Sci-fi/Fantasy recommendations

[Eddie Teach]

Brooks is indeed very bad. I'm not sure that I like him better for having suckered me into reading a whole book.

[grumbler]

Raz is not my enemy. At least, I hope not.

And Napoleon probably didn't originate that quote.

[grumbler]

Quit faggoting up the threads, grumbler.

Oops. Sorry.  I didn't mean to steal your schtick.

[grumbler]

Goodkind is, if not the worst author I've ever come across, certainly a member of the top three worst. I tried reading his first book many years ago and gave up somewhere around page 100 or so. By which point I already disliked both of his main characters, let alone his "prose".

Everything I've heard since makes me glad of that decision.

Brooks, however, I've always found to be readable even if his early books are derivative tosh and his later books seem determined to contradict bits of his earlier books. I'd certainly rate him on a level with a good deal of the Star Wars EU (and actually better than at least 20% of it, particularly the bits of the EU that the EU itself has airbrushed from history.)

Never tried Paolini (?); never wanted to. The jacket blurb on his first book failed to make it sound worth my time.

What you say kinda goes to my point, though: it seems that the bar for getting published in fantasy is very low, which is why so much of it seems so bad.  I am sure that, in absolute numbers, there are more bad writers in general fiction than in fantasy, but in relative numbers, fantasy seems the genre with the greatest problem with "derivative tosh" and horrible writing. 

Which isn't to say that there isn't lots of great fantasy books out there.  It's just that its a minefield.

[The Brain]

Quit faggoting up the threads, grumbler.

Oops. Sorry.  I didn't mean to steal your schtick.

Whoa. There's a mouth on this one.

[Neil]

I don't know who locked this or why.

[Jacob]

I don't know who locked this or why.

Yeah, I was confused about that too.

[grumbler]

I suspect it was Sheilbh, because he thought it was drifting off topic.

Sheilbh, a recommendation that I would make now that I have remembered the book title is Roger Zelazny's Doorways in the Sand.  It is an amusing little story about a guy who wants to remain an undergraduate forever, before he encounters an extraterrestrial, and I think you will enjoy the non-linear writing style Zelazny invents for the story.

[Sheilbh]

I don't know who locked this or why.

Yeah, I was confused about that too.

I think I did accidentally with hands like shovels and an iPhone

Just started first Sarantium novel.

[PDH]

I second Doorways in the Sand.  Fun book.

[Maximus]

I think I did accidentally with hands like shovels and an iPhone

Wait, how many hands do you have?

[mongers]

I don't know who locked this or why.

It was pre-emptively blocked in case I made a recommendation. 

[Neil]

I like Niven's Known Space.  Ringworld is great.

[The Brain]

Molly.

[jimmy olsen]

It's the same old story. Crap writing, a plot so implausible it is impossible to suspend disbelief and characters with as much depth as a paddling pool.

I'm not going to disagree with 1 and 3, but I'd be quite interested as to what particularly you found so implausible about the plot given the genre of the novel.

As I say I've got a third of the way through before chucking it. The idea that you attempt you start a civil war/uprising under the nose of a super-powerful, immortal ruler and you tell thousands of people that you are going to do it was my main objection.

IIRC he didn't expect to be successful, it was basically a martyrdom operation that was meant to inspire future rebellions. Can't exactlly send in your video to CNN in this kind of setting he had to spread the word.