Indeed. Not to mention Silverthorn. I guess fantasy meant a different thing back when those were written. Though there are better parts in the second part of Magician, and A Darkness at Sethanon marks quite a shift.

But I'm still mainly thinking of Betrayal at Krondor when I see Feist. A rare case of game better than the books, I'd say.

Sorry to butt in without talking about books, but just wanted to say that I hope you (or someone else) creates and maintains a 2021 version of this thread. Would love to join in 2021!

I imagine that will inevitably happen by the OP, who has been doing it for a few years now. I'd wait a while for them to do it.
If they don't for whatever reason, then it is most likely someone else who participates here will do so.

Totally ... variety and spacing out similar elements is everything I reckon. Many years ago, I burnt out on Fantasy, during a period where I was laid up for several months, and that taught me to read more wisely, so I could get the best out of every read.

I don't understand it either, but getting started is no doubt the hard bit. My two adult youngest suffer from that I think ... but then they have so many other distractions these days that are easier to get into ... games for my youngest lad and movies/TV series for my daughter. My youngest lad has been stuck on the second Witcher book for about a year now. My oldest lad reads a lot of non-fiction, far more than me.

Mmmm sorry, can't agree with you there ... must be a perception thing or something.

My all time favorite author is Terry Pratchett, his mind is second to none ... a very smart and perceptive man. He can take a while to appreciate, but once you get it and that style of English humor, it is brilliant. I never used to be into what I initially saw as a parody of fantasy by Terry Pratchett. I almost gave up on him after reading the first Disc World novel, but I kept going, because I wanted to read Mort, which was about 4th in the series. By about the third book I was hooked and starting to appreciate the depth of where the author was coming from. Many of his later books absolutely blew me away ... a very clever and deep man, who knew humanity well. Not surprising that he was King while J.K. Rowling was Queen.

Dan Brown is probably my second favorite author, but I have many favorites. He likewise has an amazing mind.

And I have read The Magician by Raymond E. Feist twice ... second time was the extended version, and I loved it each time. In fact, Raymond along with Janny Wurts has written (co-authored) my all time favorite story, their Empire Trilogy ... a very complex and multi-layered marvel, with a nod to many genres.

Personally I only consider something juvenile if I find the author is writing down to you, like you are a simple child, when they shouldn't be ... so it's insulting ... treats you like an imbecile really.

Hell, the most important series for me that I still love, which had a big impact on me, and still effects me emotionally to this day, is the Narnia series by C.S. Lewis. Written for children I know, and full of allegory which upsets some ... I'm not religious either. However I still feel the glorious magic and wonder over five decades later ... re-read it many times, and to each of my three kids as they were starting out with their more adultish type reading. I was 7 or 8 when I read The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe with my dad ... finished the second half on my own.

Narnia stories, while written for children, never felt like they were written down to a simpleton, and they always felt like the author was cognizant that adults would also be reading them. Still, it is often about perception and I know many find them childish ... sad really. I've never lost touch with my inner child, and feel sorry for those who have.

To be perfectly honest, I don't like a lot of juvenile books written for children. But I do love ones that acknowledge how bright children can be. David Walliams for instance writes brilliantly. Dr. Seuss is another. Clearly I also like the humor side of things. A good children's book to me, is still a good adult book ... it just misses concepts that might be difficult for children to understand or relate to. A good adult book doesn't have to contain all the things that many do (i.e. sex and violence) ... and I say that as someone who loves the writings of Val McDermid, J. Robert Kennedy, C.J. Box and others, which can be very dark psychological thrillers.

I read to learn and or be entertained. I like to have my concepts or ideas challenged, but don't like it when things get too preachy. Terry Goodkind is a brilliant writer, but he can get too preachy sometimes. Same for Piers Anthony, though in a different way. Stories that make me think are great, but so are ones that are just nice easy reads. I love complexity too, to a point ... I am a complex simple man after all ... or is that a simple complex man ... I can never quite tell or remember. ;)

P.S. It is my personal view, that many over-analyze stories. They make it too clinical. Reading should be a joy I reckon, a journey to elsewhere, an escape when needed ... or not ... nourishing and maybe enlightening. Sometimes it is important to suspend disbelief to get to what really matters.

I recommend Sapkowski's "Saga of Reinevan". Exciting and fun. Just finished reading the last book in this series.

Because it was not written by Feist, I guess, but by Neal Hallford.


Quoth Timboli:
"Mmmm sorry, can't agree with you there ... must be a perception thing or something.

My all time favorite author is Terry Pratchett, his mind is second to none ... a very smart and perceptive man. He can take a while to appreciate, but once you get it and that style of English humor, it is brilliant. I never used to be into what I initially saw as a parody of fantasy by Terry Pratchett. I almost gave up on him after reading the first Disc World novel, but I kept going, because I wanted to read Mort, which was about 4th in the series. By about the third book I was hooked and starting to appreciate the depth of where the author was coming from. Many of his later books absolutely blew me away ... a very clever and deep man, who knew humanity well. Not surprising that he was King while J.K. Rowling was Queen."

For some reason I mixed up Terry Pratchett with Terry Brooks. I like what I've read of Pratchett and look forward to reading more of his. He was also a fan of Thief: The Dark Project and used to hang out in the Usenet group about the game discussing fanmade missions.


" And I have read The Magician by Raymond E. Feist twice ... second time was the extended version, and I loved it each time. In fact, Raymond along with Janny Wurts has written (co-authored) my all time favorite story, their Empire Trilogy ... a very complex and multi-layered marvel, with a nod to many genres.

Personally I only consider something juvenile if I find the author is writing down to you, like you are a simple child, when they shouldn't be ... so it's insulting ... treats you like an imbecile really."

Well, I loved Magician first time I read it, but a few decades later, after having read more complex stuff like ASOIAF, Malazan and Prince of Nothing, it felt very simple and juvenile in comparison, and I actually like the writing in the game by Neal Hallford better.
Haven't read the Empire Trilogy, but may get around to it eventually.

" Hell, the most important series for me that I still love, which had a big impact on me, and still effects me emotionally to this day, is the Narnia series by C.S. Lewis. Written for children I know, and full of allegory which upsets some ... I'm not religious either. However I still feel the glorious magic and wonder over five decades later ... re-read it many times, and to each of my three kids as they were starting out with their more adultish type reading. I was 7 or 8 when I read The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe with my dad ... finished the second half on my own.

Narnia stories, while written for children, never felt like they were written down to a simpleton, and they always felt like the author was cognizant that adults would also be reading them. Still, it is often about perception and I know many find them childish ... sad really. I've never lost touch with my inner child, and feel sorry for those who have."

That's a series I really wished I had not missed when I was a child. I've found that CS Lewis is not very subtle, so I can't bring myself to read Narnia now.



"P.S. It is my personal view, that many over-analyze stories. They make it too clinical. Reading should be a joy I reckon, a journey to elsewhere, an escape when needed ... or not ... nourishing and maybe enlightening. Sometimes it is important to suspend disbelief to get to what really matters."

I agree with that. But sometimes the writer just fails. I could never get into Malazan, for example. It felt so phony and artificial that I only occasionally was immersed into it. Would have more suitable for a RPG campaign, like Forgotten Realms, than as Literature, IMO.

Well, other games, or movies, based on books don't typically have the writer of the books as the lead writer either, but that generally makes them worse. Usually much worse.

Oathbringer

The handwriting on the illustrations in the mass market paperback edition is still hard to read, and page margins also sometimes make it hard to see the beginning or end of lines. And, while Shallan's sections still shine, the book's first part includes more of what I call human filth and is rather dull despite providing a crucial perspective. The action's slow, there's less depth and wisdom, and that's not even in order to remind readers of what happened before. Even those quotes at the start of chapters don't really say anything.
Moving forward, the interludes again offer brief but important views of other characters, locations and events. More importantly, parts two and three are absolutely brilliant. Thrilling action, revelations, character development, emotion, reasons to care and be involved, depth, wisdom, understanding, again tackling innumerable aspects of life and society. Most of all, however, it shows true understanding of people, and of the mind. How and why people crack, struggle to cope, fail and break, what may utterly destroy or, sometimes, at least partially, save them. The Bridge Four sections are extraordinary from this point of view, but there's much of it in others as well, Shallan's in particular, even more so when another character appears.
Part four returns to a much slower pace, worldbuilding and inner struggles, but also includes important details and revelations. That hesitant attempt at a love triangle doesn't really work, but little else matters when, after intermissions that are anything but, part five hits with the full force of storms and nightmares coming to life. It's a cinematic whirlwind of action culminating with that monster of a chapter 120, when the Thrill threatens to overwhelm even the reader. Maybe it's a bit too much, a bit forced, maybe falling apart at the seams, but maybe, and at least in part quite certainly, I just couldn't keep up and grasp it all, and either way I didn't care. And then, far from being anticlimactic, winding down, tying up loose ends and spelling out remaining questions and the path forward showed confidence and a solid plan.

Rating: 5/5

And *phew* At least managed 12 books this year too, as sad as that is to have as a goal, but the last time I read more was in 2006, leftovers from... a different life...
Anyway, didn't think I'd read Oathbringer this year too, but eventually set my mind on it and there it is, even if I think that means giving up on the the usual goal of 5 games (even with a "cheat" while counting) finished, and all of NWN:Diamond. And yeah, reading this series was probably the best thing about this year for me.
Putting it all together though, probably the highest page/word count in a year in a long time. Goodreads definitely says so, by a large margin.

Hi! Is this one a separate series form that of Geralt of Rivia? If different, are they linked somehow?

Ha ha ha, well there are a few Terry authors out there.

As for Terry Brooks, he can be a bit repetitive and even shallow at times. I also get the feeling he is deliberately writing to a word count and never lets himself get too carried away. That said, he writes a cracker of a book or sub-series now and then. I like many of his ideas, but he doesn't always flesh them out enough, or just expects you to accept what seem like illogical things sometimes, making it harder to suspend disbelief. However, I read him early and fell under his spell of magic with the first few Shannara books, and that has carried me through.

Well as they say each to their own. Just like music, you can't really be that objective over what one person likes and another doesn't. There are undoubtedly so many factors involved ... where you are coming from, how you approach things, what tickles you or impresses you most, etc, etc. Nature and Nurture playing various roles in our development.

Quite a few years separate my two readings of The Magician, and the second reading was the version with an extra thousand words that had originally been edited out.

Yes, I suspect there is some truth to when you read them. Many or most adults seem to struggle with the series when reading for the first time. Once again I suspect it is the path you approach them by.

Sometimes it can be one element alone that puts you off an author. I love Edgar Rice Burroughs stories, but he overdoes it big time with coincidence, and I fully appreciate how that could turn many readers off ... it annoys me at times. I consider him a great writer, but not really in the classic literary sense.

Entirely different. Just the first translated in English so far.

Yes, that is very true, I've found.
Some books I read as a kid were too advanced for me, and some books I never read as a kid are too juvenile for me now.
I really wish that as a kid I had access to the Narnia books, and Andre Norton's and Heinlein's "juveniles" for example, and that I read the Drizzt books when they came out (I found the first one terrible when I read it quite recently). Yeah, I dislike "oh, how convenient", tacked on romances and preaching.
I only read one Burroughs story when I was a kid, a Tarzan book with a lion on the cover, but found it rather boring, much preferring the Russ Manning comics and the Johnny Weissmuller movies.

Attack Surface by Cory Doctorow

Doctorow reminds me of the activists from the 60s (yes I am that old and typing here on a game forum). But the themes in this book are thoroughly modern, from the protagonist (an American version of Lisbeth Salander but without the Aspberger's) to the the themes of privacy, free will, the compromises we make in order to survive, and to the intricacies of network warfare. Yeah he throws words around a little loosely and anyone who works in IT can see fractalization of the holodeck image he paints, but it is sooo good. Sometimes dense in a William Gibson kind of way, sometimes thrilling in a Lames Bond kind of chase,but never boring in James Fenimore Cooper way.

Thank you! Good to hear about Sapkowski.