theworldofdreams.com

The Death Gate Cycle is, I think, by far the best series I have ever read. It's not your typical cookie cutter good vs. evil story. You start out thinking you know who the good guy is and who the bad guy is, but, by the end, you don't know who to root for. I'm always impressed when authors can write against the norm like that and pull it off. These books hold what few books do: an antagonist with true depth and character. Most 'bad guys' it seems are so shallow and petty and predictable, it's almost insulting. Like that idiot in the Final Fantasy movie. *shakes head* Anyway, if you like fantasy and have not read this series, I highly reccommend it. I've always considered Weis and Hickman to be really good authors, but this series, imho, places them among the true greats.

*scratches head* Boy that sounds familiar..is that a series in relation with The Darksword Trilogy? I cant remember....terrible memory at times.. Im almost possitive I've read that though heh!

Hmmm.... I've never heard of the Darksword Trilogy... Is it good?

how many books are the deathgate cycle up to now?
read the first couple of them and decided to wait for the set to be completed.

Ehran wrote:how many books are the deathgate cycle up to now?
read the first couple of them and decided to wait for the set to be completed.

*rummages around in bookcases*

Finished up a while back with book 7 (1994)

Dragon Wing
Elven Star
Fire Sea
Serpent Mage
The Hand of Chaos
Into the Labyrinth
The Seventh Gate - Well, the cover says "The Thrilling Conclusion" I suppose it isn't impossible somehtings been written since.

I liked the Darksword Trilogy. Joram is named after the main character of the trilogy. I haven't read all that many fantasy books, though, so my opinion isn't worth much on this subject.

Yep, as Joram said, the Deathgate Cycle is long over, with 7 books. Is always possible that they'll add something in later (which they did with the Darksword Trilogy - 'Legacy of the Darksword' was published a few years back.)

I'm generally a fan of Weis and Hickman - whey they write together, at least. Weis's solo series, Star of the Guardians, was kind of a low-quality Star Wars clone mixed with a crappy romance novel (I liked it, but it was still bad.) Hickman's solo novel about AIDS was so preachy it was painful. Somehow, they're two bad writers that manage to be good when put together.

Another lesser-known series by them is Rose of the Prophet. It was decent, though not up to the Deathgate Cycle.

Getting slightly off-topic, I've always thought that the Deathgate Cycle would make an excellent basis for a MMORPG. Not the four-seperate-worlds part (though those may make a good expansion...), just the Labyrinth. The key thing that I think would be good is that the labyrinth is set up as a series of gates. This would make a good way to segregate players of different power levels: Once you pass through a gate, you wouldn't be able to pass back through (better yet, though, would be to have a few gates between Main Gates - you'd have access to perhaps 10 gate areas at a time before passing through a Main Gate of no return. Each Main Gate area would also have a town.) Each gate would represent a specific challenge which you would have to overcome to proceed. The magic system would also be an interesting game system, I think. Players would learn new runes as they progressed, and new uses for their old runes (as the old runes would interact with newer runes in different ways.) It would also make a logical fighter/mage system, as players could choose to learn tattoo-based runes that would give them static abilities (strength/speed/health/whatever) or go the mage route with 'temporary' spell-casting runes.

Drocket wrote:Not the four-seperate-worlds part (though those may make a good expansion...), just the Labyrinth. The key thing that I think would be good is that the labyrinth is set up as a series of gates.

Thanks Drocket, I knew I had heard of these books before and saying the labyrinth jogged the old memory. I think ive only read 3 or 4 of them but they weren't too bad