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Book Four of the Weather Warden series sucked -- if there's a book five, I doubt I'll bother.  There was little story in the story - just a series of episodes that loosely connected with a good old sledgehammer of a message about how masters & slaves can't be friends, gods and normal people can't be friends, slightly better than normal people and normal people can't be friends, and basically the world's going to go to hell in a handbasket if you try to alter that fundamental reality. Stay at your own level and find a way to be happy about it... or else.
Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes.
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daaaaang, can anyone contain themselves to just one book nowadays?
Shadow boxing the apocalypse
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How many books are there in Outlaws of the Marsh?
I gave up on Rachel halfway through book three. She's alive. She's undead and a genie. She's alive. Stopped caring.
So much for the flickr badge idea. Dammit
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they only break it up in the american versions. actually, it's meant to be told by a storyteller, sort of like the mahabharata, and wasn't commited to a book until after it circulated for years. that's why the chapters all end with that 'want to know what happens next? you'll have to read the next chapter". that was really the 'same bat time, same bat channel' cliffhanger motif to get the audience back next week or whenever. think of it more like a continuing tv series, like lost or alias, which it actually is now.
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Drunk Monk Wrote:daaaaang, can anyone contain themselves to just one book nowadays?
They're catering to me. I love episodic books as much as I like (some) episodic TV and following characters over a lengthy set of what-if's, and watching the development over time. I love finding characters I want to enjoy over multiple novels. When I'm starting something new these days, I'm much happier if I know that there are several books with the same characters to come.
Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes.
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In High School I was really into Michael Moorcock. He has this concept of the Eternal Champion, sort of a Platonic ideal hero that would manifest, along with aspects like a sidekick, a magic weapon, etc. It tied all of his pulpy fantasies together and made them overlap, so Eternal Champions could meet each other and such through dimensional rifts. Now that I think about it, it's very comic book, but I still think that some ambitious filmaker should take on Elric, his tortured albino Eternal Champion with the cursed sword Stormbringer.
Maybe you'd like Chinese epics because all the characters reoccur in later books in the form of their descendants. The only problem is that there are so damn many characters. Reading Outlaws of the Marsh before reading Three Kingdoms is a bit like watching Voyager before the original Star Trek.
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...Michael Moorcock....
I read everything he ever wrote, up to a certain point. I think I stopped just as the worst of the years of teen depression lightened up. Pretty much all the incarnations of the Eternal Champion end up killing everyone they love. Depressing as shit, but boy, did I love those characters.
I always felt Elric would have to be too watered down to make it on the screen. He kills everyone he loves and, like, never gets redemption. He's always losing control of his sword, Stormbringer, and it winds up in some pal's chest, sucking their souls. "Whaaaa?" I can hear the uninitiated running for the exits even now.
Still, Dorian Hawkmoon winds up doing ok. Only kills a few of his pals himself and winds up saving the world. And getting the girl. Plus, he's a German that has to take over front running battles for the French against the gone-insane Brits. Can't really miss, can it?
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Interesting -- I know there are three Moorcock novels in the cats' room because Pixel or more likely McCrae recently pulled them out and I had to reshelve them. (The cats are constantly pulling books off the shelves -- they also seem partial to Julian May.)
I'll put them on my list.
Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes.
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Moorcock didn't really write as many novels as series-novels. There are 2 three book series of Corum, 2 three book series of Hawkmoon, a bunch of more-or-less contiguous Elric books, and more I'm forgetting. Prolific, that guy.
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...I was heavy into him as a kid. I have a lot of the UK editions, stuff that never came over here so much. Jerry Cornelius was a fav, sort of a luckless James Bond spin. I even have the Elric meets Conan comic - the original - that's got to be worth a few bucks on eBay now, if I can find it out of storage.
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Prices range from $14 to $75. Issues 14 U 15 both had Elric in them. Ah, Barry Smith. Before he changed his name and went all effin' metaphysical.
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A few years ago they started packaging all the Moorcock stories centered around a single character into Mammoth novels. I have the Von Bek book and some others. I thought I should read some because I had a friend who stop talking about the goddamn eternal champion. I think he is through that phase now. But judging from the posts, maybe not.
So much for the flickr badge idea. Dammit
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