Re: The Shannara Series by Terry Brooks
Well regarding Lotr, I'm afraid I'm an absolute Tolkien nut and pretty much have been ever since the age of five, so obviously I have opinions on the series. I do agree Lotr isn't a usual fantasy but that is pretty much because it is not written as what we would understand as a fantasy novel. it's a work of historical fiction set in a world where the history happens to be false. This is why there is so much walking and not a battle every five minutes.
While it is true the D&D architypes of elves, orcs etc were partly based on Tolkien, at the same time tolkien's creations are far more complex when you know something about the world and history. For example, on initial meeting Galadriel just seems to be standard ancient sorceress. It's quite different when you actually realize that she is close to twenty thousand years old and literaly the third generation of elves ever! to be created. Then all the stuff about her recreating the elda days makes a little more sense, ditto with the idea of her being able to take on Sauron if she wished. Likewise, i love the fact in lotr magic is so butle. No randomly coloured fire, just personal power and charisma most of the time, for all the rather amusing telekynetic staff fights in the film.
While I will agree Lotr isn't an easy book and notfor everyone, and certainly not what modern fantasy readers would expect, at the same time it is! absolutely unique and nobody has ever done anything similar in terms of world, legends and story, and then putting realistic characters into that world, albeit some people have come close. Still as I said, it's probably not for everyone.
The Hobbit is indeed a children's book, and was intended as such, though since Tolkien already had the history and world n built, a good few elements made it in, though again The hobbit is an odd book to read, indeed in many ways Tolkien's books are a set of coincidences.
As I said I appreciate they're not for everyone, since they're very different from anything most people would understand as fantasy literature.
Regarding brooks and combat, what really! put me off brooks combat descriptions was the Darth Maul fight in starwars episode 1. I was really looking forward to a full, blow by blow account of the hole thing. But "Flurry of strokes" is about as descriptive as Brooks goes, heck, he doesn't even tell you what colour or design people's light sabers were and from his description you could almost think Darth Maul's blade was more a pitchfork than two swords together att the ends.
While there are certainly much worse combat writers out there, even among classics (Robbert Jordan's use of random vaguely oriental sounding combat moves instead of actually tellling you wh at was going on got up my nose much as there was a lot else I enjoyed in Wheel of time, there are better ones too.
Regarding sword of truth, well as I said I quite enjoyed the first book as a sort of 6 out of 10 fantasy, albeit I wish the plot had felt slightly less episodic nd that it hadn't been quite as blatantly sexist. However from there the series just went down hill, bigger enemies, more grusome torture, lots of right wing rants and a good serving of deus ex.
There were still odd good bits of character, battle, description or emotional resonance, but as the series went on it became an exercise in picking the wheet from the chaff, and every book seemed to come with more chaff than wheat, especially! as regards Goodkind's more and more blatant right wing preachery!
I wanted to finish book eleven to see what happened to the emperor and how things resolved and because I& #039;m not one for leaving a series unfinished (which should also show my distaste of brooks), however, I will confess the last few books were something of a slog.
That being said I recently did hear from another fantasy fan that book 13 was a pleasant surprise in quality terms, and he advised me to give Goodkind another try so I might well do so.
Regarding Anthony, well I don't know. The problem is being genophobic, anything too erotic can be rather too uncomfortable for me, indeed I recently had a very bad experience with a certain book, though usually if the sections are brief and have what our tabletop gm refers to as "fade to black" I can zone out long enough to get past and go on with the rest of the story.
Anthony may or may not be too far, I won't know unless I try, though I confess my recent bad (indeed extremely! bad), experience has made me a wary.
URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=156466#p156466
_______________________________________________ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com http://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
