exactly man...

Lets hope the fourth books is simply a "black sheep" in the overall series. I certainly hope its not the beginning of something like what happend to jordans work....

And yea, it pissed me off that tyrion and spider simply vanished...that imp was like the coolist guy in the books, everythnig that made up a great caracter, and CUNNING!!

Arya, my previous favorite character, is now boring as hell studing with priests. AFter she met that magician-priest dude I thought it was going to be awesome.... uhhh nothing happens.

You saying you don't like Goodkind?? unbelievable. Goodkind is a fucking god. I can't fucking wait for nov 13,the last final resounding climatic dramatic fucking book.

As for the credits, I think most of them are due. Fantasy was largely dead when WoT started. Brooks started the first resurgence with what amounted to an inferior retelling of LotR's. Which spawned a number of fantasy works in the same vein that amounted to Tolkien ripoffs or Dungeons and dragons campaigns set to book form. But that was done by the mid-80's. From there until WoT 1 was published almost no new major fantasy epics started. And what was published was usually shit. (Pratchet excepted of course)

Fantasy has always had a negative stigma. And by the late 80's the soccer mom crusaders were out in full force against the 'evil' D&D shit that was corrupting their children and "causing" murders and suicides. Anything with dragons or magic was already relegated to the 'kiddie' isle and at that point, pompous moral crusaders decided such things were unfit for kids as well. The genre had no respect and near universal scorn. Alot of it was deserved. Most works were poorly written and trotted out the same old cliches time and time again.

RJ didn't break those cliches. He wanted to to some extent (fairly interesting how he originally envisioned the series), but publishing pressures nixed that outside the box thinking right away. Initially however his writing was strong compared to the rest of the genre, his characters interesting and enjoyable in their naive innocence, and his world vast and more thoroughly explored than anything before. And it was popular. As a general rule, fantasy books DO NOT appear on major top 10 bestsellers lists. And Jordan was the first one to do so (several novels popping up at #1...at least on the week of release) in a long time. This told publishers that fantasy was actually marketable again. This allowed other authors to get published. Once WoT started getting really popular, sometime around book 3-5, suddenly we saw the publishing of Goodkind, Martin, Hobb and others. All within a few years span.

I'm not saying that wouldn't have been published without RJ. We can't know either way. But he absolutely did make it easier for fantasy writers to get a serious look by publishers. And made some writers and publishers more willing to take risks in the genre. And his success, the later new works of other authors, all contributed to an increasingly more talented pool of authors deciding to give fantasy a try. As a general rule, talented writers didn't bother with fantasy. It was boring. Derivative. For the infantile fantasies of adolescent boys. Nothing more than farmboy A discovers great power and must learn from mentor B (who always dies at some point), while seeking out SUPER Item C to help destroy SUPERVILLAIN D and save the world.

Now we have Bakker exploring concepts of free will vs. determinism through the eyes of a 100% amoral, sociopathic protagonist. Mieville blending steampunk and fantasy in one of the most outstandingly weird worlds ever put to ink. And of course Martin dashing every expectation and slaughtering every fantasy cliche in his low magic, high realism, morally grey fantasy epic. These are all VERY talented authors. Ones who may well have found another genre if fantasy was still a dead end filled with nothing but inferior lotr knockoffs. RJ did not smother this. RJ told the rest of the literary world that fantasy was still viable. Its no coincidence that once WoT got popular, alot of other BIG fantasy suddenly started getting published again.

My problem with Goodkind, other than being IMO a poor author, is that he uses his books as a vehicle to peddle propaganda. Now I have no problem with books taking a certain political slant. For some authors, its really unavoidable. Their tendencies and beliefs will come through one way or another. But the story should always be served FIRST. The story should NEVER be contrived to serve the political agenda. Goodkind violates this moreso than most authors.

Also, if political or philosophical ideals are going to be peddled, I INSIST that they be adequately challenged. Any writer with overt messages throughout the book has an obligation to rigorously test their beliefs within. Goodkind never does. Instead he sets up weak strawmen to represent opposing arguments than demolishes them to 'prove' the righteousness of his beliefs. This is intolerable. And outright insulting to the intelligence of the reader. And it also results in some of the most laughable, cringe-worthy villains I've ever read.

Mieville by contrast is an outright socialist. His protagonists tend to be somewhat of that frame of mind. Except he actually challenges their (and his) preconceptions. And in fact, more often than not, they end of losing to the more familiar 'establishment'. And even where his beliefs seep through, he never gives impression of actually trying to peddle them. His books are not a sales job. Goodkind's are. And i don't want to be lectured when I read. Especially about one of the most obnoxiously simplistic psuedo-philosophies ever invented.

It also doesn't help that the author is an absolute prick.

Vouch this

pwb3 your a noob

Achilles, you say all this about Goodkind, which I don't particularly agree with, especially the political aspect, but you did alot more criticizing of RJ's books than you do now of goodkinds. Now your simply criticizing Goodkinds writing as poor, and dismissing it without even solid reasoning, while you vigorously criticized RJs books with sound evidence like characters, plot, style, setting, length and all the other obvious problems with RJs books. Leads me to believe you didn't read many Goodkind books. Which ones did you read then? And you still say "Goodkind is infinitely worse than RJ on his worst day".

And I still completely disagree with the credit your giving RJ for , in a sense, "spawning" new fantasy.... I hate to even remotely think that gods like Robin Hobb, Goodkind, or even Martin and others developed anything out of RJ's works. Writing is inspirational, not casual (for lack of a better word?) The way you say it, authors pick what genre and theme they want to write about based on subjects of popularity, and RJ's success created writers trying to leech off this and start writing fantasy??? Authors are motivated and inspired to write what they want. Lets say we were to erase RJ from the face of history, then Hobb, Goodkind, Martin and a thousand other fantasy authors works would remain exactly the same. You say RJ's works told publishers that fantasy was open market again... I doubt this affected any now-great authors choice of writing fantasy....they obviously would have been written anyways. I mean, I think of Goodkind and RJ as extreme opposites. What RJ did to ruin fantasy, Goodkind did to repair. Everything about RJ and Goodkind are opposite, from character development (RJ = fags who cant touch their own nose, TG = familiar characters the reader can completely adhere too), plot development (RJ = no plot, TG = extreme plot), to writing style is drastically different.

And I seriously doubt Goodkind writing is a form of propaganda, its just the way he writes about his views. I mean, if you disagree with them then its obvious your going to discriminate the books, but by no means does that make a bad author. Look, Hitler was a great author, but his views were corrupted and shit. But, by no means, was Hitler a "poor" author for writing books that inspired wars and justified murder just because it followed single minded ideals.

v good, real classic. BTW the Wheel of time pc game was fair as well (altough I sold it long time ago, - the best always is the ganuine book)

Ooooohhhhh I'm so hurt, Kulith called me a noob

I'll just leave it to everyone else to judge who is the idiot here. I'm sure everyone will hate Kulith more

It's obvious who's the moron here

Every time you open your fucking mouth I anally rape you, I left you in the last thread crying so fuck off im sick of talking to you. Achilles actually maintains an intelligent conversation, something you obviously couldn't possibly dream of.

How so? O_o

You're too stupid to maintain an intelligent conversation yourself, so you have no right to accuse me of not having an intelligent conversation. And so far, I've had perfect intelligence in my posts while yours had NONE whatsoever. Your IQ is clearly in the negatives. Sorry, kid, you fail yet again.

I can't believe I keep talking to you. Read the thread you moron.