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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WizarDru" data-source="post: 1709213" data-attributes="member: 151">Ahem.    Let's just remember to keep things pleasant, ok guys?  Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Regarding Donaldson and Covenant: No contract broken, with me.  I didn't like the character, I didn't like the rape and I didn't care for Dondaldson's writing.  He failed to engage me, but we had no contract failure.  Tastes differ, and that I failed to enjoy his work didn't invalidate it.  I find The Godfather and Sopranos series compelling, and assume the same for the Shield, not because I like the characters, but because I enjoy watching them interact in their world, and they are not the sole viewpoint characters.  Tony Soprano has a personal code of honor.  He feels bad about the terrible things he does, even if he still does them.  Covenant may have come to that point (although from what I'm hearing, it sounds like he never truly does)...but when I quit the book, he hadn't.  I might feel differently if I read the books now, but I have enough material to read that I won't seek out something I have a history of having notenjoyed.  Regarding Robert Jordan: Contract Violation.  Jordan made me an implicit promise with his work: to tell a story about Rand al'Thor, and the events leading to the final confrontation with the Dark Lord.  For roughly four or five books, I got that story.  Then Jordan lost his way.  I remember when Mat killed the leader of the Shaido off-camera...that was when I literally heard the train go off the rails.  I had eagerly awaited a climactic showdown, and was cheated of it.  I got long baths and endless self-abosrbed reflection, but characters who disappear for several books, and get a quarter-chapter somewhere.  Jordan stopped telling his story, and started just passing time.  Like Bartelby the Scrivener, when asked to finish his tale, he simply replies "I choose not to."  Tad Williams: Major Contract Violation.  I have never been angrier at an author than the 'conclusion' of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn.  Williams made me a promise...a promise that my investment of time and effort in plunging through his very long books would lead me to a satsifying ending, and that all of his foreshadowing had meaning; that a character who had been a viewpoint character on and off for three books had a great destiny...and that great destiny was [SPOILER]to hold a door open for the main characters[/SPOILER] .  All of the omens and implicit details were utterly meaningless and without value....it was all hogwash.  Most of the efforts of the main characters were redundant and unneccesary.  [SPOILER]The incredibly powerful magic swords were, as it happens, utterly unimportant...not unlike the main character.[/SPOILER]  I felt betrayed by the story.  Williams had provided me implications that the book would end in a much different fashion than it did, and I was left wondering why he had wasted all that time and all those words.  Stephen Brust: In Dispute.  I love Brust, but I still harbor a resentment at how he changed the tone and identity of the Taltos books to read more like unfocused and unenjoyable political allegories, instead of witty romps.  It was several books before he undid the damage.  As for the charge of being an assasin, I find it much harder to dislike Vlad for doing it.  He is very rarely ever put into a situation where there is a clear moral impediement to performing his work.  Usually he's killing unpleasant folks to begin with (or later, for a cause)...and death is not terribly permananent for most folks in his world (hell, it's considered a way to warn someone...Vlad himself is killed in Taltos', iirc).</blockquote>

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