4 ms·

I loved Feist's books as a early teen. Never got around to playing BaK, but I've been surprised to see few people talk about Magician for how popular it suppose

I loved Feist's books as a early teen. Never got around to playing BaK, but I've been surprised to see few people talk about Magician for how popular it supposedly was. That book was formative for me and I can't get it out my brain to this day.

simonh 7y ago
Magician was super popular at the time, but having already read Tolkien, Anne McCaffrey, Moorcock and a few others I found it more of a join the dots exercise spotting where he pinched pretty much everything from. It was like reading a whistle stop tour of fantasy fiction from the 60s and 70s. I did read some of the later novels. The sequel where Midkemia was invaded by a blatant clone of the Empire of the Petal Throne from Tékumel was fun. That might come across as faint praise, which it is a bit, but like a few novel series of the time, it was a toy box of fantasy fun. Most of the readers of novels like this were never going to wade through all the source material, but here all the basic concepts were in compendium form. They certainly had a niche to fill.
- friendlybus 7y ago
  Yeah I guess that's what Feist was talking about when he said he was successful because he broke the rules. It makes sense that the work was a mashup of previous works, it seemed clear that outside of his set pieces things really got bogged down. I read magician first and after that trying to read Lotr was going from a carnival ride to a cathedral, long slow and overly rich. The dizzying heights of individual expansion that pug/tomas got to over the series has died with the 80s and thanos I guess. That scene in the colosseum raining fire raindrops still sits vividly in my mind, why the greatest hits from magician have never been made into a more expressive media is obvious financially but nags at me nonetheless.
  - sakisv 7y ago
    > That scene in the colosseum raining fire raindrops still sits vividly in my mind, why the greatest hits from magician have never been made into a more expressive media is obvious financially but nags at me nonetheless. Ah the memories. That was indeed an awesome scene. You also reminded me of some other scenes in that book: - Macros defending Elvandar all on his own - Macros confronting Tomas after the battle and Tomas realizing how powerful Macros was - Pug Tomas and Macros watching the creation of the universe at "A darkness at Sethanon" On one hand I'd like to see them turned into movies/series but at the same time I think I prefer not to "spoil" the world and the characters that I have built in my mind.
    - vmilner 7y ago
      The parallel "... of the Empire" series is very good too, and has the colosseum scene from a different character point of view.
  - whatusername 7y ago
    It sounds like there was some interest that only recently fizzled out. (ref: http://www.crydee.com/raymond-feist/whats-happening/2019/12060/tv-series-update http://www.crydee.com/raymond-feist/whats-happening/2019/120... ) That being said -- it does feel like it was going to get some pretty stiff competition - with the $$ amazon are throwing at LoTR and WoT, alongside Witcher, GOT Prequels, etc.
  - Jedi72 7y ago
    "Tremble and despair, for I am power!"
- glangdale 7y ago
  There's a lot to be said for these fun pastiches - Eddings, Feist, the Shannara series, and Dragonlance. Not particularly well written, but actually fun and pretty light. The ones that haven't made it to TV (all but Shannara) would make perfectly enjoyable effects-driven TV series a la The Expanse. It might be refreshing to see some more escapist pastiches that aren't quite as heavily driven by urgent questions like "what might it look like if historical atrocities were attractively filmed?" or "what if the real purpose of new technology is to find nasty new ways of torturing people?"

simonh 7y ago

Magician was super popular at the time, but having already read Tolkien, Anne McCaffrey, Moorcock and a few others I found it more of a join the dots exercise spotting where he pinched pretty much everything from. It was like reading a whistle stop tour of fantasy fiction from the 60s and 70s. I did read some of the later novels. The sequel where Midkemia was invaded by a blatant clone of the Empire of the Petal Throne from Tékumel was fun. That might come across as faint praise, which it is a bit, but like a few novel series of the time, it was a toy box of fantasy fun. Most of the readers of novels like this were never going to wade through all the source material, but here all the basic concepts were in compendium form. They certainly had a niche to fill.

friendlybus 7y ago
Yeah I guess that's what Feist was talking about when he said he was successful because he broke the rules. It makes sense that the work was a mashup of previous works, it seemed clear that outside of his set pieces things really got bogged down. I read magician first and after that trying to read Lotr was going from a carnival ride to a cathedral, long slow and overly rich. The dizzying heights of individual expansion that pug/tomas got to over the series has died with the 80s and thanos I guess. That scene in the colosseum raining fire raindrops still sits vividly in my mind, why the greatest hits from magician have never been made into a more expressive media is obvious financially but nags at me nonetheless.
- sakisv 7y ago
  > That scene in the colosseum raining fire raindrops still sits vividly in my mind, why the greatest hits from magician have never been made into a more expressive media is obvious financially but nags at me nonetheless. Ah the memories. That was indeed an awesome scene. You also reminded me of some other scenes in that book: - Macros defending Elvandar all on his own - Macros confronting Tomas after the battle and Tomas realizing how powerful Macros was - Pug Tomas and Macros watching the creation of the universe at "A darkness at Sethanon" On one hand I'd like to see them turned into movies/series but at the same time I think I prefer not to "spoil" the world and the characters that I have built in my mind.
  - vmilner 7y ago
    The parallel "... of the Empire" series is very good too, and has the colosseum scene from a different character point of view.
- whatusername 7y ago
  It sounds like there was some interest that only recently fizzled out. (ref: http://www.crydee.com/raymond-feist/whats-happening/2019/12060/tv-series-update http://www.crydee.com/raymond-feist/whats-happening/2019/120... ) That being said -- it does feel like it was going to get some pretty stiff competition - with the $$ amazon are throwing at LoTR and WoT, alongside Witcher, GOT Prequels, etc.
- Jedi72 7y ago
  "Tremble and despair, for I am power!"
glangdale 7y ago
There's a lot to be said for these fun pastiches - Eddings, Feist, the Shannara series, and Dragonlance. Not particularly well written, but actually fun and pretty light. The ones that haven't made it to TV (all but Shannara) would make perfectly enjoyable effects-driven TV series a la The Expanse. It might be refreshing to see some more escapist pastiches that aren't quite as heavily driven by urgent questions like "what might it look like if historical atrocities were attractively filmed?" or "what if the real purpose of new technology is to find nasty new ways of torturing people?"