Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
<sigh>
Piers Anthony is one of the best in the genre at taking an idea and running with it. Unfortunately, he's one of the worst at knowing when to stop, and tends to run things right into the ground, with Xanth a prime example.
I'll recommend the first one or two of the Xanth books, but not beyond. I do highly recommend early books like _Macroscope_ and the "Orn, Omnivore, 0X" trilogy.
Anthony uses the profits from his writing to buy undeveloped land near him in Florida and keep it undeveloped. Xanth books sell, so he writes Xanth books. I admire the motive, but can't read the work.
______
Dennis
|
You have that right, about running a genre into the ground. He definitely did this with the Xanth series, I think they're up to 24 or 25 by now. I read one of the more recent ones a few months back and was slightly disappointed that, as NatCh put it, he forgot to develop the characters very well. My all time favorite series by him has to be the Incarnations of Immortality.
On to what I've been reading lately... I just finished a Star Wars novel called
Darth Bane: The Path of Destruction. This was a pretty good read and moved along quite quickly. If you're a Star Wars fan, like I am, this helps shell out the Sith philosophy quite a bit and what drives those characters. It's dated well prior to the movies, around the Sith War time-frame. I enjoyed it quite a bit!
I've read a few other books since posting here last, quick summary...
Nephilim: The Fallen Ones by Walter Keith York - Started out nice, then got way out of whack. This book could have been so much more fun, but essentially devolved into interpretive bible codes propaganda.
I, Lucifer: Finally, the Other Side of the Story by Glen Duncan - Again, so much promise here; I mean, how can you go wrong with a title writing an autobiography of the devil from his perspective. I was hoping for a good romp and ended up with a boring, stale narative that kept puting me to sleep. I tried to read it, I really did, but only made it about 1/2 through... sigh...
Next by Michael Crichton - I enjoyed this book as it moved along at a nice pace. It revolves around bioengineering and such, I won't go into too many details. One thing that threw me off was it started with a whole slew of disconnected stories that didn't pull together until the last 1/4 of the book and ended wrapping up way too quickly; kinda leaves you hanging, if you ask me. I'm more of a hard-core far future SciFi nut, so I ended up liking his Prey book much better (can't go wrong with nanos!).
Blind Shrike by Richard Kadrey - Sweet! I really enjoyed this book, what a wild ride! This had pretty much non-stop action and was just plain fun. I'll have to keep an eye out for more books by this author, if this book is any indication. I think it only took a few days to finish, as I couldn't put it down.
:
I started to read a few others, but they were just too painful to make it past the first few chapters. grrr... good thing there are so many other choices to go with!
I am currently reading
AEthereal by Christopher Wilcox Sr., it's off to a good start. We'll go from there!
