Author: Ruth Arnell

One of the accusations lodged against much fantasy is that it is all derivative of Tolkien.  Especially when dealing with epic or high fantasy, you have your ethereal elves, grouchy dwarves, carefree hobbits, evil orcs, heroic humans, wise wizards…  Well, just about any stock character in fantasy can be traced back to Tolkien’s works.  And while there is a reason for this — these archetypes draw on mythic traditions far older than Tolkien — it can get repetitive and make it difficult to do something entirely new.

Our intrepid reviewer Justin was discussing a book that he had just finished reading,

I was scrolling through my Facebook news feed when I saw an interesting post: A link to a news article with the comment by my friend, “I can’t believe they didn’t include Harry!” Several other people had commented agreeing that no Harry was a huge oversight. My curiosity piqued, I clicked the link to discover The Guardian‘s list of top ten heroes from children’s books (it’s a slideshow). Now, this is a list chosen from all children’s fiction, and not just fantasy, but I was surprised to see that Lyra Belaqua from Phillip Pullman‘s His Dark Materials was the only character from a fantasy novel.

It was a dark and stormy night.

That’s considered the worst, most clichéd opening line in fiction.  In honor of that author, Edward George Bulwer-Lytton and the opening line to his novel Paul Clifford, there is now an annual contest to pen the most horrendously bad opening sentence to a novel that you can imagine. And to make it even better, there’s a fantasy category.  Below, for your delectation and delight, are the winning and runner-up from last year’s fantasy contest.

Winner: Fantasy Fiction

A quest is not to be undertaken lightly —

Dear readers, many of you nominated The Spirit Lens for renaming last week.

The consensus was that the art itself wasn’t bad, it just had nothing to do with the story. Some people thought it looked like a romance cover. Others were wondering what the skull was about. So, dear readers, we’re going to use this cover to start a new monthly feature at Thoughtful Thursday:

Every month we will feature a new cover and your job will be twofold:

1.