The First Blogpost of 2021: A Blogpost on my Commitment to Fantasy

 A

Blogpost

on

my

Commitment

to

Fantasy

The first fantasy book I ever picked up was a copy of the Lord of the Rings trilogy in a single black cover volume. It was intimidating at first by its page count and use of description. I wanted to see if I could make it the whole way through. To that point, I had read mostly nonfiction and touched fiction only in comic book form. After finishing it I stepped away from fantasy for a while. It wasn't until having surgery on my ankle did I discover Game of Thrones. And after watching season one of the show I bought all the books at once and began reading, thus, sparking my commitment to fantasy.

Fantasy has a freedom to it that no other genre outside of science fiction possesses. It allows your imagination to explode like a firework in the sky. You can pluck the trails of color from it and intricately place them so as to form layers and dimensions to a world with characters that defy logic. The heat from every spark aids you in driving a complicated protagonist to his/her or their breaking point.

I will confess right here from the start that my horizons do need broadened in the genre. I'm a slow reader and have jumped to other books outside fantasy and thus have a ton of catching up to do. That is why my commitment to the genre has been increased. I plan to read fantasy from marginalized writers, plus the greats outside of Tolkien and Martin. I'd like also to break away from westernized fantasy if I could at some point. These commitments will aid in my goal of having a huge personal library before I turn eighty.

Commitment is actually an extremely important thing when reading fantasy. You have to be loyal like a bloodhound to sniff through worldbuilding and howl at the amazing plot twists you find. The same is true of all genres but fantasy can find you literally buried alive in them. Its a reason why I can't put an epic fantasy down, although such novels tend to be quite heavy. Ha ha.

Here is a list of fantasy writers that I want to read from at some point. 

Terry Pratchett

Robin Hobb

Deston Munden

Scott Lynch

Patrick Rothuss

Anne McCaffrey

Robert Jordan

Brandon Sanderson

Joe Abercrombie

Ursula K. Le Guin

Phillip Pullman