[Sept] What Are You Reading?

[Vraille Darkfang]

Right Now:

I'm reading Annihilation: War of the Spider Queen 5. So far, not to bad. Of course I'm on page 56. So far, I'd have to say this series is above average for shared world fiction & most fantasy fiction currently available. Though this speaks more for the lack of quality in the bookstore than about the exceptional quality of the series.

I'm also reading Elric: Tales of the White Wolf Anthology. A bunch of stories (including one by Gary Gygax) where different writers (including Moorcock) wrote a short story about Elric, Dragon Lord of Meliborne. As I'm only on page 10, I can't say much about it yet.

I'm also reading Mongoose's Pocket Player's Guide. It's small enough to carry around & read in my spare time and I have yet to read the PHB cover to cover & its starting to slow my game down as my players for some reason have decided to pull every obscure option available in the PHB over the last few weeks; I put in the semi-colon just so I could keep this mammoth run-on sentance going for a few more words longer.

Finally, I have Vampire Hunter D Volume 2 on order & it should be coming in any day. (Volume 1 was a great read, highly reccomended.

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

Michael Moorcock's "The Skrayling Tree--The Albino in America". Also picking through the DMGII and Weapons of Legacy getting ready for my new D&D campaign. I should be getting Stormwrack in a couple of weeks, as I've been convinced it's worth the money if you're running a sea-faring campaign.

 

[Wombat]

Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock. Never read it before.

Ooooh! Fascinating book full of all sorts of rpg potential. Have fun with it.

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock. Never read it before.

Wonderful book, one of my favorite books ever. Lavondyss and The Hollowing (two of the sequels) are also well worth reading.

 

[Desert-Raven]

Reading list

I am currently reading a quartet of Lawrence Sander's novels I had on the shelf...

McNally's Risk, McNally's Caper, McNally's Trial, and McNally's Puzzle....currently I'm on "Trial", they are a fun read, nothing too serious.

Hopefully this light reading gears me up for my next attempt, George R R Martin's A Game of Thrones...I'm looking forward to that series after all the talk I heard about it.

D-R

 

[ragboy]

This may just be a myth, but I'd heard the McKiernan wanted to write continuations of the LotR stories, and naturally neither Tolkien nor his estate was interested in supporting that. That's why the Iron Tower so closely mimics the LotR; he was specifically trying to get as close as he could without getting sued to recreating the setting so he could then turn around and write the stories he really wanted to.

Like I said, though--that story may be completely apocryphal.

It's pretty obvious that's what he wanted/tried to do (just too many characters/places/situations that map directly to LotR), but he failed miserably. He basically wrote a "Classics Illustrated" version of LotR. Blarg. I picked this up because I wanted to get back into fantasy (after being used, abused and finally abandoning Jordan several years ago). Off to the other half-price books in the area to find the Martin stuff.

 

[Asmo]

I´ve read 120 pages of Perdido Street Station.
Intriguing. Imaginative. Strange words. Lots of them.

Asmo

 

[RangerWickett]

Asmo . . . you'll be sorry.

But yes, the world and the linguistics of the man's writing are fascinating.

 

[Desdichado]

I´ve read 120 pages of Perdido Street Station.
Intriguing. Imaginative. Strange words. Lots of them.

Only 100 more to go before the book starts!

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

This may just be a myth, but I'd heard the McKiernan wanted to write continuations of the LotR stories, and naturally neither Tolkien nor his estate was interested in supporting that. That's why the Iron Tower so closely mimics the LotR; he was specifically trying to get as close as he could without getting sued to recreating the setting so he could then turn around and write the stories he really wanted to.

Like I said, though--that story may be completely apocryphal.

He really was trying to write a sequal to the LotR. He was in the hospital for a long time after being hit by a car, read the LotR, then decided to write continuing adventures of the hobbits. He did so, then either sent them to the Tolkien estate or a literary agent. Regarless, the estate got wind of it, and ordered him to stop or be sued. So he changed the names and places, and ended up getting it accepted and published. He tells the story in the "About the Author" section of one of his books. Or maybe the introduction. I don't remember, I couldn't finish the book.