Do you have a favorite author? Why do you like them? Is it something about their style or is it something you can't explain?
Do you have a favorite author? Why do you like them? Is it something about their style or is it something you can't explain?
Edgar Allan Poe.
I'll edit when I'm off of phone
·»Your focus determines your reality«·
I'm with EZ. His stuff is insaaaaaane and dark and I love it.
Also, for something a little more modern, I really love Jessica Shirvington's style of writing. She's witty and cynical, and I love me some good cynicism. xD She wrote the Embrace and Disruption series. AND SHE'S ALSO AUSTRALIAN. >:'D
I'm going to cheat a little and go with two authors that are moderately similar. The first one is JRR Tolkien and the second is Brandon Sanderson. The thing I absolutely love about both of them are that they pay so much attention to world-building, but at the same time they don't hit you over the head with it.
For Tolkien, the Hobbit was a whimsical story that introduced the beginnings of a world filled with fantastical elements and created the modern fantasy fiction genre. From there he moved both backwards and forwards through time to create an entire world. Although it wasn't published until after his death, the Silmarillion (which I can never spell), detailed the history of Middle-Earth through the First and Second ages (technically the Silmarillion was started before the Hobbit, but at best it was loose collection of stories). Moving forward from the Hobbit, he built out the narrative that would become the Lord of the Rings trilogy. This is wonderfully depicted in the book The Return of the Shadow which actually goes through each of his drafts and the process of him writing Fellowship. It's actually a lot of fun to read as you see the story transition to the one every knows despite starting with Bingo Baggins (later Frodo), Trotter the Hobbit (later Aragorn), and the Fellowship without Legolas and Gimli.
Sanderson is in a very similar standing to Tolkien in that each of his books can be enjoyed individually, but things start to take on much greater meaning or value when considered with each other (or even the same book upon a reread). His main books are all a part of a system that called the Cosmere which consists of several solar systems that are linked together by a single past event which readers still only know a little about. Because the stories are still mostly in the fantasy genre and not science fiction, the different planets (generally) aren't aware of each other, but you can see similarities in the distinct magic systems that are present on each world while also recognizing a few characters that are able to travel between the worlds.
In addition, each of the worlds are incredibly consistent with themselves, regardless of how alien the concept is. The best is example is Roshar (which is the planet the Stormlight Archive series takes place on), which is ravaged by a massive storm called a Highstorm that moves from east to west across the planet. Because this is such a major part of the planet, Sanderson has designed an entire ecosystem that can survive in such an environment and would plausibly evolved to have done so and it's even a major part of Roshar's magic system. The ash-clouds and the mists are similarly well developed in the Mistborn series. Since you are learning about the worlds as you read through the books, they are extremely satisfying to reread as you can start to pick out the reason behind many of the things within the plot.
This got a little long and rambly, but I could easily write 10x this on both authors as I'm continually amazed at the depth of their stories.
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