that's fair enough - Edit 1
Before modification by LadyLorraine at 03/08/2011 12:28:33 AM
There's just some really engaging and thought provoking (to me, anyways. I am prone to wondering about the flight of a fly, soooo) fantasy series out there that a lot of people pass over because they consider them to be lighter fantasy, or "worthless", just because each book isn't 500+ pages long and the plots/characters aren't so consulted they require charts.
Hell, I'm more impressed with the authors like, oh, Jacquline Carey, who fits more plot and character/theme development into the first book of Kushiel's Legacy than I can even remember. I regularly think something happened in a later book, because how could she have gotten that far already?, only to check and discover it's in the book before!! And it doesn't feel crammed. She just doesn't waste the reader's time with superflous descriptions, subplots, etc...etc... She's here to tell a story and she damned well tells it! That's what I've never liked about Jordan's books. I don't want to read an Encyclopedia of a World You Can't Be Bothered to Name (which on its own pisses me off). I want to read a story.
Actually, now that I think about it, the Kushiel's Legacy series is also interesting to me because, while it's certainly fantasy, there's a lot more to it than that. It's kind of an alternate history of our own world. What would happen, by the time of the Renaissance, if Christianity had never kicked off, and these other little factors she created existed? Granted, it's all caused by some fantastical scenarios...but she keeps the "magic" to a minimum. It's always something weird, but undeniable. It's interesting to think about how versions of her alternate reality could have been created in our own world (without such fantastical influences).
Aaaanyway I was just kind of jumping to "fantasy"'s defense, but it's so much more than Jordan and Martin!! But hey, if it's not floating your boat, so be it
I can certainly understand the appeal of classical literature and it's not like I don't read it myself! Just, after a week of shoving medical knowledge into my head, I'd rather free-think about fantasy books than claw my way through some plodding internal monologue-ridden classic 
Hell, I'm more impressed with the authors like, oh, Jacquline Carey, who fits more plot and character/theme development into the first book of Kushiel's Legacy than I can even remember. I regularly think something happened in a later book, because how could she have gotten that far already?, only to check and discover it's in the book before!! And it doesn't feel crammed. She just doesn't waste the reader's time with superflous descriptions, subplots, etc...etc... She's here to tell a story and she damned well tells it! That's what I've never liked about Jordan's books. I don't want to read an Encyclopedia of a World You Can't Be Bothered to Name (which on its own pisses me off). I want to read a story.
Actually, now that I think about it, the Kushiel's Legacy series is also interesting to me because, while it's certainly fantasy, there's a lot more to it than that. It's kind of an alternate history of our own world. What would happen, by the time of the Renaissance, if Christianity had never kicked off, and these other little factors she created existed? Granted, it's all caused by some fantastical scenarios...but she keeps the "magic" to a minimum. It's always something weird, but undeniable. It's interesting to think about how versions of her alternate reality could have been created in our own world (without such fantastical influences).
Aaaanyway I was just kind of jumping to "fantasy"'s defense, but it's so much more than Jordan and Martin!! But hey, if it's not floating your boat, so be it
I can certainly understand the appeal of classical literature and it's not like I don't read it myself! Just, after a week of shoving medical knowledge into my head, I'd rather free-think about fantasy books than claw my way through some plodding internal monologue-ridden classic