BPsite Forums

(Ok, screw the poll I'll just do it as a standard post.)

I have a large variety of unread books, and I'm trying to decide what I should read next. Options are:

Terry Goodkind / Sword of Truth
 - Chainfire
 - Phantom.

Trudi Canavan / Age of the Five
 - Priestess of the White

Raymond E Feist / Riftwar
 - Daughter of the Empire
 - Servant of the Empire
 - Mistress of the Empire
 - Prince of the Blood
 - The Kings Bucanner
 - Jimmy the Hand

Dune
- Legends 3 / The Battle of Corrin
- The Road To Dune

James Barclay / Ascendants of Estorea
 - Cry of the Newborn

Anne McCaffrey / Pern
 - All the Weyrs of Pern
 - Dragonsdawn
 - Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern
 - The Renegades of Pern

Philip Pullman
 - The Amber Spyglass
 - The Subtle Knife
 - Northern Lights


Hmm, I thought I had a couple of others but I can't see them around so I probably imagined it. :unsure:

Anyhow, that's the choices, you've got just under 24 hours to vote, before I decide to either listen to what people say or just ignore you all and make up my own mind anyway.

I didn't think much of The Amber Spyglass, but it comes recommended by a fair few people, and it's a while since I tried to read it, so I've been thinking of giving it another go.

Apart from that, I've not read any of the books on your list, so couldn't really give an informed opinion. I've read Terry Goodkind's Wizard's First Rule, and liked it... I've also heard that the series deteriorates, though. So either way it's inconclusive.

And that probably didn't help at all, did it.  :paranoid:  

Chainfire; could be interesting, it depends how into the series you are.  I suspect that he started writing the books to sell after a while, as the actual plot per book is often very thin on the ground, and highly padded.  I haven't read this one myself yet, though, nor phantom for that matter.

Daughter of the Empire; very, very good book, as are the other two in the set.  Very immersive, excellent world, and actually quite believable.  (The Magician trilogy became a bit too 'epic' towards the end, and my suspension of disbelief collapsed a few times.)  I'd suggest this one.

The Renegades of Pern; I know nowt about this one, but I misread it as 'The Renegades of Porn' to start with.  :blink:

Amber Spyglass; very good, although I read it many years ago.  Interesting take on God, though.  The end of the trilogy is rather odd, quite sad, and a bit ambiguous.  

The ones not mentioned I either haven't read, or are the second and third books in a trilogy.  I'm assuming that you'd want to start reading them at the first book, thus detailed thoughts on the others are a tad redundant. :)

Trudi Canavan is my very favourite author, by a long, long way. I'd suggest you read the Black Magician trilogy first, if you haven't (mainly because Age of the Five isn't finished yet, and I assume you hate waiting for books as much as I do; Age of the Five has better characters, better story... better).

Phillip Pullman is very good, but, honestly, you should've read them a good 5+ years ago. Amber Spyglass is by far the worst of the trilogy - personally it gets worse as it goes. I'd suggest reading Northern Lights and leaving it there, unless you really honest-to-god must know how it ends.

Battle of Corrin sucked hard. Read it only for completeness.

Um ... The Amber Spyglass is the first in the series? So how can it be the worst, yet the series gets worse as it goes....?

No, it's the last.  The first is The Northern Lights, the second The Subtle Knife, and the last The Amber Spyglass.
SS put them in the wrong order.  :P

Thanks everyone for the input. :)

I have decided to.... make you wait until the end of the post before saying what I've decided. :P



It does. I actually started reading it on the strength of the 6/7th book, and I liked the first handful of books, but...

Yeah, the series starts all nice and fantasy and stuff, but the recent ones have been a lot more... I dunno what the right word is. It seems to me that he's writing to spread his particular [political] viewpoint, and I vaguely remember quotes by him that back that up. Which is part of why I haven't already started on these; I like to enjoy reading, not feel like some huge ego is lecturing me. :mellow:

Anything listed that's part way through a series I've read the start of the series for.
(The only series book I've got without having the start of it is something by Maggie Fury, which is the third in a trilogy so not going to read that without reading the first two)



Yup, read the Black Magician trilogy already, so if this is better than that's promising; I found the BM characters very.... um, distinct -- unlike in WoT/etc where I sometimes go, "uh, which one is this again?" -- each character was a character, which I like.
And yeah, I hate waiting, especially when its a matter of years.
Any idea if its another trilogy, or a five book series, or...?


Hey, I just listed them in the order my bookshelf held them! Don't blame me for my bookshelf being disordered! :P









Okay, I'm going to go for Daughter of the Empire first, and read that trilogy, and then after that I'll do the Northern Lights and see if I want to go to the end of that, and then I'll go back to the Sword of Truth series, and then after that I might finish off the Dune set, and by the end of that I wont have remembered what I might decide next anyway, so I wont decide until I get there (which'll probably take me the best part of a year). :alien:

Whoot!  A fine choice sir.  :D

Actually, did you finish the Magician series?  It ties in with that somewhat, which is good as you see the war from both sides.  I don't think there are any major spoilers for the first trilogy, though.

Yep, finished that. And I wrote an agreement with your overly-epic remark, but it went missing.

Trilogy. The second is already out - 'Last of the Wilds' considering the speed of that, I wouldn't be surprised if the third was out in 2007, but you never know. I'll have it on pre-order from the first day Amazon list it - very, very eager to find out how that series is going to end.

And, yeah, I agree with the comments re: the Black Magician trilogy. When I read Knife of Dreams, I couldn't remember any of the even remotely minor characters. There was a similar gap between me reading The Novice and The High Lord, and yet I could remember everyone - possibly because there were far fewer characters? Still, I could probably name/describe most of the Black Magician characters, 2 years after reading it...

(http://users.bigpond.net.au/coffee/barbie%201.JPG)

Sorry Gal, I don't have that book. But if you're willing to stop cuddling it at night for a week or two, maybe you could post it to me and I'll let you know what I think.

:P

ouch. :stake:


you're good <_<  

World War Z

Eh?

just like it says

Finished the Northern Lights / Amber Spyglass... couldn't leave it after just one book, but the third one was definitely very... I can't think what the right word is. Dissappointing I guess - could've been stronger if the crap had been cut out and the battle scenes made more substantial.


Was going to do the Sword of Truth series next, but I think I'll take a minor detour via one of the Riftwar standalones (Legends/Jimmy the Hand) before going on to that.

Firstly, I'm having to use Firebug to get at the submit buttons, somehow the </textarea> tag's being treated as part of the quote box.  ETA: it all seems fine now, so no idea what caused that. :blink:

And secondly, you've had your year, about 1/85th of your life, and you're not even half way through your list. :P  Not good enough at all.

This is somewhat deja vu-ish, but have you read the Dark Tower series?  If not go forth and do so, preferably within a year.  :hehe:

Dark Tower? Sounds vaguely familiar, but I certainly haven't read it. Who's the author?


I think you quoted the wrong post there, but yeah, I've been really slow due to my buggered up sleeping pattern which I can't manage to fix, and thus I often go to bed too late and don't read, or I fall asleep whilst I'm doing so. :(

That's what I was after, and it's still playing up.  Try quoting the post in question and you'll see what I mean.

It's by Stephen King. :P  Nothing like his usual stuff either.

My sleeping pattern's gone a bit mad lately, too.  :(

and me.  

Oh yeah, that's a crappy Invision bug that sometimes when you try quoting long posts with quotes in.

Heh, so the detour got enlarged a bit, because I decided the other day I wanted to read Priestess of the White, simply because I know I'll enjoy it.

I was a tad disappointed with Jimmy the Hand, because for a book supposedly focussing on him, the core story didn't really have thievery and rogueness and stuff, and I was waiting for twists and didn't get anything.
Don't think it helped that a relatively small book took me a month to get through, but I don't recall a large number of times when I thought "I really want to find out what happens next" with that, which I usually do get.