Magician, Raymond E. Feist

[jack]

This is relatively famous, and I finally read most of it. In this case it unashamedly does rip off Tolkien; the elves are even named in Sindarin. In fact, what it is is the background for a roleplaying campaign; it was originally conceived as that, and later transformed into fiction, and remains a most excellent background. There's an interesting variety of cultures, on small and large scale, interesting local politics, and several different metaphysical collisions going on at once.

Indeed, almost too many: when you read about the nameless enemy who consumed the entire worlds the current populations are descended from refugees from, you forget about the ancient dragon-lords who ruled as near-gods, and so on. But it definitely filled me with a desire to find out what actually had happened.

The characters are alright, a little generic, but generally pleasant to read about. Unfortunately, actually reading the book didn't really interest me, I ended up just skimming ahead to get a plot summary.

Comments

[theinquisitor.livejournal.com]

Did you read the 'author's extended edition' version? 50,000 extra words the editors couldn't make him cut anymore, now he was famous.

Yeah...

(FWIW, I think the book is worth reading, as some of his later books are rather good, and it's acceptable, as well as being useful background. The Daughter/Servant/Mistress of the Empire spin-offs, meanwhile, I think are excellent - I'd read them next...)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Did you read the 'author's extended edition' version? 50,000 extra words the editors couldn't make him cut anymore, now he was famous.

Agh. I don't know -- it was an old, battered, second hand edition, but I assume Martin has been famous for long enough that that extended editions would now be second hand. It didn't have a modern preface or anything.

Sometimes I'd love extended editions. When I watched through Babylon 5 again, and read Lurker's Guide commentaries, almost every episode had JMS saying "and we had some lovely extra character stuff scripted and even filmed, and we had to cut it :(", and if they could have kept that and shoved it onto the DVDs, that would have been amazing. B5 was not all good, but was very good, but almost any episode would not have suffered from having extra banter -- or indeed, extra anything -- in.

But often they're questionable. It felt like it had 50,000 extra words in, but I think it would have felt like that however long it was :)

The Daughter/Servant/Mistress of the Empire spin-offs, meanwhile, I think are excellent - I'd read them next...

Oh, thank you. I was mainly planning to say "Well, that was interesting, but I don't care enough about the background to read any more of his books ever again". But you would think those are worth reading? He definitely had promise, it would please me if he happened to succeed in it. (Did you read Merchant Prince? That's the other I've heard people recommend to me, that I read at some point, that I thought had an interesting premise, but was a bit pat, and not interesting enough to come back to.)

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I assume Martin has been famous for long enough that that extended editions would now be second hand

I hope you mean Feist, there.

The thing is, iirc, Magician et sequelae are based on a role-playing group where the GM was explicitly doing "what happens if Empire of the Petal Throne invades Middle-Earth ?" and Feist took that conscious secondary/derivative work as primary. Which seems a little off to me.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Whoops, yes, Feist. Sorry, Martin! (For ages, Fiest and Martin and Eddings and a couple of others were in my head as books I hadn't read but knew vaguely as fantasy "epics" -- but couldn't remember which were actually supposed to be good.)

based on a role-playing group where the GM was explicitly doing "what happens if Empire of the Petal Throne invades Middle-Earth?

Ah! I hadn't realised the other world was also borrowed (though it should have been obvious). Nor that some of the ancient background was also borrowed. It was still very interesting to read the combination though.

[(Anonymous)]

I've read Magician! (Hah, this is what happens when you put links to your livejournal on facebook - strange people invade your LJ). I read the extended version and really liked it, mind you, I was somewhere around 15 at the time which I think helps with books like this. Like Harry Potter - if you read the first one when you were 11, you probably loved it, if not, you don't see it in the same way.

I didn't think at all about the worlds being stolen - I didn't know anything about fantasy roleplay at the time, though, which was probably why. I rather liked both Pug and Tomas (though mostly Pug) and felt that Pug's power came at a price, which was good.

Hmm, this has reminded me of how long it's been since I've read good fantasy ... time, time, where does it go? Oh yes - to Nano. That's right. That's what I should be doing instead of leaving a comment here - under 2000 to go!

--Eudoxia