Want to really work on this post for a long time. Possibly rereading all of these. Really understanding in great detail what I like about each.

Favorite writers and why...
Lev Grossman-.. Felt like it is a very realistic examination of the fascination with the Narnia books.... J liked it was like Potter but darker and more realistic characters. Like almost truly realistic characters in a fantasy fiction setting.


Robin Hobb- in Farseer, etc she stays in first person with just Fitz throughout and puts him through hell. Endless injustice and he is affected by it. Permanently. He's not some stoic super hero. He's affected and the reader cares. Meanwhile it's a world full of mystery. The magic is left vague. There is a real feeling of history and realness to the world. Plots are nothing special.

It tantalizes in that you know Verity and Fitz have great Skill abilities/potentials yet you wait and wait and wait for them to actually use them. To finally right past injustices. Fitz's Skill and Wit are both denied him for so long and you wait and wait.

Fitz has a true friend throughout that he can communicate with telepathically. What an escapist dream. Just the two of them through the dark cold nights traveling.

In Liveships we have such pain. The bad guy Kennit, something horrible was done to him as a child. The Mad Ship finally just abandoned, blind. The young boy who's father reads like some ME stereotype. Cutting his own finger off. And the mystery of bringing back dragons. The symbolism of the return of magic to the world. What will happen? What will they be like? The serpents trying to find their memories. (Mystery, etc, page turning).

Mervyn Peake
The characterizations are so detailed and... strange. They stay with you. Though little actually happens and really not a page turner.

Brent Weeks (night angel)
Escapism. To be such a badass. Even actually returning from the dead.
Third person. Starts by showing just how pitiful Azoth is. Shows doesn't tell as he tries to complete a task.
Got so engrossed in the story again forgot I was analyzing it.


Dave Duncan ( A man of his word/a few good men, also the Great Game)
Tough one to summarize. Seriously underrated. Rap has perfect morals and very very slowly turns into the ultimate bad ass. And he holds back from showing what he's capable of.

The guy in the Great Game has the same morals. Great job on the setting.

Wrinkle in Time and the rest of the series
I don't know now. Extreme nostalgia. Didn't really have much to compare to. Still I love these and somehow I picture S. as Meg, which drives me crazy somehow. Hearing about being young and getting home from school and looking in the fridge for a snack and having a liverwurst and cream cheese sandwich. And the rock out back. The sky. The garden. I don't know?? I can't explain.

So Charles is a genius. That's nice. Loved the Swiftly Tilting Planet cover with Charles on the unicorn and demons grabbing for them in the clouds. At Tara in this fateful hour....

Narnia
How I'd love to slip into another world through a closet. Nostalgia.

Tschai
Everything Vancian. Worlds made so complete with so few words. Here they don't believe he's from another world. Religion is used to subjugate man. The most competent man. A typical hero I suppose. And a stoic. Not touched by the hardships that happen to him. One can adopt this attitude IRL. If necessary.

Gene Wolfe
Hard to explain..... A stoic like Vance....

Drizzt
Escapist. Bad ass fighter in a simple easy to understand world. Bad guys are clear. Beat them with your sword fighting. Yet Drizzt is like a real person. Affected by being a good person yet stuck in such a terrible dystopia. Surrounded by Dark Elves.

Also really like Anthony Ryan, Aldous Huxley, Tolkien, Kundera, Robert Tressel, Richard Adams, Christopher Buehlman, Charles Bukowski, Dickens, Leguin, Lovecraft, Murakami, Stapleton, Sheri Tepper, TH White, Paar Lagerkvist....