> > [SNIP]
I have some sympathy for Squirrel's complaints about BA.
But personally, I've come to think of TR, ST and BA more like a single work in three volumes than three distinct books.
Looked at from this POV, the structure and content of BA suddenly make mucho sense IMO, as continuing the description of the ordinary day-to-day lives of the Heortlings and of normal Heortling adventurers.
The single biggest flaw of the books so far is that there's still no proper map of Sartar and no Gazetteer.
I do agree with "Greg and Friends * " that epic scenarios need to be built upon the foundation of normality, but I must confess to thinking this could have been far more effectively acheived by starting the Hero Wars in medias res, as the Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, and most Arthurian sagas ** do.
OTOH there's a definite tendency in modern American fantasy to have a prologue where nothing much happens ; not just the Phantom Menace BTW, I'm thinking more along the lines of Book One of George R.R. Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire" (which does little more than set the stage and introduce the characters - taking IIRC 750+ pages to do so), and, more importantly, the first episodes of many TV series.
And even the first hour or so of LOTR:FOTR.
I think that we're looking at a deep change in how fantasies are conceived and written, and I think that it's unfair to target anyone for following the trend.
Julian Lord
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