| | I have always been a fantasy book buff. Pure good old fashion magic, swords, gods, creatures kind of fantasy. My parents had a very very worn copy of Melaine Rawn's Stronghold, Book 1 of the Dragonstar Series, in their library when I still in primary school. Back in the day of boxy, clumsy computers with 8 mhz of processing power and SBC 5 / 8, what could a kid do to entertain himself? Tired of running around, catching spiders (Yes, I did catch them when I was younger, probably explains the terrible phobia I have now), I picked up the book and started thumbing through it. Memory gets hazy. It was a long time ago. I cannot recall whether my.... 8 (maybe 9 or 10 years??) old brain could handle the content, understand the weight of the words or the emotions that laid beneath them.
I graduated to classics like Eddings, Margeret Weis & Tracy Hickman, Anne McCaffery, Piers Anthony, Raymond E Fiest through the simple expedience of weekly trips to the library (thank you mom / dad!). Then I moved onto lesser known authors, with varying levels of success. Particularly good ones like Kate Elliot, Mercedes Lackey, Mickey Zucker Reichert come to mind. The rest, well, fade into oblivion. Took a brief foray into Science Fiction which held almost the same appeal as fantasy. Journeyed into the future with brilliant minds like Arthur C Clarke, Orson Scott Card, Issac Asimov, Peter Hamilton.
In recent years, I have noticed a slight maturing of taste. A sign of growing up (or at least I like to think so). Simple reads no longer satisfy me. Its all black or white. Plot runs in a linear fashion, predictable, often cluminating with great great finality. The villan is a dark fell creature holed up on top of a tower with no agenda other than creating chaos which presumably would usher in the end of days. Hero is fair, digustingly innocent, and wholeheartedly good. Spoon feeding at its worst with lines like "He chuckled evilly, rubbing his hands together in glee" (or something to that effect). I mean, come on! I had to control the sudden urge to throw the book away. Pity I cant recall the author's name, Sarah something I think.
I crave complexity. I desire no solutions. I need grays and all the colors inbetween.
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| | Posted 5/4/2007 8:47 AM - 32 views - 1 comments
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