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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5541514" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 231: July 1996part 4/8The role of books: Guardian's key by Anne Logston gets lots of praise for both being high quality, and defying easy categorisation. The elements from various subgenres are incorporated expertly, but the primary goal remains to entertain, which is as it should be. As we've said many times, that needs to be the primary goal of any artform if you want to be commercially succesful. The two georges by Richard Dreyfuss & Harry Turtledove funnily enough, doesn't play to the stereotypes either of the writers as established in their solo work. It's fast paced, has interesting, if not fully fleshed out worldbuilding, and is generally quite pulpy. John's main complaint is that it doesn't delve into the whys and wherefores of how the world got to be different from reality. Given answers generally lead to more questions, this may be hard, but there you go. The dig by Alan Dean Foster is a novelisation of a computer game. This gets a moderately problematic result simply because reading it will spoil you on the game, or vice versa, so there's really not much point having both. As with most gaming fiction, it's probably better not to bother. It's not bad, just rather derivative. War in Tethyr by Victor Milan is of course for the Forgotten Realms. Starring the kind of noble who got the title by kicking butt all the way to name level, it feels like it needs a prequel filling out our star's earlier adventures. But that's a request, not a complaint, as it does make for fun reading, providing a great example of how to set up plot twists so they come as a surprise yet make sense upon rereading. Given how many times we've had complaints about last act deus ex machina, that seems worth reading for aspiring writers. The gates of twilight by Paula Volsky gets a mildly negative review for concentrating too much on side plots and worldbuilding over advancing the main story. It's not that there isn't stuff to enjoy, but it would be better placed in appendices or given a good pruning by an editor so the story can shine. Perhaps writing should be presented as more of a collaborative artform in the first place. The electronic wizard: Oh man. Here we have a crux of my annoyance with this issue. You offer us cool bonus stuff, I don't get it, and then we have a fairly long promotional article on it to rub it in. And to top things off, it's not even as well written as the teaser in issue 226. This sent me into more than a little of a sulk back in the day. Ok, so it's probably the distributor or newsagent's fault, not TSR's, but that's not the point. The point is that it's a cocktease. I've never had much patience for that kind of experience, and if anything, my tolerance has only decreased as time has gone by. I'd much rather walk away than try jumping through someone else's hoops for some potential reward they could wind up withholding on a whim anyway because you're putting all the power in their hands. No. Just no. Screw you, and the distributor you rode in on. Buh-bye.</blockquote>

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