I'll second LeGuin. Her Earthsea books are among my favorites. Another of my favorites has always been Patricia McKillip. Her style nowadays is very compact, with really elegant and accessible prose. I like both Zelazny and Eddings, but their main epics lost steam as they moved into 2nd series. Both...

That Lord Foul's intent is harder to suss out in TLC makes a lot of sense. I _think_ that's because it is more complex with more moving parts. But I'll give it a stab. "Did Foul need Linden there?" It may be that Foul believed Linden was the only person who could summon enough power to rou...

I, too, think that the Gap series is his best work overall, though it has been some years since I read it (and even more since I read Mordant's Need). I've always been something of a cheerleader for SRD with my friends, urging them to read TC...and warning them that they might not much like TC. Some...

Menolly, you can call me Flower if you want to... :) Actually, my secretary and the kids at church call me PC, so that's fine by me. As for whether I am PC, I can only say that I have been accused of that, even if I prefer the more accurate, "Raging Postmodernist." Lord Foul, I'm not sure ...

A few things I really loved: Nothing new here: Stave's evolution. I hated that guy for the longest time. I remember thinking, "He's no Bannor." By the end, I was reveling in his growth, and also in what it promised for all Haruchai. I loved every teensy appearance of Mhoram. I miss that gu...

On some level I think it is appropriate to imagine the plot being driven as well by the secondary characters. Given that so much of TC and Linden's hangups revolve around their inability to accept help and even recognize the vital agency of their friends, i think it is fair to allow them to drive th...

I share your questions, thougtcube. The only one where I can attempt a response is the first. If we accept that Forbidding is inherently essential, I think Jeremiah learns it this way: Moksha is intimately familiar with Forbidding, being an ancient archfoe of the One Forest and its Forestals. He and...

i agree that the characters are, at times, woefully unrealized. As I said elsewhere, Stave and Mahrtiir are probably the fullest, and it gies downhill from there. I too was particularly disappointed with Longwrath's whole arc. When it was revealed he was Pitchwife and The First's grandson (IIRC) I h...

Perhaps this is beside the point, bit I feel like saying it anyway: if you regard the Ranyhyn as mere "horses" and not as fleshed-out characters in their own right (however complete or incomplete) , then I think you do a disservice. Perhaps all the TC and Linden internal monologue obscures...

What are we to make of Donaldson's comment that their could be no other outcome other than all of the real world characters dying. I think I see SRD's point. It seems to me there are only two established ways to translate someone from our world to the Land: by some act associated with the Creator, ...

I was glad to find this thread, because it captures well one of my biggest struggles in the first 24 hours since finishing TLD. Namely, I thought the Last Chronicles suffered for a lack of strong supporting characters. In the first and second trilogies, it was supporting characters that kept the mom...

Hi. I just finished The Last Dark last night, culminating my first read of the Last Chronicles and my umpteenth read of the First and Second. I'll pre-answer any questions: yeah, I'm a pastor. Maybe I wouldn't be so up front about that, but when I had to write in my seminary application an essay on ...