Ultima novels

Quoth Tristan Miller <psychonaut DeleteThis @nothingisreal.com>:
>Samurai wrote:
....
>> Ultima: The Avatar Adventures, FWIW.
>
>Yeah, that's probably it. Written by Caroline Spector, right?

And Rusel DeMaria, yes.

>She any relation to Warren Spector?

His wife, in fact. She's also author of the Earthdawn series; can't
comment on them, since I've never read them, but I'm assuming they're
better as books than The Avatar Adventures.
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Quoth Michael Cecil <macecil.TakeThisOut@comcast.net>:
....
>It was probably difficult to write books featuring "not me, that's the
>hero over there" as the main character. I wondered at the time why she
>didn't just do them with the Avatar and companions.

I'm not knocking Spector's efforts at all -- I quite like the book,
myself. But such an unusual structure, as you rightly say, can lend
some problems to the script.
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On Sat, 04 Mar 2006 21:19:54 -0600, Michael Cecil
<macecil.RemoveThis@comcast.net> wrote:

>On Sun, 05 Mar 2006 01:24:32 +0000, Tristan Miller
><psychonaut.RemoveThis@nothingisreal.com> wrote:
>
>>Greetings.
>>
>>In article <cu1i02h7aj4jjsueel9vev8jctqv73hi21.RemoveThis@4ax.com>, Michael Cecil
>>wrote:
>>>>>> Ultima: The Avatar Adventures, FWIW.
>>>
>>> It was probably difficult to write books featuring "not me, that's the
>>> hero over there" as the main character. I wondered at the time why she
>>> didn't just do them with the Avatar and companions.
>>
>>Refresh my memory: from whose perspective was this book written?
>
>IIRC, it's someone who isn't the Avatar with his friends who aren't the
>Companions, doing a similar adventure.

The first Ultima Avatar Adventure novel/hintbook (by Caroline Spector
and Rusel DeMaria) was written in first-person as if it were the
journal of the Avatar as he adventured through Ultima IV and V.

The second Ultima More Avatar Adventures hintbook (by Caroline Spector
again) is up written as an interview between the Avatar and the author
(I forget who, some character from U7 I believe).

The Ultima novels (Forge of Virtue and the Temper of Wisdom) by Lynn
Abbey were the adventures of several young men and women set just
prior to the adventures of the Avatar in Ultima V. The hero was the
son of a noble, and his companions included a his younger brother, the
town blacksmith, a young mystic who was a ward of the castle, and the
mystics rebellious magician brother. Although Abbey never finished the
series, I believe her intent was for the heroes to be involved with
the forging of the coin that summoned the Avatar to Britannia; in any
event, the novels were an interesting -if not necessarily canon- look
at Shadowlord-torn Britannia through the eyes of some "lesser" folk of
the land.

While the characterizations were not particularly good, I did enjoy
how she made Britannia feel more medieval than in the games, and how
she dealt with some of the difficulties common folk might have living
up to the challenge of the Avatar (the recent Lazarus U5 remake did
something similar, which is probably why I like it so much).
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