POLL: Reading Ed Greenwood

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Not really about Greenwood...

Did you know that Polland has the gratest fantasy writer besides tolkien?

His name's Andrzej Sapkowski, and the book's pentalogy about warlock (wiedzmyn in original) Geralt. He wrote short stories about him too.
I don't know yet if he's better than JRRT or not, but trust me that I hadn't read such entertaining, dark, emotional and thrilling fantasy cycle.

Pity it was translated in German, Czech (luckily), Russian and Litvian only. Maybe You should push some publisher into it (some mailbombing?).

I swear you won't regret.

 

Back to the world creating thing...yes there is a lot that has been pulled from other sources. But that goes for just about any fantasy world I've seen in the last 15 to 20 years. In many respects, authors just take a Tolkien concept, make a few adjustments and then rename it. Even a lot of Tolkien's concepts came from other, often very old, sources.

By and large, I don't find most fantasy writers to be very original: the genre is defined by its setting. Occasionally there might be an added twist thrown in somewhere, but not much usually. And fantasy stories tend to stick to the 'romantic quest' theme: hero(s), conflict introduction, quest, resolution of conflict. Off the top of my head, the only truly original, contemporary major fantasy writer I can think of is Pratchett.

That aside, there are still very few that have been able to create an entire world on a detailed level. The majority of authors (fantasy and beyond) don't create detailed worlds, but instead create world settings - a concept. Depending on the author (mostly fantasy) they will then fill in details of very small, specific 'regions'. Not that this is bad - an author only requires those areas that they use. But the FR not only serves as a book setting, but also a game setting. Not to mention the fact that a vast amount of his material on the FR hasn't been published in any real form yet. And there's quite a bit that is published that isn't his - it comes from other authors.

As I said earlier, I don't think he's great. But, what he has accomplished is, I think, quite impressive.

 

I gotta jump on the Ed-hatin' bandwagon here. Sorry, but I've been with the Forgotten Realms from the beginning, and almost every one of the other authors is better than Ed.

I saw a "special edition" of Spellfire that had comments from the man himself in it. He said it was meant to be more of an introductory story for people new to FR, and introduce them to all the characters. He said that it wasnt' really meant to be in depth, but to cover as many established characters as possible.

Well OK, that explains a lot", I thought. So I gave him another chance and read the first Elminster book. My conclusion: Ed cannot write a good sustained story. Some of his bits were fairly entertaining (not great, but at times he can rise to adequate), but his characters are paper thin, and yes, nearly every female in Ed's stories is a slut. He doesn't have a grasp on the word "plot" yet.

In my opinion, he would be better off sticking to short stories or writing episodes for the pen and paper modules. Most of the other authors (Novak & Grubb, Troy Denning, Salvatore) are much better at making thier characters seem like real people, and interesting plots. Ed's characters come out with as much personality as a D&D character sheet, and stories as thin as his would be better if they were a lot shorter.
He doesn't flat out SUCK, and as Tal pointed out, there are some things in the FR that you won't find anywhere else. But there are so many FR books, why not choose some of the better authors rather than one of the worst?