Harbinger

I read about this months ago on another blog about fantasy/ scifi media in general. I ended up on Shawn Speakman's website where he explained his situation and how Terry Brooks suggested he do this. Looked really cool and I saw Brandon's name on his list and got more excited. I was looking for a book to read, and Shawn wrote a book also called The Dark Thorn, and it was actually pretty awesome. Would actually love to read more stuff from him.

Yeah and it's one of those series that always seems to end up on "Best Fantasy" lists, and I'm always wondering why.

Yeah I'll second the Farseer books by Robin Hobb, I actually slogged through the first 2 and most of the 3rd before I just put it down one day and moved onto something else, it wasn't a conscious decision, I just was so bored with it I didn't care. Still don't know how it ended, and well... meh. I know part of the problem I had was that considering the word "assassin" is in the title of all three he never really does anything "assassiny" except maybe one or two times. I remember thinking for someone supposedly trained since childhood to fight and kill he was pretty bad at it. You'd think an assassin would be subtle and quiet but he'd run around slashing people like Jason Vorhees.

Yes I grasp the concept of the Hero's Journey and fiction writing in general. Protagonist versus antagonist with opposing goals and the conflict that ensues because of those goals. Garion's goal and "destiny" as I recall was to save the world, obviously not to defeat the big bad, but the big bad was the conflict he had to defeat in order to save the world. So his main goal in the series was to defeat this big bad in order to save the world. My quibble wasn't about the big bad not being the goal but about their "epic" conflict lasting a mere few pages and being underwhelming. It would be like Luke Skywalker in the Return of the Jedi easily killing both Darth Vader and the Emperor in a matter of minutes of screen time, minus the epic lightsaber duel and the extensive spiritual inner conflict he dealt with along the way. Hence one reason I found the Belgariad to be rather disappointing.

I'm still playing Skyrim mostly. I've had the game since February and I still haven't finished the main quest line. Either I go off exploring and killing zombies in crypts or or change characters cause I want to see how it would be like to do this or that differently. I've at least finished some of the side story lines like the Dark Brotherhood and the Mage's College.

This was a really fun read, and it kept me interested throughout. There were some issues, I'll admit, the story wasn't perfect, but the characters were likable, there was plenty of action, and overall the main character arcs were interesting. There were some elements that were predictable, but for the most part it was a light, fun read which is just what the author intended. There wasn't a ridiculous amount of profanity, and no 13 year old girls were gang raped, so it's already a leg up on most modern "fantasy" being produced nowadays. I wouldn't mind him revisiting that world with a book set 10 or 20 years in the future to see what they made of the situation they were in.

Wow now that I actually try to pick some suddenly my mind goes blank of the books that I've read. So I'll pick a few favorites, but there's really more than this. I guess most of my picks will be more recent books because I suddenly can't think of any of the older books I've read. Changes, Jim Butcher (probably the best book of the Dresden Files yet, I love most of the series but this is my favorite, could change though) Hard Magic, Larry Correia (love all his stuff, huge fan of Monster Hunter, but this is probably the best book he's written yet, blew me away) The Way of Kings (yeah Brandon's stuff is awesome and this is the best one he's done, hopefully he'll keep it going with Stormlight 2) The Night Angel Trilogy (I've always loved books about assassins, this is probably the best of this new influx of these stories, it's engrossing) The Great Hunt, Robert Jordan (I really enjoyed The Eye of the World, but I fell in love with the WOT with this book, there's some other really good entires in the series Lord of Chaos, Shadow Rising, but this is the one)

So if I want to enjoy Eddings' work I should go for the Sparhawk books then? Well it's been a good 7 or 8 years, maybe I'll give them a try One problem I had with all the Belgariad wasn't just all the obvious cliches and textbook hero's journey stuff, though it was a bit heavy on that. It was simply that there'd be all this buildup to something, some supposed huge problem, and then the climax would last like 2 pages and everything would be fixed and back to normal in like 30 seconds. Even the big bad that Garion was supposed to fight, was like this really mysterious figure, that comes out at the end and if I recall correctly, Garion just kinda sword fights him for a page or so and big bad is dead Garion saves the world. I was very underwhelmed.

I'd say skim 8, skim the Perrin and Mat portions of 9, and read a summary of 10. Even if you read all of 8 and 9 still skip book 10. Something I have finally come to grips with as I've gotten older and read a lot more authors since I started reading Jordan is that there's no such thing as a set up book. If you need an entire book to setup what's going to happen next than you need to skip ahead and edit out the superfluous details. Book 10 had nothing truly significant happen that couldn't have been summed up elsewhere. Book 10 is what made me finally admit something had gone wrong with the writing and give up on the series. Most of the events of 10 and 11 could have been edited down to one really good book. And even when I read book 11 in which a lot of the excessive plotlines were whittled down and FINALLY closed, there wasn't a lot of payoff for many of the side characters. They just didn't justify all the "screen time" they received. I know WOT fans disagree with this sentiment, I used to be a hardcore fan myself, so I get the point of view. But when you have characters sitting around bored with the story their in because nothing significant is happening, and they even say their bored multiple times, then it's time to do some editing.

Well I was looking for a new book to read, find myself doing that a lot actually. Since I read a lot of fantasy I get a lot of recommendations on Amazon, and this stand alone fantasy called Elantris was recommended to me, and I was surprised since that's almost nonexistent in the fantasy genre. It had apparently won some award, though I don't recall what it was now, but that actually put me off a little bit. A lot of award winners tend to be artsy pieces with lots of political statements and such and I was just looking for a good story. Anyway, after a bit of debating I decided to buy the book anyway and it was one of the best fantasy books of the last 10 years. I've been reading Brandon ever since.

My best friend strongly recommended them to me when we were in 10th grade, 14 years ago now! I got hooked pretty quickly, and was a regular WOT fanboy for years afterward. With the 8th book in the series released later that year, I'd never have imagined that I'd still be waiting to find out how it all ends this many years later.

There's so many books I've been disappointed in, and series that I just didn't care for. Going back about 10 years ago, I had a fellow fantasy enthusiast strongly recommend David Eddings' works as being some of the best fantasy out there, and must reads. So I read through the Belgariad, all of it in two omnibus collections. And I just didn't and still don't get what all the hype was about, the books were just passable, and just not that good. Nothing horrible, but mostly just disappointing. Even Jim Butcher, one of the best writers out there today says he goes back and reads these books once a year, and just don't get it. Am I missing something?

It was Jordan first for me, simply cause I started reading the WOT in 1998, when I was in 10th grade. Only 7 books in the series had been released and I had become a huge WOT fanboy during my teenage years. It also got me into reading more "adult" fantasy books, I'd only been reading YA stuff and Star Wars up until that point. However with the decline in Jordan's writing in the later books, I'd completely given up on WOT by the time Knife of Dreams had been released. Just couldn't get myself to care after the disaster that was book 10. So in my never ending search for quality fantasy literature, I came across Brandon's first book Elantris in 2006, and I've been a fan ever since, and read all of his non YA stuff and loved it all. However even knowing Brandon was writing WOT to finish it, it's only been now that he's finished the last book that I've actually read all the WOT books I'd missed. Brandon has done a great job cleaning up that mess, and brought new life back into what was once my favorite book series of all time.