Books
I recently finished two books that I want to tell you about.
Several years ago, we visited a show at the convention centre. One of the rooms was taken up by a bookstore (Chapters, I think) selling a buttload of remaindered books. The problem was, there was no rhyme or reason to how the books were arranged on the tables. They had a table in the back for kids' books, but everything else was jumbled together higgeldy-piggeldy. As soon as some room appeared on a table, the staff brought out random books to fill the hole. But, I was able to get a handful of books for an obscene amount off the cover price. I picked them up mostly based on price (like $4.99 for a book that retailed for $30+) and how interesting they looked at first glance. These books sat around for a long time until I finally read two of them this winter. One was pretty awful mediocre, the other was ok.
The first book was The Swords of Night and Day by David Gemmell. It's a fairly standard fantasy epic novel, with the twist that the main hero is dead when the book starts. (That gets corrected.) I have two main complaints about this book.
* First, the main character seems to be able to solve any problems that someone's having just by sitting them down and having a Good Chat with them. Unsure where your loyalities lie? Not sure if life is worth living? Need to find a way to motivate your troops? Just have a chat with Skilgannon and everything will be better. This usually happens with Character X having an issue. Skilgannon listens to them, then launches into a monologue about what they need to do to fix their problem. Character X says, "Gee, thanks" and the issue is never raised again.
* Second, the book trundles along with the promise of a big payoff. Then, in the last chapter or so, alotofstuffhappensallatonce and the book is over. It's almost like the author got tired of writing. He looked at his page count, said, "Oh, I guess the publisher only wanted 500 pages, and I'm at 485. I better wrap this up."
It's not a book I'd recommend. I see that he's a popular author, so I'm guessing his other works are a bit better than this.
The second book was Kingdoms of Light by Alan Dean Foster. I liked this book a lot better than the first book, but I'm still confused by one thing.
This book is, again, your basic fantasy quest. A rag-tag group is given a seemingly impossible task to perform, but they manage to work it out in the end. First of all, the book is ostensibly furry. (And looking at the now-defunct Furry Novel List, I see that he's written a lot of furry novels.) The rag-tag group is composed of pets who belonged to a deceased wizard: a dog, three cats, a canary and a boa constrictor. They are turned into humans (while retaining some of their animal instincts) so that they can perform their quest.
The story is fun and pretty light. It reads almost like a kid's book, especially in the methodical way that the characters progress through their quest. But there was a fair amount of innuendo (especially between the cats: one is male and two are female), which seemed just a bit out of place for a kid's book. Maybe a book written for teens? But none of the sites I've looked at the book on classify it as "kids" or "teen" fiction, so I dunno. If it was intended for adults, it's mightly light fare.
Anyway, if you can find this one cheap or at the library, it's kinda fun. It's pretty predictable, but you have some fun getting there.
Now I just need to decide whether I want to start Wicked now, or wait until I have the second book in hand.
Several years ago, we visited a show at the convention centre. One of the rooms was taken up by a bookstore (Chapters, I think) selling a buttload of remaindered books. The problem was, there was no rhyme or reason to how the books were arranged on the tables. They had a table in the back for kids' books, but everything else was jumbled together higgeldy-piggeldy. As soon as some room appeared on a table, the staff brought out random books to fill the hole. But, I was able to get a handful of books for an obscene amount off the cover price. I picked them up mostly based on price (like $4.99 for a book that retailed for $30+) and how interesting they looked at first glance. These books sat around for a long time until I finally read two of them this winter. One was pretty awful mediocre, the other was ok.
The first book was The Swords of Night and Day by David Gemmell. It's a fairly standard fantasy epic novel, with the twist that the main hero is dead when the book starts. (That gets corrected.) I have two main complaints about this book.
* First, the main character seems to be able to solve any problems that someone's having just by sitting them down and having a Good Chat with them. Unsure where your loyalities lie? Not sure if life is worth living? Need to find a way to motivate your troops? Just have a chat with Skilgannon and everything will be better. This usually happens with Character X having an issue. Skilgannon listens to them, then launches into a monologue about what they need to do to fix their problem. Character X says, "Gee, thanks" and the issue is never raised again.
* Second, the book trundles along with the promise of a big payoff. Then, in the last chapter or so, alotofstuffhappensallatonce and the book is over. It's almost like the author got tired of writing. He looked at his page count, said, "Oh, I guess the publisher only wanted 500 pages, and I'm at 485. I better wrap this up."
It's not a book I'd recommend. I see that he's a popular author, so I'm guessing his other works are a bit better than this.
The second book was Kingdoms of Light by Alan Dean Foster. I liked this book a lot better than the first book, but I'm still confused by one thing.
This book is, again, your basic fantasy quest. A rag-tag group is given a seemingly impossible task to perform, but they manage to work it out in the end. First of all, the book is ostensibly furry. (And looking at the now-defunct Furry Novel List, I see that he's written a lot of furry novels.) The rag-tag group is composed of pets who belonged to a deceased wizard: a dog, three cats, a canary and a boa constrictor. They are turned into humans (while retaining some of their animal instincts) so that they can perform their quest.
The story is fun and pretty light. It reads almost like a kid's book, especially in the methodical way that the characters progress through their quest. But there was a fair amount of innuendo (especially between the cats: one is male and two are female), which seemed just a bit out of place for a kid's book. Maybe a book written for teens? But none of the sites I've looked at the book on classify it as "kids" or "teen" fiction, so I dunno. If it was intended for adults, it's mightly light fare.
Anyway, if you can find this one cheap or at the library, it's kinda fun. It's pretty predictable, but you have some fun getting there.
Now I just need to decide whether I want to start Wicked now, or wait until I have the second book in hand.