New Reviews: Robin Hobb's The Farseer Trilogy and Neil Gaiman's American Gods
August 21, 2002 (3:35 AM) ( link )

ADDED reviews of Robin Hobb's The Farseer Trilogy and Neil Gaiman's American Gods. The Farseer Trilogy is very, very good--one of the best fantasy series I have ever read, even compared to George RR Martin's fantastic A Song of Ice and Fire. Neil Gaiman's book was somewhat less exciting--given my lukewarm reaction to three of his prose efforts thus far, I think I will avoid his books in the future.

I am currently nearly done with Ken Grimwood's Replay, which has an interesting premise: a man dies and then wakes up back in time in his 18-year-old body, but with the memory of his 45-year-old self. Then he dies again--and again wakes up back when he was 18 years old. As I said, a fascinating premise, and Grimwood does an excellent job laying out everything somebody in such a position would do. I am also working my way through CS Friedman's Black Sun Rising, but Hobb's trilogy sort of got in the way.

I've realized, with my review of Gaiman's novel, that I've become less and less forgiving toward books in the past year. In fact, if I were to go back and re-rate things, I think many of the books that are currently in the 6, 7, and 8 category would very quickly be pushed down below 5. For instance, Gaiman's Sandman: The Dream Hunters does not deserve the score it currently has. But I think it would be a bad idea for me to go rampaging through my prior reviews, especially since my reviews are supposed to be about what the books were like at the time, and my opinions of certain books certainly change over time, sometimes for reasons not related whatsoever to the book. But we'll see.

After Replay and Friedman's trilogy, I might get into Roger Zelazny's A Night in Lonesome October, where Jack the Ripper's dog prevents extra-dimensional Cthulhu creatures from invading earth. (I just love a zany premise.)