Posted 10 October 2010 - 02:06 PM
New member here as well.
I've read all the books except NOK (by Esslemont) or the Bauchelain/Korbal Broach stuff, I'll get to that soonish (got NOK stored away in the pile of books to read already).
After reading fiction, including fantasy, for decades, I've found Steven Erikson's writing extraordinary refreshing. Over the years I've just become more and more tired about what I now call the "three deadly sins" for any author:
1) You can just see where this is heading. Why bother reading.
2) Just about every character in the story is less intelligent than the reader, and can't see an elephant if it's in front of them.
3) There's nothing to like about any character.
Let me elaborate a bit on the above.
1) a variant of this one is the "prophesies" that tend to show up in so many books, and more often than not that's exactly what's happening, whatever else happens. Or if not, it at least gives the reader a constant feeling of where this is heading. Tiring. About the only one who's managed to pull this off in some way is Stephen Donaldson, in my opinion.
2) About this one: The reader feels that everyone in possession of the facts known to the character wouldn't do what the character inevitable does. This gets tiring too.
3) By this I don't mean that they have to be _nice_. There are many baddies out there who you can't help liking. Or Sopranos wouldn't have had any viewers. The characters have to be _interesting_ though.
Then there are some other issues I have with fantasy, e.g.
4) This notion about nobility, lords and the like, and the idea that people automatically prefer to doff their hat to them. For some reason American authors seem to be the most smitten by this idea. In the real world it was never like that, quite the opposite in fact.
5) Endless warring among kings or wanna-be kings.
I gave up on Wheel of Time after about five books, to me the series sinned on at least the first four of the above. Just about the only character I could like, at times, was Nynaeve and that says a lot. I'm not going to revisit that series. (The "humans" in this series can't possibly actually be humans, that's the feeling I get from reading the series.)
Robin Hobb's LIveship Traders trilogy sinned so extremely on point 3) above that I'm not sure I'll ever try that author again. Then there's George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" extended-trilogy which I think is utterly overrated. It sins thoroughly against 3 and 5, at least. Well, 4 too (although not as extremely as Robert Jordan did it). The characters in Song are flat and not enjoyable to read about.
Then some years ago I found Deadhouse Gates first, then Gardens of the Moon. How refreshing! Characters in shades of gray, instead of black and white. Intelligent people who actually react in a reasonably sensible way to what happens to them. No bloody feudal hierarchy dominating everything. Terrible wars that are actually enjoyable to read about. People moving about in a three-dimensional world, where even the small things happening to them during travels are interesting. You get to know the characters as real people. SE even managed to include dragons in the books, while you still get the feeling that if someone asked you "oh, fantasy? That's all about magic and dragons, isn't it?" you would immediately answer "No, this book isn't about that" before remembering that there are actually dragons and magic there. And still. It isn't, not in the usual sense. Anyway, I've since acquired every book as soon as they showed up in the local book store (hey, I check every Saturday..). At the moment there are only a few authors I buy without even looking: SE, Neil Gaiman, Neil Stephenson. And one ore two more. But other author's I like are much more variable in their output and I'll check what it is first, before buying (or not).
About the nick: I had to take one, didn't I? I'm late here, and all's taken.. except recent characters. And although I'm normal-sized, not twice-sized, at least the initials in the nick match my real name initials. So there :-)
Help
Homo spectatricis, on 26 September 2010 - 08:22 PM, said:
) would be:
I'm still completely clueless how I could miss the part 
xD Anyway I'm glad to be here. Sincerely EvilMegaCookie.
