84 replies to this topic

[trycksh0t]

He's not bad for a decent story, but he is responsible for some of the greatest technological guffaws in BattleTech.

Such as exploding fusion reactors. Or Aidan claiming he was "using up his weapon energy too quickly" (THAT was a head scratcher).

I'll add to the list as I come up with some others.

[Radgor Ryan]

I don't think much of Stackpole.

My introduction to Battletech was 'Decision at Thunder Rift' and 'Sword and Dagger'. I was 15 at the time when they came out along with Battletech itself. It was good for young readers and these books got me hooked. These weren't by Stackpole

Then I read Stackpole's Warrior Triology and later all his stuff. I devoured it at the time as I was a BT fanatic. I'd say it was passable teenage pulp-fiction. I've re-read it several times since then and realise its really pretty bad. Its contrived to the extreme, and so predictable. Comparing Stackpole to any credible Sci-Fi author is like comparing a 'Mills and Boon' novel to 'Dune' or 'Enders Game'.

The good guys overcome with such ease it makes you want to dry-reach. You almost feel for their opponents and their stupidity. With Stackpole, the outcome isn't really the question. All of this I could forgive in a action novel, except that he can't write action well either. His descriptions are tedious and lack any real tension.

I wish I could say better for the guy, he did plot out most of the timeline of the Inner Sphere in his books, but that's just the truth as I see it. If a friend of mine wanted to borrow my books, I'd warn him about them just the same. If you want to learn some of the characters and history of the Inner Sphere they are good. The younger you are the better.

Edited by Radgor Ryan, 26 June 2012 - 01:00 PM.

[Ko Time]

Ive read all [and still own] of the BT novels. Stackpole is an awesome writer.

[Thorn Blackwell]

I liked Robert Charrette's books the best. The last good book Stackpole wrote was Lost Destiny. The only book I cared for after that was Wolf Pack. All the rest pretty much sucked, and I struggled through a dozen or more before I was sickened by the series as a whole. It did such horrible things to the TT game I will never read another book written about any other era after the earliest days of the clan invasion.

In the early days the authors had enough respect for the game to know what it allowed, and didn't use so much creative license. Once the game was being affected by the books I turned against the books at first and then against the game I loved. I have all the early books for the game, but none of the latter stuff which I detest. I believe TRO 3055 was one of the last game books I bought back then. I have everything up to then. I heard about the unseen thing later ... most of you don't even know the game was originally called Battledroids.

EDIT: Have all the TROs to 3060, everything after I ignored.

Edited by Thorn Blackwell, 26 June 2012 - 01:33 PM.

[Arson]

Big fan of Stackpole. Although really I only think his BT novels are okay. But I think he is a tremendous fantasy writer. In particular, I am a huge fan of The Dark Glory War and the Dragoncrown Cycle as well as the Age of Discovery series. His world building for fantasy settings is top notch.

[Fiachdubh]

I really love his books in the BT and Star Wars universes, there is a reason he gets to write such important arc books in both settings.
The only drawback I could mention, if it even is one at that, is that all his lead characters tend to be the same person whether Corran Horn/Luke Skywalker flying an X-Wing or Victor Davion/Kai Allard Liao in a battlemech.
I am not familiar with any of his non BT/Star Wars work unfortunatly.

Edited by Fiachdubh, 26 June 2012 - 02:01 PM.

[Christofori]

My two cents... He's the only reason I got in to the books in the first place. He's the only person I think that could actually put life back in that Universe. It seems to overally manufactured now. Can't hardly stand to read the new novels.

[Karyudo ds]

Radgor Ryan, on 26 June 2012 - 12:59 PM, said:

The good guys overcome with such ease it makes you want to dry-reach. You almost feel for their opponents and their stupidity. With Stackpole, the outcome isn't really the question. All of this I could forgive in a action novel, except that he can't write action well either. His descriptions are tedious and lack any real tension.

I think the only particular book of his I remember reading specifically was the first Dark Age book and this basically described it. The character was the ultimate super spy that no matter how bad the situation, was the most awesome guy ever. Then again I can't stand Burn Notice either. Don't think I've read his other novels though, so not much of an opinion here.

[Aegic]

Thanks for all the awesome feedback and for keeping things constructive and civil. I was going to try and e-mail the link to this thread here to Mr. Stackpole however he is writing and in writer mode with no way to contact him available.

I hope he gets a chance to see this so he knows his loyal fans are still out there!

[William Chase Davion]

I enjoyed any of the Battletech or Star Wars books I've read by him.

[Threat Doc]

I'm not going to read everything here, just comment... Michael Stackpole, the White Buffalo, is my favorite author of all time; I have no other that I read with regularity, and I find most novels, regardless of genre, lacking, at best. It took me approximately six weeks to read all three of the Blood of Kerensky Trilogy novels, recently, I decided to pick up the Hobbit immediately after that, and I've already gone six weeks and am only about two-thirds of the way through that novel.

Unless it has BattleTech somewhere on the cover, EVERYTHING else I try to read I find to be written by a monkey with a typewriter; little imagination, little inter-weaving of political and personal intrigue, rather than just the right amount of politics, personal interaction, combat, and just really well-written stories.

Aegic, on 26 June 2012 - 08:41 AM, said:

Whether or not something is likely does not mean it is impossible and unlikely happenings TO ME make for much more interesting reading as long as it is not every chapter.

Are you speaking generally with regard to the novels, or has something happened that I've not heard about.

Rixx, on 26 June 2012 - 09:14 AM, said:

I think Stackpole gets a bad name for 3 reasons.

B. He's involved with the introduction of the clans. The pre-clan BT fans tended to hate the clans. They were vested in the Inner Sphere politics and saw the Clans as a really shallow attempt to revitalize the BT universe.

I could definitely agree with this; I am a pre-Clan BT fan, and I utterly hate them to this day, but Stackpole at least worked to somewhat Humanize them, to give them a background and a story, and that is the ONLY reason I have been able to remotely accept the Clans, otherwise I would have stopped playing in '96, and FASA, FanPro, Catalyst, or PGI would never see my money again. Indeed, I dare say that, without Stackpole -not solely, but mostly-, we would not be having this conversation, and BattleTech would be a distant memory.

Quote

C. He's involved with the introduction of the Dark Age series. The Dark Age timeline, mechs, books, and game are not as good overall as the pre-dark age stuff, but they are still solid and have kept the universe alive and growing. Still though, the purists and long term fans saw the DA stuff as an abomination...and Stackpoles name was on the first novel.

Age of Destruction, Dark Age, whatever you want to call it is, indeed, an abomination, and even Stackpole's books have not been able to get me involved with it. I tried playing it for about the first year, maybe a little more, and my sons and I have tried playing the game a couple of times, followed by BattleTech, and there wasn't even a contest... BattleTech won.

My real problem with Dark Age begins with the stupid Jihad; that was the most ignorant move ever made in the short history of the BattleTech universe. It was trite in writing and real-world parallel, and it allowed for a single man -supposedly with amazing charisma- to convince the leaders of the Inner Sphere, who had been at war with one-another for four-hundred years, family hatreds that make the Hatfield's and McCoy's feud look like a bad joke, to lay down their arms, sing Kumbaya around a camp fire, and go destroy even respected House and Mercenary units, who knew warfare in such a way that these types of defeats were ignorant in scope... that's a run-on sentence, and I apologize. Dark Age is NOT BattleTech, any more than Mercs-4 is BattleTech -and just because Microsoft slapped an Official BattleTech Product logo on the box for that game does NOT mean it is BattleTech; M$ wouldn't know BattleTech if it bit them in the hiney-, and it is just as much crap, and whomever came up with the Jihad, the whole Devlin Stone idea, and everything leading up to Dark Age, should be well-ashamed of themselves for writing them.

Edited by Kay Wolf, 27 June 2012 - 05:18 AM.

[DerMaulwurf]

If I hadn't stumbled over Stackpole's novels, I'd probably never started with Battletech. But as I've gotten older I came to see that his writing just isn't good.

I'm all for nostalgia and his books will keep their places in my bookshelf, but I'm not tempted to read them again.

[Aegic]

Kay Wolf, on 27 June 2012 - 05:16 AM, said:

Are you speaking generally with regard to the novels, or has something happened that I've not heard about.

Just generally speaking.

If a book (or movie for that matter) never has something unbelievable/unlikely happen I just don't find it interesting.

For example ***Minor Spoilers ahead***

-A Mechwarrior besting multiple Elementals in hand to hand combat.
-A veteran mechwarrior missing a crippled opponent at point blank range and then calling a draw (Morgan Kells phantom ability?).
-A Khan being made from a freeborn whelp.

These are just a few examples of things I enjoyed and others call foul. "Oh that would never happen" "Oh thats BS"

They want
-A Mechwarrior being slaughtered by an elemental in hand to hand combat
-A veteran mechwarrior demolishing a crippled opponent at point blank range.
-A Freeborn whelp dying in servitude.

I dont read fiction to get depressed, I read it for fun and to enjoy the universe.

[Rush Maguin]

Stackpole was a decent enough writer for Battletech. There are stretches of his writing that aren't that great - he can get too stuck in flaunting his technical knowledge of something, for example - but he was the lead writer for Battletech for a reason. Additionally, a good chunk of the jihad was already planned out (as well as the FedCom Civil War) several years in advance; Stackpole undoubtedly had input on what was going to happen and how. If anything, Wizkids dropped the ball, giving us the ending of the story before we could really sink or teeth into it. Seeing Catalyst going through the jihad from a more first person perspective has been far more gratifying than anything Wizkids put out for it.

I will say this; everyone I know who was into Stackpole's work has ended up intensely disliking him. He's apparently got quite the ego going. I know a die hard Stackpole who met him at Phoenix Comicon a year or so back and was so disillusioned with how the Stack carried himself that after going on about it on his ride home, he dropped his books into a box in a closet and hasn't said a word about the man since. Big turnaround.

[Voridan Atreides]

I have not read any of his battle tech books but I'm pretty sure he wrote some star wars books (x-wing) and they were pretty good.

[Haakon Valravn]

No.

Because he's an arrogant ****, who thinks he is the Leonardo da Vinci of sci-fi literature, but is no better than Ned Buntline.

I would not mind it if he was simply another mediocre writer. I would not mind it his ego were somewhat smaller than a large moon. I would not mind it if Mason Dunne were a different character than Phelan Kell were a different character from Corran Horn were a different character from Victor Steiner-Davion. But they're not: They are the exact same characters, with the exact same relationships with the exact same people, from their strong-damsels-in-distress to their villains (who are all the same baffoonishly cartoonish characters).

I enjoyed Stackpole's books when I was younger. I recently picked up Lethal Heritage to psyche myself up for MWO, but had to put the book down after five pages, because it was just so painful to read. Someone said that he's a good writer for a teenager to read his book and, were it not for JK Rowling, et al., I would agree.

But, I suppose that the poll proves the age-old adige: No one ever lost money underestimating the taste of the American people.

[Aegic]

If you really don't like it that's okay!

However please don't resort to passive aggressively flame people who do enjoy his writing. I understand your POV and can respect why you feel the way you do, we just have different tastes is all.

Just remember that we all have different opinions on just about everything.

[Rush Maguin]

I admit, his writing isn't as great to me as it was when I was 16. He's better than some hacks out there (like the two clowns who destroyed the Dune saga - less I say about that the better, I can rant for hours, but I literally have seen sixth graders that can out-write them). But the egomania is too hard to swallow. WIthout the lot of us who bought this stuff to start with, he'd be another shift manager at Circle K. The truth is, he needs all of us more than we need him.

[daniel castelo]

He's great.

I've read three or four of his books.

"I, Jedi" I've read twice.. Great writer.

[Creed Buhallin]

I loved him when I was younger, but find his style doesn't hold up that well for me any more. His characters tend to be superheroic, and his style of exposition-heavy just makes me grind my teeth now. I swear it felt like no character could do anything without mentally running down the entire history of what they were seeing/dealing with in their head, and it only got worse when he tried to turn it into a conversation. Having finished Leviathan Wakes just before I went back to the Blood of Kerensky probably didn't help I loved his X-Wing books too, although I'm kinda afraid to pick them up again, just like I quickly switch the channel whenever I run across an original Transformers episode. Some things are better left to the fuzzy happiness of nostalgia.

He's still the iconic writer of the BattleTech universe to me, though.