@Spartan:
So to clarify, you find the moral philosophy of the books to be flawed to the point that it made Richard less of a hero, more of quasi villain?
Nearly - i might have been unclear in my prior post. While the flawed moral philosophy is partly responsible, that would just be a mislead character issue, and could actually have been interesting. What hurt the latter books was rather the unsubtle and heavy handed way in which that moral philosophy was preached, regardless of whether i actually agree with it or not (in fact, past some things i see as moral imperative in a social context, i actually do agree with Objectivism).
I have no issue with following a flawed charcter's story, or even villains story - in fact some of the best stories i read use that very element. The problem is that Goodking sacrifices his characters and story, in favor of preaching objectivism - i hate to see good stories ruined by ulterior motives (or bad storytelling), which is why reading the latter books was such a disappointment.
If you do like Objectivism as a moral/philosophy, do read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged - it's excellent, and pretty much the modern keystone to works that derived from it (such as SoT ideals, or even Bioshock).
I don't personally have a problem with that, to me it makes the books more realistic. After all, no one fully understands the world, there are things that are going to happen that the main character wasn't aware of, that the reader wasn't aware of.
The term "Deus Ex Machina" derives from ancient greek drama - essentially the characters where tossed into problems so massive and unbearable, or driven into irredeemable despair, that there was no way out for them as normal human beings. At the end, a god/angel (actor with wings held up on ropes) would swoop down from the heavens, and solve the whole issue - hence the term Deus Ex Machina - "the god coming out of a machine".
While it's a fairly popular method in ancient storytelling, in newer literature it's just bad storytelling. There's a shift away from heroism towards protagonism, and that's accompanied by constructing realistic problems and finding realistic solutions - or in the absence of one, letting the hero fail.
Introducing a hithertho unknown element to resolve a story is a bad move when the story is being told from an omniscient viewpoint, because that viewpoint isn't supposed to hide what's going on. If the story is being told from one characters point of view, you might get away with it once, but if it's a repeat offense, then you're essentially following a person with no clue what's going on, which isn't very engaging. Finding out what's happening, bing able to think on a meta-level to the story is key; an unknown element brought in to resolve a story ruins that.
It gets worse however: many authors use deus ex because it's convenient - the reality is that it's lazy, because when you've constructed your story, you can easily backtrack and foreshadow what will happen, or tell a sidestory that later merges with the main arc. In that case, your Deus Ex suddenly becomes an integral part of the story - SoT for example did that well with Wizards First Rule: The trick/twist at the end didn't come out of nowhere, it was telegraphed all throughout the book, and it still works well as a twist. It's a bit like 6th sense in that way.
tl,dr: Yes, a deus ex might be realistic, depending on point of view & knowledge of the person telling the sotry. More often than not, it's an archaic/lazy storytelling technique that gets abused by authors who should know better - especially if they've shown that they do know better in previous works.
@root of all evil
Isn't that Anita Blake style ubersex?
It leans the same way as far as sexual content is concerned; however the story going on is imo stronger than those in Vampire Hunter
@Wudustan
Sergei Lukyanyenko's Watch series. I read them in russian, so can't attest to the English translation being any good.
They're very well translated - what might be putting some people off is the format in which the stories come along, ie. them being a collection of short stories, very modern in that way, with little fluff or padding; a bit like Zelazny earlier works.
This thread is dumb, but I'm gonna go ahead and nick of of the recomendations....
I might disagree with the OP - a lot even - but the thread itself has proven excellent so far
Lots of good pointers towards series i didn't mention (Abercrombie, king, leguin, etc..) and some nice mature discussion. As far as forum threads go, this is a pretty good one ^^
