Uhm, and what happened?
I gave up after ~100 pages of pure agony. I know it’s not enough content to draw conclusions, but I disliked his writing style, the characters, the world, his writing, and his writing. :|
It’s just not for me.
I’ve read GGR Martin’s graphic novels, Hedge Knight and Hedge Knight 2. Of course, as Graphic Novels they are very quick reads. Both are quite good, but I felt they would be better stories as full novels.
How about novellas instead? Those comics are adapted from the two Dunk and Egg novellas that Martin published (the first in the Legends anthology and the second in the Legends II anthology).
I strongly strongly strongly recommend The Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko. You may be familiar with the movie, which is good… until you read the book and realize how much better it is.
It’s not knights and elves fantasy, it’s a modern horror-fantasy so more like witches and werewolves. read it!
I like the movie and book equally and think they complement each other pretty well.
Re: The Night Watch… it’s a series, yes? Do the rest of the books hold up? (I greatly enjoyed reading the book first and then watched the movie second - not a complete letdown.)
The problem with the series is that it’s the same story beng written over and over again. I recommend you read one book from the series, and then forget the rest.
that’s true Kevin I wouldn’t say that the movie is bad by any means, though I do think the second movie isn’t as good as the first.
The problem with the movie is that it’s only 1/3rd of the book, so you don’t get the whole story. It also takes an already very action-filled book and made big changes so it could be more of an action movie. Which isn’t necessarily bad, but if I had to choose one version it’d definitely be the book. For the record, the movie is best enjoyed with Russian subtitles. In the english version, the end doesn’t tie into the beginning as well as it could… which is just nitpicking, I suppose.
The rest of the books do definitely hold up, the scenarios in each story are pretty varied, and the philosophical musings about what makes good good and bad bad continue throughout all four books without being too repetitious. My one complaint about the books is that the Random House translations aren’t very good. A couple obvious mistakes in each book. However, the Miramax Books translations are much better if you can find them.
That’s pretty much what I did with the series. I read the first one, and after reading the backs of a couple others I consulted the Qt3 hivemind and got the sense that reading further was not really worth it.
See, I thought the book was relatively light on action and much more into introspection and character development. Which worked very well for the medium while I thought the increased focus on action, style, and scope worked well for the film medium. That’s why I think they both complement each other well.
I actually much preferred the Daywatch movie to Nightwatch and thought it did a good job wrapping up the whole story (which is of course dramatically different than the book).
I’m going on vacation so I was perusing some threads to find some books to take with me.
I can’t believe no one else on these boards has made a recommendation for Robert Holdstock. In my opinion this guy is the best fantasy writer out there right now. I highly recommend checking the Mythago series. I don’t know so much about the horror, I’d never thought of his books that way. But they are brilliant, each better than the last. He also has a great take on Merlin, mixing Arthurian legend with Ancient greek mythology that I couldn’t read fast enough. The Merlin Codex.
He also wrote the novella that shipped with Elite for the C64 so many years ago.
JV Jones, ‘Ice’ series (starts with A Cavern of Black Ice) is excellent gritty fare - very much in the GRR Martin vein. Noone seems to know about it, but I picked it up at random and was very impressed.
It might have been mentioned already but CJ Cherryh’s Morgaine series is totally awesome and should be required reading - similar scifi via fantasy as Gene Wolfe, though her style is very different.
Thomas Covenant is… hmm, I’ll let Crypt say it for me:
I took some of the suggestions and purchased the following:
Patricia McKillip, Riddle Master (trilogy in one big book)
I’ve been trying to make it through this book for ~2 months and just can’t get into it. It’s not that it’s terrible, it just doesn’t appeal to me. I’m not fond of her writing style, the characters aren’t compelling, and the magic in the world isn’t … convincing. I’ll make it through this 3-book series, but so far it’s not drawing me in. From all the praise here I thought I’d like this book more.
R Scott Bakker, and his Prince of Nothing
I ordered book 1 from Amazon about 2 months ago but they decided to keep it with my order until Player’s Handbook 2 comes out (March 17th).
He summed it up perfectly for me. I like books and have trodded through many a terrible story, but I couldn’t get more than 100 pages into Thomas Covenant either. And that was 15 years ago or so when I’d read just about anything fantasy with abandon.
Yay! I feel the same way about Covenant, and did the same thing. 100 pages and I’m done.
I actually read the whole Covenant series when I was young and dumb.
Save yourself while you still can.
It’s a little like the Gene Wolfe recommended upthread - lots of details that are dropped very casually end up being really important. This leads to a really nice buildup through the books. Keep at it, the last one kicks all manner of ass.
It’s one of the most overrated books I’ve read. And I can see why, because it feels like it SHOULD be good and has all the surface appearance of being subtle and literary and deep, but in reality it’s just dull and shallow and ad hoc.