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Originally Posted by Elsi
I chose "both", though I own many more SF books than fantasy. I have tended to avoid fantasy until recently. That means I have a large body of work to read just to catch up with the folks who've been reading it all along! And it's fun.
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I got interested in fantasy many years ago, after an English teacher gave me PB copies of LoTR. (I think the motivation was "If you're going to read other books in the class room than the ones assigned, they might as well be
good ones!". _The Fellowship of the Ring_ was slow going at first, and I had to push myself through the first hundred pages, but after that it kicked in, and I blitzed through the trilogy in a weekend. It gave me a taste for it, and curious about what else existed. The Ballantine Adult Fantasy series introduced me to E.R. Eddison, William Morris, Lord Dunsany and other, and off I went.
Tolkien inspired a number of clones, which I avoided, but other authors did good work not cast in that mold.
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Thanks for recommending the Silence Leigh series. They don't appear to be available in electronic format so maybe I'll crawl the second-hand PB markets.
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My copy is an SF Book Club hardcover anthology edition. You might also look for Suzette Haden Elgin's "Ozark Fantasy" series. The series is set on a colony planet settled by folks from the Ozarks, who have developed magic alongside of technology. The protagonist is Responsible of Brightwater, a young woman who happens to be the most powerful magician on the planet, in a society not quite up to accepting that for various reasons. The books include _The Wind's Twelve Quarters_, _The Grand Jubilee_, and _And Then There'll Be Fireworks_.
Good stuff.
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Dennis