Re: McKinley: Re: epic fantasies

the "errors-to" section of the header. Since
that line includes a bunch of "caltech.edu"
stuff, I guess it's caused by a spat between
Hotmail and the list server (or something ;) ).
Hotmail doesn't like Yahoo much, either, btw.
Hey, speaking of "Sorcery and Cecilia" - Caroline
Stevermer, the coauthor of that book, wrote
another called "A College of Magics" which I
highly recommend. (I thought of mentioning it
during the 'mazes' discussion, but never got
around to it - it's got a couple in there.
Mazes, that is.)
(Oh yeah, and about the riddles - did anyone ever
bother to mention "The Riddlemaster of Hed," an
old trilogy by Patricia McKillip (whose
"Sorceress & the Cygnet" is some of the best
stuff I've ever read)? I can't remember, and it
was probably already known by everyone,
anyway...)
I did not like Terry Goodkind's work. Although I
have a few friends who love him, they're the
people whose opinions of writing I don't
necessarily trust. His books read like the rough
drafts of a sadistic Terry Brooks wannabe - who
is immature in every area except that of
torture/pain/killing. If he could actually
write, I would like him - I mean, if he had
written "Deerskin," Lissar would be a weak,
really weird idiot who killed herself or
something at the earliest opportunity (after a
million pages of description of her rape and
ensuing pain, of course).

Robin Hobb isn't a favorite of mine, but she's
certainly better than Goodkind. The offputting
thing about that trilogy was, how could Fitz be
such an incredibly stupid jerk all the time?
Does anybody know any actual men who are like
that, or does Robin Hobb just fantasize a lot in
entirely the wrong direction?!?? I met her at
the NW Bookfair (or whatever it was called, that
thing on the waterfront), and she was okay,
although extremely cold during the panel. Kinda
witty. Hey, J. Gregory Keyes, Terry Brooks, and
Steven Brust were there, too... if anyone's
interested I'll give detail. To sum up, Brust
was the life of the party, Hat and all.
"Dealing with Dragons" was the first of Wrede's
Enchanted Forest series, and IMUO the best.
Terry Brooks wrote two series about the Sword of
Shannara (well, they weren't all about the sword,
but it was peripherally there), and in each, the
first was the best (again IMUO). If you get
bored by the beginning of "The Sword of
Shannara," take heart and keep in mind that it
was his first book - it gets a lot better. (I
wish I were as lucky as Shirl ;).) (But what is
UP with everyone getting married to the wrong
people throughout his series?) I haven't read
anything else by him - his perceived
'commercialism' is 'cause of his writing the book
versions of a couple high-profile movies, huh?
I can hardly wait for "The Captal's Tower." The
character I'm annoyed by, so far, is Sarra's
daughter... Cailet is kinda backward sometimes,
though, yeah. I'm kind of glad the Malerrisi
sister finally died, but WHO WERE COLLAN'S
PARENTS??!? excuse me, you who don't give a rip,
but the tension is just making me a little
nuts... ;)
"Tigana" is awesome, and GGK deserves more
readers.
Just remembered - Brust considers "Agyar" his
best work. Hmmm. My favorite of his is tied
about five ways... I liked "Freedom and
Necessity," with Emma Bull - anyone else read it?
 
People who like Pamela Dean, there's a website
called "A Little Bit of Not Much,"
http://home.earthlink.net/~panflx/index.html
which includes 'the Annotated Dean' (that section
lives up to the main page's title, but hopefully
he'll get around to doing it proper; it's a great
idea, anyway). From there, you can get to her
own page; and then, if you care to go to
www.dd-b.net (or click 'server root' at the
bottom of her page), her husband's site has some
pretty nifty stuff on it - like pictures of a
couple of my favorite authors, under the
photography page.

I really wish that Washington were next to
Virginia (or even within a weekend's drive), so
that I could come to the 'minicon;' maybe I'll
get stationed there next year, who knows :).
Nobody has mentioned Kate Elliot. Although her
recent stuff has rather sucked, I love her book
"Jaran." The series that it was a prequel to was
a letdown (I kinda liked some of the fourth one,
though), but "Jaran" is awesome, if you don't
mind some futuristic stuff and skip all the parts
about Charles.
Okay, I'll quit now! promise. Thanks for putting
up w/ bs... ;) luv y'all.
Danielle

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Received on Tue Aug 3 05:26:44 1999