Guardian 2006
All right, I admit it, I'm biased. I hate fantasy. All those adjectives and elves and weird names. The moment someone says fantasy, I know I'm in for "The three blood-red moons rose over the dusty sand plains of Ut-Tajik as the bald jackal priest of Sidt placed the sacred silver urn of Caldon on the broken altar of the blind god Fifff." I got bored halfway through The Lord of the Rings; why should I endure Tolkien's imitators?
My 16-year-old son, Joshua, adores fantasy. Fantasy books, fantasy computer games, fantasy websites. But the books he loves above all else are Robin Hobb's Farseer trilogy. He's nagged me for ages to read Book 1, Assassin's Apprentice. He's read it even more times than I've read The Way We Live Now.
What mystifies me about Josh's love of fantasy is that it excludes everything else. He lives in a house heaving with classics. But will Josh read Crime and Punishment, Emma or Barchester Towers? He will not. We both love the theatre, and a lot of our taste in music overlaps but we part company when it comes to books.
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