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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gadget" data-source="post: 6268637" data-attributes="member: 23716">Hmm..I suppose that If one looked at generalities, I can see the similarities to tLotR.  But those are the sort of things that one expects to find when one reads high/epic fantasy.  It is kind of like going swimming and complaining about getting wet in one sense.  I'm not really seeing how people are getting these Tanis = Aragorn vibe.  I submit that people who are doing so have not read one work or the other, because the two are not at all alike (other than perhaps a Ranger vibe).  Aragorn is not half-elven (he has elven blood in his line a few thousand years and umpteen generations back), he is not at all conflicted about his parentage, and the two characters motivations, background, and actions and resolutions are completely different.  In world building, I can see a lot more Tolkien, such as the aforementioned Ishtar/Numenor comparison, but even that is more telling the tale of a great, mythical civilization that falls into corruption, decadence and pride.  The whole take that good and evil must be cosmically balanced like electrons & protons is a very un-Tolkien concept.That being said, I agree that the Chronicles was not good writing and story telling (Though Legends was much better).  It was more the setting and and world that enraptured me as a teenager.  It seemed to focus much more on character, story, myth and world building the most D&D fiction did and made a much more coherent fantasy world than many D&D worlds did, though, as I later learned, not a better world for making a published campaign setting in.  My main problem was everyone and their dog writing novels in the setting and messing it up, not to mention Weis and Hickman needing to blow up the world every time they came back to the setting.  Just too many hands at the tiller.  Not able to leave well enough alone.  We have a pretty cool and flavorful organization in the Knights of Solamnia, but then we had to add a matching 'evil' organization in the Knights of Talkisis (didn't they also add a 'neutral' Legion of Steel?).  Draconians where a great new evil monster invention long before we had dragonborn, but than we had to add 'good' Draconians.</blockquote>

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