They died eventually, but only after they lived until they were about 150!data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7
Lol! Good old Dragonlance books. Drizzit was also good to start, until he bacme indestructable and also liked by everyone who was supposed to hate him.
Just checked one of my books cases - Robert E Vardeman's Keys to Paradise and the War of Powers are utterly brilliant as well.
I liked Eddings when I was far too old to be reading them (the two belgarath series at least), but now think my 14 year old would find them a bit naive. data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7
I quite like Barbara Hambly's Darwath series (the first 3 anyway - not read the 'hangers on'), and Dark thoughts move me on towards Susan Cooper "The dark is rising" books (again, I'm far too old for these, and please don't make any more films if you're going to massacre them like "The dark is rising"...)
Other Barbara Hambly faves are the Darkmage trilogy and "Immortal blood", as an interesting peek into vampire society data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7
Dragonlance never really did it for me, but has anyone read any Patricia McKillop or Robin McKinley? Interested to hear opinions.
Remember dragonlance being good at the tome butnot readthem for years... Tanis, raistlin etc all ring a bell. Think I still have some on a shelf somewhere.
I had no idea that game of thrones was being made into a series!! That's made my day! Just hope that it stays true to the book and doesn't end up being like abomination 'legend of the seeker'. With that one you couldn't gave got more off with the casting if you'd have picked names from the phone book!! Story is appauling too, why not simply follow the book? Had the potential to be great, ended up being just another warrior princess type program.
Talk about disappointing. Take a story with depth and subtlety, then strip all that away and turn it into a generic hack and slash video game style series.The fight scenes got so tedious. It was like watching Fantasy Strictly Come Dancing, slow,slow,quick quick,slow.
They even managed to cast Zed brilliantly (Bruce Spence) and still ballsed it up.
Another1 for Feist's Riftwar saga, need to get more of his stuff read but I always worry that when I love one set of books by an author that the rest will just not seem good if they fail to live up to previous standards.
Terry Pratchett's stuff has always kept me going when I can't be bothered reading anything new, I find his approach to writing to be easy on the mind and generally his books just flow, wouldn't say they changed me in any way but still pass the time which is as good a reason to read as any other data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7
Stephen King's Dark Tower series (up to and including book 5, Wizard & Glass) are really good, I especially like the paradox which is created in the third book (if memory serves me correctly) but I felt that the series tailed off as S.K. tried to finish it off before he paps it. The introduction of 'fantasy' things from our world spoiler: just destroyed any sense of 'almost real' which I thought had been built up so well in the previous books.
The Dragonlance chronicles were a good read too, very much in the stereotypical fantasy vein but I enjoyed them very much nonetheless. As a side note, has anyone seen the Dungeons & Dragons film (the first one) - I thought the story of this echoed the Dragonlance Chronicles, if you've not seen the D&D film (lucky you!!!!) then check out the Sci Fi channel, sometimes they're on there, not great film by any standards like but if you've read the chronicles it would be good to hear your views on the film data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7those little ball things from Harry Potter, which are used to play that broomstick game, used as weapons in the Dark Tower lands and the introduction of Father Callahan from 'Salems Lot in particular
I've just started watching Legend of the Seeker recently. My God it's so corny - it's the type of drivel that gives the fantasy genre a bad name. They took out all the edginess and darkness that was in the books (the first five or so anyway - when Goodkind kept repeating the same Objectivist spiel over and over again in slightly different ways I kind of lost respect for the series) and replaced it with a Hercules/Xena rehash for the whole family to watch. Same creators incidentally! Richard is horribly cast (although the girl who plays Kahlan is a bit of alrightdata:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7).
I'm confident that GRRM won't let the same thing happen to A Game of Thrones thoughdata:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7. It is being made by HBO after all; it has a much better chance of being good and staying true to the series.
When you look at it, even after the success of Lord of the Rings, the fantasy genre is still not generally accepted as filmable.
There are many books out there crying out for adaptions into film or,preferably with most, TV series. I think it just takes a little bit of courage to spend the money and stay faithful to the book. Legend of the Seeker is the lesson in how not to do it. Now I know it was the same creators as Xena it all starts to make sense.data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7
I think that LoR has opened some doors for the Fantasy genre and films - take Legend by David Gemmell, that would be a classic film, fantasy, but with no monsters so could be (very) loosely like a 300 kind of film - an impentatrable pass held by a huge castle and walls, held by 10000 being attacked by 1,000,000 Nadir.
Before LoR, this would have been a mess, budget of nothing, or poor cgi to make up the numbers and close shots rather than sweeping landscapes to ensure the castle looked realistic.
Now with the enhanced CGI of mass battles, and the believable castle and landscapes, it could be possible. Fingers crossed....