That book may have actually been it, come to think of it. I'd say "I have to go back and find out" but I already left there with a bag and a half of books this week anyway...
Terry Brooks clicked with me almost solely for a character: Wren Ohmsford. While all her male cousins were scampering around and angsting over romance and everything else and getting locked in jail and such, Wren was literally fighting her way through hell on earth, becoming queen, then fighting her way right back through that same hell with the entire elven race literally in her hand, so she could come back and save their butts.
Sadly, while some of his female characters were decent enough and the males were ok enough for your standard "coming of age fantasy heroes" Wren was the only one I ever cared about...and the one of that Shannara series he cared the least about. Everyone else got detailed post series lives...Wren got "she became queen...she's regarded as the best ruler ever...but I won't tell you squat about her." I was ready to give up on Brooks altogether, and then he brought in Grianne, who went from the handmaiden of the world's greatest evil to the most powerful force of good the world had ever known, and didn't waste her life beating herself up for her youth. She's so powerful that it essentially took an army of magic users to send her to hell, and the second she got there, she started tearing the place up to get out(sadly, I fear that in the end, she will be rescued by her nephew, the typical Ohmsford hero, instead of saving herself.)
GRRM is...well, I'm largely attached to it for the characters, and the moral message/life of the world, but it also does an extremely good job of making "huge and epic" actually feel huge and epic, instead of tust a thick book. He's the only one to ever cross the 750 page line without me wanting to tell him to shut up and get on with it.
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That book may have actually been it, come to think of it. I'd say "I have to go back and find out" but I already left there with a bag and a half of books this week anyway...
Terry Brooks clicked with me almost solely for a character: Wren Ohmsford. While all her male cousins were scampering around and angsting over romance and everything else and getting locked in jail and such, Wren was literally fighting her way through hell on earth, becoming queen, then fighting her way right back through that same hell with the entire elven race literally in her hand, so she could come back and save their butts.
Sadly, while some of his female characters were decent enough and the males were ok enough for your standard "coming of age fantasy heroes" Wren was the only one I ever cared about...and the one of that Shannara series he cared the least about. Everyone else got detailed post series lives...Wren got "she became queen...she's regarded as the best ruler ever...but I won't tell you squat about her." I was ready to give up on Brooks altogether, and then he brought in Grianne, who went from the handmaiden of the world's greatest evil to the most powerful force of good the world had ever known, and didn't waste her life beating herself up for her youth. She's so powerful that it essentially took an army of magic users to send her to hell, and the second she got there, she started tearing the place up to get out(sadly, I fear that in the end, she will be rescued by her nephew, the typical Ohmsford hero, instead of saving herself.)
GRRM is...well, I'm largely attached to it for the characters, and the moral message/life of the world, but it also does an extremely good job of making "huge and epic" actually feel huge and epic, instead of tust a thick book. He's the only one to ever cross the 750 page line without me wanting to tell him to shut up and get on with it.