Books

[Grefter]

Fair enough.  Absence of a character doesn't really mean the rest of the writing in the book is bad though (regardless of the quality of book 8, the total lack of Matt is the kind of thing I think embodies what is wrong with it.  Nothing happens.  So little happens one of the three mains isn't even in the damned thing).

[Dark Holy Elf]

Eh, that alone isn't the problem. Book 5 completely lacked Perrin and it was great. Book 9 has nearly no Egwene (who is certainly also a main) and again, awesome.

If Book 8 was written the way Book 9 was it would be great even without Mat (and I'd say that if Mat were my favourite character); the problem with the book is not what is not there, but what is there. Little happens AND there are some writing issues.

[Grefter]

I probably should clear that up a bit I guess. The fact that Book 8 has no Mat when it really should have (he just was in a town invaded by Seancean! Holy Cliffhanger Batman!) is the problem.  The book that skips Perrin are him having a fairly stable home life, which is part of what makes the Faile relationship credible (they have been together long enough that they aren't just lusting after each other and whatnot).  It is like if they just kind of skipped a book when Two Rivers is flooded with Trollocs (Oh btw nothing much happened here, they didn't die but also didn't have any losses for a while).  When Mat pops back up it is almost as if it is right after the event took place while there is a whole story worth of things that have happened.  He got out of an incredibly dangerous situation and it is just entirely glossed over.  Perrin had some tea and crumpets and it was glossed over.

And then while that was happening, everyone else sat on their hands and we got to read about some intense hand sitting.

Edit - And yeah I agree with you, book 9 is just head and shoulders above book 8.  It really isn't a big deal who is or isn't in it.  I think I am sucking at saying that I take issue with book 8 because nothing happened in it and yet things were actually happening in that time frame or worse, SHOULD have been being written about.  My favourite soft target here of Mazrim Taim is eh probably not really ripe to have happen, but if Book 8 had handled other scenarios better there would have been more time to resolve Captain Generic Dull Evil Traitor Man, whiiiiich would lead to more Logain plot earlier and with better pacing which I wanted so much for so very very long because those plot threads were layed out so freaking early.

[Dark Holy Elf]

The Toveine chapter does a surprising amount to help ripen the Taim plot (although thinking on it the book 9 one did more than book 8. Expected), though at this point I agree with you in that it should have advanced more by now. I think it may have been delayed partly because Jordan was screwing with the Taimandred theorists, which amuses me but isn't really a good excuse. <_<

Generally agree with the rest of the points made in your post, there, yeah.

[metroid composite]

Boy's School (Sarah Lynn Morgan)

As you might expect, this is a story about lesbians.  Err...okay, maybe this fact is more obvious if you see the title in its original font (it's written in pink and frilly letters).  Or if you've read anything by the author before (I've had people IRL whom I barely know, on mentioning my interest in internet fiction, start telling me about the lesbians who travel through time using taxis--not exactly one of the author's best works, just something you can summarize in seven words).

Aaaaaaaaaanyway, SLM is an excellent author; I've noticed this before--in fact she may well be my overall favourite internet author.  I've also noticed that, while I enjoy fantasy/sci-fi, if an author is above a certain skill level then I prefer for them to avoid such settings.  Fantasy/sci-fi have this tendency to become an easy-solution crutch.  (Also, for some reason sci-fi/fantasy plots seem to require a certain minimum number of fight scenes, whether or not these scenes enhance the plot).

So...here we have SLM writing a story with a real-world setting, which is pretty much a home run with me (as it has been in the past when she wrote short-stories set in the real world).  To put things into perspective, on another forum I commented that this book may well end up in my top 5 most-liked books of all time. 

Though I do wonder how much of this is bias on my part (I happen to adore the author) and how much holds up objectively.  On character development...it's unusual--the entire plot takes place over a two-week period and most of the character development happens through backstory (kinda FF7-style I guess), but it's certainly there.  The main character is singleminded to a fault.  I'd complain that this was just an excuse to keep the plot going, except it seems to go both ways (mid-book the character falls violently ill over concerns of hurting a friend, stalling the plot).  I'd complain that an introverted main character leads to not enough dialog...except the headmaster interrogation and the phone call were both downright long and intense.  I suppose these complaints are more complaints that there are some longish descriptive passages--i.e., "damnit Tolkien, shut up about Middle Earth already"-syndrome.  Except I never found the story to be slow moving...or anything other than engrossing, perhaps because I have more interest in dress-shopping than I do in orcs, or maybe the pacing is just done better.

So...I'm having trouble with objectively criticizing this book, and I'm certainly not about to fault it on a subjective scale given how addicting I found it.

[Taishyr]

Hot, Flat, and Crowded:

Do me and the rest of humanity a favor and read this.

Not enough of a recommendation?

It's effectively an approach to the whole carbon dioxide issue from an economic perspective, and frankly it's a better read than 95% or so of novels out there. Thomas Friedman's got talent for writing. It's quite blunt, it's quite efficient at getting across the point of what can be done and what solutions are already at hand-

-and even presuming you're a global warming skeptic, let's just avoid Beijing fog worldwide, alright?

[superaielman]

You can find Freidman's columns online, Tai. Google him.

Been rereading the Dark Tower series. I borrowed (and forgot to give back) Shale's copy of the drawing of three at the minimeet, so I've had it by my nightstand and read parts of it whenever I get bored. I managed to find the rest of the books in the series around the house besides that one so reread time.Skipped DT1. I'll read that after I finish the wastelands.

Dark tower series spoilers:

So much wasted potential here.  One thing Stephen King can't do at all is write endings, yet Dark Tower's one problem wasn't the ending. The very, very last page of the series- Roland at the top of the tower- is something I can accept. Not because it's brilliant writing, but because it feels like an ending he had in mind. The entire series is a prolouge for the Roland poem the book's based on, the last time Roland does something wrong. Okay, whatever. What is also forgiveable is just how badly the ball's dropped at places in the book. Ending such a brilliant series can't be easy at all, and writing the flavor and making the world work like it did in the first three books isn't an easy task at all. There was a several year gap between Wizard and Glass and the Wastelands, and WnG is largely King buying time for himself. Much as I love Wizard and Glass, it shows the problems that started to crop up in the series. King outright says in the ending of the drawing of the three that 4 is a flashback book. The main content of the book could have been handled in one long short story. The problem isn't the novel, it's that King got about halfway through the series (Escaping Oz) and had -no- fucking idea where to go from there. The accident compounded problems. Book 5 had problems, but it was a damn enjoyable read. It just didn't move enough. Book 6 is honestly 100% hazy, I'm going to have to reread it.

Book 7.. the problem isn't the shitty ending or Harry motherfucking Potter or the Crimson King or Flagg's end, it's that he shows he can *still* write and craft the Dark Tower world so well. The shootout at the Dixie Pig's great, I love the section of the book after Jake's death to just before the tower, and the best part? It *moves*. It's almost like the first books! Except that King turns it into a personal therapy session. Mordred's section is absolute and complete fucking trash in every single regard, and King should be punched in the face for it. Writing himself in the books to the degree he does is utterly inexusable and is lazy writing of the worst sort. The early books have a nudge or two in that direction (Eddie refers to the Shining in Drawing of the Three), which is fine. Everything in book 5 and especially 6/7 don't world build or advance the characters, it's King writing himself into his favorite works and doing so in a way to distract you from the end of the series. Patrick sucked and should'nt have been in the book. Speaking as someone who *read* insomnia, the worst titled novel ever, you miss nothing by cutting him and that entire novel out. Not everything new in the books is bad... actually it pretty much all is, besides Black 13 and Father Callahan. Never mind.

Or short version: King shows he can still write and worldbuild and does it extremely well at parts. Then you get the Crimson King throwing sneeches at Roland while Patrick <i>Erases his fucking body</i>. Stupid.

Oh yeah, every single death in the book besides Father Callahan's was pointless. I could have bought everyone from Roland to Oy dying from oh say book 3 onward, but there is less than no excuse for how he killed off Eddie and Jake.  He killed them off just to get them out of the main story. Incredibly lazy writing compounded by the sin of 'hay guys there's this other world so the deaths really did mean nothing! ^_^_^_^_^_^. Fuck. off.

Edit: Oh god I forgot that he was already strongly referencing a Susanah as preggers storyline even in book 3. Lay off the crack, king.

[superaielman]

Reading: Wizard and Glass. Done with the Wastelands. Excellent book all around, and damned inspired setting wise. Everything in Roland's world stands out so strongly- the oracle circle and Jake's trip through the house, Lud, the wasteland, the endless forests. All of it is wonderfully written and paints a picture of the world. The book moves at a breakneck pace, both setting and content wise.

Wizard and Glass's first 100 pages are excellent, but the story's quickly sidetracked by Roland and Susan's story. It's a damned good read, but it should have been it's own mini novel and not part of the dark tower series.  80% of the book is in that flashback, and while the rest of the 20%'s good it is still incredibly frustrating.

Also reading Scotland: A concise history by Fitroy Maclean. I'm about a third of the way through it. It is exactly what it sounds like, a history of Scotland from it's Roman days all the way to the scottish parlament's meeting in 1999. Things I've learned:

1. Never fuck with the Scottish.
2.This goes triple for the highlanders, who exist to only kick everyone else's ass.
3. God really does hate the French. (As if Charles de Gaulle wasn't proof of that.) Seriously, there was something called a 'Holy League against France' and it was headed by the pope? Damn.

Lots of neat history. I'm seeing a lot of names of places that I want to visit in Scotland (St Andrews, Stirling, Antonine wall) pop up, which is cool.

[Cotigo]

Eleanor Roosevelt, by J. William T. Youngs. 

Very controversial.  I did not realize how... militant Eleanor Roosevelt was.  I mean... well, here's the response it elicited from me, in a short response paper I had to write:

Eleanor Roosevelt's social awakening toward the plight of the blacks in 1930 was precipitated through her travails about the country and her interactions with leaders of the black community, like then-head of the NAACP, Walter White.  This awakening affected her views of the 50's and 60's civil rights movement.  She remarked, "Dr. King's philosophy has a lot of potential for equalizing the social station of the blacks and the whites.  However, I believe that these are dangerous times, and the Black Panther movement provides a much more relevant philosophy to the climate of today's race relations" (Youngs 299).  It is no trivial matter that she donated much of her estate to the Black Panther's Self Defense Initiative, which sought to protect African Americans through armament.  Well ahead of her time, foreseeing a state of black-on-black crime, she warned, "Do not turn your weapons on your brothers. Do not use your weapon wantonly. The black community must show solidarity. Use your gun only against those who seek to harm and oppress" (Roosevelt "This is My Story" 556). These views, controversial for an upperclass white woman, caused many critics to dub her "Eleanor Racewar" (557), the moniker she is known by to this day.


See?  Eleanor Roosevelt was craaaaaaaaaaaaazy.  But in a good way.

EDIT:  Cleaned up spelling.  Eleanor has an e.  I mean, another one.

[metroid composite]

Yep, there's a reason she was my childhood idol/hero.

[superaielman]

*whips LD* Post Elantris thoughts.

Done with Wizard and Glass. Good novel? Yes. Plenty of interesting material here, but. King spends like 1% of the Novel (Very beginning and end) in Roland's world with the modern crew. The story iin Mejis is interesting and well written, it just loses the tight focus that the first three novels have. King himself says that about two thirds of the way through the novel he loses focus and isn't sure about how good it is.

That's the entire problem. He has no fucking idea where to go. Wizard and Glass is wonderful, but it's borrowing flavor from other times (Roland as a kid) or settings (The Stand).  There is barely anything about Roland's ka-tet in the novel, and it's a goddamned shame. If he hadn't gotten into the accident, I don't think we're past book 6 at this point. It's clear that he got pushed into the last three novels, and the series suffered tremendously from this.


Drawing of three>Wastelands>Gunslinger (May change pending a reading of an edited version, the orginial has a lot of errors in the continuty)>Wizard and Glass so far.

Not sure what the worst book in the series is. 7, for all of it's flaws, has a shitload of movement and action. Parts of the book are just damned good and would fit right in with the first three novels. The rest is wretched beyond belief. Book 6 may be the worst. God damn did he go way too heavy on the gimmick words and bouncing around and todash, etc. 5 is decent, just introduces a couple of utterly terrible plot threads and doesn't move enough.

[metroid composite]

Emma

No, not the Jane Austen novel (although I really should get around to reading that too), the bad internet fiction novel.  When I say bad, I mean all the usual pitfalls of bad internet fiction--total Mary Sue main character, unnecessary sex scenes, very blatant "good characters" and "evil characters", and magical intervention.

And yet I read it all in one 6-hour sitting.  While I can certainly enjoy a bubble-gum plot, enough flaws will turn me off.  My only real explanation is that my dislike of the macro level storytelling must have been made up for in the micro-level language skill.  As far as mastery of the English language goes, there were certainly some good lines--and from what I could tell the French was solid too (actually, I was mostly impressed that she used French dialogue for the scenes in France).

Can't honestly give it a recommendation, though.  I mean, if you were stuck on a train and somehow happened to have a copy of Emma printed out and nothing else of interest to read, then by all means it's a fine timesink.  Somehow I doubt the RPGDL is in dire need of timesinks, though.

[superaielman]

Wizard's first rule, Terry Goodkind-


Trainwreck value, what can I say? About a third of the way through the book. Trying to give it a fair shot, not that it matters based on what I've read and heard.

The good:

-Goodkind clearly knows his stuff about nature and does a good job painting very vivid landscapes.
-Zedd is cool.
-Some of the fantasy elements are good.
-He went in a different direction than the usual fantasy fluff with the monsters so far- the blood flies were a nice touch he added to the gar.
-He's a decent writer. No matter what you can say about his content,  I can't find anything technically wrong with his writing style. He's not a master of worldbuilding like Jordan and Sanderson crushes him in general, but this isn't a flaw. (I'm looking at you, Mercedes Lackey.)

The bad:

-He's strawmanned communism, peace activists, gun control, and condoned the use of torture and murder with the opening chapters. It's not subtle, either.  "Let's ban fire, it's the REAL enemy!!!11" The name of the evil army: The people's peace army. They have reeducation camps as well!
-I don't mind a straight up bad guy, but these guys have no redeeming traits to speak of. His brother Michael literally took every stance Richard did and flipped it. "Oh, you don't need to search for your father's killer, let the army handle it." "Oh, blah blah blah money/greed/evil/rape." This goes for every one of the villians I've seen so far. There is no personality besides evil just for the sake of evil. There's nothing interesting there.
-Richard's more a force of will than a personality. This is not a good thing in a main character. He came out of the box with pretty much no doubts and just enforces his will on everyone else. It's like if Rand went from his EotW character to his Fires of Heaven character in five pages. His 'doubts' feel completely made up, because he and you both know what he'll do and how he does it. By definition he tells and acts the truth as a seeker, so he can't ever be wrong. 
-Kalhan and Richard fall in love in a matter of days. It actually really mostly happens over one or two chapters. There's no buildup, they just *are*. This is really not a good thing for a series this long. Feels like Goodkind's rushing through the character development to get his hardened killers ready and willing to do whatever it takes. This of course ties into the political horseshit, see above.
-Goodkind does love his violence. We'll see how bad it gets.
-The characters preach about the good and bad in anyone, then pretty much work in the lowest common denominator. We know Rahl's a bad guy thanks to you lovingly describing his brutal methods in detail.
-Plot's predicable. This isn't a flaw in his storytelling, it's a flaw in his ideology (see above).  Darken Rahl's just not all that scary, becuase he's already godmodding some with Richard. It goes back to trying to have a force of will instead of a main character. It doesn't work, we all know Richard's never going to be seriously threatened.
-The setting is very generic.

It's off to a pretty scrubby start so far. We'll see what the rest of the book has to offer.

[Shale]

It's off to a pretty scrubby start so far. We'll see what the rest of the book has to offer.

The answer is "pretty much what you just pointed out, plus S&M porn."

[superaielman]

Someone either beat Goodkind too much as a kid, or not enough. I'm leaning towards 'not enough' at this point.

I'm still going to try and slog through at least the first couple books and see what happens. I feel pretty justified in wanting to punch SoT>WoT hypers. Which reminds me to kick Excal in the face saying that WFS was even close to as good as EotW.

[Sierra]

Someone either beat Goodkind too much as a kid, or not enough. I'm leaning towards 'not enough' at this point.

[Grefter]

It is a fantasy tribute to Ayn Rand.  It has to have BDSM in it.

[NotMiki]

I'm still going to try and slog through at least the first couple books and see what happens.

Why bother?  Entertainment should entertain.

[superaielman]

It is entertaining, but not in the way Goodkind wants it to be.

UPDATE: When we last left our valiant heroes, they were wandering south to reach the.. who the fuck cares about the plot? Wise old man gets hurt, large warrior gets hurt, so Kahlan and Richard wander off. We also get our first Darken Rahl PoV.

WARNING: GRAPHIC/NWS

Lowlights: Rahl's point of views. Okay, so he gets off on torture and his top aid is a well known child molestor. We then have Rahl breaking down the mind of a child so he can slaughter him, <i>eat his organs including his testicles</i>, so he can send his soul to hell for some unknown purpose. Of course we find out that Rahl is a strict Vegetarian during this! Except when he eats children's flesh. The level of violence is sickening.

On the Objectivist front, Richard meets a savage people, teaches them the value of building roofs and how it makes them happy, only for the bad village elders to say no!!!! This is a thinly disgusted rant about neutral parties, etc. It is terrible. Of course Richard is turned down by these ignorant fools, and then has to use his might and the Sword of Truth to bring them enlightenment.

Oyi. To his credit, Goodkind at least waited half a book before starting in with the gory stuff. It uh is something?

[Excal]

All I have to say in my defense is that I was 19 and in the middle of my fucked in the head stage.  As for reading the second book?  Errr, better you than me?

[Grefter]

If you can stick with it through to book 4 or 5 you get his attacks on Communism which is a pretty amazing strawman, where I stopped because I was actually finished highschool then and needed a bit more than gore and stupid plot twists to keep me going.

[superaielman]

He's already strawmanned communism pretty horribly. The people's peace palace! The people's peace army! Goodkind had to have been molested by the spirit of Josef Stalin.

[Grefter]

Much much worse.  In the people in the empire (a new one!) are shocked that he would ever help someone because to do so would be taking that persons work from them!

Edit - Not to mention he really ups that delicious hypocrisy ante later on the 1 dimensional evil villains get worse and worse all the while making Rahl less and less of a bad guy (as Richard starts to do more and more stupid pointless evil bullshit along with Khalan!)

Good times.

[Shale]

Oh yeah, Naked Empire. Good times. Let's not forget this is the same book with the magical statue that converts anyone who sees it to capitalism.

[Clear Tranquil]

*Adie is cool~