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<blockquote data-quote="mmadsen" data-source="post: 1344633" data-attributes="member: 1645">The intro to the essay on <a href="http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=books/main/classics2" target="_blank">The Forgotten Beasts of Eld</a>, by Patricia A. McKillip (1974), states some interesting opinions on fantasy:Not every &quot;classic&quot; of fantasy was written a century ago. Books as good as any ever published by the late great masters of the genre -- Dunsany, Eddison, Morris, Cabell, et al. -- were also being written in the 1960s (The Face in the Frost, A Wizard of Earthsea), the 1970s (Watership Down), the 1980s (The Bridge of Birds) and even the 1990s (The Golden Compass), many of them by authors still alive today. All are remarkable not just for their exceptional excellence but because they break new ground rather than follow current trends (masterpieces always defy conventional wisdom), although ironically some of them have themselves become much imitated in turn.One book that stands alone is The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, as it has no obvious precursor nor inspires a subgenre or &quot;school&quot; of followers; there is nothing else quite like it, even among McKillip's other writings. Whereas some fantasy classics dazzle the reader by the twists and turns of their plot or enthrall them with a seductively appealing subcreated world, McKillip's stands out by the sheer beauty of the writing. Some say that modern fantasy is today's equivalent of the pulp novel of the 1920s and 1930s, and readers who have become accustomed to the adequate prose of a generic trilogy manipulating standard characters through a conventional plot, where the villain dies in the next-to-last chapter with the final few pages for happily-ever-after, may have their breath taken away by McKillip's evocative, lapidary style:&quot;The giant Grof was hit in one eye by a stone,
and that eye turned inward so that it looked into his mind,
and he died of what he saw there.&quot;</blockquote>

[QUOTE="mmadsen, post: 1344633, member: 1645"] The intro to the essay on [url=http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=books/main/classics2]The Forgotten Beasts of Eld[/url], by Patricia A. McKillip (1974), states some interesting opinions on fantasy: Not every "classic" of fantasy was written a century ago. Books as good as any ever published by the late great masters of the genre -- Dunsany, Eddison, Morris, Cabell, et al. -- were also being written in the 1960s (The Face in the Frost, A Wizard of Earthsea), the 1970s (Watership Down), the 1980s (The Bridge of Birds) and even the 1990s (The Golden Compass), many of them by authors still alive today. All are remarkable not just for their exceptional excellence but because they break new ground rather than follow current trends (masterpieces always defy conventional wisdom), although ironically some of them have themselves become much imitated in turn. One book that stands alone is The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, as it has no obvious precursor nor inspires a subgenre or "school" of followers; there is nothing else quite like it, even among McKillip's other writings. Whereas some fantasy classics dazzle the reader by the twists and turns of their plot or enthrall them with a seductively appealing subcreated world, McKillip's stands out by the sheer beauty of the writing. Some say that modern fantasy is today's equivalent of the pulp novel of the 1920s and 1930s, and readers who have become accustomed to the adequate prose of a generic trilogy manipulating standard characters through a conventional plot, where the villain dies in the next-to-last chapter with the final few pages for happily-ever-after, may have their breath taken away by McKillip's evocative, lapidary style: [CENTER]"The giant Grof was hit in one eye by a stone, and that eye turned inward so that it looked into his mind, and he died of what he saw there."[/CENTER] [/QUOTE]

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