At the risk of derail, it has to be admitted, I think, that until the recent advent of people like China Mieville and Hal Duncan there have been more than a few similarities between books in the genre, all of which seem to stem from Tolkein
No, not from Tolkien. Tolkien is simply one of the major players, and generally the most read. Tolkien knew he hadn't invented the genre he wrote in though, and stated as much. Tolkien owes as much to
Beowulf, Nordic mythos, and
The Worm Orobourus. He stated as much in
Letters, especially #199.
The setting is always rural and pre-industrial – usually drawing on a single and rather generalised historical archetype (‘Norse’, ‘Arabic’ ‘Oriental’). They are very often quest-type narratives. If there aren’t explicit elves and dwarves there are usually willowy ‘forest’ types dispensing ethereal wisdom and herbal energy drinks, and sturdy ‘mountain’ types who are all earthy and like a good scrap. They are often profoundly reactionary, politically speaking – some terrible change has happened and we’re trying to get things back to the way they were. Despite having ten thousand year histories, nobody appears to have got very far past mediaeval technology. And so on.
Well, I won't take up the semantic argument against "always", but this is a fair criticism/description of the fantasy genre called "epic" or "high fantasy". There are elements in every genre that are similar, otherwise they wouldn't fit in that genre. If you're writing/reading the epic or high fantasy genre, or its cross-over sword and sorcery genre (the line between these two is so blurred it's hard to distinguish anymore), then yeah, you get a Medieval or Rennaisance society (Tolkien and Jordan are more Rennaisance/Enlightenment than Medieval), with embodied "good" and "evil" and the use of fantastical creatures.
But there's a whole list of seperate fantasy genres that's nearly as long as my leg, which pays little or no homage to Tolkien:
Contemporary fantasy -
King Rat by the aforementioned China Mieville, as well as
Highlander and even
Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Urban fantasy - such as S. Andrew Swann's Kline Maxwell stories, and the early
Anita Blake series before Hamilton went over to erotic fantasy (or just plain pornography).
Bangsian fantasy -
Riverworld and other alternative/after-life series.
Historic fantasy -
Song of Ice and Fire series by Martin.
Wuxia - Chinese martial arts fantasy, such as depicted in
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Some samurai fantasy can fit here as well.
Jordan should not be faulted for writing in the epic/high fantasy genre. It's the genre he chose to write in, and the fact that he was able to make a living at it suggested that the audience was big enough, and enjoyed his story well enough (or, like me, were sucked in by the early stuff and now just want to "see how it all ends"), that he was telling a decent story.
I'm currently re-reading
The Wheel of Time as a kind of honor to the man's memory. He did manage to keep me entertained and interested, even if I wasn't impressed with some of the later volumes. I'm finding that, in general, he still tells a good story, one that can be re-read from time to time.
And now to return you to your regularly scheduled discussion:
I'm quite done with Laurell K. Hamilton's
Anita Blake stories and the companion
Meredith Gentry series. Along those lines, apparently in the same genre, the Shiloh Walker
The Hunters series.
At high scool we had a teacher in "Ancient times knowledge" -directly translated don't know what it's called in english, it was cumpolsory and basically it was about analyzing the writings of Homér. I had read those books as a kid, off course translated in modern language, and i liked the good stories about the heroes, battles etc. but this particular teacher nearly destroyed those books for me becaused he analyzed them to death, if you know what i mean. We spent the first two months analyzing the first TWO LINES of the Illiad.......
