ritu wrote:
>
> G. D. Akin wrote:
>
> > > My favourite epic fantasy till date is
> > > Stephen Donaldson's _ The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant_.
> >
> > -----------------------------------
> >
> > You must've seen something in there that I didn't. I easily
> > put that series
> > on the "not recommended for any reason" list.
>
> Let us see: excellent characters, a fascinating premise, a detailed,
> alluring world and, imo, one of the best denouenments in a fantasy
> series. Also, I enjoy Donaldson's prose :)
>
> There is very little about these series that I don't like [and no,
> Covenant doesn't irritate me], I even remember regretting the years
> these books were undiscovered by me. :)
> However, I rarely recommend the series to people [you'd notice I just
> mentioned it- didn't tell Gautam that he should read it]. I have
> discovered that very few people react to these books the way I do - most
> people I have met/talked to find these books rather bleak and depressing
> and most of them find TC to be an irritating, whining git. :)
I read the first one, and didn't see what my fantasy-reading peers saw
in it. (This was in high school.) I think my biggest problem with it
was that TC was irritating and whining. I didn't know the word "git" at
that time. :) I didn't want to be reading a book about someone I just
wanted to slap upside the head and say to, "Get OVER it, man!" or
something similar. I had enough such people to deal with just being in
high school, and slapping *them* upside the head wasn't really an
option, either.
I think that whatever else you enjoy might not be an indicator of
whether or not you'll enjoy TC. I could be wrong, though.
I also never really got into Eddings. I got his first book out of the
library, and it was OK. They didn't have the second book. I bought
it. I never got more than about 10 pages into it. It's still with me,
waiting to be read. I've had friends who were *totally* into Eddings,
and friends who didn't have patience with his stuff. All a matter of
taste, and taste can be tricky.
The fantasy I've been recommending is Elizabeth Moon's. The neat thing
about it, IMO, is that it goes into a little bit of detail about things
you have to think about when you're an army on the march (like digging
latrines every night) and what *really* happens when you have a
battle-wound. Not in horrific detail, but not pretending that stuff
doesn't matter. It was the most realistic fantasy I'd read when I read
it. (I starting to read it almost by accident, but that's another
story.)
Julia
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