Just Me

For all its flaws, at least the quality of writing in the Harry Potter series is better than that of the Inheritance series. In addition to its cliched rip-offs of better novels that preceded it, the quality of the writing is terrible. As I said before, little kid with a thesaurus.

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"And at the end of the day, is magic underwear really that much crazier than giant arks, or virgin births, or talking bushes. You're either a rationalist or you're not. And the good news is, a recent poll found 20% of adults under 30 say they are rationalists and have figured out that Santa Claus and Jesus are really the same guy."
- Bill Maher

Coiled Flame

Touche. I felt the same way - loved it at first, got started reading other goodies (His Dark Materials, Wheel of Time, and writing a bit of my own)m tried to re-read it and just found no interest in it whatsoever. Looking at it from a writer's perspective, it is just plain bad.

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*Angel

how are they crazy, might i ask out of curiosity?

Krim

Because they care about integrity. INSANITY.

- giggles. -

What other books have you read?

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"A terrible energy and strength began to grow in him. It grabbed his emotions and forged them into a solid bar of anger with one word stamped on it: revenge." - Eragon by Christopher Paolini, an international bestseller

DavidGil

It's nice to see Bakker's work amongst your books Krim. I find he doesn't seem to get mentioned as much as other authors. A lot of the other ones I saw, I didn't recognise.

But a serious question: How do you find the books you want? If it was me, I'd keep all of Martin's, Bakker's and Erikson's books together in order. I literally couldn't see any of the other books in those series, unless you don't have them.

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kingajcice

I don't like any other kinds of books, so only the recent more popular fiction books like those two series.

I like the Artemis Fowl series. However I find that many books I try to read from popular authors, Steven King for example, the story line immediately gives me absolutely no interest in the book.

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Krim

What kind of books are those? Books about magical teenagers? Try out Chronicles of Amber and the Coldfire Trilogy.

Diligent searching. It's annoying since my bookshelf is now extremely packed front and back and I need another one. I've sort of ordered them, though. Let me see what I can recognize on those shelves...those are old, though. I need new pictures. I'm sure you'd recognize a lot more in recent pictures. Like I said, I tend to lose a lot of books in a series, so I'll have like book 1, book 4, and book 8.

Mhm...I see...is that Amber Spyglass? The Assassin's Quest by Robin Hobb...A dictionary...sumthin...Series of Unfortunate Events book...Cirque du Freak...Doomsday...The Sun Also Rises...Hitchhiker's Guide...sumthin...The Silver Spike by Glen Cook, sumthin, Neverwhere, Wizard & Glass, Shadows Linger, Lirael, Lady Friday, Golden Compass, sumthin, L'engle, sumthin sumthin sumthing.

Then Orson Scott Card's book on writing Fantasy & Sci-Fi, more Glen Cook (The White Rose?), Ptolemy's Gate, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep?, Fool's Fate, Perdido Street Station, King Rat, Calvin & Hobbes book, The Drawing of the Three, Looking for Jake, The Waste Land, Song of Susannah, Across the Wall, Wolves of the Calla, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire(?), Illustrated Kid's Bible some random priest gave me, Seventh Tower (last three books omnibus), a bunch of something, Reality Bug, one of the Magician books by Trudi Canavan (High Lord?)

Then some things...Cold Sassy Tree, Philosopher's Stone, Atlantis Found, Fire, sumthin, Quicksilver, Stone of Farewell, another Glen Cook book, Golden Fool, sumthin, sumthin, sumthin, so on and sumthin, Deathly Hallows (...mhm, this must be more recent than I thought, date has to be wrong on the camera), Debt of Honor, stuff, a Pendragon book, the complete Divine Commedy.

Then more crap.

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"A terrible energy and strength began to grow in him. It grabbed his emotions and forged them into a solid bar of anger with one word stamped on it: revenge." - Eragon by Christopher Paolini, an international bestseller

Mr Sci Fi

I agree with Krim, Pianogirl musn't have read many books.

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Ilasir Maroa

Well, some of the books Krim mentions aren't much better, but a lot of them are. Eriksson, Martin, Kay, Card, Hobb, all good authors. paolini is awful, and I wouldn't have read such an immature book if I hadn't fallen for all that hype. All his ideas are stolen, from the reviously mentoned authors RS, JRRT, AM, and GL. His plots are unoriginal, awful written, and somewhat corny. Not that I didn't finish, but it took work.

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kingajcice

Umm, with those series, is the protagonist a heroine, because I don't like a book with a heroine either, it's annoying to listen to the feelings written for them.

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Sekaya

@Kingajcice: As long as the heroine isn't whiny, I find them exactly like the guys. How then do their feelings annoy you?
It's not like they are that dramatically different from guys.
Of course, I'm a girl, so what would I know, afterall. -cue eye roll-

On topic: Eragon as a character frustrates me. I forced myself to read through it. He's such an idiot, even more so than usual, and whines and whines and whines.
They should have their moments but...
not so many...
And it is so draggy and predictable in places.
Personally, even though I didn't like every one of McCaffrey's "Dragon riders of Pern" series, its much better than Eragon. In the two I like especially out of the series, I found I could connect with the characters much better than in that.
not so much in Eragon.
Unless you count swearing.
/bashing.

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DavidGil

Hey Krim, thanks for the response to my serious question.

I don't know many of the books you mentioned but I've heard of Robin Hobb's works. I've never tried them though. I have the first two Dark Tower books of Stephen King's and that's about it. The rest of my books are either different than you mentioned or are by Bakker, Erikson and Martin. For some reason though, I have quite a few R.A Salvatore books amongst the fantasy and non-fantasy ones I have. I guess I just them for a good read where you don't need to think and his action sequences are nicely described.

I can recommend the series from Greg Keyes, Kingdom of Thorn & Bone, starting with the Brirar King however if you're looking for a new series at some point. People tend to refer to it as Martin lite. That is, if you've never read or heard about it.

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Mr Sci Fi

The only thing I think "Eragon" missed was when the title character was supposed to say to his Uncle: "But I was supposed to go to the Tashi Station to pick up some power converters!"

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Natasha09

I have the first book of the series, and at first it was alright, but once the actual journey in the book got started, it bored me to death. I still haven't finished it and I started it about a year ago.

One thing I hated with passion about the book was that Paolini uses way too many uncommon words. I started feeling like an idiot when it came to vocabulary, and I had to read the thing with a dictionary right next to me. Now I know the definitions of words that I will never ever use in life. If I have to say something is beautiful, I'm going to say it's beautiful, not pulchritudinous.

Rambling Sage

to pianogirl, you said that he never read lotr.

well, ive heard him speak at a conference thing and not only has he read lotr, but just about every other classic fantasy that combine to form the basis of the genre, even down to beowulf, which is like the earliest fantasy ever.

so basically his books are all ripped off of other classic, and better, fantasies

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