[What Came Before]

Personally, I love both the Second Apocalypse setting and the First law setting of Abercrombie. For those of you familiar with Joe Abercrombie, I personally habe no problem envisioning kellhus as a younger Bayaz (even if the world of Bayaz has been (almost) closed to the demonic side).

Any thoughts from the rest of you concerning siminalities/dissimilarities between Bakker and Abercrombie and/or opinions concerning Joe (he's a living genius/total twat)?

[What Came Before]

I've enjoyed Abercrombie's books, but as far as I'm concerned, Bakker's playing in a-whole-nother league.  Kellhus as a younger Bayaz?  I don't see it at all -- which is not to say that I don't recognize the similiarities between the two characters.  I do.  But even thinking about them together, I get a sort of 'cognitive dissonance' effect, since doing so involves overlapping a fully realized character from a three-dimensional fantasy world with a half-realized character from a two-dimensional fantasy world.  Considering them together throws a light on how much weaker I think Abercombrie's books are in comparison to Bakker's.

I hasten to add that I don't mean to knock Abercombrie so much as to point up how good I think Bakker is.  Again, I've enjoyed Abercrombie's books -- those of them I've read, anyway.  I find them very enjoyable, and there are a great many positive things I could say about them.  But at the end of the day, when I compare him to the 'greats' with my stern 'critic' hat on, I find that his world-building is slipshod and historically tone-deaf, his characterizations are often good but never attain to full-bloodedness (heh), and his narratives lack the depth needed to support their breadth (i.e., they have, to my mind, loads of unfulfilled narrative ambition).

[What Came Before]

+1 Bakker's in a-whole-nother league.

At first, Abercrombie felt like... the first author to write a book since the advent of movies. But since the First Law trilogy - which I liked - I have not finished Best Served Cold or The Heroes (bought both, read about 200 pgs each) and haven't bought Red Country as it is only in hardcover, where I'm at.

It actually puzzles me... I loved Before They Are Hanged.

[What Came Before]

For me, Bakker is the out-there mystical philospher-visionary of modern fantasy, mining the classic tropes of the genre and mixing in modern interpretations of the mythic interior.
JA is the super-hip beat poet of the genre, fusing the current trends with insight, panache and the influence of other media (esp. movies as Madness said above)

Kellhus = Bayaz?  Nah...
Bayaz is something of a metaphor for corporate dominance.
Kellhus is more a Neitschean force of modernity (at least until he succumbs to revelation).

I disliked the trilogy (barring Logen), but loved the stand alones. ^.^

[What Came Before]

To me the similarities between Bayaz and Kellhus is that both are extraordinarily powerful characters that make the world their playing field, basically making tools out of people. For me, I take great pleasure in both of these writers exploring upon the consequences of the surrounding world of having such people around... There are of course a lot of differences  between the two. Abercrombie for example appears to me to be consciously sparse with details concerning the larger setting of the world, in order to focus on the characters and their personal deleopment (or lack of development), while Bakker fields an artillery of details concerning the myriad of players that appear and the different parts of the setting. Reading a good Joe Abercrombie book is thus, for me, a lot like a watching a spectacular theater piece (the greek classics meet 'Black Adder'), while reading a Bakker book is like reliving the marvellous experience of lying under a table at the grandparents at an early age exploring mapbooks and encyklopedia's (feeling the immensity of a world opening up to you)...  I like the description of Bakker as the 'philosopher' and Abercrombie as the 'poet' and to me they are equally amazing, but in totally different ways :-)

[What Came Before]

I don't see much similarities in both the characters and the writing style. I love Abercrombie for his cruel fighting scenes and his great characters. I read his novels like I would have played a cool, fast and action-paced computer game ten years ago.

I devoured all of Abercrombies books in a few days and it felt like ravenously eating a meal at burger king. It was very satisfying, but two hours later I feel hungry again.

With Bakker it is different: Reading Bakker is like a gigantic candlelight dinner in a dark mansion, dining with Cthulhu...
It is exuberant with strange food and that big guy with the tentacles on the other end of the table has some really interesting ideas 8-)

[What Came Before]

With Bakker it is different: Reading Bakker is like a gigantic candlelight dinner in a dark mansion, dining with Cthulhu...
It is exuberant with strange food and that big guy with the tentacles on the other end of the table has some really interesting ideas 8-)

I posted this on Bakker's facebook page. I couldn't resist. Some part of me will never be satisfied by comedy again. Hope you don't mind, Davias.

[What Came Before]

I devoured all of Abercrombies books in a few days and it felt like ravenously eating a meal at burger king. It was very satisfying, but two hours later I feel hungry again.

With Bakker it is different: Reading Bakker is like a gigantic candlelight dinner in a dark mansion, dining with Cthulhu...
It is exuberant with strange food and that big guy with the tentacles on the other end of the table has some really interesting ideas 8-)

This is brilliant. Love it.

[mrganondorf]

Abercrombie is awesome, but so different from Bakker--love them both, Bakker more.  It would be an impoverished genre if we couldn't have both.  Abercrombie is like Lord of the Rings + Pulp Fiction, but Bakker's work has no analogue.

[Wilshire]

I agree completely. Abercrombie works well within the confines of the Fantasy genre, enriching it for his effort, while Bakker seems to be trying to push the boundaries, to see how far it can go.

[Kellais]

Not sure if we are not a bit fanboy-ish here. I mean i agree, Bakker is better than Abercrombie (for my taste). But i am not sure Bakker is so much more literary or pushing boundaries or what-have-you than other top notch fantasy authors. It always depends on what you read into it *...or what you have already read. For some Bakker might be THE thing because they never saw those ideas in other works...but for others it's like "been there, done that"...if you know what i mean.

Case in point - i once stumbled upon a forum where there was some discussion about PoN and there were a lot of posters who thought that the philosophic background and level of PoN was extremely superficial and nothing new at all (those posts were triggered because some posters were gushing how deep and new PoN was ).

* what i mean is this: some deep meanings in books are wholly on you as the reader...other readers do not see it or, often times, i am sure that not even the author thought about it that way (i had a very interesting discussion about that topic with a swiss author once who visited our school...it was very enlightening. All the convoluted stuff some of the students read into the novel just were not there or at least not intended by the author).

Anyway, i guess what i am saying is - we here are heavily biased when it comes to "objectively" (it is in "", guys ) weighing quality between Bakker and Fantasy Author X.

[Wilshire]

Lol guilty as charged. I never claimed to be reasonable.

I personally have never seen anything like TSA, in scope or content. There are many measures of an author's worth as a writer. One could argue that the point of writing a book is to have people read it, and therefore more popular = better author, and so Bakker is somewhere down at the bottom...

In this instance, I like both authors a lot, but for vastly different reasons. A book's worth is largely in the eye of the reader. An Author vs. Bakker topic, on a Bakker forum, will have an obvious conclusion. But hey, there isn't an objective answer anyway, so I don't feel bad . 

[Kellais]

True enough, Wilshire I just felt like a bit perspective was needed and i had an urge to be "the voice of reason" ....

[Wilshire]

Discent! Stone the non-believer.

[Royce]

I have not read Abercrombie yet. Am I missing something great?