Dark fantasy existed before Cook - but I still Cook as the person who more or less founded Gritty Fantasy. There are points where reading "The Black Company" was like following a unit of grunts is like following a US unit across Vietnam. And I've heard that Cook is a great guy - but he had to ban fans from hanging around his house. Things went missing, including an unpublished manuscript.
With Jordon... Even in one of his early WoT books I can recall three pages of a group of characters crossing a meadow. Three pages of sights, sounds, smells, until I could picture that meadow in my mind. Then the characters walked on, to the next bit, and my reaction was "what a waste of three pages. 'They crossed a meadow' - done. Not even a full line used."
Sigh. but to bring this back semi on topic, I'm sure that Cook, Martin, etc didn't start out writing the way they did. Oh, they might have had those ideas, but they had to write, to horn their craft, before they could convey those ideas. That's another reason I write - to improve as writer. Reading good books can help, but there's no way of improving your writing without actually writing. |