Poll for best writer of high/heroic fantasy

[dANdeLION]

Brinn, what's wrong with the elbow on your avatar? It looks disjointed.

Disjointed?!?! I thought it had been amputated!

His disjointed arm is scrathing his bum

No wonder he amputated it.....

[aTOMiC]

Atomic, The Gunslinger is not a fair test of the relative merits of The Dark Tower. Continue the series and I guarantee your opinion will rise.

Thanks for the advice, Roland. I think I will move on two book two in time and hopefully the story will improve as it develops. It has proven to be interesting in spite of the gross feeling I get when I read King's description of things.

[[Syl]]

Literature is not physics. Its laws and definitions change, and mean various things to various people. The Knight is high fantasy as I understand the term. The function of high fantasy for me is to give us hope and inspire us to courage. It rarely succeeds, I would say; but now and then it does, and thus it is worth doing. Someone said that Lancelot was the kindest man that ever struck with the sword. That's a part of it, too. There are many others.

[burgs]

I'd consider Donaldson the best writer of fantasy, but how are we defining high fantasy?

That's a good question, and really, the subdefinitions of fantasy are sometimes quite different. As Lisa Tuttle defines them, Donaldson is considered by some to be "dark" fantasy. Heroic fantasy is often considered sword and sorcery, involving a hero/ine to complete a series of tasks or to find something in a quest. High fantasy puts less emphasis on the hero figure; instead there is often a larger cast of important characters and the main protagonist is usually pretty ordinary: i.e., The Lord of the Rings. Martin could be considered dynastic fantasy, although that's somewhat of an outgrowth of high fantasy.

It's hard to pigeonhole Donaldson into dark fantasy or high fantasy. Still, it's merely a generalization.

Robert Jordan would be considered "verbose fantasy". Will someone nail his coffin shut?

[Gadget nee Jemcheeta]

Making me choose between King and Donaldson was pretty rough. In the end I went with Donaldson, probably because I still have to read DT 6 and 7.