Any fans of this @ Qt3?
The new book hits stores on July 21st.
No.
I likes 'em when they focus on Richard and Kahlan. The last book in the series ran 800 pages, and 750 focused on a brand-new, just-introduced character. There were times when I thought it might be fan fiction.
Goodkind has perfected the art of imitating Jordan. Start off strong, get your readers hooked with a plot that actually goes somewhere for a few books, then abandon your main characters and waste endless reams of paper on meaningless drivel.
Pisses me off to no end, since I once liked both Richard/Kahlan/Zed and Rand/Mat/Perrin quite a bit. Ah well
All the accolades and top ten lists (at Amazon, for whatever that is worth) he is on led me to pick up the first one. Two words:
Yu uck! Could not get interested in the least.
Another series that I am fighting to get through the first book of is The Runelords by David Farland. Crazy premise and interesting only in spurts.
I think George R.R. Martin has ruined me for all other Fantasy genre writing.
I liked the first few books, although I’d agree with the statement that he’s really good at immitating Robert Jordan…
I picked up the last book and still haven’t read it. I’m at the point where there’s too many epic fantasy books going on. I’ve got Wheel of Time, Runelords and Sword of Truth all in progress.
Gunmetal - Are you liking The Runelords? I assume you finished the first book. The whole premise of extracting “things” from other people and basing a series on it seems a bit crazy. Like an SNL skit stretched into a 90 min. long movie. The runes and endowments and then establishing those as the driving plot points is hard for me to digest. I am on page 320 or so of the first book. Do these items dominate the rest of the series or does Farland finally get their function and history established and move on to other storytelling?
I really liked the first two Runelord books. I’ve got the third book, but at this point I’ve totally forgotten what’s going on, so I haven’t started it. This is an unfortunate theme with me and books :)
There’s a definite feeling of “anything can happen” in the first two, anyway.
I actually like the premise of the runes, although the first few pages of the first book had me very confused since they’re not explained at all.
The runes seem to be playing a pretty important part in the first two books, but Farland moves onto the runes and the Dedicates as strategic elements in later battles so that’s good. The runes don’t tend to dominate the story in the second book.
I seem to remember a GBA strategy game being made that was based in the Runelords world too… I wonder what happened to it?
Now as a vidoegame, that would be viable. I can see how the Dedicates and forcibles and runes and the like are just new pieces thrown in to spice up a run of the mill fantasy yarn. Maybe as much as I claim to want something new in my fantasy novels, I really do not. I want to say the premise is simply not believable, but, of course, neither are goblins, hobbits, and trolls. Maybe I just do not like his storytelling. I dunno. Thanks for the feedback. :)
Again, Martin tells kick-ass stories with little to no magic involved. Mmmmmmm Feast of Crows…[drool]
Yeah, I think the George RR Martin stuff will be the next series I start. I keep hearing good things about it
There should be no thinking about it. I would advise you to drop everything you are reading, leave early from work, and buy all three books without hesitation.
If a certain Dr. Crypt tries to dissuade you here on these boards, avoid him as if he were a disease-ridden harlot*. Although, I have heard from my Irish spies that he is giving Martin a second chance, but wants to keep his position as Chairman of the George R.R. Martin haters club. So shhhhhhh.
[size=2]*Which he is, BTW.[/size]
Yeah, it is my bathroom book right now. I don’t really know how far I am through it - I’m reading it on my PocketPC and I’m about 563 ebook pages into it, out of a maximum of about 8,000. Most of those 563 pages have been taken up by female characters talking about the “warm seed between their legs” and totally extraneous, uninteresting descriptions of the culinary properties of various vegetables (“He bit into a gravy-slathered onion. It crunched. <End paragraph>”)
That said, no matter how far I am along in the book in real-life pages, I’m definitely further along than the last time I threw it away in disgust. So either my literary tastes have gone permanently slumming, or last time I read it I wasn’t as willing to overlook its flaws because “of all the bad stuff that happens to cool characters!”
If you are going to read any of this embarassing, twenty-thousand page fantasy pap, you could probably do worse than Fire and Ice.
have been taken up by female characters talking about the “warm seed between their legs”
If I can sit through 8 books of Egwene and Nynaeve blushing over the shape of men’s calves, I think I can handle it :)
Arrrrghghghg!! Just when I thought I had bludgeoned the Jordan out of my skull, someone makes a reference! Gah! Now I have to find another way to forget that series!
I will take that as a ringing endorsement. Oh, and your welcome.
To bring this back on topic…
Goodkind sucks.
I’ve read Goodkind through book five and have really enjoyed them, with the second book being my favorite.
One thing I like about his work is that while there is an over-arching plot, each book is fairly self contained. It makes him one of the few fantasy authors where I feel like I can read the latest book without having to reread the rest of the series. One of the reasons that the delay on Martin’s next book doesn’t bother me is that it will give me time to reread the first three.
Hey, could anyone find me a geneaology/character relationship tree for this Game of Thrones book? My ebook version doesn’t have it.
Anyone read Gemmell?
Since George R.R. Martin really needs to go on a diet before nomadic aliens settle outposts on his stomach and begin planning their fertility sacrifices by the phase of the Earth in the sky, I will happily “lend” my ebook copies of the Martin books to anyone who is interested.