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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MonsterMash" data-source="post: 2451390" data-attributes="member: 12974">Not in total agreement with this, though borrowing can be something that even the greatest writers use its the originality or skill with which they work with this material that makes the difference. I'll admit Lovecraft's writing is not uniform in quality ranging between the nearly self-parodic to good, while of the other writers in his circle the quality range is wide between the poor (Derleth) to the capable (Clark Ashton Smith). Robert E Howard did correspond with Lovecraft and I do love the sheer narrative drive of Howard's better work, but recognise he had a slightly limited pallet of characters and styles. I think the major problem is that most of the authors of the D&D and other games novels are not particularly accomplished authors and a more capable writer would be able to make some better use of the background and produce better work overall. For example Kim Newman/Jack Yeovil has written some pretty good fantasy/horror works, but also done Warhammer tie ins for Games Workshop which are ok, but have the look of 'work done for hire'.Having just read The Da Vinci code it does appear that a prose style which is not much better than functional can be highly commercially successful, even if it has little artistic merit.</blockquote>