Quote (Veilside @ Mon, Aug 6 2007, 09:07pm)
No worries about the hostility, you get used to it when you use the net a lot.
Yes, I have read Magician and the RiftWar saga and it just did not appeal to me whatsoever, one can sumarise the plot as being "young bullied boy with no hope for a future, finds out he has magical powers, goes on to kick lots of ass and become and major character in the world" . Sorry but that kind of storyline just does not appeal to me whatsoever and that just really puts me off Feists work.
I agree with you that RJ puts far too much useless crap in his books but atleast the character interactions are interesting, the world is interesting and it's put a new angle on a few popular fantasy cliches.
Again, I found Feist's story to be completely and utterly mind numbingly boring, "young boy finds out he's an uber strong warrior and goes to marry elf queen" that kind of stuff just doesn't appeal to me, I'd much rather read some Erikson or Martin where you're constantly guessing as to what's about to happen and characters aren't invicible.
As for your thing on unbelieveable scenarios, how can you complain about a few female characters beating up ten men when you enjoy reading those cliches I mentioned above? It just doesn't make much sense to me.
And no, I don't think RJ is that amazing of an author, i just prefer his works to any i've read by GoodKind or Feist, it's just a matter of opinion.
Definitely
DO read Erikson's books, they'll change your viewpoints on the fantasy genre, hell I like his books so much that I just preordered an extremely limited (52 copies) of Erikson's first book in the MBotF series for $300, I wouldn't do that if I didn't think the book was worth it.
http://dir.salon.com/story/books/review/2004/06/21/erikson/index.html?pn=1 A review I found for Erikson's series, the qutoe below is just to give you an idea about the reviewer.
Dude, those are CLASSICS!! They are the very foundation of FANTASY. Hell, you can call Harry Potter a classic good vs evil theme, but DAMN THEY"RE WELL WRITTEN!! And your not giving MAGICIAN enough credit. The majesty in which Feist takes a hopeless boy, puts him through infatuation, captivity and slavery, war, and the unique training to a Higher-level magicians is uncomparable. And anyways, not all Feists work are like that. The Conclave of Shadows are great reads, different from magician
And the fact that you say 2 women beating up 10 thugs in a street is more understandable than a well written series of emotional events leading to a great magician, and a great Valheru warrior... thats what doesnt make much sense.
Ill look into Eriksons novels.
And as for George R R Martin, hell I read the first 3 books and they were pretty good, a little bit long but good. And I get to the fourth one and I can't keep reading it, nothing at all is happening, I gave up about a month ago, stopped about half way through. Fuck, the only thing I really cared about was the girl taking over the Seven Kingdoms with her dragons, but NO she just sits there in her city with her massive army of slaves. And catelyn s tark is the most annoying woman in the world, I nearly put the books down when she freed Jaime. FFS. And then she comes back to life...wtf? Arya, the other interesting character, just sits there being a monk, doing nothing except giving the reader promises of magic etc... And Brianna (whats her name?) goes on all these little side-quests throughout the book that lead to nowhere... the whole book is just her looking for sansa... and thats pretty pointless in itself. The imp was also a fun character, but damn he just disappeared with the spider and i never heard of him again....
You didn't hear anything about the Imp because book 4 was only the first part of book 4, the second part will be out in a few months I believe and should contain a hell of a lot more detail about Arya, the Imp and Jon Snow.
As for Feist, I really couldn't care less wether or not it's a classic, when I read the story, it just bored me, I don't care how well written a book is if the story is just mind numbingly boring, now sure, technically Feist very well might be a good author but the stuff he writes just does not appeal to me in the slighest.
And yes, I must admit Catelyn is a horrible character, but she is written well, Cersei also becomes horrible later on.
Sure, Jordan might not write as well as Feist but I found his story to be much better.