[maro]

Abyss, on 30 June 2010 - 02:40 PM, said:

maro, on 30 June 2010 - 12:47 PM, said:

...Apt - it's a bit weird that you needed the films to finish LOTR. Mind you, I read the Silmarillion when I was 9. It's an excellent book.

I assume you mean me... remember, Apt is the sub-quality imaged personality node that i just allow to wander around a cause trouble because re-formatting his entire pseudo being will take at least 20 minutes and i just can't be bothered right now.

To be clear, knowing the films were coming out, i went and read the books. And while i enjoyed the read well enough, i remain minoritarily underwhelmed with everything except The Hobbit.

- Abyss, notes that singing elves make his ears bleed...

Oops!

Notwithstanding, he is the master.

[Use Of Weapons]

Lots of stuff I agree with upthread (in particular, Bujold/Vorkosigan, Bujold/Chalion, Donaldson/Covenant, Donaldson/Gap, Bakker/Prince, Butcher/everything, Abraham/LongPrice, Friedmann/everything).

Will add:

Catherine Asaro: Saga of the Skolian Empire
Melanie Rawn: Dragon Prince / Dragon Star series
Michelle West: Sun Sword series, House War series
Sharon Shinn: Samaria series, Twelve Houses series
Greg Bear: Blood Music

This post has been edited by jitsukerr: 06 July 2010 - 01:51 PM

[Abyss]

Once upon a time in the 80s, there was a sudden glut of portal fantasy - that is to say stories of people from 'our' world ending up in fantasyland and becoming whatever. In a subset of those books there were stories about people magically becoming their RPG characters, and yes, it was as generally lame as it sounds. With one exception: Joel Rosenberg's GUARDIANS OF THE FLAME series. (tho I narrow my recommendation to the first five books or so, up to THE WARRIOR LIVES - things get a little silly after that). )

His world is brutally real and ugly, bad things happen to main characters, his action scenes are solid and he writes one of my favourite dragons in the genre.

The series has a lot of the tropes of the genre, dour dwarves, pretentious elves, mysterious wizards, etc, but Rosenberg does a nice job of reflecting a realistic view of it all through his characteres.

Anyhow, solid read, likely to pop up in any second hand shop, and in its own way, a bit of a classic.