books

[meganbmoore]

To cleanse my brain and remind myself that Cassie Edwards is not representative of the entire genre, I shall read a couple of good romance novels next. Well, Loretta Chase and Elizabeth Thornton usually write good books, so I shall assume the recent book by each that I have is good. Uhm...seriously...most things would look good right now. After that, I shall return to epic fantasy because...uhm...it's all, novelwise, I seem to really be inthe mood for the last couple months. Due to yesterday's infusion, I have...a wide selection. The first 4 are continuations of series I'm already reading. The others, as far as I know, are the first books of their series. If I am wrong, I feel I should be told.

[Poll #1126501]

And, since I am in the mood, fantasy vids.

This one cracks me up because of the song choice(yet, I can't 100% say it's inappropriate)

And, because nothing says "love" like an abducted, injured woman...

Comments

[chomiji]

I can't imagine any good reason to read anything by Terry Brooks. He's been writing weak Tolkien imitations since I was in college (and we know how long ago that was ... ).

Tad Williams is "meh" to me, and I haven't heard of any of the rest of those books ... but I've heard some good things about Locke Lamora. >/p>

ETA: Just found a couple good reviews of In the Cities of Coin and Spice, so that's another one for Valente. (I don't know if the polling program will let me add another vote.)

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Terry Brooks was my intro to fantasy, so, even though I know I should, I can't quite drop him. Honestly, though, I was about ready to a few books back...and then he introduced the character of Grianne, and I got stuck reading him a bit longer. (Of course, this makes exactly 2 truly strong female characters he's ever written...)

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Eeargh, yeah, Brooks is a large part of what started putting me off commercial attempts at epic high fantasy. I remember reading the first book back when I was about fifteen or so -- an older schoolmate, one of the handful of fellow geek-misfits I could talk F&SF with, handed it to me with much effusive praise about how great it was. This was the same kid who'd gotten me hooked on Elfquest, so I had high hopes. But while I read and even sort of half-heartedly enjoyed the Brooks, in a time-killing mental junk food sort of way, even back then when I was a much less jaded reader it had me rolling my eyes and muttering "my god, this is just a transparent LOTR clone!". And I picked up the next two or three over the years, only to find they weren't really any better, but my tolerance for that sort of thing was getting lower and lower. And it didn't help any that as I drifted further away from the genre, most of the folks I knew who did read it and would try to rec stuff to me ADORED Brooks (and Eddings, who I found almost as unbearable when I tried slogging through his stuff.)

The real lightbulb moment for me was reading Le Guin's "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie"; she pinned down perfectly why I adore Tolkien but just can't stand his would-be successors. If it's meant to be a magical epic high fantasy, nothing will put me out of that mood faster than language and tone that wouldn't be out of place in a realistic modern novel.