Favorite fantasy author

[rabelais]

Originally posted by Jasper:
Guy Gavriel Kay and Glen Cook were also notably missing, IMHO.

Hear! Hear!

Fionavar was the best ever and The Black Company is still strangely addictive.

(Bring back the Limper!)

Also various Authors named Ian and one with the Last name of Zelazny. And Ursula LeGuin. Duh.

For a certain demographic Rowling might also have been included. Andre Norton anyone?

Oh and technically McCaffrey, though none for me thanks!


Rabe the Increasingly Curmudgeonly and Adverbially Momentous (whew!)

It's really impossible to name them all... who is this Martin everyone has a shrine to?

[Jasper]

I like Guy Kay's historical fantasy best, but definitely agree about The Black Company books -- like the game Myth, only better.

I'd somehow forgot Ursula LeGuin (Earthsea) and Michael Moorcock (Elric), two more of my Favorites! A quick scan over my books also finds Lord Dunsany (King of Elfland's Daughter), Robert Holdstock (Mythago Wood), and Barry Hughart (Bridge of Birds).

I've also a shine for several "graphic novel" authors, notably Neil Gaiman (Sandman, Stardust), Jim Fitzpatrick (Book of Conquests), and Mark Smylie (Artesia).

[Arryn]

Originally posted by Jasper:
I like Guy Kay's historical fantasy best

A quick scan over my books also finds Lord Dunsany (King of Elfland's Daughter), Robert Holdstock (Mythago Wood), and Barry Hughart (Bridge of Birds).

Are these UK authors? Because I've never seen/heard of them before and I'm pretty darn well read.

[Teraswaerto]

Originally posted by Arryn:

quote:

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Originally posted by Jasper:
I like Guy Kay's historical fantasy best

A quick scan over my books also finds Lord Dunsany (King of Elfland's Daughter), Robert Holdstock (Mythago Wood), and Barry Hughart (Bridge of Birds).

Are these UK authors? Because I've never seen/heard of them before and I'm pretty darn well read.

---

If you've never heard of Dunsany, Kay or Holdstock, perhaps you're not quite as well read as you thougth.

[Jasper]

Originally posted by Arryn:
Are these UK authors? Because I've never seen/heard of them before and I'm pretty darn well read.

They might be a bit hard to find... I suggest you try Powell's, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or perhaps the library.

Seriously though, they're well known mainstream authors who's books you'll find in any reasonable sized bookstore, at least as far as I've seen in the US.

[soapbox]
They're just not the standard run of the mill formula fantasy retread that is so common amongst the most "popular" fantasy authors. Jordan? Feist? Eddings? Better fiction exists.
[/soapbox]

[Arryn]

Originally posted by Teraswaerto:
If you've never heard of Dunsany, Kay or Holdstock, perhaps you're not quite as well read as you thougth.

How about a somewhat more useful reply?

Of course I could blame it on the fact that Barnes and Noble's storefront outlets only seem to carry popular authors ...

A quick check of Dunsany with B&N Online shows that his works do not seem to be available in mass-market editions. That's one problem right there. I cannot afford large-format volumes.

Holdstock's Mythago Wood came out in August of Last year and I must have just overlooked it. His other works are long out of print it seems. As are about half of Kay's. Kay's stuff that is still in print does not appear to be normal stock items in the B&N stores. And I don't buy books I cannot thumb through and get a feel for.

By the way, as a personal note, you might want to think twice about recommending books that are hard to get. It's one reason (besides simply forgetting about him) that I didn't recommend a good author like Michael Moorcock. Most of his stuff is out of print. And worse, hard to find used. (Luckily for me, I got his books many years ago when they could still be found, new and/or used.) Ditto for Andre Norton.

[Teraswaerto]

Originally posted by Arryn:

Of course I could blame it on the fact that Barnes and Noble's storefront outlets only seem to carry popular authors ...
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I don't buy books I cannot thumb through and get a feel for.

Totally different from me then. I look at recommendations in different places, and perhaps try to get something by the author from the library, and then order Online based on that. I never buy from bookstores.

By the way, as a personal note, you might want to think twice about recommending books that are hard to get. It's one reason (besides simply forgetting about him) that I didn't recommend a good author like Michael Moorcock.

Why? A good book is a good book even if it's hard to get your hands on. All the more reason to recommend it, since it's less likely that one would pick up the book by accident.