I remember a few years ago reading the first book of Stephen Donaldson’s “Chronicles of Thomas Covenant” series (long after publication) and wondering what the fuss was about. I forced myself to finish it, but it was painful.
Thats giving me flashbacks. Goddamn that was some painful shite. At the time though Stephen Donaldson was one of the few “big name” fantasy authors out there so his crap made it to the local bookstores/newsagents in the UK whereas folks like Moorcock didn’t. I am still pissed off about wasting my time reading the Thomas Covenant crap.
Oh and don’t get me started on Julian May… blech.
I thought that the fantasy parts were a pretty solid piece of work. The rest, not so much.
Yeah I just cant have any fond feelings towards it. Its like an “ok” chicken pot pie served with a dog poop on top. Even if you can scrape it off I still cant enjoy that average chicken pot pie underneath :)
Thomas Covenant has the unique distinction of me stopping reading at a certain point, I just put it down and said “Yeah, I’m out.” I just don’t do that - but anybody who has read it know what point I’m talking about.
Thems is fighting words. Pliocene Exile is still one of the best SF series out there.
Didn’t read Covenant but I read his sci-fi series The Gap Cycle. Very rapey.
Oh, so he’s got a theme then. Wonderful.
But is rape really that bad, if you think about it?
Not as bad as Stephen Donaldson’s books. Boom!
I too tried Donaldson way back when and from what I see here like many others I couldn’t get through or into it. Full disclosure though I read way to many of those Piers Anthony Xanth books as a kid and only learned through Qt3 about his weird ways.
I loved me some Conan, I tore through everything Robert E. Howard wrote and started reading Conan novels being written by other writers it wasn’t until I started reading Wheel of Time and was a few books in that that I realized Jordan had written a bunch of my trashy Conan novels. I don’t remember if they were any good (besides everything Conan being awesome), but I read the shit out of the first 5-6 WoT books re-reading before each new release. I think it was around the 7th or 8th book, “Dagger” something that I gave up. I feel like I should try to finish sometime but…meh.
Same. I was hungry for fantasy and there wasn’t that much of it back then, so I tried him but besides the rapey stuff the protagonist was so full of self-pity I couldn’t stand him. (The rape stuff didn’t bother me too much because I figured that was his cross to bear and the books would result in his changing and becoming a better person. Maybe they did, but I never finished them because the MC was insufferable.)
Not especially. He’s still an asshole by the end of the first trilogy. There is a second trilogy where the viewpoint character is a vastly more appealing woman who is still saddled with having to deal with Covenant that is much more readable but not necessarily worth bothering with at this point.
I do credit them with acquainting me with the actual practical details of leprosy, though!
So Stephen Donaldson had his rapeyness and Robert Jordan had his spanking obsession.
If you like homo erotic spanking in your Fantasy & SF then David Feintuch is your guy!
Wow, you guys are making me really glad I haven’t read any of these authors.
Is this where I bring up John Norman’s Gor series?
Oh yes, please do! I’ve seen old copies in my local used bookstore but never read any.
The series is known for its repeated depiction of sexual fantasies involving men abducting and physically and sexually brutalizing women, who grow to enjoy their submissive state. According to The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Norman’s “sexual philosophy” is “widely detested”,[1] but the books have inspired a Gorean subculture.[2]
Via Wikipedia. Need I say more? Well, except that the first wife and I read the whole series while doing live shows. It was a… different time.
Its domination/submission stuff in a fantasy world. Women want to be sex slaves to men is the general … errr thrust of it :) If thats your bag (and its the bag of a lot of Second Life players men & women I can tell you) then go for it.