Is anyone disappointed in Runes?

[Cameraman Jenn]

Well, let's see, Len's wife was cool with it...Romeo's wife was cool with it....Ian Scholls brought his wife with him....Charles Timewaster proposed to his wife in the bed with Julie and Heatherly.....Jason and Douglas's wives were also cool with it....Barbra's husband had no issues with it either....incidentally, Barbra's husband is the guy who plays Foamfollower....oh well, no sense in debating this...it's too late now anyway.

And yes, Cail, that sounds like fun....seriously though, we should probably start a new thread.

[dlbpharmd]

Well, hell, if all those guys can get away with it, so can I....

[Cameraman Jenn]

Alas...it's too late.....solly.

[dlbpharmd]

Story of my life.....

[Cameraman Jenn]

Boy, we really got off subject in here didn't we?....

[Zarathustra]

As I've said before, I think Runes is written better than any previous Covenant book, but the actual content lacks poignancy. Hell, it lacks story. Very, very little actually happens considering how long the book is. And it is to Donaldson's credit that his writting has improved so much, that he can pull this off. The book's story doesn't really begin until about 300 pages in. That's when Linden's "quest" becomes clear: how she's going to retrieve the Staff. [Now granted, it took Covenant quite a long time to realize how he was going to get the Staff in the 2nd Chronicles, but that was a series-long quest, not a quest of a single book.] Up until this point, Linden escapes the Masters and runs up a mountain. That's a summary of 300 pages!! Okay, I suppose you could add that Covenant's son comes back and kidnaps Linden's son, but everything else is just explication.

I do love Runes, but I love it for different reasons than the rest of the series. I love it as an example of the craft of writing. I honestly think it's amazing that Donaldson can fill the pages with interesting, thought-provoking prose while such little activity is actually happening. In the Dissection, we're coming up to my favorite part: Scion of Stone. But already, we can see a glimpse of what's to come. His slow build to this one scene is astonishing. In the GI, he talks about how Stephen King slows down the pace when writing a "big scene." I think he takes this technique and runs with it. He slows down the mountain pursuit to an almost painful pace--has Anele tell a freakin' story in while they're being run down by kresh!! Ah, I'll have more to say on that in the dissection.

Oh, and Anele is the Gollum of this series. I don't know if Jay stole that idea from me, or if we've come to the same conclusion (I mentioned it in the dissection). Anele is skeletal, old beyond his natural span, speaks about himself in 3rd person, has an insanity similar to the split personality of Gollum/Smeagal, has large "moonstone" eyes, needs the main character to protect him, receives pity from the main character, and always talks about his lost "birthright" ("birthday present"). Yep, he's the Gollum of the Last Chronicles. But in a good way.

Yes, I know Anele is much more complex than this. And yes, I love him.

[dlbpharmd]

Oh, and Anele is the Gollum of this series. I don't know if Jay stole that idea from me, or if we've come to the same conclusion (I mentioned it in the dissection). Anele is skeletal, old beyond his natural span, speaks about himself in 3rd person, has an insanity similar to the split personality of Gollum/Smeagal, has large "moonstone" eyes, needs the main character to protect him, receives pity from the main character, and always talks about his lost "birthright" ("birthday present"). Yep, he's the Gollum of the Last Chronicles. But in a good way. Smile

Yes, I know Anele is much more complex than this. And yes, I love him.

See Nerdanel's thread on this topic in this forum.

[wayfriend]

Hell, it lacks story. Very, very little actually happens considering how long the book is.

I disagree, because lacking action is not the same as lacking story.

I have to wonder how much Runes inherits from SRD's mysteries. Because in all those pages of Runes, what Donaldson does is launch a STAGGERING number of mysteries at you.

In the Second Chronicles, the Sunbane was rather a mystery. But by the time TWL is two-thirds over, we had a handle on it, between the Soothtell and the evidence at Landsdrop. Yes, there was a quest, and there was some question about how it would be accomplished. But when the Second Chronicles was 25% done, the stage was set.

Runes, I feel, never sets the stage. We still have no idea what the drama will be about, what form any quest will take. There is no direction that we see this series taking. Even the GAP series was better than this: by the end of book two, the larger story of Warden and Hashi and Fasner was still off-stage, but the story about Nick and Morn was going somewhere, and we could see Angus being loaded, cocked, and aimed at them.

All we have at the end of Runes is mystery after insurmountable mystery. Where the story spends its time is bring all of these mysteries out. Roger, Joan, Anele, Masters, ceasures, skurj, Elohim, Durance, Ramen, ur-viles, Waynhim, Demondim, Esmer, Ranyhyn, Mahdoubt, Covenant, Roger ... just to name the critical ones. Donaldson has dragged all of these out and let us glimpse them. And that took a HELLUVA lot of pages. But he didn't take us anwhere with any of them. There has not, yet, been any time to.

So, a there was quite a lot done. But it was not action, and it was not plot progression, it was not "anything happening". It was mostly introduction of inumerable protagonists and antagonists.

My hope is that this is like dominoes. You spend a lot of time doing the boring set-up. Then you tip the first piece over.

[Zarathustra]

Hell, it lacks story. Very, very little actually happens considering how long the book is.

I disagree, because lacking action is not the same as lacking story.

I agree with nearly everything you said in this post except for this line. I think the definition of "story" is "character x did action y in context z." To have a story, you must have characters doing something in a setting/context. Everything else within a narrative is just a) info-dumps (like exposition about the One Forest, Demondim, Kevin's Dirt, summaries of previous story arcs, ect.), b) description of the scenery/world, or c) description of characters' appearance, thoughts, and feelings. You can't have a story composed entirely of exposition and description. These are merely the ways to provide context for character action. Without the characters doing something, you have no story. Just a context in which a story is possible. [Note: "action" can be internal, such as decisions and epiphanies, not just physical action.]

For example, "This is a cherry tree," is not a story, no matter how many words you use to describe it. On the other hand, "George Washington chopped down his father's favorite cherry tree, and then decided to tell the truth when confronted" IS a story. Character x did action y in context z.

. . . in all those pages of Runes, what Donaldson does is launch a STAGGERING number of mysteries at you.

Agreed.

Yes, there was a quest, and there was some question about how it would be accomplished. But when the Second Chronicles was 25% done, the stage was set. Runes, I feel, never sets the stage.

Agreed.

All we have at the end of Runes is mystery after insurmountable mystery. Where the story spends its time is bring all of these mysteries out.

Agreed.

So, a there was quite a lot done. But it was not action, and it was not plot progression, it was not "anything happening". It was mostly introduction of inumerable protagonists and antagonists.

Agreed. Basically, Linden makes barely a handful of choices: she decides to rescue her son, to do "something unexpected" (which is code for: run away to parts of the Land not yet explored in the previous two chronicles), and then to get the staff of law. Yes, she moves around the terrain in order to do this. But "moving around" doesn't really count as a story; going from point a to point b is nothing more than changing the scenery, a way to expand narrative description. That's not what I mean by "action." Action is character making choices and acting upon them. Linden makes very few choices.

[hamako]

answering the thread, yes I was disappointed. ITs the only one in the series which I didn't want to read again as soon as I'd finished it. It's now been 2 years since I read it and I might, just might give it another go.

I thought it lacked a lot of editorial control. There's only so much I want to read about sitting on a rocky plain with a load of Ramen. Thought the start was superb, fantastically tense, and the end too. The middle was rather forgettable.

I've read a lot of other stuff since and this has helped put Runes into literary perspective. It's and OK book that's all.

I've just finished Lessek's Key, the second of the Eldarn sequence books, that was great.

[wayfriend]

BUT ... the emotional content. Compare....

( Creator, You're Q came up in the GI. )

[Nerdanel]

Off-topic:

I took a look at the Eldarn books solely due to their mention two post earlier in this thread. The back cover mentions SRD twice - good! - and Goodkind once - a very bad sign... The beginning of the first book was available online, and I read it... It was rather... bad, to put it mildly.

In fact the Eldarn books read like how not to write. I can't understand how they even got published, except that they resemble Goodkind who sells for some reason.

A full synopsis of the excerpt I read, because I'm feeling bitchy due to the time I wasted:

Spoiler

Prologue:

Some dude is sailing on his yacht. Suddenly, his wife (who is possessed by something much like a Raver) strangles him for no apparent reason and throws the body overboard.

Another dude, who had been adventuring in an alternate world, finds himself on the ocean near the US west coast, which is amazing luck considering that if he could have ended up literally anywhere, he would have been extremely likely to drown in the middle of the Pacific or something instead of getting practically on his homestep of his native country. In a move that's sure to endear himself to the reader, he steals some random beach dude's wallet and car keys after asking from him where he was exactly.

Chapter One:

A lot of royals with long names are introduced all in a bunch to make sure we're all as confused as possible and can keep none of them straight. They talk politics and stuff and some odiously Goodkind-esque phrases stick out like a sore thumb in the POV character's thoughts and also in some dialogue. Then one indistinguishable royal we don't care the least bit about and whose name we cannot connect to anything drinks some poisoned wine and dies in seconds! Yawn.

Some prince is hit by an arrow while hunting in a forest. Instead of dying, he starts seeing pretty lights that he can control. It's a bit like he's hallucinating, but it's obvious to a fantasy reader that his innate magic is awakening. The whole passage looks like an inept copy of a scene very early in David Zindell's Lightstone.

Back to the random royals. To elevate this book above the morass of the teen fantasy, one royal stares at the tits of another royal, his second cousin or something. Woah, like Martin but a million times less daring! Then the royal with the huge tits invites the other royal to her bedroom and, in a move that reveals that she's been possessed by a Raver-clone too, strangles him while he can do nothing but dyingly grope at her massive tits while the writing fails to provide any sort of emotion. Classy. More Goodkind-wannabe style here. I wonder why that Raver couldn't possess the dude royal and make him jump off a tower or something. Probably the real reason is that that wouldn't have involved any tits for the teenaged male audience.

The low-level writing is very bad too, but that cannot be really described like that.

[CovenantJr]

Sounds delightful!

[Warmark]

Spoiler

him while he can do nothing but dyingly grope at her massive tits

Hahaha this is one of the best desriptions ever.

[Creator]

BUT ... the emotional content. Compare....

( Creator, You're Q came up in the GI. )

Yup! :::D. I thought he answered it very well. And ... "Bad Dog, No Biscuit"!

[Earthpower]

I'm not sure if this has been said but one thing that might be a problem for some is TC is missing for the most part. The way I feel about ROTE is that SRD does a good job with Linden and her cast and I did get sucked back in to the land I love with this book. I do feel without TC the books would not have a lasting appeal for most, so lets hope SRD brings him back In a way thats more then just a voice in Linden's mind. From the end of ROTE is sure does look that way.

[Fuzzy_Logic]

Hell, it lacks story. To have a story, you must have characters doing something in a setting/context. Everything else within a narrative is just a) info-dumps (like exposition about the One Forest, Demondim, Kevin's Dirt, summaries of previous story arcs, ect.), b) description of the scenery/world, or c) description of characters' appearance, thoughts, and feelings. You can't have a story composed entirely of exposition and description.

I agree with you on the first two-- exposition and description are not story.

Only actions are story.

What I disagree is on the third: I think that thoughts and feeligns count as actions. For instance, "A man woman sits in her room reading a bible and trying to decide what she believes", for instance, is a story.

Runes, while it contians a small number of discrete events, contains massive amoutns fo character development. Not jsut character exposition, whre we meet people and elarn what they're like, but actual changes in characters caused by their reaction to strange circumstances.

[Zarathustra]

I did say that some internal activities (i.e. "thoughts") count as actions, like epiphanies and decisions. The thoughts I count as exposition are things like, "Gee, I'm hungry/thirsty/hot/tired," or "Stave and the Masters seem untrustworthy," or "Liand's innocent, eager, curiousity filled her heart with joy," etc.

[hamako]

Off-topic:

I took a look at the Eldarn books solely due to their mention two post earlier in this thread. The back cover mentions SRD twice - good! - and Goodkind once - a very bad sign... The beginning of the first book was available online, and I read it... It was rather... bad, to put it mildly.

In fact the Eldarn books read like how not to write. I can't understand how they even got published, except that they resemble Goodkind who sells for some reason.

A full synopsis of the excerpt I read, because I'm feeling bitchy due to the time I wasted:

Spoiler

Prologue:

Some dude is sailing on his yacht. Suddenly, his wife (who is possessed by something much like a Raver) strangles him for no apparent reason and throws the body overboard.

Another dude, who had been adventuring in an alternate world, finds himself on the ocean near the US west coast, which is amazing luck considering that if he could have ended up literally anywhere, he would have been extremely likely to drown in the middle of the Pacific or something instead of getting practically on his homestep of his native country. In a move that's sure to endear himself to the reader, he steals some random beach dude's wallet and car keys after asking from him where he was exactly.

Chapter One:

A lot of royals with long names are introduced all in a bunch to make sure we're all as confused as possible and can keep none of them straight. They talk politics and stuff and some odiously Goodkind-esque phrases stick out like a sore thumb in the POV character's thoughts and also in some dialogue. Then one indistinguishable royal we don't care the least bit about and whose name we cannot connect to anything drinks some poisoned wine and dies in seconds! Yawn.

Some prince is hit by an arrow while hunting in a forest. Instead of dying, he starts seeing pretty lights that he can control. It's a bit like he's hallucinating, but it's obvious to a fantasy reader that his innate magic is awakening. The whole passage looks like an inept copy of a scene very early in David Zindell's Lightstone.

Back to the random royals. To elevate this book above the morass of the teen fantasy, one royal stares at the tits of another royal, his second cousin or something. Woah, like Martin but a million times less daring! Then the royal with the huge tits invites the other royal to her bedroom and, in a move that reveals that she's been possessed by a Raver-clone too, strangles him while he can do nothing but dyingly grope at her massive tits while the writing fails to provide any sort of emotion. Classy. More Goodkind-wannabe style here. I wonder why that Raver couldn't possess the dude royal and make him jump off a tower or something. Probably the real reason is that that wouldn't have involved any tits for the teenaged male audience.

The low-level writing is very bad too, but that cannot be really described like that.

the beginning is abit ropey, but they develop into a good yarn. There's always a good few unexpected deaths too. Not highbrow fantasy, but a good read.

I don't think you can comment on a book til you've read the whole thing really.

Also read Vellum (Hal Duncan) recently too. Was a bit like a modern day William S Burroughs tale, but perhaps without the wit, that was a bit tiresome, not sure if I'll pick up the sequel.

Others - the fall of lucifer, Wendy Alec -appalling
Dan Simmons - Ilium & Olympos, outstanding.

[Zarathustra]

I don't think you can comment on a book til you've read the whole thing really.

Well, considering the fact that most novels get rejected merely on a query letter or synopsis, I see no problem judging a book on a small portion. From my research into the publishing business, I've learned that most agents or editors can tell within a few pages if a book will be worth reading. If you can't get it right in those most crucial few pages--your opening--then why should we trust you with 500 more?

Personally, the first two pages of my own novel has been the most revised of any I've written. I've probably redone it about 30 times.