Dragaera

Literary Disappointments (was: The LKH thing)

Mon Feb 17 15:54:57 PST 2003

On Mon, 17 Feb 2003, Gomi no Sensei wrote:

> On Mon, 17 Feb 2003 13:05:49 -0800, Richard Malena <rmalena at softhome.net> 
> wrote:

[Terry Goodkind and bad books]
 
> 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.

I think that's brutally unfair to editors.  They're not miracle workers, 
you know and turning a 900-page doorstop into a tightly plotted story a 
third that size in the time frame that most editors have isn't bloody 
likely.

Not to mention the fact that people LIKE doorstop fantasy.  Just because 
your taste doesn't match the market doesn't mean that editors aren't doing 
their jobs.

-Dennis