What Makes The Gap Worth Reading

[kastenessen]

Yes UrLord, you're right, it's not as entertaining as the rest, but you now the feeling...a new SRD!...I was not dissapointed...and I think my favourite in the series is Chaos and Order...

[amanibhavam]

Chaos and Order is definitely brilliant... I think I could've murdered SRD when he gave Angus' priority codes to Nick Succorso...

[Dragonlily]

I think I could've murdered SRD when he gave Angus' priority codes to Nick Succorso...

That raises an interesting question. Who do we blame? Myself, I blamed Holt Fasner. Never occurred to me to blame Donaldson. Same as I gave credit to Morn and then Dios for freeing Angus, not Donaldson. I credited him for the high impact when it happened, yes, but not the decisions.

So were these characters acting out their own story, to some extent?

[aTOMiC]

Its really quite simple. I read whatever Donaldson writes in a Fantasy / Sci Fi genre. Nuff said.

[UrLord]

yeah, Chaos and Order was great, but my favorite is probably This Day All Gods Die...maybe it's because I just really liked Warden Dios and liked to see his plans succeed, and maybe it's just the title of the book, but I really enjoyed it. To me, it seemed like every book in the series was better than the one before it, like SRD just couldn't stop topping himself.

[robo]

What makes the books an interesting read is the style it's written in. Each chapter is simply named after a character and is a first person account of that character. This method has significant ramifications as the story progresses and this is why:

Whenever a character interacts with another character that's been written about, the words in the book take on double (or triple or more depending in the characters in the scene) meaning because as we read them we're thinking of how these words relate to the other character(s). We're always seeing the story through a single character's eyes but because we get to see through so many eyes throughout the story we can empathise with the other characters in the scene.

For instance, when Warden has a meeting with Hashi (Warden first person), the words that are written take on a double meaning because:

1. They are words spoken by Warden and reveal things about him
2. We know Hashi and we think of him listening to the words that Warden is speaking and wonder what Hashi is thinking.

In other words, the words that are in the book have double, triple or even greater meaning. Donaldson gets incredible depth out of writing this way.

[Dragonlily]

Great observation, Robo. That is one of the ways he gives such depth, now that you point it out.

I very much like his way of writing from different viewpoints, too. For me, it's because he succeeds so well in adopting the mind of the person whose POV he is writing. I read in an interview, he described it like being an actor and taking on that personality with all its experiences.

I'm reading George R.R. Martin's Ice and Fire series now. He seems to have adapted SRD's POV method to his own style. The biggest difference I see is that Martin usually finds the same things in the environment important, no matter whose viewpoint he is using. (There are exceptions.) SRD's characters, on the other hand, just don't see the things they would not have noticed if they were real people, and feel differently about the things they do see.

For example, in Martin's books, Jon riding through a forest or Bran riding through a forest, both descriptions of the forest will be about the same. If SRD uses this technique in RUNES, Roger riding through a forest and Linden riding through a forest will find different things important, and therefore SRD's descriptions of the forest will differ, because Roger and Linden will be focused on different things.

[Loredoctor]

What makes it worth reading? the power SRD has in emotionally affecting me.