the Dept of Science said:
I don't think I can really work with your restriction of under 300 pages, that's just nuts. I
can however recommend an excellent 7-book series by authors Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman called
The Death Gate Cycle.
Unlike suggestions such as the Wheel of Time novels, where 'helpful' posters have just recommended the longest series in the history of the world to you (only slightly joking), the Death Gate Cycle is simply a 4-book cycle and 3 closing novels - the premise of the universe being that the world (which is actually
our world, in the distant future) has been radically altered by an ancient battle between two ideologically opposed races of demigods, the Patryns and the Sartans, which saw the Patryns cast down and imprisoned in the Labyrinth and the world itself destroyed, with 4 new worlds created from the ashes; the first 4 books [small](
Dragon Wing, Elven Star, Fire Sea, and
Serpent Mage)[/small] explore each of those sundered worlds while the closing trilogy [small](
Hand of Chaos, Into the Labyrinth, and The Seventh Gate)[/small] brings together characters and events set in motion during those initial volumes.
Far from chronicling the tale of an improbably named hero in his quest against ultimate evil, the Death Gate novels depict the trials and travails of the 'normal' races (elves, dwarves, humans) in each of the sundered realms, isolated from the other worlds and abandoned by their would be 'caretakers' the Sartan for unknown reasons, and how the coming of the man with the bandaged hands changes the course of events in each world. The protagonist Haplo you see is one of the few Patryns to have escaped their hellish prison world of the Labyrinth, and he is visiting each of the sundered worlds as a prelude to invasion - sent by the Lord of the Patryns to act as his spy and agent of chaos, reconnoitering and doing what he can to destabilize each world without forewarning their ancient enemies that they have freed themselves.
Naturally it becomes more complicated then that eventually (best laid plans and all), but right from the beginning you know you're reading something atypical - the "main character"[footnote]Haplo, while the overall protagonist and "main character" of the series, remains a largely secondary character at first about which not much is revealed, and he doesn't tend to enter the picture until events are already well in motion. The individual books in the initial cycle all tend to start in medias res you see.[/footnote] of the first novel
Dragon Wing is an assassin, driven only by self-interest and embroiled against his wishes in what he thinks is a political coup (if only it were that simple). The "heroes" of the Death Gate books are deeply flawed, whether they're selfish dilettantes, amoral murderers, or bumbling cowards, and the villains (or at least most of them) are the very best sort - the kind you can empathize with and understand, men who do evil not because
they're so evil oh ho! but for entirely human reasons that we the readers will probably
agree with; none of them are really the bad guy (except Sinistrad of course, but he's another sort of monster entirely and interesting for other reasons).
And then there's Haplo, who, as the vanguard of an army of prideful and bitter demigods cast down because they were basically 'the bad guys' in the first place, goes about subtly igniting world wars for no other reason than to make a world easier to conquer later - this is the fellow you're supposed to be rooting for, and it's a testament to how well written the story is that you actually
will be, even if you can't bring yourself to like him. It makes his subsequent character growth (in response to the things he sees that shake the very foundations of his carefully ordered worldview) just that much more compelling when you consider his starting point.
There are very few flat characters running around the pages of the Death Gate novels, and I cannot recommend them highly enough because of that.
