Am I Missing Something?

anno said:

Well,I've tried and tried,last year tackling his Troy sequence,I still think he is a poor writer.
Legend was my first - a bit too Conan Lite for me...

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I struggled with the Troy series, too, but if you want to read David Gemmell at his best, then IMO Lion of Macedon and Sword in the Storm are among your best choices.

DG is brilliant at flawed characters, no matter how despicable they are you still feel for them

Cheers for that, Narky I realise it's a failure on my part...

Sorry to overreact, but Gemmell stirs my soul, he makes me laugh, makes me cry and he changed my life. If you would try one more, try Ravenheart. It's doesn't hold back on the action but in my opinion the character development is so strong, even for really minor characters. And the climax is breathtaking (that would be the one which makes me cry).

Overall people love his work so much because it makes us believe we can be better. One of Gemmell's favourite anecdotes is from a letter he received. A man had just been reading some of David's work and was out walking is dog, his head full of heroes. Lo and behold in the dim dusk light he sees two men attacking a girl. Mr Dogwalker shouts, let's his dog off the lead and charges, and the men run off and the girl is unharmed! The point of the letter was that if he hadn't been reading Gemmell that evening, he simply would have walked on by.
He makes us believe we can all be heroes!

And just in case I didn't iterate it enough, anno, I apologize for my overreaction. I mean that.

No problem mate,it was meant light heartedly,I read a couple in the past so i admit that something kept me onboard but as ever good art is subjective and what fires some leaves others cold - a good case in point is Dune,I would say it's one of my top ten books but I know others have loathed it and can elucidate rapturously on its failings!

I love Howard and Conan is another favourite so the term Conan Lite isn't necessarily negative,also I remember reading about Gemmels background and recognising somewhat why he wrote in the style he chose,at some point I will try again,thanks for the suggestions.

No worries.

And on the subject of Druss Archetype vs Conan I would like to say that Howard did write some great rollicking adventures but that's all they are. I've always felt that if I could take a copy of The First Chronicles of Druss The Legend back to the 1930s and get Robert Howard to read it, it would leave him in tears thinking 'this is how I should have done it.'

I stayed up till 3 in the morning with a 9 AM lecture to follow that day in order to finish First Chronicles. I sat there just breathing for about ten minutes after I finished!