Quote (pwb3 @ Mon, Oct 22 2007, 06:51pm)
Jesus, so bloody hostile and all over a book! That is very pathetic! Pathetic! I mean, all of us have different tastes. Why can't you accept that fact? WE ALL HAVE DIFFERENT FAVORITES. You like Goodkind? Ok, awesome, now leave it at that. We like Jordan so leave it at that. The majority of us like Jordan way more than Goodkind. There is no reason for you to be hostile like that. You are just too evil and narrow minded to grasp that simple concept. I mean, god, murder a person because he likes Jordan more than Goodkind? Wow... you really need to get out of your fucking box. You are very pessimistic, evil and very very sick in the head. Go see a fucking doctor. Actually, never mind... just kill yourself instead. That'd be the best option.
and on and on he goes about whos hostile about this book. To be honest, im surprised you didnt flam again like you constanly do. But since you asked for it, now I have to quote myslef all these times. Since you boviously picked out the few times I flammed and quoted them, for some reason your making me show you the rest when its right there before your eyes. See below. Its called intelligent conversation. I don't know why you keep asking me why I think its intelligent. I dont even think you can fathom the concept of intelligence.
Kill yourself- you already used that. Better than troll, but still lame repetition - keep trying to find a good insult, I can almost hear your brain working from here.
Contradiction here again, but you must know this. I couldn't "leave it at that" anymore than you could so dont now attempt to lay all this down on my feet noob. Obviously you couldn't accept the fact that I despise half the series and leave it at that. You couldn't even pick out any of my solid points of reasoning and discuss them, you went straight to flamming and bullshiting everywhere. See below. And Yea, I really meant to murder Achilles. Even someone with 5 working brain cells can find embroidery in this forum. You, on the other hand.... seem to have trouble.
in response, and support, to my original post.
Quote (Veilside @ Tue, Jun 19 2007, 07:21am)
I like the word conglusion

More seriously, I do agree with you on some points, mainly the "no characters dying" bit, something a lot of authors are afraid to do, The Lord of the Rings would have been better if Frodo had died at the end, The Tamuli series would have been better if Sephrenia had died, that's why i like the Malazan Book of the Fallen series so much, Steven Erikson isn't afraid to kill off main characters when the time comes.
Yes, the books are extremely slow but I never had any problem with that whatsoever, so he doesn't kill any of the Forsaken (Forsaken??? I'm getting confused with Glen Cooks stuff here) every singly bloody book, who cares, the plotline is still advancing, things are still happening and I think he'll probably get the last book finishes before he dies.
in response, and supporting everything I said in my original post. Except about goodkind.
Quote (AchillesHK @ Wed, Oct 17 2007, 03:06pm)
The series started good. It was a nice, quaint little derivative yarn about the typical 'chosen one' farmboy exploring the world and coming into power. The characters were simplistic, but interesting. And he was highly readable and entertaining for about the first 4 books.
Than he lost control of the story. Instead of the enjoyable core characters, the cast was expanded to a literal cast of thousands. And most of them sucked. Literally hundreds of female characters, entirely redundant in names (seriosuly, could you figure out who was who?) and personalities. Each one bitchier, more powerful, more beautiful, more stubborn, and more annoying than the last. Jordan himself admitted that he couldn't write women. And that he based most of his female characters off his wife. Were he not dead, I'd make a crack about his wife. But that'd be in bad taste now.
Anyway, the villains. The Foresaken and dark one started off as this mysterious, sinister force capable of untold atrocities. Nightmare inducing shit. Now? They couldn't inspire fear in the heart of a 5 year old bedwetter. They sit around whining like High School cliques, their 'grand plans' usually amount to nothing, they're easily killed...another dying with relative ease about every other book, and they're so pathetic that they're even being recycled. There is absolutely NOTHING in the presentation of their characters to make me think they're competent enough to destroy cities or slaughter peoples like the stories about them suggest. Jordan told us...he did an awful job of showing us.
The heroes: When they are around, there's no suspense. The most overused plot device (Ta'avern) in fantasy literature will ensure that they'll find everything they need, meet everyone they should, and get out of all the most desperate situations relatively unscathed. They're also world-weary 20 somethings who continue to act like 12 year old adolescents afraid of girls. 'Mat knows everything about women'/'NO Rand does!' Give me a break. Everything in the book is treated in a childlike manner. These are some of the least mature character interactions I've seen in ANY writing. Harry Potter can have adults interact like adults...WoT simply can't manage that.
And this doesn't even touch on the most popular complaint. The fact that there's been no meaningful plot advancement for about 5+ books. We're talking thousands of pages with nothing relevant. Or if it was relevant (cleansing), it just popped out of thin air without adequate foundation, build up, or support.
Knife had some moments in the second half, but its just not enough. RJ down the stretch was largely unreadable.
He is NOT NEAR the best fantasy out there. Anyone who suggests that really hasn't read much fantasy. I don't hate RJ. He's had a largely positive impact on the fantasy genre...arguably the most important fantasy author since Tolkien. The popularity of WoT allowed alot of other, much better fantasy to be published. Who knows if Martin (who probably actually does write the best work in the fantasy genre today) would be where he is without RJ's blurb on his first novel? Who knows if authors like Erikson, Bakker, Lynch, and others would be able to sell multi-volume epic ideas to publishers without the trend RJ set? The genre definitely owes him a debt.
That said, fantasy is undergoing a bit of a renaissance. New, more talented authors are writing intelligent, compelling work. Adding a mature edge. Exploring relevant philosophical questions. Avoiding the cliches or turning them on their head. There is alot of great work out there...and it is getting published.
in response to achilles post.
Quote (Kulith @ Wed, Oct 17 2007, 09:07pm)
- These are some of the least mature character interactions I've seen in ANY writing. Harry Potter can have adults interact like adults...WoT simply can't manage that.
- The fact that there's been no meaningful plot advancement for about 5+ books. We're talking thousands of pages with nothing relevant.
- They sit around whining like High School cliques, their 'grand plans' usually amount to nothing, they're easily killed...another dying with relative ease about every other book, and they're so pathetic that they're even being recycled
- Each woman bitchier, more powerful, more beautiful, more stubborn, and more annoying than the last.
EXACTLY!!
THats exactly what i said, except not so aggressive. But you're still giving Jordan way too much credit. He hasn't had the great impact your painting of him.... In fact, the popularity of the Waste of Time smuggled and quenched much better fantasy. Wot is in no way creative or compelling. He takes super popular ideas (like fucking talking to fucking wolves) and a million other things from tolkien and eddings (for starters) and other gods...and retards praise him for it. As I said, his first 3 had the potential to be the start of a great series, but wtf happened to them? your guess is as good as mine.
and Martins fourth book was a misery.... His first three where jammed packed full of juicy potential but his fourth book left you thinking: wtf?? I put it down ofter the 1000'th chapter of Brianna wandering around in the pointless side plot looking for stupid sansa because of the promise she gave to a dead woman. And when my absolutely least favorite character finally died (catelyn) martin brings her back to life.... wtf...pisses me off.
Quote (AchillesHK @ Wed, Oct 17 2007, 09:30pm)
I'm one of the harshest critics of Martin's fourth book. From a storytelling perspective, much of it was awful. Brienne of course the biggest offender. Her chapters amounted to a 100+ page travelogue with ABSOLUTELY nothing relevant happening til literally her last page. Travelogues annoy the hell out of me and should be purged from all fantasy.
Martin struggled with the 4th book. You may or may not have heard about the split that necessitated the 5+ year delay between novels. He intended a 5 year gap between books 3 and 4 (storywise, not in real life...although ironically enough, things worked out the opposite). But there were too many details to fill in, background for that period to cover, and he realized that he spent most of the first half of the book telling what happened. So he trashed the 5 year gap. And had to come to a decision....write half a storyarc for all the characters, or a full arc for half the characters. He went for the second choice.
I have no problem with that choice. My only problem is that he did not deliver on his promise. None of the characters really had anything approaching a full storyarc. Most of them can be summed up with 'Nothing happened, nothing happened, nothing happened, 'CLIMAX!!!'. Sam took a trip. The book ends once he reaches the destination. Arya trains...and nothing else. The Ironborn talk about invasion...than start one, thats it. And so on and so forth. The only storyline with significant development that remained interesting throughout was Cersei's and the other ones centered on King's Landing.
That said, its still Martin. Even when he's off his game, he's more readable and enjoyable than 90% of the hacks in the genre. His themes and symbolism are strong throughout. Often times relating in a number of different ways to the title of the novel. He elicits powerful images of the aftermath of war without boring us to tears by spending too long on the struggles of random peasant A or B. From a writing perspective, he still has some of the strongest, most readable prose in the genre. Effective dialogue (some of which was lacking in the absense of Tyrion sadly) along with well drawn and intelligent characters.
And on Cat...i'm not sure what she has can really be called 'life'.
And of course...I'm still gonna give you shit for liking Goodkind.

Quote (Kulith @ Wed, Oct 17 2007, 09:52pm)
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.
Quote (AchillesHK @ Wed, Oct 17 2007, 10:11pm)
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.
Quote (Kulith @ Thu, Oct 18 2007, 02:39am)
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.
That pwb3, is called an intelligent debate. These posts are right under your nose, and you pulled out the two that I simply said "fuck you" in, and said I have nothing intelligent to say or ever have. Must I evaluate even further? It doesn't matter, your going to ignore what I have to say anyway, despite the proof, like you always do and continue with this bullshit. I can literally
prove to you the sky is blue, but your still going to scream "NO FUCK YOU THE SKY IS RED BITCH" . Well here it goes. See my next post as to where
you came into the story. Huh, funny I don't see any support, just biased opionion repeated over and over, with excessive use of swearwords and single minded convulted opinion.