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Am I the only one who distrusts female fantasy authors?


Greyman

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I don't really practice my sexism in any other format than picking up new books. That said, it's very hard for me to trust a female fantasy author. I think Mercedes Lackey and Anne Mcafrey might have poisoned me. Is Storm Constantine a woman? Robin Hobb is good, but to me, she's a unique exception.

Be honest, does anyone else distrust the lady authors of fantasy?

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Guest Raidne
I don't really practice my sexism in any other format than picking up new books. That said, it's very hard for me to trust a female fantasy author. I think Mercedes Lackey and Anne Mcafrey might have poisoned me. Is Storm Constantine a woman? Robin Hobb is good, but to me, she's a unique exception.

Be honest, does anyone else distrust the lady authors of fantasy?

Ursula le Guin is quite good, although she writes mostly sci-fi, and people seem to like J.K. Rowling, last I checked...

But now that I think about it, how about Latino fantasy writers? Are they any good? Lithuanian? I haven't noticed the hearing-impaired community turning out anything decent in awhile, either...

:rolleyes:

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I expected this thread to go into lists of good female fantasy authors. I considered even asking that it not in my first post. I know there are good ones out there, I just happen to have read some really terrible female authors and now I can't bring myself to really pick up a female fantasy author.

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I'm the other way; I tend to distrust men authors, especially when it comes to portraying female characters, and not to get too excited about their imaginary battles and wizz-bang magic tricks. It's probably because I'm a woman myself. :dunno:

The again, you haven't exactly named stellar women authors here, and I'm pretty sure that there are other women authors who write as well as Robin Hobb (I think Mary Gentle and Michelle West are two pretty good authors).

And yeah, Storm Constantine's a woman.

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So what about Robert Newcombe, Christofer Paolini, Terry Goodkind. Would reading something by them prevent you from reading any male written fantasy?

Your reason is extremely flawed Greyman

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Susanna Clarke is great. I fear that's the only female fantasy author I have read. (That being said, the author's sex interests me as much as his or her height, age, nationality, or hair colour. Namely: not at all.)

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It's not a logic thing - I can't help it. Maybe I'll force myself to read some of the authors you guys have mentioned. Perhaps then I'll get over my bias.

And yes, Cuarenta, I've read plenty of awful male writers. But I've also read plently of good male writers. Not so for the female authors, though.

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It sounds lke a kind of weird argument to me as well, yes. And I would certainly recommend the Earth Sea Trilogy by Ursula Le Guin.

Actually, this reminds me of a point an author friend of my mother's made about male vs female sci-fi writers. She said that for a lot of male sci-fi writers, the technology and toys are very important (e.g. Arthur C Clarke, Kim Stanley Robinson) and they're in many ways the focus of the books. Female sci-fi authors, on the other hand, tend to use the setting of a science fiction novel as a way of writing stories about people, societies, and so on (Margaret Atwood and Ursula Le Guin are examples of this). Frank Herbert is a notable exception to this rule, incidentally.

Anyway, I'm going to have to agree completely with Ent that the gender of the author doesn't particularly influence whether or not I'm inclined to like a book or not.

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I hate Earthsea.

But that aside, I'm not really defending my views, because in large part, it's not really something I believe in principle. I just have a lot of trouble picking up a female fantasy author. It's just something I can't help. Don't try to dig any deeper than that.

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I tend to live and die by recs as well. For whatever reason, Hobb is really the only female author I've seen that gets constantly "pimped" by people. I certainly wouldn't avoid a highly rec'd book because the author happened to be female, but I would agree with the original post that there doesn't seem to be a ton of great stuff out there.

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I hate Earthsea.

But that aside, I'm not really defending my views, because in large part, it's not really something I believe in principle. I just have a lot of trouble picking up a female fantasy author. It's just something I can't help. Don't try to dig any deeper than that.

I'm just not sure I understand what your point is, I guess. I suppose this constitutes digging deeper, so I'll stop now.

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Elrostar, I'm sure you're smart enough to understand my point. Someone can be racist while disagreeing with racism. My mother is exactly that way. Logically she completely disapproves of racism, but she'll clutch her purse tighter if a black man walks past her on the street.

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I trust female authors to write male characters more than I trust male authors to write female characters. Well written characters are key to my enjoyment of any book.

There may be a silly impression that all female written fantasy is full of unicorns and princesses and far too few boys toys, but I can neither confirm or deny, because I've never read any like that. I've managed to avoid them because I judge each and every book on the book, not on the gender of its author.

Also, the amount of women on this board giving it plenty clearly shows that there is no male/female divide in the fantasy community, so why should there be in the people producing the stuff ?

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