They should lean a lot into it, and i do mean A LOT, to get people's interest imho
Books Fantasy Reads
- Thread starter Alock1
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Re Jon Snow, sure the case of him not being heroic is just that the show is now ahead of the books and doing all the heroic stuff we would expect to have seen if grrm ever got round to writing them?
As for Wheel of time, having never read them and having some audible credits spare atm, are they worth it? One friend swears by them, while another can't stand them so I have never bothered.
Heh. Jordan was an average/poor writer with some interesting ideas, but with very strange ideas about men and women. If you like somewhat realistic characters, or well fleshed out, interesting characters, or just cool and funny characters, this is not for you. If you want an interesting spin on the classic good vs evil heroic fantasy and don't much care for the characters, give it a go. Try the first book, see if the plot hooks you in or not. If it does you might make it to book 8 before setting the books on fire and cursing Jordan for wasting your time
He never went to kill the mutineers beyond the wall, and the battle of Hardhome is a show only invention (it happened in the season 5, before Jon Snow was killed so during A Dance of Dragons). Show deliberately made him a more traditional hero, probably the best swordsman in Westeros, something that hasn't happened in the books.
About WoT, I love them but they have significant problems (juvenile characters and boring middle books). They have been discussed here a lot though, I probably have a hundred of posts on WoT in this thread.
Heh. Jordan was an average/poor writer with some interesting ideas, but with very strange ideas about men and women. If you like somewhat realistic characters, or well fleshed out, interesting characters, or just cool and funny characters, this is not for you. If you want an interesting spin on the classic good vs evil heroic fantasy and don't much care for the characters, give it a go. Try the first book, see if the plot hooks you in or not. If it does you might make it to book 8 before setting the books on fire and cursing Jordan for wasting your time
Cheers. Neither ringing endorsements tbh. Might just try the first book and see what I think.
Don't get me wrong, it is my second all-time favorite fantasy saga, and I love them. I think that it is worthy to read them, but I know that they have problems, which for some people totally break the books.
I don't think that Jordan was a poor writer at all. His writing is at the very least in the level with GRRM, and his world building is second to none. The biggest problem is that he married his editor, so the middle books essentially have never gone through the editing stage.
Can anyone confirm something. I've got the Lies of Locke Lamora on my list. Is it grim, funny/humourous or both? Because I can never get a straight answer on that. I've seen it recommended to people looking for 'light-hearted fantasy' and then other people will respond with horror at the suggestion.
It's a good series with some flaws. One of the greatest ever. But you need to commit the series. Starts off well, sags a bit during the middle and finishes with a bang.
Definitely worth reading.
Both.
I mean, it isn't grim in the sense of real grimdark books (Abercrombie, Cook, Martin, Lawrence, Bakker etc), but it has pretty of grim moments, as it has brutal deaths. At the same time, it is quite humorous (but then Abercrombie books are very humorous too). It is definitely more similar to Abercombie books rather than standard epic fantasy ones like Tolkien, Jordan or Sanderson.
And it is fantastic.
It has a bit of everything. Has some comedy but also much violence. Go for it you won't be disappointed. One of my favourite series.
Funny and grim in the same way as The Office is funny and heartwarming.
Thorn of Emberlain got June 1. 2019 as hardcover release date on Amazon. Seems like Scott Lynch has learned something from GRRM and Pat. Rotfuss regarding building anticipation.
And there are 3 more books in the series. Meaning that with this tempo(1 book every 6 years) the last will come out in 2037. Luckily Lynch is younger than GRRM and in better physical state than Pat. Rothfuss, so he will still be able to finish his series. If not, then Jordan Sanderson can finish the series fast, like he did for Robert Jordan.
Lynch suffers from depression and he has been upfront about it. He seems to be better now (apparently was in a very dark place a few years ago), so things might go faster in the future.
Seen him mentioning something about depression on his twitter, did not do much digging though. Thanks for info.
Yeah I think that effected his writing in The Republic of theives. It certainly wasn't as polished as we had come to expect from Lynch. Still enjoyed it but undoubtedly the weakest installment in the series.
I thought it was in par with the second book, to be fair, and like a lot the chemistry between Locke and Sabella. For the first time, we saw a totally different aspect of Locke. It also built the stage for what is to come.
Anyone read Senlin Ascends by Josiah Bancroft?
How much of it is based or influenced by the biblical narrative?
How much of it is based or influenced by the biblical narrative?
Wheel of Time is a modern day classic.
Yes, that central core of WOT, a hated and feared saviour doomed to go mad and die, at conflict with himself, made for a compelling arc, strip it of some of the fluff and extraneous story-lines, go a little darker in this post GOT landscape, and you have a very strong base to build on.
Getting the right actors for Rand/Mat/Moriane and Nynaeve would be key, as well as Lanfear.
WOT has so much wrong with it, feels like a missed opportunity in some ways, but I still love it, in all its braid pulling, sniffing, ridiculousness.
I hope Nynaeve tugs the shit out of her motherfecking braid every god damn time she's on screen. Let the show only viewers feel the full horror of that! Actually I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone physically tug their own braid before, nor adjust their skirts endlessly.
Speaking of repetitiveness, in Season of Storms if Sapkowski points out one more time that Letta Neyd is known as Coral I'm going to scream. I've yet to even see anyone refer to her as Coral! It's giving me flashbacks to ASOIAF and all the "little and less", "much and more" and "words are wind" it gets maddening once you've noticed it and can't unnotice it.
Speaking of repetitiveness, in Season of Storms if Sapkowski points out one more time that Letta Neyd is known as Coral I'm going to scream. I've yet to even see anyone refer to her as Coral! It's giving me flashbacks to ASOIAF and all the "little and less", "much and more" and "words are wind" it gets maddening once you've noticed it and can't unnotice it.
They weren't that great to begin with though
Heh. Jordan was an average/poor writer with some interesting ideas, but with very strange ideas about men and women. If you like somewhat realistic characters, or well fleshed out, interesting characters, or just cool and funny characters, this is not for you. If you want an interesting spin on the classic good vs evil heroic fantasy and don't much care for the characters, give it a go. Try the first book, see if the plot hooks you in or not. If it does you might make it to book 8 before setting the books on fire and cursing Jordan for wasting your time
A bit rich when you defend Malazan books to the death though
Malazan is better than WoT though.
Malazan is unreadable trash.
Well yes, that's the point. Taste is subjective
Insert Cheryl's Okay gif here
It's feckin awesome!
Everything about Malazan is better than WoT
Plenty of people will disagree
Plenty of people are wrong
Plenty of people are wrong
Agreed, in both groups.
It's been scientifically demonstrated that I am never wrong, so those who agree with me cannot be wrong either
It's been scientifically demonstrated that I am never wrong, so those who agree with me cannot be wrong either
Insert cheryl's Okay gif here.
Nerd fight!!!!
That is not correct. RJ met ******* when she was an editor at TOR and she published his first book, the Fallon Blood, in 1980. They married in 1981, long before the first Wheel of Time book in 1990. She was the editor on all his books, so we can't blame her for the lower quality of the middle books. The main culprit for that, in my opinion, was fan pressure.
I think it is important to point out, for those of you who are too young to have followed the books as they were written, that Robert Jordan was the first wildly successful fantasy writer, whose works coincided with the beginning of the internet age, and who had a massive online following devoted to parsing every sentence he wrote, even as he was writing the books. The first six books of the Wheel of Time came out in 1990, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1992, and 1994. By the time Book 6, Lord of Chaos, came out, the online fan following was unlike anything seen before, and fans had come to expect a new WoT book every year.
I myself was on the RASFW-RJ forum, the largest and most authoritative online forum devoted to the WoT, and which boasted a senior editor of TOR Books, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, as a member and regular forum presence. I can attest that the pressure on RJ to produce the next book was always simply humongous, and TOR did everything in its power to satisfy fan hunger for the next book, including compressing the time between when RJ handed in the manuscripts and when the published books were rolled out. I remember the outcry when Book 7 came out in 1996, that the book was too short, not as much happened as in the earlier books, and so on. Fans devoured the book in the first week of its release and then were desperate for the next fix.
I would suggest that the main reason for the drop in quality of the middle books was that RJ didn't have the attitude later developed by GRRM and apparently now perfected by Rothfuss, of 'f*^# the fans, I'll publish when I'm ready'. He was giving fans what they wanted, more rapid updates of the story, even if each was not quite ready yet.
Talking of GRRM, I might also mention that the first ASOIAF book was published rather fortuitously in 1996, while RJ's fans were waiting impatiently for Book 7 of WoT, and the first printing of A Game of Thrones came out with a recommendation by Robert Jordan on the back cover, which is what made most of us on the various RJ forums read it.
Just finished the Steelhaven trilogy. Derivative, but pretty fun. Seems like it's set up for a fourth but a brief google doesn't surrender any details.
Started The Black Company Chronicles.
Started The Black Company Chronicles.
Reckon you'll like Black Company, once you get used to the choppy prose and abrupt style.
The first page was a shock to the system after Steelhaven.
Black Company is great right until it becomes incredibly racist