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Perhaps you are correct about the hobbits. But the Dwarfs are portrayed usually as dim witted, physically strong, and manual laborers none of which fits the Jewish stereotype. If any one is the Jews, it has to be the Leprequans.
Trust me, I don't need 100% action. My favorite midevil-ish fantasy type books I've read has been George R.R. Martin's and while the action in it is great, its usually over pretty quick. Its far more focused around character development, politics, etc.
Granted, Erikson's will likely turn into the same thing as Martin's did for me and within a 100 pages or so it'll have me hooked. Its just even harder for me to keep picking up than Martin's was. I went back and reread the Song of Ice and Fire series and found the first 100 pages FLEW by then. I think the issue is in such immersive worlds as Martins and from what I hear Erikson's, you get thrown into it and it'll either hook you right off or just be boringly tiresome to read about characters and events that have no real meaning or depth to them at all until you get to the grander scope of things...making it hard to get into.
That was really one of my few complaints about Martin's work (That and he's taking too damn long getting the next book out) and it seems to be present in Erikson's too.
lol. Yeah, everyone complains about GotM and the early Paran stuff. Too bad he can't just re-write it. Having a bad start to such an enormously long series is so unfortunate. And that many people really aren't wrong on that one. Glad you're getting something out of it now.So pushed on through the first bit of Gardens of the Moon and sure enough, just like with Martin, things started picking up. Though admittedly it really wasn't till the Bridgeburner and Darujhistan sections that it caught me. Paran's stuff early on was....meh. Over all though I really did enjoy the book. I'm onto Memories of Ice now and really enjoying it. I think my only issue so far is its definitely beginning to give me that "Dragon Ball Z" type feeling where every little bit something even more powerful has to be introduced to beat out the previously really powerful thing and on and on. The power scope is a bit daunting but other than that I'm enjoying it a lot.
....4e reference....
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....4e reference....
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If I may interrupt for another commercial break...
A new book of stories about pirates and magic has just been released which features my humorous story "X Spots the Mark".
Amazon.com: Rum and Runestones (9781897492079): Various, Valerie Griswold-Ford:…
His Malazan Book of the Fallen series is excellent, although particularly dense. The only negative that I've seen is that I don't think he proofs his writing much - some of his sentences have just horrible structure and are overly obtuse.
I remember reading Little Big years and years ago and enjoying it, but my old age is preventing me from remembering much about it!
For genearlly lighthearted fantasy that dives into deep waters unexpectedly, it's hard to beat Terry Pratchet's Discworld series.
And you simply cannot beat Stephen R. Donaldson's "Thomas Covenant" series for intelligent fantasy.
That certainly doesn't sound very "intelligent".
Unfortunately, a lot of genre writing is as you describe: talentless hacks churning out cheap imitations of the work of one or two influential writers in said genre.
A lot of horror fiction, for instance, is ripped off from Stephen King (who isn't that great a writer himself, in many ways; I prefer Straub).
And don't even get me into romance writing: if anybody ever did it well, it must've been centuries before our time.
I'm not a fan of fantasy, but my ex-husband was, and I believe his favorite author was somebody named Marion Zimmer Bradley.
There is one- one- fantasy writer that I adore; his name is John Crowley, and his best book is Little, Big.
I've read this book dozens of times over the course of my life, and it's like a different book every time I read it. I always discover something new and profound between its covers.
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