Doc's clothing stays the same, but everyone's does change from time to time. Krysty still has her bearskin coat and boots--though she'll get rid of them one of these days, I assume--Jak still has his camo jacket and Ryan still has his scarf with the weighed ends. J.B. has his leather jacket. They all change underwear, have new trousers, shirts, jumpsuits--whatever. So please stop flogging this dead horse. Unless you are referring to the hat, leather jacket, blue boots, scarf, camo jacket...

Biggest peeves I have:

Poor quality of writing since some point around the mid 40's in a majority of the books.

Lack of continuity.

Re-characterisation of the main characters from book to book depending on the authors whims.

Lack of story direction and development.

Posted By )3az )3aziah on 25 May 2010 03:08 PM
Biggest peeves I have:

Poor quality of writing since some point around the mid 40's in a majority of the books.

Lack of continuity.

Re-characterisation of the main characters from book to book depending on the authors whims.

Lack of story direction and development.

A more eloquent way of what I was essentialy trying to say.
In other words,I agree sir!

Posted By Wordsmith-reprise on 25 May 2010 07:44 AM 
 So please stop flogging this dead horse. Unless you are referring to the hat, leather jacket, blue boots, scarf, camo jacket...

Hahaha,I assume you are teasing me.
Since I just joined here there is no such thing as "flogging a Dead Horse".LOL.
Btw,Thanks for explaining that they do seldom change their clothes up a bit.
It's just in every book I read it seems they never change anything.
Then again I have missed alot of the books in last 10 years.

I think I am most peeved that all the time they spend travelling around and Dean and Jak have not aged. Come on how many years have they been travelling and Dean is still 12? Ah well. They even left him at the brody school for 2 years was it and he didn't age. Jak had a family and he is still 16...... Pet peeve indeed. Still love the story. Just my 2 cents.
Dave

My biggest peeves are the lack of an apperent overall goal/plot.

No effort by the characters to even attept to figure out how to use the Mat Trans. All it would take is documenting the settings before you jump. there has to be some sort of pattern to their use.

The author of Dark Emblem, Terry Collins introduced a situation wherein Mildred found a computer that had all of the mat-trans destination codes. She copied it to a CD. This was supposed to be an ongoing plot device.

But with the usual sharp editorial attention to detail and continuity that has made Gold Eagle so reknowned, it was completely forgotten about by the next book.

Nary a mention of it since.

Posted By Wordsmith-reprise on 25 May 2010 07:44 AM
They all change underwear, have new trousers, shirts, jumpsuits--whatever. 

Where the heck would they find new clothes? 

A 200 hundred year old Target?

Mike, some of the redoubts had clothing. Ryan's Bastard--good point. Mark, Mildred lost the CD in one of the books. Convenient, I suppose, but the companions have had their stuff taken from them on numerous occasions.

Posted By Wordsmith-reprise on 01 Jun 2010 05:34 PM 
Mark, Mildred lost the CD in one of the books. Convenient, I suppose, but the companions have had their stuff taken from them on numerous occasions.

"Convenient" wouldn't be my word of choice, but it would still start with a "C".

Posted By Wordsmith-reprise on 01 Jun 2010 05:34 PM
...Mildred lost the CD in one of the books...

Which book was that?

In all fairness I'm only up to #10...but Mildred so far is my biggest problem.

She's just too perfect.

Meh, if I wanted to think a lot, I'd re-read The Road, or pick up something by Octavia Butler (c:

Posted By Q. on 02 Jun 2010 06:28 AM
In all fairness I'm only up to #10...but Mildred so far is my biggest problem.

She's just too perfect.

In what way is she too perfect ?

This a great subject for a thread. For me it's the inconsistent quality in the writing. These days you grab one new DL book and it's great and the next one is outright garbage. I've been reading DL since the late 80's. When I first discovered Graphic Audio I bought older DL books in that format to catch the books I'd missed while driving to work. Now I tend to buy them in audio form because I don't have as much time to read as I'd like and I don't want to waste my reading time on a bad novel. I can burn off a bad audio DL while commuting. How sad is that ?

Inconsistent quality indeed.

The reason the series boomed was because it was very consistent because LJ (and the notable first 3/4 authors after) was hammering them out as quality works instead of todays newbie to the books author junk to make Gold Eagle some fast cash.
Makes me want to weep for the loss of Laurence James.

Posted By )3az )3aziah on 02 Jun 2010 02:10 PM

Posted By Q. on 02 Jun 2010 06:28 AM
In all fairness I'm only up to #10...but Mildred so far is my biggest problem.

She's just too perfect.

In what way is she too perfect ?

In what way is she *not*? Doctor, Olympic sharpshooter, perfectly healthy... When I got to the part where they found her my jaw just dropped. It was pretty much a "you got to be kidding me" moment. Again, there are a lot of other things I could be reading if I wanted in depth flawed realistic characters...I read Deathlands because they're fun little romps. Mildred was just too much for me though.

My biggest pet peeve is people saying Outlanders is better than Deathlands. Which it is not.

Everyone has his or her favorite, and they both bring something different to the party.

Posted By Millennial Man on 04 Jun 2010 12:28 AM
My biggest pet peeve is people saying Outlanders is better than Deathlands. Which it is not.

Please don't try to start another flame war over which series is better than the other.

Both series are now in the same boat :

Both had a good author at the helm
Both lost that author and had them replaced with multiple writers which resulted in lost continuity between books and a wide range of writing quality.

So I would say that both series are now as poor as each other making your comment pointless.

I agree with )3az)3aziah that it is not prudent to start a war over which is better,but in all fairness I don't think Millenial Man was trying to do that.

There does seem to be a bit of a slightly more fanatical devotion to one title over the other and DL only fans do tend to get flamed if they say anything negative about OL while the OL fans seem to trash DL w/impunity on (occasion)

I like both  titles,one more than the other (will not say which one) but the British Bloke is right that both are suffering the same fate.

They started off w/solid writing and a direction w/excellent authors (original creators) and now both are written by less talented authors by far and the books are nowhere near as exciting to read as they originally were.

What should be done is that whoever writes Deathlands should go back reading the old books. This is to see what put Deathlands on the map. If that means writing a different take on the series so be it.
Granted the book is supposed to be fiction and I really don't need to read about how many times they change their underwear. Weapons well could be changed but at this stage why. Do we want to Change Kane weapons I think not. In every book of fiction there will be something that ticks someone off. That is the nature of the beast.
Now I read posts about Harelquin and how they are interested in profits and not the series. Has anyone meaning authors or others talked to the CEO of the company only. So far its seems not to my eyes.
Now on a personnel level do I mind if charcter acts differently then what a previous book showed him to do the opposite action. No, because in real life everyone does that. It just have to have a good story.

Posted By Millennial Man on 06 Jun 2010 12:04 PM
What should be done is that whoever writes Deathlands should go back reading the old books.

I put this to one of the DL writers a while back (no names here but it sounds like Potato!) and get a terse reply back that he wasn't paid to read old books and if he wasn't paid for it he wasn't going to do it...

So research to allow him to do something he IS getting paid for doesn't fall under the aegis of the paycheck?

Go figure...

Posted By Millennial Man on 06 Jun 2010 12:04 PM

Now I read posts about Harelquin and how they are interested in profits and not the series. Has anyone meaning authors or others talked to the CEO of the company only. So far its seems not to my eyes.

MM,
If you think the "CEO" of Harlequin is going to talk to a GE author about the profit versus quality issues in DL, you don't understand the hierarchy/pecking order of the corporation. GE as a whole is small potatoes compared to the romance divisions; GE authors and DL are skin blemishes on small potatoes.
AP

Reading all 33 of the first books by LJ should be mandatory work for any new author as research to write any new DL book.
They are getting paid to write a great mans legacy and their laziness is shitting on all true DL fans and tarnishing the memory of LJ as well.

I have never had any pair of foot wear or article of clothing last more than 4 years and I'm not running around post-apocalyptic Earth. They must have some pretty bad foot fungus because I can't sail a 3 month trip without having to buy Tinactin.

You must have missed the part where they're constantly swapping out clothing in redoubts. I, personally, have had blue jeans last for 5-6 years at least; I once had a pair of sneakers last for 7 before I wore the treads off them (I figure I ran close to a thousand miles in them - 2-3 miles a day, 5 days a week, in the Army).

Combat boots are sturdy and made to last (though they've changed those out too), and Krysty's had her cowboy boots resoled a few times.

Posted By Kerrick on 10 Nov 2010 11:23 AM
You must have missed the part where they're constantly swapping out clothing in redoubts....

I can't remember the last book the group started in a redoubt and actually searched it -that was quite some time ago though.

You have to remember that even a new pair of jeans to them are already almost 100 years old off the shelf !

Boots too.

AMEN, MILLENNIAL MAN! YOU ARE THE MAN WITH THAT RESPONSE.  THANK YOU!

I haven't missed any part. I compared the fact that I wear out my clothes usually within 4 years and I have an active life. Their lives are far more adventurous and active. The books never really provide an accurate passage of time from book to book. It's been 25 years (approx) since I read the first book and everyone remains ageless. But that's another annoyance.
No matter how many times you resole your boots, fungus still happens. Unless the radiation has done away with athletes foot.
I was trying to make a funny. Guess it got lost in translation.

I don't have one, I love death lands grew up reading them, have read them all so has my brother and father and now my brother in-law is hooked on them. It's just fiction.  

I agree with the reduced quality. i'll never forget being excited to read the next book because the previous one ended (Dectra Chain?) with a boat Captain/Pirate telling Doc he'd say hello to Emily for him (or something similar) but it was never talked about again. That has happened A LOT. I went to Iraq with a guy who writes for other similar titles and he said that 1) The writers are just doing it for a paycheck and so don't care.
2) GE would not allow them to mess with the canon (adding to or deleting from the known Deathlands universe.)
3) It's pulp fiction and nobody should care that much.
Gotta say, as someone who's bought EVERY book, didn't really like those comments very much. Maybe if GE could be convinced they would make more doing doing it the right way we could see better quality.

malacoda I completely agree with you, come on guys/gals although the later books aren't as good as the early ones they are still good books even with the inconsistencies, It is Fiction so we cannot expect every little detail to be true to life, even in real life people change over the course of time including their personalities, their are many consistencies in the books along with the inconsistencies.  I haver personally read every book to date and listened to every audio book of it to date and I have read alot of the outlanders books and IMO they are good books too.  I have my favorite books but IMO all of the deathlands books are good and I dislike none of them.