choices

James Wynn · 04 Aug 2011, 22:09 · from 2011-August.txt.gz

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From: crushtv at gmail.com (James Wynn)
Date: Thu, 04 Aug 2011 17:09:44 -0500
Subject: (urth) choices
In-Reply-To: <4E3B08D2.1040504 at irit.fr>
References: <4E3B08D2.1040504 at irit.fr>
Message-ID: <4E3B18A8.1090808 at gmail.com>

1) I remember distinctly that the Covenant Chronicles just ran out of steam.

2) It is a slightly veiled plagiarism of the Sword of Shanara (which was 
a plagiarism of The Lord of the Rings. But then so were so many other 
fantasy books of the late 70s.

As a teen, I was revolted by the rape at the beginning of volume 1 and 
chunked the book for about a year. Then I picked it up and moved on. 
Ultimately, I liked it pretty well. Enough to buy book 2 with 
anticipation which I thought was even better. But book 3 just fell off a 
cliff. Total waste of time for me. I had very specific theories about 
why the ending failed but I can't remember what they were. However, I 
knew people who were absolutely crazy about Donaldson in the early 80s. 
Not so much now I'm afraid, which I have always credited to the dreadful 
follow-up trilogy. It could be that the book captured some zeitgeist at 
the time. I hardly ever hear about it now. I wonder how the first 
trilogy reads for young people who pick it up for the first time now, 35 
years later.

On 8/4/2011 4:02 PM, Sergei SOLOVIEV wrote:
> Dear members -
>
> I didn't vote (just missed the vote), but I am
> puzzled by the fact that two of the books sometimes chosen
> (Thomas Covenant and Elric) were truly repulsive to me. I tried to 
> analyse why,
> in case of Elric I concluded that it seems to me full of (slightly 
> veiled) plagiarism
> on the level of ideas and images, but in case of Thomas Covenant I 
> could not find
> a rational explanation (the same with other books by the same author). 
> Most
> of the rest I like very much myself.
>
> All the best
>
> Sergei Soloviev
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