Exceptionally well put general introduction to fantasy genre. Eloquent, informative and thorough. It's so hard to explain so much in such a short time! Astounding!
Thank you very much for this video, I really enjoy your channel! I love reading & writing fantasy and I think it's valuable to analyze and dissect fantasy as a genre. I look forward to watching more of your videos!!
Guilbert Maric Thanks! This video was my first, and while I think I’ve improved in terms of making videos, I’m fairly happy with the ideas I was trying to get across. That said, it’s probably one of the most “academic” of my videos. Of course, all of my videos likely have a whiff of academia since I am a professor of English literature. Thanks for watching and commenting!
Guilbert Maric Yes, I’ve been fortunate in having more people watching in the last few weeks. Perhaps there’s a space on RUclips for a slightly more academic take on fantasy, but I also try to have a bit of fun. Thanks again!
@@PhilipChaseTheBestofFantasy I think there might be a space. A lot of 'fantasy youtubers' I watch comment that in their experience, fantasy is generally frowned upon in academic literary circles!
Guilbert Maric That is without a doubt true, and it’s a shame. Fantasy offers so much, and to dismiss an entire genre out of literary snobbery is to miss the riches it holds.
Thank you, John! If anyone was going to notice all my editions of Beowulf (I actually have a few more elsewhere), it was going to be you. I appreciate the comments!
Hi Philip, I appreciate your channel. I am a new subscriber, so going over your older stuff. May I make a suggestion? When you use old english or the like, it would be helpful to show us viewers what it looks like on screen, and maybe how it would be used? I know it is a little bit more effort with the editing, but it would help the viewers. I am sure I am not the only person that would find this helpful/interesting? Looking forward to viewing your other vids and seeing you grow as a channel. All the best and thank you for your thoughtful takes. Keep it up! A fan from South Africa.
Thank you, Vic! I appreciate the suggestion, and you’re absolutely right. I’ll have to find a font with the Old English characters (the letters are mostly the same, but there were a few in Old English that no longer are used). Thanks so much for watching and commenting!
Many thanks for your clear and thoughtful video on the fantasy genre; what defines it, especailly in comparison with science fiction, something I have tended to prefer and so read more of. One feature many fantasy books have is a respect or even reverence for nature and living things; something that appealed to me from my first reading of the genre. This respect is very strongly developed and expressed in Tolkien. I started reading fantasy many years ago, beginning with novels like 'The Sword in the Stone' by T.H.White, as well as others such as 'The Giant Under the Snow' by John Gordon and 'At The Back Of The North Wind' by George MacDonald. I began to look out for more of these kinds of books at the public library and luckily came across 'A Wizard of Earthsea' by Ursula Le Guin This was a revelation, and made me a lifelong fan of her writings, both fiction and factual. After that i read much more of the genre, including Tolkien. I took the opportunity of the lockdown to re-visit the genre, recently reading old favourites like 'Mythago Wood' by Robert Holdstock, 'The Silmarillion', and 'The Book of the New Sun' by Gene Wolfe. i'm curently re-reading 'City of Illusions', an early novel by Le Guin. I read mostly genre fiction when young, but my reading choices more lately have tended to diversify and include literary fiction, biography/autobiography, and memoir, though I'll always have time for a well written fantasy novel or story.
John Ballantine Thanks for your wonderful comments! In respect to the importance of nature in fantasy, I recently made a video about the origins and development of the genre, and one of the defining elements is a reaction against the industrialism of the late 18th and 19th centuries. That is absolutely something that is a big part of Tolkien, who inherited such respect for nature from writers like William Morris. Among the excellent writers you mention, Tolkien and Le Guin are two of my favorites. Thanks for watching and commenting- much appreciated!
I remember, during a CCM class in maybe... 2006? you recommended that I read A Game of Thrones. I only read a few chapters at the time, but I love those novels now.
I have good memories from that class! I’m glad you enjoy A Song of Ice and Fire - those are brilliant books, and I’ll be doing a video on them in the not too distant future.
This is awesome! Would you be interested in making a video about Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces? The end of this video made me think so much of his works and his interview with Bill Moyers. I’d love to hear your thoughts!
It's great to hear from you, Shannon! As you know, Campbell was a lover of myth, and fantasy is akin to myth, so it naturally shares similar patterns and symbols. Campbell was a big influence on my thinking about myth and fantasy when I was young, and The Hero With a Thousand Faces is something that anyone interested in archetypes should read. I also love that series with Bill Moyers. Perhaps someday a video on Campbell will be in order!
Super psyched to check this whole series out, really enjoyed this one! I would recommend trying to reduce the amount of jump-cuts, though--it's a bit jarring to the viewer. Though of course I have a question: Do you think there is some kind of base-level or fundamental genre inherent in a literary work? For instance, there are some horror elements within A Song of Ice and Fire, though it would seem to be wrong to call the series a horror series. I also think part of belonging to a genre is having some sort of success conditions--if a horror story is not scary (in some way), it's often not considered a very good story altogether. Of course there are TONS of hybrid stories that mix-up the success conditions, and other works that CREATE a new genre (ie Dracula), though the success of much fiction seems to hinge on these sort of success conditions inherent in their fundamental genres.
Thanks, Steven! I thought young people liked jump cuts . . . Of course, that's a great point, and a goal for the next videos is to increase the smoothness of the delivery. Thanks for the helpful tip! Also, I'll be thrilled to have you watch the next videos -- I have some special guests lined up for a couple of them!
@@stevehernandez6430 Oops! I didn't see the "read more". Excellent question/observations! The whole concept of genre is of limited use, but that is not to say it's useless. In fact, some of the best and/or most successful books are the ones whose authors ignore boundaries between genres. Thus, Neil Gaiman's American Gods is part fantasy, part road trip, part mystery, etc., while Harry Potter is part fantasy, part boarding school narrative, and part mystery. These experimenters are often the ones who "create" new genres or nudge us to come up with new categories within a genre (urban fantasy, steampunk, etc.). Where genres come in handy would be our natural human tendency to categorize to make sense of things and provide some easy shorthand for whether or not we might be interested in a thing. A good example of that is how at least one important factor in whether or not a new author will be published is how easily a label can be applied to her work. A given reader might want to know if a book is YA romantic fantasy or YA epic fantasy because one interests her but the other doesn't (or at least she thinks it doesn't). So, I think we're stuck with genres, though they might bias us at times in ways that limit our reading experiences. Genres are categories we impose, but there is usually fairly broad agreement about them, and they exert a lot of power over what authors write. Not sure I answered your question exactly, but it's an important one, I think.
I think the 'Orphan Hero' archetype is simply used to make for a better underdog. People love to root for the underdog, and making the protagonist an orphan means he, or she, has already had a difficult life and had to figure a lot out on their own. This adds to character depth and gives the reader a reason to sympathize with the character. It also gives a reason for why the hero is able to accomplish, and overcome, so much. Considering the fact that they had no parents to rely on, while growing up, they would've needed to hone certain skills that people in a better position would not.
Good video! I like an analysis made by a Brazilian Tolkienist, Ronald Kyrmse (also he is one of the translator to Brazilian portuguese of Tolkiens work), called "three dimensions of subcreation", duration (Tolkien's Three Ages and the cosmogonic time), extent (geography, speech, "races", lore, etc.) and depth (duration and extent are very detailed). I believe that convince us even more when we swim in any fantastic world. :)
Ah, thanks! I appreciate your kindness since this was my first video ever, and I’ve progressed from painfully awkward to just awkward. I still like what I was trying to say, though!
@@PhilipChaseTheBestofFantasy you're so silly haha. I didn't know this was your first video, so you've been great from the start! I... had a massive booger in mine, so, you did better than me!
Just discovered your channel, and it's quickly becoming one of my favourites. Unlike some other booktubers, it's clear you are widely read both within and outside the fantasy genre, and your knowledge extends beyond just the most popular modern Top 20 stuff. However, I strongly disagree that fantasy must be backward-looking as one of its defining traits. IMHO, this belief leads to some of the worse, most pernicious trends in fantasy. It results in an insular, navel-gazing attitude where "everything was better in the past". The flip-side of this past=good attitude is that modernity/progress=bad: modern society, and all that comes with it, becomes something to be distrusted and rejected out of hand. In the real world, this backward-looking mentality creates some of the most vitriolic fantasy fans, who hew to strict interpretations of the genre's works, and cry bloody murder if anybody dares to try doing anything different that deviates from their narrow understanding of the genre. There's certainly a segment of fantasy that appeals to fundamentalist and traditionalist values and all that entails (misogyny, etc), but I don't think fantasy need be defined by that as a core trait. In talking about his Divine Cities trilogy, Robert Jackson Bennett gave an interview where he said that one of the themes he wanted to explore in that trilogy, is that of change and society. He specifically wanted to push back against the fantasy trope that society is something static and stable, and has remained so for ages and that makes it good, because that's not how life actually works. So he wrote his books to explore how cultures grapple with change and progress whilst maintaining their identity, and how sometimes you may come to realize that the past no longer reflects your identity as it is today.
Thanks for the thoughtful comments, Eugene. Fantasy has definitely long been breaking out of and expanding from old tropes of medieval European settings, which is awesome. In many of these newer stories (not all), there’s still a fascination with the past and how it informs the present, especially when those in the present feel echoes of that past, but it’s definitely not a requirement. Cheers!
You finessed me into coming here by telling your audience NOT to come here. It's actually a fantastic video, not the trainwreck I was gleefully expecting.
Ha ha ha! I should have known that if anyone would take my admission of awkwardness as an invitation to watch my first feeble effort at a video, it would be the High Fist, henceforth the Cipher of MalazTube. 😁 Thanks for watching and for being gentle and compassionate!
I like Thomas Covenant series. Ending was not so great but the Illearth War is still among my top 3 fantasy novels ever. Saltheart Foamfollower for President.
This is a good primer. I would say that not all fantasy requires magic though. Guy Gavriel Kay's books are clearly fantasy and some have no magic. They're a different imagined world, and that's what makes them fantasy.
@@PhilipChaseTheBestofFantasy Seeing as you like Vinland Saga and works about the Vikings, you may like his book The Last Light of the Sun, which is set in an analogue of the Viking invasions of England during Alfred the Great's time. It's not one of his most highly lauded books but I really enjoyed it.
I grew up through my teenage years absolutely loving Robert E. Howards shorts stories--Conan, of course, and then a lot of his other stories. Every time I tried a fantasy novel, and a series, I dropped them pretty fast. They were too made-up, even juvenile in characterization. Howard's stories were grounded in a real Earth with elements of horror and magic.
Lazarinth I’m afraid many of my students agree with you! For me, though, A Wizard of Earthsea is a nearly perfect tale. I love Le Guin’s language, which I find beautiful without being flowery. And she weaves in a sort of Daoist philosophy that I find interesting. However, I recognize it’s not for everyone!
Tales of Earthsea is a classic for a reason, but classics are not for everyone. I enjoyed the series, but unfortunately the author's pushing of certain agendas in latter books did not really sit well with me personally. Still a foundational series as introduction to what modern fantasy is about. A LOT of people have cited Le Guin's work as inspirational for their own. So we have to give it that.
Exceptionally well put general introduction to fantasy genre. Eloquent, informative and thorough. It's so hard to explain so much in such a short time!
Astounding!
Thanks for the kind words! This was my first video, and while I wince at how awkward it was in its delivery, I still like what I was trying to say.
Well said, I agree.
Hi Philip, this was a great video and we should do a chat about some of the topics you raise here once we run out of Malazan books... So Jan 2024?
Ha ha! Sounds like a plan! I’m ready to talk fantasy anytime with you.
I love this introduction! I am looking forward to this series!
Thank you, Victoria!
An excellent short intro to what fantasy books are, and how they are different from other genres! Can't wait for the next video!
Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it, and I'll keep the videos coming!
Thank you very much for this video, I really enjoy your channel! I love reading & writing fantasy and I think it's valuable to analyze and dissect fantasy as a genre. I look forward to watching more of your videos!!
Thanks so much, Han! This was the first video I made and, as such, was a learning experience, so I appreciate the kind words!
Interesting. RUclips recommended you to me. Interesting to get what feels like an 'academic' take on the genre. I'll continue watching.
Guilbert Maric Thanks! This video was my first, and while I think I’ve improved in terms of making videos, I’m fairly happy with the ideas I was trying to get across. That said, it’s probably one of the most “academic” of my videos. Of course, all of my videos likely have a whiff of academia since I am a professor of English literature. Thanks for watching and commenting!
@@PhilipChaseTheBestofFantasy No problem. It must be starting to get rolling if YT has already started to recommend you.
Guilbert Maric Yes, I’ve been fortunate in having more people watching in the last few weeks. Perhaps there’s a space on RUclips for a slightly more academic take on fantasy, but I also try to have a bit of fun. Thanks again!
@@PhilipChaseTheBestofFantasy I think there might be a space. A lot of 'fantasy youtubers' I watch comment that in their experience, fantasy is generally frowned upon in academic literary circles!
Guilbert Maric That is without a doubt true, and it’s a shame. Fantasy offers so much, and to dismiss an entire genre out of literary snobbery is to miss the riches it holds.
Just getting back to reading again. And your videos have been a great help. Thanks!
Thank you! That makes me very happy to hear that, and I hope you get much joy and fulfillment from your reading!
@@PhilipChaseTheBestofFantasy Looking forward to more of your content :) Cheers!
Good job Professor! I’m putting a like.
Thanks, Tyler!
BTW, an ex-wife once asked me, "how many editions of Beowulf does one man need?" I replied, "how many are there?"
Thank you, John! If anyone was going to notice all my editions of Beowulf (I actually have a few more elsewhere), it was going to be you. I appreciate the comments!
Great discussion of fantasy! Very informative and thoughtful. Looking forward to recommendations for some good reading in future videos!
Thank you for watching! I'll be putting out some recommendations soon.
Hi Philip, I appreciate your channel. I am a new subscriber, so going over your older stuff.
May I make a suggestion?
When you use old english or the like, it would be helpful to show us viewers what it looks like on screen, and maybe how it would be used? I know it is a little bit more effort with the editing, but it would help the viewers. I am sure I am not the only person that would find this helpful/interesting?
Looking forward to viewing your other vids and seeing you grow as a channel. All the best and thank you for your thoughtful takes. Keep it up!
A fan from South Africa.
Thank you, Vic! I appreciate the suggestion, and you’re absolutely right. I’ll have to find a font with the Old English characters (the letters are mostly the same, but there were a few in Old English that no longer are used). Thanks so much for watching and commenting!
Awesome introduction to what makes fantasy fantasy! I'm excited to see more!
Thanks for watching! I hope to produce one video per week, ideally coming out each Sunday.
Many thanks for your clear and thoughtful video on the fantasy genre; what defines it, especailly in comparison with science fiction, something I have tended to prefer and so read more of.
One feature many fantasy books have is a respect or even reverence for nature and living things; something that appealed to me from my first reading of the genre. This respect is very strongly developed and expressed in Tolkien.
I started reading fantasy many years ago, beginning with novels like 'The Sword in the Stone' by T.H.White, as well as others such as 'The Giant Under the Snow' by John Gordon and 'At The Back Of The North Wind' by George MacDonald. I began to look out for more of these kinds of books at the public library and luckily came across 'A Wizard of Earthsea' by Ursula Le Guin This was a revelation, and made me a lifelong fan of her writings, both fiction and factual. After that i read much more of the genre, including Tolkien.
I took the opportunity of the lockdown to re-visit the genre, recently reading old favourites like 'Mythago Wood' by Robert Holdstock, 'The Silmarillion', and 'The Book of the New Sun' by Gene Wolfe. i'm curently re-reading 'City of Illusions', an early novel by Le Guin.
I read mostly genre fiction when young, but my reading choices more lately have tended to diversify and include literary fiction, biography/autobiography, and memoir, though I'll always have time for a well written fantasy novel or story.
John Ballantine Thanks for your wonderful comments! In respect to the importance of nature in fantasy, I recently made a video about the origins and development of the genre, and one of the defining elements is a reaction against the industrialism of the late 18th and 19th centuries. That is absolutely something that is a big part of Tolkien, who inherited such respect for nature from writers like William Morris. Among the excellent writers you mention, Tolkien and Le Guin are two of my favorites. Thanks for watching and commenting- much appreciated!
Love this Intro! Can’t wait to hear about some fantasy books! Looking forward to the next video!
Thanks, Emma! I hope you'll enjoy the next one, and I'll try to keep them coming every week.
I remember, during a CCM class in maybe... 2006? you recommended that I read A Game of Thrones. I only read a few chapters at the time, but I love those novels now.
I have good memories from that class! I’m glad you enjoy A Song of Ice and Fire - those are brilliant books, and I’ll be doing a video on them in the not too distant future.
I don’t understand fantasy very well, but you gave a great explanation! Good video Professor Chase!
Thanks much for watching, Paula -- I appreciate your comment too!
This is awesome! Would you be interested in making a video about Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces? The end of this video made me think so much of his works and his interview with Bill Moyers. I’d love to hear your thoughts!
It's great to hear from you, Shannon! As you know, Campbell was a lover of myth, and fantasy is akin to myth, so it naturally shares similar patterns and symbols. Campbell was a big influence on my thinking about myth and fantasy when I was young, and The Hero With a Thousand Faces is something that anyone interested in archetypes should read. I also love that series with Bill Moyers. Perhaps someday a video on Campbell will be in order!
Great video Dr Chase!
Thanks, Gwen! I'm happy you liked it!
Super psyched to check this whole series out, really enjoyed this one! I would recommend trying to reduce the amount of jump-cuts, though--it's a bit jarring to the viewer.
Though of course I have a question: Do you think there is some kind of base-level or fundamental genre inherent in a literary work? For instance, there are some horror elements within A Song of Ice and Fire, though it would seem to be wrong to call the series a horror series. I also think part of belonging to a genre is having some sort of success conditions--if a horror story is not scary (in some way), it's often not considered a very good story altogether. Of course there are TONS of hybrid stories that mix-up the success conditions, and other works that CREATE a new genre (ie Dracula), though the success of much fiction seems to hinge on these sort of success conditions inherent in their fundamental genres.
Thanks, Steven! I thought young people liked jump cuts . . . Of course, that's a great point, and a goal for the next videos is to increase the smoothness of the delivery. Thanks for the helpful tip! Also, I'll be thrilled to have you watch the next videos -- I have some special guests lined up for a couple of them!
@@PhilipChaseTheBestofFantasy Great! Sounds super interesting! Did you see my other question, though? (click "read more")
@@stevehernandez6430 Oops! I didn't see the "read more". Excellent question/observations! The whole concept of genre is of limited use, but that is not to say it's useless. In fact, some of the best and/or most successful books are the ones whose authors ignore boundaries between genres. Thus, Neil Gaiman's American Gods is part fantasy, part road trip, part mystery, etc., while Harry Potter is part fantasy, part boarding school narrative, and part mystery. These experimenters are often the ones who "create" new genres or nudge us to come up with new categories within a genre (urban fantasy, steampunk, etc.). Where genres come in handy would be our natural human tendency to categorize to make sense of things and provide some easy shorthand for whether or not we might be interested in a thing. A good example of that is how at least one important factor in whether or not a new author will be published is how easily a label can be applied to her work. A given reader might want to know if a book is YA romantic fantasy or YA epic fantasy because one interests her but the other doesn't (or at least she thinks it doesn't). So, I think we're stuck with genres, though they might bias us at times in ways that limit our reading experiences. Genres are categories we impose, but there is usually fairly broad agreement about them, and they exert a lot of power over what authors write. Not sure I answered your question exactly, but it's an important one, I think.
I think the 'Orphan Hero' archetype is simply used to make for a better underdog. People love to root for the underdog, and making the protagonist an orphan means he, or she, has already had a difficult life and had to figure a lot out on their own. This adds to character depth and gives the reader a reason to sympathize with the character.
It also gives a reason for why the hero is able to accomplish, and overcome, so much. Considering the fact that they had no parents to rely on, while growing up, they would've needed to hone certain skills that people in a better position would not.
Thanks for your thoughts on the Orphan archetype! You make an excellent point about building sympathy for the underdog.
Good video! I like an analysis made by a Brazilian Tolkienist, Ronald Kyrmse (also he is one of the translator to Brazilian portuguese of Tolkiens work), called "three dimensions of subcreation", duration (Tolkien's Three Ages and the cosmogonic time), extent (geography, speech, "races", lore, etc.) and depth (duration and extent are very detailed). I believe that convince us even more when we swim in any fantastic world. :)
Sounds like a fantastic read! Duration, extent, and depth are all there in Middle-earth.
Nice, thanks!
Thank you for watching!
This is a great video, as always. Thank you for all the value you add to the fantasy reading community
Ah, thanks! I appreciate your kindness since this was my first video ever, and I’ve progressed from painfully awkward to just awkward. I still like what I was trying to say, though!
@@PhilipChaseTheBestofFantasy you're so silly haha. I didn't know this was your first video, so you've been great from the start! I... had a massive booger in mine, so, you did better than me!
@@GetWriteOnIn Hahaha! You just made me laugh for a solid thirty seconds! 😂
Looking forward to more videos! :)
Thank you so much for watching! I'm aiming to put out the next one by Sunday.
Just discovered your channel, and it's quickly becoming one of my favourites. Unlike some other booktubers, it's clear you are widely read both within and outside the fantasy genre, and your knowledge extends beyond just the most popular modern Top 20 stuff.
However, I strongly disagree that fantasy must be backward-looking as one of its defining traits. IMHO, this belief leads to some of the worse, most pernicious trends in fantasy. It results in an insular, navel-gazing attitude where "everything was better in the past". The flip-side of this past=good attitude is that modernity/progress=bad: modern society, and all that comes with it, becomes something to be distrusted and rejected out of hand. In the real world, this backward-looking mentality creates some of the most vitriolic fantasy fans, who hew to strict interpretations of the genre's works, and cry bloody murder if anybody dares to try doing anything different that deviates from their narrow understanding of the genre. There's certainly a segment of fantasy that appeals to fundamentalist and traditionalist values and all that entails (misogyny, etc), but I don't think fantasy need be defined by that as a core trait.
In talking about his Divine Cities trilogy, Robert Jackson Bennett gave an interview where he said that one of the themes he wanted to explore in that trilogy, is that of change and society. He specifically wanted to push back against the fantasy trope that society is something static and stable, and has remained so for ages and that makes it good, because that's not how life actually works. So he wrote his books to explore how cultures grapple with change and progress whilst maintaining their identity, and how sometimes you may come to realize that the past no longer reflects your identity as it is today.
Thanks for the thoughtful comments, Eugene. Fantasy has definitely long been breaking out of and expanding from old tropes of medieval European settings, which is awesome. In many of these newer stories (not all), there’s still a fascination with the past and how it informs the present, especially when those in the present feel echoes of that past, but it’s definitely not a requirement. Cheers!
You finessed me into coming here by telling your audience NOT to come here. It's actually a fantastic video, not the trainwreck I was gleefully expecting.
Ha ha ha! I should have known that if anyone would take my admission of awkwardness as an invitation to watch my first feeble effort at a video, it would be the High Fist, henceforth the Cipher of MalazTube. 😁 Thanks for watching and for being gentle and compassionate!
I like Thomas Covenant series. Ending was not so great but the Illearth War is still among my top 3 fantasy novels ever. Saltheart Foamfollower for President.
Fritz Amtsberg I read Thomas Covenant years and years ago - probably worth a reread someday. Thanks for the great comments!
This is a good primer. I would say that not all fantasy requires magic though. Guy Gavriel Kay's books are clearly fantasy and some have no magic. They're a different imagined world, and that's what makes them fantasy.
An excellent example. I’ve read only Tigana, but I’m aware of Kay’s other books, which I’d love to read someday. Cheers!
@@PhilipChaseTheBestofFantasy Seeing as you like Vinland Saga and works about the Vikings, you may like his book The Last Light of the Sun, which is set in an analogue of the Viking invasions of England during Alfred the Great's time. It's not one of his most highly lauded books but I really enjoyed it.
@@Verlopil Thanks for the recommendation!
I grew up through my teenage years absolutely loving Robert E. Howards shorts stories--Conan, of course, and then a lot of his other stories. Every time I tried a fantasy novel, and a series, I dropped them pretty fast. They were too made-up, even juvenile in characterization. Howard's stories were grounded in a real Earth with elements of horror and magic.
Howard’s stories are a huge influence in fantasy.
Was onboard until Tales of Earthsea. What a bore.
Lazarinth I’m afraid many of my students agree with you! For me, though, A Wizard of Earthsea is a nearly perfect tale. I love Le Guin’s language, which I find beautiful without being flowery. And she weaves in a sort of Daoist philosophy that I find interesting. However, I recognize it’s not for everyone!
Tales of Earthsea is a classic for a reason, but classics are not for everyone. I enjoyed the series, but unfortunately the author's pushing of certain agendas in latter books did not really sit well with me personally. Still a foundational series as introduction to what modern fantasy is about. A LOT of people have cited Le Guin's work as inspirational for their own. So we have to give it that.