What other fantasy books do YOU read?

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by davem

Hmm, too long since I read Stardust. Struck me as closer to Dunsany than Tolkien. In fact, now I think about it, in his use of Faery as the Land of the Dead it is very close to Mirlees' Lud in the Mist. I see where you're coming from, but I think as a novel about Faery it shares little with Tolkien's approach.

No, I think they can both do that. Much Sci-fi is traditional faery story translated to the 'future' - Star Trek (the original series) is an Immrama.

Well, I must withdraw, having not yet read Dunsany. Frightful confession, I know, but what can I say?

Serendipity is a strange thing, as is synchronicity. At the time davem first posted this comment about Immrama (sing, immram) I had been reading about the first book of fanciful travel writing in the English tradition: The Voyage of St Brendan. (Well, okay, yes, it was written in Latin, but it was adopted and incorporated as part of the English imagination.) That coracle of St. Brendan's had once inspired in me a particular action in a very long ago RPG, but that imaginative thrust of journey to the unknown with arresting mix of known, unknown, and spiritual discovery (using this phrase losely) I find particularly interesting in terms of the development of fantasy.