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Post by ottoharkaman on Mar 24, 2021 20:22:07 GMT -5
Anybody ever read any of these? I've read one or two long ago but thought I might read some, maybe not in order. I guess there is close to fifty books in the series.
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Post by emerald on Mar 24, 2021 20:40:07 GMT -5
Anybody ever read any of these? I've read one or two long ago but thought I might read some, maybe not in order. I guess there is close to fifty books in the series.
Yeah, I read the first 27 of them. Read ‘em as they came out so I started when I was about 12 and ended when I was about 22. It’s Burroughsian planetary romance spread out on a huge canvas. Obviously, I enjoyed them enough to stick with them for a long while, but wearied of them enough to leave the series behind and not return. At their best they deliver swashbuckling adventure in an exotic world. At their worst they lean on some tropes I found overly familiar 40 years ago. You might try the first few books and see what you think. The series does have some devoted fans and if you like it, there’s a lot of it to like.
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Post by Char-Vell on Mar 25, 2021 7:24:20 GMT -5
Anybody ever read any of these? I've read one or two long ago but thought I might read some, maybe not in order. I guess there is close to fifty books in the series.
Yeah, I read the first 27 of them. Read ‘em as they came out so I started when I was about 12 and ended when I was about 22. It’s Burroughsian planetary romance spread out on a huge canvas. Obviously, I enjoyed them enough to stick with them for a long while, but wearied of them enough to leave the series behind and not return. At their best they deliver swashbuckling adventure in an exotic world. At their worst they lean on some tropes I found overly familiar 40 years ago. You might try the first few books and see what you think. The series does have some devoted fans and if you like it, there’s a lot of it to like. After a quick scan of that Wikipedia article, I think this may be something for me to check out. the first volume at least.
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Post by ottoharkaman on Mar 25, 2021 8:43:01 GMT -5
Thought I would jump back in with "The Jikaida Cycle"
Love the old covers from the 70s but this seems to be a more recent cover. I am reading digital copies on my tablet.
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Post by zarono on Mar 25, 2021 9:41:17 GMT -5
Never read any of them but that classic cover is great, I definitely would have snatched it off the shelf back in the day.
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Post by danieljames495 on Mar 25, 2021 10:43:54 GMT -5
Never read any of them but that classic cover is great, I definitely would have snatched it off the shelf back in the day. Definitely. That cover is a real eye-cathcer.
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Post by emerald on Mar 25, 2021 11:31:01 GMT -5
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Owen
Wanderer
Posts: 24
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Post by Owen on Mar 25, 2021 19:27:15 GMT -5
I read an article on Tor.com that mentioned this series a while back, I remember being pretty impressed at how prolific Akers was with that series but haven't read any. One of the perennial issues I run into with series, I tend to be a completionist, so a 50+ book series is something I would be a little leery of. Unfortunate, too, because it looks great. To anybody who has read it, is it worth just picking up the first, or are the are few good ones that might be read out of order?
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Mar 26, 2021 1:28:06 GMT -5
The old covers look nice.
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Post by robp on Mar 26, 2021 6:08:24 GMT -5
I've never seen or read them before. Checked on UK Amazon, they have some second hand copies so I've ordered Vol 1. Always nice to discover new S&S authors
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Post by Char-Vell on Mar 26, 2021 7:34:25 GMT -5
I went to ebay and ordered Transit to Scorpio (the one with the cool birdman on the cover.) I'll save it to read on the beach in May.
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Post by almuric on Mar 27, 2021 11:12:18 GMT -5
I've read the first five and it's a very good Sword and Planet series. The first is easily the weakest, but the later ones have a scope and grandeur that put them among the best of the genre. Bulmer also pulls off what is either a brilliant literary conceit or the most blatant cheat ever in one of them when he puts Dray into a seemingly inescapable death trap . . . and then "loses" the "tape" from which these novels are allegedly transcribed, picking up months later with Dray in a new location and only vague hints about how he got there. It's so brazen I can't be mad.
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Post by emerald on Mar 27, 2021 13:27:09 GMT -5
The series is a landmark in Sword and Planet fiction as it has to be the longest and most involved example of the genre. It has been quite some time since I read any of them, but I recall what I enjoyed most and what put me off. The sweeping narrative, which I thought generally got better as it went, and the complex world it takes place in, where dozens of diverse races co-exist and mysterious super-scientific forces clash behind the scenes, were engaging and fun.
The thing that annoyed my friends who read it back when I did actually didn’t trouble me much at all. The hero, Dray Prescot, has the full-on, John Carter of Mars-style ability to quickly become a dominant presence in any group he finds himself in. One of my oldest friends summarized this by striking a heroic pose and imitating Prescot’s voice, “I will not dwell upon the time I rose to godhood among these people…” What got my goat most was the consistent way that the author undersold the climaxes of so many of the books and of the ‘cycles’ of books that formed longer, more epic, plotlines. There were some really kickass action scenes, but they never seemed to come at the climax of any given story.
To this day I can recall several scenes that burned themselves into my brain-- an arena fight where the surviving combatants attack the audience, a spectacular running battle through a huge palace, and an encounter Prescot, finest swordsman of two worlds, has with an opponent who is actually more skilled than he is. Yet the resolution of any of the many storylines felt underwhelming. Maybe it was just me. I’d read a whole lot of REH and it probably colored my expectations of how violent and intense a story’s climax was supposed to be.
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Post by ottoharkaman on Apr 4, 2021 19:16:55 GMT -5
I meant to write down all the different personalities he introduces in the story I was reading, "19. A Life for Kregen." If anything he has an extraordinary ability to come up with names. Its a strange narrative how his stories seem to evolve by the descriptions of all these different people Dray comes into contact with. I wonder if his other non Dray Prescot stories follow the same formula?
Found Kenneth Bulmer's "Sea wolf" series as Bruno Krauss
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Owen
Wanderer
Posts: 24
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Post by Owen on Apr 11, 2021 15:25:01 GMT -5
I had to write back about this and let you all know. Serendipitously, I happened upon Dray Prescot #15 at the local Salvation Army thrift store, picked it up for a cool 25 cents. Fits in nicely with my DAW collection, and I am looking forward to giving it a read. I'll report back and let you all know how it goes!
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