OT: good fantasy books

[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.

[Edi]

Teraswaerto said:
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.

I will amend my earlier posts: With the exception of THOSE creatures, Prince of Nothing is less offensive in the regard I spoke of earlier. The No-God's creatures, yes, they were very, very disturbing indeed.

As for the word "feasting", well, wallowing is better, but the Finnish translation we're looking for is "hekumoida", though it would be impolite toward the others here to talk all in Finnish.

[Xietor]

As my 1st post alluded, Feist, Jordan, and Tolkien were not included on my list because they are so well known, i thought it redundant.

But, of course, Feist is excellent, Jordan's 1st few books were 10/10, then became dribble, and Tolkien is what other Fantasy novels are measured against.

[HoneyBadger]

I didn't find Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn to be nearly as boring as the Wheel of Time, the Lord of the Rings, Terry Goodkind's stuff (I didn't make it all the way through the first book, and I don't think I'll bother going back) and the crowning achievement of Accountants in Chainmail/Fantasy Economics 101/The Great Gatsby with Swords that was Feist's Merchant Prince.

M,S, and T was very lengthy and densely written, but not as I recall in a bad way.

[MaxWilson]

Steven Erikson--I really like the Malazan Book of the Fallen, although I hate the first book in the series (many people do). Erikson's writing vastly improved in the ten-year gap between writing Gardens of the Moon and Deadhouse Gates. If anyone is interested, I'd recommend starting with Memories of Ice, especially because of the Seguleh. A nation of Nietzsche supermen sends a punitive army of THREE MEN to punish a neigboring Evil Empire for bothering them. Now that's style! (They probably would have gotten obliterated if they hadn't acquired allies, an ancient sorceress and a T'lan Imass, but they would have given it a good try.)

I enjoyed Martin for a couple of books, but eventually the grinding unpleasantness of the world got through to me and I said the Eight Deadly Words: "I don't care what happens to these people." I haven't gone back. Martin admitted in an interview that, of the characters in SoIaF, he identified most closely with Tyrion because of his sexual obsessions, which made a disturbing amount of sense given the gratuitousness of some of the material. The thing that got me interested in Martin in the first place was someone's comment that Martin examines "real evil," which is to say not some evil overlord in a tower who wants to Take Over The World, but rather the plausible kinds of evil that actually occur. It's true, and he delivered on that promise. I guess I just got turned off by, among other things, the fact that there aren't enough GOOD people in the stories to counterbalance the evils. Or if there are, they get far too little screen time. YMMV.

I second the recommendations for Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber, and Brust's Vlad Taltos books. I started with /Issola/, of which you can read the first chapter here: http://www.tor-forge.com/Excerpt.asp...589177#Excerpt

-Max