So, when it comes to fantasy novels I am always asked: “Who is your favourite author?” I guess it is generally by fantasy fans looking for that ‘ultimate’ novel and that single best piece of work. They ask ‘me’ I presume because I’ve read quite a few books in the genre over the years and people expect me to be able to say: “Why Mr X writes the very best fantasy.”
In fact though I always answer by asking: “Well what in your opinion makes a good book?” I ask this because the original question is far too difficult to answer on it’s own. I mean “Who is the most talented writer in Fantasy?” is similar to saying “Who is the most talented football player/soccer player.” How do you judge them? You could look at their dribbling ability, passing ability, ability to score goals, ability to stop goals, their speed, their endurance and much more besides.
Similarly with fantasy authors there is a lot you need to consider before answering the question of who is best. Mostly importantly though, before you even begin to try you need to consider the question “What makes a good writer?”
- Is a good writer someone who can keep you gripped to a book through beautiful use of prose?
- Is a good writer someone who creates a world so real you can almost see / feel it?
- Is a good writer someone who can make you emotionally respond to their story?
- Is a good writer someone who creates a story so wonderful you literally wish you were there?
It’s a tough one and you have a lot to consider before you answer it.
Certainly if I was to be asked each of the above in the following fashion:
- Which writer can keep you gripped to a book through beautiful use of prose?
- Which writer creates a world so real you can almost see / feel it?
- Which writer can make you emotionally respond to their story?
- Which writer creates a story so wonderful you literally wish you were there?
I’d have four different answers (the names of four different people).
I have been asked though for my ‘favourite’ author and I doubt my uneducated fantasy friends would appriciate a long winded answer. Therefore there is something more we need to consider here. Firstly, what in my mind makes an author great? Is it beautiful description, is it evoking emotional response, is it realism, is in a unique story?
I would need to pick my single most important factor of what makes an author talented and which author is best at this and then consider how important the other elements are and how that authors work grade in these. Maybe they are AMAZING at creating a story but completely suck at involving me emotionally. Perhaps they are great at writing and evoking emotions but the story just sucks. Worst of all though is when a writer has a good story and good characters but they just can’t write. It’s sad, but it happens.
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Interlude
Wanna give it a shot? Who is your favourite author and why?
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My Attempt
So…I need to pick an author that caters to my needs and is a ‘best fit’ for my demands of a book. It’s not an easy thing to do!
To start with I broke down the questions and answered them individually.
For me Patrick Rothfuss or Mark Lawrence are probably the most talented writers in terms of ‘skill’. I don’t think that it is any coincidence that both have strong roots in poetry. Rothfuss is of course himself an English lecturer (says a lot!).
Sanderson is probably the best writer in terms of world building and creating that world you can literally imagine living within. He lacks though in being able to get me to react emotionally to his work. His writing is good, but there is almost a young adult feeling to it, which turns me off it slightly. I feel almost condescended at times.
Best story writers? Brett is very good. G.R.R. Martin is probably the Godfather here though. He weaves stories together seamlessly. I think Brett lacks slightly in his ability to write emotion and G.R.R. Martin perhaps in his world building, slightly. Maybe because G.R.R. Martin’s world is just so big, I lose track of how each place is meant to appear. I actually think Brett’s writing skill in terms of prose is better than Martin’s – but that is MY opinion and I know the majority will disagree there. I like shorter, snappier, more involved writing and Brett offers that.
Brent Weeks writes emotion very well. Anyone who has read ‘Night Angel Trilogy’ would probably have felt fear…terror even, frustration and love. It’s all there. Rothfuss is actually relatively good at emotion although he has the (unfair?) advantage in this debate as he does his writing predominately in first person.
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So there we have already a list of six authors, all who have claim to being ‘the best’ (in my opinion obviously). All write in very different styles and all have their strengths and weaknesses as I have briefly tried to identify. I guess to find my favourite I need to decide what is most important to me.
I always enjoy a great story and being immersed in a World that feels real. Sanderson and Brett especially do this for me. But then I guess I can’t live without some emotion. Weeks’ work really works well for me. I felt as though I knew Kylar and Durzo in his works. As a literature student I get frustrated with poor writing so reading the beautiful work of Lawrence or Rothfuss is really a great experience for me. You can see now that my original question of ‘who is the most talented fantasy author’ completely hinges on what I grade as being the most worthy talent and simply put this is unfair to both the person asking the question and the author themselves.
By saying I think Brett is the most talented writer because of his ability to create a story, for example, I am saying that I discard the pure beauty of Rothfuss’ or Lawrence’s work. And that Sanderson’s ability to create a world I could practically live in is not as good as having a great story. I am writing off Weeks’ accomplishments of having created characters that I can literally see in my mind as living, breathing people that have almost made me cry at times. How could I do that?
At the end of the day, the reason we all argue and debate about who is the best author and our opinion on what is the best novel in the universe is down to the fact we are all different. We all want something different from a novel. Be it enjoyment of an art, an escape from reality, the ability to relate to a character, an emotional response, a story. There may also be things that you don’t want from a novel. You have your own equation in your mind to judge and author and that equation is is unique. The way you weigh up one element of a writer’s work and balance it against another aspect is your own. Others may have a similar equation, but no one will have the same. Your judgement is yours.
In order for you to take something away from this article I am going to ask you a question: “Who is the most talented Fantasy Author?” I am now going pause, listen to your answer, take a breath and ask you: “Why?” By answering the ‘why’ you should be able to work out a big part of that unique equation locked within your mind that decides ‘what’ makes an author great for you and why perhaps you didn’t enjoy authors that your friends recommended. Once you have done it, come give us your opinions in the forum:
http://fantasy-faction.com/forum/fantasy-book-discussion/who-is-the-most-talented-fantasy-writer/
Anyway… I will conclude this article now and answer my original question. The most talented author in Fantasy Literature is… [word count expired]
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Geoff Matthews
Julia Kitvaria Sarene
This was a practice for an English Literature essay I am writing so feedback is very much appreciated 🙂
It actually developed into a forum topic and then back into an essay, so was quite an interesting process! 😛
I tend to favor characters and prose over world building. With that in mind, Patrick Rothfuss is perhaps my favorite writer. His skill with the written word is amazing. I also think he is creative in his style by turning old tropes on their head. So even though the Kingkiller trilogy is pretty straightforward he still manages to keep things fresh.
A close second is Brent Weeks because he is such a great character writer. I love how he takes the typical 2D fantasy stereotype character and over time turns them into a 3D character with so much texture; all through dialog.
I really want to like Brandon Sanderson. You are right in the sense that he is an unparalleled world builder. My problem with him is that he is such a poor character builder. You find this most readily in the dull flat dialog and the lack of character complexity. Too many of his characters see the world in terms of black and white. So as much as I want to like his books, the characters always sour what is otherwise a great read.
Completely agree with you – you seem to share my views… It’s good to see 🙂
Sanderson is certainly a master at a lot of things but characters is one that he is lacking, even (I hate to say it) telling a story is questionable… SFX said of ‘Way of the Kings’ that it was 400 pages too long and perhaps even certain characters could have been left out / minimised. I think Mistborn too… the ending was so rushed when the book seemed to take so, so long to build up.
*SPOILERS* when ‘x’ was killed I just thought… No… not this simply please? but ‘x’ was gone and that was it. By ‘x’ I mean the nemesis ‘x’… but could also mean the good ‘x’.
I still love his book though, just because of the world really, lol… I will read the rest of the series 🙂
This is a question that I don’t think I am capable of answering. Like you outlined above, there are certain aspects of a novel that some authors do much better than others.
In my limited experience (Less than 75 Fantasy Novels), Brandon Sanderson builds an incredible world but lacks the ability to make me emotionally attached to his characters. Robin Hobb, on the other hand, creates a strong emotional bond with her characters but her world doesn’t strike me as visually rich. Joe Abercrombie writes fantastic dialog but his magic system is uneventful.
The list goes on and on. I have had the pleasure of reading some excellent fantasy, but each author has their own strengths and weaknesses. These attributes are going to determine who “writes the best fantasy” in your eyes. For my taste, as of late, I can’t get enough Joe Abercrombie. If you would have asked me this same question six months ago, I would have responded that Robin Hobb was my favorite author.
As my experience grows, I find that I have more of an appreciation for certain aspects of the story than I did in the past. I imagine this will continue to be the case as I read more and more. Like you said above, giving a single author the title of “Best Fantasy Author” is an impossible task. As they say, “different strokes for different folks”.
Your article’s given me a lot to think about regarding that question. Excellent article!
It’s great to see so many talented writers posting for this site, especially the evil overlord who brought us all together.
Everyone is doing a great job 🙂
My thoughts
Prose: Patrick Rothfuss or GRRM
Characters: Abercrombie or GRRM or Scott Lynch
Plotting: GRRM or perhaps Scott Lynch
Magic: Sanderson or GRRM
Battles: Abercrombie
I’m going to be the outlier on Weeks. I hate to say it. You all have permission to throw things at me. I sort of felt like all his characters sounded the same to me. I didn’t object to the content or anything. I just couldn’t really care about his characters very much except in kind of an overarching, “gee, this people have really crappy lives, how sad for them” kind of way.
But–I think this speaks to the subjective nature of this whole question. Anytime you say “who’s the best” at anything in the arts, you’re going to get as many different answers as respondents. It’s not like we can look at a record-setting 400-meter dash and say, “oh, that guy’s the best.” 🙂
Funny, because on Tor.com a few days ago, there was a short excerpt from Rothfuss’ latest, and the responses to it were quite varied–everything from, “I know just what that’s like” to “I loved it! Brilliant!” to “I thought that sucked.” So there you go…
That said… I have a lot of favorites, but I don’t think I could ever come down as one “best.” I mean, I still love Eddings. And I love Lawhead (more historical fantasy, but still, in the same section), Lewis, Martin, Roberson, LeGuin (her science fiction and her fantasy), and on and on. And there are folks I’ll read when I’m in the right mood, and folks I’ll probably never try again. It just… depends… 🙂
So I have no answer. But I thought your essay was very well-written!
Amy
I didn’t like the first book in the night angel trilogy for a different reason. I felt that were a bunch of climaxes and a bunch of resolutions that let to further climaxes. There were a bunch of times I felt the book was going to end and then it kept going. He’s a fantastic author but something felt off for some reason in the first book for me.
I’m not surprised that Rothfuss’s most recent exerpt got a wide range of reviews, but I for one enjoyed it immensely. Maybe it’s just because I love Rothfuss himself.
I enjoyed it, too. I was surprised that a few people were quite vehement in their dislike. But it made me want to read more…
I haven’t read “The Name of the Wind” yet. It’s on my ever-growing TBR list… 🙂
And I agree with you on the climaxes in that first book, too. Honestly, I got about 75% through it and then just felt like I couldn’t muster the energy to finish. Weird, huh? I also sort of thought it all felt like backstory and exposition that could have been condensed and sprinkled into one of the many plots that was going on. I didn’t mind so much reading about Kylar’s youth, and I get that it explained a lot, but I just thought it could have been summed up and saved us a couple of hundred pages….
Like I said… People should feel free to throw things. One of these days maybe I’ll give it a go again and finish the trilogy.
You’re not the only outlier on Weeks. I completely fail to see what everyone else sees in him. I have absolutely no problem with anyone who enjoys his work but it would never occur to me to list him in a discussion of the best writers in the field.
I find it interesting that all the people being cited (save Martin) have landed in the field within the last ten years (and most within the last five). I think there are excellent writers from decades ago who stand toe to toe with these people, if not surpass them to some degree.
That isn’t to say these folks aren’t bang-on, too, but I have to wonder why so much of what I read on the web (in general) regarding fantasy authors and books is all so…current. Is it a generational thing (are we not reading the older writers; or, alternately, are younger readers not finding them); an availability issue (we can’t find them in print/e-book); a “buzz” thing (they aren’t on the latest top-seller lists, so no one is reading them); or something else?
Understand, I’m not condemning anyone’s tastes or opinions, but I find it interesting that in the last few months, I keep seeing the same names on the various “Best Ever” lists, and many of them are either a) relatively recent, or b) classic monoliths in the field. without much in between. Are we lacking depth in our reading, or is it merely that writers are so much better now? Or is it simply a matter of so many titles coming out that there isn’t any real reason to dig back into the genre’s archives?
I don’t have any answers, mind you, but it’s a trend I find both interesting and a bit troubling, if for no other reason than I worry a great number of excellent writers and books will be rolled under by the tide of “Now.”
I also find this trend curious as well. However, I think that with new technologies people tend to need those fast starts nowadays, and today’s writers seem to try harder to accomplish these kinds of beginnings.
That plus the fact that there is a trend towards darker, greyer, grittier writing gives contemporary authors a bit of an advantage.
I’m sure there’s great stuff out there that I haven’t read/discovered, but it’s much easier to find the new books on the shelves than a forgotten classic that is currently out of print.
I think Mr Hulick needs to educate us on some of the older Fantasy 😉 It’s probably a combination of everything you mentioned, although the big one for me would simply be that they are out of the publishers eye and therefore out of our eye. Without heavy marketing these days, there are so many books in Fantasy literature it is hard to find them!!!
I feel now as if I have missed out on stuff =( Let’s have some >10 year suggestions to read in March whilst they wait for your book in april 😉
Hmm. I half-expected something like this. Well, stick your foot out and it stands a chance of getting run over, I suppose.
Alright, let me get home later and peruse my shelves to make sure I don’t miss anything. I’ll post some thoughts later today or tomorrow. 🙂
Hmm, let’s see. In no particular order: Stephen R. Donaldson. Gene Wolfe. Roger Zelazny. Steven Brust. Marion Zimmer Bradley. Neil Gaiman. Fritz Leiber. This is a highly subjective opinion, of course, and I don’t mean to be dismissive of anyone else’s thoughts but, to my mind, most of the authors mentioned don’t deserve to be in the same conversation as these guys. Martin arguably does and Rothfuss may one day – with only two books out, I think it’s a bit premature to crown him just yet.
I agree with our Overlord. Please, give us some of your faves!
I didn’t read much fantasy for a long time… Just… Life got in the way, and I was reading a lot of non-fiction for business, and I had four kids… But I find some of the newer trends and authors less stellar than I remember the older ones being. It could be the way you romanticize things you remember from your youth, it could be that I’m a pickier reader now (I am), it could be that I’m just old and grouchy and I don’t like vampires and werewolves… I don’t know. I just know that, aside from Martin and Butcher, I haven’t really been “blown away” by anything in a long while.
Maybe that says more about me than anything else. And again, it’s so subjective… 🙂
Well, clearly I forgot about this thread and my promise to return. Oops.
Okay, to answer the long-forgotten (by me) request, I give you some my favorite authors via the Way-Back machine…
Roger Zelazny: the quality of his prose & story telling is superb, and beyond what a lot of what you see today, IMO. He could be both thoughtful and boisterous in the same story, and genuinely so with both.
Gene Wolfe: What hasn’t been said? His prose is sublime.
Guy Gavriel Kay: Not everyone’s fantasy cup of tea, but his ability to weave story and character, along with is excellent world building, make him a force to be reckoned with.
Ray Bradbury: Hello? Poetry in prose form, here! Grandmaster of SFF in every sense of the word.
Steven Brust: Not the most elegant prose, but fun, fast stories with a great world. Again, world building that put most of the original list given above to shame, IMO.
Neil Gaiman: I can’t believe I have to be the one to add his name to this list. For shame.
Glen Cook: Fun, funny, great stories. And again, great worlds.
Barry Hughart: He only put three books out, IIRC, but years later I still hear other authors talk about the beauty and humor of his work. If other writers can’t stop talking about him, neither should readers.
Ursula K. LeGuin: Earthsea? Redefining the quest story? Anybody?
Robin Hobb: One of the writers I consider more “recent” (thus dating myself). Her Farseer trilogy sets the bar for modern, tense, tight, epic first person fantasy.
Jane Yolen: Just OMG fairy tale retellings (along with a bazillion other stories).
And that’s just off the top of my head. People like Mary Gentle and George Alec Effinger and Sean Stewart and others could go up there too, but I don’t want to go on forever.
Now, to be honest, when I list these people, I am not looking at their sales numbers or popularity: I am looking at their level of craft, of the quality of their stories, of the depth of the worlds and characters. I am looking at writers and storiies that not only entertained me, but stuck with me; stories that I happily savor over and over, not just because they are good reads, but because they are great reads. Writers who do more than just entertain, and whose stories grow with re-reading.
I don’t buy that tastes have changed so much that we need a different kind of book or story to captivate us all of a sudden. That’s an excuse. I can point to any number of works that have stood not only the test of decades, but of centuries, that are still widely read and loved today. To write off our lack of depth as readers because of pacing or narrative voice is an easy out, but not a valid one.
Simply put, it’s easier to grab what’s put in front of you than it is to dig deep into the used book bins or stomp on down to the library to discover the hidden gems. If anything, it’s our current embarrassment of riches in reading choices that are narrowing our collective vision and causing us to think of the latest offerings as “the bestest ever” because we have nothing to compare them to.
Many of the people listed in the initial post are still young writers in the overall scheme of things. They may indeed grow to become walking legends; but I think it’s too early crown most of them Best Ever, especially when so few of us know what “Ever” entails any more (myself iincluded).
Right there with you, between reading the comments here and the replies on the forum. Everybody talks about the same dirty dozen from the last ten years. It doesn’t help that most of the old greats (Zelazny, etc..) have had most of their work go out-of-print, or their successors get less publicity (Brust).
Currently reading Jhereg on a train back from uni (Brust) 😛
I believe there is an easy answer, this would be the “gray perios” between the birth of social media as we know it and the “Old World” (Sad to say it like that, but we aren’t getting any younger) way of communicating.
I’ve delved through the books I have and noticed there is a trend that makes it tough to keep in the flow of things. The prose isn’t like it is now, where it catches your attention and keeps it going.
The evolution of writing for a modern (5 years ago to now and into the future) has changed enough to make people forget about the “gray period” writers. Sure, I love the heck out of Weis and Hickman, but when you’ve read one book, you read most of them (and I am a huge W&H fan).
How many Drizz’t stories do you get before they sort of just start blending?
The writing market is allowing new people to voice their vision, so this period contains a larger voice and varied style. There are so many options that you could almost look back on the period and laugh at how quaint some of the books were.
Mind you, that’s my sweet spot. I haven’t keep up on my reading (video games and all) until recently. I think John Marco and Martin are the best in my book, but they have the same thing going for them. Details, but not variety.
Wow, that really hurt me to say that. Forgive me St. George and John.
And that is supposed to be period, not perios… Got so emotional I worded wrong.
Firstly – The Name of the Wind is on my TBR list (to quote someone above). I have read Martin, Weeks, Brett. Martin actually started it off for me with the Chronicles of the Necromancer series – a bridge to this section of the Sci Fi shelf across from LK Hamilton. It then led me to Weeks and his Night Angel trilogy. For me, the characters possessed a number of characteristics and behaved in ways which fit the outcome of the book, at least in my opinion. I felt he was able to build a world and a system which the second book helped me to further create in my mind. I do remember re-reading the first 2 or so chapters after I finished the first book as I really struggled with his world building and of (then) Azoth’s world (guild rats etc.,)- to me it made no sense at first. I like Brett for his no nonsense writing – to me he is almost the ‘Lee Child’ but of fantasy 🙂
BUT going back 10+ years, I think of Sara Douglas an Australian Author and her Axis series a world of pure fantasy – I have read this series 3 times that I can remember and would like to re-read this given the span of Sci-Fi / Fantasy books I have read since. Her world, her characters, their battles, their families – it is truly amazing.
Eddings of course – I mean The Belgariad was the first fantasy series I truly remember reading and the 2 stand alone books linked to the series Polgara & Belgarath – pure bliss for me. Again, I would like to go back and read this.
I read LOTR series a year before the first movie came out – as a teen I struggled but as an adult, I was thoroughly engrossed in the books which I am sure helped me to appreciate the films far more. Tolkein’s mind – I would like to think it is he who has truly influenced the writing of today and it’s mash of Elves and Goblins and Orcs.
What happens though when you start with a series and you are engrossed, you love it, you recommend it but it just. gets. silly. For me this happened with the Wheel of Time – i stopped at Book 10. Same with LKH’s Anita Blake series – it just changed. Or perhaps I did?
As mentioned in many of the posts above, an author will stick with you and perhaps not with another and for me, I believe this is due to our own experiences and feelings at a time when we read a particular book and what was also happening in our life at that moment – books, like a meal, can linger for good or bad but as we grow and ‘mature’ our tastes also mature and that book you overlooked might now be the future dog eared copy you reluctantly lend to others.
All the authors mentioned are great but personally for me Steven Erikson is immense. The Malazan books are unbeatable.
Perhaps going towards Doug’s point, I don’t see anyone mentioning Gene Wolfe.
For my money the two most talented fantasy writers are GRRM, and Guy Gavriel Kay.
I agree very much with the article saying Sanderson is basically a YA author. And I disagree with many of the posters saying Abercrombie is among the most talented, i think he’s incapable of writing a character that is anything other than a thin caricature of a person.
I’m with my good friend (*ahem*) and new favourite writer, Mr Hullick here. All the writers discussed so far are really modern. No LeGuin, Tolkien, Lewis, Moorcock, Lieber, Zelasny???
There are lots of authors that I love reading, that I get excited about every new release, counting down the days – Rothfuss, Abercrombie, Hulick, Lawrence, Cooper (and they are all fairly recent writers.) But there are only three that I happily keep rereading their books, enjoying them (almost) as much as the first time I read them – Peter Brett, GRRM and David Gemmell. There are technically better writers, authors who build worlds better but those three authors combine all the elements together in a way that works for me more than any other.
For me two authors: Peter Brett – who don’t know him better read his books now. Really. And Andrzej Sapkowski – Polish writer, you may know him for “The Witcher” game which is based on his books. Well, what to say about them. One word comes to my mind – awesome 🙂
I have to say, I’m rather surprised at how little J.R.R. Tolkien has been mentioned here. For me he’s the best fantasy author hands down. Every time I’ve read his books I’ve generally noticed something new and fascinating. There’s just so much detail in his writing, and his love of languages shows through so strongly.
I often find myself comparing authors to the standard that Tolkien has set.
Doug Hullick, plus a few others exploring some older authors really hit the nail on the head here – this article poses an interesting question, but should have had the qualifier ‘in the past ten years’ in the title. Its the equivalent of someone discussing the best British rock band, and then just comparing the Arctic Monkeys, Kasabian, The Libertines etc. Understandable if you are in your late teens/ early 20s and that’s what you have grown to listening to – but make it clear from the start.
Paradise Avenger (Not her real name, but still cool!). She writes mostly awareness stories, and the one book she has published is about slavery, so her stories tend to be violent. I recommend not reading her stories if you hate crying a little. She’s on fan fiction net, and she had one of her stories written about in a blog. Look her up!!! She’s awesome and stands as my role model.