I just recently finished reading the first book in the series and enjoyed it, somewhat. Im just curious what OSC thinks about it.. and anyone else who has read it... IF theres a non mormon who has read it .. what is your take on the series? Thanks
Posted by filmstar (Member # 8115) on :
I read the first two books in The Work and the Glory and couldn't stomach any more. Like most of Gerald Lund's other stuff, they are books I would like to have read, but can't actually stomach reading. The characters/dialogue/plot are all so... Flat. Contrived. Stereotypical. It reads like a romance novel to me. Which is funny because my husband (to whom I've never mentioned how I feel about the books and hasn't read them himself) and I went to see the movie at Christmas and as we came out of the theater he said, "Wow. That was like a Mormon Harlequin romance."
It's a shame, though, because reading historical fiction is a good way for me to learn more about history and I would love to learn all the stuff that's in these books. But when I compare them to stuff like Card's "Saints" (which is brilliant -- maybe my favorite Card book), they just don't measure up.
Posted by docmagik (Member # 1131) on :
I love the series, despite the fact I don't enjoy reading it personally. Any series that gets any group of people who doesn't normally read to get excited and animated about a book deserves a medal for heroism.
Sadly, instead, lots of readers will pooh-pooh it, trying to distinguish it from "real" fiction, and I think that's just sad.
It's either Sci-fi authors pooh-poohing media tie-in books, or it's literay people pooh-poohing popular fiction, or it's people who read children's books pooh-poohing the latest work of one celebrity or another.
The fact is, all of those types of books, while seriously different from the mainstream bulk of the work that the existing fanbase appreciates, still serve as gateway novels to the more complex and satsifying stuff, but the readers need the gateway stuff to get them there.
I'd never have found OSC without Encylopedia Brown, and I'd have never found Encylopedia Brown without comic books.
I'll never compare Donald J Sobol to Orson Scott Card, but I needed them both.
My hat's off to Lund for all he's done.
Posted by docmagik (Member # 1131) on :
Oh, and Filmstar--that wasn't directed at you. You were just saying they didn't work for you, and they don't work for me either.
Posted by just-a-min (Member # 7308) on :
The Work and the Glory was really fun for me because I spent many summers in and around Palmyra, NY. It was true to a setting I knew well. The story was entertaining and thoughtful - Lund could have done a lot worse! Is it great literature? No, but I still like it. I own and have read the whole series. IMO Lund is a good writer but OSC is better. By the way, Living Scriptures' audio tapes of LDS church history were written by OSC. They cover much of the same material, dramatizing according to historical record, without inserting major fictional characters. They are long and bland compared to Saints in which OSC takes fictional charcters that have their own compelling (fictional) history and attitudes and sets them loose in Nauvoo. It's an epic story in one volume but there's no way it can give you the scope and flavor of The Work and the Glory series which is a nine volume work that follows early church history from Palmyra to Fayette to Kirtland to Missouri to Nauvoo to Winter Quarters to the Salt Lake Basin. I'd never bear my testimony about it, but it was a good read.