I have noticed that since Hannah and I began this blog, people are much more interested in what I am reading. I have had a number of conversations with friends at parties about what I’m reading and of course I have received a number of recommendations…I know, pretty wild parties, huh! 😉
On the way home from one of these parties George and I started discussing fantasy literature because several people had made fantasy recommendations earlier that evening. As George and I continued our conversation it quickly became clear that I had not read any fantasy literature other than J.R.R. Tolkien. (For those unfamiliar with Tolkien, he wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy) As you can imagine (especially, if you know George) this was unacceptable to my husband and urgently needed to be remedied! Needless to say, by the time we made it home George had chosen two possible fantasy series that I could pick from to read…immediately!!
My options turned out to be The Elenium series by David Eddings or the Dragonlance series called The Chronicles Trilogy by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. In order to decide which to read I applied the tried and true ‘which cover do I like better’ method and ended up picking The Chronicles Trilogy by Weis and Hickman.
The title of this blog post is meant to be a bit cheeky because as I read The Chronicles Trilogy, I started to question whether or not there is fantasy literature that isn’t Tolkien. There were moments throughout the story that I honestly wondered if what I was reading wasn’t copyright infringement! When I mentioned this to George he was not pleased with my assessment and proceeded to text me articles about the author and her writing influences, needless to say he got a little defensive. But to be fair, I have read The Hobbit at least a half a dozen times and have watched The Lord of the Rings movies no less than a dozen times each, so I pretty much know Tolkien’s world/story inside and out so it’s not too surprising that I see and hear Tolkien in just about everything.
All of that being said, I enjoyed reading this trilogy and George has almost convinced me to read the next trilogy in the series, The Legends Trilogy, which continues the story of one of the companions. Unfortunately, the main character in the next series is (in my opinion) the most irritating companion from the first trilogy. George assures me that Raistlin is actually the most interesting character but so far I find him petulant, egotistical, and arrogant which makes me hesitant to read three books primarily about him…we’ll see if it happens.
A special thanks to all of those awesome people I chatted with about my blog and offered recommendations galore! Thanks: Rula, Xela, Ellen, Chad, Marshall, and of course my partner in this crazy thing called life, George!
Read on my friends!