|
aequorea posted:Friends kept praising Tales of the Dying Earth by Jack Vance, so I read it. I just do not understand the love for this book. I thought it was godawful. Apparently Vance's stories were influential in the creation of Dungeons and Dragons. Maybe they get a lot of nostalgic love because of this association? Tales of the Dying Earth isn't the greatest book, but it's still awesome. Vance's stories all generally involve the protagonist trying to accomplish a difficult goal by outsmarting enemies who are trying to trick them. You might prefer The Demon Princes, which has a redeemable main character doing those things. What makes Tales of the Dying Earth special is that the protagonist (in the middle two books, others are meh) is a pretty awful dude, that isn't actually clever enough to deserve the moniker he's given himself. Cugel the Clever is a bad guy, but it's fun seeing him survive by conning jerks and assholes, only to mess up his situation even worse when he gets greedy. Vance does have an unusual prose style, but it's really fun when you get used to it. Terry Goodkind though, terrible. The main character of the Sword of Truth series, Richard Rahl, at one point ends up bringing down the evil (socialist) empire's capital city. It goes something like: +Start sculpting a statue (Richard Rahl is good at swordfighting, magics, BDSM, everything, so he just goes for it) +Use the power of the free market to get sculpting supplies and make friends +Make a sculpture so beautiful it makes everyone realize socialism is evil +City revolts Also the sculpture is of him and his wife. The books can actually be entertaining, though. There's a sick part where Richard plays murderball against the evil empire, and does rad flips and poo poo to score goals. To post something new though, David Weber. He's probably best known for his scifi Honor Harrington series, which is basically the Napoleonic war, but with space instead of sailing ships. It's not all bad, and there's some cool space battles, but as the series goes on the main character starts getting ridiculous. She saves a planet of....space mormons? Who duel each other with samurai swords because all they had to watch were Kurosawa movies? It's been a while since I read it, hopefully someone else remembers more. I think they listened to country music. One of the french stand-in bad guys is literally named Rob S. Pierre. I actually really enjoy his fantasy books, the War God series. They are bad, but still have a simple charm. It's like eating a huge bowl of mac and cheese; you know you shouldn't, but sometimes you need something comforting on a cold night. Also each book in the series is less good than the previous one. They also have some of the worst covers I have ever seen. First book clocks in at mildly embarrassing:  The third one though :   
|
#
¿
Jul 6, 2015 05:44
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 13:51 |
|