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Saturday, April 18, 2009

Fantasy Fiction

How can J.K. Rowling, Christopher Paolini, Robert Jordan and Tolkien create such wonderful, new worlds?! Inventing new characters, new powers, more senses than five or six, new places, new games, new rules, new government, new species and what not?!
But there is a catch here. There is a necessity to read all the series written by these four brilliant writers one at a time. You mix them up, you better start reading again. I found that out at a very time-consuming cost.

I started with the Harry Potter series, and am more than glad that it’s over. That helped me enjoy it to the fullest and live the different world effectively for many years.
Then I made the biggest mistake of my book-worm life. I took the following treacherous path:



  1. Eye of the World - Wheel Of Time (WoT) Series

  2. Eragon - Inheritence Series (IS)

  3. Eldest - IS

  4. The Fellowship of the ring - Lord Of the Rings (LOTR)

  5. Brisingr (started) - IS


    • Googled for IS, read the wiki entry to refresh my meory.

  6. Brisingr (completed) - IS

  7. The Great Hunt (Started) - WoT


    • Googled for LOTR, to find where I am going wrong in understanding

    • Googled for WoT to discover that I had completely forgotten the plot, and mixed it up with Inheritence series

    • Googled for IS, to find out what is WoT, IS and LOTR.

    • Make a Venn Diagram for future reference.. ggrrrrr!


Warning:


Kindly don't repeat the mistake that I did. If you have done it already, here is a little something for reference.





However, this does not guarantee a confusion-free reading, as the three series are deeply inter-connected. You may have to re-read everything again. What with WoT spanning 11 books, and still going strong, you don't want to take THAT risk!

Disclaimer:


I am a consultant and a follower of KrishAshok - hence propagating the usage of charts and graphs.

5 comments:

Ashwin said...

OMG! The hard work involved in treading this tedious path is showing babe!! Aila, graph vera!! Veri thanam! :))

Unknown said...

seriously omg for the graph. When I started reading Harry Potter, I made an excel sheet of similar things with LOTR. But this is way better and complex. Nice!

Archana said...

the mistake I did was reading HP series and WoT before reading LOTR. Not only could I 'not' appreciate Tolkien, I thought he was nothing compared to those two.

Before you both start 'not liking' me for 'not liking' Tolkien, I changed my mind as I read on. Hehe!

But its still sad that all fantasy worlds are based on one guy's creation. I wish they were all not so ambigous and implicitely contradictory and hence confusing!

Anonymous said...

semma graph, wheel of time - lotr, aiyyo ippo how i wish i had tons of time and could read on ... :-(

Archana said...

jiju.. all credit goes to you for introducing me to Robert Jordan though - he remains my favorite of these.. I just completed the second book too!! You know he has written 11 books, and is no more now. The series is not yet complete. there are 3 books , which are now being written by his sub i think!