Read Recently

[phantom_wolfboy]

Starting out the month of September, let's get the unpleasant ones out of the way first:

By the way, these contain spoilers.

Comments

[malinaldarose]

My best friend raved and raved about the Cheysuli books until I decided to give them a try, but I couldn't even get through the first one.

[mister_wolf]

This book examines the contemporary evidence for the existence of Jesus and finds that there is less of it than you might have thought. Well, I found it illuminating.

There's more evidence for the existence of Jesus than there is for Alexander the Great, you know. =:)

[gallowglass]

Which can be very liberating for Alexander Historians. Given that most of what so-called evidence exists is fairly unreliable and that there's not much in any case, you can propose any old idea and have a good chance of being able to make it just as acceptable as anything the masters in the field churn out. This was very comforting when I was working on my MPhil dissertation.

[mister_wolf]

Whoa. You've ruined my favorite apologetics whatzit, but I don't care. You're an Alexander Historian? You're on my froends list as of right now! =:D

[gallowglass]

Well, I'm more the gentleman and scholar than your practicing academic these days but happier for it nonetheless. However, before I left the university on medical grounds, I spent an indecent amount of time studying Alexandros Philippou Makedonon, ho aniketos, or as I prefer to call him, Mad AlexAs far as the evidence goes, you can either allow it to frustrate you or see it as an opportunity. With only a couple of scraps of primary evidence, a small handful of secondary sources (many of which are factually dubious, to say the least) and a vast body of tertiary speculation, Alexander scholarship becomes perhaps the finest expression of the game of academic history. In the absence of the facts, everyone and his most bitter rival can pick their ideas and stuff them into the massive gaping holes in modern knowledge of the era and its participants

[msagara]

to be slightly fair to the Cheysuli books, it was her first novel, and it was written many, many years ago. I haven't read them -- I've read the Tiger and Del books, and also Lady of the Forest, plus her third of Golden Key. She improved.

Although, to be fair, she did ask me, after reading Hunter's Oath why exactly it was that my women were all so bitchy .

[phantom_wolfboy]

Well, of course first novels aren't always the best introduction to a writer's works, but everybody has to start somewhere. Unfortunately, she and I seem to have gotten off to a bad start; now I don't know that I'd be able to read any of her later stuff without thinking of this and recoiling.

Definitely, the two of you have a different approach to female characters. I wonder what she thinks of Tanya's?

[msagara]

Definitely, the two of you have a different approach to female characters. I wonder what she thinks of Tanya's?

As I recall, she likes Tanya's books. Most of the DAW authors do . Actually, many non-DAW authors do as well.

I haven't read the Cheysuli books, as I mentioned, and I can understand what, in the work, especially if taken at face value, would cause the willies. BUT, I think there was an element of author-insertion in that first book that went away in later works.

I'd try GOLDEN KEY, if you were of a mind to try anything else.

[sausconys_books]

Thanks for posting the link to your review of Shapechangers. I had pretty much the same reaction to it (and I forgot to mention how much it reminded me of Dragonflight), but I gave her the benefit of the doubt since it's her first novel and will try book two, plus I have a bunch of her other books too and I'm hoping I like the Tiger and Del series better. I've liked the short fiction I've read by Roberson so I'm willing to give her another chance since I can see how much she has developed as a writer.