Reply With QuoteI'd say it ramps down, but at an even pace. The Amber books are good too. Man, I thought everyone picked them up because of the Dieties and Demigods having the Lankmar (sp?) mythos inside. Hell of an advertisement, that.
Wow!
My opinion of fantasy is pretty low. Any genre that inspires grown men to throw bean bags at each other with the word "Magic Missile!" written on it in Crayola is not the genre for me. My Dad handed down to me his complete Edgar Rice Burroughs collection when I was 8, made up entirely of 15c paper-backs from the Fifties, and I loved that stuff. Robert E. Howard's stories are great too. But that's about it for fantasy background. A girlfriend once tried to get me to read George R.R. Martin's "A Game of Thrones", but after a couple of chapters, I shuddered at the thought of reading four-thousand pages of such absolutely drek writing and flung it aside for the adventures of Horatio Hornblower.
So that's my background. But I saw a used copy of the first collection of the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories the other day, and on a whim and remembering how much I used to dig Fritz Leiber (Conjure, Wife is a great horror novel), I picked it up and have been plowing through it.
Anyone else a Fafhrd and Gray Mouser fan? Are the other collections as good as this one, or does the quality ramp down?
I'd say it ramps down, but at an even pace. The Amber books are good too. Man, I thought everyone picked them up because of the Dieties and Demigods having the Lankmar (sp?) mythos inside. Hell of an advertisement, that.
I'd agree, though there is a sharp downturn in the last two books. The Fafhrd and The Grey Mouser Become Respectable stories really turned me off.
I remember a book called "Nifft the Lean" that seemed written in the same style. You might want to look for an old copy of that somewhere, once you get done with the F&GM books.
I can't remember the name of the last book, but some of those stories in them weren't written by Leiber.
The graphic novel conversions drawn by Mike Mignola are excellent.
--- Alan
Fritz Leiber is great, and Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser are the best buddy characters in literature apart possibly from Aubrey and Maturin. It's true that the last stories in the series are quite different in tone from the first, being an ironic bittersweet treatment of the middle-age of these characters, who are (somewhat) settled down, but they are still entertaining and worthwhile, written with insight and humor.
Just stay away from the recent homage book written by some non-Leiber fantasy author whose name I have blotted from my memory. They are the worst posthumous homage stories I have ever read, and if I hadn't reacted to them with a sort of voluntary amnesia, my memory of the real stories would still be tainted.
Anyhow, within the sf/fantasy genre, I put Leiber right up there with Vance and Zelazny, who for me make up something of a trinity....
For me it's Zelazny, Tolkien and Moorcock that make up the geek god trio. Leiber's another favorite of mine.
I just finished Silverheart, a UK import he did with Storm Constantine not yet out in a US edition. It was OK, I guess, typical Moorcockian fantasy which Constantine was obviously trying very hard to stay consistent with, but it just seemed stale to me. I didn't care about the characters to speak of. Somehow it just seemed to lack something, not really introducing anything new to speak of, and also missing the interesting style elements of Moorcock's solo fantasy. I speculate that the book was mostly written by Constantine following a jointly worked out outline, with just a few passages written by Moorcock himself. In many cases the prose is much more dull and workmanlike than I would expect from Constantine, but nowhere is it actually bad; just shall I say something less than good.
I have always been a bit ambivalent in my opinion of Moorcock. On the one hand, some of his fantasy if anything seems a bit too straightforward and simplistic plodding along in the usual mechanical way, on the other hand some of the stuff related to more-or-less real-world stories (e.g. some of the books relating to Cornelius and his acquaintances) is overly complicated and obtuse for my taste. However, there are certainly many examples of Moorcock's writing that fall into an ideal middle ground for me, including some of Elric, the Dorian Hawkmoon books, the Jherek Carnelian stories, umm, whatshisname Von (?) in the books related to the holy grail and middlemarch, of course the hilarious Jerry Cornell books, and even some of Cornelius, among others.
The last exceptional Moorcock book I read was Blood: A Southern Fantasy, which I thought was quite good, if tending towards the obtuse and complicated pole of his writing....
Von Bek. That's actually one of my favorite cycles in the Champion Eternal melieu. I wouldn't say that plotting is Moorcock's strongpoint - what I love is his phrasing and presentation. I'd agree that the Cornelius stuff was over the top, and annoyingly so, but the characters were still strong and his style tres cool. I prefer his more 'plodding' works so I can relax and enjoy the ride a bit more.
To qualify myself, I agree almost totally with the above. However, a long time ago an ex-gf loaned me a series which was one of the best series of books I've ever read, and it is fantasy. It's three trilogies (nine total books) by Stephen Donaldson, entitled The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. If you can get through the tediousness of the first half of the first book, you are on your way to a great time.Originally Posted by DrCrypt
Amazon whore that I am, here's a link to the author's page there:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/se...694312-2108015
Two trilogies = six books. There is no Third Chronicles. Other than that I agree with you.
There've been rumors that Donaldson has plans for a Third Chronicles. Without giving anything away, it's hard, given the events of the Second Chronicles, to exactly see how that would work, but Donaldson's a talented guy and I wouldn't put anything past him.
junior allen
It's funny- I've been looking at the Donaldon and Gavriel Kay series in the last couple of weeks- they're all listed under inspirations for the RPG Nobilis (I hope to run it in the near future). Just can't get past the crappy-sounding fantasy rhetoric on the covers. Goblins! Wizards! Knights! Unexpected Heroes!. It's just not for me most of the time, though I did enjoy Lieber's Fafhrd & Mouser stories- the dialouge was just so witty and fun.
Intead, I'm reading China Mievilles' King Rat and Perdido Street Station- Gritty urban fantasy. I'm nearly done with the first, and it's not too bad so far. For some reason I'm comparing him in my mind to Jeff Noon (author of Vurt) etc.), probably because they're both young british SF authors who put a lot of references to club music (Techno, Drum 'n Base, etc.) into their books. The similarities pretty much end there though- Noon is fairly experimental, and Mievelle's prose is decidedly tame. IMO Noon is much, much better, but oh well- This stuff is still pretty entertaining. If you enjoyed Neverwhere, you would probably enjoy this.
Hey, do you run Nobilis online or in what city? I picked up the first edition a few years ago and enjoyed the melieu but it seemed nigh unapproachable on casual inspection. A game like Tekumel or Aria where I really appreciate it, and all, but I'd never try to run it myself. The second edition I picked up just a week ago and it exploded the setting out for me. I'd like to get in on a campaign somewhere - especially if it's being run online.
Oops, froodian slip. :?
I haven't actually started running Nobilis yet, and probably won't for another month at least - the player I've got who's most interested is getting married in the middle of October, and obviously doesn't have the time to devote to it right now. The game won't be online, unfortunately. I live in Seattle. I picked up the 1st ed. a couple of years ago, too and like you it was just a bit to out there to consider running as a game. The 2nd ed. is much, much better for getting you hooked and giving you ideas for just what to do in a game- giving you some direction. This makes me happy.
I finished King Rat. Somehow not too satisfying- it was pretty predictable, and the resolution reminded me a lot of the movie Dark City- good, intelligent setup, with the resolution being decided by a superpowered fistfight. Sarted on the second book by the author, Perdido Street Station, and so far it's much, much better. These books were reccomended by the Nobilis e-mail list.
Sorry, I just can't stand Donaldson. He is a very technically skilled writer, who can create a profoundly detailed living character in just a paragraph or two, but his writing is nevertheless for me almost unbearable. This is mainly because the only sympathetic and interesting or attractive characters he creates are doomed to horrible deaths shortly after they are introduced, while he sticks with his stupid, evil, ineffective, feeble, and generally deficient characters through thick and thin.
Now I am a pretty liberal guy in terms of writing. I have no problem with antiheroes, with characters who perform evil actions and get away with them, or with lack of morality or morals in literature in general. But there is something about Donaldson's stuff which just repels me.
Take Covenant. Here we have a rapist, a whiner and a loser who does his best to first repel and piss off, and eventually actually kills off all his friends, usually in the most horrible way imaginable. I mean, really, wading through a pool of lava seems a bit much for that poor giant -- and as I vaguely recall, that heroic deed turned out to be entirely a waste anyway. There is no redemption for Covenant, and really, I can't imagine any way he can be redeemed anyhow, considering his misdeeds. I don't care that he has leprosy, romantic problems, or what the hell may have happened to him in the past to warp him so badly. He is just a skunk, pure and simple, and I feel betrayed in reading so much about him, assuming he would eventually somehow manage to fix all the things he ruined or somehow do something worthy; yet in the end it is clear he would have saved everyone including himself a lot of trouble by just committing suicide. Anyhow, the Covenant series has a very interesting world and mythically resonant context, and many interesting if doomed supporting characters, but the Covenant's failure to rouse himself from fatalistic ennui dooms the books.
Next consider, uhh, A Man Rides Through and its sequel. The two main characters in these books are the most ineffective and pathetic excuses for protagonists in the history of literature. At least Covenant is a tortured psychotic. These two characters have so little character they are barely even alive. They make typical C. J. Cherryh male characters (otherwise the most frail and sensitive characters I can think of offhand) look like Edgar Rice Burroughs heroes in comparison. Both the main characters, the marginal male and the even more marginal female, are beyond clinically depressed, they are practically catatonic in their incredible inability to behave in any kind of human way in response to almost any kind of stimulus. Meanwhile, attractive and interesting characters around them can barely survive for a chapter or two before the awesome evil forces surrounding them kill them off. In these two books, by the way, we have the stupidest system of magic heretofore expressed in literature, the idea that reflection by its nature is magical, and that any form of warped reflection is dangerous in the extreme. Apparently no one in this world is permitted to take a bath or go near a body of water, or else they might see a warped reflection, ("Aunt Maisie was eaten by a Grue yesterday."
"Oh? That makes three this week." "Yeah, I warned her and warned her about not looking into her teacup, but she never listened; the light must have caught it just right.") and of course everyone looks pretty ugly since they can't groom themselves for fear of being attacked by extraplanar monsters. But I nitpick with logical problems that are inconsequential compared to the incredibly bad protagonist characters who never learn, develop, or in any way manage to improve themselves in a thousand pages of otherwise beautifully written prose.
Eh. Well anyway, my horrible experience with the Covenant series and with those two books have turned me off of Donaldson permanently. Perhaps he has written other books which are more bearable, but I won't be reading them to find out.
Agreed. I have said before on this board that Donaldson is at least neurotic, if not psychotic. The repulsiveness of his main characters is so extreme that it destroys any interest I have in reading about them.
Interestingly, the best Donaldson book I've read in a long time is the mainstream novel The Man Who Fought Alone. This is a novel with a deeply messed up protagonist working through his "issues" in a very strange way, and yet it worked very well. Setting the book in contemporary martial arts worked for me somehow. Apparently this book is the third in a series Donaldson wrote under a pseudonym and is now writing in his own name. I agree that Donaldson writes about deeply screwed up characters - that theme works a ton better in a gritty urban novel than in a heroic fantasy or space opera.
Dan (Sharpe)
I have no interest in getting into a long thread defending Donaldson, since that's Gayer than Gay can Possibly Be. I will say that I liked the first trilogy so much that I actually sent the man a fan letter, the only time I ever did that.Agreed. I have said before on this board that Donaldson is at least neurotic, if not psychotic. The repulsiveness of his main characters is so extreme that it destroys any interest I have in reading about them.
The first trilogy is best understood, IMO, as occuring completely in Covenant's mind -- ie, that the Land isn't real and that Covenant has the basic facts more or less correct (it's a dangerous delusion that could hurt him in the real world). The second trilogy more or less gets rid of that notion -- it's decent but not as good as the first; the canny structure of the first trilogy is replaced with an argument about pacifism that gets more and more didatic as the books wear on.
Donaldson is hardly a "psychotic". He is a rather deeply religious man of the hippie/leftish-Quaker bent, and his extreme characters, are, I think, an update of the Flannery O'Conner notion that you can best depict redemption/grace/heroism in modern society by showcasing it in extremes.
junior allen
I read that Donaldson grew up as the son of a Missionary doctor who carted the boy to various Leper colonies. It gave him an intimate relationship with human suffering. So, he fills his work with it.
Personally I find the shock and horror of what he puts his characters through, and the honesty of his characters (nobody is an angel, only Foul is a devil (I mean not even Angus Thermopyle is truly, unredeemably vile) sort of refreshing. The books have vileness in them, but really they're pretty positive stories once they're told.
Sharpe, I tracked down and read the first couple "The Man Who..." books (they're hardboiled noir) and found them pretty bad. I'm not surprised the latest one is good though, the first two came out in the early 80's. Um... I bought the two in paperback for about $10. Want 'em at that price?
I read a couple of Fafhrd & Gray Mouser compilations and LOVED them. Archetypical fantasy, but really entertaining... that can't be said about a lot of the schlock being pumped out these days.
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