Fantasy and/or Historical Fiction

Why is it bad that none of the main characters die in the Dark Elf stories? I think Drizzt, Artemis, Jarlaxle, etc. are pretty damn baddass dudes.
 
hahaha Drizzt has done everything except walk on water, thus far.

He still might do it yet! but I'm not going to read any more to find out.
 
Conspicuously Absent said:
Artemis and Jarlaxle are, thats for sure.

Drizzt is awesome, but he's too CareCrew for most people here :p
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Care Crew untill he starts fucking killing everything, haha. Though that was mostly during his younger, wilder days... :sigh:
 
The reason the Drizzt books are mediocre and will never be more than mediocre is because Salvatore, or rather the marketing assholes paying Salvatore, have completely raped any sense of emotional involvement in the books. A big part of fantasy (or any story with conflict, really) is the reader's investment in the risks the characters take–our own fear of mortality, even. Though I may be reading too much into it.

Anyway, my point is that sometime around Servant of the Shard, when I was 14 or so, I realized that no matter what happened, Drizzt was never going to die. And from there it was obvious–of course Bruenor was going to come out of his depression. Of course Wulfgar was going to recover his nobility of spirit. Of course Catti-brie was going to escape the clutches of the sentient sword. And so on. From there, it was an easy road to not caring–why bother getting invested in any sort of plot point when I know how it's going to be resolved? The only characters that die are relatively minor and too two-dimensional for me to care about, and at the end of the current story arc, Drizzt and his Super-Friends are going to be reunited, hale and hearty, ready for their next sequel when someone at TSR wants a new Lexus.

It just bothers me, you know? An honest writer should put his characters at real risk. If they're going to face death, they have to die. Salvatore, like so many modern fantasy writers, is too cowardly to write something truly great–he has the ability, but he's scared of hurting his audience. Or he just doesn't have the desire to really get serious about what he's writing. Either way, it's the refusal to match risk with reward that cripples writers.

...as you can see, this is a subject I feel passionately about.

I will say, however, that he writes GREAT combat scenes. If there was fantasy writer with Salvatore's combat scenes, David Eddings' ear for dialogue, Terry Pratchett's gift for characterization, and George R.R. Martin's balls of steel, then I could see the best series ever. As it is, I'll stick to Martin.
 
Doomcifer said:
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FUCKING DO IT!!!!!!!!
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"It loved to happen."

I still need to read that one, friend of mine has been bugging me for ages.

So god damn can't sleep. This sucks.
 
Tolkien's Middle-Earth material. Makes me sad how badly the movies killed the spirit of the books. :(

Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion stuff, especially the Elric and Von Bek material. (the recent stuff is not as good, but still cool)

RE Howard's Conan, Solomon Kane, and Cormac Mac Art (can't speak for his other work)...

Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and Grey Mouser material is worth several look-sees. I wish I had books where the stories were presented in the order they were written instead of the chronological order for the characters (actually, I wish I had it both ways. :p).

Dave Sim's Cerebus is absolutely insane. Seriously, Sim is a lunatic. But the books are emotionally crushing stuff.

WaRP's original Elfquest run was fan-fucking-tastic.

Lovecraft has to be included here. "Fantasy"? "Horror"? A definite blending of the two. Maybe horror is just fantasy where the heroes can't kill the monster in the cave. :p Some of Poe's stuff should fit right in here.

HG Wells has a good body of fantasy fiction. I haven't read so much of Jules Verne but the stuff I have read is pretty cool. 19th Century fantasy is the r0xx0rz.

I am interested in, but have never ready anything by, work from Lord Dunsany, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert W. Chambers, and Jack Vance. I think my delay is that I like "the full works of..." series where I'm not hunting down books of random stories where I'll end up with some stories multiple times and cra.

... and I avoid Goodkind, Jordan, Lackey like the plague.
 
haha, you can up to feast for crows. I like how he basically wiped the slate clean of good guys right in the middle of the 3rd one. :p

edit: Waiting for feast to go to paperback, not gonna spend $40 bucks on a book that isn't a textbook.
 
this might just have to be a pre-order, unless I can slip in one of the first reserves on it at the library:

Knights of the Black and White : Book I of the Templar Trilogy (Hardcover)
by Jack Whyte
_____

List Price: $24.95
Price: $15.72 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details
You Save: $9.23 (36%)

Availability: This title will be released on August 8, 2006.
 
hey i have that first George R.R. Martin book, never read it!

When I was young, I read Tolkein's books 3 or 4 times each and Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time (up to about the 6th or 7th when the tedium and cashgrabberry became unbearable) but they were good fun near the beginning of the series! Now its eight years later and the fucking guy's still going!
 
I know i should eh? I've started it a few times but it was always while I was reading something else as well. I remember it pretty well actually. I remember a part with the children finding wolf cubs and taking them home to raise, and someone getting executed, etc.
 
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