Who else should retire?

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Stephen King has publicly stated that he feels he is becoming too repetitive and will retire (but not until after he does 5 more books, a play and a movie ).
So this got me thinking: Who else is getting too repetitive and unoriginal and should retire?
I nominate Dean Koontz (every book has the exact same plot), Terry Brooks, and Dave Eddings.

Dave Eddings and Terry Brooks are both good writers, but they repeat themselves too much and recycle too much material.
The newer Shannara books are basically a retread of the originals, but expanded a bit. I want something different. His other series (Magic Kingdom for sale) was very weak. Basically every story involves his girlfriend getting himself into some kind of trouble, and then he spends the entire book trying to rescue her.
Same thing with Eddings. The second serties with Sparhawk gave me Deja Vu, that's how similar it was to the first. I constantly found myself thinking, didn't I read this exact same dialouge before?

[ September 19, 2002, 20:00: Message edited by: Nutrimat ]

 

I ve read only 1 Eddings bk & i liked it, even if no1 important died. but considering that ive not read ne of the others, this may hav bn utterly pointless

 

Just about every fantasy author *cough* Forgotten Realms *cough* who hocks up trite and predictable adventure stories with cardboard characters.

 

Ed Greenwood. Every damn Elminster book goes like this "Oh, look, a PLOT! I shall stop it. Oh wait, in over my head. Mystra, save me!" and she does

 

R.A. Salvatore. I've yet to read anything by him that would lead me to believe he can write anything aside from mind-numbingly detailed fight scenes mixed in with elements of a melodramatic "plot."

It's like reading a play-by-play of the choreography of a John Woo movie.

[ September 19, 2002, 23:50: Message edited by: The Deviant Mage ]

 

*grumbles* Spartans...

Eh. I'd say Terry Goodkind's over and done with. After plowing through the first four Sword of Truth books, I can't even bring myself to look at Spirit of the Flames. Just going by the back cover, I can already tell it'll be another 900 pages about Richard being seperated from Kahlan, failing to learn how to use his magic, and saving the world only to find out he's now in *deeper* sh-t. It was cool at first, and the guy's a good writer, but I'm ready to smack Richard in the head and send him to Hogwarts. Even Harry Potter can levitate a god damned broom.

 

I have to admit with the Eddings thing, gosh I loved his books as a young teenager but he the entire Sparhawk series was some of the worst **** I have ever read. I dont dare to go back and reread the Belgariadd in fear of it being utter crap in my eyes now. I agree on the Goodkind thing as well, he wrote decent lowquality fantasy at the start but come one! How many worlddestrying beings can there be? Kill one and two others plop up...

 

Salvatore bores me to death now. It started off good and went downhill from there

 

I don't think Salvatore should stop writing, only that he'd write about someone else than Drizzt for a while!! (no, I haven't read the cleric quintet, since I dislike clerics. Who'd want to be a cleric when you can be a fighter or a mage?)

 

My Favorite Eddings moment:
I think it occurred in the last book in the first trilogy (The Sapphire Rose).
Sephrina was all tough and sharp-toungued the whole series, bossing the knights around and such. Very much a forceful, no-nonsense type.

Then suddenly she became very timid and fearful because there were cracks developing in the ceiling. Sparhawk tried to reassure her that the roof was in no danger of collapsing, but she would not be consoled. At the end of the paragraph Dave writes, apparently as an explanation "Sephrina was really a very complex person sometimes". It was the only time in the whole series that she acted like this, and it was so out of place with her character (everyone was usually consistently one-dimensional) that this one small paragraph diminished the credibility of the whole series.

I have read far worse (Ed Greenwood ), but it was frustrating because he (Eddings) does have some writing skills, and does a good job of building drama, suspense, etc. If it was complete crap I wouldn't have felt so let down. It was the Pool of Radiance of fantasy books, so close and yet so far...

And Frostmage, I too feel that Drizzt has run his course, but you really should give the Cleric Quintet a shot. It is an excellent series. Cadderly is not really a typical cleric (clerics bring to mind stern faced religious types with no sense of humor). He's fun-loving and adventurous.

It is much more...colorful than the Drizzt series, and contains more humor, in my opinion.
I especially liked the Dwarves, Ivan and, what was his brother's name? The dwarf who wanted to be a druid? Pinkel?

They were confronted with a group of skeletons
Cadderly: Run!
Ivan: Run!
Pinkel: OOOOoooo! (he doesn't talk)
<Cadderly starts to flee>
<the dwarves run INTO the skeletons and bowl them over>
Ivan: Good plan, boy!
That's the gist of it. Sorry I'm too lazy to dig through the books for an exact quote, but that's it as best as I remember.

[ September 22, 2002, 02:34: Message edited by: Nutrimat ]

 

Umm...The only FR authors I think should retire are Phil Athans and Troy Denning. Athans because he's a mind-numbingly bad writer, and Denning because he doesn't know how to put a good story together. He kills off the WRONG characters (I won't mention any, no need for SPOILERS here) and "Crucible: Trial of Cyric the Mad" was so crappy I almost stopped to read one of the BG books when I got halfway throught it. It was written in EXACTLY the same style as "Eaters of the Dead" by Mike Crichton, which wouldn't be too bad, except that Denning screwed it up, royally.

Why should Salvatore and Greenwood retire. The Elminster series were pretty cool, and they were all very different. And there is nothing wrong with Salvatore's fight descriptions, especially in the Drizzt books! It's what makes his fight "scenes" so interesting, unlike many other authors who say stuff like "They dodgeg back and forth, trading blows until the orc died." Oooh, interesting. Salvatore has a good idea of what he's talking about (except for "Spine of the World" and the beer bottles, *that* was stupid). Personally, I thought the "Cleric Quintet" was his crappy work. It overused the guilt/innocence factor and was sort of an overused plot (ie. powerful man turned bad, who's son is a prodigy) and Salvatore *really* should've come up with his own name for his elf prince, "Elbereth" wasn't very creative.

 

Actually you should try reading brook's series that started with running with the demon (then continued to Knight of the word and angel fire east). I have read all of them but they are very different then his current series.

**edited to add this**
Oh and the Dwarf's brothers names are ivan and Pickle. Pickle is a dwarf who wants to become a druid and dies he hair and beard green. Ivan is very distrubed... those were some funny momments.

[ September 22, 2002, 04:24: Message edited by: gx5ilver ]

 

Brooks is ok by me. His recent books aren't quite up to snuff to the earlier ones, but the Shannara series is still comfortable reading.

As for Eddings, unless he manages another book of "Belgariad" quality, he's done for.

 

I'd say the Eddings' more recent writing is better than the Belgariad. The Belgariad was one of my favorite series as a kid, but I tried to reread it last year and was quite disappointed. It seemed to be just a collection of comfortable fantasy cliches.

The Redemption of Althalus, on the other hand, is an excellent and original book.

 

Yes, Denning and the infamous Jimmy....

Salvatore's attempt at writing Star Wars sucked majorly in the technical detail stuff... I was crying out loud at several parts... His Drizzt books are getting really flat, too...
Besides, did he HAVE to cross the Cleric QUintetr with the Drizzt works?

Eddings' books were getting stale in the Sparhawk trilogies, I mean, I was planning on doing a school project on how he plagiarized himself so much! Then, with Redemption of Althalus my faith was somewhat restored. The whole doors business was cool, and the characters were quite interesting... I especially loved the mental calculations being used in avoid being probed psionically...

Ara
(This is my 800th post! Wee!)

 

I actually liked (most of) Crucible: the Trials of Cyric the Mad. I thought that it was quite original, and the fact that I got it for three bucks helps a lot

 

Is Dean R. Koontz the same as Dean Koontz? Did he just left his R. behind?
Dean R. Koontz uses always the same plot. But i was astonished while reading "Seize the night". It was totally different and very much better.
Eddings too romantic for me anyways.
The author i love most isn't translated into english (yet?). It's Karl-Heinz Witzko, a DSA (the blackeye) author. And his last book "Westwärts, Geschuppte!" Was so funny i lmao.
It's sad you can't read it, i can't translate it, not even the title. Maybe "Go west, scaled!"
Salvatore was disappointing to me, but i was only reading a trilogy without Drizzt. This might have been his first books. I don't know the title.
Maybe it's getting boring, because most of those fantasy authors always save a world.

[ September 23, 2002, 17:27: Message edited by: Oblate ]

 

I nominate both terry goodkind and Robert Jordan.

Terry goodkind was writing good solid fantasy in the first three books, but after these three books Richard keeps fixing the world in the book while in the last chapter a "cool" cliffhanger is given, to rescue the world once more in the next book.

robert jordan is even more obvious: after book 4 (or five or whatever) the serie slows down. (actually slowing down more, would mean walking backwards) come on book 7 is about what? 3 days?

Both writers fall for the trap of milking their series because people buy them.

 

Oblate: Yes Dean Koontz and Dean R. Koontz are one and the same. Intensity was really really good (I finished it the day I got it), but overall, yep he recycles plots too much.

Terry Goodkind: I liked how Richard was captured and tortured by those sadistic nuns in Wizard's First Rule. I kept expecting him to do a fantasy cliche and summon the inner strength to break free (or something like that). But I don't think I've ever seen a promising series go downhill that fast. That seems to be the general consensus here, I have yet to hear anyone say much positive about the later books.

I read Salvatore's Spearwielder's Tale series and it was complete garbage.