Bringing preconceptions and baggage to reading a book.


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I love the Wheel of Time though. =(

We can pretend books...6 and 7 I believe they were...don't exist though.

The Exchange

Rynjin wrote:

I love the Wheel of Time though. =(

We can pretend books...6 and 7 I believe they were...don't exist though.

I believe I stopped midway through book 7... I did like the story well enough in early books, but by this point it felt like nothing was ever going to move with the series. There were simply too many characters who all stood around complaining about how sweaty and uncomfortable they are (there was a supernatural summer caused by the BBEG) instead of actually doing anything. Numerous characters would die and return to life, any sort of momentum was all gone from the story, and the ever escalating power level of the characters painted Jordan into a corner - either continue to increase the power level and make it even more ludicrous, or stop and lose the reason to continue writing the books forever ("Rand has to be ready to face the Final Battle").

Are those problems solved in later books in the series? Are the Sanderson books good?


Book 6 does have one of my favorite scenes of the entire series though.

Spoiler:
The Battle of Dumai Wells - and the rolling ring of earth and fire.

I struggled with the Wheel of Time as well to be honest - still haven't gone back to it. I think a fan made version that either strips out all of the Daes Dae'mar or follows the story of a single character would be great additions to the whole experience.

No Perrin in Fires of Heaven and no Mat in Path of Daggers were a big downer for me - as I found their stories far more interesting than Rand's at that point.


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Oh yeah, definitely. Once the ball gets rolling again, it rolls with the surprising speed and unstoppability of a herd of elephants.

Sanderson's more fluid, less meandery writing style coupled with Jordan's ideas, world building, and characters made for a damn good last few books. Not to say the first 5 plus 9 and 10 weren't great, but Sanderson did away with some of Jordan's "space filler" proclivities.

The power levels go high, but not DBZ high, and it's a bit of a logical progression and only the most powerful Channelers (i.e. the main characters and the BBEGs top minions) reach it. The battles in the later books are pretty epic, in a good way.

Yeah, the characters are pretty powerful (some of them, there are after all plenty of main characters who are ground troops), but it's really like the end of a campaign in PF where everyone reaches level 20. The casters (Rand, Egwene, Elayne, and the Forsaken for Team Evil) are wiping out entire armies of mundanes with their spells, while the Fighter (Galad, Lan, and one of the Forsaken who turns out to be a Fighter/Wizard/Magus Gestalt, the overpowered bastard) is unbeatable in single combat.

Great fun for all.

The Exchange

Rynjin wrote:

Oh yeah, definitely. Once the ball gets rolling again, it rolls with the surprising speed and unstoppability of a herd of elephants.

Sanderson's more fluid, less meandery writing style coupled with Jordan's ideas, world building, and characters made for a damn good last few books. Not to say the first 5 plus 9 and 10 weren't great, but Sanderson did away with some of Jordan's "space filler" proclivities.

The power levels go high, but not DBZ high, and it's a bit of a logical progression and only the most powerful Channelers (i.e. the main characters and the BBEGs top minions) reach it. The battles in the later books are pretty epic, in a good way.

Yeah, the characters are pretty powerful (some of them, there are after all plenty of main characters who are ground troops), but it's really like the end of a campaign in PF where everyone reaches level 20. The casters (Rand, Egwene, Elayne, and the Forsaken for Team Evil) are wiping out entire armies of mundanes with their spells, while the Fighter (Galad, Lan, and one of the Forsaken who turns out to be a Fighter/Wizard/Magus Gestalt, the overpowered bastard) is unbeatable in single combat.

Great fun for all.

Damn you, this might get me reading this series again >_<

I mean... it has been more than 8 years since I last tried.... maybe it never got as bad as I remember.... I always did like the first books....AARRGHH.

Project Manager

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Son of the Veterinarian wrote:

John Ringo is an author who's books I've come to approach with a certain amount of trepidation.

When he's good, he's very, very good. One of my favorite authors in fact, right up there with Flint, Weber, and Drake. But he's a Fox News Republican, and occasionally he can't help but go off on an authors tract. Sometimes these are merely distractions, like a short, page-long rant about how the American Civil War was cause by an evil Northern plot to destroy the Southern economy in the brilliant Troy Rising series. But often they can be hard to take, like in Watch on the Rhine, wherein he spends the entire book giving what I will charitably describe as a rose-colored glasses view of the Waffen SS.

This isn't to say his rants themselves can't be entertaining. His strawman arguments in The Last Centurion explaining why global warming is bunk and how the election of Hillary Clinton to the Presidency will nearly destroy the U.S. are (I assume unintentionally) hilarious.

I assume you've read OH JOHN RINGO NO? Some NSFW language, if that's a thing you need to worry about, but also, it may make you laugh out loud, in case that's a thing you need to worry about at work.

Project Manager

Rynjin wrote:

Oh yeah, definitely. Once the ball gets rolling again, it rolls with the surprising speed and unstoppability of a herd of elephants.

Sanderson's more fluid, less meandery writing style coupled with Jordan's ideas, world building, and characters made for a damn good last few books. Not to say the first 5 plus 9 and 10 weren't great, but Sanderson did away with some of Jordan's "space filler" proclivities.

Huh, we'll have to disagree there. I thought Sanderson's entries read like fan-fic: the characters became very inconsistent, the writing was choppy and clumsy, any subtlety completely vanished, and what delighted me the most -- Jordan's world building, the new cultural discoveries around every corner, even at his worst -- went away almost entirely.

It did, however, move briskly, but that's about the best I can say for it. I skimmed through all of his books and haven't felt any need to reread any parts of them. Of course, the same is true for the Jordan novels after #5. Those first five, though, man. I still reread them and grieve for what the series could have been.

Liberty's Edge

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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Jessica Price wrote:


It's not that bad until The Last Battle, at which point Susan is barred from heaven because she wears lipstick (female sexuality is the devil, so only pre-pubescent Lucy gets in), and Aslan cheerily tells the kids that it's all good because they died in a train accident and are now in heaven!

To me, most of the previous books felt like fantasy by an author who happened to be Christian and was drawing from his tradition to tell stories.

The Last Battle felt like he'd sacrificed storytelling in favor of evangelism, and had a particularly mean-spirited slant to it as well.

A number of people have wrestled in print with that particular issue. Jo Walton had a (perhaps too optimistic) sonnet; Neil Gaiman's take on it is interesting, but I prefer Ursula Vernon's Elegant and Fine.


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Off topic but Wheel of time as great as it started out (I also stopped around book 7 or 8) was in my opinion a horrible influence on fantasy literature that we then saw played out in "The Sword of Truth" series (I gave up before it ended) and "Game of Thrones" (I gave up in book 2 or three).

Not only is the idea of the self-contained story dying, but every story has to have so many characters and subplots that following the plot is darn near impossible.

Oh for the days when a trilogy of 300 page books was considered excessive.


Jessica Price wrote:
Rynjin wrote:

Oh yeah, definitely. Once the ball gets rolling again, it rolls with the surprising speed and unstoppability of a herd of elephants.

Sanderson's more fluid, less meandery writing style coupled with Jordan's ideas, world building, and characters made for a damn good last few books. Not to say the first 5 plus 9 and 10 weren't great, but Sanderson did away with some of Jordan's "space filler" proclivities.

Huh, we'll have to disagree there. I thought Sanderson's entries read like fan-fic: the characters became very inconsistent, the writing was choppy and clumsy, any subtlety completely vanished, and what delighted me the most -- Jordan's world building, the new cultural discoveries around every corner, even at his worst -- went away almost entirely.

It did, however, move briskly, but that's about the best I can say for it. I skimmed through all of his books and haven't felt any need to reread any parts of them. Of course, the same is true for the Jordan novels after #5. Those first five, though, man. I still reread them and grieve for what the series could have been.

This might be a difference in preferred author style as well. I love Sanderson. His The Way of Kings is excellent and Mistborn is beautiful. I didn't much care for Jordan, and only lament that I lost interest in the series because it keeps me from reading those three Sanderson finishers. Because I'm sure they would be far more enjoyable to me than if Jordan had done the job himself.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
MMCJawa wrote:

Genre authors, ESPECIALLY Science fiction authors, seem to usually have or develop belief systems that are probably not in line with the mainstream.

Robert Heinlein would have fit right in with many of the Libertarian Ayn Rand crowd.

Liberty's Edge

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
LazarX wrote:
MMCJawa wrote:

Genre authors, ESPECIALLY Science fiction authors, seem to usually have or develop belief systems that are probably not in line with the mainstream.

Robert Heinlein would have fit right in with many of the Libertarian Ayn Rand crowd.

At some points in his life, yes, but he did run for the California State Assembly as a socialist.


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Robert Heinlein was all over the political map throughout his career, more so than probably pretty much any science fiction author.

Project Manager

John Woodford wrote:
Jessica Price wrote:


It's not that bad until The Last Battle, at which point Susan is barred from heaven because she wears lipstick (female sexuality is the devil, so only pre-pubescent Lucy gets in), and Aslan cheerily tells the kids that it's all good because they died in a train accident and are now in heaven!

To me, most of the previous books felt like fantasy by an author who happened to be Christian and was drawing from his tradition to tell stories.

The Last Battle felt like he'd sacrificed storytelling in favor of evangelism, and had a particularly mean-spirited slant to it as well.

A number of people have wrestled in print with that particular issue. Jo Walton had a (perhaps too optimistic) sonnet; Neil Gaiman's take on it is interesting, but I prefer Ursula Vernon's Elegant and Fine.

Thank you! That was a lovely and powerful piece.

Loved these parts, especially:

"When she fell through the wardrobe with her brothers and her sister, at first she did not believe it. When Susan looked in the mirror and saw herself, eleven years old again, cheeks and arms smoothed with babyfat, all she could think was that no one could be so cruel.

...

She woke one night and realized that she no longer remembered her dwarf’s name.

Even if I find him again, I won’t remember who he is. And I will be eleven years old.

She put her face in her hands, and wept as she had not wept since Aslan had died.

...

Experience has a way of marking you, even if you do not remember it, or remember it only as a dream. You cannot keep the death-vigil for a god and go unchanged. You cannot walk across a battlefield with blood and mud and the moans of the dying around you, and go back to being an ordinary eleven-year-old girl.

You cannot live to be thirty years old, and have it wiped cleanly from your mind.

...

On the last day, when Aslan drew her and Peter aside, she did not cry. Her throat closed up and her heart clanged so loudly in her ears that she missed half of what he said.

Too old to return to Narnia?

You shoved me back into this wretched unformed child’s body, lion-god, and made me a thousand years a widow, and now I am too old?

If Susan had been standing next to the White Witch, before the Stone Table, looking down at Aslan bound and muzzled, she would have asked to wield the knife."

The Exchange

Jessica Price wrote:
Rynjin wrote:

Oh yeah, definitely. Once the ball gets rolling again, it rolls with the surprising speed and unstoppability of a herd of elephants.

Sanderson's more fluid, less meandery writing style coupled with Jordan's ideas, world building, and characters made for a damn good last few books. Not to say the first 5 plus 9 and 10 weren't great, but Sanderson did away with some of Jordan's "space filler" proclivities.

Huh, we'll have to disagree there. I thought Sanderson's entries read like fan-fic: the characters became very inconsistent, the writing was choppy and clumsy, any subtlety completely vanished, and what delighted me the most -- Jordan's world building, the new cultural discoveries around every corner, even at his worst -- went away almost entirely.

It did, however, move briskly, but that's about the best I can say for it. I skimmed through all of his books and haven't felt any need to reread any parts of them. Of course, the same is true for the Jordan novels after #5. Those first five, though, man. I still reread them and grieve for what the series could have been.

Have you read any of Sanderson's other novels? I'm asking to get a picture of what you are saying, because as a rule I LOVE his books - but by the end of the 3rd book in the mistborn trilogy I came to kind of not care at all about the characters, who by that point became flat and it seems like he was not quite sure what to do with them. Is this the same thing you encountered in the Wheel of Time books he's written?

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
John Woodford wrote:
LazarX wrote:
MMCJawa wrote:

Genre authors, ESPECIALLY Science fiction authors, seem to usually have or develop belief systems that are probably not in line with the mainstream.

Robert Heinlein would have fit right in with many of the Libertarian Ayn Rand crowd.
At some points in his life, yes, but he did run for the California State Assembly as a socialist.

The word "Socialist" has found it's use in party names ranging from both extremes of left and right, ("Union of Soviet Socalist Republics", "National Socialism") so that's not much of a deliminator.

Project Manager

Lord Snow wrote:
Jessica Price wrote:
Rynjin wrote:

Oh yeah, definitely. Once the ball gets rolling again, it rolls with the surprising speed and unstoppability of a herd of elephants.

Sanderson's more fluid, less meandery writing style coupled with Jordan's ideas, world building, and characters made for a damn good last few books. Not to say the first 5 plus 9 and 10 weren't great, but Sanderson did away with some of Jordan's "space filler" proclivities.

Huh, we'll have to disagree there. I thought Sanderson's entries read like fan-fic: the characters became very inconsistent, the writing was choppy and clumsy, any subtlety completely vanished, and what delighted me the most -- Jordan's world building, the new cultural discoveries around every corner, even at his worst -- went away almost entirely.

It did, however, move briskly, but that's about the best I can say for it. I skimmed through all of his books and haven't felt any need to reread any parts of them. Of course, the same is true for the Jordan novels after #5. Those first five, though, man. I still reread them and grieve for what the series could have been.

Have you read any of Sanderson's other novels? I'm asking to get a picture of what you are saying, because as a rule I LOVE his books - but by the end of the 3rd book in the mistborn trilogy I came to kind of not care at all about the characters, who by that point became flat and it seems like he was not quite sure what to do with them. Is this the same thing you encountered in the Wheel of Time books he's written?

I haven't read his other books, and it's quite possible that if I knew him from his own writing, the tonal difference between them would be somewhat less jarring for me. Even so, it doesn't much matter from my perspective: if you're hired to finish the work of another artist, in my mind, avoiding stylistic dissonance is part of the job.


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Not saying it's indicative of his whole life or career, but in the '30s Heinlein was connected to the whole Upton Sinclair-California Democractic Party-Hollywood-Popular Front-Commie Symp crowd.

Also, I know it's made a lot of inroads over the last decade and a half, but I still have a hard time visualizing Ayn Rand or even hardcore Libertarianism as "mainstream"...unless it's in comparison to something like Trotskyism.

Anyway, Zeugma, I am reading my first Asimov, too (I think this was your first Asimov, right?), I, Robot and I think it's a blast, with two pretty awesome characters, Powell and Donovan. Of course, I'm fond of brutally exploited proletarians.


Lord Snow wrote:
Rynjin wrote:

I guess I have the series to thank for one thing...it broke me of that compulsion, once and for all.

For me it was the Wheel of Time that did it. By the time I started reading the Sword of Truth, it was easy enough for me to stop midway through book 4.

For me it was Stephen R. Donaldson's Mordant's Need two-parter. I read both all the way through, thinking "My cousin spent money gifting these to me, the ending must somehow redeem this drivel..." I was so very, very wrong.

After Mordant's Need, I started using the one chapter rule: If the first chapter doesn't grab me, the book goes into the library charity pile.


Orthos wrote:
Jessica Price wrote:
Rynjin wrote:

Oh yeah, definitely. Once the ball gets rolling again, it rolls with the surprising speed and unstoppability of a herd of elephants.

Sanderson's more fluid, less meandery writing style coupled with Jordan's ideas, world building, and characters made for a damn good last few books. Not to say the first 5 plus 9 and 10 weren't great, but Sanderson did away with some of Jordan's "space filler" proclivities.

Huh, we'll have to disagree there. I thought Sanderson's entries read like fan-fic: the characters became very inconsistent, the writing was choppy and clumsy, any subtlety completely vanished, and what delighted me the most -- Jordan's world building, the new cultural discoveries around every corner, even at his worst -- went away almost entirely.

It did, however, move briskly, but that's about the best I can say for it. I skimmed through all of his books and haven't felt any need to reread any parts of them. Of course, the same is true for the Jordan novels after #5. Those first five, though, man. I still reread them and grieve for what the series could have been.

This might be a difference in preferred author style as well. I love Sanderson. His The Way of Kings is excellent and Mistborn is beautiful. I didn't much care for Jordan, and only lament that I lost interest in the series because it keeps me from reading those three Sanderson finishers. Because I'm sure they would be far more enjoyable to me than if Jordan had done the job himself.

I seem to be in the minority. Had I not known that Jordan had died, I wouldn't have realized that another author finished WoT. But knowing that Sanderson finished the series, I now plan to sample his own fiction at some point!

I'm also sure that I'll eventually reread the WoT, because I'd like to read it as a single work rather than several works scattered over ~15 years of my life.


Jessica Price wrote:
It's not that bad until The Last Battle, at which point Susan is barred from heaven because she wears lipstick (female sexuality is the devil, so only pre-pubescent Lucy gets in), and Aslan cheerily tells the kids that it's all good because they died in a train accident and are now in heaven!

Wow, all I remember is the big train accident reveal, and realizing that it was the closest thing I've ever had to a religious experience.

...I'm too young to be losing my memory!


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Tequila Sunrise wrote:
Jessica Price wrote:
It's not that bad until The Last Battle, at which point Susan is barred from heaven because she wears lipstick (female sexuality is the devil, so only pre-pubescent Lucy gets in), and Aslan cheerily tells the kids that it's all good because they died in a train accident and are now in heaven!

Wow, all I remember is the big train accident reveal, and realizing that it was the closest thing I've ever had to a religious experience.

...I'm too young to be losing my memory!

It's not quite that bad. The actual quote is "she's interested in nothing now-a-days except nylons and lipstick and invitations."

So, pretty bad, but not quite as simple as "wears lipstick == goes to hell." Read charitably it could be taken as "She's let that kind of superficiality distract her from more important things." And her being obsessed with being grown-up is often a phase for older teens and young adults. Who often come back to things they liked in childhood later on. (like gaming:)

And Lucy was most likely not pre-pubescent by the end. The exact ages aren't exactly clear, but Jill and Eustace are stated to be the only ones still in school.

The Exchange

Tequila Sunrise wrote:
Lord Snow wrote:
Rynjin wrote:

I guess I have the series to thank for one thing...it broke me of that compulsion, once and for all.

For me it was the Wheel of Time that did it. By the time I started reading the Sword of Truth, it was easy enough for me to stop midway through book 4.

For me it was Stephen R. Donaldson's Mordant's Need two-parter. I read both all the way through, thinking "My cousin spent money gifting these to me, the ending must somehow redeem this drivel..." I was so very, very wrong.

After Mordant's Need, I started using the one chapter rule: If the first chapter doesn't grab me, the book goes into the library charity pile.

That's just about the most cutthroat attitude Iv'e ever heard of 0_0

Was the book that bad?

The Exchange

Jessica Price wrote:
Lord Snow wrote:
Jessica Price wrote:
Rynjin wrote:

Oh yeah, definitely. Once the ball gets rolling again, it rolls with the surprising speed and unstoppability of a herd of elephants.

Sanderson's more fluid, less meandery writing style coupled with Jordan's ideas, world building, and characters made for a damn good last few books. Not to say the first 5 plus 9 and 10 weren't great, but Sanderson did away with some of Jordan's "space filler" proclivities.

Huh, we'll have to disagree there. I thought Sanderson's entries read like fan-fic: the characters became very inconsistent, the writing was choppy and clumsy, any subtlety completely vanished, and what delighted me the most -- Jordan's world building, the new cultural discoveries around every corner, even at his worst -- went away almost entirely.

It did, however, move briskly, but that's about the best I can say for it. I skimmed through all of his books and haven't felt any need to reread any parts of them. Of course, the same is true for the Jordan novels after #5. Those first five, though, man. I still reread them and grieve for what the series could have been.

Have you read any of Sanderson's other novels? I'm asking to get a picture of what you are saying, because as a rule I LOVE his books - but by the end of the 3rd book in the mistborn trilogy I came to kind of not care at all about the characters, who by that point became flat and it seems like he was not quite sure what to do with them. Is this the same thing you encountered in the Wheel of Time books he's written?
I haven't read his other books, and it's quite possible that if I knew him from his own writing, the tonal difference between them would be somewhat less jarring for me. Even so, it doesn't much matter from my perspective: if you're hired to finish the work of another artist, in my mind, avoiding stylistic dissonance is part of the job.

That's reasonable.


Jessica Price wrote:
Drejk wrote:
GeraintElberion wrote:

When I was young I found The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe uncomfortable reading.

Only browsing through as an adult did I realise it was the preaching.

So, in reverse, I guess.

It's ages since I read Narnia and I don't recall C. S. Lewis preaching that is mentioned so many time... And I was awakening atheist at the time of reading or soon thereafter. Maybe it was too subtle for me at the time.

It's not that bad until The Last Battle, at which point Susan is barred from heaven because she wears lipstick (female sexuality is the devil, so only pre-pubescent Lucy gets in), and Aslan cheerily tells the kids that it's all good because they died in a train accident and are now in heaven!

To me, most of the previous books felt like fantasy by an author who happened to be Christian and was drawing from his tradition to tell stories.

The Last Battle felt like he'd sacrificed storytelling in favor of evangelism, and had a particularly mean-spirited slant to it as well.

The question is if you had known this or had been told the end is disappointing would you have put the effort into reading the series?

With such a crappy end did it ruin it for you & would you discourage others from reading it?

Sovereign Court

I think I was probably culturally conditioned to read stuff into Lewis' work.

I was living just a short jaunt from where those books were written, grew up in a similar religious tradition/culture but without the belief and had been a voracious reader of mythology before getting into fantasy. The particularly English class elements, attitudes and beliefs, especially about religion, were part of my milieu.

All that stuff about nylons that is quoted by the jeff is such parochial, middle-England, C-of-E nonsense. It sounds exactly like the kind of thing my nan would say, if she was of a fantasy writing bent.

Paizo Employee

Have to agree on the CS Lewis stuff. I didn't know anything about his religious bent when I started reading them... although it just now occurred to me that my religious aunt got me the boxed set.

But, I was eight or nine when I was reading them and didn't notice anything out of the ordinary until the Last Battle. By the end of that one, though, I felt honestly insulted.

Nowadays, I have enough books to read that I usually don't bother if I'm going to go in with a lot of baggage.

I've had some problems over the years with the opposite problem, though, where I go in being told a series is earthshattering. And that's mostly a problem of plowing through an extra book or so of material, trying to figure out what's so great, rather than just bailing out, like I would if it weren't a "classic" or whatever.

Cheers!
Landon


Oooh, I thought of a book I never finished because of preconceptions and baggage!

So, there's a thread around here somewhere by one Tensor, a.k.a Grand Magus, who's kinda like a Troll Extraordinaire (that's said with the deepest, sincerest respect, from one troll to another), called "1001 Books to Read Before You Die" or something. It's a list s/he stole from somewhere, but it's fun--you roll a d1001 and read the resulting book.

One of the books that popped up was something I had never heard of before by someone I had never heard of before: The Revenge for Love by one Wyndham Lewis. So, I ordered it from the library and it came, and, on a whim, I looked up his wikipedia page.

[Scans page]

Well, he looks pretty cool...and he was an artist...and he hung out with Auden and Ford Maddox Ford...and, oh, he was a Hitler-lover. And the book turns out to be about the Spanish Civil War and is pro-Franco?

Well, I read the first ten or so pages, and it didn't grip me, I put it down and started again later, same thing, and I was like, "F!!! this fascist shiznit" and read Isabel Allende instead.


Doodlebug Anklebiter wrote:
Well, I read the first ten or so pages, and it didn't grip me, I put it down and started again later, same thing, and I was like, "F&@! this fascist shiznit" and read Isabel Allende instead.

Checked the other books thread, and, actually, I read The Hunger Games instead. Which makes me happier.


Doodlebug Anklebiter wrote:
Doodlebug Anklebiter wrote:
Well, I read the first ten or so pages, and it didn't grip me, I put it down and started again later, same thing, and I was like, "F&@! this fascist shiznit" and read Isabel Allende instead.
Checked the other books thread, and, actually, I read The Hunger Games instead. Which makes me happier.

The friend who loaned me the first HG book to read said "If I try to explain what it's about, it'll sound ridiculous, so just read it."

I did, and I was not at all sorry. :)

(Also, due to not being a fantasy fan, he was rather shocked that I wasn't shocked at the increasing scope of the plot, as the series progressed. It was kinda cute to hear him squawk over it.)


thejeff wrote:
Tequila Sunrise wrote:
Jessica Price wrote:
It's not that bad until The Last Battle, at which point Susan is barred from heaven because she wears lipstick (female sexuality is the devil, so only pre-pubescent Lucy gets in), and Aslan cheerily tells the kids that it's all good because they died in a train accident and are now in heaven!

Wow, all I remember is the big train accident reveal, and realizing that it was the closest thing I've ever had to a religious experience.

...I'm too young to be losing my memory!

It's not quite that bad. The actual quote is "she's interested in nothing now-a-days except nylons and lipstick and invitations."

So, pretty bad, but not quite as simple as "wears lipstick == goes to hell." Read charitably it could be taken as "She's let that kind of superficiality distract her from more important things." And her being obsessed with being grown-up is often a phase for older teens and young adults. Who often come back to things they liked in childhood later on. (like gaming:)

And Lucy was most likely not pre-pubescent by the end. The exact ages aren't exactly clear, but Jill and Eustace are stated to be the only ones still in school.

Thanks, I think I'll have to read that last chapter again!


Lord Snow wrote:
Tequila Sunrise wrote:
Lord Snow wrote:
Rynjin wrote:

I guess I have the series to thank for one thing...it broke me of that compulsion, once and for all.

For me it was the Wheel of Time that did it. By the time I started reading the Sword of Truth, it was easy enough for me to stop midway through book 4.

For me it was Stephen R. Donaldson's Mordant's Need two-parter. I read both all the way through, thinking "My cousin spent money gifting these to me, the ending must somehow redeem this drivel..." I was so very, very wrong.

After Mordant's Need, I started using the one chapter rule: If the first chapter doesn't grab me, the book goes into the library charity pile.

That's just about the most cutthroat attitude Iv'e ever heard of 0_0

Was the book that bad?

Unless you enjoy characters and plots driven wholly, relentlessly and against all reason, by love at first sight, then yes. It really was that bad. :(


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I have in the past, amongst friends, been fairly dismissive of fanfiction. You know, that it is lame, poorly written, excuse for getting Kirk and Spock together, etc... But I kept running across references to Hill of Swords while wandering through TV Tropes. Eventually, I decided to see what all the fuss was about, and was stunned by the quality of both the story and writing.

The author actually managed to take two properties, one of which I hated (Familiar of Zero) and another I'm meh about (Fate: Stay the Night) and combine them into something awesome.


Tequila Sunrise wrote:
Lord Snow wrote:
Tequila Sunrise wrote:
Lord Snow wrote:
Rynjin wrote:

I guess I have the series to thank for one thing...it broke me of that compulsion, once and for all.

For me it was the Wheel of Time that did it. By the time I started reading the Sword of Truth, it was easy enough for me to stop midway through book 4.

For me it was Stephen R. Donaldson's Mordant's Need two-parter. I read both all the way through, thinking "My cousin spent money gifting these to me, the ending must somehow redeem this drivel..." I was so very, very wrong.

After Mordant's Need, I started using the one chapter rule: If the first chapter doesn't grab me, the book goes into the library charity pile.

That's just about the most cutthroat attitude Iv'e ever heard of 0_0

Was the book that bad?

Unless you enjoy characters and plots driven wholly, relentlessly and against all reason, by love at first sight, then yes. It really was that bad. :(

I"m going to have to agree to disagree with you there, TS - I loved that duology, and I still get it out and read it from time to time.

Project Manager

The 8th Dwarf wrote:
Jessica Price wrote:
Drejk wrote:
GeraintElberion wrote:

When I was young I found The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe uncomfortable reading.

Only browsing through as an adult did I realise it was the preaching.

So, in reverse, I guess.

It's ages since I read Narnia and I don't recall C. S. Lewis preaching that is mentioned so many time... And I was awakening atheist at the time of reading or soon thereafter. Maybe it was too subtle for me at the time.

It's not that bad until The Last Battle, at which point Susan is barred from heaven because she wears lipstick (female sexuality is the devil, so only pre-pubescent Lucy gets in), and Aslan cheerily tells the kids that it's all good because they died in a train accident and are now in heaven!

To me, most of the previous books felt like fantasy by an author who happened to be Christian and was drawing from his tradition to tell stories.

The Last Battle felt like he'd sacrificed storytelling in favor of evangelism, and had a particularly mean-spirited slant to it as well.

The question is if you had known this or had been told the end is disappointing would you have put the effort into reading the series?

With such a crappy end did it ruin it for you & would you discourage others from reading it?

Hmm. I'd still give people The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, because while it's a fairly unsubtle Christian allegory, I don't think that really matters -- it's a good story, and if you're six and you don't already know it's a Christian allegory, that's all that's going to matter to you. I don't think Caspian and Dawn Treader are that bad, either, so while I wouldn't recommend them as strongly as TLTWATW, I have no real issues with them.

The rest of the books, I probably wouldn't give a child, or let a child of mine read until they were old enough to understand that look, the author has a pretty heavy agenda here, and we can talk about the contents. While I think The Last Battle is the worst, the racism in The Horse and His Boy grossed me out enough even when I read it at seven (and I so wanted to like it because TALKING HORSE) that I wouldn't give it to anyone who wasn't also old enough to, say, read and process and talk about Huck Finn.

As far as whether I would have put the effort into reading them, each of them took me about two days to read, so it wasn't that much effort. I read a lot of stuff that was crappy as a kid, and knew it was crap, and didn't care because I was starving for new material. I don't believe that a bad ending invalidates the quality of what came before (see: Battlestar Galactica), and I still view reading The Horse and His Boy and The Last Battle as a valuable experience because they were blatant enough to make me recognize them as overly ideological fiction without any outside prompting. Most people I know who start recognizing racism in books get told about it from an outside source, and then start noticing it, and then think back to things they read and recognize it retroactively. Narnia was blatant enough that that epiphanic moment happened for me without any outside prompting, which I think it more powerful than having someone else point it out to you. The fact that I read it more or less in tandem with the Belgariad and its "THIS WHOLE RACE OF PEOPLE IS BAD" themes helped underline the whole thing, as well.

TL;DR: Still love TLTWATW, don't think the time spent reading the others was wasted, but wouldn't recommend them.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Jessica Price wrote:
The fact that I read it more or less in tandem with the Belgariad and its "THIS WHOLE RACE OF PEOPLE IS BAD" themes helped underline the whole thing, as well.

To be fair, pretty much the only representatives of the "Bad Races" we actually saw in the Belgaraid were either evil sorcerers, priests of an evil god, or the secret police. By and large our only view of the more "normal" members of those races came from people who were in a long-standing cold war with them.

Edding's sequel series, The Mallorean, gave a much more balance view of everyone.

Project Manager

Son of the Veterinarian wrote:
Jessica Price wrote:
The fact that I read it more or less in tandem with the Belgariad and its "THIS WHOLE RACE OF PEOPLE IS BAD" themes helped underline the whole thing, as well.

To be fair, pretty much the only representatives of the "Bad Races" we actually saw in the Belgaraid were either evil sorcerers, priests of an evil god, or the secret police. By and large our only view of the more "normal" members of those races came from people who were in a long-standing cold war with them.

Edding's sequel series, The Mallorean, gave a much more balance view of everyone.

That's true, but the heroes made enough comments about "Murgos" or even "Angaraks" generally ("Angaraks aren't too smart because they're used to letting Torak do their thinking for them"-type comments) that that point is pretty nuanced and not, I think, something most readers are going to pick up on. As the Belgariad was set up, you learn that there are Races Who Are Evil, and that our heroes have contempt for them and don't bother much with distinguishing between their leaders and the people themselves, AND the only one of Torak's disciples/priests that we're shown in an even slightly sympathetic light is the non-Angarak one, Zedar. The Mallorean gives a somewhat more balanced view of it, but it's not a beacon of understanding and tolerance by any means, especially given that the two main Angarak characters we get to know and that are given much character elaboration and sympathetic portrayal, Urgit and Zakath, are both only half-Angarak (Zakath has a Melcene mom, and Urgit is Kheldar's half-brother, who constantly talks about how much he hates Angaraks.


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To be fair, that's a pretty common (depressingly common?) fantasy trope.

Pathfinder isn't exactly free of it either, since the descriptions for all the monster races don't paint them in a very nice light in general.

I mean, Dwarves have "I hate Orcs and Goblins with the fiery intensity of 1000x suns" as a RACIAL TRAIT.

Project Manager

No argument there, although I do think it's a bit different when we're actually talking about different species rather than different races. I'm fine with having different nationalities that hate each other and have prejudiced views of one another -- utopias don't generally make for good storytelling -- but it starts to make me queasy when the narrative seems to support the view. E.g. I'm fine with having heroes have flaws (like the Belgariad heroes being pretty racist), but then the narrative should treat those like any other flaws, and show examples of how they hinder the hero.

I thought The Avengers actually did a nice job of that: Loki gets to make his dramatic, misogynistic speech, and then we find out that his attitude allowed Black Widow to manipulate him right where she wanted him.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Jessica Price wrote:
Son of the Veterinarian wrote:
Jessica Price wrote:
The fact that I read it more or less in tandem with the Belgariad and its "THIS WHOLE RACE OF PEOPLE IS BAD" themes helped underline the whole thing, as well.

To be fair, pretty much the only representatives of the "Bad Races" we actually saw in the Belgaraid were either evil sorcerers, priests of an evil god, or the secret police. By and large our only view of the more "normal" members of those races came from people who were in a long-standing cold war with them.

Edding's sequel series, The Mallorean, gave a much more balance view of everyone.

That's true, but the heroes made enough comments about "Murgos" or even "Angaraks" generally ("Angaraks aren't too smart because they're used to letting Torak do their thinking for them"-type comments) that that point is pretty nuanced and not, I think, something most readers are going to pick up on. As the Belgariad was set up, you learn that there are Races Who Are Evil, and that our heroes have contempt for them and don't bother much with distinguishing between their leaders and the people themselves, AND the only one of Torak's disciples/priests that we're shown in an even slightly sympathetic light is the non-Angarak one, Zedar. The Mallorean gives a somewhat more balanced view of it, but it's not a beacon of understanding and tolerance by any means, especially given that the two main Angarak characters we get to know and that are given much character elaboration and sympathetic portrayal, Urgit and Zakath, are both only half-Angarak (Zakath has a Melcene mom, and Urgit is Kheldar's half-brother, who constantly talks about how much he hates Angaraks.

I suppose I just don't think Edding's works are good examples of what you're talking about because....

1. It's kind of deliberate. Edding's entire goal in writing the Belgariad was to throw as many fantasy cliches into one book as he possibly could.

2. It's not like the "good" races are depicted any better. You've got the Viking race, the Lawful Stupid race, the Roman race, etc....

Project Manager

So? How is any of that a defense? (And the statement that none of the "good races" are "depicted any better" is pretty disingenuous: lawful stupid or noble-but-temperamental-warrior is still better than evil, stupid, Big-Bad worshipping villains.)

Writing a book that says that people of a particular nationality or race are all one way (or with so few exceptions as to make such exceptions prove the rule), and having the narrative say so uncritically is willingly being part of the problem. "Throwing in as many fantasy cliches...as [possible]" doesn't excuse engaging, uncritically and non-satirically, in cliches that support the idea that it's okay, or realistic, or a good idea, to judge people by their race and not treat them as individuals.

The fact that it was intentional doesn't excuse it. I'd say it actually makes it worse.


I actually thought Sanderson did a fairly good job of adapting Jordan's writing style and maintaining the 'feel' of the characters... well, except Mat. It was pretty obvious he struggled to write Mat.


Jessica Price wrote:

So? How is any of that a defense? (And the statement that none of the "good races" are "depicted any better" is pretty disingenuous: lawful stupid or noble-but-temperamental-warrior is still better than evil, stupid, Big-Bad worshipping villains.)

Writing a book that says that people of a particular nationality or race are all one way (or with so few exceptions as to make such exceptions prove the rule), and having the narrative say so uncritically is willingly being part of the problem. "Throwing in as many fantasy cliches...as [possible]" doesn't excuse engaging, uncritically and non-satirically, in cliches that support the idea that it's okay, or realistic, or a good idea, to judge people by their race and not treat them as individuals.

The fact that it was intentional doesn't excuse it. I'd say it actually makes it worse.

I kind of agree here. You can say that he was trying to throw in cliches, but I don't think I have ever seen more stereotyped ethnicities in fantasy.

Granted I think the bigger problem with Eddings is that he basically went ahead and told the same story through 4 total different series. And he has a lot of trouble actually writing realistic female characters.

The Exchange

John Woodford wrote:
LazarX wrote:
MMCJawa wrote:

Genre authors, ESPECIALLY Science fiction authors, seem to usually have or develop belief systems that are probably not in line with the mainstream.

Robert Heinlein would have fit right in with many of the Libertarian Ayn Rand crowd.
At some points in his life, yes, but he did run for the California State Assembly as a socialist.

Who hasn't run for the California State Assembly? Srsly.


SnowJade wrote:
Tequila Sunrise wrote:
Lord Snow wrote:
Tequila Sunrise wrote:
Lord Snow wrote:
Rynjin wrote:

I guess I have the series to thank for one thing...it broke me of that compulsion, once and for all.

For me it was the Wheel of Time that did it. By the time I started reading the Sword of Truth, it was easy enough for me to stop midway through book 4.

For me it was Stephen R. Donaldson's Mordant's Need two-parter. I read both all the way through, thinking "My cousin spent money gifting these to me, the ending must somehow redeem this drivel..." I was so very, very wrong.

After Mordant's Need, I started using the one chapter rule: If the first chapter doesn't grab me, the book goes into the library charity pile.

That's just about the most cutthroat attitude Iv'e ever heard of 0_0

Was the book that bad?

Unless you enjoy characters and plots driven wholly, relentlessly and against all reason, by love at first sight, then yes. It really was that bad. :(
I"m going to have to agree to disagree with you there, TS - I loved that duology, and I still get it out and read it from time to time.

Fair enough. The mirror magic thing that Donaldson had going on may have been a unique take on magic. Who knows, maybe it helped to inspire D&D's Plane of Mirrors? But anything potentially interesting was overwhelmed by my disgust with all the "This guy could be a total scumbag, but I just have a good feeling about him, and oh, he's so dreamy..." that drove the plot.


Doodlebug Anklebiter wrote:

Well, that's good, 'cuz there's no way I'm boycotting a Jeff Bridges fantasy flick.

The dude abides.

Was going through some boxes of DVDs and [facepalm] I forgot that The Dude has already been in a literary adaptation fantasy flick.


I remember reading Belgariad and Mallorean twenty or so years ago. It took a long time before i even realised the angarak races were humans. I pictured them as some humanoid evil creatures like orcs.

Silver Crusade

Rynjin wrote:
To be fair, that's a pretty common (depressingly common?) fantasy trope.

Depressingly and frustratingly common.


So...David Eddings. I remember as a wee lad reading The Belgariad and loving it. I can't recall if I ever went on to The Mallorean but I do remember reading a couple of the Sparhawk books and being really intrigued about the new "philosophical" things he was trying out.

I can't remember for the life of me what they were, though, and I remember thinking that they were pretty much the exact same as The Belgariad.

I tried to re-read Pawn of Prophecy as an adult, and I thought it [redacted redacted redacted], so, since I'm not ever going to read another book by David Eddings, what were those newfangled "philosophical" ideas he was trying out?

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