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I'm not sure why it's felt that Merlin's secret cannot be revealed without somehow jeopardizing the overall story. A whole season could be easily devoted to that transition -- the revelation of Merlin's powers, the return of Excalibur, the development of the round table into a fixture at Camelot...

Corwin recommends The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny. 10 novels should keep you busy, although all ten are about the same volume as one of Goodkind's oven-stuffers. You can get it in one volume....

Just picked up Sun of Suns (had Pirate Sun on my shelf from library sale). Anybody read his stuff? Particularly the Virga trilogy? Opinions/comments welcome....

Anyone who has Trish Helfer as his/her avatar has to be taken VERY seriously! ;) Here's someone who approaches LOTS with the right attitude. Forget that silly sword and sorcery stuff. Leather, cleavage, S&M, B&D, perfect for the whole family! :D

Thanks so far for the excellent suggestions. Daughter has read most of Roald Dahl.... personally, I liked Fantastic Mr. Fox, which made great reading out loud. Pullman's Dark Materials... yes, a young girl, but some pretty scary, horrific stuff in there.... the whole laboratory where they cut...

My daughter and I have a nice ritual of my reading to her in the evening. We've gotten through several good books, and I was wondering if posters here might have some suggestions for titles in the SF/fantasy genre that would appeal to a 9 y.o. girl. Appreciate any help.

I think the negative connotation of "geek" is an "unfit" loser with thick glasses, no girlfriend or boyfriend, excessive natural interest in techy or abstruse subjects, and a desire to escape the cruelties of a social environment that doesn't accept them by immersing in things like other worlds...

Well said. To me the cardinal rule is: do I care about the prinicipal characters enough to be moved in some fashion by what happens to them. If a character moves through the plot like an automoton without any hooks into who that character is and why we should bother, I tend to put the book down...

Problem in fantasy, particularly, is that the over-development of character takes away from the high ritual of epic/myth from which much fantasy gets its driving force. Excessively realistic/psychological characters tend to make an epic more mundane and it loses its tone and pitch. I think the...

j.d., you're absolutely correct. In thinking back, Endore makes the point about the variations in violence and puts the werewolf in perspective, noting that he does much less damage/death than the commune.... he actually becomes lost in the overall bloodshed. I think what I was trying to get at...

Finished Werewolf of Paris. It was an uneven book, in my opinion, but had some edgy material in it for sure. It was a worthwhile read overall and I do recommend it. I thought the whole Paris during the commune historical stuff was tangential to the story of Bertrand, the Werewolf, but not...

I think you're on to something here. The pulps were just a step away from comics, although both produced some really original ideas and changed our culture. I think one problem with sci-fi today is that it can be a hard genre to penetrate for the average reader. Same with fantasy that is...

I'm not sure that fantasy fiction would be considered "geeky" in the same way as science fiction. I think fantasy suffers from a different stereotype... that it is all fundamentally following the same tired formula: basic good vs. basic evil; overly-portentous prose that mimics epic/mythological...

I've always found a special niche for Westerns in my reading... particularly when I want a breath of fresh air and immersion in a natural setting with almost predictable dilemmas. Much as I would pick up a conventional mystery. I have a fondness for Ernest Haycox and Luke Short from the what I...

Okay, here's a weird follow-up to my request for titles. I just headed up the street in Greenwich Village (NYC) after parking my car and came across a couple of boxes of old books that someone had left by a trash can. Sure enough, I couldn't resist poking around, as I'm fond of those old...

This is what I like about this site.... ask about werewolfs and one shows up :D Thanks for the suggestions so far. Anybody read the hard to find Werewolf of Paris by Guy Endore... everything I've read about it suggests it is to werewolves what Bram Stoker's Dracula was to vampires....

I was doing some research on this genre to figure out what might be good to read... anyone have some recommendations, either short story or novel? If this has been discussed in another thread, the link would be appreciated. Thanks.

People here can be awfully serious sometimes...

Yes, but the women wear leather and low cleavage outfits.... :)

Let's see, Goodkind writes portentous, overstuffed fantasy potboiler that is turned into a TV series borrowing heavily from Xena. What you have is a pretty routine but entertaining series of the low brow sort with women running around in low cleavage and leather.... I like it! :)