Re: The wheel of time and other fantasy books
@khomus, I'm afraid the only name in WoT I would personally accept as a direct "well you really could've tried harder", is Shytan for the dark one, since that is the only case where you have a literal paralell of someone who fulfills the exact same roll as the mythological namesake, and even in that case, mostly the dark one is referd to as, ---- well the dark one .
There are some vague others, EG the names of the forsaken sort of paralelling some evil entities, but, the beings in question, and the paralells are far more abstruse, EG Graendal obviously sounds a bit like Grendel, the monster from Beowulf, though the characters couldn't be more different.
Other relationships are far less clear, I already mentioned lord Gabril (who is not the least angellic), then there is indeed a young prince called Garwin, and though he goes on a rather doomed quest and has a highly developed sense of honour, there are no green knights or the like.
the only names I strongly disliked myself, were rand's last name of Al.Thor, ---- because clearly the audience were obviously too dum to work out how awesome he was so needed reminding of the norse god of thunder :d.
The name of the forsaken Demandred, because obviously someone with a name which literally sounds like Demon dread is clearly an ambiguous and complex character and not a bad guy at all .
And for a rather similar reason the name mordeth, though in that case the way Mat was so quick to trust an incredibly creepy guy with creepy written all over him in huge creepy letters, whose name is literally more! death! was actually sort of funny .
@Wing of eternity: there are several stories which act as flashbacks, such as Patric Rothfus kinkiller, which is basically a long interview with the main character about his life story, and Coraline, which is the story of a man remembering his childhood. However, the only story I've seen which is almost literally written backwards is use of weapons by Ian M Banks, which I do confess I never quite got into.
It begins at chapter 1, then follows chapter xxviii, then chapter 2, then chapter xxvii, until at the end you have chapter 28, and chapter I.
it sort of tells two stories in paralell, one backwards, one forwards, with you needing to connect the dots.
As with a lot of Ian M Banks though, it's extremely difficult, indeed probably the most difficult of his I've ever read, and one I need to try again, as well as being grim as hell, occasionally pointless, and strangely beautiful, with amazing sf concepts and philosophical discussions right beside strange aliens, space battles and a really difficult need to piece together what the hell is going on.
banks is an author I actually can't decide whether I like or not, since some of his stuff, Look to windward, inversions, player of games I've really enjoyed, whilst Consider phlebas and against a dark background were so grim and full of pointless random unresolvedness I wanted to break something .
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