Knights & Knaves Alehouse

mjudge55 wrote:Thanks guys, I'm checking out Colossus of Ylourgn right now. That's one hell of an opening paragraph!

I love the names he dreams up. Not as good as Vance (Vance and Tolkien are the MASTERS of good naming) but CAS comes in right after them.

I'm presently reading Lyonesse by Jack Vance, and I am completely enamoured by it. When I'm not reading it, I'm thinking about it. It is indeed a book you read quite slowly, as it takes some time to understand all the proper names of people and places referred to, and at the start you find yourself flipping back to the map, but that's all very charming in my estimation. I've read a few of Vance's other works, but this is a pure masterpiece. Of course, like anything else, this is my subjective opinion, which is clearly superior to your subjective opinion, right?

--Ghul

Funny but I don't read a lot of fantasy any more (except for my annual reading of The Lord of the Rings). I have been reading a very nice collection of fairy tales by Howard Pyle (The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, King Arthur) called The Wonder Clock. Pyle was also a talented illustrator -- you can see some of his art here.

Most of the other reading I do is to my children.

northrundicandus wrote:

mjudge55 wrote: I was thinking about checking out some Clark Ashton Smith next. Anybody have a recommendation on where to start?

-Matt

CAS can be an acquired taste. His imagination is incredible, but his style of prose can be overwhelming to a 21st Century reader. If you can handle Poe and Lovecraft, you should have no problems with language.

This website has a lot of his writings:

http://www.worldofschmitt.com/writings/smith/

Check out The Colossus of Ylourgne, Ubbo-Sathla, and The Holiness of Azédarac. If you like those three, then you're a prime candidate to be a CAS fan.

Thank you for that link!

Now I've something to read for my holidays!

Ivid wrote:

northrundicandus wrote:

mjudge55 wrote: I was thinking about checking out some Clark Ashton Smith next. Anybody have a recommendation on where to start?

-Matt

CAS can be an acquired taste. His imagination is incredible, but his style of prose can be overwhelming to a 21st Century reader. If you can handle Poe and Lovecraft, you should have no problems with language.

This website has a lot of his writings:

http://www.worldofschmitt.com/writings/smith/

Check out The Colossus of Ylourgne, Ubbo-Sathla, and The Holiness of Azédarac. If you like those three, then you're a prime candidate to be a CAS fan.

Thank you for that link!

Now I've something to read for my holidays!

Don't forget http://www.eldritchdark.com

Amazing! I am specially interested in the Averoigne stories... That ones feel really cool!

I recently started reading Raymond Feist's "Riftwar Saga" novels (Magician: Apprentice, Magician: Master, Silverthorn, A Darkness at Sethanon). So far they're good. I actually read the first book a long time ago, but I've forgotten the details.

JamesEightBitStar wrote:I recently started reading Raymond Feist's "Riftwar Saga" novels (Magician: Apprentice, Magician: Master, Silverthorn, A Darkness at Sethanon). So far they're good. I actually read the first book a long time ago, but I've forgotten the details.

I really loved them! Too bad that the Midkemia RPG stuff is so hard to find these days... Does anyone happen to know if PDF purchase of this stuff is possible? - There are some free pdfs floating around, but lamentably none of the *core* books.

Ivid wrote:I really loved them! Too bad that the Midkemia RPG stuff is so hard to find these days... Does anyone happen to know if PDF purchase of this stuff is possible? - There are some free pdfs floating around, but lamentably none of the *core* books.

I didn't even know there was a Midkemia RPG (a pen-and-paper one anyway--the only Midkemia games I knew about were the computer game Betrayal at Krondor and its two sequels). I always assumed that, since Feist's books are so fairy-tale like anyway, that if you wanted to play them you could just use AD&D.

Then you'll enjoy this one: http://www.midkemia.com/

Nice, and compatible with D&D. I would even content with books for other rule systems or rule-free setting info.

But there's nothing similar, AFAIK.

Okay. From Mr. Way Behind the Curve here. I finally picked up and started reading Vance's Dying Earth. Okay, okay, okay. After 26 years, I now finally get the whole fire and forget thing.

Oh yeah, I like the stories, too.

@midkemia - right now i'm selling the 4 serpentwar-saga-novels and krondor, the betrayal on german ebay - they're still running for 5 hours and it seems they're selling for 2,55€ - a disaster as i love those books...

Just finished Death Angel's Shadow, by Karl Edward Wagner. It's a collection of three Kane short stories. I enjoyed them. Good Sword & Sorcery in the REH tradition. I thought Wagner's prose pretty bad, but the stories were cool. If you can enjoy Robeson's Doc Savage stuff, I think you'll like the Kane stories.

GW-

I'm reading Mother of Kings by Poul Anderson.

I decided a while ago that I was going to start reading novels that were penned by authors that are found on Gary's famous recommended reading list. Anderson was the first on the list so I started with one of his works.

So, I went to the library and discovered that most of Anderson's stuff is sci fi. Mother of Kings was the only one I could find that was "fantasy". It wasn't on the list (actually, I couldn't find any of his novels from the list there).

The story takes place in northern Europe around the end of the Viking Age. Low magic, very gritty. I like it. It wasn't what I was expecting, but I'm happy I decided to check it out.

After I read a couple more Anderson novels I will seek out and digest Vance's work. I was going to check out Dying Earth but I was turned off by the art on the cover. It seems to be sci fi. Is this a sci fi novel or a fantasy novel? (As you can probably geuss I'm not all too fond of sci fi fiction in general.)

Ermanaric wrote:I was going to check out Dying Earth but I was turned off by the art on the cover. It seems to be sci fi. Is this a sci fi novel or a fantasy novel? (As you can probably geuss I'm not all too fond of sci fi fiction in general.)

The first two books at least (The Dying Earth and Eyes of the Overworld) are pure fantasy. I haven't read the 3rd or 4th books (Cugel's Saga and Rhialto the Marvelous) except for an excerpt from the latter published as a short story in the anthology Flashing Swords #1 ("Morreion"), which was a little more sf-ish than the other Dying Earth stuff I've read (a group of wizards use magic to travel to a distant planet seeking the source of IOUN stones (yes, the very same IOUN stones that later showed up as a magic item in D&D!)) but still not anything like that picture on the cover of the omnibus edition -- there's absolutely no spaceships or ray-guns or bug-eyed extra-terrestrials or any other "sci-fi" elements. Seriously, if you like "Gygaxian D&D" I can't imagine you wouldn't like at least the first two Dying Earth books.

I've been reading mostly non-fantasy books recently, but I just started Dwellers in the Mirage by A. Merritt which is, at least so far, every bit as good as any of his other books, if not even a touch better. Plus now I know where K&K member Dwayanu got his username from