I find it incredible how different I feel about certain books/series now vs how I felt about them 15 or 20 years ago. What sort of major changes have happened to your tastes during your fantasy journey?
I used to own every single Wheel of Time book and spent all my time on wotmania.com, but I have zero desire to read them ever again. Honestly, classic epic fantasy just doesn’t do it for me in general anymore.
I don’t tend to get excited about the next Brandon Sanderson novel, but I was a huge proponent of him when he was signing copies of Elantris in my tiny Idaho mall.
It’d be great if Rothfuss, Lynch or Martin finished their series, but I used to rant and rave about wanting them and now I just move on to things that are done. I can wait, and in the case of Rothfuss I’m not 100% sure those books are going to finish nearly as strongly as I first thought.
Here’s my personal opinion.
A lot of us get into fantasy and sci-fi when we’re young. In my case, maybe well before I was ten. While there are many good authors, I do feel that many authors ride on the existing world-building and tropes to write their novels. The actual writing quality of many books is suspect.
When I read over the books I enjoyed as a child or young adult, I’m pretty surprised at how poorly some of those are written. I honestly didn’t care too much when I was young and I just inhaled books. As I get older, I’m much more critical of poor writing. I know enough now to criticise pacing, or development, or eloquence.
Finally, of course our personal taste changes over time. Many of us read these books at a super early stage of our development.