Raymond E. Feist

[Shryke]

Quick question that's kind of related.

Why is it that something simpler and a very good fantasy tale about two young boys growing up in strange times have to be seen as less then something that has all these deep levels of thinking in it, such as Prince of Nothing and whatnot?

They are different, but I mean are totally different in many of their aspects and are both trying to achieve totally different goals.

Why does a book have to be complex and dark to be great? And thus leaving lighter and not so complex books inferior?

EDIT: Added last question.

How far does this extend? Should we be praising "Go Dog Go" for it's riviting plot too?

Feist's stuff, even at it's best, is less well written, less well plotted, less well characterized and simply shallower then the other books being mentioned as better.

[Prince Who Was Promised]

Quick question that's kind of related.

Why is it that something simpler and a very good fantasy tale about two young boys growing up in strange times have to be seen as less then something that has all these deep levels of thinking in it, such as Prince of Nothing and whatnot?

Well for thinkers (I like to think; my friends say I think too much), books with thinking could be more enjoyable. Many of us have read the plot of two (or three) young boys grpwing up in strange times multiple times. Naturally, when something different comes along it could attract interest.

They are different, but I mean are totally different in many of their aspects and are both trying to achieve totally different goals.

We know. That's possibly part of the reason why the complex books are more enjoyed. Books like Eddings or Brooks, even Tolkein, have a method to their madness. All three are about young folks coming of age, meeting with ancient races, and battling Dark Lords in their towers. The characters in the books each serve a distinct purpose to the story. Frodo is to carry the ring, Aragorn to wear the crown of Gondor and lead the armies, ect.

Books like First Law, ASOIAF (even though it was all of the troupes I mentioned above), and, I'm guessing, PoN, have characters that don't seem like they're there just to fulfill a certain purpose. They have characters that come alive and for that, many people see them as better than characters that don't develop as much, or seem like they're just their for a certain role. So, I guess alot of it is about the characters.

Why does a book have to be complex and dark to be great? And thus leaving lighter and not so complex books inferior?

Like I said, part of it's about the characters. I, for one, can only relate so far to a young boy out to save the world with hidden powers with the help of a wise old man, and destined to marry a princess. I CAN, however, relate more to characters of darker nature. Characters who feel real, but more importantly, who feel loss, anger, betrayal, ect.

For me, it's not that the lighter books are always inferior, but I can't always relate to the characters. And, I like complex and darker plots much more. Books with the same plots can only entertain so long. Darker books are more relateable, less predictable, and more realistic.

Hope that helps.

[Wastrel]

Why is Magnolia or The Godfather better than an endlessly looped video of a man being hit in the testacles by a rugby ball? For that matter, why is watching a film better than smearing yourself with your own faeces and crawling around on the floor? I mean, children do that sort of thing for fun - who are we to say we're better than them? On that note, what about those shiny painted rotating things you hang above cots. Why bother watching films or reading books or anything like that, when you can lie on your back in your bed and spend your free time going 'gaga' and trying to grab the mobile as the wind spins it? Babies do it and seem to find it fun. Why limit ourselves to one species, though - is reading War and Peace really more enjoyable in any way than licking your own testicles like a dog?

The question is ultimately whether utility (happiness, pleasure, enjoyment, fun, entertainment, whatever positive word you want to use) is one-dimensional or two-dimensional. If it is one-dimensional, all there is is intensity, and that's easy enough to distinguish; if it's two-dimensional, we need to worry about some second quality. As Mill put it: "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied." It is true that we cannot objectively and conclusively 'prove' any scale for this second dimension, but that is hardly the same as saying that this second dimension does not exist. Indeed, I think that those who do not believe it are hypocritical.

Consider two neurological experiments:

- It is apparently possible to create an 'orgasm button', whereby a person is able to directly trigger orgasm at any time they wish. When this is done, they invariably press the button continually, even disregarding bodily needs such as food and water.

- By removing certain portions of the brain, it is possible to essentialy eliminate all suffering (other than from immediate pain or physical discomfort). The side effect is that all higher reasoning powers are also lost, and the subject becomes able to do no more than carry out simple tasks under supervision.

Both cases provide enjoyment (one positive, ecstasy, the other negative, the absence of anxiety, depression, boredom, concern and so forth). Yet almost nobody would volunteer for either life - indeed, I would think that even suicide would be preferable to them. This is because, in my opinion, these highly pleasurable lives lack an additional dimension, and that dimension is what we value in the human life. It is these higher sensibilities that enjoy art forms at all, and, within the sphere of art, enjoy the more sophisticated forms of it.

[Personally, I think that this can be summarised (in the experience, rather than its role in life) as 'complexity'. Complex pleasures are preferable to simple ones, even if, and perhaps even because, they are less attainable]

----------------

Or else ignore all of that, and say that what is simple (in the sense of superficial) is less valuable because it is ubiquitous, and sophistication is not. Therefore, even if we were to value the complex and the simple pleasures equally, we would still value more highly the works of art that provoke more complex reactions, as they are less available to us.

[Werthead]

Play nice or I will have to deploy the mod-stick once more.

Like I said, part of it's about the characters. I, for one, can only relate so far to a young boy out to save the world with hidden powers with the help of a wise old man, and destined to marry a princess.

Interestingly, Feist actually subverts a lot of the reader's expectations going through Magician. Nowadays it would be tame, but reading the book and remembering that it was published in 1982 (at exactly the same time The Belgariad was being published, in fact), it's actually quite remarkable how many traditional epic fantasy tropes Feist inverted or took the piss out of in Magician. It's a cleverer book than it gets credited as, actually.

As mentioned before, Feist has indeed devolved into writing much more cliched, unoriginal stuff nowadays, but Magician, The Empire Trilogy (especially) and maybe the first three books of Serpentwar show some really interesting and intriguing ideas going on. I rate him far higher than Brooks or Eddings, and at his very best he is easily about the same entertainment level of Lynch, Abercrombie, Rothfuss etc. The only difference is that Feist wasn't able to sustain that burst of quality for very long (whilst those previously-mentioned authors are still at the start of their careers and only likely to improve) and tailed off into mediocrity, which is a great shame.

[polishgenius]

(whilst those previously-mentioned authors are still at the start of their careers and only likely to improve)

Or, you know, do what Feist did. Though hopefully not.

[Black Wizard]

Play nice or I will have to deploy the mod-stick once more.

Oooo. Sounds kinky. :smileysex:

[Derfel Cadarn]

Magician, imho, is his best work. I've only read the 'extended' version he released in 1992 so I can't judge the original but I'm guessing there isn't a huge difference.

Silverthorn and Darkness at Sethanon seem to be pretty standard D&D type stuff, but fun. The Empire trilogy is very good, lots of intrigue.

Sadly the rot starts with the Serpentwar Saga. Even in book one there is the odd section that contradicts itself. The second book also has a few continuity errors. In book1 Calis's 'mercenaries' number just over 100, in book 2 they are listed as being in the 100s with more survivors than indicated in book 1. Which brings me to my main problem with Feist's later books. The utter lack of continuity from book to book. In book 4 of the Serpentwar he has characers discuss a secret entrance to Sarth's Abbey Jimmy used around the time of the Betrayal game - and when he writes the novelisation of that game, no such scene exists. The years between the Serpentwar and Conclave books always seems in flux, at odds with characters ages. The less said about the changing royal families of the Kingdom and Kesh the better. Not to mention Erik Von Darkmoor's wife.

He also has a habit of introducing some big evil ... who is actually the pawn of a BIGGER!! evil. This gets overdone a bit.

[ljkeane]

I'd agree with the general consensus here, I enjoyed Magician and I thought The Empire Trilogy was actually pretty good but his work unfortunately declined from there and I haven't felt the need to read any of his more recent books.

[drawkcabi]

I really love the Empire Trilogy, it's tied for my favorite of Feist's works with the original Rift-War cycle. However, there's only one thing I don't like about Empire, at some points in the books it seems to suffer from Jordanitis, i.e. it takes 3 pages to describe Mara smelling a flower. I'm guessing this is Wurts because on Feist's solo works he's anything but long winded, sometimes he's too brief in his descriptions.

Again, this isn't that big a deal to me because the story and writing of Empire really is great, I'm just wondering if anyone else experienced this a few times during the series where you're just like "get on with it!"

[Shryke]

Play nice or I will have to deploy the mod-stick once more.

Interestingly, Feist actually subverts a lot of the reader's expectations going through Magician. Nowadays it would be tame, but reading the book and remembering that it was published in 1982 (at exactly the same time The Belgariad was being published, in fact), it's actually quite remarkable how many traditional epic fantasy tropes Feist inverted or took the piss out of in Magician. It's a cleverer book than it gets credited as, actually.

As mentioned before, Feist has indeed devolved into writing much more cliched, unoriginal stuff nowadays, but Magician, The Empire Trilogy (especially) and maybe the first three books of Serpentwar show some really interesting and intriguing ideas going on. I rate him far higher than Brooks or Eddings, and at his very best he is easily about the same entertainment level of Lynch, Abercrombie, Rothfuss etc. The only difference is that Feist wasn't able to sustain that burst of quality for very long (whilst those previously-mentioned authors are still at the start of their careers and only likely to improve) and tailed off into mediocrity, which is a great shame.

The thing is, even when he was being non-conventional, nothing abou his writing was really "great". At his best, he was mediocrely non-conventional.

[Black Wizard]

I absolutely agree with what Derfel Cadarn has to say about the contradictory nature of Feist's later works. That's something that really pisses me off about the Riftwar Cycle. I'm not a big fan of the whole 'Russian Doll' thing with the evil they're facing. I'm not even sure whether they're fighting Nalar, a Dreadlord, the Death God of the Dasati, the Pantathians, the Valheru, Leso Varen, his brother, the star elves or the demon horder any more.

There's also an enormous amount of typos in my copy of The King's Buccaneer which drove me up the wall when trying to read it.

[Foreverlad]

I really love the Empire Trilogy, it's tied for my favorite of Feist's works with the original Rift-War cycle. However, there's only one thing I don't like about Empire, at some points in the books it seems to suffer from Jordanitis, i.e. it takes 3 pages to describe Mara smelling a flower. I'm guessing this is Wurts because on Feist's solo works he's anything but long winded, sometimes he's too brief in his descriptions.

Feist and Wurts took turns, picking out passages or scenes they wanted to do (The Wedding was all Wurts, for example). Whether Feist went back over sections or not, I'm not sure, but with a practiced eye, you could definitely tell a difference between who was writing what.

When I was a member of the Feistfans mailing list, I had asked Ray who had written the... popular character who makes appearances because the character didn't quite feel right to me, but it turned out Ray had written them himself. I said as much and he said it could have been the fact he'd been going through the divorce at the time.

SPOILER: who I'm talking about

Pug

[drawkcabi]

Feist and Wurts took turns, picking out passages or scenes they wanted to do (The Wedding was all Wurts, for example). Whether Feist went back over sections or not, I'm not sure, but with a practiced eye, you could definitely tell a difference between who was writing what.

When I was a member of the Feistfans mailing list, I had asked Ray who had written the... popular character who makes appearances because the character didn't quite feel right to me, but it turned out Ray had written them himself. I said as much and he said it could have been the fact he'd been going through the divorce at the time.

SPOILER: who I'm talking about

Pug

Yeah I definitely agree.

SPOILER: Empire Trilogy

I know what you mean about Pug. He seemed pretty much the same the first time Kevin meets him with Laurie, but later appearances he seems quite different. I know it always stuck out in my mind that in the Empire books he was wearing a brown robe in contrast to all the other Tsurani "Great Ones" who wear the black robe, yet in the other Feist series he is always wearing the black robe in Tsurani tradition. Just a minor incongruity compared to what comes later, but it still bothered me nonetheless.

[Prince Who Was Promised]

Damn it. My library didn't have Magician.

[devotee]

Damn it. My library didn't have Magician.

Haha! Massive anticlimax after spending some time reading the whole thread.

Too bad, though, would have been fun to get your impressions of the books. I probably read Riftwar about 10 years ago myself, but I never dove into the Serpentwar or anything else. Still, I liked it quite a lot, though I do recognize some of the cliches now that I think back. Read the Norwegian translation, and was too young to care much for language anyways, so I have nothing to say on the writing style.

[Prince Who Was Promised]

Can't read Norwegian. But I'm goin' back to the library tomorrow, so it might be back in by then. Hopefully