On Thu, Jan 23, 2003 at 06:06:19PM -0600, "Davis, Iain E." <feaelin at kemenel.org> wrote: > This is interesting, since I never made it past the first book. I made > the attempt because a coworker really enjoyed the books (however many > were out then...this was 8 years ago). I didn't like _any_ of the > characters, which was a big part of the problem...I thought the main > character was annoyingly inept/stupid, and the rest seemed annoying in a > variety of other ways (arrogant, etc.). I gave up about half way > through. :) Of *course* the main character starts out annoyingly inept and stupid. That's what allows him to *develop* into something much more... well... interesting. Similar things happen to some of the other characters. Suffice it to say, yes, some of the character traits grate if you don't stick with it long enough to start to understand the underlying story. (Some of them continue to grate to this day, though, and you just have to grit your teeth and bear it). To really give the series a fair shake you need to read to the end of the second book, at which point you'll have a much better idea where things are going and whether you'll like the journey. The first book has some issues. -- Matthew Hunter (matthew at infodancer.org) Public Key: http://matthew.infodancer.org/public_key.txt Homepage: http://matthew.infodancer.org/index.jsp Politics: http://www.triggerfinger.org/index.jsp