122 réponses à ce sujet

[Addai]

Klace wrote...

I never read the Dragon Age: Origins books.
Am I missing out?
I would gladly buy DA2 books, but I'm not so sure about the Origins ones.
They focus on Loghaine?

The Stolen Throne is about the rebellion against the Orlesian occupation.  Young Loghain and Maric, and Queen Rowan who's mentioned in Origins here and there.

The Calling is about what led up to the Grey Wardens returning to Ferelden during Maric's reign.  Includes a young Duncan.

Modifié par Addai67, 04 février 2011 - 09:59 .

[PsychoBlonde]

bzombo wrote...

 i don't think anyone is trying to say gaider's books are classics anyway. just good, fun reads.

That's just your opinion.  Snob.

I'm not saying they weren't fun.  R.A. Salvatore is fun to read--he's just heavy-handed and juvenile and spends WAY too much time with passages that sound like this repeated approximately 15 million times:

"Drizz't jumped up fifteen feet onto a gritty sandstone ledge just below his attacker.  The attacker swung to the left, but Drizz't dodged right, nearly losing his grip on the sandstone, which crumbled slightly.  He made a grab for the attacker's boot, but the man shifted backward three inches and brought his sword around again in a whirling arc.  Drizz't managed to get his own sword up in time, but he felt his grip on the sandstone loosen even further."

In his series on Cadderly, he describes people getting head-butted in the nose with exactly the same phrase (e.g. X got their nose "splattered across their face") at least twelve times.  I AM NOT KIDDING.  Apparently headbutting someone in the nose is some sort of special cleric kung-fu technique, and yet it never fails to surprise people--even people said cleric has headbutted in the nose before.

Dean R. Koontz is fun to read--until you realize that he's basically just written the same book 1500 times.  There's a cynical guy.  There's a girl who's in trouble.  They meet.  Weird **** happens.  They fall in love.  The weird **** is resolved in a rather alarming/bloody/horrific way.

David Eddings is fun to read, but he did Koontz two better and a.) wrote the same fantasy series TWICE, and then B.) went back to series A and retold it from the perspective of a different character.  WE GET IT ALREADY.  THE BLUE ROCK HATES THE RED ROCK.

I would generally agree that Stephen Brust is great, but unfortunately he's a little too fond of gimmicky writing and this sometimes overshadows his story a bit.  Hence why I think To Reign in Hell is his best novel technically--the only gimmick there is that almost the entire story is told through dialog.

I don't see why anyone should get a free pass to make basic mistakes just because their books are fun to read.  Heck, I'm sharply critical of the writing style of my favorite writers ever, because this helps me improve my own writing.  If you never analyze, you never get better. 

[PsychoBlonde]

Addai67 wrote...

PsychoBlonde wrote...

Addai67 wrote...

@PsychoBlonde: Fiona is a recycled Katriel? Just because she's an elf who had an affair with Maric? That's skimming the surface and leaving the rest behind.

No, *Katriel* is recycled Katriel.  Fiona is just stereotypical battered chick. 

... *confused*  Okay.

*sigh*.  Let me use small words:  During the Fade sequence in The Calling, Katriel has a cameo wherein she and Maric rehash their relationship and Maric gets all angsty over having killed her.  It approaches gooey levels of awfulness.  Or awful levels of gooeyness, take your pick.

[Addai]

PsychoBlonde wrote...
*sigh*.  Let me use small words:  During the Fade sequence in The Calling, Katriel has a cameo wherein she and Maric rehash their relationship and Maric gets all angsty over having killed her.  It approaches gooey levels of awfulness.  Or awful levels of gooeyness, take your pick.

Ah.  I thought you were referring to Katriel in TST.  And thanks for the backhand, always adds to a discussion. 

Since that Katriel may only have been a figment of Maric's subconscious... well, whatever.  You're entitled to your opinion.

[Addai]

PsychoBlonde wrote...
I don't see why anyone should get a free pass to make basic mistakes just because their books are fun to read.  Heck, I'm sharply critical of the writing style of my favorite writers ever, because this helps me improve my own writing.  If you never analyze, you never get better. 

You can analyze without focusing on the negative.  Seems to be the difference in how we're approaching them.

[Maconbar]

PsychoBlonde wrote...

bzombo wrote...

 i don't think anyone is trying to say gaider's books are classics anyway. just good, fun reads.

That's just your opinion.  Snob.

I'm not saying they weren't fun.  R.A. Salvatore is fun to read--he's just heavy-handed and juvenile and spends WAY too much time with passages that sound like this repeated approximately 15 million times:

"Drizz't jumped up fifteen feet onto a gritty sandstone ledge just below his attacker.  The attacker swung to the left, but Drizz't dodged right, nearly losing his grip on the sandstone, which crumbled slightly.  He made a grab for the attacker's boot, but the man shifted backward three inches and brought his sword around again in a whirling arc.  Drizz't managed to get his own sword up in time, but he felt his grip on the sandstone loosen even further."

In his series on Cadderly, he describes people getting head-butted in the nose with exactly the same phrase (e.g. X got their nose "splattered across their face") at least twelve times.  I AM NOT KIDDING.  Apparently headbutting someone in the nose is some sort of special cleric kung-fu technique, and yet it never fails to surprise people--even people said cleric has headbutted in the nose before.

Dean R. Koontz is fun to read--until you realize that he's basically just written the same book 1500 times.  There's a cynical guy.  There's a girl who's in trouble.  They meet.  Weird **** happens.  They fall in love.  The weird **** is resolved in a rather alarming/bloody/horrific way.

David Eddings is fun to read, but he did Koontz two better and a.) wrote the same fantasy series TWICE, and then B.) went back to series A and retold it from the perspective of a different character.  WE GET IT ALREADY.  THE BLUE ROCK HATES THE RED ROCK.

I would generally agree that Stephen Brust is great, but unfortunately he's a little too fond of gimmicky writing and this sometimes overshadows his story a bit.  Hence why I think To Reign in Hell is his best novel technically--the only gimmick there is that almost the entire story is told through dialog.

I don't see why anyone should get a free pass to make basic mistakes just because their books are fun to read.  Heck, I'm sharply critical of the writing style of my favorite writers ever, because this helps me improve my own writing.  If you never analyze, you never get better. 

Thanks so much for writing this. I would love to see you critique other writers.

[TJPags]

Simple books are not necessarily bad, nor are deep (or complex) books necessarily good.

I've thoroughly enjoyed Mondesits Order series (don't recall the exact name of it).  Yet that is a very simple series, with similar characters, not much depth or character development (IMO), similar events in each book, and, frankly, repetitive phrases.  Somehow, though, I enjoy reading them.

The Prince of Nothing series by R. Scott Baker is a much more complex series.  Yet I found it incredibly tedious and dull.  I finished those books on principle (having started, I MUST finish) and put them down, and will never touch them again.
Gaider's books suffered from, IMHO, a lack of character development, flat and predictable storylines, repetitive phrasing, and pacing issues.  I never got interested in the characters.  Maric was a clumsy buffoon when we met him, and remained so throughout the story.  Rowan was a suffer-in-silence cliche, and remained so throughout.  Katriel was a classic enemy-who-finds-love type martyr.  And Loghain was a suspicious, cut-throat, take-charge-behind-scenes manipulator from page 1.

I saw how Psychoblonde mentioned Koontz.  Koontz can be a fun read, but as noted, his books are remarkably similar, and they all feel  - to me - to have an incredibly rushed ending.  In contrast, someone he is often compared to, Stephen King, writes deep books with excellent (IMO) pacing.  King is not a "fun" read, to me - he's a necessary read.

I understand that writing novels is not David Gaider's full time profession.  I don't know if he's written other novels.  And I understand he has a full time job working on DA.  But the books felt rushed, and shallow, and frankly, the editing was awful.  As for the editing, well, Tor is pretty bad in that respect, and that's not David Gaider's fault.  But it contributes to the problems in the book, to me.

As I said, I couldn't being myself to read The Calling after having read The Stolen Throne.

Now, I'm not a professional writer, I don't have a degree in English Lit or anything similar.  I may very well use terms wrong.  I write for my job, but not any type of fiction.  I read for enjoyment, and have my whole life.  I don't think I'm qualified to say they were "bad books".  But I am qualified to say I found them to be bad books.

[Addai]

TJPags wrote...

Now, I'm not a professional writer, I don't have a degree in English Lit or anything similar.  I may very well use terms wrong.  I write for my job, but not any type of fiction.  I read for enjoyment, and have my whole life.  I don't think I'm qualified to say they were "bad books".  But I am qualified to say I found them to be bad books.

Oh, no doubt, everyone's entitled to their opinion as a reader.  And if other people want to engage in heavy criticism that's up to them, though DA2 board isn't the place for it I guess.  I just don't care to.  For one thing, no one's as much in love with their own gas as a literary critic.    For another, since the writer is gracious enough to occasionally read and comment, I think it ends up being rather rude and unconstructive.

My impression is that not a lot of support was given for the novels.  I seem to recall Gaider saying in an interview that he wrote them in the evenings after a full day's work, and on deadlines as well.  That's a LOT of creative output in short space.  So with the even shorter development cycle of DA2, I was thinking BioWare wouldn't give any support at all to new novels.  I'm glad to hear that might not be the case.  I'd be very glad to hear that DG is writing them again, though I'd read one by one of the other game writers too.  So y'all can say what you like, this news makes me very happy. 

[RosaAquafire]

I'm going to jump in here because this is an interesting discussion.

I've read a LOT of books, and I consider myself a literature snob. Enough of a snob that despite loving David Eddings characters, I literally cannot bring myself to reread his damn books, because they're so juvenile stylistically. Enough that I can't even enjoy Harry Potter because of how bland Rowling's narrative voice is. I have an English degree, I've been in snobby book clubs for years, I tend to rip apart even books I really like ...

... and I really, really liked David's books.

Naturally, there were a lot of issues, but I'd honestly consider most of them POLISH related. He doesn't have a lot of experience with narrative, and THAT'S what really impressed me about his books, to be honest. While there were definitely some nearly cringey moments of unrefinement, I really felt like I was reading the early efforts of an author who is going to someday be amazing. There were some really clever and well done turns of phrase hidden in the serviceable writing that made me blink with surprise at how well-thought they were. I also found that David did a wonderful job with narrative voice for someone so inexperienced. Maric's narrative SOUNDED differently from Katriel's narrative, and from Loghain's narrative.

I thought they were great. Not as in "these books are destined to be famous classics," but as in "wow, these books are so engaging and this writer has a LOT of raw potential in his use of words."

Some of my deep appreciation might have just been pleasant surprise. I nearly hid my face when I bought them. I have a THING with liscenced novels, you see -- they usually horrifically badly written, cringe-worthy in their fanservice and often just big advertisements. I only bought the DA books because I was so excited for DA:O that I needed SOMETHING to tide me over. So I went into them expecting awful, and came out reeling from "wow, that was ... good."

Like I said, there were flaws. Some overuse of adverbs, lots of narrative cliche phrases, and the end of The Stolen Throne (everything from Katriel's death onwards) could have read "and then my deadline appeared and wiped the party" and not change much from what was in the actual book But there were also a lot of amazing things, especially for a writer so inexperienced in this form.

I recommend them to everyone I meet, and I've seen them brought up a lot whenever us literature snobs start on the "well, liscenced novels are incapable of quality." Someone usually pipes up with "well, it's not SHAKESPEARE, but have you read David Gaider's The Stolen Throne ...?"

I'd find it a tragedy if David never wrote another novel. Because I so want to see him polish all that potential I saw in his books. Because I don't think he's George Martin, yet ... but I do think he has the potential to become that. Honestly do.

[HTTP 404]

so is david writing a book about wynne's son or not? someone necro'd my thread and someone else posted this thread and now Im in a writing workshop thread.

[Addai]

LOL I think the bottom line is there are no details being given about new novels at this time.  Not sure why people were speculating it'd be about Wynne's son.

Modifié par Addai67, 05 février 2011 - 06:19 .

[HTTP 404]

Addai67 wrote...

LOL I think the bottom line is there are no details being given about new novels at this time.  Not sure why people were speculating it'd be about Wynne's son.

go figure.  bioware fans speculating and bioware staff being vague? say it isnt so. 

[Vaelidor]

Edit: Nothing to see here!

Modifié par Vaelidor, 05 février 2011 - 06:28 .

[mesmerizedish]

Wait, you mean there are still people who don't get it?

Teeheehee.

[EDIT] Frakking Vaelidor, you are NO FUN at ALL! <_<

Modifié par ishmaeltheforsaken, 05 février 2011 - 06:27 .

[Vaelidor]

ishmaeltheforsaken wrote...

Wait, you mean there are still people who don't get it?

Teeheehee.

[EDIT] Frakking Vaelidor, you are NO FUN at ALL! <_<

Did I ruin Christmas? I'm sorry.

[arcane-weirdo]

Oh my, I didn't get it either.

[Vaelidor]

There, fixed.

[mesmerizedish]

Vaelidor wrote...

There, fixed.

Haha, I forgive you

[Addai]

Alllriiiight, someone had to "spell it out" for me. Wynne's son... well, you can't hold it against the boy that his mother's an insufferable nag.

[HTTP 404]

Addai67 wrote...

Alllriiiight, someone had to "spell it out" for me. Wynne's son... well, you can't hold it against the boy that his mother's an insufferable nag.

here's the thing though, wynne's son could be nothing like her, not raised by her and could take after the father.  who the hell is the father?  I kinda regret making my thread about that as there are no answers.

Modifié par HTTP 404, 05 février 2011 - 07:59 .

[Addai]

Judging by Duncan's tryst, it could be anyone, though the logical choice would be another mage or templar I guess. Now we just need someone to acrostic when the book's coming out.

[Feraele]

David Gaider wrote...

Coldren wrote...
Hopefully David will see this thread and give us a little tease of what's to come though.. One can hope!

What? You now need everything stated so obviously? No.

Hehehe ahh thats not a surprising answer from our Mr Gaider

[dantares83]

I love to see a book on Anders.