jvj

theUnguru wrote:They are excellent books. But different.

That's right. She risks much, submitting her hole telling to the views and believes of one character and digging deep into his psyche. But she succeeds.

scenes like Duff's, the Bluddroad and Death meeting Raif will stay with me while ever memory serves.

Absolutely. I want to add the silver mine to that list.

I feel that I'm pretty well read in the fantasy genre, so I thought I'd let you know my opinions on some great authors and some overrated ones.

George R R Martin's series 'A song of Ice and Fire' opens with A Game of Thrones. This is possibly the best fantasy series ever written, even if the instalments come at a cripplingly slow rate. Political intrigue, magic that is kept so mysterious it stays magic not science, these books have it all. If you haven't read them, buy A Game of Thrones tomorrow, it will be the best thing you buy this year, I promise you.

J.V.Jones - I enjoy J.V.'s work but not because it has action or anything like that. What I love is the thickness and richness of her worlds. I can smell the foods she describes, I'm weighted down by heavy plate and hammer chains, my foot gets cold when a Milkhouse swordmaster makes me train without a shoe on. The world is thick with detail so I can taste it, although I really hate all the bits about Sull and they annoy me no end.

Robert Jordan - Do not start if you haven't already. He is an author who, before his death, alas got lost in his own books. There are two fundamental truths about Wheel of Time:
1) Matt Cauthon is cool but not in it enough
2) There is a lot of stuff about ladies in a tower having boring politics discussions that nobody cares about.
Unfortunately, the further you read, both of these statements increase in truth.

Terry Goodkind - Do not read Terry Goodkind. He wrote a smashing first book, a real fantasy corker with a great twist that makes everything work at the end and emphasises love as the great power in the world. Unfortunately though what he really likes doing is shocking everyone with over the top violence, dominatrixes, rape and unnecessary brutality. That doesn't really make good writing, but it does shock people to go back for more. His books get tacky, and the sexual violence becomes very off putting later on. His greatest sin however is from book 5 or 6 onwards the series becomes a rant about how right wing Bush'ist American foreign policy is good and everyone else is evil. I was very disappointed.

David Gemmel - Gemmel is a great hero of mine, Legend is the only book I read on a yearly basis. His description isn't great, his characters frequently one dimensional cardboard cutouts but what he does is convey incredible messages of heroism that give his relatively short novels a more epic feel than books ten times longer. I've yet to feel any book conveys a desperate sacrifice of life as well as Legend. Do note, though, that all of his 30 books are the exact same story, just with character and place names changed. If you like a lot of gore and action then his books are fast paced and very enjoyable as a light read.

Bernard Cornwell - He writes historical novels rather than fiction but he's currently writing an amazing series based on the 9th century in Britain, well worth checking him out. The series starts with The Lost Kingdom.

Robin Hobb / Megan Lindholme - everything by her is amazing. Simply the best characterisation and emotional character development around.

Tolkein - Utter rubbish. Can't stand his longwinded, dull descriptions of hedgerows and skimpig on any detail of the action. 600 words to describe a hummock of moss, and the Balrog is described only as 'a beast of fire and shadow.' The plot of LOTR is so full of gaping holes that I really wish he wasn't ascribed as the father of fantasy. Pfffft!

A few other authors I enjoy:
Kate Elliot
Karen Miller
C J Sansom
Kim Hunter (absolutely hilarious stuff)

Well, well, now you've opened a can of worms, have'nt you. I used to read a Tolkien sized book, in a day. To say I was voracious for fantasy. sci-fi and Historic Novels etc., was not an undestatement. Then life happened and interests changed, to things like spirituality, philosophy and martial arts, internal and external body forms. European and Eastern Weopons, and a little Philipino too. Got into singing opera on stage and in choirs etc., and time went bye-bye. Now I am back (from space) and getting sedantary, paunch included. Been on a video game kick all my life sense the first Atari came out, and pet computers which developed into the Commadore 64 and Radio Shack, yeah stone age. So.... I quess, what I am trying to say is, that some of my most favorite authors are kinda hard to bring into mind. But here are what I can recollect at this moment...

Julie Victoria Jones must be at the top, at least because she is the, if nothing else, the progenitore of this very fine website... and there is else.

Jaunita Coulson -- "The Web of Wizardry" , " Death Gods Citadel" and a very Ending book of a series called "Crystal Palace" I believe it was... Most of these books are out of print, I think. But, I have found copies in used book shops. Good Luck! I would like to reaquire these books, especially if they are still in print or being reprinted, as I usure you they are EPICS of eras past.

OK... This is getting a bit looong in the tooth! Aldente' as it were.

So KISS rule should apply.

So then, Michael Moorcock - who came out just a few years ago with new Eternal Champion, or additions to the Elric and Stormbringer offerings. And I could go on and on with more contemparary authors.... But i Won't. So there.... Rest your eyes Sorry. Can you tell I've got time on my hands or what? Blessings. You know I can't forget the Bible as a favorite book of all time. Heh sah........

since not sense

Ok, So for something totally different a month or so ago I thought I'd listen to a book while delievering pizza for a living. All well and good, right? Well, I for some odd reason chose the wheel of time series (as if reading them once in high school wasn't enough). Well, Book one was great. Book two was OK. I made it through the prologue of book 3 before my eyes started to glaze over. I literally went from the end of book one wondering what was going to happen to the characters to wanting to commit some sort of violent murder just to end the agony. Someone is going to have to remind me....do the children of the light actually do anything important anywhere in the series or do they just kind of wander around and randomly kill people the whole time??

I'm not sure MissMaggie, I was on a break from book7, about 3 years ago when I found A Cavern of Black Ice and read it. I've read all of JV's books (3 of them twice), and a handfull of other authors' works. I have not, however, picked up book7 of Wheel of Time yet.

As I recall, the Children of the Light seemed like a bunch of punks without direction and leadership. I may just have to return to it before long. Unless, of course, JV's next book comes out first!!! (yeah baby!!!)

The answer is essentially that yes, the heroes in WoT do achieve things but due to the length of the series and the necessity for cliffhangers at the end of every part, there's little heroism left when you reach book 7.

If that doesn't make too much sense, here's an example. In Book 1, there are trollocs and those hooded dudes and they are good adversaries for the fledgling heroes. We hear about the Forsaken, the most terrifying and powerful wizards of all time. Unfortunately in order to make a climax Jordan has Rand kill 2 of the Forsaken at the end of book 1 (and does it in a very lame 'the eagles are coming *unconscious* manner).

What he should have done was killed 1 Forsaken, preferrably a Forsaken who had lost 80% of all his power and was a crippled or something. He'd still be an adversary. Because they kill another in book 2, then another in 3 and so on until by about book 6, Jordan has to simply start resurrecting the Forsaken because he's running out of villains.

Tied into this is the escalation of power factor. You should never, ever give characters the ability to turn back time since this then messes up a large part of the continuity and plausibility of what happens next - rather like in the Harry Potter book where Hermione can wind time back. There's very little excuse for not doing it every single time something goes wrong in the future! Rand's powers increase to absurd levels, as do other characters.
A common mistake made by fantasy writers is to make their heroes into gods. These heroes become unappealing, it's more interesting to read about a humble swordsman than it is about Zoobarooba the almighty wizard lord.

J.V.Jones, in my opinion, has currently dug a bit of a hole for herself with Raif along these lines in the Sword of Shadows series. It's not really a problem that he can heart kill things, but the ending of the Fortress of Grey Ice was pretty disapointing because we've been watching Raif heart kill stuff by then for a long time. In A Sword from Red Ice, he just keeps on heart killing and it seems fairly likely that in any combat situation he'll just heart kill it again. Because heart killing has become such a routine in his chapters (if anyone has endured watching Power Rangers or something similar, heart killing to me is like when they call the Mega Zord robot and you know it will do the same animation it does every episode, automatically winning the fight), I usually prefer the chapters with Bram, Raina and Effie.

I finished book 5 of WoT recently. It is slow and it has some problems but at the time, I feel it deserves reading on. At the end of book 5, three Forsaken are killed off, which seemed unnecessary and a bit illconstructed.

Raif will not be able to heart-kill Unmade or Endlords. "Tracking" already dead hearts does him no good. This is why he decided to learn the sword.