On Sun, Nov 24, 2002 at 05:51:19PM -0500, Casey Rousseau <casey at trinityhartford.org> wrote: > > H.T. asked: > > Since it appears the majority of everyone that had typed in > > the discussion of "fantasy" had began reading fantasy when > > they were still young I thought I might ask what is > > appropriate for a young fantasy reader? > > Stephen R. Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever is > notably missing from the discussion so far. My favorite of these is the > middle volume, The Illearth War. I'd also recommend his short story > collection Daughter of Regals and the two volume Mordant's Need series > (The Mirror of her Dreams and A Man Rides Through) was reasonably > entertaining. I think by the time these came out I was older than your > brother is now. Donaldson has yet to write a work suitable for younger readers. They are all consistently dark and horrific, even in their moments of beauty. Wonderful stuff, but not in a childish way at all. > I was given the first of Raymond E. Feist's books, Magician, later > released in two volumes in massmarket paper on hard cover for Christmas > '82 when I was 12. I ate it up. > > K. Kurtz's Deryini and Camber trilogies were fare for my summer vacation > earlier that same year. Kurtz has a lot more than just two trilogies in the Deryni universe now, but they are all worthwhile if not high literature. The original Deryni series was rather clumsy, but the rest are of much improved quality. > A Wizard of Earthsea and the next two sequels I read at about 11 and > love to this day. I also enjoyed Tehanu and the more recent stuff > LeGuin has done in the milieu although plenty of people will tell you to > stay away from them. They follow a progression and do get darker as > they go along. Tehanu destroys everything the initial trilogy worked so hard to build. The recent stuff is somewhere in between. -- Matthew Hunter (matthew at infodancer.org) Homepage: http://matthew.infodancer.org/index.jsp Public Key: http://matthew.infodancer.org/public_key.txt