Re: The wheel of time and other fantasy books
Wow Oriol 20 books in Spanish?
In the English release, the wheel of time is 14 books, plus one prequal novella.
My lady absolutely adores the series, has read it three times and is currently doing one of a couple of reread blogs on the internet, I even bought her an Ais Sidai great serpent ring and Aja pendent as aniversary presents, (she is so green aja it's not funny), while I have the Ashaman golden dragon cufflinks myself .
Though I am not quite as WoT obsessed as Mrs. Dark I do enjoy the series, albeit I think (as I said in the Terry goodkind thread), that things slowed down severely in books 6-10, lord of Chaos to Crossroads of twilight, mostly due to lots of secondary characters plots being followed, and the plot lines for some primary characters going on too much.
There are some things about the series I was less keen on, EG the male and female specific magic, but I was willing to go with for a good story, though I really did not like the way that literally nobody! including married couples can have a straight conversation, and the generalised massive amount of bickering, mistrust, and grown people behaving rather childishly or in a down right arrogant manner.
I also found the hole business of rand having three wives a little odd, or rather my lady and I are both convinced Min actually acted far more as Rand's wife, supporting him emotionally, being there for him most of the time, whilst Aviendha was more like his sisterly rival with bennifits, and elayn sort of his random bit on the side (really, though she was a pleasant character, the connection between her and rand seemed weakest), the less said about Fiael and Perrin the better (poor perrin, getting stuck with her), and mat's relationships are, mmmm, interesting!
on the plus side Lan and Ninaeve are fantastic.
Then again if we go through my thoughts, much less my thoughts and my lady's thoughts on even just the major characters we'll be here for a very long time.
suffice it to say, good series, had a few things in I didn't like as much, a bit of a mid series slump, and a few assumptions I found a bit werid, but all in all well worth the time, indeed as I've only ever read books 11-14 the once, I probably will reread them at some point.
getting on to other fantasy series, I'm a big fan of Tad Williams and George R R Martin. this is one place where my lady and I differ quite a lot, since while she isn't a shrinking violet, she doesn't like things going a bit too grim, and Martin definitely crosses the lines, and indeed Martin takes grim to a bit of an art form.
Btw, I'm currently watching through the tv series after reading the books.
Both my lady and I are huge fans of Robin Hobb, and have read the entire elderlings saga, all five series, which I can highly recommend, though those are a very different thing, and we also love patric Rothfus.
Jo abacromby is someone I haven't read yet, though I've got his books on my victor stream at the moment.
David Eddings is a writer I grew up with, and who I was quite surprised how much fun I still found when I reread some of his a couple of years ago, albeit his books are very much stylised with good good guys, bad bad guys, a world where smighting enemies is fun, and all women are manipulative histrionic screamers.
indeed, it is sort of amusing that 14 year old me had a bit of a crush on ce/nedra in the belgariad (though not in the sequel series where she lost all her character development and became annoying), and I've ended up married to a tiny lady who actually does! look like a driad physically, but is about as far from a spoiled princess in character as you could get, ---- something which, when I reread david Eddings I found quite the relief.
David gemmell is someone who I enjoy for his poetry, since few writers I know can make epic war have that melancholy twist, or do the tragically twisted killer the way he can, albeit that since pretty much all of his books have the same ending, small number of good guys besieged by large enimy army, I can only take gemmell in small doses.
One author who gets sadly forgotten is pammela bell, who is sort of the robin hobb before robbin hobb, indeed I really need to reread and review hers properly, think heavily character driven fantasy in a very unique world with sorcerers who perform magic by adictive drugs.
ursula Leguin's earthsea is always worth a visit, though the series is quite dour and not exactly up beat, plus I much prefer the first three books when she was more focused on the story and less on overt feminist exegesis and undermining her earlier characters.
Stephen Donaldson's Thomas covenant series is good, difficult, poetic and very long winded, also prone to deus ex plot twists, indeed while I read the first two chronicles, I don't really feel a need to go on to the third, given how extreme his writing was going, and how once again, he seemed to have reached a more definite conclusion.
I did recently try to get in to raymond feist, but was rather disapppointed by the initial rift war trilogy, where potentially good ideas and some poetic epic fantasy was spoiled by slightly too standard characters, and a porcity of description, albeit according to my lady he considerably improves later.
Terry Brooks is someone I just do not like, since reading his books is more like reading yoru bog standard D&D source books, complete with character classes from ranger, to wizard to lots of damsels in distress.
then again, when Brooks and Feist started I don't know if fantasy got the same editorial attention as other literary types.
so, in summary, WoT good, some other stuff bad, but my personal favourites are probably Tad Williams, patric Rothfus, George R R Martin, Robbin Hobb and Pamela Bell, roughly in that order, though again, there is a lot more stuff out there to try, and I'm discovering new books all the time.
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