Just finished "Memories of Ice", and, yeah, the series DEFINETLY gets better.

I have to admit the average paragraph in Gardens of the Moon seemed like this to me (as characterized by a friend):

"Garek frowned, staring at the Um'tok. Although most Um'tok were in the service of the honat, he knew that this one was moktash to the Ughur. He dropped the krontab of drugal he was eating and stood up from the codelia. As he backed away from the Um'tok in horror, it brobtahd its bratokbrow at him and shnoogled in a gnugheer-like voice: "I am the mooha tier!""

But once you get a grasp of the terms that makes a lot more sense.

Anyways, for anyone interested Brandon Sanderson has his whole book "Warbreaker" posted online! I love his philosophy: "A while back—June 2006—I started work on the novel which would follow my Mistborn trilogy. At the time, I noticed the work of Cory Doctorow, who releases all of his books on-line at the same time as the hardback comes out from Tor. At first, I thought this was insane. If you give it away for free, nobody will buy it!

Then, I spent some more time considering. Readers can ALREADY get their books for free; I went to the library often myself as a youth. And yet, I still bought books. I often bought the very books I'd checked out from the library, as I liked them so much I wanted to read them again and loan them out to others. What do I really believe? In resenting libraries and used bookstores because they share my books without any direct profit to me? Or, would I rather look at all of that as free publicity"

http://www.brandonsanderson.com/library/catalog/Warbreaker_Full-Books/

I read some of it at the bookstore before I found this and it did seem like it could be good...

Wow, so I picked up Kushiel's Dart on recommendation of the forum here and wow. I'm not quite half way through and the whole world just turned upside down in the matter of a couple pages. And I'm afraid it turned upside down in a manner that I am not so partial to. It seem's Carey has much in common with Martin....

Stag Lord said:

I think anyone's enjoyment Once and Future King stems from reading it by choice, or for an assignment. I find it a great book, but I've had to read certain books for classes and it is never as enjoyable/engrossing when you're noting common themes and preparing a comparative analysis.

Although, I would love to see a class using Lovecraft's texts. That would be a brave teacher.

By the way, have you read much from Robert E. Howard?

Not much - a smattering of Conan stories, one or two Solomon Kane Tales and msot of his Cthulhu myhtos stuff. Pigoens form hell (not myhtos but horror) was a hell of a tale. There are a couple fo nice new collections of his out, and I ahve been browsing them at the FLBS this ummer. I may be reading hiim more seriously in the coming weeks - is there anything in particular I should be looking for?

And given HP's virulent racism - which I am finding less and less cocealed as I re-read his work, I doubt he'd be approraite for a given school class. Maybe Shadow Out of Time would be OK, DReams in the Witch House, and Whisperer - but you really couldn't get away with Dunwich Horror, Shadow over Innsmouth, Call of Cthulhu. And there is the problem of his affected antiquity - you must be talking college level class here, Dunk.

Stag Lord said:

Absolutely college-level. Even then, I can see it being pretty off-putting to a lot of students. Even now, many people have a hard time with his prose style.

As for the racism/sexism charges, it's fairly typical of much of the literature from the time. Howard has a lot of that as well, but in the end, the stories they tell matter much more than any personal biases.

As far as Howard goes, I quite enjoy pretty much anything to do with Soloman Kane or Bran Mak Morn (a very tragic figure). I know Wandering Star has a bunch of collections out. I was mainly curious since he was part of H.P.'s writing circle and certainly has some pretty dark works as well (there's a Bran Mak Morn story - Worms of the Earth - I still find fairly chilling).

I disagree, Dunk: Even for the time, HPL was a foaming at the mouth, crazy racist. I don't know if you have had a chacne to read many of his letters - but a few of them are scarier than any of the fiction he wrote. The dude had issues.

I've been re-immersing myself in his stuiff for the past year - I am running a CoC campaign and doing a little writing for it on the side, which has also led me to read some great collections and some suhtors I never got around to checking out before, but were on the bucket list: guys like Ramsey Campbell and A.A. Attanasio. some real good stuff there. Thsi also has me looking at a lot of literary criticism of Old Grandpa - and again, even by the standards of New England in the 20's and 30's HPL's attitudes towards non whites and minority religions was pretty much beyond the pale.

i like his writing style - and i always have. like HPL I often think I was born in the wrong time and I admire how he cultivated the styles and tropes of previous generations in his art. But a good firend of mine is tackling him for the firts time, and finding him a struggle - and I can sympathize. I advised him to sit down with HPl in a quiet environment with time to spare. You can't read him on the train or with the TV on or in a student union - not without some difficulty and losing a lot of the effect of the work. He's not for everyone and he is far from accessible - but he will alwyas hold an important place on my shelf.

I did read Worms this summer, and enjoyed it very much. (Yes - some race issues are in that story as well). My favorite Howard Mythos story, though, though is the Black Stone: presenting the first appearnce of Gol-Goroth, though i don't think he is named in the piece. i lie Howard - though he is a little on the pulpy side for my taste. Hell of a story teller though. I hear his werewolf stories are pretty good.

See, it's authors like H.P. Lovecraft that make me hesitant to to read "old" fantasy.

Err, I mean sci-fi/horror.

I really haven't run in to many like HPL. And most of his stuff is classic and influential.

The only thing that is tough about old sci-fi is the cultural norms at the time (i.e. everyone on a space station smokes...hello!!).

There is a really good collection of older sci-fi short stories called "Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the Twentieth Century"

I'm also really enjoying the Foundations series, even though the style is a little jumpy (short segments in one time period that a jump to a future time period) for my usual tastes.

I must say that I'm quite a fan of Lovecraft's work as well and a college course on it would be superb. The racism issue is a trickier one. Certainly his personal beliefs are not acceptable in the current world, and they were rather extreme even for his own time, but does that make his novels less interesting or of a lower quality? If we restricted our reading to only authors with viewpoints that are completely acceptable in the current social climate, our reading choices would be few and far between. I for one, would dear miss the works of Jonathan Swift for instance.

I certainly don't think so. I am saying though - a close, academic reading of some of his stuff esp Innsmouth, CoC and Dunwich are going to bring his attitudes into sharp relief (forget Horror at Red Hook, which isn't even that good of a story). So if you wnat students/folks to focus on the writing and the themes - you better be **** careful which stories of his you choose.

Stag Lord said:

I haven't actually read them - I've heard they get pretty involved. To be honest, I've avoided them for basically that reason - I don't find (in the majority of H.P.L.'s work) that it makes it's way to the text that overtly. I'd rather focus on the story than some of the admittedly colourful racial characterizations.

I tend to run countercurrent to the majority it seems - I don't want to know everything about a celebrity/artist whose works I'm a fan of. Some have some pretty messed up world views. Billy Bob Thornton's interview with Jian Ghomeshi springs to mind.

Stag Lord said:

I've been wanting to read Campbell for a while now. Any recommendations? I've heard The Doll that Ate His Mother (or similar) was pretty amazing.

If you enjoyed The Black Stone, you should also read The Children of the Night. I quite enjoyed that one. My favorite Howard tale is still Skulls in the Stars. I still find it a very enthralling piece.

I think its my reading of his letters that make it impossible for me to ignore his themes. Taht and reading widely in the field of Lovecraftian criticism.

Check out Cold Print if you can find it. Its an OOP paperback that has most of his Mythos stuff. He outgrew his HPL pastiche work pretty early - but its all good. You can pick it up fairly inexpensively on eBay.

For an unrlated HPL recommednation - check out the neat TPBs Boom comics is putting out called Fall of Cthulhu. some realluy fresh stuff there and neat takes on Nyarlathotep and Nodens.

Just finished Kushiel's Dart all of 5 minutes ago, and I had to quickly come here to thank those who recommended it. I honestly am not sure how long it has been since I read a book that I enjoyed this thoroughly.

Kennon said:

I think for many people it is less about his beliefs and mre about how they are worked into his stories. This may not be a popular sentiment, but I hope it is understandable on some level, it is much more likely that someone who is being portrayed in a negative light is going to have problems looking past this than someone who is sensitive to these issues, but not of the targeted minority. I'm Black. I can read/listen to the speeches of Farakhan and put aside his racial and religious biases for the core message of Black liberation, self-reliance, etc. themes which I think are important but I don't expect my Jewish friends to be able to do so (and with a few exceptions they haven't been able to). Reading Lovecraft can be like that for me at times (though there is the obvious inequality in this analogy that Farakhan is still alive and his writings and speeches are often a bit more direct than Lovecrafts when it comes to bigotry). I love the Mythos, I don't love the writer, and some of the stories are difficult to get through

On an unrelated note, I was invited to spend Halloween with Steven Erikson... Unfortunately I be back in Minneapolis for work and will completely miss my chance to hang with him and James Rollins, two of my three favorite authors.

I can agree with dormouse to an extent but I can't even listen to Farakhan. I'll still give Lovecraft a try but his little "On the Creation of ...." poem got my blood boiling and I'm sure that will taint my reading of him whether fair or not.

On a much happier note I'm on "Midnight Tides" in the MBotF and it's pretty great I love learning more about the other races in the series. May be my favorite since "Memories of Ice". Things are also shaping up quite nice with "Lies of Locke Lamora" and "The Blade Itself".

Has anyone read the Runelords series?

I should be clear, I don't listen with any regularity to Farakhan, just when I'm presented with stuff he writes, speeches he gives I dismiss as much of that tripe and concentrate on the core message. I have yet to be presented by anything by him that those other things are his core message. Not surprisingly, much like Lovecraft, I'd rather read someone else with the same overall core points (or in this case mythos) that leaves the other stuff on the wayside entirely.

I'm trying to get all the "contemporary" writers of the mythos on my kindle so I can enjoy the world without the dross.

Make sure TED Klein is on that list. Let me know if you need any advice or suggestions about Lovecraft's heirs.

Weird. I could have sworn I posted here the other day about starting the second Kushiel novel. So far it is entirely as good as the first.

I would put in more support for Erickson's Malazan books. Hey are simply amazing. It would almost be worth just skipping Gardens of the Moon until after you've read at least Deadhouse Gates and Memories of Ice, maybe even House of Chains as well. In my opinion, the Chain of Dogs (from Deadhouse Gates) is the true beginning of the series.

Gardens is almost like just a warm up writing exercise that Erickson just imported from when he first created the world as a D+D campaign world with Esslemont.

It's confirmed, I'm officially a Malazanite (or whatever you want to call it) I'm about 500 pages into Bonehunters right now and loving every minute of it. I'm kind of trying to hurry up the reading up right now because I want to get ready for Dust of Dreams which is supposed to be coming out here in the US shortly, I believe.

I also ready the excerpt to the Wise Man's Fear and it sounded really promising.

Just finished Kushiel's Chosen last night. Every bit as fantastic as the first. This series has certainly taken a place in my absolute favorites list.

Alright, Kennon, your high praise has done it. My next fantasy read is going to be Kushiel's Dart if its on Audible.

I don't think you'll be disappointed, though if you're getting it on Audible, won't it be a "listen?" instead of a "read?"