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Anything written by Raymond E. Fiest after the Serpent War series (which were still pretty bad, but not awful). What started as the back story to his DnD groups world turned into a overly long explanation as to why it looks different in his books compared to the game. It also takes what was a fairly basic story of "Evil Ancient Overlords attempt to return, heroes stop them" into all sorts of fuckery with twists that exist not to be interesting but to simply draw the story out. You can tell how bad it gets just looking at the original covers; the first few books have covers that make sense but around Serpent War they start using stock fantasy art that has literately nothing to do with the content of the book. He spends so much time going into detail explaining how the universe works, how the gods function, how ancient evil gets its powers; and then in the next series he goes and tells you that it's actually all wrong. The last book was a hodge podge of references to the previous works mashed together to show there was in fact some continuity and act as though he knew the ending when he was writing the Serpent War saga back in 93-94, some ten years before hand. And on the subject of continuity: he only got worse as he went on. At first it was stuff like saying one of his characters never got married, when it was a plot point an earlier book of him getting married to a character who actually got fleshed out a bit. It later divulged into straight up not editing his work. One chapter in a later book had Character A rocking up to a place and doing some things but two chapters later suddenly Character B is there, is implied to have been there the whole time in place of Character A; who is called in to visit and is amazed at the things that he two chapters earlier discovered. I'm not saying DON'T read Magician, by all means READ Magician; it's a classic. It takes some typical fantasy ideas and gives them little changes that are enjoyable. Read Silverthorn and A Darkness At Sethanon if you're an RPG fan; they basically read as a dramatized adventure log for characters who wouldn't be out of place on a DnD character sheet, you can even pick out who is what class and what role they fill in the typical RPG party setup. Hell go and read the entire Empire saga that he co-authored with Janny Wurts; it is hands down the best saga in the series. Political intrigue that's well written with interesting characters and development.
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Jul 5, 2015 15:20
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Nutsngum posted:Magician is surprisingly readable and good considering it was his first book.The next two are still drat fine reads but I do agree that things began to unravel a little in the serpentwar saga. It just became the whole "power creep" idea where everything has to get bigger and badder and the odds even greater. Spoilers abound below. Power creep is a thing only if you let it be a thing. After Serpent War he could have done a whole story of the Dragon Lords trying another trick or two to come back, have them come back then be beaten off, Pug Gods and Friends win. Having the Dread as the ultimate bad guy was cool, I liked the Dread as the ultimate bad guy; but loving seriously do you expect us to believe that the thing that hates creation so much it is trying to tear it apart at the seems is capable of just going "heh yeah we are gonna work with these mortals to achieve a minute detail  ". Also it basically makes everything that happened in Serpent War and the Conclave Saga a training exercise conducted by the gods to help Pug get ready to fight the dread; which is stupid as gently caress. Also yeah he killed Arutha and Martin and that which was a pretty big step for a writer. But then it's like "Hey look it's Jim, grandson of James, great-great-grandson of James. He's also named James, looks like both previous James's and has the excat same skill set." It's like the guy in DnD who has has character die, so erases the name on his Character sheet; makes a few edits to skills that are no longer relavent and says "booom Son of My guy"
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Jul 6, 2015 14:13
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Tiggum posted:I liked Going Postal a lot and Making Money was decent, but Raising Steam was pretty much garbage. Nothing much happened and it wasn't funny. I felt like several of his later Discworld books seemed like they were written out of obligation or something, like he was out of decent Discworld ideas but just kept adding to the series anyway. Nation and Dodger were way better than any of the Discworld books that came out after about 2005. I think his last few novels (Snuff, Raising Steam, The Shepard's Crown) were written at the point where he knew that his time was nearly up; and he wanted to make sure his thoughts on current events and messages were clear and present, rather then being softly delivered. You could see the same messages in Thud! but not delivered as plainly. Very clear on his views of racism, fanaticism, prejudice in Snuff and Raising Steam. Shepard's Crown was basically his goodbye note in book form.
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Jul 15, 2016 12:23
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