Book Fucking Talk

bryce0lynch

i fucking hate writing ...
Staff member
Because evidently that's what everyone cares about.

The Wedding Album
Galactic North
Awake in the Night
Sir John Paper Returns to Honah-Lee
Companion to Owls, for some fun
 
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Gus L.

A FreshHell to Contend With
So recently I've been reading the following - I have added my elfgame thoughts below each as a sort of JOESKY tax:


A Burglar's Guide to the City - Jeff Manhoth (or something - it's bad writing on a good subject so I misspell his name)
Burglary as Spatial Alchemy - dungeon robbers could learn a lot form modern burglary. Like did you know LA's freeway system and 'drive through banking' in the 90's made drive thorugh robbery a thing - very hard to catch. Also lots of tunneling.

Eight Flavors - Sarah Lahmaaaaan (again the writing is poor - but the stories of American culinary history are darling - OMG WE LOVE BLACK PEPPER BECAUSE OF A SINGLE FAMILY OF WEIRD NEW ENGLAND INBRED PIRATE TYPES!)
Put more spices in your adventure as treasure.

First & Only etc. Dan Abn0tt - The Gaunt's Ghost's novels - I am ashamed, but they make me sleepy.
Look they are already a game, and for 40K shit decently well written (still misspelled the name though didn't I) - the Imperium is horrorshow, it is also the sort of Empire one needs in a grimdark game - gonzo, sarcastic and layered in bathos.

Writing to Win - Steven D. Stark - A shockingly good legal writing book with a stupid name.
Being more concise is good, but so are lovely lovely words.

Call Them by Their True Names - Rebecca Solnit - Lefty essays.
History is full of murderhobos. However full of cruel wacky schemes your PCs are some real world dude was worse and likely has a street named after him in a major American city.
 

bryce0lynch

i fucking hate writing ...
Staff member
Burglar: I did know that!

8: For some reason I'm reminded of American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America. The explicit history of the american cultures was interesting. In particular the Dutch New York, Virginia Aristocracy, and brutal south.

1st & Only: It's been awhile since I've had a GOOD shame read. The new Sherlock Holmes vs Cthulhu shit is BAD, and not in a good way. Does the Book of Love discography count?

Writing to Win: On the "serious subject" topic, F*ck Feelins is a mental health books that talks about the myths be are told we need to live up to, and then what's realistic to expect and how to get it. The point blank discussion of "you've been lied to and are trying to hit impossible expectations for yourself/life", along with what "normal" should be is quite refreshing.

Call Them: The Amazon description is decidedly less fun than yours!
 

Sully

A FreshHell to Contend With
A Burglar's Guide to the City - Jeff Manhoth (or something - it's bad writing on a good subject so I misspell his name)
Burglary as Spatial Alchemy - dungeon robbers could learn a lot form modern burglary. Like did you know LA's freeway system and 'drive through banking' in the 90's made drive thorugh robbery a thing - very hard to catch. Also lots of tunneling.
We had this problem in our neighborhood in West LA when I lived there a few years back, primarily because we lived right next to an on-ramp to the I-10 freeway. The occasional car full of wannabe gangbangers would roll up, break into a few houses, and then make a sprint for the ramp. It's no fun when you come home from work and a 3x3 block is locked down because the cops are trying to smoke a few of 'em out, only your kids and the nanny are home in the middle of that 3x3...

Although between that experience and some jury duty, I learned a lot about the gangbanger scene in east LA...

As for books, I am currently listening to The First Law trilogy on Audible. Sometimes I wish I had decided to re-read them because books on tape can be so slow but the guy reading these books does amazing voices for all the characters and it's a treat.

Also made the mistake of stopping by my local used bookstore despite having a stack of books not yet read and picked up Strongholds of the Realm. Pretty cool so far.
 

bryce0lynch

i fucking hate writing ...
Staff member
Which reminds me, I need to track down Bill Johnson's latest. It's dumb, but I love his "time travel one day at a time" stories.
 

Gus L.

A FreshHell to Contend With
On "shame reads" - I read all the shameful shit, not usually as bad as 40K fiction (which I think is only slightly less bad then D&D fiction - again has anyone else read, I mean really read "The Gnome Cache"?) but I will say that of the most recent pulpy novels I've read Leckie's "Raven's Tower" was decent - a nice slow build, and thoughtfully worked out response to the whole Gods existing and acting in the world trope in fantasy fiction (also I totally enjoy the snide answer to the question of how fantasy cities aren't terrible mortality sinks like many real pre-modern cities).

So the other real question - who's worse Terry Brooks or David Eddings? Also "Piers Anthony" is not a valid response (or maybe the best response?) - because, yeah, he's King Hell creepy, in a whole different tier of bad.
 

PrinceofNothing

High Executarch
Staff member
Galactic North - Terrific outing into Reynold's Revelation Space universe. Glacial and Nightingale as personal favorites. The original Revelation Space trilogy was alright (Reynolds is weak on characterization there) but the last book was a giant non-sequitor.

GG - Abnett is one of the few authors to have hacked it outside of Black Library and I dare say Triumph and the original Eisenhorn Trilogy make it all the way up to entertaining. As Band of Brothers in space its a fun romp, and Abnett changes up the formula every other book so it doesn't get stale.

40k fiction, while still franchise fiction, occasionally rises above the level of dreck expulsed for the likes of Star Trek, Star Wars, or D&D tie-in novels (bland and banal). I think the Horus Heresy series, for sheer length, vast cast of characters, scope and its frequent emulation of historical and mythological events, has some merit as a work of fiction, for whatever illusionary literary currency we are currently adopting.

D&D tie-in novels are the worst. I have seldom read fantasy that was less fantastic.

Dante's Inferno (wordsworth classic edition)
The Silmarillion
The Complete Hammer's Slammers Volume 1
Elric of Melniboné (The Tale of the Eternal Champion Vol 1)
The Razor Gate by Sean Crag
Heroes by Lucy Hughes Hallet (nonfiction)

The Inferno - Interesting and beautiful but alien in the manner of a feverish dream. The frequent allusions to Greek Mythology I can follow, the references to figures in 15th century Florence are much harder to track, and were it not for italized synopsis above each Canto and a glossary in the back I fear I would be lost in archaic couplets and dreamy visions of afterlife.

Silmarillion - Has a reputation for being dense and unreadable but nothing could be further from the truth. As a child I would read books of Greek and Norse mythology from my parent's shelves and be filled with wonder, and later I read the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Mabignogion. No fictional work but the Silmarillion ever managed to evoke the same feeling, of reading the mythology of an imaginary world. Tolkien creates an entire mythology. Terrific.

The Complete Hammer's Slammers Vol 1. - Robust and manly tales of Mercenary Tank Combat in a future Age, in stark, robust prose, sometimes hampered by overuse of jargon. A surprising amount of care is put into the world building, economical considerations and technology and Drake's passion for history and combat experience help render the whole a compelling read. Recommended for Stars Without Number fans (there is a reason Hammer's Slammers was made into a Traveller Campaign Setting).

Elric - Moorcock is one of the few fantasy authors that gets progressively worse as time goes on but his earlier stories are nightmarish dark fantasy excursions that are so metal they almost come with a riff. Comparing Sailors on the Seas of Fate with tales like The Revenge of the Rose one would be forgiven to think they were penned by different authors. I still have not decided whether Moorcock is taking a dump on his own character in Elric at the End of Time, but as a parody of his own work it is very entertaining.

The Razor Gate - Has anyone ever played Max Payne? This is essentially Max Payne: The Novel. A cop on the wrong side of the law (drink) loses a partner to the mysterious organization (drink) behind the Curse. People get taken, wake up with a note saying that they will die in one Year, and the City is Covering it up (drink)! The evil rich people that are running the fictional town of Newport (drink) behind the scenes want the secret of the Curse. Newport is a neo-noir monstrosity of endlessly downpouring snow, corroding ship graveyards, gleaming obelisks of glass and steel, squalor, neon and cigarette smoke. By the time the hovercraft shows up and a dude in a business suit has taken Detective Garett's Girlfriend hostage as "insurance" and reveals that he never cared about the money, he cares about power and utters lines of dialog like "I can't die. The World Needs People Like Us!" you should already be diving over tables with double ingrams in slow-motion to techno-beats and distorted guitar riffs. PAH-DAH-DAH-DAAAAAAH! NA-NA-NAAAAAW!

Heroes - Very interesting look at 8 historical badasses and society's on-again-off-again relationship with them, occasional pearlclutching and muh equality aside. The inclusion of Achilles and Odysseus as as framework for the examination of real life heroes and all their flaws is effective and does not come across as jarring. Read about
Alcibiades (real life Gaius Baltar), Cato (history's first autist), El Cid (assholish mercenary lord turned saviour of the west), Wallenstein (Great Man with all caps), Drake (history's first troll), Garibaldi (the tales of a Cha 18 Wis 6 high level fighting man with a dream of free Italy and terrible strategic and political acumen).

Early Brooks is almost universally reviled. Eddings's first five books are fairly well regarded even today.
 
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bryce0lynch

i fucking hate writing ...
Staff member
Heroes sounds quite interesting. I'll pick it up.

EDIT: Who's the author? Fry? Cause th fry one don't sound like what you posted.
 

Gus L.

A FreshHell to Contend With
Both Brooks and Eddings are bad fantasy. Flat one dimensional characters, excreable writing (Brooks is leaden and boring, Eddings is repetitive and appears to have a vocabulary that even as a dyslexic 11 year old I found stunted - ask yourself, did Silk ever say anything other then "wryly"?). I'll give Brooks a slight bonus because he uses science fantasy elements in his world building compared to Eddings utterly reductive cultural determinism via poorly researched stereotype.

The Inferno is a good read (I can't recommend the other works in the trilogy though) and the imagery is still potent. I keep wanting to start a campaign "You find yourself midway through your life, in a gloomy wood, astray..." Might be a bit railroady, and I think too many would get the reference - perhaps it'd be better suited for a Choose Your Own Adventure.

Agree on Elric, first one is pretty solid weird fantasy goodness - later on it gets less so.

Drake's books are decent military sci-fi. Even his space opera is the best of that offered by the Baen gang, remaining true to pulp conventions and embracing the absurdity of their technological premises with gleeful abandon. He's a bit predisposed to shouting "Look at how hardcore, vile and uncaring everything is! Did I squick you out? Are you not mortified by these predictable cruelties? GRRR! In the Grimdarkness of the future there is only 1970's style ruminations on the horror of war!" on too regular a basis, but I can accept that. I think my favorite piece by him was a series of short stories about some Appalachian cunning many in 1800 and hillbilly sorcery - "Old Nathan" I think?

Not reading anything new really - "California Privacy Law, Third Edition" offers nothing gamable, but repeats endlessly the shocking revelation that the future is gonna be really ugly, at least partially because the courts and legislatures have either suffered from agency capture or can't adapt quickly enough to changing technology.
 

PrinceofNothing

High Executarch
Staff member
Both Brooks and Eddings are bad fantasy. Flat one dimensional characters, excreable writing (Brooks is leaden and boring, Eddings is repetitive and appears to have a vocabulary that even as a dyslexic 11 year old I found stunted - ask yourself, did Silk ever say anything other then "wryly"?). I'll give Brooks a slight bonus because he uses science fantasy elements in his world building compared to Eddings utterly reductive cultural determinism via poorly researched stereotype.
Its been a bit too long since I read the Diamond Throne and I paid a lot less attention to prose back then to really assess whether I agree or not, but I recall Sparhawk being at least 1.5 dimensional like a crossbreed of Dirty Harry and Lancelot, I thought Eddings did a charming/wholesome job on basing each villain from the Elenium on one of the seven sins and giving each one an appropriately karmic end (my favorite was the renegade Knight Martell being bested by Sparhawk because of his Gilded Armour weighing him down) and some of the fantastic creatures were at least a bit novel (bug monsters and cavemen?). From what I hear (I am interested in your perspective here) Brooks just does a terrible Tolkien, almost a verbatim carbon copy.

The stereotyping is a pretty lazy writing I agree, but what do you mean by poorly researched?

Inferno - John M. Stater Hexcrawl. Nothing else I have seen does it any justice. The various other game-ifications are dreadful.

Drake - Old Nathan it was. Slammers is my first dose of Drake after his collaboration with Wagner (Killer it was called and it rocked) and thus far I am pleasantly surprised by the amount of Dutchmen. I dig Baen for keeping in print some of the old good stuff like Fred Saberhagen and whenever I want to read something science fictiony that is JUST escapism Baen lands pretty well. Mark L. van Name, Timothy Zahn, Charles Sheffield and whoever did the Skylark shoutout were pretty good reads. Weber's protagonists are too cringey so I am not trying that one again. I have of course read most of John Ringo's books (even GHOST), the content of which I will not discuss in polite company.

Anyone read the Prince of Nothing Trilogy (and the subsequent follow up) by R.Scott Bakker? I am not him but I am a fan of the series as should be obvious. Probably the most intriguing modern fantasy series I have read.
 

Gus L.

A FreshHell to Contend With
Oh by bad research I mean lazy stereotypes... I don't remember the Belgariad that well, and it's the only Eddings I've read - quite a while ago, but even when I was a kid I remember thinking "These guys are supposed to be Vikings? I know more about Vikings from Golden Books then the author seems to." It's all just meadhalls, berserkergang and longships. All the peoples of the Belgariad are like that in the first books, just these broad pastiches of popular stereotype that are really uninteresting. It's like how a lot of D&D games feel like some kind of mobile phone tower defense game fantasy world: all goblins are green, squeaky and sneaky, all dwarfs love beer, beards and brusqueness - somnolent world-building - and it's somehow worse if you're gonna write fiction off of historical antecedents - viking culture and history are more interesting then the Belgariad version in a 1,000 ways - climate effects creating cultural and societal instability, weird warrior societies with blue teeth, shipbuilding and navigational expertise, gold giving as patronage and so on. History presents so many little details and oddities that one could really hang some fantasy off of with a little work - but instead Eddings decides to build his fantasy vikings of of what I assume is a single drunken viewing of Kirk Douglas's "The Vikings". It's the same thing as Dragonlance's Mongol/Sioux Noble Savage mash ups - and it's annoying. The Mongols were fucking awesome beyond drinking horse milk booze and sleeping in tents, and the Sioux pretty damn interesting as well. All that is just cast aside to bumble along with two or three of the barest dumb stereotypes.

Oh yeah Weber is bad and I have read a fair bit of Ringo who is arguably the worst. One thing I hate about Weber especially is his increasing inability to write bad guys who don't have some mark of personal evil about them (like pederasty or extreme sadism) - or good guys with foibles for that matter. James Ellory gets away with writing objectively more gruesome and awful stuff - but it's compelling because there's nuance. The serial killer has tragedy that makes one almost empathize and the corrupt cop can still do good despite, or maybe because of being an entirely believable as a thuggish lout. Pulp Sci-Fi and Fantasy have a damn nuance problem.
 

bryce0lynch

i fucking hate writing ...
Staff member
Anyone read the Prince of Nothing Trilogy (and the subsequent follow up) by R.Scott Bakker? I am not him but I am a fan of the series as should be obvious. Probably the most intriguing modern fantasy series I have read.
No, but I'm being procrastinating and looking for new books to read, so I'll add it to my list!
 

PrinceofNothing

High Executarch
Staff member
Oh by bad research I mean lazy stereotypes...
That one makes a lotta sense and is a valid criticism of Eddings's writing style.

I would also like to add Rothfuss's the Amir to the growing canon of unbelievable nonsense societies based off of a single idea that fall apart at the slightest examination.

Oh yeah Weber is bad and I have read a fair bit of Ringo who is arguably the worst. One thing I hate about Weber especially is his increasing inability to write bad guys who don't have some mark of personal evil about them (like pederasty or extreme sadism) - or good guys with foibles for that matter. James Ellory gets away with writing objectively more gruesome and awful stuff - but it's compelling because there's nuance. The serial killer has tragedy that makes one almost empathize and the corrupt cop can still do good despite, or maybe because of being an entirely believable as a thuggish lout. Pulp Sci-Fi and Fantasy have a damn nuance problem.
I agree wholeheartedly that characters need depth and nuance but the anti-hero trope doesn't seem an ideal solution. One of the most memorable sci-fi villains is probably Baron Vladimir Harkonnen; his constant sadistic manipulation, ruthless malevolence and gluttony make him the focal point of every chapter he inhabits. He is nuanced, credible, well-rounded and utterly, despicably evil.

Noble villains must make sense, and the burden of proof is higher. If someone is a corrupt cop, what virtues does he retain? Is he still moral, if so, how does he live with his crime? If he blames everything around him, what prevents him from giving in to his worst impulses and blame that on circumstance as well? If done right it can be a captivating character but its easier to fuck up. I'd add to his literary defeciencies any female character Weber writes, as well as most female characters in science fiction, very much including 99% of attempts at "strong female characters".

The best serial killer character study I've read is probably Patrick Bateman from American Psycho, but even here, the pity is experienced only by the reader. Bateman is a creature locked in a hell of his own creation and utterly unable to escape. He inflicts misery without remorse and suffers without meaning or hope of alleviation. A wretched half-creature, doomed to inflict on others the suffering he cannot fully process.

It's like I say with High Fantasy. We do not neccesarily need less high fantasy in DnD. We need less garbage fantasy. So too with villains, heroes, flawed or otherwise.

No, but I'm being procrastinating and looking for new books to read, so I'll add it to my list!
Absolutely let me know what you think, just know that its a little edgy, and after reading it GRRM seems childish and tame.
 

Middle Finger Of Vecna

A FreshHell to Contend With
Eddings's first five books are fairly well regarded even today.
Eddings gets a lot of hate, some of it deserved but the bile spit out against him by some seems excessive and I'm not just talking about Gus. I've seen similar comments by others. Yeah, it's not great lit but how much fantasy is? Sometimes, you just want to read something that doesn't require a whole lot of investment and is still enjoyable. Having said that, I never need to read Eddings again.

I'm attempting to read The Worm Ouroboros and it's.......interesting so far.
 

Gus L.

A FreshHell to Contend With
Eddings gets a lot of hate, some of it deserved but the bile spit out against him by some seems excessive and I'm not just talking about Gus. I've seen similar comments by others. Yeah, it's not great lit but how much fantasy is? Sometimes, you just want to read something that doesn't require a whole lot of investment and is still enjoyable. Having said that, I never need to read Eddings again.

I'm attempting to read The Worm Ouroboros and it's.......interesting so far.
I don't think I'm being unfair, or especially bilious to Eddings - the works of his I've read suffer precisely from being dull, derivative fantasy steeped in cultural determinism based on simplistic stereotypes. I don't know if he got better over time, the stupidities of the Belgariad may have been overcome in his later work - but the Belgariad is uninteresting. The Belgariad and the Shanara books are that - uninteresting derivative fantasy.

The reason I cite James Ellroy above is because he and Elmore Leonard, in a different much more fun way, manage to take the pulp detective genre and make it interesting and smart while still largely being approachable (Assuming you can deal with Ellroy's sadistic streak). Fantasy, especially 80's and 90's fantasy has this problem with being the worst kind of Tolkien pastiche and Eddings (like Fiest and Brooks) is deep in it. Heck Glen Cook is writing the Black Company at the same time - and it's fatansy as well, drawing from the same wellspring of D&D and Tolkien - but however much still quickly written genre fiction, both unchallenging and far far better. I don't demand what Cormac McCarthy does to the Western - but give me something - I'll take the equivilent of Valdez is Coming by Leonard. A few twists on the formula, a bit of self awareness and craft.
 

PrinceofNothing

High Executarch
Staff member
I'm attempting to read The Worm Ouroboros and it's.......interesting so far.
Terrific book. Both prose and characters.

I don't think I'm being unfair, or especially bilious to Eddings - the works of his I've read suffer precisely from being dull, derivative fantasy steeped in cultural determinism based on simplistic stereotypes.
Its not that I can't get behind not liking Eddings for the reasons you outlined but its just weird to see him placed at the absolute nadir of fantasy writers alongside Brooks and Jordan (and presumably Christopher Paolini) when he came out at a time when there was a huge demand for more Lord of the Rings that needed to be filled, his characters (in Elenium) were not direct carbon copies of the plot of Lotr (unlike Brooks), there was a competent execution of familiar tropes and admittedly little innovation on the format. I've only read the Elenium which may have painted its cultures with a little bit too broad of a brush but never as a dominant feature.

As for later attempts at Tolkien Level Epic Fantasy with multiple characters and complex worldbuilding I can think of no better author then R. Scott Bakker, whose work embraces some similarities to Tolkien but underlying themes that are utterly different, and whose prose, characterization and plot and worldbuilding I find superior to G.R.R. Martin (who kind of puttered out by the time of Dance of Dragons). Stephen R. Donaldson I am going to try this year.
 

Gus L.

A FreshHell to Contend With
Its not that I can't get behind not liking Eddings for the reasons you outlined but its just weird to see him placed at the absolute nadir of fantasy writers alongside Brooks and Jordan (and presumably Christopher Paolini) when he came out at a time when there was a huge demand for more Lord of the Rings that needed to be filled
To some extent I'm goofing on the idea of "worst fantasy ever" - obviously there are worse authors then Eddings in that era (Dragonlance comes immediately to mind). I haven't read Jordan though I hear nothing good. Brooks is just flatly dull (except for a few lines about Gamma World style biomechanical dead futurepast monsters) and that fails to inspire me, even to mockery. Eddings isn't good though - not even close to good - but meorable enough that I can talk a bit of smack. With that era I keep asking myself - was Earthsea doing it better 15 years earlier? The answer is pretty much - Yup.

I've read Bakker, but I get him a bit confused with Joe Abercrombie, and while I'd say he's better then Eddings - his and Abercrombie's style of hardboiled fantasy (which is taking a line from Martin and owes a look more to Cook's Black Company) is decent enough, but very of the moment - I don't know how it'll hold up. With Bakker one of the things I like was that he's not afraid to get a little weird and inexplicable in the way of Vance era stories - he leaves stuff open to being strange. Ambercrombie doesn't manage this, but I find his stand alone-ish novels (say Red Country and the battle one) more appealing then Bakker.
 

PrinceofNothing

High Executarch
Staff member
To some extent I'm goofing on the idea of "worst fantasy ever" - obviously there are worse authors then Eddings in that era (Dragonlance comes immediately to mind). I haven't read Jordan though I hear nothing good. Brooks is just flatly dull (except for a few lines about Gamma World style biomechanical dead futurepast monsters) and that fails to inspire me, even to mockery. Eddings isn't good though - not even close to good - but meorable enough that I can talk a bit of smack. With that era I keep asking myself - was Earthsea doing it better 15 years earlier? The answer is pretty much - Yup.
Dnd fiction is the least interesting fantasy I've ever read and I am very curious why this is so. I'd blame it on the universe it takes place in, which is itself a mess cobbled together from different fantasy sources without design or reason or any sort of resonance with myth and legend (I guess Dragonlance suffers a little less then Forgotten Realms) but also on the immense difficulty of writing in a universe of someone else's creation.

Earthsea is hard to compare to other fantasies, especially Epic Fantasies, because it deliberately sets out to do something entirely different. There are no dark lords, massing armies, casts of characters and magic objects to be recovered in earthsea. The problems that face the lagoon can usually be solved via co-operation, some inner revelation or the odd hint of courage. I might at some point have to reread it to figure out what parts were good and what parts have not held up (I remember hating Tehanu and considering it incredibly boring for example).

I've read Bakker, but I get him a bit confused with Joe Abercrombie, and while I'd say he's better then Eddings - his and Abercrombie's style of hardboiled fantasy (which is taking a line from Martin and owes a look more to Cook's Black Company) is decent enough, but very of the moment - I don't know how it'll hold up. With Bakker one of the things I like was that he's not afraid to get a little weird and inexplicable in the way of Vance era stories - he leaves stuff open to being strange. Ambercrombie doesn't manage this, but I find his stand alone-ish novels (say Red Country and the battle one) more appealing then Bakker.
I think from a literary standpoint Cook as an influencer is right on, but Martin is probably to blame for drawing the entire genre in that direction. Martin started out very strong but his books have begun to putter out and mired in plot threads. I don't think we will see the end of the series before he dies. His frequent use of the fake-out main-character death and dreadful pacing issues started leaving me colder and colder. Conversely, with Bakker I think the only part where his work really lagged was at The Thousandfold Thought, which felt a lot less grounded because of the plethora of fight-scenes involving shapechangers, magicians and Kellhus taking on fifty guys, to the point where I felt the urge to watch an episode of Dragon Ball Z to the Game of Thrones opening theme.

After that Bakker's counter-riff to Lotr picks up steam. The world is vivid, riven with history and philosophy, vast and grand compared to the grime-covered emphemera of Scott Lynch, Andrzej Sapkowski or M. Lawrence. Its also one of the few recent fantasy books I've read that attempts to explore some serious concepts, and offers some insights into human nature, however bleak. There is no hint of parochial, 21st century cosmopolitan mores in any of the blind, mad wretches Bakker describes, where all men are fundamentally deluded by their very natures and true faith is both a formidable power and a fatal flaw. Lord of the Rings cross-bred with Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Aguirre and the Bible. Its an uneven but great work and I think it will hold up better then Martin, Lawrence, Sapkowski, Lynch or others (though the Grimdark era will certainly end).

I can't think of any post-Martin book that stuck with me like Bakker's books did. Ambercrombie I have yet to try, and Melvielle I found creative and very beautifully written but terribly unsatisfying (probably by design).
 

Melan

*eyeroll*
Dnd fiction is the least interesting fantasy I've ever read and I am very curious why this is so. I'd blame it on the universe it takes place in, which is itself a mess cobbled together from different fantasy sources without design or reason or any sort of resonance with myth and legend (I guess Dragonlance suffers a little less then Forgotten Realms) but also on the immense difficulty of writing in a universe of someone else's creation.
It is simply bad writing and corporate-imposed creative lobotomy. The first modern Hungarian fantasy novel (genre fantasy, not literary fantasy or "magic realism") is not only based on some guy's AD&D campaign, it is specifically based on The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh and The Secret of Bone Hill. The sequel takes place on Limbo, and has AD&D-style mind flayers and anti-paladins, etc. Yet they are eminently good pulp fantasy - not masterpieces by any stretch, but they are vivid, adventurous, and full of memorable characters (mostly underdogs and lowlifes, which is a big difference in comparison with what TSR was doing with their branded fiction). It just so happens that the author was good at what he was doing, and he was free to write what he pleased, including straying from AD&D when it made better sense.

As a more internationally known example, Ian Watson's WH40K novels are readable beyond the level of a splatbook, while the other 40K novels are largely irredeemable trash.

Nothing, however, will save the Forgotten Realms. It is unsuitable as a basis for good fiction, and only lovable hacks like Salvatore will ever touch it. So your point may stand here.
 
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