[acesn8s]

End of Disc One, on 26 January 2018 - 09:01 PM, said:

stone monkey, on 26 January 2018 - 08:55 PM, said:

If I may be so bold:

IGNORE EVERYTHING ANYONE HERE SAYS!!!

Go online, or to a book shop (even better), and just pick up books that look interesting to you. It's not homework, it's reading for pleasure. If you like the look of it, read it.

There is something to be said for reading around the classics of a genre to get the idea of what's out there, but life's too short; especially if you've started reading later in life. Read lots, read often; your taste will develop. If you like a book, it's a good book for you. The End.

Life's too short, so judge books by their covers instead of making informed decisions?

Hell yeah!

[HoosierDaddy]

Anecdote: Without this board, I would have never read any Mieville, Hyperion, Banks, or any other numerous books/series.

I think there is a fair mix between recommendations and scavenging on your own. I go to the library and often just browse the new releases for something that catches my eye. If i don't find one, I'll go find something recommended and give it a shot. Often, I don't like it or don't get intrigued enough to buy in, but it is still fun to look.

[Adhara]

If not for a recommendation I would have never read Gardens of the Moon 😉

[Khazduk]

And I would never have picked up GotM, hadn't it been for a blurb from Stephen Donaldson on the cover.

[Abyss]

Recos on this board gave me Bakker, the Ilona Andrewses' Kate Daniels, Mark Lawrence, GG Kay (yes, even fucking Tigana), Stross' glorious Laundry series... and that's just to name a few from recent memory. I'll take reco's from other readers whose tastes intersect with mine as the entirety of 'doing my own research' any day... it's so rarely steered me wrong (fucking Tigana). There are a bunch of books / series I have picked up utterly on a whim, with zero to go by than a neat cover and a blurb, and have utterly enjoyed, but the former easily doubles the latter.

[Esa1996]

The Westeros forum gave me WOT and Malazan. Wheel of Time gave me Stormlight Archives. Can't remember where I got Second Apocalypse from but I think it was either from here or Westeros. This forum indirectly gave me Sword of Truth though the reason I read it was not that anyone here recommended it, rather I wanted to see what kind of a series could be so universally hated. Turns out I quite liked it. First Law I got from Westeros. ASOIAF, Kingkiller Chronicles and Wars of Light and Shadow I found on Google.

This post has been edited by Esa1996: 01 February 2018 - 02:29 PM

[Mentalist]

The only one (of the many) forum reccos that didn't click with me was Thomas Covenant. I brute-forced my way through the original trilogy, but it was a real chore.

[Aptorian]

I remember trying to get into that first Thomas Covenant book but man was it tedious. That coupled with the rape thing made me just decide to not bother.

[Mentalist]

The rape scene wasn't a deal-breaker- I absolutely loved Donaldson's Gap Cycle, and it's A LOT darker.

I just found the whole premise to be too slow, too familiar, and the pacing was awful.

[Gorefest]

Too familiar? It was written in de late 70-ies, early 80-ies. Surely you cannot fault it for newer works heavily borrowing from it?

[Mentalist]

Gorefest, on 05 February 2018 - 12:13 PM, said:

Too familiar? It was written in de late 70-ies, early 80-ies. Surely you cannot fault it for newer works heavily borrowing from it?

I'm not blaming anything. I just happened to move beyond "Heroes v evil overlord" by that point. (And yes, obviously, Covenant is a reluctant "hero" in the loosest senses). It's not the books' fault, but by then I pretty much needed my SFF morality to be gray.

[Abyss]

Other than the slowest most tedious start to a fantasy epic I had ever read til then (most of which I skimmed), I rather enjoyed the First Chronicles. Covenant was certainly an unusual 'hero'. I found the Second Chronicles less engaging but not bad... the time jump and what happened in the world in the interim was intriguing. Haven't read anything of his since.

[Salt-Man Z]

To see the Covenant books as strict "good vs evil" is to miss the deeper meaning that Lord Foul is a metaphor for the Despite within Covenant, and indeed, within all of us. The first two trilogies I thought were pretty good the first time I read them; what Donaldson does to The Land between the First and Second Chronicles is masterful. (As Covenant says, "How do you hurt a man who's lost everything? Give him back something broken.") On a reread (probably simply because I was older) they only improved in beauty and meaning. And the Last Chronicles, though fairly glacially paced, are just as powerful, intricately tied to all of the previous books, and make up just about the best series finale you could ask for. Definitely not to everyone's tastes, since Donaldson's prose is centered more on the psychological than external action (which is not to say it lacks for action.) But I would unhesitatingly call it one of the best fantasy series ever written.