dragonlance, vs sword of shannara vs twilight

[ironford]

suggestions? twilight being the vampire book, thinking about getting into reading, lol 25 ive only read a few but i have a customer coming so i have to be quick here lol

 

[Mathius]

suggestions? twilight being the vampire book, thinking about getting into reading, lol 25 ive only read a few but i have a customer coming so i have to be quick here lol

I'm not sure I understand the question. Are you asking which books you should read?

I have read most of the Shannara books, and quite a few of the Dragonlance books, and I have to say they are both quite good in their own rights.

The thing with Shannara is you have to remember that Brooks wrote the first book when he was still in high school, so there are a lot of glaring simliarities to Tolkien that I think he gets unfairly criticized for. But beyond that, the series takes off and is actually quite good through the next 7-8 books or so.

Once he started getting into things like airships, and steering into a more sci-fi direction (with references to the land of Shannara being a post apocalyptic version of earth) and then tying it in with his Knight of the Word series I started to lose interest. There was a smattering of this in the original books, such as the site with the "creature" in Sword of Shannara, but it was still mostly fantasy by design.

With Dragonlance, you have to remember that a LOT of the books were either A. written by fans themselves (almost anything labelled "Tales" was a fan fiction work) or B. commissioned by TSR and later Wizards of the West Coast.

In other words, Tracy Hickman and Margret Weis wrote the original core books, but after that, various authors were contracted to do later novels.

If you stick to the core books, they are mostly quite good. But some of the other authors are not as good as Weis and Hickman, and there are also some glaring plot issues if you choose to follow all the books. You will find multiple origins to characters, multiple time lines, and things that just plain don't make sense.

I myself sortof try to stay away from the other authors and just read Weis and Hickman's core novels. I will occasionally pickup another story that seems to be a stand alone, but for the most part I try to keep an open mind as to what is really canon.

I can't really comment on the third book you mentioned as I have not read it.

Mathius

 

[Emo17]

I started reading Twilight over the summer and got terribly bored. i didnt get past 40 pages or so. so id advise to stay away from that one. im not familiar with the others.

 

[Readaholic]

I read Twilight in two days because I thought it was a bit addictive. A little bit weird I must admit. Its nothing too great and sometimes it can be a bit boring but now I am reading the second. I like the books though, sometimes you can relate. But I guess I like anything to do with Vamps.