From: James Park 
Date: Mon, 30 Dec 1996 14:58:59 -0500
Subject: About your book reviews...

I encountered them first a year or so ago because I was doing a search 
on some engine for the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever and 
your page was one of the hits. I was actually very happy to see such a 
positive review, because for a while I thought I was the only person out 
in the world who really enjoyed the series. That's not entirely true, 
though, because I actually was able to successfully ask two friends of 
mine to read the series, and they were both hooked.

Just a couple comments about bits of your page. I'd recommend the first 
six books of the Dragonlance series to you, as these are written by 
Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. The Dragonlance Chronicles and Legends, 
both trilogies. You may not be excited to hear this, but Zifnab puts in 
an appearance of sorts, and that was the main reason the series came to 
mind. (Zifnab was here first, btw.) Actually, it was a great series, 
though the newer authors have ruined it, imo.

Actually, I'd also recommend the Forgotten Realms books by R.A. 
Salvatore (actually, the Dark Elf Trilogy, the trilogy composed of The 
Crystal Shard, Streams of Silver, and another book I can't remember) 
though a lot of people don't like these either... Too repetitive and 
such, they say.

Btw, if you could find it in your schedule (how's that thesis?) to visit 
my home page about books, I'd appreciate it. You should probably visit 
after January, because I'm planning to update it in January. For 
example, I'd read Tolkien's The Hobbit and LOTR two or three times 
previously and didn't like it any of those times, but on this reading 
I'm enjoying it immmensely. the url is 
http://www.amherst.edu/~jhpark/books.html if I remember correctly. I 
believe I asked you to visit it once before, but I don't remember if you 
did or not. In any case, wait until the end of January before you go.

A word about Donaldson's Gap series. When I finished the first book, I 
had to ask myself, "Donaldson wrote _this_?" I enjoyed both the 
Chronicles immensely (The Second Chronicles drove me to tears, with the 
way corrupted the Land, like the Bloodguard and the Giants before), and 
Mordant's Need less, but the first book of the Gap Cycle just had me 
really annoyed. I mean... I really think it was just bad writing. The 
most interesting part was the appendix, where he talks about the 
inspiration for it. :) But each book got better for me; the second was 
good, the third even better, and the fourth blew my mind away. The fifth 
was about the equal of the fourth, I think, though it may have been a 
little better than the fourth. In any case, I told myself that if he did 
as well in the fifth book as he did in the fourth, he would have 
surpassed the Chronicles, but I think I'm going to sit and re-read the 
whole series in one fell swoop before coming to a final decision about 
that.

It's amazing how similar our lists of read books are... or will be, 
because I actually forgot some of the books I read until I saw them 
referred to on your page! 

Comment on Piers Anthony. He ruins series a lot. The Apprentice Adept 
series (Split Infinity, Blue Adept, etc.) was good for the first two 
books I thought, and Juxtaposition was a little worse. The last four 
books were absolutely horrible, though. My favorite books of the 
Incarnations were the 1st and 6th, and the 7th absolutely ruined that 
series as well. The only series I found he didn't ruin was Bio of a 
Space Tyrant, but I've only read that one once, so I don't know how well 
it ages.

Robert Asprin has written two fantasy-comedy series that I've read, one 
the Myth series and a Phule series. I recommend them both, but with the 
understanding that they're fluff. I think they're good fluff, but 
they're still fluff.

I read the Sword of Shannara before I read LOTR, and enjoyed it 
immensely. As I said before, I disliked LOTR the first few times reading 
it, and I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that I read 
Sword first. People have said that Tolkien did the best work with 
creating a background for the world, evident with the elves and ents and 
their songs and such, and I agree, though maybe at the time that 
frustrated me more than anything else. (But I enjoyed the Chronicles 
that have much the same stuff, so there's a difference in there 
somewhere). I actually enjoyed Sword and Wishsong more than Elfstones, 
and enjoyed most of the second Shannara series, but milage varies, of 
course. I think I just find Allanon to be a much more interesting 
character than Gandalf... :)

Anyway... what else? I was really impressed with The Name of the Rose.

Oh, one last thing... because I think I'm going to stop this e-mail and 
just add to my web page and hope you'll be able to visit and read my 
comments that way (though I'm cc'ing this to myself): I actually thought 
it might be better to expand the Death Gate Cycle to 8 or 9 books than 
cut it down.  I thought that they really rushed the ending, and it 
may have been better to expand on it. But you're right about the 2nd 
book being really boring with the mensch; I really enjoyed the 3rd and 
4th books though. Well, in any case, I really enjoyed browsing through 
your web site.


				--James

PS. Not sure if you've gotten this one before, but I'd also recommend that
you read Peter David's Vendetta. It's a Star Trek:TNG novel that talks
about the Borg (I think after Best of Both Worlds and the Hugh story)
and gives some neat hypothetical background... It was my favorite ST novel.