quote:Originally posted by Cashew: I gave up on the Terry Goodkind books after the one with that ludicrous statue of Richard and Kahlan on the cover, couldn't handle the political tract that became at the end, and the fact that at the end of the book nothing had happened. Agree that the first few were good reads though.
Faith of the Fallen. After the first book, that was my favorite.
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Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy. His standalone "Elantris" is also most excellent.
Butcher's Dresden and Codex Alera series
Devid Eddings Belgariad and Mallorean
Anything by Lawrence Watt-Evans
Feist's "Magician" series
The 1st few "Sword of Truth" books.
And then some of my own suggestions:
RA Salvatore's Dark Elf trilogy. The rest of his Drizzt stuff is kinda meh, but the DE trilogy shines, IMO.
Dennis L. McKiernan's Iron Tower trilogy, Silver call duology, and standalone "Dragondoom." Especially Iron Tower and Dragondoom
Harry Turtledove's "Darkness" series -- essentially a fantasy retelling of WWII, but he makes it work.
Chris Bunch's DragonMaster series
Trudi Canavan -- any of her stuff
Sara Douglass -- Wayfarer Redemption kicks off a pretty good series. I also liked her "Troy Game" series. Didn't care so much for the "crucible" series. "The Hanging Wall" and "Threshold" standalones were good though. I'm not sure if I like how she's melding everything into a single world anymore in "Serpent Bride," but I'll probably keep reading anyway.
Jennifer Fallon -- "Second Sons" trilogy ruled. The 6 books in the "Hythrun" world were all quite good too. Apparently she's got new stuff out that I haven't seen yet also. Time to go back to the bookstore for me. . . .
Patricia Brigg's older stuff is pretty decent.
Christopher Stasheff's "Wizard in Rhyme" series is ok, though the 1st book is by far the best while the rest are a bit more so-so. His early "Warlock in spite of himself" stuff was good too, but he overmilked his franchise there, IMO.
Michael Stackpole's "Dark Glory War" is amazing. His later "Cartomancy" stuff is quite good too. I also love his older standalones and duologies like Eyes of Silver, Talion: Revenant, Once a Hero and it's sequel -- most excellent stuff. This guy's in my Top 3, so far as favorite authors go. He even makes the (generally) crappy Battletech and Star Wars books readable whenever he's contracted to write them -- that's how good he is.
I could go on, but it's almost time for me to get off work ;-)
And FWIW, I *despise* the Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever books. I was told they're wicked aweseme, but I spent the whole 1st book wanting to kill the protagonist myself and hoping the bad guys would actually win so I wouldn't have to listen to his constant whining about EVERYTHING. Plus he raped his closest supporter, and yet he's supposed to be the hero? Nope -- I couldn't identify with the character in the slightest. I will never read anything more from that author as a result.
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Hmm. That got me thinking. Are there any books out there where the bad guys win? Where you're meant not to like the protagonist and to root for the bad-guys? I can imagine that takes some wickedly clever writing...
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Quoting Lisa: "Faith of the Fallen. After the first book, that was my favorite"
Wow, Lisa, really? I enjoyed all the other books before that one, but Faith of the Fallen killed it for me. Two things did it, firstly the blatant political tract that it was and the caricatures of charcters that Richard was dealing with at the end, along with the just plain silly, unbelievable effect that his sculpture had on people(and funnily enough my political leanings are towards the conservative side of the spectrum). It smacked way too much of the simplistic qualities of Ayn Rand's stuff.
And secondly, the way that by the very end of the book, absolutley NOTHING had happened to advance the overall plot of the series. The whole book was like a diversion from the real story so Goodkind could get his political ideas across.
As I said it wrecked the series for me, made me feel very cynical about it, although I really liked them up to that point, the first 3 or 4 especially. I thought he introduced some really cool new things to fantasy in those first couple of books. The Mordsiths were especially compelling.
I'd be really interested to know why it's your (2nd)favourite book of the series, Lisa.
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quote:Originally posted by Armoth: Hmm. That got me thinking. Are there any books out there where the bad guys win? Where you're meant not to like the protagonist and to root for the bad-guys? I can imagine that takes some wickedly clever writing...
Joe Abercrombie's trilogy starting with the Blade Itself, to some degree. I won't elaborate and risk spoilers.
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quote:Originally posted by Cashew: Quoting Lisa: "Faith of the Fallen. After the first book, that was my favorite"
Wow, Lisa, really? I enjoyed all the other books before that one, but Faith of the Fallen killed it for me. Two things did it, firstly the blatant political tract that it was and the caricatures of charcters that Richard was dealing with at the end, along with the just plain silly, unbelievable effect that his sculpture had on people(and funnily enough my political leanings are towards the conservative side of the spectrum). It smacked way too much of the simplistic qualities of Ayn Rand's stuff.
See, I like Rand, though. Yes, her characters are archetypes, and you're never really going to run into anyone who is completely like any of her characters. That's a type of literature, and some people like it while others hate it. To give you an example, in Les Miserables, both Javert and Valjean are archetypical characters in the same way. They're extremes that you're not going to run into in the real world. But they stand for ideas. The same is true of Dagny Taggart and John Galt and Elsworth Toohey and the rest.
I don't mind a book preaching at me if (a) the message isn't something I find really odious and (b) it's well argued. And (b) is the more important of the two for me. I've read books that argue strongly for various types of statism and enjoyed them despite being utterly opposed to the ideas put forth.
quote:Originally posted by Cashew: And secondly, the way that by the very end of the book, absolutley NOTHING had happened to advance the overall plot of the series. The whole book was like a diversion from the real story so Goodkind could get his political ideas across.
There's so little out there that presents the Objectivist point of view that I was utterly psyched to see it in Goodkind's books. And I don't really think it didn't advance the plot. It went some ways towards explaining some of Richards decisions, both in that book and in later books.
quote:Originally posted by Cashew: As I said it wrecked the series for me, made me feel very cynical about it, although I really liked them up to that point, the first 3 or 4 especially. I thought he introduced some really cool new things to fantasy in those first couple of books. The Mordsiths were especially compelling.
In a very creepy way. Gawd, I had a hard time reading the stuff with Denna.
quote:Originally posted by Cashew: I'd be really interested to know why it's your (2nd)favourite book of the series, Lisa.
And it's a very close second.
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quote:Originally posted by Armoth: Hmm. That got me thinking. Are there any books out there where the bad guys win? Where you're meant not to like the protagonist and to root for the bad-guys? I can imagine that takes some wickedly clever writing...
Joe Abercrombie's trilogy starting with the Blade Itself, to some degree. I won't elaborate and risk spoilers.
Lawrence Block has some stories of that sort, with Martin Ehrengraf. Ehrengraf is a particularly nasty piece of work, but it's fun to watch him do his thing.
Block also has a character called Keller, who kills people. He's written at least four Keller books.
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Janny Wurts wrote a heavy fantasy series called "The War of Light and Shadow" where the Blonde, Friendly, Hansom hero is really the cause of all the problems, deaths, and destruction as he fights a curse-induced war against his brother, a dark, quiet but brilliant emo-prince who just wants to be left alone, and who defends himself as best he can.
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Thanks Lisa. I read Rand in college and liked it when I read it, but again got turned off by what I felt was its simplisticness (I guess that's a word). I have no problems with archetypes, but I saw more by way of caricature in the minor and incidental characters in Ayn Rand, not so much in the major ones, and much more of caricature in "Faith".
And as I said I found the response to the statue completely unbelievable. I know what he was trying to get across, the statue as the embodiment of all the qualities that were lacking in the society Richard was in (can't remember the name of it sorry, it's been a while), but to me at least, Goodkind didn't make it work.
And, I have to say as an artist and teacher of art I'm aware of the impact that art can have and has had on societies. And my acceptance wasn't helped by the horrible cover illustration of the sculpture, which made them look far too contemporary, straight out of a gym, for my tastes. I think, on reflection, they (the publishers) were on to a no-winner, attempting to depict something which was supposed to cause such an epiphany for the masses.
I think it's interesting to see people's differing reactions to things.
(Edit for Mordsith response: Creepy, yes, but extraordinarily powerful...)
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quote:Originally posted by Armoth: Hmm. That got me thinking. Are there any books out there where the bad guys win? Where you're meant not to like the protagonist and to root for the bad-guys? I can imagine that takes some wickedly clever writing...
Not sure, but there are definitely ones with stalemates. You want some bleak endings? Watch some anime. Posts: 691 | Registered: Nov 2008
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quote:Originally posted by Armoth: Hmm. That got me thinking. Are there any books out there where the bad guys win? Where you're meant not to like the protagonist and to root for the bad-guys? I can imagine that takes some wickedly clever writing...
Joe Abercrombie's trilogy starting with the Blade Itself, to some degree. I won't elaborate and risk spoilers.
Lawrence Block has some stories of that sort, with Martin Ehrengraf. Ehrengraf is a particularly nasty piece of work, but it's fun to watch him do his thing.
Block also has a character called Keller, who kills people. He's written at least four Keller books.
The funny thing is, I was listening to the soundtrack from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog while I wrote this, and it didn't occur to me to offer that as an example.
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I was wondering if anyone here had read any of Chris Bunch's (or Allan Cole's) series.
I just finished off the Dragonmaster series earlier this month. It's fun and fairly light fantasy reading. (I think I preferred the King series of his though). At the very least, the books give a great, and at least to me, somewhat rare and detailed account of what it might be like to fight from the back of a dragon. Most books never account for limitations of weapons when on a dragon, or the possibilities of harness attachments. (Some what appropriately, The Last Battle was the final book of his I hadn't read, and hadn't realized he had died a few years ago until reading the back flap.)
The King series (Seer King, Demon King, Warrior King) seemed to be a bit more mature (both content and writing style) and a bit better IMO. But both are good, quick, series for those looking. Also look into Kingdoms of the Night that he co-wrote with Allan Cole, though eventually you'll run into my one grip with Bunch, in that his protagonists between series tended to be eerily similar.
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I'd like to recommend David Anthony Durham's "Acacia", although, ahem, I haven't actually read it... I bought it on the strength of his "Pride of Carthage" about Hannibal, which was absolutely brilliant, beautifully written and a great read.
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Dexter, as a TV show, has a serial killer as the hero. The twist is that he isn't as bad as his targets, but you can't help but root for him anyway. :...and it feels weird rooting for a psychopath.
The Dexter series started as books, too, and I think I'll be picking them up soon.
I HATED Faith of the Fallen. I don't like, or need, being hit over the head with poorly written, trite ideology in the guise of a fantasy novel. It had no subtlety, and the stoy inself seemed poorly plotted.
I had been a fan of his before that, and really liked the first two books.....but I gave up a few books later. I could care less about finishing it now, and that is almost unthinkable for me.
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