On Mon, 17 Feb 2003, Gomi no Sensei wrote: @> >> E.g., Terry Goodkind. @> @> [rant elided] @> @> > We start with "Wizard's First Rule," and this is actually a good book. @> @> Whoa, whoa. WFR sucked donkey balls. It was Boy Hero With a Secret Past and @> Legacy of Secret Power, right off the back of the cereal box. I have to agree with this; Wraeththu was Book 10 I Didn't Finish. Wizard's First Rule was Book 9. The friend who lent it to me refused to take it back. He said he didn't want to let that back into his house, and that I should pass it along to someone else to spare them the indignity of having to pay actual money to find out how bad it was. @> OTOH, Tad Williams could have been a decent author at some point. Memory, @> Sorrow, and Thorn is a solid duology spread out over three books. Given @> that after its success he's probably less subject to editing than before, I @> have little interest in plowing through the verbal underbrush for @> 'Otherland'. @> @> In fact, a lot of the junky fantasy on the shelves today can be laid at @> editorial feet, or the absence thereof. It's a hard thing to blame editors; it seems to me that they can't necessarily fix something that's awful, just make it less awful. Although, of course, it would be nice if one of them said "Hey, this book? The one that you sent me to read? It's awful. Start over from the beginning."