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Old 14th December 2007, 12:36 AM   #10 (permalink)
pyan
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Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: Cumbria
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Re: Difference between Tolkien and the 'modern Fantasy' authors?

Well, I can tell that you and I are never going to agree on this question, so I'm not going to say much on the subject, because I have the feeling that it would degenerate into an ad hominem argument.... but I really don't see how you can criticise LotR for being too slow and introducing irrelevant details (Like what, by the way? I'd be interested to know which "elements introduced that end up coming to nothing" you refer to are), and then praise WoT for being epic, when it degenerates into a floundering morass of discussion on skirt lengths, braid-pulling and concepts hacked wholesale from just about everything published previously....

Quote:
Books are constantly compared to LotR, but I don't know why.
Possibly because the book is so good that it's used as a yardstick to measure every other heroic fantasy by?
I mean it's been a runaway best seller for over fifty years, consistently tops polls on "Favourite Fantasy Novels", continually gains new readers, young and old, and is one of the few fantasy novels that can be read and re-read with pleasure. If Jordan's writing enjoys the same level of popularity in 2057 as Tolkien's does now, I'll eat my hat.

Last edited by pyan; 14th December 2007 at 12:50 AM.
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