OT: good fantasy books

[Edi]

Teraswaerto said:
I think you misjudge Martin, Edi.

The world he writes about is violent, and the fact he does not gloss over it is one of the things that make him a great writer. The fact that being a main character is not a guarantee if surviving does not mean he's "run out of ideas", just that for a while he told the story from the point of view of someone who doesn't live to see its end.

Also, I don't see how you can say Martin has too much rape and torture and then list Prince of Nothing as "good fantasy".

The difference is the way they go about it. I know there's quite a bit of sex and also rape in Prince of Nothing, but Bakker hardly dwells on it the same way it jumps out from Martin's books. Case in point, there's the scene from SoIaF where Daenerys is married off to the barbarian and what follows reads like something from a pedophile's wet dream. Then there are some scenes where it is, completely out of the blue, brought up how the Lannisters' soldiers have tied women to stocks and are raping them etc ad nauseam, in places where it does not serve the plot at all.

In Prince of Nothing, I have a hard time remembering similar occurrences completely out of the blue. Black Company also has its share of mentions of what the mercenaries do to captured women, but that's just it, mere mentions without going into the gory details. Martin's writing in those instances reminds me far too much of Terry Goodkind's bull****.

I do understand that opinions may vary and that some people like Martin's work even in those instances that I deplore, and that is their right. It's also my right to express my own opinion on the subject, and at least I can enumerate sound reasons for those opinions of mine other than just some nebulous gut feelings.


Xietor, of J.V. Jones's books, Barbed Coil is standalone. Book of Words and Sword of Shadows can be read independently of each other, but I would recommend reading Book of Words before Sword of Shadows for reasons that will become VERY clear at the end of A Cavern of Black Ice. It is not necessary, but it will greatly enhance your understanding of the backstory and some other things.

Deimos, which books by Jones did you read? Granted that Book of Words is like drying to drink tar in some places, but once you get through those patches, it's good. The Sword of shadows trilogy is an order of magnitude better and much faster-paced, which just shows how much she has developed as a writer.

[Edi]

Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series was tolerable for the first two books. Three and four were just tedious and everything after that is just thinly veiled preaching of his (neoconservative libertarian) political views interspersed with liberal sprinklings of masturbatory rape fantasies that should turn the stomach of most decent people.

It had good ideas to begin with and up to and including the end of the fourth book and even the Chimes in the fifth, but those good ideas are not nearly enough to counter all the screwed up ****e in his works.

[Endoperez]

Naomi Novik has written a very interesting series about alternative history. Starting from His Majesty's Dragon, or Temeraire on the other side of the Atlantean empire. Napoleonic wars, with infantry, navy and dragons acting as huge air-ships. Dragons wearing harnesses from which the gunmen and the bellmen and the bombers and the cargo hang, dragon-to-dragon boardings, etc.

Here's an excerpt.

Johanna Sinisalo has written some unbelievably good books. Her novel 'Ennen päivänlaskua ei voi' (translated as 'Not Before Sundown', or 'Troll - a love story' in US) won several Finnish and international prizes.

W. Somerset Haugham's book "The Magician" isn't strictly fantasy, but in parts it's very close. I read it from Project Gutenberg website expecting something very different, but found myself enjoying it immensely. The book has a christian theme, but at least for me it was more about one man's faith than the God he believed in.

[Xietor]

I agree with Edi somewhat. The early Martin books are excellent, despite what i think is overkill on feeding a man's
prurient interest. To me, there were two major drawbacks in the books, and the unnecessary and somewhat offensive aggressive feeding of the prurient interest is somewhat degrading to the intellect of the reader.

Second, martin himself admitted that killing off too many main characters was what stumped him in continuing the series.

He DID kill off too many of his major story lines, by his own admission, and the creation of new ones, like that stupid female knight, was a poor substitute for some of more interesting characters he killed off.

To add insult to injury, when he finally(years later and after burning the 1st effort) managed to publish another book in the series, it does not include anything about the 2 most interesting characters left alive, Jon Snow and his crippled little brother.

I would strongly advise against buying A Feast for Crows, but i do recommend the earlier books. His earlier books get an 8/10 but could have been even higher had he not dwelled on the issues raised by edi, which assumes the average fantasy reader is a 15 year old boy wanting masturbation material. The killing off of main characters is fine to a degree, but not if leaves the storyline bereft of meaning.

And it is not open to debate that he killed off too many main characters, martin admits that mistake himself.

[Teraswaerto]

SPOILERS ABOUT A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE!



Edi,
What happens on the wedding night between Khal Drogo and Daenyrys is important to the story. Though Daenyrys is forced to marry him, she comes to love him and accepts her part as Drogo's wife. Everything that follows is built on that.

Also, she is not a preteen, so your pedophile remark is not accurate. Modern laws about age of consent are just that, modern.

Likewise, descriptions of brutality done by soldiers of the warring Houses are important. Writing about war and passing by the ugly parts is very common, and as I said before, the fact that Martin doesn't do so speaks in his favor.

I can understand that one can be repulsed by such things, but that is quite a separate issue from whether or not the books are good. Not that I'm denying your right to an opinion, but like you, I like to explain my point of view.



SPOILER END

[Edi]

Teraswaerto said:
SPOILERS ABOUT A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE!



Also, she is not a preteen, so your pedophile remark is not accurate. Modern laws about age of consent are just that, modern.

IIRC, she was 13, and I would think you'd agree that there's a big difference between 13 and 15, which is closer to what the marriageable age was historically. It still doesn't wash, not given some conversations I've had with people who have actually worked with kids and other people traumatized by abuse (sexual or otherwise). Simply put, the description is unrealistic and off and lingers far too much.

Teraswaerto said:
Likewise, descriptions of brutality done by soldiers of the warring Houses are important. Writing about war and passing by the ugly parts is very common, and as I said before, the fact that Martin doesn't do so speaks in his favor.

It would, if it were not done in a way that wallows in it and makes it gratuitous and extraneous. Black Company has similar events, so does Prince of Nothing, Wars of Light and Shadow, Book of Words, Sword of Shadows and a lot of other books, but the point is that they do not do engage in such feasting on the subject. They don't especially shy away from it, but neither do they zoom-focus in on it.

Martin's writing has more in common with Goodkind's in this respect than any of those others, which is where it becomes such a turn-off, especially since the plot does not quite carry the day as far as it should.

Teraswaerto said:
I can understand that one can be repulsed by such things, but that is quite a separate issue from whether or not the books are good. Not that I'm denying your right to an opinion, but like you, I like to explain my point of view.

Yeah, I see your point of view, even understand it, but I do not agree with it. I would have, once upon a time when I was younger and much less experienced in many things, but not anymore. Our frames of reference are too different.

[Edi]

I'm going to second the people who said Guy Gavriel Kay writes good stuff. I've read Tigana and Sailing to Sarantium and they were great.

Likewise with Cecilia Dart-Thornton, the Biterbynde series was good, even if it took me a fairly long time to read it.

Sarah Ash's Tears of Artamon (Lord of Snow and Shadows, Prisoner of the Iron Tower, Children of the Serpent Gate) is great, even though I largely detest books where the premise seems too reminiscent of historical Europe with some fantasy flavorings on top. For this reason I almost hurled Karen Elliot's first book into a wall, since I'd just read two or three series with too many similarities, but I'll have to get back to it.

One writer that I have not yet seen mentioned here is David Farland and his Runelords series. Elizabeth Haydon's Rhapsody series is also a good one, even though some elements of it are annoying. Both it and Farland's Runelords certainly can't be blamed for lack of originality either.

[Edi]

I'm going to put a word of warning (based on my personal opinion, so take with appropriate amount of salt) about Memory, Sorrow and Thorn:

It is, without doubt, the most terminally boring series of fantasy I've ever read. Your mileage may vary, but if you are bored halfway through the first book and finding your attention wandering, do yourself a favor and leave it at that. It is NOT going to change in style or pace of events for the rest of the series and you will not get those hours back. I wish I could.

If, on the other hand, you find yourself immersed and blown away, that is quite fine and I hope you enjoy the books fully. I also hope that whatever it is you have isn't contagious.

[Teraswaerto]

Edi,
I don't remember the descriptions as "feasting", not any more than in Prince of Nothing certainly, and I found Bakker's alien flesh-lovers and their rape-driven creations far more disturbing than anything in A Song of Ice and Fire.

[Teraswaerto]

Gaiman is great. His main work is The Sandman, which was published as a comic book between 1988 and 1996. It's been collected into 10 albums which are still in print I think.