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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
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