Fantasy authors you (and I) should NEVER read

[BearMountainBooks]

Quote:
and some 4 books by somebody about a wizard and a lesser wizard and an otter and somebody else, fighting some great evil. I remember the lesser wizard's name was something like Faringay and the wizard was something Grey something. And that's all there was..
end quote

An otter????

I need to read this!!! An otter???? How cool is that???

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by wayrad

How come? I'm not criticizing, just wondering if it could be because of all the similar efforts that have come since. Sort of like the first time I listened to Robert Johnson - I thought "this sounds really bland and familiar" and then realized why.

Well, it has been about three decades since I read a collaboration between those two writers.

What I seem to remember, at that time, was that I didn't find the humor particularly funny. However, my sense of humor - on this Board, anyway - goes toward the wild side, as I believe I've now reached an age whereby I can now discern sterile aridity of thought and staid, stodgy intellectualism -- and so many people who are wedded to the Intellectual Banking Theory of Knowledge are soooo boring. Give me "carpe diem" and "The Dead Poet's Society" any day. Throw Foucault to his mad dogs! Bring on the zombies! is my battle cry. Tear down those precious Ivory Towers!

Now, back to "Reality": I really think I would enjoy the novels now, so I plan to go back and reread them. I think I very well might enjoy them.


Don

[Slite]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

Quote:
and some 4 books by somebody about a wizard and a lesser wizard and an otter and somebody else, fighting some great evil. I remember the lesser wizard's name was something like Faringay and the wizard was something Grey something. And that's all there was..
end quote

An otter????

I need to read this!!! An otter???? How cool is that???

Coolest otter evar! Mudge in the Spellsingercycle by A.D. Foster

[wayrad]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

Well, it has been about three decades since I read a collaboration between those two writers.

What I seem to remember, at that time, was that I didn't find the humor particularly funny.

A little of Pete the Cop does go a long way. I always liked the Faerie Queen one the best. Harold is an unsympathetic character in the original Norse myth story and watching him get his comeuppance isn't all that amusing, plus there's no Chalmers to speak of.

What I really enjoy is the critiques of the source literature.

[AdamGott]

Originally Posted by bbusybookworm

I think part of the problem (Which is unfortunately very Common) was that success of the Series itself led to him adding in more and more, without anyone really wanting to tell him enough is enough.

As long as people Like us kept on buying, there was no real incentive to shorten up and finish.

I've read the series from Book one to ten at least half a dozen tmes, and you can really see how he seemed to have lost focus on the ending sometime around book 4 or 5. I actually stopped reading around Book ten, deciding to only go back when the last book in the series comes out.

I guess people like us didn't all keep buying though! I quit after the third or fourth book because they were just too long. I loved the story but there was just way too much 'fluff' in there...

[BenG]

Originally Posted by Slite

Coolest otter evar! Mudge in the Spellsingercycle by A.D. Foster

Actually I think she talking about the Circle of Light series by Niel Hancock. It had talking animals. The first book was Greyfax Grimwald; the second was Faragon Fairingay. It was one of the first fantasies I read after reading Tolkien. Or I should say, tried to read. I couldn't make it past the first quarter of the book.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niel_Hancock

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by Slite

Coolest otter evar! Mudge in the Spellsingercycle by A.D. Foster

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by BenG

Actually I think she talking about the Circle of Light series by Niel Hancock. It had talking animals. The first book was Greyfax Grimwald; the second was Faragon Fairingay. It was one of the first fantasies I read after reading Tolkien. Or I should say, tried to read. I couldn't make it past the first quarter of the book.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niel_Hancock

Well now I am going to have to look them both up!!!!

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by Slite

Coolest otter evar!

Perilously close to being a contradiction in terms (give or take an h)!

[BenG]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

Well now I am going to have to look them both up!!!!

Have you read Ring of Bright Water? It's non-fiction but it has otters. It was a movie too.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by BenG

Have you read Ring of Bright Water? It's non-fiction but it has otters. It was a movie too.

Can't say that I have. I've SEEN an otter in the wild and got a huge kick out of watching it interact with the seals it was trying to adopt. Or perhaps more accurately, it appeared to want to be adopted by the seals.

[wayrad]

Piers Anthony isn't the only one who runs a series into the ground. I eventually gave up on Stasheff's Warlock books, Aprin's Myth series, and Dickson's Dragon books. The first book was delightful in all three cases, and then they started going downhill. Seems like the exploration of a new fantasy world and, in some cases, the hero's exploration of his magical talents, will carry one book, but after that there was a tendency for all three authors to get bogged down in political/business maneuvering, Life Lessons, and "how to win friends and influence people" type lecturing.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by wayrad

Piers Anthony isn't the only one who runs a series into the ground. I eventually gave up on Stasheff's Warlock books, Aprin's Myth series, and Dickson's Dragon books. The first book was delightful in all three cases, and then they started going downhill. Seems like the exploration of a new fantasy world and, in some cases, the hero's exploration of his magical talents, will carry one book, but after that there was a tendency for all three authors to get bogged down in political/business maneuvering, Life Lessons, and "how to win friends and influence people" type lecturing.

I liked the first Stasheff book immensely, thought the second was much less effective, and never bothered with the rest. I never got into Asprin's Myth series at all, and vastly preferred other of Dickson's works to the Dragon books.

Authors keep writing them because editors ask for them, and it pays the bills. Editors ask for them because they continue to sell. I get tired of a lot of these series rather quickly, but I suspect I'm atypical.

I do wonder how many series like this weren't intended to be series, and suffer because the author never asked "If this book does well, the editor will want more. Am I comfortable writing a series in this setting? Do I have more to say beyond what I'm putting into the first book?"

And some books take the author by surprise. Roger Zelazny, for example, never expected the Amber books to be his magnum opus, and the second series shows signs of Roger doing it because the editor wanted more Amber books rather than because he wanted to write them.
______
Dennis

[wayrad]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I do wonder how many series like this weren't intended to be series, and suffer because the author never asked "If this book does well, the editor will want more. Am I comfortable writing a series in this setting? Do I have more to say beyond what I'm putting into the first book?"

I read someplace that Asprin always planned a series (he said he'd originally intended Another Fine Myth to be the title of the second book, not the first), but it was many years before the first sequel appeared, and it seemed tired and pedestrian when it did. Not sure about Stasheff - I seem to remember he wrote King Kobold not that long after Wizard in Spite of Himself, but it sank into thoroughly deserved obscurity in its first incarnation and it was years before the series was revived. I suspect you're right about the Dickson, though; The Dragon and the George would have been a perfectly good standalone, and again it was years before the inferior sequels appeared.

P.S. All this reminds me, one sequel I really wish would appear is the lost Venture of Karres manuscript. I mean, Schmitz managed to finish Witches of Karres to very near the standard of the original novella, so there's hope that his imagination wouldn't have flagged for the sequel. (Before anybody mentions the Flint/Lackey travesty, I'm trying to expunge it from my memory.)

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by wayrad

I read someplace that Asprin always planned a series (he said he'd originally intended Another Fine Myth to be the title of the second book, not the first), but it was many years before the first sequel appeared, and it seemed tired and pedestrian when it did. Not sure about Stasheff - I seem to remember he wrote King Kobold not that long after Wizard in Spite of Himself, but it sank into thoroughly deserved obscurity in its first incarnation and it was years before the series was revived. I suspect you're right about the Dickson, though; The Dragon and the George would have been a perfectly good standalone, and again it was years before the inferior sequels appeared.

The Dragon and the George is one of those books whose central conceit is good for a novel, but doesn't really stretch beyond it.

Another like that for me is Mary Gentile's _Grunts_.

It's something like Tolkien's universe, and everyone including them knows the forces of darkness will get greased, save that a dragon's hoard is unearthed by the bad guys and has things like AK-47s and Apache attack choppers. The balance of power is dramatically altered.

You get lines like an Orc complaining to a superior that Orc marines don't leave their own dead behind on the battle field - it wastes food.

It isn't a series, but the book it became is probably about twice as long as the idea merits, since it's essentially an extended joke.
______
Dennis