Robert Newcomb

[tonic]

Anyone ever read any of Robert Newcomb's Novels...The Fifth Sorceress?

If you did what you think of them?

I thought they were really interesitng, great chracters and plot...anyone else have an opinion?

 

[rune]

I have read this book and I felt it had a good underlying plot with witches against wizards. The witches are practising evil magic and the wizards don’t. The main character has most of his family killed at the start and the story follows his revenge and rescue of his sister.
However, I found the repetitiveness of the author annoying, and boy did it spoil my enjoyment of the book. The flow of the story constantly faultered as the author kept dropping in repeat ideas from previous conversations that the main characters had some chapters back
The ending was really strange too, almost like an after thought

 

[shevas]

I was very disappointed in this series. It is filled with almost every single cliche in the fantasy genre. The story is predictable and tends to stereotype. I usually rate a book according to its rereadabitity. I shall most definitely not read this series again and doubt whether I will ever pick up another book by this author.

 

[Jay]

I would say it's the single worst series in the history of fantasy, but I have only read The Fifth Sorceress, and Gates of Dawn. As it stands I can only say the first 2 books represent the beginings of the most incompetent writing ever from a fantasy series.

Newcomb admits to reading only one fantasy book before writing Fifth Sorcerress, and it was Terry Goodkind's Wizard's First Rule. This won't surprise you ebcasue he essentially completely rips off Goodkind (which is why Goodkind praises him most likely) except is worse. What he didn't mentio nwas taht it was apparently the only book he has ever read period. I don't care for Goodkind, in fact I think he is one of mye east favorite authors, however he does know what hios adjectives mean. Newcomb has no clue, his setences don't make sense dozens of times because in trying to be descriptive, he uses words he apparently doesn't know the defintion to. He uses heavy violence, and sex (which I have no issue with), but does it only to have it in the book, not to further a plot.

The Gates of Dawn has a classic example of deus ex machina - which makes it completely worthless to read (not that it was good anyways mind you).

Some back story? Del-Rey gave Newcomb the highest amount of money for a new authors in history (at the time) for his manuscript and put eveything into advertising it, giving The Fifth Sorceress a ridiculous banner on the cover that proclaimed :"Best Fantasy of the Year". This was one of heaviest publicized books in years and fell flat on it's face. Simple case of Del-Rey tryng to manufacture another no=talent author into a publishing powerhouse like they did Terry Brook's 20 years before

I usually don't recommend reading Amazon reviews - but go read them, they are extremely funny

If I had a vote - the worst author in the history of publicized fantasy from a major house. It's a joke.

 

[Brys]

Del-Rey did publish Mieville in the US though didn't they? You have to give them some credit.

 

[Jay]

Del-Rey did publish Mieville in the US though didn't they? You have to give them some credit.

I don't understand what the two have to do with each other. They certainly didn't get behind it anywhere near the marketing bananza behind Fifth Sorceress which was just as nauseating as Paoilini got from Eragon.

While they were proclaiming and banking on Newcomb to be the best fantasy book of 2002, they diodn't even know they had thw best fantasy book of 2001 with Mieville.

 

[nixie]

Fifth Sorceress wasn't too bad. but the second two books were irating and badly written

 

[Brys]

Oh .. Ok, Del-Rey don't seem that great. I thought they had given a decent amount of backing to Mieville, as in the UK PanMacmillan gave quite a lot, and I've seen very little of Newcomb.

The backing behind Paolini is pretty nauseating - I went into the bookshop to look for a Solzhenitsyn, but everywhere I looked there was a load of copies of Eldest, proclaiming it to be the best fantasy ever or a poster of it, and they didn't have anything by Solzhenitsyn, and the assistants hadn't even heard of him. Also, Eldest and Eragon were placed in the fiction sections, not the fantasy sections.