Kevin's Watch

That's your opinion.

That's your opinion.

maddox.xmission.com/c.cgi?u=boiling_blood

What, are you all mentalists? I picked up the first book in a charity shop and thought it was arse. I can't believe I wasted 2 days of my life with that drivel. No plot and crappy characters, and isn't there supposed to be some science in sci-fi? there is much much better sci-fi out there.

Have you read all of them? because I thought the first two were rubbish as well... the last three are amazing though.

i thought the whole series kicks...uh..."butt"...

I have yet to read this series, but from what I can gather it's rather divisive...

Read it emma! It's a great book! The first two are annoying... but the last are, in my opinion, better than the chronicles. READ THEM! I once said the Mordants Need was going to be rubbish, then Danlo put me right

But if the first two are so bad, why bother wasting time reading the others?

Well, no one is forcing you.

no its the voices....
shhh... they're speaking to me now....shhh.....they're saying 'you must read s**t books otherwise we'll give you diarrhoea'.... damn...

GullibleJohnny wrote:no its the voices....
shhh... they're speaking to me now....shhh.....they're saying 'you must read s**t books otherwise we'll give you diarrhoea'.... damn...

I'm sure...

But if the first two are so bad, why bother wasting time reading the others?

Because I had faith that Donaldson would produce an excellent series.

I disagree, every book in any series needs to be able to stand up as a good book by itself. There are plenty better books out there that deserve your attention more.

I was very put off by the first book as well. Didn't see any of what was coming. Thought the story was too small. Was wondering what the heck Donaldson was doing.

Then I read the author's note thingy about the Ring and figured I'd give book 2 a shot when it came out.

I thought book 2 was good. (I thought book 1 sucked). So then I read book 3 and was very very impressed, and book 4 was incredible. Book 5 was a bit of a letdown, but only a bit. So it's really only one bad book in the series, IMO.

But when I re-read book 1 in light of everything I knew was coming in books 2-5, I was excited to read it again. There really are hints to everything coming, it's just hard to see them when you don't know what's coming already

GullibleJohnny wrote:I disagree, every book in any series needs to be able to stand up as a good book by itself. There are plenty better books out there that deserve your attention more.

I agree (believe it or not).

I don't. In a series where each book is a discrete entity then that may be the case, however the Gap series is essentially one book in five volumes.

The second Chronicles of TC are in the same format, and The One Tree is far too heavy going to make a good stand-alone story.

As I'm sure has been repeated many times in this forum already, the Real Story is a stand-alone novella that SRD really wasn't happy with and might never have published if it hadn't led to his idea for the remainder of the series. I'm somewhat surprised that he never attempted to re-work it (or incorporate it into the next book, for that matter), but that's his perogative.

I think it's a bit harsh to term Forbidden Knowledge as sucky, though. It expands the universe of the Gap very well, and sets up events that lead into the rest of the series. The only real 'criticism' of FK is that there is far less action than in the last three books. Events in FK occur over a time scale of months though, as opposed to days/hours in later books so the sense of urgency is not maintained throughout (rightly so). Overall it has the overall feeling of a 'first' book, but it still provided such great moments as the trip to Enablement, Angus' welding and Orn's treachery.

Book 5 was a bit of a letdown

Did anybody else get the feeling that Book 5 should have been about four hundred pages longer? What I missed the most was the decision that Trumpet's crew made to take over Punisher. The potential for their bluffs to fail... Angus was obviously not pleased with the idea, and I'd like to have known what his reaction to the proposal would be. And how did Morn feel as she made the decision to "betray" the cops?

I enjoyed every single one of the GAP series, and it stands as my second favourite story of all time (with The Killing Stroke coming first)

I've only read the first Gap book so far. I have to confess that I actually enjoyed it. I've been frantically looking for a copy of the second one but it's currently out of print. Thank god for e-bay. I fond it a lot better than the Mordant's need series which I hate! "TRS" seems much more tightly written.

(I take umbrage with you MN stab cougar! )

phantomcougar wrote:I've only read the first Gap book so far. I have to confess that I actually enjoyed it. I've been frantically looking for a copy of the second one but it's currently out of print. Thank god for e-bay. I fond it a lot better than the Mordant's need series which I hate! "TRS" seems much more tightly written.

where do you live? i see the entire series all the time at bookstores

phantomcougar lives in the UK and yes, you usually only see two or three books of the gap series in stock at any one time. I recall having to travel far and wide to find TDAGD, only to discover a (somewhat motheaten) copy in my mother's local bookshop. eBay rocks for finding books though, it's where I got four of my five big, fat first editions.

You can't just, like, ask some local bookstore to order them?