Myshkin Posted November 18, 2007 Share Posted November 18, 2007 Who's Robert Newcomb, how bad are his books and where do I sign up? To answer your questions: 1) Robert Newcomb is the author of the "Blood and Stone" series. His first novel was the infamously bad "The Fifth Sorceress". 2) He was inspired by Tairy Goodkind. His books, from what I hear, are filled with both sexism and racism, with an inordanant amout of time devout to "blood purity". 3) You have already signed up. I expect you to start immediately. ETA: Follow link for more info on Robert Newcomb. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jaxom 1974 Posted November 18, 2007 Share Posted November 18, 2007 GAH! You people sully the good name...well, you tarnish the general image...of the true and proper TG threads with your talk of "Newcomb". Take it elsewhere, people. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xray the Enforcer Posted November 18, 2007 Share Posted November 18, 2007 Re: Evil Chickens -- I thought I had missed a more overt reference to their dastardly doings. Instead, it be a mere sidenote as they are cruelly subjugated by a bovid with an agenda and a chip on her noble shoulder. Stanek and Newcomb -- no way. I will be helping organize the BwB party in Denver in August. That's abuse enough for one year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ecchi-Oni Posted November 18, 2007 Share Posted November 18, 2007 How about someone rips Paolini a new one? That would be like kicking a kid in the jaw, thus the only moral thing to do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daedalus V2.0 Posted November 18, 2007 Share Posted November 18, 2007 Alright, visiting the library on monday to check if they have The Fifth Sorceress and grab it/ask them to get it in. I hope that nobody gives me any dirty looks. I'll start a thread when I get the book. I must say, it sounds delightfully horrifying. After all, my scars prove my worth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ecchi-Oni Posted November 18, 2007 Share Posted November 18, 2007 You are braver man than most. Your sacrifice will be remembered. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daedalus V2.0 Posted November 18, 2007 Share Posted November 18, 2007 How about someone rips Paolini a new one? That would be like kicking a kid in the jaw, thus the only moral thing to do. Eh, Paolini's only got the deuus ex machina going for him, along with (arguable) infallible character syndrome. This Newcomb (perhaps in the future we should call him Douchecomb, considering the "important human themes" his books contain?) is a moral quagmire which only the sadistic or the hoplessly bored can hope to stomach. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SquireThomas Posted November 18, 2007 Share Posted November 18, 2007 Poor Nicci, all that pining and she never does get laid. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atreides Posted November 18, 2007 Share Posted November 18, 2007 I'd buy Newcomb or Stanek (pretty sure I saw at least one in borders) but that would mean using up a gift card that could get me games, more Malazan books, or Red Seas Under Red Skies, or all of those. I go to a half-public college in the middle of nowhere St. Mary's City, and the school library isn't that large. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Angus Niven Posted November 18, 2007 Share Posted November 18, 2007 This just reminded me of another WTF moment that I had the last time that I read one of the Yeard's books. Zedd and someone else have been capture by the IO and as he was escaping I think that someone asked him why he doesn't just try and kill Jargband. Zedd goes off on this big speech about how if he killed him someone else would just take his place so there was no good reason risk himself blah blah blah ... (thats more or less how I remembered it anyway). Of course I thought that this is pretty stupid because; isn't he the only dreamwalker around? that would mean that if he was to die it would free everyone he was controlling. All those magic uses of his would probably go and join Dick or just start killing all those people that had been making their life hell. That sounds like a pretty good reason to me, he could probably end the war right there. Some years ago, when I was still a semi-fan of the series (what can I say, I was 15...), I posted a thread about this on a prior incarnation of the SoT boards. The replies boiled down to: 1) The Order's army was so stupendously massive that Dick couldn't win even if he had every single magic-user in the world on his side. Because, naturally, overwhelming numbers work so well when your enemy can create lines of impassable fire across an entire battlefield, or smite your army with customised magical diseases, or unleash fireballs at your commanders from hundreds of kilometres away, or generally pull plot devices out of their asses at random... and you have no way of replying in kind. (Actually, an even more egregious example of this is from near the beginning of Book 3. Ulicia and her cronies link into a magical gestalt possessed of ULTIMATE COSMIC POWAH!!!!!11!!1, and are confident in their ability to annihilate Jagang's entire army and about a hundred square kilometres of surrounding countryside in a single blast. Jagang has already secretly mind-controlled them, of course, so it doesn't come off... but Jagang, after indicating that he's familiar with what they did and has seen it done better, proceeds to forget all about it and never has them use it again. Even when it would have been extremely handy to be able to e.g. turn the entire D'Haran army into slag from across the horizon, or drop a couple of meteors on the People's Palace and disrupt that funky power symbol thing that's been foiling his plans, or...) 2) Jagang's pet magic-users are so totally brainwashed and deprived of moral celery that they'd keep serving the Order even after Jagang was dead... in spite of the fact that they get gang-raped for the soldiers' amusement essentially at random. For some reason, they will lie there and take it instead of flaying the little shits alive and running for it. 3) (My favourite) Direct paraphrase - "You don't know that Jagang doesn't have another dreamwalker stashed away somewhere to replace him, or something else like a Slide". Seriously, they justified Tairy's ass-pull plot device on the grounds that he could simply pull another plot device out of his ass to patch it up. Of course, nobody ever mentions this last possibility when they're discussing why killing Jagang will achieve nothing... Curiously, some time after I started the thread and defended my theory against the above rebuttals, it mysteriously vanished from the forums and was never seen again. Nothing suspicious about that at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rimmer Posted November 18, 2007 Share Posted November 18, 2007 The last time I randomly grabbed a fantasy book without checking reviews it turned out to be Newcomb's Fifth Sorceress, and boy did I learn my lesson. Once bitten twice shy, to say the least. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nerdanel Posted November 18, 2007 Share Posted November 18, 2007 Has anyone read Robert Scott & Jay Gordon? According to the sample chapters on their website, their works appears to be both dire and Goodkind-influenced. I took a look at them when someone on a Donaldson site was promoting them. I'm still not sure it wasn't a paid shill. According to what I could glean of the first sample chapter, the Eldarn trilogy could be described as what might be produced if Goodkind started plagiarizing Donaldson, badly, with a side dish of plagiarizing Zindell's Eä Cycle, equally bady. If anything, the writing is worse than Goodkind's, and yes, there are American right-wing political issues and gratuitous bare boobies. The third book is called The Larion Senators (!!!) and there's a deleted chapter from that book available on the website that's set in Gettysburg, Pensylvania 1863, so there's apparently time travel too. I've seen those books in my local bookstore, so I know that they must have been bought by someone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nobelpoke Posted November 18, 2007 Share Posted November 18, 2007 I used to try and grab random scifi books out of used bookstores by this method but i wouldn't be able to get more than a chapter and a half into them most of the time, and after a good 5 different books being absolute duds, i gave up on that although i did grab at random the Star Trek: Harbinger series, and its actually pretty damn awesome. .....wait this isn't the reading thread > Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maltaran Posted November 18, 2007 Share Posted November 18, 2007 How about someone rips Paolini a new one? That would be like kicking a kid in the jaw, thus the only moral thing to do. That would just be too easy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jaxom 1974 Posted November 18, 2007 Share Posted November 18, 2007 That would just be too easy. Sometimes easy is best. And focus, people! Focus! Let's hear some Tairy Confessions! I'll start: Having asked for a copy of Pillars of Creation for the holidays back in the day, I shortly there after, prior to actually reading it, learned what a mistake I had made. That I didn't realize how terrible the books were. It sits on my shelf still. Unread. I'm so ashamed about it. The wasting the asking of a gift on that book that is, not the not reading it part... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Talyn Posted November 18, 2007 Share Posted November 18, 2007 Some years ago, when I was still a semi-fan of the series (what can I say, I was 15...), I posted a thread about this on a prior incarnation of the SoT boards. The replies boiled down to: * *[snip] * Seriously, they justified Tairy's ass-pull plot device on the grounds that he could simply pull another plot device out of his ass to patch it up. Of course, nobody ever mentions this last possibility when they're discussing why killing Jagang will achieve nothing... I had totally forgotten about those. It must show that I have sucesfully blocked most of the Yeard's books out. (Thank god.) Curiously, some time after I started the thread and defended my theory against the above rebuttals, it mysteriously vanished from the forums and was never seen again. Nothing suspicious about that at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moosicus Posted November 18, 2007 Share Posted November 18, 2007 I thought I'd throw in the most dreaded part of the book:Nathan snapped his fingers as he turned to Zedd. "Now I also understand that other prophecy." Zedd looked up. "Which one?" Nathan leaned close. "You remember: 'Someday, someone born not of this world will have to save it.' Now it makes more sense." This seems to be Tairy's best shot at an excuse to keep the crap coming. A suddenly remembered prophecy about Dick saving this new world. Yipee. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jaxom 1974 Posted November 18, 2007 Share Posted November 18, 2007 I thought I'd throw in the most dreaded part of the book: This seems to be Tairy's best shot at an excuse to keep the crap coming. A suddenly remembered prophecy about Dick saving this new world. Yipee. The only thing that would have made that better would have been to have Terry re-write that scene as part of the Prologue for the next book. You know, adding that fingre snapping part and out of the blue prophecy. Yeah. And how can someone from the other world save this one? Isn't the other world populated by the "evils"? I mean, evil saving the good? That's a contradiction, damn it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moosicus Posted November 18, 2007 Share Posted November 18, 2007 I'm assuming that Dick is the one "not born of this world". Otherwise there would have to be a second saviour. And lets be frank, nobody but Dick can be right, have a good idea, know anything at all, or save the world. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jaxom 1974 Posted November 18, 2007 Share Posted November 18, 2007 I'm assuming that Dick is the one "not born of this world". Otherwise there would have to be a second saviour. And lets be frank, nobody but Dick can be right, have a good idea, know anything at all, or save the world. Should we even try to speculate how that 'ole Dick might not be of the world he was born into? Other than the fact that he's 'ole Dick? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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