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Re: suggestions, please...

I, also, welcome Kogan to the mayhem.  :-)  

Quoth Nikki:
> So anyway: David Eddings' 15-book epic, starting with The Belgariad, was 
> very good. 

15??  FIFTEEN????  How on Earth did he get 15 books out of that?  I read
the first three... or was it six... I can't remember.  wait, I think
I do remember.  I remember thinking the second three had essentially
the same plot as the first three.  But I read them back in High School,
so it's a little fuzzy.  I remember liking Polgara and her father (father,
right?), the wizards, and there was a thief who could do sign language
I quite liked, but that's all I remember of the books I read.

> Robert Jordan's series, I'm afraid, made me run screaming. 

I, too, came to despise that series.  I thought it started out as another
Tolkien rip-off, a la Sword of Shannara (which was like Lord of the Rings with
the names changed, although Elfstones was brilliant, and then it kinda bogged
down again.), but then he found his own story for a couple of books, and then
he seemed to figure out that he could keep selling the books if he could
stretch the story out, and it just got interminable.  I haven't read the most
recent one, but I tried the one before that, and just found it excruciating.
He spent 600 pages essentially just checking in with each of the major
characters.  Nothing much happened, as I recall.  It just feels out of control
to me, and I've stopped caring.  Also, those Seanchen freak me the hell out.

> I never read the Thomas Covenant stuff

I thought it was brilliant.  One of the best anti-heroes ever, and a very
interesting twist on the "person falls into a magical world" kind of story.
The second trilogy lacked some of the power of the first, but was still 
pretty good.

Now, his Gap seires was brilliantly written, but one of the most unpleasant
things I have ever read.  Five long novels about people being as horrible to
each other as one could imagine (or more).  Unlike the covenant books, there is
no vibrancy, no joy, no... I can't think of the word, but perhaps verdancy is
what I mean.  A forest at dawn.  Grass between your toes.  Nothing like that.
Just space, and metal, and madness, and pain, and pain, and pain.  The Wagner
angle is very interesting, and he's come up with a fascinating concept for an
alien biology, but man, what a cold story.

> And if anyone's into graphic novels, well, all I have to say is "Elfquest." 

Oh, man, I'm going to date myself, here, but I remember how a friend up the
street when I was a kid used to get the original black and white comic books of
Elfquest as they came out.  I also remember how they were always delayed,
leaving us in suspense for much longer than was humanly endurable.  :-)
I'm not sure I ever followed it all the way through to the end, though.
And I know there have been umpteen billion spin-offs, sequels, novels
and whatnot since then.  Haven't read any of those, either.

-- 
Don Smith                    Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment
dasmith at rotse2_physics.lsa.umich.edu        http://xte.mit.edu/~dasmith/

"Go to red alert!"  "Are you *absolutely* sure, sir?  
It does mean changing the bulb."			    - Red Dwarf

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