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Alec Eiffel posted:I have every intention of starting The Wheel of Time and not finishing (a few reviews suggested stopping around book 5). I personally suggest trying book 1. If you hate it, skip the series as a whole, it doesn't substantially improve from book 1. If you like it, I'd suggest reading the whole series, but skimming through a lot of books around 9-10 or so - Jordan really had major pacing issues in this part of his series. That said, the ending is totally worth it, and the books as a whole improve substantially in both 11 (where Jordan remembers about things like 'pacing' and 'having stuff happen in the plot' and 'actually advancing the timeline') and when Sanderson takes over after Jordan's demise. The whole plot will have a ton of unresolved stuff if you abandon it partway through. There are typically narrative climaxes at the end of each book, but they tend to only resolve immediate conflicts, not the overarching plot of the whole series. The last few books are actually probably the best part of the series (though, as I wrote above, if you didn't like the first novel, the improvement is probably not substantial enough to warrant reading the series).
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Jun 29, 2013 05:26
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They get a little bit into the Shrike and it's origins. The explaination is pretty silly, though. On the whole though I consider the Endymion books very inferior to their predecessors; they are somewhat related, but on the whole the ending of Fall of Hyperion's resolution is pretty good, and if you weren't satisfied by lack of resolution after The Fall of Hyperion you will probably be even more dissatisfied by The Rise of Endymion's closing. They do rely on knowledge of the previous books a lot, and are highly related. That said, the Endymion books are still way better than 90% of genre fiction. They don't feel the same as Hyperion, at all, but they're still a pretty good read. Edit: Kalenn Istarion posted:If anyone's looking for a good epic fantasy, I'm really enjoying Patrick Rothfuss' Kingkiller Chronicles. The first book is The Name of the Wind. I found the style of writing really unique, and the presentation of key parts of the story as a recollection of a main character leaves the possibility of a fallible or dishonest narrator having an impact on later events. The world-building is also very colourful without being oppressive, and the diction used is almost musical in quality. I kept finding myself comparing the book to listening to a symphony, as opposed to some lower-brow 'epic' fantasy being more equivalent to a brainless but easily-digested top-40 track. I found the first book really astoundingly well-done on the whole, and really enjoyed it a lot. That said, the sequel was much, much worse, almost to the point of going back and wrecking the first book. I am not optimistic about further books in the series, based on the direction the second book was going. I'd suggest reading the first book and stopping there. Great Gray Shrike fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Jul 1, 2013 |
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Jul 1, 2013 01:00
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^The Paksenarrion books have an entire (fairly long) section which is lifted directly from the Village of Homlett module from Gygax's Temple of Elemental Evil campaign. I don't really think Moon was using the tropes of D&D in a terribly sophisticated deconstructionist manner, really. That said, they are reasonably well-written page-turners, and are inoffensively written (no glaringly bad sections I can recall). I'd put them squarely into a 'popcorn books' category. I'd like to second the rec for A Prince of Nothing. The treatment of women in the novels is pretty problematic, but beyond that there's enough good stuff that it's definitely worth reading. There are a lot of neat ideas in it.
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Jul 24, 2013 14:32
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Hyperion doesn't have a good standalone ending; it and The Fall of Hyperion are basically one book, broken into two pieces. A lot of Simmons' books are like that - Endymion/The Rise of Endymion and Illium/Olympos also.
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Aug 22, 2013 19:20
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