Of books, pitfalls, recommendations and an age-old addiction to SF&F

[maldoror_gw]

Have you ever eaten oysters? Ever had the experience where three bad ones in a row turned you off the species entirely and maybe even permanently?

Comments

[maldoror_gw]

ASoIaF has, IMO (and as I mentioned before, opinions in this realm are completely personal) become a neverending story, if one of vastly superior quality. And for me, it's not a matter of the author's pace. I gobbled down the first volume, but after that, though the quality remains high...just too many characters to care about, too many strings to the plot. I would have liked it better if the author had made two or three shorter and unrelated trilogies from all this material he's got running around his skull, instead of mashing it all together to the point I have to back up two books to remember what happened to one of his characters last time we saw him/her. But as I said, that's just my opinion, and I think the author entirely deserves the huge following his books have, even if he is slower than glaciers in getting out his humongous masterpiece. IMO, he's responsible for a certain rejuvenation and rebirth in the fantasy genre that had otherwise become moronically derivative, self-absorbed or mutated into iffy romances.

Guy Gavriel Kay...ah, that brings back memories. I read Tigana and his first trilogy, and found them pleasingly mature, original and heart-wrenching (though I thought he tossed in the incest subplot in Tigana completley uselessly, that annoyed me a little). However, I could not get through his other books for love or money - and I really wanted to so badly, having liked his other novels. It seemed that the more he wrote, the more...sluggish his rhythm got. I swear I cannot remember a single detail of the last book of his I read, it's like the whole time I was reading it, I was only hearing 'blah blah blah castle blah blah blah marriage blah blah blah'...But this was quite awhile ago, and maybe now that my tastes have matured a bit, I should give him another go. At the very least, he's not derivative or neverending!