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Date: 11/14/07 11:50 pm (UTC)(and how are you liking The Golden Compass?)
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Date: 11/15/07 12:13 am (UTC)oops. There's that pesky trilogy word again ... Megan had better get that next book out soon to get rid of the "trilogy" label.
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Date: 11/15/07 01:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 11/15/07 02:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 11/15/07 09:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 11/15/07 12:59 am (UTC)I'm assuming all of the librarians in this group have already seen this, but it needs to be included in a scrapbook of Megan plugging.
http://www.unshelved.com/archive.aspx?strip=20060924
I enjoy the Magus - he already looks fed up and Gen hasn't even started yet.
Oooh, I really need to re-read The Golden Compass, but someone has my copy. *annoyed*
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Date: 11/15/07 03:59 am (UTC)The Name of the Wind and the Queen's Thief books are just very different. I like both, but I don't think it's fair to judge them in the same category. Rothfuss's book is more on the Robin Hobb/Tolkien side of the spectrum and Turner's are more on the Diana Wynne Jones (help. I want to say Gaiman but I don't think that's accurate.)
-F.D.
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Date: 11/15/07 05:21 am (UTC)Although you probably have a point about not judging them together - they really do come from different sides of the genre. But that being said, there's a similar shape to the stories.
I would actually argue that The Thief is just plan better-written than The Name of the Wind. The plot is stronger - also much tighter - and the characters are more nuanced, and in some cases, significantly more interesting. I think there are sloppy bits in Name of the Wind, but I can't find very many in any of The Thief books.
Rothfuss is doing a great job writing within the genre; he actually reminded me more of LeGuin than Tolkien, to be honest. Name of the Wind reminds of the Wizard of Earthsea, expanded x 200 (not wholly a good thing, not wholly a bad) and Peter David's Apropos of Nothing stories. It's a good book, and he's got great ideas, but I do think the writing could be better.
I like The Theif because it's unusual - I haven't seen characters or situations like that in very many other books, whereas I can give you a laundry list of things Name of the Wind reminds me of.
Meh. It's probably a personal thing as well.
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Date: 11/15/07 05:58 pm (UTC)I think part of what you call the tightness of the Thief books is their self-contained-ness. Each story stands on its own, although they are quite interrelated. The Name of the Wind isn't like that at all--I'll need the next two books to have clue what is going on.
Incidentally, Kvothe reminds me a bit of Ender from Ender's game. They're both geniuses. And what I admire Rothfuss and Card for is being able to write characters that are brilliant without having them do/think things that make no logical sense in the context of their intelligence. (For an example of someone who doesn't quite succeed at this try Laurie R. King's Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes series.) Turner's books are completely different in that (except for maybe The Thief) we don't see Gen thinking and are left (well, left in my case, y'all may have had a different experience) smacking ourselves in the head going, "Oh. Wow. Wow. I did not see that coming. And I could not see that coming. WOW." Which is also fun.
Name of the Wind reminded me a lot of Robin Hobb's Assassin's Apprentice. Haven't read Earthsea yet (I confess, the last Ursula Le Guin I read was Catwings. :) )
Sorry to be so long-winded. :)
*ambles off to the library to check out Le Guin and Archer's Goon*
-F.D.
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Date: 11/16/07 03:39 am (UTC)Hmm. OK. Most of my problems with the book are character problems. This is me, accepting that. ;)
The laundry list? Hoo boy. As I said, this mostly reminds me of Wizard of Earthsea, which use to be a loose trilogy and is now longer. The main character is a cocky, talented Hero who busts his way into the mage school, screws up with magical powers, and picks up an enormous reputation while he's at it. It's a quieter fantasy, and philosophical becase LeGuin usually is, but really good. I love it.
Kvothe also reminds me a lot of Peter David's character Apropos of Nothing, who is cranky, red-haired, and eventually goes to ground as a scarred and battered innkeeper (similar romance too, now that I think of it). Yep, the title is a pun, and the amount of puns in the landscape beats Piers Antony into a little quivering mass of goo. But Apropos is what no other fantasy character is: a scoundrel, and not in the Han Solo way, who hijacks himself into an adventure because he doesn't want to be the sidekick. It's an interesting idea. David is clearly playing around with with happens when the characters are aware of how a story should run, and that stories somehow have a life of their own (now this Terry Pratchett covers on a regular basis). But there's something delightfully novel about Apropos, a bad-tempered cowardly cripple who can talk his way out of almost anything and is an extremely unreliable narrator.
The reason I love Apropos is that even though David is actively skewering the whole fantasy genre, Apropos plays into it to the point where his own personal tragedy (which should be ludicrious in the middle of something that vaguely resembles a simultaneous parody of Clavell's Shogun and Hwang's M. Butterfly) is actually tragic and deeply affecting. Incidentally, I'm not recommending Shogun or M. Butterfly. I mean, they're both quite good, but a little heavy. The first is a historical potboiler which clocks in at 1100 pages and the second is Drama.
The atmosphere of the Arcanum reminded me a bit of Arrows for the Queen - the horrible people were equally horrible - but I'm not sure I'm recommending that either. I have mixed feelings about Mercedes Lackey. Or course it reeks of Harry Potter, though not in a bad way. Reminded me a bit of Diana Wynne Jones' Dalemark books as well - mostly the travelling players bit. The crafty bits remind me of Tamora Pierce's Circle Opens books (if you haven't read these, just read the first four; the second set are lousy but the subsequent stand-alone is great).
That's all I can think of now...and it's certainly long. Never ask me for book recs; I'm a librarian's daughter and I take you seriously. I have this feeling that I was thinking of more things which I was reading, though. But they have evaporated...somewhere...
Now I just hope you like any of these you end up reading. I'd hate to be the person who gave you the bad rec. :)
I'll have to get on Robin Hobb; my sister gave me a qualified rec and I didn't take it but I love me my politics, so I have no idea why. I think the names put me off.
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Date: 11/16/07 03:52 pm (UTC)~Feir Dearig
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Date: 11/15/07 04:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 11/15/07 04:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 11/15/07 04:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 11/15/07 01:00 pm (UTC)or Turner where every one of the books in her series has a different pov set-up that's most suited to the story she wants to tell (The Thief is first person, The Queen of Attolia is mostly omniscient, and The King of Attolia is third person limited and also and probably not coincidentally my absolute favourite).
Clever Sarah realizes it is a series, not a trilogy : )
&hearts's mistful