David Gemmel's Lion of Macedon

nesf

The said book, and Dark Prince are excellent imo. Yes they do suffer from Gemmel's "three pages to describe the stem of a flower verus 2-3 lines to describe a titanic 2 week battle between the forces of good n evil". But the pairing still works quite nicely imo. Anyone else read them?

Snaga

Ive read most of gemmels books.....guess which one my nick came from

Lion of Macedon and the Dark Prince were a good pair, Im personally more a fan of the drenai series...and I liked the john shannow series too.

Manach

Excellent read both of them, though my favourite series is the Shannow (flawed characther trying to do right.)

Some of his books do seem repeats (ie the Rigante)
but still very readable.

Closest in style I'd say would be Raymond Feist or Simon Green.

Draco

Originally posted by Manach
though my favourite series is the Shannow (flawed characther trying to do right.)

And that doesn't describe pretty much everything he has written?

LoLth

yep, those two are his better works in my opinion. Especially the first. I liked the whole sparta stuff...

Personally, I would love to see Gemmell get into "historical Fantasy". Basically doing a novel of 300 spartans, or Hannibals March, or the siege of Troy or Carthage. I think he uses magic just for the sake of it. Without any magic, or any other traditional "fantasy" elements, his books are excellent... though he does need to hire someone to write the endings.

Definitely needs to expand the battles a bit though.

nesf

Originally posted by LoLth
yep, those two are his better works in my opinion. Especially the first. I liked the whole sparta stuff...

Personally, I would love to see Gemmell get into "historical Fantasy". Basically doing a novel of 300 spartans, or Hannibals March, or the siege of Troy or Carthage. I think he uses magic just for the sake of it. Without any magic, or any other traditional "fantasy" elements, his books are excellent... though he does need to hire someone to write the endings.

Definitely needs to expand the battles a bit though.

I agree totally, I was really really enjoying Lion of Macedon, until the magic appeared. I felt that a perfectly good story was being tampered with, purely for traditional fantasy reasons. The first part of the story was fascinating, the only major flaw was the total lack of decription of battles. Whats the point in spending a few chapters describing the orginisation and training of military formations and glossing over the battles??

Methinks Mr Gemmell lacks tactical thinking when thinking of ideas concerning how battles are fought. For instance the battles throughout are very linear with no tactical insight. /i felt that he really doesn't understand tactics enough to write a detailed battle report. Maybe he should take up 40k.....

Snaga

The early drenai series were far better than the others for precisely that reason....yeah there was the odd shamen or two, and the temple of the thirty....but those guys were just cool.

We had guys like waylander and Druss who usually won through at the point of a crossbow or axe (and being well 'ard), and maybe it was my imagination but the battles seemed longer too.

He went and tied a lot of his other books together with the Shannow series when we see the history of the sipstrasi/bloodstones that seem to be used to perform the magic in some of the other series.

But I think he went overboard with the sipstrasi nuggets.

Boo, bring back drenai!

Slosh

Just about all of his books are a must have... He's one of the few authors I pester Bookshops about just prior to a release..

Remember the Simpsons episode where Bart orders the Spy Camera ??

Yup....