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SnowFire
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New York City, NY
Jan 1970
time: 00:19
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Ach, God. No! "The Sword of Shannara" is the single worst book I've ever read.
I liked it much better when you called it one of the great literary war crimes around. Sword is probably the worst written book of the series, though.
I liked Shannara when I was young, and don't think I would anymore. Elfstones and Wishsong were pretty good, actually. I will say that the 4th book of the Heritage Series, Talismans, is pure crap. It sucks sucks sucks. I thought Sword was passable, but even if you hated it, there would be nothing to ruin since you'd hate the whole book. But Talismans had stuff to ruin- i.e. the fun characters from Heritage like Walker & Wren- and so rates far, far worse. Scions was pretty bad too. The general rule is if you see the name "Par" run in terror because he's one of the worst heroes I've ever read. So Druid & Elf Queen were both decent in the Heritage for that reason.
I'm not sure I could ever work up the courage to re-read them though. Besides, I read 'em all 3 times through when younger, so I know 'em pretty well anyway.
Harry Potter: Well, on one hand the very concept of magic is somewhat annoying- why should some people randomly be able to use magic with no regards to their ability? If in the HP series magic was something like AD&D where theoretically anybody can use it if they wish to put in the time and effort to study it, then there aren't elitism problems.
That said, for a world with in-born magic, Rowling does her best to insure it's not an elitist book. She certainly has the elitists in there which is realistic, but they aren't the good guys.
Boshko: Hahahahaahahahaha. Read the book before passing judgment (re: Quidditch)! If you had actually finished the thing... well, minor spoiler, select the text to read it if you want.
The Slytherin team were NOT the ones who rigged Harry's broom! This was not some stupid attempt for them to "win," but something a bit more serious...
Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn: I happen to be reading that right now, and it's great. The only "problem" is that it's so huge! Unlike Jordan, though, things seem to happen. I'll finish it though. Gets my vote though if you're counting.
WoT: The Eye of the World was an enjoyable if somewhat flawed book. The beginning of The Great Hunt was so god awful bad that I threw the book down in frustration and haven't come back since. I'd rather that the characters remained unsullied in my head and deny their actions in TGH, where everybody for no apparent reason took stupid pills. And I'll agree with Boris G that things actually do happen in Book 1, which is why I don't consider it a bad book.
Salvatore's Drow series: I dunno, variable quality here. I will say that despite its somewhat lack of literary quality, they are a fun pulp read, and I just blasted right on through them. By far the best part is the "Dark Elf" series or whatever it's called, the first one chronologically for Drizzt that deals with life in the Underdark. The first two books especially are great (the third book suffers from a sucky villain).
The next three books are also pretty good (Crystal Shard, Streams of Silver, Halfling's Gem- they were actually written first, but are the 2nd trilogy chronologically), except for one major problem of Regis the thiefy halfling, who I hated. I'm perfectly fine with roguey chaotic good types. The problem is, Regis is chaotic evil, and Salvatore doesn't seem to realize this. Tell me, if I told you about a guy who went around swindling people out of their money with a mind-control gem, would you not think this is supposed to be a _bad_ guy? He steals credit from his "friends" and isn't sorry. He withholds information from them and gets them into all sorts of trouble (Regis was Salvatore's standard plot device to get the party in trouble several times). He's generally one of those people who seems nice by how they talk but are in fact a total jerk, and I can't even begin to see how he ever became friends with the real heroes.
The next 3 in the series brought back the enemies from the first trilogy, which was good, but they just seemed a bit less interesting in some way, not sure why. Maybe because this is where we started getting lots of philosophizing without being asked for it, which is especially bad when the philosophy is really stupid at times.
Passage to Dawn was actually pretty good, surprisingly. Some good guest magic action from the Harpells. The philosophy only got in the way at the end with some stupid ideas about home and some magical swaps of character. Gotta love how people who eked out a living in the wilderness being given stable incomes and happiness going back to the wilderness to starve and be barbaric. Compare this to Dune, where the main goal of all the desert dwellers was to greenify the planet so their children could go soft. And that's as far as I got, because I didn't like the first bit of the next book, and Wulfgar seems like no fun after he comes back. Freakin' get married already, come on!
Hmph, wrote a bit more than intended there. As for other D&D style stuff, agree that Dragonlance is probably the best, the original two trilogies of Chronicles and Legends.
As for things not mentioned so far, I'll give two:
Lloyd Alexander's Book of Three series: Good fantasy for elementary school students, which I was at the time. Yet surprisingly mature in themes. This series is worthy of note because it bears the distinction of being really the only series that A) made some statements a bit more profound than "good is good and evil is evil" and B) I completely agreed with the said philosophy expounded. Wow, that's rare. I hated the ending when I first read it, but that's because I was young and stupid- I love it now. How many heroes have the balls to do this? (Go read the series. Should take about an hour and a half per book- there are 5).
Glen Cook's The Black Company- Anybody who has played Myth will find the story of The Black Company familiar, as Myth stole wildly from it. I like to call it "All Quiet on the Western Front" in a fantasy setting. How often do you have fantasy style mass combat/wars that actually feels consistent with the world? And how often is it the evil side that's getting its butt kicked? It's accurately reflected that nobody likes the evil empire so there are more rebels than you can shake a stick at, and the backstabbing within only makes things worse for the armies of evil. And oh yes, some great plot twists as well, whether you see them coming or not. Also, some excellent villiany.
Depends whose definitions you're using, but the one I've seen that I like goes more or less as follows:
Science-Fiction takes a set of rules and works out the consequences from there. Fantasy makes up the rules as it goes along.
Well, that's depressing, because consistent fantasy worlds are good, and to be consistent, it helps not to make up stuff as you go along.
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31-05-2002 05:08
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