Who is Like unto Tolkien?

I find I am reduced to merely repeating articles from Bruce Charlton’s blog on days when I find that gentleman’s thoughts more interesting than my own. And this topic interested me immensely:

Is there anything *like* Tolkien?

This was a burning question for me aged c. 14 years once I had read and re-read Lord of the Rings (and The Hobbit) to the point of wanting to read something else.

What did I find?

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Having seen a reference to Spenser’s Fairie Queene on the LotR blurb, I picked this up to look-at in a second hand bookshop – I pretty quickly put it down again!  But I was never foolish enough to tackle Ariosto (to which C.S Lewis bizarrely compared LotR – what on earth did he think he was doing?!)

Then having done some background reading (for example, in Lin Carter’s A look behind the Lord of the Rings) I tried some older fantasy and also some more recent fantasy.

I read Lord Dunsany’s King of Elfland’s Daughter but it was hard work and made no impression – I failed to read E.R Eddison’s Worm Ourorboros. I actually enjoyed Evangeline Walton’s Island of the Mighty – which was a retelling of the ‘Mabinogion’ Welsh legends – but it was nothing like Tolkien.

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In sum – I found only a couple of books (or a couple of pairs of books) which were post-Tolkien and resembled him enough to satisfy re-readings.

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.