Jason the Magnificent
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Any other Tolkien dorks?
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?ISBN=0618894640&z=y&cds2Pid=9481
What looks the the final book from his manuscripts. I've heard its lot more story-like and less dry and historical than the other posthumous works
like the Silmarillion.
That was my Monday nerd out, continue with your day.
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DaveMoral
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I dig Tolkien... actually I dig 'high fantasy' quite a bit. As far as I'm concerned Star Wars is fantasy more than sci-fi.
I'm looking forward to this one... I'm still wading through the Silmarillion, though I love the creation myth element.
Ever read Terry Brooks? He, like many other fantasy authors, lifts directly from Tolkien many themes but he has an interesting twist. His Middle-Earth
like place is actually a result of mankind bringing upon itself a nuclear apocalypse and your trolls and gnomes and what not are a result of genetic
mutation while elves supposedly pre-existed all of that. It's neat because some of his more recent books... Like High Druid of Shannara ends up mixing
fantasy and technology in interesting ways. I haven't gotten around to them, but it's really quite interesting.
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Jason the Magnificent
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I think he wrote that Icewind Dale trilogy didn't he? I started reading that under a high recommendation from a friend and it seems like such a
blatant LOTR rip off I couldnt even continue.
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DaveMoral
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No, he wrote Sword of Shannara trilogy(Sword, Elfstones and Wishsong of Shannara), the Heritage of Shanara series(4 books, can't recall the names
haven't read 'em yet), First King of Shannara(prequel to the Sword trilogy), Word and Void trilogy, Voyage of the Jerle Shannara trilogy, High Druid
of Shannara trilogy and most recently Armegedon's Children which is the first in a series of books linking Word/Void and Shannara. He's done some
other stuff too, Magic Kingdom For Sale it's called.
I think it's hard not to take things blatantly from Tolkein because the themes he took are blatantly from old Celtic and Germanic myths and legends
and most of that stuff is already part and parcel of human collective unconscious it's impossible to avoid it even when you try to shake it up more
than a little bit. I mean, even Star Wars uses most of the same conventions to the point that the early scripts have the character that would become
Luke Skywalker trying to get his hands on something called the Kaibur Crystal that amplifies the Force in a person.
I can't begrudge people that really... not unless it is word for word, which according to some authors like Robert Jordan do unceasingly. I've got a
few volumes of his Wheel of Time series(talk about fucking long dude... 11 books thus far and each one's about 800 pages long!), haven't gotten around
to reading that yet despite having stolen books 1, 4-6 from my study hall in high school in like 1997.
Icewind Dale is by RA Salvatore... good author, but he's usually writing within the whole D&D thing and how can that NOT be LOTR re-hashing??? He
wrote a damn good opening to a Star Wars storyline called The New Jedi Order back in 99 though, and unfortunately was tasked with killing off
Chewbacca... dude actually got death threats even though it was the publishers that told him to do it.
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