Young Writers Society

Haha, thanks Sur - ever the diplomat.

Look, I wasn't offended, I was just annoyed. If it's just a case of you not reading enough, not knowing enough about where to go to find good new fantasy, that's fine. But do not attribute your failure to acquire good fantasy on fantasy itself - as you did with your "epic fantasy is dead" comment.

Steven Erikson is the greatest epic fantasist alive, well, greatest fantasist ever in my opinion. Try him. Other options listed here have been good, too, Joe Abercrombie, Scott Lynch...that's all I'm going to say. Cos I'm still annoyed.

see, I can't get into Erikson. I don't know why, because I really want to. I just dont know where to start. I dont know which is book one, because all of his stories seem to be about different characters, but so related to the previous ones that you have to start in one place and I cant find it. What do you reccomend?

Ah. I'm currently working on an article explaining why he's the best - I imagine that'll help And no, he's not the easiest to get into haha. Gardens of the Moon is the first book, followed by Deadhouse Gates . So, start there.

Fantasy's like water. It comes in different forms, but they're easily understandable once you behold the knowledge.

My honest personal belief is that the whole literary field has gone corporate-soap in the last three decades.
There was a brief explosion in the twenties- early forties, and another one, a psychedelic echo of the mid-sixties to the late seventies. Short concise thrillers, fantasy adventures, and sci-fi adventures. And sometimes a big epic, but only for when the author actually needed the space to tell the tale. Like Tolkien and Frank Herbert and Heinlein.
But the more time passes, the more I marvel at the beauty of the hard prose of Robert Howard and Howard Lovecraft. Both poor men, floging their stuff for pennies to magazines. But the style (!), the style (!!) Like their more fortunate contemporaries in the crime genres like Leslie Charteris, Hammet, Chandler. By god, even Ian Fleming is a giant in hindsight. Not a hint of a soap opera. Not a hint of fillers. No character 'has a history'. No character is 'realistic', or 'helping the reader relate to her/him', none of that B.S. But scenes are crafted lovingly and concisely and every word is chosen with manic precision, and especially concerning Lovecraft - every paragraph can be expanded into a whole book. Which is exactly what the market expects of authors and the authors oblige. Something which would make a breath-taking parapgraph, and the beauty of the words themselves moistening the eyes - is now pumped up, bloated into a hundred pages of drivel. And everyone reads that, because that's what they need - drivel. A never-ending torrent of meaningless soaps in various dressing, helping the mind never focus, never wonder, helping the spririt to never feel a flicker of movement, but only the prescribed corporate emotions.
I also think early Moorcock is the next best thing after Howard and Lovecraft.
...God how these endless fantasy and sci-fi soaps suck.
The closest I've read to the old masters is Perumov's Godsdoom, which is close, although still cluttered.