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Message: <blockquote data-quote="barsoomcore" data-source="post: 2056017" data-attributes="member: 812">Meh. I can't imagine shooting pool with the hobbits. Or talking about girls. Or cars. Or fights we got into when and with who and about what.They're great characters, don't get me wrong, but they exist in the Shire. Maybe in bucolic English landscapes. They grow out of that -- their voices are the voices of Middle-Earth and the Shire. Croaker lives downtown, next door, and I think Cook's genius was in letting Croaker talk to us in OUR language, instead of giving him a voice that grew out of some imaginary setting.One way's not better than the other, but I do think this is Cook's great accomplishment, and what makes the BC books important. Steven Brust does a similar thing with Vlad, and Erickson is doing a similar thing, and I THINK GRRMartin is, too. Not as sure there as I've only read the first half of the first book and didn't actually like it much.And I think many writers whose debt isn't as obvious still owe a great deal to Cook and the way he "de-mythologized" high fantasy. I think modern fantasy would look different if he hadn't written those books. And Brust, since they came out at almost exactly the same time and took very similar angles. Cook set fantasy stories in a gritty world; Brust told gritty stories in a fantasy world.</blockquote>