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Alyss
Feb 11, 2005 6:58:55 GMT
Post by Nathan P. Mahney on Feb 11, 2005 6:58:55 GMT
I like most of the Legends series that I've read, to be honest. This includes Books 1-4, and the adaptations of Kingdoms of Terror, Castle Death and the first half of Shadow on the Sand. The adaptation of Kingdoms of Terror was especially good, but I've enjoyed them all except for the one that adapted Shadow on the Sand.
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Alyss
Feb 11, 2005 7:20:37 GMT
Post by Zipp on Feb 11, 2005 7:20:37 GMT
You might like Albion and The World, then.
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Alyss
Feb 11, 2005 7:25:01 GMT
Post by Nathan P. Mahney on Feb 11, 2005 7:25:01 GMT
Possibly. It must be said that I found Alyss and the Q a bit annoying, though. I enjoyed the books in spite of them.
Most irritating part of the Legends: that Helghast getting killed by a non-magical weapon!
I liked the metaphysical rants that Grant goes on, though. It kind of blew my 10-year-old brain wide open.
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Alyss
Feb 11, 2005 10:23:12 GMT
Post by outspaced on Feb 11, 2005 10:23:12 GMT
The adaptation of Kingdoms of Terror was especially good, but I've enjoyed them all except for the one that adapted Shadow on the Sand. The Lorestone of Varetta is the best of the Legends series. No Alyss and No Q******. Sorted. Actually, there's more to it than that. The characterisation of Lone Wolf was better, the plot of the gamebook was actually stuck to (shock! Horror!), the prose flowed really well without stuttering or seeming forced, and even the gestalt stuff seemed to genuinely belong and actually added to the flavour of the book, whereas in the other books I mostly found it to be quasi-pretentious BS. I also liked **TINY MINOR SPOILER FOLLOWS** Roark appearing outside Tekaro, rousing the troops to attack the city with his oratory and lies. He even manages to persuade Hal Morkarn, Lone Wolf's travelling companion. I don't recall it happening in the gamebook, but that was a really nice touch.The author has apparently gone back and revised the text of the first six of the Legends series, so perhaps they read better than they used to. The Sacrifice of Ruanon was so poorly written and butchered the gamebook so badly that I remember reading it was almost painful on the brain. He's also renamed The Claws of Helgedad--an utterly pointless book--to A Dagger in the Spine. So not content with removing Lone Wolf for the entire novel, he's also trying to excise the Magnamund reference in the title as well. Personally, I thought Ruanon was so bad that coupled with the awfulness of Claws, I stopped buying the Legends series. It wasn't until I read the blurb of Lorestone that I bought that one, which was so gosh-darn flipping good it persuaded me to buy books 7-9 as well, and though I found them somewhat lacklustre, they were at the least marginally better than Claws and Sacrifice, getting better with each book from 7-10. I felt #11 The Secret of Kazan-Oud stuttered again, but was by no means a bad book (particularly since **SPOILER** Petra dies. Good riddance to another Grant/Barnett ANC). The Rotting Land was also good, though still not as good as Lorestone. Though it does herald the return of Alyss, sadly.
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Alyss
Feb 11, 2005 22:04:27 GMT
Post by Sol on Feb 11, 2005 22:04:27 GMT
Wait, wait - are you trying to say that Joe Dever is actually revising the Legends series? I mean, is THAT what he is selling in PDF format?
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Alyss
Feb 11, 2005 22:53:44 GMT
Post by Thomas Wolmer on Feb 11, 2005 22:53:44 GMT
Wait, wait - are you trying to say that Joe Dever is actually revising the Legends series? I mean, is THAT what he is selling in PDF format? Since Joe did not write these books, he does not revise them, but Grant/Barnett is doing it yes. And the PDFs he sells are the revised versions (where applicable).
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Alyss
Feb 12, 2005 18:02:21 GMT
Post by Zipp on Feb 12, 2005 18:02:21 GMT
So which was the last book in the Legends series? Which gamebook is it simulating, and what happens?
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Alyss
Feb 12, 2005 23:35:25 GMT
Post by outspaced on Feb 12, 2005 23:35:25 GMT
The last Legends book is #12: The Rotting Land which is a novelisation of Lone Wolf gamebook #8: The Jungle of Horrors. Bear in mind that Legends 1 is purely backstory and does not equate to any gamebook; Legends 5 has no gamebook parallel; Legends 7+8 both cover gamebook 5: Shadow on the Sand; and Legends 9 has no parallel gamebook. (Just in case you were wondering where the extra four books came from! )
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Alyss
Feb 16, 2005 13:08:43 GMT
Post by North Star on Feb 16, 2005 13:08:43 GMT
He really should have added more. After liking the early books and struggling through the later books (The Tellings *gag*), I really wanted to see the series continue.
NS.
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Alyss
Feb 16, 2005 17:05:00 GMT
Post by outspaced on Feb 16, 2005 17:05:00 GMT
The Tellings was yet another excuse for Grant/Barnett to write a commissioned Lone Wolf novel but avoid writing about Lone Wolf. Come on, Lone Wolf appears on how many pages of the 280-page novel? About 30? He doesn't even appear in his own 'Telling'!
And yet, the story of the theft of the Book of the Magnakai comes directly from Joe Dever, and it easily the best part of The Tellings. Once again proving Joe to be a better story-teller than Grant/Barnett.
(And why is there an entire section devoted to Carag's 'Telling'? WHY??)
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Alyss
Feb 16, 2005 17:06:28 GMT
Post by Zipp on Feb 16, 2005 17:06:28 GMT
Who is... Carag? Oh wait, is this that little Giak guy?
Um, what exactly was the tellings?
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Alyss
Feb 16, 2005 17:17:05 GMT
Post by Zipp on Feb 16, 2005 17:17:05 GMT
Here's proof Grant didn't know what he was doing: "And I was taken over for the tag-end of the project by an editor called Nancy Webber. Nancy and I got along like a house on fire - she's still a very dear friend. I'd bounced a few ideas off Nancy for other books and none of them quite caught her. And one day when I went to meet with her, she greeted me with, `Before you even open your mouth, one of the other editors here has a book which you would be ideal for.' And I sort of said, 'Gulp!' as one does . . . and she led me to the Children's Editorial Director of what was then called, unfortunately, Beaver Books; which was then the children's wing of the whole conglomerate. So Nancy said, `Alison, Alison, uh, this is the author you've been looking for.' And the Editor looked up and said, `Oh, oh . . . right.' And Nancy ushered me into her office, saying, `Go on, keep going . . .' And it was then that I learned of this series of game books, which I'd never heard of before." And thus, The Legends of Lone Wolf novel series was about to be born. But not before the writer berated his friend Webber. "I said, `First of all, you ought to have warned me. Second of all, I have no real track record that I could have brought to the meeting had I been asked for a track record,' because I hadn't written straightforward fantasy novels before, and I wasn't really qualified. Had I been asked to present a couple of specimen chapters, I couldn't. But very luckily, the editor took Nancy's word for it, that I was the ideal person, and I signed the contracts; for four books to begin with, and for twelve all told."
full interview here: hometown.aol.com/thogatthog/interview2.html
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Alyss
Feb 16, 2005 17:19:03 GMT
Post by Zipp on Feb 16, 2005 17:19:03 GMT
Gah. "Character creation was, in part, tied to the role-playing game. "I was sort of stuck with where the character of Lone Wolf went, because I couldn't disagree with the games books. Joe Dever would give me kind of a plot of what happened, a set of numbers to follow, and basically I had to do all the things that were there. Then it was up to me to put in all of the other things that Lone Wolf did. I was able to create secondary characters, though. And, after awhile, they just kind of took over. In fact, in one or two of the novels, Lone Wolf is a minor character." The plan was for Dever, who had creative control over the novels, to edit each. "But after a while, he said, `Uh, this all seems fine to me, carry on and do it.' From then on, he concentrated on, essentially, correcting factual mistakes; you know, me calling the monster by the wrong name or something like that. But there weren't any of those because as I got into them I started making my own stuff separate from the game books."
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Alyss
Feb 16, 2005 17:59:18 GMT
Post by outspaced on Feb 16, 2005 17:59:18 GMT
The Tellings ( ***SPOILERS FOLLOW***) is a series of four short stories told during Spring and Autumn equinoxes while Lone Wolf studies the rediscovered Book of the Magnakai. Well, that's what he's supposed to be doing, but he's more like moping around like a kicked puppy because a certain bint whose name begins with Q has decided to leave him because she's so ####ing wonderful, yadda, yadda. In order to keep up Lone Wolf's spirits, his "friends" Banedon, Petra, and Viveka (and later, Carag as well) appear and they sit around a campfire at the Monastery and tell stories.
Each person's 'Telling' is about themselves--Viveka on her early life; Banedon on his meeting with the Elder Magi and his battle with the Gagadoth; and Carag telling of how Gnaag seized power in the Darklands from his own personal perspective. This is with the obvious exception of Lone Wolf, since his telling takes place 600 years previously and is about how the Book of the Magnakai was stolen and how it came to be in the Tomb of the Majhan in Vassagonia. An example of Lone Wolf being a side-lined character.Zipp, your quotes from the interview really hit the nail on the head. He didn't particularly want to write about Lone Wolf, who he sees as a 'boring' standard fantasy character. Personally, I find Q****** and Alyss to be obscenely overpowered, which makes them about as interesting as watching grass grow. 'Oh, Lone Wolf's died again--useless tosser. Luckily Alyss can bring him back to life. Oh, Lone Wolf's been captured and presumed dead. Lucy that Q******, Viveka, Petra and everyone else can continue training the New Order Kai. Oh, Lone Wolf is going to fight and save the world, but Q****** is far too intellectual and existential to do that, so she must leave him.' I can't say what I think of that on this forum because children might be present, but I think you can guess. 'Oh, Lone Wolf is going to Talestria, let's make Alyss responsible for everything that has ever happened there ever just to show how weak Lone Wolf is by comparison.' Grant/Barnett would no doubt say that weak characters are more interesting, and I would agree to a point, but where does that leave Alyss and Q******? They should never have been in the books, particularly so if over-powerful characters are boring. Or is it rather that Grant/Barnett finds other people's characters boring and his own wonderful and interesting . . . ?
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Alyss
Feb 16, 2005 20:11:40 GMT
Post by Zipp on Feb 16, 2005 20:11:40 GMT
Good points.
Overly powered characters can be interesting, but only if that power is constrained to some degree. You're right in saying that a plot isn't fun anymore if, no matter what happens, if little Alyss can take us back to the begining and start aaaaaallll over again.
Again, I feel it was a huge waste not only because Dever had great established story line, but because Grant had some cool outlines for new characters. Like I've said, before Alyss became the "great and immortal" Alyss, she was a very enigmatic and interesting character.
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