Authors

Cat and I are huge readers.  It's always good when one Bookworm marries another.  While shopping in Books a Million last night (like Barnes and Nobel or Borders for my friends back Home) for more fodder to feed our addiction we noted that some of our favorite Author's just haven't written anything good or at all in awhile.  She likes the Mystery, Detective type stuff where as I like the Sci-Fi/Fantasy stuff.  Over the years we have read our share of the Classics and the Modern Masters, and we've discovered that some of the Author's out there are just not trying anymore.  Tom Clancy is the one for me.  His Ryan Series has been great from "The Hunt for Red October" up until "Rainbow Six".  After that, well he made Ryan the President and is now writing about Ryan's kids all grown up and working for the CIA.  Boring and lame if you ask me.  He has written the story lines for his video games that just completely Rock, but has written no Novels about them.  Hell I'd love to see some "Rainbow Six" novels.  The characters are great on the two teams and they would be great books.  I believe there are about 7-8 video game versions out....those would be great novels.  His Ghost Recon games would make great novels too as would the Splinter Cell games.  Yes I know, there are some Splinter Cell novels out, but they are "approved by Tom Clancy" and written by someone else and from the little bit I've read in the store they read like a walkthrough of the game.  I was first introduced to the world of Sci-Fi and Fantasy in High School with a book called "A Spell for Chameleon" by Piers Anthony.  The only series of his that I would re-read today is the Incarnations of Immortality.  This is a series of books that poses the question "What if all the aspects of the world were a Job."  In other words, what if Death was an occupation held by a person who's job it was to collect the souls of the dying.  Other occupations were Time, A man from the future who lives backwards, Fate, Three women one young one middle age and one old who share the same body and who's job is to determine what an individuals fate in life is.  War, Nature, Evil (Satan) and Good (God) were also represented.  It was an interesting series, but still borderlined on Anthony's closet Pedophile fantasies.  At the writing of this the Xanth Trilogy is about 20 books or so long.  The reason I say he's a Pedophile is because after reading alot of his stuff, myself and other people (alot of other people) have determined that what he (Anthony) explains away as his propensity to be "a harmless dirty old man" is actually his outward expression of Pedophilic tendencies.  One good example, in his series "Bio of a Space Tyrant" not only does he condone sibling intimacy (it was explained away as "okay" because the brother was in pain and the sister did it out of love.???? Yeah right..Perv!!) but his main character in one book at the age of 50-ish is given the "gift" of a poor orphan girl of 15 who he has a intimate encounters with but it's okay because she initiated it.......PERV!!!! Thusly the reason I no longer read his books.  A better author I discovered was a British one by the name of Michael Moorcock and his book "Elric of Melnibone".  I know alot of you are laughing knowingly at that because you read that series as well and it led to your buying Rulebooks for a game by Gary Gygax called "Dungeons and Dragons", but I digress.  Elric was on incarnation of the Eternal Champion.  A person who was doomed to be reborn constantly and he, along with his Companion of Champions (a person with a similar fate), was fated to fight in the Eternal struggle of the forces of Law and Chaos on behalf of the Cosmic Balance.   Sometimes the EC remembered his past lives and sometimes he had no clue.  He was almost always armed with a sword of some kind that had powers.  Elric's was the most famous.  Stormbringer, the 5 foot long, black, rune encrusted, soul eating demon in Sword form who passed a portion of the life energy it drained from it's victims to Elric.  Elric was an Albino and the sword was what he required to give him strength.  He was the perfect tragic anti-hero who had a love/hate relationship with his Stormbringer.  He hated the Sword because it killed friend as well as foe, but loved it because without it he couldn't take two steps.  The Goth kids of today would love Elric....he was very Emo.  I of course had to read Papa Tolkien's masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings.  Anyone that played D & D read it as the game was based on it.  I also read the Sci Fi classic "Starship Troopers" by Robert Heinlein.  God I love that book.  The movie was good, but the book was better.  Also read Frank Herbert's original Dune books. I just can't get in to anything after Heretics of Dune.  That one was good, but not great.  Discovered a great series by an Author named David Eddings called the Belgariad.  Good stuff, but the stuff he's written lately hasn't been that great.  I will hand it to him though, he's always creating new Worlds and Characters.  I then ran across a series started by Robert Asprin and Lynn Abbey called "Thieve's World".  This was a great idea in novels.  Two Author's who act as Editors create a world and sprinkle it with a few characters of their own, then they open it up to some of Sci Fi's greats to add characters to.  You could use someone else's' character in your short story, but you couldn't kill them off; that was reserved for their creator to do.  It was 12 books long and was a great series.  I also picked up Robert Asprins Myth books.  Comedic Fantasy that was great, until........  Mr. Asprin had some heavy crap happen to him.  I believe at one time he was married to Lynn Abbey but that ended badly and he hit the bottle.  After crawling out of the bottle, he continued to write but had to have someone co-author with him.  I've read Saberhagen's Swords Series......awesome stuff but one really needs to read "Empire of the East" first to understand some of the things mentioned in the Sword books.  I will someday although it's one of those you may have to find in a used book store.  I discovered a very cool series by Simon Hawk called the TimeWars series.  12 books long and very easy reads (real short novels).  The premise was that Mankind discovered time travel.  To solve disputes between Nations, their armies were cosmetically altered to fit in with armies of the past.  The Time Soldier was then given brain implant education, period weaponry, then "clocked" back in time to fight on either side of a great conflict.  A unit of soldiers called the "Referee Corps" watched the battle from above and through a complicated scoring system tallied things up and whomever had the most points won the conflict.  The main characters end up becoming an Elite Commando unit who's job was to go back in time and fix mistakes that came about from the Timewars...one example was the man who was to become the Scarlet Pimpernel was killed before that ever happened so one of the Commandos had to pose as him for a bit.  Then someone turned me onto the "Wheel of Time" series by Robert Jordan.  This is a series that started out brilliant but had degenerated into crap.  The Author has a rare blood disease now which has kind of lit a fire under his ass to finally finish the damn thing.  He has what I like to call "Rowling-itis".  He knows what the last scene is going to be, but kept cranking out crap long after he should have wrapped it up to get there.  Not saying Rowling cranked out crap, but she sure took her sweet time in ending the Harry Potter series.  Jordan's problem is that he introduced so many different characters and events that were tangents of the main plot that they have become abandoned or just forgotten.  His main character has been nothing but an afterthought in the last few books and the Female characters he is writing about have become whinier and whinier as time goes on.  Even one of the most pseudo-feminazi characters has become soft and weak.   I'll read the newest one when the last one comes out in paperback.  Get it over quick.  I have recently discovered George R. R. Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire" series.  I've mentioned this series before and it's brilliant.  He's currently working on the next of three more total.  I also mentioned Simon R. Green who's "Deathstalker" series I've mentioned briefly.  It had some great characters, but the ending blew.  He has redeemed himself with his "Nightside" series.  He is apparently writing a new one.  Can't wait.  I've also started reading Jim Butcher's "Dresden Files".  Waiting for the latest "White Knight" to come to paperback as well as "Cursors Fury", the next in his Codex Alera Series.   It's great to see an Author write about a Modern Day Wizard who is a PI in Chicago told in the first person viewpoint then read a Sword and Sorcery Fantasy told in third person and enjoy both.  Good job Jim.  I just picked up the first of an interesting series called "The Vampire Earth" series by an Author named E.E. Knight.  It's about Earth in the year 2065 that has been taken over by an Alien race that feeds of of Human Life Forces.  The character, David Valentine, is part of the resistance movement to take the Earth back.  So far it's shaping up to be pretty good.