Just going to toss my hat into the "Don't read any Dune novels except the original" pool. I was able to tolerate the prequel trilogy because they were set so long ago within the verse that they were effectively an independent series, and thus not total shit.
Messiah and
Children were both cast aside.
Geez, I really haven't been keeping up with this. Let's see, rough date estimates here:
The Elfstones of ShannaraTerry Brooks
28/4/13
Same problems as the first: the writing is somewhat uninvolved and feels like a write-up of a campaign more than a novel.
The Taming of the ShrewShakespeare
4/5/13
Thankfully someone got word to me that "shrew" was, in that time, a much more gender-neutral term. That makes the whole affair more interesting, certainly.
DauntlessAllora Gale
9/5/13
Reread it to catch up with new chapters. Of which it now has 94. ~650,000 words of well-written For Want of a Nail Code Geass AU. My goodness, I love this fic. The characterizations are good, there is some quality worldbuilding, there are OCs which have significant roles while fitting perfectly into the cast and world, and the author manages to put the plot together in a way which retains the same themes as canon while events falling out in a drastically different way. It's difficult to overstate how much I enjoy this.
An Entry With a BangVarious authors
985 pages
17/5/13
It's a round-robin crossover fic that drops Earth and a perfect 100ly sphere of space around it into the Periphery of the Battletech verse. Not just any Earth, though, it's the Earth of the Clancyverse. Being a round-robin fic, some of the authors are decidedly better than others. One or two I skip over entirely, either because of the poor technical quality or their style. Some of it is mediocre. Some of it is golden. I went into it with minimal knowledge of Clancy's work and only a slight bit of knowledge about Battletech and I had no trouble with it.
The Excalibur AlternativeDavid Weber
20/5/13
It's cheesy, it's Weber, but I still read it. The premise is amusing and the execution is competent, but it is, of course, very light reading. I'm tempted to dig into something meatier to follow, but with unpredictable, sleep-depriving work scheduling, I'm not sure I'll have the energy.
Author
Topic: The Official Bay12 - 52 books challenge 2013 (Read 58128 times)