Kevin's Watch

HEY! I have read both Eddings and Harry Potter! For me, it was what I was hoping to get out of the books that lead me to read them.

The only reason I started reading The Belgariad was that I read the prologue of Pawn of Prophesy one day at work (I worked in a book store). I am a huge history fan, and the whole historical work/days of yore thing snagged me in a second. And of course, because I am anal, I had to read the entire Belgariad and then the entire Malloreon, and then Belgarath the Sorceror and Polgara the Sorceress as well, for completeness if nothing else. I will admit that his writing is simplistic, but in its simplicity I found characters (such as Belgarath, Polgara, Beldin, Vella and Ce'Nedra) the likes of which I had never seen in fantasy before.

In saying that, once I start on one author, I usually read everything that they have ever written. David and Leigh Eddings deffinately didn't acheive that with me. Once I had finished the 12 Belgarath and Polgara books, that was it. I enjoyed (and at times do still enjoy) their work for light reading and a bit of a laugh, but that's about it.

As for Harry Potter, I used to be a fan of Enid Blyton as a child, and J. K. Rowling is just like Enid Blyton but with wizards, witches and dragons.

Sum sui generis
Vs

Great new sig VS!

Variol, if you read The Belgariad, then you had already read The Malloreon. It's the same story. The first epic fantasy instant replay.

And Sturgeon's Law probably applies to fantasy as well as anything. "Ninety-percent of everything is crap."

danlo wrote:Great new sig VS!

Personally, I believe the guy sat there with a dictionary of Latin words starting with "V" until he came up with a flashy saying.

And I quite agree Roland, the two are basically the same. I actually prefered the two prequels over the rest of the series in any case, since Belgarath and Polgara, and their relationship, were my favourite parts. Garion and the rest really only provided people for the Eternal Man and his daughter to drag around the world and rescue it.

Sum sui generis
Vs

The first time I read any part of The Waste of Time (or The Wheel of Overtime or whatever you call it) was also the last. I skimmed about eight chapters, grinding my teeth all the while at the slowness of the story. As I recall, it took an entire chapter for two characters to fetch a keg of beer up from the cellar, meanwhile trading Gossip from the Outside World™ that could be summarized as follows: 'Aye, measter, there do be strange goin's-on in that arr Outside World, marry begob. Lucky we never has none o' that violence and adventure stuff here in Stereotypical Bucolic Hamlet, eh, measter?' And insert Glyph of Heavy-Handed Foreshadowing Irony™.

Then came the first 'The Wheel Turns . . .' chapter, and I threw the book against the wall. A ridiculous portentous title for an undigested infodump: two of my least favourite things. One would suppose that a book with a 100-page glossary wouldn't need to be interrupted by chapters of crib notes on the background, but then one wouldn't be Robert Jordan.

Mr. Goodkind is a very strange author, writing very strange books for what must be a very strange audience. He really seems to believe that his mission in life is to preach the gospel of Ayn Rand to all the wankers at those SF cons he's heard tell of. Most people consider it rude to give spoilers without warning, but I'm nothing if not rude, so with no warning at all, here is the entire storyline, plot, and thematic resolution of the complete works of Terry Goodkind as of even date:

Terry Goodkind approximately wrote:See Atlas. See Atlas shrug. Shrug, Atlas, shrug.

The fantasy field at present seems saturated with authors hell-bent on slinging 1,000,000-word doses of epic hash, each one of them missing some essential literary vitamin or even an entire food group. Please understand this to be a brief caricature, as none of these authors are as bad as I make them out:

Eddings has no originality to speak of (he started repeating himself even before The Belgariad was over), Martin has no sense of pace or dramatic unity, Goodkind has no world-building or skill with prose . . . and Jordan has no end. That's why I remain a staunch SRD fan after all these years. He's the only man in the field of BFF who serves up the entire family paella.

That said, my own books suck worse than anybody's. The world has yet to discover this; let it count itself fortunate.

*Having a fit of the giggles* Oh, Farseer, please, please, come slaughter books for Reviewers Choice.

Variol Farseer wrote:Martin has no sense of pace or dramatic unity

I admire the hell out of the whole sprawling series, but you pinpointed why it took me a month to read STORM OF SWORDS. I never got up the momentum, or rather, the momentum kept getting interrupted.

Variol Farseer wrote:'Aye, measter, there do be strange goin's-on in that arr Outside World, marry begob."

Your summation of Wheel of Time had me laughing my head off, Variol. And while I might agree with your analysis of Martin, the rest of his skills outweigh these flaws for me.

yeah agrees with roland on that totally.
Your thoughts on the Never ending story (wheel of time) had me laughing my head off.

Also, Martin doesnt have what you mentioned, but as roland said everything else he puts on the pages and gives us outweighs those things u mentioned a 100 fold.
Cail

Roland of Gilead wrote:Your summation of Wheel of Time had me laughing my head off, Variol. And while I might agree with your analysis of Martin, the rest of his skills outweigh these flaws for me.

Oh, I do have a high admiration for George R.R. Martin — though I've liked some of his other work better than his current six-decker. When I have to keep track of 75 plot threads and eight different cliffhangers at once, and each cliffhanger is left hanging for about 400 pages before that viewpoint character's next turn at bat, I can't help feeling that a good thing is being spoilt by excessive complexity. Some of the other authors discussed in this thread don't give me that feeling. When the thing being spoilt wasn't much good to begin with, it's hard to care what went wrong with it.

SRD's writing has all the visceral intensity of Martin's best work, plus the focus and consistency that makes it possible to identify emotionally with the principal characters. A million words into ASOIAF, I'm still not even sure who the principal characters are. I know which style I prefer, that's all.

Variol F., please let me know who you do like, because you sound like a man of incredible discernment. BTW, I'd love to hear your thoughts on Anthony's Xanth trilogy (right. trilogy. to the fifth power, maybe. I think I know why Piers never became a mathmetician)

My favorites are Martin and King, with Donaldson breathing right down their necks. And Martin and King being my faves is predicated on their abilities to resolve their series as well as they've constructed them so far. As Tolkien proved can be done.

We'll know on King soon enough. But Martin - well, the jury may be out on him for another decade or two.

While Donaldson has yet another crack at regaining the top spot, with the Last Chronicles.

It's a great time to be an epic fantasy fan.

King, as in Steven? Fair enough. I have yet to read Martin. My fav list is: SRD, Tolkein, Sturgeon, etc.

Dan, I was speaking strictly of epic fantasy. I like Sturgeon, too, but not for epic fantasy.

FizbansTalking_Hat wrote:How can you not enjoy Epic Fantasy...?

Nobody ever said that! Are you trying to start an argument, Fizban? If so, stop. This isn't the place for it. Anyway, as this forum is Sci-Fi/Fantasy, I will talk about Sci-Fi writers, and expect everybody else to also.

Well, I have grudgingly allowed this topic to stay in spite of the negative nature of it, as well as the potential it has for offending those who like the writers we're blasting here. In light of that, I will say that I really liked Piers Anthony's early works, and even enjoyed Xanth for almost six books, but I got older, and his target reader is definitely high/jr. high school kids, and is probably really good stuff for them.

That being said, if this thread turns into something I don't like, I will lock it.

Just my two cents worth, but I have no problem with discussing authors we don't like, as long as we don't reduce it to name-calling or vulgar insults. It's all just opinions, anyway, and if someone doesn't like Stephen King, for instance, I'm not going to take offense.

I'll just shake my head in bemusement and wonder where your reading tastes took such a violently wrong turn.