop right there. My sister in law has an edition of one of Terry Goodkind's books with a misprint of "Copyright Robert Jordan" on the copyright page. I'm convinced someone at Tor did it deliberately. I've never managed to read Goodkind, mostly because every time one of my friends tries, they end up rushing into the room a few hours later screaming about how they can't believe how horrible some passage is and they have to read it to me.
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May 15, 2008 20:46
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BrianWilly posted:Never finished the Silmarillion. Just couldn't bring myself to care. And I'm That Guy who sped through LotR in something like four or five days thinking it was the greatest thing in the universe. It takes a couple tries. It's best to view it as a collection of manuscripts and short stories, or even as a collection of encyclopedia articles, rather than as a book. Skip around in it for parts that look interesting. The two most accessible parts are the introductory gods-forming-world bit and the Tale of Beren and Luthien. Once you've read it it really does make the LotR much more enjoyable -- for example, you understand why the light from Earendil's star, caught in the Phial, would wound Shelob, descendant of Ungoliant; or why Gandalf shouts out those specific words on the Bridge of Khazad-Dum. But yeah, it isn't a book you finish reading, tolkien never finished writing it! Parts of it really aren't in a readable state, despite Guy Gavriel Kay's added work. Calenth fucked around with this message at 18:50 on May 16, 2008 |
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May 16, 2008 15:24
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