I bounced off Thomas Covenant when I tried to read it about twenty years ago (early-mid teens) and intend to give it another go at some point.
Dragonlance I read when I was about thirteen and really enjoyed, and intend to have another go at sometime - with the awareness that I may well find it unreadable. I read the second trilogy at some point, too - the one which focuses on the only really interesting character in the first series, and seem to recall enjoying that one too.
Julian May's Pliocene Exile books (and the other novels set in the same universe) I really liked, and have read all of them two or three times each.
The original Pern trilogy (as well as the three Harper Hall ones) I reread (for the first time in about twenty years) a couple of weeks ago - I had a bad cold and needed to read something light - and I have to say I did rather enjoy them.
Shannara I've never read, and probably should at some point just to see whether it's as derivative as people say, but it's not high on my list of priorities.
We've got a few of the Gor books in our society library and I leafed through a copy of one of them a while back, while cataloguing everything, to see if they were as odd as people say. The random page I opened it on had a scene where a female character was begging (someone who I assumed was) the hero to enslave her. Rather disconcerting, and not a little bit distasteful, I thought. I don't expect to give it another go unless someone whose judgment I trust can give me a good reason to.
I intend to read The Wheel of Time at some stage, but I've sort of been waiting until they've all been written.
I've read the first five Harry Potter books. I know this, because there are copies on my bookshelves with creased spines. But I couldn't tell you in any detail what happens in any of them. There's something about a flying car in one of them, plus loads of kids wombling around in the cellars of a ramshackle old castle, defeating a rather two-dimensional Dark Lord, I think. I have vague plans to read the remaining two books, more for a sense of closure than anything else, but I see Diana Wynne Jones has recently written a new book so I don't see Harry Potter reaching the front of the queue any time soon.
I reread The Belgariad a couple of months ago, for the first time in about fifteen years - I was curious to see if I enjoyed it as much as I did when I was twelve. I still found it fairly entertaining, but something vaguely irritated me this time round that I'd not really noticed before: the central character is the long-lost heir to a great kingdom, destined to save the world by killing an evil god, has almost unlimited magical powers and is probably immortal into the bargain. And everyone, almost without exception, from the lowliest farm-worker right up to kings, princes and several millennia-old immortal sorcerers, not to mention his eventual wife, treats him like he's an incompetent, stupid child. I sort of expected him, at some point, to turn round and say "Look, for the love of all that's Tolkien-derived, give it a bloody rest! I've done everything you wanted me to do, and I did it pretty damned well, even if I do say so myself - I killed the evil god you wanted me to kill, and I saved the world. Will you please, for once, stop being so fucking patronising all the time!"
The Belgariad was clearly written cynically for gold -- I think the frontispiece explains that the author was 'exploring certain features of the genre' -- ie that you could make money for old rope. It is, I think, the only series I've ever read where there's a map at the front, and by the time you get to the end you have visited every single location on the map exactly once.
The second quintet (the Malloreon) has to introduce an entire new continent full of exotic new places, and by the end of it they've visited every single one of them.
I do have a certain amount of respect for David Eddings, actually. He's made (presumably) millions of dollars by writing essentially the same story about half a dozen times, and doing so in such a way that people keep buying it. I remember a bit in the Malloreon where one of the characters says something like "have you noticed that a lot of the same things are happening to us this time round as well?" and one of the aforementioned immortal sorcerers says something about the cyclic nature of history and explains that this is the latest in a long line of battles between good and evil that have been going on since the creation of the universe. But this one's the decider. Oh yes. Even as a relatively naïve 14-year-old I thought "Ah yes, I see what he's done here..."
Fair play to him, though - and to JK Rowling, for that matter. They've hit on a formula that works and have very successfully milked it for all they can get. I've derived at least some enjoyment from reading their work over the years, even though they're not exactly the height of SF or fantasy literature.
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Dragonlance I read when I was about thirteen and really enjoyed, and intend to have another go at sometime - with the awareness that I may well find it unreadable. I read the second trilogy at some point, too - the one which focuses on the only really interesting character in the first series, and seem to recall enjoying that one too.
Julian May's Pliocene Exile books (and the other novels set in the same universe) I really liked, and have read all of them two or three times each.
The original Pern trilogy (as well as the three Harper Hall ones) I reread (for the first time in about twenty years) a couple of weeks ago - I had a bad cold and needed to read something light - and I have to say I did rather enjoy them.
Shannara I've never read, and probably should at some point just to see whether it's as derivative as people say, but it's not high on my list of priorities.
We've got a few of the Gor books in our society library and I leafed through a copy of one of them a while back, while cataloguing everything, to see if they were as odd as people say. The random page I opened it on had a scene where a female character was begging (someone who I assumed was) the hero to enslave her. Rather disconcerting, and not a little bit distasteful, I thought. I don't expect to give it another go unless someone whose judgment I trust can give me a good reason to.
I intend to read The Wheel of Time at some stage, but I've sort of been waiting until they've all been written.
I've read the first five Harry Potter books. I know this, because there are copies on my bookshelves with creased spines. But I couldn't tell you in any detail what happens in any of them. There's something about a flying car in one of them, plus loads of kids wombling around in the cellars of a ramshackle old castle, defeating a rather two-dimensional Dark Lord, I think. I have vague plans to read the remaining two books, more for a sense of closure than anything else, but I see Diana Wynne Jones has recently written a new book so I don't see Harry Potter reaching the front of the queue any time soon.
I reread The Belgariad a couple of months ago, for the first time in about fifteen years - I was curious to see if I enjoyed it as much as I did when I was twelve. I still found it fairly entertaining, but something vaguely irritated me this time round that I'd not really noticed before: the central character is the long-lost heir to a great kingdom, destined to save the world by killing an evil god, has almost unlimited magical powers and is probably immortal into the bargain. And everyone, almost without exception, from the lowliest farm-worker right up to kings, princes and several millennia-old immortal sorcerers, not to mention his eventual wife, treats him like he's an incompetent, stupid child. I sort of expected him, at some point, to turn round and say "Look, for the love of all that's Tolkien-derived, give it a bloody rest! I've done everything you wanted me to do, and I did it pretty damned well, even if I do say so myself - I killed the evil god you wanted me to kill, and I saved the world. Will you please, for once, stop being so fucking patronising all the time!"
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I do have a certain amount of respect for David Eddings, actually. He's made (presumably) millions of dollars by writing essentially the same story about half a dozen times, and doing so in such a way that people keep buying it. I remember a bit in the Malloreon where one of the characters says something like "have you noticed that a lot of the same things are happening to us this time round as well?" and one of the aforementioned immortal sorcerers says something about the cyclic nature of history and explains that this is the latest in a long line of battles between good and evil that have been going on since the creation of the universe. But this one's the decider. Oh yes. Even as a relatively naïve 14-year-old I thought "Ah yes, I see what he's done here..."
Fair play to him, though - and to JK Rowling, for that matter. They've hit on a formula that works and have very successfully milked it for all they can get. I've derived at least some enjoyment from reading their work over the years, even though they're not exactly the height of SF or fantasy literature.
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