I find it incredible how different I feel about certain books/series now vs how I felt about them 15 or 20 years ago. What sort of major changes have happened to your tastes during your fantasy journey?
I used to own every single Wheel of Time book and spent all my time on wotmania.com, but I have zero desire to read them ever again. Honestly, classic epic fantasy just doesn’t do it for me in general anymore.
I don’t tend to get excited about the next Brandon Sanderson novel, but I was a huge proponent of him when he was signing copies of Elantris in my tiny Idaho mall.
It’d be great if Rothfuss, Lynch or Martin finished their series, but I used to rant and rave about wanting them and now I just move on to things that are done. I can wait, and in the case of Rothfuss I’m not 100% sure those books are going to finish nearly as strongly as I first thought.
Main change is that my taste has matured. 10+ years ago I was all in into “you are the chosen one” fantasy, good vs evil, protagonists are always perfect, always happy ending etc.
Then around 2013 I decided to to buy Garden of the Moon by Steve Erikson. Malazan Book of the Fallen changed my tasty completely. World is not black or white, usually everything is grey. Every action has its consequences, death is waiting for everyone no matter how important you are for the story and also sometimes death is worse then staying alive. Main character is who you decided to be. You as a reader need to expler and get to conclusions alone, writer is not holding your hand and explaining everything. I can go on and on.
If anyone has read this series they will know how it changed them.