Ok, i have already spelt out my distaste of Rose Estes. Who do you think is the worst modern writer of Fantasy?

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"You all wished me to arouse the blade and use it. Now, I think, we begin to understand the consequences. The Black Sword must be fed. It will feed on friends if it cannot feed on enemies......"

Michael Moorcock. I hate the "all alone and totally desperate" stuff.

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http://www.ot-nancy.fr/photos_ot/s_fontaine_neptune.jpg

Hmmm, I liked the Elric of Melnibone and Chronicles of Corum series by Moorcock. Gary Gyagax is pretty bad. Melanie Rawn will bore you to tears. So many lol

Anyone who read my rant against Ed Greenwood on this forum should know my answer.

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http://www.angelfire.com/anime2/memnoch/genwalk.gif My name is Memnoch. And your name is...destined to be a footnote in the sands of time.

What books of his have you read Moiraine?

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"You all wished me to arouse the blade and use it. Now, I think, we begin to understand the consequences. The Black Sword must be fed. It will feed on friends if it cannot feed on enemies......"

L.T. Modisett. I think those are the appropriate initials. I loved the first Order book he wrote but all the books following it seemed to be re-hashing the same old story. I think the author has potential, but he just needs to expand a little. After all his books run to a little over 500 pages on average, I think I deserve a little better story line for trudging that long.

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Can an elf get a break anywhere these days?
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Hi Aurican!

Have read the latest (1999-2001"ish") releases that he has had? They were pretty good. Modesitt explained how this strange paradox of Order mages and Chaos mages came to be. I found the story itself to be original and fairly entertaining. He does have a knack for boring one to tears on occasion, but he does a pretty good job of sticking to the plot line.

I can't remember the name of the damn book though...I read it a year or so ago. Wait a minute...I think it was called something like "Fall of Angels" ??? http://www.tgeweb.com/ironworks/cgi-...s/confused.gif

Hi Everyone!

Interesting thread...

I think that I can safely say that David Gemmell is the single, worst, fantasy author *ever*. He constantly tries to squeeze 4 novels worth of information into one novel and starts them out by dumping you into the middle of a convoluted story line without any background or explanation. Makes me feel as though I'm trying to swim with chainmail on...

His stories also always tend to be the typical, "Army of evil places impregnable fortress under siege and the forces of good resist mightly and will untilmately prevail." Yawn!

I'm also not particularly impressed with Tad Williams, specifically "The Dragonbone Chair". *Big Yawn!* Boring as hell, IMHO.

Hi Moiraine!

I'm sorry to hear that you didn't enjoy the Elric of Melinbone (sp.?) saga. I found that series held my rapt attention. I never tire of the epic struggle that is presented between Law and Chaos. It seems to be an interesting paradox that can be applied to many RL situations...with the time taken to do so. Elric is the sole survivor (or so he thinks) or a dying race that is being overrun by Humans. So, yes, he is "all alone"...but how he deals with this, and his interactions with other characters is one of the big bonuses in the novels.

Just my two cents...http://www.tgeweb.com/ironworks/cgi-...es/biggrin.gif

Sorry Throntar but good old Gemmel is way up in my favourite three authors (along with Tolkien, Peter Moorwood and Stephen Lawhead, I just keep on changing my mind about wich I like the most).

However the worst is undisputeably (IMO anyway) Terry Brooks!!!!! His first book The Sword of Shanara was a blatant rip off. Every scene (and I don't just mean the major ones) was taken from The Lord Of The Rings (the monster searches for Shea and his freind in the first chapter: the Black Rider incident on the road to Bree, Hendel distracts the Gnomes to allow the parties passage AND Alanon fights a demon in the boiling rooms beneath the dark lords castle(both are blatant Balrog rip offs) whilst one of the half elves escapes to act out a blatant remake or the Sam fights an Orc on the stairs whilst rescuing Frodo from the Orcish tower(just after Shelob), the gnome that he takes hostage becomes distinctly like Golum, Hendel rushes to the cities defense only suddenly noticing a blatant weak point, only slowly followed by others: Boromir defends Merry and Pippin from Orcs, and many other travesties of literature). Not only this but his second book (can't remember the title), featured another Blatant Balrog scene only a few chapters in and began to look familiar. In addition to this the chap who used to do the book review for White Dwarf (a British gaming mag, now more tabletop than in the eighties) took the liberty of describing a very bad book as "so Terry Brookish" and after that my long enmity for this writer has never allowed me to read another book of his.

In all fairness Throntar, Gemmel's storylines can seem straight out of any Western but I like the style rather than the substance of his writing. He writes like a man who knows how to use weapons and I like his minimal magic system (rather like Moorwoods and Lawheads).

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Balgin, the Dwarf