Oh, great. Now I have to dig up my copy of Dragonbone Chair and give it a second try, all for the sake of not looking too much like a hypocrite. Damn. Grumble grumble.
So you say it got better?
Jesus Christ, how true. Especially the last one.
Wait, Terry. You’re telling me that an Empire-spanning revolution just got kicked off by a few people looking a t statue?!
You, my friend, are running out of ideas.
I spit upon you, just like I did your compatriot in gouging the public, R. Jordan.
You can both crank out all the books you desire, for all I care. I won’t be reading any of them.
I really must disagree with the comment about Terry Brooks. Tolkein turned me off at a young age with so many characters and subplots (don’t worry! I’ve reread most of the series recently, and like it FAR better now), but I could really get into Brooks’ series. Each one truly captivated me, and even now, I remember purchasing Angel Fire East in hardcover in order to read it. It’s been worth it.
Moooooore…
Sounds like LOTR ::ducks and runs::
Ah-hahahahaha…! I’ve got you, now!
Yes, it does get better. The characters start breaking out of their gloomy fatalism, and begin to take some control over their lives. Bad things happen to good heros (and some come to a bad end in interesting ways), bad things happen to bad villains, but the villains aren’t necessarily dispatched to the outer darkness, there are some good plot twists, and a least one interesting battle. It still feels like the dying gasp of a faded world, and everything, until the last 150 pages of the second book of Return To Green Angel Tower (the last book in this “trilogy” is a two-parter) has the air of heroic struggle against futility, but, yes, it does get better, despite some rather weird and distracting points along the way. Not everything in the series goes towards advancing the plot, but even most of the distractions are at least entertaining.
That said, I’ve not been able to re-read the series, despite having tried on three seperate occasions. Once was enough, it seems.
Heh, I feel so much better now. You see, I stopped reading WoT 2/3 through the first book, after a full page and a half or so was the same, word for fucking word, as some page and a half from the first third of the book. Sure it was pissiness on my part, but it apparently saved my life.
As for Goodkind, everything after Stone of Tears was pure, unadulterated excrement, and I demand my money and my shelf space back. Considering how world-wise Zed and Kahlan were in the first book, they sure got stupid fast. You can almost hear them smacking their foreheads as Richard points out the obvious yet again.
I mean, christ, Richard is infallible. We get it already. Any story with Richard Rahl in it has, in retrospect, all the suspence of a “is Rahl/Belgarion/Sparhawk/Drizzt Do’Urden going to lose this one?” battle.
And why do I (and so many hapless fans) keep buying them? The wizard’s first rule: People are stupid.
The Wheel of Time Turns and the Ages come and go.
Jordan is simply recreating his setting in his books: the wheel of time turns and the ages will come and go as he cranks out one long tome after another.
There were a few promising moments in the series, but he has drowned them in clutter and dissipated them in ennui.
Sorry. The man is a hack writer and a cheap plagiarist. His books might have been competent for the Young Adult market (if he hadn’t brazenly stolen all their significant points and if Lloyd Alexander had not done similar work, but with actual quality), but they are not to be compared to those of actual authors.
I remember reviewing Sword of Shanara (a pre-publication copy, and the publicity material mentioned that Brooks had to rewrite the book because it was too close to LOTR.
I thought it was an odd statement to make until I read the book. Apparently, it was the publisher’s way of saying “if you think Brooks ripped off LOTR now, you should have seen the first draft.”
Alessan, you must try Memory, Sorrow and Thorn again. IMO, one of the two best fantasy series out there. The other one is A Song of Ice and Fire - I just finished reading Book #3 today, and I cannot get over how good it is. Most fantasy series are built on the premise that there are Good People and Bad People and they will eventually meet in some spectacular battle, in which the Good People will win and the Bad People will die/cease to exist/become good. ASOIAF totally differs from that storyline - Bad and Good are not so sharply delineated. What’s more, I have no idea what will happen at the end of the series, which is delightful.
Goodkind’s first few books were pretty good, but I couldn’t believe the last one in the series - the propaganda was so thinly hidden; very disappointing.
As for WOT, I started reading it when I was fifteen, and loved it. Over a period of years, I got annoyed with it to the point that I didn’t read Winter’s Heart til it had been out for months. A friend told me it was better than Path of Daggers so I borrowed it (I work in a bookstore) and read it. It was better, but really, it’s taking way too long. I doubt that I’ll be able to stop myself from reading the next one, though. After eight years, I have invested too much time into that series not to know how it all ends up.
Well, at least Jordan is still writing, for pete’s sake. Jean Auel left us hanging for something like 12 years before FINALLY getting done with number 5 of 6. At this rate ONE of us is going to be 6 feet under before she finishes the story.
I dunno…I’m quietly convinced that Jordan’s had the whole series finished since 1997. He’s just doing this to be meeeeaaaaan.
I have to say, I agree with pretty much all of you on most points - I thought the Wheel of Time was going to end with book 7. Seven Angreals get broken, resolution, the end. But no, it just drones on and on. Indeed, I hear he has no idea how long it is going to take to finish the story, he just keep making up stuff to drag it on longer.
I don’t like: Goodkind, Eddings, Donaldson, Brooks, Feist, or Jordan - all for exactly the same reasons as stated already, i.e. they start out with fantastic potential, and turn into slush very easily.
I do like George RR Martin, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman (mostly), Terry Pratchett (80% of the time he’s brilliant, 20% of the time not quite as brilliant), and I also love and recommend Dave Duncan and Julie V Jones.
Oh, and Joanna K Rowling, naturally.
Ha. I use Dragonbone Chair as a doorstop. I wouldn’t even use that book as lining in a hamster cage, much less read it. I couldn’t get past the 5th chapter in that piece of garbage…
On the other hand, I remain mesmorized by David Eddings and L. E. Modesitt, Jr. Amazing writers, those two.
Wastrel, I’m actually a fan of David Eddings. He’s good at what he does, which is write fun, light fantasy. When I was in my last year of college and had to read 3000 pages a week (one of those delightful periods when all of your professors think that theirs is the only class you have), I loved to escape with the Belgariad and Malloreon. Silly, fun, a nice break from cultural theory and the history of Kenya’s sugar cane production.
But if you think he’s better than Tad Williams, you are a moron. It’s that simple. Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn is beautifully written, quality fantasy. Eddings’ stuff is predictable and cliche-ridden. I still like it, but it’s not even close.
The Dragonbone Chair is the worst of the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series. The series accelerates in The Stone Of Farewell, and reaches a fairly steady pace in the two books of Return To Green Angel Tower. There are some definite slow points, and the whole story line feels like a war between ants as winter closes in to kill all the nests, but it’s not too horible once you get past the first book. The last 150 pages of the final book are actually pretty upbeat.
Amen, kyla. You are right. And it takes a fair amount of mental effort to follow, and it does start slow. The first 6 chapters are not the most exciting around, but even my 12 year old got past that part, and devoured the rest of the trilogy.
Meanwhile, Eddings is a featherweight, but they too have their places. He’s mind candy for me, and every once in a while I drag out some of the Sparhawk books, and enjoy. Williams is more like a 17 course gourmet indonesian meal, which I have to help prepare. Hard work, but the chance to appreciate the subtle, exotic, spicy and hearty, must be relished.
Enough maundering. Bye
Yes Kyla, Eddings’ books tend to be very cliche`, but his characters are very well-fleshed out, and you can relate to them. I happen to like Silk very much, he was definitely my favorite character in the Belgariad. I just can’t trudge through a Tad Williams book. I’m sure he’s an excellent writer.
Next to Tolkien, Tad Williams is my favorite fantasy author. I’ve read Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn at least four times, and I’ve been thinking about taking a swing at a fifth read. Dragonbone Chair is slow, but the whole series builds wonderfully, and the payoff in To Green Angel Tower is well worth the trip.
On the other hand, next to Robert Jordan, Terry Goodkind is my least favorite fantasy author. I read Wizard’s First Rule, and I have never before read a book that so consistently failed to suspend my disbelief. I found the characters uninteresting, the plot unconnvincing, and the entire world in general was so underdeveloped and lacking in detail I felt like the action was taking place on the set of Our Town. Bad, bad, bad book.
I’m glad other people have problems with this hack. I mean, as other’s have stated this series started out really well (remember the Trolloc fight at Rand’s farm in the first book? Spooky…) and has slid right into the garbage heap in a pretty spectacular way.
For example, in Jordanland women:
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Spank each other. Repeatedly. This is the only way women have of resolving social conflicts amongst each other.
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Pull their hair when frustrated. If a woman has short hair, she will grow it longer (ie. Avienda) in order to be able to pull on it when vexed. Then she will find another woman so she can spank her.
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When not spanking each other, women delight in mentally torturing men. After engaging in this shrewish behavior, they get together and chortle about it. This ‘fratboyish’ atmosphere lasts until they get into an argument (usually about a paragraph or so later) whereupon the usual spanking subroutine begins once again.
I really think Jordan has issues with women and that perhaps he feels emasculated by his wife (who, from his attitudes, I’d shudder to meet in real life). Hence the super-powerful masculine figure (Rand) and the shrewish, greensilkdress-wearing female characters (hell, pick one) in his stories. You want intelligent female characters? Pick up Martin (Arya springs to mind); you want utter crap–go for Jordan. I usually don’t give a hoot how one particular gender is portrayed in a book but this one really goes over the top.
He’s hardly a hack. A hack cranks them out rapidly. RJ seems to have gotten lost in his own world. And to those of us who were dazzled by the first few books, we continually get our hopes up with each new volume, only to crash and burn. But there are always a few glimmers of his native talent which convinces us to hang in there.
Kinda like a junkie continually chasing that “first high” sensation.