Who is the greatest writer of Fantasy Novels and what is that person's best work?

good question Larry, I have to stick with JRR Tolkien with The Hobbit. It was so 'different' when it first came out and his writing is simply amazing. then he went on to write the Trilogy which are all masterpieces of fantasy literature. There was a thread started last night in the forums about Twilight, quite interesting.

I did a hub on this very subject...

http://hubpages.com/hub/The-Best-Fantasy-and-Scien

You are still hard pressed to beat Tolkien although writers like Stephen Donaldson, David Gemmel, Raymond E Feist all rate as pure fantasy writers - perhaps the best of them being Donaldson.

I'm a big fan of the science fiction, fantasy mix also combined with the horror genre. I think Dean Koontz has done a great combination of all of these in his latest novels. I'm sure all the Tolkien purists are going- boo,hiss!, But I like that forward looking style that gives one hope for humanity, while scaring the bejesus out of you with all its' warts. Twilight is also a good combination of these genres.

C.S.Lewis was pretty good, he wrote the Narnia series.

I'm going with Robert Jordan and his "Wheel of Time" saga. So far I've found nothing that compares although I do also like Terry Goodkind and David Eddings.

No question that preternatural fiction is hot these days, so it's no surprise that my vote goes to Laurell K Hamilton for both her Anita Blake Vampire Hunter Series and her Meredith Gentry Series. Ms... keep reading →

Matt Ruff!

Easily!

My first hub was a sort of review, but more of an urging for people to read it, on his book 'Bad Monkeys'

go and check it out!

oh those hp and twilight and eragon books are great but they can never sum up to the brilliance of JRR Tolkien, Anne rice, and Anne Mcaffrey,

jrr tolkein seemed to have created the foundation of magical lands and walking trees and wizards (and he's a friend of C.SLewis)

i guess all of his books are wonderful in their own ways. he made a whole new world of imagination and magic, there wont be harry potter if it werent for him

Anne rice, and other vampire novelist of her time are the best ever, twilight has bad writing (thesaurus rapist as what my friends say) and those new vampire novels sprouting today are kind of annoying, i hope girls would appreciate a vampire without them sparkling and whatever

Anne Mcaffrey is a genius, she made a beautiful art of mixing sci fi and fantasy, i love harper trilogy is my fave as a child and made me read sci fi, eragon's mind reading with her rider is not an original idea, it was Mcaffrey's

that all