Joe Abercrombie mentioned my review of The Blade Itself in his blog. Times a changing when authors are amongst us mortals. Anyways there’s also a interesting post in his blog on how fantasy series compare to TV series, where he goes to point out the that the TV trend of long plot lines and open-endedness might be making it’s way to fantasy series.
I don’t mind huge and complex epic fantasies, presuming that it gets finished sometime and there is clearcut story without too much rambling. By rambling I mean useless side plots and endless coffee table discussions, ie. Wheel of Time. Also you should use the occasional short cut, eg. write that she is nuts rather than always describing that compulsive behaviour(X tugs her Y). Anyway, in both TV series and fantasy series the biggest problem with really complex plot lines that run partly on background is that it isn’t always possible to read/watch the whole series in one go. Quite a few series are getting to a point where you would like to read/watch the previous installments to comprehend everything. Of course that isn’t problem with series you really like, eg. I don’t mind reading the whole Malazan Book of the Fallen before every new book.
I have to admit that I’m not as big a fan of epic fantasy as some. I like tighter stories. When there are 5+ point-of-view characters there invariably is some character that is written poorly and it’s just pain in the ass to read his chapters.
As a side note on The First Law, so far after two installments I’d just like to see Joe writing couple of different series of independent books. One about Glokta and one about Logen, with a hefty dose of Ferro. Independent books like David Gemmell used to write, back in the day, when he was alive. Their style is somewhat similar and I’d really like to read more about these interesting characters with less epic plot lines.
Being sick and all I’m not necessarily going to post more reviews this week.