Yep.
5
Has anyone read Acacia?
Picked up the PB on a whim last week, and see the Amazon reviews are positive. Haven’t started it yet. Still reading the Eisenhorn books right now by Dan Abnett. Loving those. Really liked Abnett’s Gaunt’s Ghosts stuff at first, then the books just got way too sprawling and unfocused, with tons of characters it was impossible to keep track of.
Have the Name of the Wind Rothfuss book. Started it the other week, but it didn’t grab me, so moved into the Eisenhorn. Will try it again later on.
Make sure to read at least to the point where the perspective shifts from third person to first- the change in style adds quite a bit to the book.
De gustibus, etc, but I’d disagree very strongly so I’m interested in this. What do you mean? It’s badly written? You think the plot is cheap?
More to the point, what’s your idea of a good (subtle, literary and deep) series in the genre?
I read the Riddlemaster books a decade ago, and have virtually no memory at this point of why I didn’t like them. Fortunately, Google remembers what I posted to Usenet back then, which I’ll repost here. I assume I still agree with my younger self:
What’s really bizarre is that my main criticism of it is what everyone
else holds up as McKillip’s strength: the writing style.
Besides the merely mechanical problems – like the ambiguous pronoun
references and countless misspellings – the book is just too damn ad hoc.
We need an illusion to get away from the King’s ships? Oh, well by an
amazing coincidence, I just found this magic gem three pages ago. And oh,
by the way, I did remember to tell you that I learned all about making
illusions, right? No? Oh, well, I did.
And of course, the characterization is less than spectacular, too. Look:
it’s a Plucky and Independent Young Woman who ignores her father’s orders
to stay home, and instead sets off into adventure! Oh, and over here
we’ve got the peaceful prince who doesn’t want to be a hero and doesn’t
want to kill anybody, but is forced into it by his destiny.
It’s the stuff of hack writing, but it’s not written as well as most hack
work.
More to the point, what’s your idea of a good (subtle, literary and deep) series in the genre?
I think LeGuin’s Earthsea books are doing much the same thing McKillip was doing, except better.
Brust’s Taltos series has nothing in common with McKillip, but manages to succeed at being both a rousing adventure story and something more than that, and is plenty subtle to boot.
If you’re comfortable calling that intersection of SF and fantasy “fantasy,” then Cordwainer Smith, Avram Davidson, and Jack Vance all get on the list. I’m not sure that “subtle” is necessarily the right word for all of them (though it is for Davidson), but they’re all stylists of the first water.
Barry Hughart’s Bridge of Birds, for sure. Oh, and Kij Johnson’s The Fox Woman, while we’re on Eastern-inspired fantasies.
Tim Powers, particularly The Anubis Gates or Last Call.
Gene Wolfe, The Book of the New Sun. Also presumably a lot of his other stuff, but I admit that he’s perhaps too subtle for me, and I could tell that most of the Wizard Knight books were flying over my head.
Mark Helprin’s Winter Tale, which for some reason is shelved over in general fiction, but is unabashedly fantasy.
Robin Hobb’s trilogy of trilogies (starting with Assassin’s Apprentice) is more directly epic fantasy like McKillip is writing, but Hobb does it much better.
Well, strokes/folks - I like nearly all the authors you mention so we may just have to disagree. I’ll comment though (nice google fu!)
I think this is a feature rather than a bug - Wolfe does something almost identical in Book of the New Sun - she trusts you to pay attention.
We need an illusion to get away from the King’s ships? Oh, well by an
amazing coincidence, I just found this magic gem three pages ago. And oh,
by the way, I did remember to tell you that I learned all about making
illusions, right? No? Oh, well, I did.
Indeed, she did - and the offhand meeting is a very important part of the character’s story.
And of course, the characterization is less than spectacular, too. Look:
it’s a Plucky and Independent Young Woman who ignores her father’s orders
to stay home, and instead sets off into adventure! Oh, and over here
we’ve got the peaceful prince who doesn’t want to be a hero and doesn’t
want to kill anybody, but is forced into it by his destiny.
It’s genre fiction, so yes it uses genre tropes. That’s not the issue - what is the issue is that it does it well, with some nicely judged twists and tweaks.
It’s the stuff of hack writing, but it’s not written as well as most hack
work.
It’s not flashy writing, but it’s good enough for the purpose.
I think LeGuin’s Earthsea books are doing much the same thing McKillip was doing, except better.
Yeah, fair enough - but Earthsea’s probably the best fantasy series ever. So the comparison isn’t that damning.
Gene Wolfe, The Book of the New Sun. Also presumably a lot of his other stuff, but I admit that he’s perhaps too subtle for me, and I could tell that most of the Wizard Knight books were flying over my head.
I have given up on late Wolfe - Book of the New Sun and the first two Soldier books were fantastic, later ones seem to spend the whole time telling themselves the plot.
Mark Helprin’s Winter Tale, which for some reason is shelved over in general fiction, but is unabashedly fantasy.
Nice! I love this book to bits. Helprin himself is ever so faintly nutty, which maybe is what makes it work.
Robin Hobb’s trilogy of trilogies (starting with Assassin’s Apprentice) is more directly epic fantasy like McKillip is writing, but Hobb does it much better.
Haven’t read them.
Back to McKillip - I suppose I can see why you didn’t like them, but I suspect the very unadorned style makes it easy for you to overlook the subtleties. As opposed to Wolfe, for eg, where it’s so ornate you kind of have to take your time. The Hed books are almost naive in their style, but there’s a lot of sophistication, great characters and some wonderful mutations of tired genre tropes. The titular Riddlemasters, for one. I also think she does great magic - exciting and kinetic, yet mysterious.
C.S. Friedman’s Coldfire Trilogy
Mainly because Gerald Tarrant is fucking awesome
David Gemmel - If you like one, you’ll like them all. He sort of writes the same book every time, yet I find them hard to put down. The Rigante series is my favorite.
Elizabeth Moon - The Sassinak series is good (Planet Pirates) as is the, um, Command Decision or some such series. Can’t recall the series name, but I think Command Decision is one of the later books in it.
Robin Hobb - Been said here, good stuff. Not incredble, but good.
Carol Berg - I really like the Restoration series (that’s one of the book names, again, not sure of hte series name). Bridge of D’Arnath was decent as well.
Trudi Canavan - The Black Magician series was good. The Age of Five series was average.
Jim Butcher - Known for his Harry Dresden books (good stuff), but I absolutely love his Fury series (Alera Codex or some such is the name of the series). The Alera books have very epic, big battle scenes, and a unique fantasy world and magic sytem unlike any I’ve seen before.
Kim Harrison - Her Rachel Morgan series is actually quite good. I thought it’d be fluff, but I really like it (Dead Witch Walking, A Few Demons More, etc). Great characters.
Actually “Great Characters” is a theme in the books I like. I can forgive a lot if the characters are compelling for me.
BTW, Martin’s other books (Windhaven, Armegeddon Rag, and Fevre Dream) are all pretty good.
Ooh, that’s a good one. I’m listening to the audio of this right now. Very much in the vein of GRRM. Both expansively epic and intimately character driven. The second in the series is slated to come out this September.
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I never read Abnett’s Gaunt’s Ghosts series, but I really enjoyed his work in the Horus Heresy series for Warhammer 40k(in this case, 30k). The series as a whole shines a lot of light on the pivotal moment in the 40k universe that for a long time was pretty vague. I felt that Abnett’s and McNeill’s books in the Heresy were by far the strongest.
I just started reading Trading in Danger by her. So far it seems pretty good.
I was just going to recommend those after seeing Nightwatch mentioned! I felt the same way at first, but they characters really are outstanding and really grow on you as the story progresses. The books also stands out for having a detailed and well thought out magical system. I actually kind of like this series better than the one Trueblood is based on (Southern Vampire Mysteries).
Sorry for the massive necro. I finally got back to another suggestion, and again I am struggling to get past the first chapter of R. Scott Baker’s The Darkness That Comes Before.
His writing style of short sentences isn’t working for me and I am struggling to pay attention to whatever story is trying to be told here.
I read Amazon reviews and they range from a life changing experience, to mind knumbingly boring, with a lot of reviews saying the first half is a rough read with the story not really starting until the halfway mark.
Any comments in this book and the 7 book series? My first several attempts at the first chapter tells me I should throw it in my fireplace.
I imagine there are quite a few opinions in the relevant thread, but I can’t remember if the forum leaned positive or negative.
I have read 4 of the 7 books but my memory is a bit hazy. The series gets much easier to read after the first couple of chapters so if that is the only thing stopping you I would persevere. Honestly, the characters and narrative are very interesting to me, I just wish the whole thing was more succinct. There are a few bits in the books that genuinely disturbed me, in a way that say Song of Ice and Fire never did, I am not sure if that’s a positive or negative comment but at the very least you could say that I was sufficiently immersed and caring for the characters to react in such a way.
I can fully understand why people would hate it, and I would never recommend it to anyone, but I don’t regret the time I spent reading the first four books.