A couple more book comments and things...

[kayshapero]

Here for comments on Wolf's Head, Wolf's Heart by Jane Lindskold and The Cup of Morning  Shadows by Rosemary Edgehill.

Comments

[hrrunka]

I quite enjoyed the first two or three Wolf books, but now they're beginning to feel like an interminable saga. I'm sure there's a great deal more story from that world that could be told, but I'm much less sure that it should. Mind, I've got the same feel from at least some of the later Pern novels, and from Lisanne Norman's Sholan Alliance series, and from Valdemar, so it may be at least partly something about me. Curiously, I don't get the same feeling from Discworld though.

[kayshapero]

No, it's not just you. When the author has run out of the original vision, it's usually best for them to stop - I really doubt Anne McCaffrey originally meant Pern society to have remained static down to the language (remember, Lessa could READ the first generation inscriptions) for thousands of years, then suddenly erupt in a desire for novelty; it's just what happened when individual decisions for individual stories piled up on her. Do you think I should bother with the third Wolf book, or stop on a high note?

Terry Pratchett doesn't have that problem with Discworld pretty much for the same reason you can write an awful lot of novels set on Earth without running out of material. He's talking philosophy, satire, and generally of people living in the society they are in and what happens when you bump it a little. It's as much about us as about the folks in Lancre, Ankh-Moorpork etc.

I haven't read the Sholan Alliance books - which do you recommend?

[hrrunka]

I think I've read most of the Pern books, but most of them aren't that memorable, and some of them strain rather too much to fit into the world. It's often feels as if there's a good story idea that's been tied up to follow the One True Path...

Terry Pratchett never seems to worry about trying to keep Discworld on the One True Path. It's a world, and he expects it to spring surprises on him, and not to be neat and tidy.

The third of the Wolf books does resolve a few things, but the fourth took a turn South, and I'm still wondering whether I want to pick up the fifth...

The first Sholan Alliance book is Turning Point, and it's shorter than the rest. I got attached to one of the characters, and kept reading all the way to the seventh book, but the first is still the most memorable. It's been five years since I read the seventh, and I've not seen any sign of the next book yet...

[kayshapero]

It's a world, and he expects it to spring surprises on him, and not to be neat and tidy.

Yup, just like the real world.