[sueVee]

Two gems of fantasy that have been around for a long time (over 20 years) are Patricia MacKillip's The Beasts of Eld and Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn. Both are stand alone books. Neither is extremely long. They capture the essence of fantasy though word mastery and sheer magic. They are not epics but they are books that you are sorry to put down. Does anyone else have any old favorites that we don't hear about? If I am stomping on an already existing topic please move this post. Thanks

[Bardos]

The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson

[This message has been edited by Bardos (edited July 09, 2001).]

[Pathir]

What about Phyllis Eisenstein?
Her Alaric the Minstrel books and her two-parter Sorcerer's Son/Chrystal Palace are quite good.
And of course there is always Jack Vance,the Master of earlier SF and Fantasy.

[Xayn]

Supporting Bardos' opinion. :E

[Cygnus]

It's been over five years since I read The Last Unicorn. From what I remember I really liked it. I think I'll pick it up again, since I seem to be a little fuzzy on the details. I also saw the animated movie based on it, and though it's a little campy it followed the book fairly closely.

I'm almost finished with Titus Groan, the first book in the Gormenghast novels by Mervyn Peake. They were written in the early 1960's (I think). I'd never heard of them until I saw that PBS (a TV station here in the U.S.) is doing a series on them. I searched through the archived posts here and found one mention only. Titus Groan is defintely a different type of story, but it's very funny. At this point it only seems to be fantasy because the story takes place in and around a castle. No supernatural creatures, no quests, no magic (at least, not yet). I've found myself drawn in because of the amazing characters.

[sueVee]

It has been a long time since I read Broken Sword by Poul Anderson. Time for a reread. I had't heard of Titus Groan or Phyllis Eisenstein need to look them up. Has anyone read Beasts of Eld by Patricia MacKillip or is it a lost book?

[Pathir]

I haven't read Beasts of Eld by Patricia Mckillip myself, but if I remember correctly it won the World Fantasy Award somewhere in the seventies. Must be quite good.

[hclark]

A bit off topic but since it was mentioned, Gormenghast on PBS was spectacular! I have never hated a character as much as I hated Steerpike. I have been interested in finding the Mervyn Peake books since I watched it. You should see what they go for on ebay though. If the books are anything as captivating as I found the show to be I'll be very pleased.

[Metosblat]

Maybe you saw a different version of Gormenghast than I did, because the one I saw was really, really, really, really...........really, really, REALLY terrible.

[hclark]

That bad, really? http://www.sffworld.com/ubb/smile.gif Probably the same version, just a difference of opinion... I thought the characters were captivating, the plot enjoyable. Then again I didn't watch the acting all that closely. Perhaps that's why you didn't enjoy it?

On another note, was The Last Unicorn made into an animated film? I seem to remember seeing such a film when I was about 10.